Welcome to Visionary’s Pursuit, a podcast where we explore what it takes to turn your bold and inspiring ideas into reality. I'm Carolina Zuleta. I'm a life and business coach and your host for this podcast. I'm thrilled to have you here.
Hi, welcome back. This is episode 47 of the Visionaries Pursuit Podcast.
How's your week going? I hope it's off to a great start. If you've been following the podcast, you might have heard me talk about the Visionary Mindset Program. This is my sixth month program for founders who are within the first two years of their business. Entrepreneurship can be incredibly challenging for anyone. We're dealing with uncertainty, making decisions, managing people, managing investors' expectations, selling, becoming a more visible leader in the world.
The goal of this program is that you upgrade your self concept and strengthen your mindset so you can lead the vision that you want to bring into the world with clarity, authenticity, confidence, and excitement for what you're building.
So if you're one of those founders, go to my website, carozuleta.com, enroll in my newsletter. So you'll be the first ones to know once the doors are open.
One of the areas we cover in this program is your leadership standard, and that's what the episode is about today. I'm gonna give you a high level of what this is, how you can start using it and why it's so important. But in the Visionary Mindset Program, we take it to a whole new level so you can apply it in the every day, get feedback and really own it.
Before we jump into today's content, I just wanna ask you that if you've been following and listening to this podcast, if you've gotten valuable insights from it to go. To wherever platform you're listening to find a button to subscribe or follow or give us a rating.
It really goes a long way in helping spread this message, grow my audience, and meet some amazing visionaries like yourselves.
So in the last several weeks, I've been talking with my clients about their leadership standard, and most recently I was talking with one of my clients who is thinking about leaving her current job as an executive in one company. She's looking for another job, and I asked her the question, "how do you wanna remember these last several months in this business? How do you wanna be as you're exiting this job? And initially she told me that she wanted to do her job, do it well, not rock the boat, and be able to have time to focus on finding her new job.
I heard her answer, but I know her and I know this is not the leader she wants to be. So we spend the rest of our coaching session talking about her leadership standard, what is it that she values in her own leadership? How does she wanna show up every day for work? What's the way she wants to communicate?
What are the things that she wants to challenge other leaders to look at? And we talked about, even though she's on her way out of this business. Continuing to show up every day until the last minute following her leadership standard was important.
Not so much. For the company she's working at that she doesn't care for it a lot right now, or for her employees or other peers, or her boss, but for herself, and that's what I want us all to talk about today.
So now let me ask you, what is your leadership standard? Do you have one? Do you hold yourself accountable to that standard even when no one is looking?
A leadership standard isn't a nice to have. It's the non-negotiable baseline for how you lead yourself and others, and it sets the tone for everything you do in your business. So why is this important? Well, if we are not clear on what is our leadership standard, then the way we're gonna show up every day is gonna be based on the circumstances, what your mood is, the level of pressure you're feeling, who you are talking with.
Are you being seen by the people that you care about or you're not? When you have a leadership standard, you are more consistent. People start understanding what they can expect from you, and that builds trust. People, people trust that whatever you do, whatever you say is the same thing, no matter the circumstances, but it also builds your self trust because even when no one is looking, you are seeing yourself.
And if you are operating from your standard in every situation, you start reinforcing that belief in yourself. You start being in integrity with who you are, and that is incredibly freeing and powerful. Some years ago, I led a team of other coaches and we were hired by this corporation to go and coach their employees.
Not the leadership but their mid-managers. And we started doing our work, helping these managers, set standards for themselves, show up with integrity. And these managers started to change. They started to evolve as leaders and be more clear on the impact they wanted to have.
But what happened was that the leadership of that company, their bosses weren't holding themselves to those same standards. So our clients started to be very frustrated doubting the company, feeling resentful, and many of them end up leaving and getting other positions where they could continue the path of the best leaders they could be.
So when you are the founder, when you are the CEO, your standard sets the tone for the entire company.
