It can be lonely at the top. That’s why so many leaders – from the Prime Minister to the England football manager – take the necessary steps to ensure that it isn’t. Leaders will make sure that they’ve got a team around them for support. It’s not, of course, just a matter of ensuring that they don’t become isolated, it’s a way of injecting some perspective and diversity into their decision making. It also gives them the ability to delegate, allowing them to become a success, whatever they define that to be.
Without the right support, leaders risk making decisions that leave them feeling dissatisfied or unfulfilled. For business owners, it’s easy to make decisions without considering the implications for you, your time, your workload, your fulfilment and your personal plans. Having somebody to turn to, therefore, who is looking out for you as well as the business, is essential.
In fact, some of the most famous business leaders have had a mentor to help them get to where they want to be. Here are a few examples:
Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group
“If you ask any successful businessperson, they will always (say they) have had a great mentor at some point along the road,” Branson says. He believes that he “wouldn’t have got anywhere in the airline industry” if it wasn’t for his mentor, Sir Freddie Laker.
Branson suggests that the reason some people in business shun the help of others is down to “nervous energy and parental pride”. “Going it alone is an admirable, but foolhardy and highly flawed approach to taking on the world,” he stresses.
Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple Inc.
Jobs had something of a complicated relationship with his mentor, Mike Markkula. While Markkula was instrumental in helping Jobs get his Apple II off the ground, it’s also suggested that he was a figurehead in the sacking of Jobs in 1975.
Tellingly though, in his biography, Jobs said Markkula was the one who helped him remember his values and the reasons why he got into business in the first place. He wrote: “He emphasised that you should never start a company with the goal of getting rich. Your goal should be making something you believe in and making a company that will last.”
Oprah Winfrey, media mogul
“Mentors are important and I don’t think anybody makes it in the world without some form of mentorship,” Winfrey once said. It was likely she had celebrated author and poet, the late Maya Angelou in mind when she was making those comments.
Winfrey explains that Angelou was an ever-present in her life, who helped teach her the power of ‘paying it forward’. “The world knows her as a poet but at the heart of her, she was a teacher,” she said in 2014, the year of Angelou’s death. “‘When you learn, teach. When you get, give’ is one of my best lessons from her.”
Whole person perspective
All three of the leaders highlighted above, talk about how their mentors allowed them to see beyond just business. As any leader knows, building a business can prove all-consuming. But it’s important you don’t lose sight of the reasons you got into business in the first place.
Here at Agnentis Partners, we call this the ‘whole person perspective’. It’s an approach which understands that business and personal decisions can’t be made in isolation, while acknowledging that it’s easy to forget personal needs when making a decision that is ‘right for the business’.
But we believe that there is no need for business owners to struggle in achieving their vision. It’s all about putting the business owner’s personal needs and aspirations first, and then aligning them with the business journey and strategic plan.
In order to do that, you might need to look at your business through a new lens. We will help you define your vision and then create a plan to achieve it.
Think of Agnentis as ‘player/coaches’. As well as putting the plan in place to achieve your objective, our experienced professionals also have the skills to implement the strategy. Our role in your business is flexible – we will mould to suit your needs.
Remember, you don’t have to go it alone. In fact, successful leaders would tell you that’s it a bad idea. Help is available, if you want it. We even offer a complimentary session to get you started…
Sources:
https://www.virgin.com/entrepreneur/five-business-leaders-who-have-mentor-thank-their-success
https://chronicle.umbmentoring.org/top-25-mentoring-relationships-in-history/
