How Leaders Can Cultivate a Success Mindset
What does it mean to succeed? And is success actually a milestone or a feeling? Exploring your mentality around success can help you find more of it in your life and work.
Success is defined as the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. People who are successful experience many different feelings when they accomplish their goals, but learning to embody these feelings before you actually achieve a milestone can be a catalyst for success.
In essence, try to think of success as a continuous state of mind. You don’t want to coast to the finish line. It’s important to show up for success the same way you have at every point throughout your journey. Embodying success is just as important as taking action towards achieving it, so it’s beneficial to practice being successful in the way you show up every day.
How Leaders Can Embody a Success Mindset
When you get to the root of it, success originates in the mind, so it’s vital that leaders maintain mindsets that allow them to continuously pursue success.
As a leader, you’re responsible for creating the goal, brainstorming the plan, assembling the team, and keeping everyone on track. Continuously looking for ways to incorporate perseverance, generosity, and positivity into your practices as a leader will help you develop a mentality of success. These characteristics separate those who achieve success from those who don’t.
Successful people embody several common characteristics. Most essentially, they maintain a growth mindset. When you have a growth mindset, you view failures as learning opportunities that make you better equipped for future success.
Exemplifying a growth mindset at work is one of the best things you can do for your team. By cultivating an attitude that everything is working in your favor, you bolster the confidence of your team members.
Finishing a Project: 5 Tips for a Success Mindset
When a project’s end is near and success is in sight, the journey is at its most critical point; this is where perseverance comes in handy, this is where your team needs real leadership, and this is where you need to take charge.
Here are five areas to focus on as you begin to close in on your goal:
1. Pre-Mature Transmissions
People may start dropping off the team and moving to new goals as their roles require less work. However, it’s still important they remain available and open for communication because there are always loose ends to tie up. As a leader, be sure to carefully announce and monitor communication lines so team members receive important messages.
2. The Plan
Remind your team that the plan becomes even more important, as you get closer to the finish line, not less.
People often think, “Oh, we’re just about there, so we must be done with the plan,” and then forget to look at the plan. This can be a disaster if you’ve worked hard to complete a goal but forget to do something crucial at the end and miss out on the fruits of your labor.
Similar to finishing a race or marathon, your team needs to approach the end of a project with just as much (if not more) vigor than they experienced in its early stages.
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3. Motivation
As the project starts to wind down, people tend to lose motivation and begin to look for other projects to work on. It’s up to the leader to charge up the troops to cross the finish line as winners.
Remind them of the plan’s purpose and express appreciation for their hard work. Provide them with a clear reward at the end of a long project to show your appreciation for their work and give them a source of motivation for your next project.
4. Availability
As a leader, your availability may become more limited as you get closer to the finish line and work to ensure the plan’s success. However, your team will also have tight deadlines at this crucial stage, so you need to remain available to them.
Additionally, leaders, who are used to delegating and managing as opposed to “doing,” may be called to the front lines. They may find themselves rolling up their sleeves and getting to work alongside their troops to carry a project across the finish line.
A good leader will do whatever it takes to help their team succeed, and they’ll be there to support them when they need it.
5. Frequency of Meetings
As the deadline approaches, there should be more rather than fewer meetings. These meetings can be brief touchpoints, so that team members can review the project plan quickly to ensure no one is missing anything.
At this late juncture, team members may be reluctant to attend meetings. However, these meetings are important and the more team members that attend, the better. The key is to keep the discussions efficient so the team can finish up anything that remains and cross the finish line.
The Bottom Line
Embodying success is just as important as taking action towards achieving it, so practice being successful in the way you show up every day.
Ask yourself what you and your team need to do to feel successful. While achieving an actual milestone certainly makes teams feel successful, all your actions and attitudes along the way can majorly contribute to (and detract from) success.
You have the ability to embody success, you just need to practice it. Read more about achieving success in The 10 Step Arootah Success Formula where we explain every process we’ve used at Arootah to create incredible results in our clients’ lives.
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