This is the second installment of a four-part series entitled “Leadership: Important Steps to Build a Growing Company.” Stay tuned for parts 3 and 4 in the coming weeks. You can check out the first installment here.
Leadership Lesson 1: Introspection
Leadership is powerful. It can inspire us to do things we never thought imaginable. It can motivate a team, achieve exponential returns, and push a business to succeed. Good leadership is the most important competitive advantage a company can have.
I meet a lot of small business owners who have not taken advantage of the power of leadership. They are so lost in focusing on the day-to-day tasks of their business, such as providing excellent services to their customers, that they lose sight of the larger goals of their business. This macro- perspective is one of the most crucial aspects to being a better leader.
In this article, I talk about how you can use introspection to build better leadership practices in relation to your company. Introspection is a good place to start building better leadership skills because it gives you a clear picture of your current role as a leader and how you will need to improve in the future.
Using Introspection to Become a Better Leader
I refer to the first step as “introspection” because it involves deep reflection about yourself and your company. Introspection refers to two things:
- The reflective examination of one’s own mental/ emotional processes, strengths, weaknesses, and inherent leadership qualities.
- Decisions about the company you want to lead, including what type of company culture you’d like to cultivate and what larger vision, goals, and objectives you have in mind for your business.
I’ve discussed the importance of using introspection to get to know your strengths and weaknesses as a leader in a recent article published on LinkedIn Pulse. In the following discussion, I’ll focus on how to use introspection about your company to build better leadership practices.
Introspection About Your Company
Business leadership begins with bold foresight and imagination. You must envision a future that promises a better tomorrow. You must have the courage to pursue a future possibility that seems impossible. You must work to create this future a reality even in the most trying of situations. And you must be able to communicate your vision in a manner that inspires people to follow you.
I’m always surprised by how few small business owners can talk about the vision for their company in clear, practical terms. A lot of business owners get lost in the day-to-day activities of running their business and have neglected to define long-term goals. In the first installment of this series, I posed a question to business owners everywhere: If you’re struggling to articulate the vision for your company as the leader of your business, how must it be for your team who’s following you?
If you’re leading a business, you need to define the larger goals for your company and make sure you communicate these goals to your team. You have to visualize the company you want your business to be before it can become a reality. No one else is going to do this work for you. As the leader of your business, it is up to you to define these larger goals:
- Clarify the vision/ purpose for your business.
Define a clear vision for your business that’s meaningful and easy for everyone to relate to. Your company purpose should be based on values that are important to everyone. When it matters to all, it will encourage everyone to take ownership of their work and responsibilities. - Define your company’s core values.
You need to outline your company’s core values. Core values are often what shapes the culture of a company. How do you want your employees to interact with one another and with clients? - Set long-term goals.
As a leader of your business, you need to declare clear long-term goals and a series of objectives that will lead to accomplishing those goals. These have to be explained in simple enough language that the rest of your team can understand and subscribe to them.
Stay tuned for the next part of this series, “Leadership Lesson 2: Communication,” coming out later this week. Please like, share, and comment on this article. I’d appreciate your participation and wish to learn from your feedback.