Growing Small Business with Leadership Skills

When you are in a small business, every success you get to taste the flavour of, owes a lot to the strong team and the team leader that contribute to the overall success of your business. It is a well known fact that the effective team leaders are largely responsible for digging out the best from their team and out of their colleagues. They play a crucial role in accomplishing the goals that are being set for the different groups working in the team or the organisation. There’s certainly more to the team building and the management that the entrepreneurs and the business leaders are concerned with. A good team work always helps the leaders get to achieve the pinnacle of success and often stay at the top of the game.

business leadership
photo credit: pedrosimoes7 via photopin cc

What really makes a good team stand against all the competition that the business faces in the market? Here we are summarising the outlook behind the entire idea with 4 major points that act as key elements in building the successful business teams. Let’s take a look:

1# Focus

It sounds as simple as it is spelled but it is as easy to lose as it sounds like it won’t. There are millions of questions that appear so easy to talk about and answer such as “what are we doing here?”, “what is our goal?”, etc. It is important for the business entrepreneurs to first define a goal and then measure the impact that all those business decisions are going to make. Do they help the team achieve the goals? Do they bring you any close to the dreams? Are you working in the direction of accomplishing it? If you have logical answers to these, you are probably on the right track. Also, focus on the efforts of your team, doesn’t matter whether you are expanding or simply focussing on growth.

2# Unity

Ensuring that everyone is treated on the same platform makes way for promotion of a no-discrimination policy. This will require you to communicate on a regular basis and ensure that all the team members are aware of their roles and the tasks they are expected to perform. This gives rise to scope for promotion of team harmony and also ensures that the duplication of tasks and efforts is prevented. This is also important while you are hiring new team members; find out whether they fit into the entire chemistry of the team before they are taken in. It’s the unity in the team that not only assures the company of even a most unexpected success but also plays an instrumental role in binding the teams together.

3# Direction

If your ultimate destination is success, make sure that your team knows how they are going to achieve it. Assign them tasks that push you step by step towards the final goal; you will need to support the team wherever they need your assistance. Encourage and assist them and this is exactly where your expertise lies. If you can’t lead your team, there may be people questioning you on your leadership skills and that’s where you seem to fail. Set the direction and help your team walk on the right path. You lead them and they believe in you! That’s leadership in plain and simple way.

4# Excellence

Achieving excellence in all the tasks you do makes sure that you are determined to achieve goals. Good teams have a habit of pushing their bars of excellence a little more each time and with each achievement. Set high standards for your team and it will be fun taking up challenges for achieving the goal. Now this does not mean that you will only need to evaluate the success of your team and its progress; seek opinion from other groups, organisations and business leaders that have been inspiring you.

Finally, it’s good to remember that achieving success does not really close the book anyway. If you have succeeded as a leader then definitely there still remains to be a lot of room for improvement simply because nothing is perfect and nothing is stagnant either. Always maintain your zeal for keeping a lookout for that extra bit that can do wonders for your team and ultimately for your business. Keep striving for excellence and promote that essential bit of excellence and focus on your efforts and all that you can do to gain an edge over your competitors.

About the Author: Colin Boykins is a blogger and social media addict. He is currently associated with the UK’s most trusted supplier of security posts – Parking-Posts.com.

Sustainable Leadership

Many organisations know how to make a profit, but there is more to running a business than simply making the cash tills ring.  Those at the top of a business need to recognise this, and ensure that a healthy organisation is one that builds on the principles of thinking long-term, effective leadership and communication, and nurturing relationships.

It’s easy to think about what needs to be done now to clinch a deal or grab that next lucrative contract, and many workers have the skills to negotiate this, but effective and sustainable leadership is much more than that.  So, where does an organisation start?

Knowledge and awareness

Sustainable leadership can only be achieved if the leader is aware that they need to think in a long-term way.  They need to know who the organisation is, what its goals are, where it’s heading and how they want to achieve success.  It’s a complex process and involves engaging with managers and other members of staff to gain insight and input into how things are being run.  Having the skills to manage and monitor this alone is crucial, and often requires external assistance.

Developing skills

Many managers need to develop and hone their skills to become effective leaders.  They need to keep abreast of the latest ways of thinking to maintain market competitiveness. Leadership development training is critical to sustainable success and can give leaders the opportunity to inspire others to go that extra mile in their work and to connect strategy to performance.  It can help develop skills to allow leaders to connect people to their organisations, see how they fit in, modify change in behaviour and create shared commitment to achieve specific goals.  Leadership development enables leaders to communicate to all members of staff the wider picture of how the organisation operates, aside from the day-to-day operations and how what they do contributes to the organisation as a whole.  Thinking long term about the business also helps to foster good internal and external relations, retaining both staff and customers.

Action plans and setting goals

Sustainable leadership can only thrive if a leader outlines plans and goals for the organisation, rather than just letting things happen.  Recognising what these plans and goals are takes time and commitment, and is often achieved with the help of executive coaching, where professional assistance can be given to help glean out exactly what these plans and goals might be, and where the company is heading.  Often, the use of executive coaching not only improves leadership development skills but also unlocks potential and ideas that may have not come to fore without outside input.  Sometimes leaders are so wrapped up in the here and now, that they can’t necessarily see the finer detail and how all these pieces of details fit together like a jigsaw.

Sustainable leadership requires expertise to communicate long-term thinking to all members of staff, dispelling the notion that business success is only about the profit share.  Long-term market growth and maintaining competitiveness are all vital ingredients for a sustainable, successful business.

About the Author: This post was written by James Harper on behalf of Performance1 experts in leadership development and executive coaching. Please follow this link to find out more about executive coaching and leadership development.