Leaders Inspire!
We often hear about owners of football clubs or large sports teams who can’t help but get involved in the day to day running of the team, especially when things aren’t going so well. They often visit the changing rooms when the team’s had a particularly bad day, and undermine the work of the manager by charging in and trying to affect change with their own reasons as to why things are going wrong and what should be happening to put it right; and we all know how those stories usually end!
Sometimes the situation is that your business could be doing well, or just okay, but you’re doing too much of the day to day management of your staff. Or maybe the business isn’t scaling or is in trouble. Perhaps you’re doing really well, but you’ve hit a plateau and don’t know how to take it to the next level?
It may be that you’re being guilty of managing rather than leading your business. Often with companies, especially the small to low-medium sized ones, it is all too easy to fall into the same trap as the aforementioned football club owners!
Business owners and their managers are two completely different things, but owners tend to overlook this, having built the company from scratch. I see it so often where leaders who should be steering the ship, are so busy fire fighting alongside their staff, that they lose sight of the bigger picture and end up going further off course.
If your business is struggling in some way and you’re doing the same things over and over, trying to squeeze that little bit more from everyone in your team; getting involved in the man-management of problematic individuals, working longer and longer hours to turn things around and standing over the shoulder of your managers in the hope that it’ll add weight to whatever it is that they are doing; you’re going in the wrong direction! You need to step out of your comfort zone and do something different.
Go back to basics, look at what you can change, rather than doing more of the same. If your business has gone ‘off course’ it needs to be realigned. You need to do something different, be more connected with your people on a human level and more innovative mentally; do things you wouldn’t normally find in a book.
Leaders inspire! They surround themselves with good people, share with them and bring to life their vision, values, and goals. As soon as your team understands and buys into this, give them the freedom to get on with it. By empowering your managers to fully manage in their way, and supporting them when needed, you can take the helm and steer the ship safely to success without needing to run the main sail and mop the deck as well!
This guest blog was provided by Robert Lattibeaudiere
Business Strategist and High Performance Consultant for i2i (Impossible 2 Inevitable)
Robert Lattibeaudiere
To this I have added my own unique approach for creating business cultures that have brought me success in sectors such as Telecommunications, the Travel Industry (Co-op Group), large contact centres, direct sales and Retail.
Latest posts by Robert Lattibeaudiere (see all)
- Why Do So Many Resent Success, Is It A UK Thing? - February 8, 2017
- Five Easy Steps To Onboarding New Employees - September 28, 2016
- Are You Inspiring Your Team Or Getting In The Way? - September 13, 2016
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