Personal Growth in Business
The names used in this article are fictional as to preserve their privacy.
I wanted to share a story about two unrelated clients of mine who were facing the same issue, however in two different ends of the spectrum. One is Nathalie, a business owner and the other one is Jeff, a professional who is embarking on a quite promising entrepreneurial endeavour. Nathalie was caught up in making sure everything was done exactly as though the business could operate successfully in spite of its employees. Jeff was caught up in the self-perceived value of his work to the company he worked for, therefore feeling constantly undervalued.
Although Nathalie’s business has been quite successful for several years, she never felt like the business was on the right track. She felt as though everything good about the business was due to her outstanding talent and everything bad was somebody else’s fault. Because she felt that way, she had a hard time trusting her employees and allowing them to express their talents. Talent which made her hire all of them in the first place. She spent a great deal of her time micromanaging everyone and trying to identify what she could do better and quicker than her employees in order to save money on wages. Thus, despite the success of the business, her actions were causing a turmoil within it and her scarcity mindset was causing her employees to stop giving a damn about the quality of their work.
Jeff, on the other hand, was an intelligent experienced professional who is building his own business, but still needs to work for someone else to afford his current lifestyle and save money to invest in his own business venture. Although Jeff does an outstanding job, he constantly thinks that his work is worth more than he’s paid. As he feels undervalued, he is increasingly unmotivated to keep up with his outstanding work, he questions every decision his boss makes as if getting ready to start a business gave him qualification to do so. Moreover, the not enough sensation Jeff experienced regularly, made him blind to the essence of a role an employee plays within a business.
These two stories caught my attention because if Nathalie was Jeff’s boss, this company would be headed to self-destruction. Gladly they are completely unrelated and they were able to arrive at the conclusion that a business doesn’t make its owner successful, but the owner of a business is what determines the level of success his/her business can reach. Nathalie realised that until she was ready to relinquish her need to be the only person worthy of being part of her business, her business would never reach the level of success she works so hard for because none of her employees would do more than the bare minimum to get a pay-check. She realised that by allowing her employees to take the time to express their full potential will certainly cost a little more but will eventually improve the quality of the products as well as enhance her customer’s experience.
Jeff, on the other hand, realised that his self-worthiness was getting in the way of him performing at his full potential, thereby squashing the value of his work altogether. After all, it’s better to have an average worker that doesn’t cause any trouble than an outstanding one that brings hell to earth. He also understood that he is having a great opportunity to sharpen some personal skills that will allow him to create a great team and lead his team and business to the success he deserves. Most importantly, Jeff learned that by taking responsibility for his own circumstance is a must to a successful business owner because when a business fails there’s no one left to blame but the owner. Therefore, learning how to turn bad situations into valuable learning experiences is paramount to owing a business and to leading a life of fulfilment.
To conclude, Jeff and Nathalie are still working on their journey to achieving great success. They’ve realised that they were placing all their attention on the problems around them, therefore their energy was scare and being drained by those problems. Whereas now, they are placing all their attention on finding solutions to the problems and just like that they have liberated such an abundance of energy and time to work on creating solutions. Moreover, they’ve found courage to look at themselves dead-honestly and identify where there’s room for self-improvement because as the ancient Greek philosopher Archilochus stated “we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, but fall to the level of our training”.
