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AuthorCEO Coach |
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April 2024
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What is Integrity? The word integrity evolved from the Latin adjective integer, meaning whole or complete. Integrity is the state of being whole and complete, to be in perfect condition. It is an inner experience of being whole, complete and perfect; with nowhere to go and nothing to prove; with nothing to change or fix to experience wholeness, completeness and perfection in who you are. Only from this state of Being, can creativity, innovation, performance, productivity and effectiveness arise. How can a business survive without all of these? The access to an experience of being whole and complete is to value and honour oneself. Valuing and honouring myself means to value and honour what I say to myself and to others. Integrity, therefore, is honouring myself by honouring my word to myself and to others. What is my word? There are 5 words that define me: 1. When I say, I promise X: This is my word at the bottom of the ‘promise’ / ‘word’ hierarchy. 2. What I say: I say, I will come. I didn’t say, I promise I’ll come. Even then, it is my word, my promise to go wherever I said I will go. 3. My intentions and dreams: Our intentions and dreams are our promises to ourselves to transform our wants and burning desires into reality. 4. My commitments: Our commitments are our promises too. The values that we are committed to, the relationships that we are committed to, personal growth that we are committed to, whatever it is we are committed to is then also our promise, our word to ourself and to others. 5. Expectations that people have of me: People in our life have expectations of us. Those become our promises too unless we have a straight conversation with others and let them know that you are aware of the expectation but are choosing to release yourself from it. Unless a conversation like this has happened, we are bound by others’ expectations of us. They expect from us, they hold that as our word to them. The truth is we are aware of the expectations but may not have the courage to have an obviously difficult conversation and choose to push this under the carpet instead of rock the boat. The impact of pushing under the carpet is that we anyway won’t do what is expected of us because we don’t want to and yet the other continues to expect of us feeling hurt at our not honouring the expectation. This throws the relationship in negative spiral to a certain death of the relationship in the near future. You may still be staying together, and yet the relationship is dead emotionally, mentally and spiritually. How can we honour our word to ourself and others? Honouring my word is to keep my word; doing what I said I will do, at the time I said I will do, the way I said I will do. If I missed to keep my word, then Integrity would be to restore my word to regain my experience of being whole, complete and perfect. Restoring your word means to acknowledge your broken word and the impact of breaking your word to whoever the promise was made (either to self or to another), take responsibility of the impact and make a new promise. Though, why really bother? I came 2 minutes late to a meeting; or made a customer delivery 5 minutes late; or I said to a colleague “I will be with you in 5 minutes” and didn’t even see my watch to know when the 5 minutes started; or I plan to wake up at 7:00 am daily and hit the snooze button every time to snuggle in for another 2 minutes. Surely all these things are insignificant. Unfortunately, not. Why are such seemingly insignificant things so important? It is because our dreams and our intentions are our promises to ourselves, our word to ourselves. If we don’t value 100% of our own word moment by moment, the four bodies of our Being (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) assume that our word is of no value to us, we are not really committed to creating what we say and will not throw their full weight behind our dreams and intentions. With no inner power (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual support from our own self) to fulfil on our intentions and dreams, we struggle through life wanting so much but not experiencing fulfilment at being able to create all that we want to. Unfulfilled dreams and intentions rot us from inside, killing us softly with their unsung song. If you want inner personal power to create a magnificent Life, if you want to fulfil all your intentions and realize all your impossible unimaginable dreams that scare you because they seem so big, then value and honour every Word that you are at the source of. Keeping your word means doing what you said, doing it the way you meant it, at the time you said it. Lot of factors play to not make this possible always. Instead of just brushing something you missed under the carpet, Integrity would be to honour your word by restoring your broken word to restore your power to create. Restoring one’s word is a 5-step process: 1. Acknowledge your broken word. A word is broken when either you didn’t do , or didn’t do it the way you meant to do it, or didn’t do it by the time you said you would. You acknowledge your broken word to yourself if you had made a promise to yourself or you acknowledge your broken word to whoever you had made an explicit or an implicit promise to. For example - I had promised to finish this report by 5-Feb and I missed to submit it. I acknowledge my broken word. 2. The 2nd step is to share the impact of the broken word on yourself and on others. To continue with the same example - I had promised to finish this report by 5-Feb and I missed to submit it. I acknowledge my broken word.The impact on me is that I am feeling guilty and have been avoiding you. The impact on you is that you felt let down and got delayed in honouring your commitments. The impact is also that you lost trust on me. 3. The 3rd step is to take responsibility for the impact: Here’s how you do it - I had promised to finish this report by 5-Feb and I missed to submit it. I acknowledge my broken word.The impact on me is that I am feeling guilty and have been avoiding you. The impact on you is that you felt let down and got delayed in honouring your commitments. The impact is also that you lost trust on me. I take responsibility of this impact. 4. The 4th step is to make a new promise: Continuing with the same example - My new promise is to finish the report by today end of day. 5. The 5th step is to share your structure of success that will support you to fulfil on your new promise: In the above example - My structure of success would be to re-prioritize and re-schedule everything else on my calendar today so that I can fully focus on the report. To re-cap, Integrity is honouring and valuing yourself. Valuing and honouring yourself requires you to honour your word because you are the words you say to yourself and the words you say to others. Therefore, Integrity is honouring your word which is to keep your word - doing what you said you will do, at the time you said you will do it, the way you said you will do it. If you missed to keep your word, then Integrity requires you to restore your word to be in honour of your word. Integrity can either be 0% or 100%. Let me prove it mathematically. We are born with 100% integrity, with an experience of being whole, complete and perfect. Then something happens and we break our word and push it under the carpet. Our Integrity falls below 100%. Our integrity now, for example, is at 90%. Something happens and we are faced with the choice to honour our word or not. Our probability of honouring our word is only 90% of 90% which is 81%. Next time we are faced with a choice to honour our word or not to honour our word, our probability of making the choice to honour is now only 81% of 81% which is 66%. The next time, our integrity will reduce to 61% of 61% which is 37%, next time it will be 14%, then it will be 2%, finally it will fall to 0%. Therefore, keep track of promises you make, carefully observe what you say, take committed actions to fulfil your intentions and realise your dreams, honour your commitments and review the expectations people in your life have from you to ensure Integrity. Build the courage to have the difficult conversations to free yourself from the promise implicit in others’ expectations from you or have the strength to become bigger than who you are in this moment and honour others’ expectations from you. Remember Integrity is a Gear 4 value. Without the workouts on the other Gears to cycle up from Gear 0 to Gear 1 to Gear 2 to Gear 3, you will not have enough strength to be Integrity. Refer to the below 2 articles to understand this journey to come home to yourself. 1. How to use Gratitude as a Leadership Tool for Business Growth? 2. How Reverence for all of Life Supports you to Lead your Business from Good to Great? May you have the wisdom to be self-aware, courage to face your blind-spots and commitment to go beyond to connect with your Highest Self. In your personal journey from good to great, you will find the wisdom, the courage and the commitment to lead your business from good to great. Love, Jyoti. Inspiration: The Curriculum of Living from Landmark Worldwide
