Every Leader Needs A Purpose

Hello!

How are you? From investing in your team, knowing your purpose to the evolution of roles, there’s a lot to cover in this week’s 321! Let’s dive straight in with:

3 Scaling Tactics

2 Leadership Lessons

1 Reflection Question

Should take under 3 minutes to read.

3 Scaling Tactics

1) Facilitate Difficult Conversations

It goes without saying that conflict and prolonged unhappiness within a business is not good news; the downstream effects of it will be detrimental. However, there’s only one reason that conflict arises, at some point a difficult conversation was avoided until someone had enough. In turn, causing the outbreak of the conflict. The spoon you didn’t put in the dishwasher, and your partner erupts….it was never about the spoon!

So how do you go about avoiding these conflicts? Well, the best way is to actually lean into those difficult conversations. Of course, much easier said than done especially if your tendency is to people please.

James Watt, founder of Brewdog, when I spoke to him on ScaleX Insider (S11, Ep10) called out a method he refers to as ‘vomit!’ as something critical to his success. Everyone has heard of ‘the elephant in the room’, well this takes it one step further. During weekly meetings he asks each team member to bring forward “one thing that needs to be said but hasn’t been said yet”.

In this way, there’s a platform to air everything that should be said but hasn’t been spoken about creating an environment which mitigates the potential for business disrupting conflict.

2) Success Requires The Right People

A successful scaling journey relies on a number of different aspects. However, one that stands out to me is hiring the right people for your business. Now when I say this, you might be thinking of finding someone who has:

??Heaps of experience on their CV. ??The most skills. ?? Lives local.

And while these things do play a small part in it, they are far from the most important aspects.

To hire the right people, you need to consider:

→ Do they align with your business?

→ Are they someone who is coachable?

→ Do they fit the current culture at your company?

→ Are they the type of person that brings a positive energy?

When it comes to scaling, hiring the right people is vital. You can’t solely focus on the typical points such as their CV & qualifications. Because if you want to hire the right people every time, you’re going to need to look deeper than that.

3) Invest In Your Team

Scaling doesn’t just require a great team, it requires a committed team too. So as a leader, you need to ensure that you don’t just have great talent within your team, but you also need to ensure that they’re going to stick around and that you can retain them.

In a recent ScaleX Insider podcast with Lord Mark Price (S15, E8), he stated that one of the biggest determining factors when it comes to retaining your talent is career development, because your team need to feel like they are being developed and progressing, if you want them to stay loyal to your business.

Highlighting the importance of training, helping them work on their weaknesses, mapping out a career progression path (just to name a few examples.) Truthfully, you need to be doing as much as you can to ensure that you’re constantly developing your team forwards.

Not only will this help you cultivate an incredible team, but it will also ensure that they great people you have around you, are in it for the long run.

2 Leadership Lessons

1) Every Leader Needs A Purpose

In business leadership, there’s one thing that drives:

• Motivation.
• Desire to improve.
• Good mental health.
• Higher energy levels.

(And so much more…)

It’s having a purpose behind your business & scaling journey. If you’re a business leader that doesn’t have a purpose, not only are you going to struggle… your team will too.

As humans, having a purpose drives everything we do. We look after our children with the purpose of raising good people. We drive our cars with the purpose of reaching a destination. Everything we do in life, is driven by a purpose. And running a business is no exception. So, if you want to scale successfully, you need to unearth the purpose behind your business first.

2) Embrace Role Evolution

There’s a common trap that a lot of leaders fall into that prevents them & their business from progressing and scaling. Because leaders will have a job title (like CEO) and while that job title won’t change as you scale, your roles & responsibilities will.

If you want to scale successfully, this is something that you need to come to terms with. Because I see so many business leaders who are venturing into their scaling journey, but their roles and responsibilities haven’t changed one bit. In turn, holding their business back from scaling effectively as they are trying to juggle all their old tasks alongside the new tasks that come with scaling.

If you want to scale successfully, it’s important to remember that as you scale, your roles & responsibilities will be constantly evolving due to the changing landscape that scaling brings.

1 Reflection Question

Now for my favourite part of the newsletter! For this weeks reflective question, I’d like to refer back to point 3 of the scaling tactics:

Are you doing everything you can to invest in your teams growth? Are you ensuring that they have a clear path of progression that they have clarity on?

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I hope you have enjoyed this week’s 321 newsletter!

If you enjoyed this or found it helpful, why not share it with a friend?

And remember, complex fails. Simple scales.

Take Care,

Brendan