How to Build a Self-Managing Team That Scales With You

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How to Build a Self-Managing Team That Scales With You

If you’re still the one making every key decision, giving every approval, or tracking every task—you’re not leading, you’re bottlenecking.

In our latest Executive Edge Live panel, Harley Green (CEO of Workergenix) brings together four powerhouse leaders to tackle a challenge nearly every business owner faces: how to build a self-managing team that thinks, acts, and leads like owners.

Preferred listening on the go? Catch the full podcast episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Why Self-Managing Teams Matter

A self-managing team isn’t just about delegation. It’s about creating a culture of trust, clarity, and ownership. These teams drive results without waiting for direction, making them essential for sustainable business growth.

Meet the Experts

This episode features real-world wisdom from:

  • Kristina Karcic-Ehret – Founder of Karcic Partners, helping startups grow with sustainable org design and operational clarity
  • Alex Otero – Director of HR, The Academy, focused on aligning HR systems with meaningful, measurable outcomes
  • Dr. Lori Marie Huertas – Assistant Director, MSU Denver, emphasizing emotional intelligence, team belonging, and authentic leadership
  • Joanna Hernandez – Founder of Elavanti HR, author of Present Leadership, and advocate for clear authority, accountability, and culture-driven HR systems

Key Insights From the Panel

1. Shift from Control to Clarity

Great teams don’t wait—they move. But they only move confidently when roles, goals, and boundaries are clear. Joanna stressed the power of decision rights embedded in job descriptions, which empower people to act without constant supervision.

2. Use the Right Frameworks

Alex recommended combining OKRs with systems like RACI or DACI to establish role clarity and project ownership. These tools support accountability without bottlenecking workflows.

3. Model Emotional Intelligence

Dr. Lori emphasized the value of psychological safety. When team members feel seen, heard, and valued, they naturally lead from within. Tools like personality assessments and empathy-building exercises deepen self-awareness and trust.

4. Design With Intent

Kristina highlighted the importance of org design. Without a well-structured foundation, you’ll always be reactive. Your team can’t self-manage if the strategy, structure, and expectations are fuzzy.

5. Failing Forward Builds Ownership

Failure is a feature, not a flaw. As Alex and Lori pointed out, innovation often comes from the courage to try, misstep, and learn. Teams need environments where failing forward is encouraged—not punished.

How to Know If You’re Disempowering Your Team

A few red flags:

  • You’re the only decision-maker
  • Your team is quiet in meetings
  • Team members seek constant approval
  • Tasks stall without your input

Joanna offered a simple fix: speak less, ask more. Create space for contribution. Encourage your team to think critically and act boldly.

Starting From Scratch? Here’s Where to Begin

If you’re a founder or early-stage executive, start with:

  • A clear, actionable strategy
  • Well-defined job roles and decision rights
  • A focus on culture as part of your foundation
  • Hiring for alignment and initiative, not just skills

Alex likened it to team sports: “Everyone on a winning team knows the goal, understands their role, and executes with purpose.”

Resources & Links Mentioned

📘 Book: Present Leadership by Joanna Hernandez
Available at https://www.elavantihr.com

📱 Connect with the Panelists:

Joanna Hernandez: LinkedIn | Elavanti HR

Kristina Karcic-Ehret: LinkedIn

Alex Otero: LinkedIn

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas: LinkedIn

Final Thought

As Harley shared, “Your next level of growth doesn’t come from working harder. It comes from empowering smarter.”

Whether you’re scaling your startup or redefining team culture in an established org, this episode is packed with practical frameworks and mindset shifts you can implement today.

🚀 Ready to delegate smarter and scale faster?
Book your free discovery call with Workergenix and learn how our AI-powered executive support can help you build a self-managing team, so you can focus on what truly moves the needle.

Like what you read? Get weekly insights on scaling, efficiency, and profitability—straight to your inbox. Click here to subscribe.

