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I have always had one paramount philosophy: if a new project or business opportunity doesn’t excite me and get my entrepreneurial and innovative juices flowing, if it’s not something with which I sense I can make a difference while having a lot of seriously creative fun, then I’d far rather pass on it and move right along to something else that does excite me.
why do you think I have all those companies? They almost certainly wouldn’t be there had I not repeatedly dug my heels in and refused to spend my time on things I recognised as just not right for me.’
listening intently to everyone who has an opinion to share, not just the self-professed experts.
don’t be afraid to wear your passion on your sleeve for all to see, and when in doubt trust your instincts.
What I do believe to be an essential, however, particularly for anyone with entrepreneurial aspirations, is an unfettered willingness to trust their instincts and to follow their own star, even if at times it might appear to be leading them towards the edge of the precipice.
If your vision is to reach a distant beach where, because of the reefs surrounding it, no one has ever set foot, then the chances are that reading the same old charts as everyone else has used isn’t going to get you there either.
I have spent my life trying off-the-chart things and going places that friends and colleagues have told me were bad ideas.
They encouraged me to always look for the good in people instead of assuming the worst and trying to find fault. If
any outward displays of anger or rudeness never serve any useful purpose and if anything play only to your disadvantage.
just remember one thing: you’re guaranteed to miss every shot you don’t take.’
Acquiring the habit of note-taking is therefore a wonderfully complementary skill to that of listening.
the majority of world leaders and captains of industry don’t actually write their own speeches – Churchill being one highly notable exception to this rule – so it is dangerous to judge them by words that are not their own but rather the work of highly paid speech writers.
the all-too-common practice of texting or emailing under the boardroom table in the middle of a meeting is something that I find extremely irritating and downright disrespectful to everyone else in the room.
Not only did he ask good questions, but he listened intently to my responses and wasn’t afraid to zing me back with a tough follow-up when my response fell short of fully addressing his question.
the late Nelson Mandela was a man of innumerable talents, one that always impressed me the most about him was his unfailing willingness to listen to what others had to say.
I was amazed at his ability to make you feel like the only and most important person in the room through his desire to hear what you had to say
I am a firm believer that the kind of wisdom such people manage to accumulate and dispense is directly attributable to their extraordinary listening skills.
A really skilled listener not only takes in what has been said but will also hear what has not been said.
While what a speaker says can have several layers of meaning, how it is said can also be a giveaway to various subtexts.
LISTENING DOESN’T GO UNNOTICED When you take the time and effort to improve your listening skills by growing that extra pair of ears, you will be pleasantly surprised by how much your people will appreciate the new you.
The key to almost every one of these leadership attributes was the vital importance of a leader’s ability to listen.
Visiting your staff in their ‘natural habitat’ as often as is practicably possible is huge for you and for them.
Generally, however, I find that visiting staff on their own – or at least neutral – turf is a lot less intimidating for them than if they have to come to you.
sitting in a top-floor corner office may afford some wonderful views of the surrounding scenery but until you get out of there on a regular basis you are never going to get a proper view on what is going on in the company.
‘Always try to look at what we are doing from the customer’s perspective.’
In my experience some of the harshest and most valuable sounding boards you will ever find can be found around the family dinner table.
in my experience, particularly with anything that represents a really game-changing innovation, I believe that most consumer opinions tend to be overly cautious and tempered by what they have or have not experienced in the past.
