Ask George - Leadership in Real Terms

(upbeat music) Welcome back to the Shared Practices Podcast. Today we are doing another episode of Ask George. And on our episode today, what we're gonna talk about is leadership. And leadership is a really loaded topic. That's not necessarily something that's like a one size fits all, or also really something that's a singular topic. And so we're gonna kind of break it up into pieces and really digest a huge topic, which is leading your business, leading your practice, and ultimately leading your team to success. And so this is a topic that there's many different ways you can tackle it. You can talk about the vision, you can talk about strategy, you can talk about management of people, you can talk about culture, you can talk about development of people, and you can talk about operational leadership. Like there's just so many different aspects to leadership. And so I wanna just walk through all the different areas and try to use examples where it's gonna be helpful for you as a dentist who's in a practice, leading your team, told them to lead get to your goals. And so I think the first thing that I wanna talk about which is like self leadership or introspection, it starts within you. And so there's a few things that you need to be clear on within yourself that will allow you to be the best leader possible. The first thing is who you are, what you like, and the things that make you you. You know, you might think like why does that matter? Well, if you're trying to be somebody, you're not. You're not going to be as good or as authentic, or you're not gonna connect with people as genuinely as if you're trying to bring out the best version of yourself. And so when I think of leadership, I really think about, okay, well, we're gonna take the best version of me and it's going to be an embodiment of who I am, but it's going to be that embodiment of who I am transposed upon my practice and my teams to get my goals. And so let me just use a couple of examples. So I, I'll just, I'm gonna speak on myself and I'm just doing this to show you, right? I'm not trying to, you have to figure out within yourself. So I'm very introverted, naturally, which is maybe different than most people might think because I'm on a podcast and I talk, but like I'm actually very naturally introverted. And so for me, I also have that ability to be social, but like within myself, I know I'm an introverted person. And so when I'm thinking about, you know, the problems that I have or surrounding myself with a team, I tend to like too. So I'm very introverted. I'm also not very detail oriented. I tend to be more big picture in my thinking and I tend to like to strategize. That's kind of just like the general makeup of me. And so when I'm thinking about that, I'm like, okay, well, I want to bring out the best version of me as a leader. And so that introverted side, what that tends to do is it tends to be empowering of others. I like to really empower others because I don't necessarily want to be the end all be all for everybody. I want to have other people step into those roles. And so I think a very good compliment to me, like for example, right, if you are the dentist owner of your practice, you need to think of an office manager type position that is going to compliment you so that you can naturally be your style of leadership. And then the area is where maybe you would like support from additional leaders in the practice, then you can have like an office manager sort of supplement that. And so in my situation, I would want somebody who's very detail oriented. And I also want somebody who's very extroverted or not extroverted necessarily, but is going to go have those conversations with people. I don't want to be having the conversations with all the team members about all the little things. I'm more introverted, I like to keep to myself. I want somebody else who's going to go out there and have those conversations with those team members. And so that's where understanding yourself helps you do a couple of things. It helps you understand how do I bring out the most in my leadership? And then also it helps you understand where do I need to get other people to do the things that I don't want to do naturally, or I'm not naturally good at. And so that's sort of the first thing. So that first thing we'll call it self leadership. But that first thing is understanding yourself as a leader and making sure that you're bringing out the best version of you not trying to change you. And it's like people have strengths and weaknesses, right? That person who's very social, very gregarious, very energetic, they could use those qualities to their advantage to essentially like interact with and like spread that good vibe that they generate all around the team and the culture and they can have that energy move the business forward. And then there's the other people who may be more reserved, they can maybe be more quiet and empower others and have more of a different type of culture or vibe. But it should really start with who you are and that should be kind of a core element. And so another core element is your vision, right? So what do you want for your practice? Because ultimately the leader of a business and this is now where we're kind of blending more strategy now. But when you are the leader of a business and you are the owner of that practice or that organization or multiple practices or whatever size of you either have maybe