Scaling With Purpose Kit: Building Purposeful Leadership Teams

**SPEAKER_2** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Zacash** (0:17)
Welcome back to The Bliss Business Podcast series, Scaling with Purpose. I'm Stephen Zacash here with Tulio Saragusa. Hey, Tulio.

**Tulio Saragusa** (0:25)
Hey, it's good to be back.

**Stephen Zacash** (0:27)
So this is one of our Scaling with Purpose shows, our 10-minute series where we explore how to embed purpose into every level of your organization. Today's episode focuses on building purposeful leadership teams. So we're gonna talk about how to structure leadership teams around a shared purpose and vision, encouraging a collaborative next level approach to leadership. Let's get started, Tulio.

**Tulio Saragusa** (0:54)
Yes, let's do it. So, I mean, why talk about leadership teams? Well, because they're the heartbeat of any organization. And in a purpose-driven business, leadership isn't just about hierarchy or control or dictating what needs to happen. It really is about collaboration. So, that includes ensuring there's a shared purpose and empowering others to thrive. So, it's structuring leadership teams to reflect this approach is not only critical, but it's an effective approach to organizing an organization. And this is part of a TEAL self-management methodology too that's important.

**Stephen Zacash** (1:41)
Yeah. So, if you ever want to dive in really deep on this, as far as those TEAL organizations, there's a book, Reinventing Organizations, that's kind of the language they use there, that really does pull out some of these concepts. And we're going to dive into them, though, right here. So, in traditional organizations, leadership teams often focus on managing tasks, right? And enforcing goals in these next level organizations that Tulio mentioned, these TEAL organizations. The role of leadership shifts. It's kind of no longer about that command and control. Instead, leaders act as facilitators. They kind of steward the organization's purpose and hold the space appropriately. And they're collaborators who kind of guide the team's energy toward this shared vision. So, how do we build leadership teams that are truly purpose-driven? Let's break it down into really three key strategies. So, strategy one, you want to anchor leadership teams in shared purpose and vision, right? So, the first step is ensuring that every member of the leadership team deeply understands and connects with the organization's purpose. Without this alignment, you risk leaders pulling in different directions, right? We're not all rowing in the same direction. So, here's how you can do this. So, one of the things you can do is bring together your leaders or even your whole organization. This is what we did, right, Tulio? We brought our whole organization together to clarify and align the why of the organization. And then we also connected personal purpose to the organization's purpose. So, we had everyone kind of involved in this process, which Tulio led. When you have these individual leaders, they can, articulating this, they can kind of see how their personal why then aligns with the company's broader mission. And it really strengthens their commitment and their enthusiasm and really the whole certain organization ideally rallies around this.

**Tulio Saragusa** (3:52)
Yeah, and that's key. I think it's worth mentioning, you know, we're not just talking about stuff we've read. We're living this.
We've actually done this. We're doing this. So, we're speaking from personal experience. And I think what you said is very important, and it's foundational to everything, Stephen. So, you know, purpose alignment brings focus and cohesion to leadership teams, which is really important if you want to be a next level organization where decisions are decentralized. And why you want to decentralize is because you want to give the empowerment to the teams to act without constantly having to seek direction, you know, to check in with mom and dad, so to speak, right? So, which this brings us to strategy two, which is about fostering collaborative leadership over hierarchy. And I often say, our job as leaders to put ourselves out of the role, or out of the title, so to speak, right? Put yourself out of your job. So the important thing in these next level organizations is to prioritize that leadership is shared, and it's a collaborative approach versus rigid hierarchy. You know, you got to go through the channels. Forget the channels. It's about getting things done together. So it's not about competing for authority. This is my department. You have nothing to say in my department. You know, that kind of thing that happens. So it's about focusing on collective success. This is our company. We collectively want to get to the shared ownership and shared success. And so to make that shift, there's a few things that are needed. One, you got to implement practices like collective decision making practices where leadership teams make important choices through consensus or consent, ensuring alignment with the organizational purpose. So there's always a guiding star. The boss becomes the purpose, right? Which has been defined by everyone. So it's a shared purpose because everyone's defined it. And then redefine the roles on facilitation instead of control. So instead of owners, you have champions, right? And then leaders become really coaches, guides, cadres, stewards of purpose. And their job is to support as coaches, as mentors, the teams, rather than dictate orders. Ultimately, when I get to a place where those leaders are acting with equivalents, just like anybody else on the team, if you can create that, where everyone is co-leading, then you've got an unstoppable team, for sure.