#bob eide

At Aegis Capital Corp., Robert Eide is well known for creating a healthy work environment. Workplace competition is common and often it is a good and healthy element. It makes the staff more energized, more engaged and more productive. But there are also adverse effects of this competition. It can lead to long resentment, stress and lowered confidence levels. Some people are by nature competitive and survive in competitions while there are others who are afraid of contests.

What should you do? As a business owner, you should foster healthy competition at your workplace and avoid any kind of harmful effect. How do you do that? Here are a few tips for you…

Make the Competition Enjoyable

There is eventually competition at work. Every member desires to perform well, get recognized and seek a promotion. Do not make workplace competition a serious affair. Add a fun element and keep it light.

Promote Healthy Competition

Competition is bound to create conflict amongst employees. As a business owner, you should teach team members how to go for a healthy debate and share opinions openly. Such healthy competition promotes improvement and innovation.

Monitor the Effects of Competition

You should observe the track your workplace competition takes, not only in business but also your employees. Are your employees becoming uncooperative or are they snapping one another? If the competition starts to go off track, you should call for discussion and sort out the problem and if required, you can call off the competition.

Encourage Competitions in Teams

Competition amongst individuals is likely to go wrong. It can lead to a situation where everyone wants to be in the first position. On the contrary, team competition is much healthier and entails collaboration, which is necessary in modern workplaces. Try to have balance in teams by selecting members with diverse strength levels. This creates effective teams on one hand, and on the other, gives members a chance to learn from one another during competition.

Encourage Competition with Oneself

A competition which focuses on evaluating personal ability instead of out rating others is motivating. Encourage business professionals to make their business performance better. For instance, one should try to raise his sales numbers in a month. One team can compete with another team.

Provide a Reward

You should have rewards for the competition. Now, rewards for competition in workplaces depend on the kind of competition, nature of business and the people involved in it. For example, in some workplaces, the winning team may be satisfied with a trophy and recognition in the meeting, while, in other workplaces, teams might want to get an early leave on Fridays. Again, others might demand a bigger reward like vacation packages or bonus for achieving big sales.

Be Focused on the Goal

It is good when employees are excited about competitions but, they should become so much excited that they forget their ultimate goal. For instance, if the competition measures the number of calls a customer service department takes in one day, then they should focus on speed. It does not mean that they should rush through the calls and reduce the quality of service of the business.

Performance of Aegis Capital Corp employees is unparalleled. Do you know why? It is because the company gives emphasis on self-improvement for all its members. One cannot have business success past their own personal development. One should improve from the inside to achieve success in life and business. Robert ‘Bob’ Eide opines that working on self-improvement is as important as building a business.

Self-improvement Promotes Business Success – How? 

The effort one makes in improving themselves can be portrayed in business in the most surprising way. Have a look at the positive impacts of self-development on business… 

✓ Improve Knowledge Base In the words of Henry Ford “Anyone who stops learning is old. Anyone who keeps learning stays young.” Thus, one cannot enhance business without intellectual growth. Learning helps boost business thinking. 

✓ Increase Confidence Level Confidence is essential for moving ahead in any field. Personal growth helps increasing confidence levels which impacts business in a positive way.

✓ Discover New Systems Self-improvement can help a business professional to clarify what is essential for them. One also develops the ability to create innovative systems for the business like hiring new team members or learning how effectively they can delegate tasks. Experts are of the opinion, those who spends time in developing themselves have a greater chance of achieving success in business.

How to improve oneself? 

Self-improvement or personal growth is a long-term process. It does not happen overnight. One should give time for improving themselves. Becoming a clever person and a business executive has an everlasting impact on the success of business. 

- In the first place, a person should be able to indentify things that matter in their life, career and values. They should be able to understand their aim in life and business. When an individual is confident about their purpose and values, they can attract people sharing similar values. Success in business is achieved at a faster rate when like-minded professionals commit to a mission. So, with self-development, one can attract the right business professionals, surround themself with those people, and find success in the long run. 

- There is no age of learning. Albert Einstein said, “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death.” Learning new and innovative things will help a person to improve constantly. Reading new things about business gives an individual the chance to learn new approaches and strategies and understand how to implement them. Even if a business professional understands how to communicate better, he can become an efficient business leader. Learning new things enhances the knowledge base and hence, makes a person more confident.

