Your growth as a leader can start now.  Leadership is not about just running large organisation or coaching a team.  Being a leader is all about setting a clear vision, nurturing growth and developing others as well as yourself.

You can be a leader at home, in the office or socially.  If I asked you to think of leaders that you look up to whom would it be?  What do they do?  Why do you look up to them?  Now ask yourself, what do you have in common with that person?  What characteristics do you share?  Write down at least five and ask yourself if you can develop these characteristics.

Last year brought changes we didn’t expect. The media’s coverage of the economic climate has had its influence, leaving some of us feeling anxious, uneasy and uncertain. Many businesses are confused about how to progress and develop within these uncertain times.
But the truth is that there will always be something. People have got through tough times in the past; they did this by having the right mindset. We all have done things before that seemed impossible at the time. The mind is a powerful instrument. It can deliver literally anything that we want but right now it is focusing on what we don’t want, closures, failures, and crashes.

We need to turn our attention to what we do want because, when you begin think differently about what lies ahead, you will begin to organise yourself and resources so that you accelerate your achievement this year and beyond.

The first thing we have to do is learn to deal with change. We are used to so much change today. Change is everywhere. But we are slow to respond. Why? Because one of our greatest fears come from not knowing what lies ahead. Nobody knows what’s going to happen! Every economist is paid to have a different opinion about the future, but it’s not what happens that matters; it’s how we respond to it that counts.

Adaptability is the key, be open minded, consider alternatives, refine and alter your ways so that you avoid limiting your options.

Remember Darwin’s great words. "It's not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change."

I’m an admirer of Richard Branson I listen to what he says; he runs over 300 companies, I think he’s doing something right!

He says, that bigger companies will lay a lot of people off, and many of those people will become the entrepreneurs of the future, but it’s the smaller businesses that will get the economy up and running again - their cost base is less, they will find more effective ways of employing people than they have done in the past.  Many small companies will fill in the gaps that the larger ones have created, however they must look for opportunities and there will be lots; they must be creative in both cutting costs and providing something new.

So it’s not the strongest businesses that will survive either, we see the big ones tumbling down; it’s the ones most adaptive to change that will capture the opportunities.