Why do we trust some people as leader?

In a professional environment, we come across a lot of people either as colleagues, subordinates, boss.Only a few people, we admire as a leader and have trust.With this belief, we sometimes even adopt them as our role model, mentor, guide, coach, and well-wisher.

What makes difference between others and leaders? Only two factors make us believe that they are our leader. One is CHARACTER and second is COMPETENCY.

The character could be boldness, firmness, approachable, attitude towards helping others and so on as we see as the positive soft factors.
Competency could be their functional and managerial skills like technical mastery, problem-solving skill, decision making, thought process and communication capabilities as we see as positive hard factors.

When either character or competence lacks with reference to their position, we start to disregard them as leaders and lose trust. Now, relate this to any personalities from your professional, media, politics or in sports background and you find that those who trusted as leader once upon a time lost their shine when they missed character or competency in line with their positional status!!!

The point is, in professional or business environment, if you like to scale up your career from individual performer to leader/role model, you need to continuously enhance your character and competency.This character and competency building is a lifelong effort as any professional growth demands.

How to change bad impression in workplace ?

In the workplace, others form a perception about us and the interactions are all based on the perception. If the perception about us is good, then it is ok, what if the impression is bad? Is it easy to change? 

Our mind does not want to spend energy frequently to change the stored information. For instance, we register some brands are trusted for quality and will never change the perception even a small disturbance happened to the brands like in the case of  Cadbury, TATA , and Nestle etc.

If this way our mind works, how do we change the bad impression of others about us? For example, as an individual, others formed the perception that you are a latecomer to the office. How would you change that perception? Only by showing repeated evidence of coming to office on time, then only others change their perception about you. 

Similarly, as an organization, if your customer has the impression that you are not sensitive to quality service, it is difficult to change unless you repeatedly show evidence with your improved customer service. 

The point is 

1. We are allowing others to form perception about us through our behavior and action
2. Once it is formed, it is difficult to change 
3. To change the perception, consistent, repetitive evidence to be shown to others to change 

It is better to take responsibility to give the positive impression at first instance and in worst case take responsibility to change with repeated efforts.In reality, perception plays a major role in professional and business success!!!

What should do when you feel low ?

        

 Sometimes we are skeptical about the future and feel low about business growth or financial status or even professional improvements or quality of life.During those moments,“Possibilities thinking” may be useful to get confidence or overcoming the skeptic mindset.
        For example, observe any successful people from business, sports, media, politics, etc., You may realize that their background was ordinary or much worse than yours. How they became successful is that due to their self-belief.But before they believe themselves, they thought the possibilities of becoming successful or achieving something great.They believed in the possibilities of better tomorrow than today.That possibility thinking only made them successful.
        Similarly, look at the developments in all the fields like connectivity of the world through the internet, mobile communication, affordability of transportation modes, education, healthcare inventions, etc which was not imaginable a few decades ago. Today it has become reality as someone was thinking about the possibilities of changing from better to best.
         In essence, what was not possible yesterday becomes reality today and it is the result of possibilities thinking of humanity. Hence, when you feel low, think about new possibilities in your life either business turnaround, personal transformation or improving the quality of life, it will become reality with right actions!  

Corporate Chanakya

Recently happened to read this book and one of the best management books from Indian origin. Even though there are many books available on management, most of the books are western orientation. In this book, the author simplified the Kautilya’s Arthashastra, which was written by Chanakya, who lived in 4th century in then India. He was then considered as leadership guru and he documented his ideas of leadership and management to govern the country in the form of 6000 sutras. To put simply, this land had a genius with great wisdom on management.

This book brings back ancient Indian management wisdom in modern, contemporary format.

Must read book for business heads or the people aspiring for leading others. Recommend this book to get a new perspective about leadership and management.


link is given below


goo.gl/P0uLsQ

Embrace the sharks

    

 Many years ago, Japanese fishers had a business challenge with the fishes they were delivering to their customers. After capturing the fish in the sea and by the time they reach the land shore, the fish died and lost their taste. The fishermen tried different processes to keep the fishes fresh till entering the land, but could not succeed. Finally, they came with the idea to put the captured fishes in a small tank along with a small shark.

     During the travel from deep sea to land, shark used to eat a few fishes. The rest of the fishes who fought with the shark to save the life looked fresh, energetic once they reach the land shore. What made the fishes energetic and fresh? The challenges those faced through shark made them fresh and dynamic.

     In our life also, either in business or personal life, we need more challenges like going beyond comfort, trying something new which we have not done earlier, surpassing our own limitations etc.The challenges make us more engaged and active.If we get challenges only from the survival perspective, life would be miserable. If the challenges are bringing more out of us, then it would be positive pressure.

The problems and challenges are meant to bring a new personality of you. Let us embrace the real challenges or shark in our life

What one trait differentiates achievers and non achievers?

                                                   

When Bill Gates and Warren Buffets were asked individually to write one trait that made them success in business, they responded with one answer, that is FOCUS.

In our profession, either working as employee or business owner, we are fairly knowledgeable about our work, we are skilled enough to plan and execute, but why do we find struggle to achieve our targets? It is mainly in the mindset towards our attention or FOCUS.

