Kishore Borra

Mr Kishore Borra holds dual Masters in Physics and Energy Systems with gold medals. He is a father of two boys, husband to a superwoman. A lecturer turned software Engineer, now Managing Director of a successful and fast-growing IT company. He is also a Leadership Evangelist and a certified member of John Maxwell Team (JMT) of Coaches, Speakers and Trainers.

Make people feel important

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Today I remembered one of my primary school teachers who always made me feel like I am the most important person. All my classmates felt the same way. She used to manage multiple sections under a small thatched roof. She would compliment one student while helping the other. She would read lessons to one group while answering the other group. She would separate kids from fighting with each other and, at the same time, make them both feel good. Whenever she meets one of the parents, she would reassure them that their noisy and messy kid is the most precious one in the classroom. Therefore parents also loved her unconditionally.

Her ability to do this all day and throughout the year is quite amazing. Every time she made a child smile, she seemed to get more energized. She won many district and state-level best teacher awards. Today being part of the service industry, I realized that helping and making other people feel good somehow makes us stronger. Providing service to someone else gives us something back. It enriches our relationships and contributes to our success.

 

#leadtip #helpothers #feelstronger #success 

Before you go…

If you enjoyed this post, you would love my book, “Don’t Coast: Accelerate Your Personal and Professional Growth.”

Grab your copy from the below links:

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Credibility Is the Foundation Of Leadership

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If you ask me to say one word which is indispensable to a leader’s success, then without any hesitation, I would choose the word credibility. Let me put some spotlight on this ward and help you understand better. When a person is credible, we call him trustworthy. Like any other skill, credibility is a practicable and learnable skill. You can’t achieve long-term success if you are not credible.

Imagine that you have a medical issue and you want to see your doctor. You asked a friend of yours to recommend a good urologist or a nephrologist in the city. Your friend recommends you a highly skilled doctor. At the same time, your friend tells you that the doctor is not an honest person. He has a private practice, and sometimes to make money, he will recommend you to go for surgery even when it is not required. In addition to this, there are some rumors that sometimes he has stolen the other kidney. Will you go to that doctor highly skilled but not honest? The answer is obvious “No.”

Then your friend went on to recommend you to you another doctor who is a very honest man. He may not charge you any money, but there’s only one issue, and the issue is that the doctor is not so competent. He doesn’t know his job well. The success rate is less than 50 percent, and a few people have died after the surgery. Do you go to the doctor who’s very honest but not competent? The obvious answer is “No.”

So the question is, what is missing? Why are you not comfortable going to the highly skilled doctor but not honest and the one who is honest but not highly skilled? The answer is simple, they both are not credible. Let’s look at this mathematical equation to understand it better.

Character X Competence = Credibility

It means you need to have both character and competence to become credible. In the first doctor’s case, he was competent but did not have integrity or character (0x1=0). The other doctor had character and integrity but lacked competence (1×0=0); therefore, he was not a credible doctor. The only viable way to earn credibility is to build both your character and your competence. Do as I say, not as I do attitude won’t take you any longer in our leadership journey. You should be a worthy example so that people will say someday; I would like to be just like my leader.

Why hesitation? Start working on your character and competence to grow better in your career. 

— Kishore Borra

 

Before you go…

If you enjoyed this post, you would love my book, “Don’t Coast: Accelerate Your Personal and Professional Growth.”

Grab your copy from the below links:

You can subscribe to my social media channels:

 

What’s Your Talent?

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One question that bothers everyone is how do I understand my natural abilities? Just because you fail to see your amazing qualities doesn’t mean that they are not there. Now the question is, how can you delve deeper into the awareness and understanding of your own strengths? Well, the below information given by Gallop Inc could be of great use for you to uncover your hidden talent and hone it further.

