Great leaders make tough choices

"Good leadership involves responsibility to the welfare of the group, which means that some people will get angry at your actions and decisions. It's inevitable if you're honorable. Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity: You'll avoid the tough decisions, you'll avoid confronting the people who need to be confronted, and you'll avoid offering differential rewards based on differential performance because some people might get upset. Ironically, by procrastinating on the difficult choices, by trying not to get anyone mad, and by treating everyone equally "nicely" regardless of their contributions, you'll simply ensure that the only people you'll wind up angering are the most creative and productive people in the organization". 

Colin Powell

The wall in your head

I have done a lot of recent reading, research and discussions about personal motivation and accomplishing your goals. For a long time I felt that I was not able to accomplish a lot of things that I wanted to. There always seemed to be something either preventing me or causing me not to take action. It was hard to explain, but at the same time very frustrating. I wasn't really aware that something was preventing me, but I just felt that other people had all the luck and I was never given the opportunities to show my true talents. Then something changed. I don't know what it was and I don't know how it happened. That change has led me to dedicating my time to write this blog, go back to school for Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology and set new goals of writing a book around my concepts of life tactics. Looking back and being much more aware of life, we seem to have a wall that we create for ourselves in our mind that prevents us from accomplishing these goals.

Emotional Labeling

The next major component of the active listening process is emotional labeling.  Let’s focus on two things, what is it and also why do we do it. Emotional labeling is simply a statement of the emotions heard during a conversation. The first step to doing it effectively is listening for those underlying emotions in what a person is saying. The bottom line is people love to have others understand how they feel. If possible, I want you to never let a feeling go by in a conversation without labeling it. It really conveys that you are listening to what the person is saying and understand how they were feeling. Demonstrating that you understand how a person feels will have a significant impact during the rapport-building phase of conversation and ultimately determine how significant of a connection you can create with this person. People are rarely in a conversation where their emotions or feelings are identified. If it has happened to you, it feels great.  It is the exactly why we see therapist to help with our challenges in life, they listen to us.