A term more often associated with sports club managers but one that can be equally applied to growing businesses.

One of the many challenges in growing a business is maintaining and developing the culture that got the business off the ground, got traction and attracted great talent who wanted to be part of a great business.

Inspiring leadership is one of the key ingredients in growing a business and as a business develops, pivots or embarks on a growth period it’s inevitable that layers of management are introduced to support the business’s development.

This can present a challenge for both employees and business leaders as neither can spend as much with the other as they were able to do when the business was smaller. We all want exposure to the boss and rest assured good bosses want to spend time with their employees, yet scale prevents this from happening to the extent that both parties would like.

Not losing the dressing room or keeping key employees engaged is just one of the many challenges business leaders have to deal with and recognising this challenge is the first step towards tackling it.

It’s an issue that was recently addressed in one of Pabasso – Peer Advisory Board Associates group meetings and it’s clear there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution.

However, there are many things that business leaders can do to ensure that they do not lose the dressing room and here are a few examples.

• Schedule regular ‘Business Leader’ lunches with a cross-section of employees
• Ensure the CEO/MD meets (F2F/video) all new employees as part of the induction process
• If you have remote offices, work from your remote locations regularly.
• Define your culture and make sure it is understood by the whole team, particularly new hires.
• Ensure you have (and publish) an Elevator Pitch and Mission Statement and continually reinforce this with everyone in the business
• Ensure you have an up-to-date Organisation chart so it’s clear to all who reports to who, it also helps everyone visualise the challenge that business leaders have with employee engagement.
• Share copies of ‘Who Moved My Cheese’ (28 million copies sold worldwide) with all employees as part of the explanation that success and growth bring constant change.

This is by no means a definitive list and all other ideas are welcome.

Some more detail on some of these concepts can be found in our Pabasso – Peer Advisory Board Associates Blog which covers this and many other subjects that have been discussed by Business Leaders in our Pabasso board meetings and our 121s with our business leaders.

Here is the link: https://lnkd.in/efNCjYbj

So if you are a business leader you might take inspiration from some of these ideas and if you are part of the team and feeling as though you are losing your engagement with the boss why not suggest some of these ideas to bridge the gap?

Don’t lose the dressing room!