Leadership Training or for that matter leadership, is a very broad term and is applicable to everyone, whether it is the watchman of the office, the CEO of a big company, a father or a husband at home. However it is often misunderstood as a term that most people link to leadership positions they hold in the society or in organizations.
So let’s understand leadership a little more in depth to be able to know what it actually means.
I would like to share a real life scenario where i experienced leadership capabilities in a fried fish seller recently.
There is a fried fish seller who operates from the road near our office and I eat fried fish every other day from him. His fried fish are fresh and very tasty.
This particular time that i visited him, he had just come back from a long holiday of over 3 months and I was wondering where he had been. When i asked him, he said that he had taken a break as the fish market is closed for 3 months of the monsoon season. I asked what he was doing for those 3 months and he said he drove an auto riksha for around 8 hours a day during these months.
The next question I asked him was how he managed his house expenses with this business of fish selling being a part time business, to which he answered that it was difficult and he was just about able to manage. He also said that he was quite happy as he did not want to slog and do additional work like other people in his locality.
The Happy Fisherman
I wondered what could be the reason behind him not being interested in working harder and making more money for his family and finally landed up asking him.
His answer was that he had 3 sons and spent a large part of the day in teaching them and ensuring that they get the best of education, love and nurturing. He said that as a part of his efforts his 2 sons were doing very well at school and he wanted them to grow and not be a fish seller like him. If he would have not spent time with his children then they would also have no future like him and would end up on the road. His wife was also at home and ensured she was available for the children and the husband all the time. The family was thus fully focused together in their goal of bringing up their children and giving them the best environment.
I felt it was great to see the foresight of a father who was illiterate and had no formal education and I felt truly inspired.
Now this was an example of pure leadership for me, where the father of the house had a larger vision for his family and children. He understood how not to get sucked into the daily routine of life and to keep his vision strong and worked on it day by day. He was also self aware and felt that earning loads of money was not as important as his children’s future.
If you look deeper into this story you can learn some valuable lessons like
- Managing self & time,
- Self sacrifice for others,
- Simplicity of life
- Decision making,
- Long term growth,
- Alignment of vision with actions,
- Team work.
Such examples are all around us at all points of time and there is a lot to learn from them and then experiment and imbibe into our routine life. In fact it’s easier to learn from the little things in life rather than trying to digest big theories!
We, at The Yellow Spot, feel that it all begins with starting to know the Self and learning how to manage the self. Managing the self requires insights into ones thoughts and feelings which leads to greater awareness and what you get aware of can be more easily changed and most of the time even changes automatically!
It is said by the great mystics that “all change is only possible outside when you get in touch with your inside” and how true it is.
At The Yellow Spot, our leadership training programs focus on helping you to start observing yourself and the way you behave. We firmly believe that no leadership program can be successful unless it is able to bring change inside the individual and hence all our leadership skills training emphasize on the same.
Self Awareness is however also a process. It is not something that happens overnight and requires lots of patience and continuity. We deploy tools like the Gestalt Therapy, NLP, Transactional Analysis, Vipassana and Mindfulness as well as Human Process Labs to catalyse the process.
Our focus is on the whole individual rather than over one aspect of him. Once self awareness is developed, all other skills get easily imbibed. In fact we have to actually make individuals unlearn a lot to be able to start learning and practicing once again!
If you would like to be a part of our Leadership Training workshops, you can definitely get in touch with us. Do visit our website https://www.theyellowspot.com/ for more details.