With Character, On Your Way To Leadership!
Phil M. Jones is a motivational speaker, leadership and business growth expert.
Phil M. Jones is also the author of Exactly What To Say: The Magic Words For Influence and Impact.
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In our daily rush and in a constant desire to produce, we often find ourselves multitasking, overworked, stressed out, pretending to be busy but not completing any task.
Below are six principles of task management to help you finish what you started.
In 1906, Pareto realized that 20% of the population made up 80% of the revenue.
Then, he also noticed that these statistics also applied to work productivity. Indeed, in the workplace, 20% of the work produced generates 80% of the desired results.
That is why the Pareto Principle, better known as the 80/20 Principle or the Law of the Vital Few, encourages you to focus on essentials tasks, prioritize your activities, avoid those that are not beneficial to you and learn how to say no.
In 1958, Professor Cyril North-Cote Parkinson understood that a task will take up all the attributed time for it’s realization.
In ther words, the Parkinson Principle or the Dilatation Principle affirms that even if we have the ample time to achieve a task, we will use up all that given time.
That is why it is necessary to break up tasks into smaller ones and create your own deadlines.
According to Murphy, a US Air Force Engineer, a task always takes up more time than expected and that whatever could go wrong will go wrong.
Consequently, you must expect the unexpected, anticipate problems, add buffers between meetings, and overestimate the time needed on any task you take on even if you are good at it.
If we listened to ourselves, there is no doubt in my mind that we would always do what makes us happy and complete the easiest tasks first.
We would therefore tackle the ones who require the least effort and neglect the hard and stressful ones.
However, handling the most difficult tasks first require extreme self-discipline but is the most rewarding task management strategy.
In the 1950s, Professor Sune Carlson measured the number of time managers were being interrupted in average on a daily basis.
It turns out that they were interrupted every 20 minutes and were not able to effectively tend to their tasks because it took them time to focus back on their task at hand.
Carlson concluded that a task handled without interruptions or distractions is done faster than when it is done otherwise.
If you have an opening door policy, you may want to create strong boundaries to make time for your activities and reduce interruptions.
Ivan Illich, an ecologist thinker, states that beyond a certain amount of time spent on a task, our effectiveness and focus tend to diminish.
Due to that fact, it becomes vital to know and accept our own limitations, and to take regular breaks in order to recharge ourselves.
The clutter on your desk also takes up mental space, create a sense of being busy and overwhelmed without you actually being productive.
It then becomes important to unclutter as much as possible and set things at their place.
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Nowadays, many companies redesign their workspaces to stand out, to create a more balanced environment, to exhibit their brand, values and personalities.
In the last 10 years, employees have admitted that their relationship with work and their workspace have changed.
According to recent studies, only a small percentage of employees have a positive opinion of their workspace and the percentage gets even smaller when it comes to millenials.
Therefore, companies must adapt to meet the needs of this younger generation. That is why these companies are redesigning their workspace in the hopes of attracting and retaining young talents.
Workspace relates to the physical environment at work and can affect our life, mood, mental and physical well-being. It also involves workers safety, quality of work and of life.
Improving the workspace has considerable benefits for employees. Indeed, employees are healthier, more fulfilled, more engaged and more productive. Indeed, the well-being generated by a positive workspace leads to positive emotions, builds greater relationships, and fosters a sense of purpose.
For organization, a positive workspace drives better customer service, decreases absenteeism, saves time and money on the long-term.
There are no real roadmap to creating the perfect workspace but there are several criteria that come up when employees talk about improving their workspace.
To grade a workspace, employees take into account their working conditions, their working methods, their ability to focus, their level of productivity, and their creativity.
For the most part, companies have considered the following criteria to attract and retain young talents:
Companies can start by updating the apparence of their building, opening up their workspace and creating a startup mentality.
Truthfully, most millennial don’t want to work in traditional workspaces anymore and prefer startups.
