How to Be a Lady Boss Part II: Building Your Team

In the first part of my How to Be a Lady Boss series, we talked about overcoming your shadow. It is so so important to honor yourself and your needs—and to have the strength to speak up in order to get the job done right!

As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, working with others will test our ability to understand and honor our authentic voice. It will ask us to understand our own shadow and consciously work with it, so we don’t get swallowed by it.

However, it will also free us up. Give us several hours of our day back. Allow us to thrive and take our creativity to the next level. It’s a non-negotiable for true success that transcends the limits of dysfunctional independence.

Imagine what would happen if we tried to do it all alone all of the time? Businesses wouldn’t be born, reaching higher states of consciousness would be incredibly limited, and innovation wouldn’t exist.

Going after everything alone is also the #1 way to ensure burnout, adrenal fatigue, and the failure of a project. As women, it’s so important not to fry our hormonal systems by overworking and operating out of dysfunctional independence.

But sometimes, trusting and leaning on others brings challenges too. In some cases, the challenge means fully letting go and allowing people to show up for us. In other cases, the challenge turns into something we don’t want.

Because our success hinges on our ability to collaborate, it’s important to collaborate well! If you’re curious about how to set yourself up for success when you initiate a collaboration in your business, your community, your home, or your corporate job, here are some necessary steps to set yourself up for success.

How to Build and Manage Your Team Like a Total Lady Boss

Step 1: Know what you want.

Spend enough time getting clear on the vision you have and what you’ll need to make it a reality. What will make this collaboration a success for you?

Step 2: Initiate the hiring process.

Be thoughtful about the candidates you interview, and be sure to communicate the specific support you’re looking for. Know your pitfalls when hiring someone, and communicate them. Be up front! Set appropriate expectations regarding what it’s like to work for you.

Step 3: Make an intuitive decision.

Hire someone based on their qualifications and how they do during the interview process. Look for the candidate that handles the interview process with etiquette and grace… so much so that you feel calm, centered, and excited to enter the collaboration. Usually, your intuition knows and communicates this with a feeling of positive anticipation!

Step 4: Manage and oversee the process.

Just because you’re delegating doesn’t mean you’re not responsible for the details and management of the project. Hold the vision of your project. Give clear and direct instructions. Check in with yourself and monitor how you feel the entire way through.

However, this does not mean micromanaging. At all. It means knowing that you are entitled to have an opinion while simultaneously empowering others to fulfill that vision!

Step 5: Embrace the dark side of delegating.

It gets uncomfortable to speak your truth and give feedback someone won’t like. Just remember that you’re leading the charge, and your vision and opinion matters the most. Leadership means knowing how to leverage your strengths excellently and manage your weaknesses appropriately. Your job is to know yourself well enough to acknowledge and manage your pitfalls, and ask for what you need anyway.

Step 6: Compensate well.

If you are asking someone to go above and beyond for you, pay them accordingly. At the end of the day, it’s a job. Jobs require pay. The best way to express how much you value the job being completed by another is to pay them well.

If you ask them to do more than initially agreed upon, compensate them! I cannot express how important this is. Trust that being appropriately generous is good karma, and that will support your future profitability on all levels.

To me, the deepest level of freedom we can experience happens when what we say, do, and think are all the same exact thing. This freedom is always available to us, even when as we reach for our goals! This requires honesty, strength and the ability to self-validate—even during vulnerable collaborations. Following these six steps will allow you to enter any collaboration from an empowered and compassionate point of view, and help you feel free each step of the way.

Now, I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Do you have a team to help you as you achieve your vision? How can you embrace a little vulnerability and delegate even more? Go for it!

And be sure to check out Part III of the How to Be a Lady Boss series, where I share the biggest lesson I’ve learned about going after my dreams.