  • Rapid learning: Certain things, no matter how good the teacher is, you don’t learn well. However, few things you learn fast. You love the learning experience, and they make you feel like you are hard-wired for it. Keep an eye on such items.
  • Flow: As you are doing your work/activities, sometimes steps will come to you automatically as if it is programmed in your brain though you are not necessarily qualified for it. Make a record of such things.
  • Glimpses of Excellence: As you are doing something, do you suddenly get to feeling that you did something extraordinary that only a few people can do? This is fantastic and is an indication of who you are.
  • Satisfaction: These are signs of satisfaction. You may be really tired, but when you get involved in doing this particular activity, you get the energy and sense of joy. When you start experiencing such an energizing experience, it indicates one of your focus areas in life.
  • Yearnings: Have you ever watched someone perform an activity and found yourself saying, “I want to do that!” We will have these kinds of feelings during the very early stages of life. Yearning is much like a pull of magnetic force, leading you to do a particular activity repeatedly.

It would help if you start doing something every day that scares you, whether it is speaking in a different language like English, debating on a topic with a friend, talking to strangers, participating in social forums or book reading programs, etc. You should come out of your comfort zone and enter into your courage zone. According to various studies on successful people, 60% of your activities should be in your comfort zone, and 40% should be in your courage zone. Try things that you have not tried before. That’s the only way you will reinvent yourself Spiritually, Physically, and Intellectually.

Focusing on weaknesses instead of strengths is like having a bag of coins – some of them are made of pure gold, and the remaining were made of stained copper. Then imagine how foolish would it be to set aside the gold coins to spend all your time cleaning and shining the copper coins in the hopes of making them look more valuable? No matter how long you spend cleaning the copper coins, they will never be worth what the gold ones are. That is why YOU must go with your greatest assets; don’t waste your time. Don’t let your weaknesses get in the way of you reaching your full potential. Focus on what you do well, and capitalize on that.

If you want to grow and you want to be successful in any way in your career, your relationships, your life – you’ve got to focus on strengths and manage around your weaknesses. A strength is an activity that strengthens you. Before you do it, you lean into it. While you do it, you feel like time speeds up. When you are done with it, you are energized. You look forward to doing it time and again. It’s an activity that leaves you feeling energized rather than depleted. Strength is more appetite than ability, and it’s that appetite that drives us to do more; be more, and become more. Every one of us has unique strengths. And every one of us will contribute more when we take our strengths seriously.

Find out what your talent is? What is your strength?

—————–

Kishore Borra

Before you go…

If you enjoyed this post, you would love my book, “Don’t Coast: Accelerate Your Personal and Professional Growth.”

Grab your copy from the below links:

Please subscribe to my social media channels:

GET LEADERized

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Many of you likely know that I’m in the middle of writing a book on leadership. It is month number six on this book, and I am nowhere near the finish line. The working title of this book is called GET LEADERized Hopefully, it should be out sometime this year.⁣

Last week, one of my colleagues walked into my office room, and he was curious to find out why I post #LeadTip on my blog and social media frequently? What made me become a published author with my first book, Don’t Coast? When I started thinking about his question, I immediately recollected an interesting observation I made many years ago.

One of my friends and his wife loved hosting dinners at their home for many years. Once every month, they invite a few of his friends to join them for a weekend dinner party. Most of their friends, including themselves, had young children. Once the dinner was over, kids would usually start running around in the house and the front garden area. They yell and make noises as any kids do.

But as soon as a child fell and began crying, the correct parent would quickly get up from the seating area and go running to find their child even without seeing the face and from which part of the house they are crying. My point is that people know the voice of those important to them amid huge noise. The right voice always cuts through at the right time and reaches the right person. 

My strong belief is that right people always hear the right voices amid all the social media noise when they need it. I believe someone is always listening for the right voice, and my posts and blog are meant for myself and that someone specific who is eagerly listening.

My mentor once told me that we write books that we need ourselves. I wrote about growth in Don’t Coast because I made growth as number one priority in my life. I am now writing about leadership in this book because I am learning and practicing leadership for few years. I consider myself the first reader of this book. I was hoping you could read it and be transformed through it once made available later this year.

