The Leadership Shift That Builds Team Capacity

Many leaders believe ownership means having the answers, fixing problems, and staying involved in everything.

But that version of ownership often creates the exact opposite of what organizations want: dependency, burnout, and bottlenecks.

In this episode, Erin explores the difference between control-based ownership and scale-based leadership.

She explains why the best leaders are not the best problem solvers — they are the best capacity builders.

You’ll learn:

• Why solving every problem can actually limit growth
 • The difference between fixing issues and building systems
 • How leaders accidentally become the bottleneck
 • The shift from control-based ownership to scalable leadership
 • How to build capacity inside your team so problems stop repeating

If you’ve ever felt like everything in your community runs through you, this episode will help you rethink what real leadership ownership looks like.

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Transcript

1:06

Welcome back to another episode of this podcast, aspiring for More with you and me. we're gonna talk about ownership versus scale. Today. If you are the best problem solver in your building, you. Probably the bottleneck. You are the reason why nothing gets done because everything has to go through you and you can only do so much. So the question isn't, can you fix it? Because if you're listening to me, I believe you can. The question is, why does this problem keep coming back? I want you to stay with me because I'm gonna show you why. Control based ownership, it feels productive, but it kills the ability to create more time for you. Time that you desperately want the time to go home and not have your phone blow up all night long or all weekend long, or go on a vacation, sleep through the night, whatever it is. When we feel like we own everything, we absolutely own nothing, not even our time. That is what we're gonna talk about today. True ownership is not about control. It's about what can get done, not what you. Personally manage, fix, override, I will tell you this, when I talk to a lot of, CEOs, senior living leaders, they want their leaders to own their role inside of the community. So let me ask you this. What do you think Whenever you here, we want you to own your role in the community. We want you to be the CEO of your community. When you hear that, what do you think? Most of us, including me, have felt that ownership meant having all the answers, being in the loop on everything. Fixing what breaks right. I fix it. I will rescue you. I see you struggling. Let me jump in and tell you how to do it. Okay. This version of ownership does not create scale. It does not create the type of ownership that the corporate office wants from you. When I talk about scale, I mean what can get done in a day? What is possible for you and your team? Because if one person is doing everything, solving everything, jumping in and fixing everything, rescuing all the time, something's gotta give. This type of ownership, this definition of ownership creates bottlenecks. You get tired of making the same decision over and over again, or you don't even care to make a decision. Somebody else choose what we're going to eat today. This is burnout. You're not growing because you're constantly solving everything and staying stuck. You don't even see the results, the rewards of your work, because you're constantly solving and seeing more problems, and you build a team. This is the most important thing. If you define ownership, the way of controlling, fixing, rescuing, you're building a team that waits for you to lead instead of solving problems based on your lead. Okay. Capacity is going to multiply your influence and the opportunity to solve and make meaningful impact in people's lives. So when we talk about scale, it is. How can I build the capacity? Develop leaders in a way that they understand how to solve problems, how to fix things, how to avoid problems that get comfortable with being uncomfortable. as we go through this podcast. I wanna be able to define to you what control based ownership is and then what scale based ownership is, because I'm gonna refer to this. Control based ownership and scale based ownership all the time because again, your CEOs want you to be an owner. They want you to think like an owner. They want you to be the CEO. They want ownership of your role. So it's going to be very important for you to understand what this means. it's going to be important for you to be able to know the difference. So let's define it. Control based ownership is, I fix it. I got this. I'm gonna jump in. I'm going to. Help you because you're struggling. I'm going to rescue you. I'm gonna stay the central. I'm gonna need to be there. I override decisions that I do not agree with. I know what needs to happen, and I'm not going to allow you to figure it out on your own. This is control based ownership of your role. Okay? But from a scale based ownership, it's, I'm gonna clarify for you the things that are most important to me, what success looks like for me in your role. I'm going to equip you with where to find the answers to everything that you need, the authority. I'm gonna build structure for you to understand where your boundaries are. I'm gonna define my standards and the company standards for what success looks like here inside of this community. And I'm going to remove myself when I feel comfortable that you're ready to take this department and run on its own. When we over control, our team capacity shrinks and one of the, the best. Thoughts to think about with control based ownership and scale based ownership is I have to build team. This community cannot run on my capacity alone. It