Showing posts with label Inspiring. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inspiring. Show all posts

Saturday 29 July 2023

Charisma Vs. Influence

 Charisma Vs. Influence 

(Execution Excellence -"Ability to get things done" Series)

As we discussed the mindset and practices that highly influencing people demonstrate in the workplace to get things done, one of the queries asked by my friend related to influence.

"Some people are born with inherent charisma, and they influence people easily. Is it possible to develop charisma? 

i have also encountered this question myself at the beginning of my career. This question is relevant to the Influence topic and deserves the answer ... I've included my perspective below. 

First, we need clarity between charisma and charm as we interchangeably use both. My friend means that some people are charming by nature and use their charm to influence; Is it possible to develop charisma?
 
Charm is associated with surface-level traits like friendliness, appearance, and appealing first impressions. In contrast, charisma is related to deeper-level attributes like authenticity, quality to inspire others with conduct, trust, and admiration. It is associated with confidence and passion in what one does.

Generally, people with charm readily connect with people at first instance. They are outgoing, expressive, fun lovers, friendly nature, and attract others easily. (sometimes, too much of it lands them in trouble!
😢). 

Most of us believe that the person with the charm will have all the qualities to influence others and be good at getting things done. However, this belief is not true. It is just perception; anyone can become charismatic with effort and conduct.

For example, You are selling yourself in an interview and influence with your charm; you may be appealing instantly. But there is no guarantee that you will get the offer. However, you can get an offer if you influence with your charisma (as quality).

In a professional context, we must focus more on developing charisma to become influencers. When we concern too much about charm, it will affect our self-esteem.
 
The movie 
"M.S Dhoni's- untold story" beautifully depicts the perception of charm and its impact on others. In the early days of playing in Ranchi tournaments, on the first day of the test match, MSD did well. Then in the evening, MSD & the team met Yuvaraj Singh first time very closely on a basketball ground and internally felt inferior to Yuvaraj's charm or instantly appealing personality.

The next day, the MSD team played against Yuvaraj Singh and badly lost the match. While narrating the game to his friends, MSD said, "We did not get defeated in the cricket ground; we got defeated in the basketball ground itself." That is a very insightful observation by MSD. 

Later on, we all know how things turn around! That is, charisma wins over charm.
 
The key learning is that some people are gifted with charm, which does not mean they are successful influencers. Anyone can develop the skill of charisma with character building and consistent effort in delivering results, through which one can become a charismatic leader.

Charm is a subset of charisma. Natural charm is all about character, and it is all about how confident one is and how others feel good about their presence.

Anyone can develop Charisma regardless of their personality type.

You are highly influential and blessed if you are both charmed and equipped with charisma !!

Have a great week ahead.

Saturday 17 July 2021

Power of Edifying others

 Power of Edifying others

(Emotional Management for Personal & Professional Growth Series)
As we discuss the topic of "People Skill at the workplace," let us discuss some insights on improving people's skill management techniques.
 
For the last few weeks, we have discussed some of the cause and effect of human emotions like pain vs. pleasure, recognizing, appreciation, people's reasons for their actions, beliefs behind the behavior, etc.
 
Now let us discuss some of the proven processes to apply when dealing with people. One such process is “EDIFYING.”

The meaning of Edifying is to build.

“If you edify a person for some qualities,” means you build a person for those qualities. You may be building the quality himself/herself and the minds of other people as well.

Edify a person, to others and themselves, even for the things you wish they would do. They'll soon begin to "believe in the qualities " and start adopting the traits and behaviors for which they are being edified.

For example,

Your friend  praised you and said, “you are very punctual for every occasion and straightforward in expressing your views.” This expression is something your friend edifies you (build) for those positive qualities.
Eventually, you behave up to, at least to friend's expectation of being punctual and straightforward as much as possible. Indirectly you strive to be consistent on those behaviors for which you have been edified.
 
It happened to me also in my school days, even though I did not know the meaning of edifying. Whenever i was promoted to the next class, the class teacher informed the next standard class teacher that i was a brilliant student. This used to happen every year and to maintain that “Build-up”! i  was striving hard to be a “ so-called" brilliant student in academics ( fortunately or unfortunately, i have never been excelling other than academics.I wish someone edified for other talents😂).

You can relate in your life that someone introduced you to the third person with some buildup; subsequently, the third person might have treated you according to what he was briefed.

That is the power of edifying as it emerges from the deep emotion of human beings that we want to be notable and recognized for something. We strive to meet the expectation.

In a professional environment, this is one of the powerful processes every leader can adopt by identifying positive qualities in each people and making the person aware of  (as 1-1 basis) or in front of others. That edifying process will make the person or make others expect the behavior from the person.

When you expand this concept, you can edify your team and your industry as well. Because what you expect comes to you.

