Lindsay White - Leadership

Esther interviews Lindsay White, a leadership coach and people strategy expert. Lindsay focuses on helping female founders build and lead high-performing teams for successful small businesses. She has 20 years of experience in leadership development and HR. Lindsay shares her journey of leaving her corporate job due to a toxic boss and starting her own coaching practice. She emphasizes the importance of leadership in entrepreneurship and helping women see themselves as leaders. Lindsay encourages self-reflection and learning from both good and bad leadership examples to optimize leadership abilities. Welcome. My name is Esther. This is the Canadian Businesswoman podcast. And today we're going to be talking about leadership, which is one of the most important traits when you're running a business. And we're going to be guided by Lindsay White. Thank you for being here today. Yeah, thank you for having me. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself before we start? What you did in the past and what led you to start your business? So I'm a leadership coach and people strategy expert. And I focus on female founders, helping them build and grow and lead really high performing teams that create, you know, incredibly successful small businesses. And my background is in leadership development, HR, people and culture. Those are things that I've been doing for almost 20 years. Feels weird to actually say that out loud. But I worked for a couple of major Canadian organizations, and I'm proud to say that, you know, I have been a part of some really great Canadian businesses. And the last sort of 10 years that I worked corporately, we're really focused on human resources and that strategic talent management. I worked a lot with senior leaders and C-suite executives, helping them translate their business plan into a people strategy. So how are you resourcing through the use of your most incredible valued asset, which is your humans, to really drive the business plan and drive the successful execution of that? And so what I would do is I would help them. They'd go away and, you know, do their five-day, you know, C-suite retreat or whatever, come back and say, okay, here's what we've got to accomplish in the next year or two years or five years. And then we would talk about, okay, what are we going to need? Who do we have on the team? How are we going to grow those people? Where do we need to go to find talent if we have gaps? What are the things that we need to do in terms of helping them perform well, keeping them engaged, compensating them correctly? If we need a recruitment strategy, what does that need to look like? And then I would go and work usually with other experts in the organization on how we're going to execute that. And so I really love doing that work. That's really interesting, chewy, crunchy, dynamic work. In the meantime, you know, I'm supporting other leaders. I ended up working for a really toxic boss. I worked for someone who was really, I mean, not even to say ineffective. They were just downright mean, quite frankly. And that's what ended my career in the corporate world. I ended up leaving. In fact, I very much had a reaction. I was overwhelmed, overworked, feeling extremely burnt out because I was really hustling to please this person. And there came a moment in time where the individual actually did something. I finally had a reaction. And I said, you know what? I don't fit here anymore. I quit my job, my 10-year career, right in the middle of that meeting. I shut my laptop, and I never went back. It was pretty dramatic. I don't recommend, you know, sort of leaving your 10-year career in a huff. But for me, it was critical. And the coolest thing was I'd already decided I wanted to enhance my coaching practice. I knew I wanted to be a more effective coach. And so I quit my job in August, and I essentially went back to school in September, and I spent the next 14 months really deeply immersed in my coach training and how to be a really powerful coach. So it changed the trajectory of my whole world, that one moment. Sadly, your story, maybe not to that extreme extent, is not very common. I constantly either had incompetent managers, bosses, or intentionally neglectful, or a combination of both. Somewhere in between. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it seems consistent across the board, and you hear that all the time. And I just wish they taught emotional intelligence in school. Like, I wish that was a requirement, and that would help a lot. So why did you decide then that you wanted to start your own business? Because you had been an employee up to this point. How did you make that switch? Yeah, it was actually one of my peers during my coach training said to me, challenged me, why don't you start your own practice? Well, I've got to tell you that it never occurred to me. And I call myself an accidental entrepreneur all the time. What I've come to understand is there's lots of entrepreneurs in my family. My parents were not entrepreneurs. My grandparents, cousins, you know, like all of them. So maybe it was living in there all the time, I just didn't realize it. But, yeah, I decided that instead of going back to another HR job, because I was feeling pretty resentful at that point, I was pretty adamant I didn't want to do anything remotely related to HR talent management. I was just going to coach because I love coaching. I love the transformation that comes from coaching. I love the connection. I love the relationship. I love the revelations. And so I thought, well, I'll just start a coaching practice. And it's morphed over the last six years to where now I do both. I coach leaders and I also help them build the high-performing teams they really want to have. So it's been an ongoing process for me. Now that I'm kind of thinking about your role, how you're involved with HR, I can see how even worse your job is because you have to be the spokesperson for whatever is upper management's decision, whether you believe it or not. And you also are on the receiving end. You're in the middle of the complaints that you hear and what you can do to actually change it. You're limited and restricted in so many ways. So I can see how you were like, I'm tired of being blamed for everything, it seems like, in the middle. So you decided, okay, I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I'm going to help people. Why did you choose leadership