If you were the person in school who regularly did the entire project because you couldn’t trust your group mates, you’re likely a high achiever. Similarly, if you’ve made the decision to launch your own business– and actually executed that decision– you’re likely a high achiever. High achievers accomplish many things in life, but too often, it can come at the expense of a healthy work-life balance. I call this the “high achiever’s trap”: the desire to do everything so that you can be sure it’s done right, without ever tending to the other things in life that contribute to a sense of fulfillment.
I sat down with David Molenda, founder of Positive Polarity, a coaching and consulting firm that helps leaders develop the growth mindset they need to take their business to the next level. Like many guests on Best Places to Lead, David’s journey led him to realize that achieving your vision in business requires changing your outlook on life. Here are 3 of the many lessons I learned from David during our time together:
- Delegation is as much a skill as it is a gift to yourself.
- Diversity of thought is more beneficial than carbon copies of you.
- Separate the role from your identity to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
Lesson #1: Just because you’re the leader doesn’t mean you have to do it all.
Early on in our conversation, I asked David to tell me about a skill he didn’t know he needed to level up his business. Without hesitation, he said learning how to delegate. He offered this helpful analogy he realized while watching his son’s track meet one day. When you watch a relay race, you learn how much faster 4 people can run a mile than 1. The smoother the handoff between each runner, the faster they are able to complete the mile. The same is true, says David, in business.
Building a team to help you do all the things you can’t requires both people and processes who contribute to a smooth handoff. When they work seamlessly, the business can operate almost without effort and achieve its mission and purpose. And as an added bonus, you gain back precious time to focus on the pieces of the business you’re best at.
Lesson #2: Hire people who have strengths that are your weaknesses.
Building on David’s insightful comments about delegation, he also offered this warning to entrepreneurs just starting out. Too often, he said, he hears folks saying, “I want to hire someone just like me.” But this is typically a costly mistake. For David, hiring ten people, just him, would have looked like lots of folks with great ideas but no strengths in implementation. And as we know, a business requires more than just great ideas.
When you hire with intentionality, focusing on the skills and perspectives people add that expand on what you bring to the company, you gain much more than just an increased bottom line. You gain a scalable business model ready for regular innovation.
Lesson #3: Your work does not define you.
David and I got candid during our discussion about the fused identity that can happen between our role at work and the many roles we hold elsewhere in our lives. David draws on the Sandler System for keeping this piece of the leadership puzzle in perspective. The Sandler System says you have two components to consider on a scale of 1 to 10: your self-image and the role. You should always strive to have a positive self-image; your aim is always a 10 on the scale. With any role, whether it’s CEO, parent, significant other, friend, citizen, etc., you may fluctuate. Maybe some days you’re a 5 in your role as a parent, and maybe other days you’re a 10.
As you have no doubt realized, when we have too many lower-scale days in multiple roles, it can start to wear on our self-image. By separating the two, we can keep the role at a safe distance from our sense of self, which is ideal for maintaining a positive outlook and growth mindset no matter the challenges we’re facing. Your role as founder, CEO, or project manager is not who you are, and the mistake you made today is not definitive of who you are as a person outside of that role.
To learn more from David about how to succeed as an entrepreneur, make sure to check out the full episode!
About Best Places to Lead
Your company has the potential to be great. The leader’s responsibility is to unlock that potential – or doom it to mediocrity.
On the LIVE Best Places to Lead show, you’ll learn the hard-fought lessons from the front lines earned by business leaders who have already had their teeth bashed in and lived to tell about it. We’ll share the tips, tricks, mindsets, and frameworks that allow great leaders to lead differently.
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