Everyone on the Team Should Know the Goal

You’ve hired the help. You’ve delegated the tasks. So why does it still feel like you’re the only one actually carrying the vision? In this episode, we’re breaking down why your team might be checking boxes—but not moving the business forward—and how to fix it with one simple shift: getting everyone aligned around one clear, specific goal.

You’ll learn how to lead your team with clarity, what the real cost of vague direction is, and how to create team-wide momentum using the 4R framework and principles from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. If you're a business owner ready to stop micromanaging and start multiplying, this episode is for you.

What You’ll Learn:

The hidden reason your team might be stalling progress

What Patrick Lencioni’s model teaches us about shared goals

How to make the business goal clear, public, and repeatable

Why clarity creates accountability (and what to say in every meeting)

How to connect day-to-day tasks to the big vision

Key Quote:

“A clear goal, owned by the whole team, is the fastest path to results.”

Resources & Links:
→ DM me the word GOAL to join the Grow Mastermind waitlist
→ Click Here to sign up or learn more

Work with Jackie Murphy
Say Hi on Instagram @studioceoofficial
Learn about The Studio CEO Program

Chapters

• 0:00 The Solo Visionary Problem
• 2:01 Importance of In-Person Connections
• 3:16 Everyone Needs to Know the Goal
• 6:03 Understanding Absence of Team Commitment
• 10:22 Making Goals Public and Specific
• 12:55 Creating a Momentum Machine
• 16:17 Sharing Goals with Your Team
• 18:30 Getting Support with Studio CEO Program

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You ever feel like you're the only one who actually knows what you're building? Maybe you've hired team, you've delegated, but somehow you're still the only one holding the vision, chasing the numbers and staying up late thinking about what's next. If that is you, this episode is going to hit, because today we're talking about the difference between a busy team and a committed team, and how one clear goal can change everything in your business so it starts to run smoother. Welcome to the Studio CEO, the only podcast that empowers yoga and Pilates teachers and studio owners to step confidently into their role as CEO. If you are ready to show up with passion, take your business seriously and scale to new heights without burning out, you are in the right place. I'm your host, jackie Murphy, an award-winning certified business coach with over 12 years of experience inside the yoga industry. I have seen firsthand what it takes to build a profitable and scalable business. Join me as we dive into strategies, insights and real-world advice that will help you grow your revenue, build a thriving team and create a business that serves you as much as you serve your students. It's time to embrace your inner CEO and make more money without working more. This is just the beginning. Well, hello, welcome back to the Studio CEO Podcast. I am Jackie Murphy and I'm your business coach for about the next 20 to 30 minutes. We'll see how long the episode is.

Speaker 1: 2:01

And, my friends, I have just gotten home from leading the Grow Mastermind in-person retreat and this episode is inspired by some of what we talked about at that in-person retreat. But I am just coming home inspired. I think, that in 2025, community and those in-person connections and events are going to get more and more important for your business, but also, just as a human being, they're becoming more and more important to me. Anytime that I go to an in-person event to grow my business, to mastermind with colleagues, I always leave with a fresh sense of energy and joy in my business and like looking forward to what I'm creating, and so it's really such an honor to be able to create that for my clients inside of the Grow Mastermind. I maybe will have a few of them on to share their ahas and their takeaways from that retreat, because I feel like that would be a fun podcast episode.

Speaker 1: 3:03

But now we are back in Charleston, south Carolina, and we are talking today about why everyone on your team needs to know the goal. Pull up a chair. What are we doing? We doing the dishes together? Are we taking a walk together? Are we sitting together? However, you're listening to this episode. I want you to listen to this episode for your business specifically. I know that there's people listening that have teams of 30, 40, 50 teachers. There are people listening who have a few contractors in their business, or maybe you're still in the stage where you are a solopreneur.

Speaker 1: 3:42

No matter where you are in terms of leading a team, this episode is important to you because I know that, as human beings, we all have squirrel brain, meaning it's very easy for a human being, especially in today's world, to get distracted with the next thing, changing strategy, forgetting what your main focus was. And this episode today is really how to make sure that everyone on your team not only knows the goal and what you're trying to accomplish, but it's actually fully bought in and committed to that goal. And this is maybe one of the most underrated growth strategies in business, no matter if you are a solo entrepreneur or leading a full team. But you want to make sure that in your business, you are getting everyone on the team aligned around one clear goal, because it doesn't matter how efficient your systems are or how talented your team is, if you aren't aligned and clear about what the actual target is. If that doesn't happen, you will plateau in your business, and it won't be from lack of effort. You might have the best people who are trying to so hard, and that might be you If you're a solopreneur and you feel like you're burning the candle at both ends. You're trying so hard, but the lack of clarity around what moves the needle and how to hit your main goal is going to slow you down no matter what.

