Business and Money Tips

Of all the words in the English language, Love is the most mis-understood.  Many mistaken love to be attachment, lust, affection or relationship kind of love. We know that love is more than that. We also know what Love is NOT. Love is not about possession, condition and blind faith .   Many say that love is an inner feeling, and when you express that feeling to the outside world, that feeling is called an emotion. We define love as promoting the welfare of others.  It is to serve others, not ourselves .   It is to use your heart, not just your brain or your body. There are 7 kinds of love that we can use in business and at work: 1.  Showing Kindness, Care and Concern (non material benefits) 2.  Welfare and Material Benefits (e.g. money) 3.  Commitment and Loyalty 4.  Trust and Confidence in People, especially when the going is tough 5.  Empathy (to feel what people are feeling without them telling you) 6.  Friendship and Comradeliness 7.  Non-self, i.e. put ourselves be

From Dr Gary Chapman's best selling book "The Five Love Languages", many people tried to apply this relationship love concept in the workplace.  While many have met with success, some have found the ideas too complex to transfer them to the workplace effectively.  At Asia Trainers, we have, since 2006 in management and leadership courses, applied such concepts successfully.    Chapman's 5 Love Languages are as follows: Words of Affirmation Quality Time Acts of Service Gifts  Touch Chapman's book claims that this list of five love languages is exhaustive but we should not use the love languages that they like the most but rather the love languages that their loved ones can receive.  So in the workplace, which love language you use would depend on who you are dealing with.  Today I shall only talk about the first love language: Words of Affirmation .  Come back to our blog at www.andyngtrainer.blogspot.sg for the remaining 5 love languages.  Power o

Everyone talks about the importance of love, but most people mistakenly equate love to personal affection, i.e. the kind of love when people are in a relationship of love or romance.  We know that true love is one that is more than that.  Love is defined as a Strong Positive Emotion that's Warm, Uplifting, Endearing and Inspiring .  Love is unconditional and non possessive. Love knows no boundaries, language, race or religion.  Love of course is a verb and not a noun. Ultimately you must feel love in order to understand love.  To do that, you need to be connected to people. There are 4 types of love that we teach in our courses: Loving-kindness, Compassion, Appreciative Joy and Equanimity . 1. Loving-kindness This is the most sincere type of love, the tenderness and consideration towards others.  Its opposite is Anger. However, many people mistaken Loving-kindness to be Affection.  You express loving kindness when you are kind to others in your words, action and tho

Never marry the woman you love, love the woman you marry. This is because if you marry the woman you love, your love for this woman may not last.  What happens years later when she is old and ugly?  Do you still love her anymore? On the other hand, if you love the woman you marry, you are committed to this marriage.  You will do whatever it takes to make the marriage a success.  Your love for the woman will last longer. Same as the workplace.   You don't take up a job that you love.  You love the job that you take up. Not many of us can make our passion our vocation.  Because we need to make a living, many of us have to settle for a job that we may not dislike, but we also don't love it either. In other words, there is little passion in the job that we take. But if we can love the job we have, we will make every effort to ensure that our job will be a success. We will do whatever it takes: be it acquiring new skills, improve our communication, learn how manage peop

Yes, the best communication you can ever have in this world will give you everything that want, be it money, success, happiness and peace of mind.  This communication, when given in a timely and targeted manner , will turn any suspicions into trust.  People will start to understand you, give you business, and most importantly, give you what you want. What is this 'best' communication?  How much does it cost you?  Many times this communication cost just your thoughtfulness or mindfulness.   It does not cost you any money . The best communication in this world that you can give to anyone is Giving . Yes, not just giving anything, and not just giving for the sake of giving, but giving something that is both useful and relevant to the person receiving it.  And giving without any conditions or expectations of rewards.  In short, self-less giving. What can you give to people?  There are 7 things in this world that everyone needs and wants that you can give immediately: L

