Self-Leadership is the key to all success and failure, without first being able to lead yourself; you will never truly find business success.
Self-leadership is made up of three key components that enable you to make the transition from follower to leader. By taking control of yourself and your business, you are able to ask better questions about where you are now and where you need to be; they look at ways of bridging that gap.
Self-Leadership and Me?
Leadership is the ability to influence people to get things done. Meanwhile, self-leadership can consciously control your thoughts and behaviour to achieve your personal and professional goals or business objectives.
Self-Leadership is having a developed sense of who you are, what you can do, and where you are going, coupled with the ability to influence your communication, emotions and behaviour on the way to getting there.
Self-leaders continually develop themselves; they have Self-Awareness, Self-Confidence and high Self-Efficacy or Self-Belief, also known as your Success Belief System.
Self-Leadership Development allows your conscious & subconscious belief systems to work in unison for a predetermined goal or set of outcomes.
- Self-Awareness is about knowing your intentions and values and what can ‘push your buttons’ and derail you.
- Self-Confidence comes from knowing your strengths and abilities. As we take action and develop skills, we become more confident.
- Self-Efficacy is the belief that whatever comes our way, we can handle it. We can take the feedback, accept it, adjust and advance. With self-efficacy, we can be more creative and innovative.
One of the first skill sets of Self-leadership is the ability to STOP and STEP BACK from the things that trigger us to react; because when we react, we are being controlled by the trigger.
The second skill is to consider our INTENTION.
The intention is what is important to us, our values and what we are trying to achieve. By being intentional, we can start to live a life of choice.
- Intention precedes any purposeful action (behaviour)- rather than a reaction. Actions have effects that the true self-leader evaluates through the Power of feedback.
- Influence is the result of purposeful action. We must positively influence ourselves and the world around us to make a change.
- The impact is how our intention and influence are measured in the world.
Self-leadership is a journey, and the more self-leadership we attain, the more successful we become, and the more successful we become, the more self-leadership we need.”
“Self-leadership is the process by which you influence yourself to achieve your goals & objectives.”
The Entrepreneurial Mindset “MQ”
To first understand the entrepreneurial mindset, we need to clearly define what a mindset is or is not and more importantly, what type of mindset you fall into.
During the live session, you will already know what mindset you have adopted and where you need to improve your entrepreneurial mindset. However, I will include the mindset check sheet on the online portal to have another try, but please try to be as honest as possible.
What is the mindset?
Mindset is a set of attitudes or beliefs that affects how you think, feel, and behave. The research and evidence produced by Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University provide undeniable proof that the key is not about ability but people’s beliefs about their ability.
A mindset refers to whether you believe qualities such as intelligence and talent are fixed or changeable traits. She has shown that these beliefs affect people’s behaviours, performance, and whether they achieve their best.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset “MQ”
Now that we understand what a mindset is and how it can affect the success or failure of ourselves and our business, we now need to see how this fits into being a business entrepreneur. The Entrepreneurial Mindset is all about the business owner’s vision, with the main difference between a typical business owner and an entrepreneur being how they go about building the business.
An entrepreneurial mindset is a set of skills that enable people to identify and make the most of opportunities, overcome and learn from setbacks, and succeed in various settings. Entrepreneur needs to be self-aware of the challenges and opportunities and always be willing to take calculated risks and not let fear hold them back from moving forward.
The Entrepreneur: An entrepreneur is an individual who creates a new business, bearing most of the risks and enjoying most of the rewards. The entrepreneur is commonly seen as an innovator, a source of new ideas, goods, services, and business leaders.
There are seven Key Characteristics of a successful business entrepreneur.
Success as a business entrepreneur isn’t just about your idea or your money. Plenty of people have interesting ideas or a lot of cash to throw around — and they never quite manage to find success in their ventures.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, take a step back and evaluate whether you have the following traits or characteristics.
