4 Steps to Scale-up Your Business Successfully
Scaling-up business is a dream of every Entrepreneur. Yet only 4% of Business Owners are able to grow and scale-up their businesses.
Seemingly there’s no lack of intent. Then what’s preventing Entrepreneurs and Business Owners from scaling-up their Business?
Working with Entrepreneurs, Business Owners and CEOs for more than 17 years helping them scale-up their businesses, I have seen and experienced that Scale-up is a possibility for every business – if we get certain basic aspects right in the business! I am sharing those in this article.
6 Leadership Coaching tips to improve business performance
Leading the team and business to optimal performance is a continuing challenge to CEOs and Business Leaders – especially in these VUCA times.
The good news is that today we have multiple support systems available to create, build, and enhance our leadership skills that are appropriate to face the respective challenges – including one-on-one leadership coaching with the help of a Business Leadership Coach.
Leadership Coaching helps leaders enhance their leadership presence, and helps them gain clarity to do what’s needed.
7 Ways CEOs Could Enhance Their Leadership Presence
Leadership presence helps leaders heighten their influence, their impact. Growing leadership presence therefore makes immense sense; and it’s possible for CEOs and Business Leaders to enhance and grow their leadership presence working with experienced Leadership Coaches.
Working with a variety of CEOs and Business leaders, I’ve seen developing leadership skills, growing leadership as a conscious process, is a possibility. Often it involves practicing enhanced leadership presence.
Here are 7 ways one could enhance their leadership presence:
- Being present: first and foremost is ‘to be there’ – in whole; every moment. ‘Wherever you are, make sure you’re there’ said Dan Sullivan.
- Listening: Ability to listen enhances leadership
How Leaders Could Benefit From Working With A Business Leadership Coach!
Business leaders have the potential, and more importantly possibilities, to create significant positive impact on their businesses, their people, and the society at large. Yet many feel they are not able to create the impact that they want to create.
What’s preventing us from creating the impact that we want to create? What’s preventing us from doing what we know we need to do? What’s preventing us from being ‘the Leader’ that we want to be?
Reasons vary. Often, they’re internal.
One of the key aspects is that Business Leaders feel lonely at the top – not having any one to freely express their ideas, thoughts, challenges; to share their views, fears,…
9 Fun-facts About Leading A Scale-up Business
Recently a Business Leader asked me how’s it different to lead a Scale-up business vis-a-vis a normal (growing) business?
It’s like driving in a highway vis-a-vis driving within the city.
- A moment of distraction can cause havoc in the highway (for self and others), whereas in the city one may manage to get away with a few dents and bruises. Scale-up requires increased levels of focus, attention, and ability to manage distractions.
- A drive in the highway requires higher levels of preparation, at multiple levels – the vehicle readiness, robust mechanical condition, well-lubricated joints, proper fluid levels, ability to refuel. Scale-up requires adequate and thorough preparation at multiple levels. (For a drive in the city, one may manage with lesser levels of preparation).
CEO Coaching - How CEOs, Business Owners Could Make Use Of It
Often Business Owners and CEOs feel lonely at the top! Rarely do they get to share their deeper thoughts, and inner feelings with someone; seldom they get a chance to express their original thoughts, or bounce-off their ideas with any one.
At the same time, they are faced with multiple challenges on a daily basis. On varied fronts, of different types.
CEO trainings, peer network, books and journals may help to some extent understand different perspectives discuss, debate, understand; a safe environment because the CEO Coach is un-vested and non-judgmental, and Coaching conversations are held at high levels of confidentiality.
Working with a CEO Coach, CEOs are able to:
- explore their original thoughts (without inhibitions)
- reflect themselves, ‘look at the mirror’
Where to play? Insights from a Scaleup Coach
Research shows only 4% of the businesses scaleup successfully. There’s a reason why they do – they activate the Scaleup Enablers in their businesses!
One of them is choosing ‘Where to play’. Choosing where to play, or Positioning, is one of the key enablers for a successful scaleup.
Scaleup leaders need to be strategic here. As a Business Owner one may seem to have a choice to play anywhere. Scaleup Leadership is about making that choice. Consciously. With care.
How Executive Presence Coaching Helps Leaders Take Better Decisions!
Leaders make choices, take decisions. And quality of those decisions determine the future of business, its people.
Decision making is never easy – lack of clarity, changing conditions and a host of things make decision making process quite a complex affair.
How to improve quality of our decisions?
Executive Presence Coaching helps.
6 Leadership Coaching Insights That Leaders Could Make Use Of!
Being a Leader requires constant practice to build and enhance their Leadership Presence. Enhanced Leadership Presence enables them to exert influence on others beyond that’s conferred by formal authority.
Working with a range of Leaders over the past 18+ years, I’ve had many insights on Leadership Presence – some of which am sharing here:
- Being Present, Curious, Authentic, Consistent, Trustworthy, Resolute and Resilient significantly contributes to building and enhancing one’s Leadership Presence.
