AH QIANG'S BLOG: Leadership Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: The 8 Rituals of the Best Leaders

Publisher: HarperCollins
Year:2010
Format: Paperback
Pages: 260
Genres: Self-enrichment, leadership, motivation, business

Book Review

Leadership Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari: The 8 Rituals of the Best Leaders is a book written by Robin Sharma, who is the founder of Sharma Leadership International Inc, and one of the International Bestselling Author in the world. About this book, Sir Robin Sharma uses the story telling methods to describe the 8 rituals of the best leaders in managing people and works. This book not only explains the importance of leading people, but it also reflects a visionary leader can lead thyself become successful because of the willingness to take a risk in leading people.

Book Summary

The 8 Rituals of the Best Leaders are as follow:

Link Paycheck to Purpose (The Ritual of a Compelling Future Focus)
Manage by Mind, Lead by Heart (The ritual of Human Relations)
Reward Routinely, Recognize Relentlessly ( The Ritual of Team Unity)
Surrender to Change (The Ritual of Adaptability and Change Management)
Focus on the Worthy (The Ritual of Personal Effectiveness)
Leader Lead Thyself (The Ritual of Self- Leadership)
See What All See, Think What None Think (The Ritual of Creativity and Innovation)
Link Leadership to Legacy (The Ritual of Contribution and Significance)

Meaningful explanations from Sir Robin Sharma:

A wide ride to success

No matter whatever happens to you Peter, no one will ever be able to take away your education. Knowledge will always be your best friend, no matter where you go or what you do.
Success comes to those who recognize and accept them.

The Wisdom of the Leadership Vision

Of all of the beautiful truths pertaining to the soul which have restored and brought to light in this age, none is more gladdening or fruitful of divine promise and confidence than this- that you are the master of your thought, the molder of your character, and the maker and shaper of condition, environment, and destiny. James Allen

Knowledge and courage
Truly wise people aim, not only for leadership in their businesses but also within their lives.
Like this cup, they are full to the brim. They are filled their minds so full of their opinions, ideas and biases that nothing new get in. And in our rapidly changing world, where leaders must constantly be learning new concepts and equipping themselves with new skills, that’s a deadly character flaw. (Key: Empty cup)
Inner leadership precedes outer leadership and before he could come to understand the time-honored dynamics of leading others, he had to understand how to lead himself.
All failure, whether in the business world or in one’s personal life, could ultimately be traced back to a failure in leadership.
Immediately before a great victory, one will often experience some form of difficulty. The key is to maintain your focus and keep on believing.
Great organization begin with great leaders, And every great leader had bold dreams.
And remember, once you surrender to your vision, success begins to chase you. Ultimately, you really cannot pursue success, success ensues.
In today business world, too many leaders become creatures of habit. They do the same things in the same way with the same people every day. They rarely have new thoughts, generate fresh ideas or take calculated risks. Instead, they confine their leadership to a secure area of comfort and refuse to leave it. Such leaders eventually suffer from their own form of amblyopia.
The best way to succeed in the future is to create it. As Hellen Keller once said. “I would rather be blind than have sight without vision.”
Leadership is not about managing things but about developing people. Quite simply, leadership is about helping people to liberate the fullness of their talents while they pursue a vision you have helped them understand is a worthy and meaningful one.

