I allow my employees flexibility in lunch time, breaks, sick days, family leave, further education, etc. I don't believe in micromanaging. It puts undue stress on employees. I train, coach and mentor but I don’t have the time to micromanage.
If you hired someone, it means you believe they are capable of doing the job. Then trust them to get the job done. You don’t need to be constantly monitoring their every movement. Micromanagement breeds resentment and disloyalty.
In an AI age characterized by disruption and ambiguous change, we need to rethink how we lead people. It’s no secret that technology is transforming the workplace, and unfortunately, employee morale is only getting worse. As organizations continue to focus on this technology, they are overlooking the most important part of the equation - the people side of the disruption. Disruption isn’t solely about how you manage the technology; it’s how you lead the people. Technology is a tool that empowers change, but people make it happen.
What do employees want? Employees want to feel like they belong, are heard and appreciated. Ping pong tables and sweet treats are not enough. Engagement doesn’t have to be a challenge. Today, it can be accomplished by using digital tools. It’s all about building a culture of feedback and continuous conversations. My aim is to create an environment where employees feel safe and comfortable to express themselves.
As someone who travels a lot. I have had to get a little creative when it comes to engaging employees. I take advantage of systems as video conferencing and virtual meetings, which makes it easier to interact and connect with my employees. Weekly, I try to include 2 virtual coffee breaks. Additionally, once every three months, we meet up for a themed virtual party. Our next party is Thursday and of course the theme is Christmas. It’s important to use technology not just in a transactional way. Have fun! It doesn’t need to be overly formal. Employees will look forward to these activities.
Results should be measured instead of hours spent behind a physical desk.
My employees don’t need to be in the office every day. My new employee asked to work from home, then started to feverishly explain. This is what I told her, "I don't need to know the details. I do not pay for seat warmers. Come to the office fine. 9 to 5? Fine. Work from home. Fine. Work from the garage while they fix your car? Fine. Everybody works at a different pace. You choose how to get your work done. Keep clients happy. I am happy."
The future lies in flexible work patterns. Allowing employees to work from anywhere using technology doesn’t have to slow down productivity. It's 2019 not 1919. Digital tools allow us to collaborate across time and space effectively.
The best ideas and advancements are a result of empowering your team. If you want performance at scale, select the right people, provide them with the tools and support, and give them the room to get the job done.
Everybody makes mistakes—that’s a given—but we don't always learn from them. Sometimes we make the same mistakes over and over again, fail to make any real progress, and can’t figure out why.
“Mistakes are always forgivable, if one has the courage to admit them.” – Bruce Lee
When we make mistakes, it can be hard to admit them because doing so feels like an attack on our self-worth. This tendency poses a huge problem because new research proves something that common sense has told us for a very long time—fully acknowledging and embracing errors is the only way to avoid repeating them.
Yet, many of us still struggle with this.
Researchers from the Clinical Psychophysiology Lab at Michigan State University found that people fall into one of two camps when it comes to mistakes: those who have a fixed mind-set (“Forget this; I’ll never be good at it”) and those who have a growth mind-set (“What a wake-up call! Let’s see what I did wrong so I won’t do it again”).
"By paying attention to mistakes, we invest more time and effort to correct them," says study author Jason Moser. "The result is that you make the mistake work for you."
Those with a growth mind-set land on their feet because they acknowledge their mistakes and use them to get better. Those with a fixed mind-set are bound to repeat their mistakes because they try their best to ignore them.
Smart, successful people are by no means immune to making mistakes; they simply have the tools in place to learn from their errors. In other words, they recognize the roots of their mix-ups quickly and never make the same mistake twice.
“When you repeat a mistake it is not a mistake anymore: it is a decision.” – Paulo Coelho
Some mistakes are so tempting that we all make them at one point or another. Here are 10 mistakes almost all of us make, but smart people only make once.
Some people are so charismatic and so confident that it can be tempting to follow anything they say. They speak endlessly of how successful their businesses are, how well liked they are, who they know, and how many opportunities they can offer you. While it’s, of course, true that some people really are successful and really want to help you, smart people only need to be tricked once before they start to think twice about a deal that sounds too good to be true. The results of naivety and a lack of due diligence can be catastrophic. Smart people ask serious questions before getting involved because they realize that no one, themselves included, are as good as they look.
Albert Einstein said that insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different result. Despite his popularity and cutting insight, there are a lot of people who seem determined that two plus two will eventually equal five. Smart people, on the other hand, need only experience this frustration once. The fact is simple: if you keep the same approach, you’ll keep getting the same results, no matter how much you hope for the opposite. Smart people know that if they want a different result, they need to change their approach, even when it’s painful to do so.
