The Leader In You

 

The Leader In You

 

I am sure you all agree with me that we are emphasizing on developing leadership qualities for our children from an incredibly early age. Leadership as a concept was earlier discussed in the business schools and now it is taught in schools. There are schools that are focused just on developing the leader with in you. This is an incredible initiative because as I always said: It is better to train little children than to repair broken adults.

Let us look little deeper into this phenomenon as to why teach leadership at an early age. As a Life Skills Coach and a Corporate trainer and having worked with kids and adults closely to help them be the best version of themselves, I have come up with my narrative on essentials of leadership training.

Let us first understand what leadership is:  I am not referring to any book-written definition here. In simple words, leadership is a combination of certain positive values in a person which are rarely found in others, which are crucial, which generate followership along with respect and one who is a good listener, or in simpler terms, a leader is a sum of values and skills that he possesses. Now, the beauty is that those skills that a leader possesses are basic skills, but they are crucial and critical. Though they are basic they are not widely found.

Let us take it a step further and start attaching skills to this broad definition. When we say that leader has positive values, we mean a leader is honest, has integrity, takes ownership of his action, has a vision, is resilient, can rise from the dust, and is a great listener. These are just a few, there are many more. These are nothing but essential life skills which you need any which ways to live a balanced life. When we say that a leader is a person who can generate followership along with respect, we are essentially saying that a leader is a great communicator. He is the person who can drill an idea, share his vision, and get people committed to a common goal. He can get people to believe in what he believes.

We can therefore say that a leader is a summation of critical and crucial life skills and communication skills, which is also an important life skill according to me.  Again, the question arises, why teach all this at an early age? The reason is quite simple: it is particularly important to have the right proportion of all these skills in the right balance to get an effective and efficient leader. We can say that an efficient leader is one who thinks right, listens right, and speaks right.

Let us understand this with an example:

I am taking a tennis game example here as we just watched the US Open. My views are simply stated here to quote an example and in no means are targeted to any race or ethnicity or religion or person.  We all saw that Novak Djokovic accidentally hit the line judge and he was disqualified. He apologized, tried to explain, but in the end, folded his hands, and obeyed the law. Getting disqualified from US Open is a big thing. I urge you to view the below video and see what he has to write after getting disqualified.

https://youtu.be/XRuu2-VIw5o: Novak hits the line judge US Open 2020

  

 I do remember another similar incident US Open Women’s Final 2018, The comeback year of Serena Williams, playing against Naomi Osaka. I am sure you all remember the temper tantrums of Serena towards the end of the game when she felt that she was being defeated by a first-timer Naomi who grew up idolizing Serena. Serena threw her racket, abused the umpire, and started shouting out of panic of losing. Naomi, on the other hand, kept herself focused on the match. Obviously, Naomi won, she was the first-ever Japanese to win the US Open. What a proud moment for herself and the country. Now you must watch her acceptance speech at the award ceremony. She apologized to the crowd saying that: she is sorry, as this was not the outcome they wanted. The whole stadium was rooting for Serena. You must watch the below videos to understand what I am trying to say here.

https://youtu.be/uiBrForlj-k : Serena Williams temper tantrums US Open Final 2018

https://youtu.be/jCm3BemDlj8 : 2018 US Open Award ceremony Naomi and Serena

 

 

The point I am trying to make here is our children can have loads of self-confidence, can be good speakers as well, and can be successful. They would not be called a leader if they do not have the right mix of values and skills to cope up with any devastating situation along with their communication. It is very easy to get high pitched and start speaking your mind without seeing right or left, it is difficult to maintain a calm composure and focus on the outcome and use all your skills wisely.  It is the balance of thinking, listening, and speaking which makes you a leader. So many times I run across parents who are like: “my child is very confident, he can speak up for himself, he is a born leader, he doesn’t need to be trained, he does a sport”. Agreed, your child has great confidence but how is he using it? How are his listening skills? How are his thinking skills? You do not want him to be brash in pursuit of being independent. That is where the balance is needed. Those kids would be successful because of their confidence and ability to speak, but would they be leaders? Would people believe in them? Would people follow them?  Would people respect them? The answer is NO.

