Archives For Self Leadership

Learning From Bono | Changing The World

27/02/2013 — 3 Comments

I wish I was at TED 2013. I followed Bono’s talk on Twitter and the TED blog. Wow Bono, the U2 front man, is passionate about music and world change. He is also co-founder of the ONE campaign, a movement fighting the injustice of extreme poverty.

I’m sure when U2 started Bono never dreamed that his music would give him the platform he has today. It is not only his music that has allowed him to fight poverty. He understood the influence or the platform his music gave him beyond his performance.

Means and End

I am not aware of Bono’s motivations when they started U2. It may have started out as a means to get their music out to entertain people and make a living. As with many things, you never realize the true potential of an endeavor until you actually pursue it.

The potential impact of endeavors gets more obvious when they are pursued

From Bono, we can learn not to make our vocation the end but a means. Dare to make your career more than getting cheese on your table. It is important to provide for your family but you have to live for something more than just fame or your career for the sake of it.

We have more to give to the world than our selfishness

Not having money, skills, time and other resources like Bono, does not excuse you from not contributing your share to world change. To leaving posterity with a great future. Reading this is evidence that you have more than enough to give.

Stop looking at what you don’t have and use what you do have to play your part in changing the world.

You may not grace the stage at TED like Bono and many others, but that is not the point. The point is leaving something for your children’s children’s children that you will be proud to give. A world where poverty is something read from history textbooks. A world where posterity looks back in history in shock and disgust at the levels of corruption in our time because it will be foreign to them.

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changing the world is not reserved for few rock stars. everyone of us has a part to play and we can do it passionately and big like rock stars

image by World Economic Forum | cc

 

Influence

Consider how much influence you have. You may not have a rock star’s platform but there are people you influence. Leverage your influence.  Influence is currency and catalyst for world change, but only works when it is traded. Dare to make big asks in making the world a greater place. Do it like a rock star and be unashamed and unapologetic about making the world a greater place.

What else can we learn from Bono and other rock stars to help us make the world a greater place?

 

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In Leadership, Life, Passion, Self Leadership, Vision , , , , , , , , ,
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How ‘Bad Followers’ Make Great Leadership Development Resource

25/02/2013 — 3 Comments

Leadership is about influencing people toward making a vision a reality. It involves innumerable dynamics. One of the greatest, if not the greatest dynamic, is the human one. As much as leaders are not perfect, so are followers. Every leader has at least one ‘bad follower’ at a certain time or all the time.

It is easy to envy other leaders because you are not walking in their shoes but the truth is, they also have their fair share of challenges, some of which include bad followers. You are not alone.

Sometimes bad followers escalate in their bad ways and force leadership to expel them. In instances where this has not happened, leaders can use bad followers as a resource for their leadership. Yes, you read right: you can make bad followers a resource for great leadership.

 

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great leaders are not intimidated by ‘out-of-line followers’, but use them to enable their leadership

|| image by scott.presly | cc

 

Bad followers include followers who do not follow instructions, have bad attitudes… You can complete the list yourself.

What System?

Bad followers are always looking for ways to beat the system. They look to the system to systems to see how they can justify not following set strategy. They point out what’s wrong with the system as a crutch and not a direct means to make things better.

As a leader to bad followers, look deeper than the excuses as to how you can better your strategy.

Complacency

Bad followers are a great reminder for leaders not to get complacent. Take the bad followers as a reminder that you need to keep growing. As you grow as leader, so will your ability to lead the bad followers. When bad followers challenge your leadership, think about what aspect of your leadership are revealed to be lacking.

Bad followers can be safeguards against leaders tolerating their own complacency.

Do not get too caught up in the frustration of dealing with bad followers and lose sight of possible opportunities for growing your leadership.

How Bad

Consider bad followers as internal obstacles. Obstacles are good questions. See bad followers as a question: how badly do you want to achieve your goals. As with any obstacle, navigating it develops leadership muscle.

Think of the bad followers in your fold as a personalized leadership school.

Naked King

Sometimes leaders mistake genuine concern, differing perspectives and authenticity for dissension. There are times the lone differing opinion is an anchor. Do not be too quick to dismiss differing opinions. Sometimes opinions undermine the truth because of the way they are presented but this does not mean there is no truth.

Be care to mistake the guy who is willing to tell the truth, while the ‘rest of the crowd’ is too afraid to air different perspectives.

Allow bad followers to refine your listening skills. Listening, really listening is a skill that leaders must continually develop.

Question: How else can bad followers be a resource for great leadership?

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Why Not Doing Something You’re Passionate About Is Killing You

22/02/2013 — 4 Comments

I had coffee with some great people this morning. Something Andrew Coles said about dreams got me thinking… Living in the realm of clear sight will strongly move you. Clear sight is often the first step. By clear sight I mean more than just vision. I mean having a sense of purpose that your vision will give. Not only that, but being able to see what goes where to make your vision. Absolute clarity is not always going to be.

It is not always that we pursue what we feel strongly about. You may feel strongly about a cause and never get round to actually doing something about it.

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live, don’t just breathe to death || image Robert Couse-Baker | cc

How strongly you feel about something does not change anything until you actually start doing something about it.

Limitations will always be there. The successful still wrestle with limitations. Somehow we see those who inspire us, by virtue of their success, as not having them. If anything, they may just have more challenges. It is those challenges, limitations, barriers, whatever you call them, that we make reasons for not acting on the dreams we carry.

Not doing something about what you’re passionate about will kill you. Obviously not a physical death, but it is scary that it could be so strong that it can affect our physical health. Compartmentalization is a myth. Every part of who you are is connected. What affects you in one area of your life or organization will affect another.

