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Then the numbers will add up by themselves. Coaches approach their goal with humility, gratitude and a sense of responsibility, and set the team a good example. The female boss is in business what the trainer is in sport: the leader and the mover and shaker.
She is respected and loved and as a result has paved the way to success. “Power requires natural authority,” says Christiane zu Salm. “Women know that. And because they know that, power is in good hands when it is in their hands.”
This book shows you how to become a female leader and how to use your abilities to deal with the business of tomorrow. Never in the history of evolution has it been possible for women to achieve success, lead teams and build a successful career to such an extent as it is today.
What happens when business is no longer war, but play? It is the beginning of your career. From the beginnings, the vision and the ideas, to the daily grind, up to the highest level of inspiration, innovation and creativity. This is what this book is about: a handbook for “the female leader”. For you.
MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU.
Sources:
Pease, Allan & Barbara. Why Men Don’t Listen & Women Can’t Read Maps.
Pease, Allan & Barbara. Why Men Don’t have a clue & Women Always Need More Shoes.
YOUR ROAD
“A lot of people don’t get what they want because they don’t say what they want.“
Madonna, in: “SEX”
What shall I do?
So, what is your goal? What does your career look like? Is it your passion? Your life? These are not easy questions. But the right way. There is no happiness: as soon as you have obtained it, you become unhappy. But there is satisfaction. If you can answer these questions easily, you can be satisfied.
You don’t just “acquire” satisfaction. A lot of people follow whatever undertaking and believe that one day they will achieve happiness. Others believe that one day the meaning of their lives will become clear. One day? Why not now? It is essential to be satisfied here and now.
True happiness consists in following your passion. In one moment you live in every moment.
Satisfaction doesn’t consist in finding the meaning of life, but in feeling alive. Here and now.
You have two means: time and money. Forget the idea that you don’t have time.
Forget the saying that money can’t buy happiness. You have all the time in the world when you follow your own goal. That means making your passion your life. And then you will get all the money in the world. It is that simple. And that hard.
We all have a task: to make the best out of our lives. Each of us has something unique within us: our individual brilliance. Both of these ideas were formulated by Immanuel Kant in the sentence: “Every human being is his/her own purpose”. By “purpose” he meant “goal”. Every human being is therefore a goal. “His/her own” because it is unique and inviolate. For no one can make others his or her purpose, but they may use other people as a means to an end. That is the basic idea behind the Enlightenment, the “emergence of mankind from his self-inflicted immaturity” (Kant). Whoever reaches this point, where the goal is clear, has decided to lead his own life. Then new questions arise. And here, too, Kant has the basic question formulated: “What should I do?” It is the basic question in ethics. “Ethos” means “attitude”.
The first small steps
W
e all work in order to live. But what kind of work? The time we spend earning our money determines the quality of our lives. Those who can follow their favorite occupation and earn money from it have a sense of having found themselves.
These people can count themselves as the being among the happiest. It is evident from their energy and liveliness. Not even the most wonderful and long holiday, not even a trip round the world produces such a kick as a calling to a career. Connect your dream with your career, and you will enjoy the road towards your goal as well as the goal itself. Just imagine if you could spend the rest of your life only doing what you like doing best. A life of action, on cloud nine – and according to Kant, your sacred duty!
Many people know what their goals are, but don’t know how to go about reaching them. They are too far off, and before lies nothing but stumbling blocks and obstacles that keep you from it. First you have to do something. You don’t see your goal for the problems and the humdrum of everyday life. You lose sight of it. But what you don’t see is what is right in front of your nose: the first step. In order to take it, you have to trace the path all the way back from the goal.
You have to get moving. The Greek word for “way” is “method”. And there is only one right way: your own. To follow it, the point of departure must be clearly defined. For this we have developed a unique road map: the “performance scale”. We start from the premise that a person can only achieve exactly as much as his or her stage of mental development will allow. How to find out and know where you stand as an individual and how to continue on the way up has been shown in Gigi Sage’s excellent book “Hello, Tarzan”. And so you can understand how your career will be an enormous success, the performance scale is graded in the order of the following chapters. And even if you want to defend yourself tooth and nail against earning a lot of money…if you follow your path, it will come almost automatically.
With the descriptions of scenarios you can discover if this stage in the development of your business sounds familiar and find out in each case where you should go from here: from the values you set up for yourself to the service you provide for others. In any case there is no escape: every single phenomenon is experienced in the growth of a business, every career is built on these steps, and every development is a rung on this ladder. And every time you reach a new stage it gets better and will become more difficult. And it doesn’t matter whether you are dealing with the daily organization, finding customers, building up teams into self-organizing units or serving humanity.