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Have you ever noticed that a senior leader is usually kinder and more respectful than people down below in the corporate ladder? I had a billing issue with our internet service provider. The call-centre representative was rude and point-blank refused to consider my request saying it is just not possible. I told her in that case I would request for disconnection. She told me - “Sure. I will connect you to our Disconnection Department.” That is inspite of the fact that I have been with this service provider for 14 years now. After a few minutes of waiting, she connected me to her supervisor. The tone and language of the supervisor is remarkably different - gentle and soft instead of brusque and loud. She has me soothed in no time, accepted my request in the first breath of the call and re-engaged me as a customer. After 14 years, going somewhere else was anyway a pain. I was only too happy to continue now that all my requests were accepted. This is my experience everywhere. Higher in the leadership hierarchy I go, there’s greater ease in communication, lesser stress, greater listening, lesser rush and a sense of respect flowing in both directions. Here’s a trick question: What comes first - reverence or growth in the organization? Always reverence. You can train yourself to be respectful but that’ll only take you so far. If you are aiming for the top seat and aiming to sit there for a long time, you would necessarily need to train yourself to be Reverence for yourself, all Beings in your space and for Life itself. This is because Respect is at the level of behaviour while Reverence is at the level of the Being. When some attribute is at the level of behaviour, it’s not deep enough and you may shift your behaviour based on where or with whom you are. Reverence means Deep Respect. It has trickled to the core of who you are - not only behaviourally / physically / verbally but also intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. If you reflect, you will find that Leadership Growth is nothing but evolution of the Leader on his / her journey to be the greatest version of themselves. As they walk on the inside to be the greatest version of themselves, they inspire followership and mass movement towards the future they want to create. That is when magic happens in organizations, when employees stop working for money and work for the joy of building cathedrals. Only then a business stops struggling to be good and heaves upto the zone of greatness. How does one melt into Reverence? It is a step by step process involving all the 4 bodies of your Being - physical, intellectual, emotional, spiritual. I love the analogy of a car to describe Leadership Evolution. You shift from neutral to Gear 1 to Gear 2 to Gear 3 to Gear 4 to Gear 5. Reverence comes in Gear 3 of Leadership Evolution. Gear 2 is when you soak yourself in Gratitude. Without Gratitude, Reverence is not available. Gear 1 is when you take responsibility for all that happens in your life - the good, the bad, the ugly - without making yourself or others wrong. Gear 1 is when you can see what you believe as a view from a point and recognise that it is just as valid as other views from all other points. Then you find yourself without a reason to argue, debate or feel righteous. You are at peace, knowing you have simply chosen a belief because you have chosen it and that doesn't make you more right than others. Gear 1 is when there is nothing to complain about because you know you are responsible for all that happens in your space. Though you neither make yourself wrong, nor others nor the situation. Gear 1 is to be able to see yourself as the source of your upsets and not people or circumstances. Gear 1 is the ability to make the choice to be happy, irrespective of what others do or don’t do, irrespective of what Life throws up at you. Only after this shift is Gratitude available to you as the most powerful creative force for you to create everything that you want to create in this Lifetime. Yes, you can create whatever you want in this Lifetime. Just that you have to keep becoming bigger than yourself, other people and Life itself; moment by moment. Welcome to your Hero’s journey. Love, Jyoti. Fads worry me because people pick them up more for their current flavour rather than the in-depth understanding to implement them to move their lives irrevocably to the next level. But the real problem is not so much that. The real problem is that the fads don’t shift us from the inside because their implementation is on the surface, only engaging the intellectual body. As a result, a very powerful habit that has the potential to uplift our life comes and goes; leaving us a little cynical about its value, lost to us forever. Gratitude also seems to have become a fad. I do hope it doesn’t remain one; so that the power of this leadership habit can be experienced in its full-blown intensity as the source of business growth. Gratitude is the most powerful creative force in the world. I have known it to heal cancer in the body, heal relationships, create health and fitness, financial freedom, business growth. What is Gratitude? It is being in the state of deep thankfulness. The most important word in the last sentence is BEING, as in the Human Being. The Being of the human being actually has four bodies - physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual. Therefore, to really bring on the power of gratitude in your life, you have to be engaged at all the four levels, all the four bodies of your Being experiencing deep thankfulness. I recently observed from a distance the concept of Gratitude being implemented in an organization. I applaud the organization for this massive new thinking initiative for their employees. Though, unfortunately, only the intellectual mind seemed to have got engaged as I could see from the use of timers for regular gratitude moments and mastermind style group updates. I wonder if the BEING shifted for the people participating in this initiative. Did they feel different? Did they create different outcomes in their lives, personally and professionally? Did they experience being suffused by Divine Love and Intelligence. Till it is not this deep, Gratitude doesn’t work. It is not about thinking Gratitude, it is about feeling Gratitude viscerally beyond the level of the mind. Though, intellectually understanding Gratitude is the beginning of the journey. My one-time teacher, Brandon Bays, used Gratitude to shift her body at a cellular level to heal and melt her basket-ball size tumour in her stomach that had her look like a fully-pregnant woman. She calls that process “The Journey”. I did a one-year program with her to understand and learn to deliver it to my clients. I have had my clients clear up emotional blocks from childhood to finally access Gratitude viscerally to heal themselves, heal their relationships and grow their businesses. Gratitude is like a Gear 2 process. Without moving from neutral to Gear 1, shifting habits across all the 4 bodies of the Being, one cannot step into the zone of Gratitude. Let's call that Gear 2. Then, Zone of Genius would be Gear 3. Here’s a true story for you to understand the steps to accessing Gratitude. If you chant the magic mantra “I love you. I am sorry. Please forgive me. Thank you.”, nothing much may shift because the mantra actually captures the 4-step inner transformational journey that is required for the kind of magic that Dr Hew Len was able to create through what he called ‘Ho’oponopono’ and that Brandon Bays was able to create through ‘The Journey’ process. It is the same 4-step shift that a prayer or a spiritual practice can induce if it is intense and from the depths of one’s heart. I heard of a Sikh lady who healed her breast cancer by simply chanting ‘Wahe Guru’ with childlike trust and fate. It is the same 4-step inner process. Here are the 4-steps: 1. The 1st step is to unconditionally love and accept one’s own self, however one is and however one is not; relating to oneself as whole, complete and perfect. (I love you) 2. The 2nd step is to take responsibility for all that happens in one’s space - the good, the bad, the ugly. (I am sorry) 3. The 3rd step is to forgive oneself for causing the mess in one’s own life. (Please forgive me) I call the above 3 steps part of Gear 1 leadership transformation. 4. Now, one is ready for experiencing Gratitude viscerally in the body and emotionally. (Thank you) This is what I call as Gear 2 of the leadership transformation journey. And, wait there are 3 more Gears to step up to. Though, as of now, we will content ourselves with understanding Gear 3, which is the 5th step below. 