Building your competence boosts your confidence … and confidence is the BFF of Founders.
Elevating your game is like working out. If you quit going to the gym, muscle goes away. The grind in the gym never stops. In order to stick to it and achieve your goals, the work of building competence also never ends. The second you stop is the second you begin to fail.
Here are five quick tips!
1. Listen more than you talk.
As founders we are deeply passionate about our product. You want to shout from the roof tops about what you’re doing. BUT you must stop and listen. When you listen, you learn to see your weaknesses in your company that are apparent to others but not to you. The larger your company grows, the more you must listen.
2. Create it once, use it many times.
If you know you will perform a task more than once, create a checklist, form, or template to save time and improve your consistency over the long haul. No need to reinvent the wheel every time you conduct or coordinate a meeting, prepare a proposal, send out a mailing, plan a new project timeline, etc.
3. Learn as you go.
After you complete each task, ask yourself, “What should I Stop, Start, and Keep?” Identify those things that did not go so well (Stop), those you did not do that would have helped (Start), and those that went well (Keep). Continually improving your performance is a powerful way to build competence — it turns good to great!
4. Ask the right questions.
The fastest way to change the answers you receive — from yourself and others — is to change the questions you ask. Asking the right questions will get you better answers whether you are asking yourself or others. The questions you ask will either limit or expand the potential responses.
5. Be decisive.
Get 80 percent of the information you need, and then make the best decision you can. Don’t let the thought of being perfect stop you from doing something good. Remember, good decisions come from experience, and experience often comes from bad decisions.