Monday 9 March 2020

Look up -insightful lesson

Recently i came across the viral video,(released 6 years back with more than 6 crores views till now ), and it talks about our addiction to smartphones and social media and losing the personal connection with the real, live human beings in front of us.

Director Gary conceptualized the theme by a story of a lost young man falling in love with a woman who gives him direction and their life together without the hindrance of social media.

Suggest you watch this video with Captions twice, and you will be able to relate how much we are losing our time in WhatsApp/ Facebook / YouTube and other social media blindly without real relationship building with the people next to us.

I hope you enjoy it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7dLU6fk9QY

Wednesday 27 June 2018

Why do we respect some people most?

We do come across many people in our lives as friends, colleagues, teacher, mentor, boss, and relatives. Generally, we like all of them. However, we respect a few people with high regard. (Scan through your phone contacts list, you may easily count a few as highly respected people).Irrespective of age, positional or materialistic status, why do we respect some people most from the rest of the network?

The reason could be on two broad factors.
1. Their professional competency – technical/managerial knowledge and skill
2. Their character –friendliness, helping tendency, boldness or any other admiring qualities


Using the above factors, they might be consistently inspired others through their professional contribution or helped others towards growth or the way they came up in life. Because of their inspired action, we respect them highly. In fact, the respect is not given to them; they earned it from us through their consistent competency and character-building efforts.
 

Likewise, if you want to be regarded as a highly respected person in your life, you 
have to work on consistent character and competency building. Earning true respect is a long-term process.

Each one of us has rights and be deserved to be respected. Only, you need to commit to consistent capability and character building!
 

Thursday 7 December 2017

Who packs your parachute?



Charles Plumb was a USA navy jet pilot. On his seventy-sixth combat missions, he was shot down and parachuted into enemy territory. He was captured, spent six years in prison and he survived.Now he became a motivational speaker on managing adversity in life.

In most of his seminars, he used to ask his audience “who packs your parachute?  Meaning that who helps you through your life?

His realization was that the person who packed his parachutes held his lives from falling from the jet and he remembered that unknown person with gratitude.His message is in everyone‘s life, some unknown people are helping selflessly either physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually. Are we recognizing those unknown people and expressing our gratitude? 

This is a powerful metaphor for us to acknowledge the people who come across in our lives and help us in a different way.

If they are known people like your parents, teachers, siblings, spouse, children, colleagues, business partners, clients, then be grateful to them for your actions! 

If they are unknown, at least recognize and express your feeling of gratitude. That feeling, vibration makes a difference to you and to the unknown.

Monday 6 November 2017

Being busy is not being effective

       
Most of us have the tendency of “being busy always” either in professional or managing a business. Being busy in chasing money, success after success or even managing the challenges with the same approach.In this process, over a period of time, either we become addicted to the same methodology without evaluating its effectiveness or become so rigid in thinking process leads to ignoring other aspects of the relationship, quality of execution, next level growth, etc.

       Most of the highly effective people have one common pattern in their daily management process. That is they take a timeout from their regular work for reflection.Frequently, they use to take time for themselves and evaluate what is going on in their life, what is important, what needs to be changed, etc. This will give them clarity on the behavior to be dropped or adopted, the strategy to be modified or tuned, etc. for improving the quality of life and even manage the challenges in a different approach.

       Take time out frequently from being busy and get clarity on what is right and good for you and your surroundings. Finally what counts is your impact and quality of life!!

Friday 20 October 2017

Who is with you , past or future reminder?


We are always surrounded by two types of people and they influence the progress in personal and professional life. They are either past oriented or future oriented.

They display certain characterizes with us during any interactions 

Past-oriented:

They are more oriented towards past.Whenever  we  propose or suggest something, they immediately respond as follows 

"I had already tried this.it won’t work or I had done those days itself, nothing new".

Either way, like legacy or past wound memories, affect our progress on the proposal.

Future-oriented:

They are more oriented towards future, possibilities, and opportunities and always look for new. They are too optimistic or positive about new possibilities, but they may be encouraging you to progress.

In one of the interview, Google CEO Mr.Sundar Pitchai was asked about his selection as CEO and the reason for it. He replied with guessing that one of the reasons could be his practice of thinking and be interacting with his management team about the future possibilities of Google products and services. That may be one of the reasons he was chosen for this role.

The point is that legacy or past worries may not help today as the environment is keeping on change. The world is looking for futurist and who can think of new possibilities and opportunities.

Just be aware of your style of the thinking process and whom you are surrounded most of the time, past or future reminders?

Peace in the midst of the challenges



There was a king offered a prize to the artists who would paint the best picture to represent “PEACE”. Many artists tried and only two artists came for the final round.The king looked at both artists’ picture.

One picture was of a calm lake surrounded by peaceful mountains with green trees. Overhead there was a blue sky with white clouds.The picture looked cool and everyone felt this picture would win the prize.

