12 Essential Abilities Of Extraordinary People

Author

Introduction

The ultimate objective of every self-help book is to help the reader do well in life. All books and their authors make sincere attempt to do so. In order to do well in life one has to earn good money, have a happy family life and above all, have a very satisfying work or professional life. In addition, it is very important for an individual to feel good—in terms of his self-worth and how the world looks at him. I personally feel at the end of the day, this is the most important factor for success. And that is the bottom line that we all should understand to proceed further. All this is desirable and also possible, but it isn’t as easy as it sounds. While working towards success, people often go wrong when they look for quick fix solutions, overnight success and are wrongly convinced about ‘Don’t work hard, but work smart’ ideologies.

You may work efficiently and optimise your efforts, but you cannot expect to take short cuts and become successful overnight. Every winner has to earn what he wants to win. And every winner therefore needs a coach, who would show him the path to the victory stand.

Self-help books act like that much needed coach. They present various ideas in front of the readers. They also make every reader excel and thereby bring about improvement in him. And this book is not very different as far as the intention is concerned. But this is different in its approach towards becoming a winner. This perhaps is what makes it stand out.

Human excellence is a very complex entity in itself and so is every individual human being. To look at human excellence in its entirety and also simplify human excellence, I would like to explain my point by drawing a pyramid of human excellence. It has three clearly demarcated sections:

a) The top of the pyramid represents the capability to organise yourself, learn and apply skills to achieve your goals and become more efficient in your work.

b) The middle segment represents the knowledge and education, which one needs to acquire or learn in order to be successful. These are the abilities which one learns and acquires, through rigorous education and other knowledge tools. These are much deeper than skills, which are very mechanical in nature. Education builds foundation, it builds a new personality.

c) The bottom of the pyramid represents those basic qualities which form the very basis of success and are in actuality the material which the winners are made of. These are qualities which have to be imbibed and cultivated over a period of time.

Most books concentrate on the top two levels of the pyramid of excellence. For example, some books address the top of the pyramid and would be covering techniques like time management, using Hi-tech tools, teamwork, staying organised, communication skills, presentation skills, responding effectively to situations, conflict management, handling stress etc. to name a few. They therefore focus on organising and projecting yourself as well as applying certain techniques to become more productive. These are popularly known as soft skills administered mostly through training programs or workshops.

The next level of the pyramid is addressed usually by sound education acquired at schools and universities. Here the process is rigorous and long drawn. The books and other material are much more detailed too. The focus is on building domain knowledge following a more holistic approach. Education has gradually become the foundation of every individual’s progress. Many times for a student there are redundancies in the education system, some sort of repetitiveness and also certain things which appear to be useless to him. This is because foundations need to go deep down for the structures to survive through a lifetime.

This book will take you beyond these levels—it will look at imbibing and developing what lies at the bottom of the pyramid. It is widely believed that pyramids draw their energy from the top, but the fact is that gold is always found at the bottom. And I would concentrate on those golden traits, those gems that are priceless and irreplaceable. Without these traits, the pyramid is worthless. Yes, we are talking about the ‘foundation of foundation’.

These qualities are the basic foundation and are like the constitution of a winner. It may be worth noting that while the two top levels of the pyramid of excellence are very important for success, the bottom of the pyramid is the most ‘essential’ one. Without the foundation, the pyramid can never be built! It is also important to note that these golden qualities have to be gradually imbibed and then developed into an individual’s character which I earlier referred to as the constitution. These qualities can’t be tutored or parroted, but it is certain that they are learnable.

As a head of a premier business school, I get an opportunity to deal with the budding managers and would-be responsible citizens of a country which aspires to be a super power very soon. I also get an opportunity to interact with the corporate world at close quarters. Taking a closer look at the current scenario, it seems that the focus has shifted from the bottom of the pyramid to the soft skills on the top and without building the base one wants to wear the crown. Not only the bottom has been eroded, but the middle of the pyramid—the rock solid foundation of knowledge garnered through sound education—has also taken a beating. Unfortunately, looking at the quality of manpower being churned out by the under graduate colleges one gets alarmed. Barring the top wrung institutes, the ‘graduate exit level’ domain knowledge is far below the desirable level. Companies who hire from the campuses struggle for months together to train and then re-train this product in order to make it deployable. The cost of this ‘repair’ is colossal. And the sad part is—our country, India pays for this repair quite often.

