To all my readers, Happy Chinese New Year in advance! As a year comes to a close, its good to explore an important skill that all leaders should know and should practice. This skill is called reflection. And more importantly, knowing the power of self-reflection.
Many leaders do not practice this skill as they do not find it important to review the things that they have done. They will in the end are unable to learn as much from an experience.
The process of reflection requires people to think back of the entire event and let all emotions and feelings flood their minds. This can be painful to relive the moments of failure, separation and hardship, but is definitely necessary for the person to overcome such moments. This is similar to the other end of the spectrum of happiness and joy. As they go through such moments, draw learning points from it. What is good, what is bad, what can be done instead?
Why is this process important? By going through the process, it brings a closure to an event. Be it success or failure, it allows a person to generate as much learning points. Only by being convince that everything is over, people will then look forward to the next thing. They will not be trap by previous failure or success, which is important for progression for a leader.
Furthermore, it is more important to this on your own. This art of reflection can be done with a friend or a mentor. However, they cannot be with you all the times and sometimes it is good to solve your own problem.
Friday, 8 February 2013
Wednesday, 6 February 2013
Effective Communication
To complete up the cycle, the main role of a leader happens when the leader is with the team. In order to perform a duty successfully, leader must muster the role of command and control.
Command means to give instructions to get a certain objective completed. Control means to ensure that your group perform to their best performance or follow instructions. Command and control is fundamental to all leaders and this will require effective communication.
Communication is a broad topic and requires many years of practice before one actually masters it. But there are many different methods to ensure that it is the most effective.
Context
When a leader initiate a conversation, the leader must know the background of his listener. It includes age (junior or senior), gender, religious and other things. It requires different tone and usage of words for different target audience. One can be friendly to a junior when asking about his problems. One can be more assuring when talking to girls, while more straight forward to guys.
Purpose
Leader has to take note of the outcome of the conversation. Sometimes it is for feedback, sometimes to convey an instruction, sometimes merely a casual talk. Do not just talk without purpose. Ask yourself this question "then?" to expand your conservation. Do not let the conversation hanging there and require other people to ask you "then?" or "so?"
With a context and purpose, the conversation will be meaningful and also engaging.
With this two parts, next thing to take note will be a good delivery. There are different skills to involve to truly deliver a message.
Volume
A loud volume can create attention. However, a soft delivery can also do the same thing. When you want your audience to really pay attention, soft delivery might get them to strain their ears to focus. Normally, a mixture of both creates the attention as you vary your volume.
Hand Gestures
Using hand gestures to bring and stress important point can be useful to a leader. But this requires practice to ensure that hand gestures bring out the confidence from the leader. Weak hand gestures can reveal the lack of confidence in the leader.
Repetition
Using similar words repeatedly to reinforce the idea. This drives a common message to their heads.
Participation
Asking questions, or asking them to say a certain thing out. This will get them engage as well as reinforcing the message.
Last but not least, this skill of effective communication must be practiced and tried out to really understand. Standing at a side listening to good leaders can be a chance to learn, but that merely teach u the skill, but not equipping you with the skill. Be daring and try out. Vary the group size to try new style. Vary the background of audience as well. It will be whole new experience.
And would like to thank all the people who have been supporting this blog. Do feel free to comment on the post about the content or any future content which you all would like to see.
Command means to give instructions to get a certain objective completed. Control means to ensure that your group perform to their best performance or follow instructions. Command and control is fundamental to all leaders and this will require effective communication.
Communication is a broad topic and requires many years of practice before one actually masters it. But there are many different methods to ensure that it is the most effective.
Context
When a leader initiate a conversation, the leader must know the background of his listener. It includes age (junior or senior), gender, religious and other things. It requires different tone and usage of words for different target audience. One can be friendly to a junior when asking about his problems. One can be more assuring when talking to girls, while more straight forward to guys.
Purpose
Leader has to take note of the outcome of the conversation. Sometimes it is for feedback, sometimes to convey an instruction, sometimes merely a casual talk. Do not just talk without purpose. Ask yourself this question "then?" to expand your conservation. Do not let the conversation hanging there and require other people to ask you "then?" or "so?"
With a context and purpose, the conversation will be meaningful and also engaging.
With this two parts, next thing to take note will be a good delivery. There are different skills to involve to truly deliver a message.
Volume
A loud volume can create attention. However, a soft delivery can also do the same thing. When you want your audience to really pay attention, soft delivery might get them to strain their ears to focus. Normally, a mixture of both creates the attention as you vary your volume.
Hand Gestures
Using hand gestures to bring and stress important point can be useful to a leader. But this requires practice to ensure that hand gestures bring out the confidence from the leader. Weak hand gestures can reveal the lack of confidence in the leader.
Repetition
Using similar words repeatedly to reinforce the idea. This drives a common message to their heads.
Participation
Asking questions, or asking them to say a certain thing out. This will get them engage as well as reinforcing the message.
Last but not least, this skill of effective communication must be practiced and tried out to really understand. Standing at a side listening to good leaders can be a chance to learn, but that merely teach u the skill, but not equipping you with the skill. Be daring and try out. Vary the group size to try new style. Vary the background of audience as well. It will be whole new experience.
And would like to thank all the people who have been supporting this blog. Do feel free to comment on the post about the content or any future content which you all would like to see.
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