Daniel Goleman is one of the most renowned psychologists of our times.  In this really informative video he speaks on the relation between social and emotional intelligence and how they shape our leadership abilities.Daniel emphasizes that social intelligence is crucial in leadership.  The key to building successful bond between you and your audience depend upon your level of involvement. The video is a bit long but worth every minute of your valuable time.

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Balancing act

Leaders often need to strike the right cord when it comes to balancing openness with conviction. If you are an aspiring leader, you need to play this crucial balancing act to perfection while starting to lead a group of individuals. Performing this crucial balancing skill is no child’s play. In fact it is an art worthy of reckoning. However, we generally tend to include it all under the common tenets of leadership.

Before you start pondering on this issue let me tell you some basic facts on how to boost your balancing skills in leadership.

Get to know the basics

• Whenever you are faced with dilemma over making a certain decision in leadership, consult your seniors.
• Leadership lessons are best taught under real life circumstances, however, you can always revert back to legends and their success stories to get a ready reference.

Think out of the box

Look into the history of successful leadership. People who have tried to walk a different path have actually made a difference. You need to give unique and genuine ideas and put them in front of your audience for validation.

Accommodate others

The ultimate mantra in successful leadership is to be an accommodative leader rather than a hard-charging visionary. Always include your audience into conversation and let them shape your decision. The key to gaining popularity in leadership lies in your own hands. All you need is to shed off those little preconceptions and start balancing your acts right away.

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Key leadership skills

If you are asked what are the qualities of a successful leader, what would be you answer?  You will probably mention that an ideal leader should be charismatic, caring, thoughtful, optimistic, authentic, creative, emphatic and patient. These above qualities are not included in any graduate school course. These are self-groomed qualities, nurtured and developed through a basic understanding of emotional intelligence.

Emotional Intelligence

One of the key leadership mantras of the present time is developing a high emotional intelligence quotient or EQ. If you really want to climb the success ladder, you must connect with others on a human level.

To build your leadership skills, you must start developing your emotional intelligence at first. Check out these three key tips to improve your emotional intelligence.

• Be a good observer: Identify a few people whom you admire for their certain traits like their communication skills, their emphatic nature, self confidence and so on.  Observe and try to learn from them how they carry on with their balancing act.
• Be a good listener: To be a successful leader, you must try to be a good listener at first. Give a patient hearing to what your speaker has to say. Do not interrupt and divert from the topic.
• Be assertive: This does not necessarily mean that you will start proving your side of the story to be true in every conversation. It’s important that you give space to others as well and help them to express their point of view.

Leadership comes from within. However, you can always perfect your skills through developing your emotional intelligence.

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Small Business Team

If you are concerned with how to launch your own small business let me tell you it’s not all that tough. There is nothing better than working for yourself and being your own boss. However, when it comes to starting up a new business we generally tend to think more about the problems rather than the several benefits that come with it.  All it requires is a little bit of initiative from our end to become a good entrepreneur.

Here are a few handy tips to boost your morale while starting a small business.

• The key to starting any new business, big or small, is to have a clear vision. Your business plan must be unique and must comply with your personal interest field as well.
• The business should sufficiently have a future growth prospect.
• While starting a new business, some would advise you to ‘think big’. Do not go by the convention. Instead, start with thinking from the basics.
• Entrepreneurs who wish to start big are often faced with problems related to initial investment. Instead, it is advisable to start with self-funding rather than applying for loans at the onset.
• To set the success ball rolling on the new business turf you need to increase your knowhow about your respective business field and competitors as well.

Finally, do not walk into “get rich quick” schemes. If your initiative is honest and genuine, no one can stop you from reaching the top.

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Leadership comes from within; it is an intrinsic quality of a person. You can be a good leader only if you have got that “instinct” within. However, this is not enough, you also need to beef up your learning skills and keep your eyes wide open. In other words, you need to be a little more observant and methodical when it comes to leading a bunch of followers.

There are several route maps for potential leaders to follow to make it big in this field. There are several styles of leadership and each has its distinct mode of functioning. The various leadership styles depends upon the organization you are in, the situation in hand, the followers you have to lead and most importantly how well you can conduct yourself. The success mantra in leadership is, however, to lead by example.

The foremost style in leadership is the authoritarian style. Leaders who choose to follow this path need to decide anything and everything.  He/she needs to finalize what to do, when to do and how to do – the three basic tenets of leadership.

The participative method, however, deals with involving others in the decision making process. If you want to walk in this line, you need to consult everyone in the group and develop a joint vision.  Nevertheless you need to be the last person to finalize the decision.

Lastly, you can follow the delegative leadership style where you do not require taking the final decision. Instead, you can only act as a delegate rather than the final decision maker.  Being a good leader is not everyone’s cup of tea. But you can always perfect yourself by choosing the right path to a successful leadership.

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Self Motivation

Are you losing your self-motivation? Do you often wonder whether you can climb up the success ladder?  If these are the questions haunting your mind, it is time to sit back and give it a deep thought. It is an open secret that self motivated people are more successful in their career. They can advance quicker and further earn better than their less-motivated counterparts. But this is not an excuse to say that whenever you start getting self motivated you will gain instant success.

