Business executives face leadership challenges all the time. As company leaders, business executives must overcome complex internal and external forces that continuously threaten and challenge the firm. Managing these threats and challenges can be difficult – especially when leaders are constantly exposed to stress, self-doubt, and pressure. While confronting these obstacles may seem daunting, the good news is that anyone can overcome these difficulties with the right attitude, focus, and mindset. After all, business executive development is a lifelong journey of self-improvement and personal development.
To be successful, business executives must constantly be invested in their own leadership development and growth as leaders. To do this, business executives must make the time to learn, put in the effort to grow, and invest in leadership programs. Great leaders don’t see business executive development as a chore. Rather, they see it as part of their responsibility in becoming great and effective leaders for their team. Great business executives constantly seek opportunities to improve and overcome their own personal leadership challenges.
Ready to face the common leadership challenges faced by business executives? Here are 5 common leadership challenges that you can work on in order to become the best possible leader for your team.
5 Common Business Executive Leadership Challenges
#1 Inspire a Shared Vision
Inspiring vision is a key skill that business executives must develop and master. Why? It’s because when business executives provide a collective vision for the organization, team members have an understanding of where they are headed and can use it as a guide when making decisions that will best achieve the overarching goal. A clear vision also allows business executives to distinguish opportunities from distractions within their industry. Most importantly, business executives that inspire vision give employees meaning and purpose in the work that they do. When employees are intrinsically motivated to produce great and thoughtful work, the overall organization becomes better as a whole.
#2 Foster a Cohesive and High-Performing Corporate Culture
A challenge business executives face when running the company is the ability to foster and create cohesive and high-performing teams and culture. According to McKinsey, companies with top cultures post a shareholder return that is 60% higher than median performing companies and perform 200% better than companies in the lower performing quartile. Fostering a cohesive corporate culture is already challenging in itself and adding the growing trends of remote and hybrid working present its own new and unique challenges for business executives. As a result, business executives must constantly assess the health of the organization, hire the right people, and ensure they are keeping their employees happy and engaged in the work that they do.
#3 Generate Profitable Revenue and Promoting the Business
Business executives are responsible for running a profitable business. To do this, they must make sure business operations are being run efficiently while continuously bringing in more business for the company. As a result, business executives must always be networking, bringing in new clients, and increasing the company’s presence in the industry. Therefore, business executives must be comfortable being in the public eye and promote the business to the public if they want the business to grow in revenue and attract new opportunities.
#4 Avoid Burnout
A part of excellent business executive development is the ability to manage stress and prevent burnout from happening in the first place. According to the Development Dimension International’s Global Leadership Forecast 2021, approximately 60% of leaders report feeling used up at the end of the workday – a strong indicator of burnout. Today’s business executives feel immense pressure to solve problems quickly, generate fast revenue, and bear the feelings of stress that come with the role. This is problematic, not only for business executives, but also for the company as a whole. When leaders of the company constantly feel burnt out, they can often make bad decisions and transfer this negative energy back onto their teams. Truly, burnout is a big challenge in the workplace that business executives must continuously manage.
#5 Delegating and Elevating Team Members
Leaders cannot do everything themselves. Therefore, they understand that delegating work is necessary if they want to scale and grow the business. This can be challenging for business executives who are used to doing everything themselves. According to the Harvard Business Review, leaders must learn to delegate in order to shift from doing to leading. When leaders delegate, they free up valuable time that allows them to focus on the bigger picture versus getting lost in the details of the day-to-day operations of running a business. Business executives must not only delegate responsibility to team members, but also empower them to manage this new responsibility better than before. When done well, delegating tasks and elevating team members will both help business executives scale the business while creating more leaders in the workplace.
Bringing It All Together
Becoming better leaders is a continuous process and a lifelong journey. Business executives must constantly put in the time and effort in their business executive development. A big part of this is addressing and overcoming common leadership challenges faced by today’s leaders.
Leadership programs are a great way for business executives to hold themselves accountable to their own development. Leadership programs offer busy business executives a structured and consistent schedule for business executives to learn and work on their personal leadership abilities. Most of all, business executives get access to world-class resources and support that come with leadership programs.
Ready to develop your executive business development and leadership skills? Contact the Excellent Executive today to start taking control over your own leadership development journey.