What’s The Next Big Thing?

After racing in endurance challenges for the past eight years, I occasionally experience hearing that ‘voice in my head’ that suggests ‘what’s next?’ I have heeded it, and wondered what, if I so choose, would be my NEXT challenge?

Challenges are mainly goals that we assign ourselves to, with the intention of achieving or completing them as soon as we can. Our Bucket List may involve more time, and may include ‘nice to have’ things. Challenges are more deliberate because one we set our minds to them we would have to comply with our conditions to attain them.

Many Ironman triathlon finishers move towards off-road triathlons, trail running, marathons, ultra-marathons, long-distance open-water swims (OWS) and charity-based challenges (most distance covered in 24 hours). They make the shift due to boredom and the routine of discipline, and so apply that discipline elsewhere. This allows them to re-charge their bodies and minds from the grueling lifestyle of enduring physical training. A proper period of rest away from prolonged routine can rejuvenate us. Even injury gives us an opportunity to take stock, and review our inventory of wants and needs.

Leadership Lessons: Seek your next challenge. Uncover those that you ditched away. A challenge is a goal with a deadline. Reduce procrastination. Create enough reasons for moving forwards towards your dream. Make your challenge compelling enough to stay focused on. Above all, practise, rehearse and train for the challenge.

Pen Your Ideas Into Interventions & Initiatives

It is, probably, a truism when it is expressed that ‘the largest things started by being small’. We were once kids, and we grew up. Some companies also progressed from good to great.

Ideas come and go, rapidly and prolonged. It would be opportune just to capture some of these down on paper (or a digital pad). You need not be so extreme to write every dream down on your notebook strategically placed on your bedside. Ideas morph into reality through a series of steps, sometimes serial and other times, sideways and sidestepped. By visualizing these ideas into words or pictures, you gain a better sense of what these latent ideas may become. Let these ideas come to be!

When you review your chicken scratches from years ago, you may rejuvenate a few initiatives: a business plan, a dream trip, creating a new connection, re-establishing existing relationships, or presenting a proposal. Before we can mark out our existence or territory, we will need to make our mark on a page. Motivational speaker, Anthony Robbins wrote his life-plan on the back of a map. The Virgin logo was drafted as a signature on a paper-napkin. The all-in-one, self-contained, beer-brewing unit by WillliamsWarns was thought and talked through in many conversions. How do you brew commercial quality beers within your own home? Put a master-brewer and a few engineer partners together and realize your diagrams and blueprints.

Leadership Lessons: Start small. Build it up from them. Write your ideas down for copyright reasons, and for your own recognition.

Learn To Live And Let Live!

Just go about your way, if somebody annoys you.

To be annoyed or not be annoyed – it is your choice. People can behave in ways that irritate us or upset us, yet avoid letting them get to you. We have choices that allow us to move around, move through and move on, to the next place of most potential. We need not subject ourselves to prolonged pain and agony.

Practise patience, endurance, consideration and respect. Suspend judgement for a while. After all, we are entitled to our own opinions (and these can be temporal and abstract things). Steven Covey wrote that we have our own Circle of Influence and Circle of Concern. What are you doing to affect both spaces around you? How can you expand one and contract the other?

Leadership Lessons: Learn to let go. Proceed to the next useful piece. If something isn’t working, do something else. Instead of changing them, we can change our mind, judgements and perceptions of them. Work with what is within your circle of influence and control.

Happy Teacher’s Day!

I hope I did my teachers proud.

I was a normal student with average grades in school, except for my languages. I never studied hard for my Mandarin but I passed every examination. I did fail in English on two separate occasions; I suspect it was because I did not complete the essay portion on time. I must have done well in both Mandarin (second language) and English for I earned the option to study a third language – I opted for French, which I dropped out after two grueling years; and listening to Monsieur Lecoq while he smoked his cigarette was hard to bear. Nobody in my area spoke the romantic language, and so I fell out of love with it. Mrs Elizabeth Khalil recognized my aptitude for the language, and every one of my Chinese teachers (over 12 years of formal education) treated me well in class, and gave me positive classroom experiences. I have taught in China and Taiwan since 1993, and have taught classes entirely in Mandarin doing my own reading, writing and translation.

