Working in newspaper advertising sales for 13 years before launching marketing and public relations company Urban Life Media, Maryanne Lechleiter knew all about going it alone in the workplace.
"Being a salesperson can be very insular," she said. "You work with your own client list, and there's not a lot of time or, in my experience, even encouragement to problem solve and be creative together as a team."
Striking out on her own in 2009, Lechleiter said she continued to apply that solo-act approach as she worked with some contractors – until suddenly, that approach failed her.
Less than a year into running the company, in the middle of the 2010 Olympics, Lechleiter's husband had a seizure caused by bleeding in his brain. Lechleiter said that event kicked off eight months of crisis and uncertainty, culminating in her husband's brain surgery in September to remove what doctors believed – erroneously, it would turn out – to be a tumour.
Lechleiter said working in the midst of that crisis pushed her to re-evaluate her lone-wolf style of doing business.
"You're hit with a major personal crisis in the same time that you've still got this baby business that you're trying to focus on," she remembered. "And so my attention had to become very split, and I had to quickly learn how to rely on others to be able to move [the business] forward."
Lechleiter, a self-described "control freak," said leaning on contractors and her business network didn't come easy to her.
Her advice to solo-act business people faced with relinquishing some control: don't beat yourself up.
"A lot of days are going to be more crisis-management-oriented and some days will be very business-oriented. It's just time management and prioritization and letting the guilt go."
Lechleiter said she's consciously focused on doing a better job of communicating the company's plans and progress with her employees, and those efforts have paid off for the business.
"The more that people feel that they belong and they're a vital part of what's happening and that they have a say and that their input matters, the stronger the business becomes and the stronger the team becomes."
