Quote Of The Week #80
Tag: Integrity
13 Signs You Are Meant To Be A Leader
Sometimes, our circumstances don’t match our inner thoughts and beliefs about ourselves. Sometimes, we haven’t figured out who we are yet and we are leaning into other people’s expectations of us.
Sometimes, we believe that our personality will be rejected when it is our character that counts. Other times, we notice that one type of leadership is thriving and don’t believe that we can level up.
So, this is written as a reminder to those who doubt themselves and who are actually meant to be leaders.
Wondering whether or not you are meant to be a leader?
Western society promotes bad leadership in corporate organizations. It seems that “evil leaders” win and appear smarter and more successful than “good leaders”. Though these organizations function well and get results, they become more and more toxic to work in.
These organizations have to subsequently provide trainings and team building exercises to counter the effect of negative leadership.
What we need are effective leaders with great character. Most people want the title, the power but don’t have the character, the values or the attitude.
You are definitively meant to be a leader if…
#1. People naturally gravitate to you and ask you for your advice
Have you been standing in the streets, people come up to you for direction? In the grocery isles, people ask you for products? At work, people ask you for help on their project that you know nothing about?
People ask you for advice everywhere you go. That is because you seem approachable, like you have the answers to their problems and like you will not retain any information.
#2. You have a clear vision and a direction for your future
You have a vision for your future and you have the conviction that your dreams will come through. You dream so big that your dreams seem almost impossible.
Sometimes, you may not know what you are doing but you sure know where you are going.
Also, you may not be able to immediately put your vision into action but you are sure that it’ll come through, you know how to apply yourself, you know how to trust your gut and to put your best foot forward, and you know how to find the people to help you achieve your goals.
#3. Your character is remarkable
You have outstanding character and people model their behaviors on yours.
This means that you are self-disciplined, you stand up for what is right, you walk with integrity, you are slow to anger and demonstrate patience.
Furthermore, you have a strong moral compass. Even under pressure, you have to do what is right so you can respect yourself, love yourself and sleep at night.
#4. You love to learn
You are eager to learn, to explore and innovate. As a matter of fact, you ask tones of questions and you are an ever evolving being.
You have learnt from your employees, from bad leadership and from good mentors.
In addition, you don’t retain information, you are able to speak frankly and openly.
#5. You see people strengths and weaknesses
You see people strengths and weaknesses and you place them in the areas of their strengths.
Indeed, when you are a leader, you see people for who they really are and for what they can bring, you don’t make assumptions.
On the same occasion, you know where your strengths lie, where they will be complementary and where your weaknesses would hold people back.
Finally, you surround yourself with people who make you better and who complete you.
#6. You follow your own rules
You beat to the sound of your own drums. You don’t follow social rules and you think outside the box.
You don’t care about what people have to say about you, you go after what you want, indifferently to social expectations, to your circumstances and to stereotypes.
#7. You are a problem solver
You understand that there are several ways of doing one thing. With you as a leader, people are most likely to take risks, to innovate and are less afraid of making mistakes.
You have a lot of life experience, you find solutions to problems by asking people or by experience. Good or bad, you are grateful for your experiences and you are now wiser.
#8. You are resilient
You hurt like everybody else, you feel people pain but you are capable of withstanding adversity and of recovering quickly. In other words, you can take a licking keep on ticking.
#9. You are an equal opportunity leader
You treat everyone the same: you believe in fairness, equality and in equity.
You don’t make assumptions about people and their behavior.
#10. You are a people person
You are a people person: you build great relationships, motivate people to be better and to do better.
Furthermore, you don’t assume power or influence over people. You just lead when it is needed, show appreciation for people and you don’t hug the spotlight.
At last, you do not let negative energy permeate into your life and you leave your emotions at the door.
#11. You like to help
You like helping people, giving them the information that they need to succeed, even if they didn’t ask for help.
In your opinion, helping people is incredibly gratifying. You don’t do it for them to like you. You did it because you were needed and because you want the project to move forward.
And, you are humble enough to ask for help.