5. Therefore, the 5th step is falling into childlike trust and faith in the Universe, which is really experiencing Gratitude spiritually. Without experiencing Gratitude emotionally, this step-up is not available. The important thing to remember is that all the 5 steps are available as an outcome of dropping our limiting physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual habits and taking on Growth Habits. Habits are like building blocks of who we are and what we can create. To shift what you can create in your life, you have to shift who you are. And, to shift who you are, you have to shift what your habits are across all the 4 bodies of your Being. Wishing you the joy of this deeply fulfilling journey of growing yourself and your business. Love, Jyoti. If you are in the business of services, this is one book you want your sales team to read. The book is about what sabotages client loyalty and how to get past that to have not only your clients asking to do more business with you but also sending more clients from their network to your doorstep. But, before you gift the book to your sales team with the expectation of seeing increase in your top and bottom line, you would need to read it first because what is in the book cannot be implemented unless you as their leader believe in and live these principles. The author, Patrick M Lencioni, is Founder and President of The Table Group, a successful management consulting firm specialising in executive team development and organisational health. His business principles are now course material at the University of Saint Mary. CNN Money listed him in 2008 as one of "10 new gurus you should know”. He is "one of the most in-demand business speakers.” His work has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and USA Today. Read below few excerpts from the book to get an overview of the magic formula and experience deeply fulfilling, joyous success even as you smile all the way to your bank by implementing the ideas from the book. 1. Without the willingness to be vulnerable, we will not build deep and lasting relationships in life. That’s because there’s no better way to earn a person’s trust than by putting ourselves in a position of unprotected weakness and demonstrating that we believe they will support us. 2. For those who provide service to clients, vulnerability is particularly powerful. Those who get comfortable being vulnerable - or as I call it, naked - are rewarded with levels of client loyalty and intimacy that other service providers can only dream of. 3. …even though clients require us to be competent enough to meet their needs, it is ultimately our honesty, humility, and selflessness that will endear us to them and allow them to trust and depend on us. 4. … we need to make sure that they’d be the right kind of client. … We’ve learned over years that having a bad client is worse than having none. … it prevents you from finding other good clients. And you’re unlikely to get a good reference. In fact, they are likely to tell everyone they know how you weren’t able to help them, because they certainly aren’t going to admit it was their fault. … it just makes you feel bad about coming to work. It destroys the culture. 5. “Do you ever worry that you are going to do too much during your sales call, and that the client will take it and use it and not hire you?” … “I don’t worry about it. Very few people are going to do something like that. If they need help, they need help. Even if what I show them makes perfect sense, they usually know they need help implementing it and getting the rest of their team on board. … even if they do that, then they’d probably be a pretty lousy client anyway. So it would be better to find that out up front.” 6. … fairly long list of principles … but not much structure around their approach. 7. … one of the most intense, interesting and effective behavioural therapy exercises I had ever witnessed. All in a little more than an hour. Starting with the CEO, they went around the room and told him what they thought his most valuable attribute was for the team, and then they went around and told him the one thing they thought he should work on. The answers were pretty consistent; he took them well, and promised to do his best to address the biggest area of weakness, … Then they went around the table and did the same for everyone else … 8. Almost all of the time and energy … was being directed toward consulting to (servicing) paying clients. Those clients in turn became the sales engine for the firm, and even when we did an occasional cold call, it was the references from clients that shortened the sales cycle considerably. I’m not even sure I’d call it a sales cycle at all. 9.” … They spend almost none of their time selling. … most of their business comes from referrals and warm leads. And in the rare event that they do a cold call, they spend very little time doing research or writing up proposals or wordsmithing presentations.” What do they do then? … “… when they meet up with a client, they spend their time asking questions and doing primary research right there. It’s like they skip the entire sales process. And, they are remarkably successful. … instead of trying to outsmart the companies they are selling to, they just go there and start consulting.” 10. … they are far less professional than we are. They are also less sophisticated, less rigourous and less systematic. But they are so much more effective. … every client … raves about these people. They do most of the marketing for them, and without being asked. More than half their clients come from unsolicited referrals. 11. Why did the client pick them instead of us? The client tells them why - “It just felt like you guys were going to tell us how to run our business, and you were trying to convince us that you knew more than us, I guess. And you were telling us all the things that you would do for us if we hired you. They didn’t do that. … They didn’t come up with any answers. But they asked questions. And, they had suggestions, but they admitted that some or all of these suggestions might not be right. And, some of them weren’t, but some were, and more than anything, it felt like they were more interested in helping us figure our problems than they were in closing the deal.” What has it been like working with them since then? “The same as it was that day. It’s like all they are interested in doing is helping us solve our problems. I’ve already told half a dozen other CEOs about them. I couldn’t be happier.” 12. The power of what they do can be explained in one word: vulnerability. 13. The three fears that sabotage client loyalty i. The 1st Fear: Fear of losing the business It’s not that they go out of their way to tick off their clients. It’s just that they are so focussed on saying and doing whatever is in the best interests of those clients that they stop worrying about the repercussions. They make themselves completely vulnerable, or naked, and don’t try to protect themselves. … they’ll usually look at a company’s website and get a general sense of what business the client is in. But they do most of their research when they meet the client, by asking questions. And they certainly don’t come up with a slideshow or a marketing packet. a. Consult, don’t sell. Give away the business. The other part of this, giving away the business, is about never worrying about the fees. Don’t bring them up during the sales call unless they ask. Don’t apologise for what you charge when they do ask. And if there’s ever a dispute about fees, side with the client and charge the lesser amount. … That’s what nakedness and vulnerability are all about. If a client wants to take advantage of you, let them. I’ve seen their consultants go to a client and suggest that they pay a lower retainer because they weren’t using their services enough.’ … It’s all about standing there naked in front of the client. It’s about building trust. And in the end, that means the client trusts them and takes care of them. b. Tell the kind truth I know a consultant who told his client that he needed to move his son out of a leadership position because he was incompetent. Another guy I know recently told a CEO that he doesn’t hold his staff accountable. And, last week I had to tell a guy that I thought he talked too much during meetings. But remember the ‘kind’ part. We give them that sort of feedback with a level of empathy and concern that you would normally reserve for a friend. No matter how uncomfortable the conversation might be in the moment, eventually the clients are so glad that someone cares enough about them to be honest, they probably can’t imagine not having you around. c. Enter the danger In consulting, entering the danger comes into play in those moments when you are in a meeting and someone says something that is either strange or politically sensitive, and you know that the level of anxiety and discomfort in the room is high. What you are tempted to do is just be quiet and let the moment pass, but what great consultants do is walk right into the middle of the situation and call it out. Whenever I see someone enter the danger …, clients inevitably come up to you individually and thank you. They say things like “I am so glad you made us talk about that’, and ‘I’ve been wanting to do what you did today for three years, but I felt it would have been a career-limiting move.” ii. The 2nd Fear: Fear of being embarrassed One fear that most consultants struggle with is the fear of being embarrassed or looking stupid in front of their clients. a. Ask dumb questions Whether it’s an industry term or an acronym or a concept that everyone else in the room seems to understand, they just never pretend to know more than they do. … I think their clients appreciate that about them. b. Make dumb suggestions <Don’t hesitate to make suggestions, even if they turn out to be dumb.