The Entrepreneur DNA - Why Leaders Fail When Scaling: The Blind Spot Problem | Kristiana Corona

Episode Date: April 14, 2026

If you want to improve your leadership and identify your blind spots, take Kristiana’s free leadership audit here: https://worthytolead.co/audit In this episode, I sit down with Kristiana Corona to unpack what real leadership actually looks like as you grow your business. We talk about the blind spots that hold leaders back, why your team might not be telling you the truth, and how ego can quietly limit your growth. I share my own experiences in leadership, and we break down simple frameworks you can use immediately to become more self-aware, build trust with your team, and lead at a higher level. If you’re serious about scaling your business, this is a conversation you need to hear. Kristiana Corona – Bio Kristiana Corona is an ICF-certified executive coach and the founder of Worthy to Lead, where she helps leaders overcome burnout, self-doubt, and leadership blind spots to build thriving teams and meaningful businesses. With over 20 years of experience leading design and technology teams at Fortune 500 companies like Amazon, Target, and USAA, she brings a powerful blend of corporate leadership and coaching expertise. Through her coaching, podcast, and training programs, Kristiana teaches a human-centered leadership approach focused on self-awareness, psychological safety, and sustainable growth. She is passionate about helping leaders develop confidence, think strategically, and lead in a way that empowers both themselves and their teams to perform at the highest level. Connect with Kristiana Website:https://www.worthytolead.co LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristianacorona YouTube (Worthy to Lead):https://www.youtube.com/@Worthy-to-Lead Podcast:https://www.worthytoleadpodcast.com Substack / Newsletter:https://worthytolead.substack.com About Justin: Justin Colby is the host of The Entrepreneur DNA and The Science of Flipping podcasts and a best-selling author. He is a serial entrepreneur with over and a seasoned real estate investor with over 20 years of experience. Driven by a passion to help entrepreneurs thrive, Justin created the Entrepreneur DNA community to support business owners in building wealth, systems, and long-term freedom. Through his podcasts, books, education platforms, and hands-on mentorship, he continues to help entrepreneurs scale with clarity and confidence. Connect with Justin: Instagram: @thejustincolby YouTube: Justin Colby TikTok: @justincolbytsof LinkedIn: Justin Colby Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What is up? The Entrepreneur DNA family. As always, this episode is brought to you by the school group, sk-o-O-O-L dot com, for slash entrepreneur DNA. That's where you get to learn and engage and conversate with experts like I have here today. I have an expert who has spent over 20 years in the big corporate world like Amazon and has learned so much about how to reframe your leadership and human design in corporations and in businesses that can help you entrepreneurs grow your business. Christina Corona is here. How are you? Hi, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. Now, I want to jump into your background a bit about big corporate, right? You have 20 years plus and for those of you not watching this, you would think she's actually 20. So good for you.

But, you know, you come from 20 plus years of big business, Amazon, et cetera, right, billion dollar enterprises. Your expertise really leans into magnifying someone's ability to lead. And the things that they do wrong starts to really magnify it across an organization. What were you seeing in big businesses that made you say, hey, I think I can help the small to medium-sized businesses grow their business. just execute at a higher level. What did you see in the big business

that you thought could get better? Yeah, so what's really interesting about this is across my career, I actually started in startups. So I had that sort of, I understand how entrepreneurs wear so many hats. I understand the chaos of when you don't have systems in place

and you're just building things from scratch. But then over the course of, you know, leading teams for 19 years across Fortune 500 companies, I started to see some of those same patterns emerge, right? So you think, oh, everything is so different. It's so different from, you know, being the small guy to being the big guy. And there are a lot of differences, but there's also a lot of similarities when it comes to, like, the human-centered skills you need to be successful. And so when you get at scale, it just magnifies those things, like you said. And so it's fascinating when you see the impact as someone who's leading a team of thousands, like at Amazon,

you have to be much more aware. You have to really focus on developing those human center leadership skills because your teams depend on it. And so I think the biggest thing for your audience is if you're not aware of the different areas in your leadership where you maybe have some blind spots and you're not hearing about it regularly from your team, you're likely going to hit a ceiling. And that's really important to know. Yeah, you said something I think is interesting and imperative. would you tell leaders or suggest that leaders actually get feedback from their team members? 100%. Because you may not think about it a lot when you only have a couple of people on your team.