I see it over and over. The culture of a company is set by the leader, not by anyone else. Your example, the way you show up will have an impact across the entire organization. Also, when you're living in integrity with your values and your leadership standard,
you won't experience regret. You won't look back wishing you'd shown up differently in moments that mattered. And finally, when you're living in your integrity, when you are holding yourself accountable to your leadership standard, no matter what, unexpected doors might open.
If you are treating everyone with the same level of respect, regardless if you know they're good investors or they're your friend of a friend, you never know who that person knows. You never know what will happen from that interaction and what doors might open. And the opposite is also true. If you change your standard here and there, you might not know when you are seen by a person of influence when you're not operating at your best and a door may close.
Now, we can't simply say, this is my standard and I'm gonna operate this way. So doors open, because that's not the way it works. It's your first and foremost you're gonna operate from the standard because it's what you believe in.
Your standard represents the leader you want to be.
So let me be clear. A leadership standard isn't a vague aspiration. It's not, oh, I wanna be a great leader. Oh, I wanna have so much impact. It's not just for when it's easy to behave in that way. It's not dependent on circumstances or other people. Your leadership standard is your personal code of conduct it's the minimum acceptable behavior you hold yourself to.
It's not a stretch goal, but the baseline.
So when I think about leadership standards, I think about five pillars.
The first one is self-leadership. How you manage your time, your energy, your focus. It is when you decide I no longer will lead from exhaustion. I will no longer lead from rushing and hustling. I will protect my time to think, to make decisions, to focus my attention on what matters the most.
The second pillar is your decision integrity. It's when you decide that every choice you're going to make is based on your values, your company's values, the mission, the goals you have, and not make different choices because you're under pressure, because you're scared, because you're in uncertainty. It is holding yourself to making decisions from the highest level of integrity and not from a reactive emotional state.
The third pillar is communication. It has to do with the way you speak to and about others.
I have a client who is a filmmaker, and he's a person that holds himself to impeccable communication. It doesn't matter if he's talking to the biggest investor that can give him millions of dollars, or to the person that's holding the microphones on a set. Everyone to him has value and the way he talks to everyone is exactly the same.
And people love him for this and trust him and are inspired by him. And that is the power of living up to your standard. It's how people start talking about you, about who you are, and you start building trust with everyone around you. The fourth pillar is accountability is following through on your commitments and not only the commitments you make to other people, but the commitments you make to yourself.
Many of us have been trained that if we have a meeting with someone at four o'clock, we show up at four o'clock and we are on in that meeting. But we don't have the same level of practice or discipline when the meeting is with ourselves.
Accountability happens when you promise something, to others, and most importantly, when you promise it to yourself . Because remember when no one is looking, you are seeing yourself. And when you hold yourself to that level of accountability, the trust you have in yourself, the belief you have in yourself as a leader continues to grow and expand.
All of us have had the experience of feeling out of integrity, and we've noticed how that diminishes our self-esteem, our self-trust. It doesn't feel good. So that's why the fourth pillar of our leadership standard is accountability.
And the last one is culture modeling is remembering that you are leading by your words, but mostly you are leading by the example you set for your team, for your audience, for the people you work with.
You show it in the small things. For example, starting and ending meeting on time, being prepared, having a clear agenda with the outcomes you want from that meeting, and you also demonstrate them in the big decisions, strategic decisions about who is your client, how's the market, how you communicate these changes to the entire company.
As a leader, you have to remember that all eyes are on you and your example will set that tone for everyone else.
So let me name them one more time so you have them clear in your mind. The five pillars of a strong leadership standard are self-leadership, decision integrity, communication, accountability, and culture modeling.
And I want to say something, living up to the standard or not, is not about being a good human being. Many of my clients are incredible human beings. They're ambitious and they're doing great things in the world, and sometimes they still break their own standards. So let me give you some examples as to why this might happen.
A big one is their desire to be liked, their desire for other people to approve of them. And when that desire is running their brains and their decision making, a lot of times they end up lowering the bar in order to be liked. And I think that's why it's so important to develop the skill of self validation. And if you don't know what that is, I have an entire episode about that topic.
