7 Personal Habits of Every Aspiring CEO

Being a CEO is an incredibly lonely experience.

You're constantly under pressure and unsure about whom you can trust, which leads to wasted time and riding a roller coaster of uncertainty. Battling a never-ending list of expectations, you can make this struggle worse by neglecting your health and the people important to you.

It doesn't have to be this way.

It wasn't until I stepped down from Contour that I realized my workaholic drive was destroying my body, my mind, and my personal life. Working six days a week, I spent my twenties stuck behind a laptop. Now, in vowing not to repeat the same mistakes, I'm making sure these seven habits are a part of my day.

1. Exercise daily

Having been a athlete, you can say that being a CEO is significantly more strenuous. It isn't confined to a two-hour practice or 90-minute game. There's an expectation that you always have to be positive, energetic, and decisive, which drains every ounce of your energy. Think of exercising as one of the most important meetings you have, everyday. Don't skip it, and don't make excuses.

2. Take a break
Taking a full weekend off is not a vacation. The pile of work never goes away, and not only does your team need you mentally rested, they need to learn how to execute without you. To break a hub-and-spoke culture, take a multi-week vacation to validate how strong or weak your leadership really is. If the company crumbles without you, take that as a warning sign — and a sign of a problem you may have created without even realizing it.

3. Get a weekly massage
Everyone carries stress in different ways, but a weekly massage can help relieve that tension. If your company doesn't have medical insurance, you might join places like Massage Envy, which have multiple locations and offer fairly affordable massages. Think of it as part of the expense of running a company. It's well worth it.

4. Listen
For a long time, I was a lousy listener. My version of listening was taking the whiteboard pen and sharing my perspective. The discussion made me feel good, but it didn't encourage the people around me to think for themselves. Being a great listener takes patience and a commitment to being open. It also teaches you that you don't have all the answers, so you'll find your level of stress will diminish as you realize the people you've hired do have great solutions to your company's hardest problems.

5. Prioritize people
Relationships matter. Whether they are business connections, friendships, or family, they'll be the only thing left when you're done with the company, so don't expect them to wait around while you prioritize work: Interrupting dinner with just one more phone call. Skipping a friend's birthday for a surprise business trip. Missing time with your kids because you had to take your client out for dinner. These actions speak louder than words.

6. Talk to someone
Every CEO needs a trusted confidant. Even if that's not your significant other you can hire a coach, therapist, or a consultant who can help. Pick someone you trust, who is a fantastic listener, and is experienced at helping people understand emotions. Running a company comes with a huge amount of personal conflicts you don't even recognize until you begin sharing. The process gets easier with time, but make sure you confide in someone outside of your company. Otherwise, it could lead to a loss of confidence in your leadership. It's okay to admit you have no idea what you are doing. Just find the right person to share it with.

7. Get some rest

As a rule, you should pride yourself on the hours you've slept, not the hours you've missed. There are dozens of research articles on mental performance and a lack of sleep, but here's the bottom line: As an entrepreneur, you are thinking about hard, stressful problems all day. You need more sleep than the average person, not less.

Un-employment, More and more Pink Slips, Sackings and expected job loses going to touch 5,00,000 in India in 2013 -14. Is it not a local crisis creation?

Story by India Today:

Pradeep Chatterjee (name changed), 32, a senior correspondent with a media company in Mumbai, had everything going for him-a job he liked, a decent salary, and a new two-bedroom flat in Borivali overlooking the school where his eight-year-old son studied. But earlier this month, there were rumours that his firm was laying off at least 300 people, including several in the online team he worked with. On August 23, Chatterjee's worst fears came true. The HR head handed him and 44 of his colleagues the pink slip, along with two months' salary. As Chatterjee got into a final emotional huddle with his other 'sacked' colleagues, he could no longer hold back the tears. "I wouldn't have felt so devastated had I been thrown out for poor performance," he said.

Chatterjee is just one among hundreds of media professionals who have lost their jobs over the last two months, and joins thousands across various sectors such as automobiles, infrastructure, banking, and engineering as India nosedives into a dangerous vortex of economic malaise. The proportion of Indian workers gainfully employed slipped to 35.4 per cent in 2011-12, compared to 36.5 per cent in 2009-10, the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) said in June. This is a sizeable fall from an employment rate of 42 per cent in 2004-05, when the UPA government came to power for the first time.

Consultants say that if things keep moving in the direction they are, job losses across the country would touch 500,000 in 2013-14, similar to the levels at the time of the financial meltdown in 2008-09. India has lost five million jobs overall in the fiveyear period 2005-2010, the Planning Commission said in March this year, while only 2.76 million jobs were added. A hiring outlook survey by Naukri.com in July revealed a muted hiring sentiment for the remaining half of 2013 compared to what it was at the beginning of the year, with only 43 per cent of recruiters forecasting new job creation in the year's second half. "The economy is certainly not in the best of shape," says Ambarish Raghuvanshi, CFO, Naukri.com, part of Info Edge India.

"The hiring confidence can't overlook these parameters and hence reflects the slowdown." The Manpower Employment Outlook Survey for the third quarter (July-September) for 2013 said employers in India reported the weakest hiring outlook in eight years in the Asia-Pacific region. An estimated 4.5 million enter the Indian job market every year-750,000 engineers, 500,000 MBAs and at least three million other graduates.

"Given an evident slowdown in manufacturing and exports, the employment outlook by companies certainly looks weak,"  says Naina Lal Kidwai, president, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), and country head, HSBC India. "FICCI's Business Confidence Survey for the last quarter of financial year 2013 has reported bleak employment prospects vis-a-vis a year ago. A majority 65 per cent of the participants indicated no fresh hiring over the first two quarters of fiscal year (FY) 2013-14," she adds.

The situation seems worse off than 2008, when Indian companies were relatively unaffected and proceeded with expansions and overseas acquisitions. "The mood is unlikely to change, till the global and local macro economic issues play out," says Sonal Agrawal, CEO of Accord Group India, an executive search firm. "The 2008 slowdown was a global phenomenon, with its roots in the US. But Western economies are now reviving," adds E. Balaji, an HR expert and former CEO of manpower consultancy Randstad India.

That means the current crisis is a local creation in which India can hardly blame anyone else.

Read more at: http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/job-crunch-hits-indian-markets-will-you-be-fired-next/1/304653.html