Win -Win Mindset

 Win -Win Mindset 

(Execution Excellence -"Ability to get things done" Series)
 

As we have discussed the influencing framework/process, we highlighted the importance of being aware of the context/situation. Also, being flexible in the influence style will help to get things done.
 
Now, let us understand more about the mindset, behaviors, and practices that highly influence people to apply when dealing with people and situations. They have never been perceived as commanding, misusing power, or rude, and people love to work with them. They easily get things done in the workplace despite the challenges.

Understanding and practicing those mindsets, behavior, and practices will help you become a high-influencing person in the workplace.
 
One such primary mindset that influences people to operate is a Win-Win mindset.
 
What is a Win-Win mindset?

Win-Win is a state of mind in which we look for mutual benefit in any interaction or business deal.
It is more about being empathetic about another person while focusing on your objective, fair, and flexible in finding a solution that meets both requirements.
 
Influential people ensure that the other person's needs are met in any interaction with others, either a small conversion or significant business deal sign-off.

For example,

You are spending time with one of your colleagues, and after the conversation, if both of them feel good about the interaction, get some value or solution or agreed upon mutual agreement. It is a win-win situation, and both of them win together.

If any of you leaves with an upset mood or gets humiliated or unheard, then there is a possibility of both of you being in a situation of lose-lose or lose-win, and either way, that will not be helpful.
 
In the same way, any business partnership works on a win-win basis only.
 
For example, one product organization signs a partnership agreement with the distributor. The organization has products but needs more marketing and distribution reach to customers. The distributor has access to customers but needs more products. When both sign the deal, they share the mutual value and gain revenue together. That is a win-win.

If anyone feels that the other person is exploiting others, it becomes a win-lose, and the partnership eventually breaks.
 
There is always an argument that it is not possible to have a win-win situation and mindset all the time. If both do not realize a win-win in the long run, the association or deal is not sustainable. In the short term only it works.

We can be in a win-win mindset only when we feel good about ourselves and are optimistic about our outlook. That needs awareness and practice.
 
This win-win concept is underrated, and if we apply it in all interactions and dealings, the ability to get things done will improve.

Based on this fundamental win-win mindset, some behaviors and practices are built upon, and let us discuss them further.
 
Have a great week ahead!

Dealing with Fear-Taking Action

 Dealing with Fear-Taking Action 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

Having discussed the two steps in dealing with the fear, let us understand the 3^rd step, which is more powerful in overcoming fear. That is confronting the fear through ACTION.
 
As discussed, being aware of your fear WITHIN and Knowing more about fear through enhancing perspectives all lead to half of the battle won. Real confidence comes when we take action against fear. We can not build confidence through external stimuli all the time. Absolute certainty will be made deeply at the subconscious level only by doing and experiencing through actions.
 
For example,

You may have fear about your public speaking capability. You may be aware of your inner fear and learn many public speaking techniques through various external sources like books and from others. Still, you may struggle with inner fear. You can overcome fear only when you take action by speaking in a small group.

When you speak in a small group and experience success, your subconscious mind registers the successful event. Next time, when you speak in larger groups, your mind pushes you with positive reinforcement of earlier success, and you may do well. Again, the mind registers this event as a positive reinforcement. This way only, you can overcome the fear of public speaking of any size.

The point is you are overcoming the fear only by taking action instead of stopping at the first two steps. Most of us are comfortable in the first two steps.

Similarly, in a professional environment, you may fear of new initiatives or new policies or processes in the organization. Fear is natural. The only way to manage fear is by taking action as follows.

1. Recognize it
2. Enhancing the perspectives through external sources
3. Confronting it by taking ACTION in small and extend it

The choice we have is either fearful or FACE it through ACTION.
 
If you are fearful, the fear engulfs you. When you confront it through action, you have control over fear. It is a process that requires awareness and action!

Let us discuss other disturbing emotions next week!

Have a great week, till then!

Dealing with Fear- Rationalise it.

 Dealing with Fear- Rationalise it.

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

Last two weeks, we discussed the intricacy of FEAR and the 3-step process of dealing with fear, either imaginary fear or fact-based fear.

1.Recognize 
2.Subsidize with rational thinking
3.Confront it through action
 
Having discussed step1 Recognize last week, let us understand more about step 2

Subsidize with rational thinking:

Fear is just an emotion. The emotion can be subsidized with rational thinking with datapoints s or enhancing the perspective.