Transcript

Harley Green
 All right. Welcome everyone to the Executive Edge Live panel. I’m Harley Green, the founder and CEO of Workergenix, where we help executives and leadership teams stay focused on high-impact activities by delegating the rest to highly skilled AI-leveraged ultimate executive assistants. Today’s conversation is going to tackle one of the biggest challenges in leadership: how to build a self-managing team that truly thinks and acts like owners. In your business, you’ve hired some great people, but you still seem to be the bottleneck for decisions, approvals, or accountability. Your business is just not scalable yet. So this session with these expert panelists is going to cover that. We’re going to talk about shifting from managing tasks to empowering ownership. Our incredible panelists today are going to share proven ways to build trust, accountability, and initiative inside your team so you can focus on strategy, growth, and innovation.

I’d like to welcome our panelists to the Executive Edge Live. We’re going to go around and give everyone a chance to introduce themselves, starting with Kristina.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 It’s great to be here. My name is Kristina and I am the founder of Karcic Partners. We’re your HR on demand. The sooner you bring us in, the better, because we help you grow and scale sustainably. Typically I work in the tech sector, making sure that founders aren’t just around for a phase or two, but they’re set up for long-term success.

Harley Green
 Awesome, thank you, Kristina. All right, Alex, how about you?

Alex Otero
 Hi everyone, I’m Alex Otero, the Director of Human Resources for the Academy, Community-Based Services. Just like Kristina, I’ve spent the majority of my career in the tech sector, but I pivoted to focus on helping local youth here in Southeastern Pennsylvania get where they need to be. Very excited to be here.

Harley Green
 All right, thank you, Alex. Next, we’ll jump over to Dr. Lori.

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas
 Hi, I’m the Assistant Director of Industry Partnerships at Metropolitan State University of Denver. I have a mentorship program where I connect students with industry professionals to gain essential skills. I’m also a professor of psychology, an advisor with different programs, and I collaborate with student veterans. Grateful to be here.

Harley Green
 Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Lori. And last but certainly not least, Joanna.

Joanna Hernandez
 Hi everyone, I’m glad to be here. I’m with Elavanti HR, the owner and founder. We’re a boutique HR firm. Our core competency is providing compliance and efficiency audits and assessments for companies and offering fractional HR leadership to support businesses in making the changes necessary to be sustainable and successful with purpose, systems, and a level of experience that gets you there quickly.

Harley Green
 Awesome, thank you, Joanna. I’m really excited for the conversation today. We’ve got a panel with rich knowledge in managing people and leadership. Let’s dive right in. This is going to be an open question to everyone on the panel. What does a self-managing team mean to you? And why is it so critical for scaling a business today?

Joanna Hernandez
 I’m happy to jump in there, Harley. I believe a self-managing team is one that operates with shared trust, clarity, and accountability. And what I mean by that is that every member knows the mission, the measures, the authority that they hold to make decisions. And I believe that really the true scalability doesn’t depend on how many people report up. It depends on how many people can think forward.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 Well said. I can jump in there too because I agree with everything you said. In addition, agility and innovation are absolutely non-negotiable in this as well. Therefore, self-managing teams are critical because they decentralize decision-making. They also provide the opportunity to push ownership closer to the work and the customer. So to me, the structure allows teams to respond faster to client needs, iterate on solutions in real time, and innovate most importantly without waiting for top-down direction.

Alex Otero
 I’d agree with that actually. I mean, both fantastic answers. The one thing that I would add to that is that, you know, self-managing teams in particular, they need to connect with their vision and the results of what they’re doing. All the self-managing teams that I’ve seen, and I’m sure we’ll talk about here in a little bit, they understand and connect their work and their team’s work with the results and the vision that they’re trying to attain from a company standpoint, which ultimately differentiates them from teams that have not connected with that.

Harley Green
 Lori, do want to give you a chance or you’re good on this one?

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas
 I don’t know, everybody said all the answers have been so good. I’m like, how do I add to that? I guess the only thing that I’ll add is that I just feel that when you have a self-managing team, everyone needs to be seen, heard, and valued. And if you do those three things, I think it just allows everything to work smoother. But I agree with all my colleagues.

