Episode 90: How to Become a Better Leader with Dr. Nicole Price
How do you know if you're actually a leader? Dr. Nicole Price — engineer turned leadership coach, keynote speaker, and CEO of Lively Paradox — answers Vonda and Lori's question in one sentence that stops the podcast cold: people want to follow you. "You might be the owner, you might be the manager, you might have the title — but you are not a leader" if nobody's following. What follows is one of the most practical leadership conversations the show has ever aired, aimed squarely at the flower shop owner trying to hire, keep, and grow a team.
Stop lying in the interview
Nicole tells on herself first: early in her business, she couldn't keep an assistant, and the real reason was that she was sugarcoating the job in interviews. "Lie, lie, lie, lie, lie." Once she started being brutally honest — this work is hard, I'm hard to reach, you may have to join my morning walk to catch me — she started attracting the right people, the ones who fell in love with the reality instead of the marketing materials.
The hosts connect it straight to florist hiring ads that make the job look like all ribbons and roses, then wonder why the new hire vanishes after two weeks. Nicole's fix: let candidates see a day in the life. Yes, walking someone through the shop costs time — but compare it to the cost of losing and retraining someone. Lori knows a Houston shop that has candidates observe for two hours before hiring, and the ones who choose the job after seeing it stay far longer. Vonda's favorite honest ad copy: "the hardest job you'll ever love."
Know your style — and hire your gaps
There's no one right leadership personality; an over-the-top extrovert probably shouldn't lead a writing team, and a blunt communicator may thrive in manufacturing but flop in a pulpit. Nicole recommends every leader take a leadership personality assessment, because until you know your own style, you'll expect everyone to handle change and conflict the way you do. Knowing her own gaps is why her number-two person has everything she doesn't: she's the pie-in-the-sky visionary who rallies people around ideas; he's the rubber-meets-road servant leader who builds process. Entrepreneurs are usually the first type — and if they don't hire the second, execution will always be flawed.
Related lesson: never assume new hires know what "everybody knows." One Flower Clique member with famously low turnover nearly lost a new employee because she skipped steps she assumed were obvious — like how to process carnations. Development is the leader's job. Every hire arrives with competencies and gaps, and in a tight labor market it's often easier to develop the talent you need than to find it. As Nicole puts it: "If I can teach empathy, you can teach me how to put the bouquet together."
Retention starts with your why
Asked for her best retention advice for a brick-and-mortar florist, Nicole starts with a question: what's your mission? If you can't say why you do this — beyond "it was my grandpa's shop" — you can't inspire anyone to show up for the hard weeks. A living wage is the bare minimum; the why is what makes special people choose you. Her second tool isn't exit interviews (she's not a fan) but stay conversations: ask the people who chose to stay what's working, then have the discipline to ask where they get stuck — what makes them think on a Friday, "I don't know if I'm coming back" — and fix it together, so the team shares ownership of the outcome.
Compassion is not sympathy
Vonda raises the florist's dilemma: this is an industry full of compassionate people who hate hurting feelings. Nicole draws the line that reframes everything. Empathy is understanding; compassion is being motivated to help. What caring professions usually practice is sympathy — feeling sorry for someone and lowering the bar, which quietly punishes the rest of the team. True compassion asks "what can I do to help?" — organizing the carpool, fixing the process — and it never, ever includes talking about someone behind their back, which Nicole calls the least compassionate thing a leader can do.
She walks through a real termination: a delightful employee whose detail errors ran to $30,000 (they caught one that would have been $86,000). Nicole asked what she needed, changed processes, paid for shadowing, checked in weekly — and when it still wasn't working after six months, the separation conversation was clear and almost easy, because she had done everything she could first. That's the test: before termination, before irritation, before the back-channel venting — did you do your part, or did you only have the conversation in your head?
Two more habits worth stealing: use affirming language ("I need you to be on time," not "stop being late"), skip the compliment sandwich that buries the message, and run an after-action review — what worked, where we got stuck, what we'll do differently — after every major event, not just the disasters. And one for florists specifically: eat your own cooking. If you believe flowers enrich lives, use flowers to enrich your staff's lives.
Key takeaways
- You're a leader only if people want to follow you — titles don't count.
- Be honest in interviews and show candidates a real day in the life; hire people who love the reality, not the brochure.
- Know your leadership style, and hire someone whose strengths fill your gaps.
- Retention = a clear why plus honest "stay" conversations with the people who keep showing up.
- Practice compassion, not sympathy: address problems directly, ask "what can I do to help?", and never criticize behind someone's back.
- Before letting someone go, make sure you've genuinely done your part to help them succeed.
Learn more about Dr. Nicole Price at LivelyParadox.com.
Sponsored by:
Flower Clique
Flower Clique Prep School
Real Life Retail Florist