The Female Leader. Sonja Becker

life therefore entails coming to terms with our own death.

      Then we see ourselves as we really are. The closer we get to our own real values, the more alive we feel. You can judge your values by the vitality and energy within you. They will be carried over into everything around you, including employees and customers, once these values become “lived”.

      They are deep and therefore longer lasting than everything else. One of the largest and most successful hotel chains in the world is the Hyatt Regency Hotel. In his autobiography the heir to the chain explains the fundamental principle of its long term success. The “core values” of the founder have been passed on from generation to generation and taken up by all employees. It doesn’t have anything to do with visions on the drawing board during weekend conferences, but with deep human values that are according to the Hyatt family genuine and long lasting. Above all “the spirit to serve”.

      The possibility of always being able to perceive what guests lack and what they expect, to put oneself in their place or their character and their demands, automatically raises the quality and promotes progress, so that there is hardly one stone left upon another in spite of the lasting values in the over 70 year old history of the Hyatt chain.

      Its reputation as one of the leading international hotel chains justifies these “core values”, in accordance with the Lampedusa motto: “Everything has to be changed so that everything can stay the same.”

      Paradigm of values: “the performance scale”

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      he following seven chapters describe all the stages in the development of a business up to the moment when the original occupation becomes a business. You have to cross these “seven bridges”-there is no way round.

      The only alternative is to stand still or to go back. There is no compulsion: you will find yourself automatically on a higher level. That can be recognized from the mental development of the company, its state and your own state of mind. However once you have adopted the road to a self-employed career, it would be sad to back down.

      Look at it as your preparatory phase before your personal big bang, after which you will get in on the act in the world of business and thereby realize your personal goals and become increasingly fulfilled.

      The performance scale (see Fig. 1) outlines your business activities. The subsequent development up to the launch is not only intended for the planning phase, but for you to discover your mission, to set goals, to learn how to sell and to try out a succession of projects in order to test whether your dreams can be realized out there in the real world.

      The lower half of the performance scale can be called the theoretical, the upper the practical. We prefer to talk about the conception and the action phases.

      Our approach has nothing to do with numbers. If you are looking for a business plan you won’t find one here. Although we strongly advise you to make one.

      A large misunderstanding in our modern discourse is that for example artists and other “woolly-headed idealists” in our society are prevented from doing business. In the case of artists, writers or theatre people, commercial success through entertainment, for example, makes them downright questionable. At the same time good artists have always been interested in money. Andy Warhol painted dollar bills and maintained that he had portrayed what he loved the most.

      Fortunately today the paradigm is changing: you have to link your ideas to business or you won’t be taken seriously in the market. Your ideas, plans and dreams end up as a “hobby” in your back room, or your relations support you, “the great artist”, so that you can pay at least a part of the rent and the grocery bills? Can that be satisfying? Not just that.

      Figure 1: Performance Scale no. 7 – Sage Learning Method ©

      The old paradigm follows this very curious idea in our culture that creative people and everyone who follows their dreams and their sense of curiosity should have the grace to starve to appear credible. You can prove that you are not a “woolly-headed idealist” through projects. It would be fatal to let everything be driven in support of your dreams and dedicate yourself exclusively to this ideal. You turn your ideas into projects which will show how much energy is really invested and how many consequences this idea really has. Through projects you come into contact with reality. They are limited by time and yield a concrete result - possibly even real money without substantial investment.

      These projects are genuine experiences and give you feedback whether your idea or your business is going in the right direction.

      The “performance scale” doesn’t have dark and light sides. Imagine it as a tree. Every plant grows downward as well as upward. The roots which suck up the minerals are just as important as the leaves and branches. From the roots you can see how the tree thrives and prospers on all sides.

      It is the same with the performance stages. They are the indicators of growth and health.

      The “performance scale” illustrates the paths of individuals, organizations, models and systems along which it sketches the phenomena that have arisen. Before you begin you have to look deep into yourself in order to understand the reasons why you want to take this path.

      These reasons are your values. All further stages are affected by them. We will start from the bottom. Every concept can be found in the subheadings to follow. Every chapter is devoted to a special stage. You will recognize yourself in these stages: possibly in the first, but it could be another much further ahead if you have already developed your business idea. Then it is amusing to read what you have already achieved - and stimulating for what lies ahead.

      Because this is a book we have to portray the business stages in a straightforward linear manner. This doesn’t correspond to the “truth” of these individual stages – in fact they don’t exist separately but are linked together. All the things that you have “behind you” don’t disappear. Many moments of disappointment will resurface. You often forget why you undertook this long journey in the first place. Moments of surprise, small successes and large obstacles overcome enable you to recognize the goal once more and take you a step further, where you will have to reorganize things completely and change your system.

      Imagine the “performance scale” as a hologram within whose deeper dimensions other processes shimmer which are the individual stages above and below.

      Values are the basis of clear perceptions and decisions

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      alues indicate the direction of your creative and emotional intelligence. “Know thyself!” is written above the oracle at Delphi. “Be yourself! You are not what you do, think, desire!” is a famous quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche, who offers a helpful yardstick if you want to break free of the fetters of your illusions.

      By what yardstick, from which perspective do you act and decide? To know yourself is not so much to know who you are. That is the province of psychoanalysis. To recognize and to know yourself means to know what really matters to you and what you really want to do.

      You are exactly to the same degree happy and contented as you are in tune with your values. People who are fulfilled within themselves and live with their values don’t experience disappointments and are the happiest on earth, regardless of how much money they have.

      If you can be in perfect harmony with your own inner truth – i.e. do what you are – your mood will become light and joyful. Nietzsche called this state “exhilaration”, which arises not out of pure naivety but out of conquering dogmas and dictates.

      To break another taboo: a lot of modern neuro-scientific research has come to the conclusion that most decisions are made on the basis of emotion. Your feelings decide for you.

       Then a mental process starts up which looks for logical reasons for your decision. That is the inner dialogue that you conduct with yourself: often you hear an inner voice that