No matter the size of your business or the industry you are operating in, the chief operating officer will play a vital role in the organization’s day-to-day running and the long-term growth potential. The CEO will set the tone of the business, as they are directly responsible for setting the working culture and ensuring all staff are engaged and satisfied. With so much resting on the shoulders of a CEO, it is vital that you are working to ensure that you are doing the best job possible.
The path to becoming a better CEO can seem difficult to follow, especially when you are busy running a business. This guide has been designed to help you better understand what you can do to become a better CEO today.
1. Understand the Big Picture
When looking to become a better CEO, you must take the time you need to ensure that you fully understand the big picture of your business. As a CEO, you will guide your team and communicate your long-term company vision and brand identity to staff, board members, and customers. Taking the time to fully ensure that you understand the big picture and are able to keep this in mind for your day-to-day operations is essential.
When you are looking to gain a clearer idea of what the big picture is for your business, it is useful to make a number of different considerations. For example, you should consider:
- Who you are as a company.
- What your brand identity is.
- Who your target market is.
- Which cost factors most impact profitability.
- Which sales channels make the biggest difference.
- Who your key team members are.
Taking the time to think about the considerations listed above regularly will help you to keep an overall understanding of your business in your mind when you are fulfilling the daily duties of a CEO. Being mindful of the broader aspects of your business will help to guide your vision for your business, and enable you to guide your teams to deliver exactly what you need.
2. Improve Decision Making Skills
Decision-making can be very difficult, especially when you feel the future of your business is resting on your shoulder, but if you want to become a better CEO it is vital that you learn how to work under this pressure. If you struggle to make a decision or are unable to effectively make a decision quickly, this can be detrimental to your business, as your team is left without direction, unable to fulfill their roles. If you do some research into the importance of decision-making for the CEO role you will find that many people cite that a bad decision is usually better than a lack of direction. After all, a bad decision can be undone if you are able to move with the right amount of speed.
If you find it difficult to make decisions at speed, then it is useful to start asking yourself a few critical questions. The first question that any CEO should ask themselves when they are looking to make a decision is, what is the impact if I get this choice wrong? Next, you should ask yourself how much you will hold up other operations if you do not make a decision quickly. Asking yourself these questions will help you gain more confidence and conviction as you are better aware of the context in which you are making a decision.
3. Talk to Your Staff
It can be difficult to work completely in isolation when you are looking to become a better CEO. Taking the time to ask your staff for their feedback can be a hugely useful step when it comes to becoming a better CEO. There are a number of different steps that you can take when it comes to asking your staff for feedback on your performance as a CEO. For example, firstly, it is useful to find a trusted colleague that you can go to and ask for honest feedback about your strengths and weaknesses.
Once you have consoled with a trusted member of staff, you might find it useful to ask for feedback more broadly. If this is the case, it is useful to think carefully about how you will ask for feedback. Creating a clear and direct feedback form can be helpful in giving some direction to the process. You should also consider making the feedback process anonymous to ensure you are able to receive the most honest responses.
4. Develop Your Own Interests
When you are busy with work, it can be all too easy for this to take over your entire life. While it is natural to feel that working very hard for very long hours will be the best way to serve your company, it can actually have negative effects in the long term. As you can see from Mike Savage New Canaan and his muscle cars, developing outside hobbies and interests can help you become a better CEO. Mike Savage’s passion for muscle cars will not only help him get his mind off work to ensure he can stay fresh but also learn more about other industries. Learning more about other industries will help you better identify what universal skills you need to run a successful business. Studies have found that taking the time you need to develop your own industries can also be very important for perspective and brain functioning.
5. Give Feedback
After issues with payments, not being able to hear effective feedback from superiors is one of the most commonly cited reasons why people leave their jobs. As a CEO, it is important to realize that your staff treatment will impact the whole organization. Taking the time to regularly give feedback to staff, both positive and negative, can be hugely important when it comes to improving worker morale and productivity.
6. Learn How To Delegate
Learning how to delegate is another vital skill that any successful CEO will need to learn how to develop. As a business leader, it is important that you realize that you simply can not and should not try to do everything yourself. Trying to do everything yourself can have various negative effects, from damaging team morale to ruining output quality.
There are many reasons why a CEO might find it difficult to delegate. You might worry about putting too much work on your team’s plates, or you might simply feel you will do the task better yourself. Learning how to identify which tasks you should be delegating is important as it will help you gain the confidence you need to delegate effectively. When you are considering if you should delegate a task, it is important to make a number of considerations. You should think about the skills you possess and those your team have better identify the right person for the task. You should also consider how long the task will take and the level of importance to better understand if it is worth your time.
Starting to delegate can be a pretty intimidating prospect, but it doesn’t have to be. You need to remember that you choose your team for a reason. Trusting in your members of staff, their skills, and their experience are critical when it comes to delegating as a CEO.
7. Become More To Be Reliable
Reliability is hugely important when it comes to being a successful CEO. In fact, research has found that CEOs that score highly in terms of reliability are twice as likely to be picked for the role and fifteen times more likely to be successful. While it might not sound like the most glamorous aspect of the job, being able to perform reliably, day in and day out, is vital.
Being a reliable CEO is likely to affect a range of different aspects of the company. Being reliable will have an impact on customer satisfaction, as consumers will learn that when they shop with our business, they are able to expect the same high level of quality every time. How reliable you are as a CEO can also have a big impact on the internal morale levels of your team. When staff are able to effectively predict how the management teams are going to respond and direct them, they will be more comfortable in their roles. This, in turn, can have a huge impact on hugely important metrics such as absenteeism and staff satisfaction.
8. Lead By Example
As a CEO, you not only play a critical role in the tasks you undertake every day but are a leader in your organization. Leading by example is a critical step to becoming a better CEO. The leadership team within your organization will look at you for inspiration for how they should communicate with people who are working within their own teams.
When you are looking to lead by example, you should take the time to think about how to interact with your team members daily. You should pay particular attention to how you communicate. Trying to take notes and work on your tone will help you to ensure that there is a positive chain response rather than communicating stress down every level.
9. Time Box
As a CEO, your time is very valuable, which is why it is so important to learn how to structure your time correctly. When you come into work without a clear plan, it is all too easy to get distracted and spend your whole day putting out fires rather than getting on with your own tasks. Taking the time to box out your day will help you ensure that you can more effectively structure your time so you can focus on the critical tasks you need to undertake to grow the organization.
10. Manage Your Stress
Stress has been called the silent killer, and for a good reason. Not only can stress be very detrimental to your overall health but the health of a business too. As a business leader, how you feel and communicate with staff can have a huge impact on the company’s overall tone and working culture.
Learning how to manage your own stress will help you ensure that you can communicate fairly and effectively with all your staff. Learning how to manage your stress will help you build a positive working culture, and it is also vital for responding effectively under pressure. Managing stress and keeping a clear head under pressure is a vital skills for any successful CEO.