You know, they naturally are going to share things with you. But as you scale, people are less and less willing to give feedback to power. So the larger your team gets, the more you're going to become unaware of the different things that aren't working. And so a lot of times this shows up as like, oh, my team is a bunch of order takers. They're very compliant. They do the things that I want them to be doing. But actually, I don't know about the problems that are going on until it's too late. And then suddenly all these things in your business that you thought were working are actually no longer working.

So it's super critical to get those mechanisms in place that can help you collect the feedback along the way so that you know if your leadership is working. And you know what things you need to fix before it's too late. and it ends up hitting your business. You and I were talking a little bit offline about how I would preach, or a lot of the experts on here preach about structure, processes, systems. Now, usually you think about marketing or sales or managing numbers like KPIs. You actually and I were just talking about like you need to have the same structure, same processes, same system in your leadership ability and leadership of your company

that you would in anything else. Exactly. And I think the thing that people forget is you think, well, either you are a leader or you're not. You know, you have that any sense or you don't. But it's actually a system of continuous growth, right? So you've probably seen this throughout your business is you're going to become really, really good at certain things. And you're going to have a lot of confidence in those systems.

But do you have the same level of rigor around how you deliver feedback? around how you listen, you know, things like giving performance feedback, setting high standards, helping people feel safe, giving feedback, or bringing up issues. Likely, most of us don't because we just think like, oh, I know how to do that. That's easy, you know, soft skills. But actually, it's much bigger and more important than that. And so I think that's the thing where people have a disconnect is if you don't have those systems in place to be capturing that all the time, you're going to start having these blind spots

that you don't even know about. What would be, and I'm sure you have a lot of suggestions, as you quite literally coach executives and leadership people, how to be better. But, you know, for the listener that doesn't have asked you yet, and they will, by the way, what would be like a, you know, listen, you're at the boardroom, you have one leader or two leaders here to run a group of six or eight,

like what are one or two things that they need to be focusing on process-oriented that most probably aren't, even aware of to focus on for a process in leadership. So, you know, this sounds kind of cliche, but, you know, the book, like, Leaders Eat Last? Yeah, oh, yeah. So things like that. Like, do you, do you always speak first in a meeting with your leaders, with your team? Are you always the one that steps in, tells everyone what's going on?

Here's the direction. All right, everyone go execute. Or are you pausing to let other people, share their concerns, share their ideas, share their thoughts. Because oftentimes once you have stated your opinion, people aren't going to share theirs. They're just going to hold it. They're going to say, oh, now's not the right time. So unless you intentionally invite those moments of allowing people to say those things, or if someone brings up a challenge, rather than, you know, getting upset and saying, that's not the case or fighting back against it, how do you show curiosity? How do you show up and just ask

more questions about that. Help me understand more about that. How is that impacting your ability to do your job? What impact is that having on the entire team? Like, tell me more. You know, it's like instead of shutting the door on that kind of feedback, like really lean in and open that door because it absolutely shifts the tone of the room and people's behavior and what they will and won't tell you. I have seen this firsthand as recently as like Q4 last year. I was sitting in on a board meeting of a company. The leader literally railroaded the entire, there was 10, 12 people in the room.

It was him, only him, talking in a directive manner, not inquiring, not asking questions, not letting silence sit to allow room for someone else to. to have a thought, opinion, a statement, a question, anything? And I literally sat there taking notes, thinking to myself, like, no one has any opportunity to voice an opinion, a thought, an idea, or even ask a question. How is this going to continue? Like, this is not being efficient.

And eventually, what's going to happen? The people on that team are going to say, I don't feel like I'm being valued. My ideas aren't being heard. I'm not going to innovate. I'm not going to bring an idea because this person has it all figured out. So why am I even here? There is being that from, at least I'm aware of one person who literally said that meeting was like awful.

Yeah. And I am aware of it because they asked for feedback on, you know, how the meeting went. And I was like, wow, that was in alignment with what I was thinking while I was like, I was like, this isn't a meeting. This is basically a podium for the leader to just. preach. And I think people get confused with this idea that they need to have all the answers. They need to know everything. They need to have pre-solved every single problem before they meet with their team or their team is not going to respect to them.

