In life, we must always take a step back and ask ourselves the following question: “Where am I?“.
Everybody successful person who has accomplished something in life went through the following 5 stages in life: Learning, Editing, Mastering, Harvesting and Guiding.
Most people don’t follow these 5 stages and instead choose the Average Path. Why?
Because the Average Path is comfortable and effortless. People who go down the average path are just existing and don’t make decisions.
How to get away from the Average Path?
To get away from the Average Path, you just need to Start no matter how old you are.
In reality, the way you Start your journey in 100% in your control. You are sure of your Start but you will not know how it will end.
To have a good Start, you must first be realistic about your current situation and your goals in life.
You have to be focused and work hard on your Start.
You must also recover a childlike perception of yourself all while using the tools you have gained as an adult.
Do I Need To Know My Purpose To Start?
You don’t need to figure out your purpose to Start.
You don’t need to determine the end results before taking your first step because doing so puts too much pressure on you.
Furthermore, you will not want to do anything and will not want to fix your life before finding it.
The truth is you don’t need to find your purpose but just do everything with purpose. You can start anything you want without a purpose.
What Happens When I Start?
When you start going after the things you want, fear will show its ugly face.
It will make you question your self-worth and make your journey more torturous.
It will make you think that it’s too late and that you are behind in schedule.
It will tell you that everything needs to be perfect.
You honestly have to find a way to deal with your fears.
You have to live your life without regrets.
The Learning Stage
At this stage, you are in your 20’s.
You are still testing the waters and trying to figure out what you want to do with the rest of your life.
The Editing Stage
In your 30’s, you start looking back at your 20’s.
You select what matters most to you and going after what worked for you in the past.
You start focusing on your career and relationships.
To edit your life, value what you have, search for your passions, find out what brings you the most joy and what activities align most with who you are at your core.
You don’t have to wait for outside to live the life you really want to live.
You don’t have to stay places where you grow as a person or where you have no passion for.
The Mastering Stage
In your 40’s, you mastered every thing that is important to you.
You are more self-assured and are certain about where you are going.
To master your life, you have to put in the hours and hone your craft by volunteering, taking up part time jobs and participating in hobbies that bring you closer to your goals.
In mastering your life, you will face many obstacles and challenges.
The Harvesting Stage
In your 50’s, you reap what you have sowed in your 30’s and 40’s.
In this stage, it is wise to:
Treat people right
Not get complacent or lazy
Treat your accomplishments as rewards and not reasons for what you do.
The Guiding Stage
At this stage, your are in your 60’s.
You are retired and enjoying the fruits of your labor.
You start mentoring, helping people on their journey and start giving back to your community.
But once you are in this stage, you have to return to the Learning Stage and start all over again. To guide people, you must ask people questions and listen to their stories.
Then, you can tie your guiding experiences to something you were always interested in.
Review
Start.: Punch Fear in the Face, Escape Average, and Do Work That Matters by Jon Acuff is a funny book with great life lessons.
Jon Acuff‘s examples and introspective comments are hilarious but also liberating. He shares his strengths, his weaknesses and doesn’t take himself too seriously.
I truly recommend this book because it provides comfort and encouragement. In addition, at the end of the book, Jon Acuff shares a practical step by step guide for you to overcome fear and escape average.
Let me know below what you think about this book!
Favorite quote(s)
the surprises life gives are always better than the things you think you see coming.
Average is so popular because average is familiar. We all know how to do average. Ninetynine percent of the people on the planet do average. The road is well worn, the decisions are obvious, and the next steps are crystal clear.
Every journey has a first step. Every dream has a first destination.
No matter what fear and doubt tell you, your identity is not at stake with the decisions you make and the actions you take as you learn.
Don’t buy the lie that changing the world has to be a chore or make you miserable. Be brave enough to have fun with whatever you whittle down in your life.
The company culture depends heavily on the leader’s personality, character and vision…
The culture of the company affects every level of the company and determines:
How you act and operate.
How decisions are made.
How you treat your customers, employees.
How your employees treat each other.
How you handle failures and celebrate successes.
The acceptable code of conduct.
Why certain things are required.
A highly performing company culture increases engagement, retains good employees, satisfies their customers and has better results than any other company.