Energy

One of the reasons not doing what you are passionate about will kill you is that it takes more energy to fight what you are passionate about than actually doing something about it. It will draw mental energy from you. When dreams for your life, cause or enterprise are vivid and strong enough, trying to focus on something else instead of them will actually cause you to focus on them.

Alive?

When we do something that we are passionate about that is when we are truly alive. All of a sudden the universe makes sense. Pursuing our dreams is a big part of living them. It is not only when ‘we arrive’ at the place we’re striving for, it is also the journey there that breathes life into it. You are dying because you are not living.

Living, being fully alive, is pursuit of the things that come naturally and strongly for us. Choose to live and not just breathe to death.

Now

How do I start bridging the gap between my limitations and my dreams? I’m asking myself the same question but I can give a shot with suggestions:

  • Stop fighting your focus from going to the dream. Allow your dreams to breathe and vent. Start documenting them if you have not or have stopped.

 

  • When your dreams do not make sense to people don’t dwell on it. Skeptics sometimes disguise themselves as realists and pragmatists. They can only stifle your dreaming further and kill you only if you allow them. Do not give in.

 

Very few people, if any achieved significant things by being reasonable. 

 

  • Share your dreams with someone who will agree to believe in them even if they do not make sense to them all the time. Their responsibility will be to smack you when you stop believing in your dreams, because there are times it will get so hard that you will stop believing in your own dreams yourself.

 

  • Get your hustle on. Ensure that you are doing something everyday, even the smallest steps to get to a step closer to seeing your dream a reality. If it is not yet practical for you to pursue your dreams to the extent you want to, you can take solace in that you are doing something to get closer.

Why does not following your dreams kill you? What do you suggest to do in bridging the gap between reality and pursuing what people are passionate about?

 

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In Ideas, Leadership, Life, Self Leadership, Vision , , , , , , , ,
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The Bricks In Your Platform

20/02/2013 — 4 Comments

The platform you ‘stand on’ is built from bricks of things you did and did not do. This does not mean that what you went through does not have any impact on you; it does. Everything counts. While you cannot divorce yourself, front the past you have opportunity to create a new past today.

What you do today becomes the past tomorrow. We simultaneously create the past as we create the future. The past we create has a bearing on who we are tomorrow. Each experience we have and create is a brick in the platform we will stand on. We must be careful never think or assume that what we do now is separate from the future.

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what you build to stand on now can be what crushes you; build carefully

Take PSY, made worldwide famous by his hit Gangnam Style, as an example. After his hit brought him fame, it emerged that he had said some anti-American stuff in the past. Consider Lance Armstrong who was hailed a hero for many years, only to discover years later that he was not the hero many thought him to be.

The same platform that Lance Armstrong built his platform with unfair and illegal means is that platform on which he destroyed his reputation and career. PSY had to somehow come to account for actions about eight years old.

Never think that what you do now stands alone from everything else that makes you who you are. Also, do not make the mistake to think that it cannot come back in the future, as history that has power to destroy you in some way.

Momentary compromises have a reach greater than most imagine

Your future may just have great influence in it. At the moment not many people, if any, may really care about who you are, but trust me, when your platform gets bigger they will want to know. They will dig about everything about you as far as they can to test your authenticity and character.

When your big break comes the world is not going to judge you according to the platform you stand on at that time but on every brick on your platform. There is danger or blessing in them looking back at who you are based on what bricks you allowed to build your platform with it.

You may not think what you do now does not matter. It may seem like it does not matter now, but if not now it will matter tomorrow. If something is going to matter in the future then we must treat it with utmost importance in the present.

Whether in a personal capacity or as an enterprise, consider your platform and choose carefully the brick you will build it with.

Stuff comes back to bite you… As far as character and credibility is concerned you are standing and will stand on everything you are and everything you have ever done…

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The Power Of Clear Sight

19/02/2013 — 14 Comments

People are moved by what they see. We live in the most visual time humanity has ever known. Technology is focused on creating vivid pictures using high-definition lens and screens. We have binoculars so we can bring distant things closer and see them with a clarity distance robs from our unaided eyes.

We do not just tell stories, but also show them. If the visual things did not matter, Hollywood would not be as big as it is.

There is a definite connection between what we see and what we eventually strive for

If this were not true, a lot of money would not be spent on marketing and media campaigns. Somehow, we better understand how products and services can serve us when we see, through an ad or image by the sellers and manufacturers.

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the more vivid the picture we see, the more passionately we gravitate toward it

What see with our natural eyes opens our inner eyes. After seeing something on the outside we visualize how it could relate to us. We anticipate the changes it could make to our world, how we might be perceived because of contextualizing what we see in our own lives.

Nothing moves us like pictures we see. While tangible pictures are great aids to our inner eyesight, the most potent sight is our inner sight. No eyes are more important than our inner eyes.

The more vivid the pictures we see with our inner eyes the stronger they move us. When pictures we see with our outer eyes move us strongly it is because our inner eyes see more.

When your pitch does not move people, it may just be that you have not helped them see as vividly as you see. When our work becomes mundane, a bore and burden, it could be because our vision, the picture for what we are trying to create, is not as vivid as it was.

Leadership is about helping people see clearly. When they see clearly, they will move passionately

The reason enterprises fail and lose their way is that their inner eyes are blinded. Vision moves us only as powerfully as clarity we see it with. If you do not see anything greater, you will never strive for better. People do not push their boundaries because they do not see farther.

What do you see? How vivid is your sight, for your life, team and enterprise? How well are you helping yourself and others see? What you see and how clearly you see it is what determines how strongly you step toward it. See…

In Leadership, Life, Passion, Self Leadership, Teamwork, Vision , , , , , , , ,
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