But that's actually not the case. And the best leaders can show up and say, here's what I know. Here's what I still need feedback on from all of you. And they ask, they intend. intentionally ask, what am I not seeing? Hmm. Yeah. Because otherwise, people don't feel comfortable sometimes bringing those thing up,

especially when the other person is clearly on their podium. You're like, well, that's it. I'm done. You know, I might as well just pack up and go because I'm not going to have a chance to speak in this meeting. It almost shrinks the other people, right? They feel small, relative. And I outwardly, now that I'm talking about anything,

you almost feel as if the energy and the person that is the leader that grabbing the podium, they're doing it almost for the ego, I think is what you're talking about, right? That's how I'm hearing you, at least is like that that leader needs to prove that he's the leader or she, by the way. This isn't gender specific. The leader, a lot of times doesn't have the emotional intelligence to realize they're railroading people because they want to look bigger or they want to be the guy or the girl and look at the value I provide as your leader. How do you over, if you're talking to a leader, if you're talking to a leader, right now that this might be triggering them a little bit like oh is this me let's give that leader

some tips on what they can start to look at how they can start to change how they can audit how they're leading in their organization let's give them some activities or you know again structure practices uh concepts that they can actually work on yeah i love that um because it it starts with reading the room and if you're not good at reading the room like you mentioned you can see the energy or you can feel the energy in the room. Like if you are in a room and you don't feel the energy, you don't feel the pulse of like what are people thinking? What do they want right now? It probably means you're doing too much talking and too little listening. So the first thing is like if you can read the room and look around and you see people engaged or do you

see them disengaged, are they leaning back? Are they on their phone? Are they just glazed over? Like deer in headlights, like, ugh, why am I here? You know, just pausing and inviting feedback, inviting comments. Tell me a little bit more about your thoughts on this. Like, how do you pull people into the conversation to start understanding, am I off base here? You know, is what I'm saying resonating because most people don't pause. They just keep presenting. But then to your point, like afterwards, how are you following up? And one of the things that I really love that I saw certain leaders at Amazon do, not all of them, but certain leaders are really good at this, is creating those consistent feedback mechanisms. And so, you know, that might sound like asking what is working

really well about this presentation or this meeting? Where could we have done better? What is one thing that you really wanted to get out of this that you didn't get? Asking those very specific questions and then following back up with people, closing that loop to say, here's what I heard. The last meeting, I was talking too much, I was on my podium, I didn't listen, I didn't answer the questions you cared about. So we're going to do a follow-up. We're going to do another Q&A. And this time I'm going to take your questions and I'm going to answer your questions directly. And, you know, just the vulnerability to say, like, I didn't get it right.

And that's okay. Like, I'm going to do it again. And this time I'm going to listen. It takes so much courage. And honestly, most people don't do that. But it's the thing that's going to make you stand out. And it's going to make, you know, your. your team feel completely differently as far as the psychological safety of, you know, growing that organization.

You talk about the human component in leadership, and I love what you say. You said it to me off camera, but a lot of times people don't feel worthy to lead, right? They may be thrust into a role because, you know, you're starting a business or you being given a promotion or whatever the case may be for the person listening. internally you feel like, am I even worthy to lead these other individuals? What have I even done? And that negative talk starts coming into your feedback loop, right? And how does a leader start to quiet the negative talk? And you kind of just answered it, but I'd want to lean into this because humility is missing in leadership.

I am a coached. I pay a lot of money every year in coaching and masterminds. And I have a coach literally is probably the most humble person. And I paid him a lot of money. I'm like, man, you are like graciously humble about how you even coach me. Humility, I believe in leadership is a missed art. Talk to us a little bit about like how leaders can feel worthy but also at the same extent, even if they don't feel the worthiness yet, how they can bring humility into the leadership role.

Yeah. So great. And I appreciate you sharing that because that isn't. often the focus of what people develop in their coaching or their leadership. You know, they might hire an executive coach and it's about performance. It's about how do I look really polished in front of the media? How do I show up and, you know, represent the face of my business? But they're not really thinking about behind the scenes. How am I impacting my team? How am I developing that trust? And I personally really relate to this idea of worthiness because when I started leading, I was 26.

I was four years into my professional career. I was a designer and I got given an opportunity, which was kind of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to help build out this global marketing team. And I had no leadership training. So here I am, this junior person given a title and the people in my team were far superior to me. They had much more experience. They were experts in their field.

