Showing Care And Concern

When an Air Asia plane flying from Indonesia to Singapore crashed in 2014, Group CEO Tony Fernandes, unmindful of the advice of his lawyers, felt that as the face of the brand, it was imperative that he had to be with the airline staff, and most importantly, considered it his responsibility to be there for the relatives of the victims.

Insight
When leaders display concern and care for their staff and customers, they reciprocate by becoming more trusting and forgiving of the leader and the company.

Creating Your Own Leadership Framework

“Great leaders complicate leadership development. The sheer volume is overwhelming, and the lessons that emerge from one leader’s experience may be completely inapplicable to another’s”. - McKinsey research

Insight
Leadership material is voluminous and other's experiences are not transferable. So how do you develop your leadership skills? Inner engineering by yourself. Here's how:
1. Understand your work context,
2. Inventory your strengths & choose the the ones the ones to use/build,
3. Define your values & set boundaries,
4. Examine & reset your paradigms
5. Create own leadership framework

Or, #Connect2Coach.

The Warm Leadership Style

A growing body of research by Amy Cuddy and her colleagues suggests that the way to influence—and to lead—is to begin with warmth. Warmth is the conduit of influence: It facilitates trust and the communication and absorption of ideas. Even a few small nonverbal signals—a nod, a smile, an open gesture—can show people that you’re pleased to be in their company and attentive to their concerns.

Insights
Prioritizing warmth as your leadership style helps you connect immediately with your people, demonstrating that you hear them, understand them, and can be trusted by them.

Mindfulness Practice

“When asked which leadership tools they aim to develop, most MBA students list “practical skills” as highest on their priority lists. We have found that understanding oneself, one’s triggers, and one’s emotions through mindfulness & meditation enhances one’s ability to master these concrete skill sets”. - Yael Shy in Harvard Business Review

Insight
Practical skills call for good judgment in action, conduct, & the handling of everyday matters. Mindfulness helps us to concentrate on the here & now, become more aware of how matters affect us, & learn to change the way they relate to our inner self.

Making Winning a Habit

“I work everyday,  and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.“ - Author Patti Smith

Insight
When competing with ourselves, there are two voices within us which are clamouring for our attention. One cheers you on as a winner and the other boos you down as a loser. Who wins?  The one you CHOOSE to listen to.

Choosing a Niche

Dr. SC is a Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner in Singapore. He is 85 years old and his clinic always full of patients. He remembers not only the names and combinations of hundreds of herbs and things that go into TCM, but also the names of every one of his patients.

Dr RC, his 40 year old daughter who practices in the neighbouring clinic. She specialses in acupressure, saying  TCM calls for a good memory - and she doesn't have one.

Insight
Focusing on a niche skill to overcome one's weakness is a good career choice. Or is it?

What do you think?

Goals Require Accountability

“Weight loss goals are never achieved just by getting on the scale. Similarly, thinking about NPS as simply a score, without changing the way you actually do business, will never improve customer loyalty.” - Cvetilena Gocheva

Insight
Goal achievement begins with intention but produces intended results only with a planned and consistent change in the way we have been doing things.

Obvious? Yes, but also a reality many of us on the goal achievement path are oblivious to.

Become accountable #Connect2Coach

The Enlightened Leadership Dynamic

“Our greatest hope as leaders of this country is not to go down in history as the best ever. Our aim is to go down in history (as having helped)  Singaporeans to stand tall and see further.” - Singapore Labour chief Chan Chun Sing

Insight
Our personal philosophy of leadership is a dynamic and constantly evolving journey from self interest to enlightened self interest. An ultimate state, where our self-interest lies in furthering the interests of others.

How well are you dealing with the leadership dynamic?  #Connect2Coach

Collaborative Leadership

A man once asked Pablo Picasso why all his art was so screwed up? Why didn't he paint reality instead of these distortions? Hesitating for a moment, Picasso asked, “So what do you think reality looks like? “
Showing him a picture of his wife, the man said, “Like this. It's my wife. “
“Really?” said Picasso, “She's very small. And flat too. “

Insight
Reality is subjective. Encouraging open discussion, leaders can surface  the subjective realities of their team and uncover new perspectives. By incorporating the suggestions & addressing the objections, the decision becomes a commitment to action.

Life Choices

Bookmyshow's founder-CEO Ashish Hemrajani believes, "Ambition is a positive energy.  Desire can be unrelenting. I still live in the same house,  work from the same office and I am pretty much the same man I used to be when I started off 16 years ago."

