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Jim Collins

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Gary Hamel

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How to Use The GROW Coaching Model to Achieve Your Goals

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Geert Hofstede

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Power of Positivity: Positive Thinking & Attitude

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" From whom? "

The Toltecs are a people who rose to prominence in central Mexico between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE. They built a stunning capital in Tullan, known today as Tula, which is seventy-two kilometres North-West of Mexico City. They passed on their heritage to the Aztecs, who revered them for having a prosperous civilisation and even claimed descent from them.

With such glowing praise from the biggest known tribe of Mexico, let us look into what the Toltecs have to tell us. When these agreements are understood, people have new possibilities in life and get excited by these. Particularly the areas of happiness, love, and respect for themselves and their relationships. However, people do tend to forget about all the challenges and obstacles the mind has for living just ONE of the agreements. Don Miguel Ruiz, the grand master of Toltec spirituality and neoshamanism, touches on said challenges but people concentrate on the agreements themselves and miss out on other key information, which makes it rather likely to lead to disappointment, frustration, and "This does not work!"

Why is it so hard to do? Over the years, we do not pay attention to how we express ourselves and have our own personal automatic responses. These are out of habit and, because of this, the expressions in our words, emotions, tones, and attitudes are not our conscientious decisions. Not to worry; these mind habits do not have the power to stop the commitment of adopting the Four Agreements if you do not let them. Also, do not forget that, because you already have set habits subconsciously in the mind, it is very difficult at first to be able to keep to the agreements all of the time.

THE FOUR AGREEMENTS OF THE TOLTEC PEOPLE

1. BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD.

- Speak with integrity.
- Say only what you mean.
- Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others.
- Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY.

- Nothing others do is because of you.
- What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream.
- When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

3. DON'T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS.

- Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want.
- Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.
- With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST.

- Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick.
- Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
Related article: 7 Lakota Sioux Laws That Will Change Your Life
What this article intends to do is to promote freedom. This freedom is a personal one from fear, illusions, and long-held beliefs within the mind, which relieves the human condition from suffering. When this is achieved, you learn to automatically live your life with unconditional love, perennial gratitude, and respect for the self and others.

What can YOU do for yourself to make life better, not only for yourself, but also for others in your clan? Are you mentally strong enough to adopt these Toltec Four Agreements?

Toltec Spirithttp://www.toltecspirit.com/References:
Cartwright M., "Toltec Civilization"
Ancient History Encyclopedia
http://www.ancient.eu/Toltec_Civilization/van Warmerdam G., "Living the Four Agreements: A life changing Journey"

*From the book The Four Agreements © 1997, don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills. Reprinted by permission of Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. P.O. Box 6657, San Rafael, CA 94903. All rights reserved.

(C)Power of Positivity, LLC. All rights reserved

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The 4 Toltec Agreements That Will Change Your Life

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" From whom? " The Toltecs are a people who rose to prominence in central Mexico between the tenth and twelfth centuries CE. They built a stunning capital in Tullan, known today as Tula, which is seventy-two kilometres North-West of Mexico City.

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Daniel Goleman's 5 features of emotional intelligence

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Daniel Goleman's 5 features of emotional intelligence

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Goleman's (1998) popular book, Working with Emotional Intelligence, suggests that emotional intelligence accounts for 67% of the abilities needed to be a successful leader and is twice as important as technical proficiency or IQ. This research has subsequently been supported by a number of studies.

In this article, we summarise the key 5 elements of emotional intelligence, the benefits of each and how to improve them.

What is emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence (EQ) is the ability to identify and manage your emotions, as well as other people's emotions.

If you're emotionally intelligent you have the ability to:

Identify what you're feeling

Know how to interpret your emotions

Understand how your emotions can impact others

Regulate your own emotions

Manage other people's emotions

Some people naturally inherit high EQ but it's a skill that you can practice and develop. By practicing emotionally intelligent behaviours your brain will adapt to make these behaviours automatic and replace less helpful behaviours.

The 5 features of emotional intelligence

Daniel Goleman determined that there are five fundamental features of EQ, each with their own benefits:

1. Self-awareness

Self-awareness is the ability to accurately recognise your: emotions, strengths, limitations, actions and understand how these affect others around you.
Benefits:

Increases the likelihood of you handling and using constructive feedback effectively.

