Transformational Leadership. Social Entrepreneurship

Here’s an amazing video on leadership from Simon Sinek. He talks about innovation and how great leaders manage to inspire their followers to action.

About Simon Sinek: Beginning as a student in anthropology, Simon Sinek turned his fascination with people into a career of convincing people to do what inspires them. His earliest work was in advertising, moving on to start Sinek Partners in 2002, but he suddenly lost his passion despite earning solid income. Through his struggle to rediscover his excitement about life and work, he made some profound realizations and began his helping his friends and their friends to find their “why” — at first charging just $100, person by person. Never planning to write a book, he penned Start With Why simply as a way to distribute his message.

Sinek also contributes to several efforts in the non-profit sphere: He works with Count Me In, an organization created to help one million women-run businesses reach a million dollars in revenue by 2012, and serves on the Board of Directors for Danspace Project, which advances art and dance. He writes and comments regularly for several major publications and teaches a graduate-level class in strategic communications at Columbia University. (from TED.com)

Every Wednesday, MightyRasing.com features a series of articles on social entrepreneurship and/or personal development. This is the fourth in the series on Social Entrepreneurship. Do check out the first three articles in this series:

1. What is Social Entrepreneurship
2. The Social Entrepreneur: A Profile
3. How to Start a Social Entrepreneurship Organization

Social entrepreneurship is helping change the landscape of business and economics around the world. Thousands of creative people are bringing in their expertise in business and entrepreneurship to address the problems of the world. If you are but starting out in this field, you will need to understand the problems of the world that you want to address.

I suggest you start by taking a look at the gifts, talents, skills and resources that you could use. Go through my series of articles under the Ignite Yourself series.

First things first, you really should be passionate about the project you want to take on. Half-hearted pursuit is a slow but sure way to disaster.

If you are really intent on pursuing the social entrepreneurship path, then read these tips on How to Start a Social Entrepreneurship Organization.

Here are 24 social entrepreneurship business ideas you can use as seeds for thought.

Education. In a developing country such as the Philippines, education is available mainly to the middle and upper class strata in the society. Oftentimes, though, those who belong to the marginalized sector and lower economic classes have little or no access to education and the resources needed to help them build their future through education. The following ideas come to mind.

1. Scholarships. You can source out scholarships for poor and deserving students. This scholarship program can be for grade school, high school or even college students.

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I just came across this article from Wired.com. The article presents interesting findings about the spread of kindness. How I wish we could all be kind, be contagiously kind and make the world an infinitely better world.

Check out the article excerpt below:

In findings sure to gladden the heart of anyone who’s ever wondered whether tiny acts of kindness have larger consequences, researchers have shown that generosity is contagious.

Read More from Wired.com

The youth are truly making important changes in the world today! Just ask 16-year old Carmina Mancenon, a Filipina who’s studying and living in Japan. She started Stitch Tomorrow, a youth-led fashion microfinance initiative that seeks to use fashion in solving the pressing problems of poverty, climate change, education and youth engagement in world affairs.

According to the Stitch Tomorrow website, “the idea behind it is to use fashion to bridge the gap between the privileged and underprivileged youth. The privileged youth can use Stitch Tomorrow to channel their energy and love for fashion to help their underprivileged peers.”

Through Carmina Mancenon’s leadership, Stitch Tomorrow will help teens create their own fashion lines by using second-hand materials. This way, they will be able to pull themselves out of poverty and contribute to environmental conservation the same time!

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Jollibee has become a household name in the Philippines, even obscuring the popularity of the world’s largest hamburger chain, McDonald’s. In recent years, Jollibee has even invaded major towns and cities in various provinces all over the Philippines. There’s one in Cauayan City and another one in Roxas, Isabela. If I were still living there, I would probably be eating breakfast regularly there.

Start Small.

Tony Tan Caktiong started out small. He didn’t really start with a big idea of competing against McDonald’s. Even before McDonald’s arrived in the Philippines, Tony Tan Caktiong was already in business operations. But he wasn’t always in the fast-food industry. In fact, he started his business operations in 1975 by franchising Magnolia Ice Cream in two locations in Metro Manila—one was in Cubao, Quezon City along Aurora Boulevard. If you ever go there, the first ever branch of Jollibee is still there. The other branch was in Quiapo, Manila.

