Author: Conquestlane

Author of many inspirational books, among them are - 'Conquest in Adversity: the mystery of another spirit', 'Success unplugged, powered by conquest' and 'The Threshold of Life'. He is a techpreneur, Success enthusiast, and a senior partner at Conquestlane Global Services. A freelance web-developer, and a Google certified Associate Cloud Engineer (ACE). He is also doubles as programme Coordinator and @ bringbackourglory.org. He holds a bachelor of science degree from the University of Nigeria Nsukka. He is of the view that we can dare the impossible if we can imagine, and believe it is possible. This view informs his philosophy of life "imagine, believe, dare the impossible". He is happily married with children.
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Self-Awareness: Why it is Good for Success.

self-awareness

Self-awareness is a sterling quality every leader and success enthusiast must acquire in their gusto stride to greatness. Whether it is a private or multinational organizational setting, self-awareness is uniquely important for success. It is an attitude every leader or organization must crave for. The beauty of self-awareness is that it affords individuals to learn so many details about themselves, including their strengths, weaknesses, limitations, skills, values, and sense of judgment. It validates every commitment we make to succeed.

Understanding Self-Awareness

Self-awareness is a conscious understanding of one’s own character, feelings, motives, and desires. An organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich classified self-awareness into two, namely internal self-awareness which borders on one clearly seeing their own thoughts and feelings. And the second is external self-awareness which is clearly seeing how others see us. In general, it affects how individuals behave concerning how they interact with other people.

Self-awareness has a massive impact on the quest for success. This is because self-aware individuals are more likely to be high performing to set and achieve crucial goals, minimize cost, and mitigate loss. Self-aware individuals are constantly seeking ways to improve their skills. They can improve a variety of skills that are crucial to maximize the efforts of others. Essential skills like listening, communicating, decision-making, Conflict-management, and accepting and giving feedback are maximized through self-awareness.

One crucial element of self-awareness is paying attention to the emotions of an individual and that of others. In other words, it is more or less an extension of emotional intelligence (EQ). According to Daniel Coleman it is one of the five elements of emotional intelligence (EQ); whereas, EQ is the ability to identify and manage one’s emotions, as well as identify and influence the emotion of others. And this is good for success. I hope to discuss EQ in one of my posts in the nearest future. So watch out for it. Hence, self-awareness is a success essential as it promotes high performance and capacity building.

Moreover, by seeking to understand the impact of their emotions and actions on others individuals set up and maintain a working environment devoid of emotional glitches. Such an atmosphere encourages a win-win spirit, where every party is happy and satisfied with the outcome. Success thrives most under such an atmosphere.

How to Become Self-Aware

One truth you must understand is that becoming self-aware is a real-life process that requires commitment, time, persistence, doggedness, and humility. These four basic steps can help you in your quest to become self-aware.

Mindfulness

Becoming self-aware begins with you being mindful of yourself. The term mindfulness refers to focusing on one’s awareness of the present moment while being mindful of events around them. It is trying to understand how your experiences in life can influence your thinking and actions. Through mindfulness, you can leverage your thought process and actions to succeed in any given endeavor.

Broaden your Knowledge

You must broaden your knowledge if you want to become self-aware. In cultivating self-awareness you must thoroughly educate yourself through formal and informal methods. Seek resources that deal with the concept of self-awareness. For instance, consider drawing upon a growing body of information about mindfulness, and other branches of knowledge on self-awareness.

Solicit Feedback

You can also improve your self-awareness level by soliciting feedback. Studies have shown that effective and successful individuals seek feedback from a variety of persons including peers, bosses, employees, and customers. Feedback gives you a vivid picture of how you feel and think about yourself, as against how others see, think, or feel about you. Soliciting feedback exposes the individual’s vulnerability and the stack reality of the need for improvement.

Conduct Formal Assessment

One way to cultivate self-awareness is to conduct periodic assessments of your personality and style. This is a critical part of the process. Always conduct a formal check on your progress from time to time. This is where feedback comes in. Ask yourself how people see or feel about your personality and style. Is it okay? Then if it is okay consolidate them. These are your strength; you must capitalize on them in cultivating self-awareness. In the same vein ask yourself what are the negative feelers about your personality and style. These are your weaknesses which you must commit every effort to improve. In general, conducting formal assessments helps a great deal in cultivating self-awareness.

In all, self-awareness is imperative to succeeding in life, and it requires time, commitment, persistence, doggedness, and humility to cultivate it. You must acquire it if want to keep a date with success and greatness in life.