> c. Celebrate your mistakes If a suggestion turns out to be dumb, you admit it was a bad idea as soon as you realize it. You laugh at yourself. You take their ribbing. And most important, you don’t stop making suggestions. Most of your ideas won’t be horrible. Even the ones that aren’t so good won’t hurt you as long as you are humble enough to acknowledge that you are not an expert. And if you have built trust with the client, they don’t think about it for a second. … The idea is that your clients are looking for good suggestions, and they don’t mind sifting through some not-so-good ones as long as they are offered with good intentions and with no ego attached. iii. The 3rd Fear: Fear of feeling inferior One of the last things consultants want is for their clients to look down on them or, even worse, look right through them. There is something about wanting them to see you as being important that goes with the job. The fear of being embarrassed or looking stupid is about taking an intellectual risk. It’s about the pride of not wanting to be wrong. The fear of feeling inferior is more about humility as a person, not needing to be the centre of attention. Even taking on a role of true subservience to a client. … some of the principles that go down with this … a. Take a bullet for the client b. Make everything about the client c. Honour the client’s work - This is about genuinely displaying enthusiasm and respect for what the client does. d. Do the dirty work There is something so powerful about a person who in one moment can be confident enough to confront a client about a sensitive personal issue, and then in the next moment humble themselves and take a position of servitude. It’s the paradoxical nature of it all that makes it work. Here are few excerpts from the book where the author explains what he means by The Naked Service Model and what to do specifically to shed the three fears that destroy client loyalty. At the outset, let me tell you that it won't be as simple as reading the book to get breakthrough business performance. What the implementation of the ideas in the book really requires is the transformation of what it means to be you, what it means to be a leader in your organization, what it means to be a business in the world. Its only on this journey of leadership transformation beginning with you will you get access to your inner creative power and outer enthusiastic followership to lead your organisation to cut over from good to great. What this journey requires is for us to build high levels of self-awareness about our own evolutionary fears - I am not good enough, I am not important, I am all alone. After being present to one of these or a combination of these fears, the journey requires us to march forth like peaceful warriors to transmute these evolutionary fears to step into the highest version of ourselves. Click here to read the 5-Stage Leadership Development Process I use with my clients to support them to become naked service providers; unleashing their performance, productivity, creativity and innovation. They create not only breakthrough business results but also breakthroughs in other areas of their life - health and fitness, relationships, kids, finances, purpose, spirituality, emotional intelligence. I find it incredibly beautiful to observe how building a great business only happens in parallel to going within to be the greatest version of who we are. Wishing you the joy of the journey. Love, Jyoti. Values are our commitment to ourself, a promise to our own self as to who we are committed to be; irrespective of the chaos inside or outside, irrespective of how people are or aren’t, irrespective of what people do or don’t, irrespective of what people say or don’t. Defining our personal values defines for our own self as to who we really are. It gives us a place to stand in firmly, instead of swaying to every strong wind that may push us in one direction or the other. Instead of reacting to how people or circumstances are, we can learn to respond from who we have committed to be. This makes us far more productive, effective, in control of our lives, in control of the outcomes in our life, creative, innovative, happy, joyful and at peace. If your inner values drive you, I call you a Peaceful Warrior fighting your battles within in recognition of the fact that the problems outside are mere reflection of what’s inside. If you take out your sword every morning to fight the challenges that the day lays out for you, I call you a Fighter. It is an exhausting lifestyle, constantly fighting to get what one wants. Fighters fight the Victims or other Fighters because Peaceful Warriors are on a different path. If you constantly hear yourself complaining, you know you just slipped into the Victim mode. Who would you rather be - Peaceful Warrior, Fighter, Victim? What you choose determines the destination your organization is headed towards - industry innovator and leader, one of the many or struggling to remain out of the red. So, what are your Values? They would be inner resources that inspire you. Here are examples of what they could look like - love, gratitude, reverence, integrity, mastery, joy, gentleness, abundance, kindness, generosity, compassion, fun, freedom, fulfilment, creativity, leader, service, contribution, commitment, dedication, loyal, innovation, humility, respect, understanding, appreciation, positive, cheerful, enthusiasm, energy et al. You could choose from this list or come up with your own. Once you are clear about your own values, it is about living them moment by moment by having your thoughts, beliefs, words, actions in alignment with your core values. If your core value is kindness, observe your every thought, word and action to assess if you are truly being that. Only if you live your values will you be able to inspire your family at home and your people at work to live those values. No amount of talking or plastering the walls with lot of words has an impact as much as you living those values. It is important that your core values are aligned with the organization you are leading for your people to learn to live the organisational values. Your biggest and the first job as a chief executive is to reset values, vision and mission for your organization which are in alignment with your personal values, vision and mission that inspires you. A mismatch here will reduce your power to lead your organization forward from good to great. Values define who you are, your vision is the future you want to create and your mission is what you will do to create that future. Organisational values defines what the organization believes, stands for and values more than profits. The organisation’s vision is where is the company going and why it exists. The organisation’s mission is what it is upto to lead itself to where it wants to go and fulfil on its reason for existence. Before an organisation’s values, vision and mission can be defined, the CEO and the senior leadership team needs to come together to discuss their personal values, vision and mission to reset the organisation’s values, vision and mission that is deeply connected with their own. Without this visceral connection, your company’s values, vision and mission would be empty words on the walls instead of being the source of inspiration for the whole workforce to come together to transform the industry and lead from the front, making a massive difference to your customer community. Market leadership, profitability and scalability will be an effortless by-product of this process. If you want to pump in new blood into your business and are committed to learn, evolve and massively grow, write to me at jyoti@jyotigulati.com for a session to reset your organisation’s values, vision and mission. Wishing you a joyous journey to contribute to your customer and employee communities as you grow not only your business but the social eco-system along with it. Love, Jyoti. Imagine I passed you a bottle of water, which you gave to someone else. Will the content of the bottle undergo a transformation just because it changed hands from me to you to someone else? In the same way, who you are at home, at work and everywhere else does not change as you move one context to the other. The mask may change but the results we create is not the function of the mask but who we authentically are. In other words, the whole of who we are is our Being which is the sum total of who we are physically, emotionally, intellectually (/ mentally) and spiritually. The habits at each of these four bodies define the outcomes we create in our lifetime. To access the full power to make a dent in the Universe by fulfilling on our purpose this lifetime, by fulfilling our highest intentions and realising our greatest dreams with impact and velocity is an outcome of first creating health and well-being by inculcating Growth Habits at each of these 4 bodies - physical, emotional, intellectual / mental, spiritual. If we are not effective at home with kids who we are not able to inspire to live from their inner genius, their innate greatness, their inner light that they are meant to shine the world with; then Leadership Depth is missing where we are, irrespective of the big business outcomes that we may have created at workplace. If Leadership Depth were present, we would make a much bigger impact in the world not only outside our homes but also in our homes, not only outside us but inside us than we are currently creating; with deep joyous fulfilment, happiness, peace, love, connection, harmony, grace and freedom in our hearts. In that sense, our children are our walking talking mirrors. They shout at us and not listen to us. We know we have shouted at them and others; and not listened to them and others at home and at work. They don't do their homework on time and get poor marks; we know that we are not really inspired to challenge ourselves to be a life-long learner, living with the experience of the joy of learning. They waste their time on screen instead of reading books or playing in the park; we know we spend way too much time on the screen instead of reading books and playing a sport to learn, grow and evolve ourselves. They are getting over-weight and we know we are not at the peak of our own health. They fight with each other and we know we parents have no friendship between us. They prefer eating a chocolate to a banana, a pizza to a roti, french fries to fresh, colourful vegetables; and we know we don't have healthy eating habits. They love their colas over drinking