How to bring Brave Bold Brilliant into your business

Today, it’s more than just an ethos. Now it’s a brand and an ecosystem with resources to help you as a business leader, a strategy to step up and be the best version of yourself and business.

In this blog, I’ll be taking you through the ways in which you can bring Brave Bold Brilliant into your business, so you can take your organisation and executive team to the next level.

Why is it important?

I’ve been working with Accor Hotels for the last 18 months, advising their board on scaling up, growth strategies, and creating high performing teams. Accor Hotels have over 5.5k hotels under their banner, and last year delivered a profit of more than €1bn EBITDA.

This is the heart of what Brave Bold Brilliant is about. Whether you’re a business leader or in the process of starting one, or perhaps you even want to scale up, it always comes down to three aspects: being brave, being bold, and being brilliant.

Brave

The first aspect of business leadership is you. It’s about who you are, what kind of leader you want to be, and about leading yourself. The reality is, if you’re not in the best shape, you’re not going to be the best leader for your team, your shareholders, or your investors.

Always be self-aware and ask the questions; am I being the best version of myself? Can I improve in certain areas? Do I need some development? It’s a good idea to understand your personality type, so you can better understand how you respond in certain situations. After all, if you can understand yourself, you can be a better leader.

Constant growth and development are also important, and if you ever reach a point where you stop having the appetite to learn, you may as well hang your boots up. It’s vital that you stay curious and constantly want to be a better version of yourself. When you learn from other people, you’ll bring that into your organisation, and everyone can reap the benefits.

The biggest part of being brave is facing failure head on. As senior business leaders and business owners, it’s easy to see failure negatively. But failure is the fuel for growth, and you need to change your mindset. Have confidence in yourself, your leadership style, and see clearly that failure equals learning.

Bold

The second aspect is about physically leading your business. It’s the strategy, the growth, the investment, how you can take your business to the next level. You need to have a clear vision and purpose, because if you don’t know what you stand for, it’s very hard to bring the idea to life. Purpose-led businesses and brands that have strong values in which their customers resonate, often have the highest levels of loyalty and financial results.

When you have that clarity with your vision and purpose, it’s then about maximum impact and going for growth. Of course, if you’re in a mature business, that growth may look a bit different, because you’re not necessarily driving top line revenue growth or increasing your customer numbers. Instead, it’s small incremental changes which add up to financial growth and improving your offering. So, don’t think just because you’re a mature business that there’s no room for growth.

When leading a business, you need to have a clear strategy. This is your roadmap for going from A to B, and this breaks down into several key areas. What’s your product strategy? What’s your marketing strategy? What’s your commercial strategy, your tech strategy, your people strategy? Once you’ve laid down your roadmap, you then need to align this with your three or five-year plan. You might tend to find there’s a disconnect between the desired financial numbers and the reality of what’s being delivered operationally.

99% of the time, the plan will not play out as you expected. But having one keeps you grounded, and most importantly, it’s a benchmark to monitor your progress,

Brilliant

The third and final aspect is about creating high performance teams. Many businesses believe they have a high performing team, but in reality, it’s a collection of individuals impacted by siloed behaviour. Or it could be the team has changed or shifted, and their goals are no longer aligned with the overall organisation. What worked before may need some adjustment now, and a core part of being a leader is creating an amazing team and leading it effectively.

Creating a brilliant team is about winning together or not at all, and when a team genuinely has each other’s backs, that’s a high performing team. You also need psychological security, where people trust they can share their opinions without backlash, even if they contradict someone else’s.

Provide an opportunity-rich environment, where people can grow and develop with the chance to be promoted and take on additional responsibilities. These opportunities won’t be for everyone, as some love the place in which they’re in. But if a member or members of your team want to achieve something, it’s vital to give them the opportunity to do so.

In all, make sure your team understands their role and that everyone’s goals and priorities are aligned. As a leader, if you go through a rough spot, you want to make sure you’ve got the best group of people surrounding you, and having a safe environment where everyone genuinely supports each other and makes things happen, is the difference between a winning team and one that’s not so great.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, Brave is about leading yourself, Bold is about leading the business, and Brilliant is about leading the team. There’s no limit to the possibility for your success and growth, so just go for it, because you can take your business anywhere you want to.

It’s always easy to talk about ways to make yourself or your business better, but it’s harder to put them into action. So, if you need support in taking the next step, contact us and see how you can bring Brave Bold Brilliant into your business.

By Jeannette Linfoot www.jeannettelinfootassociates.com