7 Traits of the entrepreneurial mindset
One: Calculated Risk
The overriding driver behind making business, or indeed life decisions, is understanding and mitigating risk. Risk is not just the reason why people don’t do things; perversely, it’s also the reason why people do them – the gambler loves the adrenaline rush of rolling the dice or waiting for the next card; it’s the anticipation, the uncertainty, that drives them on to the next gamble or risk.
We are all risk takers to a greater or lesser degree, we all take risks every day, driving at 85 when the limit is 70, and we all get a bit of a rush when we take a chance, and it sort of spices up life.
Strangely, not taking a risk can have a long-term depressing effect on your life, creating an irritating merry-go-round of thoughts in your head.
Your attitude to risk shapes your whole life. I am not suggesting you have to take it to have a happy life, but you do have to take risks regularly if you wish to be an entrepreneur.
“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.” Mark Twain.
The first step to understanding risk is to objectively list all the implications of taking that risk. Start with the reason you are taking the risk in the first place: what is the objective?
Now list the consequences if it fails totally: the costs, the wasted energies, and the impact on morale. Now – and this is the tricky bit – list all the unforeseen consequences associated with taking the risk.
Is it a big list? Great. You have now put yourself in a place where you manage or mitigate the risk because you have anticipated every single possible outcome or consequence. You are in control.
The next step is to build a remedy or a workaround for each of the possible outcomes. Yes, I know it’s tiresome, but I promise that you will end up feeling totally different about taking the risk, however large.
Realistically it would be highly unusual for a particular risk to be a total failure. The most likely scenario is that only 40 per cent of the expected new patients you have in your plan actually show up.
Two: Self-Motivation
The bottom line is: do you want to play it safe and be a ‘Steady Eddy’ or do you want to take a chance and be remarkable?
Getting this bit right in your head is fundamental to your approach to your business. However entrepreneurial you are in character and behavioural style, if you don’t really want it you are going to struggle to achieve it. And, frankly, we need Steady Eddies – like the captain flying the plane to take you and your family on holiday.
Three: Continuous building and development
I found it difficult to come up with a better phrase, but continuous building and development describe the notion of taking various apparently unrelated elements or situations and creating something bigger.
The perfect illustration for this philosophy is Jeff Bezos, the guy who created Amazon. Bezos runs the world’s largest e-retailer, yet he did not invent the internet and e-retailing had already been invented by the time he came on the scene.
The reason behind Amazon’s success was not part of his plan – the business model was all about tax avoidance at first. In the US, online retailers don’t have to collect sales tax in states where they do not have a physical presence, which provides Amazon with a significant price advantage.
But Bezos was not going to stop there. When he happened to meet a guy who told him about predictive analytics, he thought he’d try making it work with his product, and this happened to be a stroke of genius.
As customers, we all love the idea of being offered yet another book on our obscure but favourite subject. As an e-retailer, it’s the perfect differentiator that simultaneously makes the shopping experience memorable and turbocharges sales while at the same time engendering outstanding loyalty and lifetime customer value. It made Amazon take off.
The imperative of continual building provides even more opportunities. It’s a bit like a business opening at the weekend for emergency treatment and discovering there is a significant number of new patients that would really like and happily pay a premium to see the hygienist on a Sunday afternoon.
Four: Be happy about making mistakes
Get ready, you are going to make loads of mistakes in your business career. Running a business is not an exact science. Think back to the 1980s and Sir Clive Sinclair’s C5, which sadly became the decade’s biggest laughingstock or Coca-Cola’s disastrous launch of the ‘new’ Coke in 1985.
You will make loads of mistakes in your business this year. Feeling the icy water of reality down your back – telling you the clever new payment plan with your star associate is not going to work for you – means you have to change it and fast, however painful.
The reality is that failing quickly is not really that bad, it’s inconvenient, but you will get over it. Failing slowly is deadly, and it’s bloody depressing. A simple tip is always to have a plan B and a C before you change things – if nothing else, it will lift your confidence level.
