America’s Leadership Expert : Best Coach For You
Clay Staires: This is Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert with Tulsa Business Leadership, and podcast number 41, “Expanding Your Capacity to Process Greater Complexity.” At Clay Staires Tulsa Business Leadership, one of the things that I experience and encounter so often with entrepreneurs and business leaders is the limited capacity — emotional capacity, mental capacity, financial capacity — that they have to run a growing business. The reason why the company is the size that it is is because the leader is the size that they are. At Clay Staires Tulsa Business Leadership, one of the things that I love to do is come in and help the business owner, whether that person be in Oklahoma, or New York, or California, or Florida, or Cincinnati, or Phoenix — no matter where they are — to step in and help the business leader or the manager expand their capacity to process greater complexity.
Once again, for me personally, the reason why I was not able to grow my business when I first met my coach was because of my limited capacity: the capacity of the education that I had, the capacity of skill that I had, the capacity of emotional stability that I had, or the mental capacity that I had. It was my limits, it was my personal limits as the leader that were keeping me from being able to grow and build my company. It wasn’t that my company wasn’t able to do it; it was that I wasn’t able to do it. And it only came through my personal development, through me being able to expand my capacity, that I was able to lead my company into greater and greater growth.
Jim Rohn says, “Your life gets better when you do.” Again, I think this really solidifies this point of expanding your capacity to process greater complexity. I have a client that I’m working with recently that is really struggling, because she has a … She’s running a family business that was started 28 years ago by her mom and dad. She has taken over the company now, but her life and her personal environment, her mental capacity and her emotional capacity, is very limited. She is stressed, she is overwhelmed, her life is chaotic, and yet she is trying to grow her business into a more profitable organization, a more profitable company. I was able to recognize immediately, as Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert Tulsa Business Leadership, that before we grow the person, we have to grow the leader. Once again, before we grow the business, we have to grow the leader.
But this can be something that is very difficult for a person in a company that they are just focused on “We’ve got to grow, I need more money, I need more money.” But this concept that Jim Rohn talks about, “Your life gets better when you do,” this is something that we don’t always value. We don’t always see that the problem is me. Usually, the problem is the environment; usually, the problem is the workers; usually, the problem is the economy. But other … Anything else other than me.
So the idea here is, if you’re able to get this picture in your mind of concentric circles, and on the inner circles, we’ll call this inner circle is your capacity: your emotional capacity, your mental capacity, your skill capacity, your financial capacity, your resource capacity. America’s Leadership Expert And then if we look at the outer circle, this larger outer circle, that is actually the complexity of responsibilities that we have in running a successful company. And so many times, we find with Tulsa Business Leadership that the business owner or the business leader is just … They are just frazzled, they are just worn slick, they’re overwhelmed, they feel stuck, they’re even to the point of depression because of the weight of the business. And I quickly say to them, as Tulsa Business Leadership, I quickly say to them, it’s not the weight of their business, it’s the weight of the responsibility. All of the responsibilities that go into creating a successful company.
This taps directly into an organizational chart for a company. I quickly ask a business owner, “Show me your organizational chart.” And if they have three people in their business, they usually have three different boxes in their organizational chart, or if they have 25 people, they have 25 boxes, because when they design their organizational chart, they design it through the lens of the people. It’s so fun to come in and say, “All right, let’s not look through the lens of the people, let’s look through the lens of the responsibilities that are here.” And we quickly find that there are at least 25 to 30 boxes that need to be filled in every small business, and all of a sudden, when a business owner is seeing that, “Oh my gosh, I am in 90% of these boxes,” then they begin to realize, “That’s why I am so overwhelmed, because I don’t have the mental or emotional or skill capacity to fulfill all of these boxes.”
So at Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert Tulsa Business Leadership, with our consulting with entrepreneurs and business owners, what we get to do is begin to expand their capacity to process greater complexity. We begin to put in systems. The very first system that we put into place, that I find almost 100% of the time, is a time-management system. So many people are running around crazy, and they keep saying, “I just don’t have time, I just don’t have time.” The thing is, is you have the same amount of time as everybody else. You have the same amount of time as Albert Einstein had. You have the same amount of time as Helen Keller had. You have the same amount of time as Michael Jordan has. You have the same amount of time as the President of the United States has.
The problem is, what are you doing with your time? And so as we begin to put in what I call our “Daily Steering Wheel” time-management system, immediately, people begin to have more and more of a capacity to handle their time. I was just talking with one of my clients this morning, and they were saying, “Oh my gosh, Clay, I feel like I’ve been so productive this last week, even before 10 o’clock in the morning. Look at my schedule each day. I’ve been crossing things out, and by the time 10 o’clock comes around, I’ve already been able to do so much stuff.” Boom. Their time-management system has expanded their capacity with their time. So all of a sudden, what was so overwhelming is actually manageable for them.
The same thing happens with our emotions. America’s Leadership Expert I have a client right now that is overwhelmed by all of their emotions as they are trying to take over a family business, and trying to lead a family business, but at the same time, their personal life is just in shambles, it’s just … I mean, there’s so much drama and so much stuff going on that just getting through their day each day is a struggle for them, because there is so much upheaval going on in their daily life, with relationships, and finances, and parenting, and living situation. It’s just, there’s so much going on. They have a very limited emotional capacity, because all of their emotional energy is being spent just keeping their life together. They don’t have time to run a company, they don’t have the emotional capacity to run a company, because all of their emotional energy is spent in just keeping their life together.
So as soon as I begin to say, “Oh, well, we need to do this,” it’s like, “Oh, there’s no way I could do that, because of this person. There’s no way I could do that because of that situation. There’s no way, I just don’t have time, I couldn’t do that, I … You know, there’s so many other things going on. If I did that, then I wouldn’t be able to do this.” America’s Leadership Expert Their emotional capacity is so limited that they are not able to handle the responsibilities, the complex responsibilities of running a company. So what we do at Tulsa Business Leadership, once again, is help business owners and entrepreneurs expand their capacity so they can process these greater responsibilities of running a company.
Also, we have just the mental capacities, and we don’t know what needs to be done. “I started the company because I know how to do carpentry really well, but I don’t know how to do my accounting. I don’t know how to do marketing. I don’t know how to do sales. I don’t know how to do customer service.” And because of our limited capacity with our knowledge of how to do these different pieces of our company, our company is not able to grow, and we stay small, and we stay frustrated. We want to grow, and it’s not about having the sincerity, it’s not about having the passion to grow; it’s about having the capacity to grow. This is Clay Staires America’s Leadership Expert with Tulsa Business Leadership, and podcast number 41, “Expanding Your Capacity to Process Greater Complexity.”
