What type of mindset do you have? In a ground-breaking research study conducted by John-Erik Mathisen and Jan Ketil Arnulf at BI Norwegian Business School, there are two mindsets that most aspiring entrepreneurs have, one of which is likely limiting your potential as a young entrepreneur.

The biggest mistake you can make in your career and in your life as a young leader is to try and protect yourself from failure. If you want to become who you want to be, you must be willing to fail. If you want to get hired, you must be willing to get fired. If you want to get customers, you must be willing to get rejected.

I believe when it comes to growing your team as a young leader you need to do it in a way that makes people feel safe and secure around you. This is about being an effective leader and exuding great energy and making others feel good around you. In this blog post, I want to share with you the most important quality you need to become this kind of leader when building your team.

Being true to yourself as a young leader is like falling in love. You can’t fake it. You have to be vulnerable. There are no guarantees that the other person will love you back. Some people will love you back and some people will reject you. And that’s ok.

I used to think passion was enough to grow your leadership, go through life as a young leader, and succeed with your team. I was wrong, very wrong. I discovered the hard way that you need strategy. I discovered you need to learn how to lead yourself first before you can lead anyone else. I am now a Willing Student and I am on a mission to teach others what I have learned and what I am still learning.

Are you feeling frustrated and stuck at work and with your team? It could be because you are too fixated on performance. You may be ignoring the learning and growth opportunities that are in front of you. The uncomfortable things in front of you might be what you actually need to get to the next level of your leadership.

Goal setting is a common prescription most young leaders use when they’re looking to perform at a higher level and grow their careers or businesses. There is nothing evil about that. I believe goal setting is how you become who you want to be. Using goals to unlock massive growth in your career or business seems like a noble thing to do.

I believe being professional, smart, persuasive, fun, and social is not enough to become who you want to be as a young leader and improve the quality of your work and life. Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to be professional, social, smart, and fun. You should strive to be all of those things.

I believe every young leader today needs personal coaching more than ever. For me, it was the fastest way to becoming who I wanted to be. Personal coaching helped me learn the most important skill every young leader needs to learn sooner rather than later – Authentic Leadership.