Are leaders born or made?

ARE LEADERS BORN OR MADE?

Do you still believe that you cannot be a good leader because you were not born a leader?  Do you know that there are so many people who at first they believed that they do not have a talent of leadership and ultimately they became very good leaders? What do you believe now! Are leaders born or made?

“We must live the change we want to see” I real like this quotation by Mahatma Gandhi, it means a lot to different people but for me it also mean we are leaders of any change we need in our life, so by this logic it means everyone can be a leader, even those who think they are not born leaders but my question continues; do you think leaders are born or made? Keep on reading we must get an answer right here.

To start with defining leadership as a foundation of our discussion, it is a process whereby an individual influences a group of individuals to achieve a common goal. Do you think on your own you can influence a group of individuals to achieve something you have agreed together? Of course you can, why not? It is a matter of having knowledge on it and skills on how you take a process through or apply to.

Just imagine that you know what you are supposed to do so as to lead others on your common goal i.e. you have leadership knowledge and skills to use on leading, will you fail to lead others? Of course not, you will successful lead. Therefore leaders carry out this process by applying their leadership knowledge and skills (this is known as process leadership). What do you think now; are leaders born or made?

Of course we all know that we have traits or attributes in our personalities which can influence our actions and to make us good leaders this is known as (trait leadership) for instance; self intelligence, self belief, convincing power by speaking (extroversion), character, values, ethics etc. this is what made us believe that leaders are born and not made but this is not working as it is now days, it was the truth of old school and false in our modern schools.

Keep this in mind, trait leadership never last in changing situations, it can fit in a certain situation but when the situation changes it loses its stability because it mostly doesn’t involve knowledge and skills of leadership which can make a leader flexible according to a prevailing situation. For instance, a certain president has a good character of interacting with people, smiling and generally he is an extrovert which made him accepted by the majority during the election campaigns and immediate after he won the election as a president. When the situation changes as the national economy declined later on, he failed to convince people accept him by his extroversion character he has, he was before meeting people in public but now he is hiding himself with a lot of security defense, very hard to access him.

Try to imagine if this president could add the leadership knowledge and skills on top of his personal attributes/ traits then he could be a unique leader. Therefore this mean that when you mix your learned leadership knowledge plus skills and then your traits then what you will get is a very unique leader you are. What do you think now are leaders born or made? Of course the truth is a true and lasting good leaders are made, the old school trait leaders can get hard to survive in this complex world and societies of today, you need to learn the knowledge about leadership and have skills to apply then use your in born traits to influence your actions which are shaped by your leadership knowledge and skills.

Good leaders in 21^st century leadership are made, I hope you are now agreeing with me, that is why those who we thought can’t be leaders they are succeeding in their leadership after learning and they run their organizations and businesses in an amazing way. You can real be a great leader you never expected. The important tip is that take time to learn and know who you are, what you know and what do you think you can do then start leading.

Be a leader of anything you want to change, just take time to learn and have leadership knowledge and skills then identify who you are, what traits you do have which you will combine with the knowledge and skills you have to make yourself a unique and everlasting leader.

“If you think you can not be a leader because you were not born a leader in your life then you are very wrong you can learn leadership knowledge and skills and make yourself a good leader and also a unique one if you will add up your personal traits. Take a step to learn to day.”

Good luck as you are enjoying making yourself a great leader!

By Erick Chrispin

How to spark your entrepreneurship spirit?

HOW TO SPARK YOUR ENTREPRENEURSHIP SPIRIT?

Profit making perspective

Sometimes back I posted a text on whether an entrepreneur is born or made, and my answer were: there are some entrepreneurs who are born with some special characters which favors the possibility of succeeding in entrepreneurship for instance communication ability which makes them able to effectively do customer care, as a result I considered them as born entrepreneurs. But I wrote much on made entrepreneurs and I tried to emphasize this by showing how you can make yourself an entrepreneur and succeed a lot. (Search for this post)

Today I want to prolong my previous text by showing you some tips on how you can spark your entrepreneurship spirit even if you are recently not an entrepreneur but you might have been hearing about this concept and thinking of joining this venture for long time now.

