Manage Yourself and Lead Others
Manage Yourself and Lead Others
Manage Yourself and Lead Others
Table of Contents
Why are you here? .................................................................................................................................. 3 What are your life goals? .................................................................................................................... 4 SMART Objectives ................................................................................................................................... 5 Smile! The magic of a simple gesture ..................................................................................................... 5 Effectiveness vs. Efficiency How to be a better person? ..................................................................... 6 Improving yourself .............................................................................................................................. 6 Getting better with people ................................................................................................................. 7 Your brain at work (Rock, 2009) ......................................................................................................... 7 Positive Intelligence (Chamine, 2012) .................................................................................................... 8 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................................... 10
I might not be able to give you an answer for any of the above questions; however, I encourage you to try to find them for yourself. Finding answers to the above questions is essential for you to know how your life is intended to satisfy you. If you do not know where you are going, any road will take you there. Lewis Carroll (Alice Adventures in Wonderland) The above quotation is quite essential for any successful life, and most importantly, for any happy life. You need to have a purpose for what you are doing in order to pursue it. If you are studying to get a degree, ask yourself, Why do I need the degree? Your goals should satisfy your needs. What do you need? Philosophers and psychologists have wondered for centuries about what makes humans happy. Is it wealth, power, health, children, strength, or something else? Abraham Maslow, (1908-1970), was a psychologist who was well known for creating a new branch of psychology named Humanistic Psychology. This field of psychology focuses on what makes people happy, rather than, why are they sad or ill. The most famous conclusion of his work was summarised in what is known as the Hierarchy of Human Needs (Maslow, 1943) which ranks the needs of humans according to their importance and assumes that a human needs to satisfy the most important need first then, pursue the satisfaction of the following one. Those needs are: Physiological Needs Need for safety and security Need of Belonging Need for esteem Need for self actualization
Later, personal development skills experts Stephen Covey (Covey, 1989) and Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995), together with many psychologists, argued that the human needs are not hierarchical in nature, rather flat! That is, the needs of the human need to be all satisfied to certain levels for the human to live in happiness and harmony. They agreed that the human needs are the need to: Live Love and be loved Learn and Acquire new experiences Leave a legacy and feel valuable to others
Note that in this list, the need to live may include both physiological needs as well as safety needs. According to that, you are in continuous pursuit of satisfying those needs. At any particular point in time, you are working to satisfy one or more of those needs depending on the opportunities you have as well as your internal feeling of deficiency in one or more of them. Further, you might risk you life, for example, to satisfy another need such as the need to acquire new experiences such as in the case of bungee jumping or sky diving! Now, let us go back to the question that started all this: Why are you here? The above suggests that you need to set your goals in a manner that will satisfy all your needs as a human being. Accumulating wealth will not give you happiness if you lack the family or friends towards whom you feel love. Similarly, being the most famous person in the world will never make you happy if you cannot afford to pay for your basic life requirements!
SMART Objectives
I want to live in a good environment! What do you think about that statement? I believe that most of you would agree with that statement. But, have you thought about the definition of good? Does it mean that there is no pollution, the people are happy, or the temperature is adequate? Can you live in an environment with no pollution? What makes people happy? What is an adequate temperature? I want to build an apartment building When? Where? How tall? How wide? How much will it cost? Do you have the funds? Will people want to live in it? Dont you think that answering the previous questions is essential before you start building the building? A goal or an objective needs to be Specific. An apartment building is different from a hospital building or a school building A goal needs to be Measurable. A building that covers 1000 m2 is different from one that covers 200 m2. A building that may accommodate 100 families is different from a building that can accommodate 500 students or 200 patients. A goal needs to be Action-Oriented. Do you want to build the building, or restore an old building? Do you intend to be involved in the whole process from the conceptual design down to finishing the apartment, just be a part of the design team, or actually building the building with your own hands? A goal needs to be Realistic. It is realistic to aim at building a 10 floor building in the centre of Cairo, maybe a little tough to aim at feeding all the starving people in Somalia, but impossible to raise your GPA from 2.0 in your first semester to 3.5 in your second semester! A goal needs to be Time bound. Building a new 10 floor building might not be a hard job, but planning to build it in 2 days is quite impossible. If you do not plan to graduate in the next five years from the school of engineering, might not be a good idea, while putting your plans such that you graduate sometime before you die is a much worse one! Finally, when you are setting goals for a small business projects, you might be able to specify all the above SMART aspects for all or most of your tasks, but when you are planning for your life goals, you might need to define further objectives that may help you achieve each of the main objectives.
