Loneliness at the top one of the top leadership blues. Despite being surrounded by their people, leaders often struggle with loneliness in their ivory tower. This is because very few people can relate to and appreciate the unique set of challenges leading an organization brings. Having both dealt with loneliness myself many times and having come across leaders who’ve struggled with similar issues, I understand how awful you feel at the apex of your business.
The journey of running a business is seemingly a rollercoaster ride with exciting highs and crashing lows. At the helm of affairs, most leaders have felt cold and lonely in their ivory tower despite being surrounded by their people. This is because they have no one to share their aspirations, triumphs and tribulations with confidence. Also, very few can relate to the big picture, see beyond the horizon or feel that excitement during early project stages.
Over the years mankind thrived by living in groups, forming connections and discovering new things. It’s this very aspect of human connection that helped advance our world from hunting and farming to doing business and networking with one another. Though we formally exchange business cards at networking events, the real test is how we can make people remember us and remain in contact once the meeting lapses.
Have you ever bumped into a connection that changed your life forever? Whether the encounter ignited sparks of partnership, or innovative ideas rolled over, impromptu meetings and informal chats can open possibilities that never existed before. From initiating insightful discussions, giving wings to new ideas or launching new products, a chance meeting can open doors to drive businesses forward in unimaginable ways.
Networking is critical to innovation where ideas disseminate as useful insights to another. In this context, networking is more about gaining ideas than about resources. While resource networkers interact with people of homogenous backgrounds to gain access to greater resources (contacts, funds, influence, or information) to further their careers, idea networkers interact with people from heterogeneous backgrounds to gain diverse perspectives and simply learn new ideas.
In a world of uncertainty and unprecedented challenges, organizations need to be resilient and nimble as change itself. Rule-plugged management systems and lofty hierarchies have failed to be responsive and agile to events around them. I stumbled across an interesting concept 'Humanocracy', which presents a blueprint for creating organizations as inspired and inventive as the humans inside them.
Do you always tell yourself you cannot achieve something? Do you discourage yourself from trying the new? If yes, then subconsciously self-limiting beliefs are stopping you from attaining what you want in life. All the positivity in the world won't be of much help if you aren't willing to break free from the thoughts weighing you down. Limiting beliefs are thoughts that restrict you from realizing your full potential.
In most meetings, conversations that discussed work schedules are often forgotten, and as days pass by people can hardly recollect the tasks assigned to them or their deadlines. In order to simplify task management and bring in more clarity, the WWW (What, Who, When) Tool is a foolproof method to break complex projects into manageable tasks, allocate them to responsible persons and set submission timelines.
With our businesses venturing into new markets, international travel is going to be an exciting phase. However, as you start interacting more with foreign clients, you soon realize that manners and gestures differ and carry varying interpretations. Now that it’s trendy for meetings to occur during lunchtime, you can’t afford to disregard behavioral norms for introductions or dining. The first impression you create will influence the meeting flow and therefore, you need to discerningly handle yourself to get the most out of the deal.
If you walk around, spot a bunch of smiling faces and say everybody looks happy...then you're not actually listening. Most bosses have lost the art of listening even though it remains the most fundamental trait of great leader. This is because leaders live in fallacy that they are way ahead of everyone else and love to listen to themselves. In the long run, such overconfidence and arrogant notions are doomed to fail.
Forum is a group of individuals sharing with each other in complete confidence their work and life. The objective of the forum is to help each other live a fuller life by sharing experiences and knowledge. To make the most of your Forum, here are a few tips to follow.
Exchanging business cards is a ritual in most networking meetings and once it ends, you’re left with a pile of cards. On the contrary, converting a card into contact and pursuing a connection of value marks the beginning of a relationship. These are often based on interests, hobbies and goals, beyond generic conversations or candid talk.
We all have our share of ups (peaks) and downs (valleys) in life. Whether you're at the pinnacle of success or led down in life, the book 'Peaks and Valleys' will equip you with time-tested principles in life's journey. Narrated as a series of conversations between an unhappy young man living in a valley and a wise old man experiencing life on a peak, the nuggets of wisdom from the book amazed me.
Are you involved entire day in a whole lot of activity and then wonder why you haven't accomplished much? Then it’s time for you to power up and get organized. When you try to execute several tasks that flash your mind, no matter how hard you try, it gets challenging to accomplish everything as expected. It feels you're bouncing from task to task and never really doing justice to any of them.