The first 3 scrolls from "The Greatest Salesman in the World" book by Og Mandino Scroll Number 1: Today I Shall Begin a New Life Failure is man’s inability to reach his goals in life, whatever they may be The difference between those who fail and those who succeed lies in their habits I shall form good habits and become their slave An act becomes easy through constant repetition Scroll number 2: I will Greet this day with Love in my heart I will remain no more a peddler in the marketplace My reasoning they may counter; my speech they may distrust; my apparel they may disapprove; my face they may reject; and even my bargains they may suspect; yet my love will melt all hearts Love is my weapon to open the hearts of men, love is also my shield When I confront each whom I meet, I address him and say in silence and to myself, “I love you” Most of all, I will love myself and love all mankind With love I will increase my sales a hundredfold and become a great sal

You may wonder: I am a professional manager, what has love got to do with my work? As we know, a manager is only good if he can get good people to work for him and get good people to stay .  Often companies are caught in a vicious circle: they need to hire people quickly to replace the loss of good people.  Once people come in, they are given everything (money, power, fame, position, responsibility and stress) except one thing: love .  As a result, good people leave them fast and they are soon caught in busy trend: hiring.   Of course you could say that everyone in your industry is facing the same problem, this country has labour shortage, right?  It is not your fault as your company's salary is already very competitive.  Being a responsible manager, you know you have to do something to stop this.  Now there is a new strategy to do this: using Love.  Because if you don't love them, you'll lose them.  To many people, love is a dirty word.  To us at AsiaTrainers, love

Often when we start out in our profession, we do it out of love for the profession, our passion and our interest.  In the beginning our intentions are good.  We do good jobs and soon more jobs and money come.  Then slowly we become consumed with pursuing success in our work. We crave for more power, money, name, ranking, profits and fame.  These slowly replace our focus on the profession.  Love becomes a distant dream. This is how we slowly become lost in our pursuit of bottom line.  The fact is that humans are never satisfied with anything, and the bottom line that we pursue is often at the expense of someone else . Look at the phenomena high profits luxury product companies made and you'll realize that they exploit cheap labour in poor countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia.  Banks incurred huge fines by governments and have to compensate billions to customers for failed investments.  In short, the pursuit of bottom line has made us become bad.  What is so-called happin

Following yesterday's blog on 'The First Love Language at Work', here are the other 4 Love Languages per Dr Gary Chapman that we use in our management training : Words of Affirmation Quality Time Acts of Service Gifts  Touch Today we shall dwell on Quality Time Quality time is simply giving someone your undivided attention . It is a very obvious expression of love and no one in this world dislikes it. Quality time need not be quantity time, and Ken Blanchand said in the "One Minute Manager" book, all it takes is an EXTRA MINUTE of your time and that's quality time. When your staff talks to you, do you listen with your computer screen on? Focused Attention is another aspect of Quality Time. It is not we have to spend our time together moments gazing into each other's eyes. It means we are doing something together and that we are giving our full attention to each other. Incidentally, the activity that we do is not important. What's im

Following yesterday's blog on  7 Shocking Truths , people asked me if I could elaborate further from there.  If you were, like my friend, read all the management and business books out there, you will get nothing but confusion.  That's why I like to once and for all cement the following truths: 1.  Suppliers Are More Important than Customers We often said that customers is king, but if you do not have the right type of goods and services to sell, you have no business to sell to that king!  Unfortunately, most schools do not teach people how to treat suppliers well.  There are 3 things that every supplier look for: fast payment, business referrals and advance order informatio n.  Do not give your suppliers nasty surprises, or treat them like a beggar.  Give them the respect that they deserve: fast payment. 2. Employees Want to Do More than What You Told Them It's shocking to hear this: many employees don't mind to do more than what they were told as long as they

The desire to be happy is what drives us to whatever we do.  In fact, humans spend so much time in their waking moments everyday to be happy that makes us forget what are the things that make us happy.  For example, many people equate money to be happiness, when in fact money only makes us comfortable and not happy .  From coaching and training over 81,131 people in 12 countries since 1996, the following are the 5 conditions that make us happy: 1.  Hope for a better tomorrow Despite the generally accepted notion that the fulfilment of a wish brings happiness, I believe that a person who has hope can taste happiness before that hope becomes a reality.  For better or worse, the human being is always discontent with present reality.  It's okay to be discontented as long as you direct that discontentment into new hopes on a higher plane.  For example, if I am not happy with my Samsung Galaxy S4, I can direct my efforts to earning more money so that I can buy the new S5 when it co

