Fascinated by the Forbes headline, “Intelligence Is Overrated: What You Really Need to Succeed,” I thought, “Great! There’s hope for me!”
The article states that “85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in ‘human engineering,’ your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead” while only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge.
Many of you may think, “I’m not into leadership” or “I’m not a leader.” The truth is, YOU ARE A LEADER, and your financial success is largely dependent on your SELF-LEADERSHIP skills.
What does self-leadership mean? For me, it means walking the talk. (Am I perfect at it? No, but I’m intentionally working on upping my skills in this area.) It means that:
- Every choice is a leadership moment . . . do I think small-potatoes/myopic/in-the-moment, or do I think big-vision/strategic/in-the-future?
- Every challenge is a leadership opportunity . . . do I blame external circumstances and bury my head in the sand when hard stuff happens, or do I practice resilience, “control the controllables,” and proactively do something about it?
- Every conversation is a leadership conversation . . . am I multitasking during conversations, or do I provide people the respect, patience, and input they need from me in order for them to be their best?
- Every chore is a leadership task . . . do I procrastinate and misprioritize, or do I tackle things and follow through on the commitments I’ve made?
As my business has grown over the last decade, I have noticed that its success is in direct proportion to my self-leadership abilities. And I’ve seen the same for the entrepreneurs whom I coach.
Grow as a leader, and you’ll grow your success. AND, grow as a leader, and you’ll be more confident and qualified to coach leaders, even if you don’t supervise subordinates, manage large sums of money, or own a large operation.
Your turn . . . what choice, challenge, conversation, or chore will you approach today as a LEADER?
Image courtesy of Celal Teber
