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Inspiration versus Perspiration

In simple words, inspiration is when someone  motivates you through their actions or words to do something. Perspiration is sweating it out after a physical activity.

In life, we need both perspiration and inspiration.   Managers learn to work hard as they grow up the career ladder. They not only learn how to perspire but master the art of making their team members also perspire.  This is a critical attribute to succeed in career and life.

However, as we grow in the organisational hierarchy, we have to grow from being a manager to a leader. The manager focuses on tasks while the leader focuses on people. While accomplishing your task is a basic necessity in organisations, motivating your people is critical for success and growth.

In my books, when managers get their jobs done they make their team perspire. On the other hand, when leaders create an environment for their team to give their best, they inspire them. Thus managers focus on perspiration while leaders on inspiration.

Is perspiration necessary ? In my view, we need to focus on tasks and hence it may be necessary to work hard and perspire. But beyond a point, when team members feel empowered and are able to accomplish their tasks without any guidance they need to be inspired to move to the next level.

So, in the organisational context, we have to strike a fine balance between perspiration and inspiration. It may be worthwhile to conclude that as we grow in the hierarchy, we have to evolve as an inspirational leader rather than be known a perspirational manager.

This may be equally true in life. Even in our own families as children grow up we need to inculcate the value of hard work. We may call this as perspiration. But as they approach teenage and grow beyond, we as parents have to be a role model so that they are inspired by our actions.  We may realize sooner than later that teenage children are no longer interested in our advice. They may follow our actions more than  our words.

It may be worthwhile to conclude that as leaders, managers or parents we have to lead by example. Our actions speak louder than words. So, according to me, perspiration may be getting things done whereas inspiration may be role modelling what you expect from others.

Time to strike the right balance between perspiration and inspiration. Try yourself as you are the best judge.

S Ramesh Shankar

Uncertainties of Life


I was travelling back from Seoul to Mumbai after an official meeting last week. I was waiting in the lounge for my next flight for Mumbai.  When I opened my phone, I got a message that our employees’ union president had died.  He was a progressive union leader and a thought leader.  He was physically fit and used to run marathons every year.  He recently retired from our company after working for 40 years.  A rare feat for any employee.  He goes for a morning jog, then gets admitted to a hospital and is declared dead.  Life is so uncertain – you have to experience it to believe it.

If we look back at our own lives, it is no different.  We begin the day with some plans and end the day with something else.  Many a time, we have to manage the change without necessarily creating it.  Such is life.  We have to accept it and move on.  While it is easy to reflect on it,  it is very tough to face it.  Imagine being in the family of my union president.  He was a wonderful human being and physically and mentally fit.  I met him last week and we discussed on how we can further strengthen management and union relationships.  Such was the vision of the man.  Then one fine day after a morning jog, he collapses in a hospital bed.  How can one digest it ? Its unthinkable in anyone’s life.

However, such is uncertainty of life today.  I was reading an article on the flight of a very successful professional in the USA.  He was the envy of all his colleagues.  He had done excellently in his career and had a great family and enviable wealth. One fine day he gets up and gets the news that he has lost his job.  Can we think this was a bad dream ?  It is not so.  It is the reality of his life , that day.  Whether one likes it or not, one has to accept it and move on.

It happens in professional life and it happens in sport and in our personal lives too. We had a captain of our national hockey team.  He is prolific player and a great backbone of our team.  He had some personal issues and lost his captaincy one fine day.  One does not know if the personal issues led to his loss of captaincy but the fact that a successful player loses his recognition at the pinnacle of his career shows how uncertain life is.  An olympic aspirant was dropped from the national team when she had gone home to pack her bags for the trip.

The photo above was Uday Mahale, the president of our union, who was running marathons every year.  But after his morning jog, he collapsed on the jogging track and was declared dear on arrival in the hospital.  Such is the uncertainty of life.

Most of us postpone to live life to the fullest.  We think we can do that in the future.  We think today is not the right time to be happy.  We have a lot of responsibilities in life so our celebrations can wait.  We need to realise that tomorrow is today and today is now.  Lets try to live each day as if a tomorrow does not exist.  Lets try to do all the good we can today without waiting for that elusive tomorrow.  If we postpone for tomorrow what we can accomplish today, we can never be sure if we can make it.  We need to learn to live life as if it exists only for today.

The best time to live life to its fullest is now.

What do you think ?

S Ramesh Shankar

Circle of Life

A circle has no boundaries and all edges are embedded in itself. Our daily life is like a circle. We all have good and bad events embedded seamlessly in a single day. I got up with a great news of a new born child in my family circle. Then this was followed by the information of a terrorist attack in some part of Kashmir, where innocent citizens were killed. Then the news of a colleague winning an award in an international contest was recieved. The day ended with the news of a tragic accident of a professional colleague on the expressway.

Every day is a circle. We get news – good, bad and ugly. Our moods swings from one extreme to the other. While we rejoice on hearing a good news and by the time the joy settles, we are saddened by a sad news. Then we recover with some good news before we are immersed with some tragic news.  

How do we cope with this ? Is life also like a circle ? May be true. If we reflect on life, we realize that it is true. We have moments of joy in life and want those moments to last forever but very soon we are drowned in sorrow. Before we recover, we are again surprised by some joyous events in life. So, it is a cycle and we have to adapt to take the good and bad in our stride.

It may be easy to write about the circle of life rather than experience it. I am not sure if there are many ideas of how to deal with it rather than experience it yourself. One of the ways of dealing with this variance in life is to minimise our expectations from life and living. If we are content with what we have and what we get in life, may be it will help us to deal with what we don’t. It’s a question of managing expectations in life.

The ability to deal with our emotions will determine our success in life. Life is a full circle and we have to learn to celebrate it that way.  Our ability to be equanamous in dealing with all moments of life defines our happiness.

Let us learn to be in the middle of the circle and deal with life with poise all the time.

S Ramesh Shankar