By knowing your strengths and weaknesses you can improve your organisation's performance, for example, you may hire individuals who perform well in areas you struggle with.

Improve self-awareness by:

Keeping a diary of the situations that have triggered disruptive emotions in you, such as anger, and your thoughts and behaviours during those situations. With this information you can form an understanding of your emotions and reactions and work towards self-regulation.

Receiving feedback from staff as this can highlight how others perceive you and it also helps you target unhelpful reactions.

Observing the response others have to your behaviour.

2. Self-regulation

Self-regulation allows you to wisely manage your emotions and impulses - you show or restrain certain emotions depending on what is necessary and beneficial for the situation. For example, rather than shouting at your employees when you're stressed you may decide which tasks can be delegated.
Benefits:

Self-regulation helps earn the respect and trust of employees.

Useful when adapting to change.

Allows you to react rationally.

Improve self-regulation by:

Taking responsibility if you have made mistakes. Rather than blaming others admit that you are at fault. You'll feel less guilty and your team will respect you for it.

Responding to situations calmly as your communication is more effective when you're in this state and this feeling will spread to others. Breathing techniques, such as controlled breathing, can be useful practice.

3. Empathy

To be empathetic means you are able to identify and understand others' emotions i.e. imagining yourself in someone else's position.
Benefits:

Provides you with an understanding of how an individual feels and why they behave in a certain way. As a result, your compassion and your ability to help someone increases because you respond genuinely to concerns.

Especially helpful when delivering constructive feedback.

Being empathetic shows your team that you care. For example, if a manager reacts angrily after finding out that an employee has been arriving to work late because their child is unwell, the team is likely to react negatively towards the manager. It would be more favourable for the manager to be understanding and agree on a plan of action with the employee, such as, the employee starting work earlier and finishing later.

Employees will respect you more and subsequently job performance will improve.

To develop empathy:

Imagine yourself in someone else's position. Even if you have not experienced a similar situation, remember a situation where you have felt the same emotion your employee is experiencing.

Practice listening to your employees without interrupting them.

Observe your employees and try to gauge how they're feeling.

Never ignore your employees' emotions, for example, if an employee looks upset don't disregard this - address it.

Try to understand first rather than form a judgement. For example, you may initially feel annoyed at an employee who seems cold and disinterested. However, after discovering they suffer from social anxiety you may feel more sympathetic.

To communicate your empathy keep your body language open and regulate your voice to show your sincerity.

4. Motivation

Being self-motivated consists of: enjoying what you do, working towards achieving your goals and not being motivated by money or status.
Benefits:

Reduces your likelihood of procrastinating

Increases self-confidence

Keeps you motivated even if you face setbacks

Makes you focused on achieving your goals

Spreads to the team

To increase your motivation:

Remember why you're doing your job - maybe think about why you wanted it initially.

Set new goals if you lack them.

Remain optimistic because to be motivated you must be positive. Even when there is a setback or a challenge identify one positive factor about it.

To increase your employees' motivation explain why they are valuable, using example, as this will provide them with a sense of purpose.

5. Social skills

Effective social skills consist of managing relationships in a way that benefits the organisation.
Benefits:

Effective social skills helps you to build rapport with your employees and earn their respect and loyalty.

Employees will trust you which is especially valuable if unwelcomed decisions have been made, such as a rise in performance targets.

When you interact with your employees you can identify the best way to meet their individual needs and identify how their abilities can be used to achieve the organisation's aims.

Staff will feel comfortable presenting ideas to you and discussing concerns.

Improve social skills by:

Developing your communication skills. Problems can arise if there is bad communication, such as, misunderstandings upsetting employees. Listen to feedback to work out what to target, for example, the manner in which you speak may need work or perhaps your body language.

Learning how to provide praise and constructive feedback.

Cooperating and working together with your employees because you are all working towards a shared goal.

Listening to employees and practicing empathy.

Building relationships with your employees will assist you in understanding how to manage each individual.

Resolving conflict by looking at the situation from all the viewpoints involved and try to come to a compromise that benefits everyone.

