If you want to be a good leader hire a person who counters your views. Well, you must be thinking I’ve gone crazy to say such a thing, but you’ll see sense in what I’m saying, a little while later.

Are you aware that this world is full of people who don’t think exactly the way you do? When I was a team leader at my office, I used to take pride in my knowledge and capabilities. People would simply nod their heads in approval to whatever I said. Then one day, a fresher came who pointed out loopholes in my outlook. Though my ego played on me, for a while, for taking tips from a new recruit, I saw sense in what he said and changed my approach. This saved us a lot of unnecessary hassles. This is where I used opposition positively.

You, as a leader, should always be prepared for challenges. You might be the king in your organization, but since you need to prove your mettle in the outer world, you’ve got to fight criticism and win over it. For this it is advisable for you to do some internal preparation. If there are people in your team who hold opposing views, encourage them to express their views. This will help you in knowing the kind of criticism you might have to face in the outside world and get yourself ready for countering it. Don’t get disheartened by criticism. Carefully mark what the other person has to say and use these as leads for rectification.

When hiring people who differ from you, be prepared to take in some ideas which might irritate you. Be sure to not intimidate the person from expressing himself because if you do so, you’ll lose valuable viewpoints that you might have to get prepared to answer. Rather give your opponent the support to speak out his mind freely because this will not only expose the validity of your judgment, but also clarify your thinking.

If you want to hire people with opposing mindsets, just follow these basic guidelines:

1. Assess if the opposing views are worthwhile. If someone just opposes you for the sake of arguing then and his argument has not substance or does not seem to be more effective than yours, just forget him. He’s not worth your time and effort.
2. Your opponent should come up with feasible solutions for the problem at hand. His views should be practical and effective in handling the situation at hand. There’s no point in hiring people who just counter your views but are not able to come up with any solutions.
3. Look out for people with high aspirations for working for the welfare of the organization. They don’t contradict you to show their superior intellectual skills or to point out your faults, but out of a genuine interest to bring about a change for the betterment of the organization. These are the people who prove themselves in the long run. Respect their views and learn from them if necessary.
4. Hire people with promising professional backgrounds. If you come across a person who’s stood against all hardships, such as, fierce competition, lesser resources or a radical change in the organizational structure, and emerged successful, this is the person you are looking for. Just get him, he’ll see you through.
5. Never hire a person who’s opposed to you and not to your ideas. Such a person is dangerous. He’s no better than an enemy who has some personal grudge against you. He’ll distort things to satisfy his personal wrong motives and will put the company in peril. Just forget him or just keep him under control.

Whoever wins the argument, whether you or your opponent, just be sure that you, as the assigned leader has the final say, otherwise the rest of your followers will be confused as to whom they have to follow in future. If you find that the opposing view is producing better solutions for a particular problem, just accept that view with an open mind, commend your opponent for coming up with a nice solution, but pass the final decision yourself. Don’t let another person formally control your team.

Remember, accepting others views is not a sign of your submission to their intellect. No person is perfect in this world and no thinking is perfect. To err is human and a wise man learns from experiences and modifies his self to climb up a higher rung in the ladder to perfection.

Please feel fee to share your viewpoints with me here.

“The tough get going when the going gets tough.” I agree hundred percent with this saying. I have come across quite a few leaders who remain unfazed during adverse times and emerged successful. What helps them retain their composure and makes them more enterprising during tough times, is their unflinching positivity. In the present times of economic crisis many of us are worried about our careers, future and survival. Fearing financial losses, some firms have withdrawn from ongoing projects and many have stopped taking up new projects. It is all because of the massive economic uncertainty looming over them. They fear to be optimistic in their views. But it is in these economically hopeless times that a few companies have tried to make the best of these discouraging situations in order to survive and prosper.

“A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities and an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties” – Harry Truman

It was not without good reason that our famous have made such quotations. With optimism as your weapon, there hardly seems to be anything that you cannot achieve in this world. If you want to be a good leader make optimism your weapon for attacking any adverse situation, fighting with it, defeating it and emerging victorious. Optimism supplies the extra energy that is required by you to fight tough situations.