We live in a world where books instantly appear on our e-readers, news travels far and wide, and just about anything can show up at our doorsteps in as little as a day. Smart people know that gratification doesn’t come quickly and hard work comes long before the reward. They also know how to use this as motivation through every step of the arduous process that amounts to success because they’ve felt the pain and disappointment that come with selling themselves short.
You can’t experience financial freedom until you operate under the constraint of a budget. Sticking to a budget, personally and professionally, forces us to make thoughtful choices about what we want and need. Smart people only have to face that insurmountable pile of bills once before getting their act together, starting with a thorough reckoning as to where their money is going. They realize that once you understand how much you’re spending and what you’re spending it on, the right choices become clear. A morning latte is a lot less tempting when you’re aware of the cost: $1,000 on average per year. Having a budget isn’t only about making sure that you have enough to pay the bills; smart people know that making and sticking to a strict budget means never having to pass up an opportunity because they’ve blown their precious capital on discretionary expenditures. Budgets establish discipline, and discipline is the foundation of quality work.
It’s so easy to become head-down busy, working so hard on what’s right in front of you that you lose sight of the big picture. But smart people learn how to keep this in check by weighing their daily priorities against a carefully calculated goal. It’s not that they don’t care about small-scale work, they just have the discipline and perspective to adjust their course as necessary. Life is all about the big picture, and when you lose sight of it, everything suffers.
Everybody’s taken a shortcut at some point, whether it was copying a friend’s biology assignment or strolling into an important meeting unprepared. Smart people realize that while they may occasionally get lucky, that approach will hold them back from achieving their full potential. They don’t take chances, and they understand that there’s no substitute for hard work and due diligence. They know that if they don’t do their homework, they’ll never learn anything—and that’s a surefire way to bring your career to a screeching halt.
It’s tempting to try to please people by being whom they want you to be, but no one likes a fake, and trying to be someone you’re not never ends well. Smart people figure that out the first time they get called out for being a phony, forget their lines, or drop out of character. Other people never seem to realize that everyone else can see right through their act. They don’t recognize the relationships they’ve damaged, the jobs they’ve lost, and the opportunities they’ve missed as a result of trying to be someone they’re not. Smart people, on the other hand, make that connection right away and realize that happiness and success demand authenticity.
Almost everyone makes this mistake at some point, but smart people realize quickly that it’s simply impossible to please everybody and trying to please everyone pleases no one. Smart people know that in order to be effective, you have to develop the courage to call the shots and to make the choices that you feel are right (not the choices that everyone will like).
News reports and our social media feeds are filled with stories of people who seem to get ahead by playing the victim. Smart people may try it once, but they realize quickly that it’s a form of manipulation and that any benefits will come to a screeching halt as soon as people see that it’s a game. But there’s a more subtle aspect of this strategy that only truly smart people grasp: to play the victim, you have to give up your power, and you can’t put a price on that.
The only way that people change is through the desire and wherewithal to change themselves. Still, it’s tempting to try to change someone who doesn’t want to change, as if your sheer will and desire for them to improve will change them (as it has you). Some even actively choose people with problems, thinking that they can “fix” them. Smart people may make that mistake once, but then they realize that they’ll never be able to change anyone but themselves. Instead, they build their lives around genuine, positive people and work to avoid problematic people that bring them down.
Emotionally intelligent people are successful because they never stop learning. They learn from their mistakes, they learn from their successes, and they’re always changing themselves for the better.
Do you operate from a growth mind-set or a fixed mind-set? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
It’s good to be smart. After all, intelligent people earn more money, accumulate more wealth, and even live longer. On the surface, being smart looks like easy living. But there’s another side to the story.
Intelligent people have a reputation for making dumb mistakes, especially in situations that require common sense. The simplicity of these situations and the abundant intelligence of those who tend to muck them up can be downright comical.
“Common sense is not so common.” -Voltaire
After decades of research, scientists are finally beginning to understand why this happens. Shane Frederick at Yale University was among the first to conduct research that explained why rational thinking and intelligence don’t tend to go hand in hand.
In his studies, Frederick gave people simple problems to solve, like this one:
A bat and ball cost a dollar and ten cents. The bat costs a dollar more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
Frederick found that some people have the tendency to confidently blurt out the wrong answer, stating that the ball costs ten cents. You, of course, knew that the correct answer is that the ball costs five cents, and you’re completely justified if you’re wondering if the, well, less-than-smart people were the ones blurting out the wrong answer.
