I AM TAXONOMY PAGE

Chapter: Global

The Power of Employee Engagement

A lot has been said and written about what Employee Engagement is, it’s importance and the drivers thereof. In this blog I will not cover that, but rather highlight some of those critical yet often muted insights in many conversations.

Enabling and achieving employee engagement is without doubt key to success on the journey to the desired employee & customer experience. Research shows that there is a very strong link between employee experience and customer experience, which leads to innovation, sustained productivity, a strong brand reputation and growth.

Research also shows that engaged employees are 87% less likely to leave. The Great resignation is becoming a concern for most organization and hence employee engagement remains a priority for most organizations, the question is are we focusing on the things that matter the most? Are we mindful of what it means to be human- how our language, emotions and body provides intelligence that through coaching can help us as individuals and organization produce learning that generates change which ultimately may lead to increased engagement? I mention both individual and organization as they are both jointly responsible for increasing engagement for themselves and others.

From my observation, the dominant narrative seems to be what the organization, the manager, leader (leader with position) can do to improve employee engagement. I believe that it is time to change the narrative. We all know that motivation and commitment is more powerful when it comes from within. Therefore, to create and build an organization of fully engaged people requires the best from all people – it should not only be the responsibility of People Leaders. We are all human beings and our whole being matters, and as such only the individual has control of their personal life and how that can influence work experience and vice versa. As an individual I have a responsibility towards self and others. So, every person should be asking themselves the question – what can I do to engage MYSELF and others, taking into consideration the well-known drivers of engagement and one’s role within the organization.

I would like to share some questions that we need to be asking ourselves. I trust that these will result in learning that generates change which ultimately may lead to increased engagement, if taken seriously and is followed by the right action.

Individual Contributor– Given the VUCA times we are leaving in, how aware are you of what is really going on with you internally? Your wellness is an increasingly important aspect of your experience at work.

How could this (VUCA) be impacting your work experience?

Do you consciously and consistently observe your thoughts and the assessments you are making?

What is important to you that is not being taken care of?

Human beings continually engage in ‘concernful’ activity, everything we do is oriented towards taking care of what matters to us. What concerns are not being met? If these are not addressed, it leads to a ‘breakdown’. As life and Ontological coaching is teaching me, mastery in life is in dealing with breakdowns.

How committed are you to your work, your team, your organization and why? What is the responsible thing to do? An example of ways to make you feel engaged at work, 5 Ideas to Help You Feel More Engaged at Work – Engagement Multiplier.

People Leaders– do you understand the impact of the turbulent times and what the people need the most? What do the choices you make support or negate an engaging workplace?

Do you understand how you are impacting employee engagement and how you plan to impact it positively? Engaged managers and leaders build engaged teams.

How are you contributing to the creation of a culture where people are encouraged to take responsibility for their own engagement? An environment where, people know and feel that first and foremost they are cared for as human beings and are encouraged to learn and grow from their mistakes.

Do you listen, understand and provide clarity on what is required of individuals and teams under your care, support and reward them accordingly?

Do you respect the dignity of others and therefore allow them to think for themselves so they may contribute to both individual and organizational success? Employees empowered and coached to make decisions are more likely to make high impact decision that help move the needle in organizations. Empowerment leads to increased engagement.

Engaged people also ensure that they grow and improve their work consistently helping the organization achieve sustainable innovation and growth, a goal that all serious organizations aspire to achieve.

The power of employee engagement lies within us, and requires all to play our part!

The 5 Stages to build Unshakeable Trading Self Mastery

Stage One: Unconscious Incompetence

This is the first step you take when starting to look into trading. You know that it is a good way of making money because you’ve heard so many things about it and heard of so many millionaires. Unfortunately, just like when you first desire to drive a car you think it will be easy – after all, how hard can it be? Price either moves up or down – what’s the big secret to that then – let’s get cracking!

Unfortunately, just as when you first take your place in front of a steering wheel you find very quickly that you haven’t got the first damn clue about what you’re trying to do.

You take lots of trades and lots of risks. When you enter a trade, it turns against you, so you reverse and it turns again, and again, and again. You may have initial success and that’s even worse because it tells your brain that this really is simple and you start to risk more money. You try to turn around your losses by doubling up every time you trade. Sometimes you’ll get away with it but more often than not you will come away scratched and bruised (and significantly poorer!). You are totally oblivious to your incompetence at trading.

Stage Two – Conscious Incompetence

Stage two is where you realize that there is more work involved in trading and that you might actually have to figure a few things out. You consciously realize that you are an incompetent trader – you don’t have the skills or the insight to turn a regular profit. You now set about investigating then buying trading systems and e-books galore, you read websites based everywhere from USA to Australia to Ukraine and begin your search for the holy grail. During this time you will be a system nomad – you will flick from method to method day by day and week by week never sticking with one long enough to actually see if it does work. Every time you come upon a new tool or indicator you’ll be ecstatic that this is the one that will make all the difference.

