Consider yourself an owner; utilize your experience and commitment to make positive differences.
I was jogging the other day and asked myself “what do leaders really want from their staff?”
My answer was: leaders want their staff to handle issues, make informed decisions, be customer sensitive, be great managers, plan, deal with delays, resolve problems, sell more and more, reduce expenses, be a team player, create growth for the company, plus hundreds of other things, all while staying out of their hair. (And, more importantly, keeping others out of their hair!)
Lead Like an Owner
It boils down to one concept; they want us to perform and act like OWNERS! This hit me hard because after working with leaders, teams and organizations for over 15 years, it makes total sense that leaders don’t want to be hand holders or be involved in everything their team does. This means that leaders must lead, coach, and train their staff to be effective and clearly understand their roles, responsibilities, and expectations, and be empowered.
To lead like an owner means taking full responsibility and being accountable for all that happens. Leaders that are owners know their brand, know how to use and promote the brand, understand how to relate to others, and how to be a team player. They understand sales and how to grow their business; they understand customers and how to interact with them. They look at the company as if it was their own, and remove the “monkeys” from the true owners’ back. They eliminate waste because it impacts money in their pockets (at least they feel it does). They manage expenses like it is their own money. They deal with customer complaints and treat them as royalty because they know how important customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention are.
For this reason, we are starting the next series of leadership tips to focus on what it takes to:
- Be an owner
- Deliver as an owner
- Be rewarded like an owner
We will need real life examples so I would be very pleased to reach out and speak to anyone directly who has examples of where they’ve witnessed this “ownership” type of behavior, and why and how it helped with performance and results.
What type of workplace ownership behaviors have you observed?