by   Sarmad Tariq

Mentoring offers you a way to have an enduring positive impact as a leader. It enables you to consciously contribute towards building leadership in your organization and/or community for the coming times. This is how you can move your organization away from a personality-driven culture towards a more institutionalized way of working. 

The Merriam-Webster defines a mentor as "a trusted counselor or guide." Think about it. If you are not perceived in this way by aspiring leaders in your organization or family, it’s pointless for you to pursue mentoring, unless, you are prepared to take the bold steps needed to improve your image. A mentor is also described as an experienced adviser and supporter, somebody, usually older and more experienced, who provides advice and support to, and watches over and fosters the progress of, a younger, less experienced person.  

As a mentor you can ensure learning takes place through methods such as profiling experiences, modeling and advising. You can share your "how to do it so it achieves desired outcomes" stories. You can also include experiences of your failure/s, ie., "how I made that mistake and what I learned from it". Both types of stories are powerful lessons that provide valuable opportunities for analyzing individual and organizational realities.

It will soon become evident to you that mentoring is a kind of a joint venture between you and your protégé. It’s a two-way process and needs an open flow of communication between both parties. Your protégé must be as eager and willing as you are in the learning process. In this context, personal scenarios and anecdotes offer valuable insights. You can end up becoming a ‘learning leader’ when you talk about yourself and your experiences candidly to establish a rapport with your mentees. Your frank, open and honest sharing of personal events in your life will be reciprocated by your protégé. And when this happens, its time for you to listen intently and empathetically.     

Through mentoring you can trigger the spirit of continuous learning in the protégé and indeed, in yourself! Learning will cease to be just an event, or even a string of discrete events. Instead it will become the synthesis of deep reflection and analysis of ongoing experiences and observations.

In your desire to guide, it is vital for you to resist the temptation to keep telling your protégé what to do. Instead, facilitate the process through questioning that will help the protégé find his/her own directions and strategies. 

Responsibility for learning needs to be shared between you and your mentee, regardless of the facilities, the subject matter, the timing, and all other variables. A meaningful mentoring experience begins with setting and agreeing an explicit contract for learning around which you, your protégés are aligned.  

If you are not developing leaders for tomorrow with the passion and urgency it deserves, you are wasting your time! 

by Sarmad Tariq

‘Time is money’. This is what you hear most people saying in business and social circles. But how many truly value their own time and that of others? We know that punctuality in all our dealings is a mark of our reliability. We are aware that one important way of showing respect to others is by not wasting their time. Yet, we witness scores of examples each day where this principle is violated.

Observations based on our behavior are mainly subjective – the way we dress, the manner in which we walk and talk. However, time and how we expend it is a good quantitative measure to assess behavior. For example, turning up for meetings on time conveys focus, seriousness and professionalism. Sticking to agreed project deadline shows discipline. Staying within the limits of allotted time when speaking at conferences will avoid testing audience’s patience and win over their approval. Giving timely rewards to the deserving obtains high level of motivation. In fact, our own self respect is very time dependent and time sensitive.

Our knowledge, experience, roles and expertise turn to naught if we fail to focus on goals with unswerving commitment to achieving them. Saying what we do and doing what we say lies at the heart of effective management. Excessive use of follow-ups and reminders to get things done in our corporate and social circles is proof that we are caught up in a culture that is imprecise, vague, careless and forgetful. Most businesses operating in Pakistan today suffer on account of this laxity.

St. Francis of Assisi (1182-1226), Italian friar, founder of the Franciscan order once said, “Start by doing what is necessary, then do what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” Make a start and be on time in everything you do, at work, at home and in your community. Example is leadership. Your self-respect depends on it.

by Sarmad Tariq 

“Anything the mind of a man can conceive and believe,

it can achieve.”- Napoleon Hill

It is in times of despair that you need to “Give yourself a break!” Take a step back, identify your flaws, uncover the underlying issues, search for the reasons behind them, and then determine which ones are changeable. Ask yourself this question “Do I want to remain the way I am or do I want to grow and flourish”.

After pondering on the subject of ‘believing to achieving’ I came to the conclusion that things which prevents us from really achieving what we want out of life is when we hang on to the past and doubt the future, always expecting the worst possible outcome. You may have come across people who say things like:

• “It didn’t work before–why should it work now?”
• “I know I will fail.”
• “Why take a chance–it won’t work anyway.”
• “I made a wrong choice.”
• “I wish this wouldn’t have happened.”

People have a difficult time letting go of the past because they are held back by unfinished business. They may regret choices they made or feel guilty about past actions. As long as guilt and regret are not resolved, it is difficult to move forward. Playing safe and hiding from realities that surround you will lead you no where. So stop blaming others, and even your circumstances. Carry your lessons from the past and then close the door on it. Don’t dwell on what’s happened indefinitely. Don’t let the past steal your dreams. To move on and live your dreams, clear out the clutter in your mind so that your dreams have room to live and grow. Set goals: Plan, execute and implement them.

Remember! We came to this world with a purpose. Find out what that is. Determine your mission in life and focus on making it happen. There will be challenges along the way. Face them! It is up to you!

by Rija Miabhoy

“It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much.” Yogi Berra

Talking is a basic necessity of life. It’s through talking that you get your day to day activities completed. But it’s through conversations that you exchange your feelings, thoughts and ideas to other people.  In short, you connect with people through holding conversations. Talking is merely putting words across without touching the heart and soul of the other person.

There are many people who are able to talk but are not able to converse or for that matter communicate well with people. Such people are not very comfortable in large gatherings and are mostly seen shying away from people. But gone are the days when you could stand alone in a big group and still get away with it, today it has become very important to converse with people and express your point of view.  And it’s not just the fact that it has become a social need, there are many other factors associated with conversations that can help us.

By holding conversations people are able to learn from others. Conversations are all about having something meaningful to talk about. To talk about something that might interest you or interest the other person. One could blab all day about absolutely nothing but it is only those few instances when you have a meaningful talk with someone, probably regarding work, your studies, and your career path, after which you feel as if you have left with something accomplished.

Conversations don’t only accomplish the social needs but also play a very important role in stimulating your mind. Because once you indulge in a conversation those areas of your mind starts to work that are mostly sitting idle. For example, if you are trying to hold a conversation about some recent political epidemic you will constantly go back to your short-term and long-term memory to sift through appropriate information to talk about. Similarly conversation helps let go of things and remove misunderstandings.

The reason behind so many of our problems is the sole reason that we are just mindlessly talking with no emotion, no intention involved. So in order to eradicate this problem from the roots lets start to bring emotion and intention into our conversation only then can we touch the hearts of our loved ones and others too.

So instead of mindlessly talking today go hold conversations with others, in order to explore yourself, others and those things that you might not be attentive to.