289: The Feedback Loop: Why Accountability is Key to Success

Hello. Hello everyone and welcome to the Intentional Advantage Podcast. I’m your host, Tanya Dalton. This is episode 289. We have a fun show planned today because I have one of my very favorite people to talk leadership strategies with, and that is Kris Plachy. She and I meet very regularly to talk about how we’re leading what business is looking like, and we talk about strategies with team. And I knew when we had this season on the spiritual art of work and life, I knew we needed to talk about team stuff because if you are leading, you have a team, whether we’re talking about your team at the office or you’re running your own company or your team at home.

You as the leader, it’s so important to make sure that you are taking care of yourself, making sure that you’re leading from a place that feels very authentic and it feels very aligned with who you are. Now, Kris Plachy is the founder and CEO of Visionary dot c e o. This is a brand new company that she has just opened up, so she is in the middle of a big shift herself.

Which has been so exciting to be behind the scenes of, to watch somebody who’s had such an incredible business shift and evolve and change. We’re gonna be talking about that on the show today. She is also the host of Leadership is Feminine Podcast. So you know, we’re gonna have some great conversations about well leadership being feminine, bringing in some of the masculine energy.

We’re gonna be talking about asking for support. We’re gonna be talking about how clear are you when you’re leading? Are you really clear with how you’re delegating, how you’re talking to your people? Are they clear with how you wanna be communicated to? So we’re gonna be talking about leadership guides.

We’re gonna dive into so many different aspects in today’s show. Let’s just go ahead, let’s get started. What do you say?

Intro Music: There’s a spiritual art to work and life. I’m not talking about sitting in silence on a mountaintop or chanting mantras for hours a day, but finding meaning in your work in everyday life can increase your productivity, boost your happiness, and yes, make you feel so much better about your days. I’m Tanya Dalton, a bestselling author, motivational speaker, seven figure entrepreneur.

Oh yeah, wife and mom. So I get it. I understand the stress of daily life, but as a productivity expert, I’m here to help you choose the extraordinary life. This season, we will be exploring work, parenting, personal growth and more. Because when you choose to be intentional, every day can be filled with meaning.

Let’s create the world we want our daughters to live in. This is the Intentional Advantage.

Tanya Dalton: I was just explaining to Kris that the whole point of this season really is that it’s very conversational, that it’s not an interview. So she and I did not sit, and say, okay, I’m gonna ask you this question and then you respond this way. Because I really feel like conversations are one of those things that is missing for a lot of people.

We’re having these very surface level conversations, and I really wanted people to see these amazing people that I get to have conversations with, who I feel help me grow and evolve and shift and do all these amazing things. So Kris, it’s gonna be so fun to have you on the show today.

Kris Plachy: I’m honored. Let’s chat.

Tanya Dalton: I do feel like a lot of the conversations that we have help propel me and push in new directions. And I know you’re propelling and pushing in new directions yourself, so can we talk a little bit about that?

Kris Plachy: okay. I’m terrified. I just keep telling Tanya, everybody, I’m like, I’m terrified. I’m terrified, but I’m good. I feel like that must mean I’m doing it right.

Tanya Dalton: I think it does. If you’re not a little bit scared, you’re not really pushing out of your comfort zone, right? It means that you’re, you’re staying really safe. The fact that when we’re talking about this, you’re making a significant shift in your business. And when I’m like, oh, are you so excited?

You’re like, I’m terrified.

Kris Plachy: Terrified.

Tanya Dalton: I love that honesty though, because a lot of times we hear these messages, especially as leaders, that it’s oh, embrace the fear and just punch fear in the face and all of this very masculine kind bro talk. And I love, I think it’s so refreshing to just be totally honest about the fact that this is scary and it’s frightening. It’s exciting, but it’s like being at the top of a rollercoaster.

