Those of you who have read What’s KILLING Your Profitability? (It ALL Boils Down to Leadership!) may be somewhat familiar with the title of this month’s column, as it’s a play on the title of the final chapter in that book. My goal in writing that book was to challenge so many I’ve seen in the business community who discount the impact those so-called “soft skills” have on their bottom line while pouring significant amounts of time and money into physical changes they hope will improve the ever-so-critical profitability of their organization. Each chapter dealt with a different line item that cuts directly into that profitability and detailed how better leadership can help avoid those costs. The title of that final chapter, “Improving YOUR Profitability by Building Better Leaders”, has become something of a tagline for everything Cindy and I work toward as we serve each of our clients.
When I started providing this column nearly five years ago, the intent was to tie what Cindy and I do to support better communication in the workplace to what each of us need to consider for building better relationships with each person we deal with outside of the workplace; most importantly, our family members and our friends. I’m sure I’ve toed a very fine line more than a few times, but I’m more convinced than ever that what we need to do to develop strong personal relationships and increase the profitability of our businesses aren’t all that different.
Before writing me off, consider this… I heard John Maxwell share a story in 2003 or so about his publisher approaching him to write a book on the importance of business ethics. This was after the Enron and Worldcom debacles that drained shareholders of billions in assets and resulted in many of the executives in each company facing criminal charges. Business ethics, in the publisher’s opinion, needed focus from someone with John’s reach and influence. Maxwell’s reply, however, served as an initial letdown. He shared that he couldn’t write a book on business ethics. After quite a bit of prodding from the publisher, John explained that there’s no such thing as “business ethics.” Someone either has ethics or they don’t; separating business ethics from personal ethics just wasn’t something he was willing to do.
Much like personal ethics are directly connected with business ethics, the steps we take to communicate more effectively and earn influence in the workplace fall right in line with what we need to practice as we interact with our family members and friends. We often work with folks who don’t have team members reporting to them, and those same folks frequently say things like, “no one reports to me so I’m not really in a leadership role.” Truth be told, if someone is only willing to comply with what we say because of the authority that comes with the title we hold, it ain’t because we’re leading – even if we are in charge… Leadership is the influence we’ve earned with someone through the service we’ve provided to them; a measure of how willing they are to support us even when they don’t have to.
With that in mind, doesn’t that apply to our strongest personal relationships – the family members and friends we can count on any time we need them? While our immediate focus in our personal lives may not be on “Improving profitability by building better leaders.” I believe it should certainly be on “improving relationships by building better communication.” In both cases everyone around will be better off because of it!
