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"Dotard" was the highest searched word on Google for a day last week. That was Kim Jong-un’s latest insult to Donald Trump after Trump referred to him as "Rocket Man."
In my experience, it is not easy to be vulnerable when people are looking to you as their leader. But I also find that sharing my story with people in ways that exposes my vulnerability connects me deeper with others and enables me to form authentic relationships.
Loss is personal for me. In my youth, I was financially illiterate and was too proud to admit it. I would make a dollar and spend a dollar and fifty cents. The more money I made, the more broke I got. Eventually I understood that life wasn't about making more money; it was about making better decisions with the money I made.
I won't sugarcoat the truth: for every stirring success, there was a crushing failure. That's my life.
We can't undo our errors, but we can learn from them. If we don't learn, the lessons get harder. Regretting our mistakes is not the same as learning the lesson.
We are not here to be perfect, but to live and learn, to fall and rise again. These painful experiences can become a blessing that transforms your life.
I hope that there is something here for you.
Angelina Jolie's First They Killed My Father: A Daughter of Cambodia Remembers is Cambodia's submission for the best foreign-language film Oscar at the 90th Academy Awards. It's a sensitively rendered real-life story about the brutal Khmer Rouge regime as seen through the eyes of a 5-year old girl.
Just because you are lost, doesn't mean your compass is broken.
One thing I discovered is that repeatedly in my career, there are always people showing up to help me at key times. These angels appear and most have also been willing to let me know when they thought I was wrong.
Some people might say that opening up, admitting we aren't perfect and don't have all the answers, makes us look weak. Real leaders, however, understand that vulnerability can actually become their greatest strength.
When you open up, people open up to you. Vulnerability shows that we are humans, and all great leaders are, at their core, deeply human. That's why people follow them. They are drawn to their authenticity.
I've been very candid when I make mistakes. I openly admit mistakes up-front and that I am not infallible. And most people have been forgiving in those circumstances. Once you say that, it's very hard for someone to stay angry at you.
Of course you can play it safe, but you'll never get the real richness of a relationship. Acquaintances remain acquaintances because you two have been cordial with each other. You are never really comfortable with that person. But with that best friend, you developed a deep connection where you were both vulnerable and open.
That new iPhone X sure looks nice. Although hailed as "the biggest leap forward since the original iPhone", Apple seems to be only catching up with Samsung in terms of fast charging, wireless charging, edge-to-edge displays and even facial recognition.
Leaders sometimes forget this. They let their attitudes and strategies harden in place, assuming what worked well before will always yield success. On the flip side of the coin, just because something didn't work before doesn't mean it won't work now. Don't let history hold you back.
Don't assume the experts are right too. Experts once thought humans never travel faster than 48 km per hour, the speed of a galloping horse. These days, planes exceed 900 km per hour. One music company exec passed on the Ed Sheeran because "he was slightly chubby and ginger and that wasn’t a good marketing tool." My point? Experts sometimes get it wrong.
In the early stages of a leader's life and career, one amasses diplomas and degrees, attend conferences, read books within one's field. Promotions and raises follow. But as the leader's career surges, his/her curiosity often dips. Busy schedules doesn't allow time to read much nor attend training courses. While it is great to be interesting, it is also important to be interested. Keep learning.
When I was growing up, a lot of items we take for granted now didn't even exist. Facebook, smartphones, video streaming, Google maps, to name a few. Now they are commonplace. What will be commonplace ten or twenty five years from now? I don't have a crystal ball but what I can say is this: agile leaders who are adaptable and willing to embrace the future now will be the ones who prosper.
Inflexible things break, when stressed. Even metal will come apart if you apply enough pressure. One of the thing I consistently do is to surround myself with smarts.
Five of the people who were photographed in the January 22 swearing-in ceremony no longer work in the White House. The departure of Sebastian Gorka, who advised President Trump on national security issues, is the latest in a string of them in the last month.
I never liked the idea of something or someone controlling me.
At the beginning of my career, like many young sales leaders, I thought my role was to tell the sales people how to sell, and theirs was to carry out my directions. Eventually I realized that a great performance would happen only when the motivation sprang as much from them as from me. I learned to see my job as simply creating an environment where that could happen.
I eventually acknowledge that the team members own the business as much as I do. When they feel in control they will surely take ownership. We can force compliance, we can require obedience but we can't mandate enthusiasm, creativity, fresh thinking or inspiration.