and why do you think that's important? Because I feel like if you're an entrepreneur, you're already kind of born that way. You already have that kind of leadership trait. So why do I need extra training? Yeah. So actually, I'm going to disagree with you. I don't think that that's actually true. I think lots of people get into business because they're passionate about their product or their service. I think lots of us get into, and I talk with women in business all the time, they want flexibility, they want freedom, they want independence. They want to grow something, right? They want to make an investment that actually is meaningful for them, not growing it for some shareholder investor. But, in fact, I think that's actually one of the problems is that we start these businesses and, in fact, we haven't had great role models as leaders, right? We actually don't know what it means for us to lead, and that's why this work is important to me. I do think we all can be leaders. I think everybody has that capacity and capability, and I think we all lead in different ways. It's just how do we define leadership for ourselves and how do we leverage our own superpowers? Because we all do things that are awesome. How do we bring more of that? And then how do we build maybe where there are spaces that we need to grow or learn? And so that's what's important to me is that, you know, women that run their own businesses, they think of themselves as entrepreneurs or founders or business owners, but they don't always think of themselves as a leader. In fact, you have to lead yourself first, right? You have to be able to lead, and we lead in a thousand ways every day. Whether we're a mom or a sister or an auntie or we're in our community, we're a coach, if we sit on a board, that's all leadership, right? As parents, we're leaders. We don't think about ourselves that way. And so that's my mission is actually to help women that own their own business see themselves as a leader and how they are competent and effective and how they can be even more. That, to me, is the important mission. That's a great point because, again, that's why we have so many terrible workplaces because we don't have a lot of examples of how to go properly. And there are a lot of people who are put in positions of leadership, but they don't necessarily have that skill or training. They just are good at one specific thing. Maybe they're really charismatic. There's a lot of reasons people are leaders and it has nothing to do with leadership. Unfortunately. No, I agree. That makes complete sense. So if I'm thinking, first of all, what should I be looking out for? What's the process of being self-evaluating and figuring out why I need leadership or if I need leadership, and then how do you help people get to optimize their leadership abilities? Such a great question. So I think the first thing that I always encourage, like anyone I talk to, but my clients in particular, is what are some of the best examples that you've had of leadership? Who have you worked with or worked for? Who have you observed that's been a great leader? What have they done that's been great in your mind? And then reflecting on who are the leaders that haven't been effective? Maybe some of them that have been really terrible. And extrapolating from both, because I think there's things to learn in both spaces. And then layering into that recipe, what are the ways that you lead? What's important to you? Some of that's a reflection of our values. Those are the things we care about most. Some of those things are reflections of the family of origin. Some of those reflections are things about how we want to be perceived in relationships, because leaders are in relationships, right? That's what we do. It's all relational. And so really reflecting on all those different parts and pieces and what we can really bring to the table, and that's the most important piece. Again, what are those superpowers? So for me, you know, I reflect on my authentic leadership style is really about the connection. It is about creating spaces where people feel like they belong and they're welcome in every conversation that I have. So that's a part of my leadership. That might be very different for someone else, right? For me, it's about really creating effective communication that's also kind at the same time that it's clear, right? So that's what I bring to my authentic leadership style. And so I think that's where we can really start is how do I want to show up? How do I want to make people feel when I'm the one that's driving the bus, when I'm the one that's leading the charge? Great point. Yeah, that's true. So like you said, there's different leadership styles, though. So how do I determine my leadership style and how I want to run my business, whether I have employees or working with contractors or whatever it may be? Yeah, great point. You know, I was just working with a client on Friday, and in her business she doesn't have employees. They're all consultants and some of whom who have worked with her very regularly for many years, but they're quite satisfied not being an employee, right? They don't want that, and she's cool with that. She still has to lead them, right? And I would tell you that this client is actually a bit more on the introverted side of the spectrum. So what we need to do is really think about, again, what do we do very naturally, right, and how do we bring that to our style? So some of us are going to be very present and out front leaders. Some of us are going to be far more comfortable leading from behind in that sense where we don't have to be as visible maybe. We need to think about, you know, how do we create that space, right, or how do we make people feel like they belong? We need to think about all those different facets maybe, like a diamond, right? There's different facets to how we want to lead. And we also, of course, need to factor into that, you know, where are the spaces that I'm not as good? So for many of us it's having those challenging conversations. It's hard for me to give people feedback when it's not positive feedback. Okay. So I know that that's something I need to work on, that my style is way more about reinforcing the good than talking about the bad. That doesn't mean that I never talk about the bad because we have to do that, right? So that's how I think we nuance it, is just really actually being introspective and thinking about what are we really good