This Bullet is focussed on Leadership and the actions of a leader in volatile times to keep the focus on opportunities for growth, progress, and achievement that arise when the world around us gets more turbulent.
Stay positive and optimistic.
Don't fall into the herd mentality. Keep investing in your future. Focus on the beauty and good things in the
world and your life. Direct your attention to your team and ensure that you are keeping them aligned and motivated.
Continue to refine your vision. You need space to get clarity, and right now, you've got space. Take it.
Scary Times Success Manual - click here
When in Quarantine, ask yourself questions like:
1. What things are truly in my control?
2. How can I use this time wisely to advance my health, beliefs, purpose, and contribution to humanity?
3. What lessons am I learning from this experience?
4. What better version of myself do I see emerging from this time of quarantine?
Pondering...
Charles Darwin said, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent; it is the one most adaptable to change.”
Change is the basic law of nature. But the changes wrought by the passage of time affects individuals and institutions in different ways. According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself. Applying this theoretical concept to us as individuals, we can state that the civilisation that is able to survive is the one that is able to adapt to the changing physical, social, political, moral, and spiritual environment in which it finds itself.
Wisdom/ What I am reading...
Leaders eat last
The events of the past few weeks have got me thinking a lot about “leadership”and the importance it plays in any community, and the lack of it present in our society today.
Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek in one sentence is this: leadership is about taking care of people.
Leaders are not responsible for the numbers, leadership is about people.
Take care of the people, and the numbers will take care of themselves.
Now more than ever we need to be the leaders we never had..
Our current education system is not developing leaders, its training managers.
As leaders our primary responsibility is to protect the people, they in turn will look after each other and progress the organisation forward.
We are all faced with tremendous and continuous threats from external forces; competitors, markets, etc. But when threats are internal, people can’t build a unified team and will defend themselves or their smaller teams at the cost of the overall organisation.
It’s the duty of leadership then to set an internal culture which is free of threats and rich in camaraderie.
When we are immersed in an environment in which we cannot feel safe, we naturally become more selfish and we start using our time and energy to preserve ourselves through politicking, back stabbing, gossiping etc.
when effective leadership can fill the culture with a sense of belonging and care for the group, that’s when the people can effectively tackle the external threats.
The reality in any organisation is that numbers need to be met and targets achieved. Often people stay in jobs even if they are unhappy, as the alternative is more stressful.
The truth is most of us perform better with external pressure but internal stress is toxic.
The bottom line is:
Leadership is the choice to serve others with or without any formal rank.
Grab yourself a read this weekend - Leaders Eat Last
Quick Watch - What does Leaders eat last mean
Find a detailed book review here
Thought-provoking...
HEURISTICS
Decision-making is an inherently complex process that involves a significant amount of cognitive effort. If a rational mind has to get involved in making a decision, it would consume a lot of energy in performing those cognitive tasks because of the ‘working memory’ limitations. This would impart a feeling of fatigue. In other words, our ‘mind system’ is naturally against rational decisions.
To counter this fatigue, the human mind has evolved over aeons to automate a lot of behaviours and use a lot of mental shortcuts as much as possible, in responding to various scenarios. These mental shortcuts are called ‘Heuristics’ which our automatic, intuitive mind uses to influence our decisions.
Sometimes, these heuristics help us but many times it would prove fatal. It had resulted in bad decisions and was particularly responsible for many business failures.
Some of the driving elements behind those mental ‘heuristics’ in our intuitive mind are our own hidden beliefs & prejudices(Cognitive Biases), which are shaped by past experiences and the environment in which a person grew up.
What makes all these ‘heuristics’ so dangerous is their invisibility to the decision-maker. We fail to see or recognise them.
“Sometimes the fault lies not in the decision-making process but rather in the mind of decision maker” -John S. Hammond
Framing Bias is one of the main heuristics that influence decision-making and has the potential to wreck the businesses.
Framing Bias
Framing bias is a type of cognitive bias where people were forced to decide based on the way the information is presented.
The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations; e.g. as a loss or as a gain. People tend to avoid risk when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented
The world is full of information, yet our brains are only capable of processing a certain amount. If you tried to analyse every single aspect of every situation or decision, you would never get anything done.
In order to cope with the tremendous amount of information we encounter and to speed up the decision-making process, the brain relies on these mental strategies to simplify things so we don't have to spend endless amounts of time analysing every detail.
You probably make hundreds or even thousands of decisions every day. What should you have for breakfast? What should you wear today? Should you drive or take the bus? Should you go out for drinks later with your co-workers? Should you use a bar graph or a pie chart in your presentation? The list of decisions you make each day is endless and varied. Fortunately, heuristics allow you to make such decisions with relative ease without a great deal of agonising.
Your heuristics allow you to think through the possible outcomes quickly and to arrive at a solution that will work for your unique problem.
Types of Heuristics
The Availability heuristic
The availability heuristic involves making decisions based upon how easy it is to bring something to mind. When you are trying to make a decision, you might quickly remember a number of relevant examples. Considering that these are more readily available in your memory, you will likely judge these outcomes as being more common / frequently occurring.
For example, if you were thinking of flying and suddenly think of a number of recent airline accidents, you are likely to feel as though air travel is too dangerous and decide to travel by car instead. The availability heuristics leads you to think that plane crashes are more common than they really are.
The Representative heuristics
This involves making a decision by comparing the present situation to the most representative mental prototype. When you are trying to decide if someone is trustworthy, you might compare aspects of the individual to other mental examples you hold. A sweet older woman might remind you of your grandmother, so you might immediately assume that she is kind, gentle and trustworthy.
The Affect heuristics
The affect heuristics involves making choices that are strongly influenced by the emotions that an individual is experiencing at that moment. Research has shown that people are more likely to see decisions as having higher benefits and lower risks when they are in a positive mood. Negative emotions, on the other hand, lead people to focus on the potential downsides of a decision rather than the possible benefits.
Widget that impress me...
I listen to podcasts while I’m running, commuting, hanging out —because it’s an opportunity to learn something new, catch up on current events, or laugh when my only other option would be music or silence.
Podcasts are readily available, and listening to one requires close to no preparation. Anyone with a smartphone can listen to a podcast
Whether you’re driving to work, cooking or going for a run, a podcast is an entertaining (and acceptable) companion. Podcasts come in all lengths, so you can listen to an interesting interview during your 10-minute commute, or you can take a deep dive into a transformative theory that keeps you entertained for hours on a road trip.
Facts about podcasts:
- In 2019 over 100 million people listen to a podcast every week
- Podcast listeners consume an average of seven different shows per week
- There are over 700,000 active podcasts and 29 million podcast episodes available
-The most popular age group for podcasts listeners is 25-44 which make up 49% of total listeners
We have all been offered an opportunity to reflect, think and learn - lets use it effectively.
Where to start:
See you next week, stay safe...