For example,

you may have a fear of exposing yourself to larger audiences on public speaking. That is natural.

You can subsidize the emotions with logical input by asking yourself. 

What will happen in the worst case if I present myself?
Do i have any past experience of failure?
What was the context?
How are others doing, and what techniques are they adopting?


When you enhance your logical perspective from other's experience, books, observation, you eventually subsidize any emotional aspect, say fear. It just needs awareness and practice of looking at emotions with logical data points.
 
In one of the retailing organizations, the management wanted to bring a reform in its sales and cash management aspects. Still, they feared losing the existing customers even though the reform would help all in the long run.

How did they manage the fear?

First, the management team had recognized and admitted the fear of losing. That led to the second step.

 Second, they checked with few customers on a trial basis and also learned the best practices from the other industries, which helped them to enhance the perspectives on dealing with the fear of losing. 

Third, they implemented clear policies and communication processes to the dealers, and to their surprise, the market accepted the initiative.
 
The key learnings are that fear is emotion and natural. Eventually, it can be offset with reasoning. For which, we need to widen the perspective!

Let us discuss step 3 next week!

Till then, have a great week ahead.

Misconception about empathy and performance

 Misconception about empathy and performance

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

One of the responses for last week's discussion on "empathy or looking at the things from other's views" is that if we start looking at things from other's views, that leads into lenience and, in turn, mediocrity in the performance, particularly in a professional environment.

We need to understand the slight difference between empathy and being lenient.

Empathy means we listen to other's views and recognize the cause in it. That does not mean that we are accepting the consequences as such.

For example, let us imagine a typical scenario in the workplace,

One of your junior colleagues on a particular day left the office early due to personal issues. He/she may be the authorized person for a financial transaction, and he/ she had not delegated the task to anyone on that day. Due to his/ her absence, the important financial transaction did not happen, which affected your organizational performance.

In this scenario, as a manager/leader, what choices you had the next day when the junior colleague reported the duty?

Choice 1:

You might have displayed your dissatisfaction with the performance without listening to his/ her situation. In this process, both of you experienced negative emotions or hurt personally.No learning from low performance.
 
Choice 2 :

You might have listened to personal issues, and both of you felt sorry about the performance. In this process, you are lenient and accept mediocre performance.
 
Choice 3:

You might have listened to personal issues, acknowledged it and you might have assertively conveyed your dissatisfaction and his/ her lack of delegation to the work. You made him/ her responsible for not completing the task.He/she might have learned from the mistakes.
 
Choice 3 is the appropriate method of understanding others and ensuring the right management process in place.

Most of the time, we are witnessing either choice 1 or 2 in which mediocre performance is encouraged.

 i recall an incident that happened to me some years back. I drove my car first time in a new city and violated the signal as I was not familiar with the signal points and free left etc. A traffic policeman stopped me and got my license. I briefed him about my first-time driving and lack of awareness about the signal points. He listened to me and advised me to be careful in city driving. But he was firm to charge me fine as punishment and I also paid. In my view, the policemen were very empathic about my ignorance but, at the same time, firm on his duty. That is what required for the people who are at the commanding level as a manager or leader. Just imagine if the policeman displayed choice 1 or choice 2  behavior, then we both were not doing justice to ourselves as humanity consideration or duty consciousness.!
 
The point is being empathetic does not lead to lenience; you need to be firm on your role as a leader in a professional environment for ensuring performance!

Looking from other's view

 Looking from other's view

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have been discussing the method of channelizing or regulating the emotions in the workplace, one more effective approach is "looking at the things from other's view."

In most human interactions, everything is right or wrong from the person's standpoint, exposure or experience, context, and timing only.

When i am considering my decision is right, that is based on my experience, my today's context and that decision may be proven wrong by some one's point of view from their expertise, background, and timeline perspective. When we realize this truth, we can develop the ability to look at things from other's views.

This ability will help us to channelize or regulate emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy from competitiveness into positive emotions.

For example, you may get momentarily anger with your junior colleague's quality of work, say preparation of the presentation. When you understand his/ her background, experience, you may realize their weakness, which will help you to cool your emotions and divert into compassion to develop him/ her.

I am not advocating other's mistakes to be accepted as such, but for every error of others, if you suffer from negative emotions, it is not going to help you. Instead, if you develop the ability to recognize the causes for the mistake or low performance from other's perspective, at that moment, that will make you be in positive emotions.

