You are an entrepreneur, a person who creates something valuable for your customers from nothing. But, also you are a leader because you can’t create and distribute the value to the customers as an individual who is alone.
You need, and probably you already have a team who will work with you and help you to achieve your business goals.
How Much Support Can You Enable?
According to my analysis on the group of entrepreneurs as my clients, I have found that without support from the entrepreneurial side the achievements of a team (or small business as a whole) are 30 to 50% less than teams where exist full support from their leaders.
What does this mean? Here are some examples:
- The completion time of the same project in two different small businesses is three months where entrepreneur gives their full support to the team and four months completion period where entrepreneur don’t give their full support to the team working on a project.
- Small businesses with full support from the leader side to the team in one year complete five different projects while small businesses without a leader’s support complete only three projects in one year.
With these two examples, you can easily see that without 100% support from your side, your small business will suffer.
Related: Unlocking the Secrets of Effective Management Style
This means that:
1. You will have more and more uncompleted projects.
A larger project’s completion time will bring on your table more projects that are not yet completed. This will create an adverse effect on your business as a whole.
2. The productivity level in your small business will decrease.
Spending more time on the same task means that the overall productivity of your team is decreased.
3. Your business potential energy will decrease.
Because the projects will not give you the results that you want or the results they have the potential to bring you, your overall business potential energy will suffer.
4. The trust in you as a leader will decrease.
This is an important thing because it can crash all your dreams. Without a team member’s trust in you as a leader, you can’t expect that you will succeed in achieving your goals.
What can you do to become a better leader?
1. Start working on the improvement of your leadership skills.
As a first spend some time working on improvements in the most important skills that you will need as a team leader. You can start with the skills described in the 8 important team leader skills.
2. Delegate carefully.
As a team leader, you need to know the capacity and potential of all members of your team and then start delegating according to this knowledge. If you want to leverage the full potential of your team, you will need to delegate smart enough and in such a way to ensure more substantial freedom for yourself and guarantee for quality completion of delegated tasks at the right time.
3. Be there when they need you.
Your team members will need you, that’s a fact. But, more important is how you will manage your time to be there when they need you. For example, if you delegate smart enough, you will decrease the time that they will require you when they work on the project tasks.
Your help can be assured through short meetings on an everyday basis where they can share different problems with you. You can also schedule part of your workday to talk about the tasks with your team members. You can use technology in the form of questions and answers, or just allow them to call you or send you emails for specific problems.
4. Help them to achieve their tasks.
When you are in continuous communication with your team members, you will be able to give them the help that they need from your side. Additionally, instead of waiting for them to ask for help, you can follow their achievement and jump in periodically if you think that they will need help from you.
5. Share your vision with them.
If you want your team members to follow you, to know what exactly they need to do and what’s their rule in the accomplishment of your vision, you will need to share it with them. If they quickly find themselves in your vision, you will be the leader that they will want to follow.
6. Go beyond your business limits.
It’s not only about work and achievement. You will need to build a culture of trust and friendship if you want to be a successful leader. Become close enough with the members of your team and talk about things that are not related to their work and your small business. You can also allow you to go out and spend some relaxing time with them. Building mutual trust is an important part of your leadership style and the success of your team as overall.
Question: Do you support your team members in your business?