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Cultural Intelligence Catalyst for Success

cultural Intelligence

There are quality skills that serve as catalysts to speed up the process of success. As much as possible you must possess them if you want to thrive and succeed in any endeavor. One such skill is cultural intelligence. Cultural intelligence is a must-have skill for any modern leader or entrepreneur. It is a market advantage as it promotes and deepens inclusion and diversity. Inclusion increases productivity, creativity, and innovation, and engenders a collaborative spirit, a win-win atmosphere where everyone feels satisfied with the outcome. Generally, inclusion is the ideal approach to successful leadership in any organization, and it is facilitated by cultural intelligence.

Cultural intelligence is the ability to interact and relate with people from other cultural backgrounds. In other words, it is all about understanding your culture in relation to other people’s culture. Culture on the other hand refers to some deeply rooted patterns of values, customs, attitudes, and beliefs peculiar to any group or society. It is learned and transmitted collectively by members of a particular society or group. And it subconsciously and consciously guides the behavior and thought of such a community.

One interesting fact about culture is that it is often neglected by people until they come in contact with anomalies in their cultural expectations. And it is our responsibility to decide how we respond to these cultural anomalies. Hence, cultural intelligence is not just the ability to understand these different cultural norms but the ability to act on that knowledge in a mutually beneficial way. It is the capability to relate and work effectively across cultures.

Components of Cultural Intelligence

Cultural intelligence consists of four quadrants. There are four components of CQ that every inclusive leader must possess in order to succeed. These qualities are sine qua none to success, and being deficient in any of them will impact negatively on your quest to achieve. These components include;

Drive

Let me say here that you must possess the energy to drive interaction across cultures. It is the motivational element of cultural intelligence related to an individual’s level of interest in interacting effectively across cultures. The drive includes the extent to which an individual is able to appreciate and enjoy engaging in culturally diverse interactions. It is also associated with the awareness of the benefits that one can gain from cross-cultural experiences.

The drive may also include confidence about being effective within culturally diverse contexts. As one of the most novel and important components of cultural intelligence, it entails the ability to engage and persevere through intercultural exchanges, or challenges.

Knowledge

Knowledge is another important aspect of Cultural intelligence. It refers to how much an individual knows about the concept of culture and its roles within any group. Obviously, you need to have enough information about different types of organizational and individual cultures, and how it affects your interaction with members of various cultures.

Strategy

It is the next capability of cultural intelligence. And it refers to an individual’s ability to prepare for and manage cross-cultural interactions. It consists of three important elements like planning, awareness, and checking. Planning as an element of strategy refers to consulting relevant knowledge and experiences before an encounter.

Awareness refers to being in tune with one’s own mind as well as trying to discern what others might be thinking. Checking on the other hand entails comparing one’s experiences with prior expectations, and adjusting one’s mindset if need be.

Action

Action includes what an individual does during a cross-cultural situation in order to remain effective and successful. It also includes the words and phrases that one uses in such situations. This encompasses verbal actions such as volume, tone, and pace of speaking. It may also include nonverbal cues like gestures, facial expressions, and the use of personal space. Personal space entails how close individuals stand or sit next to one another in cross-cultural interactions.

Final Note

Cultural intelligence is a crucial skill for any leader who will dream of success. It is very critical in your quest to succeed in life. CQ will help you to maximally engage well and with confidence with individuals in a wide range of contexts. It makes you versatile and well-prepared to respond effectively to ever-increasingly diverse and more sophisticated markets. I want to reiterate here that cultural intelligence deepens inclusion, and that is a plus to success. It is a market advantage as it enhances creativity, productivity, and innovation. It is the catalyst you need to speed up the process in your quest for success.

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How to Make Your Relationship Work

making your relationship work

In order to make your relationship work the golden rule must be your reference point. What does it state? The golden rule states that you must ‘do unto others as you would like them to do unto you’. Hence, the golden rule is about you putting yourself in other people’s position; feeling their pain when they are in pain, and rejoicing with them in their happiness.

The golden rule is the ornament of love. In fact, if you want to make your relationship work optimally you must learn to love others. The dimension of happiness and fulfillment released on the platform of love is unimaginable. Through love, you can find fulfillment in virtually every kind of relationship. Hence, we need love in the pursuit of happiness in our business, career, marriage, friendship, and other relationships. Love affects the way we think, behave, and our attitude, friendship, and relationship with others. And certainly, through love each and every one of us can bring positive vibes to any relationship.