Speaker 1: 5:09

So this episode is for the owner, who is delegated some work to the team, who's built the team, who is building the team but is still carrying the weight of knowing what the business needs in order to move forward. So you may be in the place where you're thinking like I've hired people, I've delegated, why am I the one still carrying the entire vision on my back? Like, why are you are the one that feels solely responsible for the business at the end of the day? And when that is happening, one thing that could be going on is that your team is a great team. They are doing the work, but they are all working in silos and they don't understand what success actually looks like. Now, this kind of concept is not something that I came up with.

Speaker 1: 6:02

This is from a book called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and it's specifically talking about the dysfunction as absence of commitment, and it means your team isn't anchored into a shared outcome. They will naturally default to doing what is their most important outcome, what's comfortable to them, not what's effective to the team. So I want you to think about it like this If you have a team of teachers who are coming into your business and they care most about their personal attendance in the studio and they don't even know the overall studio goal of hitting 200 members, then this dysfunction is at play. You have absence of commitment in your team. Another example may be that you are a solopreneur and you come into your business and you've decided that you're going to spend all of May really working on resigning clients and retaining clients, but all of a sudden, you come in on a Tuesday and you get a great idea for a new webinar and you want to launch something new and you pivot and you leave behind the old task and you go for the thing that is new and shiny. Right then and I'm not saying you can't pivot in your business. Obviously, there are some times in your business where it's very important for you to pivot, but when you do it from a lack of intention, when you do it unintentionally, that's where it can show you that you have an absence of commitment to your overall big goal.

Speaker 1: 7:28

This is where, like you, are doing a school project and everyone has a specific role and they go off and they do their specific role, but there's no communication and so deadlines get missed, things aren't done well, things don't coordinate together. That's what we're trying to avoid. Are y'all getting the picture? So this isn't about a like task issue. This is about a rowing team that's paddling really hard, but they're all paddling in different direction. This is about a team direction issue. This is about a commitment to your main goal, and so I want you to think about your team's perspective before we go into how to fix this.

Speaker 1: 8:06

I want you to think about you've hired them, you've told them what you would like them to do, and they're doing what you ask. Maybe they're scheduling your newsletter, or they are putting up your Instagram scheduled reel, or maybe they've covered their class and they got a sub right In their mind. They're doing specifically what you asked for in the job description. But the gap comes in when they don't know what the big win is, they don't know what you're aiming to accomplish, and so that they can't connect their role and their work with what that means for the business and why that matters. So specifically, I'm talking about telling your teachers that your goal for the month is to enroll 20 new members. Or maybe you're just launched a retreat I know one of my clients just launched a retreat last week and you want to communicate to your team like, hey, our goal right now is filling this retreat. Or maybe you are in a season where you're resigning a ton of clients and your goal for the month truly is resigning 80% of your current clients. When you aren't clear on the goal, you won't be able to stay true to it, but when your team isn't clear on the goal, there's no way that they can connect their work with that outcome.

Speaker 1: 9:18

So this is what the author of the five dysfunctions of a team meant when he said teams without commitment drift. They protect their role, not the result. All right, let me say it again they protect their role, not their result. So they get really individualized and focused on their role and doing their role well. That means their class attendance and their attendance is great, but membership is dropping. Or they're really, really great at putting up viral social media videos, but those aren't connecting to you, actually converting people from social media. They're really great at their role, but the result isn't necessarily their top focus or the top priority. And this can happen when your team just doesn't know what you're measuring or they haven't been reminded about what you're measuring and they can't move with intention.

Speaker 1: 10:12

So here is the fix. Here's what I want you to test in your business. I want you to make your goals public, make them specific and then repeat it so often, more often than you would ever have to think. So set one clear business goal at a time. That does mean that you can't do everything all at once. What is your business goal? Is it resigning your members this month? Is it converting new clients this month? Is it filling a membership? Set one clear business goal at a time and anchor everyone to it. Now. One way that you can do this is start every single team meeting with a reminder of that overall important goal. Every team check-in is going to loop back to it. We do a Friday recap within the mastermind. Every Friday recap loops back to your progress made towards it. Every task gets tied to it. So if you have a social media manager, you can say hey, we're really working to enroll 20 new members this month. So every piece of content that you put up, every DM conversation that you have that supports our overall goal of 20 new members. Now, this is not micromanaging. This is about you anchoring in the commitment to the real goal, and that will change everything.

Speaker 1: 11:32

Think about it like this In a football game, every player on the field is aware of their position, that they play, and they know the overall goal is to win the game. They are also looking at the scoreboard and seeing where they are when it comes to winning their game. They're having a team meeting in the locker room at halftime about where they are in terms of what needs to change or pivot in order for them to hit their overall goal. No one is guessing what success looks like, and you can think about if you had a football team where one quarterback is excellent and he's the best quarterback ever, but he's a terrible team player. It doesn't necessarily mean that the team is going to do well because they have that one shining star. If that one shining star cares more about how many yards he threw than the overall team winning, then the team is going to end up losing time and time again. Compared to, let's say, you have an average quarterback, but they're all about the team winning. That team more often will perform better because they're working together. So when your team knows the goal, they can solve problems faster, they can take ownership more, they can stay accountable, they're going to feel more connected to the overall outcome of your business, and this is when your business really becomes a momentum machine.