Some people are good at look at things from other's perspectives, and it is a skill to be developed!

Indicators of Low Emotional Intelligence (EI)

Indicators of Low Emotional Intelligence (EI) 
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

How to measure our current emotional intelligence level?  Many agencies in the market are administrating psychometric assessments to measure EI level and it is up to the individual to take it if it is affordable, keen on the quantitative metrics, and the development plan.

Alternatively, let us reflect on some of the habits that we demonstrate on a day to day activities. Those habits will give some ideas about our current capability of managing emotions and the gaps to bridge.

Given below, some of the habits/behaviors in the workplace. If you relate more points with your behavior, then you need to realize that you should work on emotional management aspects.

Some of the indicators of low emotional management skill 
 

1. Accepting to other’s obligation to complete a task by saying YES, then internally feeling bad about ourselves for not saying NO and finding difficulty to complete the task as per commitment and developing internal stress.
2. Getting into arguments for silly issues with colleagues or external people even though they admit the mistake. Just to prove our stand, keep on talking.
3. Criticizing others even though we do not have a direct influence and not relevant to personal, professional, business growth. ( For example, by  criticizing the player’s performance who are actually in the field or criticizing the people who are in the hot seat and no way we connect with them and no way they can hear our voice.)
4. Frequently losing coolness and shouting in high decibels with colleagues, junior colleagues, and at the end of the drama, the purpose is never met!
5. Taking “Impulsive decisions” due to overjoy or anger or frustration which sometimes backfires by way of monetary loss, time loss and the friction in the relationship.
6. Not having the patience to listen to others, interrupting with personal views.
7. Blaming others when things go wrong and not realizing the self’s contribution to the failure
8. Frequently going in a self-sabotaging mode for all the failures without logically analyzing the causes.
9. Not able to focus and prioritize. Keep on changing the priorities or even jobs or business.
10. Not able to look at the issues from other’s perspectives and more self-centered.

You can add the list based on your experience and relate your selves.

We need not regret today’s level of managing emotions effectively as it is the effect of many variables like your values, beliefs, awareness of self and others which we discuss later with counteractions. But awareness is essential for progress.

Moving towards higher-level emotional management is possible with awareness and practice.

Let us discuss more on this aspect.

Big picture thinking Vs. Micro detailing

Big picture thinking Vs. Micro detailing

A few weeks back, we have been discussing the need for big-picture thinking and the ways to develop at self-level and among the team. One aspect left out was  “ Which is ideal for the leader? Being big picture orientation or getting into micro detailing? When to switch in and switch out between big picture thinking and detailing?
 
There is no ideal style or state of thinking. Everyone should have both big picture thinking and micro detailing orientation. We need to know when to switch in and switch out as it depends on the context and situation. That awareness is essential. We can not always be in the extreme state as life is all about balancing, given the larger interest of others than self.

Some effective people are aware of themselves and able to switch in and switch out, and in both states, they bring value to the others and organization.
 

For example, 
 

I worked with a  senior colleague in an organization, who was regarded as a big picture thinker and visionary person. In a specific period, there was a huge demand for our products. Due to the supply chain issue, the team was struggling to manage the delivery crisis. He involved himself in the crisis, worked with micro details, and helped the team to sail through the crisis. At the same time, he understood the problem at the root level and thought about long term solutions. Post-crisis, he took some initiatives and solved the problem in the subsequent year. He brought the solution for the chronic problem due to his ability to switch in from the big picture to micro-level when it is required and the ability to see the big picture when working in detailing and solved the problem permanently. 

The point is as business managers or leaders; you need to develop the capability of switching in and switching out from big picture view to micro detailing and vice versa. This capability will help in sustainable growth.

*************************************************************
Additional note on this capability of switching in and switching out

Since I have the opportunity to work with more than 100 business leaders of small business, I did a little research on the leadership style (big picture orientation vs. micro-management) of those leaders. Only 47 % of the sample demonstrated both the capability during the intervention. Interestingly, there is a positive correlation between the business head who is capable of switching in and switch out and the consistent growth of the organization for the last 5~8 years period.