has to run on the capacity of my team. And if I am a control based owner, constantly fixing, jumping in, and overriding, then I am not building the capacity of my team. In fact, I'm shrinking their capacity because they're coming to me to solve all their problems, to get the, the approval to make the decisions. They're not able to think and stand and decide on their own. So when I over control, my team capacity shrinks when I over fix. My team confidence shrinks, and if I am over-functioning, my leadership capacity collapses because I can't take it anymore. So when I think about how to. Outgrow, Control based ownership and start thinking and strengthening my scale based ownership, growing my capacity, and growing the capacity of my team. There are some good thoughts to think if I didn't solve this, who would, who could? This is a problem. This is a pattern that I'm seeing over and over again who can help me solve this problem. It's not necessarily every person on your team that can help you solve this problem, but there is somebody specifically that can help you solve this problem, and you can start equipping them, helping them gain confidence, right? And removing yourself as the only person who can solve this problem. Am I solving a symptom? Or am I building a skill, right? Am I solving a symptom? Am I just putting a bandaid on a bigger problem, or am I building a skill within me that's going to build a skill in others? Because again, scaling is the ability of multiple people to do a lot more than what one person can do because one person is too little of a number to actually create significance and meaning and impactful meaning, in people's lives inside of our community. Okay. ownership is not about control and we lose sight of that too much because we feel the urgency, we feel the pressure, we feel like we have to do these things right away, but it's about scaling, which is equipping and empowering other people to rise to the occasion. When we shift to scale ownership, our teams are building problem solving muscles. That's what we want. We know that solving problems and building muscle can get uncomfortable, but the more we do it, the more comfortable it becomes. The silos that have kept us stuck with operations not helping sales, sales, not respecting operations, they will start dissolving because we are understanding that success is a team sport. I'm building the capacity of every leader to solve more problems that I am going to regain more time, more clarity, And more powerful presence inside of the community because other people are able to solve problems maybe better than I can. This is advanced leadership. This is a leader who says, who really believes I want more time for myself. I value my time, and I value my team. And I'm going to grow them, and I'm gonna grow myself as a priority. Right now if your leadership and your definition of ownership requires you to be everywhere all the time, solve all the problems that is not ownership. That is dependency and that's really important for you to understand. Advanced leadership is trusting your team to grow and to hopefully be better than you at some of the things that we have to go through. There's a strategic shift that we have to make that we as leaders have to make. We have to go from being a reactive problem solver. To understand proactive capacity building. Okay. My capacity requires me to be a scale based owner, not a control based owners, which means that I have to stop the short term firefighting. I have to stop solving immediate problems without trying to even determine root cause or solving them so fast that I'm not bringing in people to explain. I'm not using my meetings strategically enough to talk about what the problem was, how I solved it, and why I solved it that way. But when we think about the strategic shift to capacity building, we have to think about who needs to know this and why, that we create this environment that we are learning. We're not failing, we're learning, and we're willing to be uncomfortable until we gain our rhythm and our routine and our confidence, because then we can actually move together. I have three pillars that I believe can help us gradually shift if we're that ownership type, control based, ownership type, or quickly shift to the scale based owner because we see the value in it. When we see the value or when somebody else sees the value of change. Change happens quickly. So the more that we can show the value, speak the value, see the value, the quicker the change will be, trust me. So pillar number one is role pillar clarity. Okay? This is people who. The main goal here in role clarity is strictly what it sounds like, right? They understand their role. Chaos is rarely a talent issue. If you have a bunch of chaos in your community right now, or it feels like it, that is rarely a talent issue. It tends to be a clarity issue. People don't understand what they're responsible for, why they're responsible for it, and how they can be responsible for it. Just like I said in the, in a previous podcast about drama, Confusion creates conversation. But we think that people are not doing a good job because there's a lot of chaos, and that may be the case. But the first step that I would look at if I wanna take responsibility for creating a team that can scale and that can get a lot done in a day versus very little done in the day. I'm gonna look at do they understand their role? Have I been clear about what the expectations are and what the standards are in this role? Or have I not given them enough time to develop safely in this role? Before I start blaming anyone, I'm gonna take a hard look at what I may or may not have done. A key question to ask yourself if you're gonna take this level of responsibility