Mick Spiers: Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project with your host, Mick Spiers. We bring you thought-provoking guests and topics every week to challenge your thinking about leadership. Our aim is to help you become the leader that you wish you always had as we learn together and lead together.

Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project. I’m honored today to be joined by Barbara Turley. Barbara is the CEO and founder of The Virtual Hub. And we’re going to discuss today an interesting topic about how we can leverage the time and energy of our very best people.

So we’re going to be talking a lot about delegation, we’re going to talk about time management, and we’re going to be talking about leadership of our teams so that we get maximum productivity and impact out of those superstars that we know that we have amongst us.

So I’m really excited about today’s conversation. I want to get straight into it right now. So Barbara, without any further ado, I’d love to hear from you. Give us a little flavor of your leadership background and what led you to be interested in this whole element around productivity and time and energy management.

Barbara Turley: You know, I would love to tell you that I had a background leading enormous corporate teams and that I had HR experience and all these things that you would think would have led me on a path to the company that I run today, The Virtual Hub, which is very much a people-filled organization. But no, I did not.

I had a very individual contributor role, I guess, in my early career. I worked in the financial industry and I was actually an equity trader. So although that’s quite an individual role, I wasn’t managing people.

In my next role after that, I was in asset management sales. And again, I was part of a team, but I was not leading that team. However, what I’ve noticed over the years—I mean, I’ve ended up leading people now and accidentally discovering that I was actually quite good at it.

And I think some of the reasons for that are, well, first of all, I didn’t come in with any preconceived notions of what that should be. I guess sometimes that can be really a benefit to someone starting out something new.

But I just discovered along the way that leadership of self, I think, is one of the things that if you have great leadership of self, you can start to lead teams more effectively. I think that’s number one when it comes to people leadership and the mentoring of where people want to go and things like that.

And seeing leadership as a mentor sort of role, I’ve always had a very strong sense of self-leadership. And that’s something I only learned about myself in later life. As we get older, we reflect on our younger years.

And I always was able to know exactly where I wanted to go and how to get there. And I’m that sort of person.

But in addition, the other thing I discovered—and I guess this may have come from my early career—I’m very good at systems and processes, and I’m very good at finding the fastest route to anything in particular.

And I wonder whether my days on a trading floor may have led to that, because you have to be highly efficient and you have to find the fastest route to the result that you’re trying to get.

And I think those two things together have really served me well in this company that I’m now running, where I’m leading a team of 300 people. We are a digital-first, remote-first company.

I live in between Europe and Australia. The team are in the Philippines. So there’s a lot of leadership involved in that too. And those things have stood me well, I guess, over the test of time.

Mick Spiers: I’m hearing a couple of interesting things there, Barbara, but I don’t want to misunderstand it. So I’m going to throw it back to you and I want you to reflect on whether I’m picking up the right thing here.

So the two elements I’m hearing in your discovery of leadership are the leadership of self, and I’m extrapolating that in my mind to you thinking about how you like to be led and what leadership looks like for you. So being able to, let’s say, lead yourself and inspire yourself.

You then extrapolate that to how you might lead others. And then the second thing—and I know that we’re going to cover this in this discussion today for sure—is this idea of systems or platforms and processes.

I’m seeing someone in front of me that must look at problems and go, there’s got to be a smarter way of doing that. So I’m hearing very kind of self-leadership, but then an outward-going approach of how do I apply that to others? And then when you’re looking at problems, there must be a smarter way. How does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, that sounds about right, actually. Yeah, we can delve right into so many areas there.

I think the self-leadership is very interesting because to be a great leader—and I’m sure you’ve had this conversation with other guests on the show—you have to first have the ability to be able to look in the mirror at yourself and to see your own areas for improvement, let’s call it, or areas that might not be serving you well.

And then to have the ability to say, what am I now going to do so that I get where I want to go?

And I think that’s a really crucial trait to have and to develop in children, for example. And I’m sure parts of my own childhood did develop that trait in me so that then you become the leader that can actually help others to do the same thing. I think that’s really key.

Mick Spiers: So I’m hearing two things there as well. I’m hearing self-awareness, but then I’m also hearing an element of self-motivation or self-drive.

So the self-awareness was the looking in the mirror, but then I’m picking up in your language around, okay, what do I need to do? So I’m hearing an action-oriented focus on thinking about where I want to go and what steps get me there.

And I have to say it to you, Barbara, that I hear a lot of people talk about being lost in their leadership or being lost in business, etc., and action orientation is often missing.

So tell me more about your views about that. How do you look at a problem and then go, these are the steps I need to get to where I need to be? I want to unpack that a little further.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, so again, I think as I’ve matured in my life, I’ve discovered what it is that I’m doing there. I think, is it innate in my personality? Maybe. Maybe some part of my childhood developed it, I’m not sure.

But I have—and actually one of our core values has been developed from this at The Virtual Hub—one of our core values is: Stay curious. And another one is: We find solutions until solutions find us.

