IAM1170- Founder Helps Leaders Transform Their Work Environments

Brenda Batista is the Founder of Inspiring Company Culture where she helps leaders transform their work environments to be places where everyone is heard, valued, and appreciated. Brenda is an expert in establishing high-performing teams and helping business leaders eliminate the bottlenecks that are limiting their growth.

For the past 25 years, Brenda has focused on performance improvement and how the power of teams helps sustain business results. She helps teams engage and align with desired business outcomes through coaching and consulting engagements.

Brenda holds a Bachelor of Science in Industrial Systems Engineering, a Masters in Health Administration, and a Juris Doctorate.

• CEO Hack: Scheduling deep thought moments and blocking off everything else
• CEO Nugget: (i) Don't try to do everything at once (ii) Prioritize the one thing leading to your growth
• CEO Defined: Being a liberating leader

Website: http://inspiringcompanyculture.com/

https://inspiringcompanyculture.fixthisnext.com/

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Transcription

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00:14 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:00 – Brenda Batista

I would say don't try to do everything at once as a business owner because we get too distracted by shiny objects. Oh, maybe I should go do that or maybe I should go do this. And so we end up in this zigzag pattern.

00:42 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Brenda Batista of Inspiring Company Culture. Brenda, it's great to have you on the show.

00:50 – Brenda Batista

Well, thank you, Gresh. I appreciate it. It's nice to be here.

00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on and nice to have you on the mic as well. Before I jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Brenda so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Brenda is the founder of Inspiring Company Culture, where she helps leaders transform their work environments to be places where everyone is heard, valued, and appreciated.

Brenda is an expert in establishing high-performing teams and helping business leaders eliminate the bottlenecks that are limiting their growth. For the past 25 years, Brenda has focused on performance improvement and how the power of teams helps sustain business results. She helps teams engage in alignment with desired business outcomes through coaching and consulting engagements.

Brenda holds a bachelor of science in industrial systems engineering and a master's in health administration, as well as a Juris doctorate. Brenda, super excited to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community? Absolutely.

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01:40 – Brenda Batista

Awesome. Thank you for having me.

01:42 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. No, appreciate you. Well, let's get it started then. So to kind of kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit. Here is a little bit more on how you got started when I call your CEO story.

01:51 – Brenda Batista

Yeah, so thanks. It's funny because listening to the intro, I'm like, that pretty much describes it. So the high-performing teams, I've been a consultant and working for others for so long. One of the things I noticed is working with project teams is that we go in, you hire a consultant, you pay a lot of money, you get a nice report, you get some changes implemented and about 6 to 8 weeks after we would leave, uh-oh, it didn't stay, right? The change didn't stick. And to me, that's a big failure. That's not that the consultant was bad.

It's just the process wasn't really meant to engage the people who have to live with the change. So we typically didn't do a good job because you have that knowledge transfer thing that happens at the end of every project. And that is limited to a couple of days. But during the time you're there as a consultant, you interact with the client and their team. It's about gathering data, getting information, and having interviews, but not really focused on why are we doing this and how's it gonna make it better for you.

So I decided, well, let's get into that and really dig in and start with the team and make sure everybody's aligned with what we're trying to do. This isn't about eliminating your job or anything like that, but really creating a connection of how is this gonna benefit you and why that change is good. And really just having an engaged team. So that was from the business standpoint, but there was also kind of a personal story that went with it.

Literally every corporation I've worked with, every job I've had at some point in my tenure with them, I've had a leader turn to me and say, do we really need your team? Or do we really need you? In other words, what value do you bring? And it wasn't a personal attack, but it just showed me that they didn't really know for sure the full value. And it was like, how do I change that? So part of it was I realized, well, we're just not creating that loop where people understand the value that people bring in their different roles.

They hire a skill set, but they really don't get to what else can you do. And then often we just cut them off. We don't encourage that discussion. So that's the reason now I focus on being valued and heard because you have to be heard to be valued. But they also have to have, it's a conversation. So how do you get people to connect in that way and really transform your life as far as your career goes? So whether you decide to continue on the corporate path and quote unquote, climb the ladder, just stay where I am on the ladder.

It's okay. You're making that conscious choice. Or if you decide to become an entrepreneur, it's like enough of this and just going to do my own thing. How do you do your own thing and be effective? So you have to know what you're really strong at. But also on the corporate side, make sure that you're heard and that people, you're encouraging those conversations. So that's really, it's a 2 branch thing of how I got started.