I highly recommend you all to watch these three videos. All three of them are successful but only two of them are true leaders. As parents, it is our duty to give them an opportunity to strike that balance between thinking, listening, and speaking right. Your child might be a very self-confident speaker but look closely, is he a good listener/ is he thinking right always? He might need to work on those skills. Unless these three things are in a perfect balance, you will not get a leader.  

This is the reason the schools are also now giving importance to skills and values along with academics and sports. Enrich the child with those crucial life skills which if inculcated at the right time and in the right proportion can produce a leader.

I feel that a leader does not need any formal title. Count your child a leader, if he is thinking about the person sitting to the right and left of him. Count him a leader if he is resilient in these difficult and testing times and understands the gravity of the situation that we all are facing as humankind.  Celebrate the leader in you and your children and always strive to strike that perfect balance. Every situation would require a new you, keep learning, unlearning, and relearning and you are a Leader!!

 

https://youtu.be/uiBrForlj-k : Serena Williams temper tantrums US Open Final 2018

https://youtu.be/jCm3BemDlj8 : 2018 US Open Award ceremony Naomi and Serena

https://youtu.be/XRuu2-VIw5o: Novak hits the line judge US Open 2020

COVID is VIVID: Finish Strong

                                                                             

COVID is VIVID

COVID-19 outbreak has taught humanity a lot of things. They say that everything happens for a good reason. Which means, everything that happens is not good but happens for a good reason. We might not know the reason right away, but, in retrospect, we will get the 'why' behind every situation.

What can be the potential good reason behind the Corona Virus Situation? I truly believe that the universe is preparing us for what is going to unfold shortly. This is the time to invest the skills which would come handy in the future. The universe first prepares us and then puts us in the situation. I have come up with these essential skills that COVID-19 is teaching us:

Solitude

 I would like to rephrase the term" Social Distancing" with SOLITUDE. From time immemorial, we all have known the benefits of solitude. It is a great place to visit but not that great a place to stay. Every human being should practice visiting solitude. People spend thousands of dollars on vacation packages to get privacy and solitude. The mother nature today has given us that opportunity to experience it from the comfort of our home and with our family.

Experience the immense benefit of solitude and silence. When you cannot look outside the only place that's left is to  LOOK WITHIN. Take up a new routine, try meditating, listen to high vibrational music and keep the vibrations of the house high. Any kind of negative energy be it in the form of a disease cannot live in a High Vibrational place. 

It takes 21 days to form a new habit. We all are mostly going to work from home for 2 weeks which means it is the best time to take up new personal habits and weave them in your life.

Here are some of Deep Breathing and Meditation videos. Do try it and take it up as a family activity. Remember, kids always learn what you do not what you say. Keeping a calm mind in any situation as the most important skill you might ever teach your children.

Meditative Mind: healing music     https://youtu.be/jK2hS40pr-g

Tibetian Healing Sound:  https://youtu.be/OW7TH2U4hps   

Guided Meditation to Yoga Nidra:  https://youtu.be/7H0FKzeuVVs 

Family Bonding:

Take a deep breath and look around. This is one of the most precious moments wherein you are surrounded by only those people who matter the most in your life. Mother nature is telling us to focus on what is important. The purpose of our existence is in front of us. We all know that we have neglected our family time a lot of times. Our social commitments, networking dinners, parties with friends and get-togethers have moved us away from each other. This is the time to bring it all back. Cherish every moment that you are spending with your loved ones safe in your house.

The whole world today is forced to stay only with family. Take this time to equip your children with the skills needed for this decade. We certainly cannot win a new battle with old weapons. Today the skills that we need to teach our kids are resilience, persistence, responsibility and financial literacy. We are on the foothills of recession and our kids need to understand the repercussion of these situations. Not everything is learned in the schools, there is a lot that you can teach them. This is the perfect time to have those conversations. Believe me, these testing times are the best times to ingrain a life lesson. The receiver is very vulnerable, and the impact is long-lasting.