And I think it probably comes from what I’ve been doing in my own life and with my leadership and how this has developed.

Really, when you feel lost, you have to take a step back and do a kind of root cause analysis. You’ve got to stay curious about digging and digging and digging and asking why, why, why, why, why, and why not? Why not? Why not? Why can’t we achieve something until such time as we get to the root of what the problem is?

And often you find the root of problems is actually not a system or a platform or a tool. In business, for example, it can be things like fear, anxiety, overwhelm, self-worth—particularly when you’re leading people.

And when you get to the root of it, you can change all the other things, but unless you actually find the root and stay curious to dig until you find it, you can’t create an action plan that is going to create success. I hope that makes sense.

Mick Spiers: It does, Barbara. I want to play back parts of it to you.

So I think it’s really interesting. The first thing that jumped into my head is the famous adage that sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. So if you’re deep inside the problem, you don’t necessarily have the situational awareness of what’s happening around you.

So your statement of stepping back and looking at the problem again was really interesting.

And then I was picking up two things. One, I absolutely love—you said about the why, but you also said about the why not.

And a lot of companies or teams have a clear vision of where they want to get to, and they think about why that is important, but don’t necessarily always think about why they might not get there.

So challenging the why not is really interesting to me. So tell me more about this why not.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, this actually was born quite recently, a few years ago. I guess my own frustration with company growth and lack of growth.

People will tell you, well, we can only achieve this. A classic situation that happened to us—and this is a major problem in the VA industry, or in any people industries really—is attrition, turnover of people.

A few years ago, we had a high rate of churn with our people. It didn’t matter—we were paying great salaries, we were doing all the right things.

And the answer I got when I was digging, the team were like, well, we’re actually below industry average. And I said, but industry average is 40%, and we’re at 35%, and we’re saying that we want to be a world-class leader in the people industry.

So now we have a vision that doesn’t align with the numbers and the metrics. And I started saying to the team, why not? Why can’t we have a world-class retention rate? Why do we have to be just below average and be happy with that?

So we kept digging and digging with the team. And it took two years to rebuild it. At the moment, we’re at 12%.

And I’ve often brought that up with the team and said that was the entire commitment—to saying why and why not. Why can’t we be better? And forcing a team to expand their minds and not be afraid to think larger than what they ever did before.

And actually, it wasn’t even me who came up with the ideas. It was actually the team. And I felt like by pushing them, I actually empowered them to go, yeah, why not? And to come up with creative solutions.

And they did, and it worked. And then they felt so proud of themselves.

Mick Spiers: I almost feel like that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy right there, Barbara. Like when I listen to your talk, so once again I love the why and the why not.

And there’s a challenge for everyone listening to the show right now. When you are doing root cause analysis, yes, of course you need to ask why. Why is that happening?

But then listen to what Barbara is saying: why not? When someone says to you why you can’t do something, well, why can’t we do that? Why not? Why can’t we do that?

And I think that’s a key one. And one of the questions I often ask, Barbara, is what would need to be true for that to happen? So that’s also a way of asking, well, why not? And how can we, rather than why we can’t?

Why I think it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy is you then turn that into a tool for engaging and empowering your team. And what’s the secret to breaking the great resignation? It’s engaging and empowering your team.

Barbara Turley: Ask your people. Yeah, ask your people. Invite them to be part of the vision. Yeah.

And we have 300 people. So in the end, actually, we did ask all the people. That was the solution. We said, why don’t we just ask?

We thought, well, why are we allowing ourselves to come up with the answer? Why don’t we ask the actual people?

I even said we should go out to all the people that resigned and ask them anonymously what did we do wrong. And, you know, we did do a step of that. So it was interesting, very insightful. Yeah.

Mick Spiers: There’s another tip right there. There’s a number of leadership tips coming out already, Barbara. How do I know what my people in my team want? You ask them.

Barbara Turley: Ask them. Ask them.

Mick Spiers: I’ve seen this in some of the stuff that you write. Sometimes we overcomplicate these things. If you want to know what someone thinks, you ask them, right?

So this is really powerful.

There was something else I picked up, Barbara, I want to throw it at you as well. There’s also an element of—I see teams often forget what problem they were trying to solve in the first place.

So when I heard you saying the team go, but we’re better than industry average, and you saying, yeah, but the industry—and sorry to be a bit crass here for a second—but the industry average sucks. So why would we want to be just better than average?

So it’s often important to also step back and remember what the original challenge or question was. How does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: Yes. So with that one, that’s very interesting because in my previous career, I’m trying to figure out where all this stuff came from for me.

And I think a lot of time our leadership ability actually comes from a whole multitude of areas, not actually, you know, a leadership course as such. I think you learn this from life experience and from various scenarios and bring it back in.

And I remember in my previous career, one of my previous bosses or, you know, person I reported to—amazing guy—he said to me once, don’t worry about the competitors. He goes, just listen to the client.

I mean, you do have to keep an eye on competitors, of course, but actually sometimes the blue ocean as such exists when you listen to the customer, listen to the client, right?