- Leadership is about being decisive, and taking decisions in-time. A recent survey found, among CEOs fired over issues related to decision making, only a third lost their jobs due to bad decisions; the rest were ousted for being indecisive. Taking decisions and keep moving at the right pace is crucial for a Leader.
6 Best CEO Coaching Outcomes for CEOs who move!
Many high-performing CEOs choose to work with a CEO Coach . The intent is to become the best, most effective CEO that they can be. CEO Coaching assists those in Leadership positions in carrying out their role with impact and effectiveness.
Often CEOs aspire to grow their business and have ideas as to where they want to go; what they need to do; even what they need to become, to facilitate that journey. Yet, are unable to make that move for a variety of reasons.
CEO Coaching helps CEOs make that move – enabling them to go from where they are, to where they want to be! It requires a move, not a change, for (only) a move helps sustaining it.
One may wonder how this Coaching CEOs works, and how it creates such a significant impact on Leaders.
4 Things Great Leaders Have In Common
Great Leaders standout. They demonstrate great leadership qualities. People get inspired by their thoughts and presence. What makes Great Leaders tick? There are a few characteristics that are in common amongst them – 4 of which are profiled here.
1. Leadership Presence:
Being present is the first and foremost feature of a great Leader – being there wherever we are! In whole. Ability to listen enhances leadership presence. Communicating clearly, Influencing people and outcomes positively, further adds to enhanced Leadership Presence
Leadership Coaching - A Handy Tool To Enhance Leadership Presence
Leaders want to enhance their impact. A sure-shot way to do that is to build and enhance one’s Leadership Presence.
Leaders who want to improve their effectiveness therefore tend to work on enhancing their Leadership Presence. Over the years, Leadership Coaching has emerged and evolved as an effective tool to build and enhance Leadership Presence.
A Leader, wanting to generate the impact that he / she wants to create, has a choice to make on the leadership areas that he / she needs to work consciously – to build / enhance their Leadership Presence.
How Do I scale up my business, successfully?
Research shows only 20% of small businesses / startups survive their first year. Out of that, 50% survive up to 5 years and only a-third out of that make it to the 10-year mark.
Another research shows only 4% of businesses scale up successfully.
The intent of every Entrepreneur / Business Owner is to grow the business successfully. And they put-in their efforts whole-heartedly towards it. Yet, why such a large number of them are unable to survive and grow successfully?
What a CEO Coach does?
One may wonder what a CEO Coach does – especially seeing successful CEO Coaches weaving magic with the CEOs they work with!
For a CEO Coach it’s never the same, as each CEO they work with are different from each other, coming from different backgrounds, having different contexts, operating from different coordinates with respect to their business and their own leadership presence.
What then, is that the CEO Coach does to ‘move’ the CEOs from where they are to where they want to be?s
2 Ways the SME Business Owners Could Accelerate Business Growth
SME (Small Medium-sized Enterprises) Businesses hold significant potential to grow – in terms of Revenues, Customer base, Geography, Product / Service lines, Customer segments and so on. What’s keeping SME Business Owners from growing to the next level?
The reasons could vary. The most common one is that the SME Business Owners, having found a winning formula to grow from the start-up stage into an SME level, try to Scale up the business further to the next level on the back of their own experience (of having built the business to the SME level).
Business Coaching for SME Business Owners
As a small and medium-sized business owner, one has a lot on their plate – from managing their teams, to marketing, sales, operations, logistics, HR, IT resources, to finances, accounting and regulatory, to developing new products / services. The tasks and challenges on hand can be quite overwhelming. This often leads them to feel confused, stuck and at times even helpless, stalling their business growth and slowing down their Scale-up journey.
What if there was a way to overcome these challenges? And achieve their business goals faster and effectively? Welcome to Business Coaching for SME Business Owners! .
Leadership Coaching for CEO / CXOs – how one could move their Coordinates
In a way, Leadership is about one’s ability to inspire, influence and impact more. Leaders are faced with the challenge of building, enhancing these abilities on an ongoing basis, in a dynamic, fast-changing environment.
This is where the Business Leaders, CEOs and CXOs could use Leadership Coaching and Leadership Presence Coaching to up their game; and operate from a different coordinate, from an elevated orbit.
How do I find the best CEO Coach?
Over the years Coaching has evolved as a key enabling tool in the armoury of successful CEOs. CEO position in itself, is quite a lonely one in many respects. It’s natural that CEOs, therefore, are in the lookout for a sounding board, a thinking partner who is unbiased, and unvested, to reflect on their thoughts, ideas, dreams, and business plans. CEO Coaches over the years have bridged this gap quite successfully; a CEO Coach supports successful CEOs to become even more successful.
As a business owner, am I prepared to Scale-up?
figure out for yourself!