“What I learned very quickly as an entrepreneur was that to grow our organization, I had to provide different things to the company and to the people. The company needed an entrepreneur, the people needed a leader. You can do both, but it requires a shift in how you think about every aspect of your business.” ~Nancy Lyons, CEO of Clockwork.
Being an entrepreneur often requires you to be a leader as well. You started out all by yourself, but your product or service is selling so well that you’ve had to expand and bring on more people to help. It’s still your company, but now you have a group of people who need to be managed and developed. They need to feel important, be heard and share in the success. While many entrepreneurs are leaders, it often requires two different skill sets to do both. As an entrepreneur you’ve only had to focus on your ideas, your decisions and your successes. A leader has to focus on everybody’s ideas, decisions and successes. To help you be a better leader, we’ve compiled a few tips to help you grow and be successful as an organization and company, instead of just as an individual.
1. Take time out of every day to focus on your employees. Use this time to look over their production, gauge their level of satisfaction with you and the company and get to know each person individually.
2. Delegate, evaluate and praise. It is important that you share your workload with your employees. That’s why you hired them, isn’t it? After you delegate an assignment, make sure you follow up with the employee often and give ample praise when a job is well done.
3. Communicate often and be as transparent as possible. Those who work with you need to know that the business is moving in a positive direction. Nobody performs well if they are always worried about possibly being out of a job next week. Have meetings regularly and make sure you are communicating clearly with all of your employees.
4. Create a healthy work environment. If you are kind to your employees and serve them, they will respect you as a leader and believe in your ideas as an entrepreneur.
Being a successful entrepreneur and a good leader is very doable. As long as you remember to approach the two jobs with different mindsets, you will see that not only are you growing as an individual but also your organization is growing as a whole.