a small office, a larger office, multiple practices, whatever it might be, you as the leader, it's your job to be clear when people want to know what to do, they look to you. When people want to know where we're going, they look to you. When people want to know what our goals are, they look to you, right? So you are the one that needs to have the answers for the types of questions that businesses should know, which is what are our goals, where are we going? What's the future look like? What's our mission vision and core values? And so the leader needs to provide this clarity to their team. They need to say, okay, well, we're going to go to a group practice right now I'm a solo dentist. And the reason I want that is because I want us to be a great staple in the community as a practice that offers convenience and is available and has great team members, a great culture, a great place for patients to get care. Like this is where I would want my family to go. This is where I'd want my family's family to go. And so like this is the type of practice we're trying to create a staple in the community, right? So the owner is the person that sets that vision and then creates a mission vision, core values, and a structure that allows people to get onboarded. And so like for this exercise, the best way that I would think about it is think about onboarding somebody new. So there's this like casual, informal nature that develops with team members that we've had for a while. And when we get somebody new on our team, that's our opportunity to really show them who we are and what we do. So imagine like orientation in your practice of the future, the practice you're trying to build. Right, what are you going to say to people as they're onboarding? Like why is this an awesome place to work? Why do you guys do awesome patient care? Why is this a great culture? Like, you know, imagine like the perfect version of your practice and imagine onboarding somebody to that perfect version of your practice. Like what are you telling them about the practice? That's just kind of a little helpful prompt for you to really figure out what you're trying to, how to communicate that. But at the end of the day, you need to have a vision. And you know, we at shared practices, we like to establish what we call vision avatars. Because oftentimes dentists can get a little confused with this nebulous or not tangible task. Like what's your vision, right? So we have like the productive solo. We have a smart solo. We have a profitable group. We have a pseudo specialist model in a group practice. And then we also have, you know, the mega group. That's kind of like our vision avatars that we think are really good spots for dentists to strive for in a group practice or a solo practice or any single practice. And so use our vision avatars to help yourself identify what am I shooting for and then communicate that to your team. And then your job as the leader is to be steadfast in that vision, right? It's the leader's job when there's, so like I'll give you an example. I was at this time in my journey. I was a solo dentist and I was trying to get into that group practice. And I was trying to open up Fridays. And I had this front office team ever who came into my office. And she said she's like, you know, I have a lot of concerns about Fridays. I'm already struggling to fill the schedule on the other days. And I don't see that this is a good idea for the practice. And it's like, well, I think that she's also saying that because she doesn't want to work Fridays, but like that aside. So, you know, she says that. And then I'm sitting there and I'm thinking, okay, well, I'm the leader of the practice. This is my vision. My vision is a group practice. Group practices require Fridays. So that's it. And so that was somewhat of my response is like, and so, you know, anytime, and this is just like a small tidbit. Anytime like somebody comes with resistance like this to you, the leader, you have to say, this is what we're not negotiating on. And then this is what I'll negotiate on. And so in this situation, I'm not negotiating on the fact that Fridays are necessary because my vision is a group practice. And my job as the leader is to set that vision and be convicted in it and believe in it all the time, even when it doesn't look like it's going to happen. And also, I understand your point about the fact that we probably don't have enough patient flow to open up Fridays. And so I'm going to research that. I'm going to take a look at it. I'm going to get a plan on how we're going to fill those Fridays and I'll circle back with you. And that way the team member feels like, okay, well, I was heard, I was acknowledged, not dismissed. And also, my concern is going to get addressed, but we're still keeping Fridays. And so that's kind of just a small tidbit is, you as the leader, you're setting the why, right? Why are we opening Fridays? Because it's a group practice and group practices financially need to be open on Fridays. Okay, now the how and the what, I'll be malleable in those areas, right? And so now we're kind of transitioning to another type of leadership, which is relational leadership, right? Which is getting that trust and influence within your team. And so I want to explain the difference between authority and influence. So authority, you have authority. If you are the owner of the practice, you have the authority to make many different decisions. You have the authority to cut