People want to thrive. People thrive when they experience autonomy. Driving for results by adding pressure blocks people's creativity and ability to focus which undermines competence.
If a leader wants his people to truly own the work, then he has to be willing to let go of some control.
It has taken years for me to be more mindful. Today, my role is like a orchestra maestro, who doesn't actually make a sound. It's the musicians who owns the music.
AccuWeather forecasts that Hurricane Harvey would be the most expensive natural disaster in US history, at about $160 billion.
We all hit hard times. We all must deal with tragedies.
Life has certainly tested me and I have not always responded with the courage and determination that I'd like to claim. I don't have all the answers all the time. No one does.
If you are familiar with my background, you know that life came at me when I was a 9-months old baby when I was inflicted with asthmatic bronchitis. Other solemn years of my life were when I lacked financial resources to enrol into a university and later on I went through a tough time financially. I lived hand-to-mouth, one month at a time. It was rough. All of us have times when we feel, "I don't know how I am going to get out of this mess."
Those were character-building years. I learned not to allow negative events in my life affect my attitude.
I have noticed that many people who do well in life carry that same ability with them. They find hope in every desperate situation. They find the positive message in negative experiences.
How do you keep going on when life knocks you down? It's one thing to be positive when things are going well. But it is something altogether different when someone you love is taken away...when a debilitating illness strikes you or a family member...when your job is suddenly downsized...when a relationship falls apart.
One way is to trust in a power greater than yourself. Also, make it a point to be around people who makes you feel good about yourself, whether friends, family or co-workers.
So you see, no matter how hard your life may become, no matter how hard it gets, you can survive and thrive if you are able to see the obstacles as opportunities to grow. I know I am ultimately much stronger and wiser after my experiences.
Notre Dame Cathedral Is Crumbling. TIME reported last month. Like ice cream in the sun, melting, some 854 years after construction began, one of Europe's most visited sites, with about 12 million tourists a year, is in desperate need of urgent extensive and expensive repairs.
You don't know what you've got until it's gone.
In Phuket for our mid year review last month, a colleague commented to me that view of the sunset from the beach was beautiful. In reality, I hadn't seen a sunset for a while now. But you know what? It was there whether I saw it or not. It was right there in front of me the whole time.
Perspective is how we decide to see a thing. Blindness is the decision not to see it at all.
Choosing a negative perspective is limiting. Choosing blindness is a tragedy.
Many of us prefer the hunt to the capture. The grass is always greener. Burying ourselves in the hustle and bustle of daily existence, we rarely take time out to experience and appreciate our friends, health and relationships. It is not unnatural that sometimes we feel a need for a change. The mistake most people make when they feel this way, they don't stop to take stock and instead are so hung up with that chasing mind-set.
Don't compare yourself to others. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday.
We tell ourselves, "When I get that promotion, I will spend more time with the people I love," or "I will exercise next week, when I get this project out of the way."
It's one thing to try and be a better person by periodically resolving to improve. There is nothing wrong with that. But maybe we need to spend more time recognizing the good that is already there and allowing it to blossom.
"A maniac," "a fool," and a "son of a bitch." Those were the words, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte used to call North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, just before an ASEAN meeting in Manila.
Most of us have little or real understanding of one another. And it takes a heap of understanding to make a relationship and/or a team.
In personal life as in work life, the key to unlocking almost any interpersonal or relationship problem, however severe, is good, effective communication. Most couples know this. It is the only way we can show anyone who we are, what we want and why we behave as we do. It is the only way we can really understand what makes someone else tick.
Two people can have an apparently identical experience but both will view it differently. For example, imagine a couple taking a walk by the sea. It makes one feel happy and light-hearted, touching off old memories of fun at the seaside as a child. The other, however, never learnt to swim well and finds the sea threatening and hostile, and brings up old feelings of fear.
Stephen Covey's 5th habit of highly effective people is : Seek first to understand than to be understood. Nowadays, though highly challenging, I try to remain calm and not be drawn into drama when I deal with impossibly difficult people who can suck oxygen out of the room. I practice restraint of tongue, phone and email until I am in a centered place. From a centered place I'd say, "I can see why you feel that way. We both have similar concerns. But I have a different way to approach the problem...."
A little more understanding can change the world.
As a leader I make the effort to understand the different worlds my team members inhabit and to respect the individuality within them. I find that this energizes those around me and leads to sustained high performance.
No one can ever know what it is like to be you.
We all know what it feels like when someone "gets" us. That level of connection is different.
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