Organizations ought to create a healthy work-life balance.
Employees are best able to perform professionally when their personal life is in order. Companies must find a equilibrium between employees well-being and their productivity at work.
Integrating innovative and ethical services is a way fro companies to retain talents.
For example, some companies pay for cleaning services, tend to go green, monitor their energetical expenses daily, regularly test for ventilation and air quality. Others offer work out sessions and relaxation rooms.
Incorporating innovative and ergonomic equipment to prevent physical strain, pain and exhaustion increases employees engagement and value.
Most employees stay in a sitted position at their desk for hours at a time and don’t partake in physical activities.
Some workplaces are so sophisticated that they have installed sit-to-stand desk and different activities during working hours.
Companies are able to retain their talents by allowing paperless procedures and reducing bureaucracy, by proposing communication apps, digital platforms for online training and for better communication.
On one hand, employees gain time and increase their efficiency.
On the other hand, companies become technologically savvy, agile and react more efficiently.
Providing training, learning and development opportunities says that your workspace values your employees skills and that it is geared towards innovation and learning.
Training stimulates the mind and opens it up to new and interesting ways of thinking and implementing their task.
Furthermore, training and development activities are an investment and are also the best place to introduce stress relief and stress management in the workplace.
Hiring talents who will fit in the company culture is benefitial to the workspace.
Besides being competent for a given role, employees who fit into the culture tend to be more positive, perform at the best and treat customer and colleagues better.
Having employees work according to their strengths and weaknesses can only boost the general workspace.
Positive workspaces are constructed when employees are able to focus on tasks that interest them, are challenging and that utilize their strengths.
Diversity encourages communication, critical thinking, decision making, innovative ideas and personal growth.
Promoting effective leadership is a sure way to support human basic needs and to promote healthy company culture.
Research demonstrates that creating a healthy workspace, keeping employees happy and healthy increases the organization bottom-line and creates a more positive office culture.
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Powerful leaders remain in communication with their authentic self, are honest with themselves, reveal their true abilities and have developed their personal power.
They are confident enough to have achieved success on their own terms.
Powerful leaders decide what they want even if they don’t know how to get it.
Then, they do whatever it takes to get it.
Basically, they declare their intentions and commit to them.
To set the best intentions possible, they get to know themselves and learn to deal with their strengths and weaknesses.
To achieve success, powerful leaders tend to let go of what is safe and familiar.
They learn that they have to give up the good for the great and chose what is right for them along the way.
At some point, powerful leaders take risks, play the game and play to win.
They focus on winning no matter what.
Powerful leaders speak up for themselves when something goes wrong or something is bothering them.
Speaking allows them not to play victim.
Unfortunately, in modern society, women who speak up still hold a negative connotation. Most of the time, outspoken women are seen as bitchy and are punished for speaking up. Whereas outspoken men are seen as assertive, direct and forceful.
Powerful leaders don’t stop at what is doable or at what they think they are capable of.
In addition, they take risks, stretch themselves, feel the fear but go after their goals anyway.
Consequently, they often bite off more than they can chew but still manage to succeed.
Powerful leaders surround themselves with people who can individually and collectively believe in their abilities, who can guide them, and who can show them how to succeed.
Powerful leaders don’t wait for opportunities to come their way, they create them.
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Although, most women remain underpaid and make 50% to 80% of what men make, more and more women are earning high salaries.
Women who underearn operate below their potential, have negative beliefs about money, work more for less pay without making the “conscious choice to live with less”.
The reality is that underearning affects your self-confidence, breaks down your lifestyle and limit your opportunities.
To start earning more and to make the right decisions, women need to change the way they think about themselves and their relationship with money.
Six-Figure women get credentials and go for the highest level of education they can possibly get.
However, they don’t let credentials stop them from achieving success.
Six-Figure women take pleasure in their work and they work smart.
At the very least, they find jobs that are stimulating and fulfilling.