That is why leaders have to hold themselves to very high standards and realize how much their behavior impacts their workplace.
Wondering how to create a high performance culture?
1. Assess the current state of your company
Leaders have to purposefully create and maintain a healthy workplace culture.
However, they must first be a living model for the culture that they want.
Leaders must take a good look at themselves when assessing the state of the culture: if the culture is unhealthy, then the leadership is unhealthy.
2. Define your why
Leaders must clearly define their purpose, personal mission statement and the vision for your company.
Building a high performance culture is subjective to the leader. It is important for leaders to have an initial idea of who they are, what they want and where they are going before they start hiring.
3. Define your core values
Core values are fundamentals beliefs, a set of principles that leaders follow and that guide then through life.
For example, a company can be based on the core value of radical honesty. In such culture, employees don’t sugarcoat anything, are able to tell the truth no matter the circumstances.
4. Define your version of success
It is important for leaders to define the short term and long term goals, to give their employees a definition of success so they know what to aim for in the long run.
For example, success can be meeting deadlines and hitting results.
Success can also be defined on different levels of technical competencies or on leadership abilities.
Leaders must be realistic about their goals and set clear expectations for employees. Setting unreachable goals will only demoralize your team.
5. Apply the Golden Rule
The Golden Rule is the principle of treating people the same way you want to be treated.
Because leaders are role models, they have to become culturally sensitive and inclusive.
6. Empower your employees
There are several ways that leaders can empower their teams within the company. They can:
Play to employees strengths and place them in the right roles. Help employees gain awareness and achieve their highest potential.
Acknowledge hard and good quality work.
Allow employees make mistakes.
Trust in employees decisions making skills. Employees will then feel confident about their abilities and stay engaged.
Encourage training. Employees perform better when they are confident about their abilities.
7. Give your employees a sense of ownership
Employees take more pride and respect more what they do when they have ownership over their work.
Giving a sense of ownership will help you develop great leaders who will in turn inspire and motivate.
8. Promote innovation and change
Innovation is necessary for the survival of each and every company in today’s economy.
When leaders promote innovation and change, people will be more likely to grow, to adapt, ask questions, to try new things and adopt a change mindset.
9. Value transparency
Leaders must encourage a transparent and open culture where information flows freely.
For instance, letting your employees know how well your company is doing will improve trust. Of course, there will be gossip around the health of the company but overall employees will believe that you have their best interest at heart.
10. Practice collaboration
Leaders promote and encourage autonomy and collaboration within their team.
They allow their teams to have fun at work. They have broken down traditional workplace structure, simplified workplace processes and looked after their employees well-being.
11. Appraise customer satisfaction
High performance cultures are hard to come by.
Leaders continuously conduct customer satisfaction assessments because these assessments give a direct indication of team performance and the health of the company.
12. Monitor your culture
There will always be things to improve in a company but it important to strive for more. It is up to leaders to:
Nurture, develop and sustain the culture.
Deliver a set of tools to drive performance.
Show that the health of the company matters.
Give regular updates on how employees are doing in regards to their individual and collective goals.
Last Words Of Advice!
Most leaders, when trying to improve their cultures, focus on metrics and not on the people. If your culture is not where you want it to be, remember that:
One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch.
You need to focus on the positives.
You just need to take on step at a time. For example, start by sharing your goals or by being transparent about the current status of the company.
If you don’t think you can practice of implement the culture that you want, find a manager or a human resources person who has the skills that you are missing.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
We make decisions all day that will affect the rest of our lives.
These decisions have to be thought through in order for us to have the life we want.
They affect our self-esteem, relationships, career, lifestyle, … our everyday.
The truth is, there is always an element of risk in everything that we do.
Wondering what are the risks that every leader should take?
1. Bet on yourself
The best bet you can take is on yourself.
Indeed, you are your best tool for success even if you cannot predict the future or the outcome of your decision.
If you want to achieve great things, you must first believe in yourself then make sure that you are always performing at your best.
2. Get to know yourself better
Getting to know yourself better means trying new activities, seeing what you like and dislike, what you are good at or not.
Being authentically yourself requires courage and the belief that nobody needs to like you.
3. Improve on yourself
Change is scary for most people.
