“Robin there always seems to be something going wrong. I used to be able to manage it all, but now I’m wondering if I have hit my limit,” Josh offered as he described his current CEO life. “I desperately want to be a good leader. Help!” How do confident leaders handle it when they can’t handle it?

This Week’s Edition

Leadership is more than most can handle. Thank goodness for our team. If not for the team, who would you be leading? Leaders who rely on their team grow their organizations more effectively.

Clarify Your Thinking

Josh continued the description of his leadership dilemma, “we’ve grown, and there are more people on the team. Managing them, the endless projects and tasks and all the change might be too much for me.”

“That’s great,” I said.

“What?” he asked a bit surprised.

“Congratulations. You’ve scaled your business to the point that you can’t handle everything like you used to back when you first started.  That’s progress!” I exclaimed.

“It doesn’t feel like progress. It feels like backsliding,” he confessed.

Successful leaders grow their organizations. When this happens, the focus of their leadership is not to bear the burden of every task, project or problem.  Their focus should be to lead the people who were hired to bear those responsibilities. 

That’s the beauty of leadership. Leaders who rely on their teams outperform leaders who don’t by 186%. Also, they are 2.5x more likely to be a high performing revenue organization. A focus on true teamwork:

• Fosters cooperation

• Broadens perspectives

• Increases productivity

• Offers insight and learning

• Frames the company culture

By the way, teamwork doesn’t mean dictating the tasks that need to be done. If this is your view of teamwork you will be merely a task master not a confident leader.

Old Thinking: The team messed up again. I need to move them out of the way and just do it myself. That’s the only way it will get done right.

New Thinking: The business has scaled to the next level. It’s time I took my leadership to the next level by investing my time inspiring, teaching, training and coaching my team. 

Thoughts Lead to Actions

A cohesive team can accomplish anything. If you don’t feel like you have a cohesive team you can trust at this point, here are 3 simple steps to move in the right direction.

Step 1: If you don’t like your team, press in. Find something you like. Assess their ability to do the job. 

Step 2: Be decisive. Get the right people on the bus in the right seat.

Step 3: Go first. Cast a vision for the future to rally the troops for the job at hand.

Roll up your sleeves, listen to their ideas and get in the trenches, because teams led by leaders who do these things maximize their impact by creating a lasting bond with their team. That type of team experiences 74% less stress and 40% less burnout. They accomplish greater things than they even thought possible. They lose together and they win together. 

Be thankful that leadership is more than you can handle. Facing that challenge confidently brings the team together and creates the followership you need to win the game.

Boost Your Performance

Leaders who don’t rely on their team and try to do it all, risk: being more cynical, having low energy, suffering from exhaustion, being unable to control emotions, dampening enthusiasm/motivation and losing perspective. This borders on bad leadership. We believe good leadership is attainable and it is the difference maker. Find out how in this week’s video.

What’s Your Opinion?

Try the approach in this week’s newsletter and let me know what you learn at robin.pou@robinpou.com. 

If you are going to be a leader, you might as well be a good one. Don’t let doubt count you out. Have a confident week!

Robin Pou, Chief Advisor and Strategist

If this was helpful, feel free to share it with another leader who needs to defeat doubt and complete their confidence.

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What is “The Confident Leader”?

During the Covid-19 Pandemic, I began a video series called “Panic or Plan?” It was designed to equip leaders to navigate the doubt they experienced and to rise in the confidence they needed to lead during turbulent times. It took off. I then started this newsletter to equip leaders in the same fashion each week for the doubt that crashes across the bow of their leaderSHIP.