Marcia Erickson is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH in the Quad Cities, and she spent twenty years in healthcare administration before this. Most of this conversation sits on delegation, and on why so many owners say they want a team that takes ownership and then cannot hand anything over.

Marcia's first answer is practical. She says leaders rarely describe what success actually looks like in a role, so we default to saying we will know it when we see it, and the team is left guessing. Then Sara and Marisa take it underneath the systems, into the beliefs driving the behavior.

Marcia talks about how a belief has no objectivity in it, and how we go collect every piece of evidence we can find to prove it right anyway. She is candid about her own version of that, including the years she could not put her own face on her own marketing.

🔥 In This Episode:

• What actually blocks delegation, and why it has more to do with what you believe about yourself than what your team can handle
• Why "I will know it when I see it" is not a standard, and what it costs your team when nobody says out loud what success looks like
• Marcia's test before she hands anything off, and what changes when the question becomes whether you can live with the outcome
• What real accountability looks like when your people report their own wins and misses instead of you pulling it out of them
• What it took for Marcia, an introvert, to put her own face on her own marketing, and what she still does to get through it

Marcia says coaching lands hardest when someone is in transition, because that is when we finally stop and take stock of things. The rest of the time we keep doing the thing. What she wants for people is that they get to be successful on their own terms and actually enjoy what they built. That starts with naming the standard you have never said out loud, and handing off the thing you keep telling yourself only you can do.

Connect with Marcia:
Email: marciaerickson@actioncoach.com
Website: https://exceledge.actioncoach.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Bak8WCSPZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@actioncoachmarciaerickson4220

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: hello@theheartworklife.com

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Marisa took Alex to Italy for ten days and it was his first time in Europe. Rome, Florence, the Amalfi Coast, and almost none of it planned, which she says is the whole reason she actually got to be there. What she keeps coming back to isn't the sites. It's that Alex got to see where her grandparents learned to make pasta and where her mom lived, and after a lifetime of her bringing pieces of that culture into their home in little ways, he finally understood her at a deeper level. Their love went deeper because he saw her in a new light. Then they came home to Iowa and she didn't pick her old pace back up. She stopped prepping six days out at the practice, stopped posting to teach anybody lessons, and started letting a priority be a priority when it's actually a priority, herself included.

🔥 In This Episode:

• What opens up when you stop trying to accomplish something on a trip and let yourself actually be there
• The difference between capturing a moment on your phone and letting it land in your own eyes, and what you give up when you choose the screen
• Why being seen by your partner in the place you come from does something no story about it ever could
• Why Marisa stopped preparing six days out in her practice, and what she means when she says a priority is a priority, and so is she
• How to carry your family's culture forward without it becoming something you shoulder alone

We look to travel for rest or adventure, and then we come home and talk about the views. What actually stays is what your heart got informed in while you were there. For Marisa and Alex, that was him understanding where she comes from and why she loves what she loves, and then wanting to build it into their life together. He's the one at the grocery store now buying mortadella and Italian sourdough. She isn't passing her family's culture down by herself anymore. Take whatever opened up in you somewhere else and let it change your regular week here.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: hello@theheartworklife.com

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Sara made a decision this season that looked, on paper, like going backwards. With one of her associate doctors heading into maternity leave, she chose to put herself back into nearly full time adjusting after almost two years of protected CEO time. It was the right call financially, culturally, and for the energy of her practice. And it still stirred up the old story: I'm not moving forward, I'm not good enough, real CEOs don't do this. In this conversation, Sara and Marisa pull apart where that story actually comes from, and it isn't the decision itself. It's comparison, the mastermind metric, the version of success built from everyone else's life but your own.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why a decision that looks like a step backwards can be the most aligned move for your finances, your culture, and your energy, and how to tell the difference between retreat and stewardship
• The comparison trap that turns aligned decisions into evidence of failure, and why measuring your season against other CEOs will always make you feel behind
• Marisa's discernment question for every big decision: are you gathering information so your heart can feel it through, or is your ego collecting approval
• How "we're in a season of transition" quietly becomes a crutch that stalls momentum, and the question that stopped Sara mid sentence when she caught herself using it
• Your relationship with change is contagious: how Sara realized her team hated change because she was the one saying it out loud, and what that fear cost her practice

The episode ends with a challenge worth taking seriously. Look back at every season of your life, the winters included, and name one beautiful thing that came from each. If you come up empty, that's not a failure. It's a signal to slow down, because you may be moving through your life without actually living in it. And if that's where you are right now, reach out to us. We're in it and we're here for you.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: hello@theheartworklife.com

Support the show