What Business Leadership for Women Really Looks Like in Practice

Speaker A: Growing a business is one thing. Leading a growing business is something completely different. When most women start their business, they're the expert. They're delivering all the work, looking after clients, making the decisions, solving all the problems. And that's exactly what's needed in the early stages. But then something changes. The business grows and the complexity grows with it. And suddenly the business is asking something different of you. It no longer needs you to simply do the work. It needs you to build the leadership, the people, and the culture that sustain the growth. And that's what we're talking about today.

Speaker B: Welcome to the People side of Business, the podcast for female founders learning how to lead, manage, and scale a team with confidence. I'm Lindsey White, leadership coach, team strategist, and fractional HR expert. And each week, we tackle the real leadership challenges business owners face every day. From difficult conversations and employee performance issues to high mistakes, team dynamics, and building a workplace culture that actually supports business growth. Because the truth is, nobody teaches founders

Speaker A: how to lead people when their business starts to grow. And figuring it out the hard way can be exhausting.

Speaker B: This show is here to change all that. So if you're ready to become a stronger leader, make better people decisions, and build a business that doesn't depend on you carrying everything alone, you're in the right place. Let's do this.

Speaker A: Hey, friends. Welcome back to the People side of Business. I am so glad you're here with me today. Over the last few episodes, if you've been listening, you know we've been talking about what it really takes to build a business that can grow without you sacrificing yourself in the process. We've talked about simplifying your business. We've talked about making better people decisions. We've talked about having difficult conversations and great communication. Last week, I even shared a story about Sarah and how she was stepping into leadership. And it really changed not only the way she led her team, but the way she experienced her business. And today, I want to bring all of those conversations together. Because over the years, I've had the privilege of working alongside so many incredible women building successful businesses. And these have been in different industries. They've had different personalities. They've even been at different stages of the business. But despite all of those differences, I have noticed one pattern. As your business grows, the way you need to lead has got to grow, too. And that's eventually what led me to develop what I now call the LPC method. So, my friends, when I hear someone use the word growth, they're often thinking about marketing. Or sales, revenue, even profits. And of course, those things absolutely matter. But here's what I've learned. Growing a business and sustaining that growth are two very different things. And I've seen businesses that have grown incredibly quickly only to watch the founder become completely overwhelmed and burnt out. And then what happens? Their business is not joyful anymore. I've seen businesses that have hired more people only to find the team becoming more dependent on the founder instead of less. I've seen successful businesses lose great people because they never intentionally created the culture for that person to really succeed and have the impact they want. None of those businesses had growth problems. They had sustainability problems. And that's what fascinated me. And I started thinking and asking myself, what allows one business to continue growing in a healthy, sustainable way while other businesses become heavier and more complex and more dependent on the founder as they grow? And as I reflected on years of these coaching and consulting conversations, I realized the answer kept coming back to three key. Leadership, people, strategy, and culture. Not as three separate initiatives, but as three interconnected foundations that support sustainable growth. That's why I created the LPC method. Not because the world needs another framework, goodness knows we don't. But because founders need a very practical way to strengthen the parts of their business that just so often get overlooked. So here's what I believe. If you want to build a business that continues to grow and evolve, you need more than a great product or great service. You need more than a great marketing strategy. You need more than strong sales. You need a strong foundation. That's what leadership, people, strategy, and culture, the LPC method, provide. They're the foundations that support growing sustainably. But I also think of them as something else. I think of them, um, as important levers for the growth. Because when you intentionally strengthen one of those areas, you create incredible momentum through the entire business. Your decision making improves, your team's capability grows, and your people start taking ownership. Communication becomes clearer and the trust really deepens. And as a result, your culture becomes stronger, they work better together. And, uh, suddenly the business begins to grow in an entirely different way. Not because you're working harder, but because you strengthened the system that supports the growth. To me, that's what sustainable growth really looks like. Not necessarily about growing bigger, it's about growing better. So let's talk about each of these growth levers, and let's start with leadership, because I think that's the most important one. And when I'm talking about leadership, I'm not just talking about you as the founder. Yes, your leadership matters. Enormously. In fact, your leadership sets the tone for everything else. But sustainable businesses are not built around one strong leader. They're built by developing leadership throughout the organization. Every person becomes a leader because when that happens, everyone in your business has accountability and they take ownership. My friends, leadership isn't about a hierarchy. It is about accountability. It is about ownership. It's about having people who don't simply wait to be told what to do. They think they solve problems, they take initiative, they're creative, they're innovative. They care about the outcome and the success as much as you do. Now, that doesn't happen by accident. It starts with you. Because your team always learn more from you and what you model than what you say. So if you struggle to delegate, they're going to hesitate to take ownership. If you avoid the, uh, difficult or crunchy conversations, they'll avoid accountability. And if you're constantly firefighting, your team learns that reacting is more important than planning. That's why leadership is the first growth lever for me, because your leadership creates