How One CEO Juggles Motherhood and Keeping Her Teams Motivated
Meet Braden Rawls, the CEO and Co-founder of Vital Plan, a certified B-corp on a mission to educate, inspire, and empower people on their health journey.
When you think of a new parent who is also a leader in a fast-rising company and who needs to keep her team efficient, perhaps you think of someone who takes maternity leave for a few months. Or maybe of someone who hires a nanny to care for her baby while she tackles running a business.
Either way—in today’s world managing new parenthood while also keeping your team efficient as a business leader is hard.
But Braden has managed to be effective, both professionally and personally.
In this exclusive interview with Braden, we uncover her takes, ideas, and best practices for building a productive team as a new parent and as a leader.
How do you define leadership?
As a leader, my job is to bring together a group of motivated people and align them with a shared vision.
When I think about leadership in a startup company, I liken it to being the conductor of an orchestra or band.
You have different instruments—different instrumentalists—and you must ensure you’ve recruited the right talents. Then, for the vision to sync, you must ensure they’re all playing from the same music sheet.
Rather than seeing myself as a musician, I see myself as the leader of those musicians. So that’s what leadership means for me.
Using the orchestra conductor metaphor for leadership above, how can you ensure your team is playing the same music sheet?
The most significant way to handle that is through “communication.” In Vital Plan, we have departments aligned with that shared vision and ensure they work efficiently.
Effective messaging and cross-team collaboration require intentional leadership and the consistent modeling of desired behaviors. It ultimately is my role and my direction as CEO to communicate that vision.
Also, to ensure each team member can play according to their strengths. Doing this creates an environment where people can thrive, feel confident, have a clear direction, and work together.
Can you give examples of what you do to communicate effectively? Is it frequency? Is it a lot of emailing for you? Let us know how communication works.
The best strategy is to find what works for your organization. Here, we cut down the vision into three stages:
Yearly — the big plan
Quarterly — strategy/monitoring
Weekly — execution
What it means:
Yearly — we create a long-term vision.
Quarterly — We go into strategies. Strategies will work when you give your teams time to breathe and assimilate plans and procedures, not changing from one system to another within a few weeks.
Weekly — at all-team meetings, we delegate tasks of the day and execute our targets.
As a CEO and leader of the company, what are some things you do to balance strategic and tactical stuff on the plate?
I define the roles and divide them into Strategic and Tactical. Here, my role is primarily strategic, and the managers of each team take on the tactical part.
I provide managers with the bigger vision, updates, progress made, or recap of our training. The individual department managers set the weekly tasks and then empower their teams to work efficiently.
What standard or value do you expect in people, and how does that help you run your company?
Firstly, we are compassionate and supportive. We help the team achieve its goals with compassion. As a startup, our core value is being efficient, determined, working hard, and quickly.
Sometimes, these values seem to compete. But when we can strike that balance between being supportive, being strong and determined, and getting things done, that’s where the magic happens — in the middle.
That’s where our company culture comes alive and turns on and shines. So it’s a balance to manage and ensure that we’re protecting both sets of values.
How do you ensure you strike that balance as a leader?
Over the years, we learned that flexibility and work-life balance are critical to that balance.
For example, some of our employees have been with us for years. As a result, we have a determined mindset to protect their health and work-life balance so they can stay healthy, productive, and motivated to stay with the company for longer.
In our case, creating a space where employees can be productive and highly efficient and have a balanced work-life is what we target. So the sweet spot for us is flexibility.
When I became a new parent, that made it work for me, I didn’t have to choose between work and my family. The flexible work culture didn't put me in a tight spot but allowed me to adjust to the best time comfortable for me to work.
What result have you seen?
It’s an appreciation from the employee for creating a workspace that allows them this flexibility to create their schedule and goals to enable them to thrive both professionally and personally.
As a result, you get productive employees because they’re using their time wisely. And they can sync into work when it’s best for them. Last, they don't have to burn out or feel they have to choose between these two lives.
What would you recommend to people, especially those in leadership roles who want to instill this mindfulness and thoughtfulness about supporting their employees, especially those who are parents?
Open the conversation. Since becoming a parent myself, I’ve gained an appreciation for the openness of not feeling like I need to hide being a parent.
Instead, I think of how I can integrate that into my workday and be open about who I am, my life, where I can best work, and how I can add value and thrive.
Creating space to open those conversations will allow you to get faster to what’s most likely to work best.
How can you bring this conversation if you’re not in the leading role?
It all goes back to communication. Since your team wants you to succeed, say what you need to thrive — show how committed you are to the organization — what you need to be a better employee and be more productive. If your manager understands what you need to achieve your best work, they can put those conditions in place.
What other tip would you like to give to leaders reading this, especially those in startups?
When you’re the leader of a startup company, ensure every action you take reflects the trust you’re building. A big part of your job description is networking and building trust with your employees and community.
4 Key Takeaways for Leaders
Takeaway #1: Build effective communication—with this, you’re sure all departments align towards the shared vision and they're working efficiently.
Takeaway #2: Be flexible and create a work-life balance—It’s another key to retention. Employees won’t have to think they must choose between their professional and personal lives.
Takeaway #3: Openness and vulnerability — it makes you more honest and relatable to your employees and your network. As a result, you’ll all be able to work better together and be stronger as a team.
Takeaway #4: Nurture trust—building a lasting relationship with your team requires continually building trust through values and sustainability.
For length and clarity, we have edited this interview between Braden and Brian for NextGen Center.