126: Right People, Right Seat: Leveraging Your Team for Business Growth and Freedom with Nikki Lewallen Gregory

Andrea Liebross: Welcome to the Time to Level Up Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Liebross. Each week, I focus on the systems, strategy, and big thinking you need to CEO your business and life to the next level. Are you ready? Let's go.

Hello, my friends, and welcome back to the podcast. I am thrilled today to bring you another episode in my Business Audit Miniseries where we're examining all the different facets of your business that are important for you to have a better handle on so that you can one, decide what needs to be focused on and what doesn't, and two, figure out where or what you can leverage in order to grow.

We're doing an overview of all of the different facets of business. If you haven't listened yet to our episode on having a vision with Sarah Centrella or our overview on what it's like to be an entrepreneur with Jill Lehman, go back and listen to those episodes.

But today we're going to talk about the people in your business. I always say there are three different people in your business or groups of people. There's you, there are your clients or customers, and then there are your colleagues or your teammates.

Today I have a guest, Nikki Lewallen Gregory and she is here today to help us really explore this team aspect and leadership aspect of the people component and what it means to have the right people, who are the right people, what do you do when they're not the right people, and how do you ensure that you're continuing to bring on the right people and/or keep them.

I spend a lot of coaching time helping entrepreneurs figure out who these right people are, or if they're not feeling right, why aren't they feeling right? Is it you? Is it them? What needs to change? Do they need to go? Do you need to support them in a different way? I enjoyed my conversation tremendously with her. She's got some really good points. Take notes. You might want to listen to this one twice even, but sit down, buckle up, and listen to my conversation with Nikki Lewallen Gregory.

Hey, listeners. I am thrilled to have with me today Nikki Lewallen Gregory who I have known for a very, very long time. I don't know how long but a long, long time in all sorts of different ways and roles. But when I was putting together this miniseries and I was thinking about vision and people and who did I know that was an expert on this, her name popped into my brain. Nikki, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Gosh, if we counted the years, I have to say it's been over a decade of knowing each other in different capacities. I think we used to be office roommates. You were on one floor and I was on another so we'd see each other in crossing paths a lot more so it's lovely to be here with you today.

Andrea Liebross: Tell the listeners, give them a little background about who you are and what you do, we would need three hours to tell them all the things you've done.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: I'll make it really short. I'm going to lead with my why and I really have a strong need to help people live, that would be the word, live during their nine to five and not just live for the five to nine, the vacations, or the weekends. I believe that the workplace is probably the greatest mission field, if you will, to live out what you're meant to do here on Earth.

Gosh, we spend so many hours in these roles from our nine to five or whatever that looks like for you, and why not use your God-given strengths and thrive in that time so that when you go home, you go put on the other hat of your volunteer work, what you're doing in your church, or what you're doing with your kids that you are all that you can be because your work is energizing you and helps you be a better person. How many times do we see the opposite?

That's what I look to fight against is how many people are absolutely drained so therefore, they're not involved in their communities, they feel like they're the worst parent ever, they don't have time for their spouse because they're absolutely drained and so we created People Forward Network to help all people experience meaningful work.

We believe that leaders are the catalyst for that and if we build workplaces where people thrive, not only does the business bottom line get impacted in a significant way but the ripple effect that they have on people that are in their organizations and all that they go serve is so much better. We're excited to do all the work we do every day to help people experience meaningful work and I'm here to share anything I can to help leaders do a better job doing that.

Andrea Liebross: I love it. One of the things that leaders really, I know, spend lots of time and energy on, as they should, are the people within their organizations or their team members. I like to say actually there are three kinds of people in every business. There's you as the leader, there's your team or your colleagues, and then there's the person you serve.

If we're talking about who's on your team, who are your colleagues, or who are you working with, how do leaders ensure that they are working with the right people?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Gosh, that's such a big question. I would say I call it right people, right seats. We say the term right seat on the bus, well, I think that on the right people side, it's attribute alignment, and then on the right seats, it's skill alignment. Attributes would be like open-minded, curious, and disciplined, and skills would be like influence, relationship building, and detail orientation.

