Are Leaders Born or Made? 

What Makes a Good Manager? Should Businesses Hire Talent or Mindset? The Mindset That Increases Creativity and Productivity.

Every day there are new small and micro businesses starting all over the world and every single one of them has an owner that is doing their best to achieve their version of success.
If you’re one of them, this article is for you.

What is a business mindset?

• Every so often a truly groundbreaking idea comes along. This is one. Mindset explains:
• Why brains and talent don’t bring success
• How they can stand in the way of it
• Why praising brains and talent doesn’t foster self-esteem and accomplishment, but jeopardizes them
• How teaching a simple idea about the brain raises grades and productivity
• What all great CEOs, parents, teachers, athletes know

Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success—a simple idea that makes all the difference.

In a fixed mindset, people believe their basic qualities, like their intelligence or talent, are simply fixed traits. They spend their time documenting their intelligence or talent instead of developing them. They also believe that talent alone creates success—without effort. They’re wrong.

In a growth mindset, people believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment. Virtually all great people have had these qualities.

Teaching a growth mindset creates motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education, and sports. It enhances relationships. When you start applying the Business Mindset, you’ll see how.

Having a business mindset is critical in setting up and running any type of business. Because it’s not going to grow itself, if you don’t develop the way you think about your business, it’s going nowhere.
I will be providing some guidelines into improving your current mindset. These guidelines will not automatically make you a business mindset guru but they will align your current way of thinking to the business mindset type of thinking and hopefully will help out in taking the subject to the next level.

1. Be clear with your intention

Is it your intention to be in business and to grow a business? Or are you just doing this for fun?

Just because you love what you do doesn’t mean you should do it for free – the key to a successful business is to do what you love, serve others, and charge appropriately for the value you deliver. Value yourself and have a clear intention to generate a profit. You wouldn’t work 40 hours a week for free, nor for a discounted price, so don’t do it in your own business.

Set your intentions clearly from the start and allow those intentions to guide your decision making.

2. Use your awareness

What’s happening in your industry, who are your competitors, who can you team up with for mutual benefit? What does the market want? What is the value you can offer?

The secret to starting a business is to find out what your market wants, and deliver that. This is often stated as finding out a gap in the market and then a market in the gap before confirming that you are the right person to fill that gap.

Is there room for two businesses delivering the same product or service in your market? Can you see a way to do it better than what is currently on offer?

If you’re not aware of your differentiating factors, it will be tough to sell it.

3. Energy flows where attention goes

Attention is a limited resource. Where you place your attention is going to have a major impact on the growth of your business. So use it intentionally.

Create a business plan and place your attention on what is necessary to grow your business.

I find it’s best to place my attention on three major things per day. That’s three things per day that I want to get done. And I make and keep a commitment to myself to get them done.

4. Set objective goals

An objective goal is one that if you explained it to a complete stranger in one sentence, they would understand it, and also be able to measure your progress and achievement. It would have a very clearly defined end objective.

Set objective goals for profit, turnover, target market, product creation, and everything else in the 9 divisions of your business. And make sure the objective goal you set is going to challenge you.

5. Be clear on who you serve

Who are your customers (who do you deliver value to?)

6. Make decisions after identifying at least three choices.

If you have one option than that is no option at all. If you have two options this is called a dilemma. When you create at least three scenaria, than you can have an option to pick at least one.

Nothing suppresses your leadership abilities more than you. And one of the ways you do that is by using words (both thoughts and spoken words) that take away your perception of choice.

You are the King or Queen of your world – you always have choice and you are the only one who can make any choice for you.

Every time you use the words and phrases listed below you take away your perception of choice. Therefore, you restrict your own ability to lead and make decisions.

• Have to
• Need to
• Should
• Must

Be aware of your use of these words – they have very low levels of intention and are a very low order of create.

A business after all, is a creation of you and your mind. It’s best to be creating with intention and with a perception of choice.

7. Develop a combination of attention to detail and organisation in everything you do

Business is really all about numbers. Being organised helps you measure those numbers, and then improve systems in order to improve the numbers. Without this, your business will fail.

It’s important to understand what numbers are worth monitoring (the ones that have a direct impact on your ability to serve and charge for that service is a good start).

It’s also about the attention to detail you pay to the little things that make a big difference. Sometimes this is the only thing that sets you apart from your competition – and it can mean that you own the space you’re in.

8. Measure service and have an awareness of income

The more you serve, the more you’ll earn. It’s a matter of the Laws of Exchange. The more you place your attention on the quality of the delivery of your service (your outflow), the more your customer is going to have a perception of value, and therefore a willingness to pay your reward.

That means you’ll be more willing to ask for a reward (your inflow). And that is very important – you’ll never hit a shot you don’t take. You’ll never get paid more than what you ask for.

And reward is always to be asked for.

RESOLUTIONS TO CREATE BUSINESS SOLUTIONS

In front of an audience consisting of ambitious young people, businessmen, lawyers and accountants, Demetris Stylianides founder and CEO of THINKBOX LTD presented the professional services of Creativity,Entrepreneurship and Business Mindset. The event was held on Friday 15 January 2016 at the 7seas Columbia, Limassol.

The whole presentation was a call for ambitious young people to follow their dream on creation, entrepreneurship and business mind set. These services are equally useful for experienced business people who need a different approach because of the new economic developments around the world.

THINKBOX’s philosophy is that everyone should develop entrepreneurial thinking and problem-solving skills that are important for their future, through new approaches. Most young people after they finish their studies, do not have the practical tools to put their knowledge into practice and such programmes will make them feel more confident in their first business steps. While most of the young people have plenty of new ideas, they luck the experience needed to implement those ideas. Using systemic thinking and methodology as well as advanced verbal skills, participants will be able to learn among other things, negotiation techniques and ways of promoting services and products.