Kris Plachy: You know, doing what I do working with other successful women like yourself in general. I feel compelled to do the work that I teach and I think one of the biggest gifts of being a visionary and being someone who has ideas and, and has proven to herself that she can curate those ideas and then turn them into a business and into money, is that there’s always this dance that we’re doing right between expressing who we are and living that part of who we are that wants to have a voice and share a message. And then also being a woman and a mom and a, and a wife and just a person who doesn’t want to work all the time and doesn’t wanna think about work all the time.

I’ve been in business now for. almost 12 years. And I would say that for the most part, I’ve been pretty good at that. But I have built a business around a model that wasn’t something that for me was scalable or sustainable. And if I’m gonna be honest about what I wanna do in my life I didn’t see how I could get there doing what I was doing, but this process has taken me well over a year to try on argue with, cry about, yell at, all over.

I just have felt so you know, and even some of my podcast episodes. If you’ve been tuning in, like I’ve been talking about like visionary shame, like what do you do when you’re the visionary and you don’t know what the heck you wanna do? Like that’s really, really perplexing and I don’t think we talk about it that somehow we’re always just endowed with these incredible ideas and we know what to do.

No. We just know we don’t wanna do what we’ve been doing. But that doesn’t mean that I’m coming from a place of being unhappy. It just means I can see, and I’m also, I’m probably like you in this way. I think, I think you are this way, I’m outing you. Right? Like I think visionary’s bore. They get bored

Tanya Dalton: Oh, without question,

Kris Plachy: I need new, I need to infuse myself because I know that’s how I become better

Tanya Dalton: Well, I like what you said there about the fact that you’ve cried, argued, fussed, because it’s, not, that change is easy. And I think that’s the thing is so often we look at people who are evolving and growing and we think, oh, well that’s easy for them. It’s not, it looks, it looks easy maybe on the outside.

That’s just because you can’t see what’s going on behind the scenes all of the steps that have led you here. You’re fighting almost internally within yourself say, well, but this is working so well. Why, why, why change it? And, and people will tell you that. Why shift? Why change? I know that when I closed my first business, I closed my first business.

It was doing very well. And people were like, wait, why would you change it? And I was like, I’m not happy. I’m not satisfied. I’m, I’m kind bored. I wanna do something different. It’s not making the impact I want. And people would ask me, are you crazy? Like, you have a model that’s working, it’s making you six figures.

It’s paying for fancy houses and vacations, and there’s so much more to life than that. There’s so much more to life than just what you bring home on your paycheck or what your revenue looks like for your business. There’s, there’s so much more that we’re looking for, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re so uncomfortable that the change is easy.

Kris Plachy: Right.

Tanya Dalton: I think that’s the misconception

Why Failure is Essential to the Progress

Kris Plachy: No, it’s, not easy. It’s, it’s torture. I have to be willing to fail and fail. And fail, and fail. And I will say that the benefit of having been in business now as long as I am is I’ve had some really awful failures. Humiliating, right? That now I’m kind of like a little impervious. It doesn’t feel quite as substantial to have a failure because that’s just the process instead of the exception.

And I’m willing. The, the hardest part for me with all of it, is aligning other people to come with me and help me and see the vision with me on a team. That’s always the hardest part for me.

Tanya Dalton: I like that whole idea of embracing failure as part of the process. It’s not that we’re trying to avoid it. It’s almost , okay, we’re expecting some degree of failure. There’s no way that you’re gonna roll things out and it’s gonna be, oh, perfect. It’s gonna be amazing. It’s not gonna need any adjustments or shifts because the truth is everything is organic.

Everything evolves shifting and changing and growing, and quite frankly, if you are the same person today that you were a year ago, five years ago, something’s wrong.

We really need to fix that because should be constantly growing.

Kris Plachy: Mm-hmm.

Tanya Dalton: and some, sometimes growth is fast and sometimes there’s big shifts, but other times growth is these little tiny things.

