Lonely At The Top: A Choice?

It’s fairly common for business owners to comment on how lonely it is at the top. My question is: “Could it be that this is a choice you’re making…albeit subconsciously?”

Of course there are things that a business owner doesn’t want to share with his employees. He typically doesn’t want to share:

• Financial information.
• Challenges the business faces.
• Mistakes he’s made.
• Anything that might create concern among his employees.

While these are all understandable, they prevent you from tapping into your employees’ knowledge, experience and creativity, while simultaneously leaving you feeling lonely in your role at the top. It doesn’t have to be this way. Here are some ways to avoid these feelings of loneliness.

Financial information

While you may not want to share dollars and cents information to all employees, financial ratios and other financial metrics can involve employees in finding way to improve these metrics.

That’s especially true when you show them where competitors are and how, with their help, your company can become the envy of your competitors. Who doesn’t want to be part of a winning team?

Users of my Making The EXCEPTIONAL Normal program enjoy having their competitors wonder how they accomplish so much with so few people. That’s especially helpful in today’s world where it’s difficult to find talented people to fill jobs.

Challenges

Business, like every other aspect of life, is dynamic. Things are constantly changing. In other words, businesses are facing new challenges everyday. If you’re trying to hide this fact from your employees, you’re underestimating their intelligence and ability to deal with challenges.

Let’s face it, they face challenges throughout their lives and in the vast majority of cases, they find a way to deal with it. By hiding business challenges from them, you’re depriving them of the ability to learn and grow in their roles and subjecting yourself to unwarranted loneliness.

Mistakes

One of the natural tendencies we humans possess is the desire to save face…to avoid admitting when we’ve made a mistake. We do this because we don’t want our mistake to cost us the trust and respect of others.

The reality is that when we try to hide our mistakes, put a spin on them, is when we lose others trust and confidence in us. When we readily admit our mistakes, and apologize, is when we gain others’ trust and confidence in us…as well as their respect.

Employee concerns

If your business is struggling, your employees are going to sense it. The one thing that we humans cannot deal with is uncertainty. Let your employees know the struggles your business is facing and they’ll rally around you to find a way out. Hide struggles from them and the uncertainty they feel increases the likelihood that they’ll exit to avoid uncertainty…especially your most talented people because they have no problem finding other employment.

Airing your business struggles, assuming you’ve created an environment your employees enjoy, will generate a strong desire to find solutions to the struggles you face. They don’t want to leave an environment they enjoy because they don’t know whether they’ll be able to find another environment that’s as enjoyable as the one they’re in.

Takeaways

Avoid the natural tendency to keep things to yourself. Realize that doing so is a choice…albeit one that you previously made subconsciously.

In the future, make conscious choices to include your employees in the financial results they’ve helped create as well as your vision for even better results.

Share with them the challenges the business faces, the mistakes you’ve made and anything that you think may create concern on their part and you’ll quickly find that you have a lot of willing hands and minds to help you deal with whatever you’re facing.

The resources below will help you avoid feeling lonely at the top.

Resources

Making the EXCEPTIONAL Normal program helps you identify and nurture emerging leaders who elevate all around them to higher levels of performance and greater job enjoyment.

Financial Awareness & Strategy program where employees learn to identify opportunities to improve financial results and prioritize these opportunities on the basis of which produces the greatest impact with the least effort. Greater financial awareness = Better decisions.