Harley Green
 Excellent insights and just from my personal experience in business, it’s so true. Everything that’s been shared here, getting clear on your mission, vision and values is so helpful because it just makes sure everyone’s rowing in the same direction and it makes that decision-making process for everybody so much easier. Kristina, going back to you, you’ve helped leaders build organizations that run on trust and alignment. What would you say is the first mindset shift that a founder or executive needs to make to stop being that bottleneck we’ve talked about?

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 To shift is important, but I do want to emphasize before you get there that you first have to make the investment in operational model and org design and then you can shift over. Without that clarity, you won’t be able to be proactive, you will be reactive. And then for me, in particular, you have to focus on shifting if necessary from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. And the truth is most of us start with a fixed mindset because you’re constantly reacting to the chaos, right? But that’s why I say the organizational design and the operating model help alleviate that chaos and then you can jump right into ensuring that they have that growth mindset. Because if they don’t have that growth mindset, forget about it. Nothing else is going to stick, right?

Harley Green
 Alex, you’ve built HR structures through high growth phases. What are some systems and frameworks that help teams take ownership without losing accountability?

Alex Otero
 I love systems and frameworks questions. Kristina, we’re kind of in sync on a lot of what we’re saying, because I think that these two questions that came first, they can happen, but they can’t happen in a vacuum. And the reason I say that is when you ask about systems and frameworks, my mind immediately goes to OKRs. That’s the first one that most leaders, you know, most managers would think of. They’re the ones that they’re most familiar with. I have OKRs, I have a hand in creating them. And to a certain extent, they really annoy me sometimes. Everybody has mixed feelings about those OKRs. And then within those, you can break down into like the project management frameworks of like RACI and DACI and making sure that you’re assigning the right roles to the right people. But at the end of the day, none of that really ultimately matters if you can’t figure out what you’re working towards. And so specifically jumping back to OKRs, again, it’s a deceptively simple system for figuring out what your, of course, objectives and key results are. But it’s something that people tend to often throw off to the side. So spending a lot of time on figuring out what your goal as a company is, what your goals are aligning with your vision. And then as a manager or even as an individual contributor, what am I doing and can I connect that back to that vision through these frameworks is the key. You know, oftentimes people tend to just get bogged down in like hitting an OKR so that they can get a bonus. Somebody gets a little bit too bogged down and being part of say like the responsible party or the contributor in one of these frameworks that they forget what the overall purpose of it is. And so, you know, it’s as simple as having a candid conversation with a leadership group or an entire company, depending on its size, to figure out exactly what we’re working towards. Like what’s our common goal and how are we going to get there?

Harley Green
 There’s a lot of great insights there. Anybody else have anything to add? I know Alex covered a lot of ground there.

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas
 That’s a great question. I feel like lately, a lot of organizations that I’ve been seeking out my services as a consultant and to do trainings have really embraced different concepts like the five love languages of appreciation in the workplace and looking at the unique ways like I had said earlier, people feel valued and really in thinking of teams and the uniqueness, even when they’re self-managed, just embrace everyone’s unique personality. So like for example, I give sometimes the Myers-Briggs Assessment Personality Test and separate everyone in the group depending on their personality. And I tell them what their Star Wars character is based on their personality. And then we watch a clip from the movie and I’m like, great, how did your characters critically solve that problem? How did they use critical thinking skills to solve that problem? So like, for example, if Yoda solves it different than C3PO, but we need everybody. So we need processors on the team. And then I use superheroes with the Clifton strength assessment. And I’m like, I’m an executor. Like, I’m like, all right, let’s just do it. Right away I want to go and the DISC, I’m a D. I’m like, but I need people to say, Lori, calm down. We need to think about the whole situation. I know you want to do it yesterday, but we need to reflect on it. So just getting teams and organizations to understand that we need a little bit of everyone on the team. Can’t just be one or the other.

Harley Green
 Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I especially love the Star Wars character reference. That really helps people kind of drive it home and relate, especially to maybe some of those other personalities that they’re not as familiar with or wouldn’t necessarily be able to define as well. But when they see it in their favorite Star Wars character, then it really becomes clear. It’s a great idea.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 And I’ll just add, oh, I’m so sorry, I just want to add that I love, love, love that. And to me, what I think is so beautiful about it is you’re really allowing people to embrace who they are and bring their authentic self, but also while recognizing that everyone should not be the same. You need the balance. At the end of the day, that’s true diversity, right? That’s really going to drive the innovation. So I absolutely love that. I had to just let you know.

