Fears keeping you small

All leaders have fears.  However, not all your fears are created equal.

Some may manifest as low level anxieties.  Some are life paralyzing phobias.  Some may be triggered only by certain events – like fear of public speaking.  Others may be life-long fears.

Then there are the “big guns.”  These are the core unconscious leadership  fears from which all other fears come.  They override every aspect of your being.

In this article you will learn 7 unconscious leadership fears that keep you small.  First, it’s important to understand the nature of fear.

3 Truths About Fear Every Leader Needs to Know

1.     Fear is indestructible. 

Your brain is wired for fear. It is essential for your physical survival.  You want fear to send you signals when you are in danger, in an unsafe situation or about to make a high stakes mistake. Fear is your friend in those circumstances.

2.     Fear comes from a mental construct. 

Fear is a byproduct of your thoughts.  Your fear thoughts are mental constructs – meaning they have no basis in reality. As the saying goes, fear is “false evidence appearing real.”

The emotion of fear is real.  The content of your fear — your thoughts — is not real.  In your mind, though, you believe that your fear thoughts are reality.

To free yourself of such fear, you need to dislodge the mental constructs which drive fear.  Fear thoughts are of your own making and they can be unmade.

3.     Fearlessness does not exist.

Are you a leader that fantasizes about the day when you will be free of all fear?

Guess what?  It’s not going to happen.  Buying into the belief of fearlessness is a trap.  It’s an impossible goal to reach!  Even those who have achieved extraordinary feats have fear.

Your goal should not be to eliminate all fear.  Rather it should be, as one author wrote, to feel the fear and do it anyway.

Below are 7 core unconscious leadership fears you want to know about.  They are hijacking your leadership success and potential.

7 Unconscious Leadership Fears That Keep You Small

As a leader, you will be plagued by thousands of fears in your role.  You will have surface fears – such as fear of public speaking or holding employees accountable.

Then there are the deep unconscious leadership fears that enslave you until you break free.

1.     Fear of fear itself

Being a leader is demanding, high stakes work.  It stretches every ounce of your being.  It tests your strength of courage, perseverance and resilience.

The demands can be so great and the fear so paralyzing that the only way of getting relief is to put your head in the sand and pretend fear does not exist.  In those circumstances, your dominating fear is of fear itself.

In the short term, pretending you have no fear to move forward with your goals and actions can actually be a healthy choice.

In the long term, however, the fears you are avoiding will sabotage your every attempt to play a bigger leadership game.

2.     Fear of (owning your) power

All leaders are powerful yet few know how powerful they really are.  True personal power (or lack of it) determines whether you show up on the cause or effects side of your outcomes equation.

Being at the effects side means you believe that things happen to you.  That you have little or no control on your outcomes.

When you own your leadership power, you believe that …

You are at cause for all the results in your life.

If you fear power, it is because you are conflicted about it.  You have negative associations or beliefs about what power means.

The truth is that you can’t fully contribute your leadership gifts and talents if you fear owning your own leadership power.

3.     Fear of “being found out”

Within every person, there are 3 selves — a Pretend Self, a Feared Self and an Authentic Self.  Your Pretend Self  is that part of you that feels a need to hide behind an imaginary mask.

You don’t want others to know that you feel inadequate in your leadership role.  You don’t feel as though you’re smart enough, experienced enough, confident enough (fill in the blank) to be in your leadership role.

You take on other personas out of fear of being “found out.”  You put on a strong face – pretending to have it all together – when deep inside you feel like a fraud.

When you pretend to be someone you are not, you can never be your authentic powerful self.

4.     Fear of sharing your power

The world of leadership is filled with paradoxes.  One of those paradoxes is about power.

To be an exceptional leader, you must own your personal power (as addressed in #2).  Doing so allows you to take charge of your own individual outcomes and be an example to others.

However, once a leader owns their power, he/she tends to hoard it – such as making all the decisions, resolving all conflicts, leading all meetings, etc.  You hoard power because you fear loss of importance and lack of control if you share it.

