What Does Leadership Look Like?

[00:00:00] Hello, my friends. On today’s episode, I’m talking with Mr. Mark Fisher and we’re talking about leadership. This is a topic many of you asked us to talk more about on this podcast. So we are, and I’m Sha [00:00:10] sharing one of my favorite leadership frameworks that helps you figure out what your leadership style is, what your approach to leadership is every day, how you build really healthy leadership [00:00:20] habits.

The model is called the DAC model, or the Direction Alignment Commitment Model. And this will just help you. Brainstorm all the ways that you lead your team every day to [00:00:30] be a successful leader. So if you really wanna level up your leadership game, it’s a great episode for you. Get your notepad out, take lots of notes, and let’s get started.

1, [00:00:40] 2, 3, 4. Welcome to The Business for Unicorns podcast, where we help gym and studio owners create a business and a life they love. I’m your [00:00:50] host, Michael Keeler. Join me and the business for Unicorns team each week for actionable advice, expert insights, and the inside scoop on what it really takes to level up [00:01:00] your gym.

Get ready to unlock your potential and become a real unicorn in the fitness industry.[00:01:10]

Yeah. Hello, fitness business nerds. What’s up? Welcome to another episode of the Business Unicorns podcast. Before we jump into [00:01:20] today’s episode, I wanna let you know that we have a bunch of free tools available on our website and one in particular I’m gonna include down below in the show notes, and it’s called the Ultimate Gym Owner Report Card.

[00:01:30] Often as gym owners, you know that you wear many hats in your business and you’re pulled in a million directions, and your focus and your energy is split among a million things. So we made you a little report card. That you can [00:01:40] do in under 10 minutes. And it really helps you assess all the areas you have business where you feel like you’re really crushing it, the areas of the business that you really haven’t developed systems for yet.

And so if you [00:01:50] want, are feeling a little stuck from time to time and you need some help figuring out what to focus on next, just go into the show notes, download our ultimate gym org report card and start using it right away. It’s free and it’s [00:02:00] yours to use. So enjoy. Um, on the podcast. It’s Mr. Fisher today.

Mr. Fisher, how the hell are you? We’re recording this early April. So happy April. How’s life? It is [00:02:10] good. I’m still recovering from a bachelor party in Vegas, so that’s amazing. Good for you. Most in person. Good for you. Yeah. Vegas has a way of drawing, drawing everyone in a [00:02:20] few times per year, whether you wanna be drawn in or not.

Yes. It’s part of its magic. Yes. Let’s dive in. We’ve had a few thoughts and requests [00:02:30] recently from both Unicorn Center members and podcast listeners, people asking us for more leadership stuff. So what we wanted to do today is actually introduce a leadership framework that I, that I think [00:02:40] you’re actually seeing maybe for one of the first times.

Yeah. So we’re gonna walk through it together and maybe I’ll tee it off like this. Generally speaking, just zooming out, thinking about leadership as a whole, I don’t think of leadership as [00:02:50] being a centered on a person as a leader, right. We often call that, but the old school theories of leadership are really about centering leadership, like in a person.

And that was really called like the kind of the [00:03:00] great man theory. The great man theory that leaders are born, they’re not made, and they’re born to be these heroic, decisive figures, usually men, and we don’t really think about leadership [00:03:10] like that anymore. Theories after that really talked about leadership being about the followers.

If you wanna be a great leader, you have to really craft the right followers and define what does it mean to be a great follower. And often that meant [00:03:20] that. Leadership was about finding people who are willing to follow you because you have some special thing that they really need. And in recent years, all the research has really pointed to thinking of [00:03:30] leadership more as like a social process.

It’s a relationship between two or more people. And because we like to think about leadership in that way, we like to think about, okay, what are the things that you do [00:03:40] as a leader on a regular basis? That help you form what we call like a growth fostering relationship with the people that you want to lead.

And there’s a really great model that I love, and [00:03:50] I know I’ve introduced this to some unicorn setting members and they found it really helpful and Mark and I are gonna talk about it today. And it’s from this place called the Center for Creative Leadership, which I’m a huge fan of. Go check them out.

They create [00:04:00] great content. And there’s a model called the DAC Model, and it’s an acronym. It’s an acronym for three words, direction, alignment, and commitment. And this framework suggests that if you wanna [00:04:10] create really great growth, fostering relationships, your job as a leader in order to create those relationships in part is to make sure that you’re providing direction.

