Ep 152: Toni Everard - Your Business Needs You to Be the Leader

You've been waiting to feel ready.

More confident.

More experienced.

More certain about what you're doing.

Maybe you've told yourself you'll step into stronger leadership when your business is bigger...

When you have a team...

When you know more...

When you finally feel like you have all the answers.

But what if leadership was never something you earned?

What if it was something you chose?

The moment you decided to trust yourself enough to make the decision, set the standard and lead from where you are.

In this week's episode, Toni Everard explores what it really means to be the leader your business needs you to be.

Because if you own a business, you're already a leader.

Whether you have a team of twenty...

A VA working a few hours a week...

Or you're running the entire business yourself.

Leadership is part of your role.

And it starts with you.

This episode explores:

• why leadership begins with leading yourself

• how doing what you say you're going to do builds self-trust

• why you have to give yourself permission to set the standards, boundaries and priorities in your business

• why your clients are paying you for your expertise and leadership, not for you to simply do whatever they ask

• how to stop confusing being helpful with giving away your authority

• why good leaders don't need to make perfect decisions

• how taking responsibility for mistakes builds trust rather than destroying it

• why every problem is figureoutable when you trust yourself to work through it

• how stronger leadership creates more clarity, confidence and freedom in your business

If you've ever found yourself second-guessing your decisions...

Worrying about what your clients will think...

Struggling to hold your boundaries...

Or wondering whether you're really qualified to lead...

This episode will give you a very different perspective on leadership.

Because your business doesn't need you to have all the answers.

It needs you to trust yourself enough to lead.

To make the decision.

To set the standard.

To hold the boundary.

To take responsibility.

And to keep moving forward when things don't go exactly to plan.

That's what leadership really looks like.

🔗 Let’s Connect

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Links and Resources:

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Transcript

Ep152 Your Business Needs You to Be the Leader
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​[00:00:00] 

Welcome to this episode of The Coaching Circle, and today I wanna talk about something that's really been on my mind a lot, and that is really about leadership and why your business needs you to be a leader. So let's face it, if you own a business, you are a leader, right? It's required of you to be a leader.

And even if you work entirely by yourself in your business, you know, you may, you may have a VA that works a few hours a week with you, or you may even have a team, but regardless of the size of your business, leadership is a part of your role There's no two ways around it, and you might not be performing leadership, but that doesn't mean that your business doesn't require you to be a leader.[00:01:00] 

And, uh, and so this is really important because if things aren't going how we want them to, it requires leadership to turn that around. And, you know, often people, uh, associate leadership with, uh, you know, running, um, big organizations or managing big groups of people, but you are a leader long before you ever employ anybody.

And this is really important because first and foremost, you have to lead yourself. You have to be your own leader. You have to have self-leadership through making decisions. And, uh, and in your marketing, you need to be leading people towards a new way of thinking that's going to solve their problems and, uh, help them create their solutions.

And sales requires you to lead people through making a decision that is going to ultimately, uh, have a positive impact on them as well. So even then, [00:02:00] when we think about delivery, if you're a service provider or you're a coach, then you-- in the delivery of that service that you provide to your clients, you're gonna need to be a leader in that space to help your clients navigate their way through.

And, uh, and this is the nature of being able to create outcomes, right? It's leadership. So whether it's outcomes in your own life or outcomes in your business and outcomes for your clients, it all requires leadership. And every business, uh, every level of business that you, uh, step into is going to require a new level of, uh, responsibility that you're gonna need to lead it through.

Because remember that, um, every outcome you have, there's a level of responsibilities to, uh, attain and maintain that outcome, and it's the ease at which you can manage those [00:03:00] responsibilities that will make those outcomes fulfilling for you. And this is really important. And so the more you can lead yourself and other people through problems and towards an outcome, then the better outcomes that you will get.

And the fact is that the more you lead or the, the greater goals that you have, the more problems you'll encounter, and that's part of the role. It's part of the role. It's the opportunity to grow into this version of yourself who you can trust to handle whatever comes your way, and this is real leadership.

And that's what, uh, good-- That's why good leadership makes people magnetic because if you can lead, if you can solve problems, if you can remain certain to, y- you know, on your path towards your outcome, then people want to be around you. People will trust you. People will get a lot of certainty from that.

So this is why, you know, we always say that [00:04:00] leadership starts with yourself, leading yourself because before you can effectively lead anyone else, you have to be able to lead yourself, right? And, and a lot of that is doing what you say you're going to do. Even if you just say it to yourself, you've got to do what it is that you say y- you're gonna do.