and accountability on which I think you should, is, does everyone know what excellence looks like in compliance terms, in customer service terms, and any measurable terms? Do they know what that looks like? Do they understand that the monthly assessments have to be done? Monthly. Do they understand what has to be done by them and what can be delegated and why? If we are not careful about the role clarity, A lot of people, a lot of the chaos that we are seeing can be because people have fallen into what I like to call a hero trap. Which is, I'm gonna solve a lot of problems. I'm gonna make high impact, but I'm not gonna have a lot of clarity as to if this was even mine to solve. It's the hero trap that a lot of us fall into. I want to solve problems, I want to do good things, and sometimes those good things aren't the actual things that we're supposed to be doing, which causes. Chaos. Or maybe a sales director is doing things in an operational department and we don't have enough sales movement happening. That's chaos and the sales director is confused or somebody else. Or another department is infringing and solving problems that they have no business solving and they're not communicating what they did solve or the problem to the appropriate manager. Like if a maintenance person helped a resident off the floor and they were the hero. They helped the resident off the floor. Everything was good. The resident said, you don't have to tell anybody. It can be our secret. And then they go on about the merry day, and then 24 hours later, a big bruise shows up. And the nurses and the caregivers weren't aware of what happened. That is a maintenance person who was a hero. They had high impact, but they had very low clarity about what the next steps were. That creates chaos. So everyone understanding their role, clarity will help prevent a lot of chaos. And as a leader, if I'm taking on the responsibility and the accountability of building the team capacity and setting the standards, I am going to communicate. I'm going to listen. I'm going to coach, I'm going to develop, and I'm going to communicate to people exactly what they're responsible for and why there's a lot of burnout happening because a lot of people are in this hero trap and doing all the things and still not making the impact in the appropriate places, or they're seeing and doing a lot of work. They're not actually feeling the results of their work. They feel like they're spinning their wheels. Role clarity. Am I doing what I am supposed to be doing and am I getting the reward for that? There's a lot of energy management there because if you feel like you're doing a lot of things and you're not getting the reward for it, you're gonna burn out because you're just spinning your wheels. So are we doing the right things and are we doing them for the right reasons? I want to gain high impact, but I need to have a high level of clarity so I can feel a high level of impact and not the chaos of doing the wrong things, the wrong time. Pillar number two is prioritizing logic. It's really understanding the impact. How many times have we thought or even complained to other people? I have worked 10 hour days for the last 14 days, and you are telling me that I'm not doing the right things. That in itself is telling me and other people that being busy is not being productive, being busy in the right areas is creating high impact, and that is productive. Again, it's going back to that role clarity. If we can understand our role and what the impact our role has on a successful team, then I can make sure that the work that I am focusing on, the energy that I am putting into this role, into these tasks, into developing other people is actually going to move the needle, and I'm going to see the high impact of my work. If we don't understand impact and we're not prioritizing the workload, the logic of our role, we're gonna fall into something that we call a social trap where we're busy, right? We feel a sense of safety because we're being busy because we're doing all the things, but we have zero. Impact and that can easily happen inside of the community because I am busy, loving and hugging and changing the lives of the residents inside of our community. There's a social element, safety and comfort with that. I love it. There's a lot of dopamine hits that fall into that category, but I'm not having the impact that I could have because I'm so busy loving and hugging and bringing everyone their favorite things. When the impact that I could have if I'm a nurse or if I'm a maintenance director is to make sure they're safe to look at the fire extinguishers, to ensure that the fire alarm is safe because we know we have to do that once a month to, you know, if you're in the state of Alabama, assess their weights, make sure that they weights are consistent and that you're not losing a bunch of weight or. Ensuring that their medications are always in the community on the cart when we need them. We don't wanna fall into a social trap of feeling safe and comfortable, and yet lose the impact of why people were moving in to our community in the first place. So we wanna understand our role. And get a lot of clarity of what we're supposed to do. And then we wanna understand the impact that our role has on people because we wanna love, we wanna cherish, we wanna own our role, but we also wanna have a positive impact with the work that we're doing. In the safety realm as well as the social real, because that's what we're called to do. We're the stewards of people's safety, both social and physical. So we wanna have a good understanding of the logic and the impact and the role that we have. Pillar number three is the emotional safety. Which are the systems, right? The