Tuesday, April 17
In our prior video, we talked about how your intentions about leading impact your mindset about leadership and your overall success as a leader. I want to continue the conversation about mindset and take it apart a bit more by discussing another aspect that impacts your mindset about leading and that is your beliefs and expectations. The saying, “you get what you expect whether you want it or not” sums up what I’m talking about here. Expectation is defined as a belief about or mental picture of a future event. An expectant attitude is one of having feelings of anticipation about a person or occurrence. People tend to live up to their expectations, and their environment becomes a mirror of their beliefs and expectations. Positive beliefs and expectations yield positive results; negative beliefs and expectations yield negative results.
Your mindset about a particular subject is influenced by your expectations and beliefs. Beliefs and expectations are often a result of messages we have heard throughout our life. They often start with our parents and teachers and are then reinforced by our personal experiences throughout our life. Yet, what we often don’t realize is that beliefs and expectations create our experiences. For example, if you play tennis competitively, do you believe and expect to win the tennis match or race? If you believe you won’t win or cannot win, chances are that will be what you experience. And, if you do happen to win, you will blame it on luck or that your opponent was having a bad day. So, you attribute your success to something external to you as opposed to something that you created internally, from your mindset. Yet, if we flip that entire scenario around so that you approach your tennis match with the positive intent of winning and, because you know how good you are and how much you have practiced, you not only believe you will win but you expect to win, you are much more likely to have that fantastic match (and even win) than if your mindset was at the opposite end of the spectrum. It’s the same thing when you lead. What are your expectations and beliefs about leading and about the effectiveness of your leadership style? These things impact your mindset, which impacts your leadership success.
Take some time to think this through and if your beliefs and expectations about leading are not serving you, what new expectations can you set that will serve you better? A belief is a thought you keep thinking and it is the beliefs that create expectations so, what new thought can you keep thinking about leadership that will become a new, better serving belief? Start there and see how this then begins to shift your expectations and overall mindset, and then the more you consistently make these shifts, you will notice how your results begin to shift. Take small steps, be consistent and see what happens.
