Tag: Leadership development training programs

A fascinating year is about to end. It is only a few hours before 2015 starts.

There are two things that you can do:

1. Make a powerful entry into 2015; or,

2. Float into 2015 and happen to show up in the New Year.

I am certain you would like to make a powerful entry into the New Year and make 2015 the best year you’ve had till now. If that’s what you are interested in, read on.

So that you can make an authoritative and a commanding entry in the New Year, it is important to do a review of the last year (2014) and take stock. I am going to recommend a set of questions that you ask yourself. I have broken these questions into 2 parts – one that reviews and completes 2014 and another set that helps you declare your goals for the next year.

It is important to know ‘What is so’ about your life at the end of 2014; and then ‘where do you want to be this time next year’ so that you can make an unassailable entry into 2015 and achieve the goals for the New Year. These questions will help you get a deeper understanding of where you are today and where you want to be this time next year.

I am suggesting this to you after having completed this exercise and I can state out of experience, once you have done so, you will be making a very powerful entry in to the New Year.

1. What have I achieved in 2014?

While answering this question, what I did was to break up my life into important areas and identified what is it that I achieved in each of these important areas of my life, such as: my personal life; my work; my health & well-being; and Gift Your Organ Foundation (NGO);

Just writing down my achievements in each of these areas gave me a great sense of achievement and a lot of power to look at audacious and bold goals for the New Year!

I suggest you identify the important areas of your life and list out your achievements in each of these areas.

I acknowledged myself for the various achievements of the year in different areas of my life, to something as simple as acknowledging my new found patience in certain trying situations. I discovered a new me in this process of acknowledging myself. Try it, it is a lot of fun, I promise.

2. What did I learn new in this year?

I have a keen interest in reading and continuously developing myself and one of the ways I evaluate my growth is based on the new things that I learn. I can easily state that 2014 has been a year of a lot of lessons for me, a year of a lot of new knowledge that I gained and the most important recognition of how much I don’t know yet and still need to gain. The more I learn, the more I feel I don’t know enough and hence the more I want to learn.

3. What is it that I missed out on this year?

I missed out on a few of targets and certain self development goals. By simply distinguishing what I missed out in the last year, it has helped me re-evaluate these targets and goals and the ones that continue to hold its importance in my life have found a place in what I want to achieve in the New Year.

4. What do I want to achieve in 2014?

There are two ways to approach any goal in your life – one is to first identify ‘what’ is your goal and then figure out the ‘how’. The other is to first look at the resources that you have, the effort that it will take, and then determine your goal. A lot of people first look at the ‘how’ and based on the `how’, they decide the ‘what’, i.e., their goal.

I am firm believer that you need to figure out the ‘what’ first and the ‘how’ will take care of itself. Think of all your dreams, make them specific, make them measurable, put a deadline on these dreams and go after them! If there is sincerity in your effort, the universe will conspire to achieve these goals.

Break down the important areas of your life and identify ‘where would you like to be this time next year’ in each of these areas. Like I did while reviewing 2014, I have identified where I want to be this time next year in my personal life, my work, health and the Gift Your Organ Foundation. I also included places I want to travel in 2015 and other fun things that I would like to do and people that I would like to meet.

5. What new do I want to learn in the New Year?

I have also indentified what new I want to learn in the New Year. There are some specific goals that I have for myself in this area and I am committed to achieving these goals of gaining new knowledge. There are some courses that I have identified and will commence in the New Year.

Feel free to add more questions if you would like. The more you question yourself, the more you will seek answers from yourself.

Once you have done this, one last but an extremely important thing that will be required is that you will need a structure of people around you with whom you will need to share these goals; people who will not allow you to be lackadaisical and will continuously remind you of each of your goals; people who will hold you accountable to take actions to achieve these goals.

I have created a solid structure of people around me that hold me to account. If you would like to create a similar structure, please feel free to contact me on sameer@sameerdua.com

I can guarantee you, once you have done this, you will not only make a powerful entry in 2015, you will conquer the year!

Make 2015 count in your life!

Good luck and have a blast!

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On July 13, 1978, Lee Iacocca, the President of Ford was fired. He was 54. He had joined Ford as an Engineer in 1946 and had risen to the post of the President. The year following his dismissal from Ford, he was offered the position of the CEO of the then severely bankrupt Chrysler. Lee took it up. With the help of financial aid from the federal government Iacocca streamlined the company’s operations, focused on producing more fuel-efficient cars and pursued an aggressive marketing strategy based on his own powerful personality. In a span of 5 years he not only pulled the dying corporate giant out of bankruptcy but also started soaring it up into the profit earning bracket.

When Lee was fired, he could have easily decided to take his life easy and retired. But when another opportunity knocked at his door, which was seemingly not too appealing at that time, given the fact that Chrysler was not doing too well, he did not stop. He took it up headlong and dived into it with commitment.

