Leadership and your SME business

To SME Owners
Yes you KNOW this all, but a refresher.

Everyday I chat with clients on the single (in my opinion) most important skill, leadership of their sme businesses which can make or break their level of success.Recently my son and I were chatting about his degree that he is doing, Kyle asked do owners/ entrepreneurs know the true definition and process of leadership,( my son helps me in my business from time to time, on market and marketing research) good point, so I said lets go through the above two areas.

Leadership can be defined as, influencing and directing the Behaviour of staff, in such a way to achive the best results for the business and them, thats a key to a win win situation as late MR S Covey put it.

So that word behaviour comes into play, I am the first to agree that being a leader is hard work, lots of pt,effort required if it is not part of your DNA.

Simply there are SIX areas to Leadership, score yourself on them(10 being the highest)
     -  Authority(fear authority or not), how good are you at giving orders, instructions to your team,
     -  Influence, by setting examples(recently I did a post on my sales blog, sales reps and their
       influence with their clients) Influence behaviour, behaviour and more behaviour,
     -  Delegation, do you get your team to do the work, or do you want to be the busy being busy,
     -  Leadership is "all" about Responsibility and Accountability.
If the business fails it is your fault, if it wins it is the team, thats how life is.
     -  Finally that word Power, this does mean different things to different people, a pity but we
         are in the real world,
             -  power is as the dicitionary states, ability, capacity,capability, competency( not ugly power)

So six very simple areas for you and I to focus on to be better leaders.

Till next time may the Force be with you, I am your silent partner helping you work on your business.