A woman once came to Gandhi and asked him to advise her young son not to eat so much sweets between meals.
She believed that the words of great men should carry more weight than hers. Gandhi replied that he would need three months to prepare for the task.
When the woman came to Gandhi again three months later with her son, he simply explained to the boy that he should not eat so much sugar and that sugar was not good for health. If he could refuse sweets more often, he would surely grow taller and stronger. The boy agreed immediately.
At this point, the woman pulled Gandhi aside and wondered why such a simple explanation took three months to prepare. Gandhi replied: "To be more convincing, I have to give up sugar for three months myself. Only in this way can I give your son the confidence to do the same thing."
Whatever we say will carry more weight if we mean what we say.
We can tell what our words mean to others by the resonance they evoke. Lincoln said, "Your actions speak loudly for you, so loudly that I can't even hear what you are saying." If most people don't believe what we say, the reason is usually not others, but probably ourselves.
Team leaders must avoid these 4 traps
We are likely to fall into one of the following four traps.
Trap 1: Only focusing on management but no productivity
Every self-employed person and manager will be in one of the following four management stages:
Production Phase
In the beginning, many people are really productive. They spend most of their time on income-generating activities. As long as we stay in the production stage, we can make money. Only when we ourselves are productive can we talk confidently about our future goals.
Management phase
Once the self-employed find that they cannot complete all tasks on their own, they start looking for partners or employees. In the management stage, they have to spend most of their time encouraging and helping others. Now, instead of performing productive activities themselves, they need to inspire others to become more productive.
The problem is not that you move into management, but that once you leave the production stage and only do "important work", once you lose productivity, no one will soon take their words seriously.
Supervisory stage
In this stage, people become supervisors of managers. A typical situation will look like this: Employees and subordinates usually regard their boss as a role model. After a new employee joins the company, the veteran usually regards training and encouraging the new employee as their own task. This is good, as long as veterans don't neglect their own continued contribution to productivity.
Still, because everyone thinks they have to do "important work," it happens again and again: senior managers supervise middle managers, and middle managers supervise motivated new producers. Production activities were pushed down layer by layer, and overall productivity did not increase proportionally with the addition of new employees.
Supervisory Supervisor Stage
The company continues to hire new employees. Employees who were relatively productive in the previous stage have now become new supervisors. At the same time, managers have become supervisors, and the original supervisors have advanced to supervisors of supervisors. Now, they have reached the top of the management pyramid, thinking that they are extremely important, and all they have to do is evaluate and promote tasks. After all, someone has to watch over senior managers to make sure they are properly supervised, so mid-level managers can make sure new hires are productive.
You'd be surprised how quickly a company can fall into this trap—and over and over again. The reason remains the same: Humans tend to judge their importance by their position rather than by their productivity.
But in reality, credibility only comes from actions, not positions. Before we can ignite the passion of others, we must first burn our own passion. If we want to maintain our credibility, we must remain productive.
Trap 2: Falling into the idea of "I was once a famous figure"
Many people often can only live by counting past successful experiences. Such people are but shadows of their past.
We should all be careful not to be deceived by such people, or become such people. No matter what your job is, if you want to be taken seriously, you have to be productive and achieve results on a regular basis. As for how long the "regular" period should be, every job has its own rationality and periodicity. No matter how long this period is, we must abide by it.
Artists may have to publish new work every two years. A surgeon might be able to take a year off, but then have to operate again. In all industries, the salesperson's life cycle is very short. If a salesperson who achieved unprecedented success many years ago has zero sales performance in recent months, you have to take a strict look at him. Normally, the performance of a salesperson who makes a living on commission can only be measured by his latest performance.
Trap 3: Talking "I will be a famous figure in the future"
When a person talks about future plans and gives the impression that everything has already been achieved, be sure to be skeptical. There are always people who can cleverly confuse the many things that have not been achieved with the few things that have been accomplished, making people think that they have succeeded.
But in reality, they are nothing but braggarts.
Reputation is always based on achieved results, respect is based on current activities. Of course, good leaders are often also visionaries.
While most people can only see what is happening right now, leaders can foresee how things will look in the future. But they must be able to convey their enthusiasm to others so that more people are willing to work together towards a common goal. To do this, leaders must be consistent.
When actually observing the leader's work, he must be convincing - "If you do things like this, you will definitely succeed." You must have this impression. A truly visionary person should have some preliminary results to show after working for a period of time. Empty words can never replace hard work and the results that come from it.
Trap 4: Not being a role model
Many people desire to be part of a vision greater than themselves. If you already have a vision and can communicate it clearly to others, you should have no problem finding employees.
However, many people find it difficult to do this, always blaming the difficulty of finding good talent.
In fact, if we radiate charisma, we're sure to attract talent to an exciting endeavor. But no one likes to follow an unworthy example.
Please ask yourself strictly: Would you want to follow someone like you? What have you accomplished in the past three months? Please review your discipline and your working methods. How has your perseverance been in the past? Are you reliably progressing toward your goals? Have the promises you made in the past come true now? If you want to inspire others around you to do more, you must first give more.
You can't sit comfortably at home and want to "remote control" others to do more things, right? If you can't keep yourself productive, you won't be successful in the long run.
