Article for the RAW Entrepreneur Magazine
http://millionimpossiblemagazine.com/
What differentiates successful businesses from those that struggle or fail? From my own experience as MD of an HR and personal development consultancy, two factors play a major part: leadership and management.
You can have the most innovative product and best service, but if the leadership and management within your business are not up to it, then failure may beckon. Of course, ‘failure’ comes in different guises and needn’t mean a visit to a bankruptcy court. It may be a failure to achieve your true potential, or a failure to realise real benefits for your clients and customers, or failure to engage your team in a way that makes the most of their unique talents. Whatever way you look at it, this is failure, nonetheless.
Of course, many entrepreneurs have no argument with the importance of leadership and management. But despite this knowledge, backed by thousands of books, degrees and training courses, why does failure in this area continue to haunt so many businesses? If like me you worked in the corporate world before going it alone, you probably wondered how some managers climbed the greasy pole to positions of responsibility. Couldn’t they see how their interactions with other people had the opposite effect they wanted? Didn’t they recognise the flaws in their decision making?
As entrepreneurs, we need to make sure we don’t make the same mistakes. But what is that elusive ‘x’ factor that will help us to reach our potential and enable our businesses to thrive?
I believe the key differentiator is a leader’s ability to recognise and leverage his or her strengths, acknowledge their weaknesses and employ counter measures to mitigate for them. In practice, this means doing what you are good at and passionate about, using your strengths to deliver results rather than spending huge amounts of energy improving your weaknesses. This may run counter to the idea that you should spend time and effort working on your weaknesses, but take a good look at the leaders who have found extraordinary success; they leverage their strengths and build effective teams around them with the skills they don’t have.
As entrepreneurs we adopt numerous roles as we take our business from an idea through the various stages of business growth. This requires leadership and management skills, whether we are a sole trader or the owner of a large business. Of course these skills will differ in importance, depending on where we are in the business development cycle, but we need to know, recognise and acknowledge what our leadership and management style or talent is. We need to bring in the skills we do not have, and quite frankly don’t do well and probably don’t want to do; why waste time and energy developing a skill that will only ever be adequate at best?
In the last issue of the RAW Entrepreneur I found Rachel Elnaugh’s comment “…as an entrepreneur focussed on pastures new has little energy left for running their existing (if by now somewhat boring) ‘big Money Machine’”, a very telling statement. Based on her article, it appears that for Rachel the ‘buzz’ and passion is achieved through creating and developing new ideas. Once a business is up and running, she is excited and motivated by moving on to the next new challenge. There is a woman who knows her strengths and interests.
Although anyone starting a new venture is an entrepreneur, everyone comes to the role with their own unique leadership and management skills. Look at some of the most successful leaders; while all are different, they have utilised their own unique style to very successful effect.
Creators - the ideas people, such as Bill Gates and Richard Branson.
Stars, with success based on their own identity, such as Michael Schumacher and Tony Blair
Outstanding leaders, such as Jack Welch and Margaret Thatcher
You get the picture. I have worked with a business where an understanding of different styles of leadership and management has helped them to become highly successful. In this case, the leader is an ‘ideas man’, as his number two stated: “John has more ideas in one day than most of us have in a lifetime; my challenge is to turn his ideas into a successful business, and remind him that we can only cope with so much change in the time allowed! He is not interested in managing a team, whereas I couldn’t motivate and inspire like he does. I am, though, very good at implementing John’s ideas and managing the team. John and I recognise each others’ unique talents in terms of leadership and management and through leveraging these we have become a hugely successful business.”
It is short-sighted to think that we will be interested in and good at activities that our businesses require but we have little desire to do. The question is not whether we can undertake the required role, the question is do we really want to, and if not, why are we doing it? It is human nature to gravitate towards the things we enjoy and are good at. As employers (even if the only employee is yourself) you owe the business and yourself time to focus on developing your strengths and looking at ways of ‘plugging the gaps’ where you are weak.
Successful businesses often use assessment tools to help them identify their leadership and management styles and support team selection and development. Behavioural assessment gives insights into the strengths and weaknesses of individuals and teams, whether it is Myers-Briggs MBTI, Extended DISC, Birkman Method ® or Hogan.
Failure to recognise the value of leadership and management to your business will hinder your future success, both personally and professionally. Personal awareness is a key part of this; however you do it, setting aside some time to identify the type of leader and manager you are and acting upon the findings will pay dividends.
Linda Klassen-Brown
MD, Business Adrenalin Ltd
Linda Klassen-Brown is a motivational leader who helps senior executives, owner managers and their companies to improve business performance and achieve their potential. Her company, Business Adrenalin, provides HR, coaching, training and product marketing services to drive positive change, with a focus on the bottom line.
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