As leaders and managers, we often become so blind after our goals that we forget the human factor. We forget that it is our team that will lead to accomplishment of our goals. In the midst of a changing environment and a dynamic workplace, the best a manager can offer is stability to the team. It s essential to understand the behaviour that is expected from people and then to promote that.
This style of management comes in handy when we are moving towards a change. Change never comes easy to anyone. We need to first inculcate changes in our own behaviour and then we need to start developing that as a culture. Empathy is an important factor to consider if we wish to establish trust and oneness in opinions and acts.
Martin Luther King had said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.” As leaders, we need to empathise, grow and connect, understand and listen. There are times people fail to work together because they fear each other. This fear springs from lack of communication. Here’s where the role of an effective manager comes into play. The manager needs to promote cross communication, sharing of opinions and also needs to create platforms where people can get together and heart out.
Change can only be driven when people behave collectively. Culture isn’t one person’s job. Every single member needs to breathe evolution and that’s when change really happens. We all need a leadership that is motivated, inspired and purposefully driven.
Looking stylish is not that big a deal if you are mindful of it. Who doesn’t want to be noticed. Looking attractive isn’t about what you wear, it is about how you wear it. Here are some simple tricks to follow:
Love what you wear and wear what you love – Never be doubtful of what you are wearing. Make your choice wisely. When you’re in doubt about your outfit, your lack of confidence and comfort shows.
Know your personal style – Do not follow trends blindly. Know what suits you and what your heart goes out for. Dressing as per your personal styles gives immense confidence and amps you up.
Fit and fabulous – Knowing the right fit for yourself is important. The right fit of clothes flatter your body like nothing else. The comfort fit helps you to remain at ease for long as compared to a tight one. Make your choice.
Accessorise – Accessories including jewellery, purses, footwear, sunglasses accentuate your look. Try adorning yourself with the right accessories to give the finished look.
Layering – Adding a third layer isn’t restricted to formal clothing. A layer could be in the form of a necklace, a jacket, a stole or even a shrug. It adds more definition to the outfit and even takes you up the style scale when needed.
Basics over trends – What’s in trend is not here to stay. Limit the percentage of trendy clothes in your wardrobe to ensure higher wearability of clothes.
A neatly organised wardrobe – Sometimes we feel we don’t have much to wear only because we do not have a neatly organised wardrobe where each piece of clothing and accessory is visible. Invest time in managing space and visibility in your wardrobe.
Play with colours – Choose the colours in trend and flaunt. Colours ad the necessary spice. Be careful of the proportion of each colour being used in your outfit, it must match your personal style.
Ensure the message you give – Stylish, trendy or elegant – your clothes must speak your mind. Every time yo pick an outfit for an occasion, ask yourself what is the message you wish to give through your clothes.
Mix patterns and textures – Most people shy away from wearing patterns and textures imply because they don’t know how to mix them. If you can do that, you are sure to sand out in a crowd.
Most of the times, we use coaching and mentoring interchangeably. Philosophically the two terms are the same. Both have an inherent focus on development of an individual. At the base, it is about relationship between two people, the methods to guide or train may differ.
Talking of organisations, a mentor is someone who is a senior colleague or a team member who is a buddy and guides, supports and advises you on products, processes and even conduct. A mentor helps in understanding your challenges, problems and issues and gives you guidance accordingly. It is natural to feel motivated and inspired in the company of a mentor. Mentorship is often encouraged in companies at different levels. It not only helps to guide newcomers and fishers but also helps to create bonds that cultivate a better culture, leading to a holistic organisational development.
Coaching on the other hand is a long drawn process. A coach can be someone within or outside the organisation. A coach attempts to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the coaches and then creates a development plan. The aim of the the development plan is to help the individual realise his true potential. Coaching is more of a consultative process with full participation from both the ends.
Mentorship and coaching both are ideal for an organisational set up. The company management must be adept at deciding the levels of the two processes.
Want to listen to your negative internal chatter? Or you wish to try? Mindset is magical, it just turns the tables. Decide what state of mind you want to be. I can’t has I can in it just the way I don’t has an I do in it.