I was sitting there like, what am I even doing here? And I'm pretty sure that I made every single mistake in the book as far as leadership. Like I tried to make all the decisions and drive everything without asking their opinion. So I learned the hard way. And it wasn't until I started learning coaching skills where it really unlocked for me the difference in leadership. When you show up and you show up with curiosity and you ask questions and you're humble and you don't pretend to know all the answers when you don't have them, people really respect that. That's authentic. That's something relatable. And I think that, you know, we never really hit that point probably where we feel fully worthy to lead because we're always on this upward spiral of growth. We're always playing ready to play on the next field. And when you get to the next field or you're about to hit that next field, then all of a sudden you feel unworthy again. Like, oh, no, I'm doing something I don't know how to do. This is a scale I haven't done. But it's sort of this inner ability to be okay with that. You know, to be able to sit with that discomfort and to know that this is a good thing.

This is growth. This is what it feels like. This is what everyone experiences when they're stepping outside their comfort zone and they're really going for something important. And so for me, Worthy to Lead is really about developing that inner confidence that's unshakable, despite what field you're going after, where you want to play, and what skills you do or don't have. Because we're all evolving. And so it's just recognizing that and being. being able to, you know, develop those skills as we go without having that inner negative self-talk that you were talking about.

So good. So good. Well, this also, like you were young, 26, you were young. That was like a year ago for you. I adjust. Because, again, if you're not watching this on YouTube, you don't realize, like, she has all this experience. She looks like she's 26. So, but, you know, listen, this is a, this is a big thing for younger leaders that get thrust in a position. Some of them are just young entrepreneurs. And now they bring someone on to go hustle with them, to go get more sales, but they still are a leader to the person they just brought on. And so it doesn't have to be big org, like in your case, you're part of a big organization at 26th that literally thrust you into this spotlight, if you will. It could be as simple as someone becoming an entrepreneur young. And how do you lead?

How do you lead yourself? Right. But I lean into that because you yourself are a coach to these individuals, right? And I would always encourage anyone. There's people that have been there before you that you don't need to figure it out alone. Cristiana is one of them. I would tell you, like, find her, right? Reach out to her.

And where can they find you if they're kind of like, hey, I probably need some help, you know, in my leadership ability. Where can they find you? Yeah. So I am on LinkedIn every single day. So Cristiana Corona, if you look me up on LinkedIn, I'm also on YouTube. So I have a podcast called Worthy to Lead. And then my. My website is worthy to lead.co, but any platform you want to reach out to me on, I'm happy to

just connect. And, you know, if you're stuck on a certain skill set, like you've been grinding at it and trying and you're trying to show up, but it feels really awkward and you're not getting the results you want. Like, I think to your point, we aren't all naturally just born with leadership skills. Like, it does take intentional development and practice. And the nice thing about coaching is it creates that safe environment for you to do that. It's the reason why I bring that up and I'm want to sell you to some extent is because I believe one thing when I was younger, I wish I had someone I could lean into. And I didn't, frankly. And that's partly why I lost it all and went through foreclosure and lost my car to the repo man is I didn't have anybody I could lean into

based around where I was in life. And in understanding these, there is tools, there are tactics, there are structure, there is process, right? There's all these things that fundamentally think about big business. It doesn't matter. You're going to be a leader. And so, you know, I think, to the young people potentially listening to this, and it's not only for young people, but you need to kind of do the work to grow yourself. Like, let me, let me ask you, what were you, when you were 26 and did get thrown into the position and into the spotlight, if you will, what were you doing to make sure you were executing at the highest level for the position you just got thrown into? I will tell you, I was not doing the right things. I was, I was

learning the hard way. I was banging my head against a wall. I'm pretty sure people were crying, my office like several times a week because they were so frustrated and it wasn't always directed at someone else. Sometimes it was directed at me where it's like why why can't you solve this or like whatever is happening. It's not working. And and so I did feel a lot of heaviness around that. Like I felt a lot of responsibility. I wanted to show up well for these people, but I didn't know how. And so like I mentioned, I think it was a lot of trial and error, but really starting to become more self-aware and be okay receiving that feedback. Like I think at first I was hesitant to ask. I'm like, oh, it's going to be bad, so I don't even want to know. But the more you keep yourself in the dark,

the worst it's going to be. And so just rip the Band-Aid off, ask people for their feedback, ask them for their ideas because oftentimes the people around you probably has some great ideas on what you could be doing better. And it could be simple little things about when and where you gather the team to talk, how you clarify the messages that you're sending, how you're communicating the vision and connecting the dots for them because they're not seeing what you see. And so sometimes the only way to do that is to really engage directly with people and ask them those uncomfortable questions so that you can start to build that leadership. And I think that was really the biggest thing for me is once you get over the hump of this is going to be awkward, it's going to be

uncomfortable, it's not going to feel good. I'm going to feel like a failure and I'm a high performer. You got to be okay with that because that development needs to happen and the only way to get to the other side is through. You said something so great, spiraling up. You like high performers always reach new levels. But when you're at a new level, you've never been there. You have literally no blueprint or map of what can happen at this level because it is all fresh and it's all new to you.

