Are you facing tough challenges as a business leader?
Do you sometimes feel overwhelmed and unsure about the best way to navigate through difficult situations?
We understand the struggles you’re going through. At WinRate Consulting, we’ve spent the past five years assisting numerous business owners like yourself, helping them overcome obstacles and achieve their goals. Drawing from our extensive experience, we want to share valuable insights and effective strategies to guide you on your leadership journey.
In this article, we will explore the lessons we’ve learned and delve into the importance of prioritizing your mission, making tough decisions, and taking action. Discover how you can steer your business towards success, even in the face of adversity.
Hitting Rock Bottom: Navigating the Toughest Week of Leadership
This one’s going to hurt, this how things manage, how I manage when things get tough in the business. I’ll tell you right now, the first week of January was the hardest leadership week of my life and I’ve been a leader for a long time and I’ve been leading this company for a long time. Before that, I was the captain of a sports team or whatever. I’ve been leading people for a long time and the first week of January was the most difficult leadership week.
Striving for Perfection: Overcoming Unattainable Strategies and Fostering a Supportive Environment
I built some strategies that were not attainable and then built an environment where people felt like they needed to be perfect. This is an example, I’m going to tell you how I’ve kind of overcame them so that you can look at some things and make some comparisons in your own world. We run a high performance environment, our coaching staff’s high performers, our client base are high performers, and in general our operations staff are high performers. What I built was strategies, game plans, and perspectives based on high performance. How that was interpreted by the staff was that mistakes were unacceptable, even though I’ve never yelled at anybody but they just believe the standard is set so high that if you’re making a mistake, you just don’t belong.
Ultimately I had to fire and reallocate and moved people around. As many of you know, Tiff, my wife has worked for me for the last two years after I quote unquote “retired” her from corporate America and last week got to fire my wife, and not because of failure, but because of her inability to accept that she was overwhelmed and could not execute the game plan as it was developed. What that did was it created stress amongst the entire operations team. All of them broke in the same day for different reasons at different times. You want to talk about a long day, have an entire group of employees break in front of you at different times for different reasons. And the emotions! I care about my people, I care about my clients, I care about my coaches, I care about my operation staff. I truly love these people, and if you’ve worked with me, you know that. That hurt and it hurt bad because I knew it was my fault. I knew that all they were trying to do was live up and ultimately I put too much on everybody’s plate and none of them had, we’ll say the opening, the comfort level, the belief that they could come and express I failed and not be minimized as a part of the team.
Learning through this, I had to basically, we’ll say demote Tiff to mother because that’s what she really wanted to be. We homeschool our kids and blending that life family, we work from home, this is my house. We work from our house ’cause it’s just not time for me to get an office yet. I just know I’m not ready for that and the business doesn’t need it. Employees come here on a regular basis. We shoot content here, and so the family and my business is just one world. Tiff was trying to balance it all. That example she set had Alicia, Mia, and Lindsay also trying to balance everything and break a little bit on the inside.
Overcoming Challenges and Putting the Mission First
When faced with challenges, I had to analyze and adjust in order to overcome them. While many people tend to spend a lot of time analyzing and adjusting before taking action, that approach often hinders progress. On the other hand, taking quick action and implementing ideas can lead to mistakes. I experienced one of the most emotionally challenging weeks recently when I had to let go of one of our coaches. It was a difficult decision but necessary due to a misalignment of values. Although this coach was a great person with valuable expertise in certain areas, their misaligned values posed a problem for the team and the mission.
I share this experience to emphasize that as a leader, it is your responsibility to make tough decisions and have difficult conversations. If not you, then who? You must ensure that the mission takes precedence over personal emotions or insecurities. Putting yourself first would mean delaying actions or decisions based on how you feel at the moment. However, the mission should always be the top priority, even if it means facing challenges head-on.
In my case, I have a personal mantra that guides my actions: “Nothing comes above the mission, including you as the leader.” This mindset allows me to prioritize the mission over my own emotions, fears, or lack of experience. It ensures that I take swift action when needed. It is crucial to avoid putting personal concerns ahead of the mission. Otherwise, you risk hindering progress and causing others to struggle.
Analyzing the situation that led to the problem, I realized that we had overloaded our team without providing a space for discussing performance issues or feelings of being overwhelmed. While we had regular team meetings, I made a mistake by not creating an opportunity for individuals to express their concerns or discuss their struggles freely. Recognizing this, I took action by redistributing tasks, repositioning team members, and realigning priorities. In a small business, it is common for individuals to wear multiple hats, assuming they can handle it all just as the business owner can. However, this assumption is false. Clearly defined roles and responsibilities, along with the ability to hold people accountable for staying in their lanes, are crucial for success.
Once the problem was identified and analyzed, I made the necessary adjustments, even though it was painful. While I valued having certain individuals in the business, I had to acknowledge that what had worked before was not going to work moving forward. In this particular case, the need to homeschool our children and the inability to find a qualified nanny meant that we couldn’t continue with the same structure. This realization led to difficult conversations and emotional moments, but I remained focused on realigning ourselves with the mission.
The process I follow in such situations involves determining the problem, analyzing what needs to be done, and taking aggressive action. In this instance, the mission statement served as our guiding principle: to simplify and systemize the growth of home service companies while making an impact with every conversation we have. I had to take myself out of the equation, no matter how painful, and prioritize the mission above personal attachments or achievements. Firing a coach was one of the most challenging conversations I’ve had as a leader, but it was necessary for the mission’s success.
It is important to remember that as your mission evolves, the mission statement should remain intact. This means that ongoing decisions and actions will need to be analyzed and adjusted to align with the evolving mission. The journey toward success involves continuously evaluating and adapting to ensure the mission remains the top priority.
Trusting Yourself and Upholding the Mission
Taking action and trusting yourself to make the right decisions based on a clear heart, a full mind, and alignment with core values in the mission statement is crucial. While disagreements, people’s reactions, and even firings may occur, it’s important to remember that upholding the mission is the primary responsibility. Others may have their own missions and may be hurt by the decisions made, but as a leader, protecting the mission must remain paramount.
Putting oneself aside and prioritizing the mission can be one of the most challenging aspects of leadership. It requires making difficult decisions and taking action even in the face of personal emotions. However, ensuring the mission’s protection and success is essential.
To embark on this process, it is vital to first define your mission clearly. Without a clear mission, this approach may not yield the desired results. By looking objectively at the situation and removing personal emotions, you can identify what needs to happen to realign the problem with a solution that supports the mission.
Remember, no one has it all figured out, and making mistakes and experiencing failures is part of the journey. What sets successful leaders apart is their commitment to protecting the mission and making hard decisions when necessary. Reflect on your actions and the measures you are taking to ensure that you, your company, and your mission can continue to achieve victories rapidly and consistently.
Ultimately, with trust in your abilities and a focus on the mission, you can navigate challenges, overcome obstacles, and lead your team towards continued success.
