Pete Cohen's Blog

Leading a successful business can often feel like a battle. You are at war with the competition; you are fighting to provide the best service for ever-more demanding customers; your people – who are supposed to be your foot soldiers – seem to be dragging their feet instead of battling alongside you. No wonder leaders feel wounded!

Are you an Apple person, or an Android person? Lotus or Ferrari? Boots or Superdrug? Sainsbury’s or Waitrose? Ask anybody questions like this and you’ll usually get an emphatic answer in one direction or another. For decades, marketing research has been seeking out the answer to ‘why people buy what they buy;‘ why they attach themselves to particular brands and then follow them with a seemingly unshakable loyalty.

Do you need help? Let’s be honest, most leaders do. They need help to create a flourishing business and to help people to be their very best.

Why do you do what you do? Why, in fact, do you do anything? We spend the biggest proportion of our working lives thinking about what we do and how we do it (and, as a leader, also who will do it) and, as a result, we lose sight of Why we are doing it.

What is the best style of leadership? What is the ‘right way’ to lead? We are all looking for the answer to that question. And there is only one style of leadership – your style.

Are your people fired up? Are they coming to work ready to be their best and do their best? Are they committed to your and the goals of the business?

Everybody in this world wants to improve their quality of life and standard of living. For many however, they claim that ‘life’ gets in the way. Demands on their time from family, friends and work sees them living on ‘Someday Isle’.

There has long been a debate about which is more important, the Strategy or the Culture – and, in so many businesses I’ve been invited to help, the senior managers have locked on to the strategy.

Whatever you may believe, there is no one-size-fits-all in being a great leader. Different leaders have different styles and what works for one may not work for someone else.

In my experience people who want to step into a leadership role do it for one of two reasons.