Entrepreneurs make loads and loads of mistakes. They don’t get hung up by it; they move on to the workaround or next idea swiftly – but they always learn.
Five: Be a Quick Learner
When things go wrong, take them apart quickly and work out what bit failed to perform. Did you fail to sell it to the team? Did you misinterpret the patient’s needs? What was the failing component that brought the aircraft down? Equally, when things go right, what is the particular element that people really liked, and how can you develop it?
The entrepreneur learns quickly but always shares the results – good or bad – with the team in order to make the boat go faster.
Six: Respond to changes
From hero to zero in four years
In 2007 Nokia was at its peak and almost invincible. It was ‘the’ cool brand and had been for the previous 10 years. It had an estimated 32 per cent share of the global feature phone market where the margin averaged a robust 36 per cent. But Nokia failed to enter the smartphone market quickly enough, leaving the space wide open. Apple and latterly the unstoppable power of Samsung rapidly filled the space and now dominate.
In 2012 Nokia finished the year with an 8.6 per cent share and a margin equivalent to 18 per cent. It has responded to the rapid change in the market with a range of great products but it was too late. Apple and Samsung had stolen the space so Nokia is now fighting a rearguard action and will be until the next significant mobile innovation disrupts the market, forcing change again.
Often as a company grows the sparks for innovation fade, or as the business reaches its zenith (in the eyes of the owner) it fails to develop or take any risks by responding to marketplace opportunities, like a new pharmacy opening two doors down… How would the entrepreneur take advantage of that?
Seven: Work smart
Entrepreneurs are often gifted with a false sense that only they can perform tasks, only they have the ability to get things really right. Of course, this is completely bonkers and has a massive adverse impact on their effectiveness.
The 80/20 rule always applies. Typically 20 per cent of your activity generates 80 per cent of success – however, success is determined.
Spending hours trying to make your diary sync between your laptop and desktop when the right person could achieve that in three minutes is daft when you could have spent the afternoon growing the business directly.
Be smart, know what you are good at, know what you are bad at and play to your strengths. Carefully develop or recruit people that complement your strengths and mop up your weaknesses.
Work out when your most productive time slot is. Everybody has one, mine is between 7 am and 2 pm – my productivity and ability to think diminishes rapidly after that time, so I always take breaks and try to regenerate my mind
The entrepreneur above all else knows himself and treats himself as a machine, will always make sure he is in top condition both physically and mentally, and may often display a touch of hypochondria!
Conclusion
Building a business for me is the most exhilarating and rewarding sport imaginable; every day, I feel like I am going to a new party, looking forward to what may or may not happen. I have developed the mindset of working ON my business, growing, and developing every day
The killer question is:
How much do you want to do it, motivationally and emotionally?
It’s always in the want to you will find the how-to in life.
An entrepreneurial mindset can be developed and enhanced through entrepreneurial experiences. And to cultivate the entrepreneurial mindset, we must create entrepreneurial learning experiences within our businesses, organizations, and worksites.
Starting up your own business and running your own company may be the most exciting, rewarding, and positive thing you’ve ever done. It may also be fraught with challenges, self-doubt, and worries. That’s normal. Learning to embrace the entrepreneurial mindset and cultivate key characteristics linked to success will help you build a thriving business.
“Mindset Check sheet exercise.”
It’s time to start creating your success mindset using Motivational Intelligence (Mindset) of real Self-Leadership Development and High Performance!
To truly understand ourselves and our personal and professional potential, we first must understand our current Mindset or Motivational Intelligence levels.
We have designed the following Mindset Check Sheet to evaluate your current mindset; please answer this as honestly as possible, do not overthink it, and use the first answer to your thoughts, as this is your correct mindset.
The following mindset check sheet has been designed and developed to ensure you have a clearly defined starting point that will enable you to understand your map of the world as you see it.
Take a few minutes to answer the following questions and circle the option that best relates to you the most.
There are no right or wrong answers, but try to be as honest as possible, as this will help develop your mindset from where you are now to where you need to be.