One day Buddha was traveling from one town to another town along with his followers. On the way, they took a rest and the Buddha asked one of his followers to get some water from the nearby lake.A disciple walked up to the lake and he noticed that some people were washing clothes in the lake water and also a bullock cart crossing through the lake.As a result, water became muddy and the disciple thought this muddy water cannot be given to Buddha to drink. He came back to Buddha and told that the water was muddy and not suitable for drinking.
After a while, Buddha again asked the same disciple to go back to the lake and get some water. The disciple also went to the lake and found that mud was settled down and the water was clean enough to drink.So he collected some water in a pot and brought it to Buddha.
Buddha looked at the water and looked up at the disciple and said “what did you do to make the water clean to drink? You just allowed it as such to settle down the mud.Similarly, when your mind is in a disturbed state, you cannot make use of it effectively for decision making or doing anything useful.
Most of our email communication or direct communications in professional life becomes annoyed or tuned out negative when we react it during our disturbed state. Give a little time to settle it down, your mind becomes in a positive state and you can produce results”
Given the right educational background and potential, some people reach the top position in their career very faster than average pace and others it takes a time or stagnant at some level.
What makes some people move fast to reach a top position like CEO or head of the organization?
One of the HBR articles revealed interesting facts about the reason for some people take fast track.Researchers found some pattern among them as follows
1.Sometimes in their career journey, they step down and take a small role to develop them to accelerate. For example, functional head of large organization takes as in charge of small unit or projects to build his business skill. Even though it looks like step-down, they are preparing themselves for higher responsibilities.
2. Even at young age, they accept significant responsibilities even though they were not ready for that. That is taking a calculated risk and developing self on competency.
3.Emerge out as a visible leader during the crisis.That is, guidance and direction are usually essential during crisis time, and some people emerge as leaders during the crisis. For example, when the specific supplier is shut down the plant, quickly getting into alternate and resuming operations without any damage.
The point is, the above behaviors are some of the traits of people who reach the top position at a fast rate. If you have the aspiration for growth, just reflect your mindset, behaviors and your approach! Each one deserves for higher growth in the career!
source courtesy:
HBR Article -The Fastest Path to the CEO Job, According to a 10-Year Study
Elena Lytkina BotelhoKim Rosenkoetter Powell Nicole Wong
Generally, not all the days in our life go as we expect and make us happy at the end of the day. Sometimes a day is filled with a lot of disappointments, irritations, delays, hurting, rejections, and annoying situations.
The reason could be due to petty reasons like water tap leakage, housemaid not turned up on time, pickup cab late, not getting the preferred food at café or even at home, weak signaling or network issues.It could be even reasonable reasons like customer’s turnout, non-cooperating colleagues, angry moments with boss or spouse or anyone else.The list goes on ………………………..!!!!
That is, we have infinite reasons to claim the day as the dull or bad day on any labeled reasons.Cumulative of all reasons eventually affect our mood either as sad or unhappy at the end of the day.
How to turn the bad day into happy?
Just count the blessings of the day. If you observe all the moments of the day, amidst of the entire bad moments, something turned out as your favorites. That is natural design. Think of those favorable moments.(for example, your dear ones smiling face or some one's supporting words to you ).Be grateful for those moments.
The point is that there are no such only bad moments in life.Either we forget or ignore to see the positiveness in all the moments.It just needs awareness and widening of our perspectives of life!
A bird asked a BEE, “After 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...”
In professional life, sometime you may face a situation someone takes credit for your work, and your recognition may get delayed.It is just got delayed, not denial.Those are temporary setbacks and your skill, innate talent is unique. No one can take away from it. You will get recognized for what you deserve and what you possess.
Those skill, talent, knowledge are acquired only by investing your time/energy in sharpening yourself through observation, reading, venturing into new things, exploring new opportunities and so on. Invest yourself and upgrade yourself. That will be with you always. Keep investing in your skill and talent development.That will be the permanent asset and high return on investment!
To achieve success in personal and professional life, what you think and feel about you is more important than what others perceive you. Sometimes, we label ourselves in a certain way that makes much difference in achieving success.
For example, if you think yourself as a leader for your team, your behavior and actions would be in line with leadership mindset. If you feel and label yourself as an introvert, most of the time, you would get more energy in solitude state only. The point is what you believe yourself repeatedly, and label yourself would manifest externally.
We use to hear the some of the following phrases from executives and CEO’s as they label themselves. Eventually, the label would form their personality.