And listen to what frustrations they have with your industry, with what you do, with your product. And you’ll invariably find that you will enter blue ocean by solving those problems.

This is what I did. I actually didn’t know any of the competitors. I didn’t even care. I wasn’t even in this industry of VAs. I had never actually been to the Philippines. This was the truth when I first launched this company.

And I guess me saying, well, why can’t I do it? I mean, what’s so difficult about it, you know, led me on the journey.

But listening to the frustrations of employees, listening to the frustrations of customers—ask them—and then go to work to solve those problems. That will invariably lead you and your company into pole position.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, I love this. So I have a saying about giving your customers a good damn listening to, and in your case it’s a curious listening to.

So you’re really getting curious about what are the problems that no one has solved yet, right? So then that’s where your blue ocean is coming from. You’re going into the waters and going, okay, what is the problem that everyone is talking about, but no one has solved yet?

Barbara Turley: Or the problem that everyone is saying, well, that is a problem, but that’s kind of not solvable.

Mick Spiers: Ah, good one.

Barbara Turley: There’s your why not. Well, why would we accept that? Because everyone’s doing it.

So that’s what you do with it, because you will get feedback. And this happened to us. In the early days, you will get feedback from employees, clients, you know, everyone.

You will get stuff that will just make you irk with annoyance going, well, you know, that wasn’t our fault or this happened.

But you have to be sort of unemotional and say, once you let it sink in, go: “Do they have a point?”

Because from their perspective, they do have a point. They always do, even if you don’t agree with it.

If it’s a customer, well, you’ve got to think about that and go like, well, maybe how could we stop that from ever happening again?

Mick Spiers: Yeah, that’s really cool. And then helping with that curiosity process of going, well, why are you just accepting that as what it is? Why can’t we solve that?

So I love this why and why not that has come back into our conversation again there, Barbara.

And I want to then extrapolate a little bit further. When I listened to your talk, I can hear in your voice talking about the world of VAs and thinking about problems that people were having, but they were just accepting it.

I’m also—I’ve got this vision in my head of being able to articulate the problem better than anyone else also leads you towards the solution.

First of all, it convinces people that if you can articulate the problem better than they can, they assume that you might have an answer.

And then secondly, the more that you keep on peeling the onion and getting curious about it, the solution’s going to emerge there somewhere.

And I think you said something interesting before—was it “we look for solutions until the solutions find us” or something like that. Tell us more about this solution situation you find yourself in.

Barbara Turley: Well, this was born out of running a VA company where people who are looking for VAs—well, it depends on the size of the company—but a lot of people when they’re looking for virtual assistants (VAs), for those that maybe don’t know what that is, you’re looking for an assistant to help you solve problems.

Some of them an assistant can’t solve, but some of them are simple and you could probably solve them yourself, but you don’t have time to do that. And you want someone else to go and research it.

VAs, depending on how experienced they are…

What we noticed was some VAs would become overwhelmed with this because it sort of wears the line between strategy and just doing and process-following.

So we started running training programs around being solution-minded and saying that staying curious about the fact that you can actually find a solution.

These days online, you can find a solution to any problem. You just got to learn how to dig, and you got to learn what objective you’re trying to achieve for a client, and do your best to come up with a solution.

Even if it’s not the best solution yet, a solution is better than nothing, and better than going, “I just don’t know what to do.”

We’ve got to do something, and then maybe a better solution comes along later.

So that was where this core value came from: “We find solutions until solutions find us.”

Because you’ve got to keep moving forward. I think what people do—and this happens in business, this happens in life—is people get stuck sitting on the fence and not getting in and playing the game.

And that was something I learned as a trader.

You know, I remember in my first year as a trader, the head of trading saying to me—I was just a frozen rabbit in the headlights one day, I didn’t know what to do—and he said, it doesn’t matter what you do, whether you buy or sell, but you have to do something so that then you’re in the game.

And then once you’re in the game, you make the next decision and the next decision, and it leads you down a decision path.

Maybe it’s the wrong decision path, but otherwise you just get stuck—frozen rabbit in the headlights.

So that’s the essence of where this “solutions find us” mindset comes from. You’ve got to take action, because otherwise you’re not really playing. You’re just sitting on the sidelines.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, so I’m hearing some really interesting things there, Barbara. Once again, this action orientation.

And I think about what you said before, really early on, about you deciding the actions that you needed to take to get to where you wanted to be. But it was about acting.

It wasn’t about freezing and not knowing what to do.

And when I hear about your use of VAs and this kind of solution-mindedness, the words that come to mind are curiosity that you used and resourcefulness.

That a good VA is not only curious, but they go away and they find the answer. They find the answer and they start taking action.

And the third part I was hearing then is you said that you might not have time yourself to solve that. So it’s about giving it to someone that does have the time, that does have the solution-mindedness to be curious and resourceful to come back to you with a solution.

