What hat are you wearing now?

Leaders are aware of all their roles and what the responsibilities and goals attached with each role. They can clearly see what hat they need to wear in a given minute and act or communicate accordingly.

Let us say if I have four different roles (Hats) in a given project. It is my responsibility to understand the importance of each hat and responsibilities for that role and wear it as needed.

Life is confusing and challenging. But how do leaders make a difference? How do leaders get focus? How do they effectively get things done in 24 hours that everyone of us have?

Following are few things I experimented found to be working.

Answer the question "What roles are you playing?" (For example Project manager, Stakeholder manager, developer, Architect, Husband, Father etc)

Then focus on Top three goals in each role.

Now that you did your home work - live your role. In any given instance be aware of your role.

Now you are what your role is face the reality. Many distractions come in the form of other people, other roles of your own ( and of course from within) But stay focused on your current chosen role, no matter what. Impersonate someone who is best in that role.

Do a reasonable job, don't try to do the best job to please others. Do your job, just do and perfection will follow.

Tennis - Lessons:

Today while playing tennis I felt I was having lots of fun more than ever.

Playing Tennis just for the sake of winning is no FUN. I was fascinated by my own performance while playing tennis today.

Why is so much improvement in my performance today? I questioned.

Though I am the same person I realized I am enjoying the action. I realized I was not worrying much about victory. I guess I was not scared of losing.

Competition, mistakes, victories shots, cheer up, losing, winning, stress, relaxation, placing, hitting the right shot at right time, focus, concentration, anticipation, helping the team member, understanding the each other's strengths and covering each others weaknesses - what an excitement. I enjoyed every bit of this action.

Quick learners win. Players having fun win. Players who challenge their own ability win.

Having a dream is like watching someone else play in TV. Get out, why wait, get into the action. That is where fun lies, that is where win lies, that is where challenges lies.

If your goal is to win , You can never enjoy the game. Your goal must be "having fun", and winning is a bi-product.

Leadership lesson from Tennis : Get into the Action ! and have fun

Story of a Monkey Manager

Here I am going to share the story of a team who work hard really hard ( like Donkey's) to achieve success in their life without knowing what success really means.

Mr Min - very knoeledgeable person in the team, has a great deal of analytical and logical skills. He has a great memory. But his mind is like a Monkey. He cannot focus on onething. He wants every thing that exists in the world

Mr Sens - very good communicator - he is talkative, has very good listening skills and collect as much information as possible more information than required. Often Mr Sens gets attracted by /distracted by worldly pleasures and forgets his role and his purpose in the team. He likes watching TV.

Mr Bod - physically very strong person, he can keep himself stronger and healthy by doing regular exercise - but if not directed properly. Mr Bod can easily procrastinate, by nature he is lazy.

Now that the introduction is over let us see what has been happening in their world -

Mr Bod, Mr Sens and Mr Min are Part of one team. Mr Bod presumed to be the leader of this team. The definition of happiness changes from planet to planet, person to person, body part to body part. This team does not know what success really means. They don't have a sense of what are they supposed to accomplish, and they can never realize why we they should even struggle to achieve something.

Mr Bod slowly got used to taking rest, started to get lazy day by day. He is quite happy in this state, and he found no real reason to get out of the couch and do something different. Mr Bod is now the couch potato.

Mr Sens, being good at communication, got used to watching TV, talking over phone with friends, listening to music. Mr. Sens knows how to keep himself busy by wasting time.

Mr Min also kept himself busy with serious plans, and keeping his monkey mind at work. He was busy thinking about how others are good, Why he is born like the way he is now. He also started blaming his teammates for the lack of productivity. But back in his mind Mr Min was not sure what is the purpose of his existence.

Life seems to be very boring for these folks. Though they all have unique strengths, Though they are all friends, together they were not able to make a successful team. What is success? No one in this team defined what success is. They don't have any specific goal to achieve in their life. They don't have a goal as a team where they want to go? Then where else success comes into picture? Though they spent years like a Monkey mind, couch potato, and a TV beast happily, Now they all realized this way we will all waste time and produce nothing.

But the moment they all started thinking about this Mr Min's mind started responding like a Monkey. Mr Min started de-motivating his team. His monkey mind said, we are not good enough to work, our team is weak. Our team is not well structured.

Mr Min, Mr Bod and Mr Sens all decided they need help. They need someone to tell them what to do now, and next and to guide them forever. There appeared Miss Sou. Miss Sou seems to be very realistic leader. She quickly understood the strengths these three folks and started educating them on their own strengths and potential. All three could not believe that they were that strong.

Miss Sou - was assigned as the team lead position. She has infinite potential and She has the capability to drive the Team into right direction to manifest something otherwise perceived as impossible.

Miss Sou painted a picture ( vision ) of future to give them all a direction to go. Monkey in Mr Min said - impossible !!! This cannot be done. Mr Bod said - I rather take rest. Mr Sens said i better be back to my TV.

Miss Sou said ' let us try anyway'.

All cohesively have started working towards a common goal under the leadership of Miss Sou. They have all started enjoying the process of working together and having fun. They felt like they are all home. Together they felt complete - like a human body that has all the power and strength once all its senses, mind , body and soul have started working together... For a Marathon, For a Olympic gold medal, For

All of a sudden I woke up from my dream with my Mr Min(d), Mr Sens(es), Mr Bod(y) and my leader Miss Sou(l) - all in place on my body. I decided I should start using them before they get too old.

Bottomline : Leadership starts within. We all have enough resources within us to become a leader. Once you discover the leader within, you can redefine who you are.

Let your soul ( heart ) decide on what next - Soul will shape you, your values, your goals. let the soul direct your senses ( eyes, ears, speech, taste and touch ) let your soul explore the miracles of your mind to accomplish the

Five senses: Eyes, Ears, speech, Taste, touch

Body (Physical strength)

Mind (Mental strength)

Team of five can work just like a how a human body can make miracles - once each member understand his/her strengths, each member opens up their mind for a free flow of thoughts across the team, and keep the communication clear and direct can make miracles.

Story of a Monkey Manager : Don't let your monkey mind lead your path, instead let the real leader within you take charge.

Leaders are Warriors

"The basic difference between an ordadinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or a curse."

Leader's frequency

I recently watched a two minute google video on a discussion on "Road to innovation.. by Charlie Rose w/ all great CEOs. ( Google, Intel, Verizon, Yahoo - all on the same stage)

I was thinking about this last night and was not clear on how can these great leaders can start thinking about shaping the world, together.

Is there a specific leadership frequency that all leaders can tune into and talk ? This is my quest for the day and I found the folowing information on the web

The Radical Edge by Stever Farber ( a book to add to my list of books )

...the first thing we have to do is find our frequency, find our station - the one that clearly expresses who we are at our core. And one of the characters goes on to confess: "It tooke me a while to find it, to tune in, as it were. There are a lot of values I hold dear: respect, integrity, honesty, love and family, to name a few. But for me, it all plays on the radio station called 'service'." ...Every value that I ...well...'value' rolls up into service: service is the way I show respect; integrity and honesty characterize the kind of service I give to others. And if I'm really serving from my heart, I see everyone as family - not just my genetic relatives. That's the way it works for me, and the moment I got clear on that -the moment I tuned in - I committed to it with all my being.


source : http://life.ducttapemarketing.com/2006/09/leadership_freq.html

Leadership - Valentine's day special

A true leader is not the one with the most students, but one who creates the most leaders
From Conversations with God - An uncommon dialogue

EGO

This morning I started thinking about the word EGO. I found the following from a website and found very interesting.



EGO is about me, mine, my
ECO is about us, our