Rick Miller featured on The CEO Magazine website:
How does a small business owner increase his or her power? If you believe as some do that power is all about title, position, authority, control, and supremacy, you’ll be hard-pressed for an answer.
Leaders in small businesses can give themselves any title or position they want. They have complete authority to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and they have ultimate control. They are the supreme ruler and answer to no one.
Ask any successful small business leader how much time they spend thinking about this type of power, and they will laugh. It’s a non-issue.
But ask these successful business people about the importance of energy, clarity, confidence, impact, and influence in growing a small business, and you’ll get a very different response. These leaders know their success is almost totally dependent on this definition of power.
In my work with many great small business leaders, we focus on how they can be powerful by increasing their:
- Clarity with simple choices around discipline.
- Influence with simple choices around supporting.
- Impact with simple choices around creativity.
- Energy with simple choices around self-understanding and insight.
- Confidence with simple choices around values.
Discipline is an orderly pattern of behavior that increases both clarity as well as the likelihood of a desired outcome. Small business owners must certainly master discipline for their business to be successful, but the clarity it brings is where the real value is found.
Support is the act or process of promoting the interests or causes of another that increase influence. A small business owner who supports his staff, customers, vendors, and community will have influence that persists. He takes the request, “How can I help you?” seriously.
Insight is the power or act of seeing intuitively that comes with self-understanding, and it increases energy in a positive way. This form of energy is deliberate, concentrated, and effective.
Values are the foundation of relationships and of confidence. With a set of values unique to your business you’ll develop the trust needed to create confidence in every work-related relationship (and personal, for that matter) you encounter.
Creativity is the ability to bring into existence. Alignment of creative choices amplifies power and increases impact. In what ways are you bringing your vision to life?
Successful small business owners are optimizers. They don’t have time to waste.
Think about how you define the term power. Look at the choices you make that build real power, and those that don’t. In what areas can you be more disciplined? How can you support others on a regular basis? Are you tapping your own self-understanding to get the insight needed to navigate the fluctuations of your day-to-day decisions? What about the insights of your team? Does your business follow a set of values, no matter what? And last, how are you creating the future of your business every day?
If you need help, take my free Power Compass Survey. There you’ll be able to actually measure your real power and make choices about how powerful you want to be. You’ll start to answer the questions above when you understand what power really means, and how it can transform you and your business.
Small business leaders don’t have the benefit of cadres of help—yet. They need to be as powerful as possible.
Sound like you? I challenge you to be more powerful, in the best way possible.
