Positively entitled

 One of the things I struggled with in my early career was how to measure up against my more confident peers. Confidence is an attribute that I've had to work on over the years, and it's been all manner of life lessons, personal and professional, that have finally given me the courage to acknowledge openly that I'm good at what I do and have earned my place at the Boardroom table.


Lessons in life are all very well, but somehow you have to work out how to put them together and then to learn something useful from them. It's no good someone telling you either - you have to experience life for yourself and then find your own way of adapting your habits to operate in a different way. Not easy when life is running at a million miles an hour - this is the reason why reflection is such a powerful and important act to make time for. Even more so if you are a leader of people or a parent.


Part of my personal confidence issue was not an inability to speak up, I did this easily (lesson learnt growing up in a hotel) but the fact that I didn't feel as intelligent / educated / able as the people around me. They all looked so much more polished and capable, more rounded than me. Of course some of these people have now been friends for many years and I know that they felt no different to me...ah, the wonder of hindsight. One common thing that set them apart for me was their apparent sense of entitlement. Not so much in the way of a spoilt child, but more that they seemed to feel more entitled to ask questions and, importantly in my case, to seek support. It took me years to understand that the freedom I had as a child of very busy parents had resulted in a strong sense of independence, along with a diminished confidence to ask for help without an accompanying sense of failure. I still have to remind myself now that it's more than OK to ask for help, that's what being a team is all about.


I read an interesting survey this week about entitlement and creativity - it concluded that those who feel more entitled prove in this study to be more creative. If it's true that our youngest generations have a greater sense of entitlement than those that went before them this bodes well. Given the world is changing very quickly, and the world of work is likely to be very different in even 10 years time, a strong sense of creativity will be all important to develop new the business models which will keep our economy thriving.


So without indulgence, we should celebrate a positive sense of entitlement. If this is about curiosity,  a conviction that the world can and should be a better place and the confidence to change the status quo then it's a vital attribute for the future.