Sonja Becker - The Female Leader

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ou begin your business journey best by envisioning your own intentions or invoking the picture you have of yourself and which others should have of you. How should others see me and my business? What should someone else say about me? You have to answer these questions to give your business a structure. Try to put your mission into a couple of concise sentences such as a private business plan. Your mission, mind you, is not the artificial credo of collective companies. These sentences should arouse all your passion every time you read them. Just thinking about what you see before you makes your heart beat faster and turns your day into pure pleasure. If you formulate this mission it has nothing to do with your “funeral eulogy” any more, but with something that you can freely and frankly share with others. It is so to speak the “Holy Ghost” of your business religion: “Go and tell it on the mountains”. You should inspire others when you express what is important to you in your career. Write down your goal in a couple of short, clear, terse and purely positive sentences. What should your business project do for other people? How do you want to achieve your aim? Why should others be inspired to work with you?

Nevertheless it is advisable to involve only trustworthy people in your mission statement at first, people who also have your respect. These people are there for the test. If your mission has a meaning it will spark off others. This mission concerns what is most important to you, what you do, love and enjoy most in life. You can therefore grasp and feel it. The more defined your mission is, the happier your life will be.

A successful mission is based on ambition. It requires a strong ego. You want to be a business leader, and such people are driven by three factors: affluence, fame and profit. Imagine that you had not exhausted your life, that there is more – that is the profit, the surplus value that your life has through the fulfillment of a mission. Imagine that your values outlast your life - that is fame. Imagine being unconstrained and untroubled by money matters and therefore being free to deal with things beyond your business – that is affluence, and it doesn’t sound bad. Entrepreneurs are not better human beings because of it. But they go their own way, like happy children who demand a lot in their innocent way.

Which of these three factors fires you the most – affluence, fame or winning? Which thought drives you the most? Do you dream of fame? Does financial independence appear the most important to you? Do you simply want to emerge as a winner? It is generally considered taboo to answer these questions in the affirmative. Do it. Look yourself in the face to find your values. See yourself in your dreams to have a clear mission in front of your eyes. There are no taboos. Logic doesn’t come into it. Look for something that really turns you on. It will cause you a bit of fear, as it is so far from reality. Don’t be fooled. If you look these positive fears directly in the face, energy is the result. After that comes the work, ten per cent inspiration, ninety per cent perspiration. But you’re happy to sweat for the right goal.

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s soon as you walk out onto the business playing field, you lose your diffidence. As soon as you stand up for your mission, other people will regard you in a new light.

Listen to how others regard you, what they say about you. That is your personal image. Make it into a distinct brand before others label you with it. What character do you want to play? What costume goes with it? And what part do you want to play on the business stage? You still have freedom of choice. Your image is the one thing by which other people can read your intention. One can tell from your clothes whether you are going to get milk or going to a business meeting – at least, hopefully. Your style, and we are not just talking about your clothes, has to correspond to your advised target group, to your customers and business partners. This style (not style in the sense of fashion, thank you) is your manner, your native wit, your sense of humor, your character – whatever makes you unique. You discover your own nature when you let yourself be who you are. Only when all affectation is put aside and you are completely relaxed (without prosecco) can you look at yourself calmly in the mirror. There you are. With a bit of luck you are the person that you know rather than the stranger who greets you with, “Hello, do we know each other?”

You radiate the image that you have. It is the direct projection of your intentions or un-intentions. If you want to be successful, this image will galvanize others to work with you.

That doesn’t mean that your present image is already the appropriate one. Find it by trial and error, and don’t play the prima donna, an unrecognized goddess on earth, at whose feet everything should lie. The more natural and relaxed you become the more honest and stable your business will be. You notice this from the magnetism you have. You radiate energy from which others can create. And that will pay off when you are dealing with selling. So cultivate an image that you want to live and that is you. If you are not yourself, you attract the wrong people. If you have customers whom you can’t stand, who are not “your type” at all, you can feel how much effort and nerves it costs.

Pretending is the wrong way. And everything that you do will not only grow stunted, but also go in the wrong direction.

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mission is a good reason why you do something and which direction you work towards.

You unleash an unbelievable amount of energy and drive. You suddenly feel power. And that’s good: you will need all your convictions to overcome obstacles that inevitably lie in the way. Among them for example might be your own shortcomings. One of the main reasons for passive melancholia lies in the belief that you won’t do anything wrong if you don’t do anything – a wildly inaccurate assumption, but that need not interest us here. It is a matter of course that you make mistakes as soon as you start on something. Good trainers allow mistakes in order to study them. For then they can be dealt with as soon as they arise – otherwise not. The second reason is that your image is almost never congruent to your character. You can change, while others still have the same picture of you. You will often experience this when you deal with people whom you haven’t seen for a long time. On these occasions you are still in the old condition, which you have long left behind. For one is always in a position to correct oneself on the road to success.

Every contact, every conversation brings an experience with it which you build into your business strategy for the next time. Therefore your performance becomes more and more perfect. If there were no tactics, there is the third reason. Your desire to get on with everyone and simply to do nothing wrong can lead to you losing sight of your mission: you are everything under the sun, but no longer yourself.

It is better to lose a client than to lose your character. For if no one can classify you correctly – if, for example, you present yourself as the well-known “jack of all trades” – they will not take you seriously any more. The market shows that you are more successful if you specialize in something. For you have exactly the right, loyal customers for your service. Still of course it doesn’t do any harm to update yourself regularly to show who you are.

Every human being is in a state of permanent growth, and it’s fun to demonstrate this growth. Nothing is sadder than the inclination to press people into clichés. On the other hand it is a means of giving a basis to a relationship with someone, just like remembering somebody’s name. But everyone likes to be surprised, above all when it is something to do with “the latest state of affairs” with regard to you. Produce regular updates about yourself, as in the form of circulars, newsletters, updates, Christmas letters and New Year greetings. If someone still sees you as a grown-up little girl, that’s your fault. You see reality more clearly if you are in tune with your image. But be prepared for the fact that not everything you see is wonderful. For one thing, some of your abilities will not survive the ordeal. For another the decision to follow a course will perhaps force you into realizing that it is the wrong one – but that is much better than not even starting. Perhaps you have too little patience. Or you give in too easily. Perhaps you are even at the point where you begrudge other people what they have. Without realizing it, you are always finding the fly in the ointment; you question everything, and only look at the negative sides. If you diagnose these symptoms, you are still in the dark salon of melancholia: unconsciously you have the feeling that others must be responsible for your fate. However, you are not responsible, not responsible at all. Don’t look for reasons any further but go into action. As soon as you start up your business you will be faced with the problem of having to suppress your appearing mistakes and characteristics in flux, so to speak. In every business meeting other people will pose questions by which you can measure and recognize yourself. That is wonderful. If everything were so simple and static the whole business wouldn’t be any fun. Everything is in flux, and you permanently work on a traveling ship. Every step takes you further. Instead of sitting around and holding conversations about yourself and your self-awareness, throw off this melancholia and learn about yourself through action.