How Mentally Strong Leaders Succeed Despite Uncertainty
What today’s business environment needs is mentally strong leaders who can co-exist with uncertainty rather than trying to manage it. Most people cope with uncertainty by retreating to the safety of familiarity and sameness. When faced with numerous unknowns, they seek comfort in habitual behaviors.
But mentally strong leaders know that to move successfully through today’s business field of unpredictability, they must get comfortable with and make friends with being uncertain. They deliberately bring newness into their world and deal with uncertainty on their own terms in a number of ways that promote success:
• Never assume there is only one outcome for any problem. Prepare for multiple outcomes regardless of what is expected, be aggressively inquisitive by asking questions, and see uncertainty as an opportunity that offers you a different perspective. See things through multiple lenses rather than a limiting single lens.
• Don’t dismiss feelings of uncertainty. Uncertainty offers you a chance to step back to reassess numerous possibilities. Take the offensive approach by being inner-directed, not allowing the uncertainty of the situation to dictate your thinking or control your emotions. Think through your decisions and then act on them, but not as a knee-jerk response to fears, the opinions of colleagues, the business environment or momentary situations.
• Grow by learning something new about your craft daily. Being an inquisitive lifelong student builds your confidence to deal with whatever comes your way. Stay up-to-date on current trends in your business.
• Invest your time in nourishing productive current relationships at the same time you build new ones. Healthy relationships offer you confidantes to bounce things off of with the peace of mind that they can provide wise advice when needed.
• Shake up your routine. Experiment by taking a different route to work, choosing a new restaurant, or approaching your job in a different manner.
Apply these strategies to gain the freedom to break free from conventional approaches, a stagnant mindset that no longer serves you, and ineffective behavior patterns. I acknowledge that at times, like you, I also experience that uneasy feeling of uncertainty. But in working at becoming my own person, I’ve taken the “road less traveled” because of its empowering effect to design my own life rather than leave it to chance.
I urge you to get comfortable with uncertainty and use the aforementioned strategies to offer you new insights into who you are and how you want to affect the future as a mentally strong leader.
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©Copyright 2016 Jennifer Touma Mindscape
