The 100% Leader Framework Episode

What if the biggest lie inside senior living is that 100% occupancy is enough?

In this episode, Erin breaks down why 100% leadership is not a metric — it’s a mindset.

She walks through the full GROW → LEAD → RISE framework behind the 100% Leader program and explains:

• Why competence does not equal capacity
 • Why internal growth determines external influence
 • How communication builds (or erodes) trust
 • Why understanding your financial story is essential for credibility
 • How culture sells before marketing ever does
 • Why curiosity is the secret weapon of great leaders
 • And how group coaching accelerates growth faster than solo learning

If you feel overwhelmed, plateaued, or capable of more — this episode is for you.

Success is not accidental. It is intentional.

The next 100% Leader cohort is open now. If you are ready to grow, lead, and rise intentionally — apply here today.

Learn more about the 100% Leader here

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Transcript

1:05

What if I told you that the biggest lie that we've ever been sold inside senior living is that being a hundred percent leader inside of a hundred percent occupied community is enough? It's not. It's not a hundred percent occupancy. Doesn't guarantee you. Job security. It doesn't guarantee you a promotion. In fact, I have seen a lot of people get promoted who never reached a hundred percent occupancy. It doesn't guarantee you anything but a lot of people to serve and love and feel joy with a lot of more complicated, hard conversations to have, and a lot more expectations to stay there. That's when it guarantees you. But what if I told you what I do believe is that a hundred percent leader is a mindset and not a metric. I believe that with every bone in my body, and that's why I built the a hundred percent leader, because I wanted to create the foundation of what every leader inside senior living needs to understand about the climb, the process, the art. Of becoming a hundred percent occupied community. People say they want better occupancy, better culture, better retention, better communication. The question is, are you becoming who you need to be in order to get those outcomes? And so this episode for me is important because I'm really diving into. What the basis is is for me creating the a hundred percent leader program with my partner, Aaron Fish, why I am doing it, the curriculum and the frameworks that I use, and why every leader should want to be a part of this program, or at least understand the premise of it so we can honestly aspire for more knowing that we're already enough. Because one of the biggest complaints that I hear, one of the biggest hurdles. in the people that I coach or support is everybody wants more. When is anything going to be enough? And I think that we can probably say that in a for-profit or even a not-for-profit world, everybody's going to want more. We personally want more things. We want more money. We want a better car. I mean, whatever it is. If we understand that we want that knowing that we're already enough and that it's more of the outcomes they want and not more of who we are, and we can differentiate that more becomes a neutral word instead of a negative word. Enough becomes a neutral word instead of a negative word because growth, I want to grow more. I want to know more to grow more. We are pushed to grow every day because we're seeing the same problems, the same patterns. We have to grow to get better. So we don't see those, those same patterns. Growth is the only guarantee that our tomorrow is better than our today. So we have to want more and aspire more for more for ourselves so we can get the outcomes that we want. We can't stay comfortable, but we can be challenged in a healthy and safe way. And if you want to grow, you'll accept the challenge and if you want to stay, you will fight the challenge and that challenge will become very, very uncomfortable anyways. So we are gonna dive in to really what the foundations of a hundred percent leader are. The mindsets, the perspectives, the tasks that move the needle, and where you wanna put your energy to get the most return. That's why I built this program, So if you are an executive director who feels overwhelmed, wishes they had a mentor, if you are wanting somebody to, you want to build the bench for better leaders in your director's seats. Now that maybe one day can move into an executive director role, or there are people that you see potential in that you want to get them growing and in an atmosphere that inspires growth and accepting challenges. Then this episode, my programs, they are for you. So stay tuned. I really want you to feel the heart of this program. I mentioned this earlier, I think there's this trap that sometimes we fall into, inside the senior living community, industry, that people get promoted because they're high performers. But if you're an executive director who's a high performer and you go into the regional level, there's new stressors, new games, it's a whole new playing field. You don't get to a hundred percent occupancy inside of a community and then all of a sudden think that you can train people who are not inside of your community to do the same thing. It's not replicating. What you do in another community because you are not the person in that seat. so how do we train people? Sometimes when we promote high performers, I know I've made this mistake when I made a nurse into a nursing director. They didn't have the skills and I thought that I could carry them, but I couldn't. I couldn't carry them. We assume that competence equals capacity and it really doesn't. I can know what I need to do, but can I apply it? Can I slow down enough to do it? Do I have the patience to allow the process to work? These are