An entrepreneur can create a successful business without worrying about her leadership skills. But as soon as the business grows beyond a single person’s capabilities, the entrepreneur must become an employer. Her ability to lead her company in the right direction is a major factor in its success or failure.
But not every business owner realizes the importance of effective leadership. “When the economy gets tight, we see a lot of clients stop wanting to invest in leadership consulting and training,” said Tomi Bryan, owner of Leadership Worx, a leadership coaching company based in Greensboro, North Carolina. “But research shows that great leaders double the profits for organizations. So why wouldn't you want to keep creating great leaders?”
Bryan is the author of “The Five Keys of Life,” a book on how to build a truly fulfilled life. “It's the entry point,” she explained. “It's the doorway into who you are and who you can be, and it really helps you look at your own life and decide what you want to do. Not what your parents want you to do, not what your friends want you to do—what you want to do. I've spent the last 12 years of my life conducting all sorts of research on how I can make it easier for humans to go in the direction of their dreams and their passions.”
Leadership Worx uses a training program based on systems thinking to pinpoint the changes that will turn good leaders into great ones. “Systems thinking believes that there are leverage points and structural conflicts,” Bryan said. “What that means is, there are gas pedals that can accelerate you forward, and there are brakes that nail your foot to the floor. We've figured out what the gas pedals are to being an effective human being and leader. So you can go spend five years with somebody else, or you can come spend 12 months with us.”
Bryan believes that one of the keys to becoming a great leader is learning to accept responsibility. “We're a country of victims,” she said. “We want to sue everybody. We want to blame everybody. That is the bottom line of what we're trying to teach our clients—you are responsible for your own life. Now let's move forward. Now that you know you're responsible for it, stop doing the blaming, take responsibility and let's march forward and create the life that you want.”
Learning to become a great leader usually involves breaking out of the patterns of behavior that everyone establishes early in life. “We call them traffic patterns. Early in life we learn these traffic patterns,” Bryan said. “And they become so engrained in who we are, we don't know how to stop them. And so for me, with every client, it's really about how quickly can I uncover the traffic pattern, bring it to their attention and get them moving in the direction they want to go in their lives. That's the biggest hurdle for us, always, is a client who doesn't want to own the traffic pattern. Because we keep doing the same things over and over. We may say we dislike our lives, but your life is exactly what you want, because it's what you tolerate.”
Bryan refers to her website as 'safe space,' since part of the coaching process is turning Leadership Worx into a place of refuge for clients to get rid of their emotional burdens. “Some people are steeped in fear and go, 'Oh my gosh, I have to do something!'” she said. “And so they come to us, and we help them raise self-awareness and realize that sometimes in life, you just have to stand in the fear. We call it holding your own space no matter what's going on around you.”
Bryan says that her company's success, as with any entrepreneurial business, is strongly influenced by its owners' attitudes. “I think it's a mix of hard work, being willing to do whatever needs to be done in a business—that entrepreneurial spirit of 'Hey, whatever it takes, we'll get it done.' And then another big key is building relationships and being willing to be of service to others,” she said.
Going forward, Bryan plans to expand Leadership Worx to deliver its message on a global scale. “One of the things that we do is speak to a lot of organizations. And that's one way that we get a lot of our clients,” she said. “So we're trying to expand our reach in speaking to organizations about greatness, and then trying to become more of a global citizen with global outreach. I think we do have a lot of great things to offer for people about tools for managing our chaotic world.”
For more information, please visit: www.l-worx.com
