Creating Great Leaders

Many would say that leaders are born but today, leaders can be created.

Skills of great leaders can be learnt and it must be learnt from the right leaders. Do give careful thoughts on what you have learnt before using and building it as part of your skills.

Recently, I attended a convention and I see and learn more as I enjoy the whole proceedings. It was fun and funny although there was fire from the audience.

The convention meeting started with fire on a member being unlawful dismissed. The chairperson is a jovial and submissive man to the organisation. Let us name him as “Leader A”. While sitting beside him, there was a crude and unreasonable person who thinks that he is a great leader. Maybe for his own kind. Let us name him “Leader B”.

Proposal to put the privilege motions as the priority to the meeting but Leader B suddenly wanted to take control as he was afraid that fire will broke out and it will not show their capabilities as leaders, especially with the presence of the Executive Director from World Headquarter.

The audience brought up 8 motions to be discussed but somehow, they were only taken as 1 and later 2 motions. Leader B kept wanting to prevent the audience from bringing up the additional motions while Leader A sat there was opened to listen what grievances the audience has.

With Leader B trying to prevent the 8 additional motions to carry on, it wasted more than an hour and the meeting had to end abruptly with lots of dissatisfaction. There were no solutions and conclusions to the whole meeting.

During the questioning from the audience, Leader B kept snatching the microphone from Leader A without even asking a simple “Mr. Chairman, can I answer to that question?” and it was not just once or twice that Leader B was snatching. I was surprised with the kind of leadership skills which I personally witness with the hundreds of people at the meeting.

Leader A was cool and neutral but doesn’t know how to control the situation when fire started and questions were like arrows shooting at the board of executive committee.

Leader B clearly shown us how a man can turn into a chameleon instantly. With face turning green when felt scared, turning red when furious, black when angry, blue when threaten and white when he was in great fear. Yet, the snobbish and arrogant leader made a fool of himself by trying to show how great a leader he is. (He still thinks he is the greatest leader today.)

The Executive Director needed to help them to put out the fire by standing up, asked the chairperson for permission to speak, getting the audience to allow him to speak with no disturbance and addressed the audience and put out the fire. A diplomatic person with no direct answer or power yet proved his leadership skills with style.

Crooked stick produce crooked shadow and therefore we must learn with great concentration, understanding and thought.

Leader A and B have their strengths and weaknesses which we can learn to become a better leader. Know what you should and should not do while learning. It would be dangerous to learn blindly without serious thinking of what you learn.

There are two side on everything including laws. What you read and thought may not be what the lawyers interpret. Therefore, it would be great to ask if you are not sure and learn the truths and the rights in whatever we are learning everyday.

How a person does anything is how he does everything.

Looking at Leader A when in the meeting. He is jovial, a happy-go-lucky person and never take most of the things happening around him seriously enough. A person who just enjoy his life and whatever comes to him.

While Leader B thinks he knows everything and always want to be in control. Thinking he is the best, he has no respect for anyone around him until he is threaten with authority. The child in him wants to showcase his leadership skills with the wrong skills he had learnt all these years.

All these show us that we are only human and we make mistakes as we learn everyday. The most important is to be able to correct the mistakes correctly to become a better person, a better leader.

Leaders lead by examples and the right examples are important. How a leader project his leadership skills and abilities is how he is going to nurture his followers in becoming great leaders. Therefore, one needs to understand the truths and facts of being great leaders.

The eight skills leaders must learn is the Right Concentration, Right Understanding, Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, and Right Mindfulness. Master these skills and you will become a great leader to follow and learn from.

There are plenty for us to learn and once you have these skills, you will be able to change your life and the life of others. Touching and blessing the life of others and make a difference.

Writing and Presenting Great Speeches

A spark can create into a great idea for a fantastic speech. Sometimes, we are so confident that we can deliver our speech with ease as it is something that we already know. Yet, after our presentation, we always feel that the speech can be better crafted and presented.

Time after time as we present, we know that our speech can be better and we just don’t understand where have we gone wrong. How can we write great speeches and presenting powerful speeches?

The fact is a great speech is like a lady wearing a mini skirt. Yes, the speech needs to be like the mini skirt. Short enough to arouse the interest of the audience and yet, long enough to cover all the vital points.

When we have an idea for a speech, we would definitely have the opening and conclusion for the speech in mind. Therefore, to give your audience powerful facts that support your speech, we need to build a great body for the speech.

