Why ownership matters?

I was reading the article The Seven Deadly Sins of Economic Liberalism a friend of mine Lucas Juan Manuel kindly sent to me. The article describes private ownership that generates wealth as:

Economic liberalism triggers a socio-economic system based mainly on financial speculation jointly with inappropriate economic measures and structural/social reforms.  Let’s take Euro area as an example.  The EU implemented painful austerity measures in order to reduce the high level of government debt in many country members.  But it was, and still is, a wrongly-conceived austerity

There are many ‘enterprises and entrepreneurs’ arising from political clientelism (crony-ism and patronage), and those kind of enterprises and entrepreneurs do not generate wealth and prosperity in our societies because they are not competitive.  This kind of capitalism is deeply disappointing for the real entrepreneurial spirit (genuine enterprises).

 In this way, wealth, well-being and prosperity are being concentrated in the hands of a few and the income gap between a country's richest and poorest people enlarges dramatically. “Obviously, this way of capitalism is inherent to political corruption and prevents equal opportunities in the economic and social spheres.”

Although somehow hidden, ownership nevertheless matters in all the above described topics. There are different approaches to ownership of a property. The question is whether all of them are sustainable for the advancement of a society as a whole?

Let’s define different ownerships and their (potential) effects.

‘Personal ownership’ is where assets and property is belonging to an individual, also known as individual ownership. Contrary, the ‘collective ownership’ assets and property belongs to a collective body of people who control their use and collect the proceeds of their operation. Very similar is ‘common ownership’ (or non-ownership) where assets and property are held in common by all members of society. Any country owns property (‘state ownership’) where assets are state owned or owned by certain state agency consequently having jurisdiction over in terms of use. And finally, assets owned by a government or a state and available for public use to all their constituents are called ‘public property’.

Biggest Relaxation Mistakes and how to avoid them

Long ago sports evolved from martial arts (like: Greek Olympic games) and were transformed into competitive play with rules and winning points. Sports carry in itself some cultural impact on competitors. Martial arts of today, especially Chinese, are mostly later inventions. They have typically risen at the end of 19th century. It was the time when China and other Far East countries understood cultural impact of sports and had nothing else to offer regarding sports. So they began to export martial arts and other techniques.

The core of all – not only Chinese martial arts – is so called ‘natural movement’. It is a way of movement that has originated in Nature and is connected to energy consumption (see: Least of effort in leadership).

Long ago, when physical strength was necessary to fight, ‘natural movement’ was commonplace. All styles of martial arts, breathing techniques (see:  Best Ways to Relax Successfully), meditation, yoga etc. are supposedly methods to regain natural movements. Those are very straight forward and very simple once we know how to do it, but quite a bit hard to (mostly) re-learn (recall) from our childhood years. And when we do, we realize how powerful natural movements are. In the Nature all species depend on them to survive. That is why masterful martial artists when old move so simply, so powerful and are able to subdue much younger competitors.

There are different techniques to learn natural movements! Some of them are very popular today:

• “Meditation allows your body to settle into a state of profound rest and relaxation and your mind to achieve a state of inner peace, without needing to use concentration or effort.”
• “Yoga is a healing system of theory and practice. The purpose of yoga is to create strength, awareness and harmony in both the mind and body.”

But are the above techniques fairly represented and taught?

Reasons your Focus is or isn’t going to Work

“If a man does not know to what port he is steering, no wind is favorable to him” by Seneca.

Yes, we have to focus!

The so-called Y (or better interrupt) generation has big difficulties to handle it what I see daily in my classroom.

Focus is the thinking skill that allows people to begin a task without procrastination and then maintain their attention and efforts until the task is complete. Attention is a mental muscle and like any other muscle, it can be strengthened through the right kind of exercise.

During my university years I spent many hours practicing ballroom dancing on the competition level. Vienna waltz was our warm up procedure but not just one round, but ten or more in a raw. I have learned that the secret to not get disoriented is to focus on a point far in the distance and visually always following the spot (or your partner’s face) extracts the entire surrounding environment. The same goes if you lead a company: you must find a beacon and drive your organization passionately in that direction.

Organizations and countries need people with strong focus on (important) goals. They all need a talent to continually learn how to do things better or best. Without such high-innovative performers there is no innovation, productivity and change.

Therefore, focus is the state or quality of having or producing a clear visual definition – a center of interest or activity we do. So, being focused means thinking about one thing while filtering out distractions. It is an important tool that can and will shape your life. In a longitudinal study tracking the fates of all 1,037 children born during a single year in the 1970’s in the New Zealand city of Dunedin particularly compelling results came out (Source: The Focused Leader, by Daniel Goleman, 2013):

For several years during childhood the children were given a battery of tests of willpower, including the psychologist Walter Mischel’s legendary “marshmallow test”—a choice between eating one marshmallow right away and getting two by waiting 15 minutes. In Mischel’s experiments, roughly a third of children grab the marshmallow on the spot, another third hold out for a while longer, and a third manage to make it through the entire quarter hour.

