My Path to Leadership 1

Since I started my career, as a AV technician back in 8 years ago, my superior already share with me that the most challenging that he is facing is manage people. My superior was knowledgable, skilful, and confidently. As a head of engineering team, his job is to supervise and to ensure that we'll deliver the project by deadline.

He share me a lot of his story about how he manage to finish up a tough project by his alone, in comparison, we are far away from his ability. So he did try his best to educate us on the system knowledge and he is the only one who willing to share the knowledge with me at that time, I feel much appreciated for his effort till today. Despite he trying his best, but my peer was dislike him, it could be his authentic unfiltered word do make my peer felt been insulted.

From him, I learned that it's not an easy task to manage someone or to lead someone, despite I'm aware of this, I never take leadership as serious before until my staff was leave me due to he is over stress. I review myself for days, and I decided that I have to do something to improve my leadership!

Everyone have different approach to learn something, for myself, I prefer though reading, self taught, when I browse though various leadership book, "Leadership Step by Step", this title did catch my attention.



Step by step, sound like a cooking recipe, if I follow though the instruction, the chances of failure should be lower. PS: I never fail on any dishes that I cook by follow though the recipe but of course it  need to trick a little for perfect.

This book is about 200+ pages, not really a huge thick book (I suppose it is, as I reading e-book), but I estimate it will take me 5 months to finish it. Why? Not that I'm a turtle reader but it have 22 exercises in the book, each excise will take me about a week. I'm going to follow though the exercise and will record my progress though this blog.

I will skip sharing for the chapter 1 exercise as it only to write my personal essay, which lead me to understand more about myself, why I wanna be a leadership.

Chapter 2 Perception, Focus, Attention

Before every exercise, author will write a short story, to summarise, the story is about a son flew off the handle in an argument with his dad, dad said" Son, what's gotten into you? I can see why you would annoyed, but there's no reason to get this angry"

Son siad, "But, Daddy, that's what you would do"

Dad paused, couldn't find a word to reply his son. 

So this story is telling about the important of self-awareness and this lead to the weird exercise that I think in the beginning, "The three raisins exercise"



Well, I couldn't find myself 3 raisin on the day of my exercise, I brought myself Ribena pastilles instead. The exercise is quite weird and I almost laugh out, so here are the instructions for this exercise.

1. Get three raisins. You can use raisin-sized pieces of other fruit if you prefer. 
2. Block off an hour when you can turn off your phone and other distractions. You won't take that long, but the cushion keeps you from feeling rushed. 
3. During that hour, put the three raisins in front of you and eat them as follows:

• Imagine you've never seen one before
• Observe it with all your senses in turn. Look at it-its fold, its color, and so on. Feel it in your fingers, how it moves when you press on it. Try to detect if it has smell. Taste it before you bite into it and then after. Feel how is dissolves in your mouth. Hear its sound if you drop it on a plate. And so on with all your senses. 
• Only start next raisin after you have swallowed all of the remnants of the first. 

    4. If your attention drifts from the raisins, return your focus to your sensory experience of the  raisins.

Sound silly to me, I want to be a leadership, he ask me to eat raisins instead. 

Nvm, I just give it a try. 

Hmmm.....I had never been this serious to taste a pastille before, I feel its sugar surround pastilles dissolves in my mouth, the texture of the sugar, the smoothness of pastilles, so yummy, I feel like its my first time to eat pastilles, I used to chew pastilles other than just put it and let it rest in my mouth. 

During my exercise, I can feel my breathe and every little ambient sound around me, my air con, fan. I feel I was so calm. 

I learned that, I have miss so much things in my life, even a pastilles, I never taste it seriously before, other than that, I can now become more calm, Whenever I need focus, I can recapture my exercise moment, to enter that calming status. I feel I can control my emotion better now. 

If you're reading this, do not hesitate to give yourself a try, you will be surprise and realise how much you been miss in your life. 

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