It’s just changing perspective or changing the way you think, or shifting the way that you lead. I can tell you I have had some pretty big failures when it comes to leadership. I mean, that’s, that’s how you become a better manager of people is, is by

Kris Plachy: One would think right, one would hope that you would at least like not make that mistake again. But it does. It’s, it’s a very humbling experience to, to believe that the ideas that you have in your brain should be shared and then, To find people who can help coalesce those ideas into a thing in the world.

Like it’s incredibly humbling. First of all, right, like who do we think we are to just have these ideas and then be like, okay, so let’s package them and figure out how to help other people with them. I think it’s quite audacious,

Tanya Dalton: I think it is, and I think that’s one of the mistakes that a lot of people make when they’re leading other people. Whether we’re talking about running your company or in a corporation or a company, is we expect people to be inside our brain. We are like, I don’t know why they don’t get it, but we haven’t really explained it to them or we haven’t allowed them access inside of our brain. Which I think is really, really key.

Creating a Leadership User Guide

Tanya Dalton: I think it’s so important for people to understand your user guide. Do you have a user guide? I have a user guide for how to work with me that I share with people when they come on board and they start working me and I’m like, here’s my leadership guide.

This right here, this is gonna make you successful because this is what I like. This is what I don’t like. Do you have something like that too?

Kris Plachy: Yeah, what I tell people is when they start with me, I’m like, I can really work with most things except for a lack of responsiveness, a lack of initiative, and a lack of critical thinking.

Those three things for me are deal breakers because I can’t teach them to you. You have to be willing to demonstrate those behaviors. And sometimes those are just things that people did. Just never learned. They didn’t learn how to be responsive. They didn’t learn how to take initiative. And I, in a small business, I don’t have the capacity to wait for you to figure that out, so, absolutely. I think we have to be as clear as we can. We’re gonna get along great here if this is true, but not if this is true. And it’s a great thing for your listeners to get for themselves because everyone should be able to communicate that in a way that makes sense and is heard, and that is repeated.

Tanya Dalton: Mm-hmm

Kris Plachy: Like I was just talking to you about something today that mm-hmm. Not happening done

Tanya Dalton: It’s, setting up your rules of engagement. These are my boundaries. These are my goes and my no goes. So one of the things for me in my leadership guide is I don’t want granular details. Do not waste my time giving me like the itty bitty, tiny details. have no interest and I’m gonna go bonkers, okay?

So don’t give them to me. And if you come to me with a problem, Go ahead and give me a solution as well. Don’t come to me with problems. Come to me with solutions. Even if they’re not solution I’m gonna take, I wanna see you’ve taken that initiative. And if there’s a problem, give me the bottom line first.

Okay. We had this problem, it’s been solved. This is what’s happening, right? Don’t put me in panic mode. So I have, I have all these different things that are important to me. Other people are like, Ooh, gimme all that granular detail. Mm. Not for me. No thank you,

Kris Plachy: Keep your spreadsheets yourself. Yes.

Tanya Dalton: Your spreadsheet to yourself.

Kris Plachy: Just gimme the top line. Yeah.

Tanya Dalton: I make my team members create their own leadership guide because we’re all leaders within the team. I wanna know what works best for you. I wanna know, I wanna know if you’re a words of affirmation kind of person. I wanna know you’re what, what works best for you?

So it’s not just to how you communicate, it’s also how you receive. How you receive accolades and how you receive maybe not accolades,

Kris Plachy: Mm-hmm.

Tanya Dalton: Because I think all of those things are really important. I wanna make sure if we’re having a meeting and you’re doing something I don’t like, you’re gonna receive that information in the best way possible, because that’s to my benefit and it’s to your benefit my team member.

Why Asking for Help Can Be a Struggle

Kris Plachy: Yeah. It’s essential. It’s the only way to function Women in general tend to struggle with being clear about asking for the kind of support that they want. I actually was just talking about this on my podcast. You know, I was thinking about, I’ve coached a lot of women, but before I exclusively coached female entrepreneurs, I coached a lot of men and I I was just sort of positing in my mind, why do men not struggle as much in leadership roles in the same way that women do?