At the threshold of a New Year, almost each one of us set resolutions, desiring to be better than what we were in the previous year. Resolutions could be getting in shape, advancing your career, networking better, giving up a bad habit or simply spending more time with family. Sadly, very few of us live up to these resolutions and as the year progresses, they are forgotten. This is primarily because we don’t break up resolutions into actionable steps and all that was spoken is gone up in the air.
'Networking is essential for success' is a piece of advice repeatedly given. The critical part missing in this advice is the mechanism to build a professional network. Forbes article 'The Networking Advice No One Tells You' beautifully articulates the reasons that limit us from being an effective networker.
In the past, leaders instilled a certain amount of fear to churn more work out of people with focus being on profits at any cost. Pushing employees to work led to declining morale and motivation levels. However, the post- pandemic phase altered the way we work, by offering more flexibility on job. With Covid-19 having imposed several stressors the significance of empathy at work has cropped up and sticking to old ways may do more harm than good.
Your time and attention are valuable resources which shouldn't go waste. You need to choose how you spend your time making room for what's important and filtering out the rest. Calendars are functional little tools to organize your super busy life and derive maximum benefit from the day. Providing a quick glance through your appointments, they keep your focus on the top tasks to accomplish and remind you of free slots to pursue long-cherished hobbies.
There is an aura or energy that seems to swirl around catalysts - to get you inspired or coax you to change for the better. We have all experienced catalysts at varied stages - be it a parent, teacher or manager who has had a tremendous influence on the direction of our life. Catalysts, also known as change agents or Change activators, encourage you to take risks in life and go in pursuit of your dreams.
Checklists work for a simple reason, as humans we tend to forget things. When juggling between numerous tasks, we may miss out on a few. In an increasingly complex world, checklists are the ultimate supervision tool to simplify the execution of cumbersome procedures and ensure your tasks are being executed in the right order. A checklist is an exhaustive list of tasks that are essential for the smooth functioning of your business, work or even life.
Have you ever regretted after you have spoken something off-topic in a meeting? Have you ever regretted after you have spoken something off-topic in a meeting? Practicing silence can be key as well, especially when you are uncertain of what to say or saying it can do more harm than good. Sometimes, certain situations require you to hold back your opinions.
Where deceptive advertising and marketing gimmicks are rampant nowadays, referrals or word-of-mouth (WOM) are turning into a more powerful and trusted communication medium in business. Referrals is when someone in your network recommends your business to a new prospect. The referrer, being a trusted person within the circle provides a reference to your business and this may happen spontaneously over a conversation or as a deliberate marketing effort.
The key to managing time well is by using a priority-based task list system. This pragmatic system involves consolidating all your tasks and organizing them based on their level of impact to ensure optimal utilization of your time. This systematic approach of the priority list is habitually utilized by my team to plan their tasks for the day, week and month and has worked wonders by ensuring no task is omitted.
Speaking in a meeting puts you in a ‘spotlight’. This can get stressful at times as you need to present your ideas and add value to the on-going discussions. It's important that you articulate your thoughts well, especially when you have something important to say. On the other hand, knowing when to pause and listen to the conversation does also create an impact.
We all have the same amount of time that is 24 hours a day, but the value we extract from it is not equal. The way we utilize our time would decide the value time will grant us. While you cannot buy time with money, you can make money by managing time well. If you study the habits of most successful people, you will discover one common quality - all of them have managed their time well and have infused discipline into their regime.
Nature strives towards productivity. A fruit as common as a coconut has a high efficiency quotient because every part of the coconut has a use either as a tree, a fruit or a shell. And perhaps nature is the genesis of the pursuit of efficiency. It is believed that earth has the perfect conditions for life to evolve and if that is true then how do you explain the extinction of species due to natural evolution.
I have always been an active advocate of wellness and a healthy lifestyle to maintain our overall wellbeing. The line between work life and personal life continues to blur in a tech-embedded world and many employees report being stressed out. Small doses of stress can elevate our growth, on the other hand, chronic stress can affect our work progress.
We’ve all heard the phrase — it’s not what you know, it’s who you know and how well you know them. Ironically, most of us dedicate our time towards building knowledge and very few of us work towards building social relationships. The demands of work and personal commitments may not permit enough time for nurturing relationships at work.
In my span of leadership, I have noticed employees willingly consent to be managed by a genuine human being who is honest and lives by one’s values. A fancy job title bestows upon you the organizational power to lead, but this does not mean your employees have consented to be led by you.
An effective manager gets the best out of his people and steers his team towards attainment of organizational goals. Managing is no more lashing out at people for doing wrong things, rather it is redirecting, catching people doing a good job and sharing in their success.