That is self-leadership, and that's what leads to you trusting yourself as well. And running your own business requires you to decide where you're going and what you're creating and how you are going to operate. There's no boss that's setting you targets or deciding, you know, what you should change. Um, nobody determines the standards unless you're a part of an association or something like that.

But nobody determines your standards inside your business or your boundaries or the priorities for you. Y- you're the person who has to decide, so you have to give yourself that level of authority to decide and then hold yourself at that [00:05:00] standard and lead at that standard. And, uh, this is one of the reasons why business becomes such a powerful vehicle for personal growth because if you've spent your life looking outside of yourself for permission or authority or approval or reassurance, what, what we often get from working inside somebody else's organization, then i- in your own business, it's gonna require...

like, that's not gonna be there. That external permission authority is not gonna be there. You have to create it yourself. You have to develop that level of certaint- uh, certainty within yourself. And, uh, and of course, you can always seek advice and, uh, and have coaches and mentors and trusted people around you to help give you perspective, uh, and help you to make those better decisions.

But ultimately, you're responsible for deciding what happens next, for deciding what you do on a daily basis, for deciding what goal [00:06:00] are you moving towards, and this is self-leadership Right? It's being able to look, uh, at the information you have available to you at any given time, and to make a decision and trust yourself enough to move on that.

Right? Even if it feels uncomfortable, even if that involves doing something that, um, you know, you're unsure about. If it involves having a, a conversation with someone that feels difficult. All of those things is part of self-leadership. And so your business, when it is structured correctly, your business is what gives your leadership authority.

So the moment that you create a business, you, you create a structure within which you have authority, right? And this is why it's really important that you have some kind of a business plan and structure and terms and conditions and policies, uh, and, uh, and systems and processes about how your business runs.

And you decide [00:07:00] what you sell and how you deliver it, uh, and what you charge, and you establish how people work with you. Uh, you have boundaries, expectations, like I said, terms and conditions, standards. All of those things create the container from which the business operates. And you have to be then willing to exercise the authority to make sure that that is how it continues to operate, right?

Just in any organization. So you gotta really understand that when you've got your own business, you're the CEO. Just like there's a CEO of any of the major organizations, you become that CEO of yours, and this is where business sometimes starts to feel really uncomfortable for people. Because you might realize that technically you own the business and, you know, you're looking after clients and, and all those kinds of things, but- [00:08:00] You might be at the same time looking for some kind of permission, like looking outside of yourself for the permission to run it in how you see fit.

And this is where, um, you know, if a client asks for something that's outside of the agreement or outside of your boundaries, um, it might require you to have an uncomfortable conversation. And if you're not willing to lead in that space, then the client will lead you in their own direction instead. Uh, and if you've got a process that's there and you're expecting someone to follow it and they're not, then you've gotta have the leadership to, you know, have that conversation as well.

So if we're not willing to have those difficult conversations, then things get delayed. Things don't stay to standards. Things go off in a different tangent. Results don't, you know, occur as we expect them to. And over time, then the business starts being shaped by other [00:09:00] people's preferences, uh, and a lack of leadership.

And that's when it really starts to become a problem because leadership really means being willing to hold the structure you've created And with clear structure, clear structure actually creates safety and certainty for everyone involved because people know how things work, right? And what's expected of them, and what they can expect from you as well.

And if you're really clear about that, then people will... Y- like your certainty needs to trump other people's doubt. Okay? So your certainty about how those things run needs to trump other people's doubt about how they're gonna operate in that. And I think w- we've gotta be really aware that this definitely applies to our clients and people who are paying us because when you're in a job, often when you're in a job, you know, you might have heard things like, "The [00:10:00] client's always right," or it is your employer that's paying you, right?

Because the, whoever you work with in a job is usually paying the organization, the organization's paying you, and it might feel like there is a leader above you that is paying you. When you are the business owner, it feels like clients are paying you, and sometimes people feel like then, oh, that means that the client's in the lead, and they're just not.

So you've still gotta think about when you've got your own business, that clients are still paying your business to exist, to provide a service, and then your business is paying you. So your clients are paying your business for you to lead them to a s- to an outcome, to a solution. Okay? So when somebody is paying you, and this is a really important mindset shift that I think a lot of service providers need, is that understanding when someone pays you, they're paying you to lead them.

