H aving advised thousands of business leaders , my colleagues at ghSMART and I have heard many common causes of stress .
Here are some of the causes :
• You have a bold vision but lack confidence in your team to execute it . So , your business plan feels more like wishful thinking than a reasonable set of results you expect your team to achieve in the future .
• Competitors are starting to bring better , faster , cheaper services to market , and you feel your advantages slipping .
• Your own workload seems to be growing exponentially , taking a toll on your life outside of work , and you are wondering where the glory is in growing a business .
In addition to the stress felt by leaders , there are many worries outside your company . A Conference Board survey of 800 CEOs — as reported by the Wall Street Journal — reported that the top worries of CEOs outside their companies are recession , global trade , and politics , in that order . And the three worries inside their companies are hiring talented people , digital technology , and developing leaders .
HOW CAN YOU BE A SUCCESSFUL LEADER AND REDUCE YOUR STRESS IN GROWING THE BUSINESS ?
The advice I ’ m about to share is not just some off-the-cuff “ You oughta ” thoughts that your friend is telling you over lunch . I think it ’ s nice when a friend has some thoughts to share with you over lunch , but what you are about to read is different .
Our advice is based on a now 17,000-leader database of successful and unsuccessful careers , which we have analyzed with the University of Chicago and other top research universities for three best-selling books our firm has published : Who , Power Score , and The CEO Next Door . We don ’ t just write books ; our leadership advisory firm — ghSMART — has tested this advice with thousands of business leaders we have advised over the last 20 years . We practice what we preach . All the advice I ’ m about to offer is based on tactics we ’ ve successfully used ourselves to grow our business to over a dozen offices in the United States and Europe to serve clients globally while becoming the subject of two Harvard Business Review case studies as a pioneer in our field .
THERE ARE THREE ACTIONS THAT HELP LEADERS ACHIEVE MORE SUCCESS WITH LESS SWEAT .
1 . Reduce your priorities to three or less .
2 . Hire and fire until you are 90 % confident that your team will execute the strategy successfully .
3 . Build relationships that are focused not just on getting along but also on achieving measurable outcomes together .
We discovered that leaders who are skilled at these three things are 20 times more likely to achieve their financial goals for their companies than those who are not . Again , these three things are prioritizing , hiring and developing talented teams , and building relationships focused on results .
REDUCE YOUR PRIORITIES TO THREE OR LESS
Most of the time , when a leader struggles with prioritizing , it ’ s because they have too many priorities , not too few . I sat on a plane next to a CEO a couple weeks ago who seemed stressed . I was writing a love letter to my wife and I didn ’ t feel like talking to him , but a
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