04:46 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. And so I know you touched on a little bit on how you do that. Could you take us through a little bit on how that works and how you serve the clients that you work with?

04:54 – Brenda Batista

Yeah, sure. So I work with clients at 2 levels. So I have what I call the indispensable leader. So that's a one-on-one. You're trying to figure out how can I make that connection with my team stronger? What do I have to change? And how do I set up the dynamics so that I can create a culture that's really liberating where I challenge people to rise up to the challenge but also support them? Because certainly if they're unsupported or they feel unsupported, they're going to leave, or they're going to withdraw.

Right. And so you need to figure out how to do that. So I work with folks on doing that. Then I also do a series called The Invincible Team. And that approach is really about assessing how are we doing in 5 categories when it comes to communication. Are we effective? Are we transparent and other factors, but there are certainly 2 of the items? What are relationships like? Do we trust each other? Do we have each other's back in a good way, right? Not stabbing each other in the back, but we're for each other. So we're working together so that we can third, get aligned with our strategic objectives and what we need to achieve.

Once we have that, then we go into the execution part, meaning we gotta get stuff done. So, excuse me, are we focused on the things that will move us forward as a team and as a business the most? And avoid that, oh, everybody's busy. Is everybody's busy? Are they busy with the right things? Are they busy with what you need them to do? And this is typically where I find the bottlenecks because this is where teams, an average team get stuck because everybody's busy, but they just, they're not really focused necessarily on rowing together. And the last is capability.

So remember I said I hire for a skill set, but they may have something else there, another capability that I haven't tapped into because I just didn't ask them. So how are we going to bring that forward? And sometimes it'll be them, the individual who bring it forward to you because they now know where we're marching to as a team. They know the strategic objective, they know how they fit in, and they know that they have this extra skill set, or they have a growth opportunity.

Once you create and get all 5 of those categories working together, that's what creates that invincible team because they just become self-propelled to a certain extent. They become ambassadors for your brand. They just love being where they are. And It's hard for somebody to come steal them away, offering them a little bit more money is not gonna steal them away. They're just too engaged and just really loving what they do and loving the team and loving the business.

Even if the business is making cardboard boxes, which would seem like, oh my gosh, it's kind of boring. It goes to a different level because it's not about the product. It's about the service they provide and the experience that they have as part of the team and being part of the company.

07:42 – Gresham Harkless

I absolutely love that. And so would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of either sets you or the organization apart and makes it unique? Is it your ability to be able to kind of understand each of those, I don't want to say pieces or cogs, but to understand each of the totality of who might be on a team and understand how to get that in the same direction.

08:03 – Brenda Batista

Yeah, it definitely is because underlying that are certain techniques. One of my favorite ones is called 5 Gears. So it's how to drive productivity through the team by understanding where you're productive and how to structure your day so that it is productive. But you can't get there unless you have great communication relationships and everybody's aligned where we're supposed to go. So it takes a while to get to that, but it's knowing where to pull these strings or these tools that are most effective for what you need on your journey. That's really what I would say is my secret sauce or my superpower, I guess. This is what I love to do with folks.

08:43 – Gresham Harkless

Nice, I absolutely love that. And so I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an Apple book or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:57 – Brenda Batista

Yeah, so I'll go back to those 5 gears and it's about scheduling what I'll call the deep thought moments that the work that really takes concentration. I try to get those in an hour and a half. So why the 90 minutes typically where an adult can keep our attention span and stay focused on something? So something that really takes though, I really got to get at this, I need to dig in. That's the time I schedule off and I block off everything else, shut off all, you know, distractors.

And with the team will even mark it as I'm in the zone, so to speak, unless it's an emergency, don't pop in for the next hour and a half. And so they use that and it's a communication tool out to the team. They know that that's happening and they are welcome to use it as well. But it helps get what needs concentrated time done and avoids, you know, kind of the fire drills that we all kind of go through during the day because you get a call like, hey, I need your help on this contract, or I need your opinion of this, right?

So you're kind of responding to everybody else's needs on your schedule and that can really just blow your day because I had my own personal honey-do list to do. I didn't do it because I was tending to everybody else's stuff, which as a leader, we think we need to, of course, you do. But I say block off the time that you need to get your priorities done and communicate that out.