#12. You are innovative
You are constantly dissatisfied with the current system. That is why, you love innovation and you inspire others to innovate.
#13. You are cognizant of office politics
You know everything that is happening in your office and you know everyone by name.
However, you don’t judge your employees, blame them for their mistakes or gossip about your employees with your own employees.
You notice those who need training, those who hate their job, those who outperform, and those who underperform.
Basically, you understand office politics.
Last Words Of Advice!
Mots of the time, people and parents, even with the best intentions, want to direct your life. Then, we listen and achieve what people expect of us.
A leader, recognizing the value of people close to him or her, taking into account the opinions of others, recognizes that their own dreams supercede all that.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Quote Of The Week #64
Quote Of The Week #52
Getting Promoted At Work — 32 Easy Strategies To Take Control Of Your Career
Getting a promotion is a long and complex process that can trigger your innermost insecurities. Therefore, it requires a lot of internal and external work.
Furthermore, getting promoted involves being willing to take risks, changing your bad habits, increasing self-awareness, improving your behavior, being able to compete for a position, being committed to a goal and to an organization.
Wondering how to take control of your career, get a pay raise, get promoted, or move on to a new successful career?
To be promoted, you have to make yourself valuable and bring success to your organization. Promotion comes from a need to:
- Be recognized.
- Take on new responsibilities.
- Gain more influence, more authority, more respect and more credibility.
- Get a pay raise.
- Learn new skills.
- Have greater impact on your organization.
- Acquire a higher sense of achievement, of job satisfaction.
You must pursue a promotion for the right reasons.
Indeed, if you decide to go after a proportion for the money, for a feeling of superiority, for an ego boost, for revenge purposes, you will not last long in the position.
- Be mindful of the impact of your promotion. Measure the changes that the promotion will brig and if you will be able to handle them, if your time and health will be jeopardized, if your priorities will be rearranged, your relationships repurposed, your commitments denied, if there will be more power plays and more politics. Establishing the pros and cons of the promotions will clarify the reasons why you are pursuing a promotion.
- Identify your ideal position, ideal boss, career path and compare it to the promotion.
- Do your homework on the promotion, identify the required standards of your promotion then demonstrate that you meet the requirements for the new position.
How to get promoted?
To get promoted, you must get noticed for the right reasons. It is necessary to build your brand from day one. As soon as you leave your house, you have to be mindful of your behavior, your appearance, your words and your brand.
To maximize your potential, to build your brand and to finally get that promotion:
- Stay prepared for success. Stay focused and competent at your job, meet your goals and deadlines, remember that experience will build up your credibility.
- Present yourself in the best light possible. Mind your image and your grooming. Your style says a lot about you and is your first representative.
- Decide what yo want to be known for and guard your reputation with your life. Remain professional at all times when at work, stay away from drama, don’t gossip and mind what you say to others.
- Understand that you must establish your identity and your self-worth outside of your career and your job description.
- Lead by example and establish a code of conduct for yourself.
- Learn to be patient and to slowly reap what you sow.
- Find out what matters most to you, keep commitments to yourself and to others, create a vision board, repeat positive affirmations if you have to, set goals and review them daily.
- Temper your desire to speak out, to speak first and to speak the loudest. Keep your message brief all the time. Avoid talking just to fill the silence and avoid small talk if you are incapable of handling it.
- Speak clearly, control your voice tone, pitch, pace, diction and intonations. Also, be careful of the words that are coming out of your mouth. Stay positive in your delivery and never use the word “no”.
- Listen not with the intent to reply but the desire to understand, with the desire to read between the lines, to take real interest in what people are saying and to be empathetic.
- Pay attention to the unspoken language, gestures. Remember that talk is cheap, that actions speak louder than words. On your side, make sure that you keep eye contact during conversation.
- Learn to rely on your gut, on your instincts, on your common sense.
- Boost your leadership self-esteem from time to time.
- Be confident in your abilities, know your strengths and weaknesses, be open to learn. Confidence will help you develop your presence and command respect. Besides, don’t allow your strengths that have gotten you noticed so far be the reasons of your demise, of your career derailment.
