Name: Debra Chantry Taylor

Title: Certified EOS Implementer | Accredited Family Business Advisor | Leadership Coach | Visionary

Organisation: Business Action | EOS Worldwide | Integrated Executives

Debra is passionate about seeing entrepreneurs & leaders live their ‘best life’ by creating a better business and giving them what they want out of life & business. #BetterBusinessBetterLife As well as being a seasoned business owner & founder of Business Action, Debra is a Certified EOS implementer®, an Accredited Family Business Advisor & a qualified Leadership Coach who excels in the arena of entrepreneurial business.

Through her wealth of knowledge & practical real-life experience, she enables business owners & their leadership teams to work together to excel in terms of performance; living their vision & values in a positive culture; making a significant difference in their field, team & wider communities; all whilst being compensated fairly & having the freedom & time to pursue other passions.

Having worked with over 600 business owners & their leadership teams & having led teams of hundreds herself, Debra has been recognised as a leading business coach in New Zealand & has received accolades & awards to celebrate her achievements.

With the hands-on practical business acumen that comes from running her own businesses, she is well versed in the highs of business growth & the lows of ventures that fail. Whilst the tough times have been …well, tough, the insights have given her the grit & determination to excel further, enabling her to share valuable lessons with those clients with whom she partners.

As a Brit, turned Aussie, turned Kiwi & an avid traveler, she has global experience working with clients in Europe, the United Kingdom, the United States of America, Australia & New Zealand. Debra shares her experience with her clients openly & honestly. Her unique mix of academic qualifications, business experience & natural curiosity means she loves to challenge the status quo. She also loves to celebrate success with Champagne.

Outside of work, Debra enjoys a beautifully balanced life with her husband Steve, their two mini schnauzers & their three cats.

Thank you to the 2,000 leaders who’ve generously done the 7 Questions on Leadership!

I hope Debra's answers will encourage you in your leadership journey. Enjoy!

Cheers,

Jonno White

1. What have you found most challenging as a leader?

Being able to let go & allow others to step up. I think it’s a challenge a lot of leaders & business owners face. I learned that Delegating & Elevating is the key, but it hasn’t been easy & I understand why other business owners & leaders struggle. I have had to recognise that although people won’t necessarily do things the way that I would, that doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t delegate.

Their 100% might only be my 80%, or it may be a completely different way of doing it, but it’s still freeing me up to do what I love & am great at. And for the things I don’t necessarily enjoy or excel at – there are others who absolutely love & are great at them, so I need to let them also do what they love.

The key to this for me has been Clarity in Communication & setting boundaries & measurables so that people know what is expected of them. I realised early on that my communication may not have been as clear as I thought it was & I had to learn to slow down & communicate using the principle of ‘less is more’ or ‘less but obsess’.

2. How did you become a leader? Can you please briefly tell the story?

I fell into it… I was working in a biomedical laboratory & we were making too many mistakes. I put my hand up to help fix it & ended up becoming the team leader. I found that I had a natural ability to motivate teams & have them focus on the things that were important.

From there my first true management/leadership role was when I was working as a sales & marketing assistant, one of my next roles after spending 7 years in sales. My boss at the time resigned, so I went to his boss & asked if he would consider me to take over. I’d only been there for a few weeks, so I gave him a business proposal on what I would do if I were the new leader & he took a punt on me & let me try – I became the new Sales & Marketing Manager & led both the sales & marketing teams.

Throughout my career, I have always put my hand up & have moved from SLT roles to GM, Integrator & CEO roles but it was never planned – I just knew I could make a difference & put my hand up to give it a try. And then when I moved into my own businesses, with the intent of making a bigger difference, it was essential that I stepped up & became the Visionary & Leader.

3. How do you structure your work days from waking up to going to sleep?

A typical workday starts at 5.30 am for me. I’ve already planned out my day the night before, so I wake up, grab a coffee in bed (which my husband makes for me), cuddle & talk with my husband, check my emails & social media & write in my journal, expressing gratitude & what I am most excited about.

Then I get up to go to the gym with my personal trainer. I do this 3 times per week & the other days we take a longer walk. At 6.30 am we take our 2 mini schnauzers, Apollo & Hermes, for a walk & use the time to have some quiet, reflective time, whilst enjoying seeing the dogs loving their walk. There’s something joyful about watching them & just relaxing in nature, as well as getting some fresh air & sun.

Once we’ve finished the walk, I get showered & changed & I’m at work at around 7.30 am & use the time to prepare mentally for the day ahead so that I am ready to start client sessions at 8.00 am. My sessions usually end at around 5.00 pm or 6.00 pm & once I’ve sent all the follow-up work to my EA in South Africa, we jump on a quick call to ensure we’re on the same page for the day, so that she can continue with the follow-up work while I finish up & go home.