refreshing water and we know we love our tea, coffee, alcohol over coconut water. There isn't a better Leadership training ground than home. We have to do 10 times of what we expect the kids to do. We want to stop hitting the snooze button if we want our kids to wake up at our first call. We want to practise unconditional love and acceptance; irrespective of what the kids do or don't do, irrespective of what the kids say or don't say, irrespective of how the kids are and how they are not; if we want our children to grow up with self-esteem and feel worthy of love. We no longer can use rewards and punishments to control them, to get them to do what we want them to do because they will learn to crave for the rewards and learn aversion for the punishments, instead of learning what we really want them to learn - to be kind, loving, generous, honest, truthful, to have childlike trust & faith in the Universe and to live with gratitude, joy, reverence and mastery consciousness. We want to learn how to connect with them at the deepest level so that they want to share their dark, fearful secrets and impossible, unimaginable dreams with us so that we can coach them to embrace their fears and joyously realize their greatest dreams in deepest communion with their highest self, making a huge difference in the world as they are meant to. If we learn to be a Leader at home, we will know how to inspire our team members to stand tall with self-esteem, connect authentically with themselves and others in the organisation with compassionate love for each other, become masters of their domain and bring in such levels of self-generated 'being of service' that our customers experience themselves to be a part of our organizational family and become our fervent brand ambassadors that sales will no longer be about chasing customers and numbers. Our teams will begin to function independently to our highest vision and collaborate with each other to create a business impact unimaginable and impossible before. All that we would need to do then is to get out of their way as they lead our business from good to great, from a fairly successful business to a massively transformational market leader far ahead of other businesses in the industry. Wishing you such joyous and fulfilling success. Love and Reverence, Jyoti. The book is a quick powerful inspirational read, perfect for in-flight reading or if you are in-between flights, only 100-pages short. Your trip will be memorable not because of the outcomes you created but because you read this little book. Deepak Chopra is a world-leading expert in the area of human potential, health and well-being. In this book he shares principles that have helped him and countless others (that includes me and my clients) to achieve both material success and joyous fulfilment. These principles will help you to live your highest potential, make a big impact in the world through your work or business, make a difference to the communities and country you are part of, become a key person of influence in your industry transforming the industry itself. If you are someone who is committed to lead your business from good to great from a state of grace, understand and implement these principles. The book begins with this beautiful quote from Upanishads, a part of Vedas which are the most ancient Hindu scriptures: You are what your deep, driving desire is. As your desire is, so is your will. As your will is, so is your deed. As your deed is, so is your destiny. Of course, the question is whether you will nourish, grow and evolve yourself physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually to allow your destiny to fully bloom. Here are few excerpts from the book to inspire you to read the book from cover to cover: 1. Success in life could be defined as the continued expansion of happiness and the progressive realization of worthy goals. Success is the ability to fulfil your desires with effortless ease. ... There are many aspects to success; material wealth is only one component. ... success also includes good health, energy and enthusiasm for life, fulfilling relationships, creative freedom, emotional and psychological stability, a sense of well-being and a peace of mind. 2. ... pure joy ... pure knowledge, infinite silence, perfect balance, invincibility, simplicity and bliss. This is our essential nature. When you discover your essential nature and know who you really are, in that knowing itself is the ability to fulfill any dream you have ... 3. The need for approval, the need to control things, and the need for external power are needs that are based on fear. 4. The ego ... is not who you really are. The ego is your self-image; it is a social mask; it is the role you are playing. Your social mask thrives on approval. It wants to control, and it is sustained by power, because it lives in fear. You true Self, which is your spirit, your soul, is completely free of those things. It is immune to criticism, it is unfearful of any challenge, and it feels beneath no one. And yet, it is also humble and feels superior to no one ... 5. ... if you want to make full use of the creativity which is inherent in pure consciousness, then you have to have access to it. One way to access the field is through the daily practise of silence, meditation and non-judgment. Spending time in nature will also give you access to the qualities inherent in the field: infinite creativity, freedom and bliss. 6. And then you create the possibility of dynamic activity while at the same time carrying the stillness of the eternal, unbounded, creative mind. ... This coexistence of opposites - stillness and dynamism at the same time - makes you independent of situations, circumstances, people and things. 7. ... if you want joy, give joy to others; if you want love, learn to give love; if you want attention and appreciation, learn to give attention and appreciation; if you want material affluence, help others to become materially affluent. In fact, the easiest way to get what you want is to help others get what they want. This principle works equally well for individuals, corporations, societies and nations. 8. Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind ... what we sow is what we reap. And when we choose actions that bring happiness and success to others, the fruits of our karma is happiness and success. 9. Whether you like it or not, everything that is happening at this moment is a result of the choices you've made in the past. Unfortunately, a lot of us make choices unconsciously, and therefore we don't think they are choices - and yet, they are. ... your future is generated by the choices you are making in every moment of your life. ... The more you bring your choices into the level of your conscious awareness, the more you will make those choices which are spontaneously correct - both for you and those around you. 10. ... when we harness the forces of harmony, joy and love, we create success and good fortune with effortless ease. 11. An integral being knows without going, sees without looking, and accomplishes without doing. - Lao Tzu. 12. Least effort is expended when your actions are motivated by love, because nature is held together by the energy of love. When you seek power and control over other people, you waste energy. ... When your actions are motivated by love, your energy multiplies and accumulates - and the surplus energy you gather and enjoy can be channeled to create anything that you want, including unlimited wealth. 13. ... most of our energy goes into upholding our importance ... if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two, we would provide ourselves enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the Universe. - from The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda. 14. This moment - the one you are experiencing right now - is the culmination of all the moments you have experienced in the past. This moment is as it is because the entire Universe is as it is. When you struggle against this moment, you are actually struggling against the entire Universe. Instead, you can make the decision that today you will not struggle against the whole Universe by struggling against this moment. This means that your acceptance of this moment is total and complete. You accept things as they are, not as you wish they were in this moment. ... You can wish for things in the future to be different, but in this moment you have to accept things as they are. 15. When you feel frustrated or upset by a person or a situation, remember that you are not reacting to the person or the situation, but to your feelings about the person or the situation. These are your feelings, and your feelings are not someone else's fault. When you recognize and understand this completely, you are ready to take responsibility for how you feel and to change it. 16. Responsibility means not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself. Having accepted the circumstance, this event, this problem; responsibility then means the ability to have a creative response to the situation as it is now. 17. Whenever confronted by a tyrant, tormentor, teacher, friend, or foe (they all mean the same thing), remind yourself - "This moment is as it should be." Whatever relationships you have attracted in your life at this moment are precisely the ones you need in your life at this moment. There is a hidden meaning behind all events, and this hidden meaning is serving your evolution. 