So that has been the most effective thing that I have done. And actually using that technique with myself and my team, like year-over-year productivity, I could see an increase of 10 to 20% on projects I was able to complete. And that's projects for the clients and as well as projects for my own company.

10:45 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I love that. I appreciate you sharing that. It's like you end up creating that space and that opportunity to do that. But I think so many times, as you said, too, says, well, there's always, you know, fires, there's always things that can kind of take you away. And you always forget to kind of quote-unquote, put that oxygen mask on first, especially as a leader, so that you can kind of help so many other people.

But we forget that we have to actually create, set aside time, and create space so that we're able to kind of tend to that on a regular basis. And so I want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be more of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client or if you happen to be a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

11:20 – Brenda Batista

I would say don't try to do everything at once as a business owner because we get too distracted by shiny objects. Oh, maybe I should go do that or maybe I should do this. And so we end up with this zigzag pattern, where when we start our business, we start with a definite vision of what we want to do, and where we want to be. And then we zigzag around. Instead, and it's because we're distracted, We go over here, we go over there. I want to grow my business, okay?

I should hire somebody to do what? I don't know, but having more hands makes it more possible for me to do more things. Like, yes and no, right? So it's not being intentional with it. Just, you've got to really kind of create that path by creating a prioritization. Where, what's the bottleneck in my company? What is not working right? So being intentional with assessing where you are and taking that moment and go, okay, wait a minute, I do want to grow, but why am I not growing? Don't follow the symptom, we get to the root cause of why isn't it growing. I just need more sales.

Okay, why isn't it selling? I don't have enough in my pipeline. Okay. And you just keep asking those questions. And why don't you have enough in your pipeline? Maybe my marketing isn't right. So it's that, you know, we identified as a sales problem, but it's actually not, there's something missing in our marketing, or I might be trying to market to a random audience. Right? So you have to really get specific and find out what's not working and fix that one thing. Instead of saying, I'm gonna hire a salesperson, I'm gonna hire a marketing person.

And then I'm gonna have somebody do all my social media content, right? We just have a tendency to try to do all of those things and still sick. Wait, wait, hang on. Hold up. What's one thing? What's the one thing that's that's limiting the growth? Or what's the one thing keeping me from living in the direction I want to go? Focus on that first, then move on. And it's hard to do. It's a practice, right?

It's something you have to do over and over and over again because it feels foundational. It feels a little simple or maybe playing small. But once you move that one pebble out of the way, I've seen companies over and over again, teams just grow from removing that one thing. We have to identify it first and prioritize it.

13:41 – Gresham Harkless

It's absolutely huge. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Brenda, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:52 – Brenda Batista

Yeah. So it means being a leader and I'll say a liberating leader. So your help means helping people find their superpower. How can they grow and how can they succeed on their journey wherever they're going? It just happens that our paths cross at this juncture in my business, but they may be going on to do other great and fantastic things.

14:15 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that definition Brenda and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know, and of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you are working on.

14:29 – Brenda Batista

Yeah, is there anything additional? Feel free, you know, if any of this resonated with you and you want to discuss more and say, oh my gosh, how do I create an invincible team, or what about this indispensable leader? How do we connect on that? Just email me. As it would be the easiest way to do it, Brenda at inspiring company culture.com. And I read those and respond to them myself. So I'm happy to discuss. I'm happy to talk about it with your teams if you have them and want to, or with you as an individual.

So I would just kind of leave with this parting word is, remember as leaders and CEOs, we have the responsibility to really provide opportunities for others as they were provided to us and have that linkage to carry each other through. You know, we're, you know, leave nobody behind type of thing. And how do we really help each other excel? And I think that we have the blessing and opportunity to do that. And I encourage everybody to do that as much as possible, to create that impact. And as well as, you know, achieve your revenue and your business, right? No money, no mission. So again, go and just go for it.

15:39 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Brenda, truly appreciate that. We will have the links and information in the show notes. I absolutely love that parting word and reminding us of that word that you used, responsibility. And I think that so many times, especially as leaders, we forget about that responsibility or lose sight of that as we kind of talked about as well. But when you realize that not only does that make an impact on your bottom line, it can make an impact on your team, but it also makes an impact in the lives of the people that are on your team in so many different ways. So I appreciate you so much for reminding us of that, of course, doing that in the work that you do. And I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

16:08 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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