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Grow Higher By Empathizing

You must have used the words mentioned below many times in your resume:

  1. Leadership
  2. Team Player
  3. Organizational Goal
  4. Team Goal
  5. Personal Goal

These five words are the golden words that can make you grow higher and higher!

Many job seekers mention these words only to impress the potential employers, but when actually implemented in life, these words can change your life completely and make you live your dream-life.

These words mention the attributes that not only make you successful in your professional life but also in your personal life.

Think of a friend in your school or college who was most of the time surrounded by your other friends. This particular friend had the charisma, which mesmerized your other friends.

Point to ponder is that what was the source of his charisma?

Was it his looks or some other attribute?

This friend was considered by others as someone who could offer words of wisdom and could show them the right path.

And how do you think one can offer words of wisdom to others?

Answer is that when someone really cares for the other person, will always try to show him the right path. So, these words of wisdom are actually the words which express lot of care.

In school or college, this particular friend of yours did not even know that he possessed the golden attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’ which are the most required attributes in any walk of life.

You may agree with me that your friend was either gifted with these attributes right from his birth or learnt these from his family members.

For example, I had a friend during my engineering days, whose parents were top politicians. So he always ensured that he was as polite and as humble as possible whenever he interacted with others. Certainly, he learnt these attributes from his parents.

But I can tell you with hundred percent confidence that anyone can learn to develop these attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’, which would help him to achieve personal, team and organizational goals.

If you already possess the attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’, then you are already doing great in your personal as well as professional life.

Because when you are a leader and a team player, it implies that you are a leader and a team player both in your personal and professional life.

People who try to have dual life, for example, they try to portray themselves as a leader and a team player in the professional life but do not exhibit these attributes in their personal life, do not have a balanced life. Either their personal life or their professional life goes for a toss.

Therefore, when you say that you possess attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’, then you need to exhibit both of these attributes both in your personal and professional life.

Personal life and professional life are two sides of the same coin. When you learn something great in your personal life, you try to implement it in your professional life. And when you learn something great in your professional life, you try to implement it in your personal life.

And it also happens that when something is not right in your personal life, it affects your professional life and when something is not right in your professional life, it affects your personal life.

So, how do you think, you can implement these golden words of leadership, being a team player, achieving organizational goal, team goal and personal goal in your professional life?

If you think that it is your job to just follow the instructions of your supervisor to work towards the team goal and the organizational goal, then you will work under compulsion.

When you work under compulsion or when you work towards a goal which is imposed on you, then you try to put in the maximum possible effort that you can put in as an employee towards achieving that goal.

But the objective of this article is to make it easy for you to become a leader and a team player in order to help you achieve your personal goal, team goal and organizational goal by giving your best, without making you feel that “You put in maximum possible effort that you can, in order to achieve your personal, team and organizational goals”.

When you think that you have to put in your maximum effort, you start feeling stressed. What if, there is a way which will help you to give your best without making you feel stressed.

It all starts from your mind.

When you tell yourself that you have to put in maximum efforts, your sub-conscious mind starts making you feel stressed.

When you tell yourself that you do your work honestly and sincerely, your sub-conscious mind does not let you get stressed.

The objective of this article is not to persuade you to work towards your goal in such a way that you lose your work-life balance.

The objective of this article is to help you develop the mindset that whatever you do to achieve your personal, team, organization goals, you do it effortlessly. Without feeling the pressure of being compelled to do something to achieve these goals.

We discussed earlier in this article that personal life and professional life are two sides of the same coin.

So, let us now discuss with the help of a scenario that how you can develop ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’ attributes in your professional life by developing these attributes in your personal life.

Visualize a scenario that you are travelling in a car.

It is raining and the road ahead is blocked by a tree which has been uprooted because of the heavy rain.

There is a traffic jam on either side of the uprooted tree.

Your gut feeling says that, if 15-20 people try to lift the uprooted tree and move it aside then the road could be cleared.

But no one is taking the initiative to gather people and clear the road.

In this case, you take the initiative to get down from the car and start requesting people to join you to move aside the uprooted tree and clear the road.

Some people deny your request, as they do not want to get drenched in the rain and some people accept your request and give it a try to clear the road.

In this scenario, whether the road gets cleared or not, is not the point. Rather it is about exhibiting the attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’ in such a challenging scenario.

In this case, you have shown your leadership attribute by taking the initiative to gather people to clear the road and you have also shown your attribute of ‘Being a team player’, by believing in the collective strength of a team to clear the road.

Let us now try to understand that how you can gather people to clear the road in this scenario. What kind of statement you need to make to get their help.

If you tell people that you are getting late, so they need to help you to clear the road, then you may get the support from one or two very kind persons but not from many.

But if you make a statement that clearing the road will benefit everyone stuck in the traffic because of the uprooted tree then you will certainly get the support from many.

Point to note here is that you need to communicate with people with the right statements.

When you make statements that sound selfish and make others feel that they have to work to serve your purpose, then you will not get their support.

But when you make statements which sound benefitting others, then you will definitely get their support.

Though this is an imaginary scenario but you come across such situations in real life.

You need to use these real life scenarios to develop the attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’.

Start analysing your own statements.

“Do your statements sound selfish and make it appear as if you need others to work for your purpose” or “Do your statements sound benefiting all including yourself”?

Statements are very important because they communicate what you think. And what you think is very important because it is the result of what you feel.

So, in this imaginary scenario of the road getting blocked by the uprooted tree because of the heavy rain, you can get support of the maximum people when you feel that you need to care for everyone who is stuck in the traffic jam and then communicate it to them in the way that convinces them that you are interested in their welfare.

Yes, this is an imaginary scenario. But just think, how such scenarios in the real life can help you develop these attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’.

The imaginary scenario that we discussed here was related to your personal life, let us now connect it with your professional life.

Consider that you displayed the attributes of being an ideal leader and an ideal team player in this imaginary scenario and you got the support of almost everyone who was stuck in the road blockade.

Then it means that in this scenario , you cared for others, thought of doing your part for the welfare of others and then conveyed it to them in the way that convinced them that joining you in your endeavour would benefit them.

So, this is exactly in line with what we discussed a little earlier. That is, “What you feel” results in “What you think” and “What you think” results in “The kind of statement that you make”.

Therefore, when you align this flow of messages from ‘Feeling’ to ‘Statement’ with the interest of your team, that is, you care for your team members, think of doing your part for the team and communicate it to the team members in the way which convinces them that joining you in your endeavour will benefit them, you will certainly get the support of all your team members to achieve the team goal and the organizational goal.

And when you get support of your team members, you automatically prove that you possess the attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’.

You can now conclude that in order to develop the attributes of ‘Leadership’ and ‘Being a team player’, you need to consistently work on the flow of messages from your feelings to your statements.

As the message starts from your feelings, you need to employ your mind to keep a tab on your feelings in order to consistently monitor your feelings for others.

When you start showing empathy for others, that is, when you start understanding others’ situation from their perspective, you start caring for them. This leads to the thought-process and statements that convince others that joining you in your endeavour will actually benefit them.

When people join you in your endeavour willingly, it demonstrates your capabilities as a leader and as a team player to achieve the team and organisational goals, which ultimately helps you achieve your personal goal.

The mesage starts from your feelings, and when you work consistently on your feelings to ensure that they consist of ‘Empathy’ for others, you can really turn around things in favour of the goals of your personal and professional life.

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