Strictly speaking, no one can be really independent! The independence that Covey aims at is the Emotional Independence. An emotionally independent person is one whose reactions to external motivations are built on his personal values and believes rather than the inputs from the environment. According to (Smith, 1995), the 9th law states that: Your self-esteem must ultimately come from within In other words, if you are an independent person, you will not need others to make you feel happy, or force you feel sad. Satisfaction and self esteem can be generated from inside your brain and that is the essence of the first habit Be Proactive (Covey, 1989) that leads to Independence. In the search for proactivity, many scientists and world figures have mentioned a lot of statements. One of the most important ones was by the psychologist Viktor Frankel The last of human freedoms is the ability to choose one's attitude in a given set of circumstances. The second step towards independence is planning. Covey sais that you need two habits to plan properly: Begin with the end in mindand Put first things first. The first (Second habit) draws upon the importance of having major goals in your life (Life Mission) in order to be able to set your intermediate goals. The second (Third habit) involves the arrangement of tasks and objectives according to their priority in achieving your life goals. In a similar track, Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995) introduces the laws that he believes will get you to achieve more with your time and reach more life satisfaction. The first 7 laws state that: Law 1: You control your life by controlling your time. Law 2: Your governing values are the foundation of personal fulfilment. Law 3: When your daily activities reflect your governing values, you experience inner peace. Law 4: To reach any significant goal, you must leave your comfort zone. Law 5: Daily planning leverages time through increased focus. Law 6: Your behaviour is a reflection of what you truly believe. Law 7: You satisfy needs when your beliefs are in line with reality.
In the process of planning your activities, both Covey and Smith emphasise the importance of reviewing your mission statement or life goals whenever you are setting intermediate goals or tasks in order to make sure that your activities are in line with your main objectives. Further, regular daily
or weekly planning is highly recommended for the tasks you need to do is of extreme value to true efficiency of time management.
When you think win-win, you are always seeking the mutual benefit of both you and the other side of the interaction. You will never act in a win-win manner unless you truly believe that there is enough for every one (the principle of abundance). Similarly, the 10th law proposed by Hyrum Smith (Smith, 1995) states that: Give more and youll have more. That was the first step towards gaining people trust, make them feel that you care about their needs; the following step is the fifth habit: seek first to understand then to be understood. This habit needs you to activate your patience and listening skills. Listening to people and giving them the opportunity to express their point of view does not only allow you to understand it, it also gives them the feeling that you care about them and love them (satisfying two of the primary human needs discussed earlier). In the same context Dale Carnegie (Carnegie, 1937) stated two principles, among the twelve principles to Win People to Your Way of Thinking,: Principle 8 - Try honestly to see things from the other person's point of view. Principle 9 - Be sympathetic with the other person's ideas and desires.