When you try to improve on yourself, the people around you will resist that change, may even think that you are crazy and may not recognize you.
They will pressure you to revert to your old self. You will risk losing friends and family in order for you to grow and to feel good about yourself.
4. Reinvent yourself
Don’t do what is expected of you.
Your life will be dull if you did what everyone else wanted of you.
Your friends and family certainly have your best interest at heart but most of the time they can stunt your growth and bring down your expectations so you don’t outgrow them, so you don’t change.
To break these expectations, start doing things that your entourage will laugh or look down upon.
5. Put yourself out there
Everyone observes and judges others at some point in their life. Honestly, we all do it whether we mean to do it or not.
Everybody criticizes. Criticism can be negative or positive but it can sometimes be useful.
It only hurts if you let it or if you agree with the criticism.
So, put yourself out there:
Risk of being judged or appearing foolish.
Don’t be afraid to look stupid doing something.
6. Pursue your dreams
Don’t live in regrets and what ifs.
You don’t want to get old and realize that you didn’t do what you set out to do.
Furthermore, the happiest or most content people are driven, purposeful and allow themselves to dream and act upon their dream.
There comes a point in time when you have to chose between your goals and your friends. You have to know that it is OK to miss out on fun events with friends and family in order to work on your goals and advance your purpose.
7. Admit your mistakes
When you take risks, you will always make mistakes.
Mistakes are signs that you are human, trying new things and getting our of your comfort zone.
Sometimes, we think that there is no going back from our mistakes, we cannot move on and we cannot be forgiven for what we have done.
You will ever know if you don’t take the risks and ask for forgiveness.
8. Learn to forgive
When other people on your team make mistakes, you must learn to give them a second chance.
The risk or the certainty is that they will mess up again but they will have enough confidence to fix their mistakes.
Consequently, they will trust you more, be more creative and forgive you more when you make a mistake.
9. Show emotion
In the workplace, showing emotion is risky because people will tend to use them against you.
In order to not be taken advantage of, you really have to own them and discipline yourself.
10. Ask questions
Leaders must acknowledge that they don’t know everything.
It’s better to ask questions and look dumb for a few minutes than say nothing and be dumb for a lifetime.
11. Speak up
Leaders must speak truth to power, speak with truth, power, integrity and transparency.
They must stand up for what they believe in and speak up when it’s right even when it’s hard to do.
In addition, they express their opinion, don’t try to manage other people’s feelings and opinions: they say what they mean and mean what their say.
People who are able to speak up confidently, say what bothers them and what doesn’t are the people who usually go far in life.
12. Analyze opportunities
Before taking any risks, you must always analyze the pros and the cons of your decisions.
You have the right to say no to opportunities that don’t fit you.
You have the duty to say yes more often to things that scare you.
Just remember that you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.
13. Risk rejection
If you haven’t been rejected in life, then you haven’t done anything worthwhile.
You have to dare to apply to jobs you don’t have the qualifications for, talk to people outside your circle with different affinities.
If people don’t return your interests, then they are the ones missing out.
14. Let go of things you cannot control
You must take the risk that everything will work out on its own and you don’t have to control everything.
15. Don’t be afraid of getting hurt
Taking risks implies that you will be vulnerable most of the time.
In other words, it means that you open yourself up to get hurt.
Because pain is inevitable, you can go for it and perform at the best of your abilities.
16. Overcome your fears one by one
You will not feel confident going towards your fears. However, once you have faced your fears, you will feel good about yourself and be ready to take on any life challenges.
In reality, your fears are not as bad as you think and facing them help you build confidence.
Most of the time, your mind and your ego are exaggerating your fears to protect you.
17. Travel
Travelling allows you to reframe your mindset, to learn new things and meet new people.
It also allows you to try out different versions of yourself.
It costs money but it is totally worth it.
Last Words Of Advice!
Life is an adventure! Don’t live in regrets and live your life to the fullest.
Taking risks is the best chance you have to get to know yourself, predict the future and achieve your highest potential.
The bigger the risk, the bigger the reward.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Technology in the workplace can do a lot to save you time, effort and mental bandwidth, and these five services are no exception…
No matter which type of work environment you find yourself in, technology can bring a ton of value to your work day.