How does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: Yes. And I think just on the leadership thought train that we’re on here, when dealing with a VA or dealing with anyone who is reporting to you—and it could be someone quite high up, but if they’re reporting to you, just in terms of leadership—

I think sometimes when we’re delegating, and it doesn’t matter if we’re delegating to someone at a manager level or higher up than that, we always think this is kind of lower-end stuff. It applies across the chain.

When we’re asking somebody to do something for us, it’s okay to expand out. Start with what the objective is of what you’re trying to achieve.

Then share some ideas that you have around how this might look so that you don’t have misalignment of expectations or solutions.

And then empower that person by literally saying, go away and see what you can find for me in this, this, and this category, or try to give some parameters.

And what you want to have is flexibility within a structure.

So give somebody some form of structure around a task or a delegation. Tell them vaguely what you think success might look like, and maybe a good idea of what failure might look like too, because that’s handy for the person.

You’re giving people parameters around what you want.

And then you can also go as far as to say—particularly when it’s somebody on an assistant level who might feel embarrassed or lesser than you in any way—it’s good to say, look, if you get stuck, just come up with something.

Empower them that something is better than nothing, and we can chat about it.

You want to create psychological safety, I think is what they call it in leadership circles, such that they can come back with something that maybe isn’t the right answer, but it’s getting us on the path.

We don’t have to be perfect straight away. Depends what the task is.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, I’m liking this kind of model of delegation that you’re talking about. So giving a base or broad brushstrokes of the problem that’s trying to be solved. So setting some expectation of what the problem is.

Doing a bit of ideation together so the person’s not just completely not knowing where to start. So doing some base ideation, setting some parameters about what good would look like, about what you don’t want as well.

Because if there’s something that you clearly have in mind that you don’t want, isn’t it better to have that out in the open?

Then that word empowerment coming through to go, okay, off you go. Use your resourcefulness and come back to me with some ideas.

But you also open up the door that if they’re stuck, they can stick up their hand and ask for help.

Barbara Turley: Or they can be wrong—open the door that they could come back and be completely wrong. And maybe that’s a collaboration that you have to do then.

And I also want to talk about this resourcefulness thing because I do find that we see this with clients. We see clients saying, well, I just wanted them to use their initiative.

I’m like, using your initiative is different from reading your mind. So we’ve got to be very clear that you’ve got to take someone a bit of the way on the journey of what you want.

And then resourcefulness can kick in successfully. But if you don’t take someone 10% of the way there with what you want to achieve or what you’re trying to do, it’s very difficult for someone to read your mind.

And sometimes people expect that. They’re like, but isn’t it obvious? I’m like, well, not really, no. Not really.

Mick Spiers: I think we’ve got an interesting balancing act that’s going on here, Barbara. I’d like to unpack it a little bit more. I think there’s something in this for the audience, right?

So we talked about delegation, we talk about the importance of it, and some people find it difficult. Maybe we’ll come back to that point in a moment.

But we talk about delegation and the importance, and then we talk about empowerment, right? We’re using all positive words right now, but for some, delegation plus empowerment looks like abdication.

Does this go: “All right, Barbara, I need you to solve world hunger and come and let me know when you’re finished.” That’s abdication.

Barbara Turley: Yeah, my objective is to solve world hunger. You come up with the ideas, the execution plan, and do it. Yeah.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, come back and let me know when you’re finished. So that’s not delegation—that’s abdication.

Whereas what you’re talking about is a dialogue. It’s a dialogue. It’s a conversation. It’s not just a “here it is, off you go.” It’s a dialogue and a conversation.

Now, how does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: You know, look, I mean, I’m in the business of assistance, which is support. Generally speaking, an assistant is a supporting role.

And delegation, when you’re talking about an assistant, you would think—sometimes people think, I don’t want to micromanage, I don’t want to tell them what I need them to do.

But I have hired people in very high-up roles in Western countries as well, and you still have to sit with somebody and unpack your brain of what it is that your vision is, what you want to achieve.

Some ideation—that’s what you said. I have somebody who’s in a very high-up business development role, and she demands time, needs time with me weekly so that we can ideate together and make sure that we stay on the same page.

And then she goes off and does it, and that’s fine. But she does need—there needs to be collaboration, and that’s what running a business is.

And when it comes to the assistant level, I think sometimes people’s expectations of what an assistant can ideate and solution-find on their own just goes way too far.

The purpose of an assistant or a VA, for example, is for you to figure out what are all the things that I shouldn’t be doing? Have we got a process for that? Could I systemize that? Could I create a framework around that and then maybe delegate that to someone like an assistant?

But you’re forgetting that that person doesn’t have the IP that you have. And it doesn’t mean they can’t do it, but maybe they can do 80% of it and free up so much of your time.

It doesn’t matter that they can’t do 100% of it. So it’s just being realistic about working with people in general.

You know, people often say, “I just want to hire an A-player and let them at it.” But really, even an A-player needs time with you to figure out what your vision is, what you’re trying to achieve, and the ideation process, which you mentioned.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, I’m loving this, Barbara. I’m hearing two things.