I saw this vision in my memory of being at Thanksgiving dinner when I was young at my grandma’s house. And you know, the men were all in the den watching football or whatever, drinking their drink, and where were the women? Even the young women, young girls, they were in the kitchen.

They were preparing, they were getting the hors d’oeuvres out and serving. They were asking if people had everything they needed. They were making sure that the table was. Set properly. They were making sure that Uncle Harold had his, you know, whiskey and rye or whatever he likes. In general, women are taught from the time that we could probably remember that we have to make other people feel supported and safe and seen and taken care of.

And men are not taught that in the same way. So then fast forward being a 45 year old woman running a multimillion dollar business and you still can’t ask for help because you feel guilty asking for help. Right. Because you are the one who’s supposed to provide the help. You and I both know women who run multiple million dollar businesses and they still can be incredibly passive in parts of their lives, or they feel tremendous guilt if they even ask it’s just so ingrained in culture and I think that’s across the board in a lot of cultures. Not so much so I don’t think in our daughters, which will be really interesting to watch.

Tanya Dalton: I think it is gonna be really interesting to I’m watching Kay as she’s leading at her work. You know, she’s 16 and she’s training people who are twice her age. And it’s so interesting to watch her navigate it. But here’s the thing that’s so different for our daughters. I feel like my daughter doesn’t think it’s weird to have a mom who’s a CEO.

She doesn’t even question it. My son doesn’t question it. My my son is like, other moms don’t do these things. And I’m like, no, they don’t. So they’ve had a lot of modeling that we have not necessarily had, because, I feel like I went out into the world. Decided I was gonna make my own way and run a business, and I, I felt like I didn’t know anybody else who was doing anything like what I doing, and I felt very isolated.

I think this is why it’s so important for women to come together because we need to share that support. We need to share that it’s okay. Not only is it okay for you to ask for support, but it’s also okay to tell your team, Hey, you’re not doing your job.

Kris Plachy: Yeah.

Tanya Dalton: is not how this needs to be done. And there is a little bit of stigma as a woman.

You wanna be assertive, but not, hey, not too assertive. You need to make sure that you’re doing the things that need to be done. But don’t push people too hard.

We’re definitely raised to be good girls, and that creates all kinds of problems.

When Your Assistant Isn’t Your Assistant

Tanya Dalton: You are the person, I believe this is you because I, and I lean back on this all the time. You said one time If you are assisting your assistant,

YOU are the assistant. And I was like, oh yeah, you’re right.

Kris Plachy: Yeah

Tanya Dalton: we’re like, you know what? I’m not gonna have this difficult conversation.

I’m not gonna tell her she’s doing a bad job. Let me just take this on. I’ll just make these tweaks.

Kris Plachy: I’ll

just care of it. I’ll just take care of it.

Tanya Dalton: What a disservice we’re doing to ourselves, but also to that person we have hired who is supposed to be the expert. We’re not having that conversation with them because we’re afraid to exert our boundaries.

That’s essentially what it is.

Kris Plachy: Yeah. Or ask for what you paid for. Yeah.

Tanya Dalton: for what you

pay

Kris Plachy: I would say there’s two compounding issues.

The first one is you get to a point where you’ve done it all yourself for so long and people don’t work harder to support you, to meet the needs that you’ve to, to do the things you’ve asked for. You give up, just say, forget it. I’ll just take care of it. think a lot of women just hit this wall, like I’m never gonna get the level of support from other people that I provide to people and or to myself. So

I’ll just take care of it.

Tanya Dalton: Tell ourselves that lie. It’s just easier. So I will just do it and then we grumble and complain when nobody else is doing it.

Kris Plachy: Yeah.

Why Training People Takes So Much Time

Tanya Dalton: it, I think it’s shifting the way that we look at training people, onboarding people. Because it really is an investment.