It could be for time management, personal finances, workforce management, or maybe just something to help your personal workflow, technology can help make many aspects of work easier.
These five technologies are no exception, and are worth looking into.
1. The Mayo App
Mayo is a mobile application that allows users to ‘ask for help’ from the people in their immediate area- be it a coffee shop, store, library, etc.
Using a no-sign-in-required model, Mayo discourages the social ‘connectivity’ aspect that is traditional in most social platforms and instead focuses on connecting people in the real world for the purpose of solving tasks at hand.
Mayo’s founder Allen Chan is integrating this application into the professional co-working and university environments for helping people solve business problems and school related tasks, respectively.
If you work remotely or find yourself in a population-dense area, Mayo can help you with everything from brainstorming business solutions to borrowing a MacBook charger.
Because the Mayo app is relatively new, there is a lot of opportunity to get early-adopter value from the application.
2. All About PDF
PDFs are the cornerstone of digital documentation in the workplace.
It’s a format that is widely accepted and maintained for professionalism purposes, but for the most part, PDFs are stagnant and can pose a lot of hassle when in a time crunch.
Have you ever received a PDF and realized you have to make changes to it? Not an easy task to accomplish.
All About PDF is a PDF management software that allows you to modify PDFs in ways previously not thought possible, all on a dime’s notice.
See the screenshot below for just some of what All About PDF can do for you in the workplace.
3. Keeper Tax
Finance management is a headache for a lot of professionals, especially those in the freelance or contract working space.
Tracking receipts, invoices, costs, expenses, from every micro transaction that occurs on a daily basis is a time management nightmare that nobody has time for.
Keeper Tax is a tool for automated expense tracking with one specific purpose- to help you to get the most accurate tax report filed with the IRS.
Keeper Tax steps in as the middle man for finance management and texts you (yes, you read that right) whenever an expense is incurred on your credit/debit card.
From there, you can tell Keeper Tax if that expense should be filed as business, personal, or other.
Becoming self-aware is an active and conscious process.
Self-awareness is the ability to get in touch with your authentic self, to clearly assess your strengths, weaknesses, core values, relationships and limitations.
It is a skill that improves job satisfaction, mental health, your relationships and understanding of others.
Wondering how great leaders acquire self-awareness?
The benefits of self-awareness
Self-awareness helps you identify your passions, bring out your authentic self, open yourself to learning, receive honest feedback and detach yourself from the opinion of others.
Furthermore, self-aware leaders are emotionally intelligent, lead with confidence and compassion, understand that leadership is an ongoing process, upgrade their organization and uplift their teams.
Self-aware leaders understand how their behavior affect the people around them and subsequently have great people skills.
Self-aware leaders may not climb the ladder faster but they may gain more respect and trust from their peers.
Basically, they are the opposite of toxic leaders because they constructively acknowledge, process and manage their emotions.
How do leaders acquire self-awareness?
There are a few steps to take for you to acquire more self-awareness.
1. Look for patterns in your behavior
Sometimes, we are so busy fighting off whatever is coming at us to realize that we are having reoccurring experiences and events, that we are holding on to negative assumptions and beliefs.
In order to stay focused and be ready for any life challenges, we have to take time to identify our triggers and track our patterns of behavior.
To see positive and negative patterns in your behavior., you can hold a journal and write about yourself objectively.
2. Take a self-awareness assessment tool
Self-awareness assessment tools give you an insight into your personality type, your character, the way you handle different situations.
They help you discover your strengths, weaknesses and hidden passions.
Admit your mistakes and seek out continual improvement.
Be compassionate towards yourself and simply revisit your core values.
6. Observe how you affect your surroundings
Sometimes, we want to talk about topics that matter to us, connect with people who make sense or belong to a group.
However, people are not always receptive to you because there is a margin between how we are and how we are perceived, because of their own insecurities, assumptions and lack of self-awareness.
It is up to you to determine using your self-awareness, whether or not you can be your best self or you want to belong.
To be mindful of your actions and words;
Understand how your behavior and words can be misinterpreted and when it is time to stand up for yourself.
Acknowledge that by getting to know yourself better, you will get to know others as well, to interpret their verbal and nonverbal cues.