Over the years, the bottom of the pyramid which is the basic human character and the most important building block has been totally ignored in the value chain. To sum up—the pyramid has been inverted, upside down. This is the single most important reason for leadership failure and crisis at the top, across the world.

One always draws comparisons with those who are already winners and those who are successful in their lives. But I would advise the readers to first look at the essential qualities of those people who in your eyes are winners before looking at their fruits of success. Seeking the key to success is more important than dreaming about the results!

After a detailed analysis you would invariably find that the bottom of the pyramid is always full of gold; for all those who have been successful have found success there. Many of us are fortunate to have these gems and pieces of gold already within us in varying proportions. It would be rare to find a person whose bottom of the pyramid is totally empty. God has that way been kind to every human being. It is therefore essential that each one of us makes a sincere effort to improve upon these gifts of god.

These dozen gifts are:

Will Power / mental toughness / resilience

Integrity / dependability

Empathy and human touch

Delayed gratification

Pride and self esteem

Initiative and value addition

Making friends / being humble

Positive attitude

Self-discipline

Adaptability and flexibility

Believing in yourself

Moral courage

Now let us look at an analysis of eleven very successful, famous and effective people. All of them are from very diverse back grounds. I have taken an army general, a national leader, a top cricketer, an industrialist, a physically challenged person, a president of a nation, a top actor, an inventor, a global CEO as well as a top scientist for you to glimpse at successful people from varied backgrounds. All of them have been leaders in their own fields. Therefore, analysing them is essential before we proceed.

They have been rated out of ten for each of the twelve qualities listed above. Instead of displaying an exact figure—which may indicate being too judgmental—I have assigned A, B, C, as grades instead of the regular markings. These are world’s top performers, celebrities and icons—some of them are treated as demi gods across the world. After all, they represent ultimate success. These grades have been arrived at by going through numerous articles written about them and information provided by trusted sources. In many cases their biographies have been scrutinized too to arrive at these scores. All of them are public figures and people may have different perceptions about them. To some extent, my own perceptions also would have played some role in this analysis.

Not surprisingly, most of them have scored all A’s and a few B’s. It brings out two important inferences. First, these qualities are all important and essential for success in all the fields. Second, all great people need not have a top end score in all the qualities required for success—but it is interesting to note that none of them scored a very low—a C grade—in any of these. You may like to rate yourself too, keeping in mind your own strengths and weaknesses. This will give you a good idea about your own success story.

Extraordinary People

These qualities are embedded in humans naturally and are often called ‘nature’ or ‘character’ which means these are basic characteristics of every individual. These are personality traits of a person. We, in this book, are looking at ‘Personal Effectiveness’. Therefore, it must help every individual, individually.

Our sun signs play an important part and are indicative of some of our very basic characteristics. Many of us believe in astrology while a lot of us don’t. Some argue that how can the entire seven billion population of the world be divided into just twelve sun signs. Fair enough! But on a closer examination of the characteristics defined under the system of sun signs, one would appreciate that people born under a particular sun sign do share a common thread as far as basic characteristics are concerned. This would appear to be truer if you look at it from a device I call ‘macro scope’ rather than looking at it with merely a micro scope.

Macroscopic view would give us a broader picture about ourselves. It is better to look at these things in this perspective because the ‘things’ we are looking at are not just things—they are intangibles! It is difficult to assign for instance a number or a value to the degree of personal integrity of a person. It is also equally difficult to quantify somebody’s will power, moral courage or adaptability! It would be futile to gauge these as laws of physics, chemistry, botany or mathematics. For example, every action has an equal and opposite reaction as per Newton’s laws of motion, but in case of human reaction—every action may or may not have a reaction, leave aside equal. Sun signs therefore are only indicative of characteristics of people. Traits like pride, caring nature, mental toughness and self-belief are closely associated with our sun signs.