That’s what it is. And when I say training people and onboarding people, I’m not just talking about work people. I am talking about at home as well, where we’re just like, ah, the kids can’t seem to load the dishwasher, so I’ll just load it every single time. And then we wonder why we’re the only one loading the stupid dishwasher because we have trained them that, don’t worry about it.

Mom’s gonna do it. You’re not doing it right. Anyways.

Kris Plachy: Well, because to hold the accountability conversation of this isn’t what we discussed, this isn’t the result that we expected. This isn’t right. There’s two things. First, you have to know that you were clear, which you referenced earlier, and a lot of times we aren’t really very clear. We just expect people will read our minds.

And the second thing is, We really are in a, in a current time in life where there is so little accountability It’s just a blast of excuses. Instead of, you know what, you’re right. I screwed that up. Let me fix it.

So we have this double whammy, cuz I know my clients, right? We, that’s a lot of what we work on is embedding accountability culture and ownership and how do we hold that space for people. But the people aren’t used to getting any kind of feedback. And so we have a little bit of a, like, there’s, there’s a US thing and then there’s a big macro issue, which is, you know, I, I was just telling another client this, I was at Disneyland a couple weeks ago and a little kid, he was eight, he, this was unintentional, but he literally was just kind of walking around and he took his arm and he punched me in the stomach as we were walking past each other because he was right at my waist. Right. So he just punched me in my stomach and I was, I, I was like, ow.

Tanya Dalton: You were punched in the stomach, literally.

Kris Plachy: His father laughed.

Tanya Dalton: Oh, okay.

Kris Plachy: I would’ve been mortified. I would’ve been like to little Johnny, like, dude, you need to apologize to her. It was an accident, but

Tanya Dalton: It’s an

accident.

Kris Plachy: you need to apo like apo. But the dad laughed and I was like right, that’s right. I forgot.

Tanya Dalton: I somehow that was for walking my stomach into your So you

Kris Plachy: how funny is that?

It’s a Disneyland, but it is. So we have this, so how do you stay who you are? To me, this is the question, right? How do you stay true to what you know is right for you? And how do you align to those non-negotiables and those expectations and those rules of engagement? All the things that we’ve already been talking about, when people breach them, people don’t follow them.

People overtly dismiss them. isn’t about them, it’s what you do that matters. And if you then compromise and you tolerate, you set the cycle.

Tanya Dalton: Yeah, it’s what are you tolerating is the big question to ask. Ask yourself. I think that’s this culture that we have as a society of no accountability is a real issue. I’ve always been very adamant about giving my kids accountability. And agency is one of our core values for my company. It’s a, it’s a core value for, for my family.

I think it’s so important to understand that you have ownership things.

Creating a Culture of Feedback

Tanya Dalton: Did you ever read Marc Randolph’s book? No Rules Rules.

Kris Plachy: No.

Tanya Dalton: of the co-founders of Netflix. Netflix has this culture of a radical candor. It’s maybe a touch much. Their radical candor is radical, but I found it really refreshing because every meeting begins with feedback. And there is this expectation for and feedback goes multiple ways. It goes down the ladder, it goes across the board, and guess what? Feedback also goes up the ladder. It also comes up to me because quite frankly, as a leader, I don’t want to fill my company full of yes people. I don’t want my team to be filled with people who are gonna tell me great idea when everybody’s scrambling in the background thinking this is the worst idea of all time.

So really

Creating this culture where feedback is not only accepted, it’s an expectation

I think is really, really important. And so I set that edict for all of my team members. Anytime you’re starting a meeting, You start with feedback. Do you have any feedback for me? I have feedback you and we have these guidelines for how you give feedback based.

It’s actually based off of Marc Randolph’s. He has four A’s that he talks about in his book. And I, I have found that to be so refreshing because it opens up that channel of conversation. And I think that’s one of the things as leaders, that’s most important for us to do is to allow communication to happen we’re doing a disservice to ourselves

if we’re not allowing that communication because we’re not allowing ourselves to communicate, it’s almost giving yourself permission while you give everyone on your team permission to share. And I like to say

The Difference Between Feedback and Criticism

Tanya Dalton: Feedback comes from a place of love. Criticism is from a whole different other place.

