The State of Flow

 

                                                The State of Flow

A question to you: How do you feel when you are doing something which you don’t love to do? How would you describe that state? That ebb and flow of frustration, discontent, anguish and perhaps even fear of not doing something significant is something that we all have encountered and witnessed several times. But that frustration turns into excitement when you are setting yourself up to do something that you thoroughly enjoy doing. Think of that state where every moment passes by without you being consciously aware of it and you being helpless to not let it be, only realizing it at the end of it all. That’s what is known as the ‘State of Flow’.

State of Flow is when you are whole heartedly connected with the task in hand considering even the disturbances of the outer world seemingly occurring just to distract you. But at that time, you are so much in togetherness with the work you are doing that all those disturbances seem to be of trivial importance to you. This state of flow is the reason for contentment and happiness of mortals who do what they are supposed to do, even iteratively. Happiness, like Success as they say, is not a pursuit but its presence is in the present. And to experience it, one must be able to find ‘flow’ in what they do. Some people even after working on certain skill sets for several years live a fulfilling life, however iterative that task may be. Why is that? Well, one of the reasons is that they enter into that state of flow whenever they set out on that task.

The Paradox of Work Life

·         Lack of a clear direction:

Most people are living a life filled with almost every luxury that a man could think or possibly imagine but are still not fulfilled and find no meaning in what they do. This is possibly due to the fact that they had no sense of purpose for their life. And this what Logo therapy deals with. It looks into the future giving you a sense of hope and destiny that ignites the deepest desire of your heart to do something meaningful and significant. To learn, unlearn and then to relearn in ways never tested before and persevering through daunting situations making it the  true essence of life. And it is in this continuous process of breaking up your bones and then standing up firm again that gives you that state of flow where despite the circumstances, you say to yourself, “It doesn’t matter anymore, bring it on!”

·         Engagement in Multi-tasking:

With the advent of technology and scientific advancement, it has become normal for the younger generation (specifically) to drain themselves up with many activities all at once. It’s quite subtle and the effects of multi-tasking are detrimental. Many studies have been conducted over the years revealing that people who multi-tasked were far less productive than those who focused on the task at hand. Multi-tasking may seem to be a time saver but instead, it sucks up even more time and energy than if you were to focus on a single task. So Multi-tasking is a big detour to reaching the state of flow.

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The State of Flow

 And as someone said, “Energy flows where attention goes”. So, you don’t want your energy to flow in different directions where it ends up being wasted. Make sure that you are focusing on that one BIG Thing and align your energies in that direction to be in a state of flow.

·         Focus on being a Jack:

The post-modern society has played a massive role in advancing the belief system that a man or woman needs to be good at many things. So they have developed this idea of being a Jack of all trades. They want you to be a jack of all (or many) trades but don’t tell you to master something specifically. The average person is too concerned about being good at many things that they don’t have the luxury to spend their time on thinking about something which they could master and become the best at it. Whenever you master some trade in life, you always feel this state of feel. Even the top notch athletes have agreed upon this at some point in their life where they were at the top of their game. You might have heard they say about their exceptional performance as being normal or natural for them. It’s because they have become so good at it that it feels like another game or regular performance for them.

There is a Ladakh Leh highway signboard which signifies the true essence of state of flow. It reads, “ What is a lifetime adventure for you is a daily routine for us”.

The State of Flow

When you do something long enough, you become a master of it and reach that state of flow. You begin to enjoy every moment of doing that thing. You certainly would have done something in your life that you didn’t wanted to do it before because of your dislike for it but once you started doing it, you started enjoying it and then time just passes away quickly and you start enjoying it. That is the State of Flow.

