What kind of manager are you? How do you take on your role?

Throughout a career we evolve and gradually develop our technical and management skills.

The day comes when we take over new responsibilities and start managing people and teams.

Then come into action the management models we have created in our minds.

What is your new role? Commercial, Finance, Operations .., or General Manager? How should you interact with the teams? What should you / should you not do?

The majority of directors act in accordance with their models, beliefs and fantasies about what should be a manager's behavior.

As if taking over a position as a Director was like wearing a hat, playing an artificial role. Like an actor playing a preset scenario.

The shame is that as a result their artificial behaviour might take away any personal spontaneity or professional creativity ... Relationships become superficial and cold.

For me, the ability for executives to be themselves in their management and working roles gives them power and credibility.
Being aligned and coherent 100 percent with their role and responsibilities, being authentic and true in their relations with others give executives the capacity to inspire a much higher level of commitment and performance.

Be more connected, more present. Be more nimble and agile.

What about you? How do you see your role and how do you act it? What kind of manager are you?

Be authentic and spontaneous as a manager! Your motivation and consistency will have impact on your teams!

What do you think?

How is your life? Is it full or empty? How do you see it? Do you live in abundance or in scarcity?

Abundance or scarcity.
These are certainly the most unfairly shared notions between people around the world...

While a few have personal fortunes that can be compared to the GDP of small countries, others have nothing ... apart from their life.

These notions, as real and intolerable they may be in the real world, are also present  in our privileged countries and affect our minds and our lives.

The context and difficulties of everyday life  that are created by the recession turn people into victims, Victims that blame everything and everyone around them. This victimization is based on the envy or the emptiness they are feeling, on their fear of losing what they have, fear of having less.

The greed we sometimes have when we uncontrollably buy or acquire things relates a lot to filling up a void, filling up a gap, alleviating a need in order to respond to a frustration.
As if we wanted to get high like a drug addict or an acoholic ... high enough to run away from our unexciting day to day...for a time...

The way we live our lives relies heavily on these perceptions or mindsets... How do we perceive our lives? Are we happy with what we have? Or do we always want more?

How do you live? Do you enjoy the moment? Or do you always expect something, a holiday, money, a new car, … or merely that something, anything would come up...?

The abundance or scarcity are in your heads, in your minds. They have nothing to do with the money or the assets you own... Millionaires can be depressive and many poor people live happily ...

Being envious to possess more or terrified to lose what you have will never bring you serenity or happiness.

Knowing what is important to you and feeling free and detached from minor things...These may help getting closer to happiness.

Happiness is about being grateful for what you have.

And about knowing where you are going, what you say yes to and what you say no to.

Are you the one deciding or someone else is?

"Imagine that there are two kinds of courage. One is an active courage that gets people killed. The other is an inner courage. That keeps people alive.

Which of these two is better?
No one can answer that for you. Each has its benefits and its drawbacks. Tao has no preferences.

Keep in mind that Tao means how: how things happen. But how-things-happen is not the same as what-should-I-do. No one can tell you what to do. That is your responsability.

Instead of asking for advice, learn to become more conscious of what is actually happening. Then you will be able to see for yourself how things happen. You can make your own decisions about what to do.

Tao does not preach sermons or dictate behaviors. What people do is their responsability.
But the pattern of their behavior follows natural law.
This law is so general, it covers every possible event. It is so specific, it applies to every instance of every event.

But no one can decide for you what to do in a given situation. That’s up to you"

Coaching is aligned with the wisdom of Tao. It does not judge you nor tells you what to do.
It supports you in getting clearer with what is happening and in taking your own decisions.

Try it!. or comment.... What do YOU think?.

Texts are an extract of Lao Tsu's "The Tao of Leadership"