#73: Grace, Responsibility and Leadership
As business owners, we want it all.
We want things done quickly. And we want to get it right every single time.
But what isn't typically spoken about is the level of grace and responsibility required in our lives and business in order to balance leadership with understanding and action with outcomes.
Which is truly necessary for transforming into the leader we need to become.
But how do we lead through this tension of grace and responsibility?
Make sure to tune into this episode where I'll share the key to balancing these critical components like your growth depends on it, because it does.
Check out my free training on www.yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond.
Listen to the Show:
Laura (00:00):
Today, I want to talk about the impact of grace, responsibility and leadership. There's a really interesting tension between these three words that we rarely hear together in a sentence, especially when we're leading organizations. The thing is we need to be able to give other people and ourselves grace. Grace is rarely discussed in the online business world. We want perfection. We want things done quickly. We want to get it right every single time. But what that doesn't include typically is this idea of grace. We also need to take responsibility for the pieces that we own as leaders, responsibility, around things that we wished we had done well and not well. And oftentimes as we continue to scale, we forget this piece and then it can sometimes come back to remind us in ways that we didn't necessarily want grace and responsibility shows up in our leadership. How do we lead through this tension of grace and responsibility? I want to share a story of something. I recently went through personally, what I did about it and how it impacted my leadership. And today's episode of the Scale with Joy show.
(01:07):
So many entrepreneurs, dream of living a life of massive impact by creating a mega successful company, but only a tiny percentage of businesses actually scale to that point. And when they do it is so often lacking the very joy and freedom that got them into entrepreneurship in the first place. So on this podcast, we speak authentically on what it actually takes to scale your business in a way that creates freedom and joy that works for you, your team, and the incredible impact that you are meant to make in the world as a visionary entrepreneur. My name is Laura Meyer and I'm your host. I'm a serial entrepreneur wife, mom, to three. And I love talking all things business, especially digging into what it actually takes to scale joyfully to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond let's get started.
(01:50):
Grace is a word that's rarely seen spoken about in the realm of leadership. Leadership is all about driving it forward, getting it done, making it happen and inspiring other people to create a result. It's about being unrelentless about our vision and our mission. And for many of us, this idea of grace, this idea of making sure that we leave room to be kind to ourselves and remind other people that even though we're leaders, we're just human isn't always the primary focus as a faith based person. I think grace is one of the most under-discussed most critical components to being able to lead well and manage the pressure cooker that can sometimes happen when we're scaling a business. And in a lot of ways, we have to lead through example on this topic of grace. We have to be willing to forgive ourselves, give ourselves grace in the decisions that we make, things that maybe we wished we had seen coming or done differently.
(02:46):
It can be a tremendous burden to bear. And for many of us at moments in time, it can feel like we're carrying the wheat of the world on our shoulders. We're responsible for all of these people and their income, their ability to pay their mortgage or feed their family with the decisions that we make. This is just a pressure that you get used to as a leader, who's growing companies, but if you're a human with sensitivity and care, it really never gets that comfortable. What grace means for me is being able to admit mistakes, be really honest when I see that something needs to happen differently and understanding that leaders become better leaders through honing their skills and actually absorbing those lessons learned along the way. We are not in a silo alone. Although as leaders growing organizations, we might miss stuff. We might make a decision that wasn't the right one and everybody needs grace.
(03:37):
There is no exception in this world to needing grace responsibility by definition is to take accountability for one's actions to do what's right and true and authentic alignment with how you need to show up where responsibility comes in is not spinning it any other way, not kidding myself or other people, not trying to create some kind of marketing or sales around it. Just really communicating in a clear, straightforward, honest manner, because the most honest people will appreciate that. And if you're working alongside somebody who can't handle that level of authenticity from you, they shouldn't be in the arena with you. Grace means embracing that kind of honesty, that kind of transparency, that kind of authenticity. Grace means that when we wish we had made a different decision, hired someone else, our expenses outran our revenue, or we can't deliver on the thing that we thought we could that were not only honest from a place of responsibility, but that we ask for grace by first giving it to ourselves because no leader that I've ever met, who has had tremendous success has gotten it right every single step.
(04:46):
And if the people around you hold it against you or come after you, that's on them, it's not your burden to bear. This is a really difficult thing to embrace as a leader, especially for those of us who used to communicating a big vision and exciting positivity. Several years ago, I closed down a company fairly unexpectedly. I had scaled it to over a dozen locations through franchising of a concept that was originally performing extremely well. Then over time, I realized that the industry was changing. The unit level economics of the original plan had also changed. And after about a year of not selling franchises anymore, I decided to proactively close down the company. It was an extremely painful decision, as you can probably imagine. Litigation took place that was eventually dismissed, but I lost a lot of painful relationships and a lot of sleep never mind financial loss for myself, my family and others.
(05:42):
I look back on that time. And while I didn't receive a lot of grace from the people who were involved, I started to embrace grace back to myself. My life then changed. I also took massive responsibility. I refunded anybody we couldn't serve the locations where I owned. I released any responsibility coming back to me from the franchisees, whereas I easily could have pursued it and probably won my case due to the agreements that we had in place. I personally fulfilled outstanding obligations on that business, even after bankruptcy for months and months after closing, it was extremely painful. But for me it was extreme responsibility. If anybody asks, I can look back on that time and say, I have my own back on how I handled it. Recently on the flip side, I was in a situation where somebody came to me, who I was working with, and this situation had changed on their end of things.