Entrepreneurship is living your dream. It means that your aims are in tune with your heart. You always work in principle in a tight unit in which you take over the role of leader, whether as a free agent, a lady of leisure, or an executive in a large company. Our society doesn’t make it easy for anyone to realize their dream. It values the mediocre. Our most important influences come from our parents and teachers. And they all praise security to the skies. They expect you to fit in with a system and to become “a useful member of society”. And that you will become – but at the end, not at the beginning. First you will become wild and unruly, you will recover your own curiosity, and with it your lust for life.
So entrepreneurship is a stony and exhausting path. But there are no easy paths. Either you fight it out or fight for all of your life against the tedium of a life of security and without passion. In Germany we still live in luxury that we can barely afford: provided or subsidized by the state. The result is not only a certain laziness, but also a lack of passion amounting to lethargy. And a poor quality.
The somewhat anarchic but lively and passionate filmmaker Klaus Lemke believes that Germany would be Europe’s number one film making country if films weren’t subsidized. Not only because you get the money in advance, but also chiefly because a crowd of investors and skeptics incessantly point to the script, demand that the characters be explained to them, and so subsequently everything has to be rewritten. “Everything has already been explained to death before the shooting, so nothing happens in the film anymore”, said Lemke. “I would like to say to filmmakers, do your own, small thing without money. At least it’s your own then!”
We are all colleagues, fathers, mothers, sons, grandchildren. Even if we play the role expected of us perfectly, we will always lose something. We are not in the world to play out roles or to give in to the pressure of custom. Our bodies are aware of that. They send out signals of our condition: aches and pains, illnesses, feelings of hopelessness, despair, disappointment. You can read disappointment in particular in many faces, because the great dream of their lives has at some time been put aside and they have then found themselves somewhere where they didn’t want to be. No problem. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. Many people are suddenly a lot happier when they take the first step towards becoming completely free in order to live their dream and pursue their goals. Often illness, redundancy, divorce or bankruptcy open people’s eyes to recognizing the value of their lives and to pay heed to the time that is left to them to do the right thing. We teach this awakening experience in our self-awareness seminars. We research the curiosity in people, delve into the sources and recommend to them projects, out of which small and then large companies grow.
You can create a life that is based round your personal interests and whatever is close to your heart. “The female leader” shows you your career and shows you that the road is worth it. If you turn things which you love the most into products and services that benefit others, you will soon discover what it feels like to be genuinely financially independent. And you will have found the inner peace that goes with it. Yes, money does bring happiness. And a career brings satisfaction.
“The female leader” is not a “how-to-” book. It tells you the rules of the game of entrepreneurship and when to change gear so that you can move forward. Business is not simple, and so we don’t simplify it by giving you helpful hints that you can’t use in everyday life. If you want to live your life, we will show you how you can use your own sense of curiosity to do it. It is like the scout on the path. Follow your sense of curiosity and you will always see a light in front of you, regardless of whether you are still contemplating a product or have already placed it on the market. Wherever you are, there is always a step in front of you. You will find it difficult, but there is no going back. Real success is complicated. “She is a Natural Leader” is written for intelligent and motivated individuals who regard their careers as a game. Not a game of chance, but a sport, which they learn, train for and during which they continually encounter new challenges their whole life long. They know what they want to achieve. We show how it can be achieved.
Most people don’t lack courage for a career; they lack the footing and the attitude. If you don’t have the orientation, you will change direction more often. Every time that costs a lot of time and money. Because we show you the way, you learn how to place time and money respectively in relation to your plan and thereby learn how to use them as instruments for yourself effectively and successfully. This is the right way. For while the number of steady jobs is rapidly sinking and the number of unemployed drastically increasing, the number of people become self-employed is growing – and not only since the government scheme supporting the self-employed. People who are waiting for changes can wait a long time. If you want security, you make your fate dependent on others. If you follow your sense of curiosity, you will radiate joy and will arouse the curiosity of others. And perhaps their greed, too.
Go another way. Find your own. Drop out of the statistic. Become self-employed. Offer a service that is near to your heart and you will find millions of people who have been waiting for it. They will be infected by your enthusiasm. You career will have its ups and downs and smiles and frowns. But with this book you always know what you can do for or against them.
This book is the outcome of experience with thousands of clients that I have had since 1993. We have learned from these countless training sessions. And we are still learning. And out of this has arisen the model of the “performance scale”, which will stand you in good stead as a personal career road map. But something has to be clear from the start: what type of businesswoman are you? Do the following quiz. The result may possibly surprise you.
