How To Scale Your Leadership Without Losing Your Team (Or Your Mind) | Ep 243
16:21 Share

The thing is, is if you want to scale your leadership without losing your damn mind, you can't be every person's best friend. And it sucks because you probably really like the people that you've hired and you want to create a great team. I get it because I'm the same way. At some point, you have to realize that your desire to have relationship with every single person that's very deep and you give them all the time in the world might actually be holding your business or your team back.

What's up, guys? Welcome back to Build. And today I want to talk about a transition that every leader makes, which is going from one-on-one to one-to-many. So this was top of mind for me because I think at different points in your business journey, there are different areas where things break. One of the areas where things start to break is in going from one-on-one communication to having to go to one-to-many. And what

And what I mean by that is essentially when you first start the business, it's easy to talk to every single person individually. And you find that things run really smoothly when you talk to every person individually and people stay long when you talk to every person individually. And so talking to people individually,

works really well to make sure things don't fall apart and things continue to work well. The reality is though, is as your business scales, and especially if you scale to be, you know, let's go 70, 100, 150 people, eventually you meet a ceiling where you cannot just talk to everybody individually at once.

I personally was reminded of that myself in the last week. And so I thought it would be a really good topic to share because it's something that I've done multiple times in my career and I have to do it over and over depending on the level of scale with different groups of people each time. But I'm at a point right now where I realize it's something that I'm going through. And so I wanted to share with you guys how to make this transition because I think it's one that is crucial to be made. And I want to talk about all the things that go into it because it is a scary one to do.

So for any of you who haven't heard of the transition from going from one-on-one communication to one-to-many, there's a book called Blitzscaling, which I recommend you don't read unless you are planning to burn money and get VC funding. However, it does talk about this one concept, which is going from one-on-one communication to group communication.

And this is essential for anybody that is scaling their company because early on, one-on-one conversations feel like the best way to do things, right? But as your business grows and as your list of responsibility grows, if you don't shift how you lead people, you find yourself doing a few things. And this is what I found myself doing recently. One, repeating the same information over and over and over again.

And it's like, oh, but you know, this person's going to take it this way. This person's going to take it this way. And so like, I've got to talk to these five people individually to relay this information, right? The second is that you find yourself becoming a bottleneck for decision making, right?

So what you notice is that until you talk to somebody, decisions are not getting made. Decisions stop until they have a conversation with you. And then the third thing is that you build a team that relies on you rather than a team that thinks for themselves. One-on-one conversations are still important. I am not trying to belittle that and I am not trying to say that they're not, but they should be strategic, not a default type of communication to keep things moving in your business.

In fact, in order to scale, you have to stop being the person who solves every problem and you have to start being the person who teaches people to solve their own problems.

The reason why one-on-ones prevent you from doing this is because they are a scapegoat. They become a scapegoat for a few things. One, you don't have to carefully tailor group communication because you just say, oh, I'm going to let all these people know on our one-on-ones, right? And so you avoid leveling up your communication style as a CEO or as a leader in your business because you're like, I'm just going to talk to each person individually about these things, right? And what you actually do when you do that is you also avoid building a strong team.

And you also avoid building people who are resilient. And you also avoid teaching people to understand that not every communication is gonna be perfect every time. Now, the other thing that you do is you teach your team to rely on you to make decisions. So if you're meeting with somebody weekly, if you're meeting with somebody twice a week, if you're meeting with somebody every other week, that will determine the level of problems that they present to you. What do I mean by that? If somebody knows that they're gonna meet with you every week, what kind of decisions do you think they're gonna bring to you?

they're gonna bring to you weekly decisions. If you meet with somebody every twice a week, what do you think they're gonna bring to you? They're gonna bring to you the decisions that they have to make in those couple days. If you meet with somebody daily, what kind of decisions are they gonna bring to you?

they're gonna bring to you decisions they have to make that day. What they become if you have these things too frequently and you're too loose about your requirements around them is they become a scapegoat for your teammates to rely on you to make decisions so that they don't have to worry about fucking up, they don't have to think and they can just go execute.

And then lastly, what one-on-ones do, especially when the leader defaults to having them instead of having group communication, is they create a team that is strong top-down, but not strong from peer-to-peer. Basically what happens is that the people on your team that report to you, they get all their reinforcement positively from you as the leader and not from their peers.

And they rely on you to help them solve their problems, not their peers. And so what you've done is you've made yourself the strong piece of the puzzle rather than having them rely on each other and creating a strong peer-to-peer dynamic. That being said, I'm not arguing that one-on-ones are not good and that they're not important. In fact, I'm not arguing that at all. I do lots of one-on-ones.

