Wednesday, July 31, 2013

My advice for women planning their career - PART 2: SELF-CONFIDENCE

Self-confidence – in this world you need to demonstrate a new self-confidence. Self-confidence is a key behavior that is critical for anybody to succeed.  Researchers have found that the correlation between self-confidence and leadership effectiveness is overwhelmingly statistically significant.[1] This means that any leader –male or female - must demonstrate high self-confidence to be considered an effective leader, but do women always come across that way? Some do but not all of them.
There is room for improvement, ladies!
Gone are the days where women sell themselves below value – and women need to stop doing  that – know what you are worth and let the world know!
To build confidence women need to concentrate on their strengths – what they are good at and make it phenomenally great - Successful people do not work so much on what they are bad at, they focus on capitalizing on what they are good at
Scott Adams the Inventor of Dilbert said:  If you want an average successful life, it doesn’t take much planning. Just stay out of trouble, go to school, and apply for jobs you might like. But if you want something extraordinary, you have two paths:
-          Become the best at one specific thing.
-          Become very good (top 25%) at two or more things.
-          The first strategy is difficult to the point of near impossibility. Few people will ever play in the NBA or make a platinum album. I don’t recommend anyone even try.
-          The second strategy is fairly easy. Everyone has at least a few areas in which they could be in the top 25% with some effort.
Being good is clearly not good enough!!
Believing you have the ability to reach your goals is important, but so is believing you can get the ability. Many of us believe that our intelligence, our personality, and our physical aptitudes are pretty much a given —  As a result, we focus on goals that are all about proving ourselves, rather than developing and acquiring new skills.[2]
invest in these learning opportunities yourself – set time aside and give it priority – if you don’t…….. nobody will
copy and master  / rather than one mentor I have always tried to copy behaviors of different leaders that I found to be ingenious
Build smart Networks - It also means using your network to pull in information and intelligence about where the growth opportunities are — and then investing in yourself to build skills that will allow you to take advantage of those opportunities.
For entrepreneurs it’s  differentiate or die – that now goes for all of us.[3]
And remember, as you now behave more like an entrepreneur, they don’t write a 100-page business plan and execute it one time; they’re always experimenting and adapting based on what they learn.[4]
Tomorrow you will hear from me on the new opportunities I see on the horizon.




[1] http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/11/women_leaders_need_self-confidence.html
[2] http://www.businessinsider.com/9-things-successful-people-do-2011-2?op=1
[3] http://pht.sla.org/2011/07/13/differentiate-or-die-that-now-goes-for-all-of-us/
[4] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/13/opinion/13friedman.html

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