15. If you just relinquish the need to defend your point of view, you will in that relinquishment, gain access to enormous amounts of energy that have been previously wasted. When you become defensive, blame others, and do not accept and surrender to the moment, your life meets resistance. 16. ... if you stop fighting and resisting, ... if you embrace the present ..., joy will be born within you and you will drop the terrible burdens ... of defensiveness, resentment and hurtfulness. Only then will you become lighthearted, carefree, joyous and free. ... When you have the exquisite combination of acceptance, responsibility and defenselessness, you will experience life flowing with effortless ease. When you remain open to all points of views - not rigidly attached to only one - your dreams and desires will flow with nature's desires. 17. Attention energizes and intention transforms. Whenever you put your attention on will grow stronger in your life. Whatever you take your attention away from will wither, disintegrate, and disappear. Intention, on the other hand, triggers transformation of energy and information. Intention organizes its own fulfilment. ... Intention is the real power behind desire. Intent alone is very powerful, because intent is desire without attachment to the outcome. ... Intention combined with detachment leads to life-centered, present-moment awareness. And when action is performed in present moment awareness, it is most effective. Your intent is for the future, but your attention is in the present. ... The future is something you can always create through detached intention, but you should never struggle against the present. 18. One-pointed intention is that quality of attention that is unbending in its fixity of purpose. One-pointed intention means holding your attention to the intended outcome with such unbending purpose that you absolutely refuse to allow obstacles to consume and dissipate the focused quality of your attention. There is a total and complete exclusion of all obstacles from your consciousness. You are able to maintain an unshakable serenity while being committed to your goal with intense passion. This is the power of detached (present moment) awareness and one-pointed, focused intention simultaneously. 19. ... in order to acquire anything in the physical Universe, you have to relinquish your attachment to it. This doesn't mean you give up the intention to create your desire. You don't give up the intention, and you don't give up the desire. You give up your attachment to the result. ... Detachment is synonymous with wealth consciousness, because with detachment there is freedom to create. Only from detached involvement can one have joy and laughter. ... Without detachment, we are prisoners of helplessness, hopelessness, mundane needs, trivial concerns, quiet desperation and seriousness - the distinctive features of everyday mediocre existence and poverty consciousness. 20. Every single problem that you have in your life is the seed of an opportunity for some greater benefit. 21. Everyone has a purpose in life ... a unique gift or special talent to give to others. And when we blend this unique talent with service to others, we experience the ecstacy and exultation of our own spirit, which is the ultimate goal of all goals. Wishing you the clarity to march forth on your Hero's journey to fulfil the purpose of your life. Love, Jyoti. Vulnerability is the courage to be authentic about your inauthenticities. Vulnerability is calling yourself out when you catch yourself being inauthentic. Vulnerability is letting others know your fears and ugly truths instead of hiding them from not only others but from your own self. When we have the courage to be vulnerable, we will walk into joyous freedom. When others know our deep dark ugly secrets, the fear of others knowing we are not good enough no longer holds us hostage and can no longer blackmail us into living a small life. That's when we can break free from the chains of bondage, which are inside us rather than outside, to live our greatest life, to realise our biggest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self and fulfil 100% of our intentions in all areas of our lives. In this way, moving from fear into freedom is the purpose of our life so that we can fulfil on our destiny to be Heroes of our journey this lifetime. Here's the framework that I use for myself and for my clients: Gear 0 - At this stage, either we are a Victim of other people or circumstances or both, feeling trapped by Life. Or, we are a Fighter resisting Life, fighting to get what we want. The Universe gifts us with pain and loss to awaken us to our Hero's journey. If we are lucky, we learn the message the Universe is giving us from the gift of the pain and loss and grow bigger than who we are as human beings. This conscious inner growth is our only access to go beyond the pain and loss. And, yet, there's another way to grow. We choose to grow much before pain and loss is needed to awaken the giant within us. The second path is the path of Insights, which we access through someone mentoring / coaching us if we give ourselves the permission to receive that contribution. Gear 1 - Either through pain and loss or through insights, we evolve to the next level of who we are as human beings. The first step is to look within for deeper self-awareness, for discovering our fears and ugly truths which we have pushed to the basement of our psyche, for discovering our coping strategy to hide our fears and ugly truths from our own self. On discovery, go through the fire of vulnerable authenticity to acknowledge your fears and ugly truths to your own self and to others so that there is no need to hide behind a mask or an armour anymore. In doing that, the stress and heaviness falls away. There is a sense of relief and a lightness of being. By doing this, we have truly embraced ourselves - flaws and all. Now we are ready for the next stage of our Hero's Journey. During a session I was leading for entrepreneurs and business owners, I got present to a neediness to get one of the participants to renew his engagement with me as his coach. I called myself out and acknowledged that to the group. Before that acknowledgement, my stomach was in knots and my heart was burning with humiliation. On acknowledging my ugly truth, I freed myself, him and the group because 80% of communication happens non-verbally and the group energy would have been vitiated by my pretence of that neediness not being there. In that space of authentic vulnerability that got created, I was able to coach more effectively and powerfully making a much bigger difference than I would have been able to do otherwise because most of my energy would have been consumed in the hiding of the neediness. Not only that, the participants experienced the courage to be vulnerable. That single act of authentic vulnerability contributed massively not only to the participants but to me, their leader. Just by shifting to this first stage, so much locked up productivity, performance, creativity and innovation gets released because we become true collaborators, can give up competing with each other and the concomitant hideous pretence, to now connect authentically and deeply with each other. Gear 2 - After having forgiven ourselves for our flaws in the first stage, we are now ready to evolve to the next stage of leadership - to forgive others for their flaws and accept them the way they are and the way they are not, without any need to control them, to simply love them unconditionally without the need for them to change for us to love them, giving them the space to grow at their own pace and on their own path, experiencing joyous gratitude for being on our own journey and for all beings who share a bit of our journey with us. Gear 3 - At this stage, we begin to experience reverence for all beings and all things. There is childlike trust and faith in the Universe. We begin to receive with joyous gratitude whatever situations Life sends our way as gifts of the Universe. We no longer try to make things happen our way because there is an inner knowing that our way is already unfolding. We leap into exponential productivity, performance, creativity and innovation. We have the clarity on which 20% gives us 80% outcomes and courage to do only those 20%. From complexity, we move towards simplicity realizing that good solutions are complex but great solutions are simple. The power of clarity helps us go deeper within and create higher levels of success on the outside, unimaginable before. From 'so much to do, so little time' frenzy of Gear 0, we flow into abundance of time for all that we want to do. We begin to welcome and embrace whatever we resisted before, uncovering more fears and dropping more layers of the thick dark wall to finally connect to our inner Light, our innate Greatness. Gear 4 - Our power to create continues to expand and we find ourselves in the 4th stage, Gear 4. In this stage, we have the power to inspire people in our space to step into Gear 1. Gear 5 - This is when we step into mastery consciousness and experience the power to inspire people in our space to step into Gear 2. Our productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity, innovation continues to expand exponentially from Gear 3 to Gear 4 to Gear 5 as we now have the ability to inspire other people to expand their productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity and innovation. We now have the power to lead our businesses, our communities, our countries from good to great. The evolution from Gear 0 to Gear 5 is an outcome of a conscious decision to transform who we are as human beings. To progress on this path, we begin to drop bit-by-bit limiting