HOW TO HAVE CLEAR AND POWERFUL VALUES FOR SUCCESS

Values are beliefs that you think are true and important. Not all of our beliefs accurately reflect reality 100% of the time.

This is the first of a series of blog posts that will examine how your beliefs about yourself and the world powerfully influence how you do business. These articles are designed to help business owners, CEOs and executives focus on what they believe is important for business growth.

When you have clarity about your values, it strengthens passion, purpose, and communication with your staff and customers.

Business people hold two types of beliefs: those that minimize success and those that maximize success. Business owners have a variety of beliefs that fall within a range along this spectrum, and the cumulative effect of these beliefs has a powerful impact on their business.

For instance, a business owner may have a lot of ideas that increase their marketing success but limit their sales success. They may enjoy connecting to other people and spreading brand awareness, but may be less comfortable asking for the sale.

It is the business owner’s conflict in values that creates this type of situation.

Two types of business leader mindsets

The two types of mindsets in a business owner’s mind when it comes to opportunity are: fixed and growth mindsets. Take a look at the research from Carol Dweck for more information.

A fixed mindset is:

• About doing things a certain way with no possibility for change
• Has to do with only seeing obstacles that block you from success
• A tendency to be negative
• Will influence your daily actions and expectations
• Example: ‘I’m never good enough no matter how hard I try.’ ‘I’ve worked so hard but never get what I really deserve.’

A growth mindset lets you take a completely different approach to the same situation:

• It is a belief that allows growth and forward motion
• It is a belief that opens up to possibility
• Tends to be positive
• Is something you only have to believe 1%
• Allows you to challenge the negative things you assume are true about yourself
• Might be about things you could do differently that would allow for change
• Examples: ‘I am improving steadily every day.’ ‘If I keep trying I will eventually succeed.’ Or ‘I am confident in my abilities and will focus on my past achievements instead of failures.’

How to challenge a fixed mindset

It’s important to realize that a locked door in your mind will often exert its influence when you are trying something new. This fixed belief about how things have to be done will initially creep into your mind as doubt and make you hesitate. This can be particularly difficult to overcome when you are launching a new product or service, changing a business system process, or implementing a new technology in your business.

You can easily find these rigid beliefs because they will always:

• Make you doubt your abilities and increase your resistance to change
• Focus on the negative and amplify a fear of failing
• Magnify the risks and minimize the rewards for taking bold action
• Create conflict between you and your team or you and your customers

A fixed belief in your mind is a distorted belief and is not particularly rational. It often makes sense emotionally but not logically. Therefore it can be helpful to add “because” after your belief. For example:

• I believe that I am incompetent because my father always said so, and I never did well in school.

In order to challenge rigid thinking and distorted beliefs, you need to find evidence to support an opposite viewpoint:

• Although my father always told me I am incompetent and I didn’t do well in school, I believe that I can think differently about myself. I believe that I do have talents and self-worth because I have created a successful business through hard work and by hiring the right people in my company. I don’t always need to be the smartest person in the room; I just need access to expertise to make informed decisions.

Whether you are aware of it or not, your values are driving your business.

Values are what are what we consider important, worthwhile, or desirable. They dictate how we think we should behave, and how we think others should treat us in response. Your value system is a personal moral code. Here are some examples:

• All employees and customers deserve to be treated with respect
• Employees who disregard company policy should be punished
• My company has a responsibility to protect the Earth’s environment

Values are part of our identity. It is hard to know how to deal with people and situations if we don’t know what we value, or if our values shift depending on the mood we are in.

Values are based on our beliefs, and our beliefs are shaped by our direct and indirect experience. We can often hold conflicting beliefs.

For example, you may believe ‘the customer always comes first’ even if they are disrespectful to you. Yet, you or your staff may get openly upset and disagree with your customer’s attitude or requests. Therefore, your behavior does not fit your values, and you may not even be aware of other values that are influencing your behavior in certain situations or with particular employees and customers.

These articles are intended to increase your awareness of fixed and opposing beliefs that you hold true in order to bring increase your focus in your business, and increase congruency between your beliefs and your way of doing business.

Click the links below to learn more about how your values are impacting your business success.

How to Deal With Authority in Your Business

How to Have Healthy Control and Be Successful

How to Be More Accountable and Authentic in Your Workplace

How to Be More Professional Dealing with Anger at the Office