How do I transition from Manager to Leader in my business?

Steve from Montana asks: How do I transition from Manager to Leader in my business?

What an important question Steve. This is critical to taking your business to that “next level” and NOT transitioning is a mistake that many business owners make that stagnates the growth of that company, and never allows them to realize their vision.

First let me say congratulations for achieving some level of success. It sounds like, though hard work and late nights you have managed to build your business to some level of respect within your industry. And you are wise to realize that to continue to grow you must step back from working on the day-to-day issues and begin work on the consistent long-term growth of the business.

Just like Al Pacino said in The Godfather: “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

There will be many distractions (you are probably encountering them now) that will suck you back into the day-to-day challenges. You must fight to minimize this!

Perhaps it is time to hire a manager to become that buffer, perhaps it is better training so that your employees can make more of the decisions. But whatever solution that you come up with, it will probably go against your natural instincts that now require you to be involved in every decision. That ego that it took to get into, and build your business this far, is what you need to fight against in order to find a NEW happy place that allows you to set the vision for your company and inspire your Lieutenants to execute that vision.

Inspire and influence will now replace sell and demand. You will need to focus on how to increase sales while they work on building a better operation. You will be deal making, rather than turning the wrench. You will work in broad strokes, instead of dealing with details. So, as you can imagine, it is critical to build a strong, capable team to surround yourself with. A “What’s next Boss?” type direct report employee is no longer going to cut it.

So, Step #1 is to build a good team that can work more autonomously and Step #2 is to change your mindset and work on those things that will provide long term, sustainable growth.

Not easy, is it Steve? But it is critical. So, think about it this way; Pareto said that 80% of results come from 20% of your effort.

This is a good illustration of what you are probably doing right now. In effect, you are spending 80% of your time managing (or perhaps even as a technician), and 20% being a Leader, working on the long-term benefit of your business. Imagine that next week you worked on the good stuff 30% of the time, and next month you worked 40% on these critical tasks and eventually you have reversed the equation to 80% of the time you are working on the deal making, sales increasing, infrastructure expansion that your business desperately needs.

This is one of those things that we do here at Resources & Development. Through weekly coaching we are helping to refocus business owners on the long-term tasks that will provide the greatest benefit to the business. We know that building a business is one of the hardest things you will do in your life and that the skill sets needed will change at various points in your journey. We also know that if that transition never happens, not only will the business stagnate, but the owner will most likely burn out.

So please call me if you think it is time to refocus and for your business to move up to the majors!