Steps to Turn Control into Delegation

In my blog ‘Can Obedience nurture Trust?’ my thoughts were about shifting from blind obedience to trust. Control and delegation are a part of the same story. Let’s challenge them here now.

Control is the act or power of controlling or regulating people's behavior … or to exercise restraint or direction over; to dominate. All responsibility is with a control-holder.

History has repeatedly shown how problematic is to effectively restrain power from someone once it has been granted to if a strong system of control, checks and balances is in place. People tend to – when given control or power – exercise them far beyond the legal, actually given, authority. Such anomalies are not excluded in business.

What is Delegation?

To delegate means to give to another person a task or duty or activity meanwhile retaining responsibility for the outcome. The latter is the key since while delegating, you are still responsible for the outcome!

So, where lays the difference between the two if responsibility still remains in the same hands?

Well, control, as we have seen, can be misused when delegate hardly.

Best Practices describe why Punctuality matters

In martial arts “punctuality” is the key. Why?

Why I think so, I’ll explain later, let’s see how punctuality is defined in Wikipedia: the characteristic of being able to complete a required task or fulfill an obligation before or at a previously designated time. "Punctual" is often used synonymously with "on time". It is a common misconception that punctual can also, when talking about grammar, mean "to be accurate".

In business world punctuality means organizing your time effectively; to be more productive as you start or get on time; in some countries to be respectful to your hosts and well, yes – also disrespectful in others; in short, punctuality affects the individual just as much as it affects the workplace to operate more smoothly as a whole. Punctuality reduces stress as well as stress leads to poor workplace performance.

Does then being punctual strengthens and reveals your integrity?

It is said that when George Washington’s secretary arrived late to a meeting and blamed his watch for his tardiness, Washington quietly replied ‘Then you must get another watch, or I another secretary.’

When you make others wait, you rob minutes from those that came early or on time.

I recall leading a project group in a government environment: we had meetings in a place where most of attendants had their offices. The reason was not to spend time of most participants on commuting. I usually arrived few minutes earlier. Once, after several attempts of asking people to be on time, I have written on the big wall table names and numbers. Everybody seemed a bit wary while watching me. When the last person finally arrived I summed up the numbers and multiplied with average hour salary for our group. We lost almost an average monthly salary while waiting.

The importance of being punctual is not universal and varies from country to country, even within country and from culture to culture. In some places like south Europe, Latin America or Pacific Islands, life moves at a different pace than in northern hemisphere and meeting times are meant to be more incoherent.

Does then being punctual build up and reveal the extent of control a leader has?

Things nobody tells you about Soft vs. Hard

“Soft can beat hard” is a saying in martial arts. It is hard to understand that one can be soft in martial arts and still win, isn’t it?

Let me explain a bit further. When talking about martial arts people mostly split them into two main categories:  Yin styles and Yang styles, named by China Yin and Yang concept (see: Dualism vs. Yin-Yang). If we transform this naming to western concepts then Yin styles could be referred to as soft or internal, while Yang as hard or external. Behind this naming and division is basically the way how we perform them. Like in Tai Chi which is predominantly practiced with slow nature and gracious movements and consequently labeled as Soft - Internal. In contrast, Yang as hard and external refers to the development of combative skill, brute strength, power and stimulating workout. For the latter Karate or Wing Chun could be examples.

But, if we, over the years, observe how one practices martial arts we note how everything changes due to experiences. Most Shaolin animal styles like White Crane for example, many Tibetan styles and/or Okinawan Karate are trained especially ‘hard’ early in one's life. Later on those styles soften as the master grows old and at the time knows the ‘ideas’ behind. Finally, at the top level the knowledge of any martial artist starts to resemble more to Tai Chi than e.g. stereotypical Karate. Majority of my older teachers converted their style to softer variation.

Is aging the only reason behind softening of martial arts’ styles? Normally the masters are still very vital, full of power and speed that dominates any novice with even higher speed and more force?

There definitely has to be another reason.

Cross-Culture Will Radically Change Your Leadership

All of you have probably visited places where you sensed that “things” are different than those at your home place?

Paradoxically, we set our knowledge and belief as a reference / universal point when judging other cultures. We compare what we know or believe to new and different views sometimes curiously wondering how wrong they are. You are basically trapped in stability issue of which I have written in Leadership and stability, such stability that you have fallibly perceived as security due familiarity with your ‘not changing’ home place culture.