Okay? They don't know how to get the outcome that they want by themselves, [00:11:00] and so they're paying you to help them do that. And so, you know, sometimes we get unconsciously get this relationship backwards, and a client pays, and suddenly we start behaving as if the client's the boss, and they're not. Right?

So we've gotta be really clear about that. Um, and if you're hyper-aware of whether other people are happy, then you can really be challenged to, uh, hold other people accountable to their actions. But this is part of leadership, right? If something isn't working, you know, if you just start immediately, uh, questioning whether you've done something wrong, then that's not self-leadership Okay?

So you've always got to think about why did this person come to me? And if there's a problem that they want solving and help with that and an outcome that they want to achieve, then they're paying for your expertise and your experience and your perspective and your process and your ability to get there, and the container that [00:12:00] you've created in your business with all the systems and processes and standards that-- how you operate in for that.

Okay? So sometimes that then means that leadership requires telling people some things that they don't wanna hear. Um, and I hear this a lot from my clients when they feel like, "Oh, you know, I've gotta deliver this message, but it feels really awful. I think that they're gonna be upset," or, you know, "I'm worried about how that is."

But of course, the client, if they've got a problem, they probably are going to be emotional at some times because they've got a problem, right? And they've been stuck in it, and if they knew how to solve it, they would have solved it themselves, but they don't. And so sometimes people need to be led through that to be able to see things that they haven't been willing to see on their own.

And so, you know, this is why leadership also requires understanding people, having emotional intelligence, understanding things like rapport, understanding when rapport is broken and how do you regain [00:13:00] rapport, and how do you, you know, keep yourself in a state of certainty that's still compassionate, but that state of certainty will, uh, w-will be-- will create that level of safety and magnetism for which people will follow.

And that's really important for you to understand and to be able to develop. And, uh, and so, you know, with clients, sometimes you've got to hold a boundary, right? And really hold a boundary and say really clearly, "This is what I recommend we do." And know at the same time you can't control people. They're still gonna have-- they're still gonna be in control of their own actions, but be really clearly, say, "This is what we need to do to get this outcome, and if we don't do this, I can't guarantee what your outcome will be."

Right? So you clearly map that out and say, "This is what I'm recommending. You do this to get this outcome. If you do something else, you'll probably get some other outcome that's not what you want." [00:14:00] And they can still make that choice, but you've been really clear about what is required. Uh, and so in that way, y-we've got to remember that you're not handing over your authority about your knowledge or your expertise because somebody else has paid you.

You wanna stand strong in that. You need to use your expertise to lead in that space. And so it's not just in the delivery, of course, where we're leading. Um, you're also leading through marketing and sales. This is really important, and I think often when I talk to people about visibility, they're like, "Oh, yeah, I'm happy for people to see me."

But are you happy for people to see you leading? Are you happy for people to see you have a lot of certainty about the way you do things and what you actually think? Because often people say, "Yeah, I'm, I'm happy for people to see me, but in a very vanilla kind of way where I'm not gonna upset anyone either way."

And, uh, and w- you know, what you gotta [00:15:00] know is that leadership begins before somebody becomes a client So every piece of marketing that you create, wherever people see you, has the potential to lead someone's thinking. And this is what we have to be okay with because a lot of people wanna be really passive and it's just like, "Oh yeah, if someone decides that, you know, they wanna come to me, and that's great."

It's very passive, and you can't leverage that, right? Leading means you're willing to, uh, influence people, knowing that other people have their ability to make decisions on their own. They're still making their own decisions, but you're willing to lead in influencing those decisions. So your content might help people understand a problem differently, it might be helping them recognize a pattern or see a possibility that they hadn't even considered before.

And so when they enter a sales conversation, um, there's another form of leadership that begins because people often have problems [00:16:00] around making decisions for themselves that will get them to the solution. So they might doubt themselves, you know, they can have fear that comes up around investing in something.

Um, you know, they might need some sort of leadership to help them become resourceful in paying for what they, for what they need. People have all kinds of rules around money and paying for things that are all fear-based. Um, you might have to lead them through that. And so your role is to lead the conversation in a way that helps your clients have enough clarity to make a decision that is right for them.

And once they become a client, then obviously leadership continues from there as well. And so, you know, human beings don't always behave in ways that make achieving their desired results easy, right? That's why they need help. Um, you know, people miss calls, [00:17:00] people procrastinate, life happens, um, fear appears halfway through delivering your program.

