How Trust can be built?

In a professional or family relationship, Trust can be built based on “Consistent behavior and action"  over a period of time. It is not a one-time effort. Generally, based on our past consistent or repeated behavior and actions only, others form a perception, that is trust.

For example, in a professional environment,

If you are consistent in keeping up your commitment  every time, others start trusting you as “committed”.Alternatively, if you commit something and everytime you show up with excuse, others form perception that you are "not dependable". This way only, you build the perception about you to others on commitment is concerned.

When colleagues are approaching you every time for a guidance or solution, if you are consistent in your approachability, then others are forming a trust on you as "easily approachable and solution provider". Alternatively, if there is inconsistency in your behaviour or action every time, you seem to be "vulnerable" and trust is not formed on the approachability. 

The point is that in every aspect of your behavior and action, if there is consistency, accordingly trust is built on the particular behavior and action.

Hence, building trust is not a one-time effort, it is CONSISTENT EFFORT and if you would like to preserve the relationship with the team, customers, family members, show up consistency in your behavior and action on anything.

when you want to lead others, trust has to be earned by YOU and it is an effort!

Why should Trust be Built?

Having discussed TRUST is an underlying thread in a relationship; let us understand why building trust is essential to lead others particularly in a professional environment.

Trust is evergreen required quality in a relationship, with the changing working environment now, it is utmost needed to develop the influencing capability.

What is the change in the working environment?

The work environment is rapidly changing. Earlier, people look up someone as their lead for knowledge, information, age, and experience they possess. Now with the abundance of information availability thanks to digital evolution and humungous opportunities across the world for survival and growth, people are no more looking up for someone for a reason stated above. Instead, people are now looking up someone as their lead for their wisdom, insights, mentoring or solution providing capabilities for the specific challenges.

To sum up, the workplace is changing from commanding to inspiring, in turn, positive influencing to get the things done.

For any onetime transaction or for short-term benefits, commanding or pushing may help to get the things done. If you are looking for long-term association, positively influence others to get things done and peaceful transaction between you and others, building trust is required.

You shall deserve yourself as a person to look up, only when you develop yourself and you are proven as “ TRUSTED “ by your colleagues or networks.

In the above context, trust building becomes important.

The question is on what areas, you need to develop trust and how to build trust among people. Let us discuss next week!
 

Leading Others (Building Trust)

One of the factors to enhance the quality of a relationship is building trust which will improve your capability to lead others.

What is meant by Trust?

 Trust can be understood as a strong feeling or invisible connecting bond between you and others. 

The others in your professional or family circle should believe or strongly convince that you are

1.Genuine in your intentions
2.Capable of providing solutions or doing something worthy
3.Dependable for outcome 

In any relationship, any one or all the above is strongly expected or to be felt.

For example, in mother and child relationship, the strong conviction of a child about mother is unconditional love and care, that is trust.

In teacher and student relationship, the strong conviction of a student about the teacher is knowledge sharing and care, that is trust.

In a doctor and patient relationship, the strong conviction of a patient about the doctor is cure from disease, that is trust.

In an employer and employee relationship, the strong conviction of both on each other is guaranteed on survival, learning, and growth, that is trust.

In a seller and buyer relationship, the conviction of a buyer is on the quality of product or service, that is trust.

So, in all relationship, there is a hidden undisputed expectation or strong conviction exists between both or anyone. That can be termed as TRUST.

When we understand the TRUST factor is underlying thread in a relationship, let us discuss Why building trust is important and how to build trust in a professional context next week.

Leading Others

The second step in the personal development process is to learn to lead others
 
What does “leading others ” mean?

Leading others is not just commanding or dominating others. It is more about strengthening the quality of relationship with others.It is all about the way you are connecting or relating with others. That quality of relationship will determine your capability to lead others.
 
Why do we need to learn to lead others?
 
To be successful in professional life, it is not sufficient to be “individual outstanding performer”, we need others for our success and growth.
 