Unfortunately, in this you are wrong. There is nothing stable in this Universe. Changes and differences are all around us, also when meeting other people, cultures or leadership styles.
Differences are the outcome of Gerhard Hofstede project when asked to unify IBM corporate culture across the globe. The study was conducted within IBM between 1967 and 1973 and covered more than 70 countries. Hofstede built a methodology of different countries and cultures and how they interact based on six different categories of cultural dimensions:

• Power Distance that expresses the degree to which the less powerful members of a society accept and expect that power is distributed unequally. 
• Individualism vs. Collectivism which focuses on the questions about whether people prefer a close knit network of people or prefer to be left alone to fend for themselves. 
• Masculinity vs. Femininity where masculinity represents a preference in society for achievement, heroism, assertiveness and material reward for success; and femininity, stands for a preference for cooperation, modesty, caring for the weak and quality of life. 
• Uncertainty Avoidance that expresses the degree to which the member of a society feels uncomfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity. 
• Long-term vs. Short-term Orientation where Long-term orientation dimension can be interpreted as dealing with society's search for virtue and are careful how they shape today not to distort tomorrow.
• Indulgence vs. Restraint that identifies the extent to which a society allows ‘relatively free gratification of basic and natural human desires related to enjoying life and having fun’.

Commonly used and cited methodology unfortunately is a perfect “Descartes model of dualism” so appreciated in Western hemisphere way of thinking (see: Dualism vs. Yin-Yang). With different dimensions it brings some diversity but does not allow or imply the changes within cultures.

Is there a solution that may contribute and add change to cultural dimensions methodology?

How Would a Leader Rock With Fun

Does fun have anything to do in leadership?

Did ever happen to you when you were still young that out of nothing (or for something that today would not even notice) you burst out laughing loud in a classroom? Did other mates follow?

Grown up, have you ever been in a situation when you could not stop laughing even you are aware it is not appropriate time/place? Probably, you have not.

And if it happened to you, you very likely tried to hold back and hush up knowing that the sound of (roaring) laughter is far more contagious than any cough, sniffle, or sneeze. Therefore, laugh should not interrupt the important meeting or should it?

How many times have you heard the phrase ‘work and fun’? So, do we have fun at work or we work for fun …?

The heresy?

It is well known that when we laugh we change physiologically and psychically. We stretch muscles throughout our face and as well our body, our pulse and blood pressure go up, we breathe faster sending more oxygen to our organs and tissues. Maciej Buchowski, a researcher from Vanderbilt University, conducted a small study and found out that laughter appears to burn calories, too.

In the post Best Ways to Relax Successfully I was talking how relaxation lowers stress. Laugh was purposely not mentioned as you have to have fun to do what was written in previously mentioned post. Increased stress is associated with decreased immune system. A good, hearty laugh relieves physical tension and stress.

Without any study behind I can argue that most people do not equate ‘work & fun’ together. Furthermore, as shows The Employee Engagement we are further and further distancing from engaged employees. The disengaged majority of employees probably wish it could be true to have fun at work but they have never really experienced it or been allowed to have it. And, by not allowing it, what a failure to raise productivity, development and much more. Studies demonstrate that when people are having fun at work, employee turnover is reduced. And not only turnover …

Now, think for just a moment. Think about your personal experience: when last did you have some fun and after felt more energized, focused, willing and able to get more things done?

How to use Praise, Blame and Appreciation!

“To belittle is to be little!” (unknown)

A Wing Chun practice on a hot evening at the end of spring: we were already well warmed up and our martial arts instructor told us to make pairs to begin a drill of punching, carefully chosen to practice a special sequence of repetitions (see about it in Pushing hands). Repetitions are the ones that bring ingrained knowledge to the surface at the right time. You start to respond in a subconscious way. When attacked we mostly don’t have time to think what to do. Therefore, our body should react suitably.

Every few minutes we changed partners. This improves the techniques as each of us is somehow different – smaller, harder, heavier, quicker. Meanwhile the instructor usually practiced with a guy who had no partner or he thought that needs an extra practice with him.

It was my turn at the time. We began exchanging of punches with a moderate speed to be told later by the instructor to quicken it and some other sequences were added. I pushed a bit harder knowing that instructor is much better than we are and can withstand faster, more dynamic, mixed type of punches. Then, in a heat of practice when sweat was running from both, I hit him with a very precise punch but still under control. With a high pitch voice the instructor stopped the practice. I thought he will explain and praise me. Being a teacher myself and also a father I’m always proud if my students or kids surpass me.

No, that was not about the praise!

He started to shout at me! Pretty angry he said that I should control my punches as he controls them, otherwise he would injure or even kill with a punch. He might as well demonstrate it if it is what we want …

Others, me particularly, were unpleasantly surprised and in sort of stupefied. Nobody was able to understand his anger and behaviour. Is this not a martial art’s environment where hits and small injuries are part of training? Nobody was actually hurt. No blood was spilled … just some small red mark on his cheek demonstrated what happened few seconds before.

What went wrong?

Best Ways to Relax Successfully

Is a stress-free and meaningful life possible today?

We are daily bombarded by requests, actions, interrupts. The media pressure us with what we should possess or buy, how we should look, what to eat ... We are pressed by our surroundings, neighbors, friends to ‘comply’ with standard of living they value. Our bosses tell us when and what to do no matter the hour of a day or day of the week. We are (always) connected – if not, right now we are looking for wifi!