You will test out automated systems, you’ll play with moving averages, Fibonacci lines, support & resistance, pivots, waves, fractals, divergences, DMI, ADX, and a hundred other things all in the vain

hope that your ‘magic system’ starts today. You will also become a top and bottom picker, trying to find the exact point of reversal with your indicators and you’ll find yourself chasing losing trades and even adding to them because you are so sure you are right. You’ll go into live chat rooms and see other traders making profits and you want to know why it’s not you. You’ll ask a million questions, some of which are so dumb that looking back you feel a bit silly.

You’ll then reach the point where you think all the ones who say they are making profits are all liars – they can’t be making that amount because you’ve studied and you don’t make that, you know as much as they do and they must be lying. But they’re in there day after day and their account just grows while yours falls. You will be like a teenager – the traders that make money will freely give you advice but you’re stubborn and think that you know best. You take no notice and overtrade your account even though everyone says you are crazy to, but you know better. You’ll consider following the calls that others make but even then it won’t work so you try paying for trading signals from someone else – they don’t work for you either.

You might even approach a guru or someone on a chat board who promises to make you into a trader (usually for a fee of course). Whether the guru is good or not you won’t win because there is no replacement for screen time and you still think you know best. This stage can last ages and ages – in fact in reality talking with other traders as well as personal experience confirms that it can easily last well over a year and more nearer to three years. This is also the stage when you are most likely to give up through sheer frustration. Around 60% of new traders quit in the first 3 months – they give up and this is good – think about it – if trading was easy we would all be millionaires.(and the opportunity would’nt exist). For a small number of traders to be consistently prroftiable a large number of traders need to lose money regularly. Your goal is to be amongst the small % that are profitable.

Another 20% keep going for a year and then in desperation take risks guaranteed to blow their account which of course it does. What may surprise you is that of the remaining 20% most of them will last around 3 years and they will think they are safe in the water but even at 3 years only a further 5-10% will continue and go on to actually make money consistently. By the way – these are real figures, not just some I’ve picked out of my head – so when you get to 3 years in the game don’t think it is plain sailing from there! I’ve had many people debate with me about these timeframes – funnily enough none of them have been trading for more than 3 years – if you think you know better

– then look on a chat board for someone who’s been trading for 5 years and ask them how long it takes to become fully 100% proficient.

Sure I guess there will be exceptions to the rule – but I haven’t met many yet. Eventually you do begin to come out of this phase. You’ve probably committed more time and money than you ever thought you would, lost 2 or 3 loaded accounts and all but given up maybe 3 or 4 times but now it is in your blood. One day – in a split second moment you will enter stage 3.

Stage Three – The Eureka Moment

Towards the end of stage two you begin to realize that it’s not the system that is making the difference. You realize that it is actually possible to make money with a simple swing trading system and nothing else IF you can get your head and money management right. You start to read books on the psychology of trading and identify with the characters portrayed in those books and finally comes your eureka moment. This eureka moment causes a new connection to be made in your brain. You suddenly realize that neither you, nor anyone else can accurately predict what the market will do in the next ten seconds, never mind the next 20 minutes.

Because of this revelation you stop taking any notice of what anyone thinks – what this news item will do, and what that event will do to the markets. You become an individual with your own method of trading. You start to work just one system that you mold to your own way of trading, you’re starting to get happy and you also get much better at defining your risk threshold. You start to take every trade that your ‘edge’ shows has a good probability of winning (landing on the right side of probability). When the trade turns bad you don’t get angry or try to get even because you know in your head that as you couldn’t possibly predict it, it isn’t your fault – as soon as you realize that the trade is bad you close it. You take the loss as a learning opportunity. The next trade or the one after it or the one after that will have higher odds of success because you know your system works. You stop looking at trading results from a trade-to-trade perspective and start to look at weekly figures knowing that one bad trade does not ‘a poor system make’.

You have realized in an instant that the trading game is about one thing – consistency of your ‘edge’ coupled with the mind you bring to the moment of performance. Your develop discipline to take all the trades your system triggers no matter, what as you know the probabilities stack in your favor. You learn about proper money management and leverage – risk of account etc. – and this time it

actually soaks in and you think back to those who advised the same thing a year ago with a wry smile. You weren’t ready then but you are now. The eureka moment came the moment that you truly accepted that you cannot predict the market, but you can control the mind you bring.

Stage Four – Conscious Competence

You are making trades whenever your system tells you to. You take losses just as easily as you take wins. You now let your winners run to their conclusion fully accepting the risk and knowing that your system makes more money than it loses. When you see the trade is a loser you close it swiftly with little pain to your account. You are now at a point where at a minimum you break even – day in day out. You will have weeks where you make big money and other weeks where you lose big money – but overall you are breaking even and not losing money anymore. You are now conscious of the fact that you are making calls that are generally good and you are getting respect from other traders as you chat the day away. You still have to work at it and think about your trades but as this continues you begin to make more money than you lose consistently. You’ll start the day on a good win,then take a loss and have no feelings that you’ve given those profits back because you know that it will come back again. You know instinctively that the market ALWAYS gives more trading opportunities.You will slowly begin to make consistent profits week in and week out.

