It is not how you compare to others that is important, but rather how you compare to who you were yesterday. If you’ve advanced even one step, then you’ve achieved something great.

Daisaku Ikeda

How many of you still thinks that employees are expenses instead of assets? We have heard of this. So, one… thousands?

Why?

Well, perhaps these people would say “just look at the books, where do employees fall on?” Uhmm – trying to use logic huh, however blind? This is like, which came first, chicken or egg? There are those who would say egg, for they would argue that before becoming a chicken, it would still be an egg.

Alright then. We’d just run circles if we fall for that. It’s just like believing that employees are expenses instead of assets.

You want logic, here’s logic.

Did God create Cain or Abel before He did Adam and Eve? Did God fashion an egg before showing us the chicken? You might say “but that’s not business”. Right.

Leaders, readers… everything is simply common sense. Don’t complicate things to make it sound prestigious. It would only show how shallow you are if that’s the case. Everything can be learned. And if only you look deeper, you would realize how valuable your employees are. And it’s not because others say so, but because you really understand how business works.

“A personnel man with his arm around an employee is like a treasurer with his hand in the till.” – Robert Townsend

Without employees, you would not have the people to help you produce… from visualizing to creating to innovating to marketing to selling to collecting and all.

Oh, what if you are a “one-man army”? Guess what? We are talking about the value of the employee not about yours. For if you insist on that argument then sadly, you are narcissistic and do not deserve to have employees.

“It is difficult to love mankind unless one has a reasonable private income and when one has a reasonable income, one has better things to do than loving mankind.”
~ Hugh Kingsmill

Without empathy, you can never be that Leader. Yes, you could pay your people to do this and that; but have you ever wondered of what your performance appraisal would be if they be the ones to do it on you instead? Good?? Technically possible, however, satisfaction, respect and loyalty is yours if you not only know your job but understand and value your people.

Do you? Then walk the talk.

Remember:

“People are people… not personnel.” – Tom Peters

Jesse Domingo

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. – Osho

“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder the hate. In fact violence merely increases the hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.”
–Dr. Martin Luther King

“We must never forget that it is through our actions, words, and thoughts that we have a choice.” -Sogyal Rinpoche

Our work lives are made up of a million tasks, relationships, deadlines, duties, commitment, and goals. We are often at a loss as to how to communicate difficult news, create consistency, or even just feel less stressed during the day.

When we work with teams we can find ourselves trying to be the best to the detriment of the whole or we start gossiping in the break room, even when we don’t want to do those things.

In my years of working with management of large corporations, community groups, non-profits and small businesses I have seen some deplorable communication skills, folks ripping each other apart to get ahead, and teams clueless to their impact to the larger project or individuals. There has to be a better way.

When I was managing a creative group in San Francisco, I found it difficult to deal with the ups and downs of a changing workplace (this was just after the DotCom bust). It was especially challenging because I wasn’t skilled at addressing the raw emotions of workers who were undergoing work and family stress.

This led me to seek a mediation teacher who could at least share some wisdom about finding balance on a black cushion sitting on the tiled floor of a church basement.

It was in that first introduction that I realized that I lacked a guiding set of rules for dealing with my staff, coworkers, clients and management. Learning about the ideas inherent to the Eightfold Path I was able to start the timid steps towards a new way of communicating and finding balance both at work and in the rest of my life.

I did it through the idea of Zen Business.

Don’t get so focused on one goal that you miss other opportunities that might pop up right beside you. Sometimes the journey is more fun than reaching the end. ~Jason O’Neill

“I’ll be floating like a butterfly and stinging like a bee.”

“I wish people would love everybody else the way they love me. It would be a better world.”

“A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.”

I’m guessing Muhammad Ali doesn’t need a long introduction. As an amateur he won the Olympic Gold. He then went on to become a three-time World Heavyweight Champion.

And in 1999, Sports Illustrated and the BBC named him as “the Sportsman of the Century”.

But what can we learn from one of the best boxers of all time?

Well, here are five tips from Muhammad Ali on how to break through the barriers in the world and in your mind.