How can a leader inculcate the purpose?

 How can a leader inculcate the purpose?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we have discussed the importance and method of creating PURPOSE at an individual level, let us discuss how effective leaders are inculcating the PURPOSE to the organization's employees.

As an individual, the benefit of knowing the purpose is to elevate our energy and focus on a higher cause, which will also help us navigate the challenges easily. Similarly, when the team in the organization also knows and aligns themselves on the higher purpose of the organization, the focus and interaction would be on a higher cause than isolated or distracted working.

Since people come from different values and personal needs to the organization, bringing the people together is very significant for organizational growth and internal harmony. Getting that alignment is one of the responsibilities of an effective leader.

As I observed, some of the below practices by effective leaders.
 
1.Sharing the value of the organization to the team frequently
2.Keep the team engaged with new possibilities or targets
 
Sharing the value of the organization to the team frequently:

This is one of the practices some effective leaders adopt to keep the people on an elevated level. They use to share the organizational values frequently with the team whenever they interact or through forums.
 
For example, in one of my previous organizations, the Managing director of the company frequently mentions “Trust building with the customer through service.” Eventually, when the people are exposed to the repeated value's expectation, their actions and interactions with others are also in line with their organizational values. As long as the person is working in the organization, he is bound to work with building trust with others.

Keep the team engaged with new possibilities or targets.

This is another method I had observed with some of the leaders. They engage the team by showing new possibilities or business targets. This will make the team to work on an elevated emotional level as the future possibilities eventually tap out their potential. As human beings, we are always excited to look forward to new things that we have not seen earlier.

For example, a few years back, Ratan Tata conceived the idea of the low-cost car, which no one ever thought of before. That new possibility might have created a positiveness and drive for Tata motors' internal team to work together to see it in reality.
 
The key point when you are aligned with higher-level purpose, your energy, emotions, managing the challenges, and achievement orientation would be to a higher degree. That is applicable for the individual and the organization as well.!

Some leaders are good at inculcating those purposes in the team through their consistent effort, which i think is one of the leader's primary responsibilities!
 

Avoiding impulsive decisions( Contd..)

 Avoiding impulsive decisions( Contd..) 

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Last week we discussed one of the methods to avoid impulsive decisions-i.e Going beyond the numbers or facts with example. Let us understand other methods to avoid impulsive decision making.


Taking timeout for responding:

Except for emergencies, not all business decisions call for immediate reaction or response. We can take time out to make the decision. One of the benefits of taking timeout is that the time makes us think about the alternatives or choices for solutions. When we are making decisions impulsively, we feel as if there is no alternative.

When we give time ourselves, we are thinking about both rationally and emotionally. We are in a position to generate the options and able to evaluate the pros and cons of the options.

Typically we come across situations when dealing through emails. We used to react to mail communication immediately as impulsive and later realized that we could have taken timeout to respond with different choices. Sometime back, i have shared my experience on impulsive way of reacting to email as given in the link.

https://lifeexcellenceinsights.blogspot.com/2019/05/lessons-learned-on-email-communication.html

It just needs the ability to distinguish which decisions call for immediate attention and which decisions can be delayed. Not all workplace decisions need the same level of urgency!
 
Getting the perspectives from elders or mentors:
 
The next practical method is to get a perspective from others or mentors on important personal or business decisions. The obvious reason is that when we are emotionally overwhelmed with the problem, we may not see it from the other dimensions. Others could see it from a different perspective because they are not emotionally attached.

Most of us might have experienced that when we were about to make an impulsive decision due to emotions, and when we discussed with others, they provided us simple, rational solutions to the problem.

It requires that we need someone to share the concerns and get different rational perspectives than making impulsive decisions and struggling with the consequences.

How to avoid impulsive decisions?

 How to avoid impulsive decisions?

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we discussed the importance of avoiding impulsive reaction in the conversation and making hasty decisions on any business aspects, now let us learn some of the methods to avoid impulsive decision making.
 

1.Going beyond the numbers or facts
2.Taking timeout for responding
3.Getting the perspective from mentors

 
Going beyond the numbers or facts:

Generally, we believe that "numbers or facts" are the real proof for making the right decisions. However, not in all situations, the facts or numbers will help us to make the right decisions. Instead, the numbers or facts lead us to make impulsive decisions and as a leader, we believe that we are taking logical right choices. We need to look at the scenario from the overall perspective.