The process of being more focused:

1. Decide what we want and what is important for professional success
2. Priorities the action regarding DAILY, WEEKLY, MONTHLY, QUARTERLY, ANNUALLY 
3. Execute what may come 

In fact, nowadays there are more distracters like WhatsApp, Facebook, mails, and calls from anyone, but in my opinion, they are all manageable if we are clear on what we want to focus. Since there is no clarity on what is our priority and we succumb to external distracters. 

Personally, I know one of my entrepreneur's friend with many successful ventures, has a habit of checking mails only once in a day, that too in specific time period.This habit increases his personal productivity and enables to focus on what the priority.The point is all distractions are external, the question must be are we clear on our priority and what we want..That differentiate achievers and nonachievers 

Why should we celebrate even small success?

    

One way of motivating ourselves is to celebrate even the small success on our own way .when we celebrate the success, the happiness feeling associated with celebration reinforces positive motivation, in turn, pushes us to achieve more.This is the psychological effect of celebration.

    At a personal level, the definition of success could be anything.For example, if you set the goal of reducing weight by 3 kg and even if achieve 1 kg reduction, that is the success and needs to be celebrated.Celebrate it on your way. It could be anything, even expressing your happiness to your dear ones. This happiness feeling will give you the motivation to reduce further weight.

    Similarly, in organizational setup, even small achievement of success towards big target must be celebrated with the team in the form communication, appreciation, gifting, etc.This will bring more positiveness inside the organization, and eventually, that becomes the culture of winning mindset.

   The point is irrespective of the size of the success; you need to celebrate and feel happy about your achievement that will give internal motivation to move up further. Your state of mind and happiness is important to achieve anything and celebration is one way of keeping you in a positive state.

Hence, strive for success and celebrate and achieve more success!!!

Why some people grows fast ?

     As you might have observed that some people are progressing fast in their career path and some people are not progressing enough despite their potential.Even though there may be many external factors contribute to the growth, the choice of mindset and personal qualities exhibited by the individual contributes significantly. The individual either possesses  a growth mindset or survival mindset and accordingly  demonstrates the behavior in a professional environment.

Let us understand the two categories of people  and qualities

Growth Mindset  and qualities:

•    They  always  eager to learn something new  
•    They accept the challenges and  do the mental risk calculation 
•    Always look for the opportunity  to contribute during interaction, crisis moment and do their best 
•    They do not bother much about  their defined target set by  others and go beyond 
•    Their  thinking and solution approach is  always one step ahead of current titles  

Survival  Mindset and qualities:

•    They do what is given or asked to do 
•    When opportunities were given, they have always found the reason why can not be done
•    Being in the same environment, they are always complaining  others
•    They always depend on  someone or forum to take a decision 
•    They refer to the rules and processes frequently
   
Being in survival mindset is not a big issue if it is a conscious choice of the individual.However,  the awareness of the above mindset will help you to change yourself into a growth mindset and enhance the career growth.

What to do when others hurt you?

You might have come across a situation someone had hurt you by their words or action  either by family members or by your colleagues or business partners .As a chain reaction, you would be thinking of the person or event for a longer duration say days, weeks ,even for years !!.Internally you would be feeling of resentment or bitterness about the person or event.

How this feeling of resentment affects you?

It affects your physical health and also your mental strength, in turn affects your quality of your work.

How to handle this feeling of resentment?

Only by way of forgiving. We had learnt the different definition of forgiveness from our education, ancestors, spiritual masters and some of us  think that forgiving mindset is beyond human capacity. Actually, forgiveness is not about forgetting the event or person which is practically difficult, but it is the ability to look at the person or event in a different perspective 

What are the different perspectives?

oThe other person hurt us with his words or action; because the person comes from different background and experience.He behaves with others too. Hence it is not your issue. This will calm you down to some extent
oHow do you behave in such a situation? This will help you to understand others
oLook at event’s or person‘s behavior with reference to a time frame, say after a year or 5 years from now. You may feel not to worth to worry too much.
o Life is too short and it is not worth to trade your peace of mind with that incident and move forward.

The above perspective will give strength to forgive the person or event. Ultimately your quality of life is important and how you choose the response makes a difference!!!!

Mind your intention while giving feedback

One of the routine activities we are doing every day either at home or in a professional environment is to give feedback to others for their behavior or performance.Have you wondered how many times the “pointing out “ or feedback ends up with disagreement, argument, resentment or silence vengeance from others?

One of the reasons could be the tone we use in our feedback conversation. The quality of tone comes from our intentions.If our intention is to find fault with others and if we use the feedback as an opportunity, our tone will be more of commanding, sound .dictating and harsh.This results only in reaction from others and leads to poor consequence only.Alternatively, if our intention is to correct or help the other person to improve his or her behavior or action next time, then our tone obviously would be with more empathy, kindness and gentle.

Your tone results into the consequence of either arguments or accepting your views in a positive perspective.Hence mind your intentions, which will take care of your tone which will, in turn, take care of the quality of relationship with others.