Is this the life we want?

Some adhere to it others aim to different lifestyle. Nevertheless, for many of us the relaxation represents zoning out in front of a TV at the end of a stressful day. Does/could this reduce the accumulated stress?

No.

Known from ancient times to effectively combat stress is that we need to activate the whole body's natural relaxation response.

How we do it?

There are numerous marketing campaigns telling us to try three, seven, eight … ways of relaxing techniques that are readily (commercially) available?

Do those techniques work? Likely not!

What then?

Stress is necessary ‘part’ of life. One needs it for creativity, learning and, mostly in ancient times, to survive. Why, then, such a fuss about it?

We are all probably aware that stress is harmful when it becomes overwhelming and interrupts the healthy state of equilibrium of our body chemicals through nervous system. Our body and our nervous system are flooded with chemicals which prepare us for ‘fight or flight’. While stress response in emergency situations when quick action is necessary could be lifesaving, it wears our body down when constantly (daily) activated. Sadly, overwhelming stress has become an increasingly ‘common occurrence’ in our lives.

We should aim to control the impact of stress or to reduce it. And here the relaxation techniques come in. They are kind of brakes on our over heightened state of readiness and bring our body and mind back into a state of equilibrium.

Now, let’s move from ‘what’ to ‘how’.

Do we still / again need Leaders?

Current economic and political situation in the world with all perturbations is a big puzzle for me whether we are having or not the leaders.

Manuel Lima in his TED talk A visual history of human knowledge explains that “for a long period of time, we believed in a natural ranking order in the world around us, also known as the great chain of being, or "Scala naturae" in Latin, a top-down structure that normally starts with God at the very top, followed by angels, noblemen, common people, animals, and so on. This idea was actually based on Aristotle's ontology, which classified all things known to man in a set of opposing categories.”

Consequentially we accepted some kind of leadership whether of a real person or imaginative / invented super being. Normal people were part of a branching scheme of the tree depending on their power or wealth or importance. This concept is in fact such a powerful metaphor for organizing big communities, organizations, countries or super national entities or conveying information to map a variety of systems of knowledge that still persists in our understanding of organizational order.

At the end of the Cold war things somehow started to fall apart. World became globally connected via air transport and mostly due to evolution of Internet. To be precise I think the Internet is actually changing the tree paradigm we lived thousands of years, quite a lot and pretty fast.

Information is not any more spread via top down approach which gave top people the power of it. Organizational schemes are flattening. Even such organizations as armies follow the new principle when teaching combats units how to behave in the battle. It is dealing with decentralized, independent cells, where there's no top leader leading the whole combat process. Rather, any soldier should or could take command if necessity of circumstances requires so.

What we experiences today is the shift from trees structures into networks. Networks really embody notions of decentralization. Bring in interconnectedness. And the most important people, knowledge, information, organizations, countries and more become interdependent. A fact so well embodied in Nature that we keep forgetting all the times. For a moment think of your body. How many cells you have, organs, extremities. Do you feel each finger all the times? No, all these work in unity. But your body is not alone in the Universe …. Therefore, interconnectivity or better entanglement is a natural order.

Even more, this new way of networked thinking is critical to solve many of nowadays’ complex problems we face. From decoding the human genome or brain up to understanding the vast Universe we live in.

Back to the topic in question – is there a space for a leader in such network notions?

The Difference between Helping and Fixing

Leaders are there to help, managers to fix.

Agree?

Probably hard to claim this could be the final truth.

When helping someone then (obviously) you have to know better or more than the person you are helping. So, helping in ‘the wrong way’ demonstrates non-equality of the people involved thus becoming a relationship between non-equals.

There are times when we help a friend or co-worker during tough times. Does this kind of help require (owe) a favor in return? Or, is this help a sincere one with no expectation of returned favor?

Trying hard to help someone has it happened to you that you have inadvertently ‘helped’ in a way that it actually took away from people more than you could ever “give” them?

I remember my first weeks arranging my life in Seville. I was so many times lost and had to ask for help. And most of the times I got it only to discover that people, in their desire to help, sent me in the wrong direction.

There’s another way to help: we could help in a way that the receiver will eventually develop new abilities or knowledge and not just receive your help and your past knowledge.

And what would a help with a sincere and open approach be like?

Picture a small kid playing with toys: trying all over again to build a tower with bricks and it keeps collapsing all the times. After a while you step in and demonstrate how to do it. What exactly have you thought the child by your action? That depends on the way you have helped: you may have as well diminished kid’s self-esteem, sense of worth, integrity and/or wholeness. But, the help could be given with the right stimuli, motivation and by asking what goes where … it is a proactive way of helping that ultimately builds trust and knowledge.

With a sincere help you simply share your knowledge or you figure out what’s your help’s value to other person or when you give a transparent feedback. You do not expect anything in return. You just help the other to grow and learn. Help is also when (good) leaders take the time out of their busy day to help a follower or co-worker in need but unable to solve a problem. They’ll sure remember your help.