Yet for a company to flourish, power must be distributed and shared throughout the organization.  This means developing employees as personal leaders within their own roles and teams.  Allowing them to make decisions within their own scope.  Giving them the tools and know-how to resolve their own conflicts.

5.     Fear of Truth

Reality is truth.  Yet our brains are not capable of knowing 100% reality.  The reason … your brain can only process less than 1%  all the sensory data at any moment of time.

Your sense of reality — or perceived reality – comes from your beliefs, your sense of identity, your model of the world and so forth.  You become so attached to your own sense of reality, that you avoid new information (truth) that conflicts with your current (limited) thinking.

By no means is fear of truth exclusive to leaders.  However, avoidance of  truth can have dire consequences to leaders and their organizations. Your actions and decisions are driven by cognitive biases and those biases can be costly.

For example, success often blinds leaders and prevents them from seeing the truth of a looming future ahead.

6.     Fear of losing the known

For your company to grow, leaders must move into foreign territories where they have no prior experience.  In those situations, you don’t have a mental flashlight to guide you.  That can be scary.

In reality, it’s NOT your fear of the unknown that stops you.  After all, how can you fear something you don’t even know about?!

What you really fear is …

Fear of losing (or letting go) of the known

As you grow to new leadership levels, the new possibilities can be endless.  Yet seldom does your mind see these new changes as amazing opportunities.  Instead, you …

·      Fear losing your sense of safety when making a leap

·      Fear letting go of current routines and habits that give you predictability

·      Fear letting go of who you are for who you can be

7.     Fear of your own brilliance

While it is a rare leader who hasn’t dreamed of standing on the shoulders of giants, boldly stepping out and realizing your own greatness is a scary proposition.

Yes, the majority of leaders fear their own brilliance.

How do I know?

I observe it in such behaviors as …

·      Getting caught up in distractions – such as, always looking at your cell phone

·      Mindless activities

·      Chasing the externals to make you feel good about yourself.

Being visible in the world … rising above mediocrity … standing in the light of your authentic self, that takes radical courage.

Fear does not have rule you.  The key is to know how to dislodge it.

Dislodge Your Unconscious Leadership Fears in 5 Minutes 

Step1:  Name your fear.

To break the hold of your fear, first name it.  Boil it down to a single word – like SeenAsFake.

Step 2:  Personify your fear.

For example, if you fear fear itself, perhaps you personify it as a big black monster.  If you fear power, perhaps you imagine it as Hitler or mean sergeant.

Step 3:  ID visual and auditory associations with your fear persona (identified in #2).

When you think of your fear persona …

·      What’s the characteristics of the picture?  Black and white or colored?  Large or small?  Near or far?

·      What does he/she/it sound like?  Deep or high voice?   Fast or slow pace?  Loud or soft?

Step 4:  Change the identified associations above to their opposites to transform your fear. 

For example,

·      If your fear picture is black/white, large and near, change it to color, small and far.

·      If your fear voice has a low pitch, loud volume and slow pace, change it to high pitch, low volume and fast pace.

That’s it!  With this simple 4 step process, your fear will transform from a roar to a whisper.

Want to know more secrets how to rise to the top of your leadership game? 

Sign up for our free report below — Wired to Win Big:  7 Inner Game Leadership Strategies to Rise to the Top and Stay There.  The only game you ever need to win is the game within your mind!

The post 7 Unconscious Leadership Fears That Keep You Small appeared first on The Empowered Business.

Willpower Exhaustion

Because of my exertion-exhaustion approach,  my world came crashing down with life threatening illnesses that cost me everything in my life.  While I wished I had learned the lesson in a less traumatic way, there was a gift in that experience.

It catalyzed me to seek mindset tools and technologies to create results with ease and less effort.  It motivated me to learn how the brain works and its impact on our thoughts, emotions and behaviors.  It taught me how to live and realize inspiring work and life.

