Archive for June, 2011

In business (and in life) you need to be ready for anything. How you deal with the curveballs (business) life throws you determines your success. You can have the greatest plan, but unless you are ready to adjust what you are doing as circumstances change, you will be on a path that was right at one point, but is not anymore.

Staff changes are a prime example of this. When you are involved in a small business, each staff member is a critical part of the operation and when a staff member chooses to leave (or is asked to leave), things will change. When you hire a replacement, this person will be in need of training, and may have different strengths than their predecessor; they may have different ideas and most likely will have a different personality and therefore interact with the rest of the team in a different way.

For the most part, we don’t have a choice if those unexpected curveballs are thrown at us. But we do have a choice how we react – we can either choose to get overwhelmed and be resentful of the responsiblity we have of constantly having to re-adjust what we are doing, or we can embrace the change and the new opportunities that come with it.

Welcome to my new blog! I am looking forward to sharing my insights, thoughts and experiences on business and leadership topics with you here.

In my workshops I often ask “are you a leader or a follower” and almost always, the answer is “both”. And while this may hold true on a situational basis, I ask the question again, when it comes to your core character, are you a leader or a follower? Are you an individual who prefers to not have to take on the responsiblity of leadership or are you a leader who is willing to step aside to let others lead and follow by choice, well informed and doing so while looking at the big picture.

As a leader, when we follow, it should be by choice, not because somebody else tells us it’s the only way, everybody else is doing it, or because it’s more convenient. Being from Germany it’s engrained in me to never blindly follow a leader, as our history sadly shows what can happen when many, many people choose to follow without asking the right questions. Staying with this same example, it’s equally important to me that those whom I lead are individuals who are capable of speaking up when the direction I lead them is not right.

I want to encourage you to check in with yourself… and leave me a note - how do you lead, how do you follow?