Psychologists from James Madison University and the University of Toronto wondered the same thing. They gave similar tests of logic to hundreds of people and compared the accuracy of their answers to their levels of intelligence. The researchers found that smart people were more likely to blurt out the wrong answer because they actually make more mental mistakes when problem-solving.
Smart people are more prone to silly mistakes because of blind spots in how they use logic. These blind spots exist because smart people tend to be overconfident in their reasoning abilities. That is, they’re so used to being right and having quick answers that they don’t even realize when they’re blowing it by answering without thinking things through.
The dummies getting the bat-and-ball question wrong weren’t so dumb, either. When Frederick gave the question to students from Harvard, Princeton, and M.I.T., more than half of them got it wrong. Even students from some of the most prestigious universities in the world make stupid mistakes.
Perhaps the scariest thing about the errors that highly intelligent people make is how unaware they are of them. People of all levels of intelligence succumb to what’s called the “bias blind spot.” That is, we’re great at spotting other people’s mistakes and terrible at recognizing our own. The sillier the mistake, the harder it is for an intelligent person to accept that they’ve made it.
“I know that I am intelligent, because I know that I know nothing.” -Socrates
While it might seem like we don’t spend our days solving logic problems like the bat-and-ball question, the brain functions involved in solving these problems are the same ones we use in everyday thinking. Hence, the tendency to do stupid things follows smart people into the workplace. Consider some of the most common ways in which smart people manage to shoot themselves in the foot.
Smart people are overconfident. A lifetime of praise and pats on the back leads smart people to develop an unflappable faith in their intelligence and abilities. When you rack up accomplishments while people stroke your ego, it’s easy to expect that things will always go your way. But this is a dangerous expectation. Smart people often fail to recognize when they need help, and when they do recognize it, they tend to believe that no one else is capable of providing it.
They push people too hard. Smart people develop overachieving personalities because things come so easily to them. They simply don’t understand how hard some people have to work to accomplish the same things, and because of that, they push people too hard. Smart people set the bar too high, and when people take too long or don’t get things quite right, they assume it’s due to a lack of effort. So they push even harder and miss the opportunity to help others achieve the goals they’re so anxious for them to reach.
They always need to be right. It’s hard for anyone to graciously accept the fact that they’re wrong. It’s even harder for smart people because they grow so used to being right all the time that it becomes a part of their identity. For smart people, being wrong can feel like a personal attack, and being right, a necessity.
They lack emotional intelligence. While intelligence (IQ) and emotional intelligence (EQ) don’t occur together in any meaningful way (Smart people, on average, have just as much EQ as everyone else), when a smart person lacks EQ, it’s painfully obvious. These high-IQ, low-EQ individuals see the world as a meritocracy. Achievements are all that matter, and people and emotions just get in the way. Which is a shame because TalentSmart research with more than a million people shows that—even among the upper echelons of IQ—the top performers are those with the highest EQs.
They give up when they fail. Have you ever watched a sporting event and seen the stunned look on the face of an athlete whom everyone expected to win, but didn’t? Smart people can easily fall into the trap of seeing failure as the end of the world because frequent success creates expectations that make failure hard to tolerate. People who have to work hard for what they achieve have plenty of practice learning how to deal with failure. They learn to embrace it because they know that failure is just a stepping stone to success.
They fail to develop grit. When things come really easy to you, it’s easy to see hard work as a negative (a sign that you don’t have what it takes). When smart people can’t complete something without a tremendous amount of effort, they tend to feel frustrated and embarrassed. This leads them to make the false assumption that if they can’t do something easily, there’s something wrong with them. As a result, smart people tend to move on to something else that affirms their sense of worth before they’ve put in the time to develop the grit they need to succeed at the highest possible level.
They multitask. Smart people think really quickly, which can make them impatient. They like to get several things going at once so that there isn’t any downtime. They think so quickly that, when they multitask, it feels like it’s working and they’re getting more done, but Stanford research shows that this isn’t the case. Not only does multitasking make you less productive, but people who multitask often because they think they’re good at it are actually worse at multitasking than people who prefer to do one thing at a time.
They have a hard time accepting feedback. Smart people tend to undervalue the opinions of others, which means they have trouble believing that anyone is qualified to give them useful feedback. Not only does this tendency hinder their growth and performance, it can lead to toxic relationships, both personally and professionally.
To some, this post will read like I’m trashing smart people, but I’m not. Some of life’s greatest gifts, including high intelligence, can also come with challenges. If you aren’t willing to take an honest look at the whole picture, you’re selling yourself short. And that isn’t smart.