If you work with no passion, you are no different from a machine.  How to produce quality work?  Without quality work, how can you earn more?  Without earning more, how can you live your dreams and fulfil your life's aspirations and obligations? Unfortunately, most people do not work in a vocation that is their passion, and most have to work even if they have no interest in what they are doing.  But we know that passion at work can be built , and if you do the following 12 things, you'll become more passionate about your work: Look Beyond What You’re Doing What value are you creating for the society?   We are not just workers, our work do produce value for the society, and without our contribution, the society would be worse off Go into the depths of your work Learn Something New Everyday  Go the Extra Mile (GEM) – Do Beyond What’s Expected Without the Thought of Compensation  Adopt the FISH! Philosophy at work, which is a fun way of doing work Make Work a Reward,

Last week, the CEO of the world's largest software company launched a new product called 'Doors 10'.  This CEO said that his goal is not for people to not just use this new product, but to love it. It is like me setting a goal to get my girlfriend to love me. That cannot happen in life. A goal is something that you set as a target so that you can work towards it .  The goal is based on things that you can work on and things that you can control .  What happen when you achieve your goal is called an outcome.  Note that the outcome is the result of your goal plus other things that you cannot control , like the response and reaction from other people.  In short, a goal is something that you can control but an outcome is not.  So base on this understanding you cannot set a goal for your girlfriend to love you.  You can set a goal for you to woo your girlfriend, but you have no absolute control over the outcome of whether your girlfriend will love you or not.  You can as

Why We Shout In Anger" A Hindu saint who was visiting river Ganges to take bath found a group of family members on the banks, shouting in anger at each other.  He turned to his disciples smiled'n asked. 'Why do people shout in anger shout at each other?' Disciples thought for a while, one of them said,'Because we lose our calm, we shout.' 'But, why should you shout when the other person is just next to you? You can as well tell him what you have to say in a soft manner.'asked the saint.  The disci ples gave some other answers but none satisfied the other disciples. Finally the saint explained, . 'When two people are angry at each other, their hearts distance a lot. To cover that distance they must shout to be able to hear each other. The angrier they are, the stronger they will have to shout to hear each other to cover that great distance. What happens when two people fall in love? They don't shout at each other but talk softl

(This article appeared in the Straits Times page C30 on 21 Oct 2016, watch our 1-min Better Manager video at  here )  1. Suppliers First, Customers Second We know that customers are important, but if you don't have the right goods and services from your suppliers, you have no business. That's why suppliers are more important. There are 3 things that every supplier yearn for: fast payment and advance order information. Give your suppliers the respect they need, for they are actually not suppliers but human beings 2. Employees Can Do More Without Being Told Unknown to many bosses, employees can do much more without being told. They just need to be appreciated for whatever little extra things that they do.   3. How They Feel = Morale Employee morale is about how people feel towards the bosses. If your people have low morale, examine yourself. In our course How to Be a Great Boss, we said that if you have low morale employees, either you change or you change your peo

By now over several million of people from Singapore and the workd have paid their tribute to the late Lee Kuan Yew, who passed away on 23 March 2015.  Lee Kuan Yew loves the world, especially Singapore, very much.  In 1965, he shed tears in front of national television when he announced the separation of Singapore from Malaysia. Fifty years later in 2015, the entire nation shed tears for him.  Singapore and the world are showing Lee now how much they love him too. The funeral on Sunday 29 March 2015 reads like a 'Who's Who's' of the world leaders.  No other world leader's funeral has attracted so many visitors, not even the late Princes Diana in 1997.  How does Lee Kuan Yew love his people?  Many young people may not appreciate what he has done for the nation, because they perceive him to be a strict and fierce parent.  One thing for sure: he does not love them by spoiling them, he loves them by developing them.  From watching over hundreds of hours of video