The Ritual of Compelling Future Focus

Napoleon Hill: Cherish your vision and your dreams as they are the children of your soul; the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.
Orison Swett Marden: “There is no medicine like hope, no incentive so great, and no tonic so powerful as the expectation of something better than tomorrow.” Find a vision you can invest every ounce of yourself within, one that will become your driving force, your raison d’etre, your life’s work.
Story: Once a young student traveled many miles to find a famous spiritual master. When he finally met this man, he told him his main goal in life was to be the wisest man in the land. This is why he needed the best teacher. Seeing the young boy’s enthusiasm, the master agreed to share his knowledge with him and took him under his wing. “How long will it take before I find enlightenment?” the boy immediately asked. “At least five years,” replied the master. “That is too long,” said the boy. ‘I cannot wait five years!’ What if I study twice as hard as the rest of your student? ‘Ten years,’ came the response. ‘Ten years! Well, then how about if I studied day and night, with every ounce of my mental concentration? Then how long would it take for me to become the wise man that I have always dreamed of becoming?’ ’15 years,’ replied the master. The boy grew very frustrated. ‘How come every time I tell you I will work harder to reach my goal, you tell me it will take longer?’ ‘The answer is clear,’ said the teacher. ‘With one eye focused on the reward, there is only one eye left to focus on your purpose.’
You need to concentrate on contribution. Giving begins the receiving process.
One of the key tasks of the visionary leader is to engage the heart.
You must keep your people centered on the communities they are helping and on the lives, they are touching.
A visionary leader cares more about doing what is right than appearing intelligent. Leadership is not about popularity, it is about integrity.
People who feel superb about themselves generate superb results.
Story: According to Indian mythology, all people on earth were once god, Brahma. However, they began to abuse their power so the supreme god, Brahma, decided he would take this gift away from them and hide the godhead in a place where they would never find it. One advisor suggested it be buried deep in the ground, but Brahma did not like that idea. ‘Mankind will one day dig deep enough to find it,’ he said. Another advisor suggested it be hidden in the deepest part of the ocean. ‘No,’ said Brahma, ‘one-day mankind will dive deep enough to discover it.’ Yet another advisor suggested the godhead be placed on the highest peak of the highest mountain, but Brahma replied, ‘No, mankind will eventually find a way to climb to the top and take it.’ After silently thinking about it, the supreme god finally found the ideal resting place for that greatest of all gifts. ‘Here is the answer: Let’s hide it within man himself. He will never think to look there.’”
All people have more energy and ability within them than they could ever imagine. As a leader, is to uncover this truth for the benefit of your people.
Failure is the highway to success.
Leader should lead as far as they can and then vanish, wrote H.G Wells
The ultimate task of the visionary leader is to dignify and honor the lives of those he leads by allowing them to manifest their highest potential through the work they do.

The Ritual of Human Relation

Performance gap, the theory that problems leadership often arise when leaders fail to translate their good intentions into actions.
When you enrich the relationship, you enhance the leadership
Without trust, there is no commitment. And without commitment, there is no company
Listening truly is the highest compliment
Listen with the intent to understand
KEY: Become an aggressive listener, loyalty, and commitment. Visionary leaders are consistently compassionate (Sending handwritten thank you card)
Small actions can have big consequences

The Ritual of Team Unity

When I was a kid, my dad would always tell me that we have two ears and one mouth for a reason: to listen twice as much as we speak.
Great leaders are great teachers. The verb ‘to coach’ came from the root meaning to ‘bring a person from where he is to where he wants to be.’
Every day is special and full of tiny blessings. Teoh, When I was a time-starved, out of balance lawyer, I was so busy chasing the brass ring that I lost sight of the simple pleasure of life. I let my family slip away. Sure I made a ton of money and had all the toys any person could dream of. But I was not happy. I was not fulfilled.
Motivating employee: hunt for good behavior. Remember, you always get more of what you reward. One thing for sure: the sooner you reward the good behavior, the more likely it is repeated.
Yogi Roman always told me that almost everyone wants to do good. Each one of us wants to contribute in a positive way and feel our life has some meaning. We all have dreams and hopes and passions that we pray will be fulfilled one day. But the reality is that most people’s ambitions are stifled by the men and women who lead them. They are told what to wear or when to have lunch or how to do their work. Most employees in our part of the world are micromanaged to the point where they feel that it will be detrimental to their careers if they become free thinkers and innovators.
Have the vision to understand that failure is essential to success. When one of your people tries something and fails, he or she is simply learning how to succeed. Failures are nothing more than lessons in disguise. They eventually lead us to wisdom and prosperity. The visionary leader makes work environments risk-free. They give their people the freedom to fail. And by doing so, they ultimately succeed.
If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will avoid a hundred days of sorrow.
Praise is free. Sincere praise can move mountains and revolutionize your entire organization, And it won’t cost you a penny. Too many leaders think that bonus checks and cash incentives are the only way to motivate their teams, and since money is tight, they do nothing. [Starting with wow questions]
The way you treat your employees determines the way they will treat your customers.
When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all of your thoughts break their bonds. Your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties, and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.
The most beautiful sound in the world to a person is the sound of his or her own name.
Give a man fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

