Leadership: Influence… how? Part 3

The third trait of a leader that inspires and allows their influence to get to the masses is, the love for pressure. The saying goes, “When the going gets tough, the tough gets going.”

There are two kinds of people in the world, the ones who takes sees the challenge and hopes it does not befall them, and the ones who see the challenge and takes on it. Unfortunately, in my home culture, we call the latter group of people, the ‘extras’, the ‘wannabes’, but deep down, if we can get past ourselves, we truly admire these adversity-challengers, these bull-fighters.

It takes that certain courage, that certain kind of focus to get past the worries and just dive into the problem and work it out. Not many have this, and this is what makes leadership scarce.

We could also say that it takes a certain amount of foolishness to take on the crunch time situation. And we are, many times, secretly hoping that the person would fail. However, again, it is not about winning or succeeding then, but the courage. We must focus on the process (as well as the outcome, even though we tend to put too much emphasis on the outcome). Of course, it would be unfortunate when one fails to do the job, but usually with the courage and tenacity and the mind of a true leader is able to gauge and take on what he is able to handle and then more.

Leadership: Influence… how? Part 2

Still on the topic of what a leader would look like in a group of people, we have the second trait: Humility. In a world where the loudest person is the one who gets heard, humility is a difficult virtue to cultivate.  Many times we want to be the best in the class or in the work place etc. This makes cultivation of humility difficult. In fact, this type of thinking, which I call it the Law of Comparison, is diametrically opposite what humility would embody.

The Law of Comparison tends to skew us towards comparing ourselves with others. The problem with this sort of thinking is that everyone is unique, and comparisons cannot be accurately done. It is like comparing oranges with apples, it just does not make sense. When this sort of comparison is done, negative competitiveness comes into the play, which leads to competing against each other for attention/honour/performance bonuses/recognition/whatever, which in turn can create the hostile environment.

Humility, on the other hand, allows you to be the improving human. It is the “understanding that I’m not always the best, and that another person on any given day can win,” says Wade Rowatt, a social psychologist at Baylor University. And, this tends to foster the Law of Comparison in relation to self. That is to say, you would be comparing yourself today and yesterday, or today and 3 years ago, to see if improvements have been made for yourself.

Other than that, humility will and can foster a basic respect for everyone, and that would include your enemies/competitors/siblings/spouse (if you see your spouse as an adversary). When you do not see yourself as someone who will always win, you would see yourself as someone who is as good as everyone else. You do not see yourself as someone a cut above the rest and therefore deserve special treatment. Rather you see yourself as a special part of the machinery (like the liver in the body, or the lungs uniquely different but others but as important), and that everyone HAS to work together for the betterment of the goal.

A person who feels he/she deserves special treatment never inspires greatness. A person who feels he/she is special, like everyone else… tends to respect others, which becomes inspiring.

Leadership: Influence… how? Part 1

Accordingly, leadership is said to be the power to influence others. Of course, leaders influence others to achieve their goals. We also hope that these leaders have goals that benefit everyone.

The word “influence” becomes key on what leadership is. I observed a group of friends, and while a few seem to want to be the ‘leader’ or ‘head honcho’ of the group, I realized that the real leader was the one whose views were heard and carefully considered… which then led to the group action.

This then let me to thinking… how is someone a leader? What allows him/her to become one? Are there certain traits or values? While reflecting on this, I read an interesting article which list down a few traits that made sense to me.

The first being, the person’s work ethic: If you are seen as someone who is constantly working to improve, not in a hey-look-at-me-as-I-improve way, but more of the well-just-doing-my-best-where-I-am attitude. Then you are probably one step to getting closer to being seen and heard as a leader. The focus isn’t really about how good you are or have been, but it is the focus on getting better, inherently encourages everyone else to move with you.

It is about being a continuous learner, willing to learn and improve. Anyway, enough said. The next post will detail other traits.

Ability to respond & authority

The much less talked section of leadership is that of authority and responsibility; more so regarding responsibility.

In my younger days, when I was still in school, I realized very quickly that I did not want to lead groups to do anything, simply because my teachers did not give me certain authority to make decisions. Responsibility without authority is frustrating, it feels like being a hapless helpless servant. Thus, I shunned from leadership positions like being a student councilor, or even being a drill sergeant for my extra-curricular activity. The fact is, I learned to detest authorities who held on to their power in fear that something might go wrong.

Now, as I am older, and hopefully much wiser, I learned that I probably did not know much about responsibility. When authority was given to me to complete tasks, I had tended to abuse this authority, not by giving people hell in what they do. When the project failed, I, who delegated the work to my team members, refused to take responsibility for the project, but rather blame my group members for the incompetence. This is harsh, but I’ve done that before.