Also, when you are growing up in a career, your relationship quality is equally important as your functional competency. Hence, it would help if you mastered the art of managing the relationship with others, despite your past success as an individual contributor.

How to strengthen your quality of the relationship?

As said, strengthening the relationship is an art and with a little bit of awareness and practice, anyone can improve the relationship skills.
 
Given below some of the factors contributing to strengthening the quality of the relationship.
 
1.Building Trust
2.Connecting with Care
3.Enhancing the tolerance
4.Improving communication
5.Earning the respect

When we enhance our perspectives on the above factors, eventually we can strengthen the quality of relationship .

Let us discuss each factors next week. 

Leading Self (Having Faith)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The fifth and last factor to improve strengthening inner world is “Faith.”

Faith can be defined as complete confidence or belief or trust or conviction about something. That something can be unknown, no proof or evidence or not seen. However, internally, we feel the presence. The moment you think and feel about it, it would give internal strength. That is FAITH.

The faith can be entrusted on God, Nature, your capabilities, your people or your profession. It can be anything which is held on with strong conviction.

For example,

if you strongly believe and trust in your values and it will drive your life, that is faith
If you strongly believe your favorite Guru or God and it will guide you, that is faith
If you strongly believe yourself and your capabilities without any doubt, that is faith

Why do you need faith in something ?:
 
When you have undoubted faith in something, that gives positive feeling inside you and your mind accepts life challenges or face any consequences with clarity and courage.

Faith makes you stronger internally both during normal and tough times.

If you read any successful people, they have faith either on themselves or on their product/services or in the force beyond their imagination, say divine power.

Just answer yourself on which you have faith? How strong is it? Make it stronger and hold it or surrender yourself to that faith, eventually, you become stronger, and your leadership capability will also become stronger!

Leading Self (High-Level Discipline)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The fourth factor to improve strengthening inner world is “self-discipline”.

When we say self-discipline, most of us, relate it to being punctual or being organized. That is also required, but those are low order discipline. Nevertheless, for some people, still maintaining that discipline is being a challenge.

To strengthen the inner world, what is really required is high order discipline practices. That is under no compulsion from external factors, how you stick on your routines or values for long-term benefits.

For example, you have decided to follow some kind of diet practices in your lifestyle and you committed to that. Even though you are free to give up the diet practices at any point in time, but if you consistently stick to it for your own benefit, that is high order discipline.

The point is that under full freedom, what you are doing consistently without give-up will reinforce your inner strength. Alternatively, when you break frequently your own commitments, you will lose your inner strength.

Personally, I know one CEO of a large organization adheres daily walking practices for more than 25 years irrespective of his busy schedule, travel etc. That is high order discipline. I wonder to correlate his business success with his personal discipline.

 The action is to take one initiative which is good for your forever and stick on this consistently. Eventually, that will improve your inner strength and leadership!

Leading self ( Owning responsibility)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world.

The Third  factor to improve strengthening inner world is “personal  responsibility.”

When you search the meaning of responsibility in dictionary or Google, you get the answer as a duty to do something or the ability to respond to the situation. Those are outward focused.
From a leadership perspective, my view is personal responsibility is a feeling of ownership about something. That could be your life, your family, your team, your organization, your work or about the world. It is more of Inward oriented.
Most of the personal problems are due to lack of ownership feeling at an individual level only.

How does personal responsibility enhance your internal strength?

When you have a feeling of ownership about something when a problem occurs, you try to find solutions, and in this process, you are giving yourself towards solutions and internally you are feeling safe, comfort and peace.
Alternatively, When you do not own something, when the problem happens, you tend to blame or complain about the situation, and in this process, either the problem aggravates, or you are undergoing stress within yourself.


For example, 
When you own your work, if somebody points out some problem, you try to correct the problem. In case if you are not owning, you try to defend or put the problem on somebody.