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Leadership Without Authority

Leadership Without Authority

 

Much of today’s leadership thought revolves around the aspect of using the position provided by the organization to exercise authority over the team members or on followers to persuade them into doing what’s best for the organization. While that may prove helpful in some cases where the environment is too casual in the organization but it’s not quite promising to expect best results from Authoritarian leadership style. It’s not authority that drives and motivates people  to achieve a desired task but the influence that the leader creates in the long run. Influence is a key element in any successful leadership strategy when executed in the right way. And influence is not generally manifested until & unless a leader stands their ground on the following three criteria:

1.       Authenticity:

A leader needs to be precise in what they want from the followers. They need to have a clear purpose & a vision. They etymology of the word ‘authentic; can be traced back to the Greek word ‘authento’ which means to ‘have full power’. This reflects that when the word ‘authentic’ is attached with a leader, he or she is a master in his or her own domain and areas of competence. And it is this mastery in their domain which produces influence. To put this into perspective, we can consider an early reference to authentic functioning in Socrates view of self-enquiry as he argued that an ‘unexamined life’ is not worth living. So a leader constantly needs to pursue knowing themselves and refining their skills to become a master of their domain or areas of competence.

2.       Integrity:

Integrity is arguably the most important component in your leadership journey if you want to make an impact on people despite your position or authority. To be an Integrated leader means to be completely aligned with your beliefs, values and convictions. It means that you won’t compromise on your moral values & ethical considerations despite of what circumstances you are facing at any moment of your personal or professional life.

The ethical part of leadership has been sharply questioned particularly by leaders who failed to live by some intact principles & standards. So, is it worth for a leader to remain ethical? Or can they just preach and not practice it? The answer is an absolute YES! Because leadership is an act which involves the trust of the followers. And in any given scenario, if you violate that basic entity which is the very foundation of a stable relationship between a leader & a follower, you have just uprooted yourself from being an Influential leader to merely an authoritative leader.

Great leaders of the history like Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and many others showed an exemplary character which formed the foundation of their leadership abilities. They had this unique quality of leading the masses with their influence produced by their integrity to their convictions which separated them by a distance from leaders who had authority but no influence because of the fact that they failed to live by some intact moral principles & ethical boundaries. And to prevent that from happening, you must share your values with your team members so that it gets deeply ingrained in their mind and become a culture of the organization.

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4.       Share your values: This is generally one of the best practices that a leader must inculcate in order to stay ethically sound. Although this part comes in the transformational leadership also, but mainly it is based on the idea of creating an environment or culture within the organization where the followers, managers & the leaders have same belief patters & value system.

The core values are an integral part of sustaining and thriving an organization. And that’s the reason why core values must be assimilated by the leaders beginning from day one. And then shared with the followers. As the Roman philosophy goes, “if you can make a large group of people believe in something, you are actually creating a culture’. And if the culture in your organization is based on its core values, there is no better alternative than that. The inputs that you feed into your people, they return it in the form of their performance and help in thriving the organization and sustaining it in times of crisis because of the trust that has been established.

    Put People First:

This is the point where Servant leadership comes into play. A Servant leader is one whose motivation is to meet the needs of his/her team members so that they could work without considering any ramifications, worries or poignancies of their professional or personal life

Authoritarian leadership does not necessarily guarantee the successful implementation of the ideas or the strategy of the leader. It is only when the leader leads with his own example that the team or the staff members can act on leaders mandate. When a leader leads by example, it can bring about both organizational change and also employee engagement. And since Employee engagement is directly linked with the organizational change, therefore, it is necessary for a leader to focus more on themselves and how they want to present themselves in front of people they lead. They need to carefully analyze themselves and regularly ask questions such as: What kind of qualities do I need my people to incorporate in themselves and do I have those qualities in me?  Or What kind of a leader would I like to follow and then improve yourself to become that Ideal leader whom you would like to follow.

If the leader can release the abilities of the employees by having a healthy relationship with them and providing them more & more opportunities for growth, then the employees are automatically going to lead the organizational change even in the absence of authority and work collaboratively to thrive the organization.

A Servant leader completely transforms an organization which results in the establishment of trust within team members and effective management & allocation of resources in favor of the organization.

 

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