I'm arguing that they're not good if you do them too frequently. I'm arguing that they're not a good replacement for peer-to-peer communication. I'm arguing that they're not a good place to inform people of new initiatives because we should be doing that in a group setting.

It's really a mentality switch that we want to have. So the mentality switch that goes with, I would say, like less frequent one-on-ones and more group communication is a couple of things because you can't really make the shift unless you shift how you think. So I wrote down three things that I believe that I've had to shift in the past, and I know I'm in the middle of shifting right now, and I recommend you do as well. Okay, so we go from, instead of thinking, how do I fix this?

We think, how do I make sure my team knows how to fix this without me? I bet you guys can feel that one. Okay. Instead of saying, how do I fix this? You have to think, how do I make sure my team knows how to fix this without me? The second one, instead of, I need to be involved in everything, you switch to, I need to build a team so strong they make me irrelevant.

I know that sounds ridiculous and that's crazy, but the stronger your team, the less needed you are. If you feel like you're needed in everything, it's because you don't have a strong team. And is that your fault or their fault? It's probably your fault because you train your team how to use you. And at some point in every business, you have to go from allowing them to use you in every capacity for every decision and everything on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis to teaching them how to build systems that do not need your input. And then the last mindset shift is instead of thinking, I'm the expert,

You have to think, I'm training a team of experts. So notice what it is. It's going from thinking about yourself to thinking about the team. It's going from using every opportunity for you to show up for the team, for you to take on something, for you to be the hero,

to making your team the hero, to having your team solve something, to using it as an opportunity to create systems. Let me tell you why most people don't do this. Most people don't do this. They don't shift from this like one-to-one to one-to-many mindset because of this, because they cannot think on behalf of their team. Their default thinking always goes back to that, whether that's because they think that they're just so good that other people can't do it, or whether it's because they're scared. Either way, the buck stops with them, right?

The question is this, how do we actually make this shift? Okay, I want to first combat the thoughts that I know are gonna arise in your mind as I talk through this, okay? I understand that change is not easy and you're probably thinking a couple of things like this. First one you're thinking,

But Layla, I don't want to lose the personal connection. If I don't do one-on-ones with people, what if they leave? You're not going to lose the personal connection, okay? What you want to do is you want to make your one-on-one time more valuable, more strategic, okay? Teaching somebody that you are going to speak to them less so that they grow and that when you do speak, it's so that you can help develop them. Most people would like that.

Think about the one-on-ones you have with people right now. Most of them I would guess are tactical. They're not strategic. They're not developmental. What you want to do is you want to make sure that when you do meet one-on-one, it is to talk about strategic things. It's to talk about their development. It's not to stay in the weeds and talk about the tiny tactical items. And so you just need to say that to your team.

Okay, and you have to think of it like this. Whenever you remove yourself as somebody who's providing reinforcement for your team, you need to replace yourself with somebody. So for example, if you're going to do less one-on-ones with somebody, set them up with one-on-ones with somebody else. Say you normally do a weekly one-on-one and now you're moving to monthly. Can you have them meet with another leader to meet with them every other week? And then in the weeks in between, a different leader.

That's gonna make a more valuable person, a more valuable teammate, a more valuable team. Maybe you don't talk to them as much, but that doesn't mean you lose connection, especially if the time that you spend with them is quality, not quantity. Now, the second one that you're thinking, you're like, well, I don't think my team's gonna like that. This is a tough one, guys. But here's the thing, business is not a democracy, okay? Your team often won't like things until they see that it's best for them and best for the business, okay?

You have to set new expectations. You have to be honest. You have to get by when you can, and you have to move forward when you can't. And people will adapt. This is something that took me too long to understand. I was so terrified of cutting off certain people's one-on-ones. I was so terrified of spending less time with my team. And it wasn't until I saw that my fear of letting people down, of not being there for people, of not spending as much time with people, held back my team from being strong enough

That's when I was like, oh yeah, fuck this. I don't care if people don't like this change because I know this is the right way to go. This is gonna make them a better team. This is gonna make them better for each other. This is gonna make us stronger as a whole. And that's when I was like, okay, even if people resist this in the beginning, they're gonna see the benefit eventually. And so I just need them to hold on long enough to see that. And I know the next thought you're thinking, which is like, well, I feel like if I step back, everything's gonna fall apart. They're not gonna make decisions. They're gonna make mistakes. I'm gonna have to pay for it.

