How Winning is Killing Your Business
CEOs/Founders…How Winning is Killing Your Business — and Why Coveted Talent Runs From You
Are you a CEO or Founder who is an overachiever and highly successful? Are you exhausted, maybe waking up concerned about your business and your team? Are you finding you lack peace within your organization as you and your teams are more stressed and overwhelmed — especially over these last two plus years?
As a Conscious Leadership Coach (and an Xer) to CEOs and their teams across industries, I have found the intensity to have to know the answers during these uncertain times. I’ve met with leaders whose questions and concerns are unprecedented and are unconsciously taking a huge toll personally, professionally, and within their organization.
Want to truly grow your business? Of course! Your people have to come first. You know this. Please realize that as far as you grow and learn as a leader is truly as far as your organization will grow and who you will call in as your talent.
Leading people in your business by focusing on achieving and winning the next opportunity as your main strategy to growth is no longer sustainable, and certainly is not going to bring in the up-and-coming younger generation (Z) that is more conscious about living purpose-filled lives, which includes their work. Are you preparing yourself to lead your life and business in a brand new, meaningful way? Are you ready to meet the new set of leaders who demand authenticity, curiosity, purpose, collaboration, and compassion? The Z Generation is highly self-aware and requires this of their leaders. Are you this CEO?
As I see it, the Z Generation is a gift to us all. Working with students at Vanderbilt University (in leadership classes) I experience them as quick to look at themselves in how they create their own conflict with a willingness to learn about who they are and how to gain new perspective, in order to make different choices. Wow! They understand how they create their own drama and how to take responsibility for their thinking, and actually put into action new ways to achieve different results in their life and school work. They see how they create strife within relationships and how to take the very next step to be the change for a new outcome. They are willing to learn, and they want to have fun doing it. What else could you ask for as a CEO? So, are you that leader that has gone ahead of them so they will be challenged to keep growing? How are you growing?
If you are not already where the Z Generation is right now, they are going to blow past you and not want to join you and your organization. As a CEO (no blame here), if you are mostly caring about achieving and winning (this is what the X Generation is really about and they are the parents of the Z Generation), it’s time to wake up. You can still learn to be conscious of how you’re leading and where you’re making your decisions from. Get out of reactivity and what you’ve been taught (winning is the answer). If you don’t have the results you want, it’s time to change how you go about running your business and leading your culture.
It’s in the best interests of companies and leadership to get to know Gen Z, who represent about one in five people in the United States by 2020. They truly care and want to make a positive difference in the world. You can get them engaged if you trust them like the creative, competent, and caring employees they are.
This is a long story my friend. I used to be an overachiever and was obsessed with being the best. That almost killed me. I used to race my bike competitively, and I found myself in a coma. When I woke up, I realized my life was more than getting things done and winning.
Wake up to who you are called to be and discover what you are here to do. Break through the patterns that bring you success but limit your fulfillment and joy.
You are the answer.
Don’t wait until you crash to live your purpose-filled life. Discover YOU and join me.