The other picture also had mountains, but with rough surface and plain. The overhead was the sky with dark clouds, from which rain fell and lightning was also shown. This did not represent peaceful at all. But when the king looked closely, he saw behind the waterfall, a tiny bush growing in a crack in the rock. In the bush, a  bird had built the nest.The bird was sitting in perfect peace in midst of the lightning and raining.

The king chose the second picture and surprised all. He explained that peace does not mean to be in a place where there is no noise and trouble. Real peace means to be in the midst of all those troubles and still be calm in the heart. 

Moral of the story is that how we maintain our coolness and peace at heart amidst all the troubles and challenges in life.Some times we are disturbed due to external factors.Real maturity is being calm despite external challenges and this is what we need to learn.

Monday 18 September 2017

Is it ok?

As you may be aware of Oprah Winfrey, a famous American lady and known for a talk show. She conducted “The Oprah Winfrey Show"  for 25 years, by interviewing the celebrities and successful people in all fields. It is one of the long runs, the highest rated television program in the history. In one of the interviews, she said that in almost all the episodes, after the shooting, all the celebrities used to ask one question to her. That commonly asked question is “Is it ok?”

In my opinion, this question from celebrities and highly successful people convey the fundamental human traits. Irrespective of  background, level of achievement, status, every human being is craving for two things 

1.Continuous desire for improvement 
2.Looking for confirmation from others either feedback or pat on the back 

I feel this is something we need to realize to improve our relationships and help others to grow.

How can we apply this in our personal and professional life?

In all the dealings with others, we shall give appreciation to others to endorse their positive actions, or we can give feedback to help others to improve.This is what expected in all relationships implicitly!

Tuesday 8 August 2017

Why is patience required for development ?

      
One of the most challenging tasks for self at a personal level or leaders in a business environment is to reach next level growth by changing self or inspiring others to change. The strange nature of the change management process is that it requires continuous effort on nurturing and the result may not be visible immediately. Without knowing the change management process and with impatience mentality, most of us, either give up the effort or getting into inferiority feeling or spoiling the relationship or environment.

        As you might have aware of a bamboo tree, it is different from other trees as it does not grow in the usual fashion. While most of the trees start growing steadily from the beginning, this Chinese bamboo tree does not even break the ground for the first four years. Then on the fifth year, this tree starts to grow at an amazing growth rate. It is said that within four to five weeks time, it even grows to 90 feet height. Actually, during the first four years, growth is not visible externally, but the tree has internally grown and made the roots strong. This nature reveals a lesson on our growth efforts on self-development or on other people development.

        Whatever efforts we put on self-development or people development, it works internally and needs time to be visible externally. Here the key point is your patience to go through the process makes you realize the result, especially on self development or people development.
       

Friday 7 July 2017

How successful people look at failure ?

Jeff bezos, Founder, and CEO of Amazon has said in one of the interviews that if his people have a one in 10 chance of making a 100 x return on an investment, he wants them to experiment every time. This message has a profound on the way he looks at failures. His message implicit that he is willing to tolerate failing nine of out 10 times because his chance of making one big success is high.

This is a very hard concept for us to believe as we had come from an environment where we measure individual or organizational worthiness only with materialistic values. We think that failing is something as a personal failure and with that mindset, we achieve or lead a life what we can do in the safe environment.

The point is when we take the failure as normal in business or in a personal endeavor and then there is a high possibility to make the breakthrough result as we are open to much experimentation. This is purely mindset issues and needs to be challenged with awareness. This is how highly successful people look at failure and moves on!!





Wednesday 22 March 2017

“What should I do when I cannot get?”



A young businessman was struggling to make his life, and he could not find the right path to overcome his troubles. One day he met a Buddhist saint and approached him for an answer. He asked Saint, “I am trying so many things in life, but I am not getting what I want. So my question is what should I do when I cannot find what I am looking for?”

The saint listened patiently and asked the young man to come and meet him the next day morning. The Youngman disappointed, but still, he wanted the answer and hence visited the saint next day. The saint took him to the open field which was littered with small and big rocks. The saint said, “If you want the answer to your question you have to fulfill a task by today evening. There are a hundred rocks, and I have hidden ten gold coins under some rocks. Your task is to find the gold coin and return to me by evening”.

The young man got irritated with this tasks, and yet he wanted the answer from the saint, he labored all the day to remove all rocks to find the gold coin, by the end of the day, he could find ten coins. He returned to the Saint and offered the coins for the exchange of answer.

The saint looked at the young man and said “you might have got the answer from the task. When you are looking for something (coin) that you could not found under all rocks, you did not give up. You believed my words and kept on searching under all rocks and finally got it. Life is also like that. When you are destined for something by God, have faith, keep on doing your work, one day you will get what you suppose to get “.