If you own your team or organization, you try to educate your team member when you find fault with their performance. Else, you blame them or complain.

If you feel you are responsible for your family harmony, you try to bring solutions for relationship conflicts; else you complicate further by arguing and complaining.


The question to ask yourself is how much ownership you are taking for all life aspects and you can see the correlation of your internal strength!

Let us discuss further.

Leading self (Being grateful for everything)

As we discussed, leading self is all about strengthening your inner world. The second factor to improve strengthening inner world is “ being grateful for everything.” Being grateful means internally feeling gifted or blessed to have this life and being thankful for everything. Generally, we use to crib about the things which we have not yet attained or achieved or what we missed in the past. In this process, we forget the profound truth that up to this moment, many factors are working in favor of us to exist. As life is so uncertain that, we need to imbibe the feeling of being blessed for every aspect that made us to this moment. Those aspects could be your education, work, family, friends, personality and so on. When you feel gifted and being in a grateful state, you gain the following benefits 1. Becoming humble which takes you to the next level of your evolution to divine 2. Sincere desire to make an impact by giving and you start attracting the right things 3. Internally feeling secure and confident. How to be grateful? 1.    Count your blessings, and good things happened in your life 2.    Count your worries or challenges 3.    Compare the blessings vs. challenges, and I am sure everyone will have more blessings than challenges. Having suggested a rational way of being grateful, you need to be more reflective to feel the gratefulness at emotional way. It is possible through awareness and self-introspection. Whatever way you develop your inner world with a feeling of gratefulness, that is ok as long as you are in a grateful state as this improves your LEADERSHIP qualities in the external world.

Leading Self (Improving self-image through actions)

Having discussed the two approaches to improve self-confidence, now let us consider the third approach to improve your self-image and confidence.

Through action and small success:

One of the most powerful methods to improve your self-confidence is to take action by yourself and experience the small victory. That achievement experience will inculcate positive reinforcement in your mind and each cell of your body. The positive reinforcement in your mind improves your self-confidence.

For example,

One of the professional challenges for most of us is public speaking or making a presentation to strangers. Even though you are competent enough in your subject, the fear inside you may make you feel low about yourself or you display low confidence. How to overcome low self-image and improve self-confidence on public speaking?

You need to take action of speaking in a small group and experience it. When you achieve the small success through your actions, your mind registers that event and positive experience. When you are doing it again in a relatively larger audience, your mind pushes you with positive reinforcement of earlier success, and again you will do well. When you repeat those positive experiences many times, your self-image and self-confidence will go up on public speaking.

similarly, whenever you feel low about yourself in any aspects of life, you need to take action and experience it.

Hence, you need to take ACTION and achieve small success to improve your confidence which is more effective than any other methods like a self-help book, observation or listening.

Leading self (Improving self-confidence)

Improving self-image by enhancing the perspectives
 

As discussed last week, there are 3 methods by which we can improve our self-image inturn the self-confidence

1. Self-introspection
2. Enhancing perspectives
3. Through self-actions

Enhancing perspectives:

We are forming beliefs about self and the world through our windows and what we are seeing through it. Typically the windows are our family, friends, working environment and the location we live. When we widen our windows and vision, we see a new world of possibilities.
 
Widening windows are possible through observation, reading and listening to others.

For example,

When we see a person with no financial support, only with an engineering background, values, passion creates world-class  IT Institution, it enhances the perspective within us and gives us confidence on new possibilities.

When we see a man/women hailed from the middle-class family is heading the corporate giants at the international level, it enhances our perspective and gives us possibility thinking within us.

When we see a person, with the right strategy, passion and faith achieves world recognition, and become president or first citizien of a nation, it enhances our perspective and gives confidence within us about new possibilities.

Personally, when I met Onlysuccess founder Mr.Vidyashankar in 2008 and came to know about his childhood village background, an introvert type but with a deep hunger in making a difference to establish a world-class training organization.That moment instilled a confidence in me to start my organization in 2012 to make an impact on others.

