Whether a business is doing well or not comes down to leadership. If you want your business to do better in 2022, then you need to become a better leader. Everything within any organization— including yours— rises and falls on leadership.
I recently discussed the concept of leadership with my good friend Lyn Cikara, a leadership coach, before she lost her life to cancer. She was writing a book on leadership, and I asked her why the countless books, seminars, and training sessions on leadership haven’t eliminated the leadership issues within organizations. We concluded that the various personalities within an organization make leadership complex.
Furthermore, many leaders are relying on talent and skills that they learned years ago, while leadership in the 21st Century is different. I also propose that the leadership skills used pre-pandemic are not the same skills needed coming out of the pandemic. The business landscape has changed dramatically, and your leadership skills may need updating so you can lead at a higher level.
A couple of years ago, I was working with a leader of a large organization here in Oregon. The leader had been hired by the company’s headquarters, located on the East coast, to run the Oregon operation. Previously, this individual had been managing his own small business in another state and he had been hired because he had industry knowledge and experience. However, he was currently struggling in his new position trying to manage a much larger organization with multiple locations.
To my surprise, I discovered that he had not done anything to upgrade his leadership skill set since he graduated from college. He was able to run and manage his own small business with his wife and a small group of employees. Now he was trying to lead and manage a much larger company with multiple locations, a direct staff of 15, and 150 employees. He was failing and needed help. He had essentially taken on a role that was beyond his capacity, thinking that because he had managed his own small business, that he could easily manage this much larger organization. Unfortunately, he lacked the leadership skills necessary.
If you are relying on skills and techniques, you learned 20 or 30 years ago, you are most likely falling short. As a leader, you need to be continually developing your ability to lead others. Continuous improvement is not an option if you want to be a successful leader.
John Maxwell’s 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership discusses “the law of the lid,” which says that our ability to lead has a lid on it that will determine our overall effectiveness. The lower the leader’s lid, the lower the ability of the organization to rise above that lid. Where is your lid?
If you would like to learn more, give me a call 503-312-3145 or email me at garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com
You can also visit my website at http://www.garyfurr@garyfurrconsulting.com
Listen to my podcast Turning Complexity into Simplicity®
For more on this topic, you can find the book, Full Speed Ahead, a collection of advice from a group of six business advisors and consultants across three continents and four countries who specialize in working with small and medium enterprises, available on Amazon.
Leave a Reply