resilience of the systems that we put into play. To me, this is really important that we understand the value of honesty and integrity and unsafe systems and unsafe cultures inside of our community. People will hide their mistakes. But in safe cultures, in safe systems, we will bring mistakes quickly to who needs, who needs to know them, and we will learn from them if we have too comfortable of a culture or too many teams working in silos. We're not gonna see the mistakes that are happening and we're not gonna be able to learn from them. And so I wanna ask you a question just for you to reflect on when you're thinking about your community, and if this applies to you, can someone within your community, yourself, any of your key directors, your hourly associates, can they admit a mistake or. An overwhelming workload or a choice that they made that wasn't the most appropriate choice is gonna take some intervention. Can they bring those negative life lessons to you without penalty of any kind, without retaliation with just listening and saying. Okay, here's how we're gonna learn from this. If they can't, then we're gonna fall into something that I call the silo trap. And I didn't even know what the word silo meant for a long time, but it's really when each department works as its own individual company team and they do not work together, a silo trap would mean that your team is feeling high clarity, right? They know what they need to do, especially within their own system, within their own department, but they have a low safety threshold so they feel like they can't come to you or another director in another department and to be able to talk. So they're efficient, but there is absolutely no innovation. They can get stuff done within their boundaries, but they cannot cross over because they don't understand the value, because they don't care because there's not a precedent set to do that. The silo trap keeps everyone stuck. If you can't get your team to work together, then you're not gonna be able to be a scale based owner because you will be the one who's having to communicate between the departments. You want them to be able to come to you and say, I made a mistake. I'm feeling overwhelmed. I need some help. This just happened. That emotional safety. Important because maybe they're struggling with role clarity. Maybe they're struggling with trying to figure out where they fit in in the team and how they can help others. And then they're in that phase of understanding what their impact is and if they're going through and they're growing through this journey. The emotional safety component is really important because then that helps you equip and empower them to rise. It helps you to be able to say, Hey, this is a tough lesson. But we're gonna get through it together. Or, Hey, thank you for bringing me, bringing my attention to not having this medicine on the cart.'cause we have to fix this system, right? When our systems feel unsafe, when they, when our people feel like they can't talk to their directors, all of your mistakes will hide. And then it'll come out and they will get you at the least opportune time. But if our systems, if we have this open door policy, if we're understanding that we're growing through what we go through, we understand that these mistakes, they're learning lessons, there are ways to help us identify what we need to focus on. Instead of having them repeat over and over again, which is what an A control based owner would do, we're gonna switch our perspective to say, what are we learning through this? We're gonna scale our ability to solve problems. This is an important piece of growing the team capacity. to be productive with innovation, with growth, with risk taking, with learning is a huge part of scaling and building a team capacity. I know I probably have given you a lot to think about, right? Understanding control based ownership. Am I being too controlling? I thought leadership was control. I'm gonna tell you, control originates with a lot of fear, a lot of untrust, and I'm just gonna tell you fear and the lack of trust really is the way. To work through getting to scale based ownership because people are gonna make mistakes. They just are. As a leader, as an executive director, as a department director, you have to be aware enough of being able to say, I have to take accountability for people's actions. I may not be responsible for them, but I do have to take accountability for them. So where were people? Unclear. Where did I stand in the way of not equipping them and empowering them enough? Where was I? Confusing ownership with control. And then to be able to lead and guide. People are gonna let you down if they don't understand what they're supposed to do. And how many times has that happened? In your career, in your community, they just didn't know. I was helping a a, a client recently whose team would be talking to a regional nurse or would be talking to some type of corporate person and they would say, I don't know. I don't know. I've never been trained. I don't know. Do you know how frustrating that is? I'm sure some of you have felt that way. And it does not look good on the leader when your team is constantly saying, I don't know. I've never been trained. I don't know. I've never seen that before. Now that person doesn't feel comfortable answering the questions, number one. Number two, maybe they don't know, maybe they don't know. But if I was the leader and my team was constantly saying that to a corporate representative, the next thing that I would do, and this is the advice that I gave this leader, is have a team meeting and go over the basics, and then have people sign the training and then build the confidence of the team to understand, yes, you do