So, you know, the challenge that, you know, leadership owners, just people in general is when they actually find success in doing the thing they're doing, you get to a new level and now you're starting all over again. So for you, when people do, when leaders do get to this like, I'm taking on something new, maybe they're leading to a two people team and now they're leading a 20 people team. What can they rely on? What can they fall back on to make sure? that they're being an effective true leader to the group. Yeah, and I think you brought up a really good point about feeling like you are at a place where you need to reinvent. And what I would say is if you treat human-centered leadership skills like a flywheel, it isn't that you start all over and you don't use any of those previous skills.

It's that every time you're circling up and you're doing another revolution of that flywheel, you're getting faster. It's getting easier. It's getting more intuitive where maybe it was a lot of effort before. So you just have to believe that the more you practice it, the more it is going to become a flywheel and it's going to work on your behalf and give you that momentum. So I think some of the things that people don't think necessarily about is cultivating culture. How do you cultivate a culture? Not only of psychological safety where people can say things like, I'm asking for help and I don't get in trouble.

I can speak up without being punished. I can challenge ideas without some sense of retribution. Like that's what psychological safety is. But also your culture. How are you making your company fun? Where are people overworking? Where do you want to set some better boundaries to help people have that work-life balance that maybe you don't have yourself? But you can focus on that and build that.

And then think about conversation design. So you might do one-on-ones with people. And when you only have a couple of people, that's, that's, that's, easy. It doesn't become a big time suck. But when you have 20 people, how do you maintain those relationships at scale when you can't always be doing one-on-ones all the time with all the people on your team? So you have to start thinking about what does it look like to communicate to a group and what things are appropriate to communicate to a group and how do I inspire that group versus, you know, I say all of these things one-on-one in a conversation. So there are different skills

that we continue to unlock. But I think, again, going back to how aware are you, that you've actually hit a new level, what do you know about what you do well or not? Like how reliable is your thermostat of what people are telling you? And if you feel like everything is going super, super well, it's likely you just don't actually know what's going on or that the people around you aren't telling you. So there should be a healthy dose of self-awareness. And vulnerability about what isn't going well in order to make you feel like, okay, I know, I know this next level. I see this next level. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not.

And I think like you said before, if people feel like, okay, the skills needed at this next level are really outside my zone. I've been working on this flywheel. I've been developing my ability to listen. But I still have all these skills. That's when you really want to think about a coach who can walk beside you as you start to develop those things and also give you things that maybe you just didn't. have as doing this before. New level, new devils is kind of the cliche thing. Talk to the leader that's hitting a new level and what questions should they be going back

to their team with to find what are we not doing well? Like that's a generic one. But the idea is where I want to give them from this episode like a handful of questions that they can go to their team saying, hey, we just hit this new level. How do we improve? What are a handful of those questions for a leader that just hit a new level for their team? So there's four key questions that I think about in a feedback loop mechanism. The first one is, what is working well about my leadership right now?

The second one is, where in my leadership is there friction or pain points? The third one is, if I changed one behavior that could meaningfully improve your experience here or improve your job, what would that be? And then the fourth one is, what am I not seeing right now? And if you couch it in leadership specifically, it allows you to get the clarity of the response. It isn't complaining about everything. It isn't like, hey, Bob puts his lunch on the wrong shelf in the refrigerator. It's really focused on you and your leadership and how you're being perceived. And so if you have those questions and then you get that feedback and you are vulnerable and you share it back with your team,

again, being able to recap and say, hey, here's what I heard. This thing you told me here about the way I communicate in front of, you know, our stakeholders, I don't quite understand. Can you help me understand that? Being able to ask, you know, some follow-up questions. So you really get the gist of it. And then just making some commitments. What are a few key things that you can commit to taking action on?

