I asked my mentee how she leads her business, and asked her to think of her answer on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is she's deep in the weeds and 10 is she is completely hands-off.
She'd been complaining that she doesn't have time to think about where the business is heading, and do some longer term planning.
Unsurprisingly, she came back with a score of 3 - she's so into the everyday details that she can't see into the horizon. Which is strange because she now has a competent team around her to manage the day-to-day work. She's probably getting in the way.
I asked why she behaves like this?
There were two reasons - both common and very telling:
She founded the business in her parent's kitchen and knows every detail about it. She wants to make sure that when her team are handling customers and suppliers they are doing it 'her' way. She's not comfortable delegating stuff.
Detail is her comfort zone. She feels uncomfortable about stepping up and being the boss.
So I asked her what score she thought she should have if she were to lead growth, and she said 7. In other words leaving her team to get on with their jobs but getting a regular read-out on where the business is. The resulting mentoring task is to get her from 3 to 7 - moving her into a new comfort zone and getting her good at delegation, amongst other things.
I use this technique a lot - two marks on a 1 to 10 ruler. Where are you and where should you be? It helps to visualise your current position and where you think you should be. It can be used for any question.
What do you know, what should you know?
How confident are you now and where should you be?
Is your business a lifestyle one, or are you solid growth?
How much time do you spend, and how much should you spend?
How do you feel, and how do you feel you should feel?
Lots more - you can define any scale you want. Use it with your team - it can say a lot about job satisfaction and ambition.
Comments