at? Yep. Being self-aware, basically, is what you're saying. We all have to be honest and self-aware, and it's a continuous process. You're not going to fix it all in one day. You've got to just be honest with yourself on a day-to-day interaction, by interaction, take accountability of what you can control, right? So what kind of services do you offer them to help people? Like how do you work with people? Yeah. Yeah. And so some of that, and this is a great segue, because that introspection, I love that you used that word, you can do that on your own. You can accelerate that process when you're working with a coach because what a coach helps you do is see yourself more accurately. They hold the mirror up. They reflect things back to you. They help you see different perspectives or they challenge the perspective you're already in. And they help you get unstuck or unfixated with things. And so, yes, that's one of the things that I really love to do, is work one-on-one in that coaching context with female business owners. And let me be clear, I work with some great guys too, but I focus on women. But it is in that one-on-one space that we can do really deep work together. I can ask them great questions. I can help them refocus or shift their perspective. I can help them see themselves in a very different way and then challenge them to go and do some things that perhaps are outside of their regular practice. Hold them accountable because sometimes we say we're going to do it and we don't do it. We need someone to reflect with. Sometimes you need someone to just talk it through and be a good thought partner. What about this? Have you thought about that? Where are you with this? We all need those moments, and that's what a great coach does, is they just hold that space for you to take a look at the things you need to look at. So I do one-on-one work. I also do that work in group because some people like it, the sharing, the connection. Knowing that someone else is going through the same stuff or has been there and done that, it can be really comforting for people. It can be really inspiring. When we work in a group context, we're sharing. So someone else is thinking, oh, yeah, I can see how that might happen in my business. Or I've had that kind of interaction. Here's what it meant for me. Have you thought about, like, right? So that peer support and coaching is really valuable. And then I also do some consulting work. So I'll work with the business owner, and then I'll come into their organization and do some diagnostic work. What's going well? What's not moving effectively here? And then what do we want to do differently? Where are we going? What's the business plan? What are the goals? Again, how are we going to get there? What are the strategies? What are the programs and processes we need that ultimately are going to create performance? And then we can get busy, right? And so it becomes an ecosystem. I'm working with the business owner so that she's a better leader. I'm working with her team so they are set up for success. And ultimately, that generates incredible energy and just really drives the outcomes that we want. That's a great point. You know, it's hard to always be objective when it comes to us looking at ourselves. So it helps to have somebody who's objective and trained to just say, hey, I'm not in love with any of this. I can just tell you with honesty what it is. And if you're open to that, then you're going to go further than just trying to figure it out on your own and learning the hard way, right? Is there anything else that you wanted to discuss that I haven't asked you? Yeah, I think one of the things that I really love to do with female-led businesses is talk about the people strategy. And I think it's something that gets missed, right? We have a business plan. We come up with a marketing strategy. We have a capital strategy. Maybe we have a, you know, right, we're raising money. We may have a strategy for our operations. But we actually forget more often than not that we need to have a strategic approach to our talent and to our people. They are the value in our business. It is the human beings that do the work that create a great deal of the value in our organization. And so that is my mission right now is to talk nonstop about your business needs a people strategy. And no business is too small to have one. And it is so advantageous to have that in place as you build before your business starts to scale and accelerate so that you can actually think about who is going to do this work and how are we going to get it done. And that then really can drive your business plan and those important goals that you have. What happens for so many is they don't think about it. The business grows and scales. And inevitably what happens is as the business owner, we take on more work and more responsibility. That's where burnout comes in. We all, the dreaded burnout that we all talk about, but it's when we don't have our organizations resourced properly from a talent perspective, that's where the burnout actually can really get in, you know, cause some problems. And it's so time consuming, expensive to figure that out as you're doing it versus planning ahead and preparing for the fact that, oh, IT is not just going to be me. I have to actually talk to people and deal with people and manage people. There's more to running a business than just making money. I need help making that money. That would be nice, but it gets complicated as you go. No matter whether you keep it a solopreneur or not, right? All good points. I love it. I love everything. There's so many great quotes that I'll be able to use for this episode. Thank you very much, Lindsay. And if somebody wants to reach out to you and get help and be a better leader, what's the best way to reach you? Yeah. So you can find me in a number of places. So you're welcome to send me, you know, first of all, an email. And my email is lindsay.white at highvoltageleadership.ca. The website is highvoltageleadership.ca. You can absolutely reach out to me through the website. And then I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. So you can look me up there and connect with me or on Instagram. And my handle is at highvoltleadership. I will make sure to include all that in the description. So to make it as easy as possible to reach out to you. Thank you so much for your time today. I hope you have a great day. Thank you so much. Take care. Thank you.