Business good, but not where you think it should be? Tired of trying new business growth strategies because nothing is moving the needle? Are you beginning to think this is just as good as your business is going to get?
Maybe it’s OK. Nothing’s obviously broken. Revenue’s coming in. You and your team are getting the job done. But…you know something’s not right.
What if the problem isn’t with the strategies you’ve been implementing? What if it’s closer to home and it’s actually you, the leader, who’s the problem?
How Do You Know If You’re The Problem And Not The Strategies?
Traditional business advice treats growth like a math problem. Find the formula, apply it consistently, and get the result. This approach ignores the fact that every formula passes through a human being first. Your decisions, beliefs, willingness to act, and your capacity to lead all create the filter that every business growth strategy you implement passes through.
So, if the strategies aren’t working for you, you’re the problem.
Yes, I know this is very bitter medicine to swallow. I’ve had to swallow it many times myself. And what I can tell you is that the first time is the worst. After that, it becomes easier because you will typically see the results of your changes fairly quickly, as you’re raising your leadership growth ceiling.
What Is A Leadership Growth Ceiling?
A leadership growth ceiling is the point at which a business stalls because the leader hasn’t grown to go beyond it. Every business has one, and most leaders don’t see it because they’re not looking at the right things.
They’ll look at marketing, business growth strategies, or sales. Instead of what they need to be looking at, which is their own capacity.
What really governs your business growth is the decisions you make, the discomfort you’re willing to tolerate, the authority you’re willing to claim, and the responsibility you’re willing to delegate. These are what determine what your business can become.
And this ceiling is invisible to you. So no matter how many business growth strategies you attempt to implement, no matter how many hours you work, your business will stay stuck.
To get things moving again, you’ll need to step into the unknown. You’ll be required to break free from old patterns and step into the new identity of the leader your business actually needs now to support the desired (or necessary) growth.
How Does A Leader’s Growth Ceiling Show Up In The Numbers?
It shows up as a plateau. Revenue will hover in a fairly tight range year after year. It doesn’t improve, no matter what you add or cut.
This plateau tells you that you’re holding a belief that’s making business decisions for you.
How do I know?
Because I lived it for too many years.
I attempted to build businesses while treating sales like it was something I wasn’t supposed to do. I was an engineer by training, and my family had made it clear that science was the most respectable career. Sales was something people only did if they couldn’t do hard sciences.
(Yeah, I know, it’s pretty messed up. That’s exactly what false and limiting beliefs are. They are wrong ways of thinking that completely skew how we view and therefore behave in the world. But they’re really hard for us to see in ourselves because it’s our “normal”.)
The business growth strategies I pursued were the same ones that seemed to work for everyone else. But not for me because I would have to become someone my early conditioning told me I shouldn’t be…a salesperson. And I just couldn’t figure out how to do it.
So, I waited for business to come to me. Sometimes it did. But when it didn’t, I wasn’t covering my costs and had to deal with the havoc, drama, uncertainty, and fear that it created for my family and me.
What finally changed for me were 3 specific decisions that my colleagues and mentors patiently helped me see I needed to make.
- Pick up the phone and start calling prospects
- Stop being subservient and see myself as a valuable person
- Own the value of what I do and have done
These 3 seemingly simple decisions changed my financial reality and life in general. They enabled me to pay off my business debt, stabilize my income, and then grow it.
The point I want to make here is that my business was exactly the same. I changed.
Your version of this might not be about sales. For you, it might be about pricing, delegation, visibility, who you’re allowed to serve, or something else. But if you’ve been at a revenue plateau for some time, something in how you’re operating is holding your strategies back.
A growth mindset on its own will not bring it to your attention, because you can’t identify what you can’t see from inside your own thinking about what “normal” is.
I want you to really get this because it’s critical for you being able to break through the plateau you’ve been sitting at. You can completely understand what a leadership ceiling is and even know the exact belief you’re holding that’s getting in the way, but you won’t be able to act differently under pressure because the pattern runs without your conscious thought. And awareness is different from change.
Can You Really Grow Your Business By Growing As A Leader?
Abso-positively, YES! In fact, McKinsey found that leaders who demonstrate at least 3 of 5 key growth mindsets are 2.4 times more likely to outgrow their peers’ profitability. The difference is only in mindset. Not what they know, but mindset.
Sit with that for a minute.
There’s more data to consider. Truist Leadership Institute conducted a study that tracked companies that had appeared on Inc.’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies. Within 5 to 8 years, two out of three had shrunk, been sold at a disadvantage, or gone out of business entirely. The most common reason for these results? The leadership in these companies didn’t evolve to match what the business needed to grow.
So, it doesn’t matter if you look for positive or negative examples of the impact of mindset and leadership ceiling. They’re both there with the same message.
And I imagine every single business owner in these studies knew that growth mattered. It wasn’t a matter of not knowing. It was not having the capacity to act on the knowledge consistently, regardless of the situation, because of their internal beliefs.
The low-cost and no-cost strategies that So no matter what business strategies you use, they will only work well when you choose to grow too.
