Sonja Becker - The Female Leader

A further important step in getting to know your strengths and weaknesses of your activities is the help of people whom you like and value. Ask them to be honest with you. Politeness is out of place here. The nice friends with the prosecco are drinking only to your misery which drags you down further. We mean the people with good intentions whose views don’t correspond to yours, and on account of which you always try to pretend something else which they see through: your mother, your ex-friend, your brother. Simple feedback – instead of criticism, pieces of advice or formulas – will already help you to jump onto the path that is the only right one – your own. Ask them if there are things that don’t agree with your real intentions: if you are pretending to be somebody other than you are. Perhaps it is only about the correct presentation of patterns of behavior, ways of presenting yourself which don’t suit you according to their opinion. For example: “As soon as you are in company of people who can be useful to you, you play up like a superstar who expects to be paid for their appearance. The first goes down well, the second doesn’t.” Draw up appropriate rules in order to play a part that pays off: your own. Everything else is a waste of energy. Quite a few things that you read here give you a light sting. Just take time to go through them one after the other and to observe your perceptions after a few days. How did I get here? What is right about it and what not? Where am I? Where do I want to go?

The human brain is happy to remain on the subjective side, and so it is incredibly difficult to look at yourself from an objective perspective without other people’s help. Other people always have a certain impression of you. Those who know you well give you exactly the feedback on what suits you and what doesn’t. Try it. Let people who have no vested interest tell you who you are and how you present yourself, and how, where and why these two things differ from each other. That is not necessarily to say that you are intrinsically a self-obsessed, arrogant person. Perhaps you even underestimate yourself, hide your light under a bushel too much, and in fact have more greatness and beauty in you than you admit to. Whatever: if you go along with your personality you will be unbeatable.

At this point in your career you simply have to think about yourself as objectively as you can. You are at the point when your calling card coincides with your personality. If so far you have only been doing things for fun you have not been taking yourself seriously. Then why should others take you seriously?

When you have jumped this hurdle other perspectives open up. Suddenly you can tell what is and what isn’t okay. You stop being ironic. You mean what you say. You are listened to. You are accepted and respected. Such a realistic perception will arise at every threshold of a new level of business. In the course of time the fog of routine will always lie over your doings, and when you wake, it will only happen through your fundamental awareness of yourself and your situation.

With a clear, realistic and completely critical view of yourself, you can learn a lot from other people. For example, people who think completely differently from yourself. It is unbelievable what dimensions other points of view have, and not only through encounters with other cultures. Even an insight into the world of your neighbor can have many new things in store for you. Furthermore you now have the ability to think about scenarios in which you yourself take part in. You will inevitably feel whether you are comfortable in the role in which you find yourself. Your reason will in turn tell you what lies in your path and what doesn’t. As soon as you tread a path there will be bandits. If you have a realistic view of yourself and your aims your reason will tell you what and who is good for you and what not. Your logical understanding quickly grasps the problems. It is the bulwark against the mental inclination to jump between options, to acknowledge your point of view as the only valid one and not allow other interpretations.

Stand by yourself. Feedback from others is control enough. Stop making excuses and justifying yourself. Don’t be continually asking why you did this or that. You can quietly throw the things you have concocted out of doubt into a pot. The main point is that you accept these things. The results speak for themselves, even if you are trailing 2:3 at halftime. Congratulate yourself on your realistic view of things. Only then can you think about what to do in the second half.

Bonding is everything in our increasingly productless service economy. In order to fulfill your mission you work daily in close contact with your fellow human beings: partners, friends, colleagues, employees, bosses, service providers etc.

And your cash flow. The quality of both constitutes the barometer of your vitality. If you work without these fundamental qualities, you are possibly frozen solid in your interpretation of life.

You will gain clarity when you see what results from your activities. Every experience will either enrich or diminish you. The rest is explanation and vindication. If you really learn something from it your vitality will increase. Your mind will sometimes be confused. That means that you are entering new mental territory. Your mission can be realized when you step out from under the shadow of melancholia and exchange it for the great game of life. Then get to it.

Often when your plans threaten to break down or when your life takes a turn to the negative side, you will be able to recognize whether you have measured up to these challenges and can pull yourself out of this mire with the help of your own personality by looking in the mirror. Once your mission is clear, nothing can drag you down.

“The North Sea will sooner look for water than a woman be lost for words.“

(Jutland saying)

Values give a vision a basis. And missions give values a system of coordinates. Goals are the definition of your intentions in concrete, measurable results. The verb “to define” comes from the Latin “finis” (“end” or “goal”). A de-finition is a predestination of an ultimate plan.

As your mission develops, your business game will become immensely exciting and attractive for others as well as for yourself. Your company is an exclusive party, and “parties are meant to last”, as Prince already pointed out in his song “1999”. Even this once utopian year is some time ago, and we must honestly and sincerely realize that there is nothing more dreadful than a never ending party. Not only because we are getting older, not on account of the effort connected with it, but because we get lost in it and don’t get any further. It has no prospect and “lasts” without changing itself or anything else. Fortunately every party eventually reaches a certain stage of exhaustion. The same goes for your business party, as it lacks something crucial: energy reserves.

If your mission progressively comes true your business game will take on bigger and bigger dimensions along with it. It depends above all on the zeal with which you pursue it. Your enthusiasm is the magnet of your business. Your new-found charisma and your interest will connect the interest of other people to your activities. If you stand behind what you do your efforts will automatically be linked to the right people.

You set goals as soon as you resolve to do your own thing. But sometimes you are not at all conscious of them. The problem is the party. It goes on, but it has no goal, no end, and no definition. If no idea dominates what should come of your intentions, there is gaping emptiness. Is your business also woven like that?