Face the challenge of the current economic situation boldly. Uncertainty creates a void in the minds of people. They strat expecting the worst, get depressed and loose focus on their work which effects their performance- something that your company cannot afford to put up with when it is already burdened with a crisis. It is during these times that you need to convey your message of assurance and hope with clarity, in a positive tone. The first thing that you should start with is to stop worrying and get ready for action. Inspire your people and start thinking how best you can use the current resources for survival and growth. Your success as a leader depends on how best you can transfer your positive beliefs to other people. Go ahead and take the challenge with the help of these guidelines:

1. Develop a positive culture in the workplace: Address all employees by holding a meeting or by arranging a gathering. Answer their queries and assure them. Give a realistic picture of the present situation and how much they’ll be affected by it, and the measures you are taking to cope with the situation. Make a team of positive thinkers in your organization that can create a positive culture there. Any initiative starts from home. Bring about a change in your work environment first and then proceed to introduce positivity in the market where you’ll have to face pessimism and criticism.
2. Transfer your positive belief to your followers: Envision a practical, positive environment and convey your vision to your followers in clear and simple language. Your vision should be relevant to the situation at hand and should be really effective. Your followers should be able to relate to your vision. Tell them how they should cope with their present hardships and proceed ahead towards success. Instruct all sub-leaders of your organization to convey your vision in terms relevant to their followers based on their areas of work.
3. Create Positive pilots: Positive vision, when successfully conveyed, triggers an urgency in the followers to take initiative in adopting positive measures to counter any crisis. They become positive pilots who take the responsibility of piloting the firm out of danger and make it prosper. They will play an active role in spreading your positive vision, goals, focus and purpose in the organization.
4. Establish personal relationships with your employees: As a leader if you really want your positive vision to be adopted by your employees, you should be prepared to do some hard work. Don’t just sit in your chamber and ask your managers to convey your message, Meet each and every employee, empathize with him/her and convey your positive message personally. They will connect with you when you establish a personal rapport with them.
5. Feed the magical potion of turning adversity to advantage: Your vision and your style of communicating your positive thoughts should be so effective that your employees should be able to think optimistically by themselves at the face of adversity. Take the help of general knowledge and history to cite examples of firms and individuals who prospered at the time of crisis. For this, you can initiate a thought process in them which answer the following questions:

1. Do these experiences teach me something positive?
2. How should we hone up our positive thinking?
3. How will I benefit by thinking positively?
4. What are the actions that need follow my positive vision?

You cannot control situations in life. But with positive leadership, communication and action, you can definitely work upon the situation to your advantage.

Hiring the best in the industry is not the end for your quest for success. Just collecting great minds is not enough; you’ve got to create the culture of excellence in your organization to bring out the best from the best. After all, human abilities are a product of nature and nurture, and the onus of nurturing excellence in your work environment lies largely upon you.

Nowadays, I find a lot of organizations taking the trouble of identifying the potential and existing skills of their employees and encouraging them to hone them up. Organizations are spending huge amounts of money in getting their employees trained in soft skills for working towards a healthy work environment devoid of petty politics and disputes. The other day I visited an organization for imparting lessons on corporate communications. I found that most of the time the executives out there were fighting over petty issues. Their goals were so trivial. They were simply satisfied by being in the good books of the boss. They weren’t really bothered about enhancing their quality of work for the greater goal of company welfare.

Clearly the culture of this organization is negative. The leaders of this organization should introduce the “culture of excellence” in this organization. Standards for excellence should be set and the employees should be asked to meet them. People will automatically develop the behavior, attitude and habits that are necessary for excellence. As some senior officials of most companies opine, no matter how good your strategy for coping with a challenge may be, if you don’t have a culture of excellence in your workplace, you’ll not be able to achieve complete success in your endeavors.

I’ve seen organizations with a culture of excellence remaining unfazed in the toughest of times. In keeping with the expectations of the culture, executives have been trained to cope up with challenges and their mindsets are tuned towards excellence in the toughest of times. People work in unison to achieve the common goal of excellence. You as a leader, should instruct your managers to identify the interests of the people. If you find that a technical recruit has good sales skills, give him a sales job if he’s interested. Don’t bind his creativity to one area of work. Just do anything to bring out the best in this person. Let him use his abilities to the best possible extent and you’ll find him excelling his work amazingly.

Well, you might feel that it is indeed obvious that a person who has abilities should be given the opportunity to hone and use them, but in reality it is not so. Hirers are interested in extracting the maximum from the hired, right from the first day of their employment. They are really not interested in giving them the time to work upon their skills and excel. They think training people in skills is a costly investment with little repayment value. But the opposite is true. It is seen that the investments that are made in training executives have great returns. You save a lot of money that is spent in overcoming crisis and problems arising from petty culture.

One advantage in developing a culture of excellence is that it nurtures a positive culture within the employees. The positive energy flows from the top levels to the bottom levels and every person of the organization is energized. As a leader, if you are positive and vibrant, you’ll set an example and people will follow suit. Your motto should be “be happy and keep others happy”. Within a positive culture, any problems owing to petty mentalities are dealt with at the level of the culture and not on an individual basis. So, most of the problems are kept at bay owing to the mandatory cultural standards.

