Creating an A-Team: Leading with Courage
As a leader, creating a team that excels is paramount to your success. You need a group of people who can work well together, remain productive under pressure, and achieve goals beyond anyone's expectations. To make this happen, you need the courage to be an effective leader, inspire others around you, and model the behaviors you want from your team.
This interview with Keera Brooks of Wholesale Sugar Flowers, highlights the key aspects of creating and leading your team courageously. From nurturing trust to striking the right balance between empowerment and control, she shares her experience in leadership.
What do you think is your greatest strength as a leader & why?
My greatest strength is my ability to curate an A-Team. I surround myself with people who are good at what I lack so we can be great together. But this is just step #1. Once the dream team is built, it’s equally important to empower everyone to have and use their own unique voice and management style. I have unintentionally held people down earlier in my career, but once I learned to let go of the need to control everything, my team began to shine. Most people are motivated to do better for you when you give them space to grow.
What is one characteristic that you believe every leader should embody & why?
Courage. Leaders must be okay with not being liked by everyone because an important part of the CEO role is making the difficult decisions. At the end of the day, the CEO is responsible for the overall success of the business. When my business stopped the day our country was shut down due to the pandemic, I had to lean on courage to make very difficult decisions that ultimately positioned us for exponential growth. Without that courage, we would have been another business casualty of the pandemic.
What are the most important decisions you make as a leader of your organization?
Personnel decisions. In my mind, there is no harder job than managing people, but the organization doesn’t exist without the people. Everything else about operating a company is fairly black and white within reason. The people element exists in the gray space, and that’s tough to figure out. Leaders need to manage according to the employee – when you can get the best out of each employee because you have honed in on their intricacies, magic ensues. It’s one of the most rewarding aspects of leadership.
Meet Keera: Keera Brooks acquired Wholesale Sugar Flowers in 2018, after nearly two decades in corporate America. As the company’s CEO, Keera is passionate about contributing in a meaningful way toward customers, partners, employees and the community, and she has a personal mission to empower other women through partnerships and outreach programs. These efforts have helped her expand the Wholesale Sugar Flowers business and track fast growth in both the B2B and consumer markets, helping everyone from professional pastry chefs to aspiring entrepreneurs to at-home hobbyists elevate their celebrations and enjoy “the art of decorating.”
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