Leadership and Passions

A key idea from How I built this podcast brings forward the leadership characteristic trait of being autonomous and passionate. The big thought here is your conviction and passion enables you to be certain with yourself, strengthens your ego (in a good way) to persevere against criticisms, setbacks and self-defeating mindsets. The outcome of knowing yourself, your convictions and passions make you autonomous. Acting autonomously is being self-confident and being self-confident is a characteristic of leadership and can be your repurposed mindset in any field of profession or occupation.

A conviction is a firmly held belief. Finding your convictions by reflecting through journaling will reveal your ideas of what you believe in and what you really want in your life. By journaling, you can help yourself to bring out your passions. Journaling is your internal compass with your mind. A guiding start point in your journal is writing out your work view and life view reflections and discover where they complement and clash with each other. The book DESIGNING YOUR LIFE, HOW TO BUILD A WELL-LIVED, JOYFUL LIFE, by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans (2016) outline guiding questions for developing your work views and life views.

Being autonomous and certain about where you are going and what you want is a key theme in the NPR interview on How I Built This: Serial Entrepreneur: Mark Cuban. In the case of Mark Cuban, the successful entrepreneur, showcased a key attribute of his character, his mindset to be autonomous and passionate. Mark Cuban’s autonomous attitude created his mindset of certainty of success toward his passion of making his mark in the marketplace. He was able to be comfortable with ambiguity, criticism, setbacks, self-doubt by having the conviction of certainty. His certainty of outcome to be successful in the market gave him perseverance and confidence to learn and sell products, concepts, systems and stocks. His certainty of outcome, conviction to be self-sufficient, audacity in the market and passion to excel in business developed his leadership skills. Mark Cuban created momentum for himself, and by age 40, he was a self-made billionaire.

The art and science of leadership encompass frameworks of theory, tools for decision making and numerous books on strategy and leadership development which enable a leader to advance. Advancing as a leader with passion and autonomy goes with the principle of being prudent and not reckless in your decisions. Acting autonomously is being self confident with certainty and being self confident is a characteristic of leadership that can be a repurposed mindset in any field of profession or occupation. Like an amateur cook, Mark Cuban went from following his instinct and taste of the ingredients in a kitchen to being a Master Chef in the kitchen by going beyond exact measurements outlined in cookbooks to demonstrating his mastery of the art of being autonomous.