Are You A Leader?

Good Evening everyone, today I would like to post about leadership. Leadership is one of the most important characteristics that we must have in order to lead others to a good way. Especially students where they have to learn to gain this characteristic that very essential for their future. So, lets us look into more detail on what is leadership is actually about.

Definition- Leadership is the ability to inspire support and confidence among the people who are needed to achieve company goals.

KEY LEADERSHIP TRAITS TO DEVELOP

An important part of being an effective leader is to have the right stuff. Here, I would like to post about personal attributes that help a person lead others in many situations.

Five Key Leadership Traits- People who possess the traits listed below are usually well suited  to being an effective leader. However, many other traits and behaviors are also important contributors to effective leadership.

Self-Confidence and Leadership Efficacy

As a leader, one must have confidence in themselves as well as on others too. Besides, a leader should be confident on what he/she had planned and what he/she going to do next with. This will reflect the leadership in them and also this will build a confident on other people too. Leadership efficacy is that is a form of efficacy associated with confidence in the knowledge, skills, and abilities valuable for with leading others. You also can appear more self-confident to the group by using definitive wording, maintaining good posture, and making appropriate gestures such as pointing an index finger outwards.

Trustworthiness and Morality

Trust, is an important element where every leader should have in order to lead a group. No matter what, a leader have to tell or inform the followers of what is going on and what going to happen next. By telling them the truth, the respect for the leader will be increasing day by day instead of being no change at all. Besides, a leader also must have moral values in them. This for example, treating the group members fairly, talk politely, manage the problems in an organized way without hurting anyone.

Sense of Humor

Sense of humor is also one of the fundamental factor that a leader should own. Leaders usually able to entertain others by telling some jokes in their communication, but make sure that your jokes does not hurt or annoy anyone. Besides, humor also helps the leader dissolve tension and boredom as well as defusing hostility.

Emotional Intelligence

Emotional intelligence refers to the ability to recognize your emotions and those of people around you. Where, emotional intelligence also refers to being able to work effectively with the emotions of others to resolve problems, including listening and empathizing. Emotional intelligence can be developed via working on some of its components. It is also important to develop the habit of looking to understand the feelings and emotions of people around us.

Self-sacrificing Personality

A leader must have this characteristic, where he/she willing to sacrifice their own needs in order to satisfy other people’s needs. A leader should be open-minded and able to accept others opinion before interrupt it. Self-sacrificing personality is the tendency to be more concerned about the welfare and interests of others than those of oneself.  The self-sacrificing leaders are sometimes called as a servant leader because his/her primary focus is to serve the groups.

This are the traits or characteristics to be a good leader. I am pretty sure, if we own these characteristics in our lives, we able to lead a group. Hope everyone benefits this post. Thank You .

      Characteristics to become a leader

Fear and Anxiety

Good day everyone, I’m here today to introduce one interesting issue in Psychology. I hope this will benefits many of us. I’m pretty sure that many of us having the problem to deal with anxiety and fear. First of all, we must able to understand what is fear and anxiety is about, then we may try to avoid or overcome it later in our daily lives. Below, I have some suggestions too where we can overcome our fear and anxiety.

A fear is composed of both operant and respondent behavior where the person is afraid of a particular stimulus or stimulus situation.

Example: Sarah feels nervous when tend to speak out in front of the class, her heart beats faster, palm starts to sweat and she felt the fear of getting in front of the class.

This explains that, when the stimulus is present, the person experiences unpleasant bodily responses such as mentioned above. The bodily responses are respondent behaviors we called as anxiety. The autonomic nervous system arousal involved in anxiety is an establishing operation that makes it more likely that the person will engage in escape or avoidance behavior ( Fight or Flight response).

Source : Google Images of The difference between fear& anxiety

PROCEDURES TO REDUCE FEAR AND ANXIETY

	RELAXATION TRAINING

 

                                                                                                                                            

That people use to decrease the autonomic arousal they experience as a component of fear and anxiety problems. There are four types of relaxation technique which were progressive muscle relaxation, diaphragmatic breathing , attention-focusing exercises and behavioral relaxation training.

Progressive Muscle Relaxation

The person systematically tenses and relaxes each of the major muscles in the body. Tensing and relaxing the muscles leaves them more relaxed than in their initial state. To use this technique, the person must learn to do this from a therapist, from listening to an audiotape of the procedure, or from reading from a description. I have posted a video regarding this relaxation technique, where we can use to overcome our anxiety as well.