I've seen so many times that people hire for skills and miss the attribute side, which is one of our core values is relationship building so we're going to be like high communication, high touch, and the person that we hired is excellent at detailed operational system development but they never want to talk to a person and they never want to engage and build relationships. You've got to have that mix of both and I found that to be just so true over and over. I could tell you story after story after story.

Andrea Liebross: Okay, it's not just soft skills and hard skills anymore. I really love how you're talking about attributes as what do they embody almost in a sense.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Right, totally. I think there are a lot of different assessments out there that are intended for different purposes. We all have our favorite probably. It's like I grew up on DISC, I love DISC. It's so behavior-oriented and a lot of that is skills. Behaviors, a lot of them translate to skills where a recent one that we've been working through is called the YOS, and it really helps you see what is this person's why? What is their how? How do they show up and do as they do?

For me, how that breaks down from the YOS is my why is to contribute, whereas somebody else's why is to challenge. Being able to have those assessments that walk alongside to really guide this so it's not just off the cuff, you're a leader and you're like, “Well, I've got hundreds of people, how do I do this?” you got to lean into some tools to be able to help you with that but at the end of the day, it is a mix of not just, “We're hiring for skill,” in order to sustain, they have to be aligned with who you are as an organization for them to thrive as people.

Andrea Liebross: Yes. How do you know in your organization or how do you get your decks lined up in a row to know what attributes you're looking for?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yeah. I think a lot of that comes from the leader's vision. Leadership teams need to spend ample time developing their vision, their mission, their core values. I think sometimes people overlook that, they're like, “Well, duh, yeah, we've had those forever. We've had those since we started.”

Andrea Liebross: It's been on the wall.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Right, yes. Not only the time that it takes to develop these as to the core of who you are as a leadership team and your vision but regularly checking in on that and really what makes the most sense for you where some companies like mine are highly relational.

Relationships are one of our five core values. We are high touch, high communication, over-communicate, know things about everyone that we serve or work with outside of what they're doing at work. Whereas that doesn't always apply. There might be a tech company that is very highly automated. Maybe their core value is efficiency. It's all about efficiency and process and this doesn't apply there.

The relationship-building side doesn't apply for the entire organization. It might be some core people. Not only do we spend ample time really going introspective to understand who has a leadership team we are and our vision and what needs to align with the vision to come alive but don't be, “Hey, it's been there since 1942 and haven't revisited it,” this is like revisit that every year. In your strategic planning, you are revisiting and you might shift things as you learn as most companies do, constantly evolving and shifting.

Andrea Liebross: Yeah. When I'm doing business planning with someone, we talk about their core values and I always say, “You just wrote your job description in a sense. If you've got core values that really align with where you want this company to go, then the people you're hiring need to have those core values.”

It is something that sometimes we just brought like, “We talked about that once. I got those down. Let's move on to the more important things,” no, you have to be disciplined in revisiting them over and over again. Every year, they change slightly. I don't think I've ever worked with anyone that always, it's the exact same thing, never tweaked, they're always changing.

How would you describe corporate culture, business culture, or organizational culture?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yeah. The best word that I can put with it is the vibe that a company creates on its people, those that they serve, and the voice that they put out into the marketplace. All of that stuff is a consistent culture that I like to say ripple effects from this entity.

For People Forward Network, our culture is energy. I'm always evaluating a meeting. We do like global events and they're virtual. A virtual platform is always hard for engaging people. There's more of a challenge there than being in a room with them. We work so hard to make sure that that is a life-giving energetic experience. That is our culture.

Another piece for us is constantly growing, growth-minded. After any meeting, it's like, “What could we do better?” or asking those that we work with, “Hey, we've polished up this project. Can you help us understand from that experience what can we do better?” It's just built into who we are. It is our vibe.

People that are around us, again, ripple effect. We want to propel someone else's energy so that they're going into the next meeting and their energy is coming from the meeting that they just had in a better way, or we're inspiring them to start in their company by asking, “What could we do better? How could we be developing further?” Culture to me is behaviors, but at the end of the day, it's the vibe of your workplace.

Andrea Liebross: It is the vibe. If we think about people, they need to align with your culture, they've got to have the right attributes, and they have to have the right skills.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yes. One other thing that I will share that came from our work recently with CliftonStrengths, which used to be called Clifton StrengthsFinder, a lot of people are familiar with that, so powerful.