The first one is adaptive leadership. The adaptive leadership is the element that, yeah, you are going to delegate differently to someone that’s three weeks out of college compared to someone that’s 20 years in the industry—that’s clear.

But then I also heard, and I think it’s important for everyone to hear this, that even that 20-year industry veteran is going to perform better with that ideation session.

Because ideation breeds co-creation. And then through co-creation, you can create something that’s greater than the sum of the parts, because you’re bringing something to the table, and so are they.

And if you’re having a curious conversation where you’re building on each other, you’re going to half-solve the problem in the first meeting.

And then from that platform, the person can go off and create something wonderful.

So even the 20-year or 30-year veteran in their industry will still benefit from that ideation before they run off and solve the problem.

How does that sit with you, Barbara?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, and I want to add to that because I completely agree.

And here’s a really interesting point—and something we’re working with clients on, actually some of our larger clients—we’re working on their operational frameworks right now.

And something I talk about a lot is the operational framework that you build a company on. And this works for delegating to VAs or having higher-end people or whatever you really want to have.

So you can ideate together—that’s amazing. But where things start to get misaligned, and where A-players—this is what they don’t like—is when they enter a company that has chaotic ways of updating.

So too many meetings, no dashboards and metrics-driven systems, no streamlined way for us to update each other without having to have a meeting all the time about everything.

How are we all staying on the same page? How do we all know, no matter what department we’re in, that we’re all rowing the boat—which is the company—at the right speed in the one direction towards the one mission and vision?

And that company framework and how we do things is really important in that environment.

So it’s really important that we have the right operational framework such that every person in the company—including the assistant, the CEO, the COO, the A-players, whoever it is on the team, the salespeople—that everybody knows we are rowing the boat at the right speed in the right direction collaboratively, without all of us having to be in the same office, in the same meeting, in the same update.

And that’s something I’m very passionate about. And A-players perform much better when you have that kind of structure as well, because everyone knows how to plug into the game—to use the game analogy again—and how to play the game that is this company.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, this is really interesting. I want to unpack it a little bit more, Barbara.

So this is the kind of platforms and processes thought. And absolutely with you on the alignment—you can dominate any industry if you have everyone in the boat rowing in the same direction at the same speed, like you’re hinting towards there.

What I’m curious about is that for some, the way they’ve always done that up until now—up until the digitalization era—has been through those meetings. In fact, there would be people who would be very offended that they weren’t invited into that update or meeting.

But now we’re in a more digital age. But for some people, that transition is very difficult, Barbara. How can you help someone out there who has grown up in industry using meetings and updates to be more digital and use platforms for asynchronous updates?

Barbara Turley: Great question.

So first of all, you do not announce that now our company is not using email for internal communication anymore, and we’re going to reduce meetings dramatically, and we’re all going to be told to use an online platform.

Because that is going to terrify people who are not ready yet.

And with change management—and that includes changing platforms and processes—you have to consider the leadership involved in the change management of the people.

And you have to accept that some people will be emotionally destabilized by these changes.

The best way to do it is to first create a vision, then create a roadmap, then show where we’re trying to get to and why and how this might look.

And then you absolutely need a transition phase.

So when you’re asking somebody to move from all being in an office, for example—we all got thrown into it in COVID, where we all suddenly had to work from home.

And people very quickly started to use Zoom and figured it out, right? Because that was a shock event.

But I wouldn’t advise doing a shock attack with a company on its own.

It’s about creating the vision for why we’re doing this, why it’s good for them, and then allowing a transition phase so they can try it out.

And never say, “By October we’re going to be off this thing.” You can say that eventually, but you first have to let them try the tools.

They will resist. They will say, “I don’t like it that way. It doesn’t work for me.”

But at the end of the day, I could unpack this in a much longer podcast, but there is a way of using objectives and key results (OKRs), cascading down from the vision through the organization so that everybody knows what they’re working on and how it impacts the results we’re trying to achieve as a company.

And then tying that process piece to platforms—how do you wrap all of that into a platform?

For example, I’ll just mention Asana. Big shoutout to Asana. Amazing company doing amazing things.

There are other platforms doing similar things, but Asana has created a cross-functional collaborative platform where you can build a digital workspace, run OKRs, and connect strategy at the top right down to execution at the bottom—even a VA—and bring everyone into a shared digital space.

Reducing email, not eliminating all meetings—because meetings are still important—but making meetings about discussing roadblocks and solutions, not presenting updates.

Updates should be handled through dashboards and asynchronous status systems.

And that’s a very quick overview of what’s possible.

But the change management of people is possibly the hardest part, and that requires leadership from the top of the company—not something you can delegate away.

It has to be led by the CEO and executive team.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, really interesting. I’m hearing the platform and process helping to drive alignment, and I’m going to say alignment in both directions.

And then status flowing back up, and new ideas bubbling up as well. So getting alignment through the business using platforms and processes.

And I’m going to extrapolate and say in a way that expedites alignment and removes some human error to a degree—because if you’re having a series of cascading meetings, it’s like Chinese whispers.