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Teams have become an important part of business and organizational operations. And why not? Teams have the potential to increase individual performance of workers and employees! When one person works with a team, he or she is given a chance to work with other who can support, encourage and even challenge the way he works! That way, the output will be of a better quality than if it was done alone.

Here are fifteen ingredients of effective teamwork that a leader should nurture in the teams within an organization.

Open communication. In any collaborative effort, communicating openly is a very important component of the process. This factor helps create the ideal environment for teamwork to actually work!

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Apartheid, racial discrimination and slavery, ugly as they are, have been a part of human history. Yet, the human quest for justice and equality could not be quenched. That’s why we celebrate the legacy of people like Mahatma Gandhi and in recent history, Nelson Mandela.

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela served as the South African President from 1994 to 1998. He is the first South African president to be elected in a fully representative election. Yet, his road to his presidency is not easy. It was paved with so many difficulties and controversies. Yet, in the end, he became victorious and led South Africa into a new future without apartheid and racism.

Here are some leadership lessons that we can learn from the life of Nelson Mandela.

Look for a role-model.

Even at an early age, Nelson Mandela came to admire and follow the non-violent resistance movement as practice by Mahatma Gandhi. He became an anti-apartheid activist. Nelson Mandela also attended a Wesleyan school because his mother was influenced by Methodist missionaries. His early education probably prepared him to embrace non-violent resistance.

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Stephen Covey, in his bestselling book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, he talked about the Circle of Concern. This circle contains the things that people get worried about yet they don’t have direct control over these things! Focusing on the circle of concern is counterproductive! Why? Because you cannot really control it. Why bother?

In order for you to become more effective, you need to minimize your circle of concern! I’ve been thinking about my own circle of concern and how I can minimize them. I’ve listed twelve things that belong to my circle of concern, which I need to stop worrying about.

1. The weather. Even if I do some rain ritual or dance, I can’t make the rain fall at my own whim!

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Every Wednesday, this Transformational Leadership blog features a series on leadership or personal development. This is the fifth and final part of our Leadership Anticipation and Directions series. To get updates on upcoming series, please subscribe to our blog feed.

Do you remember Christopher Columbus? He was the first European who discovered the New world! He was a true blooded pioneer who brought knowledge of the New World to the rest of Europe. But pioneers can’t be rightly called pioneers if other people won’t follow them. Pioneers push frontiers, explore new worlds and ideas and establish new orders.

When the pioneers shall have done their jobs, the managers and the rest of the people will populate whatever colony they have established. We can liken this to managers following the footsteps of the leader.

Managers are mainly maintenance folks. They make sure that the machine is running as efficiently as effectively as possible. They tend to be the “behind-the-scenes” guys while leaders are usually like the driver of a bus or the captain of a ship. Leaders are responsible that the ship is cruising along towards the right direction while managers are concerned in the efficiency, speed, and performance of the ship.

How’s your leadership habits and reflex?

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Every Wednesday, this Transformational Leadership blog features a series on leadership or personal development. This is the fourth part of our Leadership Anticipation and Directions series. To get the upcoming articles on this series, please subscribe to our blog feed.

The Global Positioning System is an amazing feature of twenty-first century civilization. Through the use of satellites way above planet earth, individuals can actually see where they are on earth and how they stand in relation to their environment. This system used to be exclusively for military use. But now, it is also used by civilians for numerous purposes. This technology also gave rise to location-based web technologies and to the famous Google Earth and Google Street View.

How does the Global Positioning System works?

The satellites used for GPS (24 of them) circle the earth twice a day. They then transmit signal information to the planet. The receivers (gadgets installed on a computer or in a car) then take this information and through a process of triangulation, the receiver calculates the user’s location on the planet. The satellites measure time and distance and after a series of really quick calculations, the GPS receivers will display it on the device.

This poses an important lesson for leaders all over the world: Do you have a leadership GPS? How are you using it? How can you have one?

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