Dr. Eric George, Founder and CEO of ERG Enterprises. Nationally recognized thought leader on entrepreneurship, investing and leadership.
“Mind your habits,” a mentor once told me. “They can make you or break you.”
A three-decade career has taught me that those words reflect the truth.
The incremental power of habits is undeniable, and practicing the right ones has enabled me to achieve and sustain success as a full-time physician, serial entrepreneur and investor. Experience has taught me they have the equivalent effect on anyone—at any phase of their career—who adopts them.
But what habits constitute the right ones? Which ones should you choose? In this post, I uncover the five leadership habits I’ve found most beneficial to my career—beyond simply putting in the work.
1. Groom your network.
Good partners are far more valuable than any great business opportunity. Whether a co-founder, investor or vendor, a partner can provide value that extends years. They can introduce you to new business deals, talent or opportunities. They can also provide the shortest path to acquiring valuable knowledge or tapping into a new perspective.
Many of the partners who helped me grow my first business three decades ago still provide value to me today—and vice versa. That shows the importance of growing and nurturing your network—your digital rolodex of potential and existing partners.
Here are my pro tips:
• Establish a weekly cadence: Set aside time each week to grow your network.
• Focus on deepening your existing connections: Don’t forget about the connections you’ve made. Check in with your existing partners to sustain your relationships.
• Ask to help, not only for help: Help your partners when you can. Don’t simply contact them when you need help.
• Learn what you can: Maintain a genuine curiosity in what others can teach you.
• Make an effort: Leverage digital and physical communities to grow your network, whether that means staying active on social media, joining professional associations, asking your current connections for references, etc.
2. Seek the why.
Growth is simply the outcome of how you use your time, talent and capital—your scarce resources. Maximizing your growth potential calls for the right focus—choosing where to spend your resources for the optimal ROI. Yet finding the right focus is a complex and challenging quest, one that requires you to continuously ask questions and seek the why. Why do X? Why do Y? Why do X over Y?
Why reveals the importance of doing something and remains a key lever in maximizing the output of your scarce inputs. It’s a reason why Harvard Business Review authors Jim Collins and Jerry Porras introduced the “five whys” exercise—asking “why” something is important five times—as a method for getting at the purpose of something. It’s also the reason, at every encounter, you’ll hear me ask why to tap into the perspective and mindset of my counterpart.
Here are my pro tips:
• Never assume the answer: Seek to learn rather than assuming you know, which only protects existing biases.
• Seek context: Use why to understand the full context of the situation, and don’t stop asking until you know.
3. Never discount an opportunity.
A five-minute pitch turned into one of my best investments of my career. Had I given in to the momentary impulse to skip the meeting for another obligation, I would’ve missed out. I often remind myself of this realization: No serious opportunity is unworthy of attention. And here, “serious” means anything that has a reasonable potential of creating worthwhile value for you. Only hindsight can tell you what opportunities aren’t worth your time.
Whether you’re a founder, leader or professional, you can’t afford to discount opportunities. So don’t.
Here are my pro tips:
• Stay open-minded and objective: For “serious” opportunities, give them fair and adequate consideration, and avoid making early conclusions or assumptions.
• Seek context and data: Seek information to better evaluate opportunities and their potential ROI.
4. Diversify your knowledge and capabilities.
I’ve long written about the importance of specializing versus generalizing in your career. The former helped me get my early start as a physician, while the latter has fueled my success as a serial entrepreneur and investor.
In terms of generalization, I fundamentally believe the human mind can learn and succeed in multiple disciplines—if we’re open to it. And that last part is the key. For me, I continue to diversify my knowledge and skills, recognizing that, in my view, knowing a little about a lot serves me better as an entrepreneur and investor than the alternative.
For leaders and career professionals, generalization can not only improve the range of your know-how, it can also aid in how you strategize; collaborate with vendors, partners and colleagues; make decisions; and much more.
Here are my pro tips:
• Consume diverse media routinely: Gather information from diverse sources via your preferred medium (e.g., reading, podcasts, etc.).
• Leverage your network: Solicit the perspectives of members in your network.
• Stay curious and experiment: Seek to uncover new knowledge and experiences.
5. Keep complacency at the door.
Plenty of business books catalog the rise and eventual fall of successful businesses once thought of as immune to failure. Yet history continues to prove every success story can succumb to a tragic ending. And the often deciding variable? Complacency. The more room we allow for errors in decision-making, planning, execution, etc., the more ground we give to our competitors—and we always have competitors.
Whether you are an entrepreneur, leader or professional, resist complacency to ensure it doesn’t erode your potential.
Here are my pro tips:
• Set stretch goals: Goal-setting enables you to balance the short- and long-term and stay focused on execution and success.
• Stay accountable: Hold yourself and your team accountable for their performance against benchmarks.
Mind your habits.
As leaders, our habits determine our ultimate measure of success—increment by increment. Hence, it’s important we choose the right ones and then stick with them.
In my experience, the five habits we examined are instrumental to success and provide universal value. So, try them out. You may have a lot to gain and lose if you don’t.
Forbes Business Council is the foremost growth and networking organization for business owners and leaders. Do I qualify?
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