In my years of mentoring entrepreneurs, one problem I've seen all too often is low self-esteem and over-compensation through arrogance and ego. These entrepreneurs struggle to respect customers or team members, and their businesses generally fail. As a member of the team, low self-esteem leads to low confidence, low productivity and no job satisfaction. Fortunately, both can be fixed.
Organizational change expert Paul Meshanko, in his classic book The Respect Effect, explores the human science behind these questions, confirming that people with healthy self-esteem give the best of themselves and treat others with respect. We are all closed when we do not respect. He assures us that everyone can train to stay on track.
With my updates on entrepreneurs, I love the eight stages of Meshanko to help develop business self-esteem and avoid the ego trap, which support a broad range of attitudes and behaviors beneficial to startups. companies:
- Identify the qualities and skills most closely related to your idea of success . Current research is conclusive that self-esteem is related to our sense of competence in the areas that are important to us. Looking at the goals of your entrepreneur, be sure to follow your own definition of success that gives you pride and passion in his quest.
- Identify your current strengths and make plans for improvement. Once you have clarified your personal definition of start-up success, examine where you stand in relation to where you want to be. Whatever your goals, there is little more value than knowing that you are progressing towards your image.
- Be on the lookout for new opportunities to develop your talents and experiences. Part of our sense of self worth comes from the belief and confidence that we have the ability to grow the business today and into the future. Entrepreneurs have a natural basis for adventure and curiosity, and should savor new things every day to stretch them.
- Identify and redirect unhealthy competition and comparisons. Make you the base, not the others. Your sense of value should not be determined by other startups, or what you think your peers expect from you. The competition sabotages team work and leaves feelings of isolation and alienation. Use the others as a source of inspiration rather than envy.
- Forgive yourself for past mistakes and bad decisions. From a rational point of view, scolding for startup failures makes no sense. Unleash your energy to focus on more productive activities and learn from past efforts. The great entrepreneur Thomas Edison said that any wrong attempt is another step forward.
- Stand completely responsible for your actions, decisions and results. The legitimate place for guilt and remorse in the short term is to bring them to some type of behavioral change. Not holding yourself accountable sends out subtle messages that can hurt others' self-esteem, and this does not promote trust or competence.
- Develop a self-diagnosis model that validates your value and abilities. Each of us has developed a way to interpret and explain the business world around us. It is important that our stories do not harm us or release us from our responsibilities. We should continue to feel dignified, responsible and capable, with a state of mind that allows us to continue to follow our entrepreneurial passion.
- Concentrate on what you can control, not what you can not. Our short-term destiny is not always under our control. What we can do is commit to doing our best in any entrepreneurial environment. We can also ensure that we build strong relationships with successful business leaders before we need their wisdom.
For every entrepreneur, a healthy self-esteem, leading to self-confidence, is essential for a constrained ego and more successful, since every start-up enters unknown territory and must take risks to seize a new opportunity. Not all entrepreneurs have experience in this field, but all have the ability to learn and the passion to succeed.
In my experience, the most common cause of entrepreneur failure is to give up too soon, rather than running out of money. Are you running out of your own potential, and not working on your own self-esteem, thereby jeopardizing your business success and job satisfaction?