By the time it gets to the root level, the essence of the message has been reinterpreted multiple times.

So with platforms and processes, you’re going to get alignment in a faster and more accurate way.

But I love that you never lost the people element.

Barbara Turley: People are everything. And all of this is actually designed—if I could say—what are we really trying to do?

At The Virtual Hub, we’re a VA company at our core. We support staff in the Philippines for companies all over the world.

That is really what we are. We also do implementation and consulting on platforms and process for clients that want the full three Ps of operational efficiency.

But what are we really trying to achieve? It is actually about people.

Because what you find is people in companies all over the world are drowning in work, confusion, chaos, mistakes, firefighting, burnout, and declining passion.

Why? Because key people are doing work that is important but not significant enough for their pay grade, but not enough to hire a local assistant. They’re not delegating effectively.

They’re not using platforms, process, async communication, and all the tools available in the digital world.

And the purpose of all of this is to free your key people so they can focus on work that moves the needle.

Because that is the purpose of any company—we’re not here for busy work. We’re here to grow.

But we need to be strategic about how we use our most expensive resource: people’s time and energy.

And platforms, processes, offshore teams, and delegation are designed to make sure we’re using that resource efficiently.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, I’m loving this, Barbara. So the interesting thing here is that platforms and processes are being used to enhance people, not replace people.

So that’s one of the fears around digitalization—that people become irrelevant.

But what you’re saying is platforms and processes create alignment and multiplication of impact.

They free up people’s time so they can do what they do best.

So you have your best strategic thinker in thinking mode most of the time, your best doer in doing mode, and your best planner in planning mode.

So I’m hearing platforms and processes, but also maximizing the capacity of people in organizations.

How does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, because people are out there calling for more people. There’s a gap right now and hiring is difficult.

And my argument is there is a strategy here whereby you can multiply the time and resources of the people you already have by sitting back for a second and looking at platform, process, people—what everyone is doing, how we’re doing it, and the structure of the whole thing.

And yes, there’s change management involved. It’s not something you do overnight. I suggest six to 12 months, and you can absolutely change the game.

And it’s not about cheap labor in the Philippines. It’s about growing small to medium businesses all over the world, because that is the backbone of our society.

That’s where growth comes from.

We need productivity. We need growth. We need companies to thrive. We need to be more strategic and not afraid of offshore teams, or creating careers in the Philippines—that’s great.

Use platforms, use process, and embrace AI. It’s here—get over it.

Mick Spiers: There are a lot of companies out there right now saying they can’t find enough people or the right people.

But are they getting the most out of the people they already have? Or are those people bogged down in tasks that aren’t the best use of their time?

So how do we become a force multiplier?

Barbara Turley: And getting back to our why. Why do we need more people? What if we didn’t need more people? What if we actually went back a step and said, you know, root cause analysis is like: is it because we’re not being as efficient as we possibly could with the time that we already have?

And can we multiply the time that we already have using platforms and processes and digital tools? You know, that’s the whole point of this. It’s just staying curious about: are we answering the right question?

Mick Spiers: Yeah, I love it. And that’s a beautiful full circle moment back to what we were talking about earlier. I want to ask another question now that might be interesting for a lot of people that are either working in multinational companies across multiple time zones, or they could be interested in dipping their toe in the water of having a virtual assistant somewhere like the Philippines.

But they might—65% of this audience are in the US as an example, Barbara—so there might be people listening to this podcast from the US going, “Yeah, I’ve always wanted to try this, but the time zone difference is too difficult.”

How do we master the use of platforms and processes when it comes down to very large time zone differences?

Barbara Turley: Okay, so a few things. First of all, we operate 24/5, which means we’re five days a week, 24 hours a day.

I was adverse to that from a people perspective in the early days when I launched The Virtual Hub. I didn’t like it. I thought, I can’t possibly have people working at night. I just don’t like it.

Then I went to the Philippines and I discovered that the nighttime is alive over there. And there are people that prefer to work the night shift. Don’t ask me why, but they do. I think it’s because they’ve always done it.

I’ve had this conversation with many of them. The Philippines has worked with the US for a long time, and they’re sort of used to this. And there’s a pretty vibrant nighttime economy going on over there.

So that was what got me over that.

And we now do US time zone shifts. However, if you don’t want to do that, you need to use the tools very effectively and you have to have crossover time.

So now I’m going to come full circle and say you must have meetings. So while we want our meetings to be very focused, you have to have at least a couple of hours, I feel, of crossover time for real-time collaboration.

If you are not going to do that and you want to work completely asynchronously with your team, then you need to be very good at writing bullet points. You need to be very clear and very precise. You need to be very good at using Loom to record videos back and forth.

And both of you need to learn how to collaborate fast in an asynchronous scenario. It’s doable. It’s not easy to get it right. I’ve done it, but you need to be a very good delegator.

And I wouldn’t start there. That’s what I want to say. I wouldn’t start there. I would try to get some crossover time, and then you can evolve together into a completely asynchronous relationship.