people, you have authority to hire people, you have authority to change their pay, you have authority to manage the expenses, you have a lot of authority in a private practice, right? because that's the point. The benefit is called private practice, and the owner of that practice has a lot of authority and rights. Now there's another term, influence. Influence is completely different. It's more about credibility and buy-in. And so, influence is what do people think about me? And when I say something, how much weight do they give to what I say? So for example, if I say like we're doing this, well, they're like, well, he has the authority to tell us what to do. But are we going to do it with our sense of ownership and are we going to do it really bought into what we're doing and why? Or are we just going to do it kind of half effort because of the fact that we're told to from the person who has authority? The difference is your influence. And influence and credibility in getting that buy-in from your team, that occurs through multiple different actions. So the first one is going to be leading by example. So for example, if I'm going to sit down with my team and say like, look, we're going to work really hard. We're going to do same-day dentistry. We're going to do all these things. And then in the middle of the chaos of the day, they watch me and I'm doing the little things that make the day flow when things are tight. Then, you know, like for example, let's just say, you know, I'm going to help like clean up a room or I'm going to help do something just to get things moving when I'm pushing the schedule. Well, then they're going to be like, okay, like he's making us do these things, but he also does them too. So that's going to reflect well. So you want to lead by example. As in the things you're asking your team members to do, you want to do those things as well. Another one is, let's just say like we talked about reappointment rate a lot in Share Practice Podcast, we deeply believe in the importance of reappointing. And so if we're really deeply believing in the importance of reappointing and you walk into a hygiene exam and a patient hasn't made that next appointment, you can push through their objections to try to get that appointment, build value for that next visit and overcome whatever objections are preventing them from scheduling that next visit. That's you leading by example where you say reappointment is important and in your actions you're showing through your example of your leadership that your reappointment is important. And then what happens when there's a really strong leader who leads by examples, they gain just respect, right? Like you just really respect somebody who shows up every day with the discipline to do the right thing at the right time consistently. And then when they say to do something, it's like, okay, well, there's just a different level of respect that you have for that person and that request and it's going to help with that credibility and that buy-in. So that's the first thing lead by example. The second thing is about building relationships. One of the things that I often tell new owners is I say no like trust is one of your most important things early, right? When you first buy a practice, I can tell you my experience. I walked into this office and my sellers had told the team the prior day and so I'm walking in and we have and that's customary, right? You tell the team short notice, so you're going to meet the team right after they've been informed, which is the way it's supposed to work, but it's also not necessarily putting you in a great position to be successful because they haven't had a whole lot of time to process. And so you know, I have people, they've got tears in their eyes, you know, all of that stuff. And at the end of the day, they're looking at me and I just feel like deeply overwhelmed. And then over time, or the first like two to three weeks, I very organically was really focused on building that no like trust within the team where we were having conversations I was asking them questions. We were asking them about their weekend, asking them about, you know, ask for feedback. And that's a thing like asking for feedback from your team members and listening to that feedback is a massive trust builder because they feel hurt and acknowledged. And so in this situation, right, I was just getting to know my team organically, right? These are people I'm going to be working with. I wanted to get to know them. And so that builds that no like trust and that relationship between you and the team members and the team as a whole, where it's going to create more of that influence, right? Where they're going to feel like you care. And you know, I think that there's a line here, right? You want to care about their professional development, but like you also kind of have to put a boundary in place and a professionalism boundary about their personal lives, right? A lot of dental office team members, their personal lives, they bleed into the practice. And I think as the owner, it can sometimes be tempting to go down the road of caring about them so much. So they now you care about what's going on in their personal life. And you should know about their personal life. You should ask them about it if you're wanting to kind of engage in conversation. But like you kind of have to maintain a professionalism boundary there. And that's something that I've learned with time. I think it's very