Therefore, at the end of each chapter—that concentrates on one trait from the list—I have given a brief pen picture of that trait for each of the sun signs for better understanding.

Reading these would give an idea about what your basic traits are and this will then become a start point for you to begin your journey to change and mould yourself. These brief insights will focus on your strengths and weaknesses and also tell you what to watch out for!

Read these passages at the end of every chapter as broad descriptions and don’t look for too much of accuracy in them because the variable human nature can never be defined accurately. In fact, none of us can accurately define our own selves. Sometimes, people take a lifetime to understand what they are and what they want from themselves. If seen in this light, these brief portions can be very helpful.

I have discussed sun signs profiling given at the end of each chapter with hundreds of people and they have found them amazingly helpful, broadly indicative, practical and a very useful tool for personality development and success. Though I would like to caution every reader about a human characteristic that almost all of us possess—‘not accepting our weaknesses’ very easily. The aim of this book and all my efforts would go waste if you don’t change this habit before going through this book. Be ready to accept that you do not have many friends and accept it as a gap in your life rather than viewing it as ‘My Weakness’. Once this is seen as a gap, go ahead and fill the gap immediately. This book will show you the right direction to do it.

If you change twenty to thirty per cent in each of these twelve ‘essentials’, I guarantee you a visible transformation in your life. But you will have to work for it.

Most business schools and educational institutes also focus only on the top two segments of the pyramid. Out of these, only a few concentrate on the second from top i.e. knowledge. They do so because these two segments if addressed properly are good enough to make a person—industry ready and employable. The skills that are acquired at the educational institutes are good enough for seeing you through for the first three to five years of your career. In fact, they are more than good enough to give you a head start and establish yourself as a professional.

Your actual journey begins thereafter. There is a quantum shift in the job profile in most cases after a while—the role becomes wider, more serious in nature, the stakes go higher and responsibility increases many fold. At the same time, expectations of you from your peers, your bosses and your subordinates soar pretty high as well. There is a shift from managerial expertise to high order leadership. That is the time when the gems and gold at the bottom of the pyramid play a very critical role. In fact, those who have not cared to develop these qualities find themselves losing their ground amongst their peers. They find themselves standing on the quick sand. It is therefore essential to focus on these aspects as early as possible. This book is going to focus on these pieces of gems and gold and urge the reader to develop and imbibe these critical qualities. Armed with this you would not only be successful, but you will be a respected person in all walks of life. This is the art and craft of winning.

- Virender Kapoor

SECTION – I:

POWER WITHIN

Chapter 1 –

Catching the Bull by the Horns

WILL POWER AND SELF-CONTROL

Though much is taken, much abides;and though

We are not now that strength which in old days moved earth and heaven

That which we are, we are—

One equal temper of heroic hearts,

Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will.

To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.

- Tennyson, Alfred

What is will power?

Will power is the strength within you that helps you strive to achieve your goals. It is that power which intentionally directs the mind towards thought or action. It is that power which is necessary to pursue a rational cause against our own desires. Will power is thus, one of the most important and required inner strengths to achieve our goals and succeed in life. In simple words, it is the ‘will’ to do something, achieve something against all odds.

When Mahatma Gandhi saw racial discrimination against Indians in South Africa, he was convinced that what the whites were doing to non-whites was wrong. This wrong then became his rational cause to fight the whites. He thereafter, fought against the British till the end of his life. He suffered personal discomfort, went through umpteen number of fasts, suffered physical assault but yet stood his ground. In the normal course, a person would have reacted violently to British behaviour and actions. But Mahatma Gandhi slowly but surely opposed them with Satyagraha and peaceful disobedience which required courage, conviction and a strong will to sustain at that movement.