all good questions. We assume that experience, the success that we have will equal influence with people, and success does create a level of influence. But it doesn't sustain significant influence for a long time. And we assume that results equal leadership. And I think that this is one thing why we think that a hundred percent occupancy gives us job security, but it doesn't. It doesn't because a hundred percent can hide a lot of problems. And there are reasons why communities will be a hundred percent, without a great leader. but can they sustain a hundred percent without a very specific, consistent leader? These are some of the big traps that we fall into inside senior living, and it's areas that we really need to talk about because we think that the problem may be competency, but really it's capacity. And if you stay with me, I'm going to show you. How we can break that problem, why most leaders kind of plateau in this area, and how really bringing awareness and working inside of our strengths and having our perspective change can be really what can skyrocket you to the success you want. But first you have to define the success you want. You have to define what is success to you. And I think that's, that is really what this first step of my curriculum, in the a hundred percent leader program, the grow framework is really important. It's an internal leadership compass. I have to be intentional to grow, which means grow in capacity. Which means renew my energy, become aware of what's draining my energy, what fuels my energy, and what will, keep my energy going and sustain my energy. And then to understand boundaries. I'm gonna own them. I'm gonna know why I need them. I'm gonna understand their conditions for success, and I'm gonna communicate and enforce them effectively. A lot of people will struggle with that. and that's one of the main hindrances of growth and burnout inside of our comp. It's actually one of the main hindrances of growth and one of the fueling factors of burnout is when we don't understand our own boundaries, what we need, why we need them, and that boundaries are really conditions for our own. Success and then the W in the Grow framework really means win with encouragement. We focus a lot of times inside senior living when we're in the sales process and when we are moving in. What can the residents not do? How do we make this care plan We can fall negatively into that trap. But I'm here to tell you the opposite is available. And when you encourage people, when you call people out for what they are doing, when you show them the outcomes of the work and the good decisions that they're making, how it directly correlates to the success of the community. Then all of a sudden, we are creating positive momentum. And that momentum, honestly is most important to you than it is to them because you see progress. And if you don't see progress, you're not gonna feel like doing what needs to be done. But if you see progress, if you see the micro changes, the macro changes, the consistent changes, call them out. Because that's going to keep the momentum building because remember, momentum is built in the tiny, small wins and the tiny, small pushes. You don't just get momentum unless you're in a basketball game because you steal the ball, right? You get momentum into building and seeing the progress, acknowledging the progress. This will build your capacity as well, because if you don't grow, you can't lead past your capacity. If this is where I'm at in an internal growth, I cannot lead the business, the occupancy, influence the culture, create a culture past where I'm at, and if you're stuck, you might wanna look at you. Where's your growth? Where are you plugging in to get the momentum that you need to grow? are we staying in our weaknesses more than understanding our strengths? Because that will keep you stuck as well. So how do I use this framework inside the a hundred percent program? Well, week one is all about the foundation, building the foundation of a hundred percent leader, which is you. You are a hundred percent leader. We're gonna talk about leadership identity, the way that you think about yourself. You're gonna take a strengths assessment. You're gonna know what your strengths are. We're gonna talk about how they show up in a day. We're gonna talk about purpose because there's a lot of meaning inside the work that we do. And yes, there's a huge part of this business that people think is a real estate business, and they're not wrong. But I'm here to tell you the shift is happening from a real estate focus to a relationship focus. People are coming into your community that need your guidance. You are the expert, and if you can't guide them and serve them and identify their emotional pain points as well as the, the roadblocks of them choosing to move in, then you will lose to the person who can. And if you want to be that person who can be that emotional intelligent pattern identifier and help people walk and serve in a positive way, you have to become self-aware if you don't know who you are, you will over function for everyone else, and that's not growing in your capacity and in the foundation of a hundred percent leader. That's keeping you stuck. That's the lid to your development. when we operate in strengths, when we operate in the story of what we know we can do and we can communicate that effectively and serve people in a profound and meaningful and purposeful way, you will attract the people who want what you have to offer. And that's why we're building that foundation in week one. It's not about your company's values because we'll tie them. We'll tie that into it. It's about how you show up every day. It's about you, the leader, because when leadership is about you, a self-aware, you, a operating in your strengths, you understanding