And then have a moment in time where you're following back up and saying, how did this work? Did this work the way that I wanted it to? And again, this isn't completely different from someone who leads a five-person team or a five-thousand-person team. It is the same behavior, where if you cultivate that behavior, people get much more comfortable telling you how it is. They tell you what you're not seeing. They feel safe. They bring you ideas proactively instead of you having to pull teeth and get that feedback out. And I think it helps you to also know where are you too hard on yourself, where you're like, ah, I just did a horrible job on that town hall, or that board meeting didn't go well, well, you have a pulse check now. You can go back to your team and they'll tell

you, actually, you showed up pretty well. I thought you made some really great points. Here's one thing that maybe you could do differently next time. It is hard to give feedback to your leader, but when you make it safe like that and you invite it, people will tell you the things you need to hear at the next level. So, Justin, before we move on, I really want to ask you a question. Okay. When was the last time your team challenged you on your leadership? I feel like all the time because I just feel like I have two kind of executive females in my group that always kind of question me. I don't know if they're challenging me as much as they are questioning, but almost always they're right because I have a little.

little bit of the ability to understand, I guess, guys say things or do things in a very non-thoughtful way a lot of times that there's no, there's nothing behind it. They just didn't think it all the way through. So like a great example is yesterday. One of my leaders literally had to call me back three times about this one subject. And it was because I said something in the meeting that had no thought or there was no weight behind it. But because it was such like a guy thing to do, she needed clarity to say, hey, if you say this, then these are the things that are going to happen as you say these things. And you need to be aware of that. And I'm like, oh, thank you. Busted. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so, I mean, I think it happens more often than not if you want me.

Like, I couldn't tell you that it happens a good amount. And I actually, I'm one of those individuals that I can take it. I can. Because I know I don't know. at all. And I know sometimes I'm just kind of brute force and just say things or do things without full thought. So I think that's a super healthy signal for you because I think the worst situation is when people think things are going really great because they have compliance. And compliance is everyone is just doing what I say and they're showing up and doing it, but they're not pushing back. They're not challenging me. They're just overworking or trying to over deliver. And then I don't know of those problems. And so then all of a sudden the wheels fall off your business and you're like,

what's happening? Or people quit. Your A players quit, right? So the fact that you have a team environment where people can step up and challenge you, help you to get, you know, think things through, that is the healthy signals that we want to be seeing in leadership because then you know exactly what is going on with your team and you don't have to guess. Yeah, I love that. And it helps. Yeah. So if people don't have that mechanism and place, just ask yourself, when was the last time my team challenged me? Are that like yes men or yes woman? And I would just like you, I would tell you if they are, then you need to change them to say, hey, you need to look after us by making sure I'm not

overstepping my boundaries. I'm not, you know, whatever those things are, the example I gave you is I said something with no thought. And my leader was like, brother, you got a, how you said that is going to lead us way left. And I don't think that's what your intention was. And I'm like, oh, you're totally right about that. So calling the leader out, right? Like make it okay for them to call the leader out. I think that's really important. 100%.

And I will say I'm not immune to that. So I'm a very creative person. And I love coming up with new ideas and new products and things I want to do and how we want to do things. So I'm a creator and innovator. Like I like to make and I like to do. And I have an operations manager. That was my very first hire in my new business because I'm like,

man, if the wheels are going to fall off, It's probably because I am not following through on what is the systematic, the templated approach here for how we should do this next time. Like I'm thinking about the first time. I'm thinking about how do we measure the value? And my operations manager, who's amazing, is going, okay, great. Well, if we did that again, would that be, you know, repeatable? How can we build the system around that? How can I start building the system around that before you've even finished this thought?

And is that even going to work? And so she's thinking like 20 steps ahead. and then coming back to me and saying, actually, I don't know if that's a great idea. And here's why. And I really value that feedback. So I think either way, no matter who you are, if you're, like, highly disciplined with tons of systems or you are the creative person who is always coming up with something new, you need your counterpart and you need to understand, like, are those people telling me the feedback that is going to make me successful in this business? Or are they just, yes, like you said, yes, men and yes, women, in which case you're not set up for success. How often should a leader be asking for feedback?

Like to some extent you want to show confidence still, right? We just talked about how you don't want to be the, you know, look at me leader and let me show you my value, right? But you also want to exude some level like you can trust in me to lead us, right? So if you're always like, what should I do? What should I do? What should I do? What should I do? And I'm like, do you even know what you're doing? Right.

So what would be a good secure cadence to get. feedback from your people. Yeah, I hear you on that one. Like the just not wanting to show up and look like you have no clue what you're doing. And I think how you ask the questions makes a big difference too. Because if you do show up and just say, like, how am I doing? What should I change? It sounds a little insecure.

