Microbusiness Mentor

In the February 2009 issue of Harvard Business Review, Robert Kaplan and Robert Kaiser suggested that we’ve been too focused on strength, to the growing detriment of leaders.

As small business entrepreneurs, we have to exhibit leadership and a spectrum of operational competencies.

If you are like me, you are not only the CEO of your company, you are COO, CFO, the head R&D or creative director, the executive assistant, and the mailroom clerk. We must have a degree of leadership quality in each of the different hats we wear. We don’t have the luxury of compartmentalizing leadership “at the CEO” level.

Because we wear many hats and run small, agile organizations, our businesses live the mantra, “Change is the Only Constant”.

We evaluate the change, recalibrate our approach, and capitalize on the difference to our competitive advantage.

This is what I LOVE about being a small business entrepreneur, and especially, a microbusiness entrepreneur!

Yet the stress and demand to adapt and innovate can push us microbusiness entrepreneurs to rely too much on a specific leadership attribute.

In other words, we end up “overdoing” strength, as Kaplan and Kaiser warns in leadership situations.

I prefer to see this “overdoing” as “corrupting”.

To me, this is not as much “overdoing” as it is perverting a strength to the point where it no longer is a strength, but temporarily and artificially becomes a weakness.

Earlier this year, I cofounded a medical scientific leadership development company. My business partners and I provide leadership development to physicians, scientists, and healthcare executives – many of these individuals are outstanding leaders and are in fact current leaders of their companies.

We offer a scientifically validated brain dominance assessment to help participants understand how their leadership styles change during stress. Most problems in organizations don’t arise when we’re all behaving at our best, when leaders are in their zones of full engagement and highest performance! Stress pushes our limits and suddenly we see how we are “reacting” rather than “responding” to the situation. Our survival instincts kick in, and for a few of us, much of what we learn during coaching or in professional seminars take a back seat.

I see this in myself as a small business entrepreneur.

My own brain dominance assessment suggests a high preference for synthetic, creative, intuitive, and innovative thinking – functions associated with the right brain. I also exhibit strong left brained thinking style and analytical thinking.

My right brain-left brain partnership has served me well. I am able to spot patterns, see trends, and formulate visions as an entrepreneur. I am then able to analyze plans of action, assess performance metrics, and execute on best approaches.

I let each thinking style shine where each is meant to shine, and as a result, I enjoyed success and fulfillment in what I do.

My left brain thinking style is not as prominent as my right brain dominance.

UNTIL I’M STRESSED.

Under stress, I learned that my left brain thinking takes control. Literally. I behave like a control freak. I see everything as black-or-white, right-or-wrong – a binary world of 1′s and 0′s.

(It certainly explains why I can keep up a highly technical overly analytical argument with my husband for hours. My husband is an aerospace engineer and has a high degree of left brain dominance, but that doesn’t keep me from wanting to “win” an argument’s he’s already won.)

When I was stressed, I observed that instead of engaging my right brain thinking and seeing a creative solution to a troublesome trend or business problem, and engaging my left brain to the analysis of best approach and subsequent execution of best approach, I let the left brain take over the solution seeking process. I end up reducing the situation into all-or-none and do-or-die.

Not exactly the optimal way to reconnect with my vision and inspire myself to action.

Now that I have this insight, I’m motivated to challenge myself – to train myself to better manage my different thinking styles. When I’m stressed, I notice how my thought patterns change. Then I assign my left brain thinking and right brain thinking in the proper context.

Until I can master my thoughts, I can choose actions and behaviors that serve me.

We’re in stressful times right now. The whole world is stressed.

How are you leading and entrepreneuring during this stressful time?

Image credit: Business Sunset by mark normand and Neurons by Gerard79