If you completely do not understand what is entrepreneurship then the first step for you to undergo is to understand its meaning. There is a lot of information sources where you can find some good definitions of this concept because it doesn’t have a universal definition but briefly I can say is a process of recognizing or discovering an opportunity which is a problem or gap in the society and find a way to fill it by selling your goods or services which is then business so as you can at the end of the day make profit out of it. This is my own definition.

Apart from reading in different books you can also find new friends who are successful and growing entrepreneurs around you then try to investigate by asking them how they define entrepreneurship, from them I assure you that; you will get a true definition which is working because these people will tell you according to their experience of being in business. From these people you will not only know the meaning of entrepreneurship but also you are going to be inspired and motivated to know more and start engaging in it immediately.

Understanding what is entrepreneurship you will automatically be convinced to join this venture but I want to assure you that if you are not careful you will end up in dilemma because then you will be choosing a new life and leaving your common life which most people know you from it. If you are employed then it will start contradicting whether to stop working and join entrepreneurship or doing both entrepreneurship and employment or stop entrepreneurship and continue with employment. The same to if you are in school etc but for your information, entrepreneurship is very powerful if you are real motivated by it, you will end up indulging to it and stop other stuffs and if you won’t do that then you will need to be so persistent until you decide to stop all other stuffs and go in to it completely sometimes later.

To solve this dilemmatic challenge, think of your main purpose which trigger you to join entrepreneurship, it might be to become a millionaire some years to come, for sure entrepreneurship is the only way you can become a millionaire than any other ventures. Write down your purpose and place where you can be seeing it every time for instance on the wall in front of your bed where you can see it every morning as you wake up. This will help to remind you and cement such an idea/ purpose in your subconscious mind for it to attract its reality every day. Read it every day before you hit a bed and morning as you wake up, if you are free just read it loudly, this will increase the emphasis in your brain. The end result of this will start becoming your character and it will start dominating your thinking everyday which is then a simply way to attract other information relating to it.

Having your purpose of becoming an entrepreneur, will motivate your burning desire towards it as time goes on. A voice in you, will always be reminding you to start doing something about it, it will be convincing you to engage in different entrepreneurship stuffs like meetings, events, seminars, workshops and trainings, entrepreneurship clubs etc. I want to assure you that if you find such pressure in you please never delay to follow your gut , do what your mind tells you because there is where you will meet a lot of business opportunities , you will get a lot of business ideas to start with, more than that you will meet a lot of Very Important People (VIPs) who will support you to start your enterprise and furthermore they will inspire and motivate you to start and enrich your burning desire. This stage is very important in sparking your entrepreneurship spirit.

Never entertain fear of failure which will be coming as a voice and telling you in your mind that you can’t do what you desire to do, start affirming yourself every day with positive affirmations and statements like, “I am a making it successfully” and not, “I am not going to fail”, this is also negative affirmation just say, “I am going to win”, try to affirm yourself positively every time this will inspire you to continue and believe in yourself ability. In fact it is possible what you need to do is to believe in your ability to make it happen and start doing it.

It is all about setting your mind to think of entrepreneurship most of your time which spark your entrepreneurship spirit, because being an entrepreneur comes out of your thinking, if you think as an entrepreneur it is obvious that you will become. And spark your thinking about entrepreneurship you need to engage much in all the areas which enable you to see and hear about it most of your time. This mean that you need to change your old friends and find new friends form this kingdom of entrepreneurship otherwise if you keep on hanging out with your old friends who are not thinking entrepreneurially they will easily pull you back to their side and make you believe that it is not possible for you to become an entrepreneur.

Just start from where you are now to seek for this new kingdom of entrepreneurship and keep on going with your positive attitude and belief in yourself abilities and talents you own from your creator, I 100% assure you that you are going to become a growing and later successful entrepreneur in the future.

“You are the only creator of the life you want by your thoughts, just start living it now”

By Erick Chrispin

Start doing it before it is done

START DOING IT BEFORE IT IS DONE.