Alignment and a sense of commitment to [00:04:20] the people that you want to lead. So it’s a pretty simple idea, which is why I like it so much. So what I wanted to do is talk through it with us all today and then Mark, you and I can brainstorm what are the ways that [00:04:30] we ourselves have created direction, alignment, and commitment with our teams, and what are ways we’ve seen other Unicorn society members do?

So first, let’s like start with the direction, let’s define terms. The [00:04:40] Center for Creative leadership thinks of direction as being. The idea that everyone agrees on a vision, everyone’s clear about where the ship is heading, and ideally really clear [00:04:50] on a set of specific goals that we’re all. We’re all clear are our goals.

Mm-hmm. And so often things people talk about when they think about direction are things like a vision statement, a [00:05:00] mission statement, values. These are all things that provide direction, annual goals, quarterly goals, or projects or rocks. These are all things that provide direction. But when you [00:05:10] think about all that kind of stuff that you’ve done over the years, Fisher, to provide direction to your teams, what stands out to you as being the most useful?

Yeah. If I’m understanding this correctly, the [00:05:20] direction can have both qualitative and quantitative markers. Sure, yep. Yeah. I think for the values have always been a big thing, [00:05:30] in part because I’ve always been interested in business as a. Lab, if you will, to test the theory of what would the world look like if this was the ways we chose to conduct ourselves with each other, and [00:05:40] this is how we get the work done together.

So I think having a clear set of values and not just the words, but another thing that we actually just did recently for biz unicorns is [00:05:50] a longer document that goes in greater detail, right? Because I think you don’t wanna have too many values. You want the values to be able to state, be stated ally, but if it’s just a [00:06:00] word, sometimes people actually have very different opinions of what those words mean.

So I think having maybe a two to three page document that flushes out the values, what they look like in behavior, what the [00:06:10] opposite of those values are, how the values intersect with each other, I think is one thing that I found to be helpful. So if you don’t. Have values. That’s something to consider.

And if you have [00:06:20] values, if you don’t have a supporting document to really clarify what you mean in your business by those values, that’s I think another thing worth considering. The second thing on the numbers front that [00:06:30] I have found to be valuable is some sort of planning process. So we work with members of the Unicorn Society.

We have one called Frameworks for Unicorns, and we have a system of quarterly planning where you [00:06:40] work back from a set of annual goals. To work back into not only like weekly goals, they’ll move you there, but also what are projects that might be done on a quarterly basis that are gonna move you [00:06:50] there.

And then importantly, I think, to make that real world having some sort of, and I might be jumping to one of the other ones yet ’cause I don’t know this model, but that’s okay. Having some sort of weekly meeting polls to stay accountable to [00:07:00] make sure. That the weekly numbers and the projects are moving forward towards the annual goal, as well as some sort of quarterly pulse, which is a bigger picture, deep dive where you step out of the business, [00:07:10] you look at how the quarter went and assess how are you doing on the path to your stated goal for the year.

So those are two that. Come to mind. Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s really critical. I think it’s good to have a [00:07:20] mix of qualitative and quantitative things, like a clarity of how we want the business to look and feel in terms of culture and values, I think is super critical, as we all know. And also getting clear about, [00:07:30] okay, what actually does growth look like in terms of revenue, number of employees, hours, worked in the business by the owner, right?

All those things we know are critical and, but we don’t provide [00:07:40] direction as a leader. Then there’s a, we don’t have agreed upon priorities. People peel, feel pulled in different directions and so there’s not a clear direction. Sometimes [00:07:50] people are working against each other or stepping on toes, or there’s a real battle for who gets to side direction when the leadership, yep.

There comes a leadership vacuum and then [00:08:00] people are advocating for different directions all at the same time and so I think, right. All those things you said I think are really critical and I think it’s really important. You can see how. Clear it is [00:08:10] that having good direction on a team contributes to having positive relationships.

Yes, yes. I’m more likely to want to come to work and see my fellow coworkers and collaborate with [00:08:20] them and spend time with them if I feel like our efforts are all pointing in the same direction. And if not, I. It becomes recipe for infighting and, and silos and all that, which we know sucked. Yep. [00:08:30] That’s the first one.