What about ‘fixing’?

What do People Want from Leaders?

We mostly talk about leaders and what constitutes to be a leader. What about followers – do they have any role?

Hearing Lao Tzu one can figure out what was found important long ago: "I have three precious things which I hold fast and prize. The first is gentleness; the second is frugality; the third is humility, which keeps me from putting myself before others. Be gentle and you can be bold; be frugal and you can be liberal; avoid putting yourself before others and you can become a leader among men."

How about today?

The Gallup informs us that the ‘vision thing’ pales in comparison to instilling trust, compassion, stability, and hope when debating what followers expect from their leaders.

Is it any different from the past?

I do not think so, just the wording is kind of more puzzled when reading ancient texts. What I understand is that followers expect a lot from their leaders. When they don’t get what they expect the first thing they begin to lose is trust and respect for their leader.

What I would expect from the followers is their hope for leaders to have greater emotional intelligence – what Daniel Goleman has already introduced in the previous century. With it a leader connects more intuitively with his followers. But this connection is never one way. Followers anticipate to be heard, understood and given enough attention to feel that their contributions and opinions matter. They envisage a leader to become opportunity enabler and an exceptional coach for them to help improve their performance.

Best Practices That Drive Adaptability

“Better to spend three years looking for a good master than ten years training with a bad one.” Wushu wisdom.

We live in a fast changing world where “being stable” means being adjustable. Only people who lost their adaptability naturally resist change (see: How to Guide Your Change). They become rigid which is the opposite of stable.

In Martial Arts adaptability is the principle of the Bruce Lee’s idea of giving with adversity, to bend slightly and spring back stronger than before and finally to adapt oneself harmoniously to the opponent’s movements without striving or resisting. During a competition or fight you have to adjust to the environment, your opponent, and to the mistakes you and your opponent make. This you can only do by being stable, flexible and adaptive.

Nature is a prime example of adaptability. Even big trees should be flexible and adaptive to grow stable. They adjust to the surrounding environment, to the winds and become even more stable. If not, they are uprooted. They don’t consume extra energy to rise straight up. For them it is natural to adapt to the soil declination when growing.

Water is the next good example mostly used in martial arts as a material to ‘replicate’. In China they used to say: water purifies and refreshes all living creatures, water without restraint and fear trickles through the surface of most things, water is fluid and adaptive, water which is in harmony with the laws of Nature. Water is soft but can cut through the hills and hard rock. Water “makes” it by adapting.

In everyday life there is an abundance of events and issues that require our adaptation.

Are we able to adapt or not quickly enough?

How to Guide Your Change

“Change is the only constant in life” Heraclitus.

Then why are we so afraid of it?

In the post Organizational change I have written that employees, others as well, perceive stability as security and therefore normally oppose changes. Such perceptions present difficulties or even block a change.

Where, then, is the exit door to ‘changing’ that?

Let’s start with a simple question: what do I want to be?

The answer does not lay within New Year’s resolutions where we write down our wishes and intentions on a piece of paper, store it in a bottle and launch it to sea, hoping it will manifest by itself! No. The Universe isn’t going to make this happen. You are the only one to do it!

So, how then?

Fajin Power that radically changes your Leadership

Fajin or fa chin is a term used in some Chinese Martial Arts …

When I first heard the term I didn’t know what to think of it. If your background is natural science you know that MOMENTUM is the product of the mass and velocity of an object and that the net FORCE acting upon an object is equal to the rate at which its momentum changes with time. You’ve also learned that POWER is equivalent to an amount of energy consumed per time unit.

If everything is already explained by physics, what now with this Fajin?

Let’s see what Fajin is and then how a person could practice and achieve this skill in Tai Chi practice.

 

In Chinese, the character ‘Fa’ literally means ‘to issue’, ‘to discharge’, ‘to send out’, whereas ‘Jin’ is a little more difficult to translate. Dictionary term is ‘strength / force’ but does not fully express the correct difference between ‘strength’ in Chinese ‘Li’ and ‘Jin’ in Tai Chi. The best description between ‘Li’ and ‘Jin’ is that the latter is generated by the whole body and is able to permeate the four limbs while the first is bogged down in the shoulder and the back.

Difficult to understand?

For me it was. So let me give you some hints.

In Tai Chi classic The song of Thirteen Postures it is said: “To store the Jin is like pulling open a bow, to issue the Jin (with Fajin) is like letting the arrow fly”. “The root of Fajin lies in the feet and is issued from the feet, controlled by the waist and transmitted to finger tips.”

Still having trouble understanding?

Ideas to Spark Positive Motivation

We recently got a puppy Xia. She entered our hearts immediately although Biba left us not long time ago (see: Lesson of Leadership by Biba).

