Career Funda

Archive for March, 2010

17 March

Canvassing Life with spiritual programs

Juggling between work, home and the grocery shop in your neighborhood, you sometimes realize that you have lost your peace of mind.  The everyday tension is getting on to your nerves and you do not have the time for your hobbies and space for your family. This can cause irritation both at work and home. Loss of concentration, insincerity, lack of enthusiasm and lethargy are some of the other repercussions. This scenario is not new in today’s fast-paced world. While you might find career coaching at every nook and corner, spiritual guidance is difficult to find.

How is life coaching courses effective?

There are times when you find your priorities overlap. You lose the thin line of divide between your personal and professional life, which leads to enough trouble to last you long for mental unrest. A spiritual guidance at this juncture can help you stay afloat and motivated even in crisis situation and help you stay calm. Here are some other advantages of life coaching:

  • It will help you set your priorities in life and act accordingly
  • Create a plan of action for underachievers and find what motivates them
  • Set a design to see that the plan is implemented and followed
  • Help in eliminating obstacles if any

Basically, life coaching deals with day to day problems in a positive manner. There would be someone to listen to your problems without passing comments about your ideas and views. It is believed that listening makes a great difference in handling crisis in relationships. A Personal development plan can help you cultivate the power of listening and not just talk.

There are times when things do not go as you wish. May be, you have a set notion about things and do not want to break free. A spiritual guide can help you realize that moving on with the time is the best way to cope with difficulties and reduce friction both at office and at home.

Got a doubt about the project you are working on? Need to talk to somebody about your nagging boss? Talk to the life coach and you are sure to get a patient ear with suggestions or two. Some of the other things a personality development course can provide you include:

  • Coaching for the time and space that you need to dedicate to yourself
  • Coaching for an successful interview
  • Fitness regime
  • Boost to the confidence level

Leadership is a quality hard to define and even harder to practice. By definition “it is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal.” To put it simply, a leader must possess the ability to inspire people and provide a new direction to achieve their goal. Gone are the days when people believed “leaders are born, not made”.  The modern corporate business world believes in positive thinking and therefore, leadership skills training programs are being designed to bring out the leader in you.

Leadership Skills Training

From a commercial point of view, a good leader in management must have the potential to increase a company’s business revenue. That is why more and more corporate employers are looking towards leadership skills training programs for their employees.

Today, there are hundreds of leadership skills training institutes to give young aspirants a direction to follow. The objective of a professional leadership development training session is to transform an apparently shy, diffident person into a confident leader so that people can respect the leader; so that he can make others follow his direction – whether it is in a commercial or in social arena.

The Prime Objective of Leadership Training

The prime objectives of an effective leadership skills training session should be:

  • Understanding the behaviours of leaders
  • Learning to differentiate between leadership and management
  • Gaining insight into ones self and personal beliefs
  • Identifying human qualities and strengths
  • Improving perception to catch up quickly with what is going on around
  • Polishing interpersonal communication skills
  • Making effective and timely decisions
  • Learning how to handle difficult situations tactfully
  • Learning about commitment
  • Inspiring and encouraging others in their job

Differences between Leadership and Management

A leadership development training program can be explained as a combination of management skills training, interpersonal communication skills training and many other aspects.

However, we often confuse leadership training with managements skills training. The very basics of leadership training, as we have already discussed, is learning the difference between these two. Leadership is primarily about acquiring certain behavioral characteristics while skills are secondary. People trust and respect leaders because of certain human qualities like courage, honesty, humbleness, compassion, confidence, sensitivity, sincerity, positive thinking, wisdom and vision. All these qualities blended with his personal charisma to make a leader acceptable to the mass.

On the contrary, management skills training deals with planning as well as developing organizational and communication skills.

Management skill relies more on skills to control people to excel in a certain direction. Management has subordinates to direct and control while a leader has followers who are inspired by him, charmed by his charisma and will follow him for his ideologies.

Leadership is about giving a new direction and vision to people and inspiring them to follow that path. Leadership has the courage to take risk and break the established social norms. But management controls and directs people to follow already established rules and notions.

However, this doesn’t mean that a good manager can not be a good leader. Knowing the basic differences will help you acquire leadership abilities as you will be able to distinguish between the do’s and don’ts for a leader. Leadership without management is like a ship without a mast – uncontrollable in the wind. On the other hand, management without leadership is like stagnant water that gradually acquires impurities with no free flow. It is only when leadership quality is combined with management skill that we get to see the best results.

Author:

Mark Johnson

Author’s Bio:

Mark Johnson writes on various aspects of personality development and leadership training including communication skills training and management skills training. For more on leadership he recommends you to visit: http://www.jeanhoustonfoundation.org/.