WHICH KIND OF LEADER ARE YOU?
T
EN NOT VERY SERIOUS QUESTIONS WHICH WILL REVEAL YOUR ATTITUDE AND CLEAR THE WAY FOR YOU.
Satisfaction depends on whether we know who we are and what we want. Then we can do things which correspond to our talents and temperament. We all know that leaders are very different in character.
We have taken three types that we have come across again and again and who had blazed a trail. And one of them will most resemble you.
For your business to be successful you need all three. You have aspects of all three in you. At first you have to play all three roles. But a leading role is designed for you.
However we should be honest. There are no right answers and wrong answers. Have fun with the “She is the Natural Leader” personality test – and especially with the results.
1.At the moment you are reading:
a.The Little Prince. Againandagain. Really from another planet.
b.Harry Potter. I want to know what people find so fascinating about it. And if you can keep a secret: I can’t stop any more.
c.Machiavelli for Women. Simple,effective, efficacious.
2.What is your house like?
a.A sexy apartment in Bauhaus style with a lot of room for meditation.
b.Trendy, colorful and lively. No need to change it round for a party.
c.Classical with a hint of country style. Another world where you can wind down and feel comfortable.
3.What did you want to be as a child?
a.A diva
b.A Nobel Prize winner
c.Chancellor
4.Which of these things would be the most desirable?
a.A silver wedding
b.Multiple orgasms
c.A meteoric career
5.You are sitting in your favorite bar with a glass of Bailey’s in front of you, when your dream man walks in and gives you a cheeky grin. What happens next?
a.I can already see us waking up together the next morning. I play the siren and get him to come over and sit with me.
b.I buy him a Bailey’s before he does.
I teach him some manners. If he behaves, he will pay my check. Otherwise he gets what he deserves.
6.Your worst vice is?
a.Nice shoes
b.Soft drugs (nicotine, alcohol)
c.Men
7.What do you like to wear best?
a.Prada, Etro, Chanel. Esprit in your free time.
b.Jennifer Lopez style tasty butt jeans, a scanty blouse by Helmut Lang: it’s always free time.
c.Jil Sander, Calvin Klein. Elegant and practical for every occasion.
8.Your ideal first date looks like this:
a.He appears like a prince on a white horse to save me. And next time he’ll bring a picnic basket with him.
b.During happy hour he is suddenly standing next to me, and we both sense something between us.
c.Brahms by candlelight, and then he even conjures a soufflé out of the oven.
9.How do you end it?
a.The “man of my life” turns out to be a complete idiot. But after the game is before the game. I have already found a replacement.
b.I flirt with his best friend. In his face of course.
c.I throw his drink in his face and turn on my heels. In the case of betrayal I turn my heel on his breastbone.
10.On whom or what would you rely when it comes to the question of whether he is Mr. Right?
a.On the question whether we discover new and wonderful things together, and how many minutes, hours, months or years it would take before we got bored with each other. Or never…
b.On my intuition and on my best friends.
c.On precedence and the color of his tie.
11.Which adjective describes you best?
a.Romantic
b.Passionate
c.Self-confident
Results
Count up the number of letters in your answers. The letter with the highest count corresponds closest to your type. And now read through all three “types”.
TYPE A: THE VISIONARY
You are an artist who makes what she wants of the world. Your visions and your illusions are your capital. You are a bit of a Pippi Longstocking and a bit of a Sleeping Beauty who has yet to be kissed. In case of emergency the right shoe will do: preferably by Manolo Blahnik, for your ideas enable you to be richly rewarded. Once you have been awakened by a kiss, you see more things than others and are able to create something which others turn into a product, a service or a business.
You live in the future. You can inspire other people to do what you want by your visionary power. Admittedly the daily grind and reality can cause this power to decrease. But in the long term you will always find a perfect solution, because your cheerful nature and your inspired soul keep you alert. And hopefully you will find the perfect partner. But be on your guard against fair weather friends.
Visionaries love adventure. They really do let themselves be led by their sense of curiosity.
Because “everything begins with curiosity”, as the writer Gary Hoover said. Heidi Klum is an example of this type. A genuine mountain girl without being born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she had the idea of making something of herself in New York after winning a model competition. Today she is one of the most sought-after women in the world: a supermodel, a multi-millionairess and married to a pop star. She has also published a book. And among the rules you have to follow on the way to becoming a world star is her motto: “Follow your sense of curiosity.”
