As a small- to medium-sized business owner, you probably established your business by doing ALL the roles – from payroll to sales to product development to delivery to a customer. This may be an ingrained habit for you after a few years. The danger is that it becomes very easy to micromanage everything. All this time you are spending doing jobs other people could be doing is time you are not running your business.
It takes discipline to work ON your business, not always IN it. Employees will thrive with more trust and responsibility. You need to build an effective and supportive leadership team around you which focuses on developing and implementing your strategy.
The leadership team of a small business focuses on seven key questions:
The first questions address the clarity and alignment around the organisations’ Purpose, Vision and Values.
1. Why do we exist?
2. How do we behave?
3. Where are we going?
4. What do we do – and don’t do?
The following questions address establishing your Business Strategy and setting Goals and Objectives.
5. How will we succeed?
6. What’s important now?
7. Who needs to do what?
All of the work you do with the Leadership Team is looking to answer these questions. The answers are key communication points to the rest of the organisation.
A critical part of leadership is to communicate and then communicate again, and then communicate again. Patrick Lencioni’s work around Organisational Health is a useful resource for the importance of clear communication from the leadership team to employee engagement and the health of a business.
Role of the Leaders
The success of a business is directly linked to the leadership team's ability to lead. Poor leadership results in sub-optimal business performance. To become better leaders, you and your leadership team MUST be open to feedback and be prepared to look at your behaviours and the impact you have as a leader.
The Leadership Questionnaire helps you to understand your strengths and weaknesses as a leader using the I-WE-IT model.
I – Self Leadership
Effective leaders are conscious of their behaviour and are committed to understanding how they can be more effective. It can be confronting for people to receive feedback and take a hard look at their behaviour and the impact they have on the team.
We – Leading Others
Good leaders provide inspiration and direction for the business. They actively seek to develop and mentor others and are prepared to hold people to account for behaviours that don’t align with the company’s values.
It – Leading the Organisation
Leading an organisation well requires the leadership team to establish a shared Purpose and Vision and to embed a Values Code, so everyone is clear on acceptable behaviour. To build a Resilient Business Strategy, you need to consider inputs from the whole system and execute that strategy with disciplined leadership and planning practices.
Read more about building an effective team using the ADAPT Team Model here.
Resources:
Leadership Questionnaire
Role clarity