 - Talk less negative things about yourself. You might be the biggest critic of yourself but you should also acknowledge what is good and right for you. It is always advisable to make effort to beat your weaknesses but, at the same time, you should remove negative self-talk. The more an individual becomes a positive person, the more likely they are to achieve success.

 - A flourishing personal life is also a crucial element in self-improvement. A person cannot maximize their potential if they do not take care of themselves. It not only involves taking care of their health but also taking care of all spheres of their life 

– social, mental, physical, spiritual and emotional.

Robert Eide, being a business executive at Aegis Capital Corp, knows what it takes to make a business stand and sustain it through all kinds stress. He has experienced various types of stress and has learned to overcome them. A business professional aiming to reach the top ranks will experience stress at certain times. Businesses of all types, small as well as large have stress. Very few people know the best ways of reducing stress levels.There are some highly effective methods of keeping stress in control and conducting business activities smoothly. Learn these methods and despite what is occurring in one’s personal and professional life, we believe you will be able to ward off the negative effects of stress.

Remember the positive aspects of your life

People generally concentrate on certain sectors of their life (primarily the negative or worst performing parts), ignoring the major parts of their lives that are actually doing well. Take paper and pen and make a note of the things that are working smoothly in life. You're sure to be surprised seeing that the list is pretty long. Now, stick this note in a place that it is visible throughout the day. Following this, your mood and perspective will change in no time.

Be clear about the to do list

Clarity brings serenity. Sometimes, people feel stressed about the amount of work they have to do. It is always advisable to be extremely precise about the tasks a person needs to do. Highlight the crucial tasks and you will find that mountains of work become smaller.

Try the breath therapy

Entrepreneurs and business professionals often complain of stress. They should try a simple exercise –

“take a deep breath”

"while exhaling the air imagine that all stress and problems are also leaving”

Repeating this 3 times, you're sure to feel relaxed and will find that stress has dissipated.

Help others

One of the best techniques to reduce stress is to remove the attention from oneself. When an individual devotes time in helping people around him/her, they get less time to think about their own problems. Sound strange? They have a connection! One of the reasons stress is commonly seen in corporate professionals is that they are incessantly thinking of their situations and issues, instead of others. One needs to keep a balance between the two. This thought process will add drastically to your leadership skill set. There is nothing more gratifying than lending a helping hand to others, or showing generosity.

Keep the surrounding environment clean

At Aegis Capital Corp., we believe that learning from the experience of others is important. Here, Robert Eide shares his thoughts on a business book that anyone could benefit from reading. ‘Good to Great’ is a classic business book by Jim Collins that talks about companies that were “good” for a long time and then became “great”. The book makes an attempt to find an answer to see how the companies became great. The one word that describes this book is ‘Discipline’. A company that becomes great from good needs disciplined action, disciplined thought and disciplined people. Disciplined People –It implies having proper business executives and keeping their focus on excellence. Disciplined Thought – It means business should be honest about facts and avoid being sidetracked. Disciplined Action – It indicates the right action that understands what should be  achieved and what should not.

Diagrammatic Representation of Good to Great concept is right here:

LEVEL 5 LEADERSHIP   Jim Collins has seen that all great companies have Level 5 Leaders. These are great leaders who have knowledge, good working habits, managerial qualities and effective leadership together with humility and will. This combination makes these business professionals great.

FIRST WHO, THEN WHAT It is the second concept under disciplined people. Quality of a leader together with other quality members in a team is important for a company to become great. Now, what is the meaning of “first who, then what”? It implies that a business should not first decide its goal and then hire professionals for doing it rather it should first have correct people in his organization. Then motivate those right people to work for what a business is aspiring to do.

FACE BRUTAL FACTS When a company has Level 5 Leadership and the right people, it is capable of excelling in its performance. This will help the organization to confront brutal facts without any loss of hope. An organization can achieve great results when it makes good decisions and executes them well. Again, for making good decisions a business has to confront facts no matter how uncomfortable or brutal they are.  

HEDGEHOG CONCEPT A good company to become great should behave like a hedgehog. They should focus on doing what they are best at and should not get distracted. Getting distracted is very easy and even great companies have to strive to avoid distractions. Thus, a company should do what it is best at, passionate about and what its economy supports.

CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE Having discipline of action avoids bureaucracy meaning that there is no need to control the actions of people. Most companies cannot succeed not because there is lack of opportunity but because they are thinly spread and cannot use the opportunity. Culture of discipline implies that a company will have plenty of people capable of taking consistent actions together with the hedgehog principle.