As a Business Leader, Do You Know Yourself Well Enough to Make the Call?

When I spoke to leaders at the British Chambers of Commerce recently, one of the ideas I shared was this: successful leaders know there's no such thing as an organisation. It's merely a collective of people all working towards a common outcome. A business doesn't feel confident, or nervous, or decide to wait and see before making decisions. The people leading it do.

And that’s worth mulling over, because, if you think about it, business confidence is often reported as a number. But when I read see those numbers in the news, or online, I picture the people. The owner-manager juggling business and family life. The MD answering questions between meetings. The finance director who's been asked the same thing by the board all week. Behind every figure is a decision somebody made.

Between the conditions and the decision

I'm a coach, not an economist, so let me be clear about what I'm not saying. The pressures are real.

What I've learned from working with people at the top of organisations for more than 20 years is that there's always a person standing between the conditions and the decision. Two leaders can read the same forecast, face the same costs and land in completely different places. One waits. One invests. Sometimes waiting is exactly the right call. The question worth asking is whether you chose it, or whether something chose it for you.

A coaching question in an economic report

In June, Andy Haldane, President of the British Chambers of Commerce and former Chief Economist at the Bank of England, co-authored a report proposing a Growth Delivery Test¹ for economic policy. As he put it, before announcing any major measure, policymakers should ask: “will this prompt firms to do something they would not otherwise have done?”²

When I read that, I smiled. It's a coaching question.

Good policy can change the conditions around a decision by lowering a cost or opening a door. The decision itself still must be made by someone. The last metre of every growth policy runs through a human being in a chair, and that last metre is where I've spent my whole career.

So, I'd invite every leader reading this to run the test on themselves. What would prompt you to do something you wouldn't otherwise have done? And what, honestly, is stopping you now?

Meet the motivator

The leaders I work with are self-aware. They know their style and their strengths, and most can list the less helpful bits of themselves without being asked. But so what? Do they know what to do with what they know? A more interesting question is: what causes them to be the way they are, both at their best and when they're not at their best? And, how good are their strategies for showing up as the leader they want to be?

This is where I use PRINT®, from the USA – the next generation exec team development tool. I was amongst the first cohort of coaches in the UK to be accredited in it. It identifies nine values-based Unconscious Motivators®: deep drivers shaped by our life, each one pulling us towards something and working hard to keep us away from something else. They're a big part of what makes us good at what we do. Left unnoticed, they also trip us up.

Like our innate drive to always feel safe and secure. In a leader, it's a brilliant thing to have. It protects cash, spots trouble early and keeps people in work. But what it wants the most is to avoid risk, uncertainty and unnecessary change, and the economy is currently serving up plenty of all three. In a leader who hasn't properly met this motivator, "let's wait until things settle" can feel like strategy when it's actually protection.

The drive to succeed and achieve behaves differently. Its great fear is failing or looking bad, and in a downturn that can make a bold, public move feel far riskier than a subtle, invisible one, even when the numbers point the other way.

None of this determines whether someone can lead. But once a leader can recognise their unconscious motivation at work, they get the choice back. In my experience, that's the game changer.

Being brave keeps the business safe

I've had to do this work on myself. Last December I moved my family and my business from Lincoln to North Essex. The timing wasn't kind. Between the Budget and the conflict in the Middle East, clients in my pipeline started to delay and cancel as their own businesses felt the squeeze.

Fresh-out-of-the-box Nicola would have battened down the hatches and worried. Instead, I asked myself the question I ask my clients—how do I do 'me' in times like this? My answer was to get out there. Networking, and cups of tea (Yorkshire Tea were rubbing their hands together), knowing I only needed one of those conversations to identify a space where I could help. Within five months I'd built multiple proposals to help high performing teams from a standing start, in a place where hardly anyone knew my name.

I share that because it's the clearest proof I have of something I believe about every leader I meet. You already have the resources within you to achieve what you want. For me, in that moment, being brave was what kept the business safe.

Where to look when the forecast is foggy

The happiest, most successful leaders I've worked with know what they're leading towards, clearly enough that it compels them. They know who they need to be to get there, meaning the version of themselves they want to be and the version others want to go on the journey with. And they have strategies for being that person consistently.

When the outlook is uncertain, knowing where you're going does most of the heavy lifting. You can't control the forecast. You can decide your destination, how fast you want to row, and let that shape your next move more than the headlines do.

Before you make the call

The economy is thousands of individual judgements added together. Which means every leader who makes a clear, conscious decision, whether that's to invest, to recruit or to wait, is changing the picture a little.

So the next time you're weighing one of those decisions, try one small thing before you commit. Ask yourself whether that's the market talking, or an Unconscious Motivator® deep within that you haven't properly met yet.

Whatever you think you are, you are so much more than that. So is your business.

For one to one executive coaching or executive team coaching, please get in touch.