easy for new owners to just want the relationship with the staff to be great. And so we're going to like get involved in emotionally and, you know, mentally invested in what's going on in their lives outside of the office. And I do think that that's just kind of a good boundary to set is like, you know, it's my job to pour into you professionally. And it's my job to grow your professional development and to grow your career and to make your work satisfaction as high as it can be. But like once you leave the office, that's kind of where my oversight ends. Just kind of a tidbit there. You know, I think that that's kind of just a generally good thing to kind of have a bit of a boundary. A little bit of an announcement to our audience. I am currently working on a second book. So I am writing Dennell Moneyball Zero, which is a guide to practice acquisitions. So if you think, well, Dennell Moneyball Zero, what is that? Well, it's a prequel to the first book, Dennell Moneyball One, which is about how to grow your dental practice. And so before you can grow your dental practice, you must have a dental practice, which is why we're writing Dennell Moneyball Zero. Dennell Moneyball Zero is a book really designed for the aspiring owner to give them a complete guide from the idea that I want to get into ownership all the way to closing on an acquisition and growing that practice post acquisition. And so we're doing a big launch event where we're going to be doing a lunch and learn for dental schools across the country in every time zone. So this is going to be an event where I'm going to be hosting live events virtually in Pacific Standard Time, Mountain Standard Time, Central Standard Time, Eastern Standard Time. And so every dental school in the country should have an opportunity to participate in our event where we're going to send books to the school themselves. I'll join virtually during lunch and we'll have a lot of schools there with you during your time zone. And so if you are a shared practices fan and you want to be a part of our book launch, reach out to [email protected] to set up a lunch and learn during our launch event for your school. And we're taking requests up until March 17th. And so if you want us to be at your school for the live presentation during the launch of Dennell Moneyball Zero, reach out to us at [email protected] and we will put you on the list of schools that we will be sending books to and hosting a virtual live event during our launch week. Dennell Moneyball Zero is going to be awesome and it's, you know, I got a piece of advice from an aspiring owner who said, "Don't be afraid to write 400 pages." And so I'm so about taking that to heart and this is going to be a beefy book that's going to be a complete guide to practice acquisitions. So Dennell Moneyball Zero, if you want to participate in the launch event with your school, email us [email protected] and we'll set it up. And so we're back to talking about trust, building that trust with team members. What is what happens? Feedback flows up. So for example, if you have a dental assistant and you have a dental assistant lead and you have an office manager and then you have you in like an organization chart, hopefully a good flow of information is a dental assistant will tell the dental assistant lead a problem. If the dental assistant lead can't solve that problem, then it will get escalated to the office manager, then it gets escalated to the owner. So what happens is you want that flow of information, right? People generally want to avoid problems, especially owners who like to remain in an optimistic headspace. They don't like it when their team members bring them issues. And I think one thing is you should always encourage people to bring you issues alongside solutions. You should always train your team. It's that they're going to bring you a problem. You say, "Okay, I acknowledge that this is a real problem now. Do you have a procedural solution?" And just kind of train your team on bringing problem and solution. But either way, most team members feel like they've been dismissed because they feel like they'll bring the owner a problem. And then the owner's like, "I sound like I'm really a real problem." And they're like, "Well, but it is. It is to me. It is in my world. I'm bringing it to you for a reason." And like super common that owners and leaders who have work to do will be dismissive in an effort to either avoid the problem or they're just not empathizing enough with the person who's in the role experiencing the problem. But that breaks trust, right? Because trust requires that I can bring something to you and that something good is going to happen. And there's many times people have brought something to me and like, I did not agree with their assessment. But I sit there and take the time to talk through the issue completely with them to make sure that we're aligned at the end of the conversation. And so the way that you handle conflict, the way that you handle feedback and the way that you essentially communicate with your team and manage those relationships, that's going to build your trust and influence. And these are like, you know, you're putting, you know, there's this like goodwill deposits into the account, right? So you and your team, there's like kind of a metaphorical account where if they come to you with a problem and you ask them, "Okay, like, can you bring me a problem and a solution?" And then they bring you the problem