Inspiration and desperation

We inspire with others, we follow, and we prosper together. But after sometime the trailblazer stops blazing, what to do now? Desperation or continue our journey. Most of the time people stop doing what they did by inspiring others. I spent quite some time but none were discussed about this topic.

For example, U.S.A is leader of world, they led all war and other’s followed and fought with them. Now in Libya, U.S.A due to internal pressure not leading and war against Gaddafi stalled. The leader stopped leading others and all are collapsed or not effective as before. Why this is happening? How to avoid it?

1.       Don’t abuse leaders: When leaders leading something, don’t take everything grated rather use the opportunity to learn and document it.

2.       Document all the advice: When leaders giving advice when they are leading those are not just advice, those are insights and priceless piece of wisdom and document it.

3.       Don’t question leaders: Leaders say something with in context always, don’t ask question and don’t ignore those. All are very effective because leaders won’t talk for talking.

4.       No middle ground: If we inspire with others, we have to align with leaders all the time. There is no middle ground. The actions which are taken by leaders should be committed. If we follow leader without committed we can’t repeat it when leaders not present.

Actually once we start following leaders, we have to become that leader after some point of time. Leadership main objective is creating as many as leaders.

17th Hour

The most important hour in our daily life is the 17th hour,which is, when we close our eye,of course for sleep(assume our biological clock starts as soon as we wake up). We all work hard for 8 hours per day and other 8 hours for eating,commutes,family time,TV,reading, so 17th hour is our first very private hour(most of the days). The 17th hour should be used for something productive, something creative and something to remember. When i was kid one of my school teacher told us to use the hour to run through your day abstractly to find what went wrong and what went right to improve our day by day life. I couldn't practice it consistently because it was easy to tell but hard to implement.But i believe that was a wonderful idea and great tool for self improvement and improve better decision making, moreover improves our abstract thinking.

Actually i told this same topic to a friend of mine 3-4 years ago, he argued that if you are president of country or prime minister then you can exercise this kind of routines, we ordinary human doesn't need this. But we ordinary human definitely need this because we are living a very dynamic world where from president of country to average joe are in same boat. An Average Joe under pressure now because

a)easy money flow become history.no more free lunch.
b)people become very selfish(in a positive way),no one now has time to correct mistake of others.
c)world become flat and a common man now dine at New York,breakfast at Paris and Lunch at New Delhi.
d)technology become very sophisticated,start taking its toll to replace human's repeating job.
e)smart people now start talking about giving life to all things(internet of thing)

So the power of 15 mins thinking at 17th hour is become very crucial. If we do, the benefits are

a) The oil spill could be averted if someone from BP,just spent 15 mins of their 17th hour by thinking about the negative impact of an accident.
b) We don't discuss about Moody's AAA rating of mortgage based securities, if we spent 15 mins of our 17th hour by thinking the abstraction connection of 2000-2001 stock market collapse.
c) We don't need worry about today's things because it was already planned and already put some thought process last year at our 17th hour thinking.

We don't need to be a genius or thinking required any things or meditation or brain power, all we need is some time before diving into sleep.

Who is listening?

Earlier, I often get discouraged by my wife, friends and relatives because they are not listening to me. Sometimes a small things required lot of effort from me to get things done as I want, for example, which movie to go? Where we want to spend our next vacation? But after getting little older and enough maturity now I know how to get things done as per my wish. This is called Persuasion. Persuasion is something everyone has within their soul, this might take some time and experience to use it fully and successfully. Persuasion is not something related to marketing for selling goods, we should not confuse persuasion with sales and marketing, In fact if you are sales man for GE, you might not need to use your persuasion to sell your rocket engine to NASA, because everybody knows about GE brand. Same with Japan auto makers because of price everybody comes to your show room without having to persuade. Persuasion is “You must convince others to take action on your behalf even when you have no formal authority.”

Persuasion required following 4 basic steps

1. Credibility: Collect both positives and negatives of your points. People will not ask only positives but negatives also. You should prepare for both side of argument.
2. Understand your audience: This is sometime you have to switch context and present different arguments that is one’s positive point now become negative now. I can’t persuade same way to my son as my wife. I can tell superman story to persuade my son but not with my wife.
3. Connect emotionally: You have to connect emotionally with audience to persuade successfully. You have to be enough smart and emotionally intelligence to adjust your tone and body language according to audience emotion state.
4. Don’t loose your position: You are persuading something’s because you are 100% sure that what you are trying to do is right. Your instinct tells you do so. If you have that instinct, just persuade persistently, until you hit the success. If you are not too confidence then don’t even try to persuade others. Don’t even think about persuade others by threatening them because no body will listen to you after that and your credibility will become a question mark.

If you want to be a leader.....

Leadership doesn't required any special skills. Any body can become leader at any time of his/her life. so try the following to find out you are ready or not. This might be fun but real truth hidden in each points.

1. Just show your fingers as gun and try to act like you are shooting everybody in and around you, this makes somebody thinks you are a maniac, somebody thinks that you are a crazy guy, somebody thinks that you are going to fire them. If you are successfully created multiple perception for same action then you can be a leader.

2. Read more and identify complex English vocabularies and use it appropriate time. If you are able to read more and your brain allows you to store much information, that's good sign for leader in making.

3. At least yell at your co-workers once in a week to straight up some things, makes you to become leader very fast.

5. Attend meeting on time and talk more unwanted things other then real meeting agenda, if it is really helps business to achieve something. You are ready, just rock n roll.

6. Just start talking with co-worker at first floor and get into elevator with the same discussion with same co-worker and you get out in a wrong floor, If the co-workers also follows you. You are already a good leader.

7. Even though you are defending 3+4=8, somebody try to correct you for more than 5 minutes. Just think that you are great leader of 2008.

8. Same time if you can talk with 5 people for various tasks and you are not doing anything, you are a true leader.