by Soulaima Gourani
SOULAIMA GOURANI INVESTOR, SPEAKER, AUTHOR, ADVISOR, LIFE LEADERSHIP & DESIGN COACH
Copyrighted by Soulaima Gourani
Setting up and running a successful business is not effortless. Aside from effort and determination, there are two traits that many businesses and organizations lack but are required to achieve success, and they are: great leadership, and community bonding (also known as healthy corporate culture) and it is when you combine all these factors when running a business that you will be able to increase your revenue streams and influence in the community and market that you operate in. Most people, however, have a misconstrued view of leadership and believe that leadership entails mainly overseeing the operations of the business and coming up with the best strategies to future-proof the business, and although those are key components, there is also much more to leadership than this.
Leaders of an organization typically head a team of workers whose primary objective is to ensure that the organization delivers on its objectives and goals as such. Therefore, leaders must inspire and motive those working for them to do as such. Most people, however, overlook the aspect of being inspiring leaders, and instead resort to threats of dismissal to get the workers to perform their duties. This strategy is not effective since it relies on fear to get the workers to perform, and fear is usually not the best motivator. It may get the job done momentarily, but you cannot use it to spur corporate success for the long run. Having workers operate out of fear is not suitable for business since it curtails their freedom and ability to interact with the clients in the best viable way. The best thing would be to inspire and encourage them to do more and to give more.
One way to remove fear from the work environment is to understand that your workers are humans and to err is human. So, when your employees make a mistake, be gentle when disciplining them. This shows that you care, and it will push them to perform their best, providing long term benefits to your organization. Another factor essential for corporate success is a strong corporatecommunity bond. For a company, being socially responsible and having a healthy corporate culture means using its resources and its influence to shape the lives of its fellow citizens including its employees for the better. It is only with a robust corporate-community bond that the company will prosper.
Some ways businesses and leaders can build community bond is by organizing community outreach programs such as outside volunteer work, planting trees in community parks or visiting children hospitals. This allows workers and its organizational leaders to interact with one another outside business settings. Such activities create an emotional connection and loyalty to one another. Organizations will have to spend resources on such activities, however, the ROI from such ventures is usually high. A strong corporate/community bond bolsters company’s identity in the community, which can help bring in more customers to the business. Additionally, it also shows that the organization cares about the people and places that support its business, creating a positive impact on community members.
Fear is a normal human emotion, that can sometimes be a functional or even necessary way to ensure that people do not become complacent, however, when fear becomes the norm for an organization’s culture, it can have toxic effects over the long run such as oppressing creativity, inhibiting collaboration and can lead to burnout.
Running an organization is not without its challenges; it is up to the business leaders to evaluate its operations to see what it needs to do to adapt to the new changes. ~ Soulaima Gourani
soulaimagourani/ Soulaima Gourani www.soulaima.com
Soulaima Gourani is the founder and CEO of Tradeconductor, a highly successful business, and global trade marketing consultancy that has helped countless major corporations become what they are today and an official expert at World Economic Forum’s (Expert Network) Behavioral Sciences & Education and Skills. She is a frequent motivational speaker at conferences with approximately 200 public talks/year around the world, online coach, corporate advisor to major companies on customer loyalty, sales, service strategies and employee motivation and the future of business + author of several bestseller books and has contributed to more than 14 books on leadership, change mgt, SCM and how to get success in life. Soulaima helps to serve a common purpose: to create more innovators, critical Thinkers, and problem solvers–more peace in the world.
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