A Strong Woman Needs A Strong Team

Kris Plachy: Well, hello and welcome welcome. Today we're gonna talk about being a strong woman, and a strong woman who is also simultaneously running a company. Let's go.

Welcome, welcome, strong woman. How are you? I think that a lot of you that are listening to this podcast would identify with that. If you are a new listener, I am Kris Plachy. Welcome to Leadership Is Feminine. I'm thrilled that you're here. And if you're a longtime listener, thank you for tuning in. And as I have asked in the past, if you have yet to write a review and you've been a longtime listener, would you do it today?

It'll take you like three minutes. Just a quick five stars, wink, wink, and a few sentences about really why do you tune in so consistently? What we have definitely found is the majority of our clients find us through our podcast or through this podcast, and I just wanna help more women. Because what we tend to hear also is, "I wish I had found you sooner." and I would love to leverage the voices of all of you to help amplify this podcast. So more women get the help they need.

So let's talk about being a strong woman. So a few weeks ago I went to my chiropractor and I needed an adjustment. I have a rib that loves to go out and, uh, she was cute. She said, "So here's the thing, we are of a certain age where we need a team. We need a team of care providers." Chiropractor, she said you need to be getting massages regularly. We talked about being, you know, going to therapy, having a coach, aesthetician. Right? We have our whole little crew.

And it was such great perspective cuz she's totally spot on, right? I have this body and I'm 53 and my body has a little more going on than it used to. And so it requires a team. So I did take her advice and I also got a massage therapist and that's been heaven. He comes to my house. You guys, come on. That's heaven. I don't know about you, but I'm like, "Oh, that's fun." And he is really, really good.

But it really gets me also thinking about, just in general as women, that strong women need a team. And that I don't think we are well taught and conditioned to believe that. I think we are well conditioned to believe that we can help everybody else, that we are the supporters of everyone else and that that's our primary role, even if we're running multimillion dollar businesses.

The problem with that thinking is it puts you in either- I see sort of categories of women. I see some categories of women who are all the way on the other end and they build a team to help them, but they're kind of demanding and almost emotionally removed from the team that they built to help support them because they don't wanna let themselves get emotionally connected because that's too painful. So then they come across as difficult to work for, difficult to work with. There's that, and I don't see a lot of those women, but I know they exist.

But mostly what I watch is that is women who have very successful businesses and very successful lives, but they are always in this apologetic, permission to live, sort of posture. So they feel guilt. They feel bad asking other people to help them. They feel bad if other people do things and didn't do it the way that they'd like them to. There's all this guilt in expecting to get the thing that you asked for or paid for.

What we do then is we compromise, but not intentionally. Intentional compromise is involves two people. What we do is we just compromise on what we want and then we shuffle off over here and do it ourselves or just sort of tolerate what we got, the support we got, even though it's not really what we were hoping for. I've alluded to this in the past, but this is, this starts really, really young.

Young girls compared to young boys are taught to be supportive, to take care of other people, to anticipate the needs of other people, right? And we've been just ingrained with that. Like, "Oh, make sure, Uncle Harold has his cocktail". Like, "Circulate the room and make sure everybody has what they want." And so we're already programmed to have this deferential relationship with the world that we're second, they're first.

But here you are, this very strong woman, right? So then the swing that happens is if you are strong and you are independent and you don't really need anybody else to help you, you become isolated from even knowing what it's like to be supported. And then you can become hyper controlling, hyper perfectionistic because the only person who actually knows how to take care of you is you. Because the truth is, it got just too darn hard all along to try and get someone else to take care of your needs, so you just figured out how to do it on your own.

But you make a tough leader in that case, love, because building a company has to be built on leveraging everyone. It can't just be you. And it also can't be the swing of that which is sort of inadequacy because you don't know how to ask for, and demand, or expect what you really want, what really needs to be done to build this business.

So a strong woman needs a strong team. What am I talking about when I say a strong team? Let's talk about a couple different facets of that. I'm willing to bet that if you think about when you have had the best relationships with people, you have had a match, you have had a relationship with that person, that was a really strong alignment. And in my experience that's always been with other strong women, but women who were strong in ways that I was not. And I am strong in ways that she is not. So we are able to balance, create a lot of balance in our relationship. As soon as I need to be stronger than someone else, that balance is off and vice versa.