Resilience

I would say, this is the number one and the most important skill for the coming decade. As Sheryl Sandberg says: " You are not born with a fixed amount of resilience. Like a muscle, you can build it up. "

Today when the world is facing a rapid transition and an economic recession is looming over all of us, it is very important to teach our kids to bounce back from failures, cope up with stress and keep moving forward.

Some are born resilient and others must work their way into it. Some ways to build this skill is through:

Reframing the situation: look at the brighter side of every situation

Meditate: look within for all your answers and things will start to fall in place

Visualize, how bad could it be: By this I mean, visualize that things could have been a lot worse. You will start appreciating the current situation.

Daily Journal: Form a habit of writing a daily journal and start with 3 things that happened in the day which you are grateful for. You will slowly build up on your gratefulness reserve. Also, daily journaling will help you to document your failures and mistakes and have a clear perspective on the same.

Financial Literacy

We all need to be financially literate. This is a great time to strike those financial conversations with your kids. Remember, you must teach them how to nicely survive in the recession and thrive in a boom. Teach them both and keep them ahead of the curve.  Some ways that you can do this is by teaching them to invest in stocks and explaining to them how the market works. The only way to be successful is to have your money work when you are asleep. Today is the best day to talk about this and help them to face this decade strongly.

Mindfulness

Today the whole world's safety has boiled down to a small task done mindfully and that is: washing hands properly for 20 seconds. This might look like a small thing but imagine if not done correctly, it can bring the entire human race to its knees.

This is life, it lies in small things, small pleasures, small tasks. Keep doing them mindfully and bigger things will be taken care of. This is the time to teach mindfulness to kids. Mindfulness is about being conscious or aware of the present moment. Focus on this moment and do it right and the rest will fall in place. Some ways you can teach mindfulness to kids is:

Gratitude journal: Have your kids maintain a gratitude journal. They will learn to record their day mindfully. You can order one from amazon and gift them. Here is the link to the one that I always gift my students: https://www.abebooks.com/Good-Days-Start-Gratitude-Week-Guide/30225630366/bd?cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade-_-new-_-naa&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI9dX5tZGo6AIVpP_jBx0YCwBzEAkYBiABEgL4xvD_BwE

Eating Mindfully: Have a noise-free eating policy. No gadgets, no TV, no texting on the dinner table. Have them concentrate on food and eat. Talking to the family members is ok but no talks about how stressful the day was. All of that can wait till the dinner is over. Only positive thoughts are discussed while eating. This looks like an easy practice, but it is easier said than done. Take this opportunity to start this practice while all of you are at home and having all the meals together.

In the end I would conclude by saying that; Nothing is a coincidence, and everything is pre-planned for a good reason. We will all come out stronger from this but let's all learn from this pandemic. Stay safe and make the most of this Solitude. This won't last long!!

 Intangible is the new in....

Being a business major and a corporate trainer; I often end up comparing our real-life situations to a corporate world situation. This is what led me to write on investments.


With the New Year in full swing as we have entered a new decade, I am totally sure, every household and every individual would have done their financial planning for the decade to come. (If not; This is the time) 


This is the time to reflect on types of investments. There are investments which have tangible benefits and there are investments which do not have tangible benefits or let’s say not tangible on the face of it. 


Let’s dig deep into it. We all would like to invest in stocks, mutual funds and bond which have a tangible benefit. We can see the gain that we would receive at the end of a period. But we all also always have a life insurance. Which does not mean that we will die, we might never be able to use that money if it is a term life insurance but, we still take an insurance because it provides us an intangible benefit. The benefit is in form of a safety net around us which we might never want to use but it is there. 