We are all intrinsically driven by the conversations we have with ourselves. When an event occurs, we as humans naturally make up a story about it in our minds and this story then guides us to take actions that we do. Our work, at The Institute for Generative Leadership, involves us meeting many people from various organizations and from various sectors and strata of the society. One question that we frequently ask people and our participants is “What stops you?”. The answers that we commonly receive are “The fear of failure”, “The fear of the unknown”, “society”, “inhibitions”, “uncertainty” and so on.

If you go deeper within these answers and introspect further, the underlying base will always be “Internal Conversations”.The conversations you have with yourself are the ones that decide your future actions.

Jay is the General Manager at a multinational organization. He said he had been wanting to bring about a culture change in the organization and had very powerful and detailed plans and ideas that if implemented could bring about significant change in terms of turnover and the environment of the company. He said he had this going within him for 3 years. When asked, what was stopping him from proposing his thoughts to the senior management, the one thing he said was “I have a fear that they may ridicule me. This plan of mine will move the very basis of the organization and I think they may not want to even consider it.

Jay had a brilliant plan, he was doing very well in his career but was being stifled by the culture he saw around him. Every day on various occasions this thought about his plans and ideas crossed his mind but he always stopped himself. He was indirectly restricting his own growth. And all this because of the ‘internal conversations’ he was having with himself. These internal conversations were stopping him from his own expansion.

Ravi, is the production manager in his organization. He says ‘If some jobs crop up in the last minute that could hamper our deadlines, I do not ask anyone, I just go ahead, get hands on and do it myself’ When asked ‘What stopped him from asking his juniors to pitch in’ he replied ‘I think, I will be troubling them and overburdening them with extra work’. Ravi here is putting himself in a tight spot and discomfort too because of the internal conversations he is having with himself. These very conversations are stopping him from making effective requests to his subordinates who probably don’t have an inkling about the extra work that comes up in the last minute.

Amit has written stories but is unsure about publishing them. To see them in print is his dream. His justification is “What will people think if they read them. These are my thoughts, and I will be exposed to the world”. Amit is stopping himself from giving the world an opportunity to read his writings only because of these very internal conversations he has been having with himself for more than 4 years! More importantly, he is stopping himself from an opportunity to grow in the realm of the writing world because of these very thoughts that he has been indulging in and has also being justifying his stance to himself for not taking that one step of publishing his stories.

If Lee Iacocca’s internal conversations with himself had been thus ‘I have been fired from one job and this new company that has offered me a job is already going down a dwindling spiral, I should not take this risk in this age. I’d rather retire and travel the world now that I have all the time and money anyways’ then he would not have been in a position to credit himself for a future that he created for Chrylser and for himself!

Take a moment, sit back and think, “Where am I stopping myself?”
You have a choice, you can either be your biggest barrier or you can be unstoppable!
What would you rather choose?

With care,
Sheeja Shaju, Leadership Coach, Institute for Generative Leadership, India.

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“To be playful is not to be trivial or frivolous, or to act as though nothing of consequence will happen. On the contrary, when we are playful with each other we relate as free persons, and the relationship is open to surprise; everything that happens is of consequence. It is, in fact, seriousness that closes itself to consequence, for seriousness is a dread of the unpredictable outcome of open possibility. To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility whatever the cost to oneself” James B Carse (Finite and Infinite Games)

We have all seen and met people who in their organizations operate like they would operate in a war zone. There is pressure, stress, and constant anxiety at work. This is the unceasing and relentless mood within the senior staff of several organizations. At the Institute for Generative Leadership, we state that one of the key responsibilities of the leader is to manage and cause the mood[1] within the organization. Whether you, as a leader, know it or not, accept it or reject it, you are causing the mood within the organization. Skilled leaders effectively blend with the emotions of the other person and subtly cause the other person to change their emotion.

Any mood or emotion pre-disposes you to certain action and may not be the ‘right’ mood for creating a high performance team. For example, if the employees of your organization are in the mood of resentment, then chances are the sub conscious conversation they have is “I assess that you are responsible for closing possibilities for me / my team and I am committed to not having a conversation with you about this.” Similarly, if the employees of your organization are in the mood of resignation, then the sub conscious conversation they may have is, “I assess that nothing is going to get better here; it has always been and it will always be this way; and there is nothing I can do about it.”

Both these above moods pre-dispose them not to have a conversation with you as the leader of the organization / team and also not remain committed to your requests, promises or deadlines.

The interesting thing about Moods is that these are contagious. If you have an excited employee around you, s/he spreads excitement and energy around them. Similarly, if you have someone who is resigned and disempowered, s/he will bring others down with him/her. One of my coachees, working as a Chief General Manager in a leading bank in India stated, “I have noticed that when I am in a good mood, my family and entire staff in the office are in a good mood. Similarly, when I am angry and preoccupied, I somehow create this uneasy tension which I have come to realize is counter productive for my organization (and my family).”

Begin by becoming aware of your mood in different environments, such as, home, office, with friends, etc. Now notice if this mood serves you and the people around you. If not, this awareness of your mood will bring forth with it a choice of whether or not you want to continue being in this mood.

I will leave it for you to decide whether or not you want to continue in this mood or choose to change it.

Sameer Dua, Founder Director, Institute for Generative Leadership, India

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