For example, if we are meeting some friends and we reached the venue early and we have to wait for them. As we looked around, we spotted some people and by the look of the body structure, we know if they are the friends we are waiting for. Then, we will double confirm by looking at the faces before we concluded that they are friends.

In another view, a speech as I have said that it is like a lady wearing a mini skirt. The lady in mini skirt will capture attention specially from the men. Imagine, if the lady take of her jacket and pop off a button at a time in front of the audience. Their eyes will pop and their jaw will drop. Each button popped the audience will get much more interested to see and want to know what’s next.

Having the idea on how to write your speech, it is now about practice, practice and practice your delivery. Rehearse and make that speech again and again to make that speech part of you. Every time you need to present that speech again, rehearse it over and over again so that it can only be better.

The art of writing a great speech and presenting a fantastic presentation is not about what you wants to deliver but what your audience wants to hear as well as how you can add additional values to empower your speech and presentation.

Hence, if you are planning to write you next speech, do take some of my sharing into consideration. Having some careful thought, understanding and concentration in the preparation, orgainisation, and ultimately your way of presentation is important.

“Thinking without doing is dreaming. Doing without thinking is dangerous.” – William Lim T.C.

It’s in The Mind.

We may witness happening with our eyes but sometimes our eyes can deceive us. At times, our mind play tricks on what we thought we saw but it may not be true sometimes.

The mind can only start thinking correctly if we keep our mind clear. We can only start seeing the right picture when we clearly understand what had actually happened. With the right concentration, we can then make the right choice on what to do and how to do things right.

Whether we think we are right or wrong, we are right. The speed of our brain waves is so much faster than the speed of lightning. Hence, we can imagine things, see imaginary images, or sometimes dream.

Therefore, it’s a double-edged sword which either give us success or failure.

Whatever the mind thinks, we project thru our facial expression, gestures and body language. If you don’t believe in yourself, others around you can see, feel and know it because it shows. A sales person who doesn’t believe and sold to the products they are selling will not have confident to sell the products at all. People with lack of beliefs and confident will not be able to attract friends and opportunity.

Therefore, one need to learn how to believe before one can achieve anything in life.

Yes, it is hard to think positive, feel positive and act positive. Our mind will always question ourselves if what we are doing it right or is it wrong. Hence, we go no where in life as we are not sure of where we are heading in life.

Life is meant to be this way unless we start understanding what life is all about. As the word spell as L-I-F-E, L stands for Living and E stands for Ending of Life. What’s left behind is I-F which is the remaining of the word LIFE. The IF which confuse us, that creates uncertainty and therefore creates procrastination in life which in turn creates the road to nowhere.

Unless we learn to control our life by focusing on the positive in our life and take positive actions to achieve our dreams, we may not achieve anything. Successful people don’t do different things, they only do them differently by seeing the different perspective in achieving their goals.

Likewise, many love explain things, make excuses on why they are not successful or even blame others for causing their failure in life. Sometimes, people even blame the government of all their wrong doing but what about those things they did right? Are they commented by you publicly?

John F.Kennedy once said: “Ask not what the country can do for you but ask what you can do for the country.”

Explaining, giving excuses and blaming will not help us progress instead it will only create a door for us to run away from the truth. Pushing the wrong doing, and everything wrong to others will only make us more irresponsible.

Take the courage and face every problem that comes to you. That is the only way we grow and become wiser with everything problem we solved and conquered.

Your mind can make you successful or make you a failure with the kind of message you sent to your mind. Therefore, so long as your mind can conceive and you believe, you can achieve.

Christopher Columbus had made up his mind that he would want to be a successful seaman since 7 years of age. He learnt the art of sailing and managing when he was 21 and master the art after years of sailing. With all the persistency and perseverance he managed to organise his own fleet of ships at the age of 41, to sail for the first time to the West on 3 August 1492 while others who didn’t believes in him sailed only to the East.

Learn the art of positive thinking and you will be able to achieve your dreams. It’s all in the mind. Once you believe whatever your mind conceive, you can achieve and conquer anything in your life.

The Mirror of Life.

We have seen and heard many speakers and sometimes we try to model them. But are you learning the right skills from the right masters.

There are many great speakers in the world and as we listen to their speeches, we are impressed with the way they put their words across. We are persuaded, inspired and aspire to be like them.

Since the birth of radio many decades ago, we have been listening and learning thru hearing. Until today, some people still learning thru listening to the MP3, MP4, radio, CDs and etc. Hence, we build in our mind that language is the most important in any presentation. We need to perfect our language before we can use it. But is there perfection in this world?