Visionaries like entering unknown territory for their life. They discover the possibilities. They never ask “why?” but “why not?” They love the chaos that often accompanies the start up of a company. Every company starts with a vision. Behind every logo of a famous brand name lies a big idea of an individual person, who has realized this vision.
Like Steve Jobs, who has rescued his own former company Apple thanks to unbelievable ideas. Once the computers were perfect child’s play to operate, he saw what was missing: sex. The apple is after all the symbol of temptation. Meanwhile the new sexy Apple machines have become status symbols. In addition, Apple’s “iPod” has revolutionized the whole music industry because it recognized the market potential of digital music which was seen as being half criminal by the complaining industry and made mp3 downloads respectable. Jobs didn’t invent it, but he could see it.
Visionaries play an important role in the start-up phase of a business in particular. They are the captains of the ship and see the new continent over the horizon. They set the course even if there is no navigation chart. They see more than others. Imagination and artistic talent are the midwives of a new business idea.
And these qualities lie in the very nature of visionaries. But when they have to manage complex projects, the ship begins to veer off course. In the worst case the captain’s name is Ahab, and the crew jump overboard. Because visionaries are good at dealing with contradictions their method of working often produces witty results. Consistency they hold to be a sign of mediocrity. Instead they use their breadth of vision to change the direction of thought.
Most visionaries are driven by the ideal of a wonderful new world. They want to go into the service industry for humanity to become more just or more humane as much as for their personal aims. Often they are regarded as mad. Just as once there were machine wreckers who held the sowing machine to be an affront in the eyes of God, or who railed against washing machines in the past, there was hardly anyone thirty years ago who could imagine that computers would be affordable for everyone, that they could be so large or so small, could fit comfortably on a table, and be so simple that children could use them, or that as much data as was stored on those funny winding machines of a size to fit a skyscraper could be stored on a microchip. Even the founder of IBM estimated at the time that the number of computers needed in the world would be between five and ten.
Vision is a form of creative destruction. It opens up doors into new worlds, whereby it mutates into other systems, as the example of Apple shows. Views of the world disintegrate, things change fundamentally, familiar patterns break up, and new realities emerge.
When a culture protects itself against visionary ideas – which is entirely natural – visionaries run the danger of losing the thread. When visionaries are prevented from doing their own thing, they are quick to regard other people as obstacles, or they give in to lazy compromises in order to achieve their aim. Of the three types, the visionary is the most vulnerable, standing at the end with empty hands because she has fallen in love with her ideas or with herself too much. She can be so idealistic that she scares other people away.
Visionaries in the positive sense are extremely curious about what concerns others and infect them with their creativity. Economic visionaries can recognize patterns and requirements in the market that others can’t. Their ideas are as clear as they are mad. This arouses sympathy in many, while others laugh at it. As revenge they roll up their sleeves and turn their ideas into reality. They are entrancing in the true sense of the word, and are able to influence a lot of people and carry them along by their enthusiasm. Only they need people who can bring them down to earth: promoters and managers above all.
TYPE B: THE PROMOTER
In the Trinity you would be the “Holy Ghost”. You are one of those who believe both in vision and in people and therefore want to do something for both. You know what you need for that: people who are enthusiastic about new ideas both within the company and out there in the market. For this you take the initiative yourself.
When you are inspired you immediately start up a campaign and find people who are also enthusiastic. You are able to bond with people, and do it with a feeling for the little delicate things in life and an empathy that often astonishes your fellow human beings. You are able to head teams because you like to set a good example.
Promoters are gregarious animals and geniuses at getting other people interested in something, establishing contacts and building networks. The world gets wind of an idea or a product through them alone. They are comparatively extrovert, like people, are charming, witty and have star qualities as entertainers.
You have a fine sense of what is appropriate: the right design, the people who understand the product or the service and fit into the company. You attract others magnetically. And once you believe in something, you can present it creditably. Your passion is to be the bringer of good news. Just as in sales. Thanks to your empathy and human warmth you deliver the right product to the right man or the right woman. You don’t put pressure on people who don’t need the product, but find the people for whom the product is suitable. You do the same in the office. Your inspiration keeps the team in good shape. Your firm belief in people is the energy which keeps the business machine running, because you enjoy doing things for others.
Promoters are movers and shakers. They turn dreams into deeds. They act first and think later. While visionaries are dreaming of what the human race needs, they are already on the phone, and are totally committed.
Where others are regularly shy, they first begin to glow, and so does the email box, the telephone and the fax machine. They want to reach people and sell. That is their sense of achievement. Contact with other people is their universe. If there are only genuine promoters in the marketing department the firm makes a profit and has fun doing it.