Showing posts with label Confidence. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Confidence. Show all posts

Saturday 5 December 2020

Power of Progress or Small wins

 Power of Progress or Small wins 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 
For the last 20 weeks, we have discussed the importance of channelizing the low-level emotion into a higher level and the different methods of channelizing the low-level emotions like anger, fear, frustration, sadness, and envy into productive emotions.

In all the methodologies, the common underlying factor is our awareness of the emotion and taking action to subsidize it.
 
One more effective way of being in high-level emotion at the workplace is to make small progress or small win in our core work area on a consistent basis.

Why small progress or small win is important?

Irrespective of any setbacks, everyone craves fulfillment or happiness at the end of the day. That is the emotional aspect everyone is looking forward to. One way of getting into that state is to make meaningful small progress in the work.

Generally, we can not achieve great success or milestones on all days, but we can make small steps toward milestones. In the absence of a small step or meaningful progress, we feel low.

For example, achieving a higher sales target may be the destination and that will happen only once, whereas the initiative or progress towards reaching the destination can happen every day. When you make a progress or small win every day in that direction, that improves your inner emotions.

One of the studies done by researchers indicates that when people make a little incremental progress in a meaningful way, that boosts the people's inner emotional positively. The researchers came out with the book “The progress principle”.
 
How can we achieve small progress?
 
To achieve little progress or small wins, you do not need any special occasions or reasons. You just need to be conscious about bringing incremental, progress through your effort.
 
For example, on a typical day and in your routine work, if you stimulate your team’s thought process, initiate new ideas or take a step for solving chronic issues, you may think that you have made some progress towards milestone success. That thinking will elevate your emotions. In routine work, you are making a small difference in your effort consciously.
 
The key point is the small progress or small win through your effort will offset any low-level emotions and keep you on elevated emotional level. Progress is progress, the quantum does not matter. The momentum makes you engaged and relieve you from low level emotions.
 

Just you need to be aware of making small progress or small win every day that makes you be in higher level of emotions.

Tuesday 25 October 2016

Building confidence with small success


In business or professional environment, the biggest challenge is selling our idea or believing that the idea will work.That is building a confidence within us and to others.

Building confidence in self-levels:

This cannot be built  only through external stimuli like reading books, listening motivational lectures, etc. as they build confidence momentarily and short lived. Real confidence will be built deeply at conscious level only by doing and experiencing small success.

              For example, if you want to improve your confidence on public speaking skills, you cannot immediately do it in a large crowd. Instead, you consciously experiment in a small group, take action, and taste the success. Your subconscious mind registers the successful event. Next time, when you are speaking 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 positive reinforcement. This way only, you can improve your confidence in public speaking.

Building confidence at team level:

             Similarly, if you want to  build confidence to your team  about any new initiative ,they need to see it and believe  it .Hence   experiment  the iniatives in a small way , be focused, take action, achieve and celebrate it .This  positive reinforcement   of success will give confidence to your team for taking higher level  initiatives .
              Building confidence is one of the leadership qualities  and it is time consuming,but more powerful once it is built . Hence, the action plan is to identify the area in which you have low confidence level, take small action, taste the success and this small success will help you to achieve more!

Wednesday 13 April 2016

Leadership Insight

You may be aware of E. Sreedharan, a man behind in modern metro rail transportation system in  India and popularly known as “Metro Man".His contribution as technocrats who modernized the country’s railway transportation to global standards. It could be Konkan rail lines which is known as one of the engineering excellence, or could be a modern metro rail  in Delhi. While most of us  were skeptical about metro solutions, the success of Delhi metro paved way for metro solutions in more than 20 cities in India.

Under his leadership, Delhi metro lines were completed before the due date and budget. His project management practices are  case studies  for aspiring project managers and business school students.

On understanding his background, now the leadership insight from him. 

Whenever a query asked about his lifetime achievement, everyone expects the answer could be some of his best work, like Konkan, Pamban bridge, or metro line etc. But he used to reply, “The important achievement in my life is I could able to instill the confidence to my engineers that enabled them to work competently”.

According to me, this is a very profound statement on leadership  and it is required in every organization that looks for transformation. As a leader of  an organization or our team, our primary  responsibility is showing the possibilities for the team, instill the confidence and backup them in any circumstances. People come from different background, level of competency  and confidence level and leader’s  job is to enhance the hope, positivity and confidence in them to deliver the best!.That is leadership.