7. Don’t make assumptions about people
This will help you make better decisions, navigate office politics, empathize for others, build improved teams and find team members who complement you.
8. Stay curious
There is no way you can fully get to know yourself and others.
Stay open-minded and give yourself enough space to step out of your comfort zone.
9. Don’t ignore your intuition
Your intuition sends information that you have not or don’t know how to process.
Your intuition is there to protect you and is right most of the time.
10. Ask for feedback
Leaders tend to ask for less feedback, to become less self-aware the more experience and the more power that they wield.
It becomes detrimental for them to ask for feedback from people they trust and respect.
11. Commit yourself to growing
Nobody is perfect. The people who have arrested their development are the people who need the most improvement.
Leadership is a long journey. You must always figure out what you can do to make things better and what you can do differently.
Last Words Of Advice!
It is goof to check in with yourself from time to time.
Take time off in solitude to confront your decisions, to measure your progress and to reignite your fire.
Recall the times that you felt your best and operated at your peak performance.
Recently, I have made solid plans around an opportunity that didn’t turn out. Thou I didn’t care much about the opportunity, I was frustrated that the plans that I carefully hatched fell through.
In order to find out why the opportunity fell off, I had a conversation with a toxic individual who spewed lies and venom and with whom I happened to get out of character.
Because I lost my plans for the future and gave away my personal power, I was deeply disappointed in myself and in the circumstances.
If you are a trailblazing leader, are goal-oriented or enjoy making plans for the future, these moments happen often and you will face a lot of disappointments in your life.
That is why, you simply have to learn to cope with it.
Wondering how leaders overcome disappointment in life?
The importance of disappointments
Disappointment is defined as feelings of sadness or displeasure caused by feelings of unfulfilled hope and failed expectations.
Sometimes, an opportunity that we wished for just doesn’t turn out; A person we are hoping for doesn’t show up or act right.
However, life never goes according to plans. Eventually, you will make new plans, you will realize that not every opportunity is a good opportunity and not everyone is good for you.
Feelings of disappointment are hard to get rid off at first but are ephemeral. Those feelings will go away with time.
Once you have overcome these feelings, you will finally understand who you truly are, you can grow as a person, become a stronger person, and build up your character.
How to overcome disappointment?
1. Accept your emotions
Disappointment is part of life and everyone will experience it at some point in life.
Disappointment can trigger a vast array of emotions that you cannot run away from or cover up.
It becomes critical to acknowledge your feelings and find out what exactly triggered it.
Refusing to analyze, confront and discipline your emotions can cause long-term damage on your health.
2. Forgive yourself
Learning to forgive yourself is the hardest part of dealing with disappointment because we are grasping our errors and what we “should” have done instead.
You are only human. You have made mistakes and you will probably make some more.
So, be compassionate with yourself, avoid shifting blame and take care of yourself. Eat well, sleep well and exercise.
3. Reframe your mindset
Now, that you have dealt with your raw emotions, it is time to restructure your mindset, improve on yourself, analyze your situation and mentally distance yourself from your past expectations.
This is the moment when you get comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, when you accept disappointment as a part of life and as a challenge, when you use it to improve yourself and to change the way you have been doing things.
While you are reframing your mindset:
Monitor your self-talk.
Don’t expect to be constantly disappointed because you attract what you think.
Practice self control to make better decisions, to nurture healthy thoughts because you are responsible for yourself.
4. Shift your focus
Now that you have reframed your mind, you have to trust that positivity can result from a negative situation and focus on turning your negative situation into a positive one.
The best way to keep moving forward and to making the best out of any situation is to stay busy, positive, focused and on purpose, to focus on your strengths and on who you want to be.
You can also find out what you could have done differently and make your goals more achievable.
5. Stay present
Your disappointment happened in the past and it’s time to move on.
There is no sense in replaying a situation in your mind over and over again.
It becomes detrimental to your health to be present and be grateful for what you currently have.
If you cannot remain in the present and keep ruminating, it is best to quickly analyze your feelings until you get closure.
6. Surround yourself with positive people
Disappointment can turn into a burden that can be too heavy for one person.
It can be helpful to share your disappointment with people you trust and who care about you.
As a general notice:
Be careful who you surround yourself with.
Stay away from people who constantly disappoint you or who hurt you on purpose.