When I get home, we usually take the dogs for a 2nd walk & then we cook dinner. After dinner, it’s either a jigsaw puzzle or a game, or sometimes a Netflix movie or series… We can’t be sensible all the time? At 8.30 pm, we start our wind down & allow ourselves an hour of reading before going to the bedroom.

Before I go to sleep, I fill out my journal & plan my next day – what have I got on & what do I need to focus on as well as reflecting on the day & what went well or could have gone better.

I take my supplements & then I sleep for a solid 7.5 – 8 hours. This routine, while it seems very structured, gives me the energy & mental capacity to run hard & fast at work & gives me the freedom on the weekend to do the things that I love – spending time with family & friends, riding our bikes, spending time in nature & photography.

How do I keep this structure? The time is blocked out in my diary at the beginning of the day & at the end of the day so that no one can book over it…. Which surprisingly gives me more freedom… And I always have the choice. It’s my life by design.

4. What's a recent leadership lesson you've learned for the first time or been reminded of?

That you need to design your life before someone else does. I used to say yes to everything & I never blocked out time for what was important to me. I tend to neglect my health & fitness quite easily, especially when I am trying to please everyone. And the adage of putting on our oxygen mask before you help anyone else is so true… You can’t pour from an empty cup.

I would find myself neglecting the time I needed to look after myself but also the time to do my other passions – spending time with family & friends, cycling, photography, travel… All the things that fill my cup & replenish my energy. So, I learned that I need to block out time in my diary.

Not just each day & week, making sure my time for walking, time for my husband & time for me is in there but now at the beginning of each year, I also plan out when I will take holidays, when I will take time out to do my other passions & I plan what an ideal week will look like. All of this goes into my wall plan (yes, I like old-fashioned wall planners) as well as into my online calendar (I also love tech!).

You would probably laugh if you saw my calendar with things like ‘Saxophone practice’, ‘Evening meal & quality time routine’ & ‘Take supplements’, ‘Reading time’ and ‘Plan for tomorrow’ but without these times blocked out, my life would get filled by other people’s priorities.

And it doesn’t mean that I always stick to it, it just means that I have a choice. Would I rather grab a drink with a friend or do saxophone practice – it’s a conscious decision that only I get to make. I think having the oxygen mask on & taking time for Clarity Breaks, makes me a better leader.

5. What's one book that has had a profound impact on your leadership so

far? Can you please briefly tell the story of how that book impacted your leadership?

Get a Grip by Gino Wickman & Mike Paton, closely followed by Traction, also by Gino Wickman. I read these 2 books over 5 years ago & they have had a massive impact on my life. I was already doing a lot of the things in the books in my business, but it brought it all together into a simple framework that myself & my team could easily follow.

It improved communication, it instilled discipline & accountability into my leadership team & myself & it taught me how to ‘let go’ so that the leadership team & others could really step up. It improved my business & my personal life. Now I feel very privileged to be able to teach the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS) from these books to others, as well as use it in my own businesses.

6. If you could only give one piece of advice to a young leader, what would you say to them?

Don’t be afraid to put your hand up if you feel you make a difference but also don’t think that you have to know it all. Being humble about what you do & don’t know is a true skill. And asking for help is not a weakness… I have had a lot of help throughout my career & I’m hugely grateful for it, but I also love to help others.

In fact, most people do love to help others so I challenge you to think about how helping others makes you feel. You feel great right? So, don’t deny other people that feeling. Ask for help, and allow others to feel great & it also gives you a chance to grow as well.

7. What is one meaningful story that comes to mind from your time as a leader, so far? Honestly, I have so many but the one that sticks out for me is that we sometimes forget that we are all just people, dealing with people. And people like to have strong communication & clear boundaries. It’s like playing a sport. Imagine playing rugby without any rules or understanding of how you win.

What it would probably look like is a bunch of grown men doing some kind of weird ballet on a pitch, without any real direction. It might be fun to watch for a short period but the players & the observers would both soon get bored. You need to know how to win & what the rules are to get there, then you can develop a game plan. I always tell people that I love to celebrate success, usually with a glass or two of champagne, but in order to do this, you need to know what success looks like.

So, being clear about your vision & what success looks like & setting the boundaries (or the rules of the game) means we all get to play a clear, strong game & we get to celebrate the success a lot more often on the journey. And even if we don’t always win, as a team we learn from our mistakes & we can work together to get better. Bringing people on the journey with you & playing with others is way more fun than doing it on your own!