Um, and you know, someone can genuinely want an outcome while also struggling to take the actions that's required to create it. And so your job then is to lead them through those challenges. And, uh, and often, uh, a lot of the things that I do in my coaching, 'cause I've done so much coaching in the past, I know a lot of the challenges people will have, and I pre-frame them before we even start.

So I, I'm calling out any of the behaviors that they may have throughout the process before they even know that they're gonna have them, so we've already set up a frame that when this comes up, this is how you need to act, right? So I don't have to be then trying to challenge that at the time because we've already set the frame for it.

That's leadership. You can lead in ahead. And, uh, and so you've al- you're always leading. You can [00:18:00] provide the process, the expertise, the tools, the feedback, the support, and there will still be times that you need to challenge someone in their thinking or hold them accountable or help them recognize how their behavior is affecting the outcome because people are paying you to see the things they can't see.

Okay? But ultimately, the client still has responsibility for taking the actions that are required. Uh, but strong leadership means that knowing where your responsibility sits while continuing to guide the person towards the outcome that they came to you for, right? This is, uh... I hope this is landing for you so far because it's-- we can all be leaders already in many aspects of our lives, but it's where is it in your blind spots that you can lead even more?

And of course, as your business grows and you have a, a... develop a team, your, uh, your business is gonna need you to step up in a, another form of leadership, [00:19:00] and that becomes even more visible. So even if the first person you bring on is a VA for a few hours a week, um, that's gonna require leadership. And I know for me, this is, was one of my challenges.

I've, I've had a VA for years, and I know in the early days when I had VAs, I wasn't a very good leader in that space, and it's something I had to develop. Um, but the more that you develop that, then the better the support you get. So I've got a really great VA now, and, uh, and my leadership has changed how I lead myself and, and, and how I lead with her as well.

Uh, and a result, I've got a much better quality VA than I've had in previous years. So the people that come in to support you are gonna be a reflection of your leadership as well. Um, so how much you believe you can be supported to success has got a lot to do with your own self-leadership and how much you trust yourself, um, and how much people are gonna respond to your leadership as well.

And so the moment that another person starts [00:20:00] contributing to the operation of your business, then you need to be leading that, okay? That's-- They need leadership. People need to understand where you're going and what to expect of them. And having those really clear responsibilities are really important and so is feedback.

And so, you know, people need to understand what good performance looks like and also where they've got authority to make decisions themselves. Um, sometimes you'll need to correct something, um, and mistakes can happen, and communication will occasionally be, uh, misunderstood, but we have to be able to have those conversations and lead through all of these things.

Okay, so, um, and this is why I think as well that leadership can be difficult for some people because leadership will naturally come with some, um, points of conflict, right? Where there's, uh, s- a, a conversation you're gonna need to have where perhaps someone's behavior or actions isn't [00:21:00] okay, perhaps where there's something that you need to correct yourself.

Um, and that can feel uncomfortable. And through, you know, all of the coaching that I've done with business owners and, and leaders, uh, it's that communication piece that is often some of the most challenging. How do we have difficult conversations? And if resolving conflict wasn't something that was demonstrated particularly well when you were young, then, um, you might feel that conflict is dangerous.

So if there was no repair shown when you were young or if conflict was demonstrated with, um, adults, other adults being unresourceful or not regulating their own emotions, conflict can feel scary. But it's really important that we understand that during conflict, yes, emotions can run high, yes, people may not agree, but healthy adults move through conflict in a healthy way, which means we look [00:22:00] for outcomes.

We look for ways to resolve it, and if there is, um, i- if anyone in that conflict behaves in a way that's inappropriate, then they resolve that. Then they, you know, take ownership of that, and they look at repairing whatever that has happened. And so through that, then what we can find is really positive experiences of how conflict actually helps relationships deepen.

This is really important because, um, you will have a lot more trust with someone who you've moved through conflict, uh, in a healthy way rather than if someone's had conflict and then they've avoided it, um, and just hoped it's all gonna blow over. Okay? So being able to lean into that conflict and resolve it in a h- healthy way develops a lot of trust in relationships.

It develops trust in yourself because, you know, unconsciously you feel like, "I can trust this person 'cause I know what happens when [00:23:00] things get tough." And also it's the trust with yourself because it's like I know I can, I can, uh, handle difficult conversations and I can be okay and I can preserve those relationships that are important to me through that And so this is the big thing in, in leadership is, is really understanding that, um, it's still okay to make mistakes as a leader.

