It’s lonely at the top.
You’re expected to know all the answers and make the best decisions for your team. You know ultimately, the buck stops with you.
It’s not easy being ‘Superman’ or ‘Superwoman’ in business.
They say that judgment comes from experience: and experience comes from bad judgment.
So, how do you make a good judgment without the cost or pain of a potential bad judgment call?
Being a Managing Director can seem very lonely. No one to share your problems with at an equal level; you may feel you don’t really understand how the business is doing or don’t understand what to do next. You feel stressed and not valued.
Often the answer seems to be to just to slog on alone as you are the boss, be the hero. Yet then nothing seems to change: only the stress levels increases.
To help it would be good to know you’ve got someone to talk to about your problems. A problem shared is a problem halved as the adage goes.
Wouldn’t it be good to have someone on board who can offer many years of experience in running real businesses? Your own right hand man? Someone you can share your problems with and so get answers? A mentor to complement and extend your skills?
Can you relate to these following examples?
James had a great team behind him, he felt the current business performance was a financial success but the financial position of the Company was plagued by historical debt which their foreign business owners demanded they repaid and a large but uncertain legal claim.
The legacy of the debt and the legal claim muddied the current business performance with their owners insisting that they weren’t in fact making any money – the relationship with the foreign business owner was fraught.
Mentoring discussions helped share the stress and revealed a plan of action which was subsequently put in place to remove the stress.
In Nick’s case, he was unhappy. His business performance seemed to be declining and running the business was no longer fun. Nick decided that the business no longer delivered a good enough service level; maybe they were in the wrong market? Nick decided to close the business.
Acting as a mentor, we helped him to double check if his plan was the best way ahead, and to think through all the issues. We helped him to devise the best action plan in the circumstances to wind everything up. It was a tough decision and a tough job to go through with it. Yet, that was exactly what he did.
Mark sometimes feels alone despite having his team around him and enjoys a very regular catch up meeting to help him sort out his next steps. This has helped him to get focus on the massive recent changes within the business.
James, Nick and Mark were feeling stressed in their work as Managing Directors and found through our mentoring service, that they could find a solution to their problems.
So how can we help? As well as saving tax, time and worry, we work with business leaders to help them grow their business in the way they want.
One way we do this, is through meeting with you on a regular basis and acting as a business mentor, someone to talk to, share problems and consequently come up with concrete actions to sort out those problems.
Isn’t it time you started halving your problems?