Regards,

Kishore.

 

The Breakfast of Champions

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Do you know that feedback is considered to be the breakfast of champions? Do you have a formal feedback process with your team at your workplace? How often do you ask your team members to give feedback on you? When I do that very often, I encounter radio silence. Not many people will provide honest feedback, especially if you are the one signing their paycheck. Without a regular serving of feedback, your organization and employees will likely starve in productivity and innovation. Remember, people who feel good about themselves produce good results, and people who produce good results feel good about themselves. It’s all based on feedback.

Feedback is information about a person that can help build self-awareness about the impact of their actions. The focus of feedback should be to help others to thrive. Good feedback speeds up learning and builds collaborative and engaged teams.

# Is There A Positive or Negative Feedback?

Sometimes we receive feedback that wasn’t so great. It may be because it is unexpected or based on hearsay or plain unfair or hard to understand. We may likely have felt hurt, frustrated, defensive, blind-sided, or unsure of what to do. Often, a bad experience receiving feedback is the most common reason people do not share feedback with others.

On the other hand, some people experience feedback that was a great experience? You may likely have felt appreciated, respected and that the person genuinely wanted to help you to improve. What was it about this feedback that made such a positive impact? Maybe it was well-timed, genuine, helpful, or specific enough to act on? Feedback like this builds happy, engaged, and high-performing teams.

We often think about feedback as positive or negative. It can make it a more stressful experience than it needs to be. A way to think about feedback that avoids this is as ‘reinforcing’ or ‘redirecting.’ In this framing, all feedback is positive. Reinforcing feedback is when your feedback encourages someone to continue a certain behavior. Alternatively, redirecting feedback encourages someone to adopt a new behavior in favor of an old one. In both cases, the focus is to help a person thrive. Criticism on its own is not feedback.

Whether your feedback is reinforcing or redirecting, your focus should be on helping a person to improve. For it to happen, it is important to ask yourself:

  • What impact do I want my feedback to have?
  • Is my feedback constructive?
  • Is my feedback actionable?

# Stop using blur words !!

Think of feedback that you could give to someone on your team. Maybe the team member is doing something great, or maybe it’s something you’d like to see change.  While giving feedback, do not use blur words or general statements that are not specific enough to be actionable. For example:

  • “You’re unprofessional.”
  • “Your email is too sloppy.”
  • “Your summary is awesome.”

None of the above examples have enough detail to be helpful and are hard to interpret and measure. What exactly is ‘unprofessional’? How sloppy is “too sloppy”? Blur words can result in well-intentioned feedback being misunderstood. They can cause distress and rarely support constructive change. Let’s look at how to avoid this? Simple, let’s be specific while giving our feedback and stop using the blur words. Let’s go back to the previous example and be specific to understand the difference.

You’re unprofessional. You were late for the meeting yesterday. It would have been great if you could have given the organizer a heads up in advance or apologized.
Your email is too sloppy. I noticed your email had a few spelling mistakes. Maybe do a quick spell check before sending.

 

Your summary is awesome.

Your summary captured the key points and made it easy to decide what to do next.

The most honest feedback is often given peer-to-peer and can teach us more about our engagement levels and improvement opportunities than we could ever hope to get from the top-down feedback and appraisals. It is important to know how our coworkers perceive us. We spend more time with them and have deeper and more personal relationships with them. Therefore their feedback is first-hand.

Also, every time you offer feedback, make sure that some of it are positive. It would be best if you gave equal importance to praising successes as you offer suggestions for improvement. One-on-one feedback discussions with team members should be private. Do not share the conversation with someone else. In giving feedback, you’re seeking to help the person and the organization. Nothing good will come from sharing one person’s issues with another.

Try writing a piece of specific feedback for someone you work with today. You don’t have to share it, but writing it down will help raise your awareness of the words you use.