Running a business in the traditional maximising profit way certainly does produce results. It is about executing on your business strategy in a way that provides a competitive advantage while appreciating the contribution made by your people.
Manging their people and business in the traditional way allowed Sharp and Charter to perform really well over a five year period, according to Stephen Sharp, Founder and Partner of the executive recruitment firm. They treated people well, were “never mean or disrespectful” and they celebrated success.
However, once Sharp and Charter made a conscious decision to run their business by what Sharp terms “Managing Positively” accordingly to behaviours consistent with their values of Care, Generosity, Trust and Humility, they have shown an average of 55% growth in revenue and profit per annum.
Sharp suggests that treating people as truly your most important asset means leading them with humility and showing them care, generosity and trust. This is a change of emphasis on what yields outstanding business performance, away from traditional business to a higher level of consciousness in business.
“Achieving specific results requires behaving in a way that produces such results, and behaving in such a way requires beingthe type of person or organization capable of such behaviour,” says Fred Kofman, author of Conscious Business.
According to Kofman, being a conscious leader requires a level of consciousness that creates
- unconditional responsibility,
- essential integrity,
- ontological humility,
- authentic communication,
- constructive negotiation,
- impeccable coordination, and
- emotional mastery.
In addition, the conscious business leader fosters—and demands—the enactment of these qualities in her subordinates. She not only holds herself accountable for conscious behaviour but everybody else as well, and she holds everybody else accountable for holding everybody else—including the manager herself—accountable.
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