How CEOs REALLY Think (7 Counterintuitive Principles You Were Never Taught)

Have you ever felt at a loss of words when you're in front of the CEO in the meeting and you know you wanna make a good impression? If you desire to make an impact, it's important to understand how CEOs think. The CEO way of thinking isn't just about running a business, it's about running the business of you because you are a business.

The way CEOs think is very different from the way we've been programmed to think. In school, they teach you how to be good workers, they teach you how to be great implementers, but they don't teach you how to be a CEO. So in this video, what I wanna share with you are seven action principles on how to think like a CEO.

The first action principle to thinking like a CEO is to master your mindset. Your mindset is what you think of as a result of what you see and what you experience. And that's exactly why two people who experience the same devastation can then therefore have two completely different outcomes in their life or make completely different decisions in your life because your mindset is made up of a bunch of different conversations in your head.

So CEOs understand this and so therefore they get busy raising awareness to what conversations are going on in their head and they are in control of the conversations that are going on in their head because the conversations in your head go on to determine the decisions that you make. So the question you gotta ask yourself is, what have you been thinking? What have you been telling yourself?

What do you think of when you experience certain things? What do you think of when you witness or when you see certain things? Because whatever your thoughts are in that moment will determine what decisions you make and what actions or inactions you take.

So then when it comes to a CEO mindset, one of the most important CEO mindsets is the mindset of abundance. So many professionals have a scarcity mindset and I get it. It's because you're in a business landscape and in a business landscape, it can feel like and really look like a zero-sum game where there's only one opportunity and there's more than one person vying for that opportunity.

So if one person gets it, there's no opportunity left for everybody else or there's a certain budget in the company and that budget is gonna be allocated to certain departments. If one department gets that budget, then there's no more budget left for your department. So there's many aspects of working in a business that really do seem like and feel like a zero-sum game and as a result of that, the focus on that creates a scarcity mindset.

One aspect of the scarcity mindset is a zero-sum game. Another aspect of a scarcity mindset is the fear of taking risks because of the thought of failure, a thought of impending failure. So CEOs understand this, that there's a psychology behind a scarcity thinking and it is intentional to work hard at shifting mindsets from scarcity to abundance.

And an abundant mindset says that there's more than enough to go around and even after more than enough has gone around, there is still more than enough left over. And so with that abundant mindset, when a CEO goes to make decisions, absolutely, with a decision, you have no idea of predicting exactly what will happen as a result of the decision. But that doesn't cause a CEO to hesitate to make that decision because even in failure, even in things not going out exactly as planned, there are benefits and drawbacks.

There are positives and negatives. What you experience depends on the focus that you create. It depends on what you focus on more.

So a mastery of mindset allows you to change your perspective and when you change the way you see the world around you, the world around you changes. Action principle number two is pursue mastery over mediocrity. Now, recently I took this trip to Japan and last year I went to Japan twice with my husband because the first time we went, it was a bucket list item to go to Japan.

And I have to say, I didn't visit every city in Japan. I only visited three cities in Japan. But one of the things that I noticed was that in Japan, in the cities that I visited, and this was Tokyo, I went to Osaka and I went to Kyoto, is that there is a pursuit of mastery.

Individuals mastering their crafts. They have restaurants that specialize in one dish and they have chefs who specialize in the item they create and they put so much intentionality to it. They put so much of their imagination into it in the pursuit of mastering their craft.

And when I saw that, I said, here is a master at work. Here is someone who's purposeful in their work and not about focusing on the specifics of their work, but focusing on mastery. So what is mastery?

Mastery is effortless execution with limited mental resources. When you've mastered something, you make it look effortless to everybody else. And this is something I really appreciated when I saw individuals in Japan, because they have it in themselves, an intentionality to pursue mastery.

And mediocrity is not acceptable. Mediocrity is like, ah, it's not good, it's not great, but it's good enough. That's mediocrity.

You know, that shoulder shrug, that eh, oh well, it's good enough. That's mediocrity. So many people have that attitude.

Oh, good enough. Why? Because it is difficult.

Mastery is difficult. And if you don't see the meaningfulness in the pursuit of mastery, then the default is the pursuit of mediocrity. You may not have chosen mediocrity, but inaction is also a choice.

So pursue mediocrity, or sorry, pursue mastery. CEOs understand this, and they surround themselves in an environment with others who also pursue mastery. They surround themselves with individuals who support them in their journey to mastery.

And they have reflective self-awareness to understand what areas in my life, in my knowledge, in my understanding, and in my wisdom have I still not mastered yet. But they have a sense of awareness so much so that they realize when they haven't mastered something yet. They realize it.

And once they've mastered it, the journey's not over. It is a continuous journey. Mastery is a continuous journey, and it requires commitment with consistent endurance.

Action principle number three, clarify your vision. And this is crucial because nothing becomes dynamic until it first becomes clear. And clarity is a difficult concept because sometimes we think we're clear on something.

We think we're clear on our thoughts and on our communications, and then life gives you feedback, then well, maybe it wasn't so clear after all. So clarity, just like mastery, is also a journey and not a destination. But one thing that CEOs focus on is the clarity of their vision, a future-based vision through one's imagination.

