Ricky’s Online Business Blog

I have recently helped conduct a survey on “Have You Got A Lady Boss?” I have promised to share what I personally think about a lady boss.  So here it is.

On a social level, I find it easier and more comfortable dealing with girls than guys.  I have more and closer female friends than guy friends.  Normally you may see me associating with girls more than guys.  I think this has something to do with my childhood upbringing.

But when it comes to working, I find it much more difficult dealing with a lady boss than a male boss.  “Boss” here is not limited to workplace but also other settings such as a team leader working together for non-work purposes.

Perhaps it’s because the few lady bosses I have had in the past are all quite strong leaders, even stronger than many male leaders I have come across.  They often have very high expectations out of me.

From personal experience, it has not been very pleasant experience working with lady bosses.  But thanks to these lady bosses, I have learned much and corrected myself from the experience dealing with each and every of these strong personalities.

Personally, I prefer working with male boss.  But I’m not in control of who will be assigned as my boss.  Perhaps God gives me a difficult boss in order to train me up.  So I should take whoever assigned to me as my leader.

I guess in future, women leadership will be very common, that perhaps one generation from now, such survey on lady boss is no longer meaningful any more.

It is a fact of life.  We need to deal with anyone who come into our life.  I guess the problem is more on “managing our boss”, rather than the lady bosses themselves.

Right after my secondary school, I joined one network marketing company.  I managed to recruit over 40 downlines in my group.  Within a few months I rose to the so-called Manager post.

We were trained for positive thinking.  One compulsory reading we must have was Think & Grow Rich.  We were trained to visualize success and think “if I think I can, I can”!

I believed in the “law of attraction”, though it may not be called this name at that time.  I believed I could achieve anything I wanted, anything my mind focused on and attracted.  At the age of 19, I thought I was at the top of the world.

But things did not turn out well:

• My group collapsed.  Many downlines migrated to another network marketing company.
• The company also folded itself in a few years.
• I lost money and trust of many friends.
• And many other setbacks in life.

Recently I made a presentation on the concept of self-efficacy.  It is the belief that we can complete a certain task completely.  It also refers to our general trait that we think we can succeed in a variety of situations.

To make a long story short, while self-efficacy is very important, it is not everything.  We humans have limit on what we can do, and we need to be humble enough to recognize our limit.

However, as Stephen Covey, the author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, proposes that as we focus on what we can do now (our circle of influence), and not on what we are concerned of but can’t do now (our circle of concern), we will stretch our circle of influence bigger and bigger.

Please go through my presentation and see if you can find out anything or not

Are you a blogger?  If you are in one of these situations, perhaps it’s time to consider stop blogging, or at least adjust how you do it:

• You do not know why you are blogging.
• You do not know what to blog about.
• You do not know who your target readers are.
• You do not know what you can offer to readers.
• You do not feel happy and at peace blogging
• You blog because others do, or others asked you to.
• Your blog is just a copycat of another more established blog.
• Your blog is not serving what you intend to achieve.
• Your blog conversion rate is too low.
• Very few people read or subscribe to your blog.
• You find blogging eat up too much of your time and energy.
• You find blogging become more important than other things in life such as your job and relationships.
• You find blogging working against your life objectives!
• Do you have anything else to add?  Please feel free.

Actually this is a checklist for myself.  I started blogging since years ago on Google’s Blogspot.  Since then, I have stopped and restarted a few blogs.

During my previous blogs, I could easily answer yes to many items in above checklist.  When one blog was not working, it’s time to take a hard look!

At last, I settled down with this blog since April 2008 and it’s been one year plus now.  Hopefully it will stay long this time