Other ways that they break their own standards is they start making exceptions, telling themselves it's just as once, but then it starts becoming a pattern.
Or they start leading reactively when they're under stress, when they're under pressure. And listen, all of us, there's moments that we're not operating at our best and it can happen, but it's important to learn from those moments so people can expect that they're gonna have a leader that is managing their emotions and not reacting in a way that is unpredictable.
Because that erodes the trust they have in you. I've also seen some of my clients not calling out behaviors that contradict their values. Again, because of that fear of people quitting, of important leaders leaving their businesses that they need there. Your standard has to be above. Everyone, you can replace an employee, but if you start going against your standards, that change in the culture, that's really hard to build back.
One of my other clients who is a VP in a company was telling me about how disappointed she was because leadership had made a strategic decision. She had voiced what? Why? Uh, okay. She had voiced why she thought that strategic decision was not gonna work.
And it ended up not working. And the leaders of her company, instead of owning their mistake and self-correcting, they started blaming everyone in the company, pointing fingers, firing people. And from her perspective, she felt so disillusioned because she remembered perfectly what happened.
And she was sharing with me how dissolution she was about them, how she no longer trusted them, how that scenario made her start looking for a different job. And this is the power you have with everyone.
And this is the power you have over everyone in your company. There is so much discussion about how do we keep our employees engaged? And I remember at some point some years ago, it was all about having a ping pong table or fun things, or a massage therapist to come. But the way to keep your employees engaged and trusting the company is by you being clear on your standards, calling them out and living by them.
What is the saying that leaders should always give credit to their employees and take responsibility for their mistakes? I think that is an incredible standard that sets the tone. So if you don't have your own leadership standard right now, you can go ahead and create it. You can look at the five pillars and use them to guide your decisions.
You can use the five pillars I shared to write down your leadership standard. You can ask yourself, what are my non-negotiables as a leader? Remember, a leadership standard is not something you're aspiring to be.
It's your minimum standard. It's the minimum that you're gonna hold yourself accountable to. Another question you can ask yourself is, what am I unwilling to compromise? Even under pressure? For me, kindness and respect is one of those things that I'm unwilling to compromise. Another of mine is service.
I am a coach and I'm a business owner, and I wanna be very successful and I'm very ambitious and I wanna make money in the business, but the reason why I am a coach is because I love people. And I care about their goals, their dreams, their insecurities, the hard stuff. And I'm committed to helping everyone that crosses my path, being my clients or people who are simply interested in what I do, to add value, to help them reach their goals in the best way I can.
And the third question you can ask yourself is, if my team mirrored me exactly. Would I be proud of the culture we create? Yes. Why? No, why? What would you change?
After you reflect on these questions, you can take some time to write three to five statements. I start with, I always, I always show up with kindness and respect. I always deliver value in every situation or statements that start with, I never. I never make big decisions in a reactive emotional state. I never treat my employees or anyone with disrespect. I never gossip or avoid having difficult conversations. What are the three to five standards that are most important to you?
And if you do write them down and wanna share them with me, I would love to read them and even provide you with some feedback. You can send them over to info (at) carolinazuleta (dot) com.
So remember, your leadership standard is not a nice to have. It's not something you aspire to be. It's the minimum standard to which you hold yourself accountable. It reflects the leader you want to be.
So if you're up to it, challenge yourself. And by the end of the day, write your leadership standard. Share it with your team, share it with other people. When you make it visible, it encourages you to be even more accountable to following it.
All right. That's all for today. I'll see you next time.
If you're currently pursuing a big, bold idea and would love some support, let's talk. In my coaching program, I'll teach you how to manage yourself, your own thoughts and emotions. as well as your team and your money so you can turn your beautiful idea into a reality. Go now to carozuleta.com slash consult that is c a r o z u l e t a dot com slash consult and complete the form to book a complimentary call with me.
See you there!
