Competitiveness requires a willingness to step forward into uncertainty and to take the risk. But the presence of doubt will quickly seed hesitation, fear and a lack of participation. For any business to thrive, to bring its potential to the forefront, leaders must actively strive to remove all and any doubt within the business. 

 

Active Knowledge Question:

What level of certainty, confidence and trust do the people who work within your business have in its future prosperity?

 

Rock-Paper-Scissors

I’m sure you have played the hand game ‘rock-paper-scissors’ at some time or another. Rock beats scissors, scissors beat paper, and paper beats rock – well they’re the rules I play by. But when it comes to business, doubt wins outright against potential, contribution and performance; you don’t want it to be an option as you can never defeat it.

In business, the potential for doubt it always present, and often is genuine. I’m not sure as leaders whether we recognise the negative impact that doubt has on our business’s performance?

Many business leaders see doubt as a motivational tool to entice greater performance and contribution from individuals and teams within a business. Doubt about performance reviews, promotions and job security are tools frequently used with the expectation that it will lead a person to work harder. Doubt can seed fear, and the use of fear does not I believe improve performance but rather impedes potential.

Doubt can reflect uncertainty, that is, how to act, which path to take, whether performance is satisfactory etc.. I believe encouragement and guidance are far more effective tools to stimulate performance and contribution.

Doubt Is A Feeling

Feelings provide us with an emotional feedback as to how we are responding to the circumstances in which we find ourselves. And emotions are a good servant but also a terrible master. The point is that we will all have and experience doubts in our daily lives and it is how we respond to them that is most important; do we listen to them and respond appropriately or do we allow them to control and direct us.

When speaking to doubt and businesses, we are firstly addressing the feeling that anyone working within or with your business may hold about the business. Doubt can be seeded in many ways within a business, but basically, it reflects an agent that will influence people’s willingness, and ability, to contribute their full potential into the business. 

The core competitiveness of a business is reflected in the combined talent and effort of every person who works within and with a business. And the task of leaders is to muster that combined contribution. If their efforts in mustering that contribution are not effective, then the competitiveness of that business will significantly lag behind what is possible.

Doubt can exist at an individual level but also quickly spread throughout teams and entire business units. Doubt can and will sap the competitive strength of a business.

What can seed doubt in a business at either an individual or wider level? Here are a few examples:

• Failed projects.
• Missed opportunities.
• Failure to openly communicate.
• Self-interest by leaders.
• Lack of trust in leaders.
• A profit-first motive placing profit above all else.
• Weak governance.
• Weak quality control and processes.
• Lack of reinvestment in the business. 
• Favouritism 

All of these examples can seed uncertainty about the future success of a business, what is happening in the business, the fairness of rewards and promotion, the recognition of contribution and the commitment of leadership the enduring success of the business; they all can create doubt as to whether I should step forward and contribute. 

There is a second context in relation to doubt and its impact on business performance, and that is individual success outside of the business. The presence of Achievers throughout your business, and them acting as champions of success in your business, can have a profound effect on participation and contribution. Successful people nurture other people to be successful. I’m not referencing those who have climbed the leadership ladder in the business, rather those persons who have successful lives outside the business. People who feel their lives are a success will contribute more to the business they work in. This is simply an effect of feeling successful, that is, the willingness to give.

Defeating Doubt

Doubt is an active enemy of performance, and leadership must be working to minimise its presence in a business. Here are a few examples of the actions that will dampen and eliminate doubt:

• Succinct and frequent communication uplifting the work of the business throughout all levels of the business – everyone knows firsthand what is going on; good and bad.
• A purpose for the business’s existence founded in meeting customer need – pride in the work that is being done.
• Worthy leaders who encourage and uplift the efforts of everyone and who eliminate self-interest whenever and wherever they see it – trust and honesty are prevalent, and recognition and rewards provided to those whose effort produced the outcome.
• Profit is recognised as an outcome of outcompeting others, and the business invests in strengthening its competitive engine.
• A culture that supports the best of the best working with the best – not elitism but a culture of ‘better every day’ encouraging everyone to give their best.

Recognising the adverse impact of doubt on your business’s performance is the starting point of changing the way in which it is treated and viewed within your business. We all have doubts, but we must also have the trust and confidence to push past these doubts.

 

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An entirely new level of performance.

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All the best in the success of your business,

Richard Shrapnel