What direction am I heading? This is the daily disturbance podcast with Anthony Gungini. Henry David Thoreau, and I quote, if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours, end quote. So here we have an idea that if you are advancing towards a certain direction, success will come upon you.
Not a destination, but if you are in the right direction. So in what direction am I heading? Well, it depends on who's looking, right? Or whose point of view I am taking.
I want to thank Joe Mahalindal, coach Jomak, because I had been running for almost 20 years when he had actually noticed that I wasn't running in the right way for many decades. And specifically that day, he instituted changes that changed my running, experience and journey forever. See, he could see that the way I was moving my arms and the way I was planting my foot and the way I was raising my knees were not maximizing my potential in terms of distance and in terms of enjoyment in running. So thank you, coach Jomak, thank you, coach, thank you, coach, thank you, coach, thank you, coach, thank you, coach, thank you, coach, thank you, coach, thank you.
So sometimes it's important for you to step back and retreat when you realize that you're going in the wrong direction. What was it that Douglas McCarthy said? We are not retreating, he said. We are advancing in another direction.
Where are you heading? You might want to ask yourself these questions and take note of your answers. Are they positive, are they negative, or are you completely unaware of your answers? If I would take a couple of notes here, so here we go, where am I heading?
Well, what results are you seeing? What are you seeing when it comes to your personal life? When it comes to your spiritual life, your personal life, what do you see when it comes to your physical life, your health? What do you see when it comes to your emotional well-being, your mental health?
What results are you seeing? Good, bad, or ugly? And I'm just referring to the personal life, now let's go to your relational life, see? What results are you seeing in your relational life?
The quality of your family connections. That's an indication of direction. The quality of your friendships, or loss of lack of engagement with your friendships. What about the community?
Looking at what's happened in the global community because of this pandemic, you can no longer dissociate yourself, right? From your barangay, your village, the community around you, what do you call those levels of quarantine? Oh, it escapes my mind right now. But the idea that we need to move as a community, and we will either live or die as a community, depending on how obedient we are, given some protocols.
So what results are you seeing in personal life, in your relational life, in your professional life? What was your last performance rating? I mean, I don't agree with many of the current tools being used, but it does give an indication of your current level of performance, what your boss says. What I do go for, even in our company, is a tool in performance management and evaluation that takes into consideration feedback from people above you, but not just above you, across you and below you.
So in our company, APG, we call it, we evaluate everyone. And we only are, how many are we now? Over a dozen. And so each one evaluates another, right?
We all evaluate each other. So I am evaluated, if we were a dozen by 11 people, and I evaluate 11 too. I forgive them because I sometimes can't distinguish the full-time to the part-time to a retained personnel. But if we're talking about those who are all full-time in the organization, we all evaluate each other every month.
And so it is a more holistic view of how people actually see you, when it comes to your hard skills, when it comes to your soft skills, hard skills, accounting for what you were hired for, right? Sales, hard skills when it comes to presentations. Soft skills is the way you relate, right? With each other, your compassion, your empathy, your listening skills.
So we are evaluated on that basis, but not just on that, but also our results, based on our objectives. So are you getting the drift professionally, relationally and personally, what results are you seeing? Because that is a good indication of where you are heading. Another question, not just about results this time, but the process, how much are you enjoying?
Or is there much regret on a daily basis? You know the statement, we are doing so much more and more and more, but we are enjoying it less and less and less. So when you think about the last year, for example, how much joy characterised your life? How much disappointment?
How much pride, and this is not the wrong kind of pride that you compare yourself with somebody else, but how much pride have you had towards what you have accomplished or how much humiliation have you suffered, or perhaps others have suffered under your care in the past 12 months? These reveal your current direction. What is the quality of the right, right? For those who are in this right with you.
I think it's important to note that in family and in community, when you're looking at your direction, you value the differences in the goals of people around you. It may be the same sport, for example. You're all in business, or you're all in triathlons. The business specifically, in our case, you're all in consulting, you're all in one boat.
Maybe, but for what purposes? It can be very diverse. One is in the fight because he wants to prove himself to somebody. One is in this engagement because of a target that he would like to set or break as a record.
One is in it because of the money. Another is in it because of the companionship of the people that he loves to be with. Another is there simply because he sees it as a calling, a mission for the God that he serves. All in the same boat, but with different purposes, enhance different perspectives on the direction, right?
They are taking. How are you doing when it comes to the direction that you are taking? The first responsibility of leadership, and I've shared this before, this is a quote from Max Depree. The first responsibility of leadership is to define reality.
A bit of perspective though, as we consider redirecting, or perhaps staying the course, from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.