We rescued Biba from the shelter when she was about one year old. Xia came to us eight weeks old from a breeder. This time we did not hesitate to start educating Xia right away. In the first weeks we tried “old” school techniques according to our previous experiences but they were not working well. So we decided to get an instructor to teach much more us than her. The instructor was very confident in telling us that his principle is a positive motivation that is easy for dogs and hard for owners. And it proved so all over again!

We were awarding Xia (with briquettes) whenever she was doing something that we actually wanted her to do in the way the instructor taught us. Xia was not receiving her food at home but was fed out throughout a day and practically for every single briquette had to do something. In two weeks’ time she was completely clean. As dogs are more inclined to “understand” gesticulation and not words we had to learn right gestures. When she understood them we gradually added words to them. All this time whenever she behaved “properly” she was rewarded with food from our hand. Wrong doings were overlooked but not punished. Until something was done rights, she did not get food. Xia almost immediately learned what brings her food.

The instructor told us that normally the repetition of 10.000 times makes the command stored to dog’s musculature “memory”. How equal to us! (See: How To unify Body, Mind and Spirit). Practically the same goes in practicing martial arts: “If you want to really learn something you have to repeat it 10.000 times!”

How To Unify Body, Mind and Spirit

In the philosophy of all Martial Arts ‘body, mind and spirit’ have to be and work united in order to be successful in any combat situation. In my previous posts you can easily figure out I claim that the same is valid in exceptional leadership.

Here I’d like to go deeper into the subject by using the knowledge that has been steadily compiling. In the post Wing Chun basics 4Leadership I explained this topic through Wing Chun perception of ‘central line, economy of movement and simultaneous attack and defense’. The first can be used as a reference for body as on the ‘central line’ reside most of the vital points of a human. The mind is the most energy lavishing organ in our body. Therefore, a martial art teaches to store “the muscle knowledge” of all your hits, kicks etc. in your ‘muscle memory’ (will be discussed further below) allowing us to be faster and more explosive than we are within the conscious (mind) way of moving our extremities. In the fight there’s simply no enough time to deliver hits and protect oneself. Therefore ‘a simultaneous attack and defense’ is called for. It is “a spiritual way” to be confident that your whole body and not just your hands will protect you. But, at the same time a person has to have high spirit to combat with the opponent.

Looking at those two different options and issues through the same lens give us the opportunity to appreciate the similarities in them. So I tend to see most of the Asian Martial Arts as trains heading for the same destination – the unification of body, mind and spirit - but on different tracks.

Tai Chi’s (Taiji) main aspect is the yielding: when attacked Tai Chi “turns into water” and yield. The main emphasis of Tai Chi is working internally utilizing the Qi (see: Qi–energy–leadership). The Great Masters of Karate, Judo, Kendo, Aikido, Jiu-Jitsu, Sistema etc. all taught and tried to inculcate different principles to unify the three.

Reasons why Leadership is not about manipulation

After recently a puppy joint our household once again it proved that from the moment we are born we have been predestined and taught how to manipulate. All small kids (the same goes for puppies) use basically 24 hours per day to watch, observe and consequently ‘calculate’ what is good for them and how to achieve it.

Well, assuming that is so and also knowing that manipulation has a bad reputation, how could we distinguish manipulation from a persuasion (does not have a bad reputation) that we use as well?

In my view a manipulation is, by definition, a form of persuasion and vice versa. Might be that manipulation is more of a short-term strategy, but consequently, manipulation and persuasion are all about getting someone to do something that you want them to do. Isn’t it?

From persuasion point of view I would say that it distinguishes from manipulation in a small detail: influencing someone because of something that is ‘good’ for the person or, better said that the person may be persuaded to perceive such doing as beneficial or good. Therefore, in this relation the trust in the persuader is the fundamental element for the effective persuasion. And trust is mostly missing or abused in manipulation.

Steps to: People are energetic when …

… interested and motivated - a well-known approach!

In the posts Can Obedience nurture Trust? and Disciplines of execution the question was whether command/control could bring results and if obedience could bring the trust. My opinion remains the same as explained in How to (not) energize the team: a positive energy energizes a person or a team.

So that’s it! Well, not exactly. My life lessons from bringing up my sons teach me that I have to use different approach to energize one or another.

To further it, I believe we mostly come across two types of personality: one gives us strength and energy while the other drains it. Within the first group are people (or even places and things) that make us feel like we are building up our own energy stores, rejuvenate us and help to do our best. The latter group leaves us exhausted, makes us feel as though we have wasted our time and energy without getting anything useful done. They do this to fuel their relentless hunger for negativity, leaving us drained and unhappy.

So how should we help people to function in their zone?

How leader decide

I have read that there are many people who think and plan in organizations, but very few who have the ability to move cognitive processes into executable phases (Marino).

We all have experience in making some thoughtful decisions. Making a good (right?) decision in different, sometimes difficult, situations is no small coup.

But why is it still in a lot of normal situations so difficult to make the right and good decision?