But I think if you have it as a, here is a leadership mechanism that I'm putting in place to make sure your voices are heard. to make sure I continue to evolve with this business as we grow and that there aren't blind spots that I'm unaware of. That is a confident leader speaking, right? And so I would say once a month, at least, check in. If you have, you know, cadences with your team where you are talking about things like this, just set a rhythm. Maybe one of those meetings a month, you bring back some results.

The same you would with, you know, P&L or other. reports, analytics, like you kind of have cadences in your business where you're typically looking at things on a monthly basis. And maybe this is just a part of that. It's just another mechanism for gathering feedback on many important parts of your business. And it starts to not become that big of a deal. Yeah, you want to have buy-in from your people. And asking questions is probably the most humble thing you can do. But probably more important is, listen to them. I would assume based around your experience in corporate world, probably one of the more frustrating things is when someone asks your question, leadership asks a question,

you give some feedback and no one's listening. That would be a deterrent to can you continue to push forward, right? I would believe. 100%. And I think... Good. Yeah, the leaders that did it as lip service where they would have those things, but then they would change nothing. Like a checkbox. Like, yeah, I asked them a question. I asked for feedback. I did it. It doesn't. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. The commitment, the follow-up, the transparency, and here are the things I heard, and here's what I'm going to try. And oh, by the way, your ideas are welcome if you think of other things that you think might work better to address this particular thing. Also, I'm engaging you as a team to help me be accountable on this. So,

I want you to participate in the solution. I think that's another thing that works very, very well. And so, yeah, if you treat it as lip service, if you say you want the feedback and then no behavior changes, it totally backfires and it is not going to have the impact that you want. So you have to really, truly be okay taking that and adapting your behavior. So again, that takes a lot of vulnerability to do. What about the individual who might be a solopreneur? Maybe they're just jumping out on their own.

How do you, what suggestions do you have for internal leadership? How do you lead yourself when you're a solopreneur? I think that is such a wonderful question. You know, how does that show up in your leadership? Are you leaning back on systems that work for you? Are you chaotic? Are you just showing up reacting to, everything. I think being able to truly look at yourself, like we have an audit on our website,

a leadership audit that it's free. Like people can go in and take it. So it's kind of a self-leadership audit where you go through some of these different categories and questions and you look at, you know, where am I actually excelling and where am I kind of letting my own mindset or my own fear or my own imposter syndrome kick in and it's holding me back? And so sometimes it takes a little bit of an external look at that to be able to understand where you actually sit right now. But then being able to focus on developing those skills that you know are going to lead to positive outcomes. Like, for example, you may not have a team, but you probably have customers and you probably have a lot of stakeholders or you have suppliers. And how are you in relationship

with them? What questions are you asking of them? Are you treating them like order takers? Or are you treating them as a strategic part of the solution. And so I think the same principles can apply, but you're looking at a broader set of stakeholders that maybe are not necessarily reporting to you. How you lead yourself when you feel like you're not the person you imagine yourself to be, right? So the imposter syndrome, I believe, to be a big challenge for a lot of people. What would be a takeaway that, you know, the growing leader who might have a team of two and is probably going to be going for a team of six before the year's over? what would be one or two pieces of advice that that person should be listening to right now on that trajectory, right, spiraling up, as you say?

What should they be focusing on to grow their team to be the leader that they should be? Yeah, I think there's two parts here. So to the point of self-leadership, I think becoming aware of where you are talking negatively to yourself, you know, that might be writing it down, noticing, hey, you know what, I really beat myself up when I didn't get that last deal. Hey, I'm overworking and I keep telling myself that eventually two years from now I can stop overworking because of X. Or, you know, like I don't deserve to have that team because I'd never had that experience before or whatever those mindset things are. Like, just capturing it and then getting curious about it and saying, I wonder why. I wonder why I think that.

I wonder why that is coming up for me right now. What might be leading to that belief or what might be leading to that particular thought? And the thing is for our thoughts, like we don't have to believe all of our thoughts. They're just thoughts. And oftentimes they're just set in our previous context and all the things we've been through.

