The Studio CEO: Business Coaching For Yoga & Pilates Teachers & Studio Owners

The Leadership Pause: How to Stop Being the Bottleneck in Your Studio and Take Back Your Time

• Jackie Murphy

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You can’t scale your studio if every decision requires your sign-off. In this episode Jackie explains the simple, powerful habit she calls The Leadership Pause:  a Micro-Habit that changes how your team shows up, makes decisions, and owns results. 

If you’re tired of being the default problem-solver, this episode gives three practical shifts (ask first, replace approval with ownership, default to execute) and real scripts you can use the moment a teacher, VA, or manager asks for direction.

What you’ll hear:

  • Why leaders accidentally become bottlenecks (and how that slows growth)
  • The three micro-strategies that create ownership and speed on your team
  • Real examples from Colleague, Clients, and Jackie’s own team 
  • Exact scripts you can use with your team today
  • A safe, step-by-step way to build a more independent team without making anyone feel abandoned

Want to practice this live? Join Jackie’s free Three Marketing Mistakes workshop on August 14 — link in the show notes.




Work with Jackie Murphy

Speaker 1:

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. Hi, welcome back, or welcome to the Studio CEO podcast. I am Jackie Murphy and I'm your business coach for at least the next 20 minutes, and maybe, if you're one of my clients, you're inside the Studio CEO program or you're in the mastermind or you work together privately, then I am your business coach and I'm happy that you're here. If you're brand new to the podcast, truly coach, and I'm happy that you're here. If you're brand new to the podcast, truly welcome. Thank you so much for being here. I'm glad that you found this podcast, if you are a podcast listener, but we haven't taken our relationship to the next level. You're not on my email list. I want to let all of you know that we are hosting the three marketing mistakes workshop. These are three marketing mistakes that yoga and Pilates studio owners make, and we're hosting this workshop live on August 14th, so you can click the link in the show notes to join that workshop. We're diving into what these three mistakes are, how you can avoid them and really how to master one of the most important skills that you can have in your business, which is marketing. So I will see you all there. So today we're talking about what I am going to coin call the leadership pause, and I want to tell you just a backstory of how this podcast came to be.

Speaker 1:

I recently went to visit my parents at the beach and my dad has a really amazing team that he leads and he sat down one night and he was like just chatting about one of his engineers top engineers on his team and one of his engineers came to him and said you know, like here are two options option A, option B what do you think we should do? And my dad was like what? I am not the engineer, I do not know best case option. I do not know best case scenario. You know you tell me, choose, decide and then go do. And this podcast like started in that moment One. How cute is it that? My dad was like Jackie, let's talk about leadership and managing people at the beach. I absolutely love that.

Speaker 1:

And then the very next week I got back into my mastermind and one of my clients brought up the same thing. She brought to our group coaching call that she had an incredibly busy day and she was being asked by different team members oh we need your decision on the design for the bathroom and we need your help picking out the Pilates schedule and getting that pricing and reformer schedule set up. And she was like every single person on my team seems to need me with them making decisions for the business to move forward. And so I had this moment of like okay, no matter what industry you're in like clearly my dad is not in the yoga and Pilates industry but no matter what industry you're in, there probably will come a time where your team is relying on you too heavily for the pace that you want to grow, you essentially become the bottleneck of your business, without even thinking about it, without even meaning to. So this might be you, if you've ever had a scenario if you maybe just like taught back to back classes, you finally have some time to sit down and work. You open up your computer. Might be you if you've ever had a scenario if you maybe just like taught back-to-back classes, you finally have some time to sit down and work, you open up your computer and you're going to work on your next marketing campaign or your next ad. And then, all of a sudden, you get an email from your client services representative who needs to have you weigh in on how they're handling a membership cancellation. Or you get a Slack message from your lead teacher who really wants to talk over the feedback form that you're using for classes. Or you have a teacher come to you who needs a sub and you're now finding a sub for their class.