1. D for direction. The second one’s alignment. I think you started to get into a little bit of alignment, but alignment is really just about everybody being clear about their roles and responsibilities [00:08:40] that the work feels coordinated. Right, that we know this is your lane. This is my lane, and this is where our lanes intersect.

These are the things we have to do together. These are the things we can do [00:08:50] separately. And when there’s not alignment, this is often where deadlines are missed. I. We have to redo work because it was done by the wrong person or in the wrong way at the wrong [00:09:00] time. Or there’s a duplication of effort where we’re, like I said, we’re stepping on each other’s toes because it wasn’t clear, I own this, or you own this.

Mm-hmm. And I think where this stands out a lot in terms of [00:09:10] alignment is alignment on who are the decision makers. Right. For certain things. I think that’s often where the rubber meets the road is. Yeah. We all have opinions and maybe we have a very collaborative environment where everyone gets to share, but [00:09:20] who gets to decide?

And that’s something we struggle with, even with bi unicorns from time to time. It’s like we’re really good at creating a collaborative environment where our voices get heard and we don’t to share. But when does that end? [00:09:30] Yeah, yeah. Who is the person that says, okay, I’ve heard everyone’s thoughts. Here’s what we’re gonna do.

I know that both of us struggle with that in MFF years. And it’s an ongoing challenge, [00:09:40] but I think that’s a part of why, again, alignment is such a critical piece of this. Hey there, business Unicorns podcast listeners. I’m just making absolutely sure you have already gotten your [00:09:50] free, instantly downloadable copy of my new book, the Little Book of Gym Marketing Secrets.

You can find a link to download it in the show notes, or you can go to gym marketing secrets [00:10:00] book.com. I worked super hard to make sure this is a less than a 30 minute read and is a comprehensive overview of all the things you need to do. To grow your gym, get more leads, more [00:10:10] clients, importantly, change more lives.

Again, find the link in the show notes where you can download your free copy at gym marketing secrets book.com and now back to the podcast. So [00:10:20] let’s talk about some ways that we create that alignment, clear roles and responsibilities. What’s worked for you, sir? Yeah, certainly the thing that I think we have done pretty well over the years when [00:10:30] we’ve noticed this tension and I want, I wanna get back to what a typical Jim owner might do.

’cause it might be different. Yeah. Because our business have been larger, it has often made sense to put [00:10:40] various people in various leadership seats and be okay. You make the final call. For marketing or sales or finance or operations or the training product. And [00:10:50] if you’ve even read e meth, they do a similar exercise, which is probably even more relevant to the gym owner because if anybody’s ever read it, one of the stories they use about people making a [00:11:00] business into systems.

They have two founders get put in different seats. Mm-hmm. And they make the the case that one person can be in multiple seats, but you can’t have two [00:11:10] person in one seat. Yeah. And I think that’s a very important takeaway because in a typical gym, you’re not gonna have one person in charge of marketing and another in charge of sales and another in charge of X.

Yep. [00:11:20] So we often have been in the case where we’ve had. A lot of different people in the different seats, which does make things easier for decision making because okay, this person, [00:11:30] both, other people know to respect, okay, that’s the person that’s gonna make the final call there. I’m gonna opt out. And even importantly, I think for us, a lot of the, the real benefit has been giving ourselves the freedom.

Oh, I’m allowed to [00:11:40] make this call here and just run with it because this is my seat. I’m curious if you can maybe. Speak a little to how a trainer in let’s say, a more typical gym where maybe they have two or [00:11:50] three full-time trainers and maybe very part-time admin, how they might leverage this particular part of this framework.

Yeah, 100%. I’ll start with something like the most basic, which a lot of people just don’t do, [00:12:00] which is actually writing down what everyone’s roles and responsibilities are like in an actual document, and then when they change. Going in and changing the doc, right? Because also what’s, even if it’s just a [00:12:10] list of, here are the things you do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, here are the things that you’re responsible for, for doing in terms of KPIs.

Here are the ones you’re responsible for. [00:12:20] Right? Making it clear what people’s jobs actually are in writing seems very simple, right? Maybe like a duh, but I talk to people all the time who’ve been open for years [00:12:30] and don’t have roles and responsibilities written down in a way that people can refer to them or they did at one point.

