My Biggest Mistake

Have you taken time to reflect over the last few weeks you spent through the Covid-19 quarantine? If not it’s not too late!

I often start my mornings reading, reflecting, and writing. This break has taken me back to my “WHY”! and in my last blog I spoke about getting off track and going back to my vision. However in this reflection, I realized a couple of things as I was reading a leadership message from John Maxwell, he says…I realized my biggest mistakes. Here they are...

1. Attract and equip people, hire and teach everyone you can.

Ok, I got this part down. For years I have been developing others, I love it and will do it until I hit the dirt! 

2. Find and mentor emerging leaders and give them responsibility and authority.

Ok, I got this part down halfway. I have trained many leaders and emerging leaders to leave my company. Let’s look at the first area.

• FInd emerging leaders-  I believe many times I focus too much of my energy into followers and not leaders. I was not intentional enough to find leaders. I have spent too much time with people who don’t want the responsibility.  Do you find yourself doing this? It is not too late to turn it around and start focusing on your star players. The ones that really want to lead and truly want the responsibility of a leader.
  
• Responsibility and Authority- Oh, this is big! My mentor Paul Martinelli reminds me often how big this mistake is. If you give someone responsibility without the authority it is like cutting off their legs. They cannot move and manage the responsibility you gave them. They need enough room to make mistakes and grow. I don’t have an issue with giving both of these, but my mistake is giving it to the wrong people. They need the authority to make decisions.

3. Create new organizations- Raise leaders to multiply and extend your influence.

• Ok, this is where I dropped the biggest ball. Ugh! (insert emoji covering her face) I screwed up big time here. A good friend of mine Kenneth said to me “Christine you trained most of New Jersey how to cut hair and own their own salons!” Ugh! I made the same mistake Vidal Sassoon salon made. That is not good leadership. It’s not knowing how to scale your business. And it is not something I am proud of.  Am I proud of being able to equip others and help them succeed? , Absolutely. I didn’t know how to partner and scale my business. I did not know how to offer people more to make them stay with the company and build the brand. For a couple of reasons...

1. I wasn’t knowledgeable in leadership or scaling up.  
2. I was insecure. Mainly because I didn’t know and I had forgiveness issues that lacked trust in people I needed to clear up. 

There I said it! AH, that shit feels so good to be able to say :)   

4. Engage in the ongoing development of leaders. - This is truly where the gold is. To take your leaders and sink yourself into them. I have some truly incredible leaders on my team and they deserve the very best of me. I will work my hardest in this area moving forward.

Based on these 4 main areas of leadership development, what area do you think you need to work on? 

I would challenge you to sit with this and write down what you do well in every 4 areas and what needs work. Then what you can do is write down some action steps to make a difference in these 4 areas.