Vision, Mission … Mantra

In a previous post about the power of vision & mission … After writing the post, I realize some people has a bad feelings toward such things as vision & mission. For anyone that could careless about mission/vision, here a simple alternative from Guy Kawasaki:

Create a Mantra

Guy recommends instead of writing vision & mission where no one remember it; a much better alternative would be 3-5 word mantra. A few keywords that describe your purpose.

Here are some example from Guy’s post:
  Nike: “Authentic athletic performance”
  Target: “Democratize design”
  Wendy’s: “Healthy Fast Food”

In my opinion, the process of creating vision & mission is still really beneficial to the writers, because you get clear what you should be focusing on. After that creating a mantra would be a good idea. When strategizing in the future, I would:

1. Create a mission & vision: For the executives/self to reflect on
2. Create the mantra: To share & inspire others & self

After reviewing my mission & vision, I realized already got mine, which is: 
Teach, Lead, Careering.

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This mantra suggestion came from this keynote from Guy Kawasaki about startup; it’s super funny & lots to learn from. For people who want to know more, you should check the podcast mentioned & Guy also details this in his book, Reality Check.

Vision, Mission … Why Bother?

In an in-class assignment, we were ask to make a vision & a mission statement for our life or career.

I was always confused about the difference between vision & mission statement … so we were taught the difference were:
   Vision = External purpose
   Mission = Internal purpose
Honestly, I could never under stand what’s the point of it. The company ones usually just seem long & generic most of the time.

On the contrary, It was an interesting exercise; We had to consider what’s important to us & what our life/career meant to us. It put a spotlight on what my direction in life.

This is mine (for now):

• Vision: To show the power of teaching with leadership throughout my careers
• Mission: To improve work-life & leadership through teaching

After the exercise, now I do appreciate mission statement & vision; Especially the process of creating it. It really get you think in a bigger strategic way.

For anyone who want to figure out their career path or bored about their life; I suggest you should try creating a vision & mission statement, you might just be surprise what you find out.

To Lead: Trust Them

Trust is the a key motivator in Leading

This is what I found from years with my various managers, teaching experience, coordinating projects & leading teammates.

Even when I only have 1 -2 people to coordinate, I try to provide them trust & empower them with any needed knowledge. When that happens they perform better, which allows me to focus improve quality & spend more time in tracking pending issues in the project.

This is important even with grade school kids. I provide trust in their judgement & work with their homework, they gain confidence. Once that is in place, I will trust them to do their work on their own with minimal supervising.

When they know others trust their quality of work; They perform better with less stress, greater confidence, concentration & motivation to work.

Whenever there is trust, the lead/employer will trust the employee with resources (otherwise they are just saying it while not meaning it). This will empower the employees with freedom & decision making to do their work better due to less stress.

End-Note: The more trusts happens → The more you will be able to delegate → The more things you will be able to accomplish

Recognizing the Curse of Knowledge

From my last post on describe one impact of the curse of knowledge & said I was going provide method of avoid it. Although if we can’t see it happening, how can we avoid it? So let’s talk about recognizing it first.

The core issue is people having missing information. It could be as simple as weird acynoymns.

First, we need to recognize when does it happens.
You know the curse of knowledge is occurring when:
 – Everyone is disagreeing against 1 or 2 people (it could be you)
 – The same topic keeps on coming back
 – Too much arguing
 – Both side is giving incoherent suggestion
 – When someone look confused & keeping quiet (Scare of looking stupid)
 – When someone sounds like they don’t know what they are talking about
These are all signs one or both side being misinformation or misunderstood.

To break this is to make sure the other understand the situation or you just start asking question. That’s the quick version. I will leave the details & the how till next post. (9 days from now, after a sunny vacation … Cheers)

Curse of Knowledge … on Delegation

Earlier today, I read a post from Ravi Kudesia at Brazen Careetist about the curse of knowledge on innovation & it reminded me of Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check. The book said the following:

“The curse of knowledge… Lots of research in economics and psychology shows that when we know something, it becomes hard for us to imagine not knowing it.”

At first it not seem that important, but when you can’t delegate because your team can’t produce the similar results as you … it is devastating.

Have you ever experienced someone training you tries explain what to do in one shot … then give you a stupid look when you starting asking questions?

When someone knows how to do something it will seem easy to the person because of their knowledge & experience. Although they try to explain it, but they cannot explain it in Layman’s terms; Even if they want to delegate some tasks,  they couldn’t.  This is one of the power from the Curse of Knowledge.

Next post I will attempt to find some ways to beat this curse.

Inspiring: Leading to Action

An inspiration of this blog was the post
How Teaching Can Make You Unforgettable
from Anita Bruzzese‘s blog On the Job.

I have been teaching kids for years & I have been applying those skills in the wokplace; But not until when I was replying on Anita’s post that I found myself constantly thinking of more & more points; that’s when I find myself thinking … “I might be able to write a full blog on this topic alone” … So I did, 3 months later (After planning, researching & pushing myself to do it).

Most of the time when students ask for help, they already know what to do. Usually what I do is to just ask leading questions to inspire them to figure out what they to should do … and their face lights up when they figure it out themselves.

Here is one simple way to inspire others through a situation:
1. Use leading questions to point people to a direction
2. Give them confidence/permission to take action
Note:
 Please don’t make them feel wrong if they took a different direction than you expected

3. Make sure to watch their reaction when they see their results unfold in front of them

Teach to Gain Leadership Soft Skills

Beside actually leading, a really great method to gain leadership skill better than teaching someone. Teaching, mentoring and leading are all about guiding people, so there are tons of leadership soft skill that can gain from teaching others. The following are leadership skills you gain from teaching:

Providing Guidance
In a micro-level,to teach is to lead people on a path/solution. When you become more experienced at this, the more effective you will be at guiding others in any situations.

Being Heard
The point is to not making people feel dumb when communicating, otherwise people will feel imitated to ask for you help. Teaching forces you to show an ides while not talking down to your audience.

View as an Leading Voice
As you teach a topic/software/process often, the more you get to view as an expert by others.

Becoming an Expert
The more you teach, the more you get exposed on the topic/software/process. This way the more question you the, the more you need to find the answer to. This naturally will push you toward an expert.

By getting these skill, you can improve your soft skills needed to become a leader others will listened to.

Lead: Gaining Leadership skills

Leadership skill are often list in any job posting; but when it comes learning it, we can’t just take a class & say we have leadership skills.

Like many skills such as writing, math, exercising, playing the piano or industry experience … Leadership skills need practice & gradually growth.

If you want to gain leadership skills, there are many place you can to start. These are some suggestions:

1. Volunteering
With so many tasks to do, you are force to take charge in completing some of the task. This will give you a chance to gain coordination skills.

2. Assoications or Communities
Having a role in associations & communities will give you responsibilities you don’t usually get. Many times you will need to request for help to complete these responsibiliies. Know how to requesting effectively is a fundamental for leading.

3. Teach
With no surprise … this is another way, teaching is a way to guide others to a specific goal. You can teach one-on-one or one-to-many, in the end, the goal is to lead people to learn particular processes or information.