As the saying goes, ‘Whether you think you can or you can’t, you are right.’ Our thoughts make us who we are. We can choose to see the glass half empty or half full. Every problem we encounter doesn’t seem huge at first. But it surely becomes gigantic if we hold on to it for long. The longer we hold, the greater the stress. Very often we discard things that we’ve been hearing since childhood and dismiss them as untrue. ‘Mind over matter’ is true!
Overcoming challenges has always been a mental game. Tricky situations and ambiguous roads are the real boulders we need to get past. Our beliefs define us. Most of the times, when we encounter a problem, our first reaction is either to submit and give up or to jump up to a solution. We normally do not follow the tendency of reaching the root cause. We just want to provide a symptomatic relief to the problem, which is superficial and temporary. As a result, the chances of the problem resurfacing become very high and we fall back into the trap again. It is essential that we define the problem first, get to the reasons that have caused it in the first place and then generate possible solutions to the problem. This way we get rid of the problem in the first instance.
Out attitude to win or lose matters. Haven’t we heard of cases where a patient recovers from a fatal disease or an accident by virtue of his will-power? That is evidence of a resolute mind. It is very critical to harness the power of our mind and use it to our advantage. When we face a major trouble, the mind automatically starts thinking of why has the incident happened, why am I affected, why not someone else. The trouble starts becoming an obstacle to a normal life and we start to drown in it. The tendency of our minds getting affected severely by problems makes us fall into the trap of mistaking such thoughts for truth.
There is no problem so big in life that cannot be sorted. It just needs a strong mind, a positive approach and will power. If we train our mind well, there is really nothing that we can’t win over.
What are habits? Our habits define us, our habits keep us going. Habits fail to make us happy when we start expecting too much from ourselves. Leaving old habits needs courage and forming new ones needs self belief. Forming healthy habits is not a mean task. The reason is that we grow in a certain way with certain beliefs. Our minds are conditioned in a particular way. To be able to break that or add something new requires efforts.
The other problem with forming healthy habits is that we want to change too much too soon. We all know that new year resolutions are highly overrated. Yet, we take resolutions and more often than not, we fail in achieving them. Ever thought why? With age comes impatience. Inabilities or should we say incompetencies are not welcomed.
We get swayed by the habit of instant gratification. We want results immediately. When we form new habits, we want to see the impact. Imagine you’ve never read a book in your life and banging on some resolution you expect yourself to start reading hefty novels. That’s too much to ask yourself.
Forming healthy habits is all about knowing the WHY behind the idea of creating that habit in the first place. It is only when the purpose is clear that we will be able to reason out and work towards the goal. In the absence of a solid why, the motivation of achieving often goes missing.
Habits like getting up on time, eating healthy, losing weight come with time. Let us give our mind some time to process the change that we are expecting. If we gave that much time to the old habits to become a part of us, the new ones too need time to adjust with us.
Is self-development a destination? It becomes one when it isn’t a regular activity. We get so engulfed in our daily chores that sometimes we forget that as time progresses, we face different challenges, changing circumstances and new and varied responsibilities. The way to overcome challenges is self-development. In case of women, especially, self-development takes a back seat, given the multiple roles they play.
There isn’t a rule book that defines self-development. The definition may vary from person to person. For some women self-development could be stepping out of the house, for some it could be embarking an entrepreneurial journey. For some it could be just about developing a love for reading, for others it could be about finding a penchant to travel.
When women start their journey of developing self, they must look out for the following:
Need for self development
Setting a target
Clarifying a destination
Identifying strengths
Aware of weaknesses
Self development in women leads to the following:
Discovering self
Pushing self out of comfort zone
Becoming self-aware
Unlocking abilities
Increased confidence
Higher self-esteem
Self-development is an ongoing journey. It allows us to invest time and effort in ourselves, which in turn helps us to manage ourselves and others around us effectively. Self-development also helps us to release happy hormones because we become more adept at handling challenges with greater confidence and spring back with greater might.
