Leadership expert Debashis Chatterjee doles out advice on how to lead, based on wisdom culled over the ages in The Other 99%. Excerpts from the book 1 Schedule 'nothing to do' on your to-do list ufffdset aside a few minutes of space in your daily diary where you write: NOTHING TO DO. I do not offer this as an option to be lazy. Use these moments for active and productive reflection. In your mind go through the course of how you spent the whole day. Explore what mistakes you made or what you could have done or said better. <img alt="" src="/imagedata/2011/jan/Leader.jpg" border="5" /> 2 Define your goals through your passion(s), not your job Identify with something bigger than just your career or professional goals. The more we concentrate on limited things, the narrower our identity becomes. Do not just say that I am an engineer or an ear-nose-throat specialist! The reality is that we are neither engineers nor doctors, we just have an engineering or a medical degree. What we identify with can be much bigger than a diploma or degree. So identify yourselves with your passions and aspirations, which are much greater than your career tracks. 3 'Engage your employees as well as your customers' Our organizations have largely been built on command and control. [...] We need something more than control to lead human beings. We need strategies of involvement and structures of engagement to bring out the best in people. Konosuke Matsushita of Japan built his nation's greatest enterprise based on this simple philosophy: Engage your employees as well as your customers. 4 Pay attention Information is dumb data. What gives voice to information is attention. Attention has created the world that we see around us. If we stand before the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty or the Pyramids of Egypt we marvel at the vastness, symmetry and majesty of physical matter that has been put together by human effort. But the starting point of all that effort was a blueprint of these wonderful structures in the human mind. This blueprint was held in mind space by a network of neurons. What held this neural network together is attention. 5 Do regular tasks differently Creativity comes from doing ordinary things differently. It also comes from doing different things -- like multitasking. Sometimes, the way we organize our desk in the morning can bring a creative spark to our day. Just placing a fresh flower in a vase on our table can make this happen. Doing some ordinary tasks with the left hand instead of the right (for a right-hander) can activate the creative juices in us. 6 Become mindful Another way to contact yourself is to witness some of the actions that you do mechanically in the course of your day. For instance, most of us brush our teeth, hold the telephone or even have a cup of tea in a manner we have conditioned ourselves in. We hardly notice how we perform these daily chores. To be watchful of some of these routine activities is the secret of unleashing the power of yourself as the observer. The result of this exercise can be very powerful in unlocking a quiet centre in your self. 7 'Grow' as a person Transformation is essentially a commitment to stay alive. Life is inherently transformational. A good question to ask at the end of the day's work would be: "Did I excel and grow as a person today?" If I did, I am already on the transformational path. The Other 99%; Debashis Chatterjee; Rs 195; published by Jaico Books. Available at leading bookstores

Being close to spouse doesn't help communicability  

Leadership expert Debashis Chatterjee doles out advice on how to lead, based on wisdom culled over the ages in The Other 99%. Excerpts from the book

Seven ways to empower yourself in the workplace

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Seven ways to empower yourself in the workplace

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