The moral is never to give up your work; one day you will get rewarded.Have faith in him.

Wednesday 8 March 2017

Autobiography of a yogi



Autobiography of a Yogi is a journey of about a boy in search of God, the saints he meets in his life and his experience with them and path of self-realization, etc.

This book will give some perspective about the spiritual process of self-realization, ideas about some of the yogis’ lived in India and their contribution for spiritual awakening to the world.It is nothing to do with religions and rituals.

Since this classic book is available in all Indian languages and flow is simple and easy to read, recommend to read this book for enhancing the perspectives about life and spiritual process.

Thursday 16 February 2017

Greatness is in details & care

     
Some time back, I read the interview article by Mr.K.V Kamath, Ex-Chairman of ICICI Bank about his amazing experience with Mr.N R Narayanamoorthy (NRN), founder of Infosys. As they had been friends, one day they went to a hotel for lunch in Bangalore. As they were engaging in a meaningful conversation while entered into the hotel entrance, a janitor welcomed both and opened the door. Kamath was passing through the door, NRN stopped the conversation for a moment, looked at the janitor and asked him with smile “Had your lunch?” .The janitor smiled back and nodded head positively. Then NRN continued the conversation with Kamath and found a table for their meal.Kamath was surprised with that incident and wondered how a  high profile person with many priorities and work pressure had a time or heart to care for fellow human being.He described NRN as great human being.

     You also could have come across such great people in your lifetime either in business or in a personal environment.The greatness is not in a position or financial strength; it is in displaying the modesty, humbleness, simplicity, care for fellow people amidst all work pressure and priorities.

     Sometimes, we are too busy to notice small things which matter most. Our greatness is when we start appreciating little things and care for either it could be people or beauty of this universe. Becoming good to great is all about excellence .

Tuesday 25 October 2016

One degree +

Very good video on emphasizing the importance of stretching the effort. We use to think, only in sports, the difference between winner and loser is only to the extent of microseconds, but actually, in all aspects of life, like career advancement, winning deals in business, relationship, the extra step or effort or stretch makes a big difference.

Hope you enjoy this video even though you might have watched earlier.

https://goo.gl/OA7rBP

Thursday 9 June 2016

Dealing with setbacks

       In business or professional environment or in sports, when something goes wrong, the most affected person will be those who are headed the business or organization or function or team . Simply, the captain of the team. The challenge for the captain is to bring back the confidence of all stakeholders through quick actions and more than that managing self emotionally to overcome the setback.
       When we go through the successful peoples life stories, some common patterns emerge in their thought process and approach in dealing with setbacks

1.They use to feel gifted to lead a team either as captain or as owner of the business. They see the position as a responsibility. They internally feel and believe that if they are blessed with such privilege, they will also be blessed with to overcome any setback. It is more about taking the setback as  part of the divine play to make him strong

2.They strongly believe that failures are acceptable. This reflection protects them from self –sabotaging and think a way forward 

3.They deeply spend time with themselves to introspect the causes and mistakes they did. They  critically evaluate the assumptions, decision making process, management style  behaviors etc.  

4.They are quick to come out with an alternate plan and put into action

5.Single minded focus on execution till seeing the result 


It is not a problem falling down. How quickly we bounce back and strong reveal our true inherent strength.

Sunday 3 April 2016

Infinite Vision (Book)

The inspiring book is all about the explaining the path of How Aravind Eye Care Hospital became the world’s greatest business case for compassion.

Authors: Pavithra K Mehta / Suchitra Shenoy

Context:

Dr.Govindappa Venkataswamy founded Aravind eye clinic with 11 beds  in 1976 after his retirement  in his hometown  in South India  .He had only one vision “To give sight for all” who has curable blind diseases with highest quality and affordable cost .Today Aravind eye care had treated more than 32 million patients and performed more than 4 million surgeries . In India, 5 % of the eye surgeries are being done by Aravind. 

Today Aravind eye care case study is mandatory reading for every MBA student at Harvard business school.

Started in a small way by a visionary person become the world greatest business case for compassion.

Excerpts from the book:

Aravind surgeons average 2000 cataract surgeries a year, against the Indian average of 400 surgeries and the US average of under 200.The efficiencies that enable to provide the lowest cost, highest quality eye care systems in the world.----

This is a model that demonstrates the power of integrating innovation with empathy, business principles with service and outer transformation with inner change. -----

To understand the Aravind model –one must look into the heart and the mind of the visionary surgeon who set it all into motion. ----

Recommend this book who would like to understand the power of vision and the leader’s compassion towards the humanity.It is inspiring to learn the process of how one person from the village made it happen in a span of 30 + years.

Also for manufacturing professionals, it is inspiring to learn how  they applied LEAN SYSTEM THINKING in their process to improve the efficiency  and made it  best cost in the world.

Overall, Inspiring book from an Indian background.