Small Business: Leadership development - Mike Ashby, The Breakthrough Company

Mike Ashby, founder and director of The Breakthrough Company.

This week, Small Business editor Caitlin Sykes talks to business owners about leadership development.

Mike Ashby is the founder and director of business coaching firm The Breakthrough Company, and is the author of the recently released business guide Breakpoints.

What characteristics do you think make for a good SME leader?

There are a whole bunch of course, but the one that I think is most important right now is the ability to see what's coming down the line. We've all heard the talk about the digital revolution, but I don't think we've really seen it's full impact yet and I'm convinced we're on the cusp of some pretty exponential change. When things like 3D printing and driverless cars really unfold, there will be huge threats and opportunities in the B2B space. So I think the very first requirement of a leader in these highly volatile times is the ability to not just recognise the threats, but to see and act on the opportunities and position their business for tomorrow.

How do you think our SME owners stack up in relation to that at the moment?

I think we've always got the challenge here of size. I've just come back from the States, where I was in Chicago for a while, and if you run one successful restaurant there within six months you can open another, and then before you know it you've opened 14 and you still haven't left Chicago. But in New Zealand there's the saying that if you segment the market twice you're down to one person, and it's a very big step for many business owners to move outside of New Zealand.

But what's really the problem is business owners are generally too busy working on the railroad track to see the train coming. They're spending too much time focused on today's business - which is really yesterday's business - and not giving enough time, energy and thought to where they need to be tomorrow.

So there are barriers for business owners, but they're largely self-created: an addiction to busyness and a pathological self-reliance; an inability or unwillingness to put your hand up and ask for help. I think one of the hallmarks of good leadership is to surround yourself with people who can help you as opposed to doing it on your own. You don't need to and you shouldn't even try.

What are some practical things business owners can do to break out of that, and get on a path to improving their leadership capabilities?

If they were going to do one thing it would be to have a discussion with their senior people about their needs as a leadership team and from their leader. A lot of our work now is not with just owners, but with their leadership teams because some of the really powerful transformations occur when the leader has learnt to share leadership with their team; when they're growing their people around them. We know how much more effective an organisation is if there's a genuine leadership team as opposed to one person trying to run everything. A leader can evolve and develop themselves so they've got the capability to think about tomorrow, but to have the capacity to do that they need to have a great team. Having the leadership team running today's business enables the managing director to focus on building the business for tomorrow, which given the pace of change is the most important thing.