VITAL TRAITS FOR SME GROWTH

SMEs must develop leadership skills to be effective – Dr. Muneer Muhamed

Having interacted with a multitude of SME owners and leaders across the world over the years, it is apparent that many different leadership traits exist – although not all of them are useful for driving enterprises forward on the path to growth.

Creating workplaces that nurture healthy and open communication, and less toxic management, should be the ultimate objective of any business leader.

To guide businesses through the turbulent and transient advantage economy, those leading small and medium-size enterprises need to focus on a few skills that will define their ability to drive growth with lower attrition and higher productivity.

Here are a few guidelines that could prove to be essential for SME leaders.

REMAIN AGILE The pandemic and economic disaster taught SME owners the importance of agility. Irrespective of the line of business you’re in, you need to be able to display resilience in the new economy… even if you fall. Quickly recover from failure and be roughly right in driving new initiatives.

To be able to practise this skill, inspire employees to gather data for disconfirmation bias, have risk heat maps and plan scenario mapping. This will help with drawing up multiple plans in case things go wrong, which they will as things stand today.

IMPROVE YOUR EI Emotional intelligence (EI) is by far the best predictor of performance as 80 percent of top performers have higher emotional quotients compared to only 20 percent of low performers.

EI is more critical than IQ in driving a better workplace. As you know, it’s the ability to understand, and use the emotions of oneself and others for problem solving or creativity.

To mobilise this ability, focus on your motivators, self-awareness, empathy and social awareness. Spend up to an hour at the end of each day to write down the emotions you felt, reflect on them, and decide on the good, bad and extremely painful issues to be addressed.

LISTEN ACTIVELY Whenever leaders of small and medium-size enterprises are asked about their listening ability, they say they’re excellent at it. But research suggests that 90 percent are poor listeners.

The ability to really listen to your employees is critical; it’s one reason why some companies quickly returned to normal activities following the first wave of the pandemic. Being heard makes employees more motivated. You’ll be able to gain more insights from the people who are on the frontline.

When someone offers suggestions – even if he or she is on the lowest rung – pay attention to what’s being said without interruption. This is tough to do given your time constraints and ego about knowing better but they have to be managed. Start practising with your immediate subordinates.

This goes further into the area of encouraging constructive criticism, which will result in motivating employees to find data that can lead to disconfirmation bias.

You can encourage your staff to provide constructive criticism and suggestions by leveraging channels such as emails, surveys or a 10 minute interaction every day to whoever requests such meetings.

DELEGATE MORE Many first generation SME owners manage most critical tasks reasonably well and are reluctant to delegate them entirely to others. Unless you begin trusting your team to carry out tasks with little or no interference from yourself, running the business will be a major challenge.

Empower your people to get things done – this will reduce management toxicity and stress. Monitor progress on agreed timelines and milestones, but do not breathe down employees’ necks all the time and instruct them on how to get things done.

By doing this, you will reduce your own workload and stress, freeing up time for more strategic thinking and innovation.

MOTIVATE TEAMS Most SME leaders face the problem of having to attract and retain talent. You may want more diversity in your teams to drive innovation and growth.

A majority of SMEs have a disproportionate gender imbalance so perhaps you should focus more on achieving gender parity. Use ‘gender hidden’ recruitment practices as a starting point to remove any bias against females.

Furthermore, build new skills for existing employees by way of relevant training; or your leaders could become mentors to some of them. Additionally, seek peers from other industries to visit and interact with your teams.

KNOW YOUR TEAM Try to learn more about your team members’ strengths and weaknesses. Offer constructive feedback and support wherever necessary – even if it is personal.

Schedule a weekly open door policy to enable any employee to barge in and discuss his or her issues with you. Become a statesperson to employees and create a social environment within the workplace. Offer free counselling wherever needed. Create events in the office where families are also invited.

Remember to have actionable targets for these objectives. Over time, you may want to tweak some of these for other goals as well.

Empower your people to get things done