As a consultant I work with multiple businesses at the same time. In this work, I have found who you are as a manager or owner and what the business is are often closely aligned. If they are not, it can lead to multiple people quitting the company or, in a worst-case scenario, the company failing as employees and suppliers struggle to understand the value to the community by working with you instead of one of your many competitors.
Today, I encourage you to explore who you are by taking lessons from The Who’s 1978 release of “Who Are You.” This song, in my opinion, teaches lessons about self-reflection, authenticity, and adapting to new thoughts and ideas in life and business. I believe that if you embrace these three lessons and work to include the thoughts they produce into your work life, then you will have a greater sense of what the work you do daily is meant to produce outside of the physical results.
Lesson 1: Find Time to Reflect
In a small business, leaders are responsible for critical activities and often juggle multiple job roles. But it doesn’t stop there. They are frequently required to take care of urgent and important tasks that can happen at a moment’s notice and have critical effects on operations.
Even with all the daily items taking up precious business time, it is important to understand how your personal and professional identity affects your decision making. Many companies communicate this clearly by producing a set of core values. In adhering to those stated values, individuals and companies can find what they stand for, clarity of purpose, and potentially the direction for the business.
As you take the time to reflect, you will begin to make decisions about the business that potentially change strategy as you align with who you are. This may be a decision to distance yourself from a referral partner, add interaction with a local charity that provides meaning in your life, give customers an extra level of service, or other strategy outcomes. Reflection often results in providing a strong foundation for sustainable growth.
Continue to ask yourself, “Who are you?”
Lesson 2: Be Authentic
As leaders we are often not authentic because we fear that we may not live up to the expectations of those around us. The interesting thing is that you will never fully live up to the expectations of other people in the business. Simply put, they may want more than you can, want to, or are able to give. In my experience, it’s best to get that disappointment out of the way early and foster connection, trust, and collaboration with the customers and employees you work with daily.
You can embrace authenticity by consistently delivering on your product, admitting the limitations of your service, and being honest about its strengths. When giving this information, you may lose an employee or customer, but if you’re not authentic, you may lose them anyway and with potentially disastrous results. On the other hand, being authentic often has the effect of attracting employees or customers.
Verse two reminds us that, “…there’s got to be another way.”
Lesson 3: Embrace Change and Adapt
The business you are in today will be different from the business you are in five years from now. With the current speed of information and the way both large and small businesses react to the world, change happens all the time.
In a small business, you can adapt quickly, make changes, and see progress in short periods of time. This often leads to better positioning and more success as the market changes. In fact, innovation doesn’t have to only come from you as a leader, it can be from any coworker. You may even find that they have better ideas than you.
The entire “Who Are You” song is about embracing change and adapting, asking who you are and who you want to become until you achieve a result. Eventually, questioning who you are will change to “Who are we” and this is a triumph to be celebrated. Moving from me to we with self-reflection and working on the business is where you begin to find a sense of fulfillment in your work. Continue to ask yourself, and in a less direct way others, “Who Are You?”
Chris McQueen
Chris McQueen is a Business Development Advisor for Violand Management Associates (VMA), a highly respected consulting company in the restoration and cleaning industries. Chris is a veteran of the restoration industry, having worked as an independent claims adjuster, estimate reviewer, and district manager for the world’s largest independent claims management company. Through Violand, Chris works with companies to develop their people and their profits. To reach him, visit Violand.com or call (330) 966-0700
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