Aria talks to Megan Dolce about leading authentically and impactfully
Megan Dolce (aka just “Dolce”, pronounced dōlCHā) is the founder and head leadership coach at RIPE, a human development company for organizations. She left a career in high fashion and apparel to help leaders and top executives in sports, business, film, and politics make a bigger impact. Megan has formal training, certifications, and degrees in Coaching (ICF), Mindfulness, Team Leadership, and Facilitation. She is also a current What If Ventures fellow. We chatted about how to lead your team through tough times, leading a team versus leading an organization, and some tools for the new year.
Aria: Dolce, you’ve been an amazing executive coach to myself. I learned so much from you about what makes me tick, and what ties together my personal narrative, having moved from being a lawyer into operations at a startup to politics to innovation at Nike. Why do people come to you?
Dolce: People come to me for what I like to call “navigation support”. Maybe it’s founders starting a business, navigating how to show-up more powerfully, how to break through a roadblock, or how to run the day to day of a fast-paced organization. What we do together is turn them into stronger versions of themselves and build their leadership muscles. My focal point is always on Self-Leadership. We strengthen their foundation, gain tools, and build a clearer picture together.
I want to pull on that founder’s thread for our Second Saturdays audience. What is the hardest thing for new founders to learn about people management, or growing their team?
I work with many founders who may have never led a team before, and then they jump to leading a business, and it’s a big jump. Within leadership, you have to learn what Self-Leadership is first and foremost before you jump to leading a team, and then an entire organization. A great leader is always fine-tuning all three of those, but it can get messy if you don’t do the work necessary on your personal leadership and on leading others.
A lot of founders have had experience leading teams, but maybe not a whole organization. What is different about leading an organization versus a team?
Leading an organization comes with all the pieces you think it does–it’s you leading all the pillars of the business, seeing and influencing the entire playing field, and knowing how to make the whole work better. You need to enroll and support to drive action in order to drive change. You’re also thinking about questions like, How are you developing the team's capacity? How are you building more leaders within that team? How are you supporting them within driving towards their best?
Getting an organization excited about the future gets folks through some really tough times. How do you enroll your team in your vision, and get them really passionate about what you’re building?
These days especially, teams want to know your why, and what they’re working towards. They want you to enroll them and ask them how we should get there. They want to play a part in shaping the “how”, and then be given responsibility (rather than being assigned a task). Consider it this way: you enroll an investor to buy into the business. Now how can you consistently enroll your team to buy in as well. The buy in is with time, energy, and their strengths.
I find a big part of leading a team is also the emotional leadership component, and that really requires authenticity these days. How can founders show up authentically with their team?
Knowing your strengths and opportunities. Teams want to see your human side (you don’t need to be a perfect robot, and really shouldn’t be). But you are in a problem solving seat. Brenee Brown just said this on her podcast and I appreciated her honesty, “When I’m in fear, my team is in fear of me.”
She recognizes that her work is in how she handles her emotions and the impact it has on others. It’s not just about you anymore. A really great leader will get you through the hard times. That requires the leader to work on themselves.
How much of those hard times do you share with your team, without scaring them off entirely? Founders carry a lot of the heavy stuff for their team.
If you’re gonna share hard times, the tone is important. It’s a time to enroll them to support you in solving something. The tone and the delivery of that hard time isn’t “shit is hitting the fan and we’re going under;” it’s “hey, we got a mountain to climb, and we’re going together. I need everyone’s support”.
Going back to working on yourself, and self leadership. How is that work, and your work, different from therapy?
There’s a lot of beauty in knowing what brought you to where you are (in therapy). My role as a coach is to support you in moving forward from that, versus dissecting your past. It’s action based through tools and practices. I work with a lot of clients who have therapists and if there’s a moment where I feel we might be crossing the line I’ll say “serve that to your therapist in your next session”. Coaching is about calling out your blindspots, leveraging your strengths, and putting in the work.
To close out, and to create a positive space for self growth in the year ahead, what resources would you recommend for people to work on their Self Leadership or on their business leadership?
I love tools whether it be a book, podcast, journal, community support, etc. I like to call them tools vs. resources because it feels more strategic. The universal tools for all moments would include these:
Journaling. It’s not a one size fits all approach but you absolutely need to be putting pen to paper daily. What this looks like will differ for each person. Check out this article from the Times on journaling.
Create An Inspiration List. This is something I do each month. As an entrepreneur myself I like to stop and catch inspiration because if I don’t make the time to do so, it might pass me by. I make a list of 10 people that inspire me that I may or may not know. I not only write down their names but I write down the WHY behind the inspiration. Here’s an example: Seth Godin: Shortform impact writing. He packs a punch in minimal words.
Community Support. The greatest tool for a founder. There is no way you have all the answers and stop giving yourself unrealistic expectations. Ask for support. There’s a lot of strength and clarity in the “I DON’T KNOW”.
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RIPE is a human development company for organizations.They equip the people behind the organizations with the tools they need to be leaders in their own lives and careers. RIPE offers workshops and self-led courses for individuals outside of the workplace and is launching their newest course The Anti-Resolution Course on January 18th! Check out RIPE at www.get-ripe.com and follow them on instagram at https://www.instagram.com/get_ripe/