While my details may be different than yours, how many times as a leader have you:

• Used brute force and over-efforting to achieve goals?
• Mustered every ounce of your being to power through what needed to be done?
• Berated yourself for not making the changes and vowed to try harder?

Willpower is one of the least understood concepts, especially in the world of leadership.  To make tough decisions, manage never-ending changes and handle the demands of their roles, leaders rely heavily on willpower to make things happen.

Leaders also often pay a heavy price when they hit the willpower wall and spiral downward on both personal and company levels.  Let’s take a look at why.

Myths & Realities:  What Willpower Is and Is Not

Psychologists now understand that willpower is defined by 5 specific characteristics:

• Delaying gratification and resisting short-term temptations to meet long-term goals
• Overriding an unwanted thought, feeling or impulse
• Employing a “cool” cognitive system of behavior rather than a “hot” emotional system
•  Effortful regulating of self by the self
• Limited resource capable of being depleted

According to Kelly McGonigal PhD, author of The Willpower Instinct, willpower is an instinct that comes from both the brain and body.

The prefrontal cortex houses our decision making and behavioral control functions.  Self control, or willpower, is directed by this part of the brain.

Brain science tells us also that the prefrontal cortex can be easily depleted from cognitive and emotional tasks (such as, regulating our emotions).  The same tasks that leaders are required to perform non-stop in their roles.

The fact that we have just so much willpower before it runs out is a critical, yet seldom addressed issue in the world of leadership.  Willpower-depleted leaders have a tendency to push the envelope even harder until they crash and burn.  The ultimate risk for leaders is suffering from serious willpower exhaustion.

When leaders hit this danger point, the company pays a high price in irrational decision making, addictions, low productivity, out of control emotions, a toll on personal lives and the list goes on.

The key is for leaders to learn the right use of willpower to lead their company to higher levels of success and growth.  In my experience in working with leaders, below are examples when willpower is used for the right reasons:

• Delaying immediate gratification in your decision making

Doing so builds a leader’s strategic thinking capacity – ie., focusing on long term company gains, rather than reacting to “short-termitis” or immediate gratification.

• Living your purpose, vision and values

Living your company’s purpose and values takes daily leadership discipline and self-control. This right use of willpower requires leaders to respond to unexpected events through the lens of  purpose, vision and values, rather than go into crisis mode.

• Pacing change and growth

Most leaders have high initiative.   This quality is typically a leadership asset.  However, when it comes to change and growth, leaders must learn to utilize willpower to pace both at a rate their organization can handle.  A leader’s urge to go full force will cost the company the very outcomes it seeks.

How Do Leaders Exhaust Their Willpower?

The factors below are just the tip of the iceberg.

• Inability to Right-Size Stress

Under high levels of stress, the fight-or-flight response floods a leader’s body with energy to act instinctively rather than being utilized by the prefrontal cortex for effective decision-making.  High stress drives a leader to focus on short term survival outcomes, rather than the big picture, due to depleted willpower.

•  Trap of Excellence

Striving for excellence can be a trap for perfectionism.  Perfectionistic leaders have a mindset … “if I am not perfect in performing this task, then I am a failure.”  Expecting a perfect outcome takes its toll on a leader’s willpower and puts him/her into over-drive.  Such perfectionistic tendencies show up in  micro-managing, “analysis paralysis” or unwillingness to delegate, thus further depleting a leader’s energy reserves.

•  “Away From” Motivated Goals

“Away from” motivated goals are stated in terms of what you don’t want —  eg., “I don’t want to procrastinate anymore.”  “Away from” goals actually reinforce the outcome you don’t want.  They also take enormous willpower to overcome and, doing so, depletes that scarce resource.

•  Deficient Brain Fuel

Given the on-going demands on time and energy, leaders often neglect exercise, diet and sleep to cope with their workload.  Yet ignoring these basic necessities for brain functioning further depletes a leader’s blood sugar needed to fuel willpower, resulting in decreased performance.