and the solution. And you work with it. You acknowledge them. You thank them for bringing you the problem. And then you provide them with a solution in place and then you put a solution in place and then you follow up with them, right? Like that would be an ideal interaction. All of that deposits positive goodwill into your relationship with that team member. Then when you need to have the conversation with the team members, I okay, like I need you to do a little something extra. I know what you're doing. You know, you're doing a great job, but I need you to add this to your plate and we're not going to add you an additional compensation or anything. You're just going to add this function, right? You're going to add a checklist or you're going to add this recurring duty once a week or whatever it is. What's going to happen is that team member, you're withdrawing a little bit from that account. And so you think about you as a leader have a metaphorical account with your team with each individual team member and your team as a whole. And you can deposit into that account through good behavior, leading by example, listening to them, coaching them, developing them, all of that, right? And I think that you can also withdraw from that account as asking them to do things, giving them negative feedback, you know, maybe making changes that are disruptive that aren't team favorable, but necessary for the business, those are withdrawals. And so you kind of want to manage that account balance, so to speak, to make sure that at any given time you've put in more good will into the team than you're taking out so that that culture remains healthy. So let's talk about culture. Culture is one of those things that I think there's like the spoken culture and the unspoken culture, right? And the spoken culture should be your core values. It should be the things that you and your core values. The thing I've learned is you have to repeat them over and over and over again. I've learned this from Alex, who's our CEO, who has repeated the cultural elements of SPG just really at nauseam. And at first, I was like, wow, he's being quite repetitive with this. But then you realize over time that you have to be very repetitive because of the fact that that leads to excellent performance with your team and also that leads to them being able to repeat the core values themselves. It's one of those things that needs to be repeated over and over again, right? So I'm on meetings and now I have team members telling me the core values, right? And that's because our leader has repeated them so many times that the team has internalized them and is now regurgitated in the back. And so that's the spoken core values and the spoken culture are those things that you're defining. You're saying this is how we do things, right? But there's also like what's really going on. And that's the unspoken culture. That's what behavior is tolerated. So like just kind of just a list of things, right? Like have you given people very clear expectations on their role? Clarity is something that's more of an unspoken culture, but super important, right? Like have we given this person everything they need to succeed? I had one person come to me and a mastermind call and they said, you know, I'm frustrated with team members said, you know, team member. And I said, okay, well, like before we talk about the team members, let's talk about what you've done to the team members. Like have you provided that team member with the clarity of what is required on a daily, weekly and monthly basis from them to make sure that they know what they're responsible for. And in this situation, they hadn't said, okay, well, like that is setting up an unspoken culture of a lack of clarity. And so that lack of clarity is going to lead to mismanaged expectations, which is going to make it difficult for them to really give you what you're looking for. And so clarity is one of the unspoken things is like we need to have each team member have very clear roles, responsibilities. And we also need to have what's tolerated. So this is like what you tolerate. So one of my favorite things is you get what you tolerate. And, you know, at the end of the day, people are going to, especially you're not so strong performers. So you're going to have the strong performers that are your best, right? Like think of you have four hygienists. There's going to be that gunner that is just like every single time you walk in, intro, photos are perfect. His talk to patient about everything, her periocarding is on point. Like she is just excellent in every way. There's definitely those team members. Those team members, this is not as important for. But then there's the other team members who clock in, clock out, you know, it's more of a, they just go through the motions more. And for that person, it's all about raising the floor, right? You're going to have both on your team and both have their place. But you need to have a floor of performance that is high, right? Because your success should be based on your floor. You should be having a high floor, which means we have processes, we have systems, we have things that people do every single time that make it that we don't need in all start every position to have success. And so that's going to be what you tolerate. And so if you walk into a room and a hygienist has not taken the intro pictures and they have not talked to the patient about their perio and they have not done all of these