Kris Plachy: Mm-hmm.

Tanya Dalton: Criticism is what we get on social media when people wanna throw out hard pass on th this or I don’t like the way you’re doing that, that’s criticism. True feedback comes from a place love. It comes from a place of I want you to do better. I want you to be better. And as leaders, if we can get our team members to want to be better, to live better, to work better, isn’t that a benefit to them as much it is to us?

And it’s a benefit to your kids when you give feedback, when you allow your kids to give feedback to you. Again, modeling this, not criticism. Feedback two very different

things.

Kris Plachy: Absolutely. And your comfort level is critical. So that’s the right live it to give it. Before you, you know, you first is the other one that you hear a lot like, okay. Yeah. You want everybody to be more accountable and take more initiative. You first.

Tanya Dalton: You have to model it. I feel like you have to model. Anything that you wanna instill within your One of the things I would model with my team was going away on vacation. Let’s normalize some of that, when my team comes back after vacation, they’re better, they’re happier.

They’re more

Kris Plachy: genuine, right? You really are gone. Yeah. Agreed. Agreed.

Tanya Dalton: literally that’s a conversation I, I make sure that I have at the beginning of a season where it’s like, okay, here we’re coming up to summer. What’s your vacation plans? And if they tell me, I have none, I say, come back next week and let’s have some ready, cuz I wanna hear because that’s important.

I wanna make sure that, again, it’s not just accepted, it’s an expectation that you’re taking care of yourself, taking care mental health. And as a leader, I need to feel good about taking care of my mental health. I’m gonna go away and I’m gonna take my unplugged vacation without question. do it already.

So I want you to do the same

thing.

Kris Plachy: Mm-hmm.

Tanya Dalton: So it really is about how this flows both ways, not both ways, multiple ways, up, down, sideways, every which direction

Kris Plachy: Yeah, it’s communication maturity, which I believe if you’ve, if you’ve decided to be the leader of this thing, I see that as a responsibility for you to work on your own thinking so that you can be a communicator that isn’t just communicating to make yourself feel better, but that you’re communicating with the intention, just as you’ve said, to love and to serve and to pour into people, I just love that you’re doing this because that’s part of why I think you and I enjoy talking to each other because we can share ideas and we can share common challenges, but we both accept a lot of responsibility for the solutions and.

That’s where your authority, that’s where you’re speaking of agency, right? That’s where your agency is, is regardless of what is showing up in your plate, do you believe you have the ability to affect change and make something happen? Whether that’s through a conversation with someone or your own behavior in action.

Leaders see that I can have influence, I can have an impact, I can do something. It’s not just up to me to sit here and. Be helpless.

Leading with Love

Tanya Dalton: When you get to a position of leadership, you have this amazing responsibility and it’s a gift. It really is. Sometimes it can feel like a weighted gift or a poison gift from time to time, truthfully.

But it is, it’s a gift that you get to influence how other people live, their livelihood. People come to you and they work in your office space for the majority of their day. They spend more time with you than many times their loved ones, their families, and getting the opportunity to, to be the person who influences that.

That determines someone’s happiness is a great responsibility and it’s one we should, should never take lightly. And I think that is why it is so important to lead with that autonomy, to lead with authenticity and

to lead with this idea of this concept of leading with love.

That’s what feedback is. Exerting your boundaries is loving yourself. It’s, I really do believe that love is an important aspect of what we do as leaders,

Kris Plachy: Mm-hmm. I think it’s a

Tanya Dalton: is definitely a feminine way of thinking when it comes to leadership.

Kris Plachy: It is. Yeah.

Tanya Dalton: which I love.

