What good are regrets?

Dennis recounted to me his life in the 1990's over lo hei last evening.

There is a tendency to look at our life in the teens, 20's and 30's in negative terms. "I should have spent more time with my family." "I wish I had taken that job." "If I had known then what I know now."

I think one reason some middle-aged men run off with their 25 year old secretaries is that they want to rewrite their stories. They cannot get past the mistakes of thier younger days, so they try to write a new one.

This is how I see it: everything in our younger days - the successes as well as the failures, the good decisions and the lousy ones - prepares us for something better.

What good are regrets? Regrets slow us down. regrets cause us to fail to pay attention to the future. So I never log, count and inventory my regrets. I move on.

How we say it

Communication skills are vital to senior executives. Through the years, I have come to realise that it doesn't matter how smart we are, how right we are, or how much we know. If the people don't understand what we think or think they do understand but have something different in mind, we will fail as leaders.

I have learned the hard way that the content of my message will disappear quickly behind grammatical lapses, jargon, accent and inability to get to the point. For example, a five-minute response to questions that deserve a five-word answer impress few.

Many years ago, I also had an inclination to begin too many sentences with "I". Mr Daser was the one who pointed that out to me. I realise now that it branded me as an egocentric loner who doesn't much like working in teams. I have since subsituted "we" or "our team" as much as possible.

The bottomline is: How we say it is often more important than what we say.
Back row: clockwise from left: Diah, Nadeem, Donna, Jiaye, Marie, Shirley

Use courage

"Skill and courage are very important," Cristiano Ronaldo was quoted in yesterday's newspapers. "If you don't have courage, you can't do the skills."

Personally, I don't define courage as the absence of fear. That is Hollywood courage - as captured in action movies - which gives the impression that success comes from fearlessness.

I define courage as experiencing fear, acknowledging that I'm afraid, but if it's important for enough for me, I will still push ahead in spite of my fear. This is what I learned from playing poker: It is fight or flight.

Resolute leaders acknowledge that, yes; we've screwed up before, and that we may screw up again, and that we may in fact screw up this time. But we plunge ahead. Our desire for the reward overwhelms the human instinct to quit and compromise, to take the safe route.

Leaders can't avoid stress, fear, pain and pressure. When necessary, I pick flight - but otherwise, I try to be brave and fight.

The faces of courage

Taking life on

My granny whom I love very much has been bed-ridden since Boxing day. It pains me to celebrate CNY with her this way.

We are living in very challenging times today. Pressured in the workplace, stressed out at home, we try to make sense of our lives.

How do you keep going when a debilitating illness strikes a family member? or when your company is downsizing? of when the relationship that has kept you going falls apart?

There have been periods in my life when I was overwhelmed by a financial tsunami, I was in-between jobs and nobody believed in my dream. If I had accepted those times as permanent I would not be here now. There are times when it seems the harder you work, the deeper the hole you dig for yourself.

I have always taken life on.

Love is a 24 hour decision

"Please block your diary to attend our wedding in November," Catherine said over the loh hei.

As a society we are incurable romantics. We fall in love and get married. Sometimes people make the mistake of thinking they're in love when more realistically they're just "in heat."

We live in an incredible, unbelievable world of science and technology. It seems that with all our scientific skill and technology we could solve any problem, except the problem of human relationships like marriage and the family.

Maybe this quotation from Camus provides and inkling:

Don't walk in front of me

I may not follow

Don't walk behind me

I may not lead.

Walk beside me

and just be my friend.

Secure in self

My friend Ernie is on his way up the corporate ladder. We threw a farewell party for him last night as he will leave for Hong Kong to take up his new job in February.

People climbing up the corporate ladders are marked by confidence in themselves. An uncertain, apprehensive person will not make it to the top of anything.

I've have a lot of confidence in myself. There's no questions I have faults. I'm super critical of myself. But I believe in myself.

Top leaders want to deal with self-assured people over any other type. Remember: people tend to choose people like themselves to work with.

?

"Sounds like an interrogation or job interview," Suzanne commented. "The way you question her."

My years as a sales leader has taught me that questions can start a conversation, or control one. They can begin friendship, romances, sales, jobs, opportunities and satisfactions.

I have found that the best way to get people to do what you want is by persuading them to convince themselves. Questions help me accomplish this