Whereas the business heads(41 %) who demonstrate a higher level of big picture thinking orientation and lack of detailing on a day to day issues, the organization struggles on the consistent growth or some organizations are stagnant or even switched to other businesses. Similarly, the business heads (12%)who demonstrate high on micro-level detailing also loses the sight of growth opportunities.

I am aware that many variables influence the growth or stagnant aspects of the business. I am not concluding that this leadership capability alone contributes to growth; however, it is also one of the contributors. We need to do more research on this aspect.

Peaks and Valleys

Peaks and Valleys

Even though this book is old, this is very apt at this point, to make good and bad times work for us by maintaining mental stability and positiveness all the time.


Name of the Book: Peaks and Valleys
Author: Spencer Johnson (Bestselling Author of “Who moved my cheese” book)
No of pages: 100+

The  Theme of this book :
In the entire lifecycle, everyone goes through good and tough times. Our tendency would be enjoying too much during good times and getting upset too much during tough times as it shows the lack of maturity in dealing with the gift and uncertainties.

This book gives perspective on dealing with good and bad times of life in a story format and easy to read.

I especially recommend to entrepreneurs and business leaders to get perspective on managing good and tough times in business.

The essence of the book is given below. 

Valley (Tough Times):    
                                                                                          
 This time is an opportunity to learn more about life. Find the good hidden in a bad time. Could you make use of it? Do more service to others. Learn from the mistakes; develop strategies, competency development for a better future.

Peak (Good times):

This Time is for celebrating the achievement and enjoy the moment. But, be humble and grateful for being on the height. Reflect on what good things made your top and look back on the path you have come across. Sustain it.

Prolonging Peak (Good times):

When we are in peak, the tendency would be to get into complacent and arrogance. Instead of it, practice humility, do good things better, and do more service to others. Always remembering to reach the valley as part of the cycle.

Be mentally strong now, and everything will pass on!

Developing big picture thinking

Developing big picture thinking

Having discussed the definition of big picture thinking and its benefits on growth, let us understand the process of developing the big picture thinking as an individual.

Once three people were working on the bridge construction. The stranger approached the first person asked what he was doing. The person said, "Can't you see that i am laying stones." The stranger quickly moved on to the second person and asked the same question. The person replied: "I am working on my income to take care of myself and family."

      The stranger moved on to the third person and asked him what he was doing. The person replied with a smile, "I am building a bridge, once the bridge construction is over, many people will pass on. I am helping others to move fast. This bridge will be here centuries after I leave."    
 
       The story has a profound message of how you are looking at your work with a higher purpose makes a difference in the quality of work and life. That is big picture thinking. Here we extend our perspective or thinking from being working for survival to a higher purpose,
 
 Similarly, with your qualifications and experience, you are working as a professional. How do you look at your profession for the next  5-10 years' time? Today, you are running a business in a small way, how do you look at your product/ service and its impact on the market  10~20 years from now?

If you look at your profession as a means for survival, that is low order level thinking. When you extend your thinking about the impact you can create through your job or your business, you are into high order or big picture thinking.

When you are proposing some ideas to your team, and if they are not receiving it well, you may think they are resisting. That is low order thinking or micro-level thinking. The big picture thinking could be either team needs more explanation about the proposal, or they are not ready to digest, or you need to improve the communication skill, or the timing is not perfect. That is big picture thinking. In this process, you are looking at the event from 360 angles.
 
The key is how you are extending your thinking process from minute to higher, wider,360 angle makes you learn the big picture thinking process.
 

Big picture thinking is an art and can be developed at any age with awareness and practice.

Big picture Thinking

Big picture Thinking 

One of the qualities of competent people is the ability to have “Big picture thinking or perspective” in any circumstances.

What is meant by Big picture thinking or perspective?

A big picture perspective is looking at any interaction or event or opportunities from a higher, broader angle view to get the holistic idea rather than immediately getting into details.

For example, when you fly over your city on a flight, you able to view the entire city. You may be able to look at high rise buildings, rivers, roads, flyovers, and so on. This holistic view is possible only when you are at an elevated level, say at higher feet from the ground.

Similarly, in personal and professional life, when you look at any events, incidences, conversations from a higher-level view, you will get a holistic idea about opportunities, growth potentials, and other benefits. The key is elevating yourself at a higher level or distant yourself emotionally and look at the things.

