Extreme Leadership takes a sabbatical

Suddenly it just felt as though it was time.

Time to stop.

For the time being, it is just this blog, and the whole "I want to express myself" feeling.

I could never understand why people stop blogging, or why some never started.

This blog is taking a sabbatical, because it represented my work and professional side, for far too long.

Thank you for being an audience. Drop me a line anytime in my personal blog.

Mind Power

To those who visit this blog and have comments, thank you for your feedback and I will try my best to live up to this extreme leadership blog paradigm. To those who came by in the new year and hoping to see a few updates, I apologize for not blogging recently.

My engine has not started for the year, forgive me.

But let me tell a simple story to all of you. It is all in your mind.

- Attitude
- Luck
- Relationships
- Fortune
- Beauty
- Health
- everything...

If you feel you are lacking in specific area, the positive energy you generate from your mind on thinking and approaching and taking action positively will generate the same positive response from around you.

And if, one day, if you are like me, just sometimes out of chi, just go rest the mind by doing something simple which you need not think about. When the mind is calm, so are you.

Try it.

Sweat it out

I used to sweat the small things at work, and stress follows, now I still look at the smaller things but do not sweat over it anymore.

In contrast, I used not to be able to sweat much in the gym and it is not healthy, but now I sweat a lot on workouts.

I found that sweating is really healthy, and the body is capable of adapting and liking it a lot more - its not about losing weight or water, but about working for it.

The idea of sweating it out has a great meaning - working hard over something!

Leadership and Sports

Sports has never been my forte - but has been a passion for me. I am a keen follower of sports from both the armchair and also keen competitor in my hobby sports - golf and running among the key ones. I strongly believe that sports people who succeed in their discipline and interest has what it takes to be successful in other aspects of their life purely because they have the passion to win.

Competing in sports teaches us how to win and lose. In every competition, there is only one winner. The sportsperson who goes home with the trophy, the cash, the title. No one remembers the runner ups or the participants. Yet, unlike life events which sometimes hinges on uncertainty and also arbitrary judgement of victory, competitive sportspersons compete to win. And in every competition, with one winner, there are many losers. Learning how to lose means knowing there is always one place better we can do the next time. And when you are there, there is always the one you cannot win, the element of time, name or history.

The greatest aspect of sports is the arena of camaraderie. In all the races I've ran in since I took up competitive running again, I have never been so comfortable to see all races, age, religion and the regular smile when we meet on the road and the camaraderie amongst friends after races. I suppose the adrenaline of sports enables the participants to have a "high" all the time, a positive high and one which transcends barriers.

The final and most important aspect of competitive sports is discipline. This is by far the most under-rated area for the athlete or sports person. Whilst there is always the motivation of money or reward at the end of competitive sports, the majority of us indulge in casual competition or non-victorious sports. And yet, we continue to strive to train, and practice for wanting to be more skilled or successful the next time around. And regardless of level or age, the victor is the one who is most disciplined to train and help himself or herself. Discipline is the science to achieve excellence in anything we do.

Leaders of organisations take note, ensure the people you hire has not only a mix of excellence and social interest in sports, but your organisation has the environment to encourage and enable the employees to participate in ongoing sports events. There is no better platform for the foundation of leadership and the recognition of the leaders who excel in sports.

Generation Y

I was in a recruitment drive trip to Australia recently to look at campus recruits - graduates who wants to return back to Malaysia to work. I learnt much about Generation Y during this trip.

Generation Y characteristics on job-hunting :
- Career not Employer - they care about themselves and their own career rather than look for employers and how they can contribute to the employer. They want to be trained for the job and asks and assess employers (not the employer assessing the employee) about the prospects of cool opportunities such as "management trainee" kind of positions where they can practice job rotation and learn before having to contribute

- Academic perfection - the short cut way. Those I met usually had brilliant SPM results, but varied performance in university. No doubt I only met a subset of students, but it seemed that the old fashion way of consistent hard work was out of the window, some students even told me they learned how to "do the exams to score" and was not shy about it

- Shopping for a job, not looking for a career. When I was younger (oh gosh, am I saying this?) - I used to look for a place to build a career - now graduates are shopping around for a job which suits them, offers them training and without any due concern about whether this was what they want to do for a career.

- Overseas the grass is greener - most graduates I met (not just Malaysians, but other nationalities) wants to have a job in Australia after they graduate. They did not think about opportunities or their own countries or even their own capabilities and grades suitability and difficulties in finding a job - the standard question was "are you hiring for australia?" and then when the answer was not affirmative, next statement was "i want to work in australia". Whilst I am not advocating the disadvantages of this, all I am asking generation y malaysians overseas to do is to examine what is best for themselves and look in the mirror and question why they should not serve their own country first (!!! there, another old person thought !!!)

- Whither the sportsman? Either we were looking at the wrong set of candidates or there was a severe lacking of balanced kids out there nowadays - where was the sportsman who is an all-rounder? where is the guy who says his hobbies are "badminton and running" or something achieved in those areas? Nowadays CVs are littered with random jobs which is more "money making" part time jobs to supplement income, and these jobs are used as a "experience profile" to support the candidate.

- Working hard is not an option. I used to think it was the ONLY option. I can photocopy, bind and print an entire proposal on my own in my office, despite my position. The gen y candidate complains about being asked as an intern to photocopy a few sheets.

So you guessed it, I am Gen X and still struggling with a plastic smile after 11 days of recruiting booth stand ins trying to handle Gen Y candidate's questions.

I think I need to go for a class to deal with Gen Y. Before Gen Z comes on board.

The Leader is Revived

It has been a long time since my last post. Writing is about expression, but writing passionately without thinking about what to write about, or who the target audience is, or editing language and text repetitively before posting is not really as cool and inspirational. And so at some point, when I did not feel much leadership power in me, I kept to my usual personal blog, which is really more me.

Nevertheless, I am back!

Learning from Po the Panda

Finally caught KFP (Kung Fu Panda) over the weekend.

Short one liner on my learnings from a cute fat panda :
- If you believe in it, it will come true.
- If you work for it, you will achieve

And... the real one from the movie - there is no secret recipe! How true....