Women feel that they have to overwork themselves, stay longer hours than their male counterparts in order to attain their ambitions or to compete with men.
However, that lifestyle is not sustainable. High earning women look for signs of fatigue, burnout, a way to get more done in less time, to up their focus and for a way to balance their personal and professional life.
The put their visions and values before financial gain.
Moreover, they want to live on their own terms.
Focusing on making money only creates an internal void that could never be filled.
They are confident and believe in themselves.
They believe that they can do anything they set their minds to.
Of course, they struggle with self-doubt and fears but they somehow manage to overcome those fears or to fake it until they make it.
Six-Figure women deal gracefully with social injustices.
They have figure out ways to deal with biases, injustices, racism and sexism with their sense of humor.
They are grateful for what they have and how far they have come.
Six-Figure women are not victim of their circumstances.
They refuse to be beaten down or depressed for extended periods of time. Instead, they remain positive and optimistic against all odds.
Secrets Of Six Figure Women: Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life by Barbara Stanny identifies the secrets of six-figure women, understand the traits and the principles that these women live by, so that we can apply these principles to our personal lives.
Secrets Of Six Figure Women: Up Your Earnings and Change Your Life helps you grow internally, expand your mindset, remove self-limiting beliefs, become self-aware, become financially aware and boost your income.
Furthermore, Barbara Stanny aims to shift the mindset from overcoming obstacles to finding in opportunities to increasing your earnings.
She shifts the focus from wage gap to wage gain, from lack to abundance.
Barbara Stanny, a new aged woman with a lot of questions when it comes to the process of women earning six figures, interviews and introduces us to the mindset of high powered and high earning women from all professional background.
I enjoyed the fact that she gave easy and achievable steps into earning more.
I also appreciated that Barbara Stanny tackled the fact that almost every woman and monorities experience the same hardships in the workplace.
Unfortunately, in 2020, not much has changed in corporate. Racism and sexism are still present in most organizations.
Do you have the same experience at home or in the workplace? Has earning a high income created any backlash at home or in The workplace?
Was holding a high-paying job even worth what I imagined it would entail? Did six-figure women have to work absurdly long hours, forfeit their femininity, forgo their happiness, give up all semblance of a personal life? Did their marriages hold up? Did their children suffer? Did they bear lasting scars from breaking glass ceilings or battling gender bias? Was it possible for anyone to become a high earner? Could I?
What if we shifted the spotlight from women’s plight to women’s progress? What if we turned our attention from what’s wrong with the system and instead analyzed what’s working for those who are succeeding? We’re not ignoring the problem; we’re merely shifting our perspective.
Lawyer Tracy Preston told me the same thing. “If I internalized every time someone said something racist or sexist I wouldn’t be able to function. There’s always some incident that’ll be jarring, but I recognize it’s people’s ignorance. How do I deal with it? As they say, being black in America isn’t easy, so you have to have a sense of humor. Otherwise you’d go crazy.”
Like it or not, money affects virtually every area of your life. Lack of it leads to dependency and hardship. It can limit your access to health care and lifestyle choices. It can keep you in an unhappy marriage and an unsatisfying job. It perpetuates the cycle of poverty and debt, of discontent and chronic stress.
Our state of mind, however, often resembles a rearview mirror. We head toward the future seeing only the images from our past, and then wonder why nothing ever changes. I once heard insanity defined as doing the same thing over and over and expecting it to be different. Given that definition, I can safely say underearning is a form of financial insanity.
The real work in raising the bar is to stop doing the same old thing you’ve always done, to try out new strategies, to ignore false alarms, to resist the urge to quit, and to refuse to fall back into familiar terrain. The ability to tolerate discomfort—doing what might not feel good, but doing it anyway—is the only way you’ll ever complete the path to financial success. It helps to keep in mind that the discomfort is temporary, but the payoff is extraordinary.