If you've never done that with your team or if you haven't done that recently with yourself, take a refreshed version. It changes over time just like your core values do. We want to lean into our strengths. Our strengths give us energy. Going back to how we want to show up our cultures, we want to be energized in the work that we do so we have this saying it's either a hell yes or a hell no.

It's part of our culture code that I want to talk about in a minute which is activation of our culture and the vibe that we put out. The greatest thing we've ever done is our culture code so I want to make sure that I highlight that today. But going back to this part of our culture code is this hell yes, hell no. Is it absolutely spot on? The right people that we're working with, are they aligned with our core values? Do we have the right energy working together?

Our whole team has the opportunity to share when it doesn't feel like it's a hell yes or to be able to vote on “Are we going to move forward with this or do we need to change this to get towards that?” We look at that in each of our individual roles. The way we were taught to evaluate this in the Strengths is how much time are you spending in your balcony so the high points, the energizing points, the things that give you energy and make you better and just make you want to, just you can do it forever.

The other side is the basement. In strengths, it's balcony and basement. So for us, it's like hell yes, hell no. We look for 80% of our time, each individual person on our team is to report in, regularly we do check-ins on this or they could be proactive and just share it if it gets out of whack, 80% of our time is in our hell yes, or in that balcony, meaning we're doing things that propel that energy. We love it.

Then we also take the basement concept as, I think we were taught this in our training, we all have to do dirty diapers. We all have to do the dishes. We all take out the trash. It's never going to be 100% every single thing we do is absolutely beautiful but that we're operating in an 80/20, and not only do we do check-ins on that, it's a regular part of one-on-ones, but we also are proactive as a team as part of our culture to share when that's off. Because when that's off, our vibe is off, which is pulling us down. We're not our best self.

Andrea Liebross: How do you figure out if you've got someone on your team that you as the leader no longer think is a hell yes? When it's not a hell yes, I think the person is no longer a hell yes to us, we hold on to them too long. Why do you think we hold on to them too long?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Because we're human and we want to help people. We want to make sure that they're taken care of and we have emotions. At the end of the day, sometimes the greatest gift is helping people move into right people, right seat somewhere else.

Being that leader that has the guts to overcome the challenging emotional conversations you might have to have to help them get there, anyone that's listening, you and I, we all have examples of things that happen in our life that were icky at the time, but thank goodness, someone pushed us, fired us, or whatever happened that helped us to move on to that next place. It's like, “Oh, gosh,” once you get past it you're like, “Because I was not thriving here. I wasn't thriving that’s why I'm no longer there.”

Andrea Liebross: Someone's like, “I know, they probably shouldn't move on or I should let them go,” you will be doing them a real favor by saying this like, “Hey, don't think this is working out anymore,” but we don't give equal air time in our brain to that. We go into the “I don't want to hurt their feelings or maybe I should change. I need to do more.” Interesting.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yeah. I think there are two sides to that that I just want to make sure we hone in on. I've seen this done terribly, not the way that we're talking about. Let me give a quick example. With all of the AI movement, ChatGTP's awareness, and all this, there is a very large company that recently sent a message two months after ChatGTP went live. This is brand new.

They send out a message to all of their admin team. They have a lot of field staff but the admin team called out 100 people. They said, “Hey, in an effort to be people first and to be able to be transparent, we wanted to let you know that we're seeing the writing on the wall with AI, 50% of admin positions will be cut within a year so we just love to have regular conversations with you about what might be a better fit.”

Making a flippant decision like that because really it's all about just like a quick flipping decision on bottom line, that kind of transition, not in favor of. When it's not like right seat, right alignment, a couple of things come to mind as to what does that look like, attributes are misaligned, culture then isn't aligned, skills, we thought the skills were there but for some reason, they're not working out. At the end of the day, KPIs aren't getting hit.

Every role in your organization should have clear KPIs, and if you're consistently not hitting those KPIs, sometimes it's a business problem and an economic problem, a lot of times it's because it's not the right fit for the person. On this side, you're doing them a favor because no one wants to be failing every day, no one wants to feel like it's not a good fit. I just want to make sure I'm staying on this side of the fence that really you're leading them to the next best place and many jobs, most, are a season.

