What if someone took the time to train you in leadership? As a business owner, you could unleash a ripple effect in your community.
Throw a rock into a pond and the ripples will travel outward to fulfill their sole purpose: to ripple.
Leadership is the same way. The character that blooms in your boardroom will bleed into your business dealings and the people that you employ. A leader’s success is not just measured by how well they are doing personally but also by the impact they have on their community.
Developing Leaders, Developing Communities
Community leaders know that when a leader grows, the community grows. Leadership training for community impact is specifically tailored to enhance their ability to influence their area. But if a leader’s influence is stunted, it betrays their purpose, their calling. Let’s think about leadership as both a lid and a ladder. Your organization’s success will never exceed your own success as a leader. This holds true for businesses, churches, and any other organization. Leaders need to understand that they have influence, and it is wasted if they do not use it.
Some business owners believe that their influence ends when the clock strikes five, and they head home for the day. They fail to acknowledge that those under their authority have spheres of influence themselves, and the good or bad that they do as leaders will echo into their dealings outside the walls of the business. What a leader says or does affects more people than just the people inside their organization. It is not what they say though, but what they do that will have a lasting impact. Potential customers will evaluate a leader based on their actions, not some catchy slogan, particularly during a hardship. Scripture says, “And the things you have heard me say in the presence of many witnesses entrust to reliable people who will also be qualified to teach others” (2 Timothy 2:2).
From Personal to Public Impact
EQUIP works on a ripple effect model. One leader reaches out to influence another leader who then influences an organization, an industry, a community, and eventually a city. Their work in Argentina has trained more than 200,000 leaders. When other countries witnessed the change that EQUIP implemented, local leaders began asking what was happening in Argentina. This is how influence travels. Leaders influence those around them, who then influence others and the areas that they operate in.
Business owners may not think of themselves as change agents. Their influence only extends as far as their customers. But what they do not realize is that business owners influence their employees, vendors, and customers to be change agents in their own spheres of influence. Leaders have a responsibility to influence others so that they too may influence spheres beyond themselves.
What Leadership Development Looks Like
When a business owner accepts that they have a responsibility to reach beyond themselves, it transforms the way they operate. Here are some of the ways these leaders might begin influencing their own spheres:
- Invest in leadership development, not just for the executives at the top but for everyone in the organization.
- They will begin to display servant leadership and how to appropriately handle conflict.
- They will treat employees like leaders and expect them to act as such.
- Mentoring will extend from the business into the community.
- Evaluation will take place to measure influence. They will consider the impact of their business by examining the growth of the organization and the positive character traits it exhibits.
None of these actions demand a lot of the business owner, but they require intent. Leadership development will happen if a business owner commits to learning and growing before they attempt to teach and develop others.
Viewing Business as a Vessel, Not a Destination
In order to sustain a business, the owner must be able to acquire a customer base and make a profit. But the expansion of the business should not be the end all be all. Business growth should be a means of getting to an end rather than an end in itself. Maxwell Leadership’s mission puts it plainly: transform lives, strengthen communities, change nations. That sequence matters. It starts with one person, and we as business owners have the ability to change someone today. The problem we encounter is that business owners do not realize they can influence people in their sphere of influence.
Businesses can be a catalyst for community change. There are many business owners that want to change the world, but they lack the necessary knowledge to affect change in their communities. The most overlooked truth in business is that character formed in private eventually becomes influence exercised in public.
Your Ripple Starts Today
You do not need to be on a pedestal to begin influencing your sphere. The next step you commit to is the first step in influencing your sphere. As a business owner and member of the community, you have a responsibility not just to your customers but to your community. If you are interested in taking a step toward your community, visit iequip.org and invest in yourself through Beyond Success or the Bridge Builder program.
