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My guest today is an International Leadership Guru with forty years of experience and the author of fifty books, including the award-winning ‘See the Light in You.’ Professor M.S. Rao, Ph.D., also known as the father of “Soft Leadership,” is a global keynote speaker and a regular contributor to the Entrepreneur Magazine, and he focuses on training a new generation of leaders through leadership education and publications. In today’s episode, we dive deep into the concept of soft leadership, practicing discipline, giving and receiving healthy feedback, managing negative influences, and more.
Our guest today is someone who has dedicated their career to helping people lead themselves toward crafting a good life with good work. Gregg Vanourek is a high-impact leadership developer, executive, and award-winning author training, teaching, and speaking on leadership and personal development. Gregg’s work has been featured in the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, and his book, Triple Crown Leadership was a winner of the international book awards in 2013. In today’s episode, we dive deep into how we can avoid falling into numerous traps we find in our life paths.
Show Notes
Soft Leadership – Professor Rao is known as the father of soft leadership. We explore what soft leadership is, how Professor Rao came up with the concept, the elements that constitute the concept, and why soft leadership is important for people who aspire to grow.
Discipline & Motivation – Professor Rao shares with us how his background and experience in the military helped him gather the motivation and discipline needed to complete his work as an author of fifty books.
Feedback – Giving each other in a constructive manner can our society better. However, many of us struggle when giving feedback in a way that doesn’t put the other person down. Professor Rao shares his take on how to give healthy, constructive feedback and how to respond to feedback.
Avoiding Negative Self-talk – The inner voice that exists in our heads can sometimes negatively influence our decision-making process. Professor Rao shares with us why it’s important to avoid this negative self-talk and how to avoid it. Positive People – We get heavily influenced by who we surround ourselves with. If we surround ourselves with positive people, our lives eventually become better. We talk about how we can surround ourselves with the right people.
Contact Professor Rao
Website: professormsraovision2030.blogspot.com
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/professormsrao
YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCf4OaBOr9W6O00ha6JlnI-A
Books: amazon.com/M.-S.-Rao/e/B00MB63BKM
Mentioned in the episode:
Feedback is the Breakfast of Champions - Ken Blanchard:
bkconnection.com/bkblog/ken-blanchard/feedback-is-the-breakfast-of-champions
Bobbi's Takeaways
I hope that you found a lot of value in that conversation. I know that I did. With all of that, here are my three insights for thriving.
When I think of the overall conversation, I think that’s something that really stood out to me is that it truly does not matter where we begin our journey. Our beginning does not determine what we can do or what we can achieve. It is simply our starting place. And I think the most important thing is to start.
I loved the science behind planning your day, the night before. He talked about having those three items for the following day. And then how when we plan our day, the night before, we are, in a sense supercharging our brains, it’s a practice that I’ve been doing for a while. And it was dumb luck. But now I understand why it works because I always feel more effective and motivated when I do that.
I was intrigued by conscious learning versus getting into information overload or just being pulled along by whatever current shows up. And we know that can happen right you open your email, you open up your social media, and who knows where it’s going to take us. But it makes a lot of sense that if we are intentional about where we are, where we want to go, and who we want to be. Then we can also really tune into being intentional with what we are learning, what we want to learn, and what we’re surrounding ourselves with.
