Developing The Leadership Potential Within You

Is it possible to develop the leadership potential within you? First you must belief that you have the potential for becoming a leader. It is that belief that becomes the basis when unfolding the leadership potentrial within you.

A thorough self awareness of your strengths and weaknesses is the first step if you are keen to develop the leadership skills. Seeking feedback form your friends, colleagues and close family members is one way to assess your strengths and weaknesses. If you are not so comfortable seeking feedback from thes egroup, then stepping aside and learning to self relflect is another option. You should be able to identify a number of assessment tools you can use to identify your areas of expertise, strengths and weaknesses.

Complete the assessment tool below to gain a better understanding about yourself:

Know yourself

Understanding Leadership

Then start with the leadership development plan referred in the following document:

Developing The Leadership Within You

Understanding Leadership

EQ versus IQ

Does IQ really that matters? How important is the EQ skills. Though the term Emotional Intelleigence was coined in 1990 by 2 researchers, it was the publication of Daniel Goleman's book on EI that popularised the concept. View the BBC video.

Battle of the Brain

Understanding Chinese Mind and Chinese Culture

The link from the University of Texas Austin, will be useful in acquiring an understanding of the chinese culture and business practices. It covers a whole range of chinese practices, you will find it useful.

Understanding Chinese Culture and Business Practices

Managing Work related stress

Stress is something we are unable to avoid completely. It is important to learn how to cope with the stress encounters we face in our work. You will find the following document useful.

Understanding Work Related Stress

Writing Resume - Getting it Right

How do we get a potential employer become interested in us? When you see an advertisement for a job opening and decided to follow-up with your resume you must remember a number of important factors. Try and follow the following guidelines and visit the links provided at the end of this posting:

Never send a standard resume to an employer. You should customise your resume to a particular job opening.

Read the advertisement(s) carefully. Pay attention to the details about the nature of the job. Recognising the key duties and responsibilities is a critical first step before you get your first draft of your resume.

List down the key words from the advertisement. These key words should be in your resume, when documenting your experience.

In the process of documenting your work and professional experience, you should highlight your personal experience relating to the key duties and responsibilities stated in the resume.

Use actions verbs reflecting to the key duties and responsibilities. Use the search engines to locate the powerful action words.

Highlight your critical skills and professional qualifications. Whenever possible adopt a 'Functional Resume', as this will enable you to highlight your specific expertise.

If the advertisement states that candidates with certain skills or experience are preferred and you do hold them, then you should emphasise those skills and qualifications more prominently in your resume.

Do an Internet search for help and guidance in getting your resume right.


Getting Your Resume Right

Arul John Peter

Managing Stress at Work

Today’s workforce is experiencing job burnout and stress in epidemic proportions. Workers at all levels feel stressed out, insecure, and misunderstood. Many feel the demands of the workplace have become too much to handle. The financial impact of stress on corporations is staggering. This workshop explores the causes of such stress, and suggests appropriate initiatives for the company and its employees to undertake.

As employees we need to:

* Understand that stress is an unavoidable part of everybody’s life
* Recognize the symptoms of over stress
* Identify those situations in your life that cause stress
* Identify those actions which add to our stress
* Develop strategies for managing stress
* Develop techniques for dealing with the situations that can’t bechanged


Visit the following site to learn how to cope with the stress in your life.
Stress Management

Mayo Clinic Stress center

Tools for Better Decision Making

We face problems and opportunities all the time. This would mean we need to make choices. Making choices is about making decisions. Unfortunately making decisions is not always easy, unless we master the skill using some reliable tool. Inmeetings we are always under pressure to make decisions. Unfortunately, when inadequate time was spent in problem identification and solution development, the quality of decision making suffers.

When you have to make a decision in your next regular management meeting, because it has been in the agenda for sometime, just ask “Are we ready for making a decision?”. Unless everyone can answer with confidence that they are in a position to say 'YES' you should not rush into making decision.

We should familiarize ourselves with a number of decision making tools that can be used to evaluate each ideas. For a start try the following website:

Force Field Analysis

Prioritization Matrix


Arul John Peter
Centre for Creative Thinking

Leadership in Business

Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP discusses the leadership concept. It is a very interesting speech. According to her leaership is about building capability,collaboration and character.


Leadership and Choice by Carly Fiorina

Understanding Singapore's Economic Competitiveness

The abstract below is extracted from the author's website/Mr Leo Kee Chye is well versed in Economics and several other discilines). I strongly recommend you read the article.

Abstract
Based on a research paper (2002) by the McKinsey Global Institute, this essay argues the importance in the role of the government in focusing on a few strategic sectors. The McKinsey paper reveals some surprising findings: 1. Much of the United States labour productivity growth jump in the period 1990-1999 was real and will continue. 2. The productivity growth jump was concentrated in only six out of fifty-nine economic sectors in the United States. Therefore, if the Singapore government choose to focus on these few strategic sectors, they can potentially drive the overall Singapore economy.