Joanna Hernandez
 Yeah, I love that as well. And I just want to add that I think it also creates psychological safety and modeling empathy in action, which is so important because when your team feels seen and they feel valued and trusted, they’re naturally going to begin leading from within, which is that ownership mindset. And I think that’s where that true self-management begins. I love what you’re doing. That’s amazing.

Harley Green
 Well, Joanna, I think that segues perfectly into the next question that I had for you. You specialize in aligning HR systems and operational excellence. What are the practical steps that leaders can take to embed ownership into that team culture?

Joanna Hernandez
 It’s a great question. For me, embedding ownership starts with the principles of present leadership. And what that means is showing up whole and building the bridge of trust and stewarding the assignment with excellence. Leaders have to start with clarity. They have to define expectations. And one of my favorites is giving them decision rights. When people know what their authorities are, they understand their boundaries and they can act. And also when people see how their work ties to something meaningful, they begin to take ownership naturally. And the final step is modeling it. When leaders are consistent, when they’re present, when they’re transparent, they set a culture where accountability feels shared, not enforced.

Harley Green
 Could you talk a little bit more about the decision rights? I’m really curious about that. Are there some practical tips for kind of helping a leader define how to even get started there? Because there are so many areas where you could possibly define and it could be overwhelming. I’d love to hear your tips on that.

Joanna Hernandez
 Absolutely. Yes, and the simple answer is it starts with job descriptions. And the job descriptions we normally see KSAs or KSEs, which is knowledge, skills, experience, or knowledge, skills, and abilities. But if we could put inside that job description, here are the things that we expect you to do. And here are the authorities that we’re giving you. It could be as simple as you can spend up to $10,000 without taking anything in front of your project committee. If you feel like that $10,000 is going to achieve the result that comes from our strategic plan as an organization and you play a role in that and it falls within your accountability, you have the authority. For example, Kristina and I work together. In that job description, it would tell me that I have the authority to work with her in collaboration. And so that tells me I don’t have to go through a hierarchical process. I can go straight to Kristina with the problem that I have that aligns with her job description and we can solve that together. And the second part of that is a RACI, and Alex made mention of that earlier. That is a very effective tool and it allows people to collaborate safely and not feel like they’re stepping on each other’s toes, understanding where their responsibilities are and when they are simply someone who needs to be informed, as an example. But that is the most simple way that everyone can start today is just adding that one section of here are your responsibilities. Now here’s the authority that I’m offering you. And then that allows me as a leader to not bark instructions at you all day, but to rather manage the results and ensure that you’re utilizing and applying that authority in the way that’s going to achieve the outcomes that we want as an organization.

Harley Green
 I love that. It’s just one simple thing you can add. Go ahead, Alex.

Alex Otero
 Just to piggyback off of that real quick. Sorry, Harley.

Harley Green
 Yeah, no, go ahead.

Alex Otero
 So, okay, sorry. The one thing—and that was a fantastic description of how we can empower managers with decision rights that, let’s face it, aren’t going to make or break the business. And that’s the big issue, especially when you’re dealing with, say, founder CEOs who are used to having a lot of the authority and you’re taking something that they’ve brought up from inception. But a big, like, major sticking point for a lot of individuals to say, you know, new managers or people who maybe have been managers for a long time and haven’t had those decision rights that Joanna was talking about is understanding what the outcomes of accountability actually are. So oftentimes people will think, “Hey, if I mess up, well, then I lose my job.” You know, that’s the unfortunate, some of the unfortunate realities that we’re dealing with in this market. And that’s a different conversation for a different day, but you can create an environment as a leader where people can feel comfortable with working on something, making a decision, and potentially failing while knowing that you may look to somebody else to potentially help them to take on that project without them affecting their long-term outlook in that role. A lot of people love ownership. They’re really scared of accountability because they think because nobody’s taking the time to explain to them that accountability doesn’t always mean you fail and you’re no longer in that job. And that’s an unfortunate issue that is oftentimes not confronted in most businesses.

