Leadership Spotlight: Supporting Scaling Teams

How to Support Teams as they Scale

I had the chance to chat with Phil Chang and Kenny Vannucci from This Commerce Life about what it looks like to support teams as they scale.

These are the main takeaways from this conversation.

Going from Player to Coach - Kenny

"I always go back to sports. You've got to go from being the player to being the coach. And you have to understand what that transition means you delegate. And delegate doesn't mean you throw shit on people's desks and walk away. Delegation is teaching - putting it on the desk, following up, and understanding what you're good at and maybe not good at— potentially hiring a good assistant coach. But I think most fall apart because most entrepreneurs or founders think they can do it all. Yeah. And if they could do it all, why are they talking to anybody about anything? Just do it. Right. But what they should find out is there are only X amount of hours in a day, and quite frankly, you can't do it all, and you can't do it all well."

Keeping Teams in The Loop - Phil

"In that process of growing, we need to keep doing is briefing our teams right like the ability to keep your team on track and yet give them enough room involves here's where we want months ago here are the taboo things or the things you cannot do. Everything else is fair game. I don't know what it's going to look like because even the three of us, if I said, draw me a garden, the three of us would come up with something different, but at the end of the day, that's what I wanted."

Start Thinking Like a CEO - Phil

When you're an owner, you're used to doing everything independently. It's a tried and true formula. You rely on yourself. The inspiration is from you. You have to have a certain stubbornness and no fear. Because everyone will say you can't. I can't do it. You can't do it. And you build that kind of like ironclad. I can do it. I'm going to make it. Screw you, guys. I got to get it done. But when you want to scale, I feel like the first thing those folks need to do is stop thinking like an owner and start thinking like a CEO.

Leading Without Ego - Me (Ange MacCabe)

"And I can tell you within my growth and getting vulnerable here, the Ange three years ago would not sit in front of a group and say, hey, can you critique me on, you know, on my video or my presentation or hit, right? I could not do that at that point. I did it two months ago and didn't even think about it. And my team, the first thing they said to me was, are you sure right now? Do you want us to take it away and then give you written feedback?

And I'm like; we're doing a working meeting, so let's hear what we have to say here. It's okay. Safe space. We're all flipping friends here. And it took them a minute.

And we're all coaches and consultants. We play in this space. It took them a minute to adjust to that concept, I'm going to give my CEO and co-founder feedback, and she will be okay with it. And it was a huge learning opportunity for the team and me to be like, okay, so this is a safe space to speak.

For more leadership insights, check out our post on Fueling Team Performance.