Be a Self-Starter

I was still a young man when my mentor asked me this question: When you finally become the man you envision being, what do you look like?

The question suggests that for each of us, there is emotional and intellectual development that continues throughout life. That process never ends, nor would you want it to. After all, how would you feel if you thought that you could never be better than you are today?

It is in that sense that we develop character. And with one’s development in the world of business, certain characteristics tend to propel us along the path of success. One of those characteristics is that of being a self-starter.

Dictionary.com defines a self-starter as “a person who begins work or undertakes a project on his or her own initiative, without needing to be told or encouraged to do so. According to Google Dictionary, a self-starter is a person who is sufficiently motivated or ambitious to start a new career or business or to pursue further education without the help of others. For example, "he was the self-starter who worked his way up from messenger boy to account executive".

Yesterday, a 17 year old patient of mine told me of two ideas he had for setting up his own business with a friend who would be his business partner. He has put enough thought and planning into the project that the next step was to make the decision to engage. I was impressed that the young man was smart enough and ambitious enough to start up his own business. He is already a self-starter.

Also, yesterday, I was seeing a patient who had come in to discuss the results of his gene testing. My computer was slow and uncooperative. When I stepped out of my office to complain about the computer problem, my secretary confirmed the computer problem and handed me a printout of the gene testing. She had anticipated my need and had solved my immediate problem without being asked to do so. I was again impressed. She is a self-starter.

Many years ago I read a book called A Message to Garcia, by Elbert Hubbard. A man needed to get a message to Garcia, who was deep in the jungle. The man engaged a messenger to deliver the message, but he did not know exactly where Garcia was. Without asking too many questions, the messenger figured out how to find Garcia and give him the message. The point of the story is that the messenger had to have the character to get the job done with minimal instruction, and he did. The messenger was a self-starter.

How does one become a self-starter? By decision. It is a characteristic that you assign to yourself, and then you go about developing that characteristic, looking for opportunities to do so. If you know what needs to be done, then you might decide that you could go ahead and do it without waiting to be asked. You would anticipate what the boss wants, or anticipate what the business needs. If you are an employee, you could imagine yourself as the owner of the business and decide what you would do; then tell the boss what you have decided to do, with his or her approval.

In the business world, one would be either the boss or the employee, although one might easily be both. An employee who is also a boss might be a mid-level executive, for instance. As the boss, it would be your responsibility to make the business succeed. In another book entitled Boundaries for Leaders, by Dr. Henry Cloud, he makes the point that what happens in a business is what the boss either creates or allows.

Make a decision to define yourself as a self starter.Look for opportunities to develop that part of your character. Beware of a tendency to wait for the next task to be assigned. Instead, think of yourself as an extension of the boss, thinking of what needs to b