habits and take on growth habits across all the 4 bodies of our Being (physical, mental / intellectual, emotional and spiritual). As we continue walking on this journey from fear to love and freedom, from scarcity to abundance, from a victim to a creator, from struggle to effortlessness and grace, from ignorance and unconsciousness to deep awareness and wisdom, from lethargy of the mind / body / soul to joyous energy of effective and powerful action; we realise our greatest dreams in deepest communion with our highest self and have it all - deeply fulfilling successful abundance-creating creatively self-expressed career, loving harmonious relationships, happy responsible kids with their genius joyfully expressed, nourishing nurturing our own self, while making a difference in the world through our work and life. Wishing you the joy of the journey to come home to yourself. Love, Jyoti. After a point, getting your direct team to take action in alignment with your vision and in partnership with each other becomes the biggest bottleneck for business growth. One CEO I was talking to yesterday lamented how he had been driving home the point to his team during every Monday morning standing meeting on tough action to be taken and all he had received for the last few months is a yes from few who never took action and silent shuffling of feet from the rest. Another CEO felt his team never kept pace with the massive amount of creative ideas for business growth that he was generating. Yet another CEO experienced a silent mutiny from his most powerful direct report because the CEO had been hired from outside, ignoring the CFO's ambitions to sit in the corner office. Another client shared how he felt his team just wasn't scaling up with action and there was a lot to ask for as far as velocity to respond to market situations and customer demand was concerned. I am usually approached to transform the senior leadership team to become more agile, more open to new ideas, more quick to implement, more coachable, more receptive to feedback, more open to learning, have greater leadership depth, be more collaborative and more of a lot many other things to support business growth. It always turns out that I end up coaching the CEO to become more agile, more open to new ideas, more quick to implement, more coachable, more receptive to feedback, more open to learning, have greater leadership depth, be more collaborative and more of a lot many other things for business to grow. Here are few ideas to help you transform your direct team to become powerful allies for each other and for you that together you lead your business from good to great for deeply fulfilling, joyous, sustainable success: 1. Your team and your organisation is your mirror. If you find something missing out there, it would support you to look in the mirror for the source of that. Start there. 2. The only way to inspire others to support you to realise your dreams is to really understand what their dreams are and be committed to support them to realise theirs, even if it seems on the surface to be conflicting with yours. 3. Drop your masks and armours so that they can drop theirs. A great team is built when members can connect to each other with authenticity and vulnerability. 4. Do 10 times what you ask them to do. That is what leadership is and you are their leader. 5. Trust them so that they can trust you. 6. Become their coach. As their leader, it is your responsibility to be their coach to support them to reach their highest self and not outsource this responsibility. 7. Live your values, mission and vision instead of talking about it. Non-verbal communication has greater impact than the words you use. 8. Become coachable so that they become coachable. Being coachable means having the ability to look inside for the mess outside. 9. Give self-care the highest importance. Then only will you be authentically be able to care for others. 10. Be compassionate love and kindness so that they become compassionate love and kindness. This is the secret sauce of a company on the way to greatness. 11. Make personal mastery your mantra and grow physically, emotionally, mentally / intellectually and spiritually; so that your team and subsequently your organisation lives from mastery and excellence consciousness, making a dent in the Universe. 12. Lead with questions so that your team generates ideas and solutions, not you. 13. Constantly learn, unlearn and relearn so that your direct reports are eternal students and create a learning organisation. 14. Have the agility of mind to wrap your head 360 degree around any reality to have the ability to see the truth in every point of view, however contradictory. So that your team bring in understanding and reverence for their peers' views to collaborate with each other for business growth instead of running to you to solve their conflicts. 15. Learn to communicate in the world of others by using silence as your gift. Communication is 90% listening and 10% talking. In that 10%, only asking questions to allow for more listening to happen. 16. Be the world of integrity. What you say, you do at the time you said you would do it, the way you said you would do it; however much it hurts you, irrespective of to whom you may have given your word. Be like this and your team will never say yes and not do it. 17. Let humility and gratefulness be your essence that it powers others in your space to become stars; to have the strength and courage to remove the dark curtain of ignorance between them and their light. 18. Be the least interesting person in the room to give space to others to become leaders. Choose being interested instead of being interesting. Your leadership success will come from creating more leaders, not more followers because more leaders drives your business up and more followers only leads your business to a certain death in a future not so far away. Choose compassionate love and reverence over charisma, all the time. 19. Have the vision that brings tears to your eyes. Have a vision to make a dent in the Universe to give your team the invigorating, refreshing, exhilarating, rejuvenating energy of a crusade, of a revolution, of transformation, of building cathedrals overs cutting stones. Have a vision that has the power of giving you the purpose of your life so that it gives your team the purpose of their life. 20. Have relationship of equals. Have the same reverence for your office boy as for your biggest client. This is the energy you need to grow leaders. 21. Know you are here to be of service - to your direct team, to your employees, to your customers, to your family, to your community, to your country and ultimately to humanity. Being settled in this will centre you; with nowhere to go and nothing to prove. That will unleash productivity, performance, effectiveness, creativity, innovation at levels you have never experienced before in yourself and in your team. Keep making a difference. There is a reason why you are born, there's a reason why you are in the position that you are in. It is to come home to yourself through the work you do. Love, Jyoti. Homo Sapiens grew up in tribes and subsequently fragmented into nuclear families. The next stage in the journey is to get back together again in a structure called Joint Families; where grandparents, parents and children stay together in a symbiotic relationship of love, peace, joy, harmony and yet, full self-expression; supporting each other to fulfil each others' intentions and realize each others' dreams. It takes greater leadership depth to stay together than to stay by yourself. Values can only be emulated. They cannot be taught. Leadership means to respond from one's values instead of reacting from fear. Therefore, leadership in its truest essence cannot be taught in a classroom. Neither can we wait for kids to grow up to learn leadership in organisations, where they are assigned coaches to support them to increase their leadership depth. Grandparents and parents are the first coaches and mentors. As parents are often away on their day job, raising of kids is delegated to day-cares or nannies or at the cost of the mother's professional self-expression. There is not only an economic but a much bigger emotional and spiritual impact of such an arrangement. There's loneliness at both ends - loneliness of growing older where one generation (grandparents) can no longer seek refuge in the busyness of being busy and the other generation (grandkids) hasn't as yet learnt to submerge themselves in the busyness of life. Bringing these two generations together serves both of them as the pace of life for them is the same. Since values of love, gratitude, reverence, integrity, mastery, joy, gentleness can only be role-modelled; kids have a greater learning opportunity observing their parents and grandparents living these values with each other. Marital relationships go through the cycle of stress and strain as the parents evolve in their own journey to greater harmony with each other. Therefore, parents may not be ideal relationship role models for kids. Similarly, in organizations, getting the older generation to exit at a certain retirement age is creating a huge loss for the organisations by taking away natural mentoring and coaching relationships from the eco-system. Google recently demonstrated that its best employees were not Ivy League students but rather young people who had experienced a big loss in their lives and had been able to transform that experience into growth. According to Google, deep personal loss has resulted in employees who are more humble and open to