Mick Spiers: So I’m hearing two possible paths there. The first one—I’m going to go from the negative to the positive.

So to me it’s about clarity of communication, clarity of expectation, and I do like your crossover time—the bit where it overlaps.

And just think about this: if I get this wrong, if I’m not clear in my communication, when I wake up tomorrow morning, I’m going to wake up frustrated that the person who took on the task went in a completely different direction.

And I feel like we lost 24 hours because now we’ve got to start the clock all over again and reset.

Whereas if I take the time to be very precise and clear in my communication, I’m going to wake up tomorrow morning to the task having progressed eight hours, and I’m going to pick it up where it left off.

So I’m going to say it’s like an investment, Barbara. If you invest the time in that overlap, the crossover time you spoke about, and you invest in clear communication during that, you’re going to have a force multiplier where you wake up and while you’re asleep, work was getting done—productive work that mattered.

If you don’t get it right, non-productive, frustrating work is going to get done. How does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: Yeah, I mean, I do it. I’ve got lots of team members that I never really get on a call with, but we have a fun relationship through Loom and through Asana where we communicate.

But yes, getting it right—I think you have to develop your delegation muscle quite strongly. You have to be very clear on the objectives, the key results we’re looking for, and what needs to be done.

Like we said earlier: more information rather than less, and don’t leave things open to assumptions. That helps.

You know, I think one of the reasons we do work through the night is because most of our US clients have VAs working the full business day with them.

Because I do firmly believe the majority of people in this world are not yet good at delegation. So many people are bad at delegation as it is that I just think this async thing needs a lot of work. We’re not quite there yet as a world.

And I think those people listening who are successful at it won’t believe me, but trust me, 95% of people are really bad at it—and it’s going to fail. Just be careful with it.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, it’s interesting what you said. Because if I wasn’t good at delegation in a real office—as in a bricks-and-mortar office, working in the same space as someone—what makes me think I’m going to be good at delegation to someone in another country working asynchronously?

That’s a good one to think about. It doesn’t mean you can’t, but it’s going to take work.

Barbara Turley: Yes, you’ve just got to really be good at it.

And you know, I think one of the things I realized—I’ve delegated to loads of VAs over the years, I’ve been doing this for 10 years.

A few times VAs have come back with something that just wasn’t what I wanted, and I literally have done a facepalm going, “I see what I wrote. I see how that happened.”

Never have I come back and gone, “How did you miss that?” Maybe once or twice.

And I think I see clients coming back with that all the time. And I think, well, why do I never come back with that?

And maybe it’s that self-reflection thing where I can look in the mirror and go, yeah, that was a bit vague actually. I can see how they read it that way.

Maybe a comma was missing. And I go, yeah, okay, fine.

And just to your point about the investment, I do describe this as a dividend.

So the investment you make today in time and energy in learning how to delegate effectively, getting a team working and delegating properly—it takes time today, and a lot of people will say, “I don’t have time for this.”

And I go, yeah, but if you invest the time today, this is going to pay dividends into perpetuity for you.

And I’m a living, breathing example of that.

I’ve had two children in the time that I’ve built this company. I’m very passionate about how women work in particular, how mothers work.

I was able to do this without driving myself into the ground. I built a scalable company and had two children at the same time.

And it’s not because I’m superwoman. It’s because I’m very good at systems, processes, and delegation—and maybe leadership of people.

And I’ve had to learn the hard way over the years to get those things right. It hasn’t always been easy.

But the commitment to getting those things right has actually freed me—as an entrepreneur, CEO, person, and mom—to do both things.

Mick Spiers: Yeah. And I should say congratulations on your success. We completely glossed over that during the intro, but you have been very successful in this and the way you’ve systemized it.

And I love this word investment and dividend. And to challenge the idea of “I can’t afford the time to do this,” I’m going to say you can’t afford not to.

If you really want to make an impact on the world and maximize or multiply your own personal impact, these are the skills you need to learn.

You’re only given 24 hours a day. You’re only human. But if you’re able to master delegation—whether synchronous or asynchronous—you can start multiplying your impact on the world.

Barbara Turley: Or, you know, sometimes you say multiply your impact on the world. Or maybe you just choose that as a mom—you want to be the mom who picks your kids up from school every day. That’s okay too.

You don’t have to change the world. Maybe just change your family. That’s what you can delegate.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, I love it.

All right, so we don’t normally do this, Barbara, but I’m going to do something interesting here.

This is a thought leadership show. We don’t do advertising or anything like that.

But if someone is listening to this show and thinking, “You know what, I’ve always thought about having a VA or this process,” how does someone engage The Virtual Hub?

Barbara Turley: So our website is thevirtualhub.com. You can head over there. It’s a wealth of resources—from the blog to guides.

There’s lots of ways of expanding out. I even have a podcast there—shameless plug—with over 50 episodes on how to delegate and manage VAs.

People learn a lot about how to get this right and go deeper into what we’ve talked about today.