So when you really think about where you've thrived in relationships, I know that's gonna be an element. So a strong team to me is a team of people who are emotionally mature, who are not using their job as a social outlet, who are not using their performance as a means to validate their value, who can receive substantive feedback and not crumble. A strong team is a team of people who understand why they work and it is entirely to do with the goal or achievement or vision of the business and their own personal alignment to that, their goals.

And a strong team player does not indulge in gossip. A strong team player does not talk about other players, or the founder, the leaders behind their back. A strong player does not make excuses. A strong player demonstrates ownership for her failures and her successes. That is the type of team you need to have. You need that team to thrive. But I will tell you that the development of that team is a curation process. It's not a job posting and then a hire. If it were that easy, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast, now, would you?

But you being the strong woman, there's the element there is that, are you willing, as a woman and leader, to go through the relentless pursuit of the best team members? Because that relentless pursuit is laden with no, failure, not great hires, low performance of team members you thought would be great. It is a minefield of that. I know that what you want most is that you're just gonna finally figure out how to build this strong team and you're gonna find them all and then they'll be with you forever. Yes, you will hire great people, and yes, you might even keep some of them for a really long time. If you keep growing and you keep advancing your skill, and you keep becoming a better version of yourself, and you invite employees into that exercise with you, you will keep people.

If you keep your business static and you keep yourself static, you won't keep people because a strong team member wants to grow. She wants to evolve, and she wants to work for a leader who's doing the same thing. I just had a client ask me, who's in my SAGE program, she said, "Well, when do you graduate from Sage?"

I'm like, "I don't think you graduate. I think that as long as the coach that you're working with, the mentor you're working with is, first of all, in alignment with what you want, and she keeps extending herself, and keeps growing, and advancing her own strength and self knowing you are on a journey with someone that's fun.

So a strong woman recognizes that you're gonna make choices in hiring people that don't work out. But a strong woman doesn't indulge in the guilt and the judgment that she thinks that other people will hold against her because she's firing people or because she hired someone that didn't work out. So what? That's true for everyone. If you let that define you, you're gonna keep hiring people who will not advance your business. You can't keep people just because you're afraid to fire them. And if you're afraid to fire them, learn how.

A strong woman recognizes that weakness does not exist in asking for help. Weakness only exists in suffering without help. Ask for help. Because you've been a strong woman for so long, right? We go all the way back. I can figure it out. I know how to do this. I can take care of myself. I don't need other people. Lies, lies, lies. We have to have strong people in our lives. We have to surround ourselves with people who want to have us show up as our best selves, not shrink, and be demure and passive, not just be pretty for the pictures.

Are you willing to be that strong woman but allow for your vulnerability. Allow for your lack of knowing. Allow for where you need help. Allow yourself to start to assume a posture of a strong woman who knows that she can only be as good as her weakest link in her business. And because she knows that she no longer will accept that mediocrity and she will move through that so much faster because she doesn't want to create drag in her business, and she's no longer going to use a poor hire as a reason to tell herself she's a terrible leader.

Are you willing? Because a strong woman needs a strong team and it takes time to build that. And there will be days with your head in your hands where you're like, "this must be impossible". You all know I coach elite visionaries. I work with exceptional women, and every single one of them goes through it and then goes through it again, and then goes through it again. But you know the difference, right? They ask for help. For as accomplished and successful as they are a strong woman, ask for help.

So I want you to think about who you are today and who you have surrounded yourself with in your life and in your business. And I want you to ask yourself to go into the future three, five years and look at her and ask her to describe the people that she has in her life. Who has she surrounded herself with? What changes did she make to get to where she is with the team around her? Because a strong woman needs a strong team.

Spend some time thinking about that, and less time thinking about how the people you hired two weeks ago, or two months ago, or two years ago aren't the right people, but you feel like you can't do anything about it. Cuz if you do something about it, you'll either be reminding people that you're terrible at it. Or, you won't have anybody and you'll be back on your own, like, this whole loop. Or, get some help because you're a strong woman and you ask for help regularly. Right? Let's go.

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