They’ve changed a hundred times since. So no one looks at that document because it [00:12:40] complete does not represent reality anymore. And so making sure that it’s really written down. I think the other thing that I think is important if you have a team of one or a team of a thousand is that [00:12:50] part of the act of leading and managing, which are have a lot of overlap, is really checking in on how things are going and maintaining.

The thing you agreed to. So one thing to set [00:13:00] someone’s roles and responsibilities, that’s another thing to make sure they’re continuing to deliver Sure. On set roles and responsibilities over time. And that’s where we typically, one-on-one meetings are like the container in [00:13:10] which those conversations happen.

And so making sure you have a clear agenda for your one-on meetings that talks through the most critical parts of someone’s role that they uniquely own. So if you [00:13:20] have someone on your team who, and, and this is true for a lot of gyms, even if you have a small team, you usually have like maybe someone on your team who owns social media.

As an example. Yeah. Or program design created. Yeah, exactly. Or programmed [00:13:30] design. There’s these little buckets that are pretty common in gyms that some trainer usually owns as like a side project or a thing they do off the floor. And even just clarifying what you’re doing on social media [00:13:40] and when and how.

And then in our one-on-one meetings check in and saying, okay, you’re supposed to post five times a week. Let’s look at last week. Yep. Let’s look at your post. Did you post the right number of times, the right quality of content [00:13:50] following your SRP for how to do that? And so I think it’s that kind of thing that keep maintains the alignment, not just to get too aligned and we’re all agreed on what you do and when and how, but [00:14:00] it maintains it over time when it’s very easy for that, that role creep to to set in.

Yep. Yeah. You must inspect what you expect. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Anything else to say on [00:14:10] alignment? I think that we covered some good strategies there. No? Yeah, I think that’s good. So we got direction alignment. And the last C is commitment. So commitment is in a nutshell, buy-in. I. [00:14:20] And buy-in has lots of layers, right?

Getting a team to buy-in involves thinking about their motivation, their intrinsic and extrinsic motivation for what? What motivates [00:14:30] them to actually wanna participate. It also includes both like responsibility and accountability, right? So more than alignment, this is actually making sure that people are being a [00:14:40] team player, that everyone contributes to the group’s success, that there’s trust that everyone’s team.

It was all on the same page about, we’re all committed to the group’s [00:14:50] overall goals and when this is not in place, when we don’t have a great sense of buy-in or commitment from the team, only the easy thing to get done, no one ever really is right. It gets, [00:15:00] does the hard stuff. No one ever does the stuff that no one wants to do because there’s no commitment to sucking it up and just getting it done.

And then there’s also a sense of kind of real [00:15:10] individualism that sneaks in when you don’t have. Commitment to the team that everyone’s out for themselves and, and you can see very easily again, how that kind of environment does not [00:15:20] form great relationships, right? When everyone on the team is just looking out for themselves and what’s in it for me and protecting their own space, and there’s a battle to keep things off my plate, right?

There’s not that [00:15:30] sense of sometimes I just need to suck it up on the, for the benefit of the team and we don’t have that commitment. I’m sure there’s a million sports analogies that I’m not qualified to make here, but I remember even just as a kid [00:15:40] from playing. Football for a while. We wouldn’t practice all the plays, but I full well knew when I got onto the field, I didn’t get to decide which ones we did.

The quarterback decided and we all [00:15:50] just did it without asking any questions. There was no debate in the huddle about, it was like we all agreed we had commitment to the, who’s gonna be the decision maker and our role in it was to run our part of the [00:16:00] play. And without that, it would’ve been a more hectic than it was playing a 10-year-old football.

Yes. Yeah. So when it comes to getting people on the same page, to have a [00:16:10] sense of mutual trust and mutual responsibility to the team, what have you seen that works over the years? Yeah, it’s interesting because what’s [00:16:20] immediately coming to mind is the first things we had talked about originally. I think certainly one thing that we maybe haven’t discussed yet is that when you get weigh in, you get buy in, right?

Yes. [00:16:30] In the sense of if I have the opportunity to contribute to how this work is gonna get done, even if we don’t do it the way that I want, if I really feel [00:16:40] like my thoughts were really like meaningfully considered, once I have felt. That I have weighed in, I’m more likely to buy in. Yeah, certainly. An example of that would be, and again, you have to [00:16:50] decide, pick your battles here.