Kris Plachy: But it’s kind, I think that’s part of the issue, right? Those tired masculine models that we’re seeing a little eruptions all over, right? Whether it’s the Me Too movement or all these other different ways that we’re seeing this backlash.

And we’ve just watched masculine leadership models for thousands of years, really since the goddesses were crushed out several thousand years ago. Right? Because goddesses women used to be the revered leaders and the revered thinkers of the world, and that got changed. Along with a lot of other things.

but I think for a lot of women, there’s all this, either you try on and you put way too much of that on because you’re trying to protect and hide from your own empathy and discomfort there, or you just think that’s how it’s supposed to be done, right? It’s like when we look back at the eighties in the late seventies and women were wearing little bow ties and little suits and

Tanya Dalton: Oh, shoulder

pads.

Kris Plachy: shoulder pads and the nylons and cover everything up. And so, you know, we’re getting, I think we’re really evolving. And I do think the last sort of standing artifact of this older leadership model is the belief patterns. Because we can look softer, we can act softer.

We can show up more of who we are, but there’s still this ingrained belief. That I have to be tough or I have to be stern. and, and I don’t argue that there are times to tap into masculine energy. I think a lot of people think I don’t agree. I I do think there’s, we need both. I just think that what the truth is is that women have been taught that they’re feminine approach is an is unuseful, and if anything weak, And I think that’s the lie because I think love and empathy and grace and kindness and nurturing and support and all those elements that we just sort of naturally are born with and can do, are incredibly powerful leadership tools and in fact, make you the leader that might even be more successful. Some of the data is starting to prove that out,

Embracing the Feminine and Masculine Energy in Leadership

Tanya Dalton: I love it because I do, I think there are spaces where you want that masculine energy, but the feminine energy is so powerful. It’s bringing them together and embracing both, I’m talking to male leaders as much as female leaders

Kris Plachy: if you listen to how he talks about his team, his employees and relationships and caring about people and nurture, like if on the surface in Shark Tank, you might not see that, but his philosophy.

And how he thinks about people and ecosystems and what really happens and what makes people thrive. Very, very tapped into, I believe, a more of a feminine leadership approach, which I don’t know if he would agree, but I certainly think that when I listen to him, for sure.

Tanya Dalton: I’m gonna start paying more attention to that. That’s

Kris Plachy: Yeah.

Tanya Dalton: because I do think we want. Both masculine and feminine working together because that’s when we’re at our best. We all have masculine energy. We all have feminine energy. Doesn’t matter what sex you were born with or how you identify, we have all of that within us, and it’s important to embrace.

The masculine side, the the feminine side, because that’s what what’s gonna allow you to lead the best. I think that’s, that’s really exciting when you fully, wholly completely accept who you are.

Kris Plachy: it’s the self-doubt that comes with trying to mimic. Right. And it’s not aligned to who you are, right? So even from the top of our conversation with knowing what your expectations are, knowing what your rules of en like what matters to you, you’re a leader.

You’re building your own ecosystem, you’re building your own language in your company that that needs to be, it’s authentic as it can be because then the last person we want feeling out of her own skin is you. The more you’re in your own skin and you feel confident in who you are, the better you are for everybody.

Tanya Dalton: Yeah, the better everyone is,

quite

Kris Plachy: Yeah. So much happier. good.

Tanya Dalton: happier. Oh my gosh, this is so good. Kris, we could talk all day, which has been known to happen between the two of us. This is so good. Let me ask you this before we, before we sign off with you, what’s one piece of advice you would love to impart today?

Kris Plachy: Well, I, I think it’s a great question. I have a lot to say, but I will tell you something I have been saying a lot lately is that at the heart of a lot of the challenges that women face leading is a underlying conflict when it comes to self-worth. And believing that you are worth having a team that is exceptional, that you are worth people respecting you, that you are worth the ideas that you have in your brain, that you are worth time alone to think that you are worth getting your nails done in the middle of the day, whatever.

