Does the idea of scaling your business make you feel uneasy because you think it will just add more work for you? If your answer is yes, then you may be the bottleneck in your business.
There is good news. The solution may not involve adding a costly layer to your organizational chart. There’ are small shifts that can make a real difference.
One of my clients expanded his business and fell behind on some of the critical success metrics. When we started to work together his schedule was overloaded, he was behind on several promises, and was working too many hours not leaving him energy or time with his family.
It’s really easy to think you need to add someone to your organizational chart to be the implementer or handle the daily communication. In fact, that may not be the ideal solution. First, we looked at several key areas of his business alignment and especially the way he was naturally wired.
He was wired with a high degree of autonomy and a high degree of certainty. Biologically, it was natural for him to want to put his thumbprint on ideas and make sure they were done right, which often gets translated into acting on his own ideas and doing things himself.
Not only was he hanging on to tasks his team could handle, he created an environment where his team went to him for everything because he would figure it out.
The innate autonomy he needed he was not providing to his team. He created the bottleneck in his business. There is a lot of personal power in discovering that you create your environment.
During his mentoring session, I asked him a few strategic questions. He quickly realized that he needed to shift a few things to have all of his critical success metrics work in all areas of his life.
In order to scale his business more effortlessly, he recognized the need to level up his leadership skills. There are two things that made a significant difference for his mix of wiring.
1. He would ask himself: Who on my team is the point person for this new project/client? Whenever he brought in business, his natural instinct was to hold on to the client. He would be the go between adding more to an already filled scheduled.
With the question in mind, he shifted the way he worked. He immediately started to engage the point person on his team in the conversations with the client. This early introduction paved the way for the team member to develop rapport with the client so the client would go to that point person rather than to him. Regardless if you have employees or independent contractors, add this handy question to your sales process.
2. He would ask his team member, “what do you recommend.” As someone naturally wired to want to solve challenges, having his team members come to him to solve these problems actually fed into his natural need to problem solve.
To change his results, he had to manage his natural impulse. When someone would come to him with a problem, instead of trying to figure it out, he would ask them for their opinion and solution. It wasn’t his first instinct, but he worked on managing his natural impulse.
It wasn’t long before his team realized they needed to step it up, too. They needed to present a solution to the problem instead of just the problem.
As an internal thinker, it didn’t always occur to him to verbalize exactly what he was looking for. He recognized the need to verbalize more of what he wanted so that the other person was clear on the outcome that was needed.
Within 30 days, he noticed a shift not only with himself, but with his team and the results that were being produced. His team members were taking proactive roles in the company, his schedule opened up to cultivate strategic relationships, and he had more time with his family.
As he mastered managing his natural wiring, more opportunities came his way. His team was highly engaged, and his revenue numbers increased over 62% from the previous year.
If you want to change the outside results, change the inside first. Then, watch was shows up.
It’s one thing to know how you’re wired, it’s another to understand how to align it, manage it, and spot the wiring in others. If you would like to understand your human wiring at a level where you powerfully create your desired future, register today for Wired to Win: Your Path to Passion, Purpose, and Profit on June 28-29, 2018.
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Save $200 on tuition when you register by May 31 and apply code: wired62018
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