Insight
"Don't give money way too much power over your life. It's not about how much you make, but the life that you make with the money you have. “ is an advice Suze Orman, TV financial guru says, she would have appreciated when she was 22.

What are the life choices you have made? How well have the served you?

The Art of Change Management

“Like old masonry buildings—such as the Musée d’Orsay in Paris ...that have new glass & steel added to their existing structures, today’s leading companies must integrate the contrasting elements of stability and speed to create a more functional, modern whole.” de Smets et al, McKinsey Quarterly

Insight
Change management is an art akin to the 4 arts of music. Thus you:
INTERPRET what needs to remain unchanged to provide stability & what needs to change to provide speed of customer response
ARRANGE priorities
COMPOSE change activity and
IMPROVISE along the way
Let the music begin!

What's your insight?

Feel For Your Customer

Hard-sell  morticians at the China Dragon Garden graveyard in suburban Beijing set up hundreds for gravestones bearing the names (living) local residents in gold letters. Sales staff would show residents their names, saying, “Look! That could be you.”

Insight
Being close to your product is good, and creative marketing even better, but not at the cost of distancing yourself from customer sensitivities. Know your customer, feel for your customer. #KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

The Advantages of Setting A Range of Goals

“It's impractical to have a growth target being a number. A range is more practical. It gives more room for policymakers to exercise their creativity boost the economy” - Iris Pang, Greater China Economist

Insight
An important objective in setting goals is to make them both challenging and attainable. Emerging evidence suggests that shifting from single number goals to high-low goals offers an increased advantage.
For instance, the impact of being set a high-low goal on members’ sustained motivation to pursue their goal was striking. Only half assigned a single number weight loss goal persisted with the longer-term target, but nearly 80% of those assigned a high-low range weight loss goal did.

Don't Take Your Success For Granted

“We aced at everything, creating products and designing them etc. Going in, I thought, that was it, that’s all we needed. Marketing, HR, and media relations were all BS. How I was proved wrong. Having a great product will not sell itself.” - Rahul Yadav at IIT E-summit 2016

Insight
On his desk, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz keeps a bottle of Mazagran, a carbonated coffee drink he introduced in 1994, and which failed to sell.

When riding waves of success remembering our past failures can serve us well.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

The Positive Energy Within

“Unpark your life. Let your inner you out to play. Stop what you are doing. And just go.” - Ad for the Subaru XV

Insight
There is a powerful source of positive energy within all of us, and when you have an awareness of that, you can consciously allow that energy to flow freely through you and apply it to whatever you are doing.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Elevating Your Storytelling

“Elevate your storytelling from just a taxi ride to the story of life and its meaning….While Uber is about transportation you can still inspire people with a good story”. - Uber founder Travis Kalanick

Insight
The key to a compelling story begins not by asking , “What's my product?” but by asking yourself, “What business am I really in?  What am I passionate about?” When your true passion becomes the subject of your communication, it serves to truly inspire your audience.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Your Life Plan Should Evolve

We have to find our own way forward. There is no perfect model that can imported and therefore rather than strive for “unworkable perfection” from day one, Singapore opted to let it's political system evolve to suit it's unique needs. - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, referring to the country's Constitution

Insight
Rather than live life on borrowed templates, continuously evolve your life plan, and customise it to suit your particular needs and circumstances.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Simplifying Complexity

“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” —Mother Teresa

Insight
The problem in decoding complexity is because we want to find the perfect solution in one step. Take a step back, find out what you have to do and start by restraining yourself within the limits of your comprehension and doability.”

The Voices in Our Heads

We have two very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2.
System 1 is intuitive, instinctual and automatic, makes us prone to look for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning in events.
System 2 is the voice in our head – the narrator who never seems to shut up – that enables us to plan and think logically.

Insight
The first voice is that of our biases that have to be questioned, and the second the voice of our instincts that have to be evaluated and critically examined. Both require a deep dive within and thoughtful reflection.
#KnowYourself  #Connect2Coach

Filter for Leadership Ideas

“This consuming interest in leadership and how to make it better has spawned a plethora of books, blogs, TED talks, and commentary. Unfortunately, these materials are often wonderfully disconnected from organizational reality and, as a consequence, useless for sparking improvement.” - Jeffrey Pfeffer, McKinsey Quarterly

Insight
Ideas for sparking improvement of your leadership style need to be curated using a two level filter system:
Are they relevant to your organizational reality and context?
Do they feel a comfortable fit with who you are and where you want to go?
#KnowYourself   #Connect2Coach