The key is to recognize your willpower’s limitations – in quantity and effectiveness.  The next step is to learn how to strengthen your willpower for when you need it most in your  role.

7  Simple Strategies to Strengthen & Conserve Your Leadership Willpower

According to Kathleen Martin Ginis, assistant professor of kinesiology at McMaster University, willpower is like a muscle and needs to be challenged to build itself.  At the other end, just as an over-trained athlete needs rest and recovery, balancing the active use of willpower with downtime is a must.

Below are my 7 favorite strategies for conserving and strengthening leadership willpower.

1.     Empty Your Mind

Quiet Mind

Today’s leaders find themselves driven by a fast paced agenda, often denying themselves critical downtime to replenish their minds and bodies to be effective.  A daily 5-10 minute meditation is your best strategy for reducing stress, improving emotional and physical wellbeing, as well as tapping into your intuition for your next right actions and decisions.

2.     Leverage the Power of Oxytocin

Peer support helps strengthen a leader’s willpower. Doing so makes reaching goals easier, while using less willpower to do so.  A bonus benefit of peer support is an increase in your bonding neurohormone — oxytocin — that lowers stress, increases relaxation and amplifies trust among the team.

3.     Increase Willpower with the Right Fuel

Willpower is not all in the mind.  It is critical to supply your body with the high quality fuel it needs.  Reduce sugar and carbs to avoid energy dips, which can further deplete your willpower supply.

4.     Anticipate Problems

“What if” strategies are critical for both strengthening and conserving your leadership willpower.  Such strategies require you to figure in advance how you will deal with obstacles and make a plan for dealing with such obstacles.

5.     Ask Bigger Questions to Unleash Motivation

Rather than depend on willpower to reach your goals, ask yourself bigger questions to unleash motivation such as … “Who do I want to become as a leader?” … “WHY are these goals important to me?”  Tapping into your deepest  motivations fuels an energy source that pulls you toward your goal, rather than pushing through willpower.

6.     Frame Challenges as Pleasure

Recently I asked a leader to write a one year vision of what he wanted to achieve.  He originally wrote what a struggle it was to overcome his challenges around organization.  I asked him to reframe the challenge as a learning process and a series of small wins that he celebrated, rather than a struggle.

How you speak to yourself can determine success or failure.  The key is to reframe challenges by describing the resourceful state, not the disempowering one, you want to experience to achieve your desired outcome.

7.     Chunk Down to the “Critical Few”

Conserve your willpower for what really matters.  Set priorities and stop doing the things outside the critical few   Schedule time in the morning while you have a full tank of willpower to progress on your critical few.  Then give yourself a break to rebuild your willpower reserve.

The Most Important Point … Are you really ready to change?

Are you really ready to let go of your exertion – exhaustion cycle and experience an easier, more rewarding leadership path, starting TODAY? 

Your challenge with this change is rarely an issue of not knowing “how to’s.”  In fact, seeking out more knowledge can be a trap.

The truth is … change can happen in an instant … almost appear magical to the outside world.

The secret is to ask yourself  3 simple questions: 

What’s the greater motivator right now regarding making this change … to avoid pain or seek pleasure?  Ie., Do you perceive making this change as painful or pleasurable?

What will you gain if you keep using the “white knuckle” approach?

What will you lose if you keep using the “white knuckle” approach?

When you can honestly say that making the above changes is the greater motivator than sticking with old behaviors, the change has already started.  Practicing the “how to’s” just reinforces that desire and you are on your way to a different leadership experience.

The post Brain Science Secrets to Increase Leadership Willpower appeared first on The Empowered Business.

I know this statement may sound harsh at first.  I ask you to hold your judgment until after you’ve finished the article to understand why.

For example, when a company is stuck or has plateaued, I often hear reasons like …

• Our company did not grow because of the economy.
• We need more knowledge or technology to beat our competition.
• We have to seize every revenue opportunity as it comes our way or we won’t survive.
• The marketplace is an unfriendly place.