For example,

In one of the client organizations, the worker's union put a demand to increase the compensation by quoting an absolute value per annum basis. By seeing that fact, the business head was immediately got angry and reacted to reject the proposal. Eventually, that decision led to the disturbance in the operations for some time. The disruption in the operations costs more than what the people put it as a request. Later, when the business head analyzed the demand in detail, he realized the impact was minimal daily compared to the losses they incurred.

The key realization is that the business head reacted to the mere fact rather than looking at the issue holistically in terms of the overall cost to the company, business continuity, and goodwill.

We may come across many situations in the workplace when we look at only on the number or facts, and we tend to react impulsively both positively and negatively. In either way, it would affect us professionally. It just needs awareness.

Let us discuss other methods in next week!

Impulsive reaction and decision making

 Impulsive reaction and decision making

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

  In continuation of channelizing the emotions for the positive outcome, one more emotional practice that needs attention is "Making Impulsive  Decisions or Reactions."

The impulsive decision means taking quick decisions without much thought about the consequences, implications to others, and self. Spontaneous reaction means quickly reacting to someone during the conversation without thinking about the consequence. It is simply all about "not thinking before speaking"

For example,

When a manager/colleague/ customer is asking for timeline commitment, without any thought or calculation, committing some timeline and realizing later that impossible to complete.

When somebody asks for your appointment tomorrow, you are agreeing for that, then later on realizing that you have some other commitments.

You can relate your experiences where you committed something without any thought and later troubled yourself to fulfill the commitment or asked for excuses.
 
Why do we make impulsive decisions? 

It is due to our inability to control our emotions, both positive and negative emotions in a particular moment or conversation. It is a state of mind, and it is challenging to be in a balanced state, but that is what most of the effective people use to display both in extremely happy or in extremely uncertain times. That we need to learn while growing up in the ladder.
 
Why should leaders not make impulsive decisions?

Taking an impulsive decision is not good for everyone, but especially it costs more for the people who are growing up and at higher positions. When you are young and make any impulsive decision, it would be seen as aggressive, over-enthusiastic, ambitious, and the mistakes are perceived from the perspective.

When at a higher level, when we react without much thinking and impulsive in making decisions in a business environment, it will affect most of the stakeholders.

I know one of my managers who had grown very fast in the early years of the career due to his impulsive way of making things happen. The same strength affected his reputation and growth when he was handling the managerial roles to manage both business and people.

We should not conclude that impulsive decision means taking decision slowly. It only means making decisions without thinking about the consequences.

But in reality, most of us are prone to impulsive reaction and decision making, and we need to strive to be conscious about it.
 
Let us discuss some of the strategies to channelize the impulsive reaction or decision making next week!

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!

Channelizing Anger

Channelizing Anger
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
 

We are aware that anger in the workplace affects the self and the environment as well. It is an outcome of our inability to cope up, non-acceptance of reality, and high expectation.

Some people are developing the capability to channelize the anger for positive turnout. Let me narrate one incident which i have witnessed some time back, and i learned a new insight as well.

I attended a public seminar in which all the age group people attended along with the family, including kids. The speaker is known for the "family wellness" subject, and he was invited to deliver a lecture. So i could see many married couples along with the kids in the hall.

The speaker was delivering the lecture. At some point in time, there were noises from the group of kids. There were chatting, playing, laughing despite their parents tried to control them. The interruption continued frequently, and some audiences got distracted towards the disturbance, and some people got irritated.

Having noticed the disturbance and initially got irritated with it, the speaker turned the audience and said," Let us focus on our objective." He then continued his speaking with enthusiasm and finished the lecture successfully in amidst of the disturbances.

In this incident, the speaker had choices to get angry with the parents like other audiences or asked them to move out of the hall. Knowing the targeted audience background and his purpose of delivering a lecture to them, he channelized his energy to convince the disturbed audience. He went ahead with high energy whenever he countered disturbance.

He put the purpose on a high level than on spending energy on low-level activities even though he has all the power to execute the choices at those moments.

The key lesson for me is that when we focus on petty things, we get angry frequently as the world is not perfect. When we divert our focus on higher purposes, some of the insignificant things cause anger can be avoided and channelized towards higher goals.
 
How can we apply this learning in professional life?

Whenever we are about to get angry with someone in a professional environment, we need to be aware of whether we are going to battle for petty things or shifting towards a higher-level purpose.
 

Channelizing the emotions

Channelizing the emotions 
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

As we have discussed the first part of managing emotions in the workplace as "self-awareness, "the second part is "channelizing the emotions" for the growth.
 
What is meant by channelizing the emotions?
 