You must let go of where you are to get to where you want to go.
men got high marks from their bosses when they were forceful and assertive, but women were downgraded for displaying the same qualities. To be quite candid, the double standard is alive and kicking—assertive men are respected, assertive women are resented.
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Smart Thinking is a skill and an attitude.
Smart Thinking is effective reasoning that requires the filtering of information.
Needless to say, Smart Thinking helps you become successful at work and in your everyday life.
Smart Thinking combines the way:
Smart Thinking requires information and the proper use of claims
A claim is a written or spoken statement, true or false, that expresses the view of the world.
Therefore, claims are descriptive, reserve positive and negative value judgement.
To properly reason, claims are linked together and must be carefully structured.
Reasoning effectively means avoiding errors, internally evaluating arguments and thoughts before expressing them.
In effective reasoning, clear, well-formed, well-founded and truthful claims are welcomed and are easily accepted by an audience.
To reason effectively, you must start with claims that are more acceptable and end with those that are less acceptable to an audience.
“Reasoning is not about answers […], but about the process of making answers more acceptable by giving appropriate reasons for them.”
Furthermore, using expertise, accurate examples or authoritative sources is a way to solidify a claim and make it more acceptable.
Another way to reason effectively would be to remain in control of your claim, aware of the context of the claim and believe that your claim is true before sharing it with an audience.
There are five types of reasoning.
Causal reasoning employs common sense and allows reasoning from cause to effect.
Reasoning from generalization explains how a general event impacting general population leads to another event.
Reasoning from specific cases takes specific events and provides a conclusion.
Reasoning from analogy uses an analogy to a given case to draw conclusions about that case.
Reasoning from terms used the meaning of words from a given context.
Reasoning is something we already do: all of us have be learnt, in one way or another, to think and to reason, to make connections and see relationships between various events and attitudes in our world. So, being a smart thinker is not about becoming a different sort of person, but about improving skills that you already have.
It is our responsibility to understand what is happening in society and to act where necessary to conserve or change, to get involved, to make things better, and to fight injustice. We can only pick our way through the complex tangle of opinions, assertions, ideas, and assumptions that make up the dominant social world in which we live.
We should never assume that there can be only one right view; we should not, in turn, presume that all views are right.
What makes assumptions dangerous is not their content […] but, rather, that they are not consciously considered and tested to see if they are correct.
What any one individual knows about world is extremely limited. People tend to be experts in certain small areas and ignorant in many others; their detailed knowledge is often applicable only in limited situations.
Matthew Allen
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Matthew Allen is a lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Asian Languages at Curtin University of Technology.
Matthew Allen is also the author of Smart Thinking: Skills For Critical Understanding And Writing.
Throughout our life, we never stop learning.
By continually learning, you grow and open yourself up to new experiences and ideas.
Acquiring good learning skills builds up your confidence and your willingness to explore.
Learning skills are thinking skills and habits that you acquire in your childhood to help you learn and that you can perfect in adulthood.
Furthermore, learning skills is all about processing useful information, acquiring knowledge, self-regulating and making a sound decision.
Learning include reading, listening, focusing, remembering, confronting your understanding, practicing what you have learned, using the right tools and using time effectively.
Learning is acquiring knowledge but not all knowledge is useful or will have a positive impact.
Therefore, leaders must develop critical thinking, become attentive to details, be selective of the knowledge that you acquire and store in your brain.
They must be able to think critically, make their own opinion and think independently, create their own experiences and increase self-awareness. They must also be able to classify and track their thoughts and ideas.
Furthermore, leaders must be able to break down, analyze, compare and understand a situation, an event or concept in order to reach a conclusion and take a measured decision.
Creative thinking is the ability to be creative and to generate ideas.
With a sense of creativity, leaders are authentic, curious, open-minded, adapt easily and are capable of expressing themselves.
They are able to innovate, brainstorm with others, creatively assess a problem and come up with new and out of the box solutions.
