So many entrepreneurs struggle to reap the rewards of their efforts. They’re stressed out, overwhelmed, and unsure of how to get the best out of their teams. Yet they understand that to grow the business, they need more people — a classic catch-22. In fact, it’s become a common complaint of founders with expanding businesses who have made the leap from startup to fast growth: “It was so much easier when I didn’t employ people.”
Many entrepreneurs fail to realize that leading a business is a continuous learning process. As your business grows, your leadership capabilities and entrepreneurial drive need to adapt and evolve. The fatal mistake most founders make is not changing their leadership behavior from being a control freak, which served them well in startup mode, to a more enabling and empowering style.
When you start out, you are living and breathing your business. As success comes your way, you need to entrust your business to a team. You simply can’t do it all yourself anymore — you need to move from founder to leader. So what does great leadership look like in a fast-growth business?
You must be focused.
Your role as the leader is to create a high-performance environment where success is inevitable. Get the balance right between working ‘in the business’ and ‘on the business’.
You must be inclusive.
It’s no good just you having all the passion and energy — to deliver exceptional results, you need to operate in a collaborative way to realise your team’s potential.
You must be innovative.
You need to create a culture where everyone comes up with ideas to improve performance and add value. Take advantage of new technology and platforms.
You must educate.
Help people and organisations learn, inspire curiosity, ensure learning is applied, lead with questions, coach, develop, and nurture capability.
You must manage ambiguity.
In complex and uncertain times, be comfortable managing paradoxes. A good example is thinking about reducing costs while adding value for customers at the same time.
You must make the complex simple.
Come up with one-page plans and understand the need to let them evolve, to remain agile. Be mentally tough and resilient to deal with a world in perpetual crisis.
You must be authentic.
Have the courage to be vulnerable, to be the real you. Share your leadership philosophy, build trust, and be positive, healthy, and happy. Energy and vitality are essential. Doing all this will create engagement with your team. They will want to be in your business and make it a success. The culture comes from you.
You must be bold.
Have the courage to go out on a limb. Take time to understand yourself and be self-aware. Tell stories and give examples that ensure meaning and inspire action.
AS SIMON SINEK SAYS, “START WITH WHY.”
Starting a business and building something from nothing is an intensely personal experience. For most entrepreneurs, there is virtually no separation between business and personal life in the early stages of a startup: work is life and life is work. However, as a business matures, founders must mature alongside it to be successful. This means relinquishing the total control to which they have become accustomed.
The very idea of relinquishing control can be a difficult thing for entrepreneurs to accept. After all, it is often their hard work and attention to detail that brought the business to that point in the first place. However, the behaviors and practices that worked at the early stage of a business rarely translate once a business has reached a point of maturity.
Here at Remote Staff, we entrepreneurs like yourself by taking care of everything that doesn’t have anything to do with growing your company: we’ll surround you with top tier remote talent and handle your remote team’s operational requirements: IT, administrative, HR, and payroll, etc. All you have to do is manage your virtual assistants from the Philippines, run your business, and focus on growth activities.
If you want to know more about how outsourcing to the Philippines can help your business, click on the button below, and let’s talk.
