Taking People With You: The Only Way to Make Big Things Happen Paperback Read Online Free PDF Page B

It’s a prejudice, a bias, a fixed way of looking at things. We all have them, some good and powerful, some bad and limiting.
    Limiting Mind-set
  “What works in China won’t work here.”
  “Corporate doesn’t understand my market.”
Powerful Mind-set
  “It’s amazing that a Western idea worked in China, so it’s bound to work here.”
  “Corporate can be a huge help to my market.”
The key, when applying this tool to your own way of thinking as a leader, is to remember that a mind-set is something you choose, not something that you leave up to chance.
    To Use This Tool
  Start by silently recognizing the limiting mind-sets you see in others (colleagues, family, friends). Notice how often people have mind-sets that weaken their results (e.g., I can’t do that, I always mess this up, You cannot do
x
in a recession, etc.). These mind-sets are beliefs that people hold to be true. However, you know they cannot be universally true, because
you
don’t hold them, or not all the time.
  Next, realize you are no different. You also have a set of limiting mind-sets that you hardly realize are there, though others are likely to see them in you.
  Admit that your mind-set is a choice because if what you believe were really true, there would be no need to
believe
it.
  Now, make an effort to choose mind-sets that will help you, not limit you.
© John O’Keeffe, BusinessBeyondtheBox.com

2
Be Your Best Self
    be yourself, know yourself, grow yourself
    Just be yourself.
    I bet you’ve heard that advice many times before. I know I have. And I bet you’ve been told that, in business as in life, being yourself means being trustworthy and authentic and that if you don’t come off as those two things, then you’ve failed already, because no one is going to follow you very far.
    It’s interesting how casually people often deliver this wisdom. They’ll tell you to be yourself before a job interview or on a first date to help calm your nerves and take the pressure off. The implication is that you don’t have to try so hard. Just relax.
Be yourself.
    Easier said than done. In reality, it’s much harder to be yourself than most people are willing to admit.
    Think about how often you’ve watched or listened to someone you don’t even know that well, maybe a colleague or someone on television, and you could just tell that that person wasn’t being authentic. During the 2008 presidential primary season in the United States, I remember watching the news on multiple occasions and shaking my head as the various candidates, trying hard to find their footing, flubbed in this regard over and over again. I remember a news clip of Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, where he was behind in the polls, donning bowling shoes and taking to the lanes in an attempt to connect with working-class voters. It was cringe-worthy watching him throw a pretty pathetic gutter ball, not so much because of his lack of skill, but because helooked so stiff and uncomfortable while he was doing it. By contrast, he was much more relaxed and relatable at a subsequent event where he played his
favorite sport, basketball, with local voters. It was his game and you could just see it. And by the way, he’s got a heck of a jump shot.
    Around the same time, the press took Hillary Clinton to task for doing shots of whiskey and drinking mugs of beer at a bar in Indiana. The Web site Gawker, for one, mocked her for assuming the only way to appeal to blue collar voters was to drink “like a frat boy” (not to mention her choice of a
Canadian
whiskey). At a different event in New Hampshire, when a voter asked how she managed to keep on going day after day, she got choked up and responded, “It’s not easy, and I couldn’t do it if I just didn’t passionately believe it was the right thing to do. I have so many opportunities from this country. I just don’t want to see us fall backwards.” This display of emotion struck people as genuine. After the