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas
 I’ll just add, just to piggyback on what Alex said. I love what you said about the failure part. There’s a book by John Maxwell called Failing Forward. And the main thing of the book is that in life, the most successful people are not necessarily the richest people, the smartest people, the most good-looking people. They’re the people that when they fail, they don’t focus on that. They move forward. And I think us talking about that can really help our teams feel more comfortable in embracing the fact that we’re not looking for perfection, we’re looking for direction.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 I love what you all have said. And just to quickly sum it up, at the end of the day, a lot of innovation comes from failure. So not giving that space, you’re losing out on creativity and innovation.

Harley Green
 And as your excellent point says, founders or leaders in business, you’re allowed to fail and you fail a lot. And it’s encouraged. It’s like the book Dr. Lori was referencing. So it’s excellent to think about that from a context of the employees. And if they want to think like leaders too, they need to have that space. So appreciate you pointing that out, Alex, as well.

Harley Green
 Next question for the group. Many executives struggle to let go of control. How can they build trust without losing visibility or quality? Anyone’s welcome to jump in.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 I think Joanna, you answered a lot of this in your prior question. I feel like you addressed it. And honestly, Alex, your follow-up was perfect. I think really when you’re talking about this, one of the really important things is, believe it or not, taking a step back and ensuring that you have the right IT and security infrastructure, which sometimes if you’re an early-stage startup, this goes as like, “Hey, you know what, we can deal with this later,” never mind the actual cost that that adds up to. But the reason why that becomes so critical in this situation is that you allow leaders to have the insight and the data to monitor things because it is critical when building to be able to stop when things don’t look right and go deep as an executive, as a leader. And you’re able to do that with the right infrastructure. How many of us have been part of an organization and trying to get that information is like, it’s painful. So we can’t expect leaders not to be able to go deep unless they have that. And secondly, I’ll just say going back, I’m going to sound like a broken record—that org design—and going exactly back to what Joanna says, if you don’t define the rules and responsibilities, don’t forget about it. Your org design goes out the window. But understanding who the founders are and building around it. And I’ll use the example like, oftentimes you have a founder that’s a visionary, then you need an integrator, right? And just thinking through that. But combined with everything you all three have said, I think collectively, that’s how you answer that.

Joanna Hernandez
 That’s so good.

Harley Green
 Well answered. And I agree, I think the previous answers have covered a lot of this as well. Next question I have for the group.

Joanna Hernandez
 I will add one more thing. I’m sorry, Harley. I just had a thought. Executives can also create visibility through dashboards and milestone reviews. And that’s one way that they can let go of that control. They don’t always need to be right next to the task, but they can have, I often call them toll gates, as often as they want. That could be once a week or once a month. Alex mentioned new managers, maybe they need to be checked in with more often. But there could be a rhythm to each project that is assigned. That’s another way to gain control—is to create an actual task where you state just like what it sounds like. You state what the task is, what that statement of work is, what their boundaries are, what their authorities, their budget, all of those things. But then you also build into that a check-in, a toll gate, so that you can sit with that employee and you feel then they have the power to course correct and or add value while still encouraging them to have the team member to have creativity and be innovative.

Alex Otero
 Let’s not forget that there’s also a—again, we can talk 10,000 feet, 100,000 feet—it doesn’t really matter. These are still people we’re talking about. And oftentimes, you know, there are not necessarily personal matters, but you know, everybody’s personality is different. Dr. Lori was saying about it earlier. So people are going to clash. People are going to think differently about how to approach a task. And sometimes it’s truly as easy, especially with executives or maybe senior-level managers who have been in a role for a long time, for them to go through an exercise of writing down why a specific thing is bothering them or why they feel they need to have a piece of information. If they can’t answer that in 10 seconds, it requires them to dig a little bit deeper and understand, “Hey, maybe I don’t need to be attached to this.” And then it could be as simple as what Joanna was saying with a dashboard. Dashboards fix a lot. They fix a lot because more often than not, people don’t want a dissertation on the information that they’re seeking. They just want a quick snapshot. But it’s incumbent upon them or whoever is enabling that behavior or trying to fix it to help them say, “Hey, why is this a roadblock for you? Why is it an issue? Why are you angry about it?” There’s a lot of why behind it.