A way to your success

Take ten seconds now and remember how many times you met some projects or business ideas which are being done by other people but you remember dreamt or thought about them sometimes back? How many times have you been shocked and surprised by seeing something in conduct which you delayed to start doing it after it came in your mind and decided you will do it sometimes later? What was your immediate feeling you got after meeting such a surprise? Hopefully were intimidating you because you thought it was yours and then it is taken away by someone else.

My message to you today is START DOING IT BEFORE IT IS DONE, you can ask me a question “how will I know that this idea I am getting is not yet done by other people?” my answer is; by the time you discover an opportunity in terms of an idea or in whatever way, that is the only right time for you to start implementing it, if you will start waiting to implement it sometimes later, you will start realizing it already done by other people.

 In fact there is nothing new in the world but at least there is something new around you. The idea you are dreaming or thinking about might be done somewhere else far from your place but if you will start doing it on spot as you get it in your mind then when you meet other people doing the something somewhere else or around your area your surprise will sound like, “WHAT! THIS IDEA IS ALSO DONE HERE! LET ME LEARN HOW DO THESE PEOPLE RUN IT DIFFERENT FROM ME SO THAT I CAN GO BACK AND  IMPROVE MINE”

This is quite different from if you meet someone do the same idea like yours and you haven’t started even a little to implement it, what will come into your mind is a shocking surprise, you will start complaining and groaning like, “WHY DIDN’T I START THE TIME I GOT THIS IDEA?” this is a very discouraging question, is not leading you towards your success in life but my advice now is for you to use it to wake up and do something on your idea.

This is your time to stop dreaming and thinking without realizing it, just start to implement it from whatever small resource you have, everything grows, it starts from littleness to hugeness, whatever amazing stuff like business and projects you see around you and anywhere in the world started as small as a seed and then as time went on with good plans and implementation they grew to the extent they are now.

This is what you can do to make it happen:

1.      As you get an idea or dream please write it on you notepad very fast so that you cannot forget it
.

2.      Then try to imagine deeply about its big chance to positively change other peoples’ life and then your life in future only if it is turned into its reality. Why starting with other peoples’ life and then yours? Because others are your clients so always you need to think of your clients first then the results of what you do to them will award you a very big portion of profit. This exercise will motivate and inspire you to start implementing it; it will promote your burning desire to start realizing by implementing it.

3.      After your motivational imagination then start thinking on how it is going to be implemented in the real world, think of what resources you have personally and then go beyond yourself and think of the resources available from other people around you and your surrounding environment, think of who should be your partner if necessary: there are people who have a lot of money but lacks good ideas like yours think on how you are going to use them, think on where you can use to implement it, a place where is also depending on the nature of your idea. WRITE DOWN EVERY THING YOU GET IN THIS CREATIVE THINKING PROCESS; by doing so you are making good strategies which will easy a process of implementing.

4.      After this powerful thinking and strategy making, please decide to start working on it, plan and write down an action plan which will describe when you are going to start and with what task, write down a schedule of your work then start implementing. 

5.      Challenges are unavoidable and they are there to tell you what you are supposed to do in order to improve your task, so look at them in a positive way and keep on going. Commit yourself on that by believing on yourself decision which you have taken, remember this is a time where a seed is growing from a scratch so cost is high than profit but if you commit yourself to it, become persistent and stay focused at it you will soon realize high profit with low cost.  

Start doing it before it is not done by others, don’t wait until you get what makes it to happen just start with very little which you have that matters a lot to a seed start growing. As you start it will attract more resources to enable you move on. TRY TO REMEMBER ALL GOOD IDEAS AND OPPORTUNITIES YOU DREAMED OR THOUGHT OF BEFORE AND THEN START IMPLEMENTING THEM NOW, YOUR LIFE WILL START CHANGING amazingly.

“Start doing it before it is done by others”

By Erick Chrispin

Managing interruptions at work

MANAGING INTERRUPTIONS AT WORK

It happened many times in my working life when I planed and scheduled a number of tasks to accomplish in my working hours but ending up accomplishing nothing or less and ineffectively due to interruptions of different nature. Some of these interruptions are emails, phone calls, out of appointment guests, face-booking, twitting, laziness feeling,  out of office negative feeling and so many other interruptions.

