Starting your very first business?
Before you can think about financial issues and hiring, take a long hard look at yourself. Do you have all the skills it takes to become a CEO? Leadership is a must-have skill, but leadership is an umbrella term.
You are your boss, and you are your first employee. Therefore, taking care of your employee is extremely important when you are starting your first business. For this, you will need to hone some leadership skills, which will pave the way for your successors to follow.
1. Self Awareness
For honing your leadership skills, there is one thing which you will always find experts say, ‘you should practice what you preach.’ You can ask someone to ‘work hard’, but if it doesn’t reflect on your own work, the entire credibility falls down.
In the long run business, you will make a few many mistakes. Your task is to make a note of these mistakes and work on them. Understanding where your capabilities and limitations lie is not a sign of weakness.
On the other hand, it makes you a fulfilled human being with self-awareness; you will know your strengths and weaknesses and work according to that. Self-Awareness, The Hidden Driver of Success and Satisfaction by Travis Bradberry is an excellent book to add to your collection to understand the subject more. Download the ebook for free from RARBG.
2. Encouragement & Upliftment
You are not just a pack leader; you are also a pack builder. You will not just be leading your team for the rest of your life but also get some of the best team leaders yourself. There will be times when your followers will feel demotivated and unable to work towards their goals.
This is where your words of motivation & upliftment will come in. No, you do not have to oversaturate it to the point that they get full of themselves, but ensure that some amount of extrinsic motivation through acknowledgement is maintained.
Especially when they are accomplishing an important task and yielding excellent results.
3. Understanding Work-Life Balance
Yes, this is your business, your ultimate pride and possession, and there is no harm in spending more than twelve hours a day building it. However, it is unfair for you to ask your employees to do so as well.
Yes, they can be an integral part of the business, but their role will always be different from yours. Plus, as a good leader, it is your responsibility to give your employees recharge time as well.
Once they are fulfilled in their free time, they will have more energy to come back with a blast and give their full potential.
4. Ethical Mind
In the tough world of business, we often hear that being ethical is not an option anymore. Somewhere in the making of the business, you have to choose a twisted path. But, it couldn’t be any less right. In fact, it takes a brave person to stand on the beliefs of ethical practices and run their business.
The more you follow in these footsteps, the better of a mentor you will be to your people. They will follow and lead in your lane, and fear unethical practices when it is established that wrongful practices are not tolerated.
5. Decision-Making Capability
Your decision-making capabilities highly depend on your level-headedness and confidence in the decision. Remember, if you are starting a business, there are people who are looking up to you, and it is your responsibility to give them a sense of assurance.
This is to say that it is almost impossible that you will never make a mistake. But the qualities of a good leader are judged by how they take responsibility for a wrong mistake and how essentially they are rectifying it.
Teach your subordinates the comprehension of limitations, and take action accordingly.
It Starts From You!
If you have a vision for your business, it should always start with you. You are your first leader and your first follower. Now that you know all the skills which can help you get some of the best results on your first step toward being an entrepreneur.
A route to business is not easy, but from the time you begin, you are a leader. This is why we need to keep our practices in check if we want others to follow us and work equally hard towards the business.