Please share your thoughts in the comments section below, as I learn just as much from you as you do from me.
ये जब्र भी देखा है तारीख़ की नज़रों ने
लम्हों ने ख़ता की थी सदियों ने सज़ा पाई।
मुझे खामोश रहना है...
तुझे महसूस होने तक...
जितना लिखा, उससे ज़्यादा मिटाया है हमने
इश्क़ नाकाम सही, शिद्दत से निभाया है हमने
When I accepted that stability , in fact, be the problem, I opened my mind to the idea of disrupting every value, belief, and rule I had which was the first step in the process.
Rock bottom is when you have forgotten how to feel.
Compassion is what can make people want to help you for reasons they don’t even consciously know.
The real transformation comes from aiming to make it through each day with one small win at a time.
Wearing your heart is about being vulnerable and giving yourself permission to ask people for help.
Walking, during a dark period in my life, was like teleporting out of my own head and looking down at myself from high above the Earth.
It made me feel connected to something much bigger and more significant than my own problems.
Writing sentences on a blank computer screen helped me to link up several ideas that seemed pointless and useless in my head, but on my computer screen seemed to hold a different meaning.
मसला तो सिर्फ एहसासों का है,जनाब ,
रिश्ते तो बिना मिले भी सदियां गुजार देते हैं।
उसके हाथ की गिरफ्त ढीली पड़ी तो
महसूस हुआ मुझे
शायद ये वही जगह है जहाँ
रास्ते बदलने है
जल्दी जागना हमेशा फायदेमंद होता है
चाहे वो नींद से हो या वहम से.....
मत परेशान रहिये मस्त रहिये व्यस्त रहिये क्योंकि!
1.पैतालिस साल की अवस्था में "उच्च शिक्षित" और "अल्प शिक्षित" एक जैसे ही होते हैं।
2. पचपन साल की अवस्था में "रूप" और "कुरूप" एक जैसे ही होते हैं। (आप कितने ही सुन्दर क्यों न हों झुर्रियां, आँखों के नीचे के डार्क सर्कल छुपाये नहीं छुपते)
3. साठ साल की अवस्था में "उच्च पद" और "निम्न पद" एक जैसे ही होते हैं।(चपरासी भी अधिकारी के सेवा निवृत्त होने के बाद उनकी तरफ़ देखने से कतराता नहीं है)
4. सत्तर साल की अवस्था में "बड़ा घर" और "छोटा घर" एक जैसे ही होते हैं। (घुटनों का दर्द और हड्डियों का गलना आपको बैठे रहने पर मजबूर कर देता है, आप छोटी जगह में भी गुज़ारा कर सकते हैं)
5. अस्सी साल की अवस्था में आपके पास धन का "होना" या "ना होना" एक जैसे ही होते हैं। ( अगर आप खर्च करना भी चाहें, तो आपको नहीं पता कि कहाँ खर्च करना है)
6. नब्बे साल की अवस्था में "सोना" और "जागना" एक जैसे ही होते हैं। (जागने के बावजूद भी आपको नहीं पता कि क्या करना है).
जीवन को सामान्य रुप में ही लें क्योंकि जीवन में रहस्य नहीं हैं जिन्हें आप सुलझाते फिरें। आगे चल कर एक दिन हम सब की यही स्थिति होनी है इसलिए चिंता छोड़ कर मस्त रहें स्वस्थ रहें। यही जीवन है और इसकी सच्चाई भी। लोग कहेंगे बहुत कुछ क्योंकि लोगों का काम ही है कहना पर उन्हें कहने दें। चैन से जीने के लिए चार रोटी और दो कपड़े काफ़ी हैं "पर, बेचैनी से जीने के लिए चार मोटर, दो बंगले और तीन प्लॉट भी कम हैं !!" मानता हूं कि इस आधुनिक दौर में रुपया, रूप, रुतबा बहुत कुछ है पर सबकुछ नही है यह जरूर याद रखें।
जब सवालों के जवाब मिलने बंद हो जायें..
तो समझ लो एक मोड़ लेना है रास्ते और रिश्ते दोनों में ...!
नाराज़गियों को कुछ देर चुप रह कर मिटा लिया करो,
ग़लतियों पर बात करने से रिश्ते उलझ जाते हैं.. ...!
सारी गवाहियाँ तो मेरे हक़ में आ गईं
लेकिन मेरा बयान ही मेरे ख़िलाफ़ था।
कभी तुम भी लिखा करों दो शब्द हमारे लिए..
हमें सिर्फ लिखना नहीं पढ़ना भी अच्छा लगता है!!