Speaker 1:

Essentially, your time that you've dedicated and devoted to working on your business all of a sudden turns into you working in your business in other people's roles, and it's not that your team isn't capable, it's just that they've accidentally learned to check in with you before they move forward, before they make decisions, before they make decisions, before they act and unintentionally, you might have trained them to do that. So we're going to talk about what you can do instead, so that you don't create team dependency and you can create trust, ownership and real momentum in your business. So the first thing you know that has to happen in order for you to use the leadership pause is you have to understand what thought is driving you to step in and work in your business in other people's roles. So let's think that you have a teacher who emails that they need a sub for their class, that you have a teacher who emails that they need a sub for their class. There's a split second where you get that email, that all of your power is going to lie and all of your leadership capacity lies in that split moment. If you're unaware and unintentional, you may think, oh my gosh, I need to answer this real quickly. I need to just respond to them. I need to tell them what to do. I need to reach out and find a sub for them. I need to text these other teachers to see if they can sub. You feel stressed, it feels urgent and all of a sudden, you're now texting five other teachers to find a sub for your teacher and you're working in your business as a teacher instead of working on your business as CEO.

Speaker 1:

What happens is that you try to be everything to everyone and what ends up happening is that you're you're working. Every single role in your business and your team can become incredibly needy. Decisions don't get made, meetings get added to your calendar, emails get heavier and heavier and heavier and heavier, and things don't move forward quite as quickly. This actually came up with a colleague that I was talking to this week. She has a virtual assistant and some of you may have that in your business and she said, hey, my virtual assistant isn't completing the task, this Instagram task that she wanted her to do, and so I'm going to set up an additional meeting every single week to make sure that that task is completed and walk her through doing that. And I said, no, don't set up an additional meeting If your virtual assistant isn't completing the task that's in their role. The last thing that you want to do is show the virtual assistant that you're going to hold their hand, sit with them and complete the task with them, and she wanted to do this from a space of being supportive, right, of wanting to be there with her team, and it all came from a beautiful intention. But it would have slowed her down, it would have added another meeting to her plate and it would have trained the virtual assistant to rely on her to complete the task.

Speaker 1:

Instead, I said, hey, you need to have a pretty clear conversation, like the job isn't being done and if it continues that, you talk about a performance improvement plan, you make sure they're right, fit for the role. You have a growth plan for them. But that takes leadership skills and often we're not taught that when we go into this industry. But the last thing that I want for you is to have a team of people that you are paying every single month that feels a draining on you, that's coming to you before they act. That is sending you emails and asking for feedback and decisions when you really want a team that feels supportive. So let's talk about the opposite of this.

Speaker 1:

Like same situation, you get an email from a teacher or a text from a teacher that they need a sub and you remember this podcast and you think to yourself huh, this is my opportunity to lead, this is my opportunity to teach them how to be empowered leaders in the business themselves. I love the idea that great leaders create great leaders. That is what I want you to do, and your actions and what you do will change when you take that moment to say let me teach them, let me lead them, let me create an environment where this text message won't come to me in the future because the problem is solved without even me knowing about it at all. You're going to feel empowered to empower them and instead of just answering the text messages or answering the email, you're going to do the leadership pause. And the leadership pause is exactly what it sounds like. It's a pause, a breath between your team asking you for something, a decision, feedback, the go ahead, a meeting, a phone call, whatever it may be and you jumping in with the answer. It's this micro moment where you're going to decide.

Speaker 1:

Wait a second, is this actually something I need to solve? Is this in my job description or is this in their job description? Caveat, I know, if you don't have job descriptions for your business, you definitely need those. I have a mastermind that helps you create them. Let's keep going.

Speaker 1:

The goal isn't to abandon your team and not support them. The goal is to create space for them to rise up as leaders and create solutions for themselves to move the business forward. The goal is to remove any bottlenecks that you have in your business so that you can start sorry, so that you can stop over functioning and they can start moving in their role powerfully. And this isn't just something that I'm telling stories about, right, like my client, my dad, my friend. This is actually backed by decades of research and in a study published in the Academy of Management Journal, they found that leaders who empowered their teams by delegating, by encouraging independent thinking and stepping back those teams saw a significant increase in both performance and proactive behavior. So this works. It's already been proven to work.

