August 22, 2023
Written by UJJI Team
Mindset is a powerful force that shapes how you make sense of yourself and the world around you. It influences your perception of everything and determines how you feel, act, and react in any given situation.Because your thoughts dictate your outcomes, they are instrumental in building a successful business. When it comes to leading in a fast-paced environment, your mindset can help you reach your most prominent goals or hold you back from achieving success.
A seemingly small thing that makes a huge difference, mindset can sabotage your business interests, drive loss of high-performing staff, and cause unnecessary damage. To be a great leader, you need the right mindset, and empowering yourself with awareness is the best way to achieve this.
So, here are 4 mindsets to shift ASAP...
Undeniably, hard work is crucial to success, but from time to time, ask yourself: what is the outcome I'm trying to achieve and is there a better way to get there? With so much on your plate as a leader, it might be time to consider if you could work smarter.
When you think about working smarter in a fast-paced environment, effectiveness is more important than efficiency. A smart worker won't speed up to get things out of the way. Instead, they will focus on quality, prioritize high-value tasks, delegate, optimize their schedule, and achieve a good work-life balance.
In a fast-paced environment, breaks can be perceived as laziness. However, working irrationally long hours, living in constant fatigue, skipping lunch breaks, and having no balance in life should never be worn as a badge of honor.
The time has come to flip this mindset! Productivity in a startup is about achieving the best possible results, which can't happen if you're burned-out... So, for a more efficient, productive, and creative life leading a startup, work smarter and know when to stop!
For most hybrid or remote workers, non-stop video calls, emails, and chats have become digital exhaustion. Employees often feel pressured to show productivity by adopting an "always-on" mindset and clocking in waaay too flexible hours.
It has become increasingly complex for a startup worker to set healthy boundaries for separating work from private life, and in the long haul, this can lead to a burnout spiral.
When leaders show respect for their staff's work and time, they will see this reflect in productivity, retention, and revenue. According to @Forbes, companies that intentionally empower their employees to take breaks meet higher morale and creativity.
Influencing a healthy work-life balance will show your people that their time, energy, and brainpower are valuable assets and promote a positive work culture in which they are satisfied, loyal, and driven to perform at their best.
In today's world, all employees demand - and have the right to - respect and acknowledgment for their efforts, insights, and performance. The truth is, if employers now fail to meet those standards, they will lose their teams. So, if you value your time, remember to extend that same respect to your staff.
No one is an expert in all areas of their field, and as a startup leader, that wouldn't be any different. In leadership, you can't assume you have all the right answers - there's always room for growth, and no matter the size of your company, you should be building and exploring a reliable support network.
Some leaders nourish a limiting belief that asking for advice will challenge their authority when such couldn't be further from the truth. There is strength in being vulnerable, and using all the resources at your disposal is critical to making the right business decisions.
Knowing when to accept help means you're receptive to different perspectives and information and will allow you to think and act as optimally as possible. A leader who seeks advice from their employees demonstrates they value their wisdom and expertise and consequently promotes a healthy environment of trust and collaboration.
In a startup, constant changes won't allow one to be on top of everything that's going on, so a "know-it-all" attitude is hardly beneficial. You have a way better shot at success when you are not the only person coming up with good ideas, so how about we shift this mindset?
Innovative organizations have recognized that the world is changing rapidly, and as a result, how we hire or develop employees has changed too. Soft skills — such as resilience, empathy, emotional intelligence, mindfulness, and adaptability — have become indispensable success factors.
Soft skills are not a replacement for hard skills but are definitely needed in the new normal. With the latest waves of technology and more job activities becoming automated, a team equipped with soft skills will have a competitive advantage in the workplace of the future.
If you strive to lead in a business that can make the most out of innovation, you need people who can adapt to change, find smart solutions to roadblocks, communicate effectively and take on different responsibilities as needed.
Unlike technical skills, soft skills may be hard to recognize or quantify. While we often acknowledge these as someone's innate personality traits, soft skills can and should be continuously developed with the right tool and environment.
If you want to unlock your team's A-game and maximise your startup's performance, we have just the right tool. Book a demo today!
Even when conditions look favorable, scaling your business will be painful if you forget one critical ingredient — your mindset. In leadership, your thoughts influence everything you do in your job, and a failure to work on yourself and shift dangerous mindsets will hurt your company on more levels than you realize.Time is scarce, and a busy schedule can make working on yourself sound like an extra task when it's actually an investment in your whole organization. Being an effective leader means role modeling by navigating life with the right mindsets. By demonstrating your consistent effort of working on yourself, you will let employees or other fellow leaders know that it's not only okay but crucial to do so.
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