A Leader Without A Mentor Limits Success

Leadership Needs Wisdom.  Wisdom Needs Mentor-ship.

Winning is an attitude.  Winning is a process.  Winning is a combination of placing a lot of crucial  things in motion, all at the same time.  Winning is an order of components strung together massaging the same goal.  Winning comes from the efforts of those who know what to do, how to do it, when to do it and making sure it gets done.  Leaders practice winning ways more often than those who do not lead at all.  Business owners are people who need to win more often than not.  Business success comes form winning a lot.  Long term success comes form a leader who recognizes how to remain disciplined with the tools and requirements of their trade.  Long term winning does not come by accident.  It is earned.  A great business owner did not cheat to become great.  The two do not mix well long term.  Finally, the long term business success owner comes to the surface with the help of others.  Mentors were present along that owners successful trail.  Great success does not come to a 'lone-minded' business owner.  Great success does not come to the leader who operates all alone.  A leader without a mentor is a leader who limits success.

I have some mentors.  I appreciate what they bring to my table of production.  One of my best mentors is my wife.  She brings compassion to my stark way of approaching human dynamics.  I am very cold, calculated and efficient in the way I deal with softer traits humans perform.  I would just as soon flip out some bold quip to quickly resolve a nasty rub with one of my co-workers or employees.  It is my wife who helps me filter out the hardness I use in my method of treatment for the personality challenges I face in my leadership path.  My wife is my mentor in how I process my human relations.  She saves me from myself.  She has saved my leadership countless times in the past.  She fills in where I operate blindly.  She helps me reach better results with added compassion and increased human respect.  I do not naturally possess these important tools.  One of my mentors, my wife in this case, helps me find those tools when they are needed.  She adds the depth to the way I need to become as a better leader.  Who helps you with those missing parts?  A leader without a mentor limits success.

There is no business owner who knows it all.  None.  For every leader who made it big, someone behind them helped them learn how to mold how they did what they did.  Great leaders are littered with good mentors.  Great leaders surround themselves with good advice.  Great leaders know when they have reached their own personal capacity for moving forward with a challenging issue.  Great leaders now when to ask for help.  Great leaders learn how to pay attention to other minds that travel with them.  Great business success does not come from a single mind.  Great business models do not grow up big because one person did all of the great thinking.  A leader without a mentor limits success.

Business owners are leaders.  Some are good at it, some are not.  Some are terrible leaders.  The terrible leaders are the ones who struggle the most with business success.  This observation is not rocket science.  The terrible leaders of most business models are the ones who produce the worst numbers.  Terrible leaders do not usually produce great results.  Terrible leaders have a limited library of success rewards.  There are very few economic trophies on the shelves of their hallways.  The terrible leaders are usually the ones who go it alone.  They like wearing the Lone Ranger's mask.  They like being alone.  They mentor with nobody.  They read nothing worthwhile and have no desire to add new knowledge to the work they do.  Their results becomes the proof for how much help they do not permit to come in.  Unfortunately they help others live the loss they individually produced.  A leader without a mentor limits success.

For those of you who are currently leading a business model through the 'mind fields' of this day and age, without a mentor, I suggest you go find one as soon as you can.  There is no business owner on this planet who does not need a business mentor.  None.  Even Bill Gates has a mentor.  Even Steve Jobs had a mentor.  Even our President has some mentors.  Phil Knight has mentors.  Phil Knight has a multi-million dollar cash reserve, too.  In this day and age, and with this poor economy at hand...Phil Knight has a monster, after-tax, cash reserve.  Phil Knight has a lot of business mentors.  Gee, I wonder if that is a good idea?  Get serious, get a mentor.  Find someone who helps you think in ways you will otherwise ignore.  Get a good mentor.  A leader without a mentor limits success.  Some of the best business models in this world were developed by a group of leaders working together...not by a Lone Ranger.  Lone Ranger's suck.  They do not win as often as we would like to believe.  They lose a lot.  Winning comes form those who accept good advice.  Winning comes from those who recognize the power of a mentors views.  A leader without a mentor limits success.

Do Not Refuse Mentor Help!

Charlie Sheen says he is a winner.  He is also one of those Lone Rangers operating in life.  He ignored the compassionate advice of some really great leaders in his industry.  His net worth has dropped almost 48% in the past year-in-a-half.  How is that winning?  False leaders are everywhere.  They will try to dominate the screen, the news, the attention and the interest of those who are willing to follow.  However, in the end they will not produce the best results.  In the end they will crumble the greatness right out of their working models.  They will become littered trash discarded along the side of the business road.  The great results do not flow in tandem with the individuals who operate all alone.  They can parade how much they are winning all they want but their bank accounts do not reflect the same results.  Get a mentor.  Save yourself from yourself.  We all need to do this little step if we want to become successful.  None of us are above Charlie Sheen.  We are the same.  We have the same tendencies.  We can make the very same mistakes.  Make sure you have someone close by that will help you see when our leadership will be tarnished by some unnecessary actions we might try to imply.  Mentors help us see the things we cannot see.  It happens.