Love conquers fear, hatred, bitterness, malice, unforgiveness, jealousy, envy, and other vices. All these are toxic habits and are poisonous to any relationship. So learning to love will free your mind from all these toxins. If they are not taken care of they can negatively affect the relationship. And in such relationships, we cannot find happiness and fulfillment. Hence, love functions as a relationship sanitizer.

Be Kind to others

The golden rule is anchored on five elements of love, namely; kindness, giving, sacrifice, tolerance, and forgiveness. We can express our love for others through our kindness. Have milk of kindness. Show empathy. This is how to make your relationship work. You must be kind to everyone you meet whether you know such a person or not. In showing kindness you must be ready and willing to help those in need. And in helping them you must be selfless. You must help people unconditionally without expecting anything in return. That is the true color and nature of love.

Kindness is also about appreciation. Appreciate those that have added value to your life. Appreciate your business partners, customers, friends, family members, and anyone who has brought happiness into your life. You can call on the phone, send messages or make arrangements to meet with them face to face, where you can thank them for the unique impact they have on your life. By appreciating them they will be happy and do more to impact your life positively. And on the other hand, the level of your happiness and fulfillment in such a relationship will be unimaginable. Hence, if you have been there before you will know that every show of kindness carries with it a weight of fulfillment. There is great joy and happiness in kindness.

Learn to give in any Relationship

Giving is also another channel to express your love for others and your relationships with them work. Do you know that the true test of love is in giving? Love is a two-way thing. It involves giving and receiving. In your relationship, you will definitely receive love when you give love. And in the pursuit of fulfillment, you must give to impact the lives of people around you in order to be happy and fulfilled in life. So, love entails giving back to change people’s life for good. 

Make Sacrifices to make your Relationship work

You can make your relationship work through the sacrifices you make to see others happy.  Sacrifice in this regard is inconveniencing yourself to see that others around you are happy as well. You can make your marriage and other relationships work by inconveniencing yourself to love others. Sacrifice entails cost, compromise, and deep pain. You must inconvenience yourself if you hope to achieve a win-win situation where every party in the relationship is happy.  Try and be flexible always ready to compromise and adjust if you want fulfillment and happiness in any relationship. 

So many marriages have broken up, relationships destroyed, friendships gone sour and many have failed in the pursuit of happiness just because someone refused to make the sacrifice. They refused to shift ground but wanted to dictate the terms of such relationships. In fact, for you to love you must be ready to inconvenience yourself. Happiness and fulfillment in any relationship thrive best in an atmosphere where people are willing to sacrifice.

Be Ready to Tolerate

Tolerance is also another important quality you must possess if you want your relationship to work optimally. Learn to tolerate people the way they are. Accept their faults; accept their weaknesses and this will help them to gain confidence in that relationship. Understand that we all came from different backgrounds with different values and traditions and this explains the variations in personalities. Hence, if you can tolerate people irrespective of their shortcomings it will help them overcome their weaknesses and gain confidence. On the contrary, intolerance breeds hatred and there is no happiness or fulfillment in an atmosphere of hatred.

You must Readily Forgive

Forgiveness is also another important virtue of love. It helps a great deal to make any relationship work optimally. Forgiveness is letting go of any past offense and grievance against your person. Understand that not forgiving those that offended you imply that you will dwell in your past. This is very unhealthy as any offense or grievance you refuse to let go of becomes a burden. It brings rottenness to your mind. I remember when we newly got married. I categorically told my wife that I am not perfect by any standard. And that I might offend her but pleaded with her that before I offend her she must find a place in her heart to forgive me. It has perfectly worked for us, and we are waxing very strong in our relationship.

So many marriages have broken up, relationships have gone sour, and friends have even parted ways because of unforgiveness. It is very important that you know when to forgive. When is the best time to forgive? Immediately, your partner realizes his or her fault and apologizes to you asking for forgiveness. Please forgive. Once you hear this powerful phrase, ‘I am sorry’ do not hesitate to say ‘I forgive you’. These three-worded phrases are massive game changers in building strong and happy relationships. So don’t be so proud to say them when necessary. Stop dwelling in your past, don’t hold any grudge or malice against anyone just forgive and let go. Obey the golden rule, love everyone without dissimulation. Remember, the person you love might be the key to your happiness and fulfillment in that relationship. This is the smartest way to make your relationships work.