Samantha Reynolds is the founder and CEO of Echo Memoirs, a publishing company that specializes in family and company histories. The business employs eight permanent staff and around 40 freelancers.
When Reynolds had her second child in October 2013, she was confident that her mature team would be able to carry on without her while she spent time away from the business with her new baby.
“I considered myself an expert delegator,” Reynolds said.
“I had a really strong belief in empowering my team and really took every opportunity to give them more freedom.”
Reynolds got a wake-up call during an exit interview with an employee who was leaving the company.
“She shared with me that there was a real lack of leadership in the company,” Reynolds said.
“She came on board after I'd had my first, so she had only experienced the company with me as a mom trying to balance those dual roles.”
When she asked other staff members whether they had experienced the same thing, Reynolds heard a resounding yes. She realized she needed to make a change.
“When I was there, it was easy enough to let me interpret our values and make interpretive decisions,” Reynolds said. “But when I wasn't there, the values weren't clear enough to guide the team.”
Reynolds hired a facilitator to guide the business through a two-day “excavation of our values.”
She also made an effort to be more present in the office. With her older child attending daycare in the mornings, Reynolds set up a playpen and a Jolly Jumper in her office and started taking her baby with her into work a couple of times a week.
Arranging regular meetings with staff members, sans baby, also helped.
“Little things would come up in those moments that no one would have bothered me for by calling me up at home, but those conversations are where so much leadership happens,” Reynolds said.
“My epiphany was that people want the freedom to do their best work and they want the room to make mistakes, but they also really want and need direction and feedback. As an entrepreneur, and having never had a boss, I'm really accustomed to not having that mentorship. But employees haven't signed up for that. They've signed up for leadership.”
