Becoming an Effective Leader #6
Dear Steemians,
Today I have gathered my final notes and conclusions of 'The Servant' by James Hunter. As a leader we must never forget about the responsibility we have to make wise decisions. In order to make the best decisions, we must look into ways to control our emotions and consider the facts pertaining to our decision making.
Responsibility
Leaders never make excuses nor blame their shortcomings on other people/situations; leaders accept the responsibility of their actions and behaviours. Let's look into the word responsibility further - we can break it into response and ability. Think of your current situation, we all have personal problems that constantly arise in our life. These include: career problems, relationship problems, children problems, friendship problems, you-name-it problems. These are stimuli that are coming at us through all directions. But, as humans, we all have the ability to choose our response to every individual problem. Hence we must be trained to approach each decision with the best response.
Making the Right Decisions
One way to make rational decisions in the moment it to train you mind to have discipline. Discipline is teaching ourselves to do what is not natural. When we discipline ourselves to do an unnatural thing, the unnatural skill turns into a natural habit. James Hunter lists the four stages of developing new habits or skills:
- Unconscious and unskilled - At this stage you are unaware of or uninterested in learning the skill and obviously the habit is unnatural to you
- Conscious and unskilled - This is the stage when you become aware of a new behaviour but have not developed the skill
- Conscious and skilled - At this stage you are becoming more skilled and comfortable with the new behaviour and the skill is has become almost natural to you
- Unconscious and skilled - At this stage you don’t have to think about making a decision about your behaviour and the skill is natural to you
By following the process outlined above, we can see that we have full control over our destiny. Moreover, we have demonstrated how thoughts become actions, actions become habits, habits become our character, and our character become our destiny.
Final Thoughts
In our quest of becoming leaders, there are other important lessons that James Hunter emphasizes. The first is regarding one’s ego and pride. The more a leader breaks down his pride and ego, the more enjoyable life becomes. By enjoyable, we do not mean becoming happy in life. According to some of the greatest leaders, namely the Buddha, Christ, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King, leadership through authority creates joy. This joy is defined as inner satisfaction and the conviction of knowing that you are truly aligned with deep and unchanging principles of life. By serving others you free yourself from the self and self-absorption that hinder our ability to sense the joy of living.
Based on a sociological study that examined a hundred people over the age ninety asking them “if you were to live your life all over again, what would you do differently?” The top three answers were:
- Risk more
- Reflect more
- Do more that would live on after they were gone
A quote from a Native American tribe says:
When you were born you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die the world cries and you rejoice.
That's it for now Steemians. I hope you have enjoyed my summaries and reflections of this book. Stay tuned for more summaries and reflections of my favorite books.
-AZ
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About my Channel:
Hi Steemians, In this corner of Steem I am finding out the things I will be offering to the community. I have a lot of different passions and I am planning to include these here for everyone to benefit from my experiences. I can not wait until my channel gains more momentum and read your comments and suggestions.
You can expect me to cover the following topics within the next few months:
- Summaries important takeaways of the books I am reading
- Notes regarding long term goals I have for myself and can be shared with others
- Potentially food recipes and tips on cooking
- Photography and travelling advice about the places I have visited.
- Music I enjoy listening to
For now, I will be focussing on #1, summarizing some of the books I have read such as: The Servant, The Intelligent Investor, CryptoAssets, and How to Win Friends and Influence People. The photos you see on my posts are all taken by myself, unless I include the source (obviously).
Once my channel gains momentum I will be reading all the meaningful comments you leave.
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