If the pressure for every part of your business sits on your shoulders, then you do not have a leadership team. What you have is a bunch of direct reports.
Many business owners confuse job titles with leadership. They are not the same thing.
If the pressure of running the business rests on your shoulders, if you need to step in every time something goes wrong in one of your business functions. If you’ve people constantly deferring to you to help solve problems, then I’m afraid you’ve a lot of direct reports. You don’t have a leadership team.
Real Leaders Take Ownership
Real leaders take ownership.
Real leaders aren’t task-focused. They understand the outcomes that their functions need to deliver, and they get to work on finding a way through the challenges and delivering those outcomes.
A proper leadership team work together, challenges each other, and collaborates to make sure that the business delivers the ultimate outcomes that it needs to: profit, cash, revenue and alignment to strategy.
If you know that you don’t have a team that is performing in that way—if you are having to get involved in all of the nitty-gritty, if all of the problems keep coming up to you—then you need to get your leadership team working properly.
Step One: So, How Do You Do That?
You need to get clear on outcomes.
Often, I will work with businesses where the business owner isn’t crystal clear on the specific outcomes they want from each of their function heads, and they don’t have any way of measuring whether their function heads are making progress towards those outcomes.
So, the first thing you have to do is be very, very clear on the specific outcomes and KPIs that you expect from each of the functions in your business.
Step Two: Who’s Taking Ownership?
Next, do you have people who are taking ownership of each of these functions?
So, look at where you have people that are actively taking ownership—trying to find a way through—and people where they are just not cutting the mustard. They keep deferring back to you even though you’ve got clear outcomes in place.
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Step Three: Support or Replace?
The people who are achieving the results—the outcomes—give them the space to do their jobs properly.
Those who aren’t and keep coming to you… They need a development plan. You need to be crystal clear with them as to where they are, where you want them to be, and you need to work together to identify the specific skills and the specific areas of capability you want them to plug over some time.
Through that process, it’s about making sure that you are managing them effectively. What you need to get to the heart of really quickly is if they have what it takes to step up.
Are They Willing to Meet You Halfway?
The rule here is if they are putting the effort in—if they are genuinely going the extra mile, they’re going through the learning, if they are willing to meet you 70% of the way—then you’ve probably got someone that you can work with.
If you’ve got somebody who is just not going to take ownership, somebody who is not going to drive their function, someone who’s not going to be able to deliver those results with all of the training in the world, you have to be realistic about that.
Your business cannot wait for somebody to eventually feel like doing something.
Your Role as Managing Director
Your job as the managing director is to manage the directors. Obviously.
The director’s job is to direct their functions. And you need people who are motivated, who are capable, and who can deliver the outcomes.
Make sure that you are very realistic about this bit. I have seen businesses bash their head against a brick wall time and time again because they’ve got the wrong person in the seat. And even though they’ve given them all of the outcomes and all of the training, they’re still not performing.
If that is the case, face up to it and take action.
Step Four: Give Them Space Without Abdicating
The next thing you need to do is make sure that you give your people space to do their jobs properly.
Now that doesn’t mean that you abdicate your responsibility. What that means is you provide clear outcomes consistently. You provide feedback as to how people are progressing against those outcomes. And you make sure that you surround yourself with the best possible people that you can just about afford.
Your goal is to be the dumbest person in the room.
What a Proper Leadership Team Looks Like?
If you have a leadership team that can achieve the outcomes… if you have a leadership team that can work together… if you have a leadership team that are genuinely driving the business forward—with you, for you—then that is how you get to a point where you’ve got a proper leadership team that can free you up to do what you want to do as the business owner.
Focus on vision. Focus on culture. Focus on strategy.
That is where you need to take your leadership team. That is what it looks like to be an effective managing director.
Clarity beats hope every single day of the week. Give your people the clarity of what you expect from them, the results you want to see, and then give them the space to do their work.
That way, you will have a great business.
Want More Like This?
You can find more insights like this on the Mind Your Own Business blog series by Marc Soares, where business leadership and growth are unpacked in practical, real-world terms.
If this resonates, check out how to stop being the single point of failure in your company by reading Don’t Be the Bottleneck in Your Business, or explore how to effectively develop your team in Developing Your People.
You can also watch the full Mind Your Own Business video series on our YouTube channel, or dive deeper into these concepts at marcosoares.co.uk.
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