- Stay authentic to be able to build relationships.
- Keep your integrity throughout the process. Don’t do things that you don’t want to do or you don’t think are right to do.
- Be a problem solver, taking into account the company culture and requirements. To every problem you bring to the forefront, find a solution to it. Anticipate issues, gain perspective, be responsive, adapt to different circumstances and learn to solve them before they show up. This will make you more reliable, more empathetic, will leave you two steps ahead. This will also get higher-ups to trust and respect you.
- Be flexible and organized.
- Show initiative and keep your motivation.
- Show that you can effectively manage conflicts and face challenge. Furthermore, learn to control your emotions to control your behavior, keep your composure in difficult times, stay optimistic and see pressure points as opportunities.
- Improve your communication style and learn to adapt your style to different context.
- Keep the communication line open with your boss, inform him or her of your latest achievements and seek feedback. During performance reviews, mention your career goals, directly ask for a promotion or for more responsibilities for example.
- Take risks and don’t be afraid of failure. If you fail, turn a negative into a positive, learn from your mistakes, avoid dwelling on your past, avoid beating yourself up or blowing events out of proportion.
- Be accountable, correct past mistakes and avoid shifting blame.
- Understand the company culture, learn to deal with office politics.
- Be loyal to your employer, have the best interest of your organization at heart and demonstrate your intentions.
- Take every opportunity to network and to build a list of contacts who can help you. To do so, master your people skills, discover how to sell yourself, treat every encounter like gold, do more favors than you ask for. Talk about your own achievements, your interests and motivations without overbearing your audience. However, don’t toot your own horn, don’t be desperate to make contact, don’t nag people, don’t focus too much on yourself or else you will damage your relationships.
- Enter a mentorship program or find a mentor in your organization who can give you some advice and take your career to the next level.
- Volunteer for additional and interesting work outside of your position, for a position that you wish you had inside your organization.
- Attend training programs and seminars.
- Don’t try to please everyone. Respectability trumps likeability every single time.
- If you don’t get promoted, move on or create your own opportunities. But no matter what you do, don’t feel entitled to the promotion.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
The Importance Of Successfully Leading Through Change
To remain competitive, most organizations stay up to date on every technology, continually propose innovative products and always embrace change. However, putting change into practice is much more complex than it appears.
To that effect, effective leaders have to be confident, self-aware, self-assured, strategic, adaptable, bold, resourceful, driven, accountable and able to think on their feet. Needless to say, ineffective leadership hinders change, creates mistrust, disengagement, misalignment and a loss of moral among employees.
Wondering how to successfully lead change and overcome resistance?
Change is a part of life, is a constant and is inevitable. Change shakes things up, disrupts old habits, breathes new life into the workplace and into any project.
It has the ability to stimulate interest in a job and can be perceived as a new challenge. It also creates an opportunity for promotion and to learn new skills.
Change becomes compulsory and evident in the workplace during societal movements, when the values and beliefs of both leaders and employees no longer match those of the company. Change also happens when the organization requires new skills, new products or services, policies update, restructuring, or relocation.
Resistance to change
Change brings about an initial resistance, can easily become chaotic and unstable. When faced with change, most people believe that they will:
- potentially lose their current position,
- be demoted, that their career will eventually suffer or that their hard work will be devalued,
- be working for a lower salary,
- lose control over their own life,
- live in the unknown.
The unknown generates strong emotions in people. Therefore, employees tend to resist change when they are surprised or unprepared, don’t understand the reasons for the change, are not implicated enough in the decision-making process.
Indeed, some people will openly express their resistance to change, some will voluntarily sabotage change, others will quietly and passively express their discontent. It is the role of the leader to temper such behavior and push change.
How to implement change?
The leaders must visibly act out the change, must be ready to do things differently and to think otherwise. To lead the change process from start to finish:
- Assess your own ability to handle change. Before undertaking such mission, ensure that you believe in the change and that it doesn’t go against your principles. In addition, keep in mind that reacting to the change is much more difficult than initiating it. Either you can start the movement, participate in it or suffer and react to it.