know the answers. A corporate person is just a person breathing in the air that you're breathing and breathing out the air, that they just breathe in. They're humans. They're not asking you questions to get you. They're asking you questions to understand what you need to know, what you know, and how to help you grow because a lot of the chaos probably comes down to they just don't have the language to answer the questions. So the more that we educate, the more that we understand role clarity. Give them the language to answer the questions. Feel the confidence to answer the questions appropriately for them to understand they're not in trouble when questions are being brought to them. The better people can scale their own impact. Because I hate to break it to you. I feel as if the more these younger workers come into our communities or new people from outside industries come in, they're not gonna know how to answer these questions. And so it's going to be imperative that you do. Give them a lot of help on understanding the dynamics and answering the questions and building their confidence and asking them questions to gain a lot of clarity, right? To create systems and environments where they feel safe coming to you and for, for them to understand, Hey, everything we do here, we learn here everything, every mistake we make, every good decision we make, we learn from it. And as long as you are learning and growing and being able to adapt, and communicate what you're learning and growing through, the more you're gonna learn and grow, the more respect and accountability that we have. So these are the thought processes that are really important and building the capacity of you as the leader and the capacity of your team. If the system collapses, if the community collapses, right? if the cook can't not burn the meatloaf, if the culinary director isn't there, then you don't have ownership. You have dependency, and that's important. I wanna ask you this again. Do you have dependency within your department or within your community? Dependency is not the goal, right? Growing people's capacity to grow through what they're going through to solve problems, to see what they're responsible for and how to make an impact. That is scale based ownership. That's what your corporate office wants from you, and that takes time. Because capacity is built in a bunch of tiny moments stacked on top of each other. Capacity takes time, and that's the one thing that we fight the most is time. We expect instant results. Capacity isn't built in instant results. Actually, it can. If you have a lot of clarity as to why you're doing it, if you see things and you, you reflect on them. You can build capacity, but you're not gonna see and feel the results of a lot of capacity except for A bunch of experiences, a bunch of learning lessons that eventually turn into. Oh, I understand now, and a lot of grace in between all of those experiences, the best leaders are not the best fixers. They're not the best reactors, okay? The best leaders are the builders, the architects, the people who understand the more that I invest my time in other people, the more I will create more time for me, and I'm sorry to say this, but if you think there's not enough time, you will never have enough time. It's putting down the urgency and saying, I'm going to invest time in you so you can solve this problem on your own. Because the more that I invest in you, the more investment I make in myself. I want you to replace control with clarity. Replace fixing. With equipping with, how would you fix this if I wasn't here? How would you handle this? What would you say? Start asking questions that make them think and that make them speak out loud how they would solve the problem. That's building capacity. One moment at time and I want you to replace the definition of ownership. That is controlled to an ownership that is scalable, that is building the capacity of other people because you are going to burn out. You are going to feel like you're failing. You are going to feel like you are spinning you wheels if you are not building the capacity of your team, if you're not understanding. The chaos that you're fighting is more about understanding the role success, the impact that I have inside of this community. Okay, so what do I always say? Leaders. It starts with you. It starts with you. And I am always here. I would love to hear from you. So I want to start. Building these episodes in a way that answers the questions that you have. So if you want me to talk about certain things or ask, I would love to have an episode that is full of questions that my listeners are asking me. I would love to do that. So if there are areas that you want me to focus on, if there are specific questions that you have for me, please send them to me. You can find me on LinkedIn, you can leave a message, uh, directly to this podcast, uh, to me as a host. I've received messages from listeners before. but my email address, it's long. It's Erin Thompson at Aspire for more with aaron.com. But I'll send a link. I'll put a link in the show notes for you to. Submit a question or a topic that you would love to listen to. I appreciate your time with me. As always, we are open registering for the 100% Leader, which is a group cohort, and I work with companies and individuals who want to invest in themselves. With mentorship and coaching and development, you would be amazed at what can happen in six weeks time. I'm seeing it in real time and I'm super excited about it. But as always, this is free mentoring as well, and you really do make a difference. Change starts with you, and I'm thankful that you are giving me a few minutes of your day today. Always aspire for more for you. That you are enough.