Harley Green
 I really appreciate what you brought up there, Alex, with like the information access. I think that’s something a lot of times people don’t think about in the time to like cut things. And I experienced that just this week. There is an email group we use internally that’s related to marketing. And I was like, “You know what? I actually don’t ever take action on any of these emails. I don’t need to. I’ve got my team handling them. So I’ll just remove myself from that group.” And now my inbox is that much more clear so I can really stay focused on the things that I do need to focus on and respond to.

Harley Green
 So one other question I wanted to follow up because the next one was about communication. We’ve been talking about that. Do you all have any advice or specific frameworks that you particularly like for enabling that communication and feedback? We talked about having the tasks and setting outlines. Are there any frameworks that you swear by or recommend that people use to really enable that strong communication to have the self-managing team?

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas
 I guess I’ll say something real quick. I think trust is so important. I think visibility is really important as well. And I know that it’s a challenge at so many companies now because there’s people working remote, there’s people working in person, there’s the whole AI situation. And so I think we have to be intentional about continuing to develop those relationships with those people on our team so that that trust is there because without trust, it’s really hard to have communication. And I’ll use a quick example of myself. So my parents passed away. They were diagnosed with cancer. First, my mom and then my dad. And at the time when my mom was diagnosed, I was at another university and I was quickly moving up. My dad called me up and he was like, “Hey, what’s it gonna take for you to come home and help me with your mom?” This is before he got cancer. He’s like, “This is too much.” So I had to take FMLA. So I had to meet with HR people like my colleagues here. And really, because I trusted HR, I was able to be honest. And I was like, “What’s the best thing? Do I quit? Should I just quit? Should I do FMLA?” I ended up doing FMLA. I honestly did end up quitting because when my dad got diagnosed after my mom passed away, it was too much. But I just say that if it had not been for the trust that was developed, I would have probably not even told them. I would have just quit and not given a reason. And they would have had no idea what was going on.

Harley Green
 I think we see that a lot of times if employees are not thinking the same way as business leaders in most circumstances. So things that business leaders might take for granted, like, of course you come and talk to HR if you’ve got a problem. It’s not necessarily what employees think by default when they are in that stressful situation. And of course, the stress doesn’t help in making wise decisions either.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 So agree. I think the other piece to it as well is learning and development, right? I would love to say that everybody knows how to do these things, but truth is we don’t. Even if you think of active listening, which is a key part of this, right? For leaders, but other team members, we’re taught to listen to respond, listen to defend. We’re not taught to listen to actually listen. So I think just developing those key competencies, feedback and so forth. And then again, I know I always go back to that operating model, but what’s the expectation for communication? Who are my key stakeholders? Exactly what you three have said, so I don’t want to take credit for it. Who’s the owner? Who do I need to work with? Defining all of that enables communication and feedback, which is critical because self-managing teams cannot function without those two effectively. But it goes back to your leadership development, your overall development plan for your employees and providing that training.

Harley Green
 This next question is kind of going the opposite direction. I’m curious to hear if you all have examples of this that you can share and speak to. And the question is, how can leaders identify when they’re accidentally disempowering their team and what can they do to reverse that pattern?

Joanna Hernandez
 I absolutely love this question because I think that leaders disempower their teams without realizing it. And they do that by usually, first of all, really tight agendas, not creating enough space for people to share their thoughts, answer questions. Most leaders forget to go into inquiry mode when they’re inside a meeting and they’re just speaking, which we can do by recording a video or we can do through an email, right? But mostly from my perspective, I’ve been in HR for 28 years. The root cause is usually over-directing, over-correcting and withholding context. That’s been my experience. And you’ll see it the way you notice that is when teams become hesitant. We kind of talked about that a little bit. They get quiet. But the one that’s not so obvious, Alex, you were talking about newer managers. It took me a really long time to learn this, is they become dependent on you for every decision. I used to see that as a compliment, that my employees would come to me and ask me so many questions. I felt so useful, but I realized it was not exactly a good thing. To answer your question though, to reverse that, I think you need to create the space for contribution.

