Scalable businesses require scalable leaders

Business owners tend to look shifty when leadership comes up in the conversation.  They don’t see themselves as leaders – even though they are.

Leadership doesn’t mean they have to suddenly become Napoleon or Gandhi, but it might help them to understand what leadership looks like and do the things that leadership requires.  The quality of the leadership will to a large extent decide the scalability of a business.

Google returns over 244 million pages when you search for “leadership books”.  Amazon returns over 60,000 titles.  The subject has been fascinating people for thousands of years.  We all know it when we see it, and recognise when it is absent, but a practical, implementable definition remains elusive.

The development of leadership thinking and research over the last few decades can be summarised as:

  • First, people started by examining leadership traits
    • Leaders were born
    • Certain traits recurred, like intelligence, empathy, confidence
  • However, the traits used varied from leader to leader, from day to day – and possession of all of them didn’t necessarily mean someone was a good leader.  So researchers moved on to analyse leadership behaviours
    • Did good leaders tell or sell their wishes?
    • Did good leaders treat their followers like slaves or like equals?
    • Did good leaders focus on task outcomes or on developing the team and the individuals?
  • Once again, the research failed to come up with any definitive answers.  Latterly, researchers have been working on descriptions of the way effective leaders alter their behaviour in different situations

So, after millennia of trying to answer the question “How can I become a better leader” the scientifically correct but managerially useless answer is “It all depends…”.

So how should you as an SME owner develop your leadership skills so that your business becomes scalable?  Think of your role as turning vision into reality:

  • Give purpose and context to your employees’ activities
    • Communicate the Vision.
      • Keep it simple and consistent.  You must protect your employees from the complex, shifting picture of your business that you have in your head
    • Define and exemplify the values and beliefs you want for the organisation and your employees
    • Link individual roles and tasks to the bigger picture
      • Keep it simple.  The ideal is one key result area measured by one number for each role – in practice most roles will have two or three of these
  • Enable them to succeed
    • Provide the necessary resources
    • Implement structure, process, system and routine
  • Give them autonomy
    • Help them develop their role and their capability
    • Take every opportunity to delegate
    • Don’t interfere – coach.  Your aim as a leader is to develop other leaders, not to control every action of every employee so that they do it exactly the way you would

The Scaleup Formula provides you with an online system and methodology to follow to become a better leader and make your business scalable.  You can find out more here.

(From an original post on www.nickbettes.co.uk)

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