Leadership Spotlight: Building Team Relationships

We’re excited to announce that after appearing on Episode #26 of the Elevate Business Podcast, Jesse has been selected for the Intuity Performance Leadership Spotlight series.

Jesse Perreault, a digital marketing expert and relationship builder. As CEO and partner of Soap Media Inc, Jesse leads the company and their client’s growth through a tailored digital marketing journey that fulfils their business goals. In 2017, Jesse created a 500 coffee challenge, where he connected with 500 people over coffee with the intention of building relationships within his community.

Here are the top 3 insights he shared with the community.

1. What does the word Performance mean to you and what role has it played in your journey?

For the longest time, performance was my input. And by input, I would say my time into something. But, I’ve come to realize that, that is not what performance means to me anymore. It’s simply the output and what the outcome is. Like most entrepreneurs, you know their hard work, their hustle is a badge of honour because there’s pain associated with late nights or early mornings not sleeping.

I would go into a day and it wasn’t very intentional and I would overload my day with 10, 20 tasks and feel like I could conquer the world. Then at the end of the day, I’d be left feeling, like I didn’t accomplish nearly what I wanted to. I just didn’t feel good and then I bring that into the next day and the next and never felt accomplished.

So I’ve come to realize that is not performance. It’s no longer measuring the inputs or long hours anymore. I believe that truthfully, it’s the outcome. So when I look at what I’m seeking to achieve in a day, I’m more realistic now. And if I get my main task done in the few outlying tasks that I have, that is what really drives.

2. What was one of your biggest learnings stepping into a leadership role?

I think delegation is something that I always knew existed, I just didn’t know how to do it properly. When I started to learn how to exercise delegation, part of it was taking that leap. For example being on a call with a client with a couple of team members, where I want to speak up because I can tell that they’re not addressing things how I might, but instead, keep myself quiet no matter how much I wanted to speak up.

Over time, I began to develop a scale system to rate what was super critical that was not being addressed in a call, then I would speak up and if it was something that I knew was not critical and maybe it was just me being picky, I knew to keep reserved and not speak up.

And the same goes with delegating tasks. At first, I was a bit crazy about how often I would oversee things then I developed some self-awareness. Now I still check things, but I don’t check them as often. I realized that ultimately that’s not driving the culture I want for the company, for me to constantly digging into what my team is doing, which as a consequence might make some employees not feel like they’re good enough or that I don’t believe or trust in their ability, which is not what I wanted.

3. What are some ways you’ve sought to create an environment for your team to thrive?

I think one of the things is that we encourage people to speak up. Your opinion matters, and because we had a few team members that wouldn’t speak up because they felt like, they just weren’t confident, I said, it doesn’t matter. I want to hear it and then over time, I simply reinforced that by saying, that’s a great idea!

Or maybe this doesn’t make a lot of sense. But let’s talk about that. Let’s see where you’re heading, and in your mind what that direction was. And honestly, nine times out of ten, it ultimately led to them feeling great, them feeling heard, important and motivated. And they also get a sense of contribution, I’m helping build this company and helping push the company towards the vision that I kind of preach.

We also try to reward employees, over time, whether it be bonuses or just simple verbal appreciation. So I try to walk the walk. But at the same time, it’s super important that I’ve realized that they need to feel like they are contributing more than just, we pay you to do this work and that is your job. That sounds really boring to me. So we try to make it more than that.

If you’re interested in learning more from our Spotlight Leadership, check out Sam Arseneau’s post on Fueling Team Performance.

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