an environment where other leaders can emerge. And I remember, um, I was coaching one founder who came to a session convinced that she absolutely needed to restructure her whole business was very reactionary mindset. She'd spent weeks researching new software, rewriting job descriptions, and looking for the next operational fix. But as we talked, it became really obvious that none of those things were actually the real issue. She'd actually stopped trusting herself. Every decision took days because she was looking for certainty. And my friends, as entrepreneurs, we know nothing's ever certain in this game. And what she would do is she would go and ask two or three different people what they thought and ignore her own intuition and her own judgment. Wasn't a systems problem or a strategy problem, my friends. It was a leadership problem. Not because she didn't know enough and she wasn't an expert, but because she'd forgotten to trust the leader that she already was and really lacked some confidence. So once we started rebuilding her confidence, really getting her back to where she needed to be as a leader, everything else became easier. Not overnight, that doesn't happen, but over time, because every decision after that came from a very different place. Leadership isn't just the first foundation of sustainable growth. It is the first growth lever. Because every decision. Because every decision you make influences every other part of your business. And when you are confident in your leadership, your business becomes more sustainable. All right, let's move to the second growth lever. For me, that's people strategy. And I have to say, I think this is one of the most overlooked and underrated growth levers in business today. Think about it for a minute. As business owners, we spend a lot of time developing our marketing strategy, our, uh, sales strategy, operational or financial or capital strategies. We know these things are critical if we want to grow our business. Yet I rarely meet founders who have invested the same level of time and energy thinking about their people strategy. Not just hiring when someone leaves, you know, to fill the gap. Not just recruiting because the workloads become too much and we need to delegate tasks. A genuine people strategy, one that is intentionally aligned with where your business is going. Because here's what I know to be true. Your business strategy can only ever be delivered through your people. The people in your business create all the value. And the best strategic plan in the world means very little if you don't have the right people in the right roles at the right time, with the right support, working all towards your vision. That's why I believe your people strategy deserves a seat at the strategic table. Not just as an HR conversation and listen. You know, I love to talk about people and culture, stuff human resources, But I think this is a business growth conversation. And I remember working with the founder who told me once, lindsey, I don't understand why everything still comes back to me. She had a really good team, people that genuinely wanted to do a great job. But every question still landed on her desk. Every decision still needed her approval. Every challenge somehow found its way back to her. And as we unpacked, um, what was happening, it became clear the issue wasn't capability, it was clarity. Her team did not fully understand where the business was heading. They weren't clear on expectations, and they really were not confident making decisions because they'd never really been invited to think like leaders. So that's where we started. We clarified the roles on our team and the outcomes that were expected. The accountabilities, and most importantly, the ownership. And that was really cool because then we could have conversations about who owned, um, what instead of just who delivered on tasks. We shifted from managing people to developing people. And over time, something remarkable happened. Her team stopped asking, what do you want me to do? And, uh, started asking, here's what I think. Here's a couple options. Can you help me decide? Can you hear the difference in that? It's remarkable. That's leadership capacity growing. That's what you're hearing right there. And that's what a strong people strategy does. Does it just build a team? It builds people who can think, contribute, and lead right alongside you. And when that happens, your business gains capacity. Not because you have to work harder, but because you've intentionally grown the people who are helping you to build your business. That's exactly why I created the People Strategy Playbook. Because if your people strategy is just as important as your marketing and your operational and your financial strategies, it deserves the same level of intention. Now, the Playbook will guide you through the key questions I ask my clients to help them assess whether their people are aligned with the future of their business, not just the demands of today. It's designed to help you take what we're talking about right now in this episode, really start applying it to your business. You can download your free copy, there's a link in the show notes, and I'd encourage you to work through it and really think about what is my strategic approach to my people. Okay, let's talk about the third lever for growth. That's culture. Now, you've probably heard the phrase, if you've listened to me long enough, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And there's a reason I quote this so often, because I think it's true. You can have an incredible strategy. You can hire exceptional people. You can even develop really great leaders. But if your culture does not support the behaviors that you need for growth, the way people are going to show up and deliver, eventually everything starts working against you. The culture of your business isn't values printed on your website. It's not posters on the office wall. It's not an annual retreat, and it sure isn't a Pete's Party on Friday. Culture is what people experience every single day working in the business. It's how people speak to one another. It's how they make decisions. It's how conflict gets handled. It's whether people feel safe enough to contribute new ideas. It's whether they know they'll be treated with respect even when they make a mistake. It's whether accountability feels supportive rather than punitive. Culture is simply your values in action, and that's the behaviors. I remember sitting in on a leadership meeting once with a client. She was frustrated because it felt like nobody on her team would make decisions without checking with her first. Right. Pretty common story. Uh, and she kept saying to me, you know, I've empowered them. Like, they can make these decisions, and I don't know why they don't just get on with it. So I watched in the meeting, and every time someone shared an idea, someone else