the story of success of your community, you can now make it about everybody else as well, and you're influencing them. then we're gonna go into week two, which is the anchors of leadership, which to me is trust and communication. Communication is going to build trust or it's going to erode trust. Point blank. The biggest problem in every relationship is communication, whether it's personal or professional. So we're gonna focus on being consistent, the emotional regulation, and having these hard conversations, not avoiding them, understanding boundaries. We want to be a boundaried leader and we want to know that we want to enforce them. We want to communicate them, there may be times where there are boundaries that have to be ignored to solve the problem, but then we go back to enforcing our boundaries and we communicate them. Because boundaries are conditions for success, for our success. They're not punishments for other people. And there's a distinct difference there. And we're gonna communicate clear expectations, what we can and cannot do. Why? Why we can and cannot do them. We're gonna be communicating upfront. again, I know I've said this over and over again, but when you think with the end in mind. You can find a win-win quadrant for everything. And if you're avoiding having the clear expectations conversation, which is a communication of boundaries, or you're avoiding having the hard conversations, it may be because you don't have the language that you need, you don't have the boundaries, you don't see your strengths, you're not seeing yourself as a steward, as the leader, as someone who is responsible and accountable for the team. Everybody's acting individually and no one is running together as a team. And this is where you understand that communication is a huge part in building trust, synergy, and momentum inside of your community. Because trust is not somebody who is charismatic. Who has the ability to connect because you can't always trust those people. But trust is built by being consistent and, and the follow up and the rhythm of communication, and by the clarity that you're giving within that communication. That's how we're gonna build trust. That's how we understand the importance of communication. To me, that is the foundation. Of the a hundred percent leader, this is why we start the a hundred percent leader with this internal framework. First, you do not fix the culture by disciplining them, by yelling at them, by threatening them. That is not fixing a culture, You fix the culture by being a representation of what you want your culture to be. That's you, and that's why the self-awareness, working inside of your strengths, understanding where you're weak, and hiring for them all becomes critical in that a hundred percent foundation. It's you. You matter. Everyone else matters too. But if you're going to serve them at the highest level, you have to understand how you show up every day at your highest level. So lead is our next framework. It's the external, influence. Grow is your internal influence, but lead is How do you influence people outside of you? You are gonna lead with integrity. You're gonna do what you say and say what you mean. Right. You're gonna say what you're gonna do, you're gonna do it. You're gonna mean what you say, you're gonna show it. You're gonna empower others because you don't wanna be the bottleneck of your community. You want other people to be able to solve problems because that's how a team is supposed to work. So you're gonna make education a priority. You're going to make the time because if you don't make the time, you're never gonna have the time. Time is the biggest pain point we all have as human beings. It unites us and there's a front load of energy in empowering others. But it's a compounding fact as the more you empower and equip, the better the leaders become. And you can see who's not gonna make it and who is by empowering others. And we're gonna acknowledge the hard things if we just ignore the hard things. Everybody's gonna ignore the hard things. The hard things are not gonna go away. They're gonna keep getting bigger and bigger and harder and harder, but we're gonna acknowledge them because it matters.'cause when we acknowledge them, we can look them in the eye and we can face them. And then we're gonna define the direction and we're gonna communicate it consistently. That's what the lead framework is. And how, once your internal foundation is stable. The grow part, you can actually lead and influence others because you're walking and leading inside of your own strengths, not what somebody wants you to be or what you think you need to be to be successful because that's not the case. It is what you are the best version of you needs to be to be successful, which is growing. Which is experimenting, being curious, understanding what I need to recover. Why am I telling myself no? All that internal focus is gonna lead to the external influence because you're operating at a level of flow.'cause you're not fighting challenge, you're embracing it. Once your internal foundation is stable, you actually get to lead and influence people. And we're gonna use that when we talk about breaking down silos and creating team capacity, team synergy, shared ownership, building capacity, these are the things that we talk about in week three when we're talking about breaking silos. If you have a team that's not working together, they're working maybe even not necessarily against each other, but not with each other, you don't. I mean, maybe some of us need more talent, but not a, not a lot of us, we can actually succeed with what we have inside of our communities. We just need more alignment. They need a leader. They need a dot connector. And to me, that's what an executive director is. You want to be able to see