Speaker 1:

You just have to use what works. So let me give you kind of three different ways that you could use this when this moment happens to you in your business. Number one ask first, don't answer first. Essentially, respond with a question. It is so simple Instead of responding with an answer or a solution, you want to coach your people to come to you with their own answers or their own solutions. So when someone asks you for a decision, pause and say what do you recommend? What do you think is best? What would you do Like what do you think is going to be best for the business? Any of those questions are going to you do Like what do you think is going to be best for the business? Any of those questions are going to teach them. Hey, I want you to come to me. Your insight is valuable. What you think is best is valuable. Present that to me and then we'll move forward.

Speaker 1:

So let's go back to my client who is adding on Pilates Reformers to her studio and she has a lovely team member who is highly capable of creating the Pilates reformer schedule. Instead of the owner of the studio sitting down with this team member and crafting out the schedule, what is going to happen instead is that this team member will sit down, use data, come up with a potential schedule, think about why that schedule is best and then present that to the owner so that my client only has to say yes, no or tweak it. The meeting is all of five minutes or it's not even a meeting, it's an email, and my client the owner, can stay in her genius, which is visionary for the business. She's going through massive expansion, so that's where her mind and her focus and her energy needs to be when the other tasks, which are incredibly important, are done by people who are incredibly important in their roles. So this really invites their critical thinking into the conversation. And it's the first domino in training your team to be a team of leaders or a team of A players.

Speaker 1:

Okay, number two replace approval with ownership. So if your team is constantly waiting on your green light, it's worth asking yourself have I accidentally built a culture where everything runs through me and this one I am guilty of? Because I like control, I like to be in charge. That's why I have a business. So that may be you. You may resonate with this one. But just think to yourself is there reason in your business where you are getting people to ask you for your approval versus just letting them run, letting them do their thing? Is there a reason that they really need your sign off? Probably not. Can you encourage them more to go out there, make decisions, act, do and come back with results and data?

Speaker 1:

Imagine if you were gone from your business, if you just like weren't there, if you took three months off, if you disappeared, whatever it may be, would your business still run? Would people still feel empowered to make decisions and move forward without you signing off on it. Often they can and they already know what you would decide. They just need permission to trust themselves and they need to know that you are going to be okay with trusting them. And they need to know that, even if they make a decision that isn't the decision that you would make and they quote, unquote, fail that it's all going to be okay. It's all going to be okay.

Speaker 1:

Now, there's so much nuance to this right. This is about building a team that you trust and having really great training and onboarding them well, but it can be so impactful, and the example I want to give you is the example from my business. This week, I have an amazing team member in my business, ashley, and she came to me and she was like listen, we're redoing this email that you send out every single week. And she said here are the two versions. Oh wait, this is the version that I like best. And she sent it. And then I saw this, like there was no waiting for, like Jackie, is this okay? Should we do it? Should we not do it? Let me know what she did is she went ahead and acted, sent out the email and then she was like oh yeah, if you have feedback or want to make any tweaks, let me know. And it's so easy I have to. I just get to be like amazing, I'm so glad that you did this thing that I didn't even have to think about or teach you to do or tell you to do. It was just done for me.

Speaker 1:

That is the kind of team that you want and that comes with building trust. But it comes with you intentionally telling your team hey, I trust you. Like, you can make this decision. You, I trust you. I hired you in this role for a reason. You go do what you are great at and if, for some reason, it's an off decision or you need feedback, of course there'll be an open conversation and that conversation won't be critical. That conversation will be designed to help the team move forward.