The Ritual of Adaptability and Change Management

Watch and see the courses of the star as if you ran with them, and continually dwell in mind upon the changes of the elements into one another, for these imaginations wash away the foulness of life on the ground. Marcus Aurelius

4 elements of guaranteed success: Discipline, concentration, patience, and persistence
Lao Tzu said, Softness triumphs over hardness
Raplh Waldo Emerson said that a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.
The nature of water is to flow. It goes with the current. It does not resist. It does not hesitate before it yields. But it does also one of the most powerful forces on the earth. Study water and manage the changing currents of modern business like water manages the current of nature.
Adaptability is one of the most essential leadership skills of our new information-driven world.
Buddhist saying goes, ‘The arrow that hits the bull’s eye is the result of one hundred misses.’
Every person is resisting to change and maintain the state of equilibrium. Your job, as a visionary leader, is to lessen the anxiety by continually reminding your people of why the change is necessary and connecting them to the many benefits that will result from it.
Create a learning culture, the best antidote for fear is knowledge, the more prepared and informed your people are, the easier, it will be, for them to accept and thrive to change.
Stop finger-pointing and begin to see yourself as a problem solver.
Understand that employee development is an investment, not an expense. Know that the growth of your company I directly proportional to the growth of your people
Knowledge that remains unapplied us worthless.
In this new era of business, you are privileged to live in, ideas are the true commodity of success. How far you go will be determined by how well you think.
Helen Keller said, ‘No pessimist ever discovered the secrets of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new heaven to the human spirit.’
An inverse paranoid is someone who believes the world is conspiring to do something good to him or her.
The funeral pyres burn the dead while worry burns the living

The Ritual of Personal Effectiveness

There are 5 steps to the Time model for visionary leadership.

First you must adopt a weekly planning practice and carve out some time, say on Sunday night, connect your vision. Your vision will serve as your personal lighthouse, to connect your vision. Your vision will serve as your personal lighthouse, offering guidance and keeping you on the proper course.
Step 2 involves reviewing your annual victories, those goals you have determined you need to determine you need to accomplish this year to keep moving forward.
Step 3 in the process is to come up with a series of weekly wins, or micro goals that you must accomplish during the coming week.
Once you weekly win, step 4 requires that you schedule them into your days by applying the technique of strategic time blocking. Every day of the week has a designated area of focus. Schedule each activity into the particular day designated for it and you will ensure that it gets done. It is really pretty simple once you do it for 3 or 4 weeks.
Step 5 is a regular reflection, reflection is the mother of wisdom.

Leader leads thyself

There is nothing noble in being superior to others. True nobility lies in being superior to your former self. Ancient Indian proverb

Sir Edmund Hillary, the first person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.’ That is really the essence if self-leadership- it is about conquering and mastering yourself.’
You cannot be the inspirational leader you hope to be if you wake up every morning feeling miserable and depressed.
Success on the outside begins within.
Great thinkers said: To master one’s self is the greatest mastery.
Remember that when you settle for mediocrity in the big things. And anything less than a conscious commitment to peak personal performance is an unconscious commitment to weak personal performance.
Learning no longer ends the minute you pass your last exam. It must continue until you take your last breath.

Discipline of physicality, as you care for your body, so you care for your mind. The person who does not make time for exercise must eventually make time for illness.

Yogi Roman said I have 2 doctors I always keep with me. My right leg and my left one

Getting up early is a common practice that runs through the lives of history’s greatest people

As you start your day, so you live your day.

‘Sleep is like drug. Take too much at a time and it makes you dopey. You lose time, vitality and opportunities.’ Ben Franklin believed that there would be more than enough time to sleep to when we were in our graves

Gandhi slept only 4 hour a night. His personal mission to free his people from the shackles of servitude was enough fuel to drive him forward. Mandela was an early riser as were many of the wealthiest industrialists who founded this great nation. Always remember that there is a close connection between your new energy levels and your purpose

Discipline of the Deathbed Mentality

Stop spending so much time thinking about the success of others and start focusing on your own vision for the future. Have the courage to understand that every minute spent thinking about someone’s else victories is a minute taken away from the fulfillment of own. Have the courage to understand that every minute taken away from the fulfillment of your own.