                                                              Relaxation Training video

Diaphragmatic Breathing

Another relaxation exercise involves diaphragmatic breathing also called as deep breathing or relaxed breathing in which people breathes slowly and in rhythmic fashion. To learn this technique, a person should get in a comfortable sitting position and place a hand on the abdomen, just below the rib cage. On inhaling, the person should feel the abdomen move outwards as the diaphragm pulls the breath of air deep into the lungs. After learning to breathe correctly, with the abdomen expanding at each inhalation, the person is ready to begin the breathing exercise.

Source : Google Images on The correct way of breathing

Attention-focusing Exercises

This produce relaxation by directing attention to a neutral or pleasant stimulus to remove the person’s attention from the anxiety-producing stimulus. Procedures such as meditation, guided imagery and hypnosis all produce relaxation through a mechanism of attention focusing.

Behavioral Relaxation Training

The person is taught to relax each muscle group in the body like in progressive muscle relaxation. The person is taught to breathe correctly and his/her attention is focused on each of the ten relaxation behaviors involved in the procedures.

It is important to learn relaxation techniques and procedures because relaxation training is a component of fear and anxiety reduction procedures. Thank You and see you again in next post. Have a nice day !!!

Guidelines For Nonverbal Communication

Hello everyone, nice to see you here again. Today my topic will be how to improve your nonverbal communication skills? There are several guidelines that I have posted , which may help you to overcome the problem that you face in daily lives.

(       1)  Obtain feedback on your body language by asking others to comment upon the gestures and facial expressions you use in conversations.

- Be videotaped conferring with another individual. After studying your body language, attempt to eliminate those mannerisms and gestures that you think detract from your effectiveness. Common examples include nervous gestures such as moving knees from side to side, rubbing the eyes or nose, and head scratching.

      (2) Learn to relax when communicating with others.

- Take a deep breath and consciously allow your body muscles to loosen. Tension-reducing techniques should be helpful here.

     (3) Use facial, hand and body gestures to supplement your speech, but don’t overdo it.

- A good starting point is to use hand gestures to express enthusiasm. You can increase the potency of enthusiastic comments by shaking the other person’s hand, nodding approval, or smiling.

 Source http://www.positive-parenting-skills.net/examples-of-non-verbal-communication.html

    (4) Avoid using the same nonverbal gesture indiscriminately.

-  If you want to use to convey approval, do not nod with approval when you dislike what somebody else is saying. Nonverbal gestures that are used indiscriminately lose their communication effectiveness.

   (5) Use role-playing to practice various forms of nonverbal communication.

- A good starting point would be to practice selling your ideas about an important project or concept to another person.

  (6) Use mirroring to establish rapport.

- Nonverbal communication can be improved through mirroring or imitating someone. An effective mirroring technique is to adopt the voice speed of the person with whom you are communicating. If the other person speaks more slowly than you typically do, slow down to mirror him or her.

These are the guidelines that you may follow to achieve the effective nonverbal communication. Thank you and hope it benefits everyone.

          Source: examples of nonverbal communication in everyday life, Google images.

Source: examples of nonverbal communication in everyday life, Google images.

How to Develop Good Communication Skills

The ability to communicate effectively is important in relationships, education and work. Here are some steps and tips to help you develop good communication skills.

Part 1 : Understanding the Basics of Communication Skills

Know what communication really is. 

Communication is the process of transferring signals/messages between a sender and a receiver through various methods It is also the mechanism we use to establish and modify relationships.

Have courage to say what you think. 

Be confident in knowing that you can make worthwhile contributions to conversation. Take time each day to be aware of your opinions and feelings so you can adequately convey them to others. Individuals who are hesitant to speak because they do not feel their input would be worthwhile need not fear. What is important or worthwhile to one person may not be to another and may be more so to someone else.

Practice.

 Developing advanced communication skills begins with simple interactions. Communication skills can be practiced every day in settings that range from the social to the professional. New skills take time to refine, but each time you use your communication skills, you open yourself to opportunities and future partnerships.

Part 2 : Engaging Your Audience

Make eye contact.

 Whether you are speaking or listening, looking into the eyes of the person with whom you are conversing can make the interaction more successful. Eye contact conveys interest and encourages your partner to be interested in you in return.

Use gestures.

These include gestures with your hands and face. Make your whole body talk. Use smaller gestures for individuals and small groups. The gestures should get larger as the group that one is addressing increases in size.

Use appropriate volume.

 Use a volume that is appropriate for the setting. Speak more softly when you are alone and close. Speak louder when you are speaking to larger groups or across larger spaces.

Slow your speech down. 

People will perceive you as nervous and unsure of yourself if you talk fast. However, be careful not to slow down to the point where people begin to finish your sentences just to help you finish.

These are some tips that I would like to share, so that we can together improve ourselves in order to become a good presenter. Thank you and hope it benefits everyone.

Source: Google images on communication skills.