Speaker 1:

Okay, the third like strategy that you can use. The third thing is default to execute. This is going to be a just like reset for your team and you can tell them, unless I specifically say otherwise, you are empowered to make the call and move forward. Like, imagine if you just told your team that, like, unless I specifically say like, this needs my approval. You are empowered to just like, make the decision and move forward. How much free time would you get back? How much energy would you get back? I want you to really think about that. It shifts the energy from ask first to act first. This is something that you've probably heard before, but it's oh my God. The quote is like ask for forgiveness versus asking for permission. It's kind of that vibe within your team.

Speaker 1:

This change alone will eliminate just so many delays and it signals to your team like, hey, I trust you. And it also signals to your business that you trust your business, because no one decision alone, no one teammate acting most likely if they're a great teammate is going to impact or derail your business in such a significant way that you can't keep going, that you can't make it work. Empower teams are going to execute faster, they're going to take initiative more and they're going to feel much more ownership. And that's what you need, because this industry is fast growing. Most of the people that I talk to, their businesses are fast growing, and so you need to have a team that's on board with that pace of fast growing. So what happens when you do this? At first it might feel totally weird and even a little scary, because there is room for your team to fail or make wrong decisions or do something you wouldn't do. But that is where really good leadership starts and that's where building a team that's independent and empowered really, really starts.

Speaker 1:

And you really have to come back to that moment, that pause, where, kind of like instinctively, you're going to want to answer the email, answer the question, give your opinion, and instead you're going to have to sit back, lean back and remember that your role is not to be answer giver, solution giver. Your role is not to be in their role. Your role is to be leader, manager, director, owner. And that requires you doing different things, like answering a question with a question, taking a moment to pause, getting their insight, giving them the go ahead to trust themselves and make decisions, and then you evaluate and give feedback. If you're in conversation, that is different than you just doing everything in your business.

Speaker 1:

So let's go back to the example of the teacher who wants a sub. Teacher texts you I need a sub. Your old response would be like okay, great, I'll find a sub for you. Your new response is pause and send a message back to the teacher. Who do you think would be best to sub your class. So now we're asking the teacher to think critically about what sub would be best for her class, based on her style and her students and the vibe of her class. She sends back and she's like Sarah, laura and Tim, and you're like great, I agree, can you reach out to all three of them and find a sub? Now you've just taught her like hey, think critically and then go do the thing so that I don't have to do it for you All.

Speaker 1:

Right, now we have to talk about one little caveat. What I don't want you to do is just like disappear from your team altogether overnight, because that will freak people out. It'll make them feel a little bit abandoned. Freak people out, it'll make them feel a little bit abandoned. So too little delegation is going to lead to you micromanaging and over functioning, but too much delegation too fast can lead them feeling abandoned. So we're not saying like overnight you go to your entire team and say cancel all of our meetings, y'all just go do your roles and we'll check in once a month. They'll be like what?

Speaker 1:

Instead, I want you to just like implement this one little pause and, over time, as your team builds more capacity and leadership within themselves. You may see that you need less meetings. You may see that you move faster, more efficiently, as a team. You may see that your inbox goes down, your Slack messages go down, but that doesn't need to happen overnight for you to really know that you are pausing as a leader to build strong leaders. So this is your challenge this week.

Speaker 1:

I want you to practice one leadership pause when a team member asks you for a decision, feedback or input.

Speaker 1:

If a team member is waiting on you for something, pause, ask before you answer.

Speaker 1:

Reflect to them instead of rescue them and re-delegate the task to them to encourage them to completion. And even y'all, those of you who are moms do this with your kids. Do this with your kids. My kids will ask me a question and I will just turn around and ask them a question and then I'll affirm their response and go with what they say and teach them how to be little leaders in their own lives, even though it's very tempting sometimes for me to just step in control. Do it all myself, because, as an entrepreneur, I guarantee that you are really great at getting stuff done. What you want to become really great at is getting other people to do stuff as well. And that is the talent, that is the skill of leadership, so that you're not the bottleneck in your business. All right, my friends, I would love to have you in the three marketing mistakes workshop. You can click the link below in the show notes to join and I'll talk to you in the next episode.