Probably the main problem lays in variables and outcomes that are often so uncertain and we are discomforted and paralyzed by analysis. I’ve read that all our decisions are made with a help of our emotions. And when we get into the emotional part of our brain, our inborn reaction is to protect ourselves. More hard it is to decide more adrenaline rushes in and we get flight-or-fight response. Our short-term survival is the (only) immediate goal.

Therefore, in such circumstances it is important to figure out when what you don’t know is actually important to know. So the first and most important component of decision-making is self- confidence. It helps us to go about gathering the necessary information to resolve the uncertainty and seize a decision.

Employee Engagement

I’ve read a lot of articles stating and arguing that the engaged workforce can create competitive advantage. The prime question here is how to engage people?

An engaged employee is ‘a person who is fully involved in, and enthusiastic about, his or her work’.

Now, try to find out from a truthful top executive how many engaged people work in his company and you would probably get an answer ‘about half of them or less’.

Should top executives be concerned about that?

In my post Leadership and “happy” organization I wrote: there is a Gallup-poll of a 1.5 million sampling, and the result is: 30% of employees are happy with their managers, 20% are not, and 50% have disengaged themselves in having any feelings at all. This is when employees show up for work, did what they are told to do, and, at the end of their shift, go home; the same routine would be repeated the next day.

Competition or Collaboration?

There is always a dilemma how to get better results: by fostering competition or collaboration between employees for the executions of organizational tasks.

The humanity from the dawn had to collaborate in order to have bigger chance for survival, so I would (always) vote for collaboration. Our basic communication tool (language) provided two main issues for the success: learning and passing the knowledge and the second is explaining or danger warning to other members of the pack.

On the other hand competition was, throughout our history, a driving force that continued moving humanity forward. It is most evident from the conflicts between tribes or societies. Imperialism, known from ancient times, is about economic expansion by grabbing defenseless countries (like Alexander the Great or/and Genghis Khan). Looting the countries for raw materials by forcing the labor to later force them to buy expensive manufactured goods is also accompanying humanity from dawns. But this competing attitude helped in driving developments that improved many aspects of life, and is continuing to do so. What else is globalization?

Definitely, conflicts were and are still part of our environment. And for them you need collaboration (again): to start or to solve them. But, on the smaller scale, could scientists in e.g. CERN compete with each other and still produce the same results as they do – or do they collaborate?

Continuing the struggle of thinking which one – collaboration or competition – yields better results, I would again like to say that it is collaboration: compare teamwork against solo or egocentric behavior of a player on the football terrain. Unfortunately, today we are often forgetting team play and are only competing with each other, against countries, environment… and not really understanding that there is no win for us while doing so. I think that for the progress towards a better world we should principally collaborate with one another and not compete against one another. Could this then be the ultimate goal?

No way!

Practicing “Tai Chun”

There is no martial art with the name Tai Chun. I just melted names of two arts to form a new expression:  the first word from Tai Chi (Tai chi in the leadership world -1) and the other from Wing Chun (Wing chun in Leadership; Wing Chun basics 4 Leadership). So, why did I combine those two arts?

For several decades now I have been practicing different martial arts and came to conclusion that at the top level of any martial art there is a very similar if not the same knowledge and performance.

Why is it so?

People like to think we are different. But, what I like to point out is that as people we are all the same. We have almost identical “hardware” (two legs and hands, one body, head …) that moves in the same way. Well, one is taller and the other is heavier etc. but there is no big difference when it comes to how we sit down, walk, eat or fight. We use the same musculatures, joints or/and bones. Our “software” is pretty similar as well (we have fears, we are happy, we are angry …). Our brains work through the ‘same’ neurons and have same regions for processing vision, thoughts, and emotions. Therefore, our thoughts are produced, stored and retrieved in the same manner. And the same goes for our  cerebellum system where our reactions are ‘memorized’ and fired from.

Can Obedience nurture Trust?

Someone told me that blind obedience nurtures trust (my post Disciplines of execution). Let me elaborate this a little more.

I was told once that obedience is the basic issue to foster trust in organizational structure!

I was kind of surprised by such unilateral thinking and explanation of the working environment and could not figure out where from this way of thinking comes. In all my years of working experience I never thought that obedience can or may nurture trust. Just the opposite: I believe that obedience is a one way communication. And trust is definitively a two way issue.

Let me review what I have already written about to clear my position on the subject.

In the post Loyalty at work I stressed that in strictly traditionally hierarchical organizations (companies or even countries) there is only one way of implementing the will or preferences of the leader or owner - it is called a command!

Well I can argue that even in such hierarchical organizations at different incidents employees should always be (are) treated with respect. It is the obligation of the organization to see that individual leaders or managers do not abuse their power or mistreat their subordinates.

In another post Leadership and trust I expressed that trust is vital and is one of the fundamentals of any kind of cooperation between two living beings! I can definitely claim that it is very difficult to expect the trust in leaders that are practically squeezing last drops of effort out of employees with a command.