Like, as humans, people make mistakes. Um, and people that you're leading can make mistakes. It's very human. But understanding the intention, uh, that someone has is really important. So if you know you're operating from good intentions and you're behaving ethically and genuinely trying to create good outcomes for people, then making an error doesn't suddenly change who you are, and it's the same for, uh, the people that you're leading.

And h- so having that compassion for yourself will help you have compassion for others. Um, but like I said, good leaders make mistakes, and they also [00:24:00] take responsibility for them. They correct what needs correcting, and they learn, and they move forward with information, uh, well, more information than they even had before.

So this is very different from believing you have to, uh, make perfect decisions in order to be trusted, right? So, you know, the real common theme through this is that leadership is really creating certainty with people of how you will continue to move forward in a healthy, responsible kind of way. Uh, and you know, a really important part of, of good leadership is having, creating certainty th- for yourself through structure.

So having those systems, processes, standards, terms and conditions, you know, continuity in how you operate and, and in what boundaries you operate in takes a lot of pressure off because you've already set the standard for how things work and you can operate to that without having to overthink every single decision.

That's really [00:25:00] important. And when you've got those really good structures in your business, you will feel safer in your l- leadership and that also attracts people in as well because it feels like a safe space for them. Um, it's very unconscious, but people feel it. It's part of the h- what we signal out And so, of course, this also means that we realize that every problem is figureoutable.

I think that's a term from, uh, um... What's her name? Marie Forleo. Everything's figureoutable. Um, there's always gonna be problems, conflict, different things that arise, but it's having the certainty in yourself that you know it's just a process to move through and things will be fine again after that. Um, every problem is figureoutable.

Like, lean into the problems. The more that you lean into things that aren't going right, the more peace you'll create for yourself 'cause you'll-- the more you'll resolve things faster and, uh, and the more you'll learn and the more you'll move forward. Uh, it's a really [00:26:00] important thing and, and that certainty, like I said, creates trust.

It creates trust in yourself. It creates trust for the people that you're leading and all of those signals of certainty and trust, uh, and emotional regulation is what makes you magnetic, what makes people trust you to follow you, to take your suggestions, to, um, act on what you, um, advise them to do. And of course, leadership, good leadership is very much linked to making more money because the more money that you make, the more responsibilities you're going to have, the more leadership is going to require you to move through any challenges and obstacles that happen in that space.

Um, and, um, having the capacity to deal with those things at a larger level, that requires the internal work, right? Creating the internal safeties, uh, expands your capacity to deal with more things and having the structures to be able to keep up with that as well. [00:27:00] So there's been a lot about leadership, of course, in this, in this episode, and, you know, really think about some of the really positive leaders that you'll know.

Um, the people that you can see that are leading themselves well and leading organizations well will generally be easy to spot because they're the people that, uh, people are magnetized to. You can tell by the way that they present that they're leading themselves in their health. You can tell by their relationships that they're leading themselves in their relationships.

You can tell by their homes, by their activities, their lifestyle, by their family, um, immediate family, by their business, by their, um, you know, teams, by their clients, that you can tell when people are leading well because the results are evident. Really important to, uh, to take some notice in that, in, you know, the people around you and just see what you can take from that for [00:28:00] yourself, and where are the areas that you need to step up further into your own self-leadership?

What would that look like, and what do you need help with in that? Is there anything that feels challenging or uncertain within you? That's where the real work is, and when you resolve those things, everything becomes much, much easier. So I'm gonna wrap that up for today because I could swear I could keep talking about this.

Um, it's definitely a, a topic that's been hot for me and my clients lately. Um, and it's, uh... leadership's not a dirty word. Uh, I think it's something that we all wanna aspire to, and if we do aspire to, that life gets infinitely better. Uh, it's, it's the ease at which you can lead will be directly correlated to the outcomes you have in your life and how much of your life runs the way you'd like it to.

So I'd love to hear your [00:29:00] feedback on that. If you've got any comments or questions, uh, go to the show notes, get in touch. And, uh, and a special thank you to everyone who came to my book launch last week. The Turning Point, uh, had its official launch. It was an amazing, um, live event. Uh, we had a room full of people.

It was a great celebration and, uh, you can still get your copy. A lot of people have been saying, "Oh, I missed it. Can I still get a copy of the book?" Yes. Um, go to the show notes. You'll be able to order a copy there as well. But until next week, keep leading and, uh, I'll speak to you soon.