Stage Five – Unconscious Competence

Now we’re cooking – just like driving a car, every day you get in your seat, buckle up and trade. You do everything now on an unconscious level. You are running on autopilot. You start to pick the really big trades and getting big profits in a day doesn’t make you any more excited than getting none. You see the newbies in the forum shouting ‘go market go’ as if they are urging on a horse to win in the grand national and you see yourself – but many years ago now. This is trading utopia – you have mastered your emotions and you are now a trader with a rapidly growing account. You’re a star in the trading chat room and people listen to what you say. You recognize yourself in their questions from two or three years ago. You pass on your advice just as others did to you, but you know most of it is futile because they’re teenagers – some of them will get to where you are – some will do it fast and others will be slower – literally hundreds and thousands will never get past stage two, but a few will.

Trading is no longer exciting – in fact it’s probably boring you to pieces – like everything in life when you get good at it or do it for your job – it gets boring – you’re doing your job and that’s that. Finally you grow out of the chat rooms and find a few choice people who you converse with about the markets without being influenced at all. All the time you are honing your methods to extract the maximum profit from the market without increasing risk. Your method of trading doesn’t change – it just gets better – you now have what some people call ‘intuition.’ You can now say with your head held high “I’m a trader” but to be honest you don’t even bother telling anyone – it’s a job like any other.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this journey into a traders mind and that hopefully you’ve identified some points here that resonate with you. Remember that whilst less than 5% will actually make it – the reason for that isn’t ability or intellect or knowledge, its staying power and the ability to change your perceptions and paradigms as new information comes available. The losers are those who wanted to ‘get rich quick’ and approached the market with this blinkered thinking, blinding them to seeing the obvious – a kind of “this is the way I see it and that’s that” scenario – refusing to assimilate new information that changes that perception.

I’m more than happy to confess to you that the reason I started trading was because of the ‘get rich quick’ mindset. Now I see it correctly as a ‘get rich slow’ profession.

If you’re thinking about giving up I have one piece of advice for you:

Ask yourself the question “How many years would you go to University if you knew for a fact that there was a million dollars a year job at the end of it?”

 

 

It’s not the Lack of Food, It’s Logistics!

Komal Ahmad is the founder and CEO of Copia, which facilities the delivery of donated food. Understand how she conjoins tech with logistics and marches towards her vision of eradicating hunger.

Cracking the paradigm about Tobacco Smoking: new perspective allows new solution

Currently, there are several billion smokers and secondhand smoke-exposed persons on earth. China lights up at a rate of 50,000 cigarettes each second with approximate 300 million tobacco smokers and 700 million secondhand smoke affected persons. There are approximately 120 million smokers in India and nearly half of the doctor’s smoke in India. This product, a ‘smoker’s supplement replacement product’, derives from US Patent #8,889,194, Issued Nov 18, 2014. When you look at the tobacco smoking problem from a different perspective it allows for a new solution, not previously recognized before.

 

Background: 

 

About 21 years ago, I learned that about half of the medicines used in the world have some kind of drug-induced nutrient depletion. I discuss this and the data (proof-of-concept) in my PowerPoint presentation (available upon request).  Cigarettes are also included amongst drugs, as they are regulated worldwide. I discovered what antioxidant and micronutrient depletions occur from tobacco smoking and secondhand smoke exposure. I then asked the question, ” What does replenishment of these depleted substances do?” The bottom line, replenishment decreases morbidity and mortality for a number of depleted substances. 

In a nutshell: 

1)    When people smoke or when they are exposed to secondhand smoke, they unwittingly become depleted in antioxidants (like Vitamin C, etc.) and micronutrients (vitamins and minerals).

2)    The origins of the diseases associated with tobacco smoking and secondhand smoke are these antioxidant and micro-nutrient depletions.

3)    Replenishment of these substances decreases morbidity and mortality (and improves numerous biomarkers) in some of these substances. It gives people a fighting chance of staying well.

4)    Finally, and importantly, people who quit smoking sometimes quit multiple times before stopping for good. This product improves relapse rates. This means they have to continue to purchase the product.

 

  The smoker’s supplement replacement product replenishes these lost antioxidants and micronutrients from tobacco smoke exposure and decreases morbidity and mortality. The product can be used for tobacco smokers, secondhand smoke-exposed persons, and pregnant smokers. As I have said, this gives people a fighting chance of staying well. The only claim I make is the replacement of antioxidants and micronutrients. This qualifies the product as a dietary supplement.

 

The idea of a smoker’s supplement replacement product is new and if you speak with smokers, they crave something new. There has not been anything significantly new for tobacco smoking in over two decades! It just takes someone with a little bit of vision to turn this into a worldwide product. By vision, I mean to see in an inspired way.  First to market with creative advertising and creating a brand name will win the market. Imitators cannot compete.

Finally, the smokers supplement replacement product is a proactive solution by replenishing these nutrient and antioxidant losses needed to run the biochemical pathways. The nicotine patches and gums are reactive solutions and do not address the underlying biochemical depletions that occur from tobacco smoking.