Suppose your boss is asking you to take additional responsibility as being aware of your potential. If you are a big picture thinking oriented person, you will be immediately thinking about learning opportunities, future growth prospects, exposure, and so on. Else, immediately you will be worrying about too much about the unfamiliarity of the job and refuse to accept or getting into a conversation on monetary benefits, working hours flexibility, and so on.
 
The point is not to get into the details, but how you are distant yourself emotionally, elevating yourself to look at a higher and wider level helps you to get a holistic view. Once you see the comprehensive picture, your mind is ready to take on any challenges on the micro-level. This mind shift only provides the path for growth.

Now the question maybe

1. As a leader, how can I develop my people to get into big picture thinking?
2. As an individual, how can I develop my thinking process?
3. When can we shift from the big picture to detailing and vice versa

Let us discuss it next week!

Dealing setback -a leader's mindset

A few weeks back, i  met the CEO of a firm whom I know for many years. He is looking after many businesses, apart from his passionate activities. A few years back, he ventured into a new business, and he had been consistently growing since inception.

When I asked him about this year's performance of his new venture, he replied that performance was not up to the expectation and indicated some no's. I wondered about his coolness and asked about his mindset to manage through this slowdown setback.

His reply seems to be the real testimonial of authentic leadership.

• My senior team is continuously working hard, and I am not finding a problem with them except the external environment
• Despite the external reason, we are working on our initiatives, and this will help us when the external environment turns positive
• Now I am spending more time with the team  to share  more insights about business and their development
• I am optimistic that the initiatives will bring more business when the external environment turns favorable 

The responses reflect the right leadership behavior. As we discussed some time back, leadership is all about mindset, thought process, and actions that impact others positively.

It is essential during tough times the leader should maintain coolness, not getting into negativity or blaming everything, believe in non-permanency, work for the long term, and hope for the future. More than that, taking personal responsibility to turnaround within the individual or team's capability is more critical.

No wonder that his team regards him as a role model.

Sometimes as a leader, we forget our balance during setbacks!

Finding Balance

Both in personal and professional life, one of the causes of stress or losing peace is due to taking an extreme stand or bias in a given context. When we fail to be in balance state, we invite all the troubles. Being in a balanced state is the outcome of self-awareness. Effective people will always find a balance in their approach.
 
For example,

Being too much aggressive or too much passive in communication only leads to stress or ineffective. A balanced state is being in an assertive, firm and friendly tone which improves harmony as well as the effectiveness of communication as end result.
 
Being too much lenient with new employees and being too much harsh with on old employees only leads to instability in the organization. Balanced state is respecting both with compassion.
 
 Being too much on planning or too much busy on execution without calibration leads to either no result or poor result only. Balanced state starts with planning and get into execution and do the course correction.
 
 Being too much on micromanaging other’s work or fully leaving it to others also leads to stress only. Balanced state is to allow others to do the work with feedback for improvement.

The point is finding balance in your approach leads to harmony and peace than being extremism.It requires awareness on the state of mind which is possible with practice.
 

Pursuing interest beyond work

As we are spending almost half of our life for work, obviously we expect a sense of fulfillment through our work. There are a few people gifted enough as they get all the status, benefits, and above all, sense of accomplishment due to the contribution or impact they make through the work. In reality, not all people get satisfaction through the job for various reasons, but due to personal commitments, they need to continue to work. Eventually, this non-fulfillment state affects self-identity and confidence.

To overcome that situation, as a proactive, it is essential to find and do something beyond your daywork that fulfills your inner feeling. For example, some of my known contacts and friends are engaged in activities that are not related to their current profession. When interacting with them, I realized they are  feeling more fulfillment in their extra activities beyond work like

One person engages himself in reading books after his office hours and weekends
One medical practitioner engage himself in conducting free medical camps / educating people on health on every Wednesday
One person is preparing himself for marathon participation
One person opens up his library after office hour for public and for mentoring the needy people  

The point is that you need to find a way to get a sense of fulfillment when the work circumstance does not provide. The only thing you should ensure is that the path must be more meaningful to you, and it should not affect your regular work, family, the community at large. The choice of feeling fulfillment is with you only!

Cultivating Calmness in tough times

Recently met a CEO after a long time with whom I worked earlier. He was happily sharing his recent accomplishment in his business, and I was listening to him. Inside my mind, I was lingering with a question which I wanted to get the answer from him that moment itself.i was waiting for him to complete.
 