different things, well, then you're tolerating a lot, right? And you need to, let's just say it happens once you pull them aside to say, Hey, just so you know, this was not acceptable. Like my expectation is that when I walk into an exam, if there's an issue, the intro photo up on the, up on the computer screen, the patient has been informed on the situation. And I've been told what's going on so that I can come in and have an effective exam. And like, yeah, that's a negative good will interaction, right? You're taking out of the account in having that conversation. However, you are also really making it clear what you tolerate. And I do think it's the unspoken culture. You do get what you tolerate. And so you need to kind of raise your standards and have standards that are high. And then the last thing I'd say on leadership on this topic is meetings, collaboration and alignment, right? Like having some type of rhythm in your office to have meetings at a certain cadence, right? Morning, cuddle, weekly department meeting, monthly office meeting, whatever it is, but like need to have some type of cadence to that so that there's a place and an opportunity for you guys to come back and reconnected. That's also like the spoken and unspoken culture is, you know, how collaborative and aligned are we as a team? You know, and that's going to be a kind of a really big thing. And then, you know, I think, you know, maybe the last thing I'll talk about. So we've kind of, let's go through the kind of the things I've discussed, right? I've talked about your self leadership, understanding yourself, understanding your vision for your practice. We've talked about relational leadership, you know, having that trust and influence within your team. You have the authority, but do you have influence? Do you have them? Are they really, are you credible? Are they going to buy into what you say just because you're saying it? And then we're going to have like the people development side of things, right? Growing people, that should be every leader's goal is to grow their team professionally into the best version of themselves. And that's through listening to their feedback, building that trust between you and that team member, providing coaching and feedback, giving constant feedback. That's going to be super important. And then there's all translates into operations and into execution in terms of what you do, right? It's kind of interesting that, you know, when you think about it, you know, the majority of the leadership that you do on a day in day out basis is very, very minute small actions, right? Where it's like, what should we do in this situation? What marketing company should we use here? You know, like all these little decisions that you make day in and day out that are going to drive your business forward. You know, the front office is going to ask you, how do we manage this? You know, all of these different things. And that is where you have to have excellent understanding of where you're going long term and find a way to distill that down into answering these small questions. So for example, let's just say a team member comes to you and says, okay, well, like we're hiring for a high genist, but they're only available two days a week. And you know, what are we going to do? Are we going to interview for another person? This person seems really ideal. What about something else? You know, like this is a decision that's going to come up. And then you as the leader is, okay, what is my vision? What is required for my vision? And then distill that down to a micro decision. Like, should we hire this particular hygienist or keep interviewing? And you say, okay, well, if this hygienist could potentially plug into my long term vision, then I proceed. If this hygienist potentially, her hours and days of the week are just not going to work. Like if we bring her on these two days, the schedule is going to get all funky. And then we can't add someone else. They're unwilling to leave their other job. This doesn't work for us. Then you need to have that discipline to say no. And so I think that operational leadership is going to be very important as well. Because through operations, there's just so many different small things that are going to come up, whether that is prioritization and focus. For example, on any given month, what are your dental assistants, hygienists and front office team members focused on? Right? That's operational leadership, making sure that you know what is your vision? What's the bottleneck in the way of getting to your vision? And then how do I have my team help navigate that bottleneck? Right? So this is probably a topic for another episode where we could distill it down into more detail. But the other day, your operational leadership is going to be your prioritization and focus, your accountability systems. So your score cards per team member, your roles of responsibilities, your quarterly structure of feedback, whatever your feedback mechanism is to let people know how they're doing, whatever metrics you track, the processes and SOPs that you have in place, the decision making process, do you have a decision making process where teams can make decisions without you? All of that stuff is going to be more detailed execution operational leadership. And that's going to be another sort of genre of leadership as well. And so you can see as going through this episode, right? I've tried to take a whole episode to explain this