Do any of these sound familiar in your company?

The GRAND illusion is … those outside factors are NEVER the reason.   As soon as you justify outside factors for lack of growth, profitability and/or performance, you are lying to yourself.  You are buying into your own story.

That is not to dismiss the importance of knowledge, systems, the timing of opportunities and other factors that leaders believe with all their hearts are the reasons for their success or failure.

The Real Problem Is Your Leadership “Map.”

I don’t mean the kind of map you stick in the glove box of your car or get from your GPS system.  I am talking about a different kind of map.

In the 1930’s, Alford Korzybski, in his book “Science and Sanity,” made a profound statement about human nature.  A statement still widely used in many contexts, including management.  That is …

The map is not the territory.

This statement says it all … how and why your mind plays “dirty” tricks on you.  That is, your perception of reality is never reality itself.  Rather it is your version or internal representation of reality (or mental map).

100% of your experience of the world is being generated by your mind, not outside events.

Due to your brain’s limited processing capabilities, your mental maps filter out over 99% of external information coming from your five senses.  Your mind attempts to fill in the massive information gap with its own “spin,” story or interpretation about what it perceives.

Not only is your conscious awareness limited.  You also filter every experience through your own learned behaviors, experiences, beliefs, values, interests and states.  As a result, this filtering process distorts, deletes and generalizes your sense of reality.

How Can Your Mental Maps Cause BIG Trouble to Your Organization?

The distortion in thinking and perceptions –based on mental maps – creates over 80% of the problems at a leadership and organizational level.  While your leadership mental maps can actually create many problems in your organization, let’s look at 2 common examples.

Mind Trick #1:  You rationalize away outside circumstances (or your perceptions of those circumstances) as the reason for your organizational failures or lack of results.

Projecting outside circumstances (eg., the economy) as the cause for companies’ lack of results is so rampant in today’s business world.  Yet this one mistake alone is costing companies billions in lost revenues, profits and new opportunities … and leaders don’t even realize it!

The truth is … you either fight for reasons OR you fight for results.  Your brain is not capable of holding two opposing thoughts at the same time.

You can’t fight for growth and fight for the reasons for lack of growth at the same time.  When you focus on the latter, you are reinforcing in your brain why you can’t have growth.

Doing so has a domino effect.  On your attitudes, you become a victim.  On your beliefs, you convince yourself again that “outside circumstances drive your fate.”  On your behaviors, you focus your actions on survival, and ultimately, all this drives results or more lack of growth

Do you see how your perceptions of reality (your mental maps) determine your outcomes?

How is it that at times you become prisoner to your own reasons (and don’t realize it)?  What are the telltale signs?

Level of believability:  Your reasons seem plausible. 

So much so, you perceive your reasons or beliefs as true … as facts.  Those reasons then drive your focus and preclude you from seeing other possibilities.

Because blaming the economy for company failures or lack of results is a common rationalization, let’s use that as an example. 

You speak that rationalization, think it, believe it, feel it, and act consistently with it and then have evidence to back it up that it’s true. You are so identified with your mental map or mind that to you it is not your mind at all, it is the unvarnished truth.  In this case, you believe that the economy is the reason.

Consensus:  Your team, industry peers, the media, etc. all validate your reason. 

They buy into the same reason.  “Of course, the economy is to blame.”   Consensus grows and resignation becomes contagious within your company and industry.  This meme  …. aka thought virus … becomes the norm and goes viral.  Your thinking is infected and you can’t see causes within your control or other possibilities for a different outcome.

That one thought (or mental map) is the real cause for lack of results, not the economy.

That’s not to negate that economic downturns exist and can impact how a company operates and grows.   Your response to a down economy is completely within your control however.

It’s within your control to look for market segments or industries still in a growth mode.  It’s within your control to identify new strategies for seizing opportunities. It’s within your control to focus on your most profitable offerings during downturns.