I get it, but that's also your ego talking. You need to put systems in place, not accommodate with your time. And so if you're worried about the decisions that people are making, then create a system where they submit all the decisions that they're making to you and you can approve or deny, right? If that's really what makes you feel better in the interim, or have them do a weekly report. And on that weekly report, they talk about the decisions that they've made.

If you lack transparency and you lack systems, that's when you default to just letting people use your time. I understand all those thoughts and I know that they are like they're valid. But at the same time, they're not reasons to keep doing this because the thing is, is if you want to scale your leadership without losing your damn mind, you can't be every person's best friend.

And it sucks because you probably really like the people that you've hired and you want to create a great team. I get it because I'm the same way. But at some point, you have to realize that your desire to have a relationship with every single person that's very deep and you give them all the time in the world might actually be holding your business or your team back. Now that I have broken your belief and dismantled your desire to have one-on-ones with everybody all the time on a weekly basis, okay, how do we actually train people at scale? How do we go from one-on-one to one-on-many?

The first thing that you want to do is you want to identify what are the repeatable topics that you keep talking about? What do you keep answering as a question? That is a sign that that is something that you can teach to your team in a scalable format.

Right. So something that I do is I really look back at the last couple of weeks most of the time. And then I ask myself, like, what are the repeat topics that I keep hearing about? And then how can I relay this message, relay these answers, relay this way of doing this to the team in a way that is more scalable? Now, the second thing that you do based on that is instead of answering one person at a time, you can host team wide Q&A sessions.

Okay, so you basically move from one-to-one to one-to-many. Instead of answering questions one-on-one, you answer them in a group setting because here's the thing. If you're answering the questions in private, I bet you this, for every one person that has a question, there are seven other people who have the same question. So now people don't just benefit from getting their question answered, they benefit from hearing every other person's question get answered on that call. The next thing that you need to do is delegate leadership. If you have team leads,

If you have leaders that report to you, empower them to train others. Your goal is to make yourself unnecessary to all the levels below you. Now, when I say unnecessary, that doesn't mean unwanted, okay? But if you don't delegate leadership, you don't delegate hard conversations, you don't delegate hiring, you don't delegate decisions, then you are going to be the bottleneck of every single department in your company.

And so it's in order to make this shift from one-to-one to one-to-many, you also have to be able to delegate authority to other leaders on your team. Don't just call them a leader. Give them all the same responsibilities that you have as a leader have. And then the last piece to this, to being able to go from that one-to-one to one-to-many is to create a culture of learning. Okay, make ongoing learning and training a thing because that way your team is going to grow without you having to spoon feed them.

Right. If you have people on your if you want a culture of learning and growing and you have people on your team who don't like learning, don't like growing, then one, you need to reconsider what kind of people you have on your team. But two, you need to provide them and prompt them to continue doing these things. Some people get so caught up in the day to day that it makes things really difficult. And here's the thing.

When I say that we need this culture, the reason is, is because you cannot continue to prompt people in a one-on-one setting to grow. You cannot continue to prompt people in a one-on-one conversation to grow. You have to do it in a group setting.

And I understand because this is one of the most difficult shifts for people to make as a leader. I'm in it right now and I don't like it. I don't like having to talk to people I like less. I don't like having to have more distant relationships with people who I really like spending time with. But I also want to make sure that I make sure that my company wins because everyone that works at my company, they're here to win. And if I don't lead them to the finish line, I have failed them.

And if I know that in order to lead them to the finish line, I have to make a shift from having so many one-on-one deep relationships to having one-to-many relationships, then I've got to do it. Now, here's the thing. I get it. They're going to have pushback. It's going to be hard. There's going to be mistakes.

But the reality is, is that oftentimes what holds people back from getting to the next level of business is because they keep operating as the person that they were when they started it. And a lot of those things work until they don't work. I'm reminded again in my journey because it just continues to happen at every level. But I want to remind you because I continue to see it over and over again for people. It's like the way that the CEO, the way that the founder operates, that's what's holding the business back. It's not any like, it's not the market. It's not the strategy. It's not the team. It's how you train your team to use you.

It's where you put your time and you have to make sure that your time is focused on things that are the highest leverage, highest ROI for the entire company. So this is the shift that if you make will change everything for you. If you want to scale your leadership without losing your damn mind.

The key to this is to build training, to trust your team, to trust the systems, and to let your team step up when you step back. If this hit home for you, let me know about it in the comments. Shoot me a DM. I would love to hear how you're making this shift if you are. And of course, if this is valuable, go ahead, subscribe, leave a review, share it with somebody who needs it.