The 5 features of emotional intelligence can all be improved with steps outlined in this article. Start working on these today and notice how you're able to connect with people at a deeper level.

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The 5 Features of Emotional Intelligence

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Goleman's (1998) popular book, Working with Emotional Intelligence , suggests that emotional intelligence accounts for 67% of the abilities needed to be a successful leader and is twice as important as technical proficiency or IQ. This research has subsequently been supported by a number of studies.

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Nonviolent Communication and Self Awareness | Maria Engels | TEDxAllendaleColumbiaSchool

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NonViolent Communication by Marshal Rosenberg : Animated Book Summary

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Hi,

My name is Yassir LAHLOU. I am a localization manager located in Morocco. I don't have a direct team to manage by I need to well coordinate indirect teams in order to achive our target. In other words, my mission, is to strenght the supplier panel. To do so, I need to convince Procurement teams, quality, Industrialization/engineering and supply chain.

Believe me, it's not an easy task to manage indirectly a team

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Position: Group Intl Mobility Coordinator

No direct reports as of yet, but coordinator role on stakeholders

Expectations: learn how to:

- Remain in management, not get into operational

- Be a manager not a friend, but remain approachable when rising from peer ranks

- Balance between my high expectations and lower work standard when incentivisation is not within my control

Free time: nice family time

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I have been working at Alstom since 1998. I'm Part of engineering department (signalling). Nowadays I manage a team of 8 internal resources with some consultants. The team is dealing with Sw development, innovation and AI.

My expectations are on improve communication within the team, including conflict management. Delegation and people care

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I am working in ALSTOM since 2000 ; Curently leading Industrial organisation in Ceska Lipa , before experience in leading Production Supply Chain 4 direct report curently . Expectation on the training - how to motivate and energise the teams to arive to the targets set

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Position: Site Support Engineer

No direct reports right now.

Expectations: To gain knowledge and tools required to progress to a role where i will be managing a team of support engineers in the near future when the contracts have been awarded.

This training is a big part of my career development.

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Toltec agreements & transactional analysis

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Toltec agreements & transactional analysis

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My favourite exercise was the KISS with teammembers to secure good orientation and collect constructive feedback. The idea of a periodical review with each team member and the whole team is very interesting.

The rocket of goals exercise allows to understand how to trasfer the ultimate goal into activities and everyday tasks. It also made me think about the importance of correct goals definition.

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A manager is only as good as their team.

Onmiscience and Omnipresence are areas that i believed to be positive but may actually have a negative impact on good management.

Keep, Improve, Start, Stop - important when working on good relationships and sharing of information.

Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, Timed - important prompts for objective setting

2/3 why's to aid team motivation.

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I have found several interesting inputs for my development. I'll go deeper into clarity and quality of my mandate, I'll try to implement the kiss method for share with the line manager (not anonymously :-)), and I will also be using the rocket of roals

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KISS

rocket of goals - makes me realise that it s easy to criticise current/perceived management failures, but quite difficult to formulate what i would actually want

my management traps - unrealistic expectations from my team

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Management styles part has been a source of ispiration for me, to understand positive and negative sides for each style to apply them consciously, I found delegation wheel as a good practice to follow, I'll go deeper into the levers of motivation

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Management styles and how to apply them to different personnel and the task they are required to do.

How my management style looks and the areas i need to improve, persuasive and negotiative.

Important to delegate and how to delegate.

Motivation is important especially understanding how people are motivated and using this to improve their productivity.

Motivation: Recognition, Responsibility, Nature of work, career development.

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Most interesting for me:

the 4 toltec agreements - that really goes along my life psychology and i think allign well with the stoic approach

the management styles and the classification of the coworkers - to apply the proper style to the situation

motivation - the understading people part. I will really take benefit of the method to understand individual's stake, sources of motivation and way of working

the delegation exercise - even if the topic of exercise was not in line with my everyday job, I think I learned a lot from it and will use it in future for my delegation tasks.

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- Management style – move away from directive and persuasive – learn to trust people and to accept their mistakes

- Lower standards of expectation from myself for myself and then focus on what to expect from others - this will lead to less stress, less micro management, less pressure. Almost everything can be fixed/corrected and a solution can always be found one way or another