Story of Paul Rokich:

He was a young boy growing up in Utah, who lived near a copper smelter which had ruined a huge forest with its sulphur fumes. One day a visitor remarked that the place was awful and this young boy felt that something must be done—he felt insulted because it was his town which was being looked down upon. He vowed the same day that he would bring back life into that wasteland—he would replant the entire forest!

He was initially refused permission to plant trees there. Then, he went to an ecology professor who also told him that it was a hopeless situation and nothing would grow in that wasteland. He gave up for a while, but kept on thinking about the problem quite often. One night he got up and decided to take some action. That was his turning point. He started planting seeds and saplings. He did it for weeks together without giving up. But most of those died after a little period of time. However, he remained undeterred and kept planting for years—many time his work was destroyed by floods or fires. But he kept on planting, again and again. Slowly things started showing positive results. Gradually trees grew up, then came animals, birds, rabbits and gophers. People also joined him by and by when they saw the miracle. This accelerated his movement and progress towards seeing a change.

With persistent efforts, fourteen thousand acres of barren land became a jungle with lush green trees, bushes, grass and animals. Paul received almost every award for environment from the government which continued to encourage him. It took him all his life to achieve what he wanted to achieve when he was a small child. His life is no less than an inspiration. He showed that the way to get something done is ‘Keep on Planting’—keep on doing despite the odds.

‘Where there is a will, there is a way.’

- English Proverb

Group of related qualities

Will Power is like a mega power and the one who possesses strong will power also possesses other important, related qualities and strengths. The cluster of qualities related to will power is given as under:

Cluster of will power. If you closely scrutinise this list, you would realise that all these qualities help us do better in life. These qualities also indicate existence of strong character within a human being. Please remember—obstacles, difficulties and challenges are a part of life. The winner is the one who can keep working against all odds.

Will power/mental toughness/resilience. Here’s the list for you to look at:

Will power to fight failure

Sir Edmund Hillary who was the first man to climb Mount Everest in 1953 had suffered a few failures before he could do that. In 1952, he had attempted to climb the peak, but failed. After that an organisation asked him to address its members. There, he was given a great welcome and a big round of applause when he walked up to the stage. But he felt humiliated because he saw himself as a failure at that time. He moved away from the microphone and made a fist and pointed at the picture of the mountain and said in a loud voice—‘Mount Everest, you beat me the first time, but now I will beat you because you have grown all you are going to grow… but I am still growing’. He took this as a challenge and not as a defeat and conquered the highest peak the very next year. This shows the power of will and determination.

‘People do not lack strength; they lack will.’

- Victor Hugo

Power of will power

Many of us make big plans, dream big, make resolutions, but some of us fail to execute these plans or do not realise these dreams while others do. The difference between those who succeed and those who don’t is—will power. Again taking example of Mahatma Gandhi, do you think he could have fought the mighty British Empire with almost no personal position or authority—without a strong will or desire to do it?

In recent times, if you look at some of the actors shaping up for a role, working hard on their physique, you will realise the importance of determination. For example, if you look at Shah Rukh Khan working hard for months to acquire a chiselled body, then you will surely agree that it required a huge amount of determination for him to reach that level. He was shooting for other movies and was simultaneously put on a gruelling exercise regime and a strict diet plan. His lunch and dinner for five days a week—for three months—was just salad and boiled chicken. He had set a goal—a time bound goal—for himself and summoned his will power to achieve it. His strong will power gave him the strength to bear the discomfort for three long months. During second world war, soldiers and Jews were captured and tortured by Germans in concentration camps, but they survived because of their strong will power—a strong desire to survive.

How you can win by continuous efforts and sustaining hardship?

Once an old mule fell into a well and started braying. The owner saw that the mule was injured and there was no way to get him out. So he asked the neighbours to help him bury the mule by throwing mud and dirt on him. As the neighbours started using shovels to throw mud on him, the mule started braying still louder. But every time the mud used to hit and hurt him, he used to shake it off and step on it. It happened again and again and the mule used to shake off the mud, even if every blow hurt him and pained