I recently attended a two week workshop on general soft skills / cross culture and related subjects' training. Two topics really made me look up and take notice. The others were good too, but the below topics really caught my attention.
1. Self leadership
2. Fostering creativity
I will not describe or discuss here as to what was taught to us in the workshop. But I will just put down my own independent thoughts on the above topics from my perspective.
1. Self Leadership:
I think this is perhaps one of the most interesting topics that has caught my attention recently. We often complain of how much change we would like to bring in a "system" given the chance. We often complain about the lack of leadership skills shown by others who hold such positions. But when you do some introspection you realize that, leadership is in fact, not so easy. And you realize it the hard way , when you try to "lead" yourself into "change". The "change" could be anything , it could be as simple as "waking up early in the morning". You can make a plan and start the process of "self leadership" into accepting yourself into this simple change, and you'll realize how hard it is ! It takes great amount of force to pull yourself out of routine and adjust yourself to a new reality. Most of us give up somewhere along the way, and say "it just isn't possible" or simple, procrastinate it so you wont feel guilty of totally giving up. Whatever the case maybe, you need to ask yourself this - "If its so hard leading yourself, how do you think you'll be able to lead others ?" Note that, I'm talking about "leading" and not "managing", they are totally different from each other. Managing people is rather easy, but leading them, is hard. And to those, who think they're already better leaders, or they think they can be better leaders, I would say your litmus test is when you start "self leadership" ! Try leading yourself into accepting a simple change from yourself towards improvement and you can gauge how good your leadership skills are !
I think this is perhaps one of the most interesting topics that has caught my attention recently. We often complain of how much change we would like to bring in a "system" given the chance. We often complain about the lack of leadership skills shown by others who hold such positions. But when you do some introspection you realize that, leadership is in fact, not so easy. And you realize it the hard way , when you try to "lead" yourself into "change". The "change" could be anything , it could be as simple as "waking up early in the morning". You can make a plan and start the process of "self leadership" into accepting yourself into this simple change, and you'll realize how hard it is ! It takes great amount of force to pull yourself out of routine and adjust yourself to a new reality. Most of us give up somewhere along the way, and say "it just isn't possible" or simple, procrastinate it so you wont feel guilty of totally giving up. Whatever the case maybe, you need to ask yourself this - "If its so hard leading yourself, how do you think you'll be able to lead others ?" Note that, I'm talking about "leading" and not "managing", they are totally different from each other. Managing people is rather easy, but leading them, is hard. And to those, who think they're already better leaders, or they think they can be better leaders, I would say your litmus test is when you start "self leadership" ! Try leading yourself into accepting a simple change from yourself towards improvement and you can gauge how good your leadership skills are !
2. Fostering creativity:
Now this is another interesting misconception that I see most people have. I see how often people believe that they are not "creative", and it takes some genius to be really creative. After attending the workshop, I feel that this notion of "lone genius" is really misguided. Creativity exists in all of us, its just that we let it go into hibernation, simply because we find it easier to adjust to routine and stay in our comfort zone. For ex: We were asked to paint a dragon with water colors. Now, even though I was fairly good at drawing long long time ago, I did not know I still had it in me. But when I took those brushes and started painting, I felt I did a fairly decent job. Now what sparked this ? In my opinion, its just that I was not afraid of the results / or in other words "failure", there was no one to judge me, and I had no critic to tell me whether it was good or bad. I was like a child, exploring what I could do with those brushes. That's creativity. Creativity exists in all of us , but it only sparks when we set our minds free, get out of the "routine" box , stop thinking of risks and feasibility and worry about acceptance . When we do that, we can see that we explore so many avenues which we initially thought did not exist.
Now this is another interesting misconception that I see most people have. I see how often people believe that they are not "creative", and it takes some genius to be really creative. After attending the workshop, I feel that this notion of "lone genius" is really misguided. Creativity exists in all of us, its just that we let it go into hibernation, simply because we find it easier to adjust to routine and stay in our comfort zone. For ex: We were asked to paint a dragon with water colors. Now, even though I was fairly good at drawing long long time ago, I did not know I still had it in me. But when I took those brushes and started painting, I felt I did a fairly decent job. Now what sparked this ? In my opinion, its just that I was not afraid of the results / or in other words "failure", there was no one to judge me, and I had no critic to tell me whether it was good or bad. I was like a child, exploring what I could do with those brushes. That's creativity. Creativity exists in all of us , but it only sparks when we set our minds free, get out of the "routine" box , stop thinking of risks and feasibility and worry about acceptance . When we do that, we can see that we explore so many avenues which we initially thought did not exist.