So, I learned, good leadership is not easy. Authority must be backed by responsibility and vice versa. Someone who does not take responsibility for his own life, becomes a liability to society. Another who does account for his actions, becomes a valued member of society. And this is just the beginning journey of being a good leader: First to yourself and then to the community as a whole.

Mindfulness again

An article from Psychology Today explained what “mindfulness” is, and how it is functions, or allow us to function better in the real world.

It claims that people who are high on the mindfulness scale are “more aware of their unconscious processes” , this possibly leads to better control of their cognitive ability and thus they are able to respond proactively, rather than reactively.

My take on mindfulness is that when it is practice, it allows the practitioner to be more aware of his surroundings as well as his own actions, and thus, it allows the beginning of change to occur. Decisions can be made with the new awareness. However, the steps to which change actually occurs has not been detailed out for my own understanding… till the next time then.

Forgivenness without religion

An article in Psychology Today has shown how forgiveness can be explained and applied in a non-religious way.

Forgiving yourself means first accepting that you committed an error, but secondly, refusing to condemn yourself totally for having made it.

It is important to admit the gravity of the mistake. The error may be very bad, and admitting it to yourself is the first step toward improving the effects of the error. Forgiving yourself means accepting your human fallibility.

While this is sufficient for understanding, application is usually more difficult than understanding.

Helping others

It seems like helping others is not as easy as I thought it ought to be. Being in the people-helping industry, which includes teachers and instructors, it is definitely not easy to help others be interdependent. Rather, it is far easier to have your students/clients be dependent on you.

It is far easier to give instructions and have people follow them to churn out the best results/outcomes for everyone to see. The idea of focusing on the process becomes tedious and difficult, and the outcomes/results might not reach the requirements.

Yet, it is absolutely necessary for workers in the helping profession to empower individuals for their growth. Here’s a summary of what I thought was useful to think about:

Simply stated, empowered individuals are aware of, and act on, the right to make their own choices and decisions. To empower a client is to raise their awareness about personal rights and entitlement.

Strategies to empower aim to transform client feelings of helplessness and powerlessness into greater self-assuredness and confidence. Minor shifts in the way a counsellor conducts casework can serve as a great starting point for empowering clients.

This sounds good in theory, but difficult in reality. But we have to try, don’t we?

Expanding the metaphor

If there is one thing I like about stories and one-liners, it would be the metaphors that they can generate. From Seth Godin’s blog,  he wrote these:

• A big car on a wet frozen lake goes nowhere. No traction, no motion.
• A small bug working its way across a gravel driveway takes forever. Too much friction, too little motion.
• If you’re stuck, it’s probably because one of these two challenges.

Which is interesting, because he writes it from the context of marketing. I am thinking of the metaphor on how people get stuck in their situations, and how did they get there. And how these metaphors can allow them to see the action they need to take to get out of it.

The biases we all have

I read an article that talked about how we would want to believe what we read, or do we?
Well, the conclusion of the various research done was, when given time to process the information given, we would/could, though sometimes we forget to do that, we can/cannot believe what we read.

However, when not given time to process the information, we would generally believe what is being said in accordance to our biases. I guess that is why some sales people can close a hard selling deal on certain other people.

Back to the biases that we have, these biases would tell us if we would believe:

• Correspondence bias: this is people’s assumption that others’ behaviour reflects their personality, when really it reflects the situation.
  
• Truthfulness bias: people tend to assume that others are telling the truth, even when they are lying.
• The persuasion effect: when people are distracted it increases the persuasiveness of a message.
• Denial-innuendo effect: people tend to positively believe in things that are being categorically denied.
• Hypothesis testing bias: when testing a theory, instead of trying to prove it wrong people tend to look for information that confirms it. This, of course, isn’t very effective hypothesis testing!

I guess, I tend not to buy stuff from people who try to hard sell me anything, because my bias is that I distrust people who do not give me space and time to think about what is really going on.

interesting day

I have decided to try a new philosophy out.

Eat when I am hungry, (not the mind-type of hungry, but the stomach says it’s hungry, hungry

This morning I woke up and had my mix of juice: Carrots, green apples, bitter gourd, and oranges. about 4 hours later, I became hungry, so I ate two bananas.

Then I went to meet my mentor to discuss how should I proceed with my life goals. During that time, I got hungry, so I ate 2 slices of kaya toast, 1 french toast, 4 eggs. This meal lasted me till about 7.30pm, when I decided it was time to do some kettle bell swings.

Sweating like pig on a hot afternoon, I got out my dinner which comprised of 4 tomatoes (516g), 200 grammes of lettuce, 4 pitted prunes, and 2 bananas (140g). That and my 90g of soy milk.

I am filled pretty much. Wonder how the meat and salt cravings will come to me later at night.