Benchmark Business Group

Leadership - Page 9

Going back to our roots in E-Myth, we believe that leadership is a central piece of owning a business.  Your leadership skills as a business owner will impact every area of your business.  Over the years we often touch upon leadership in our Business Owner Insights and below is a collection of our leadership articles.

Planning to have a life outside your business

Most people take this time of year to talk about resolutions and planning. You know, the weight you’re going to lose, the new business you will bring in, the weight you’re going to lose, upgrading your business facilities, the weight you’re going to lose, and so on. In the context of your business, planning is usually all about revenues and profits, staff, equipment needs, and even how you as the business owner are intending to use your time more efficiently.  What about you?  Aren’t you one of your business’ most important assets?  Isn’t it important to your business, let alone yourself and your family, to maintain your health and your sanity?  Did you not go into business in part to create more freedom and a more enjoyable life?  How is that working?

This is a not-so-subtle reminder to plan for your time off. Plan some short days. Make plans for a vacation later in the year. Take the time you need to put your work/life balance back in order. Encourage your staff to do the same and they will thank you for it.

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Celebrate the Things You Want to See More of In Your Business

We are a celebratory society. We celebrate birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, and other milestones. In our personal lives we celebrate just about every chance we get. But what about our professional lives? When was the last time your business celebrated a birthday, anniversary, or mid-year production goal? With their eye on the finish line, business owners can miss the little successes, milestones, and personal achievements that happen on the way to that finish line.

So, what does celebrate really mean? Does it mean that every time something good happens you have to throw a party? Of course not, but it does mean that as the owner, you will need to be intentional about acknowledging the successes of the business and its employees. There is any number of ways a business can celebrate success.

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Creating an Accountability Structure

Now that the C.A.T. (Communication, Accountability partner, and Take action) is out of the bag  regarding the importance of accountability, how can you create a structure of accountability?  Ask and answer the following questions and you will on your way to creating an accountability structure that will help ensure you gain the results you desire.

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Creating an Accountability Structure that Drives Results

It’s the time of year when you start to think ahead to your goals for 2013.  Your inbox starts to become filled with newsletters such as ours that talk about the importance of setting goals.  Putting goals on paper is an important step.  They provide you and your business with direction for the upcoming months, but before you set those goals, there’s an important step that many business owners overlook.  That step is looking at the accountability structure you need in place to meet your goals.

Many businesses owners feel as if they are isolated from the rest of the world and believe that accountability within the business stops with them.  They feel there’s no one to talk to when things are not working as planned.  There’s no one to vent to when they are frustrated or to encourage them to take that next step.  There’s no one to celebrate the many small steps they take each day to reach their goals.  Were you surprised the last time you did not meet a goal? The scary answer is probably not. Did you want to meet your goals? Of course, but by not having that measure of accountability in place, the journey becomes long and lonely.  There are a number of ways to establish accountability for yourself with in your business.

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Getting Back on Track - Business After the Summer

It happens to nearly every one of us. When summer arrives and the kids are out of school, life outside of the business becomes more prevalent, if not more important. Family vacations become the priority. Spending more time with your children when they have the free time becomes more important. The work/life balance you strive for has become skewed. Then, you wake up one morning and find that the business goals you set for 2012 are still a long way off. Your desk is a mess and you have no idea where information is. Your thoughts are scattered and you are having trouble identifying how to get back on track. Take heart! This is not a unique situation. You are still in the fight. You just need to get back on track.

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SUCCESS BEGINS WITH YOUR POINT OF VIEW

The secret to success in anything—business, sports, raising a family, pursuing a hobby, or whatever—begins and ends with attitude.  To say it another way, your point of view will determine how you see things, how you think about things, how you react to things, and how you act upon them.  The success of businesses that have had the extraordinary advantage of an E-Myth Business Coach, and indeed the success of the E-Myth Mastery Program itself, can be attributed to a point of view.  We call it simply the “E-Myth Point of View”, or in shorthand, the EMPOV.

There are five core principles that make up the EMPOV.  The first is the Principle of Life, which begins with the simple premise that your life is really your only business.  The purpose of starting and owning a business is to give you more life, however you may define that.  It could mean more money, more freedom, more enjoyment, more time to spend with your family or friends, more satisfaction from doing what you love, more control over your destiny, and so on.  Most business owners, however, find themselves experiencing just the opposite.  Instead of having a business that gives them more life, they have a business that is literally consuming their life!  They’re not really running their business…their business is running them.  Is your business giving you more life?

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THE KEEPER OF THE FLAME

There are volumes written on leadership, and quotes that end to end would circle the earth several times.  In spite of the volume, there are only a very few basic themes that keep repeating themselves.  Those themes involve clarity of vision and purpose, an ability to move others to action, and an ability to draw out the greatness that already exists in others.

I once asked a retired CEO of a regional bank how he would describe his function in his former position.  He simply said, “I was the Keeper of the Flame”.  That was both an exciting and intriguing response, so I pressed on with more questions.  He described his view of leadership in that position as creating real clarity around the overall results the organization wanted to achieve…the end-game, if you will…the final picture.  To complete the picture, it then had to be imbued with a clear sense of shared purpose and value, so that it became like lighting a torch…a Flame.  It has an aura of something bigger that any one person in the organization, even the leader.  He then had the job of continually reminding everyone in the organization of the Flame and it’s meaning, and using the Flame to shine a light on all the activity in the organization, to the end that the final picture would be achieved.

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Leadership By Design

Setting an employee up for success is good leadership.  Hammering on an employee who is not successful – that’s assault.  In our work with hundreds of businesses each year one of the top complaints we hear from business owners is; you just can’t hire good people. As we inquire deeper about this statement we hear the gory details of seemingly uncaring employees who just can’t seem to get the job done – they don’t follow through, don’t listen, don’t care, don’t show up and don’t last long.  We invariably find the very same business leaders who are convinced you just can’t hire good people, have not designed their business to ensure their employees are successful.  More often than not, these very same leaders point the finger of blame at the employee, without recognizing that their business is not designed to ensure employee success. 

It’s all so predictable.  And curable.  What’s missing most often in these businesses is clarity.  Clarity of results.  Clarity of action.  Clarity of accountability. 

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Consistent and Persistent

As you engage in the annual ritual of reviewing the year that has passed and designing the year ahead, we at E-Myth Benchmark and the Benchmark Coaching Center encourage you to weave two words into your business strategies; consistent and persistent.  Marketing experts understand and advocate that companies be both consistent in their marketing message and persistent in their advertising activities.  They know by experience that inconsistent messages and scattered advertising initiatives will not yield the returns that consistent messaging and persistent advertising provide.

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