Not often any company owner worldwide is confronted with the same dilemma simultaneously. While the pandemic affected various companies – some more difficult than others – it acted as a telling test for leadership.
Entrepreneurs face imminent growth pains that act as leadership rites with or without a pandemic. After almost a decade of engaging with small business owners, influencers and founders, I found out the five most important transition rites that forge market leaders that will stand the test of time.
In reality, attempting to circumvent these five initiatives leads to growth ceilings in both company and the business owner’s progress. Despite their natural difficulties, they are necessary to achieve the best possible leadership.
Growing rejection pain
We are trained as humans to prevent discomfort. According to Thorndike’s law of impact, all creatures (including we human beings) are hardwired to prevent pain according to Psychology Today. Often known as a battle or a flight, we don’t like doing stuff that don’t feel good in short.
The reality still extends to businesses. However, entrepreneurs who ignore danger to avoid the possible result of rejection are undermining their leadership and market potential. In industry, this pain of refusal will come in a number of ways. Do you never get forgotten when you’ve pitched a large prospect or a gigantic “no” call end? Despite this sting, desire to try opens up opportunities, an opportunity to change and learn from mistakes and builds trust.
If you are squeezed by the notion of refusal, you expect it to be part of doing business. Another fantastic asset that I have maintained over the years on my desk is a proof magazine, where I chart all my little gains and achievements. Look for all the facts to convince you that you are qualified to take the next step, instead of thinking about a possible failure and allowing it to slip you.
Increased discomfort in uneasy conditions
Not unlike rejection, our brains are wired to guide us from both business and life circumstances. Our brains regard to fear or stress as a life-threatening danger. If we get into a hazardous situation, the brain creates a narrative that describes the pain as unpleasant or pessimistic.
According to best-selling author and scholar Brene Brown, the advantages of leaning to rough environments are not taken into consideration in our head. Brené says, “It is he or she who is prepared to get the most awkward,” he says.
Avoiding company discomfort may be a prescription for failure. Businesses that are healthy prefer to keep people in shape that don’t suit, don’t ask critical questions in the recruitment process and head through an uncomfortable loop of problems involving employers, consumers and staff members.
Rather than escape awkward situations, you know that they cost you doing business and build expectations and principles that help you handle them more effectively as they emerge.
The pain of tough talks is increasing
When it comes to awkward circumstances, the managers of business who prefer to escape uncomfortable situations are the same who miss the crucial discussions.
Leadership is full of difficult conversations. The main reasons for avoiding a potentially tough conversation are that they dislike tension, don’t prioritise it or are worrying that it will harm someone’s feelings.
Think of it from a parenthood viewpoint. How does this affect the child if a parent constantly stopped talking to their kids about topics that are difficult to speak about? They would have no chance to understand, evolve and be led, and eventually their ability would be stunned.
The same applies to business affairs. If a customer overflows or a staff member that does not live up to its potential, a leader has the confidence to do his work.
Instead of throwing a tough back and forth, set time to deal with the challenge and guide it with an optimistic, kind and truthful way. When entrepreneurs learn this capacity, they raise their leadership potential to a new level!
A may pain in asking for assistance
Dictionary.com describes a contractor as an individual who organises and runs some company with great effort and risk, particularly a business.
By design, we are self-starters who are ready to take risks. Then what is the passage rite that distinguishes a businessman from a leader? We can’t go alone with the modesty to know.
I wore my challenges as badges of honour in my early years in industry. I needed credit for any victory and might peacefully lose. Not just that, I was the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker confidently. In other words, I was a check freak who tried to do it all by myself.
Although we can be in business for ourselves, we are not supposed to be in business for ourselves.
To expand both your company and your own leading capacity, you need to call the troops. Whether recruiting a team member to get you out of the weeds of your company, getting a coach to show you the way to the next step, or even just asking a relative to support children, it isn’t a sign of failure to ask for help, it is a sign of progress.
Cultivating suffering to recalibrate your life
Most company owners have a sense of possibility open their doors. We have visions of a happier world beyond our jobs and we know that business is a gateway to our view of life.
And, a few years (or occasionally, decades) later, we look up and figure out that our math somehow didn’t add up…
Hard labour plus time was not identical to the fantasy somehow.
Then what do other businessmen do? You’re doing harder. It may be painful to take a stop and look at the distance or path between the location of the pin today and where you want it to be, so how you get to your ultimate destination.
A clear indication of leadership is a desire to take root in fact and to correct the ship. There are some useful questions to ask:
- Can this purpose contribute to my vision for myself or for business?
- Should this decision fit with my values?
- Can my present business model sustain my goal for the long term?
- Does the job I do (and how I do it) agree with me, or does anything have to change?
I had a customer who came to me with all observable expectations a profitable company years back. Quite lucrative, deep and well-known team culture in their industry. When I asked him about his vision for his life, he spoke about being more versatile, about writing books for his children and about the white room.
This was his leadership and, through his aversion to change at the time, he became the impetus for his and his company’s success.
Also Read: 8 Out of 10 Leaders want This
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