I did not go to the top schools or junior college. I graduated with my first degree as a mature adult (through a corporate sponsorship); I decided to complete my Masters degree soon after graduating. Earning relevant degrees was the way to go, if I was to enhance my credibility as a consultant and corporate trainer. I enjoyed my interactions with my overseas tutors and supervisors. To me, my conversations with them (related to practical aspects of my studies) were far more valuable than earning upper-percentile test scores. I believed that my journey in my learning was as relevant as the destination.

In my youth, I taught in the military as an Instructor (topped my cohort and class on two separate occasions, in the Methods of Instruction module). I was a gym-trainer for three years, had a brief hiatus as a journalist, then resumed training as a full-time profession since 1993. I became an independent educator in the year 2000, and I never looked back on the teaching profession since. Just this week, I taught in my 20^th country in 19 years.

I was a decent athlete in school, self-taught, and self-styled but encouraged by my form-teacher Mr S K Cheong (who I reunited with a few years ago at a public race together with his wife - my former-Mathematics teacher - and their two children). Since 2004, I have completed multiple marathons and Ironman triathlons. I enjoy teaching tremendously, and relish in my time with students. I also enjoy my personal learning with my own mentors and teachers. I am fortunate to have found my calling early in my career. It took a long while to get here, yet I am grateful for my journey. I am a teacher and I appreciate teachers. I am encouraged by teachers who extend and expand themselves further than a fixed syllabus, timetable, or salary. They breathe of true potential.

I trust I did my teachers proud.

The Values In Customer Relationships

Values matter. When somebody violates our values, we become alert and cognizant of that. Even the insurance industry realizes that it is about promoting the values of ‘being sure’, ‘certainty’, ‘being insured’, and ‘assurance’. Having stated that, what about continued business that focuses on ‘reassurance’? What can we do to ensure that our clients think and feel assured about their buying choices and decisions?

Nobody likes to feel foolish about his/her buying decisions. Yet, we occasionally do fall prey to clever advertising and marketing. How can we bypass these unpleasant experiences and create new and pleasant ones for them? How can we assist our clients to feel more valued about this worthy relationship with us? Endear and endure to create responsively useful relationships, instead of reactively ‘fearful’ ones. Create reliability, responsiveness and a sense of responsibility. Give value, and add more value. Your purpose behind your value offerings matter, too. Do this well, and your customer will be reciprocal in his/her relationship with you.

Create your own personalised, conversational scripts. Instead of sticking rigidly to a prescribed speech or spiel, write your own dialogue. Speak from your heart. Be heartfelt and thankful for their business. Be arm but avoid raising temperatures. How would you provide advice and counsel to a person you value and care for? How would you create attention and make your sharing session an attractive one? Once you meet this criterion, clients are more likely to attain, and attain again. That is the process of ‘customer loyalty’.

Drawing Inspiration Around Us

I have been watching snippets of the London Paralympic Games 2012 on television. I have been amazed and inspired by the depth of competition, and extent of competencies demonstrated by the athletes.

There are numerous categories for some sports. Each athlete works around his/her disability. The physically-challenged athletes are not handicapped, especially when they perform as well as able-bodied ones. Some have limited use of their limbs, whereas others rely on their sense of touch and sound. I have, initially, watched the Games wondering which are their disadvantaged. After a while, I stopped guessing and started enjoying the drama of athletic competition. These Games are some of the major highlights of human abilities and capabilities.

I am smitten by their raised sense of consciousness, heightened sense of competition, and enhanced hunger to be their best. These Games are not about physical disability, but rather about sports spread over a larger canvas of human possibility. Every effort counts. Their results reflect on our dreams, hopes and aspirations. We can share in their joy, jubilations, frustrations and disappointments. We share in their emotions and engagements. Thank you athletes for helping us raise our personal bars of ‘higher, stronger and faster’.

