Being the best CEO you can be means unlocking every last resource your brain can offer, and then some. Success is 95% mindset and 5% strategy, so why are so many CEOs getting bogged down by strategy when they need to be leading? This is where mindset mentoring comes in.

Most business owners do not understand how important mindset is for success, and then they spend 95% of their time working on strategies, which gives no room for creative thinking and looking at the mindset element of it all.

Success is always going to come back to mindset, whereas with strategy, people are working on strategy after strategy after strategy, hoping for a different result. But ultimately it comes back to the thinking behind the strategy. This is a huge thing for people to acknowledge, but when they do, it can be lifechanging.

Thinking Days

Most corporations have a whole host of meetings, day in day out. There are team meetings, problem-solving meetings, timetable meetings, finance, HR, the list goes on and on. If a CEO is present at all of these meetings, then when do they get time to actually think, to get creative and to explore ideas for their business? I advise my clients to introduce a quarterly meeting totally dedicated to creative thinking, to thinking outside the box and beyond limitations, so new ideas can be shared and explored. And as well as that it is essential that a CEO gives themselves a ‘thinking day’ once a week. Every Friday morning my schedule is clear, and I dedicate that time to thinking. To brainstorming ideas, however crazy, that will help me grow my business. By giving myself time to think I am creating capacity for creativity and ideas. I do this on my own, and then bring the ideas to the creativity meeting. A thinking day is a CEOs meditation time, and you will not find one successful leader – from Elon Musk to Jeff Bezos – who doesn’t allow themselves time to use their brain and imagination to generate exciting new ways to build business and earn money.

Understanding people

A mindset mentor can not only guide you to get the most from your thinking time, they can also support a CEO in understanding people. If you are leading people, it is essential that you understand people: how they think, how they operate, what they need. Ultimately, a company is only a company because of the people in it, and if we do not understand the mind and what makes a person tick, then we're going to have struggles dealing with many different personalities, many different beliefs and paradigms that come with individuals. So a CEO should dedicate time to understanding the mind, understanding how the mind drives behaviour, behaviour drives performance, and performance drives profit.

What you will understand through mindset coaching is that the mind controls behaviour, which ultimately affects how successful and profitable your business will be.  Mindset coaching enables the CEO to get to the root cause of the outcome that they're looking to get to. It is reverse engineering – getting back to the root cause.

Enhancing resilience

Resilience is a word that gets batted about a lot, so let’s clarify what it actually means, and how a mindset mentor can help. CEOs need to develop their mindset so they can rise up and become resilient to the challenges and change that will happen in any company, in any economy. It is about attaining a positive mental attitude, being able to be calm and respond to situations instead of reacting.

Reacting gives your power away, responding comes from a place of power.

In any crisis, in any challenge, it is so important that a CEO has a bulletproof positive mindset and attitude so that they can rise up above the challenge and spot the opportunity. For every problem there is a solution, and by understanding the mind, you are then able to navigate and close those gaps much more quickly.

To be able to develop this skill we return to the power of meditation and giving yourself time to think, to become absorbed by the power of your own thoughts. And alongside the creativity, I advise clients to practice gratitude. Gratitude is being grateful for all the things that are going right. Acknowledging them and being thankful for them. This magnetises the mind to the positive, so that when something challenging arises, you are not instinctively and unthinkingly reacting to it, because you are in a place of calmness.

Productivity increases profit

The reason I say that 95% of success comes down to mindset is because most people think ‘I don't have time for that stuff’ when it comes to brainstorming and focusing. They are so busy reacting and putting out fires, they feel that they have no time to spend on the creative side. But it’s being creative that enables you to grow your business. You need to develop your mindset so you can increase your productivity. Productivity increases profit, and how you increase your productivity is by focusing on one thing. A lot of CEOs are still doing far too much of other people's work, and they need to start to become more focused on the tasks that a CEO has to deal with. Productivity comes from the mind, and all too often clients have this knowing/doing gap where they know they need to do something, but subconsciously they are not programmed to do it because they are not in the habit of it. CEOs need to understand that there are certain tasks and things that they need to do, and then they need to delegate the rest.

Becoming more focused and proactive in delegation is key.

A mindset mentor will encourage a leader to set goal-achieving activities for each day. For example, before I go to bed every night, I make a list of all the things that I'm going to achieve the next day. This gives me laser focus and it gives me intention. And the power of intention means that your mind is super focused.

Upon waking every morning, the first thing most CEOs will do is open their inbox. This is the worst thing they could do, because immediately they are distracted. You get overwhelmed by what you are letting yourself believe you must react to. Whereas if you have three to five goals-achieving activities that will increase your profit in some way, you do them first, then you are going to be more productive and achieve more.

Consider your vision

A mindset mentor will encourage you to consider your vision. A leader is always working on a vision, and working on your mindset expands your vision. It expands the realm of possibilities.

If we are not developing our mind, then there is no room for expansion, which means there's no room for big ideas. And big ideas equal big income.

If you look at any corporation, any product out there that has been a big idea, you’ll see what I mean. Think of Uber – what a big idea, yet they don't even own a car! That is so smart. It is big thinking, it is creative thinking, and that is having a vision. Any leader that is going anywhere will have a vision that most people think is a little bit crazy. So you've got to have self-confidence and belief in yourself.

Finally, let us come to the number one success habit - decision making. Most CEOs should be spending most of their time making high-level decisions, not low-level ones, and being able to make a decision fast and change it slowly, if at all, is one of the most important characteristics in any leader.

If you cannot make a decision, it is indecision, and that's a decision in itself, that you're scared to make a decision! No leader can operate like that. Learning how to understand the mind and get to the point where you can make decisions from a place of faith instead of fear, is going to speed success up considerably. A mindset mentor will help you identify what decisions you can delegate and release to give yourself more space to focus on what you really want – growing your business and reaching that point of success you know you can achieve.

Do it, you owe it to yourself!