Every moment we are undergoing different emotions like happiness, sadness, fear, frustrations, anger, and so on. We have two choices in recognizing and managing emotions. Either we use it for our advantage or turn it for a disaster for us and our surroundings. Channelizing the emotion is more about how to recognize the emotion and direct it for betterment for us and the surroundings.
 
Why the channelizing the emotion is important?
 
When we do not know how to channelize the emotions, it hits us back by way of losing peace, losing focus on higher-level growth-oriented activities. Sometimes when we are not keeping the perspective right, the emotions affect our health as well.
 
Hence awareness is required to handle different emotions with different methods as we are dealing with a mix of both positive and negative emotions in everyday transactions with others.
 
For example,
 
In our workplace, predominately, we have the following emotions in our day to day interactions with our colleagues/team/boss and even with the customers.

• Anger (when the things do not happen  as we expect)
• Jealous (when some of our colleague's / competitor does well than us)
• Frustration (when we do not see the result for our effort, or someone does not recognize our work)
• Insecure (when we do not know the direction of future on job/business)
• Feeling low (we do not know what to do in a particular moment; less motivated)
• Irritation (when we work with the person whom we do not like to work)

You can add on the list from your experience!

Each emotion calls for different strategies to channelize the emotions and if we are aware, that will help us for growth.

Let us discuss each emotion and the method of channelizing in the coming weeks!

Emotional management and its effect

Emotional management and its effect (Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

As we discussed the importance of emotional management in the workplace, let us see a typical example of different emotional management for a particular event and how it is affecting the quality of the relationship and impacting the performance.

For example, one of your teammates prepared a presentation which you suppose to present it to your customer. The presentation content seems to be as good as you expected.
 
Now you have three choices on managing your emotions in terms of recognizing and expressing.
 
Choice 1: Recognizing your feeling of happiness and expressing to your teammate
 
Since you have a high level of emotional intelligence, at that moment, you realize the feeling of happiness. Also, you express your happiness to your teammate by appreciating the work, giving some more positive feedback about the presentation.

Consequence:

First, you are feeling happy and at a high level of a positive state. Second, your teammate feels happy, motivated with your appreciation, and learns some more tips on the presentation from you. There is a chance of development in his/her capability and an increase in the quality of the relationship.
 
Choice 2: Recognizing the feeling of happiness, but not expressing to your teammate.
 
You may feel happy and ending the discussion with the teammate with a simple gesture of thankfulness.
 
Consequence:

your teammate is not getting any clue about your feeling. He/she may get disappointed, doubtful about his / her quality of work, feeling not learning much from work. The quality of the relationship is neutral and not much scope for development.
 
Choice 3: Not recognizing your feeling of happiness and not expressing to your teammate
 
As you are with low EQ, you are not in a position to recognize your feeling at that moment and concern about other’s work.

Consequence:

Nothing fulfills you, and your teammate feels low for a thankless job and not getting any clue about the work, and there may be chances of poor relationship building and learning.
 
We are not concluding which choice is right or wrong. It is up to the individual to decide. The point to realize is that, knowingly or unknowingly, we are displaying either one of the choices in our interactions, and each choice has a different consequence on either relationship building or managerial/ leading capability in the workplace. 
 
Going forward, let us discuss the process of developing awareness of emotional management.

Why is emotional management required in the workplace?

Why is emotional management required in the workplace?
(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)

 

Emotional management at work is all about managing your emotions or feelings within yourself, expressing well, understanding other's emotions, regulating your response in line with both yours and others.

When we learn to master the emotions through awareness and practices, it brings the following personal and professional benefits.
 

1. Being in a peaceful state  
2. Feeling complete
3. Being productive
4. Taking timely and right decisions
5. Enabling growth in the profession
6. Nurturing a good relationship with others 

 For example, you might have seen some people who are qualified with educations and technical/functional skills (IQ), but not being happy inside, not achieved much growth in the profession and not sought after person. But some people without much educational qualification, low intelligence on technical/functional aspects are living a fulfilled life, having a good relationship with others and consistently grown in professions. The main reason for the contradiction is emotional intelligence (EQ) or emotional management skill only.
 
Even at the business level, some business is quite successful and grown consistently because the leaders are good at managing the emotions well at self-level and managing the people's feelings very well. People could be employees, customers, and other stakeholders.

Most of the organizational problems are related to people management only. The executive leaders who are good at managing the people well can drive the business results also very well. That calls for effective emotional management skills.

What is meant by emotions?