You can also book a call with our team and chat about what we can help you unpack, what we can help with, what we can’t, and where to go for anything like that.

We can take you on the journey with us. We partner with clients along the way. We don’t just give you a VA and leave you.

We have a client success team, we engage heavily with clients, and we have a training team for VAs.

We’re committed not just to growing numbers. From a business perspective, that’s important—but our success metric is longevity of client success and longevity of employee success.

Those two things matter most to us.

Mick Spiers: What I’m picking up there is the help you’re giving to make it successful.

You could just go on Fiverr or Upwork and find a VA at an hourly rate. But what’s missing there is all the thinking around delegation—what, how, and why you’re delegating.

What I’m hearing from The Virtual Hub is that you’re setting up the process and platform for success, not just matching a business with a VA.

Anyone can do that, but you’re building the system to make delegation a worthwhile investment. How does that sit with you?

Barbara Turley: Yes, we are doing all of that.

And for those who have tried VAs before and found it difficult, it’s not easy to get it right. You might go on Upwork and get a home run—it is possible.

But you don’t get the infrastructure. We create culture for our VAs, we provide health cover, we do team building, and we build teams.

It depends what you want. You can absolutely go and get a VA on Upwork or similar platforms and apply everything we’ve discussed yourself.

But most business owners don’t have time for that, especially offshore.

We partner with clients who are growing teams. Some say, “I need another VA next week,” and we can make that happen quickly with onboarding, transition, and support.

So we’re more of a premium service in that way, and we also help on the platform and process side.

Mick Spiers: All right, wonderful Barbara. This episode has been really full of some golden nuggets about really stopping and thinking about self-leadership, around delegation, around processes and platforms and the people element of all of that. There’s lots of really interesting takeaways, things like questioning why, but also questioning why not. All of these things have been wonderful takeaways for me in this episode today. So thank you for sharing the wisdom and your insights with us.

I’d like to now take us to our rapid run. These are the same four questions we ask all of our guests.

The first one, Barbara Turley: what’s the one thing that you know now that you wish you knew when you’re 20?

Barbara Turley: I think it’s trusting your own intuition. And that’s hard to do when you’re young, but you know, as I’ve gotten older and gotten more experienced over the years, I sort of knew some things in my soul when I was younger, but I didn’t trust that I knew or that it was right. You know, it’s hard to do that when you’re young. So I think if we could learn more of that at school, that would be really quite a useful skill.

Mick Spiers: Yeah, really good one. What’s your favorite book?

Barbara Turley: You know, I’d love to have some amazing thought leadership book or whatever, but actually the book that has impacted my life the most is a book by Vern Harnasch, who’s the founder of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization globally, wrote a book called Scaling Up. And I read that book on my first ever trip to the Philippines when I did have a sort of a business there, but it was a bit of a mess in the early days. And I read the book on the flight over there. I came back and I rebuilt the company based on the book.

Two years later, I did the course, the online course in the States. It completely changed the game. There’s a lot about people in there and strategy execution. And from that, Vern Harnasch heard about our company, became a client, has become a massive advocate for what it is that we do. But the book really changed everything for me. So it’s called Scaling Up. I think anyone should read it. It creates a methodology that’s really easy to follow to actually scale a company.

Mick Spiers: A really nice full circle moment there for you as well, and that’s really beautiful. And what’s your favorite quote?

Barbara Turley: My mother used to always say to me, “feel the fear and do it anyway.” I don’t know who said it originally. It wasn’t her quote. If you Google it, I think there is someone who said that, but that’s what she always said to me. I’m going to call it my mum’s quote. And I have lived my life like that so far.

Mick Spiers: That’s the definition of courage to me. You know, people talk about fearless leaders. There’s no such thing. Fear does exist, but courage is the ability to take action despite fear. I just love it. Really, really good.

And finally, I mean, you’ve already a little bit answered this one, but I’m going to give you that opportunity again. If people want to connect with you personally, Barbara, or they do want to connect with The Virtual Hub, how do they find you?

Barbara Turley: So if you want to connect with me personally, please come over to LinkedIn, where I do share quite a lot of my thoughts, not just on VAs. I mainly share my thoughts around my own journey in business, in life, what we’re working on around platforms and process, and more in depth about what we’ve talked about on this podcast. You can message me over there or follow me, just Barbara Turley.

And if you’re ready to talk to us about, you want to learn more about this VA thing, please pop over to thevirtualhub.com and check us out over there and book a call with our team. We’ve got a great team of people that can chat to you and help you to figure out if we’re right for you.

Mick Spiers: Thank you so much, Barbara. It’s been a wonderful time having you on the show today. Thank you so much for sharing all of this. I took some great personal takeaways today and I’m sure the audience will as well. Thank you for your time.

Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project at mickspiers.com. A huge call out to Faris Sadeq for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP: Joanne Goes On, Gerald Calabo, and my amazing wife, Spiers. I could not do this show without you. Don’t forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week. And you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram. Now, in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other, and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.