(06:36):
It was due to something outside their control, but it would impact me pretty significantly financially and not in the best way, particularly in the short term. It was very clear to me that what the situation was based on my years of business experience and knowing how financial models work. With that said, I think with grace, God was inviting me to extend that grace in a way that I had not been provided. So sometimes when we're growing a company it's bigger than each one of us in this situation, God was teaching me something in a way that I did not expect. And I probably would have never seen it from that perspective, If I hadn't been working on being on the receiving end of needing so much grace, exactly three years prior. I gave that person so much grace and understanding it was completely beyond their control.
(07:28):
And I knew that eventually it would work out. It really is amazing when God gives us situations to teach us something, not maybe the way that we were expecting or even hoping, but reminding us that with all of these resources and gifts and blessings, they come from him and it's him who teaches us the things that we need to learn, not on our time, but on his time. It's also a beautiful opportunity. It's a moment in time where we have been given the gift of choice to sometime take these painful lessons learned and to lean in, embrace those stretchmarks and allow grace to move us into the action that we know is right, this reminder of grace, and then also on the flip side, responsibility is incredibly important and it's that tension. And that balance between the two that makes us who we are as leaders in ways that maybe we didn't expect her may not always want grace is the dignity and empathy to others and ourselves.
(08:27):
That has an incredible understanding for us to lean into and be at peace with, with our own selves, our own decisions and looking for opportunities to extend it to other people. And we need to take responsibility, not defending it or spinning it, but just knowing that sometimes things don't always go the way we think. And when we make decisions, they don't always go in the way that we want them to. There might be things that happen outside of our circumstances and not within our control. Maybe it was just a lesson that we haven't learned yet needed to, or we needed to make a different decision. And we just didn't know it. This is where grace comes in. Grace gives us what we need to extend to ourselves as leaders and the people around us, or else we'll just walk around like a pressure cooker and cannot, and will not ever be at peace growing a company.
(09:20):
Because when we embrace that balance responsibility and grace, we know that what we're doing, it comes with peace. I mean, when we make these decisions, they're not always popular, but when we have our back with how we made a decision and the fact that everybody needs grace, when we handled something in the best way that we could with the information that we had at that time, and we forgive ourselves for something that we've already received, grace around, we inherently do good by our creator with responsibility. The more we try to spin something or push it off, or when a door's closing and our situation has revealed its truth. The more we actually delay grace, it's so much better to say, here's the deal. This is the situation. This is how I'm going to handle it. This is the best thing that I believe we need to do based on what is right here.
(10:15):
And I understand that might not work for you. What can we do to talk about it? The more we delay responsibility, the longer grace takes to come into our lives. And by leaning into that responsibility, the more at peace we can be with our everyday choices and actions with the underlying understanding that this was truly a lesson that was critical to learn. This is where we transform into the evolved servant to God, our loved ones, our business, and those surrounding us that we were born to be. I have to tell you the truth. I resisted this for a little while and my own personal example. I had so much on the line and so much to lose. I knew that the industry that I was in for 15 years was changing. And while I stepped away from selling franchises for just a little over a year, it took me a long time to really realize that the door that I had invested in for over 15 years was closing.
(11:10):
Once I did come to this realization, I took action that aligned with my truth. It was like a burden was lifted off my shoulders. I knew that there would be so much hard work ahead and lots of adversity, but I also knew that that sense of peace made the decision, the right one. There are times where I could take extreme responsibility for the pieces I owned. And there was times where I didn't own every element of that story. And that just needed time to take, to settle out to this day. It is so much more important to me to exhibit grace around what happened than for me to be right about anything. Sometimes when people hear about the details they cringe and say, well, you should go back after them, but the truth it's already been released, that's where the grace comes in. Not only for what I've given to myself, but to others.
(12:00):
And ultimately sometimes it's just really not worth the energy to be right about something, just taking the responsibility for what we own, never over owning the pieces that are for others. And just moving forward from a place of grace creates so much peace when we're scaling businesses. So as you're listening here, I want you to think about where you are not giving yourself grace or others, grace, who may be understood a situation differently, or did the best they could, or maybe given what you owned. They couldn't fulfill their obligation. Where are you taking responsibility either too much or too little. And how can grace be the healing that creates a new outcome? Where are you being invited to extend grace to other people that you're not choosing?
(12:44):
One thing I know for sure about running seven different businesses over the last 20 years, all of which have scaled to six or multiple have scaled to seven figures is that it always comes down to after responsibility is done, what remains is grace businesses open and close. Everything has a beginning and end, and we are not here forever on this planet. So how we choose to show up, particularly on the topic of grace is one of the main components of legacy that we get to leave behind. Not only as entrepreneurs who are joyfully scaling, but as human beings.
(13:23):
Hey there: before you head out, I want to let you know about a free new training I have right on a brand new website called yournextmillion.me. It's yournextmillion.me, where several of my seven figure clients and colleagues share what they're doing in the next year to scale their businesses, to the multi-million dollar mark and beyond. And I have to tell you, it is not what you think. So check it out at yournextmillion.me. And if you loved this show, will you subscribe to it and share it with a friend or just say something nice about it to someone, you know? I’d really appreciate it so much. Thanks so much for being here and I'll see you next time.
The Scale with Joy podcast dives into the mindset and strategies of scaling your company to the million dollar mark and beyond. Each week, we follow the journeys of innovators, disruptors, experts and leaders - sharing behind the scenes stories of their most challenging moments and greatest lessons learned-all while building their multi-million dollar empires.