I kept on feeling guilty for not accomplishing my tasks due to these interruptions until I discovered a way to overcome them. 

You might have been suffering from the same problem at your work office and this is applicable to any kind of work and office you are, if not these kind of interruptions then there are other kinds. Let me share with you some of the few techniques I use to manage them and make my working hours accomplished with achievement of my tasks.

1.      Scheduling your day: make sure in the evening before you go to sleep you write in your diary a schedule for tomorrow, write down each task and activity you want to accomplish in the next day together with it’s time to be done, this will enable you stay focused on what you are going to do and it will increase your commitment level to it as you won’t be in need of wasting time by accepting unnecessary interruptions so as you can accomplish your task on time.

Why scheduling before you go to sleep?

Human psychology shows that if you plan something and go to sleep, your mind keep on cementing it and memorizing it until you  wake up, some time it can make you dream about it hence a concrete strategic plan to accomplish it is done as you are asleep. This easy your tomorrow’s implementation. And also by doing so you increase the level of your comfort- ability in the next day.

2.      Stay focused on your schedule; in the next day stay focused on your schedule until you accomplish your planned tasks, inform your staff members how scheduled you are and let them know at which moment you will be free for chatting and making stories normally use tea breaks and lunch time to meet most of the casual appointments

3.      Plan a specific time for emailing and face-booking etc: if you won’t plan a special time to read and write emails, using social media networks etc then you will be surprised how these stuffs take all your time of working and accomplishing your tasks. Normally I read emails and answer few of them which are important in the morning before I start my works, then in afternoon after getting lunch and then in evening before I leave the office. And for the case of long emails with attachments that do not demand me to reply immediately, I download and read them at home when I am relaxed. You can also unsubscribe from the networks which are useless to you so that you stop receiving their frequent mails to your inbox. Switch off your mobile phone if interrupts you or put it in silence so that you can’t hear its ringing then set a special time to reply some messages and missed calls after work.

4.      Change your office setup: if you are office is much interrupted by guests due to its position which is may be open to passerby, decide to turn your table and chair to the wall side so that people can see you at your back. This will enable them think you are so busy and stop coming to your office interruptive and if one enters in and you don’t like him or her stay in for long just stand up while speaking, this will destroy his/her comfort zone to seat and stay there for long, and if your office is faced with many people coming in any time just remove guest’s chairs so that they cannot get a chance to seat in. 

Also you can use your secretary if she/he is there to receive all guests and allow or disallow unimportant guests by receiving their queries to meet you later. You can also put a written sign on your table or hang it on your office door outside “PLEASE DON’T DISTURB”, this will help to avoid people who wanted to interrupt you, stop coming.

5.      Set appointments: try to set an appointment to anybody who asks to meet you; don’t make them perceive you as good and an open space person by telling them “NO PROBLEM JUST COME ANYTIME!” By doing so you will end up disappointing most of them and fulfilling to meet few of them in all your time as a result you will be spending all your time meeting people instead of working. Visit your task schedule then see where you have space and make an appointment with such a person by telling him/her the time you are going to spend in your meeting with him/her and then be punctual.

These are among few techniques I use to manage a number of interruptions at my work but an important technique which determines the possibility of managing all the interruptions is to plan and make a schedule and then commit yourself to accomplish all the scheduled tasks by staying focused on it. Being focused and committed to it you will automatically adopt yourself to above techniques.

Interruptions at work are increasing everyday in relation to technological advancement so we have to learn how to overcome them everyday otherwise our level of delivering at work will be declining every day.

By Erick Chrispin

Working through others

WORKING THROUGH OTHERS

Why don’t you like to delegate your tasks to other people though coming in this world, growing up until you became an adult your parents were delegated to care you? Not only that but also you are delegated or you will be delegated to take care of your children later on? Why do you tell your children that now they are depending on your help but when they grow up should not depend on others help instead keep on working hard on their own?

