A picture from the interfaith conference in Sri Lanka a few years ago. The respect for each other and their views points gives hope to make this world a better place. Please reflect on a baby step you can take to create interfaith harmony in your own community, be it the neighbourhood, workplace, school, social organisation or any other organisation you are associated with.
Everyone can be a leader. Everyone don’t want to be a leader. Everyone don’t have to be a leader. You need to love your people to be a leader. As you listen to this inspirational speech, reflect on if you love being a leader. If not why not? What steps would you do?
A collection of Ranjan De Silva’s favourite poems recited by him with short introductions and debrief of each poem at an online Rotary meeting between Rotary Club of Colombo Reconnections Sri Lanka and Rotary Club of Nanganallaur, India.
As you listen to these poems reflect on what inspire you. Is it the selection, a particular poem, the themes, the words, the way they are recited, relevance to you, your mindset or anything else?
The poems include;
Reflection Guide:
As we celebrate fathers day, let’s reflect on the greatest gift your father gave you.
My loving father taught me that no one is perfect and that I can be happy if I accept myself for who I am, improve areas that can be improved and give of my best to the world, starting from my own little world, my family, my team, my community and so on.
I love and respect my dad; Stephen Richard Francis De Silva, who left us 16 years ago to enjoy eternal happiness.
Coming form an Asian background, we sometimes become over-cautious about the impact our communication makes on others, especially those senior to us. Therefore we end up saying things others want to hear, saying things that are not fully accurate or not saying things. This article tries to highlight some of the reasons behind this and some practical steps great leaders take to overcome it.
In my blog post on the 7th of May 2015 titled ‘How great is your team?’ I promised to go into details of the 11 different aspects that make a great team. The first five aspects regarding ‘Burning Platforms’, ‘Team Alignment around Critical Goals’, ‘Does your Team have Clearly Agreed Way of Working?’, ‘A Great Decision-Making Process for a Great Team’ and ‘Information Flow is Encouraged’, have already been posted in this blog. Here is the sixth installment regarding the 6th aspect; ‘Candour with Respect’’.
Great leaders do not just encourage candour with respect but they insist on it. Candour is a quality that is essential for a winning team. Jack Welch in his book ‘winning’ mentions that candour was a vital quality for any GE leader. Candour is about speaking out the truth with courage even if it would create conflict or hurt someone else. Good communicators also know how to select the right words, tonality and body language to make it as positive and productive as possible.
Great leaders insist on candour using the following mind-set, thinking and behaviours,