I’m not sure you can be collaborative in every micro decision a gym is gonna make, but inviting people to be part of the process of decision making, and in some extent, even [00:17:00] choosing the actual goals themselves while making it clear that ultimately the leader does have to be. The tiebreaker. So that’s what comes to mind.

Yeah. I’m wondering if you can talk through Yeah. Again, how this might [00:17:10] look for a typical smaller gym and specifically, yeah. Examples of how we could see this going wrong on a small gym. 100%, I think, right? That, I think this does connect back to alignment. I think these all have a [00:17:20] Venn diagram kind of vibe.

Yeah. The three of these things together. And then when people are asked about their opinions and feel like they have some say in whether. Business is going, they’re gonna be more likely to wanna go along for the ride and contribute [00:17:30] to that journey than if they weren’t. But also say that a very small step that everyone listening can take is actually just inviting a conversation about what part.

So let’s say I [00:17:40] manage a team of two people as part of our one-on-ones or part of my onboarding with them getting clear about what work do they like and what work do they not like. Mm-hmm. Even just knowing that I’m gonna be [00:17:50] asking you to do something that you really hate. Is useful. I know that you’re not intrinsically motivated to do this thing, so can I maybe provide some ex external motivation?

Yeah. Or at the very least, balance [00:18:00] what’s el, what else is on your plate with things you like more? Yep. Or, and or I keep going. Or help you organize your time so that you have to eat that frog, so to speak. Yep. Time of your [00:18:10] day when you’re most likely to be able to do something you don’t want to. And so I think even just managing someone by helping them think through what’s on your plate that you like or don’t like.

What are you motivated to do and not motivated to do? [00:18:20] Having that conversation lets you help them and support them better as a manager and a leader. Yeah. Yeah. And teams in general should have that conversation. Hey, this is project a good one. [00:18:30] No one wants to do a software change of any kind in any business.

Yeah, moving from mind, body to something else, no one is motivated to, excited to do that [00:18:40] project. Right. And so how you navigate people’s feelings around a project like that is absolutely gonna contribute to its success or failure, right? And so I think that’s part of getting commitment is getting commitment, [00:18:50] not to the easy stuff that everyone likes doing, but getting commitment to the hard things that no one wants to do is a big part of what leaders do is we sell the idea of where we’re going and [00:19:00] help you.

Maybe not get excited about it, but at least figure out how to navigate. Getting it done anyway. Yep. Yeah. Is that specific enough? I could probably get more [00:19:10] specific, but yeah, no, I think so. Yeah, I think that’s clear. Yeah, so I think that’s the model. It’s that simple. It’s really just thinking through, if you really wanna create great relationships with the people you manage, thinking about [00:19:20] what are the ways in which you create direction, alignment, and commitment.

I did this exercise earlier with unicorn side members, but go just set an alarm for 10 minutes and just write down for yourself. My [00:19:30] approach to creating direction on my team is what? My approach to creating alignment on my team is what my approach to creating commitment on my team is. What? And you’ll start to develop this is what kind of, among [00:19:40] other things you could add to that list.

This is part of what your leadership style is. This is your approach, right? This is, this is the toolbox box that you’re developing as a leader for how you do leadership. And the [00:19:50] research shows that when those things are present. Leadership is present. Those things, leadership is an outcome of this social interaction we have with people.

And when we have those things present [00:20:00] and we’re building strong relationships that are gonna last stand the test of time, hopefully. Yeah. Anything else you would add to that? No. I’m happy to learn about this framework in Molly that’s useful. I. Fun. It’s fun, [00:20:10] it’s easy. It helps put some of the things that we do as leaders into buckets that we can, yep, we can think strategically about.

Alright friends, hope this was valuable to you. As always, keep on listening to the podcast and go into the [00:20:20] Slack chat box down below and show notes. They called the chat box into the show notes, that’s what they’re called. And go get that free resource we talked about, ’cause it’s there waiting for you and it’s gonna be very useful for you [00:20:30] to figuring out how to have some new direction in what you’re spending your time on.

Thanks Fisher. I’ll see you in the next one. [00:20:40] [00:20:50] Bye.