Speaker 1: 12:55

Now I want you to think about this. If you don't have a team of people who necessarily need to know your overall goal, but your team of people is you, and I want you to think about if you're starting every single Monday morning with a reminder of what the overall goal is and what you need to do that week to stay on task and what the needle moves needle movers are, or if you're just jumping right into work and then ask yourself are you you know at the end of the week? Maybe it's your Friday afternoon, maybe it's Saturday or Sunday. Whenever you end your week at the end of the week, are you looking down at the goal and saying where did we make progress, where are we, what needs to change next week, what worked, what didn't work. When you do this, this is when your business becomes a momentum machine. Now, in order to help you do this, I actually created a free momentum tracker that you can grab on my Instagram. It's at the studio CEO official and you can comment the word Monday and that momentum tracker will be sent to you on any of my posts so you can use that to make sure that your Monday meeting with yourself or with your team is on track. And I want you to think about this If you had a rock star team that all knew the primary business goal, how many members you're going to, and at the start of every single week you told them every new member and their story and why they joined and how close you were and what needed to happen that week, within a few weeks you would start to see your teachers at your front desk actually selling membership.

Speaker 1: 14:30

You would start to see your content not just reflect what events you have going on, but actually speak about your membership. You would start to see your team celebrating each other when they hear a conversation about membership happening in the studio. When they see another teacher sign up, a member like you'd start to see this cohesive team work together, but that can't happen when the goal is only in your mind. The goal has to belong to the whole team. This is what clarity does in your business. It's going to create harmony in your team.

Speaker 1: 15:05

Now I want you to think about this. Like when you have a clear goal owned by the whole team, it is actually the fastest path to results. So, when you are delegating and when you are assigning tasks, don't just say do this, do that by this date. That's a great way to delegate, though. However, I want you to take it a step further and say, hey, like this is what I need you to do. This is why I need you to do it. This is why it'll matter for our community, this is why it matters for the business and get their buy-in. In order to get their buy-in, you do have to open up space for them to have any pushback or hesitations or doubts, and that's where you can really step up as a leader and make sure that everyone on the team not only knows the goal, but is aligned with the goal and is committed to the goal and if those three things happen, harmony happens and your team is going to start to function so much more effectively together.

Speaker 1: 16:01

Now, when we talked about this at the retreat last week, one of the concerns was like Jackie, I have never been a part of a studio that has shared with me how many members we've had, let alone revenue. Because we were talking about sharing your revenue goal with your team, which you can totally do if you want to. But we're specifically thinking about, like if I were to share that my studio is going towards 500 members. Like is that weird for my team to know? I feel like that would be super strange. Like my job as a teacher has always just been to come in and teach and then leave, and I think it will feel strange to a lot of businesses who have never operated this way. I don't think that necessarily means that you shouldn't adopt this moving forward, because a lot of what I see within the yoga and Pilates industry is just old practices that lead to a studio that's not profitable or business that's not profitable and the owner is burnt out, and so I would encourage you that, if this feels stretchy for you and you're like I don't know that feels kind of weird.

Speaker 1: 17:03

Start with a membership goal. Start with a client goals. Tell your people how many people you want to serve in the world and why you want to serve them, and practice communicating that to your team regularly and connecting tasks back to it regularly. Just for like a month. Just try it for a month and then see what happens. Notice what the morale of the team is within the business, notice how you feel. Notice if you feel like things are actually being taken off your plate and you're carrying less on your shoulders and it feels like your team is operating more smoothly together.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Now, in order for this to happen, we have to start with the fact that you have to be committed to the overall goal.

Speaker 1: 17:45

So really take a moment and if you need help deciding what your overall goal is, if you're like Jackie I don't know if I should focus on ads or selling or create a new offer or launching my teacher training or hiring Like I don't know what to focus on right now I would absolutely love to help you decide exactly what your right next step is, and while I wish I could do this on the podcast for each and every single one of you, this is not a two-way conversation.

Speaker 1: 18:15

So I want to invite you into the Studio CEO program where I can coach you Monday through Friday within our community and you can join weekly coaching calls that you can get your clear next step forward. If you are in the place where you're like gosh, I really do need to know what my overall goal is for the next few months. I cannot stress enough that having eyeballs, having support, having accountability on your side is going to make it so much easier for you to know what your next step is, but then also for you to be able to tell your team what the next step is. So the studio CEO program is waiting for you. You can click the link in the show notes and join us inside of that program. Otherwise, I will talk to you all in the next episode.