If you do not have a 'live' mentor right now, that is fine.  You can find a good mentor from a book or two.  I use a few authors as my mentor-ship board.  I have a mental board of directors I have developed.  I have mentally placed a few key people on that imaginary board.  I include these people because I trust in how they have lived, lead and operated in their lives of challenges and success.  I have made an imaginary board of directors in my mind and have included a list of directors who I think can help me work through the challenges I face in my own leadership paths.  Not always do we have the luxury of being able to talk to our mentors when the need arises.  The art of having some imaginary mentors in the mind to use is a good tool to use when the need is faced without a real mentor at your side.  Charlie Sheen could have used a couple of my imaginary mentors during the past few years of his life.  At least his bank account might look a little healthier.

I find my imaginary mentors from the books that I read.  I read the Bible often.  Almost every single day I read a segment from that book.  Jesus is one of my imaginary board of directors.  I know how he thinks.  I read how he makes decisions.  His decisions and his recommendations have a profound effect on billions of people.  I see how he was able to produce this long term effect on the lives of billions of people thousands of years after his death.  That is very strong leadership.  If you do not believe me, try it.  I challenge anyone to try and do some leadership work in this current world that will eventually affect billions two thousand years in the future.  I doubt anyone can pull that off.  I placed that kind of leader on my imaginary board of directors.  His ways are too effective as a long term leader to ignore those skills when I am faced with trying decisions.  I read about who he was, how he thought and what he represented.  I know a little bit about how he thought.  I try to include those patterns of thoughts in my decision making processes.  He helps to mentor me.

I also love the stories I have read about Abraham Lincoln.  The Lincoln Reader is my favorite Lincoln book.  I have read enough about Lincoln to know a little bit about how he thought.  He is also on my imaginary board of directors.  His actions, his leadership is also one of my considerations when I am faced with tough decisions.  He helps to mentor me.  Some of his ways of operation are not necessarily the same ones I naturally use.  Sometimes I try to think how he might think about something I am trying to achieve.  It might give me another important perspective.  I allow Lincoln's impressions to help me to see separate views.  I sometimes think, how would Abe overcome this issue I am facing?  Sometimes it helps me to see the problem from a different view.

I have others I allow to be on my imaginary board of directors.  I also allow my partner in life, my wife, become a strong board of director.  These influences are necessary for me to see problems in many ways that will eventually help me to turn them around and into something special and productive.  We all have challenges to overcome.  Challenges come with leadership.  Challenges come with ownership.  Making better decisions comes with deeper thinking.  Deeper thinking comes with a wider variety of perspectives.  A wider variety of perspectives comes with the help we receive form the way other great leaders have learned how to influence the leadership they produced.

Success is not about how we do what we do with our own perspectives.  Success is often times the results of how we do what we do with everyone else and their perspectives.  This can only be achieved when we place value on other perspectives.  Those other perspectives are not usually something we own.  We need to learn how to borrow those other perspectives for a little while.  Mentors are the ones who allow us that privileged.  They are also the ones who give us our strength.  Mentors help us mold a better way to operate.  If we improve our ways of operation, we improve the chance that we will win more often.  That way when we fill out our annual tax forms we will not need to report less income to the IRS, like Charlie does.  Be reminded, a business model who must report less income year after year is a business model on its way out!  The last I checked, that is not winning.  Don't get confused.

Good mentors are everywhere.  When the student is ready the teachers appear.  It is one of the most misunderstood components of success.  It is not a success component usually included in college business classes, either.  Do not under-estimate the value of mentor-ship.  Most success is surrounded by this process.

Start your leadership walk by including the art of allowing a mentor to become influential in the way you think.  I might also recommend that you find a way to make sure your mentor has some form of vested interest in your success.  It helps to keep them honest.  They are not Gods.  They are people.  They have flaws, too.  Remain grounded while you accept others advice.  Always exercise caution in your business affairs.  Get some mentoring going on.  It might originally come from some very good books.  Don't get confused.  You are not the reason why success lives.  It has very little to do with who you are and what you did or did not do.  However, failure is truly something you permitted to happen.  Failure is about you.  Know the difference between these two outcomes.  Find some mentor-ship.  A leader without a mentor limits success.

Until next time...