What Is a Leader?

Does leadership have an effect on project success?
Is there a difference between management and leadership?
Can leadership be learned?

The answer to all these questions is yes.

In this article, I look at six essential attributes of project leadership. This is not a complete list, but one that provides a good jump start to successful project leadership.

1. Lateral Thinking

The first essential attribute, lateral thinking, represents a variety of methods to get us out of our usual way of thinking. In essence, lateral thinking breaks down the instilled and predetermined patterns we often employ when working on a problem.

Through lateral thinking, project managers try different perceptions, concepts, and points of entry. They consider multiple possibilities and approaches instead of a single approach.

The variety of perspectives used in lateral thinking allows us to solve difficult project challenges more successfully.

2. Empowerment

Often, there is little recognition given to people who spend time solving elementary problems. And yet, it's those problems that can plant the seed for bigger, more complex problems.

Typically, and because of preset leadership attitudes, employees develop the habit of ignoring an issue until it becomes unmanageable. Often, leaders seek to go on record for being a problem solver.

Empowered project teams counter this attitude. They focus on getting the job done while solving or preventing problems while the problems are still nascent.

The ultimate paradox of project leadership power is that, to be an effective leader, project managers must develop all team members into leaders.

In this way, processes (such as relationships and the issues of leadership) and empowerment become important. Successful leaders are able to motivate, energize, and empower others. When people are excited and empowered, it affects both their task initiation and task persistence.

In other words, empowered people get more involved, take on more difficult situations, and act more confidently.

3. Active Optimism

The third essential attribute is optimism.

Leaders are optimistic. They think positively. Positive thinking is more than just avoiding negative emotions. It translates into actions that are forward thinking and involved. When negative events happen, excellent project leaders focus on the positive aspects of the event. They look at a problem as an opportunity for learning and team development for the team and for themselves.

4. Determination to Improve

On-going self-assessment and self-evaluation are critical exercises for ensuring that your project is meeting its objectives and generating a positive impact.

A strong determination to constantly improve is simple idea. Just ask, What can I/we do even better?

By asking this question, leaders focus on challenging themselves and project team members. Further, it sets on-going self-evaluation and achievement into motion. In turn, this focus on continuous process improvement reaps results.

5. Encouragement of delegation

Delegation is one of the most important roles of your job as a leader. Your primary job isn't to execute but rather to motivate and accomplish tasks through your project team members. Delegation of tasks and authority means less time spent on fighting fires and correcting errors and more time on vision development, motivation, project change control, and goal setting.

Delegating relieves time-pressures. It provides your team members with an opportunity to expand their decision making and problem solving skills and encourages creativity and initiative. This, while motivating them to achieve their potential.

In addition, delegation forces you to spend time with your team members, thus developing interpersonal relationships. Your feedback and attention will encourage your team to attain higher levels of responsibility. Delegation helps set performance standards based on team member rather than purely on their activity. As a leader who encourages delegation, you will be able to step back and look at the bigger picture rather than being caught up in the minutia of the project.

6. Real potential

To meet future challenges, leaders must be inspired by real potential and strategies for the future.

Only then can they set a vision with reasonable goals and promote the process of developing effective strategies to achieve them. Considering the organizations potential and future enables leaders to think constructively about what could be and what would be necessary to achieving a vision. Proactive and realistic-future-oriented-thinking can lead to greater project success. For leaders, a successful future requires real planning now.

In summary, a successful project leader is one who considers:

Lateral thinking
Empowerment
Active optimism
Determination to Improve
Encouragement of delegation
Real potential

Think & Grow Rich...It Works Every Time!

The text of Think and Grow Rich! is founded on Hill's earlier work, The Law of Success, the result of more than twenty years of research based on Hill's close association with a large number of individuals who achieved great wealth during their lifetimes.

At Andrew Carnegie's bidding, Hill studied the characteristics of these achievers and developed 15 "laws" of success intended to be applied by anybody to achieve success. Think and Grow Rich! condenses these laws further and provides the reader with 13 principles in the form of a philosophy of personal achievement.

Reflected in these principles is the importance of cultivating a burning desire, faith, autosuggestion, and persistence in the attainment of one's goals. Hill also discusses the importance of overcoming many of the common fears that can adversely affect one's thinking and potential.

In his introduction, Hill refers to the "Carnegie Secret", a conception which he reports is the foundation of all success and appears to be the premise of the book. Hill promises to indirectly describe this "secret" in every chapter, but never states it plainly, believing the use of the secret is only available to those who possess a "readiness" for it, a disposition Hill describes as essential to the concept itself.