Leadership Lessons: How do you gain your inspiration? What are you most inspired by? How do you engage with your own inspiration? How do others draw upon you for their inspiration?

Listening In to Conversations

Active listening is a useful set of skills for capturing the interests and needs of a person. Language comprises surface structure and a deep structure. A ‘chair’ is a piece of furniture when we describe concrete thinking, and ‘chair a meeting’ is an abstraction (of a set of behaviors). The deep layers of language require us to listen attentively and acutely, so as not allow abstract reasoning to escape from our awareness.

Active listening is a soft skill, fraught with the risk of confusion, vagueness and ambiguity. If you do not ask questions, you may be misled by the ebb and flow of the conversation. If you drift into boredom, you may miss chunks of useful information presented or hidden in the jetsam and flotsam of a person’s language. Pay attention also to the body language of doubt, confusion and emotions inherent in their manner. Look, and be able to ‘see’. Observe, identify with, and detect signals and cues. Work off responses and feedback.

Leadership Lessons: How often do you practise active listening? How astute and accurate are your listening skills? What can you glean from pedestrian conversations? How close do you keep your ears to the ground of your organization?

Leading With Abstracts

Having been on the road for the past few weeks across four countries, I have reminded myself constantly to pay dense attention to my use of language in teaching and instruction. Although business and conversational English is one of the widely spoken languages, it can be challenging for many with its abstract forms. When you travel on business, you learn to pay attention to how well your communication with others, go. You learn to engage with precision, accuracy and deliberateness.

Be mindful of when you use figures of speech. Abstract language relies on the deeper structure of language. A table is a piece of home furnish whereas ‘under the table’ or ‘table of content’ refer to different things entirely. Stick to concrete language and only migrate when the conversationalist shows higher competence in managing such language. When in doubt, ask them: ‘What do you understand by…?’ It tends to reveal the gaps in understanding of daily business language. Challenge their use of abstract language, such as ‘What do you mean by not pulling their weight?’ and ‘How do you define overloaded with work?’

Leadership Lessons: Beware of using abstract language, especially figure of speech. Be aware of the use of metaphors, analogies, proverbs and idioms. Non-native speakers may have difficult comprehending and understanding the nuance of language such as subtlety, innuendo and entendres. Question people on the use of their words if you, too, have difficulty comprehending or understanding.

Inspirational People: Uncle Kor Hong Fatt

Uncle Kor qualified for and completed Boston Marathon 2011. He is Singapore’s oldest marathoner to have completed that race. He continues to inspire veteran and new runners to train and race. He leads by example, within his family, as well as in the community. He walks his talk, and backs it up by racing occasionally. He is a positive driving force with runners and would-be runners.

Starting A Business

How do you start a business? How do you go about doing this?

I had pondered over this about 15 years ago. Before that, I had no business acumen and savvy, other than running other people’s business as a paid staff. I sold club memberships, advertisement space, and sports equipment. I enjoyed these opportunities for it fostered a confidence for creating business relationships. I learnt earlier on, that commercial enterprises relied on educating others in the process and to be a beacon of optimism and hopefulness. 

There are some useful guidelines on how to engage in the process of starting your company. I will elaborate on these more in future.

1)    What are you passionate about?

2)    Do you think you can turn your passion into a business?

3)    What is the market for your expertise?

4)    How long do you intent to stay in business?

5)    How will your business benefit others? Who will it benefit most?

6)    How will you build your credibility in business?

7)    Which relationships will you need to establish immediately?

8)    Who can you learn from, regarding business and on this type of business?

9)    Which success stories can you emulate?

10) Which will be the indicators of your success and what will be your expected timelines?

Leadership Lessons: Lead with your dreams. Your dreams are your visions. Back them up with action.