For the activities and business you always run; to be succeeded you need to exercise working through others, normally you can’t manage to do everything yourself, what happens to people who like doing everything themselves is not accomplishing each activity and if accomplished then ineffectively because their focus is to make sure what they are doing is completed and not making it better.

Bad enough all who prefers doing everything themselves get tired early in their life, they become having a lot of energy at the beginning but as time goes on they become tired as a result they start becoming poor deliverers, being poor then they usually get frustrated and also stressed as everything they deliver seem to be poor and inefficient. The end result of these people is to get old before their age, acquiring a lot of psychological led diseases like diabetes, heart attack etc.

Why do people not preferring to delegate their activities to others.

1.      A sense of competition: you think if you are going to delegate him/her, such a person might do it better than you and all the rewards will go to him or her instead of you and then you will be defeated. This is very wrong, normally people like those who have good relation with them and also help them to achieve something. Your subordinates will always love you if you delegate them some tasks in a very good manner and they will promote you everywhere.

2.      Wastage of time: you also think that you are wasting your time delegating some tasks to people but for your information; delegating is planning, delegating is capacity building to your subordinates and delegating is investment because when you delegate you enable this person to be able to do such a kind of task for the rest of his/her future even when you are not there. Working thorough others it means you are making a plan of how you are going to achieve the goal through others so it is not wastage of time but instead is investing in the time you have. You can use 30 minutes delegating a task to others but you will have enough time to do other different creative works while these other people are working your tasks. Not delegating you couldn’t get such a time to spend in other important creative tasks.

3.      Others won’t do the way I want:  most of us think and believe that if we delegate a task to someone he/ she won’t do the way we want so we decide to do everything ourselves. This is also very wrong. Most of people who delegate and their subordinates come up with wrong end result are those who do know how to delegate. Previously I said delegating is a kind of training, if you just tell your subordinate to do an activity without instructing him/ her how you need it to be done then expect wrong results. Don’t be speedy in delegating, allow yourself to spend enough time until someone is well understood the process then allow him/her to continue. Let him or her ask all her questions during the delegation process and make sure you answer all questions clearly until he/she understand and become comfortable to start working. Allow your subordinates to use any approach which is good and makes them feel comfortable to achieve your goal.

Delegating does not mean working with your subordinates all the time, there are people who asks their subordinates to do something and all the time they are there correcting what their subordinates do. That is not delegation, if so is better you take such task and work on it yourself. Being there your upsetting and frustrating your subordinates they won’t be free to use other creative approach to achieve a goal. Delegating means you instruct someone the way to do and then you give him/her enough chance and space to do what you delegated also leave your door open for a subordinate to come and ask any relevant to the ongoing task questions.

Stop living in your old school kind of life where important people were those who are busy hard working, moving here and there in the office the whole day and not achieving any goal simply because they focus on activities which are not important and not goals to achieve the end result because they build their reputation to people’s eyes. Now days things have completely changed, team work is more encouraged and everyone is goal oriented what we want to see is deliverance, achieving end results and not your sweating due to a lot of unimportant movements in your office. 

Please let others do some of your tasks so that you can a bit relax and complete your few important tasks and get time to think and create new initiatives. Use a lot of the masterminds behind you, there is a lot of experts in town who seeks jobs, please use them to easy your life.

If you work through others under a very good built team, you will be sure of accomplishing a lot of your tasks in your office and this will result to the increase of production which mean you will be able to pay your subordinates/ employees and employ more masterminds to make you get more time to relaxing and do more important initiatives.

“Working through others will make you more efficient and effective in whatever you do than keeping yourself busy doing unaccomplished tasks”.

Good luck as you enjoys working through others.

By Erick Chrispin

A rich tanzanian part 2.

A RICH TANZANIAN part 2.

Takes an advantage of our cultural setbacks

“Whites are blessed & we are cursed”

              

                                                                 Is it? 

In A RICH TANZANIAN part 1, we learnt a lot from this guy on how he is taking an advantage of many people’s belief in poverty to enrich himself. We saw that many people believe that their country is poor so they are poor and may be they think if their country could be rich then they could also be so, they are now despaired of becoming rich in their life. If you didn’t read this article please go and read it before you continue to this new secret of this rich Tanzanian. (January 26^th 2012).