The Changing of Our Conscious

There is a change in the thought of the world. This change is transpiring in our midst, and is more important than which the world has undergone since the fall of paganism. The present revolution of opinions in all classes of men, the highest and the most cultured of men as well as those of the laboring classes, stands unparalleled in the history of the world. The fetters of tradition are being melted of humanity. Is this a good thing? or is this a bad thing? In a new world we will need new skills to adapt. Life is about change, and change is the only way to bring growth.

Sharing Consciousness

The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon-A Story About Social Change

Sometimes learning takes traditional forms. We hear or read something new and add it to our personal store of knowledge. Yet many people have also experienced a more subtle shift of awareness. At times it seems as if a new idea is simply in the air and that we need only 'tune-in' to be a part of a new consciousness. One hypothesis suggests that if enough individuals are on the same wavelength, awareness will spontaneously spread to new individuals from mind to mind. Scientists observed a specific species of Japanese monkey on the island of Koshima for a 30 year period and discovered some fascinating data that supports this concept.

Initially, the scientists provided the monkeys with an edible treat consisting of sweet potatoes dropped in the dirt.The monkeys enjoyed the potatoes but found the dirt unpleasant. Soon one resourceful monkey found that by washing the sweet potatoes in a nearby stream, she could improve the taste of the food. Before long, she had taught the trick to several other monkeys, who also happily adopted the habit of washing their dinner before eating. The trend spread quickly with the younger monkeys, while many other monkeys persisted in eating the dusty potatoes. This continued until one particular day when a certain number of monkeys - let's say 99 - had all adopted the washing habit. On that day, the hundredth monkey learned to wash his potatoes. The added energy of the hundredth monkey had a remarkable effect on the rest of the tribe as almost all the monkeys on the island promptly adopted the new method.

Surprisingly, the momentum created by the hundredth monkey even spread to colonies of monkeys on other islands and on the mainland. These new groups of monkeys, divided by a sea from the original tribe of monkeys, also began washing their sweet potatoes before eating them. The new tribes had somehow absorbed the new washing system through a communal shift of thought that became known as the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon. When a certain number of individuals achieves a new awareness, it may remain the property of a few. But there is a point at which if just one more person absorbs the information, it becomes available to the world at large.

The Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon brings hope and purpose to individuals and small groups who may feel powerless in their life journey. Through sharing knowledge, we can help spread new forms of positive thought throughout the world. And who knows if you may be "the hundredth monkey" who helps turn a quiet trend into a giant step forward for humankind.

Findind Yourself

Finding yourself is an enlightening experience. You become self-sufficient. You can do things for others without any expectations of return. You are no longer a needy child and you become utterly grateful for all those things people have done for you in the past. Finding yourself is a time of developing a philosophy or belief system that can carry you through the rest of your life. When you love yourself and who you are, you will savor and enjoy both life's pain and pleasures. How do you know you've found yourself? You will be able to help others find themselves. Finding yourself is not easy, but how can you be yourself if you've never felt connected to who you are, and you want to find whatever makes you you, then read on.

1. Start with a clean slate. Develop your own moral conduct and practice sticking to it. Remove vice from your life. Smoking, over-eating, and over-drinking will prevent you from functioning at your peak.

2. Now that you have a clean slate and you realize some people still think you stink: Forget about what everyone else thinks! You cannot please everyone. While you might not want to disappoint the people close to you, they should want you to be happy. As long as you continue to exist to fulfill other people's ideas of who you should be, you'll never know your true talents. "He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away." - Raymond Hull

3. Find solitude. Get away from the expectations, the conversations, the noise, the media, and the pressure. Take some time each day to go for a long walk and think. Plant yourself on a park bench and look. Take a long, thoughtful road trip. Whatever you do, move away from anything that distracts you from contemplating your life and where you want it to go. In solitude, you should feel independent and self-sufficient, not lonely, needy or afraid.

4. Ask yourself every question in the book, questions that are difficult, that dare to look at the big pictures, such as:

* If I had all the resources in the world - if I didn't need to make money - what would I be doing with my day to day life and why? Perhaps you'd be painting, or writing, or farming, or exploring the Amazon rain forest. Don't hold back.

* What do I want to look back on in my life and say that I never regretted? Would you regret never having traveled abroad? Would you regret never having asked that person out, even if it meant risking rejection? Would you regret not spending enough time with your family when you could? This question can be particularly difficult for some people.

* If you had to choose three words to describe the kind of person you'd love to be, what would those words be? Adventurous? Loving? Open? Honest? Hilarious? Optimistic? Realistic? Motivated? Resilient? Don't be afraid to pick up a thesaurus. Don't be afraid to choose words that are considered negative. Sometimes your traits that others don't like become useful only in emergency situations or are valuable to the job you are meant to perform. If you do have a truly negative trait work on redirecting that energy to something positive. Exercising compensates for many bad habits and there are hobbies for almost every vice. Pole dancing is becoming a hobby! Don't wash your clothes much? Try camping.