Joanna Hernandez
 Ask questions instead of giving answers. One trick that I use for that, you know, all of us on this panel are very experienced. We have a lot of answers. As I will limit myself to—I will try to limit myself to giving two answers. Everything else I will write down in my notebook and I will hold them for a different conversation so that I can create that space for what I just referred to—them asking questions and contributing.

Alex Otero
 Joanna, you said something in there that really just light bulbs started going off above my head. Context and lack of context is huge. And I think that, going back to pretty much what everybody said, Kristina, you’ve touched on it a few times just in terms of like how an organization is set up, how people feel like they can communicate. There needs to be somebody in that room who feels comfortable saying, “Is this what you want? Or is this what you think is best for the organization accomplishing its vision?” And I’ve been in rooms where that has been answered. And there is somebody who does that. I’ve been in rooms where there hasn’t. The ones where it hasn’t is where people feel disempowered. They feel disenfranchised because in that situation, they’re just doing work. They’re doing work because somebody wants something but has failed to provide them the context for what it is that they want. I myself, without specifics, have done tons of work on a specific project and walked into a room thinking that it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. And somebody’s like, “That’s not what I want.” It’s like, “Well, you didn’t tell me what you wanted.” So which one is it? Do you want me to do the work that I think is best for us to accomplish our vision and mission? Or do you want something specific that you had in mind and I’ll just execute that? And those—it’s a vague real life example, but it’s specific to what Joanna said about context because so much context is lacking in a lot of what is handed from the top down.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 I absolutely love that. And actually, I think also the thing I would like to add—I’m going to actually steal this from Alex and go back to you. The thing you said before, which I think is critical here too, is a sense of accountability, right? And ensuring that self-managed teams—those are brought into your values and most importantly, your leadership values, right? Your leadership tenants, your leadership principles, because that then forms your performance management and it then becomes accountability. But like everything, it’s dependent on other things. So again, I go back to your leadership development, making sure that your people and your leaders know what to expect from them and then building that in, as well as honestly, even your hiring practices. It goes beyond that, right? Making sure that you’re hiring the right people that are going to be able to thrive in this environment and so forth. So I love that you brought it back to accountability earlier, and I would say that here too, to reinforce that.

Joanna Hernandez
 Also, Harley, I’m sorry, I just had a thought as Kristina was speaking and Alex—that people need those moments to really absorb, those moments of context to absorb and then translate ideas into action. And Alex said that so perfectly because when you make room for that, that’s when you transform partnership into an ownership mindset.

Harley Green
 That’s so powerful. Now stepping into early-stage companies, maybe just a few employees, what is the best place for them to start building that culture of ownership?

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 I can jump in. I’ll say right from the start, right? How often when you build organizations, culture is secondary. Culture is not secondary. It can mean very, very intentionally designed. But first and foremost, you have to have a clear and actionable strategy. You can’t build without that, right? And then being able to build, like we were talking about, everybody’s mentioned those pieces about whether it’s designing for the org, whether it’s designing your operating model—all these pieces come into play. But it’s never too early. But remember, culture does not sit by itself. It works collectively with other pieces of your structure and your foundation. And if the thought is earlier, then you can really embed it into your DNA and build that. But I think that’s critical for self-managing teams because that’s setting them up for success.

Alex Otero
 You’ll hear a lot of leaders pretty much everywhere, at least in my career—and I’ve done this a little bit short of 20 years—I’ve always had somebody say, “We’re recruiting for this role. I really love the idea of potentially bringing in somebody who has played division one sports or something like that.” Again, with no context, Joanna, so they kind of just say it. They don’t really say why. But the reason that individuals look for people who play organized sports often is because they understand singular focus and what their participation means to the success of a team. And so that is super paramount when it comes to smaller teams, because if you were to walk into a room right now of a startup with 10 people, you should be able to ask each of those 10 people, including the leaders, “What is your purpose here and what’s our vision?” And if they can’t answer that, then you’re having trouble building that culture of accountability. If you walked into any sports organization right now, any sports team and asked them the same question, they’d say, “We need to do what I need to do. What helps my team win this next game or win this championship?” Companies, individuals, and companies that have that same mindset are the ones that are the most successful.