The late Dr. Albert Mehrabian did a study to find out the differences and effectiveness of Verbal, Vocal and Visual in presentation and found out that the Visual (Body Language) take up 55% while Vocal 38% and Verbal has only 7%. It was a great surprise to everyone when announced to the public. But time after time, when a simple test has been done, the audience get to understand instantly how true the findings are.

But some people still thinks that language is the most important in presentation and because they focus so much on the language usage, they neglected the importance of vocal variety and body languages.

Therefore, when we attend any seminar, we can easily judge the speaker with their performance on stage, the kind of skills they possesses and how effective can they be. It mirror their life.

I always say that how you do anything is how you do everything. How you do anything on stage is how you do everything in your life.

If the speaker focus on the language so much, they are only focusing on the smallest part in the whole presentation. It is just like when a mosquito bite you and you kept scratching the small little part of your body that was bitten. There are plenty of things you can do and with other part of the body but you insisted on scratching the part that was bitten. Aren’t you wasting time and efforts on things that are minor in life and forgotten that there are plenty of things should have been done if you would have not concentrate on the wrong part at the wrong time?

The usage of vocal variety is not just about the ability to pronounce the words properly but it is all about creating excitement, feeling and authority at any moment of time during presentation. It is how you make the audience feel when you get that message across to them and winning their heart.

Many speakers aren’t able to trigger the emotion of the audience because they focus too much on the right usage of the language that they forgotten even to use the right word at the right time with the right vocal variety and the right body language during presentation.

If you focus only the small things, these small things will be the biggest thing in your life. If you focus of the bigger things, the bigger things will create the world in your life. Because I focus on the bigger things in life and they creates the world for me and I am invited to many parts of the world to share my experiences and knowledge. If one only focus on the smaller things, than they will only be invited among the smaller circle of certain group.

The mirror of life is powerful as it reflects you to life, your efforts to what you will achieve in life and your understand to what others can see you as a master in life.

So, if you are looking forward to become a greater speaker and a greater leader, learn from the right speakers and the right leaders. Change your image and adopt the right understanding and you will change your life. The reflection of your life will be changed so long as you change yourself now.

Decide Yourself

Your destiny is in your hands and you need to make the right decisions yourself.

Most of the time, decisions are made without us but we need to fulfil them.

At work, your superior tell you about your duties and responsibilities in the company. How you should do your job and what to submit to him/her first or as and when he/she wanted it. Sometimes, your superior would even decide what time you go home by giving you more work just when you are about to leave for home and tell you the time he needs them.

At home, your parents and siblings would expect you to help to clean up the house, cook the food, or even to wash the things. If you are married, you may have that experience with your spouse and children too. You are expected to be doing something all the time but most of the time you are doing for someone else.

With friends, family, and at work, everyone would want you to do something for them. They would direct you, persuade you or even inspire you to do all the things for them.

Are you living for yourself or for others?

An old man once told me many years ago when I was only 10 years old that his only regret was not to have time for himself, to do things he really wanted to do and achieve his own dreams. He elaborated by telling me that everyone wants a piece of you, your time, your efforts, and everything they can get you to do. You would only be doing things for others and carry out their tasks for them.

My friend, it’s not about them. It’s all about YOU!

Do you really plan for your future, your destiny and how you can leave a legacy for your family and descendants? Have your really plan what you want to achieve in this life?

Take charge of your life! You need to wake up and live your dreams.

Failing to plan is planning to fail.

Set a Goal for yourself and your family. Share with your family on your dreams and how you and your family can take part to achieve those dreams together as a team. Because Together Everyone Achieves More.

Organise your plans and goals so that you can achieve them step-by-step, one-by-one and enjoy the process as well as the happiness on the results of the individual goal achieved.

Take massive Action to achieve your goals and dreams. Because vision without action is only daydream and action without vision can be a nightmare. Therefore, once your goals are set, take massive action on them and results will follow.

Lastly, remember to Learn and keep learning. May it from mistakes we have done along the way or experiences from others which we can learn and enhance from. Learning can only make you better each day. It can also helps you to achieve your goals and dreams much faster.

In conclusion, decide your destiny and shape your life now. Set your Goals, Orgainse them, take massive Action and Learn as much as possible during the process. You owe your success to yourself and your family. Decide yourself your life, your destiny and your legacy today because there is always a tomorrow and it will never end.