The opinions expressed by Entrepreneur authors are their very own.
You may be surprised to listen to this, but 82% of bosses they typically hold managerial positions without any management training or qualifications.
This resulted in a serious decline with high-class leaders in various industries around the world. As a result, we are dealing with a decline in the level of trust in managers among extraordinary employees and a high level of worker turnover.
So, to avoid this, shouldn’t company founders and top management also develop and improve their skills, especially in the current market conditions when every thing is changing day by day? Well, let’s take a look, we could? Here’s my take on how leaders can go through the means of self-development and why it is important.
Adopt a change mindset
As a long-time business leader, I have learned that the financial industry is continuously changing and evolving. This implies that my co-founders and I have to continuously monitor these changes if our company is to stay relevant.
Lewis Carroll once said, “My dear, we must run as fast as we can just to stay still. And if you want to get anywhere, you have to run twice as fast.” These words perfectly describe how founders should feel when collecting and analyzing recent information.
And it isn’t just about having the right knowledge. The roles you have to play in the company also change depending on what stage of development you are at. When you first launch a startup, your principal focus is on building a team and researching the market for possible product niches that you may fill. However, as what you are promoting grows, things change. Just like the tasks you have to face as a founder.
For example, now all of our teams have been established, so I deal with such matters less regularly. Instead, most of my attention is focused on more strategic issues, resembling planning the company’s course and prospects for the next two to three years.
And that is the way it should be in my opinion. Founders must be capable of switch gears, step by step moving away from operational and towards strategic issues. For this purpose, it is necessary to adopt a specific way of considering and prepare management staff that may enable what you are promoting to operate without your direct interference in on a regular basis matters.
Learn find out how to take the backseat
In my opinion, the founder’s job is to build the company to a certain stage. You will know that you simply have reached this stage when you’re feeling that your competencies are now not sufficient to be capable of proceed to perform your duties effectively. This means it is time to take a step back and hire people higher suited to take over some of your tasks.
The ability to do this requires a certain character that means that you can look at things objectively and admit that in some positions in the company, others would be higher suited than you. In fact, the larger your organization becomes, the less likely you are to be a good fit for many of the positions that have to be filled. And there’s nothing flawed with that.
I’d say this is a completely healthy situation for the company. There may come a time when things will be taken care of by other individuals who are higher at direct management than you. Meanwhile, you and your co-founders can form a board without having to get deeply involved in regular processes.
It’s as much as you to come to a decision when is the right time to make this transition.
What tactics can you utilize?
It’s natural that each founders and employees grow with the company and its needs. Set specific goals you wish to achieve and select the forms of training that may higher enable you achieve them. Here are some options that I think would be very useful in developing the skills you could higher lead your organization.
Leadership Coaching: Coaching sessions create a space for reflection where you may improve your self-awareness and explore your aspirations. Get a clearer picture of where you are and where you wish to be to realize sustainable business growth. The evidence shows this 70% of leaders who profit from coaching as a results of improving performance in the workplace. Personally, I can say that coaching often allows me to reflect on existing business problems while learning find out how to do higher based on real cases we have encountered in the past. This has proven very helpful over the years.
Industry Analysis: I have already mentioned that working in finance means operating in continuously changing conditions. Therefore, the most vital thing here is constant market assessment. It helps to grasp the state of affairs and the needs faced by market participants. This, in turn, allows us to forecast demand and supply for our products and possible financial profits. If you wish what you are promoting to succeed, you may never stop deepening your awareness of the market in which you use.
Collecting opinions: at my company we do not really have a single benchmark by which we measure all of our employees and attempt to match them. It would not make much sense. Fintech is a very revolutionary field, so the most desired features are the ability and courage to think creatively, not “sticking to standards”. We subsequently prefer to measure the success of our training initiatives based on the feedback provided by our management and employees in accordance with Art Kirkpatrick model. Whether they manage to use recent skills and knowledge in their work and whether the training has influenced their level of self-confidence and motivation. This is how we evaluate our progress.