Today a rich Tanzanian is coming up with a very popular saying and belief to many people in Tanzania and almost all citizens of the said underdeveloped/ developing countries like those in Africa. And he was telling me that there are also many people in the said developed countries who believe this way especially those who are foreigners in those countries from the said underdeveloped countries. Thought they leave in these said developed countries but still they have the same belief which pulls them back like those who remained in their countries for instance Tanzania. 

A rich Tanzanian introducing us the following belief and popular saying which is number two in our series:

2. Whites are blessed & we are cursed: “undersized thinking and an undermining belief”, this is how a rich Tanzanian started to view this saying and belief of many people. He decided to start analyzing the difference existing between white people and other colors like black people and colored people then he discovered that our differences in only in color, skin and generally culture (the way of life) which is truly determining our difference in life success in terms of getting rich and remaining poor.

He decided to stop believing that White people are getting rich because they are blessed by God and black people are remaining poor in terms of owning money because are cursed; with his guiding reasons which make him rich now.

First: he decided to believe that if he will dare learn Whites way of accumulating money and becoming rich, he will surely get rich because he is also a human being with the same body biological structure and mind like whites so he started following them by reading a lot of books written by many rich people in the world about their secret of being rich, he started listening to a lot of motivational speaking of successful motivational speakers in the world, attending their seminars and in doing so he found a number of black successful rich motivational speakers like Les Brow http://www.lesbrown.com/ this made him completely change his belief and feel sorry for all who are still believing that we are cursed and Whites are blessed.

Second: he decided to define the word blessing so that he cannot be confused with a lot of dogma which religion put into people’s mind. Then in his view he decided that blessing will be a lot of success and return he will be getting out of working to get what he want in life, which is richness to his case so he started doing business following the opportunities he was discovering and grabbing them while becoming happy with every increased income and return in any kind, believing that those were blessings so he was blessed too and not cursed.

Third: he decided to think of the difference between whites and us in God’s perspective: then he discovered that God created a human being and not Whites or blacks or colored, this mean that we are all equal to God all of us have the right to be rich it depends on ourselves to use this gift of being in the world by God. Everyone can be blessed if he or she wants. So he created his own view and didn’t see any difference when seating with whites at the same table planning and discussing different stuffs, he started doing business with them and in doing so he found a lot of Whites who are economically poor like other people in Tanzania and they are striving the same to find richness. He was amazed to find a number of beggars in the said developed courtier’s towns like the way they are in Tanzania so he decided to take all the blessings from God and get rich.

Fourth: in his learning the Whites rich people secrets he discovered that they have an important value in their culture which most of us do not have and this value is used by their government leaders to individual level. This is a value of ACHIEVEMENT, we do not believe in achievement and most of rich people believe in achievement and this become a motivational value to make them keep on working and making good strategy to get rich. A rich Tanzanian decided to change his belief from being cursed by God to seeking achievement in life and he is now very rich, he is always achieving what he want.

The last reason he told me as time was not allowing to continue with our conversation is the focus to learning which is to many successful and rich whites and also blacks. He said almost all of them are investing much in learning through research, going to classes, reading books most of the time, he gave me an example that if you go in their countries is common to find people reading books as they are travelling in buses, train etc, they learn, learn, learn and learn most of their time this helps them to develop their mindset and find a lot of opportunities around them from which they do business and become rich.

So a rich Tanzanian is also learning a lot, he is using whatever learning opportunity occurs in front of him as long as it favors his purpose of getting rich then he grab it and real he is growing rich every day. He said our governments do a very big mistake by not investing in education. They are setting their own bomb to be exploded in future; he is suspecting our governments to remain successful beggars in future, very dangerous.

“It is not true that we are cursed, we have to work and earn what we want in life then we shall also look blessed, let us think positive and believe in ourselves to get rich and success”.

Please don’t miss the next rich Tanzanian secret of him being rich.

Good luck!

By. Erick Chrispin