Turbulent time create great leaders

Victims’ approach: Why me?

Leaders’ approach: It depends on me!

This second leadership lesson of “Leading Without Title” by Robin Sharma focuses on how overcoming crises is the beginning towards the real improvement of our lives and becoming leaders in any area of our lives.

S P A R K is the acronym used for the learnings Blake receives from his master:

Speak with candour:?Being honest and ensuring clear communication takes place, especially when things do not seem to be working. Towards clients, teammates, but above everyone, towards ourselves, knowing that we are behaving with integrity and courage. Naming situations generate emotional responses.?Words are thoughts that expressed aloud, shall be used to improve levels of energy or innovation rhythm. The behaviour of people surrounding us will be determined by how we influence them with our example. This shall become viral.

Prioritize:?Focus on the best and forget the rest. Leadership consists of knowing very little of everything and a lot of few topics. We shall become experts on them to succeed in a world where there are too many options and too much information available. To be productive and create results,?let’s transform chaotic complexity into an elegant simplicity. Our personal energy is our most valuable resource.?We can be genius, having amazing endless opportunities and a plan to make the most of them. However, without daily energy, there will not be any result. We shall be productive and focus on authentic results by doing fewer things but better. Focus, focus, focus.

Adversity Breeds Opportunity:?Every crisis or setback contains in themselves exceptional opportunities. The most powerful and strongest leaders were built through struggle and difficulty. Adversity, if we allow it, unleashes noble courage in each of us. Leadership is about taking advantage of difficult times to use them in your own favour by seeing obstacles as blessings in disguise. Progress will occur by acting to leave adverse conditions behind.?Setbacks are nothing more than tests to see if we are prepared for the rewards we can get.

Respond versus React:?When difficulties arise, be elegant under pressure.?Having initiative, let’s strive to be the person in our teams to get things going by focusing on what can be controlled. The best hours of a leader occur when it seems that everything is falling apart. Rather than feeling paralysed, keeping calm and acting in an excellent way will turn the situation around.?

Kudos for Everyone:?Inspiring, encouraging people, and?pouring light on them. People need to feel appreciated for the smallest action to face uncertainty and stressful moments.?Every day for the rest of our lives, we must be those few individuals who encourage the effort of others,?looking for the good in people and applauding even the smallest positive actions of others.

We sometimes assign to luck the outcome of our achievements in life, rather than assuming the active role we have towards everything that comes on our way.?Who we commonly call “fortunate” people have not just been lucky but created the conditions that allowed them to achieve their goals. This can only be done by embracing risks and taking advantage of opportunities?

Ultimately, our approach towards our failures will define our level of satisfaction in life. Or even, our acceptance of the events that happen to us, will determine our feeling of fulfilment. Events just occur until we categorize them and assign them a value: positive, negative, or neutral, depending on the impact we consider they will have in our lives.??

Failure is a construct, usually of what has been agreed to be against our social definition of success.?

Being out of our comfort zone can sometimes feel like a failure, as we are just in the process or halfway through our goal. Precisely because we feel we might not be able to control a certain situation or event happening in our lives. However, the limits of our comfort zone will expand the more time we spend on it. Hard conditions are our opportunities to become heroes, and the virtue of patience will convert our fear into momentum. By consistently overcoming our natural resistance and approaching what we are fearful of, increased confidence, strength and capability will be our reward. As well as the respect that we have towards ourselves as individuals.

We shall be led by the idea that every positive action has a positive consequence, and that initiative and hard work are the warm-ups to reaching the summit called success.?