And imagination is the highest level of value in the marketplace along with communication. So when you're clear on your vision, what that means is in your mind, you understand, you see, you can articulate to yourself with words the different future that you desire to create with your knowledge, with your insight, with your intellect. And this is why a lot of the famous CEOs that are out there, you know them, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, a lot of famous CEOs seem to have risen out of nowhere and changed the world just simply by having a vision.

So this is, if you don't have, if you're listening to this and you're saying to yourself, well, I don't have that gift, what if I told you it was a learnable skill? What if I told you that it is, it can be, it's something that can be awakened in you? Now, not all CEOs are visionary.

Some CEOs are implementers. Some CEOs put their hands in the field and they roll up their sleeves and they implement. I mean, maybe you work for a CEO like that, or not all CEOs are visionary.

But what I'm saying is that CEOs who really lead great companies and great teams and change the world with massive contributions requires a strong and clear vision. And when they have that strong and clear vision, they articulate it with the same amount of clarity that they have inside of their heads, they articulate that to their teams with inspiration to motivate that vision to become a reality. Action principle number four, make decisions with discipline.

Your life is a sum of so many different decisions and the more decisive you have been, the greater your momentum that you've created. But the more clear your decisions have been and the more right your decisions have been for the outcome you desire, then the greater your outcome is aligned with what you planned, what you did desire. Make sense?

So Ray D'Alio was the one that said, life is a sum of decisions, so get good at making great decisions. What I say is that, right, you're making a sum of decisions, but it's not that you need to make perfect decisions every single time. Because a lot of folks, they're afraid of making the decision, so they delay it, they hesitate, and they analyze and they overanalyze and decisions just don't get made and the moment passes.

So indecision is still the decision, but it's not that you need to make a perfect decision every time. It's better to decide and then analyze and course correct than never to make a decision at all and let the moment pass. So become someone, become a person who takes decisive action and embraces decisions even when you don't have all the information available to you.

And I understand that this is very difficult, but it's only difficult because of your emotions. There's a lot of emotions involved when you don't have all the pieces to make the decision, you don't have all the information and then your mind is going crazy thinking about all the ways this can go bad and your mind is going crazy thinking about a lack of ROI in making this decision or missing out or wasting money or wasting time. Your mind goes crazy thinking about these things.

And so what I have noticed after having coached thousands of executives is that when your mind goes crazy thinking about all these things, what you're actually anxious over is the content in your own mind. You created it. The fear of making a decision, you created it.

You created by focusing on all the different ways that is not gonna work out. And that's the exact definition of doubt. Doubt is believing in the outcomes you don't desire.

So you created it. What I'm encouraging you to do is embrace decisions not as something that could go wrong, embrace decisions as something that is important to be in momentum and to help you to become the person who can continue to make such decisions. And a CEO is someone who focuses constantly on becoming better at decision-making because the CEO who can't make a decision and who is indecisive is setting a very bad example.

So don't see decision-making as hard or difficult. See decision-making as a necessary path to your personal growth. Action principle number five, leverage leadership through influence.

Now you might have a goal in your own career path to have more influence in your career, to have more influence among your teams, in your company. You might have that goal. But you gotta understand that when it comes to adopting the CEO mindset, the CEO way of thinking, a CEO is not a task manager.

So if you have been seeking to have more influence and your chosen strategy to have more influence is to manage self or other people and manage the tasks they perform and manage the responsibilities they have, then that's not the true definition of leadership. CEO is not a task manager. Instead, what they do is they focus on magnifying trust and magnifying their impact through their influence.

So how do you know that you've influenced somebody? You know you've influenced somebody when they naturally, no coercion. I mean, you could coerce someone to follow you, but that's not gonna last very long, right?

But you know you have true influence. I'm not talking about that coerced influence. You know you have true influence when someone else or a group of other people naturally choose to follow you and champion your cause because they've came to their own conclusions.

Then you know you have true influence. And you see, it has nothing to do about checking in on them, managing their tasks, and checking in to see if they got their, upheld their responsibilities. It has nothing to do with that.

That is very tactical. So this is leveraging leadership, understanding that not all decisions are going to be able to come through you. So if you are leading a team right now of direct reports or leading a department, then this is really important for you to understand, stepping into a CEO way of thinking.

A CEO understands that there are hundreds of decisions that need to occur every single day in a business. And it's impossible for all of those decisions to need to come through him or her. So what you need to do is you need to find a way to empower your teams to make decision-making even without you being there.

But they make the right decision for the company or they make the right decision for the team. And that is a genuine influence. So leverage leadership through influence.

Action principle number six, prioritize process over panic. Have you ever noticed that when you're in a panic over something, it reduces your progress. You're not making any progress.

You're just in a deep panic. But when you have processes, processes magnify prosperity. And a good CEO, the way of thinking is that they have processes for every aspect of their lives.

So here's what I mean by that. I run my business, Mastery Insights, and I have processes where I manage every aspect that I create to manage every aspect of what I do. So I have a process for recording YouTube videos like this.

