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it Black historyWe can learn a lot about how to go through challenging times by looking again by the leaders who have experienced their right share of challenges. It takes bravery, durability, intestine and a vision to move through dark ages and emerge victorious. As a Diversity, equality and inclusion (Dei) Consultant, I spend most of my days helping large and small cruise companies navigate, and often I look at black leaders like Frederick Douglass as examples of what resistance looks like.
Here are three lessons that all entrepreneurs can learn when sailing situations by trying in their professional and personal lives.
Choose the way of self-development
In challenging times, sometimes our best teacher is us. And no one knows better than Frederick Douglass. Despite being born in slavery, Frederick Douglass knew his ticket for freedom was through education. At the age of 6, Douglass moved to the Wye House plantation, where she took care of Lucretia Auld, the wife of a recently felt slave supervisor. Later, she sent her to serve her family members, Hugh and Sophia Auld, in Baltimore. When Douglass was about 12 years old, Sophia Auld began teaching him the alphabet. However, her husband Hugh did not strongly accept it after feeling that writing -Lead encouraged enslaved people to seek freedom.
In secret, Douglass would teach himself to read and write and once said, “Knowledge is the way from slavery to freedom.” Douglass learned how to pronounce from Webster's spelling books and began reading and writing with inspiration from the basement posters and the barn doors. In his later years, he continued to write three best -selling biographies: Frederick Douglass's life story, a American American (1845), My slavery and my freedom (1855) and Life and times of Frederick Douglass (1881).
Lesson is this: when it's time to evolve and change, choose the hard way to self-development for long -term growth and success. Whether you are receiving an executive coach when you feel stuck, honoring your fundraising skills, or applying a new AND Since the stakeholders are skeptical, make the difficult thing you know will be paid later.
Do and say what is right – even if no one listens
Douglass was known all over the world as a vocal abusive. He spent two years in Ireland and the UK, lecturing the need to eliminate slavery in the United States. Charming Europeans donated money to buy his freedom from the AULD family. When he returned to the SH.BA in 1847, he began the first Abolitionist newspaper, North starwhere he defended the removal of slavery in writing.
Here is the lesson: Say and do what I know is right. In business, we often follow our competitors, copy what they do, repeat it, and try to overcome them. But some of the best entrepreneurs I know Chart their paths often swim in the upper stream, innovating along the way and doing something that no one has ever done. In challenging times, these can feel like dangerous movements to do. But these entrepreneurs focus on their vision for the future and do what they think is right, even if others are not purchased inside.
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If you feel alone, build coalitions
When you are stuck in a challenging situation – whether struggling to keep your business in office or navigating an unsafe market – you can storm by building coalitions and partnerships with those around you. Frederick Douglass did exactly that, but with the movement of women.
In 1848, Douglass was the only black person in the room when he attended the Sena Falls Convention, the first Women's Rights Convention in New York. When others could not see the link between women's voting and the removal of women, Douglass spoke strongly in favor of a woman's right to vote and equated the rights of black men with the difficult situation of women to vote. He often said that the world would be a better place if women had the right and power to participate in politics. For this era, this kind of partnership was revolutionary. Douglass would not be alive to see that the 19th change, but his alert and advocacy on civil rights and freedom for all will never be forgotten.
The lesson is this: build partnerships. No one in business can survive alone. If you have not built as many partnerships, alliances and relationships as you wish, now is the time. Douglass realized that by relying on a community of people who shared similar values and goals, he could exalt his issue and create collective growth. When times become difficult in business, it is the strength of your partnerships that will see you.
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Final thoughts
Sometimes, it is useful to look back in order to move forward. Searching for leaders like Frederick Douglass is not only an inspiring choice, but a smart. He was a man who fought to navigate life in the era of slavery and rose in this case to teach himself how to read, write, speak, and eventually become a loud advocate for freedom and liberation. You can't help, but feel that Douglass would be someone who would manage to need advice if he was still alive. He is one of the many figures in black history that can provide us with a guide light in times of uncertainty and turmoil and can be a model to go through challenges with hardness, confidence and hope.