There are several ways to convey a message. Some leaders enjoy public speaking, some one on one conversations and others prefer reading or writing down their thoughts.
Leaders must be able to describe, share, argue, persuade, clarify, defend an idea, explain themselves and reach a solid conclusion. That way, they confront their own ideas and understanding.
They are also able to actively listen, evaluate an idea and engage with it.
Organizational skills include time management, goal setting, schedule and event planning, productivity tracking, and progress measurement.
When leaders are organized, they tend to favor a clean and tidy workspace.
Being organized helps them alleviate the mental load, organize their thoughts, focus on the tasks at hand and meet their deadlines.
Organized leaders run the day and don’t let the day run them.
Everybody learns differently.
It becomes useful to identify your preferred learning style as soon as possible.
Hope that I’ve helped you get it together on your way to leadership!
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There are a few women in positions of power but those few have been selfless, have created movements, and have tremendously impacted History.
These women have had different stories and have impacted society differently but they all created movements, have faced adversity, and broken the traditional rules of a male-dominated society.
Indeed, these women were not afraid of thinking or acting differently, being catalysts for change, bringing distinct perspectives and leadership styles to the table.
They have proven, more than necessary, that leadership has nothing to do with gender.
In no particular order of importance, you will find below a short profile of 5 remarkable women, promoting change around the world.
Michelle Obama is a Princeton graduate, lawyer and writer of Becoming.
Michelle Obama is also the wife of the 44th President Of The United States Barack Obama. She is the first Black First Lady Of The United States.
Throughout the presidency of the 44th President, Michelle Obama wrote and gave several heartfelt speeches. She initiated several campaigns against Youth obesity with the Let’s Move! Movement in 2010 and acted for the Red Cross in Haiti in 2010.
Her latest speech at the 2020 Democratic National Convention revolutionized the role of the First Ladies in the White House and have demonstrated her level of influence.
Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza & Opal Tometi were all involved in social works when they came together to create the Black Lives Matter Movement.
After the unwarranted death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza & Opal Tometi wanted to give people the tools to fight for human rights, black rights and to generate change.
The Black Lives Matter Movement campaigns against systemic racism, injustice and violence inflicted on Black People. This movement also militates against police brutality, against the lack of empathy and accountability of the American oppressive system.
Tarana Burke is an activist and founder of Just Be Inc., focusing on the health and well-being of young women of color.
Tanaka Burke created the nonprofit organization Just Be Inc. to help women to speak up and stand up for themselves. From there, she started the Me Too Movement to help women victims of sexual harassment and assault.
The phrase Me Too took on a broader meaning after the H. Weinstein cases in Hollywood.
With the phrase Me Too, women around the world have been able to share their stories and tell others that they are not alone.
Angela Merkel is the Chancellor of Germany and Forbes 2020 most powerful woman in the world.
Throughout her political career, Angela Merkel has adopted an analytical, quiet and confident leadership style.
Angela Merkel has commanded respect for several years for her ability to run a healthy economy and to render Germany competitive.
Margaret Thatcher, also known as the Iron Lady, is Britain’s first Prime Minister.
Margaret Thatcher served her country from 1979 to 1990 and introduced the United Kingdom to her conservative politics.
Her strong opinions generated both hate and admiration among her peers.
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Despite efforts to maintain the status quo and biases keeping women and minorities out of certain spheres of influence, women are rapidly climbing the leadership ladder.
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Western society has an obsession for mediocrity and complacency even though we have great resources to excel and even though our minds are strong and are built to endure whatever challenges we face.
Succeeding and functioning at your highest potential is all a matter of detaching yourself from that system of belief, gaining self-awareness and conquering the mind.
Inequalities in the system, systemic oppression will always exist but are not the core reason why you are not excelling and functioning at your highest potential.
The truth is you are the one limiting yourself.
That is why you must imperatively identify what is holding you back in life.
To do so, you can:
By identifying what is limiting you and creating rituals, you will be able to renew your purpose and reinvent yourself.