If we look even on broader scope – our environment – my post To trust the Capital? goes even beyond trust of any living being: can we trust the systems we are implementing and having as the only solution today?

Disciplines of execution

Not long ago I met a young upwardly mobile professional. While discussing his views on management practices his position was clear: the subordinate has to do as he is told by his manager no matter the consequences! I kind of disagree: what if this ‘command’ costs company a bad reputation or money or lost customers. He was clear again: regardless, a subordinate has to follow what he/she’s been told to do! Lower ranked people have, most probably, less experience, less information and no broaden picture about the final goal. I was kind of surprised by such determined stand point, but had to point out that a company is not a military organization (even there some flexibility is possible). If a subordinate cannot execute the order then a manager cannot trust him/her, was his prompt answer.

A bit of a shock for me: from blind obedience to trust issues.

I have been managing and leading different teams in different environments. I do not remember ever expecting my co-workers (not subordinates) to execute blindly what I had ordered. On the contrary, I was trying hard to stimulating their own opinion(s), their own way of doing it but with the notion to take responsibility as well. I still follow what Ken Robinson said: “The role of a creative leader is not to have all of the ideas; it is to create a culture where everyone can have ideas and feel that they’re valued!”

I’m positive that the true threats to humanity are not the Hitlers, the Dahmers and the Mansons but those that blindly obey. As those that order cannot do it by themselves they can achieve it only through the means of obedient people. Therefore, I am strongly against the situation when a person in authority makes a decision or gives a command, that decision or command should be followed without questioning simply because a person in authority gave it.

Leadership Development

In my post Are Leaders Born or Made? I expressed my belief that the best leaders have some preconditions but they learn later on how to lead. By getting a leading position it should never be the end stage of learning and changing phase: to be (stay) in shape and understand the working environment constant learning and developing is what is needed and necessary.
When we already occupy a position of a leader what more should we learn, what competences should we develop and how do we do that?

Most leaders (I should rather use the term managers) begin and end their learning process by visiting MBA programs and maybe some additional courses. Unfortunately, traditional management practices (taught in a typical MBA program) are usually not very helpful in the field of innovation process (read more: Leading a team). Innovations foster any kind of development that is much needed in the very competitive business environment of nowadays therefore innovation is the key to success for any leader.

Any organization’s future success depends on identifying and evolution of the next generation’s leaders. Organizations that fail to do that sooner or later experience a loss of its high-potential talent that is usually at the time already in short supply. In a study by Laci Loew and Karen O’Leonard, Leadership Development Factbook 2012: Benchmarks and Trends in U.S. Leadership Development (July 2012) was acknowledged that US companies alone spend almost $14 billion on leadership development annually.

Why do then so many companies ignore proper leadership development? Is it because companies too often demand a wish list of ambiguous qualities like creativity and innovation that fail to align with organizational needs? Or is it due to assumption that ‘one size fits all’ and that the same group of skills or style of leadership is appropriate regardless of the strategy, organizational culture, or leader mandate?

Avoid or not office politics inside the company?

Politics are as old as civilization is. We are all aware of that. The fascination with politics increased in the 16th century when Machiavelli wrote thesis on how to acquire and retain power The Prince.

The question is if politics are meant only for politicians? To be used only at a state (region, city) level? Or are there underlying politics going also in many other fields, say also in organizations?
We know there are. Some of you may have heard or experienced this: ‘There's too much wrangling, gaming and maneuvering going on – I just hate this organizational politicking?’

There are very few employees and even less top managers immune to gossip, having their ideas stolen or being set up by others who want their jobs or statuses.

Very rarely employees or senior managers are reluctant to take part in what is called political games, because most people want to advance their careers or ideas, have job security, earn more and get more recognition.

The term office politics often has a negative connotation. On the other hand the brute truth and reality is that to ensure your own success or your ideas or projects you must navigate the minefield of office politics.

“Milking” – a new way of getting information from applicants?

Have you ever been through a hiring interview process?

If yes, what were your experiences: positive or negative?

There is not a lot of talk about it but abusive hiring processes is reality and cost organizations millions of dollars by turning possible customers into lifelong ‘haters’. Not long ago I've read that: the impact of a poor ‘candidate experience’ is uncalculated, unreported, and not discussed, making it quite possibly one of the largest ‘hidden costs’ facing modern organizations (by Dr. John Sullivan) but companies are never the less doing it.

Why?

There are millions of people searching for their jobs. Employers use different tactics to select between applicants. What I found lately is a tactic where prosperous new employee should prepare presentation (e.g. to board members) with one of employee from hiring organization. It is presented on an interview discussion that new hire could get the position only if presentation would be a fit for the board. The only connection between a position in a new company and a candidate is this employee fellow. So the employee is all sweet and kind and asking tons of questions and diligence in writing what a candidate says. Company employee squeezes applicant from different angles and asks to prepare special scenarios and data. It is an additional knowledge, experiences and possible different thinking that is asked from candidate.