listening and learning. - Exponential Organizations by Salim Ismail From Google's experience, what becomes clear is that leadership depth is more important that technical expertise - humility (a combination of love, gratitude, reverence, gentleness), openness to listening and learning (pre-requisite for personal mastery). As we age, we also collect losses along the way, deepening us as human beings and we naturally slow down realising the futility of escaping ourselves by taking on a chase on the outside. It's only when we learn to slow down can we really speed up the outcomes on the outside. Warren Buffet, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the third richest person in the world, spends 80% of his time reading. When asked once about the key to his success, he said "I read and think. So I do more reading and thinking, and make less impulse decisions than most people in business." How will the organisations learn to slow down to speed up in the right direction from good to great? Only if the senior citizens of the organisations are still around to provide the stability and wisdom of experience. "Superagers" is a term for 65 years and above, whose memory and attention isn’t merely above average for their age, but is actually on par with healthy, active 25-year-olds. How do you become a superager? Studies at Massachusetts General Hospital suggests by working hard at something. From the article by the researchers - "The road to superaging is difficult, though, because these brain regions have another intriguing property: When they increase in activity, you tend to feel pretty bad — tired, stymied, frustrated. Think about the last time you grappled with a math problem or pushed yourself to your physical limits. Hard work makes you feel bad in the moment. The Marine Corps has a motto that embodies this principle: “Pain is weakness leaving the body.” That is, the discomfort of exertion means you’re building muscle and discipline. Superagers are like Marines: They excel at pushing past the temporary unpleasantness of intense effort. Studies suggest that the result is a more youthful brain that helps maintain a sharper memory and a greater ability to pay attention." A ground-breaking implication from this is that if you continue to engage with your employees well beyond the so-called 'retirement age' and support them to become a superager, you not only contribute to the society by ensuring greater health and well-being but also reap monetary benefits from having a loyal, committed, stable workforce who can be friend, guide, philosopher, coach to the younger employee force that you are on-boarding from colleges. Creating grandparent-grandchild kind of relationships at workplace will increase the quotient of compassionate love in your organisation. Research proves that a culture of compassionate love leads to greater productivity, performance, profitability and organisational greatness. "We surveyed more than 3,200 employees in 17 organisations spanning seven industries: biopharmaceutical, engineering, financial services, higher education, public utilities, real estate, and travel. In organisations where employees felt and expressed companionate love toward one another; people reported greater job satisfaction, commitment, and personal accountability for work performance." - From an article published in Harvard Business Review, Jan-Feb 2016 by Sigal Barsade, Professor of Management, Wharton; Olivia A. O’Neill, Assistant Professor of Management, George Mason University Two weeks before, I invited Dada Dadi (my kids' paternal grandparents) to move in with us and they did. Nearly 7 years ago, I had moved myself, kids and husband out from their house because I could not bear staying with them. I wanted to live my own way and in peace. I was full of anger, upset, sadness, resentment and all sort of other types of negativity. I thought at that time that they were the source of my misery. Shortly afterwards, my husband became the source of my misery. I couldn’t deal with it that I ended up becoming a coach to get a handle on all the misery in my life. The journey as a coach and all the training and inner growth that came along with it made me realise that the source of misery is really inside me. The outside just serves as a trigger to activate whatever is inside me. The continual inner cleansing brings me home to myself moment by moment, that joyous inner peace has become more important than being right and having my way. I also realize the only way to get my intentions fulfilled and dreams realised is to support others to fulfil their intentions and realise their dreams; give away all the credit without the need for approval, appreciation and respect. I want my parents to stay with me so that I can care for them as they move forward in their journey in this lifetime. Dada Dadi keep waiting for the one day in the week when kids will come. Dadi (paternal grandmother) misses the connection with her only child, who doesn’t really talk much and doesn’t really experience my love as I am not really able to give it unconditionally. My daughter keeps complaining about the food not being tasty. I find myself not being able to love my kids unconditionally too and see myself frequently losing my temper with them. I also see myself being too strict, disciplined and controlling. My younger one has now moved to a grade where he’ll also have his exams. My older one keeps feeling left out because of the younger one and does not fully experience my love. Dadi falls sick and that becomes my pretext for getting them to stay with us. It is an intuitive decision, a decision that feels right. The rationale for the decision comes to me later as I go about enrolling Aditya (my husband), Dada, Dadi on the wisdom of this decision. Because the inside is cleansed, I access the power to get them to say yes to my proposal. We have stayed together for a week now. Mealtimes are happy times, kids are no longer crying and fussing, the food is delicious that the kids appetite has increased, kids are having so much fun, Dada Dadi look so happy, Aditya looks settled and at peace, there’s financial abundance as there are running expenses of only one house instead of two and the other house will soon be put on rent. This arrangement also creates space for me to visit my parents weekly, who live 4 hours away in another city. As per Harvard Grant study, there are only 2 things that ensure that a child grows up to be happy and successful - receiving unconditional love and doing household chores. Dada Dadi’s love for them is so much more unconditional than mine is. Also, neither do I know nor do I love how to cook well or how to manage the functioning of a house, both critical life skills for both men & women to have fulfilling relationships with themselves and with important others in their life. Dadi is not only an expert in both these skills, she loves both these crafts. The kids will effortlessly pick up these skills from her through the process of emulation because kids learn by observing and imitating rather than what we adults tell them to do. Sure, there’s white rice that kids are being fed instead of brown rice, organic way of life is probably slipping away, Dada Dadi are feeding the kids instead of the kids eating on their own, daily disciplined study is not really happening, golf practise is not happening with the rigour of before, lot more screen-time is available for the kids. Opening myself to other ways of life, other points of view is increasing my leadership depth. I feel having a happy positive home environment will create greater health and well-being for the kids than organic food, brown rice, the rigour and discipline. Guess what, as I didn't attach myself to my way, Dada Dadi are opening up to explore other ways of life. Within 2 weeks, brown rice found its way back on the table, we just ordered organic vegetables yesterday, their brand of milk that we have now adopted is of much better quality. That's what I always keep discovering - when I give up my attachment to my way, others give up their attachment to theirs and we come up with an integrated way that is 100 times better than each of our individual ways. Old age homes, retirement age, nuclear families are concepts antithetical to the organic growth and evolutionary process of our species. We started our evolution as homo sapiens in tribes. Being a part of a close-knit community is our natural way of being, providing a nurturing space for us to continue our journey of evolution from fear-for-survival instinct to compassionate love and childlike trust & faith. The wars outside are because there is a war inside each of us. The separation outside is because there is separation inside each one of us. We are designed to be in authentic connection with each other; designed to nourish each other through loving kindness, appreciation and respect. Living any other way reduces our productivity, performance, creativity and innovation. As organisations seek ways for greater sustainable profitability, ways to transform themselves from good to great; we will come back home to ourself and to each other, end the war and separation within our own self to end the terrorism and abuse outside by re-connecting ourselves with our parents first and then with everyone else as our families become organisations of multiple generations staying together and organisations become families. To this brave beautiful blissful new world, let's march forward. Love, Jyoti. References: An article from New York Times - How to Become a Superager |
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