When we developed the Exhilarating Business™ framework, we knew from our experience that sustained success came from business leadership adopting principles of the Peak Performance state known as ‘flow’.
State of ‘flow‘
This state, characterized by optimal performance and deep engagement, is underpinned by several key principles:
- Balance between challenge and skills
- Clarity of goals and rewards
- A feeling of control over the task
- Immediate feedback and recognition
- Complete concentration
- Merging of actions and awareness
These principles lead to a feeling where time seems to evaporate, the experience becomes intrinsically rewarding, and tasks are performed with a sense of effortlessness and ease.
Recent Development
In a recent Harvard Business Review article, “Leading in the Flow of Work” by Hitendra Wadhwa, it is noted that traditional leadership development programs focus on influencing and coaching people, giving feedback, and building trust. However, a new approach, the leadership-in-flow model, enhances these efforts by activating one’s inner core through five energies: purpose, wisdom, growth, love, and self-realization. This model, now a popular course at Columbia Business School, can be used by people at all levels to unlock peak performance.
Reflecting on our experience with business owners, we often see them in distress with financial worries, cash flow problems, people issues, stagnant growth, and confusion. These challenges can have catastrophic impacts on health, family, and community. However, it wasn’t always this way. Every business owner we’ve worked with remembers the euphoric, exhilarating feeling when they first started their business. That state of flow, characterized by endless energy, enthusiasm, and motivation, is what we aim to help them rediscover.
Our Approach
Our Exhilarating Business™ framework incorporates the same core energies identified by Wadhwa:
Purpose – we’ve found business owners started their journey with a clear focus, but somewhere lose it along the way. By working together using a structured process, we’re able to re-invigorate business owners and in term, their business.
Wisdom: Aligning skills, knowledge, and experience with tasks and challenges is crucial for maintaining flow. Too often the issues and challenges extend beyond the scope of the business owner or their team. Having us on hand as a sounding board while building capability has become key in returning them to, and maintaining, peak performance.
Growth: Business owners are always eager to learn and improve, but often struggle to find practical, relevant, and timely resources. Our business capability platform and resource center fill this gap perfectly.
Love: We enjoy the company of our clients, and we emphasise this in our work with business owners. We find that by ‘walking the talk’, it inspires our clients to do the same, and they soon quickly realise how important this aspect of working is to achieve a state of flow.
Self-Realization: Our ACTION phase helps business owners gain momentum with quick wins, leading to maintaining flow and sustained success.
To learn more about how we can help you achieve this state of flow and enhance your business leadership, you can book a free, no obligation Discovery Meeting by contacting us here—> Contact Us