I am not a team player, but individually good contributor
I am not good at finance management
I am technical person and not good at business management
I am not competent person to handle cross-functional teams
I am poor in time management
However, we have seen from our experience; some people have changed their self-restricted labeling to positive labeling with little awareness and practice
The point is just to be aware of some of the labels you are giving yourself and check whether it is useful or not.If not, work on it and reshape your personality!
Whether we like it or not, each person is like a product which needs to be sold in the job market.Since most of your time is being spent in profession either working for an organization or owning a business, your brand in your work environment is important criteria for your progress in the career ladder.
What is a personal brand?
It is the perception of others about you when they think or what comes to their mind, which is your identity or brand.
Now the question yourself, what is your brand in your organization? What identity or brand you had created in your organization?
You could have created a perception either as problem solver, people manager, taskmaster, good analytical person, hard worker, forward thinker or problem creator, complainer, blamer, lack of interest to learn, not dependable person and so on
Based on the brand you establish,you are creating your opportunities and growth.
Good news is that little effort, you can build or change your brand as you want.
Be just aware of your personal brand and change or leverage it for your personal and professional growth in 2018!
One of the lingering question most of us have in mind is “how to manage my time or how to improve my personal productivity?
To find the solution, we may get into googling for finding tips on time management techniques and even in getting into Apps downloading. Even though those help in initial stages, but managing those itself become time-consuming! The real change starts from WITHIN.
From your lifestyle, just figure out which one thing is the biggest time killer or obstacles to your productivity or find out what is one thing would save your time if it were removed from your daily practices. It could be Facebook, WhatsApp, desk management, repeated browsing of mail check etc.
Find it and work only on this improvement idea consistently rather than taking too much at a time and not completing anything at the end.
Start with one change and work on it. Your productivity will improve! Time management is not about managing time, it is managing our mind and priorities!
Irrespective of any profession, each one will always admire someone as his best boss or inspiring mentor in his/ her life.As you recollect all the people under whom you have worked, finally, you conclude one or two people as your best bosses or inspiring role model.
What could be the significant factors to admire someone as best boss or role model?
You may list down a lot of attributes of role model or inspiring boss like charisma, functional competency, managerial competency and so on.However, research shows that among so many attributes, only a few attributes contribute to conclude someone as inspiring boss or role model
Those attributes could be the person who had given you a lot of opportunities to learn more or the person who brought out your hidden potential or who made you believe or make you do something extraordinary which you ever thought as impossible.
Since now you are managing a team of people under you, answer yourself for how many people you are the best boss by demonstrating those attributes.
It is a moral responsibility of every manager and leaders to bring out the potential of others!!
Both personal and professional life, we tend to look at the past, its experience and based on it, try to drive the current and future strategies. In this process, we tend to believe and give overweight on the experience and success or failure factors.
If the past is quite successful, we tend to give overweight on the experience and rely on the same strategy and tactics to drive the business
If the past is quite a failure, we tend to give overweight on the experience and give up trying new ideas.
However, future is not same as past as most of the parameters are changed like assumptions, environment, people, timing and of course you also evolved. What worked out past earlier may not be necessarily relevant now.
For example, what strategies you used to build an organization of size 10 crores may not be workable for building an organization of size 20 crores.Mainly the business environment, customers, people are changed.
Likewise, what worked out for you at a managerial position may not workable when you are at a senior leadership level.
Similarly, what not worked out earlier, may work now for the same reason.
The point is that experience or legacy alone will not drive your future.Too much dependence on the past or legacy may not work forever.You need to continually drive new initiatives or effort to be successful in personal and professional life as everything is changing!
Charles Plumb was a USA navy jet pilot. On his seventy-sixth combat missions, he was shot down and parachuted into enemy territory. He was captured, spent six years in prison and he survived.Now he became a motivational speaker on managing adversity in life.
In most of his seminars, he used to ask his audience “who packs your parachute? Meaning that who helps you through your life?
His realization was that the person who packed his parachutes held his lives from falling from the jet and he remembered that unknown person with gratitude.His message is in everyone‘s life, some unknown people are helping selflessly either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. Are we recognizing those unknown people and expressing our gratitude?
This is a powerful metaphor for us to acknowledge the people who come across in our lives and help us in a different way.
If they are known people like your parents, teachers, siblings, spouse, children, colleagues, business partners, clients, then be grateful to them for your actions!
If they are unknown, at least recognize and express your feeling of gratitude. That feeling, vibration makes a difference to you and to the unknown.
