‘I cannot believe how they could have made that decision. Have they got no brains at all? What were they thinking? Or were they just not thinking?’
How would you describe your current management style? Are you a screamer, shouting your criticisms across the office/factory floor mixed with profanities for all to hear and fear? Do you sit in your office and send long emails expressing your decisions and/or displeasure for recipients to absorb? Do you like calling meetings with everyone sitting around the table to share your thoughts and hear their reports?
Leadership and management are difficult at times and bringing the best everyone has to offer to the forefront can be a real challenge, and frustrating. And it’s no wonder we all lose it at times.
As a young professional, I once worked in a firm that trained its managers in the art of ‘kick in the arse’. Not physically, but emotionally; humiliate them publicly so they will never want it to happen again and will, therefore, work so much harder. Needless to say, I moved on and that global firm imploded some years thereafter.
The way you manage your team to lift their best performance to the surface becomes even more critical in succession. You are training your new leadership team and setting the standard for leadership that potentially will flow through into the new business. Some of these new leaders may well be family and the example you set becomes even more influential.
This is an opportunity to pause and ask yourself: what is the leadership approach that will yield the best performance from my team? And that turns, in a large part, on the members of your team.
We often make the mistake of thinking what we did for the last forty years will be what works for the next forty years. But it won’t be and the new team must be able to continue to change and grow the business for future markets.
It’s no longer just about your leadership but rather the leadership of the new team and the business they will be taking forward. This calls for you to pause and to change your approach to leadership. Allowing the new leaders to step forward and learn, and for you to reflect on your life’s leadership lessons and share these with them.
Active Knowledge Question:
- Who are the next generation of leaders in your business? What are you doing to share your experiences and nurture their individual leadership capabilities?
Act Now
Searching for the world’s best family business succession guide? Buy Transition – Orienteering The Five Lands of Succession.
Want to become a part of the Entrepreneurs+ community? Sign up for my eNewsletter, and join the conversation by sending a question via Ask Richard.
All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
