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You never read about a sailing race in which one of the competitors failed to know the destination or the starting line. Precious few captains start without a serious game plan or preparation behind them – the risks are simply too great. Why don’t more business owners guide their business that way?
Strong leadership is a success factor in sailing and in business. When leadership fails, there is no telling what or who will fill that void. Knowing what to do to keep your leadership vacuum filled with good habits can make or break your success.
Here are five things good leaders do to get the results they want inside of six months:
- Determine the results they will have at the end of the period, whether sales, production or customer satisfaction.
- Identify who they will be accountable to for results, rewards and consequences.
- Demonstrate commitment to their stated goals by turning every stone to learn and do what is required to move forward.
- Develop good time management skills.
- Communicate openly with others and be open to their suggestions for improvement.
For a real-life example, consider Jack, the owner of a consulting company. Filling his leadership void meant declaring openly to his team for the first time ever what their revenue would be at mid-year. He didn’t know how they would reach that goal, but he committed and followed through to involve his team in figuring that out, something he had never done before and didn’t think they could do.
He asked a business owner friend of his to hold him accountable. They met weekly to review progress; Jack put $100 into a charity fund each week that he didn’t complete his commitment or show up for that meeting on time. Meeting the revenue goal became the most important focus. Others he shared his plans with became excited for him and helped – many with leads for new business. He continued to learn about leadership and why that needed to show up before his results did.
Two months away from his deadline, he is a little behind plan, although his business is performing better than ever before.
What are Jack’s biggest learnings? The leadership mindset must show up before everything else can be expected to. Daily leadership habits set the mind, the tone and the action that will lead to results. Jack realized that he had let his company’s leadership vacuum fill with low quality work and poorly coordinated service.
That ended when Jack decided to make his choice.
Doing what Jack did wasn’t easy – and moving ahead meant he had to admit the failure of old habits and be truly open to a new way of thinking and operating. Great captains of sailing vessels or businesses don’t try to get to the other end of their journey, they choose to get there.
That choice is the difference between hope and conviction and is a factor in every element of success.
What choice could you make today?
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