7. Let go control
In life, you must always remember that you cannot control everything that happens to you or around you.
Therefore,
Don’t worry about the circumstances outside your control. It won’t change anything.
Trust that life has a better plan and solution for you.
Remember that there are many more opportunities out there.
Don’t get too attached to your plans and expectations.
Expect setbacks in life.
8. Grow!
Remember that life is a journey and that every failure brings you closer to your success.
We can learn something from every life experience, even from our disappointments.
Last Words Of Advice!
No matter the situation, always maintain your personal power.
Once you have given yourself time to heal and when you get over your feelings of disappointment, you must think about what you could have done differently and implement the new solution the next time you face a similar situation.
Now that you know better, do better!
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Organizations often face challenges that cannot be handle the traditional way.
Leaders quickly realize that creativity is the skill that will remove challenges, increase the success rate and will optimistically carry their organization into the future.
Wondering how to boost your creativity?
What is creativity?
Creativity doesn’t belong to the select few.
Creativity is the process of producing something out of nothing, of combining older ideas, of bringing imagination and ideas into reality.
Creativity is harder than we think but plays an important role in job satisfaction. There are a few ways that you can boost your creativity.
1. Take time off to restore yourself
Restoring yourself means that you know who you are and that you understand that society can erode your authentic self. Taking time off will help you to:
Get out of your boring routine.
Let your imagination run wild.
Practice meditation, sleep and rest your mind.
Prepare yourself for your next move.
Exercise. Exercising will help you clear your mind and energize you.
Put some distance between your personal project and your thoughts.
Organize your day and work at hours where your creativity is the highest.
Enjoy solitude. Solitude allows introspection and introspection triggers creativity.
2. Change your habits
It is good to change your way of doing things from time to time. In order to renew your though pattern:
Go somewhere or try something new.
Try things without fear or shame.
Say yes to different opportunities more often.
Expose yourself to things that inspire you and gain more experience.
Build up new good habits. Building new habits will allow your body to go on autopilot while your mind is free to wander.
For leaders to become original, they would have to know what has already been created.
Read books, listen to music, watch shows that will inspire you and that do not necessarily pertain to your are of interest.
Learn new skills. Learning new skills will give you the opportunity to explore.
Remove fear or other negative emotions that may block your thinking process.
7. Write down whatever comes to your mind
Ideas come to you at impromptu moments. It becomes handy to keep a notebook with you at all times so you can write them down as soon as possible.
To jumpstart your imagination, you can try brainstorming techniques or stare at a blank canvas as long as you need it. Blank canvas can be intimidating because there is an unlimited amount of outcomes.
When you are writing down your ideas, remember that there are no good or bad idea, just an unlimited number of ideas.
8. Monitor your surroundings
To get inspiration, you must surround yourself with creative people or with people from different backgrounds who hold different opinions.
You can also sit in public and observe the movement of people.
Last Words Of Advice!
It is one thing to be creative and another to maintain the creative process. You must learn yourself well and stay confident in your ability to create.
To maintain your creativity, first share your vision and ideas across your organization. Then, encourage others to come to you with ideas.
Is your organization doing enough to increase the creativity within the company?
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
They are willing to go through tough waters to achieve their vision.
However, they know that the greater their vision, the greater the focus needed, the greater the risks taken, and hopefully, the greater the reward.
Wondering how to take risks and step out your comfort zone?
Taking risks means stepping outside of your comfort zone.
Furthermore, risk taking is an inherent human trait and plays a major part in the life of leaders.
Risk taking may depend on the leader’s age, generation and financial background.
Risk taking is contagious. When your team sees you initiating risks and stepping out of your comfort zone, they ble will feel more comfortable doing the same.
For the past few years, risk taking has been treated like a disease.
Nowadays, taking risks is valued because it provides opportunities even though the consequences can be disastrous.
I believe that the old saying “with high risks come high rewards” is still defensible.
Taking risks is not reckless as long as they are calculated.
Why should leaders take risks?
Some people try to avoid risks and others fearlessly walk straight into it.
However, leaders are willing and obligated to take risks.
The key rewards of risk taking as a leader include longevity, meaningful experiences, increased finance, and a more motivated, loyal and trustworthy team.