Andrea Liebross: They are. So true, it's a season. It's not forever and ever and ever because we evolve also as people. Okay, culture code.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yes. Culture code. I was a consultant doing employee engagement-type work for quite a few years before we got to this place with People Forward Network. I got the opportunity to go behind the scenes inside of workplaces and just see what different operations look like with their people.

I remember this one company, it was such a cool workspace first of all, the vibe was awesome, people were great, and I learned that the secret that they had was this culture code and someone else explained it as like our laws, not in a harsh way but these core laws that we stick to that drive our behaviors and it becomes a second language for us in our workplace.

I wanted to share what that looks like to bring it to life. We worked so hard on our culture codes. The first company that I have led that I've had one that I have guided the development of and seeing the fruits of that, let me just run through ours really quick, it spells the acronym LEADERSHIP because somebody on our team is just brilliant, they're like, “We could rearrange this so that we could make it an acronym and easy to remember.”

Live work-life integration, Embrace failure, Ask for help, Design efficient solutions that scale, Engage in work results versus time spent on work, Require a hell yes decision or we say no, Serve the greater good, Have fun and celebrate successes, Improve ourselves, Pursue excellence, not perfection.

That was a lot right there but it helps us to stay true to another team member's nudges, someone that says, “I don't think you've taken time off lately,” we have an unlimited time off policy, take it as you need it, we're all adults and we know how to prep each other.

One of the challenges and downfalls is people don't take the time off and so you have to learn how to balance that, not just in your day-to-day like I'm not going to sit on my screen for nine hours at a time because we're a remote work company. I have to take care of my health. That means I need to go for a walk. I need to take a wellness break and go maybe get a massage or whatever that looks like, and us encouraging each other in that as an example.

I shared a little bit about the hell-yes, hell-no thing is each person on your team from the attributes they bring and the skills they bring have a different perspective. They may see something that the leaders know or the team members, everyone has that and to be able to say, “Here's why I don't see the hell yes,” and people can speak up and say what that is so that we're not onboarding a terrible new client that someone sees a writing on the wall, read something about them, or saw and it's like, “They aren’t aligned with our core values,” and that they can speak up and be part of that every single person on our team.

It has just been an absolute game changer for us and it guides most of our team meetings, it guides our internal content and some of our external content, and it is how we live, our actions of how we live as a team.

Andrea Liebross: I love the acronym. You packed so much into that, all in there. Is this something that you review on a regular basis?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yes. We have monthly culture code sessions. It looks like, “What did you say you were working on last time?” you personally, we work on all of these as a whole, what did you say you're working on and how have you taken steps? Next is what are you doing moving forward? Are you keeping that same one to keep going deeper? Are you switching it up? What are you focused on now until our next meeting next month? How do you see our team doing right now? Are there any gaps or things we need to celebrate?

We then share stories about, “Oh, Ashley, oh my gosh, she has reached out to collaborate on this so much more. I'm so grateful because it's helping me to serve this client,” and calling each other out in those meetings to celebrate each other and how we're living it out.

But we meet once a month as a team on our one-on-ones. I check in on it. We have regular conversations. We love Slack so we're regularly on Slack and communicating. Our verbiage is like, “Hey, embracing failure on this one. Totally sucked at this today,” blah-blah-blah, or “In order to serve the greater good, I had a come-to-Jesus-conversation with so and so today.” Regular conversation and I think that's to go with vibe of what we create, it's this internal dialogue that everybody knows exactly what that verbiage is and helps each other pursue those key things.

Andrea Liebross: Keeping it real.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yeah.

Andrea Liebross: Like be honest. I always say being honest is being kind too, so you're being kind to yourself and others by keeping that dialogue open.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yes.

Andrea Liebross: I love it. I love it. To wrap up, the name of this podcast is Time to Level Up, what do you think leveling up really means or how would you define that, or is there an example that you can think of leveling up?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yeah. I just recently launched a new podcast with my husband called Addicted to Betterment. When I think of leveling up, it is this never-ending, no finish-line pursuit of greatness, I guess, to say it in a maybe cheesy way. But it's “Am I living in my best self today?”

