Here’s some food for thought. If you don’t work hard, you won’t be successful. If you’re not successful, it’s not fun to work hard. If you’re not having fun, it’s likely you won’t stay motivated to work hard in the long term. This interesting little cycle can work for you or against you.
You can manage to work for you and when you do, you will experience incredible success and fulfillment from that success. It’s an important aspect to any entrepreneur who works with passion to get the success they’re looking for. It doesn’t matter what product or service you stand behind. Balance is really important for getting what you want out of your business.
We become motivated by our success. Usually it’s not even the money that is the driving factor either. The same goes for recognition. It really is the feeling of success that many of us strive for in business.
Finding Balance as a Leader
As a leader, it’s important to balance the hard work, obtaining the success you’re after and enjoying the process. There are so many things that depend on this positive process. You are kind to your staff, making their time at work fun and meaningful. Every day, you can find the gifts in your work which will keep you in a good feeling place for greater things. Even if business is slow, you want to maintain a belief that it will all work out well. If you don’t live with a good belief system, going to work will seem like a drag.
When you’re positive within the balance cycle of success, hard work, and fun, you create a higher function of achievement. You will get better results for the hard work you do put in. Also, you’ll enjoy the process and hard work will be fulfilling.
Be the Leader, Be the Follower
If you want better balance, try to be both the leader and the follower. If you see something that needs to get done, do it. This teaches those around you about the work ethic. You can be simply the leader and tell everyone what to do all the time, but when you take on the role of follower, you help others understand what you expectations are. If you do things that are outside of your work tasks, people generally appreciate it. You are more respected and are naturally considered the leader of the pack without having to prove it through dominance. This creates a much more balanced and happy work environment for all your staff.
Don’t Fear Making Mistakes
As a leader, you want to be fearless. This is a good way to find your balance. Take on the big challenges that are perhaps more than you think you can handle. This is where you find out what you’re made of. This is where you make mistakes and learn from them.
Success is a confirmation that you’re correct but you don’t learn any valuable lessons. A mistake tells us that we weren’t right and that there’s more to learn. This is where your business grows and improves.
Find Balance to Manage Your Business
When there is a problem within your business or you’re just looking to manage your team effectively, you’ll want to use the laws of balance. There are often many different challenges and departments within your business. You need to have a certain kind of flexibility to meet expectations and solve issues. Different people are going to need you to lead them differently. It’s good to have many methods of balancing your communications. Your Information Technology (IT) people will want things said to them in a straight and logical manner, while your marketing team may need a more subtle approach.
Benefits of Balance in Leadership
When you’re in balance in a leadership role, you can create a better performance within your team. This helps to get better results, and they may perform better than you expected them to. Balance is a trade-off of benefits and costs that are connected to how you make decisions and how you behave. Of course, the best case scenario is when you achieve what you wanted while spending the least amount of money.
Finding balance will take some time to adjust to, and of course it’s not static. You will have to modify your practices and constantly monitor what’s going on. Think about it like riding a bike. Pretty easy, but there are plenty of times that the road asks for you to adjust your weight. If there are curves ahead, you’re going to have to adjust the handles. You have to be flexible and willing to change or you might lose your balance. If you find balance today, you will notice the difference in the near future.
You’ve seen successful companies rise and fall. While economic factors are a big consideration, sometimes a leader just isn’t flexible because they’re not balanced. For the longevity of your company and the success of it, balance and flexibility are key. You don’t have to slowly down, or spiral due to loss of balance, bad performance, and eventually failure. You worked too hard to build your business. Honor it by using the practice of balance. There may be growing pains at first but it’s worth the effort.