You get to choose.  Are you going to fight for reasons or fight for results?

Mind Trick  #2:  You believe/assume that your plans and strategies, as long as followed,  (“the map”) will take your company to its desired destination (“the territory”).

Developing strategies and plans is a healthy practice for leaders to do.

However …. and this is a BIG “however” … it is often assumed that if you follow your strategies and plans (“the map”), you will successfully navigate the path (“the territory”) to get to your company’s destination.

There’s something to be said about staying the course and sticking to your strategies.  Yet your strategies often create blind spots that underestimate the impact of external changes on your business.

The issue is not about the content of your strategies and plans.  The issue is the unconscious belief or assumption that you have the right roadmap.  That one belief will cause you to filter critical external information and cues that may be signaling you have the wrong roadmap or you need to change it.

Example: A common blind spot is to overestimate your company’s strengths and capabilities.  If you perceive customer service as a strength, you are apt to assume that “strength” as the basis of your strategy and your differentiator.  That blind spot, however, may cause you to miss other emerging competitors who are better able to service your customers and are threatening your business.

• Where are you missing critical external cues that your strategies (maps) need to be changed?  
• Where are you over-estimating your business capabilities and strengths?  
• To what extent are you attached to your own strategies as being correct that you cannot perceive better ways of reaching your destination?

The above are 2 manifestations of the grand leadership illusion that can sink organizations and performance.  Your mental maps are driving your outcomes, not external circumstances.  The more you understand as a leader how your mind works, the less trapped you will be by your own thoughts and mental paradigms.

Changing Your Leadership “Maps” Can Change Your Results & Performance … At Lightning Speed.

Let’s take a moment to summarize what you need to remember from this article.

Key Points Summary

• The map is not the territory.
• Your mental maps of reality are NOT 100% accurate.  Your mental maps distort reality through your brain processing and filtering systems.
• We react to our own mental maps, not reality. Our maps are affected by our own interpretation about what is happening.  Your negative interpretation of the same event can be another person’s optimism.
• Your territory is constantly changing, so don’t overlay today’s experiences with what happened yesterday. After all, the surroundings were different.  Just because sales slowed or profit margins declined last month does not mean your growth or profitability can’t be stellar this month.
• No two maps are the same. Everyone creates their own maps, each is unique and no two are the same. (Your map is not the same as other leaders on your team.  In fact your maps may be opposite of each other.)

The good news is … your mental maps can be changed.  New mental maps can catalyze your company to its next level of success, just as much as the old ones can keep you stuck in molasses.

The first step to change is to question everything.  Challenge every thought, assumption, belief (disguised as fact) and point of view with which you currently identify.  Especially the ones you believe are right :)).

In future articles, I will be addressing the concept of constrictive minds and their impact on your leadership and organizational performance.  To be notified of those and other articles, sign up for our monthly newsletter and free report at Wired to Win BIG.

The post The One GRAND Leadership Illusion That Sinks Organizations appeared first on The Empowered Business.

As a leader, how often do you find yourself …

• 

  Thinking Behind Strategic Thinking

  Overwhelmed by an overload of demands, not knowing what to respond to first?

• Continually fighting for certainty, paralyzed by fear of the unknown?
• Blind sighted by unforseen events that jeopardize your company’s stability and bottomline?

I’m guessing what you really want is to stop your perpetual busyness.  You want to focus on the critical few.   You want to navigate your company, amidst constant change, to its ultimate destination.

In my decades of working with leaders, I have found that the above are symptoms that a leader lacks the capacity to think strategically.  Let’s look at how to turn those symptoms around.

The 3 Most Important Things You Need to Know About Strategic Thinking:  What It Is AND Is Not

1. Strategic thinking is an exercise of the brain muscle, not the wrist muscle.

Despite what many leaders believe, strategic thinking is NOT quantitative analysis – eg, generating sales forecasts – nor quantitative goals – eg,  $100 million in revenues.