All you need is to adopt a few self improvement strategies and get on with your life. The key to self motivation lies in your own hand. It is never too easy to break away from your old habits and start adopting newer ones overnight. It takes a few qualities like determination, focus and strong will-power to succeed in life.

Like a seasoned navigator, you need to steer your life in the right direction. In a word, making yourself focused and motivated is like giving a kick start every morning and keeping your attention focused on things you wish to achieve in your life.

A good strategy is to write down your career goals emphasizing on the finer points and then go about asking yourself how much time you need to accomplish each of these. Fix a time frame for completion of each set goals and award yourself after you complete each task in time. Last but not the least, be a good observer. Making your observations judiciously will boost your self-confidence immensely.  Let these steps be a stepping stone to your successful career ahead.

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Achieve your target

When we talk of targets, it always makes us jittery. The sheer feeling of anxiety grips our mind and we falter miserably. Career goal is one such area where we need to work on from day one to perfect our future and make it the way we always want it to be. Setting up aggressive future targets, which at some point of time may seem over-ambitious, is strictly discouraged.

Chasing your dream is fine but don’t push yourself so hard that you end up hitting the road bumps. You may eventually become de-motivated to carry on any further. The success mantra to achieve your career targets is simple. You just need to keep a tab on the following points to make a difference in your life.

• One great way to keep moving in the right direction is to set up smaller targets instead of bigger ones. Once you get accustomed to these minor targets, you can aim for the major ones as well.
• Don’t look for the easiest way out; instead look for the most sustainable route to success.  It’s better to set up a long term career plan rather than hopping from plan A to plan B.
• Building your foundation is the basis of achieving any targets, small or big. Remember that once you have the proper foundation, you can build almost anything on top of it.
• Finally, set targets with a realistic deadline and commit yourself fully to it. Plan in advance and execute your resolutions promptly.

With these guidelines to follow, all you need is to get started right away. Act now and see yourself achieving your targets in no time.

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Do you often find yourself in dilemma while given the choice of deciding between to be or not to be? It is a common problem among people and it stems from a lack of motivation. In fact, people from all walks of life suffer from motivational crisis to some extent.  This in turn may reflect upon your career-choices giving you pangs of uncertainty at times when you need to stand a firmer ground.

Trivial things like whether to shop for your grocery in the afternoon or whether to mop and vacuum the floor before the kids come back from school may hold you back. You may not be all that motivated enough to take up tasks related to your daily schedules. This laid back attitude cannot be treated as lethargy. Instead, there may be deep-seated problems holding you back.

All you need to regain your spirit is to bear a positive attitude together with learning certain tricks to motivate yourself at the right instant. Here are a few tricks that really work wonders.

• Start out by telling the whole world about your future plans and initiatives. You can tweet regularly and tell everyone about it. This will certainly help increase your decision making faculty.
• Set up a self timer for all your daily activities.  Pick any reasonable time frame and plan your day in advance. This will certainly help you in meeting your deadlines well in advance.
• After you meet your deadlines, the next step is to reward yourself for a job well done. You can promise yourself a small treat and this will certainly help you in achieving your targets.
• Another time and tested formula is to divide your work load into smaller chunks and then go about doing each bit of it within pre-defined time limits. This will also motivate you in meeting your targets.
• Another way to motivate is choosing self-focused individuals as your companions or role models. You will easily find people who can sap your vital energy by acting pessimistic; this may in turn affect your mental set up.

The above motivational tricks will surely help you regain your lost confidence and assist you to move on with your life.

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Lead by example

Have you ever been intrigued by the speeches of great leaders? The pioneers of modern society were all great leaders in their own right. Leadership is something that was ingrained in them. Being able to provide leading thoughts in crunch situations and the ability to materialize them into proper action is not everyone’s cup of tea. However, you can always brush up your leadership skills to impart that perfect shine to your personality.  Read on these three key lessons on leadership and carve out a niche for yourself in the success ladder.

• Try to be a good speaker: If you want others to follow your words, you must have that inner potential to cast a spell upon them. Good public speaking acumen is enough to cast a spell upon your listeners. Place yourself in the position of your listeners and judge your performance impartially. It is a common experience for listeners to get bored with the speeches after sometime. So always try to make your discourse informative and add a dash of humor to keep your listeners excited.
• Be honest: Leadership is a hard-earned virtue. Once you establish your leadership skills, it’s important to hold your listeners’ confidence. Stick to the age-old saying – Honesty is the best policy. We rarely say what we know to be true, but when it comes to public speaking and leadership skills you must get hold of the pulse of the public.  Speak what is true to common knowledge and you will be an instant success.
• Lead by example: It is an opt-quoted phrase, however, there is truth oozing from every bit of it, when it comes to the topic of successful leadership. You might get a little perplexed as to how will you lead by example? Well, the catch is to befriend your co-workers, or fellow subordinates as well as immediate seniors.

Once you adapt to these few strategies, you can set the success ball rolling in no time.

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