“Great leaders need a great team. Identifying your Wealth Creators could unlock your business’s potential”, says Dr Adrian Atkinson, founder and Chairman of hfi.
Wealth Creators are the ones who drive the business to the next level. Resilience and tenacity are key characteristics of Wealth Creators. But they can also be very task focused and challenging to work with. You don’t have to be a Wealth Creator to be a successful leader. Many excellent leaders are not themselves Wealth Creators. However all leaders need the support of a Wealth Creator to drive business growth. Wealth Creators have a unique mix of characteristics that allow them to turn a leader’s vision into reality.
After working with business leaders for more than forty years, one of the most resilient that Adrian has mentored was the owner of a manufacturing business whose entire workforce deserted him. He left on Friday night with an intact business and returned on Monday morning to an empty factory.
As with all the Wealth Creators that Adrian has worked with, this business owner saw the catastrophe as an opportunity. He set about recruiting a new workforce and had the business up and running again within two weeks . Eight years after losing his workforce overnight and his Herculean effort to rescue the company, our Wealth Creator sold the business for £22m – and started his next company.
Wealth Creators have the self-belief and the ability to mold the world to suit themselves and to make a success out of a disaster.
As King of Shaves’ Will King says: “If you are not prepared to sweat and sacrifice to get the boulder out of the hollow and rolling, you’re unlikely to succeed.”
Wealth Creators are rare but they are essential to the success of serious businesses. hfi‘s business psychologists have been researching the qualities of wealth creators for twenty years and can identify them through psychometrics, skill and expertise.
Dr Atkinson believes that “As a leader, you need to find out whether you have the characteristics of a Wealth Creator yourself; if not, you will need the support of Wealth Creators to drive your business.”
Wealth Creators need to be recognized and put into positions where they can influence the direction of the company. For example hfi was coaching a technical team leader who was seen as a real trouble-maker. He was visionary and very strategic but he was also demanding and impatient, common attributes of the frustrated Wealth Creator.
hfi persuaded the organization’s CEO that he needed this strategic trouble-maker to work with him to identify and exploit new market opportunities. Over the next four years the two of them worked together implementing several key acquisitions which drove the value of the company from £200m to more than £500m.
In another example, hfi found a Wealth Creator three levels below the board and advised them to promote him to a more influential position. They refused to recognize his potential or to promote him outside the usual succession path. He left, set up his own business and within two years was a serious rival. With no Wealth Creators in the executive team, the original business continued to lose market share and eventually went out of business.
“It is an easy decision.” says Dr Atkinson, “Companies that do not recognize the value of their Wealth Creators will struggle. Leaders that identify and support their Wealth Creators will flourish.”
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