Leadership From The Heart

PRAKASH SESHADRI takes the reader from survival mode to a mature leadership model, by sharpening Emotional and Spiritual Quotients through the practices of meditation, introspection and inquiry.

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Challenges to Graduating Up the Competency Spectrum

Why is that some people do not learn fast, and what stops them? I was reading an interesting article recently, in which it was suggested that everyone in the world who has ever been born or will be born has the same hardware as Albert Einstein or Newton, and our brains are also wired in a similar manner. Einstein could achieve so much in his lifetime, but most of us are ineffective though we have the same set of capabilities. What is the difference? For hardware to work efficiently we need software and unfortunately, people are never taught how to build it. I may buy readymade Windows or Mac software and install it, and it works. But how do I write my own code, build my own operating system, or write my own app? These are the biggest challenges. Today we cannot build our own software because we are not inquisitive; we have lost the ability to ask questions. Every question you ask can be replaced by a higher level of questioning, which will expand your consciousness, your state of being and your awareness.

The second biggest challenge is to look within and introspect, and we do not make the time to do so, we have lost the art of introspection. Looking within with distractions is very different from looking within without distractions. So it brings us back to the competency model. We need to develop these tools. Like the Lion and the Deer story, we humans are also busy with our survival, and we do not have the time to hit the pause button, to spend time asking questions, and to introspect. In fact, 99.99% of the time many of us are in perennial survival mode. Realizing that is the first step: we are moving from Unconscious Incompetence to Conscious Incompetency mode.