While numbers are important in planning, true strategic thinking is qualitative.  It is about HOW you think as a leader, and less about the contents of your thinking.

 2. Strategic thinking is NOT the same thing as strategic planning.  In fact, many strategic plans have little strategic thinking behind them.

For most companies, strategic planning focuses on breaking down a goal into action steps and connecting those steps to resources, timelines and budgets.

While strategic planning is an important activity for implementation, a plan, without strategic thinking preceding it, has little chance of success.  While strategic planning defines the steps to move up the ladder, strategic thinking (in the words of Covey) defines whether your ladder is against the right wall.

 3. Strategic thinking is more about the structure of one’s thinking, NOT the content of one’s thinking.

While most strategy development efforts focus on content – or what one thinks, strategic thinking is driven by how one thinks – ie., the thinking behind the thinking.   We call this metacognition.

For example, assessing a competitor’s strengths focuses on content.    While the structure of your thinking may view competition at a higher elevation, such as the changing forces in one’s industry and impact on the competitive landscape.

How Great Strategic Thinkers Think:  The 6 Core Characteristics

Essentially, strategic thinking is a mindset.  It is the art of making the right decisions for attaining future success in a complex, uncertain world.   

Although there are many books about strategic thinking, my focus for this article is on the structure of strategic thinking … the Core 6 characteristics.

To uncover a leader’s strategic thinking capacity, I utilize a tool called the Inventory of Workplace Attitude and Motivations (IWAM) to assess a leader’s strength in the Core 6, as well as dominant mental patterns blocking a leader from thinking strategically.

Below are my Core 6 characteristics of strategic thinking.

Global (or Holistic) Thinking

Global or holistic thinking combines the cognitive abilities of:

• Big picture thinking (ie, seeing the overall landscape from a 10,000 foot level … such as your organization or industry. 
• Systems thinking (ie., ability to see the interrelationships between elements … such as, how decisions made in engineering impact other functions)
• Patterns recognition (ie., seeing cause and effect patterns within your environment, peoples’ behaviors and even within yourself  … such as “when I take 5 minutes to plan daily, I have a more productive, focused day.”)

The purpose of holistic thinking is not to accumulate knowledge, but to create new mental maps that unleash greater thinking possibilities for the future.

Example of Holistic Thinking:  Bill Gates and Paul Allen did not invent anything to start Microsoft. The personal computer revolution was started by putting together existing technologies in a way never done before. They could see from a 10,000 foot elevation how seemingly unrelated technology trends intersected, eventually disrupting the computer industry in a completely new direction.

Future Oriented

Strategic thinking leaders view their company’s past and present through the eyes of the future.  Strategic thinking requires strategic foresight and asking such questions as …

• What new emerging trends will shape our company’s future?
• What new possibilities may exist 10 years from now that don’t exist today?
• What unmet needs will our customers have in the future, not even visible on their radar screen today?

Strategic thinking requires a mindset that anticipates rather than reacts.  A strategic minded leader is seeking out opportunities through a “future” lens rather than merely responding to today’s problems and customer needs.

Example of Future-oriented Thinking:  According to Dr. W. Edwards Deming, management expert, the “principle of anticipation and innovation — driven by the producer, not the customer — is the ultimate competitive advantage.”

Henry Ford, a leader with great strategic foresight, understood that principle.  He said if he had asked his customers what they wanted, they would’ve asked for a faster horse.

Options Thinking

Options thinking is nothing new.  Our whole lives consist of endless options –  what will we eat for dinner, where will we invest our money and so on. The same is true for organizations.

To achieve strategic success, leaders must develop their options thinking capabilities on two levels:

1. Defining multiple options for reaching goals and choosing the “best”;
2. Identifying a wide range of possible future states (aka environmental scenarios) to uncover and exploit emerging opportunities.

To understand why, imagine, if you picked a random path up a mountain – rather than finding the easiest among multiple alternatives.  Or that you did not consider various conditions in your climb – like snow, dangerous animals or equipment failure.  What would be your chances of success?

