Leadership is the ability of an individual to motivate, influence, and enable other employees to contribute to the success of an organization.
Management is controlling a group to accomplish a specific goal.
Inspiration and influence are what separate leaders from managers – NOT control and power.
There is a tight rope to walk when it comes to running a business. Leadership inspires and creates passion, achieving results through other people one might never dream of accomplishing alone. Leadership is a difficult skill to master, but when you get in sync and create momentum with your team it’s a beautiful dance. Yet, management also has its place in an organization as it creates structure and systems for repeatable results. It can be a challenge for any individual to weave the right amount of leadership and management together when pursuing the business objective.
Leaders must consider the business environment. In booming economies, the risk of financial ruin is lesser because the chance of failure is lower. In retracting economies leaders must realize that financial failure is more prevalent. The management of team members needs to be increased to focus in on key metrics to preserve the business, which in turn provides for the team members’ livelihoods. This oversight might be painful in the short term, but you are doing it to survive the storm. Leaders make tough choices that sometimes the team doesn’t understand, but once through the struggle the entire organization will be able to look back and recognize the necessary.
Given the current economic indicators, do you need to be a Peacetime or Wartime CEO?
Peacetime:
- Focuses on the big picture and empowers people to make decisions
- Knows what to do with a big advantage in an economic expansion
- Works to minimize conflict
- Sets big, hairy, audacious goals
Wartime:
- Cares about the speck of dust on a gnat’s ass if it interfered with the prime direction
- Is paranoid
- Heightens the contradictions
- Fights the enemy on a day-to-day basis to maintain market share
Get back to the basics that made you successful: lead generation. Double down on scripts and track your conversion. Learn from fall out. Get side by side with your team to provide direction, training, and accountability. There is a shift in our economy coming. Get ahead of it. Make these uncomfortable changes and the market share you have now will double on the other side of this impending market shift. Be the leader they need in this moment to thrive on the backside.
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