Leadership

Successful business owners are familiar with the transactional approach to running a business (business planning, meetings, setting targets, sales and finance), but in reality, leaders are also very creative people and by harnessing creativity as a skill, we can all transform our businesses and grow them better, faster and more sustainably.

Successful leaders never stop learning. Whether they read books, learn new skills, study academic or business journals, learn from their employees or peers, or strive for change through innovation, they all share a passion for wanting to learn new skills and ideas.

When it comes to recruitment and building a team, how often do you spend time looking at an individual’s strengths and skills for the role?

If you’re a business leader I’m sure that you’ve already started to make some connections between my running journey and the growing pains of your success. Chances are that at some point you’ve sat back and consciously thought ‘we can do better (or need to do better) but something has to change’. That’s the problem, change is hard and the ’too difficult’ box looms large. Change is inevitable and if you don’t continue to move forward you can be sure your customers will.

Learning is innate - we learn all of the time and our development does not have to be just professional, it can also be personal.

The GROW model is a fantastic way of agreeing and setting a course of action. Great for the development of others as well as yourself, it provides a logical step-by-step structure that you can agree and commit to.

As the year progresses, you may be finding that resolutions set on the 1st of January have lost momentum or been forgotten about. Even with the best of intentions, juggling both life and work pressures can de-rail your personal and professional goals.

Will Greenwood, Pen Underwriting’s Brand Ambassador, talks about the importance of Planning, Peripheral Vision and The Team when trying to achieve success. How small, continual improvements - sometimes even just 1% at a time - across all critical factors can turn a good team into a great team, and in the case of England’s 2003 Rugby squad, a World Cup winning team.

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