To star with, here’s a simple exercise for you to establish a great organizational culture. Just pin up messages saying “I’ll work for excellence” on each and every work desk so that people are reminded of their true goals whenever they see that message. You can also announce attractive gifts for those who meet their goals.

You are welcome to share your views on this with me!

You want to make it big in online business, right? As one of the successful online business persons, I must tell you that my journey to the top was not all that easy. All the way, I was a good observer of failures and learnt a lot from them. I want to share my success secrets with you so that you do your homework before getting started and avoid failures as much as possible.

The first thing that you should bear in mind is that online business is like any other business and you get to taste success after a lot of correct moves. Like other businesses, those who make it big in online businesses are few. Business is not only about luck or hard work. An important ingredient is business acumen that helps you play your cards right. This is what the majority of us is not gifted with and therefore lags behind while only a few make it to the top. A successful businessman will analyze the loopholes in his concepts and techniques, and work upon them.

Surprisingly, I find, success or failure is not as much about technical knowledge or skills, as about human elements. This is what self development author and trainer, Dale Carnegie has to say about success:

“Even in such technical lines as engineering, about 15% of one’s financial success is due one’s technical knowledge and about 85% is due to skill in human engineering, to personality and the ability to lead people.”

Now, do you see the dividing line? Why the majority of us are unsuccessful is because of our attitudinal problems. Here’s what I gathered from my experience in the online business world. Thinking in these lines is going to help you in avoiding failure to a large extent:

1. Faking authority is foolish: When I surf the internet, I come across only a few reliable sites. Unfortunately the rest are all bogus. Do you know why? Many people eagerly try giving information without having expertise in the subject. Remember, that your readers are no longer novice in anything. Using Internet technology they gather heaps of information at the click of a mouse button. They are intelligent enough to figure out if you are an expert in your subject or not. If they find that you are faking expertise, they’ll label you as unreliable, and go to the expert. Before you start selling your products make sure that you are armed with expert knowledge.
2. Why do it when you don’t have your heart in it?: Blindly joining the rat race is what many of us do. When the internet business concept first came into being, I saw many ‘budding entrepreneurs’ running for it just because it was the talk of the town. But then, may I ask why the number of people who make it big is so few?  Don’t give in to a popular craze if it really doesn’t interest you. See if you really like it and if you have the skills to succeed in it.  Well, you might be short of rewarding career options. But even the most popularly rewarding career might suffer if you aren’t the correct person for it. Just listen to your heart and you’ll be on cloud nine. That’s what I did and I really thank my stars for that. Believe me; a whole hearted attempt always pays.
3. If money is your only passion, forget it: Working for money, is different from working for only money. Online business does give great monetary returns and many of us are primarily attracted to online business investments for these returns. I don’t blame anyone for that. Naturally, when livelihood has become so expensive, money is an important criterion for a business investment.  But if money is your only attraction and you don’t like the business or don’t have aptitude for it, better you quit. The logic out here is very simple. To get a good output, you need a good input. Money is an output. Your interest and skills are your inputs. If you don’t have a good input how can you expect a good output? Your output should never be your motivating factor because without good input motivation, its illogical to think of a good output. The inputs were my passion and the output was my reward.
4. Have faith in yourself: In the early days of my business, I had to struggle a lot. There were many times when I felt that my business wasn’t giving me the desired results and so I should switch over or just wind up. I was repeatedly unsuccessful in around 20 attempts of mine. After that the silver lining on the cloud became visible. I started climbing up the ladder to success and since then I’ve never looked back. If I would have let my fickle-mindedness get the better of me, I would not have got the opportunity to see that which was in store for me beyond my failures. Every failure was a learning experience for me rather than a disappointing event. My self confidence and determination were the foundation stones of my success on which I built up my prosperity.
5. Be a Warrior: Success does not come that easily. In a world full of fierce competition, you can’t expect things to come your way very easily. I faced a lot of obstacles when I first launched my online business. Nobody noticed me in the market and my revenue was nil. Many a time, there was a lull in the market in which many online businesses did not get good response. The statistics of the successful percentage was pretty discouraging, but I fought my way through. I did not lose heart. Another thing I learnt was not to make myself totally dependent on anybody. Just imagine, many online businesses have become parasitic on Google. You should be able to survive even without Google if situations turn out to be so.

Now since I’ve told you my secrets, learn up these and proceed ahead. Don’t waste time in common mistakes. Feel free to share your opinion with me here.

“Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other thing.”
– Abraham Lincoln