When you’re tasked with taking a position of leadership, there’s a lot resting on your shoulders. You have to acknowledge the power you hold and use it to improve the system you’re working within. This can seem like a daunting task if you try to hold all of the responsibility. One of the most important attributes of a leader is the ability to listen to others and to know when to look for advice.
Taking advice from people in established leadership roles can help inform what you want to do and how you want to accomplish your goals. Mark Wiseman is an investment legend who acts not only as an investment manager but also as a business executive. With years of leadership experience, he has some great advice for those just starting out or established leaders who are looking to up their game.
Take the long view
As a leader, you have to be able to make decisions not just in the short term, but also for the success of your business years down the road. A huge part of setting yourself up for financial success is by investing in the stock market. When doing this, it’s important to understand that you won’t be touching that money for at least 30 to 40 years.
The ups and downs of the stock market can seem intimidating, and perhaps even like an irresponsible choice at first glance, but Mark Wiseman points out that “if you look at a chart of the Dow Jones over 100 years you don’t see any volatility.” This means that over a longer period of time, your money will be well taken care of and your company’s wealth will be compounded, maybe even exponentially.
Plan for different scenarios so you can lead your team in times of crisis
Mark Wiseman isn’t encouraging you to lead as a pessimist. On the contrary, he encourages you to look at the array of outcomes your company’s money could face. These outcomes range from success surpassing your wildest dreams to a stock market depression that could very negatively impact your investments for a period of time. There are going to be financial booms, and there are also going to be difficult times such as the Great Depression or the post 9/11 economy.
Wiseman specifically says that “for long-term investors…these are the types of scenarios you should be running and looking at how it affects markets and businesses.” He understands that you obviously can’t predict these trends, but having an awareness that they can come around and planning accordingly for them could be very beneficial.
Take advantage of opportunities when they present themselves
Although Wisman acknowledges that the current pandemic has been devastating on a human level, as an investor, he also thinks coronavirus could be the opportunity of a generation. With so many industries halted, now is the time to buy in at a low level on the ground floor. As a leader, it’s your job to make your moves while you can.
He explains that “a friend [of his] in the music business is signing every band he can find, [because] people will go back to concerts.” He goes onto talk about how six months after 9/11 people were using air travel as much as they were before, therefore proving that people will return to restaurants and cinemas once the imminent danger is over. They’ll go to see theatre and sports again after an amount of time, so if you’re thinking of getting into any of these businesses, during this time of transition and suspension, you might be very in demand in just a short amount of time.