Harley Green
 It’s an excellent observation. So does anybody have anything else to add on that before I go to the final lightning round question?

Harley Green
 All right, guys. So this one—after you answer, I’d love to have everyone give the opportunity to share briefly the best way for the audience to connect with you after the show, whether it’s connecting with you online or if you’ve got an item of value you want to share. Please feel free to share that after you answer this quick question: For everyone out there who’s in business leadership, what is your number one piece of advice for them to take action now to help their team think like owners and not task doers? And Kristina, we’ll start with you.

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 To answer that, I think if you want a team that thinks like owners, start by hiring an HR leader who thinks like a business partner to help you develop, to create that.

Harley Green
 And how can people connect with you, Kristina?

Kristina Karcic-Ehret
 I apologize. Please connect with me on LinkedIn. Thankfully, I am the only Kristina Karcic. Never mind when you add my secondary last name, Ehret. So I’m easy to find.

Harley Green
 Awesome. Thank you. All right. Up to you, Alex.

Alex Otero
 So I think that—yeah, I’m definitely not going to say hire a good HR leader. It’s just self-aggrandizing. But I will say that—have a conversation with all of your leaders that you want to empower and ask them straight up, “Am I giving you enough leeway? Am I putting you in the position that you feel like you are owning your role, that you feel like you understand the accountability of your role?” And if either of those answers is no, immediately ask, “How can I do that for you?” Or “Let’s start planning that. Let’s start mapping it out. Heck, if we need to get a whiteboard session for the next hour, let’s figure out what we can do together to understand what our purpose here actually is.” And yeah, the best way to find me is definitely on LinkedIn. Yeah, that’s probably the best way.

Harley Green
 All right. Awesome. Thank you, Alex. And Joanna.

Joanna Hernandez
 I would say trust before task and just show up whole, show up present. It’s so important to lead with presence before policy and clarity before control and trust before task. Because when you show up whole, your team learns how to lead from within and they have that ownership mindset. How you would connect with me—obviously I am on LinkedIn. However, connect with me on my website, which is www.elavantihr.com. Because there I do have access to a book that I just published called Present Leadership, which has a lot of content that we’ve reviewed today. And I also have a podcast that you can connect to through that website. So that has all my contact information and a link to my LinkedIn if you’d like to connect with me there as well. And thank you for that opportunity.

Harley Green
 Thank you, Joanna. All right, Dr. Lori.

Dr. Lori Marie Huertas
 So I think that meetings should be held on Tuesdays because of Taco Tuesdays. I think when you have food at meetings, people participate more. But on a serious note, even though that’s kind of true and I’m a foodie, I will say that—and I love everyone on this call. Thank you so much for inviting me. I feel like I’ve learned so much from everyone. I think being authentic is really important and just giving people room to tell their story. Because I think as people tell their stories, you get to know if they understand the company mission, like Alex was talking about, where they are. So yeah, letting people be authentic and telling their story and modeling that as a leader, I think is really important. And I could be reached on LinkedIn.

Harley Green
 All right. Thank you all to our amazing panelists for such powerful insights and practical strategies today. I know I’ve taken many notes and have some great things I’m going to start implementing from our conversations today. And to everyone joining us, thank you for investing your time today. Remember, your next level of growth doesn’t come from working harder. It comes from empowering smarter. And if you’re ready to free yourself from being the bottleneck and build the kind of strategic support systems that scales with you, I’d love to invite our audience to our free masterclass called Delegate to Dominate. You can watch it and unlock a special bonus offer just for our panel viewers at workergenix.com/bonus-masterclass. And we will see you all on the next Executive Edge Live. Thank you everyone.