The point is, irrespective of your background, if you enhance your perspectives, it will give you new possibilities, in turn, increase your self-confidence and in turn self-image.

Hence, look around and enhance your perspectives!

let us discuss the 3rd method to improve your confidence in next week.

Leading self (Improving Self confidence)

As discussed last week, our upbringing and environment plays a significant role in the way we think and feel about ourselves. Despite that fact, if we do not enhance our self-identity or image, it would affect the self-confidence and also the quality of life. Hence it becomes essential to improve our self-image.

How to enhance the self-image & boost self-confidence?

From my personal experience, three approaches  will help to improve confidence  
1.Self-introspection 
2.Widening the perspectives
3.Actions and achieving small successes.

1. Self-introspection:

One of the powerful and hard things to improve your self-image is through self-reflection or self-analysis. It is more about analyzing your inner feeling, thought process and finding the reasons or solutions yourself.

It is more powerful than listening to others, reading self-book.

For example,

Imagine that you attend a seminar, and you have valid questions to ask the speaker, but somehow due to inhibition, you do not speak up, and the event was over. In the end, you felt guilty of not raising, being shy and thought yourself inferior, low confident person. That impacts your self-identity as low.

If you want to overcome low self-identity and be strong personality next time, you need to analyze yourself in solitude by answering the following questions.

Precisely what happened yourself during the moment?
What prevented from asking questions?
What could have happened if you stood up against your inhibition?
How would you have felt if you did as per your inner thought?

The above similar dialogue within you will help you to improve your shortcomings, next time, when similar situations arise, you would become stronger.

Even though this approach is powerful, for some people, it is difficult to ask questions inward. But, from my experience, when you ask yourself and get answer yourself, that is the most impact moment to improve your self-confidence.

If you read some competent people, they use to do the self-introspection of their thought process, behaviors and actions on a DAILY BASIS.

Just it requires practice & time, and let us discuss other approaches in next week. 

Leading self (Impact of self-image)

As discussed last week, One of the factors for strengthening your inner world or “leading self” is self-image.

Self-image or identity is how you feel or think yourself most of the time. That is self-image of yourself.
For example,
if you feel or think like a capable most of the time, then you are identifying yourself as a capable person.
if you think yourself as unlucky most of the time, then you are identifying yourself as an Unlucky person.

How is self-image being formed within you?

The self-image is formed within in the following ways  

1.Your upbringing and background 
2.Your actions
3. The society or network also label you in a particular fashion most of the time, and you will even start believing yourself, then, that will become your self-identity or image.

How will this self-image affect you?

The feeling or thinking you have most of the time will get manifested or demonstrated outside as your personality either as CONFIDENT, ENERGETIC, ACTION-ORIENTED person or Low confident, dull, passive person.

 One of the surveys reveals that 85 % of the world population suffers from low self-image. The consequence of low self-image affects the relationship, communication, performance at work, parenting quality, living up to potential and so on. So the quality of life depends on the quality of self-image.

Let us discuss the method to improve the self-image next week.

Learn to Lead - Leading Self

As discussed, the first step in personal development process Is leading self or personal leadership.
Personal leadership precedes everything. If we do not learn to lead self, we will be finding difficult to manage others, organizational roles and responsibilities, and even family life.

What does “leading self” mean?

Leading self-means being aware of yourself, your emotions, beliefs, values and how you are effectively managing yourself. It is more of strengthening your inner world. The quality of your inner world would reflect externally as your outlook, appearance, tone, and style of carrying out your activities.

Hence, leading self-means how you are strengthening your quality of inner world.simple.

If your inner world is positive, vibrant, peaceful, then our external personality will also be more positive, energetic and pleasant to you and others.     
    
How to strengthen the inner world?

Irrespective your upbringing and environment, with little awareness and practice, you can strengthen your inner mindset, and thereby you lead yourself. It is all about keeping your mindset in a positive mode.

