|#102 MWAVC| - Check your ego at the 🚪
“With great power comes great responsibility” is a quote I’ve heard multiple times. “Power corrupts” and “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power” are two other quotes I hear quite often. Inflated egos are usually many leaders’ source of downfall. How do you protect against that? Check this extract out from an article JAA sent over. Ego really is the enemy of success.
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Breaking free of an overly protective or inflated ego and avoiding the leadership bubble is an important and challenging job. It requires selflessness, reflection, and courage. Here are a few tips that will help you:
Consider the perks and privileges you are being offered in your role. Some of them enable you to do your job effectively. That’s great. But some of them are simply perks to promote your status and power and ultimately ego. Consider which of your privileges you can let go of. It could be the reserved parking spot or, like in Cees ‘t Hart’s case, a special pass for the elevator.
Support, develop, and work with people who won’t feed your ego. Hire smart people with the confidence to speak up.
Humility and gratitude are cornerstones of selflessness. Make a habit of taking a moment at the end of each day to reflect on all the people that were part of making you successful on that day. This helps you develop a natural sense of humility, by seeing how you are not the only cause of your success. And end the reflection by actively sending a message of gratitude to those people.
The inflated ego that comes with success — the bigger salary, the nicer office, the easy laughs — often makes us feel as if we’ve found the eternal answer to being a leader. But the reality is, we haven’t. Leadership is about people, and people change every day. If we believe we’ve found the universal key to leading people, we’ve just lost it. If we let our ego determine what we see, what we hear, and what we believe, we’ve let our past success damage our future success.
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Article List— What I’m reading (10 articles a day x 7 days x 4 weeks x 12 months = 3360 articles a year).
Finland’s Sanna Marin, 34, will be the world’s youngest sitting prime minister: Youngest leader to ever hold the job, and the world’s youngest sitting PM. We stan!
A banana fetched $120,000 at Art Basel Miami, and then someone ate it: Sorry, but really not sure about this one. A banana? Duct-taped to the wall? Okay oo
Google CEO Sundar Pichai is taking over as CEO of Alphabet: I have this theory that after the Indians take over leadership at big tech (Google, Microsoft etc), the next wave will be from Africa…Nigeria to be precise.
How Hipcamp Became the Airbnb of the Outdoors: Before I read this article, I didn’t really understand why Hipcamp was such a big deal. Speaks to the fact that you need an innate understanding of a business to invest in them. Sounds like this company is doing a lot.
Sweden’s ‘Milk War’ is getting udderly vicious: #MilkWars in Sweden. Need a series on this on Business Wars
Exclusive: Saudi Aramco pursues war cover after attacks - sources: Very necessary now they’re a publicly traded entity
How Africa’s entrepreneurs can innovate and invest to put African cuisine on the world stage: And it’s happening. Soon!
Africa’s fintech boom is creating niche ecosystems to power the industry’s future globally: Nigeria is leading the pack here.
A Nigerian’s culture shock with tech in China: Article shows you how many light years China is ahead of the African continent regarding tech.
Uber reveals thousands of sexual assault reports last year: The numbers are bad. We need to do better.
Kenya: Nairobi Governor Sonko arrested on multiple charges: The Dino of Kenya? These people are embarrassing
Apis Partners raises $550 mn for second PE fund, exceeds target: Not too many funds exceed their hard cap. Big up to them 👏🏾👏🏾
Podcast— What I’m listening to (1 podcast episode a day= 365 podcast episodes a year) — Broadening my experiences through others’ stories.
Acquired: New acquired episode out on Tik Tok. The app that makes you (the millennial) think you’re a grandparent because you just don’t understand it.
Book— 1 Chapter a day x 7 days x 4 weeks x 12 months = 336 chapters. Most books have 10-12 chapters, so 1 year = 28 to 33 books. And my book list is nearing 1000 books. Send help 🌚
The House of Rothschild— Just started. Will let you know what I think in the coming days.
📱📱Quote of the day
“If you will change, everything will change for you.”
Remember: “Until the lion learns to write, every story will glorify the hunter.”