The reason for the internal disturbance in me was some years back, he was undergoing tremendous trouble in personal life, financial aspects, and his business as well. I worried about his state then. During those tough times, I never had seen him losing his coolness, smiling face, or showing his frustration to anyone and also noticed that he never gave up his efforts both in business and personal life.
 
After he completed his expression, I asked him how he managed through the tough times and his mindset during those times. His reply was inspirational and taught the spiritualism in life.
 
“When everything goes against me at the same time, it means something is working beyond my control. Then why should work against it? Let me accept reality and do my part.

I believe that good and bad times will never last forever. I had enjoyed good times and let me go through this tough time as well.

God is testing my resilence, and if pass, I will get a reward more than now.”
 
In my opinion, this mindset is the highest level of maturity in dealing with life challenges, and cultivating calmness will take us to the next level of evolution.!!

Hope you agree on this learning......

One Habit for a Lifetime

Habit is what you are doing consistently.

For all behind success story, there must be consistency in some of the actions. That is a habit. Even for our own sake of fulfillment, we need to have consistency in some of the practices what we do. The frequency is what you set depending on the action.
 
For example, I know some of my friends have the following “consistent practices or habits” as their life long practices.
 

• Walking for an hour daily for the last 30 years
• Being punctual to any event by being  present 10 min before the event
• Giving Blood donation once in 3 months for the last 20 years
• Calling the people on the birthday and wishes for more than 15 years
• Conducting weekly discourses for more than 20 years
• Waking up before 6 am and doing yoga for more than 40 years

 
When you observe your network, you may also come across many people with good lifetime habits.
 
When you have some good habits, as an individual, more than external monetary success, you feel proud of yourself, and also it enhances your confidence.

One habit for a lifetime, whatever it may be in terms of frequency, easiness, significant to others. However, sticking to one pattern for a lifetime is very much meaningful to you and make a difference to you.

The action is irrespective of your age, profession, choose some habit now, and practice it consistently.

or

if you are practicing some habits, please share as this will be an inspiration for others !!!

Focus on Process than People

In the workplace or even in a family environment, when the things are not happening as expected, or any problem occurs, the most immediate tendency of us is “fixing who is responsible?”. For any issues, finding the cause is a good thing, but the moment we focus our the cause on “People” factor, it likely turns out as blaming, complaining, justification, arguments and eventually into personal vengeance only.

As I observed with effective leaders, they focus more on fixing the “process factor” than the people. Once the problem occurred, they immediately recognize it, and their thought process moves towards fixing process as they believe that is a proactive approach. They believe that when the process is robust, ignorance, attitude related to people can be solved quickly. Sometimes fixing process may prevent the issue permanently as well as take care of human errors.

For example, some of the mistakes in organizing an event can be minimized when you have a checklist rather than depending solely on people. That is a proactive approach with process focussed.

Shifting the focus on fixing “process” than  “people” is possible with a little bit of awareness on our intention and behavior. For any problem solution lies in process, in turn, the process will take care of people factor also.

Just it needs awareness when we face the problem.

Lessons learned on email communication.

Most of us might have come across the following situation in professional life.

"You might have received an email either from your colleague or boss or team or customer, and the mail content induced anger or frustration within you. Immediately you reacted to the mail by bursting all your emotions by way of words and pressed the sent button. Later on, you felt that you overreacted or subsequent mail communications led to friction in relationships or waste of time. In either way, you might have realized the incident should not have happened."

Some years back it happened to me to receive a mail from one of my clients, and I reacted very harshly in a reply mail. However, fortunately, due to some intuition, I kept in the draft without sending. I had given some time to read the contents again and again. Then I called the client over the phone, and to my surprise, the client responded to my call, patiently explained his views which were quite the opposite to what I interpreted the mail content. The problem was eventually solved and our relationship is continuing till now.

the key lessons I learned from the incident were 

1. Unlike in verbal  communication.we  may not understand the intention of the content in written communication. In verbal communication, we may understand the intention through tone quality to some extent. We need the patience to interpret the contents rightly.
2. We should avoid the temptation to react to mail communications immediately. Email as a tool is not for instant communication We can take time and respond.
3. Even the mail content evokes negative emotions; we can give some time to dilute the emotion Any problem is solvable if it is understood in the right perspective and good state of mind.

To sum up, we should not react to email communications while in emotionally feeling low. Take time and then respond for better relationships and quality of life.

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 (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.