Now here’s the point to ponder, we truly never understand the importance of a life insurance up until we see someone who was the bread winner and lost his life and does not have a life insurance. This keeps the bereavers stranded. That day, we all feel, how crazy, he didn’t have an insurance? But, do we go and celebrate the people who have insured themselves. The answer is NO. the reason is, it is given and expected.  Lesson here: The absence of an intangible investment causes a bigger damage than the presence of it.


We invest in intangible mode of investment purely based on our common sense, acumen and judgement. That’s the least expected out of us to ensure that our family is safe after us. We are not doing a big deal having insured ourselves. It’s a big deal if we have not insured ourselves.


 We don’t even think about all these things. But moment we see a person who met with a heart attack and doesn’t have a medical insurance, we feel strange. Hence, investment in intangible assets is more important than tangible ones.


Now let’s compare this with life. In our life we invest in our education. We ensure that our child should have good grades, should be going to best of university and so on. Why? Because it gives us tangible returns. You can measure the growth by ranks and marks and eventually money. You can teach him a sport and have him compete and see him win a medal or two and feel bloated about it. The more you spend, the more you feel you have invested in the future of the child. All Tangible….

But all this while chasing these tangible things we forget that it is what is inside of him that will shine out. Yes, he might go to best of the university but is he the best version of himself?  Mental Health first aid news provides some alarming statistics

1.      In the United States, almost half of adults (46.4 percent) will experience a mental illness during their lifetime.

2.      5 percent of adults (18 or older) experience a mental illness in any one year, equivalent to 43.8 million people.

3.      Of adults in the United States with any mental disorder in a one-year period, 14.4 percent have one disorder, 5.8 percent have two disorders and 6 percent have three or more.

4.      Half of all mental disorders begin by age 14 and three-quarters by age 24.

This is not something new. We have known this for long. But what is new is why so much so sudden. Why is it that this number is growing instead of coming down? 


History has shown and science has also backed that all these issues start small. Absence of life skills in children. We get so involved in the tangibles, that we forget the intangible investment. Obviously, because there is not tangible rank, grade or eventually monetary benefit associated to it. We want our kids to be wealthy nut we forget to teach them right ways to earn it. 


Now lets’ come back to our tangible and intangible argument. Investing in instilling proper skills in your child is a very thankless and intangible investment. But, as in case of all the intangible investment, even in this one, the absence of it is going to be noticed and will affect all your tangible investments. 


We do not go out of our way and praise someone for their honesty and integrity every time they show a proper behavior. But let me tell you, you will always notice an arrogant person, a dishonest person and it will make you think, why are they like this. They are like this because their parents, when they were planning for their child’s next decade they only focused on the tangibles. 


These small little life skills like honesty, accountability of time, responsible behavior, integrity, communication and so on go a long way and they might not openly benefit you in a material form, but their absence will affect your material gains. Today all the corporates are moving towards skill-based hiring. We have so many assembly line workers and artificial intelligence has taken over all those jobs. The world needs leaders. And there is no sure sought recipe to build a leader. A leader is the result of his experiences, failures and learnings. The skills that he learnt right from childhood to utilizing it in the adulthood. The leader is not always someone who always had good grades, but someone who failed, touched rock bottom and rose out of his own ashes. Integrity builds a leader, resilience strengthens him and adversity tests him. 


Parents sadly have forgotten to plan for this and not planning for these intangibles is a result we see those alarming statistics. Walk the walk and talk the talk, develop the qualities of a leader and your child will follow. Teach them to fail. Teach them to take NO for an answer. Teach them self-respect. Free loader mindset is a poverty mindset. Don’t teach them to use people. Teach them to use their two hands and two legs. You don’t need any title to be a leader. You can be a homemaker yet be a leader, you can be Janitor yet be a leader. A leader requires no titles. His qualities are those intangibles that the world has forgotten. 

Give yourself and your family a New Year gift, take a Life Skills insurance and secure yours' and your child’s mental health. You don’t need any big planning, just look with in. invest in books. If you don’t like to be treated the way you are treating others, then change it. Remember, what you give is what you get.