Happy to see your comments on this leadership insight.

Wednesday 15 July 2015

Invest in yourself

“Investing in yourself is the best investment you will ever make.It will not only improve your life, it will improve the lives of all those around you.”—Robin Sharma

          At one time a bird asked a BEE, “After a continuous hard work, you develop the honey, but a man steals the honey… Do you not feel sorry about that? . Then the Bee replied, “Never.. because a man can only steal my honey, NOT  the art of making honey..

         Sometime in professional life, your work may not get the timely recognition  or somebody may claim credit for your work. In business association, someone may exploit you  and your ideas without rewarding you. Those are the moments are only temporary and short term in nature. The surroundings or others  can only temporarily halt your progress. No one permanently stops your growth. In the long term, your unique talent will become discovered and acknowledged.


         Keep investing on your skill and talent development. Keep investing your time on managing yourself, ethics, purpose, character, motivation and conduct. You will attract good things in life!

Breaking limiting beliefs

“What we can or cannot do, what we consider possible or impossible, is  more likely a function of our beliefs about who we are.”-Tony Robbins

         Most of us have inhibition to set high standards or aspiring big .One of the reasons is that the mind is always looking for some reference or role model to get convinced. Once we  believe that something is possible based on the reference, we also may achieve or even surpass the earlier standard.

         For example, till 1954, no one  believed that man can run a mile in less than four minutes.Even medical experts concluded  that it could not be done and humanly impossible. Roger Bannister, an athlete from British smashed the belief by running a mile in 3 minutes and 59.6 seconds. The breaking the record was  commendable, but what happened afterwards, which I think is worth to mention. After he broke the record in 1954, over the next few years, more than forty people run a mile  in less than four minutes. They broke their limiting belief  on seeing the record .Today it has become possible and standard.

         In business or in a professional environment, if you want to achieve new heights, but lacks courage, look around what others had achieved and set the base. This will give confidence or will help you to break the limiting belief.Once  you break the belief, you can also achieve and even may surpass the already achieved standard.Always break the limiting belief and you attract the good things in life!!


Self-efficacy

“In order to succeed, people need a sense of self efficacy to struggle together with resilience to meet the inevitable obstacles of life.” —Albert Bandura


      Self-efficacy can be defined as one’s belief in his ability to succeed in specific situations. The success or failure in whatever situation is generally depends on individual‘s belief in his ability to face the situation. For example, if you are venturing into new business or new initiatives in your professional environment, more than environmental factors which alters the result, your belief about your capability gives you all strength to manage any challenges during execution.

      People with high self-efficacy are more willing to take action, especially on new activities. They stay longer in the face of challenging times. Now the question is whether this quality is inborn or can be developed by anyone. The answer is a high level of self-efficacy can be developed by anyone with little effort.

      One of the ways to develop self-efficacy is through observation. It is demonstrated through study about a person with phobia and the person’ self-efficacy about managing the phobia is improved when he observed fellow phobic struggled with and overcome their phobia.


       Similarly, if you observe your role model for any of his excellent qualities, you can also gain the belief about your capability. It is a simple proposition that “if it is possible by others, it is possible by me “. Who could be your role model to observe and learn? 

Gain strength from new experience

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.”-Eleanor Roosevelt


         Studies show that 85 % of the population struggle with confidence issue. Since the fear had passed into the  subconscious brain, it is hard to gain confidence only  through  outside  resources like  self help scripts. It can be improved through “ within”  development of  the individual.

          When you experiment  new actions in small day to day activities  and  continuously expanding  your horizons, the experience gained from such action will  improve the confidence.

For example,

If you have a habit of waking up at 6 am, practice waking up one hour early consistently which will improve your will power

If you use to walk for 5 km at a stretch, extend it to 8 km at a stretch as this will improve your strength

If you use to drive only in a city environment, go for long drive which you have not done so far as this will enhance  your courage

If you use to spend hours together on the net, cut into half and resist the temptation  as this improve your willpower

The intent of stating above examples is  to reinforce the thought that new experience will widen your perspective about yourself and this will enhance  your courage, will power or confidence level.Since the experience are fully experienced by you as  “within”, this will sustain your confidence level than anything comes from external..


Experiment and share your experience!!!