3 Leadership Strategies for Small Business Owners

As a small business owner, do you ever ask yourself this question: “How can I get all of this done?”

1. Take a timeout.
If you have kids, you’ve probably seen them get possessed by their emotions and you’ve put them in a “timeout.” You want them to think about their actions. You need to do the same thing with your timeout.

It could be a series of evenings, a weekend getaway, or even a short vacation. Use it to catalog everything you do in your small business. You can organize this on your computer or with a series of Post-it notes on a white board or wall.

Be thorough and include everything. For some bigger operations, you’ll start thinking in terms of an organizational chart and responsibilities at this point.

Once you complete this step, you can visualize your workload, and the next step is starting to offload some of it.

2. Bring in the replacements.
If you have a group of employees already, are there any who can start taking over some of the tasks you’ve made yourself responsible for over the years?

This is also the time to consider freelancers, virtual employees as well as software services. The more you can automate tasks, the better.

Start with aspects of your job that you think can be easily accomplished by someone else, if a quick “victory” will feed your enthusiasm and give you energy to continue. Alternatively, you might want to spend time off-loading your biggest burdens first to see a difference sooner.

3. See yourself differently.
A writer friend of mine was once hired by a catalog company to fill in for the president while she was on medical leave. Previously, the president did all of the writing and much of the merchandising. When the president came back after her medical leave, the day-to-day tasks she had been doing were being done by others and she couldn’t adjust to the new situation. She eventually left and although she never realized it, a central and vital “vision” left with her.

Once you have others handling the tasks necessary to keep the business rolling, you need to see yourself as the leader with a different job description. You need to inspire your team, enable employees to do their jobs better, keep growing professionally, as well as discover new business opportunities and cost savings. You can’t walk away from your small business, but you have to see yourself as addressing a new slate of challenges.

There are, of course, many critical details involved when you start handing off your areas of responsibility to others. The people need to be right, the training adequate, the authority given and the instructions clear. But without the all-important first step of removing yourself from the chaos so you can get clarity, you can never enjoy the success you deserve.