Transformative leaders can be everyday heroes–ordinary people who achieve extraordinary things. These leaders display seven key mindsets of success: high aspirations, courage, resilience, positive, accountability, collaborative, and growth.
HIGH ASPIRATIONS: DARE TO DREAM
Having high aspirations means daring to dream and to create the future. It involves transforming and disrupting–that is, not just trying to make things better but making them different. To make a difference, leaders must be unreasonable in pursuing goals, yet reasonable and flexible about the means to achieve them.
There are three major obstacles to having high aspirations:
For the best leaders,
1. Living in a comfort zone of high standards without learning and growing. high aspirations are
Focusing on achievement in current roles rather than preparing for next at the heart of how roles. they think.
Falling back to lower standards and aspirations over time. To overcome these obstacles and attain and sustain high aspirations, leaders should imagine the perfect future; seize opportunities that are presented every day; work in a culture that is running, not walking; act as a partner, not a follower, of powerful people; and know what they want and work to achieve it.
COURAGE: DARE TO ACT
Courage is required to take the risks that separate great leaders from others. There are three main types of risks:
Rational risk is the risk undertaken in such projects as drilling for oil or financing motion pictures. Dealing with rational risk is a basic management routine; it does not separate great leaders from the rest.
Ambiguity, or risk of the unknown, is disliked by most companies. It is seen as risk by managers but as opportunity by leaders and entrepreneurs.
Personal risk, the fear of failure and ridicule, can be the most daunting but is accepted by the best leaders.
Leaders can build their courage mindsets by making the unknown familiar and routine; by believing in a mission where a greater commitment will match a greater cause; by creating a bigger fear, which causes the fear of inaction to become greater than the risk of action; by focusing first and foremost on outcomes and benefits, and then developing plans to mitigate the risks; by finding support and sharing the burden; and by managing fear through recognizing it and visualizing the benefits of success.