This essay also argues how the above strategy can be complemented by leveraging on the opportunities accruing from the globalising economy, and by identifying city-state's role in the portion of value chain in an increasing China-centric world, to enhance Singapore's competitiveness on the international stage


How can Singapore remain competitive in a globalising economy?

Brainstorming Technique

Any one who is serious about using creativity to develop new ideas, must learn the art of conducting brainstorming. The following links provide adequate information. Read, reflect and Use it regularly.


Brainstorming Technique

Handouts on Brainstorming

Eight Rules to Briliant Brainstorming

Developing Conceptual Skill Through SUDOKU

How fast you can complete this SUDOKU?

Economics Course from Carnegie Mellon University

You can access the Carnegie Mellon University's online course workbooks used in the full semester course on Micro Economics taught at the following link. The access includes the complete online workbooks including all expository text.

Economics

How to Apologise?

We all make mistakes. We do need to apologise at time. The problem is how do we say sorry. You may find the following link useful:



The Art of Apology from Harvard

Managing Difficult People

We all face difficult people at work and in our social encounters. How do we manage them Read the following article:

Managing Difficult People

Dealing with difficult people workbook

Insights on Creativity -

The preference to stay as we are right now is the norm rather than exception. The uncertainty and risk associated with new things and new ideas are the main reason for the avoidance attitude. We need to adapt and change to survive. Remaining status quo is not going to bring you anywhere. Organisations need to accept the truth - innovate or die.

Organisations who wish to survive and grow need to adopt innovation as one of their basic strategies. Innovation demands that the people in the organization learn to THINK differently, so that they are able to bring about new ideas. Managers must recognise that creativity and inovation are not meant to be limited to R&D department. Creativity and Innovation should become the norm in all types of activities. Once we become committed to the reality that innovation is required in all our processes, management policies, marketing, services and products we will be able to convince the employees of the need to THINK more Creatively.

The million dollar question is - How do we make people think creatively? First you must accept the fact that all of us are creative. If that is so, why are the majority of employees reluctant to think more creatively? Generally, the processes and structure in the workplace discourages creativity. The best place to start is to take a comprehensive review of the present practices and processes that are in place and ask whether each of this practices encourages or discourages creativity.

One should be prepared to slaughter sacred cows if you want to move on to become a more creative and innovative organization. Business organizations need to think of new products and services so that they can stand out from their competitors. Thinking and developing new products and services demand that the employees be equipped with creative thinking skills. Innovative business organizations know how to create the right work environment for innovation.

Employees at all levels must be trained on creative problem solving techniques, so that they will be equipped with competencies and skills that will enable them to generate creative ideas, when dealing with problems in the workplace. One needs to create the environment that supports creative thinking first, so that employees can move to a higher level of creating new products and services. To take the innovation and creativity to a higher level, you must remember that creativity is about generating new ideas, while innovation is about introducing feasible business products or service. Gaining an insight on creativity is the best way to develop effective problem solving skills.


Arul John Peter, is a Facilitator with the Centre for Creative Thinking, based in Singapore (www.creativityasia.com). He conducts training workshops on creativity and related soft skills for clients in Asia and Middle East. He holds an MBA and majored in strategic human resource management. He also holds a Bachelor of Science as his basic degree and professional qualification in administrative and people management from the Institute of Administrative Management, United Kingdom. He is a member of the American Creativity Association.

Creativity Techniques

Training and Staff development is becoming critical for the success of an organisation. Training executives play important role in this aspect. They need to have the right skills and tools in order to improve the Abilities, Skills and Knowledge (A.S.K.)of individual employees. Training managers in the process of managing and providing training and development programme are helping their employees to acquire critical skills and competencies that would enable them to enhance their performance. There are other independent trainers who are also involved in providing similar services to business organisations. if you are always looking for some interesting puzzles then this is
the site.

Creativity Techniques

If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on Creative Thinking, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: +65 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.


John

Marketing Book

If you would likw to know more about marketing, then this free ebopok is your reference. This is an interesting ebook on marketing:

Marketing Book

John

Resources at Open University

You want to familiarise yourself with various topics. The Open University, UK is the place you should visit. In the Internet age, you are just a click away. Good Luck.


Open University, UK

Arul John

Famous Speeches

Searching for great Speeches from the past is not easy. Try the History Channel. Hear the Words that Changed the World. The site below provide a vast collection of speeches is drawn from the most famous broadcasts and recordings of the 20th century.

Great Speeches

If you wish to have a workshop exclusively for your colleagues/employees in your workplace on the Art of Public Speaking, then you may contact Centre for Creative Thinking (Tel: 63370098) www.creativityasia.com for details.

Martin Luther King's Speeches

To learn how to speak, you must listen to great speeches. Listen to the speeches of Martin Luther King. Ask yourself, what can I learn from his speeches.


Martin Luther King's Speeches


Arul