It’s I will scream till I can’t scream anymore that, that. Is what I believe. If we could work on and understand better about ourselves. So if I were gonna give you one piece of advice, I would just tell you, you are enough exactly as you are today. And instead of believing you need more of something else to get better, lean into what you already are and work with people who believe that too.

Tanya Dalton: Oh, beautiful. I love it. I love it. Thank you so much.

Kris Plachy: You’re welcome.

Tanya Dalton: Oh, I loved having Kris on the show today because she really has such an amazing perspective when it comes to leadership, and I love how she really promotes and encourages that feminine energy that we all have, men and women, both how we have that feminine energy. Really incorporating that into your leadership strategies.

I think it is really important when we lead other people, that we lead from a space that feels really, really pure and authentic to us. I love that conversation we had about really making sure that we’re clear with our expectations, really setting those boundaries for ourselves. There’s this phrase that I heard a while back that really has resonated with me.

80% done well by someone else is better than 100% done perfectly by you.

That little phrase really shifted how I looked at things, because I think so often, as Kris talked about in our show today, we take things on. We say, oh, you know what? It’s easier. I’ll just do this, or I’ll take this on.

Or they didn’t quite do this right. When the truth is when we delegate to other people, we allow them to have the autonomy and the agency that we’re really hoping that we will instill in them. We as leaders, we play such an important role in so many people’s lives, and I think it’s something to really take hold of, to really accept and acknowledge that you have influence, that you have the ability to shift and change how someone’s world looks.

And part of that is helping them be the best version of them possible. I think a lot of times we hold back on the feedback and yes, as we talked about in today’s show, there’s a difference between criticism and feedback, but we hold back from that feedback because we worry about how that’s gonna affect them or how they’re gonna receive it.

But when you give feedback to other people, you allow them to expand into who they have the ability to be, and that’s a beautiful gift. Whether we’re talking about your team at at work or your team at your company that you run, or your team at home, even with your own children. I know that has been a really important part of me raising my own children.

So I’m really hoping that today’s show has given you a lot of insight into who you want to be as a leader and how you wanna step into intentional leadership. I think it’s a really powerful thing. So now, if you have not subscribed to the podcast, please make sure you go ahead and do that. If you haven’t headed over to YouTube, the show is now on video. It’s been a big change. It’s been a big shift, and it’s been so exciting. I have gotten so many great emails from so many of you about how much you’re enjoying all the little extras and the little bonuses that we put into the videos with the, the B-roll footage and the call outs of the different things that we say that really speak to me.

I go through and I really pay attention to what I want you to take away from the show. So if you felt like today’s show really helped you, if it gave you some really good insight, do me a favor, snap a quick picture of it. Just take a quick little screenshot, text it to a friend, text it to someone you know, who you think could use a little more leadership strategies or just would like to sharpen their saw a little bit.

Because truly this is how we all become better. These conversations that you’re seeing me have on the show, These are exactly like the conversations I have behind the scenes with these women. They really do shift me and change me and help me step into who it is I want to be. And there’s nothing more powerful than that.

There’s nothing more powerful than leading from a place where you feel and you embody your own power. Because when we embrace who we are, when we lead with authenticity and we allow others, that agency and autonomy to really step into who they are designed to be. That’s when we’ve got the Intentional Advantage.

Ready to take action on what we talked about on today’s episode. The easiest way to get started is my free take five challenge, five minutes a day for five days. That’s it. And yet it will boost your productivity and double your happiness. I can promise you thousands have taken the challenge. Go to Tanya dalton.com/take five to join or click the link in the episode notes.

And don’t forget to follow the intentional advantage on your podcast player so you don’t miss an episode.

**The Intentional Advantage has been called one of the best productivity podcasts for women. This transcript is created by AI, so please excuse any typos, misspellings and grammar mistakes.

Tanya Dalton is top female motivational speaker with productivity keynote topics ranging from habits, goal setting, time management and finding balance.