I have a process for recording shorts, 60 -second videos. I have a process for creating content in the form of articles. I have a process for creating content when I teach classes to my clients.

I also have a process for waking up in the morning to prepare myself for that level of creativity. I also have a process for winding down at night to prepare myself to heal overnight so that I can be refreshed the next day. I also have a process in my life for preparing for meals and understanding what I need to fuel my body specifically.

And I also have a process to choose how to spend time with the people I care about. CEOs live with very intentionally designed processes, not just for business, but it's a way of life because processes create prosperity. So if you will seek to prioritize building processes and you have those processes turn into systems, then you will have automated and you will have an ability to create outcomes over and over again like clockwork, right?

But again, building processes is a process in itself. Sometimes the first time you build it is not gonna produce the outcome you want. It's not gonna be quite right.

Something's gonna be needing to tweak in it, but that's what I mean. It's a journey. It's a process to build it.

But once you've built it and it's proven, you test it, you test it, and it's proven to produce the outcome you want, now you can systemize. See, a lot of people, they think, okay, we need a system. We need technology and we need to throw technology at it and automate at it.

If you systematize and you automate too soon, then you're just gonna be systemizing and automating something that doesn't work yet. So then shift your way of thinking. CEOs prioritize processes so they don't need to panic.

Action principle number seven, cultivate courage to charge forward. CEOs, visionary CEOs, are momentum-based beings. That means that momentum is extremely important because momentum equals progress and progress equals prosperity.

Now, a lot of people are playing it safe. Play it safe. Don't take too much risk, play it safe.

And if you desire to be influential in your company or in your industry, then this is really important. Show courage, exude courage. And you cannot exude courage if you're playing it safe because no part of playing it safe is courageous.

You see, there is a important and necessary ingredient to courage, and that is the presence of anxiety-driven fear. If you don't feel any fear or anxiety, then you're not really exuding courage. So here's what I mean by that.

For those of you who know me, I have a fear of water. When I was in grade five, I went swimming for the very first time in elementary school, and our gym teacher took us to the swimming pool, and I saw all of my classmates diving in. And I've never done this before, I was very naive, so I dived in too.

And I happened to dive in on the deep end. You can imagine what happened next. Panic, don't know how to swim, swallowed a ton of water.

And I was panicked, my lungs were filling. And then I happened to catch a glimpse out of the corner of my eye of one of my colleagues close enough, and my hand just reached out to her, just involuntarily, and I happened to grab her hair long enough to pull myself up. And I was enough of a breath to say, help me, help me.

And then when I got to shore, that there started my phobia of water. And I haven't since learned to correct the phobia. So you see, I have a genuine phobia of water, which means that I cannot be submerged fully in water, otherwise it creates a sense of anxiety-based fear.

So then if I later chose to go to the swimming pool or to the ocean, to the Pacific Ocean, and I went in, and I was submerging myself deeper than chest with water, then you see, I am exuding courage because I have fear in the first place. So I'm exuding courage. But how many of you would agree, you're watching this right now, you can see, and I hope you can hear, that I've been speaking for a long time, right?

I'm speaking on camera, I speak from the stage, I've taught in rooms with thousands of people in the audience. So I do not have a fear of public speaking. So if I were tomorrow to go onto a stage and speak in front of a live audience, I'm not exuding courage because that's not something I fear.

It's just something that I do. I can go on stage and speak. That's the difference.

Anxiety-based fear, anxiety and fear, is a necessary ingredient to exude courage. If you are playing it safe, then you're not fearful, you're not anxious because everything's familiar to you. So then therefore, you don't have an opportunity to exude courage.

So the way the CEOs think, CEO way of thinking, is that they cultivate courage so that they can charge forward. You also don't create momentum just by playing it safe. You also don't create influence just by playing it safe.

Right now, at the time of recording this video, I have over 17 million views on my YouTube channel all around the world, right? Over 400,000, approaching 500,000 subscribers. I did not have global influence by playing it safe.

I did not become a known speaker by playing it safe. Influence doesn't come from playing it safe. Influence comes from cultivating your courage.

Don't wait for perfect conditions, create them. CEOs don't wait until everything's perfect and then I can move forward. They don't wait, they create perfect conditions.

And the only way you can create perfect conditions for you and your team members is by cultivating courage. You're gonna be doing things that most people do not dare to do, but you do them by choice and with consistent, persistent endurance. That is courage.

And courage is in the face of fear, not by playing it safe. The CEO way of thinking isn't just about running a business, it's about running the business of you because you are a business and business is a for-profit reflection of you. So if you desire to develop that CEO way of thinking for yourself so that you can advance, you can be in momentum and you can have the influence you desire to have, and if you desire also to have that support and that mentorship from a CEO who can understand that, who does understand that CEO way of thinking, then invite you to look at the link below this video.

Click the link and I have something to offer for you. It's called Master Accelerator. So click the link, it'll take you to a page.

Have a look through it and if it makes sense to you, book a call to talk to someone on my team. And if we work together, then I look forward to serving you to my fullest and helping you develop the CEO way of thinking.