In a similar fashion, many strategic plans fail within organizations due to lack of options thinking.

Example of Options Thinking:  In 2006, Mike Jackson, CEO, AutoNation, challenged industry assumptions by asking “what if buyers replaced cars every 5 years, not 3 years?”  By looking at a low probability, high consequence event, AutoNation experienced profitability and positive cash flow, while many dealers went out of business.  That’s the advantage of options-thinking.

Differences–Oriented

When a leader is a high differences-thinking person, it tells me two things:

1.  His/her brain is wired to sort for differences. These leaders are innovators.  They love to change the rules of the game.  Think Steve Jobs as a “high differences-oriented” leader.
2. They thrive on change.  Not only can these individuals respond easily to change.  They can “see” possible changes in the future that others may dismiss or think impossible.

Such leaders have the ability to see and capitalize on hidden opportunities that others don’t have the thinking capacity to spot.

Example of Differences-Thinking:  Billy Beane, General Manager, Oakland A’s, shattered conventional baseball beliefs that big payrolls translate into big wins. His unconventional use of statistics in identifying undervalued players led the A’s — one of the worst teams in baseball with one of the lowest payrolls — to three American League West division titles.  This is hallmark of a differences-oriented thinker.

Achievement/Success Thinking

An achievement-thinking leader is an individual who is motivated by success and by being the best.  Achievement-thinking leaders choose strategies that exploit an advantage. Their only goal is to win.

To develop this thinking muscle, leaders must address fundamental achievement-oriented questions, such as …

• What defines success?
• What are the factors that drive success?
• How will we measure success?

Example of Achievement-Thinking:  Olympic athletes are the quintessence of achievement-oriented thinkers.  Their whole focus is on winning the gold medal.  For many, even a silver or bronze medal is considered failure.  They seek every possible strategy to get the advantage: the choice of a coach, equipment, mastering the fine points of technique, etc.

Proactive Balanced with Reflection

Most leaders by nature are highly proactive and take little time for reflecting.  Yet, to solve the increasing unfamiliar problems facing businesses today, a leader must learn to balance (proactive) action with reflection for new insights to problems with no precedence.

This balance requires leaders to take regular time for reflection and cultivate a sense of right timing for action guided by one’s own intuition.

True reflection is not about thinking hard, but rather a presence of mind.  A state of mind in which you view a situation from not knowing … a beginner’s mind.  (see Strategic Intuition, William Duggan)

Example of Proactive Balanced With Reflection:  Napolean was a master at strategic insight.  What he lacked in size of army, he made up in precision and reaction rate. Napoleon said it best: “Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.”

Building your own strategic thinking muscle

A small amount of consistent time and practice is all it takes to build your own strategic thinking muscle.  For example …

1. Learn chess.  It is one of the best ways to develop the strategic thinking characteristics described above.
2. Subscribe to the Futurist magazine published by the World Future Society.
3. Track the BIG, new things the smartest people & organizations (regardless of industry) are doing.  Then adapt them in your company.

If that seems too much now, just remember …

Do less.  Reflect more.

Problems less.  Possibilities more.

“Play not to lose” less.  “Play to win” more.

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Fear is activated in the most primitive part of the brain – the reptilian brain. It signals danger. In life and death situations, fear is an important survival mechanism to act quickly, mobilizing strength, courage and power we never thought we had.

In most situations, however, fear is a serious liability. When fear runs you, you can’t see its control over you. It impairs thinking, paralyzes decision-making and drives reactionary behavior.

To shift from fear to fearlessness, you must first get rigorously honest about how fear may be running you right now.

• What fears about your business, the economy or the future dominate your thoughts right now?
• How might those fears be costing your business?
• Who would you be without those fears? How might your future be different when coming from that fearless place?

Getting rigorously honest about your fears will help you step up your inner game and cultivate a fearless mindset.

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