Psychologists suggest the six dominant emotions that we are experiencing most of the time, namely happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust. Under each, there may be many sub-elements.

When we manage those emotions very well in terms of recognizing and expressing, we become a better person in dealing with emotions.

For example,

one of your teammates prepared a presentation which you suppose to present it to your customer. You are happy with the presentation quality. The way you are recognizing your emotions at the moment and expressing with others will have a consequence on your quality of self and relationship. Let us discuss the various scenario next week that will give you the idea of our emotional management.

Learning Emotional Intelligence

Some time back, i requested feedback on the topic to be discussed for our personal and professional growth. Some have expressed  the requirements indirectly the struggles they have at a personal level and the workplace as follows

• dealing with the decision dilemma
• managing the boss and the colleagues
• how do we know we are on the right path?
• developing charisma
• improving interpersonal skill
• managing the conflict and difficult people
• overcoming stress

When we observe all the struggles, most of them are related to emotional management only.

Emotional management can be defined as the ability to recognize and regulate emotions in ourselves and others to make effective decisions.

When we are aware of ourselves in terms of our values, beliefs, strengths, areas of improvement, and if we learn to know how to deal with the emotions of others, we can become a better person. That awareness brings the ability to manage all the challenges in the workplace.
 
 For the last 30 years, the modern business world packaged emotions related aspects into a new theory, termed as Emotional Intelligence or Emotional Quotient and a lot of researches and books have been written on that subject. When we go in-depth of those theories and researches, one after study either supports or counters previous findings, and some of them are not considering cultural differences.

One thing I had realized that reasonable emotional management is already in our culture as we encourage more family systems and our ancient mythologies also insist upon emotional management. The Bhagavat Gita starts with the emotional conflict of Arjuna, and Krishna taught more to bring emotional stability as part of his teachings.
 
Hence, we need a holistic approach to look at our personal and organizational challenges in dealing with emotions from our culture, a combination of emotions, and a spiritual perspective. Also, to bring a transformation at an individual level on emotion management, just theory alone is not sufficient, we need to experiment, and self-realization is required.
 
With that context only, we are going to discuss "Emotional Management for Personal and Professional Growth" in the coming weeks with an in-depth explanation of some of the concepts, real-life examples, small actions, and sharing the personal experiences. We focus more on our discussions with reference to workplace challenges only.
 
Given below the broad area of coverage.
 

• Knowing self – Strengths / Values / Beliefs / purpose /balancing in all aspects of life
• Controlling and Managing our emotions for positive turnout
• Achievement drive – self-motivation/ finding passion/ taking responsibility / being in energetic mode / Looking at the work and people from a karma perspective
• Managing Others – background/understanding and  sensitizing emotions  /developing others
• Leveraging relationship to achieve results – Leading change / Influencing / Building Team/ Improving communication

 
Look forward to your views and sharing your experiences.

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.

Developing the team's big picture thinking

Developing the team's big picture thinking

Having discussed the process of developing big picture thinking at an individual level, let us understand how smart leaders teach the big picture thinking to the team.

As I observed some leaders and their method of developing big picture thinking among the team in the organization as follows

1. Sharing the big picture perspective frequently to the team.
2. Briefing the context when delegating the task 
3. Helping the team to see the meaning in the work

1.    Sharing the big picture frequently to the team:

I know one CEO of a social organization, whenever, he conducts a meeting with his team, he makes a point to share about the prime purpose of the organization as "Making positive Impact" to customers. The team also articulate the same purpose and behave inline with the big picture perspective during in any business transaction with the customers and stakeholders. 

2.    Briefing the context when delegating the task:

Most of us tend to give a checklist or to-do list to the junior colleague. Effective people use to delegate responsibility and brief the person about the context of the job.

For example, instead of merely asking your salesperson to prepare the next three months' sales projection, if you give the context of sales projection to manage the plant capacity, mobilizing the working capital and so on, that will make the person more careful on the accuracy of the sales projection. (The point is wherever possible, brief the context as this makes the other person understand the big picture!!)

3.    Help the team to see the meaning of the work:

When anyone knows the meaning of his / her work, it will enhance their big picture thinking and contribution. As we are predominately organized ourselves as a department or function, most of the time, the team's thought process will be confined from a functional perspective. The leader's role is reminding the individual or team how the work is aligned with organizational objectives or how their work is helping the customers.

The effective leader is continuously striving to develop 360 perspectives both at self and at the team's level.

Let us discuss when we need to switch over between big picture thinking and micro detailing next week! 

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!