- Stay disciplined, resilient and patient. The change process is slow and everybody moves at their own pace.
- Learn to communicate your vision which encompasses your values and morals.
- Be authentic and transparent in order to build trust and to improve relationships. Change is much more difficult to implement when there is a climate of mistrust.
- Be open to feedback and to making alterations to the original plan of action.
- Ask probing questions to key employees, acknowledge that you don’t know all the answers and be open to learn continually. This will allow you to gather appropriate information, to anticipate issues, to maximize effort.
- Evaluate the right amount of change you want to implement. You don’t want to overwhelm or burn out your employees .
- Calculate the costs and determine the feasibility of the change to ensure that it doesn’t get out of control. It becomes critical to motivate the necessary time and resources, to place emphasis on the value and sustainability of change.
- Analyze the consequences of change before undertaking anything.
- Understand the company culture, its values and beliefs in order to best present ideas and to determine a proper structure.
- Design a clear strategy and outcome for the process. For example, you can break the change process into smaller steps, prioritize them and create metrics to measure progress.
- Identify the influencers and the people who are open to change in your organization. Find informal leaders in your organization, who will motivate others and who will instill pride in their work.
- Discuss the implications of change with your employees and increase the number of meetings if necessary. Listen to the questions and concerns of your employees. It is necessary to reassure people about the upcoming changes by explaining to them the reasons and the benefits for change.
- Directly address problems, don’t micromanage and don’t openly criticize dissenting voices in order to shut them up.
- Keep your energy up during the process, motivate your team and show them the positive sides of the transformation. Persuade your employees that they will benefit from the change to increase commitment.
- Encourage collaboration on your team, mitigate conflicts and maintain harmony as much as possible because emotions are high.
- Set high expectations and give your team the confidence to deal with changes and gain their approval every step of the way.
- Give your employees more ownership of their work to increase commitment.
- Expect setbacks. Understand that the risks are worth the rewards and that it is OK to fail. People don’t take risks when there are no personal rewards, there is no clemency towards failure.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Quote Of The Week #40
Dealing With Cultural Sensitivity In The Workplace
In the world we live in, with a supremacist leader as the leader of the free world, it seems that culturally ignorant people feel free to demonstrate their ignorance. Lately, cultural ignorance and overtly offending people have been maximized, and this behavior is slowly becoming the norm.
At work and in life, leaders are the ones to demonstrate exemplary behavior when dealing with people from different backgrounds. They have to be emotionally and culturally intelligent.
Wondering how to adjust yourself with different cultures, to become more culturally sensitive and create a healthy workplace?
What is culture?
Culture is a dynamic and complex system of shared values, norms and symbols that distinguishes groups of people from others and that bound them together. It is demonstrated most often in literature, art, religion, language, traditions.
Furthermore, culture is learnt, and shapes one’s personal behavior, values, thoughts, experiences. for example, it defines one’s reaction to conflict or our problem solving skills.
Culture lays the basis for purpose, a higher calling and meaning in life. It is built on morals and a set of unspoken rules. It also conditions our perception for failure and success.
What is cultural sensitivity?
Cultural sensitivity is being aware that everyone is not the same. It means being able to learn from different people, to understand their backgrounds, to collaborate and cooperate with them, without being judgmental.
Cultural sensitivity means viewing everyone as a unique individual. It promotes unity and has become a skill that is most useful in the world of today.
Why is cultural sensitivity important?
Cultural sensitivity is detrimental because it introduces the concept of identity, of cultural appreciation, of cultural differences. It consequently increase the feeling of belonging and of safety. It improves communication, the quality of work in multinationals or when dealing with coworkers from different backgrounds. In addition, it removes the idea of cultural superiority.
Contrasting cultures bring a diverse set of knowledge, competencies, perspectives and ideas. If positively and purposefully harnessed, culture differences can trigger innovation, creativity and improve job satisfaction.
How to become a culturally sensitive leader?
Work is a part of an individual social identity. Corporate has its own culture, with its norm, its rules, its own values and own systems of beliefs. If the culture is healthy and positive, people easily feel empowered, valued and give better results.