5. Write down your answers. Beyond your time alone, it's easy for these thoughts to slip to the back of your mind and be forgotten. If you have them written down, then every time you reflect, you can review your notes and take it a step further, instead of answering the same questions all over again.

6. Act upon your newly discovered knowledge. Do the things that you want to do! Pick up those water-colors. Write a short story. Plan a trip to Mombasa, Mt Kenya, a walk at Nairobi Safari Walk. Have dinner with a family member. Start cracking jokes. Open up. Tell the truth. Whatever it is that you've decided you want to be or do, start being and doing it now.

7. Be ready for dead ends. Finding yourself is a journey, not a destination. A lot of it is trial and error. That's the price you pay in return for the satisfaction you receive: More often than not, you hit a bump in the road, and sometimes you fall flat on your face. Be prepared to understand and accept that this is a part of the process, and commit to getting right back up and starting over. It's not going to be easy - it never has been for anybody - but if you learn to see that as a chance to prove how much you want to find yourself, then you'll find fulfillment and security in your pursuit. When you are yourself, everyone will respect you more and treat you kindly. Best of all, you will always feel good about yourself.

TIPS

* Love many, but trust few; always paddle your own canoe.
* You're never as bad or as good as people say.
* Resist the urge to feel like you're the only one going through this:

All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naive. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself. ~ Ralph Ellison, "Invisible Man"

* Be yourself and make sure no one influences who you are. It will make finding yourself even harder since people are influencing who you think you are.

5 Tips To A Healthy Sex Life

You may still remember those times when your first sex was full of passion and desire and you both could not take your hands off each other. You could have sex anywhere, anytime and you couldn't have enough of it.

Now, that you are settled in a marriage, your sex life underwent some changes and sex became less sizzling. Does it mean that sex will disappear from your life?

First of all, it is worth mentioning that almost every couple will face this situation sooner or later, but it doesn't mean the end of sexual relationships in a marriage. The fact that we all have different libido, with different preferences and frequency of sex is not always obvious during a honeymoon phase. But sooner or later when a man and a women have long term relationships, their differences may lead to certain conflicts.

1. Find a compromise

If your partner has higher libido you will need additional stimulation to find common ground. First of all, you will need to explain this to your partner and find out what turns you on the most: romantic evening, longer foreplay, certain words or some other details. You may hint about your desires to your partner so that both of you could enjoy sex.

In case when your partner has lower libido, you may need to be more active and inventive to arouse him or her. Show your interest in your partner's desires and feelings and you will be gratified for such attention.

2. Choose a right role

Now that sex roles are not so determined, our sexuality is still often based on traditional roles. And while most of us have to play different roles, it is better to forget about them once you are in a bedroom. Many women are extremely turned on by the feelings of being a weaker sex in their sexual relationships and being conquered by a stronger man. As long as you both agree on your roles, your satisfaction will be very high.

3. Be more sensual

One of the most effective ways to return those sizzling nights back in your life is to get detached from the intercourse. Touch each other with your hands, tongues, feathers and use other ways to arouse your partner sexually. Take things slowly and be patient during such foreplay. The main rule is to avoid the intercourse. This will make a difference for your usual sexual scenarios and let the desire built up. Sensual focus is also a good way to become closer to each other.

4. Improve your relationships

Sex is closely related to relationships with your partner, that's why many couples end up on different sides of the bed at the end of the day. Frequent fights, misunderstandings and lack of attention are common reasons why your partner may refuse sex. Many women need to feel appreciated and loved to be aroused and this plays very important role in long-term relationships. Try to discuss your desires and conflicts before sex and show your interest towards your partner. This can make a big difference in your sex life.

5. Stay realistic

Do not expect sex to be perfect every day with both of you feeling satisfied every time you make love. Real sex life is not what you see in Hollywood stories and you are not on a stage. It is up to you to make your sex life better and bring happiness in your relationships. Keep in mind that you and your partner have your ups and downs and do not let the disappointment overwhelm you.

Holistic Healing

Holistic health is not itself a method of treatment, but is an approach to how treatment should be applied. Holistic concepts of health and fitness view achieving and maintaining good health as requiring more than just taking care of the various singular components that make up the physical body, additionally incorporating aspects such as emotional and spiritual well-being. The goal is a wellness that encompasses the entire person, rather than just the lack of physical pain or disease. This means that not feeling sick, does not necessary mean you are well, just that you are between Well and Sick. When symptoms develop, it is often long after the cause of the symptoms occurred. It is often used in contrast to the medical model that focuses on treating symptoms and syndromes without attempting to address functioning beyond the absence of disease, the Holistic approach focuses on the cause.