And so the more we can become aware of our thoughts and how we're speaking to ourselves, then we can take that self-awareness and not spread that negativity to everyone else. And so that's where it's important. You've got to start with yourself and analyzing your own thoughts and beliefs. And, you know, if you need a partner to be able to do that, a coach is a good one to do that with. Because maybe it's hard to get to that answer yourself. But I think just starting with that awareness, because then when you start adding people to the team,

if you believe that you're not capable to lead or if you believe you're not capable to sell, or if you believe that, you know, your ideas aren't amounting to anything, well, then that belief is going to transition to your team. And so you want to show up well for your team. That self-leadership is critical as the starting point. So I think, again, the more aware you are of your own thoughts and beliefs, what is serving you, what is not serving you, what do you need to put down or completely change in order to become the leader that you need to be? and then being able to take that belief and share that as you start to build your team. Christina Corona, you said something right now that I think everyone needs.

What do you need to put down? And I think people need to think about that. What is limiting you? Relationships, thoughts, habits, behaviors, you know, vices, whatever it may be. I think, Christiana, what you just said was so. good for any and all leaders. I don't care if you're leading your team of 200 or 2,000 or 2. If you can't lead yourself in doing it from a place of understanding, a place of empathy, understanding who you are and what helps you perform at a higher level, it's very hard to lead others.

Right? I mean, it's just a very big challenge. If you can't lead yourself, how is it going to be easy to lead other people? because you fall into the same traps thought processes woe is me i'm not good enough i'm not worthy the vices your health whatever the things are that you like you can't even lead yourself in these things very challenging to lead others yeah so i hope people can hear that now what would be i like this because i think there's so many great books i've read a lot of great books what would be a couple great books that you would suggest for people to maybe even just get started on. And there's so many. What would be one or two that are top of mind for you? Yeah, it's hard to narrow it down because there are so many great ones. But I always love Brune. I love Adam Grant. Anything by Bray and Adam Grant. I mean,

they just, they cut through the noise and they remind you of your humanity. And they remind you that we're all struggling through this. We're all learning. We need to give ourselves grace. We need to not think too highly of ourselves because, you know, inevitably we are going to stumble and fall and we're going to need that grace at some point. So daring greatly or, you know, anything that is sort of that traditional EQ. But actually, one of my favorite books is not specifically on EQ, but I love 10x is easier than 2X, which I'm sure your audience is probably a big fan of. Because to the point of, what do you need to put down? Like, you might be doing good work. Your team might be doing good work. But if you cannot put something down in order to serve you at what is great, then you're never

going to grow your business and you're never going to get to that next level. And so, you know, who not how, like all of those books by Dan Sullivan and Benjamin Hardy are so great at picking apart. What is that particular pain point that you're running into from a self-leadership or from a people leadership standpoint and helping to start adjusting gap in the gain. That's another really, really good one. So I'm sure you're familiar with those, but those are actually the things that I keep coming back to over and over again. And I know it's not like brand new books in the stratosphere they've been around, but they really are core to a lot of what we do. Sometimes you just need to be reminded. I mean, sometimes it isn't innovating. It's just getting a

reminder of what's important, a reminder of the gap in the game, a reminder of 10x. Like, Jesus are just brilliant books. They've been around for a long time. But so is thinking grow rich. I'll reread that because sometimes I just need the reminder. Yeah. You know? So we have so many inputs and so much noise in our life that it's so easy to forget some of those core fundamentals.

And we're always like, what's the new thing? What's the new thing? But there's so much truth in just coming back to how are you treating people? How are you listening to people? And honestly, we just keep seeing new research studies that confirm over and over and over again the importance of those skills, especially the way the world is right now when things are chaotic. That determines the difference between someone just hanging on for dear life in their business or actually thriving and growing. So they are far more important than you would think. This is Christiana Corona.

I really appreciate you. I think anyone, everyone again, where can they go find you on LinkedIn and social media is in your website? Yep. And worthy tolead.co is my... Worthytolead.com. Make sure you find her on LinkedIn and social medias. You are going to be one of those changers, right? Industry changers, world changers, because you're leading with the place of humanity. And I believe with everything is going on in tech and all the AI, humanity is, you know, becoming less and less, I don't want to say important. It's actually more important, but like less viewed on as important.

I mean, it's just not true. It's actually more and more important with all that. So I appreciate you coming on. That's right. Yeah, thanks. So glad to be here. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. Right on.

Well, as always, this is brought to you by the community. School.com for slash entrepreneur DNA. And if you actually want to learn from Christiana, exactly, genuinely learn. ask her questions, please get into the community. It's $25 a month. It's completely affordable. She will be in there and so will the rest of our guests. We will see you in there and thank you for coming on. If this was impactful, share this with two of your friends. I'm Justin Colby and this is The Entrepreneur DNA.