As the CEO of your business, your job is to lead your team so they can turn your vision into reality. Therefore self-leadership and upleveling your leadership skills is vital to how your business will grow and scale in the future.
According to Google, self-leadership is having a clear understanding of your values, your strengths, and your weaknesses, and using this knowledge to make intentional choices that align with your vision and purpose.
A lack of self-awareness and self-leadership often creates a bottleneck for a business especially when a CEO holds the reins too tightly and the team struggles to understand their role in the growth of the company.
Unfortunately, you may be your own greatest bottleneck.
Here are some questions to ask yourself about your own self-leadership:
1. Are you very self-aware of:
- Your inner critic about money?
- Your superpower or zone of genius?
- Your vision for your business for the next 3-5 years?
2. Do you spend the majority of your time on business activities and tasks that will grow the business? Or are you stuck in the day-to-day operations, the maintenance of your business?
3. Are you spending the majority of your time in your zone of genius? Do you even know your zone of genius?
4. Could your business thrive without you for six weeks? For six months?
If not, your business depends too heavily on you, making it difficult to scale or step away.
Your role as a founder isn’t to do everything—it’s to lead. If you want to grow and scale, it’s time to transition from Chief Everything Officer to visionary CEO by:
- Delegating tasks and empowering your team.
- Building systems that run without your constant input.
- Focusing on strategy and growth, not daily operations.
A self-running business engine increases the value of your business and allows you to take truly unplugged vacations, confident that your team can handle anything in your absence. Start making the shift today to free yourself and position your business for sustainable growth.
Here’s the truth – you won’t raise your own self-awareness or increase your self-leadership BY YOURSELF! You will need to change your circle of influence. You may need to find a coach to challenge your daily thinking. Thinking like a CEO is a different mindset than how an employee thinks.
I remember challenging a client, a seasoned business owner of a multi-million dollar company, who was spending a tremendous amount of her time making her own travel arrangements – a task easily delegated. It just didn’t occur to her to delegate a task that she had done herself for many years. She had to start thinking like a CEO of a multi-million dollar business.
5. Where could you delegate to free up more time to stay in your zone of genius?
Upleveling your self-leadership and your mindset isn’t a ‘one-and-done’ kind of thing. It’s a constant activity and one best done with someone who will challenge your current level of thinking.
This wraps up the series of blogs concerning costly and yet common small business bottlenecks. By addressing these 3 key areas—marketing, metrics, and leadership—you can uncork the bottlenecks holding your business back and then achieve the freedom you originally dreamed of when you started your business.
You can work less, PROFIT more!
You can do this!
Diana
P.S. Want to read more on Thinking Like a CEO? Read this.
P.P.S. Want some specific help uncorking your bottlenecks, I’d love to chat with you so book your no-pressure Business Breakthrough call here