You must understand that in life, there will always be pain. But if you have a purpose, you can overcome that pain and borrow the path of most resistance.
Before starting your mission, you will have to objectively assess your current situation and abolish your ego for it is the cause of all your problems.
On your mission and on the path of most resistance, you might get depressed and discouraged but you have to be convinced that your depression is a sign that you are no longer in your comfort zone.
In life, you will be confronted with your own demons, bullies who will oppose you for no reason and will face many other challenges.
You have to prepare your mind for eventual opposition and understand that:
The Taking Souls strategy is a game that you play with yourself and yourself only by tapping into your own reserve of energy and power. It allows you to easily defeat your opponent and find your inner beast:
Every negative experience creates callouses in the mind. When you know how to avoid negative self-talk, to manage your mind and your callouses, then you can choose fight over flight, push through any obstacles and overcome self-doubt.
To build the most stable callous mind there is, to acquire mental toughness and to improve your character, you need to accept your Self, stop running away from your past, face the source of your wounds, fear and insecurities.
For this reason, when you are facing opposition or a negative situation, you have to:
Now that you are comfortable with the concept of pain and possess the ability to flip your negative experience, it is time for you to start:
When all is said and done, don’t forget to take the time to celebrate your success.
Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds is David Goggins‘ raw and uncut autobiography.
In Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds, David Goggins aims to help you use your setbacks as fuel for your success, live a bolder life to your fullest potential, master the mind and use it to its maximum capacity.
David Goggins, intense and pragmatic, shares his hardships and successes in his civilian and military lives. Through his story, he encourages people to stop playing the victim and making self-limiting choices.
To make this short, his story is rooted in pain, very dramatic and hard to read. You basically need to brace yourself for the first chapters where David Goggins recalls his childhood.
Throughout his autobiography, we can observe:
Furthermore, I couldn’t help to wonder about military life and how they recruit their candidates.
On one hand, does the military hire people who don’t know what to do with their lives, who completely lack purpose or are at their wit’s end? Then, the military breaks them down, builds them up into superhumans, gives them a patriotic purpose, and pours into them their way of thinking to get these superhumans to obey them and do whatever they want without asking questions?
On the other hand, according to David Goggins, “Hell Week is designed to show you that a human is capable of much more than you know. It opens your mind to the true possibilities of human potential, and with that comes a change in your mentality.”.
Needless to say, it’s amazing what these soldiers put their mind and body through but still survive. I wonder if they know how much they lose or gain mentally and emotionally doing so? If they are able to function outside of that institution and with that level of trauma?
Can’t Hurt Me: Master Your Mind and Defy the Odds should definitely be called “How to make the best out of the worst”.
While reading this book, you will experience a lot of sadness, twisted experiences, inspirational and funny perspectives on life. Just life!
As much as I had a hard time reading this book, I couldn’t put it down.
Nobody likes to hear the hard truth. Individually and as a culture, we avoid what we need to hear most. This world is fucked up, there are major problems in our society. We are still dividing ourselves up along racial and cultural lines, and people don’t have the balls to hear it! The truth is racism and bigotry still fucking exist and some people are so thin-skinned they refuse to admit that.
There is no more time to waste. Hours and days evaporate like creeks in the desert. That’s why it’s okay to be cruel to yourself as long as you realize you’re doing it to become better. We all need thicker skin to improve in life.
I looked at the people who were making me feel uncomfortable and realized how uncomfortable they were in their own skin. To make fun of or try to intimidate someone they didn’t even know based on race alone was a clear indication that something was very wrong with them, not me.
Self-improvement takes dedication and self-discipline.
The first step on the journey toward a calloused mind is stepping outside your comfort zone on a regular basis.
Until you experience hardships like abuse and bullying, failures and disappointments, your mind will remain soft and exposed. Life experience, especially negative experiences, help callous the mind.
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