Whenever I woke up and the dog's sick and we have a leak in the basement, that day, greatness looks different than tomorrow where man, there weren't any hiccups and got back from the gym feeling great, and it just flowed every day as an opportunity to lean into only you know how to measure your greatness. Did you give it your best and are you continuing to pursue growth and never stopping that? That's one side of it.

The other side that I just want to make sure that I mention as a leader who is wanting to attract great people that fit their culture and are in the right seats, you as that leader are in charge of the vision and it is your job to storytell really well as to what the future looks like for the people on this mission because the culture code is a tactic.

Clifton Strengths is a tactic. Aligning attributes, doing check-ins, one-on-ones, all of those are tactical things really when we break them down. As a leader, your job is to cast a vision that fires people up to get behind all of these things. One of the best ways that you can do that is to become a great storyteller.

What that looks like even deeper is in five years from now, guys, we're going to be sitting in this most amazing space, this warehouse that we've brought all these people to that we've decorated together and made such a meaningful experience for all people.

Stephanie has done all the polishing of these little gifts that we're going to have for everyone as we celebrate this milestone, and being able to share what does that look like in the future when we're all pouring into this experience that we want to create for the why we get up every day and what we do.

We impact leaders to help people experience meaningful work and we want to bring a community together that constantly supports each other, we give awards, we recognize, we uplift, and we energize. To be able to share stories regularly so the others can clearly see and reiterate that all the time is so important, so important as a leader.

Andrea Liebross: I'm coming to the warehouse party.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Great.

Andrea Liebross: I can see it now.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: We're not going to go rent some restaurant back room or something.

Andrea Liebross: No, no. This is going to be big, like an airplane hangar.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yes, yes, and we have some creative people. It will be sparkling, so pretty, and so unique. I can't wait for you to be there.

Andrea Liebross: I love that. I love that. Well, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your expertise with all of us.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yes, thank you.

Andrea Liebross: What's the best way for someone to connect with you and follow all the amazing things you're doing?

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Yeah. I do want to make sure that I link out to the culture code because I had ran through that so fast. It's on our website. If you go to about us, it's very clearly right there. My greatest call to action is as a leader, go develop one, start with three. You don't have to take too much time to make them too long.

It'll evolve over time but go to peopleforwardnetwork.com and you can see that resource and anything else that we do. Then LinkedIn, I love LinkedIn. I'm on it all the time every day. If we're not connected on LinkedIn, I love to share content, connect, and build relationships.

Andrea Liebross: Super. I'll have all of those links in the show notes, of course.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Great.

Andrea Liebross: Thank you so much for being here.

Nikki Lewallen Gregory: Thank you. So fun.

Andrea Liebross: Based on what you heard, do you think you have the right people on your team? Do you think you need new people, different people, more people, get rid of people? What are you thinking? Do they have the skills? Do they have the attributes? Or is it really you, you need to have a culture code and core values in order to do a better job with your people?

These are all things that are worth exploring and the people component is one where if we have the right people and we can leverage them, we can create tremendous growth in way more freedom in our business, time, money, and brain power than we might have now.

Having the right people in the right seats is key to creating the freedom you're looking for. If you are curious about creating more freedom in your business, I invite you to set up a call with me and we can talk about how we might together go about doing that so that you've got a partner in this process. It's scary going it alone, isn't it? I find it is. I would love to partner with you.

Who is your coach? If you don't have one, and I see a coach is really a partner or team member, if you don't have one, I would love to be yours. If you're just curious about what that would look like or if you're ready to go, go to andreaslinks.com, click on the book a call link, and let's chat.

Before we go too, I just want to mention at andreaslinks.com also, there is a quiz which will allow you to dig a little deeper into what facets of your business might need a little work. Go to andreaslinks.com, take the Business Freedom Finder Quiz, and let me know what your results are. Alright, my friends. I will see you next week.

Hey, listening to podcasts is great. But you also have to do something to kick your business up a notch. You need to take some action, right? So go to andreaslinks.com and take the quiz. I guarantee you'll walk away knowing exactly what your next best step is to level up.