You could spend the rest of your life listening and learning everything available on leadership, most of which is really good, actionable information so have at it! Im sure you have your favorites just like me but over thirty-five years, I have made lots of mistakes, lots of bad decisions and hit lots of brick walls. One of my mentors says “Im not sure I trust anyone that doesn’t have a limp.”

I knew he was talking about the trials and triumphs of life. So, I thought it may be useful to describe some of the trials that created a mindset I learned after each one of those.

I have discovered that leadership includes doing, but its more about being than doing. It is the “being a leader” that requires more of a mindset. Mindsets can be fixed or flexible, they can create a path to move you forward, or build a barrier that feels safe but left unchecked can be the onset of stagnation. I have learned that preparation is the best skillset for a leaders mindset….

Here are a few of the traits I’ve learned for a prepared leaders mindset: I don’t claim originality just experientially.

An Observing mindset:

Seeing beyond the obvious, learning to make mental notes, learning communication styles and cues…watch for emotional capacity and bandwidth.

A Reasoning mindset:

Moving from the known to the undetermined….The process of testing new waters or even recognizing that there are waters and weighing the information as a calculated risk.

An Imagining mindset:

Envisioning the future before it arrives means taking the limits of your current understanding off and have lots of what if and self-talk.

A Challenging mindset:

Pushing for higher and deeper thinking is a self- imposed discipline that most likely will include others that have been where you want to go. If you aren’t challenged to know more, your business may be no more.

A Deciding mindset:

Choosing with consequences in mind is the burden of leadership. The most important mindset about deciding is deciding when you are wrong.

A Learning mindset:

Keeping a developmental mindset means always looking for nuggets….wherever they may be hidden. This means effort, my dad used to say “eat the chicken and spit out the bones.”

A Reflecting mindset:

Intimacy…. in-to-me-see, or self-awareness keeps the mirror clean. My mom used to say, did you look in the mirror before you went out? It was a self-check to make sure things were in the right place.

Since there are seven of these, use them every week, take one a day in whatever order makes sense for you and be intentional. If you are intentional with these every week, in a few short months, you will find yourself leading at a much higher level.