concept of leadership to you. And you can see how it's kind of complex. There's levels of detail to this where we can go have a full episode on any of like the five or six different things I discussed. We could have a whole episode on self leadership, a whole episode on understanding who you are and how to get clear on who you are as a leader. We could have a whole episode on vision identification. We could have a whole episode on taking your vision and really understanding how to get it in action so that you take that vision and you put it in action. And the day to day minute decisions that you're making are connected to your vision so that, you know, if you think about your team as a rowing a robot, every little stroke of the or is pushing your boat just a little bit forward towards where you want to go long term. Again, I could probably talk for a whole hour about the concept of relational leadership and building that trust and credibility, especially around feedback management and encouraging your team to give feedback and listening to that feedback and acting on it, right? Because your team members, they need that trust. They need to know that when I say something, like when I say something to the team, they say, okay, like he's serious. And when they say something to me, well, we can trust him. We can tell him this thing and something good is going to happen. That could be a whole episode of itself. So this is such a big topic. You think of people development growing your team, having your team really develop over time. Right? I think that that's, honestly, that's probably the sign of some of the best leaders is when they have those people that have been with them for multiple years, and then you talk to their team members and they say, "Man, when I came to this company, I came in at this level." And then I just grew with this organization. And now I'm so capable. I built all these skills. I'm, there's this gratitude that people who you've developed have for you and the business because they've grown professionally throughout this time. And also, those are some of the best people to have in your company long term because of the fact that they are very grateful and they also like know all of this stuff. Like when someone starts at a lower level in a company and elevates their skill level or their qualifications, they've picked up skills at every level. And so they are more well-rounded. They understand the nuances of the business better. They're higher performing team members. And oftentimes it's financially more advantageous to bring someone in and develop them rather than to bring someone in fully developed. So people development is an excellent leadership quality and something that frankly we could talk about for a whole episode as well. Team leadership, right? The way that you lead the team, the cadence, the meetings, the roles and responsibilities, the cultural normals, the spoken culture, the unspoken culture. Also a whole episode could be done in that topic. And then the way that you execute and you lead operations, that could in itself be a whole episode, right? How do you prioritize teams? How do you put together accountability systems? How do you get metrics in place? How do you have SOPs and processes in place? All of that could be a whole nother topic. And then you have strategic leadership, right? Strategy, that's like one of my favorite parts of leadership, is thinking through the strategic decisions and having a lot of leverage in your thought. So another whole episode, right? You see this topic of leadership is massive. And it's one of those things that what I tried to do in this episode is just give you like a flavor of all of the different topics. But leadership in of itself is gonna be one of the very important things where they say like, you know, great culture beats great strategy 10 days out of the week. So it's like one of those things that like, if you have a group of people who are all aligned and you know, that's ultimately the last thing I'll leave you with, you're like, wow, this episode was about a whole lot of things. You are correct. And the thing that I'll leave you with is this idea that leadership at its highest level is resource allocation. You are in charge of all of the resources of the business, the financial resources and the people resources mainly. Right? So your time and how do we allocate our investments? How do we reinvest profits? How do we make financial decisions? And also, how do we allocate our people? What are our people doing? What are our people focused on? How are we leading them? So your leadership of your team and getting the most out of your team is going to bring out the best in your leadership. And so KPI scorecards, right? Those are all the different areas of leadership. And what I'd like you to do is I'd like you to just ask yourself, how am I at each of those categories and just rate yourself and try to identify your weaknesses and then try to focus on those and try to level yourself up. And hopefully this episode was a good guide. So thanks for listening to another episode of the Shared Practices podcast. I encourage you to come back. We're going to be here producing more content. And if you have any questions or anything that you want on the podcast, email [email protected]. And we're going to get your desired topics featured on the show. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING] This podcast was edited by Resonate Recordings. [BLANK_AUDIO]