Stop putting off your hopes and dreams to another day. Stop putting off the becoming the kind of leader you know in your heart you can be. Now is the time to make things happen. Now is the time to take some risks in your leadership. Now is the time to test those new strategies you have been thinking of testing. Now is the time really love your family and commit your community. Do all those things you have always wanted to do, whether that means learning how to play the saxophone or mastering that golf game of yours.

Live every day as if it were you last. Otherwise, you will die with the best you had to give still within you.

To laugh often and love much; to win the respect of intelligent persons and the affection of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics; to appreciate beauty; to give of one’s self, to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived- that is to have succeeded

The Ritual of Creativity and Innovation

Read every day something no one else is reading. Think every day something no one else is thinking. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. Christopher Morley
A yogi was sitting with his disciples, high in foothills of the Himalayas. As a test, he drew a line in the dirt and asked each student to make the line shorter without erasing any part of it. (Draw a line longer to it)
That little guy over there, strumming his imaginary guitar thinks he is the rock star he saw on the music video last night. You cannot tell me that each and every of them is not an artist, creator, rich with the ability to generate the fountain of delightful ideas at any given moment.
Remember, the way you lead teaches your people how they must follow.
Work should be fun. Hugo Rahner said, to play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic and Plato observed that ‘life should be lived as play. Remember, the men and women you lead spend the majority of their lives at the office. At least you can do is make it great place to be. Fun and laughter are doorways to the hearts and imaginations of your people. And people love doing business with people who love their business.
Never forget that when you ensure that your employees laugh while they work, they will ensure that your clients laugh while they buy

The Ritual of Contribution and Significance

I cannot believe that the purpose of life is to be “Happy.” I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be compassionate. It is, above all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that you have lived at all. Leo C. Rosten

Be a light. Be the one people look up to for guidance and direction. Let the ideal you aspire to burn brightly within you, blazing a path for all to see. This is your ultimate purpose in leadership- and in life.
I would want to be the person I could have been but was not.
In this particular story, Tolstoy wrote about Ivan Ilych, a vain, a highly materialistic social climber who was more concerned about appearing successful than doing right. As a young man, he married, not because he loved and cherished his wife, but because high society approved of the match. He then had a number of kids, not because he wanted to have children but because that was what was expected to him. Rather than spending time with his family and building a rich home life, he devoted almost all his time to his work, becoming obsessed with his public persona as a top-level government lawyer. He asked himself this: What if my whole life has really been wrong? This dying man realized that life is a gift.
What makes greatness is beginning something that does not end with you
Your legacy must be so much more than that. Your legacy will ultimately be a manifestation of the deepest and the best that you had to give in life. It will be a reflection of the person you now are and the person you aim to be. Leaving a legacy is not about impressing your friends or reaching the top. It is more about fulfilling your duty and actualizing your humanity. Legacy-based leadership is the most powerful type of leadership. Practicing it will allow you to do what few leaders in the world today can do.

To my now wise friend, Peter, a man who I know will touch many lives. May your spark of leadership turn fear into power and darkness into light. With love, your fan, Julian.

My thoughts

Frankly, this book I have read two times because of meaningful leadership wisdom from Sir Robin Sharma which can enable readers clearly understand a visionary leader can make a difference in the world with a small act. To me, as a great leader, we should start to lead ourselves with a vision while developing business. This is because a business venture contains many failures, mistakes, and risks which can provoke the person feel disappointed and depressed about his hard work. Only vision can create a clear to the person to keep forward to achieve his goal in the long run. Lastly, as a leader, sometimes he is not about to show others how successful he is, and describe how many awards he received, but is about how to lead others with heart and stimulate their potential patiently, and balancing his life between healthy, financial, and relationship. This is because the purpose of life is more important than awards and achievement.

Recommendation

To me, I recommend this book for people who are interested in self-improvement, leadership and develop a new business idea in the market. This book not only contains leadership wisdom from the writer, it also describes past experiences and lessons from other leadership gurus in managing works and people as well.

For those are interested in this book, you can click this link:

https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Wisdom-Monk-Sold-Ferrari/dp/0007348401

Robin Sharma's Youtube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/user/sharmaleadership