Given below the factors contributing to strengthening your inner world.

1. Self-image
2. Personal responsibility
3. Self-discipline
4. Being grateful
5. Faith

When we enhance our perspectives on the above factors, eventually we can strengthen the inner mindset.

Let us discuss each factors next week. 

Steps in Leadership Development Process

As discussed, leadership is all about personal development, and it is not given by others.
How to develop your leadership capabilities?

It consists of 4 steps. 

1.Personal leadership or leading yourself
2.Ensuring cordial Relationship with others or leading others
3.Performance  or delivering results
4.Developing others as a leader 

This step is applicable for everyone at ANY stages of the life cycle. 

For example, if you a "business head," you need to develop your leadership qualities by continuously working on those four steps.

If you are entering into the professional ladder as “ Trainee,” you have to develop your leadership capabilities continuously on those steps

On a personal front, if you are entering from "Bachelor to spouse role or spouse to father /mother," you have to develop your family leadership qualities based on those steps only.


It is a continuous improvement journey throughout life. There is no guarantee that as Manager you exhibited good leadership qualities would help you at General Management level. Each level or position calls for the development of different leadership capabilities.

As mentioned earlier, the leadership capabilities could be your thought process, attitude, words, actions and results and how it lifts your surroundings, your organizations, your teams and your personal and family quality of life.

Also, you observe that the development from one step to another step is sequential.but, in reality, it is parallel development only. We can not wait for PERFECT personal development to get into the next step of RELATIONSHIP building.

The point is you need to be conscious enough to develop yourself, your relationship quality, your performance and your effort in developing others on a continuous basis.

Let us discuss each step and its components in next week.

Learn to Lead (Understanding Leadership)

What is leadership?

Leadership is all about greatness in your thinking, your words, your actions and your results which leads to making a positive impact on your surroundings, organization, and family.

Leadership is a quality of the individual on character and competency which positively helps others.

Misconceptions about leadership :

1.    Leadership is given by others
2.    Leadership is related to a title like a manager or CEO
3.    Leadership is directly related to age and experience or educational qualification
4.    Leadership is for the organizational or political environment.
5.    Leadership is more about charisma

All the above are just a misunderstanding about leadership.

If you make a positive impact even a smile in others, that is leadership.

For example, we respect some people irrespective of their age, experience, position but only for the positive impact they made on us through their intention, words or actions. Whereas we may not like some people, even though they are holding reliable power. You can relate this with your network of people.


Leadership is all about what you do rather than who you are.

To illustrate this definition of leadership, some year back, Times of India had launched ad campaign " Lead India". The video link is given below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-gvE7MGIBw

Having understood the leadership definition as more about personal development, let us discuss the step by step development process next week.

Learn to Lead

If you observe any individual’s phenomenal growth or any organizational growth or any family’s upliftment, the hidden factor among all is“leadership.”

Leadership is not about the resources or positional status; it is more of personal qualities which are uplifting the individual or organization. For example, all organizations are filled with many people with various designations denoting as leaders, even then the organization struggles to make a positive impact or sustained growth. The reason is not due to resources, it is due to a lack of leadership.

As there are misconceptions on leadership and development, a holistic understanding is required on Leadership from the inside out perspective and we will discuss  the following  aspects of leadership
1. What is leadership and how it is different from a leader or manager?
2.Steps involved in developing leadership capability irrespective of your age, qualification or position
3.Insights in each of the steps in leadership development

I am firmly believing that “ Personal Leadership precedes any organizational, family leadership.” If the person is molded with the right leadership qualities, the organization he is associating with will also be flourishing. If the person is molded with right personal leadership qualities, his family upliftment also is ensured. The starting point is " personal leadership".

The fundamental is developing personal leadership capability WITHIN, and hence we will discuss more on Personal Leadership and its insights in the following weeks in detail.