Multi-tasking decreases performance dramatically, there is no real multitasking, you just switch between tasks reducing your performance and consuming a lot of energy in the process. E-mail and instant messaging reduce your IQ to the level of a 4th grader! To increase your attention, you might need to increase your blood glucose level or just prioritize prioritizing and control spending your energy There is a limited number of information that can be held by your brain at a single time, thus, try to simplify the ideas to the simplest possible phrase to be able to handle several ones Control distractions. Internal and external distractions Managing external distractions. Switch off all communication devises when trying to focus on mental activities Internal Distractions. Most distractions are internal. The idle brain constantly creates thoughts randomly, also, ideas will normally stay in your brain for about 10 second if you do not keep them there! Your brain needs a good level of stress and alertness to work properly. Dopamine is a chemical that help your brain to work it is generated by good expectations or rewards. Humor and positive expectations generate dopamine. Fear produces adrenaline which also help attention, but it might have negative effects as well. So be careful using the fear technique so that it might not turn into panic! Over alertness reduces your capability to concentrate!!! To get out of over alertness try to activate other parts of your brain take a walk or have a shower Activate your director: Meta-cognition, or think about your thinking
RESTLESS: Restless, constantly in search of greater excitement in the next activity or constant busyness. Rarely at peace or content with the current activity. CONTROLLER: Anxiety based need to take charge and control situations and peoples actions to ones own will. High anxiety and impatience when that is not possible. AVOIDER: Focusing on the positive and pleasant in an extreme way. Avoiding difficult and unpleasant tasks and conflicts.
Then the author presents different techniques that may be used to overcome those saboteurs. First, he introduces the Three gifts techniques which is based on the fact that any bad situation has its positive outcomes! Then, he introduces techniques to weaken the saboteurs, namely: Empathize o Visualize the child Explore o Curiosity and fascination of what is being explored o When exploration is needed? o Fascinated Anthropologist (power game) o Discover things as they are o Try to be fascinated by exploring how the other parts of the situation Innovate o Change the way you use to find solutions o Come up with as many ideas is you can WITHOUT evaluating the ideas o Yes And (power game) o Every idea is appreciated by getting what is good about it and then adding some more value to it o Yes, and what I love about this idea is .. and maybe we can Navigate o Check more paths o Setting main life goals and values, helps you like a compass to reach the target through different paths o Flash forward (power game) o Look back at this situation from the perspective you will have at the end of your life Activate o Get things done without procrastination o Get everything else out of your mind o Pre-empt the saboteurs (power game) o Anticipate the saboteurs actions and be ready for their attacks
At the end, he introduces some techniques to increase the muscles of the Sage or your controller. Activate your sage by being aware of your physical senses 10 seconds 100 times per days. Use your daily routines to remind you of the fitness routines; 10 to 15 minutes per day may help you and 21 days is the target to get you in the habit of PQ strength.
Bibliography
Bartlett, P. R. (2010). Thinking like an Economist: A Guide to Rational Decision Making. (Recorded Course). The Teaching Company. Boynton, A., Fischer, B., & Bole, W. (2011). The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen. Jossey-Bass. Carnegie, D. (1937). How to Win Friends and Influence People. Pocket Books. Chamine, S. (2012). Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and How You Can Achieve Yours. Greenleaf Book Group. Covey, S. R. (1989). The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Free Press. Degraff, J. (2011). Innovation You: Four Steps to Becoming New and Improved. Ballantine Books. Johnson, S. (2010). Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. Riverhead. Maslow, A. (1943). A Theory of Human Motivation. Psychological Review, 50, 370-396. Retrieved from http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Maslow/motivation.htm Pink, D. H. (2009). Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us . Riverhead. Rock, D. (2009). Your Brain at Work: Strategies for Overcoming Distraction, Regaining Focus, and Working Smarter All Day Long. HarperBusiness. Smith, H. W. (1995). 10 Natural Laws of Successful Time and Life Management. Business Plus. Sowell, T. (2008). Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One. Basic Books. Sowell, T. (2010). Basic Economics: A Common Sense Guide to the Economy. Basic Books. Sowell, T. (2011). Economic Facts and Fallacies. Basic Books. White, G. D. (2011). The 5 Languages of Appreciation in the Workplace: Empowering Organizations by Encouraging People . Northfield Publishing. Wikipedia - The Free Encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit: http://www.wikipedia.org/