People don’t take risks simply because of fear. They are generally afraid of failure, of success, of being vulnerable, being wrong, or admitting their errors and limits.
How to take calculated risks?
Risk taking can be an effective leadership strategy. To take calculated risks:
Define clear goals and a vision.
Gather information to estimate your risks. Do your research to unveil potential obstacles and give yourself time to find a solution.
Measure your resources and the costs of your actions.
Take a moment to evaluate the negative and the positive outcomes of your decisions. Study the pros and the cons to make the right decisions.
Do something that scares you everyday. Get out your routine and try new activities to uncover your limits and who you truly are.
Learn to trust yourself and your decisions. It is important to listen to your gut, to distinguish your intuition from your emotions, to avoid overthinking or over-analyzing your decisions.
Understand that you are your only limit and that you set your goals.
Increase your emotional intelligence. Don’t let your fears make decisions for you. What ifs will stop you from taking chances.
Practice taking risks and prepare yourself for rejection. Rejection is not as bad as it seems and usually doesn’t last as long as regret. Regretting a moment or a situation is definitely worse than being rejected.
Avoid spreading your self thin, examine opportunities that come your way, and learn to say no to opportunities that seem too good to be true.
Test your ideas to a wise sounding board that you trust and that can be candid with you.
Be reactive. Be on the lookout for possible breakthroughs or setbacks, and be ready to correct mistakes.
Your vision is a dream that encompasses their values and morals, that seems unrealistic but that is yet anchored in reality, that is ingrained in your DNA.
You are confident about it and you can communicate it easily.
You aim to build a company culture that promotes curiosity, imagination and brainstorming.
However, you do not need to have a clear step by step plan.
In addition, you are always frustrated because your reality doesn’t match your vision. Your progress doesn’t seem enough and you believe that you can be better, do better, do more and do faster.
You value your originality and you hate imitating others.
You don’t try to blend in because you understand your value resides in standing out.
#3. You are pathologically curious
You are eager to learn and cannot stop asking questions.
Without fearing repercussions, you ask questions that no one has never asked before.
You understand that the possibilities are endless and you are never done exploring them.
You experiment with things that excite or scare you. By facing your fears, you evolve and learn important information about yourself.
#4. You embrace change
You embrace change and innovation. Matter of fact, you love to lead in tumultuous waters, you are the first to say or do anything and you adapt easily to change.
Great leaders know that they have to embrace change in order to stay competitive and relevant.
Moreover, you see life as an adventure. For example, you are unafraid of uprooting and moving to a strange place.
You love experimenting, taking risks and can’t stand routine.
You enjoy trying new thing and seeing what will happen next.
#5. You are creative
You are creative and your need to create overpowers all your fears.
You can’t help that you:
Require creative freedom.
Are entirely consumed by your creations.
Care more about the content than the format.
Care more about creating than being right or clever.
Care more about creating or innovating than selling or introducing it to the world.
#6. You need freedom
Your freedom means everything to you.
You hate structure, rules, paperwork because you believe that all these are processes stifle your creativity, delay your pioneering moves and slow you down.
#7. You challenge the status quo
You are unpredictable. Your forward-thinking disrupts, challenges the status quo and pushes people out of their comfort zone.
Consequently, your presence and your perspectives make people uncomfortable.
You wish that they can see what you see and understand what you believe in.
#8. You attract the right people
You love to explore and to meet new people.
A trailblazing leader goes first and leads by example. By going first, you will attract the right type of followers and you will be able to feed from their energy to keep pursuing your vision.
At the end, you will build a team that is unconventional but has the right skills to reach your vision.
#9. You take self-motivated action
You constantly take action and need to move forward.
Indeed, you are always on the move, looking for the next new thing. You are always looking for new opportunities.
Furthermore, you are self-motivated. You do not need someone to encourage you or push you towards your goals.
You are goal-oriented: you have a tendency to focus on your vision and unfortunately forget your relationships.
However, with your actions, you will inspire others to take action.
#10. You are resilient
You are persistent and resilient. You see challenges as opportunities and courageously face adversity.
You are also committed to your vision and are willing to see a problem through.
By now, You have thick skin because people have tried to shut you down so many times.
