As a business owner, it is important that you are reflecting and checking back on your business and its identity regularly.
You need to have a strong grasp of the qualities that your business has and how that translates into your business’s success.
Think of your business as an iceberg.
The tip of the iceberg represents the actions and behaviours of your business but what is underneath and unseen is what drives those actions and behaviours.
So reflect on the unseen.
Habits
Think about any habits that you may have fallen into as a business owner and generally as a business.
As a leader, do you often start sentences with ‘But’? Or ‘no’? Or are there others within the business who do this? Breaking that habit is the first place to start along with any others that could be affecting work relationships and creating negative behaviours in the workplace.
Changing a habit is possible – perseverance is key.
Thinking
All habits are driven by thinking so changing a thought process will help to break a habit within your business.
Having an awareness of your habits and how they are affecting your behaviour is the first step to adjusting them.
An example of this might be that you become aware that the leadership skills within your business are not as refined as you would like. Once you are thinking about this, you will begin to work to fix the issue.
Beliefs
All of our thinking stems from our beliefs.
But it is much harder to adjust our belief system than anything else.
Instead what you can do to reflect on your business and how your beliefs are affecting the overall identity.
Do you believe that being a good leader is a vital part of a business?
Do you believe change is necessary within business?
Values
All of these are driven by your values.
Values will not easily change – they are something completely personal to you.
But ultimately you should want your business to be reflective of your values and bring this unseen aspect of the business identity to the surface.
Within a business, something you might find is that different business leaders working together will need to align their core values and decide what is the most important to them for the business.
This is where some of your values might have to be adjusted or compromised to work better as a team.
Identity
So where do values come from?
Our identity.
Who we are as people.
The first three years in life reportedly establish our identity as humans.
You should want your identity to shine through your business.
So work on all of these things and truly reflect – does your business represent you?
Davis Grant offer tailored coaching programmes and sessions for you, your senior leadership or your whole company to ensure that your business aligns with your values and beliefs. These can be either one-off sessions or as a series. Get in touch for more information.