In the corporate culture, managing people with different backgrounds is complex and full of challenges. Regardless of the laws in place, there are a lot of micro aggression towards diversity.
To create culturally sensitive environment, and subsequently a healthy workplace:
- Encourage self-awareness and self-development. Change is an internal process that requires self-analysis and self-respect beforehand.
- Stay authentic and don’t try to appropriate or claim someone else’s culture.
- Be mindful, be open to new experiences and don’t hesitate to explore and learn new things.
- Remember, with every interaction, that every person from a different culture is a human-being.
- Embrace people who are different from yourself. Get to know the person’s background to understand their behavior, how they operate in society and how they experience life.
- Listen actively and respectfully to people and when speaking, choose your words carefully.
- Avoid imposing your ideas on people and forcing them into a box of stereotypes.
- Take the initiative and learn other people’s dynamics through personal experience or prolonged exposure.
- Identify some idioms and sayings. Also, pronounce their name correctly and accept silence as an act of communication. Learning their language will consequently improve communication.
- Show appreciation for someone else’s culture. On one hand, demonstrate empathy and avoid judging them. On the other hand, don’t pander too much to someone else’s culture.
- Ask probing open-ended questions. Avoid asking too many questions as not to overwhelm your interlocutor.
- Help your employees to understand the company’s culture, expectations, goals and code of conduct.
- Work on your social skills. Focus on building healthy relationships.
- Effectively navigate conflicts brought by cultural differences.
- Pick up on emotional and non verbal cues during conversations.
- Take and provide diversity trainings.
- If you are part of the majority, seek understanding before seeking to be understood. opening up to minorities will help them accept yours faster, to face challenges better and will increase their work performance.
- Respect that other people won’t want to integrate your culture.
- Allow people to express freely their values. This will increase their interactions with others, their work performance and their well-being.
- Learn to compromise.
- Encourage your team to travel more and to approach diverse group of people outside of work.
Adjusting or understanding a culture is a long process. Learning and adjusting to someone else’s culture doesn’t mean that you have to deny your own. It just means that you are able to work and collaborate with people from diverse culture.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
Don’t forget to like, share and leave a comment below.
Quote Of The Week #36
Quote Of The Week #35
Quote Of The Week #34
Start With Why — How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action by Simon Sinek
In Start With Why — How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, Simon Sinek explains the importance of identifying your personal purpose and extending this knowledge to different areas of your life.
Discovering your purpose will help you to avoid making bad assumptions about people, to make better decisions, to inspire people, to motivate people to achieve goals, to build great organizations and to mature into a successful leader.
Undeniably, most of us make unfair assumptions about other people, about the world around us and we tend to adjust our lives around these assumptions. Others attempt to gather information through polls, surveys, personal experience or external perspectives to make important decisions and to motivate people.
However, having the right data and all the great advice in the world doesn’t protect us from making bad decisions and underperforming. How to make the best decisions, achieve a desired outcome, motivate people and be successful, discarding all assumptions?
Manipulation for Motivation
Leaders achieve results by making decisions. When leaders don’t understand their goals or the way to achieve an outcome, they tend to manipulate others to reach their goals.
Manipulation is quite visible and effective in the business world, has become the norm and a flawed assumption in itself. For example, businesses either:
- Drop their prices to attract customers in order to get rid of old products and to welcome new ones. This creates low expectations in customers who stop buying and wait for the next price decrease.
- Give away free promotions with their products to entice customers. The promotional process is purposefully complicated to reduce the number of people getting the free product but to increase the number of random product purchase.
- Use fear to motivate people, to make them obey rules, to understand the consequences of their actions and moreover to step away from unwanted products. Fear tactics are seen in advertisements and in politics.
- Make us aspire to a better lifestyle with one product. This tactic has a positive intention but is still manipulative because it is only effective with insecure people.
- Use peer pressure to make people believe that their product is the best and that they have no choice but to purchase it. This tactic is designed to make people feel like they are missing out on something.
- Innovate in order to compensate for society’s need for change and to potentially boost sales. In reality, companies don’t invent new products but add features to existing ones.