Sometimes, our circumstances don’t match our inner thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. Sometimes, we haven’t figured out who we are yet and we are leaning into other people’s expectations of us.
Sometimes, we believe that our personality will be rejected when it is our character that counts. Other times, we notice that one type of leadership is thriving and don’t believe that we can level up.
So, this is written as a reminder to those who doubt themselves and who are actually meant to be leaders.
Wondering whether or not you are meant to be a leader?
Western society promotes bad leadership in corporate organizations. It seems that “evil leaders” win and appear smarter and more successful than “good leaders”. Though these organizations function well and get results, they become more and more toxic to work in.
These organizations have to subsequently provide trainings and team building exercises to counter the effect of negative leadership.
What we need are effective leaders with great character. Most people want the title, the power but don’t have the character, the values or the attitude.
You are definitively meant to be a leader if…
#1. People naturally gravitate to you and ask you for your advice
Have you been standing in the streets, people come up to you for direction? In the grocery isles, people ask you for products? At work, people ask you for help on their project that you know nothing about?
People ask you for advice everywhere you go. That is because you seem approachable, like you have the answers to their problems and like you will not retain any information.
#2. You have a clear vision and a direction for your future
You have a vision for your future and you have the conviction that your dreams will come through. You dream so big that your dreams seem almost impossible.
Sometimes, you may not know what you are doing but you sure know where you are going.
Also, you may not be able to immediately put your vision into action but you are sure that it’ll come through, you know how to apply yourself, you know how to trust your gut and to put your best foot forward, and you know how to find the people to help you achieve your goals.
This means that you are self-disciplined, you stand up for what is right, you walk with integrity, you are slow to anger and demonstrate patience.
Furthermore, you have a strong moral compass. Even under pressure, you have to do what is right so you can respect yourself, love yourself and sleep at night.
#4. You love to learn
You are eager to learn, to explore and innovate. As a matter of fact, you ask tones of questions and you are an ever evolving being.
You have learnt from your employees, from bad leadership and from good mentors.
In addition, you don’t retain information, you are able to speak frankly and openly.
Indeed, when you are a leader, you see people for who they really are and for what they can bring, you don’t make assumptions.
On the same occasion, you know where your strengths lie, where they will be complementary and where your weaknesses would hold people back.
Finally, you surround yourself with people who make you better and who complete you.
#6. You follow your own rules
You beat to the sound of your own drums. You don’t follow social rules and you think outside the box.
You don’t care about what people have to say about you, you go after what you want, indifferently to social expectations, to your circumstances and to stereotypes.
#7. You are a problem solver
You understand that there are several ways of doing one thing. With you as a leader, people are most likely to take risks, to innovate and are less afraid of making mistakes.
You have a lot of life experience, you find solutions to problems by asking people or by experience. Good or bad, you are grateful for your experiences and you are now wiser.
#8. You are resilient
You hurt like everybody else, you feel people pain but you are capable ofwithstanding adversityand of recovering quickly. In other words, you can take a licking keep on ticking.
#9. You are an equal opportunity leader
You treat everyone the same: you believe infairness, equality and in equity.
You don’t make assumptions about people and their behavior.
Furthermore, you don’t assume power or influence over people. You just lead when it is needed, show appreciation for people and you don’t hug the spotlight.
At last, you do not let negative energy permeate into your life and you leave your emotions at the door.
#11. You like to help
You like helping people, giving them the information that they need to succeed, even if they didn’t ask for help.
In your opinion, helping people is incredibly gratifying. You don’t do it for them to like you. You did it because you were needed and because you want the project to move forward.
And, you are humble enough to ask for help.
#12. You are innovative
You are constantly dissatisfied with the current system. That is why, you love innovation and you inspire others to innovate.
#13. You are cognizant of office politics
You know everything that is happening in your office and you know everyone by name.
However, you don’t judge your employees, blame them for their mistakes or gossip about your employees with your own employees.
You notice those who need training, those who hate their job, those who outperform, and those who underperform.
Mots of the time, people and parents, even with the best intentions, want to direct your life. Then, we listen and achieve what people expect of us.
A leader, recognizing the value of people close to him or her, taking into account the opinions of others, recognizes that their own dreams supercede all that.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
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