how we can not unite people to work towards the same goal. And the different viewpoints that each director has inside of a community. Week number four, we're gonna talk about understanding the financial story. If you can't communicate the financial story of your community, you cannot influence its future. We help leaders be able to prepare for their financial reviews, understand what people want from you, which I'll give you a secret. Is just to be able to communicate where you've been, where you are, how you got there, and where you wanna go, and what your plan is for that. To be able to tell the story in a confident way. And if it's bad news, we still have to talk about where we've been and where we are, because hopefully there's a positive difference there. There is a way to be able to tell the story in a way that serves both the people asking the questions, and you the leader inside of that, and we're gonna help you find that story. We're gonna understand revenue, labor, margins, and translating those numbers into, into vision. There's a lot of people, pleaser leaders, a lot of, people who love seniors who are. Inside, working inside of our communities that may not understand the financial side of things. We help translate that for you because yes, this is a business. Even if it's a not-for-profit, it's still a business. We have to treat it as such. And there is a relationship driven side, but there's also the business side and we can't ignore that. It's important that we're able to balance those. Effectively because you cannot continue serving the people that you love. If you can't provide a solid business story to the people and be a good steward of, of the business. If you can't communicate that up, it's necessary I believe one of the biggest mistakes leaders make when they try to influence up is they try to be liked before they're clear. here's what I believe, corporate offices, like a lot of people. But they still can't have them continue their employment here if they can't tell the financial story. So I really like to shift the mindset from, it's more about being clear and being able to tell a story effectively up than it is to being liked. You wanna be respected, you wanna be trusted, like is in the respect and in the trust. when you grow and when you lead, you're gonna rise, which to me, when we rise, it's because we're multiplying our influence and the culture. We see the benefits of the culture that we created. To me, this is about creating a culture that sells rather than trying to sell a culture. And the RISE framework is where we focus on relationships with all the key six stakeholders, which is residents, their families, associates, the corporate office, the regulatory agencies, and to me, vendors play a very pivotal role inside the success of our leaders inside the community. Those relationships are key. How do we make those a priority? The impact. the impact that we all have with the people that we serve, do we know it The systems. What systems do we have to communicate effectively? Which to me, are your meetings? Are you leveraging them in the appropriate way? And then not only are we empowering people to make decisions, we're equipping them with what decisions they should make and why. This is where we, when we start rising, when we start focusing on these relationships, the impact that every team member has to the success of the community, the systems that we're constantly working in, and what we're equipping people, this is where leadership becomes multiplication. This is the flow state. Okay. All the work internally, all the work externally starts fitting together and we see the compounding effects of all of our efforts. We start to rise. This is when influence starts multiplying, and we focus in this area on week number five, when creating a culture that sells. The culture sells the community before the marketing does. People feel it when they walk in. It's the emotional connection. It's the, the team being involved in sales. It's the value-based conversations. I'm not here to sell you a product. I'm here to help you solve your problems. It's reducing the uncertainty that the family members feel when they walk in. That's what our culture can do. That's what focusing on those relationships, the impact the systems and the equipping people can do, and discovering our own language of how we do what we do. That's important and that's different for everybody, and that's why you have the internal focus of what our strengths are, and then you get to lead externally. So you can focus on what is this language? How do we do this through the lens of our corporate office and our community? Week number six, we talk about the power of presence because your presence as a leader is powerful. How are you using it? Your energy, when you're present in the moment, are you rounding? And having positive energy and, and saying positive, encouraging things. Are you visible? Most people, if they're turn, trying to turn around a community, one of the biggest complaints that you'll see or hear is we never saw the leader. They just didn't make themselves available. That's the power of presence or the lack thereof when you can make your presence. Seen, felt and heard in an encouraging, empowering, and equipping way, you start creating the culture that sells. You start depositing into the emotional bank accounts of people, and then that's where the multiplication happens. That's where the culture that sells is happening. We focus a lot of time in this area Because the most valuable currency we have right now is trust and attention, which is presence. Are you giving people your attention? And if we understand how important attention is, are we using it? Are we leveraging it? Are we using it in a way. That builds, equips and empowers people, or are we using it in a