Objectivity might help you become more entrepreneurial. How?
Elizabeth Thornton, a contributor to the Huffington Post, challenges us to ask ourselves these questions:
Let’s be honest:
- Have you ever over-reacted to a situation?
- Have you ever taken something personally when it was not really meant that way?
- Have you ever misinterpreted the tone of an email, text or tweet?
- Have you ever judged someone unfairly simply based on the way they look?
On the spectrum of subjectivity to objectivity, we all typically land somewhere in between in every moment of our lives.
Elizabeth goes on to explain:
We perceive through our senses; a person, situation or an event. In an instant, we project our own mental models, i.e., our understanding of the way things are or ought to be, our background, experiences, and fears onto the person, situation, or event. Often, the result is that we judge and respond to things incorrectly. We commit what psychologists call cognitive appraisal errors. These errors can impact us at work, at home, in business, in all aspects of our lives.
I can think of one example in which objectivity could lead a person to become more entrepreneurial.
Entrepreneurial individuals typically seek out help from others in order to make a project successful. Now imagine someone wants to start a new project. But they need help. If that person were to ask for help from an acquaintance who gives a strange response to a request for help, the one needing help may prematurely decide that the acquaintance will not help.
However, if the person starting the project takes a step back and sees the response from the acquaintance through a more objective lens, it could lead to them receiving help. Perhaps the acquaintance was having a bad day. They really want to help but in the moment they felt like giving a non-response. Perhaps they had a headache. If so, the person with the project needing help would end up being more entrepreneurial if they were objective about the response for help by not automatically assuming a strange response meant NO help.
By being more objective about responses to requests for help, an individual will become more entrepreneurial by the fact that they end up receiving what they asked for. This leads to their projects getting accomplished. This leads to their success. These individuals will go on to do more entrepreneurial work given this success.
For a further look into objectivity with more real-life examples, I suggest reading the remainder of Elizabeth’s article here: Objectivity: The Power of Seeing Things as They Are
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