- Write conditions in fine prints , offer products at low tariffs to only rise the price later.
However, manipulation is a back biting and short termed method to get results. It guarantees transactions and not loyalty.
Inspiration for Motivation: The Golden Circle
Some leaders go against the norm and choose to inspire people rather than manipulating them. To do so, they follow the Golden Circle.
Inspired by the mathematical golden ratio, the Golden Circle rule has many applications in different areas of life, favors “order and predictability in human behavior”, helps leaders communicate their vision from the inside out.
The Golden Circle is a guide to vastly improving leadership skills, the corporate culture, the company’s hiring skills, product development, sales and marketing. It even explains loyalty and how to create enough momentum to turn an idea into a social movement.
The Golden Circle has 3 steps: first identify why, then ask how and lastly ask what.
Ask Why
Leaders who know why they do what they do first build long-lasting success, are much more appealing, are able to communicate their belief, to include people, to drive positive decisions and to command loyalty. A lack of understanding of why leaders do what they do only breeds doubt, make decisions harder, make them resort to manipulation.
Knowing why will improve the leader’s charisma and confidence, will attract followers by giving them something to believe in, will inspire them but won’t be able to drive an entire movement.
To have a broader impact, leaders have to be authentic, to trust their gut and their purpose. Additionally, they have to diffuse their message, through commercials and through their logo, with a purpose and not with manipulation tactics.
Ask How
The second step resides in putting the purpose into action. To put their vision into action, leaders must gather a following and gain their trust. Therefore, leaders have to identify their core values and principles that guide their decisions, be disciplined enough to stick to these values, share their purpose, and show that they are not self-interested.
Followers having the same set of values as the leaders will have the opportunity to innovate, to trust the workspace and to go the extra mile. Having a loyal following provides peace of mind, increases trust, reduces the stress levels and the need for hard work.
Needless to say, leaders with different sets of values, often don’t fit in a particular culture. If they don’t belong, they won’t be able to make others feel like they belong, they won’t hire people who will embody their values.
Ask What
The third and last step consists in leaders remaining consistent and staying accountable to their values and principles.
Maintaining the Golden Circle
When leaders or organizations no longer have purpose, start feeling unsuccessful and start being untrustworthy, though having great achievements under their belts.
Leaders must fight to maintain the Golden Circle so that they can sustain trust, drive and purpose. To do so, they must maintain clarity of their vision, extract it and integrate it into the culture of the company and find a successor willing to preserve the vision.
Review
Start With Why — How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action, by Simon Sinek is a self-help book that help you understand the importance of having a purpose.
The Golden Circle classifies people in Why-types (visionaries), How-types (realists and executives) and What-types (employees). In addition, the Golden Circle clarifies the conception of great organization and the composition of all hierarchy. At the top of the organization, stands the leader representing the vision and imagining the destination. In the middle, are the executives who know how to bring the vision to life and imagine the route. Finally, at the bottom, are the employees who implement the results (money, profit, prices).
It is remarkable for people who own businesses, for leaders who want to market themselves, to find their purpose and sustain success. Becoming successful without knowing who you are is almost impossible.
I would have to agree with Simon Sinek: loyalty and trust are the most valued and long-lasting qualities in relationships and in business. These qualities reduce our stress levels and the pressure to compete or to innovate.
Furthermore, it discloses real truths in marketing, in business and in corporate, observes what makes them successful and what makes them fail. It also shows us the numerous manipulation tactics that we have certainly fallen victims to.
Favorite quote(s)
We are drawn to leaders and organizations that are good at communicating what they believe. Their ability to make us feel like we belong, to make us feel special, safe and not alone is part of what gives them the ability to inspire us. Those whom we consider great leaders all have an ability to draw us close and to command our loyalty.
Cultures are groups of people who come together around a common set of values and beliefs. When we share values and beliefs with others, we form trust. Trust of others allows us to rely on others to help protect our children and ensure our
personal survival. […] A company is a culture.What all great leaders have in common is the ability to find good
fits to join their organizations
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