way that tears them down? Week number seven is very critical when we're talking about relationships and impact and systems. We're talking about transitions. And transitions are where reputation and legacy is the most vulnerable and the most powerful. This is where communication is very important. Where influence and impact really means the most to people. Staffing changes is important. the care increases and that we can reduce the uncertainty for family members because there is so much uncertainty When we understand the power of transitions, we understand how we can build relationships, maintain trust, and help guide people through. Whatever that transition is for them, because transitions are personal for us. They may seem just changes that we have to manage, but for the person going through the transition, it is very scary. It's very real, it's very raw, and it requires our attention. And if we don't pay attention, the legacy, the reputation of our community and all of our hard work can. Spiral out of our control. And as a leader inside of a community, that's not what we want. We want to be able to serve people at the highest level in transitions, allows us to do that when we're able to look at them for that perspective. Week eight really starts diving into what makes good leaders great. And that's curiosity. And curiosity will multiply your influence in a way that you do not expect. So we're gonna start asking, instead of telling people, we're gonna learn what that energy and what that power is. We're gonna start trying to learn how to coach over controlling and building that emotional safety that is required for momentum and synergy in our teams. how many times do you have to say, control your face, control your face? Don't make a statement. Ask a question. Don't judge. Be curious, right? That's what will make good leaders, great. Not statements, but questions, because the more people talk more, they can solve their own problems. The more they understand, the more they have awareness of what the real problem is. And if we shut things off with statements, the conversation's over. But if we get curious, we start asking what the root cause is, so we don't have this problem anymore. So good leaders ask great questions and we're gonna have some great questions to talk about. So you can see then here that I'm very passionate about this program. I love it. Why does group coaching change everything? Well, I will tell you that I. Invested in myself in a group coaching program. It was six months, and I wanted this coach because she felt the opposite of me. She looked very artistic. I'm not artistic. she looked like she could teach me how to do some Canva, which I needed. I'm literally the least artistic person you will find. Literally choosing colors makes me nervous. Drawing, decorating, any of that stuff makes me nervous. But that group coaching program radically changed my life, and it wasn't necessarily the coach, it was the people in the program. I learned from them. I learned the way they thought was the way that I thought, and I learned how they overcame it, and it gave me courage to overcome it because. I can find all the information anywhere I look, especially with AI and Google and all the things that are available to me. It's not an information problem. It was how do I apply it when I am in my own way problem. It was an integration problem and I learned through, through people who were ahead of me, I learned through. Their experiences, I learned so much because other people were willing to share. And that is the growth multiplier of group coaching programs. And companies have the ability to do this because they get us on these calls and instead of multiplying growth, we're calling out what's not working. But maybe we should be asking what did we learn? Where did we not apply our strength? It's because in a group format, we can real time problem solve, and it doesn't have to be me that's solving the problems we're learning from other people. We're getting the confidence to be accountable through modeling of other people, and there's a psychological safety and knowing that my coach has failed and succeeded and wants to communicate both sides of the story for people to understand what it really takes to succeed. Watching another leader solve a problem that you are facing builds confidence faster than any book, than any other leadership course program that you can find. And you don't have to just learn from one person. You can learn from everyone in the room. So that is the a hundred percent leader. To me, that is the foundation. This is what I wish I would've had available to me. When I was inside the community,'cause that would probably still be inside of the community and what I believe the industry needs to fight the big battle of retention and burnout and empowerment inside of our industry. if you want that type of support, you can have it. You just have to choose to invest in yourself and maybe. Just maybe the company will reimburse you. It's worth the ask, so I'm gonna leave you with this. Success is not accidental. It is very much intentional. You will choose to stay in the messy, middle, suffer, or you can choose to get out and see things from a new perspective. The a hundred percent leaders no longer are waiting to be developed. They are deciding to become who they need to be first to reach the a hundred percent goal, because a hundred percent leaders know that it's about them. So it can be about everybody else if you're ready to grow. Lead and rise intentionally. I'm opening up the next 100% leader cohort and I hope to start it in March. So join me. I would love to meet you, discuss with you further, and be able to be a part of your growth plan. Thank you for listening, and as always, aspire for more for you, knowing that you are already enough.