Entries Tagged 'Leadership' ↓

Here are 12 Principles of Self Management by Rosa Ray, author Managing with Aloha! Found via Lifehack. Edited a bit for clarity.

1. Live by your values, whatever they are. You confuse people when you don’t, because they can’t predict how you’ll behave.
2. Speak up! No one can “hear” what you’re thinking without you be willing to stand up for it. Mind-reading is something most people can’t do.
3. Honor your word, and keep the promises you make. If not, people eventually stop believing most of what you say, and your words will no longer work for you.
4. Responsibility comes with Accountability. When you ask for more responsibility, expect to be held fully accountable. This is what seizing ownership of something is all about; it’s usually an all or nothing kind of thing, and so you’ve got to treat it that way.
5. Be Trustworthy first. Don’t expect people to trust you if you aren’t willing to be trustworthy for them first and foremost. Trust is an outcome of fulfilled expectations.
6. Be more productive by creating good habits and rejecting bad ones. Good habits corral your energies into a momentum-building rhythm for you; bad habits sap your energies and drain you.
7. Have a good work ethic, for it seems to be getting rare today. Those “old-fashioned” values like dependability, timeliness, professionalism and diligence are prized more than ever before. Be action-oriented. Seek to make things work. Be willing to do what it takes.
8. Be interesting. Read voraciously, and listen to learn, then teach and share everything you know. No one owes you their attention; you have to earn it and keep attracting it.
9. Be nice. Be courteous, polite and respectful. Be considerate. Manners still count for an awful lot in life, and thank goodness they do.
10. Be self-disciplined. That’s what adults are supposed to “grow up” to be.
11. Don’t be a victim or a martyr. You always have a choice, so don’t shy from it: Choose and choose without regret. Look forward and be enthusiastic.
12. Keep healthy and take care of yourself. Exercise your mind, body and spirit so you can be someone people count on, and so you can live expansively and with abundance.

Last financial year was full of lessons for me. I witnessed business expansion, rupee appreciation and the struggle to stay profitable! 5 things shaped my reactions to all the adversities and I want to share them with you. I think all entrepreneurs face the same challenges and these are 5 things that can shape your success this year!

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Continuing in the series, here’s what Buddha would have said about being an employer, effectively handling customers and capital & assets.

Buddha’s Basics on being a good boss or employer

• Assign work employees can manage.
• Keep them challenged by assigning special projects, cross training, or job rotation.
• Give employees free food and enough money. Productivity and health are related.
• Support them in sickness.
• Share the bounty. Profit-sharing and other means of sharing the wealth will let your people know you appreciate their efforts.
• Grant leave when appropriate. People are not machines and should not be treated as such.
• Recognize that every person learns differently and at a different pace.

Buddha’s tips on effective handling of customers

• Buddha would see customer service staff as the most important people in the organization.
• Customer service staff need to practice compassion.
• Make the customer’s day and it will make yours.
• Listen. Take notes so the customer will not have to repeat his story to your boss.
• Emphasize what you can do for the customer, not what you can’t do.
• Get help from a coworker or from your boss.
• Commit to what you can do to fix the problem.
• Keep to your commitment and do what you said you would do.
• You need customers to survive. Do not deliver anything less than quality.

Buddha’s notes on capital & assets

• Never abandon what can still be useful.
• Select and hire carefully. People must be cultivated for long-term, and not dumped at the first sign of tough times.
• Be moderate in consuming resources. Recycle paper.
• Real success depends on the virtue and character of leaders.
• Never give money to those who would misuse it. Give it first to the shareholders and employees who helped you make the profit.

I wrote about What Would Buddha Do to Become an Enlightened Worker earlier. Continuing in the series, here’s what he would do to create and expand superb relationships at work.

Part 2: Cultivating Enlightened Work Relationships

• True leadership is service to other people.
• A tough demanding boss is like a tough coach who demands more from his athlete. Good leaders stretch your capabilities and provide regular feedback.
• Wise people admit they don’t know everything.
• What goes around comes around. This is the law of karma. Do a good job at work, respect your boss even if you don’t like him and let the law of karma work its way to him.
• Give unselfishly to your coworkers.
• Do your work without complaining.
• To influence others, you must have competence and character.
• Do something extra for others. Ask a stressed coworker what you can do to help.
• Offer to stay late to finish an important deadline. Ask coworker’s about their families.
• Bring home-baked goods to lunch and share it with everyone.
• Give others the benefit of the doubt and avoid making judgments.
• Listen more than talk.
• Let go of your ego and listen to other people’s feedback.
• Respect the learner or trainee. Teach her by invitation, not by command.
• When you are about to criticize someone, stop and ask yourself if you mean to teach that person or do you simply want to establish your own superiority?
• Take responsibility for the problem and the solution. Be personally accountable.
• If people are hostile to you, maybe you did something to deserve it. People are jerks to us now because we were probably jerks to them earlier.
• Don’t give in to your anger. Keep your mouth shut and do the right thing.
• If someone is bad-mouthing you, ignore him.
• Unconditional love and understanding in the face of hostility is the noblest of all human acts.
• Revenge is not sweet. An eye for an eye makes us all blind.
• Avoid negative people. These are the chronic complainers, whiners, and cynics.
• Survival at any cost, dog-eat-dog mentality, and war-like thinking in business leads to great social costs. We must see everything as interconnected.

Want more? I will post about Buddha’s wisdom on being a boss, dealing with customers, hiring people and more in the next few days!

What we ponder and what we think about sets the course of our life. Any day we wish; we can discipline ourselves to change it all. Any day we wish, we can open the book that will open our mind to new knowledge. Any day we wish, we can start a new activity. Any day we wish, we can start the process of life change. We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes us uncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest over labor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, and doubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But while we curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause. As Shakespeare uniquely observed, “The fault is not in the stars, but in ourselves.” We created our circumstances by our past choices. We have both the ability and the responsibility to make better choices beginning today.

This is what Jim Rohn said. And boy, this is inspiring!!

And if you are really serious about transforming your life, they have a limited time special offer going on on the Jim Rohn 2004 weekend. The event had special guests like Denis Waitley, Brian Tracy and more. For around $200, you get 24 hours of leadership training, a 283 page workbook and special bonuses!

If you don’t want to spend the money yet, check out the free ezines (and archives)! Even they are full of wisdom!