Leadership as a Good-Hearted Business Owner

By Christina Suter on Oct 22, 2016 at 08:05 AM in Business Issues
 Leadership as a Good Hearted Business Owner

I talk often about being a good-hearted business owner and I define 'good-hearted' as a person who believes that your business makes the planet a better place for others. 

There is a way to cleanly and successfully run a business and maintain good-hearted principles while having a high level of integrity.

Self-Leadership

Challenge the belief that you can’t be kind and good and still do necessary business tasks such as marketing your products or services or pitch sales.

Your purpose is to lead and that means having the willingness to be right and wrong and to know that your decisions make a difference.

  • Lead by example, let your yes be yes and your no be no, knowing that your employees and clients are taking note.
  • Be willing to be seen- don’t hide your light, don’t detract from or hide your power or expertise. Instead, be willing to have your marketing material show you as the expert you are.
  • Make your knowledge public. Publish blog posts as an expert- it’s part of your job and your work needs to be found so you can enrich people’s lives. What if the sun refused to shine or withheld its brilliance? We would be deeply affected by that and you are the same. Nature doesn’t apologize for itself and nature abhors a vacuum.

You are here to fulfill your purpose, so step into it. While doing so, hold your shape; be findable, be seen, and keep your boundaries. Maintain your integrity and professional limits with employees and customers.

Do you work on fulfilling your vision?

It's your job to share your vision and to steward over it. 

“Spirit meets you at the point of action and brings the vision forward”.

Unapologetically take action, and upgrade the vision if need be. Be mindful that visions often shift and change, so allow it to bend to adjust to the density of the world. It takes time for your vision to be created, but every year, upgrade, re-enliven, realign your vision, and accept feedback.

As a leader, accept that not everyone around you is a leader.

There are people whose purpose is to follow the leader, and that is an act of their own leadership. Realize that your secretary may want the freedom to work from 9-5 and that others welcome the consistency and security of a weekly check. Not everyone will have the risk tolerance you have and not everyone is an innovator, besides, your vision isn’t their baby.

Be a great leader and hold people accountable as a form of love and encouragement, and work hard while being a good-hearted business owner, not instead of. Most of all, hold yourself accountable and strength your self-leadership muscle.