One of the toughest aspects of running your business is wearing the many hats it takes to run your company.

However, to get yourself out of the spin cycle of your days, investing in building a high-performing team can elevate not only the space you can gain in your business to focus on strategy and goals, but to elevate your company’s results.

Through my work with my clients who are successful business owners and founders, we’ve been able to elevate their impact and overall company performance by embracing three core steps in building high-level support in their businesses:

An unhappy employee, a negotiation, hiring, deciding which product line to build out and grow...

We can be faced with these types of situations and decisions in a given month, week or even day!

So when we feel the intensity heighten and the stakes get higher in our decision-making, there’s one fundamental exercise that I know can be helpful in these situations.

This reminds me about a recent appointment where I was taking one of my children to a physiotherapy session. The physiotherapist spoke about the benefits of working from the ground up to strengthen their legs and base so they can perform higher and get stronger at the sport they are playing. But the exercises were working some of the smallest muscles in the body to do so.

It was so fundamental to higher performance that’s where we started.

So, when faced with challenging business situations or decisions, a similar approach can help you go from uncertainty to assuredness in knowing how to proceed.

Several years ago my husband and I were asking questions like: Will we have enough to retire? How much is ‘enough’? What do we need? What do we want our future to look like?

We’ve both worked in the financial industry and we have a good understanding and knowledge of personal finance. However, we wanted more than our general understanding and wanted to speak with an expert in retirement planning.

We explored possibilities and chose someone who we love working with and has the expertise we needed.

Once we made that move I felt incredibly relieved. Like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders because we now have a plan built for us.

And, I feel more confident in our ongoing day-to-day financial decisions because I know where we are in relation to where we are going with our ‘plan’. It was a very smart decision for us and I’m so thrilled we made it.

Getting help in the areas you need it is important. We can’t be all the things.

And we don’t know what we don’t know.

You can apply this to a number of areas in life.

We all have them….things we want to accomplish in our work and in our personal lives.

Whether you’ve got many goals or just one or two, the steps you’ll take to get to each goal may look different but there’s ONE thing that is the same for every goal you work towards.

How you start.

It takes a commitment.

A commitment towards a future where that goal has been attained….We won’t move forward unless we commit to that decision.

And, after you commit and start working towards your goal….You’ll need the follow-up strategy of…

There’s a power and practice we all have access to that I would say is one of the most underutilized tools in our everyday toolbox….and I would venture to say, also in life.

First, here are some questions to consider:

Do you ever feel like your business or work is happening to you - a force unto itself and you’re not really in the driver’s seat?

Have you often wondered about the next step to take or how to navigate tough decisions?

Do you feel regular swirling thoughts of uncertainty and lack of direction or lack of focus when you think about your work or business?

Do you find yourself off course often - realizing that what you were doing all day or all week isn’t getting you closer to your goals or aligned with your vision?

Here’s the thing: I know how it feels to be uncertain about the next steps, to feel like it’s ‘hard’ to figure out what’s next or to wade through the noise and chaos of what comes at us daily.

I have found a simple tool and practice helpful and I wanted to share it with you today.

There’s so much to say on this topic and how it relates to being successful.

The perspective I’d like to take on this today, with you, is to illuminate how powerful it is when you create focus and simplicity in your work.

There’s a caveat here: Simplicity does NOT equal easy :).

If you’re scrambling in your role or business and not seeming to get the traction you want, an injection of clarity can help.

I help Business Owners and Leaders create a positive social impact through their business by helping them to grow and be sustainable.

Our current reality is the sum of our actions and decisions.

If some of those actions and decisions are not aligned to a single focus or destination then it’s a little like…

Have you ever heard the quote:

“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them” by Albert Einstein?

Einstein suggests that shifting how we look at things provides us with the clarity to find solutions. In order to shift our thinking though, understanding our behaviours can help identify how we think or feel about things. So, let’s look at your leadership behaviours.

First, what do I mean about next level behaviour?

This is the higher level behaviours we use when we are at our best selves and step into a more evolved or expanded version of the role we are striving to inhabit.

As an example, for the business owner, next level leadership behaviour may come when you consider what you would do if you thought about what your business needed from you. Or, what you would do if fear wasn’t in the way?

What behaviours would you need to lean into more fully in order to execute in a critical area? This could be what your business needs to enhance it’s marketing or sales process, for example. Or, it could be what’s needed to improve any process in your business, for that matter.

As a business leader there are behaviours that contribute to the success of your business and there are behaviours that are neutral (may not have an impact either way) and then some that may even put up challenges to achieving success.

Here are some behaviours I have observed that can prevent us from evolving in our leadership effectiveness:

What a question…..and, a question I’m often asked.

It can also be a deeply held belief that some of the business owners I begin working with have: that their business can’t possibly grow because they are already maxed out….or close to it.

This is where the intervention begins :)

Yes, growing your business is hard work and you will have to put the work in. I want to lay that out right now.

However, it’s where you put your energy that counts as you grow and expand into a future vision of your business that delivers results…..and maintains your sanity and personal relationships too.

It’s about laying the foundation for growth.

A house cannot be build on a faulty foundation. It doesn’t sound fun but it’s soooo important and you’ll find that when you do have a solid foundation….after you’ve put in the work to create one…it IS fun. It’s exciting to see what you, your team and business are capable of at that point.

So what does a foundation for growth look like?