shot it down. Every time someone proposed a decision, founder jumped in and adjusted it. Every time someone tried to Take ownership. There were other people stepping in, and the truth is, they weren't trying to undermine each other. She wasn't trying to undermine her team. She genuinely wanted to help. But without realizing it, this founder had created a culture where people had learned that the safest option was to wait for her approval. That one meeting completely changed our conversation, because culture isn't created by what we intend, and she never intended to create this culture. It's created by what we consistently reinforce. And she wasn't reinforcing the right things. Uh, as leaders, we are shaping culture every single day through our behavior, the conversations we have, the standards we uphold, the behaviors we reward, and, um, the ones we ignore. It's reinforced by the questions we ask and the way we respond under pressure. So whether we realize it or not, we are always creating culture. The question is, are we creating it intentionally? This is why I believe the LPC method matters so much. Leadership, people, strategy, culture. These are not separate. They're not initiatives competing for your attention like everything else on your to do list. They are three interconnected foundational pieces that support sustainable growth. And they're also three growth levers. When you strengthen leadership, you create leaders throughout your business. When you strengthen your people strategy, you align your people with your business strategy, and they build capability for your future. When you strengthen your culture, you create an environment where people can consistently perform at their best. None of these levers work in isolation. Leadership influences your people strategy and your people strategy shapes your culture, and your culture reinforces leadership growth. And altogether, they create a business that's not only capable of growing, but, uh, capable of sustaining that growth. To me, that's the big difference. Growth isn't just about increasing revenue. It's about increasing capacity. The capacity to lead, to innovate, to. To serve your clients really well, to develop your people. Most importantly, the capacity to step away so that everything doesn't fall apart when you're gone. That's the kind of business I want. And I got to tell you, I hear that that's the business most founders want. So, my friend, before you move to get on with your day, I want you to pause for a minute and ask yourself three really simple questions. Number one, how am I growing as a leader? Number two, is my people strategy as intentional as my marketing or my operational strategy? Number three, what kind of culture am I creating through the way I lead every single day? Because your answers to these questions will tell you far more about the future of your business than your next marketing campaign ever will. If today's episode has given you a different way of thinking about your business. I would love to invite you to book a spark session with me. In this session, we'll explore your business through this lens of leadership, people, strategy, and culture. What we'll be able to do is identify which of these three growth levers will have the greatest impact on your next stage. And, uh, we'll create a practical plan that'll help you build your. Your business in a way that it's growing and it's really growing sustainably. You'll find a link in the show notes before you'll find a link in the show notes. And you know, I'd love to support you on that journey. All right, friends, we're getting close to the end of today's episode, but before you move on with your day, I'd love you to pause and ask yourself three pretty simple questions. Number one, how am I growing as a leader? And how am I growing other leaders on my team? Number two, is my people strategy as intentional as my marketing or my operational strategy? And question number three, what kind of culture am I creating through the way I lead every single day? Because your answer to these questions will tell you far more about the future success of your business than your next marketing campaign ever will. All right, if today's episode has given you a bit of a wake up call, maybe a different way of thinking about your business, I want to invite you to book a spark session with me. Because together, what we'll do is explore your business through this lens of the LPC method. We'll be able to identify these three growth levers and which is going to have the greatest impact on your next stage of growth. Then we can come up with a plan so you can grow sustainably. You'll find the link in the show notes before it's easy to book a call with me, and I'd love to support you on your journey. All right, well, if there's one thing I hope you're taking away from today's conversation, it's this strategy is going to tell your business where to go. The LPC method develops the leadership, the people strategy, and the culture that's going to make getting there possible. Because let's be honest, without leadership, strategy just sits on the page. Without the right people, that strategy is never going to get executed. Because the next stage of growth in your business isn't going to come from you doing more. It's going to come from intentionally developing the people in your business and the culture that they work on to support the growth you've already got going. That's the power of the LPC method. All right, so until next time, I, uh, want you to take care of yourself, Lead with intention, invest in your people, shape your culture. And remember, you can become the leader that your business has been waiting for.

Speaker B: Thanks so much for listening to this episode of the People side of Business. If this conversation resonated with you, make sure to subscribe to the show and subscribe share it with other founders in your world. And keep coming back each week for practical leadership strategies to help you lead, manage and scale your team with more confidence.

Speaker A: And if you're sitting in the middle

Speaker B: of people challenges right now, whether it's leadership, team dynamics, hiring culture, or difficult conversations and you're realizing you don't want to figure it out alone, I'd love to support you. You can book a leadership strategy session

Speaker A: with me through the link in the

Speaker B: Show Notes or@High VoltageLeadership CA.

Speaker A: I'd love to hear what you learned

Speaker B: from today's episode, so come connect with me on Instagram, ah, hivoltleadership or on LinkedIn. And remember, the people side of business is the business.

Speaker A: I'll see you next time.

Speaker C: This podcast is produced, mixed and edited by Cardinal Studio. For more information about how to start your own podcast, please visit www.or email Mike@um mikeardnostudio m.co. you can also find the details in the Show Notes.