Likky Lavji, is known as “The Blind Spot Navigator” and he’s a renowned keynote speaker. Likky helps people and organizations discover their blind spots to power performance. With over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience, Likky Lavji has been acknowledged by leading organizations, including Lenovo Canada, Ingram Micro, Royal Bank of Canada for his ability to redefine networking and his innovative approach to conducting business, giving value to others and showing people the tools to overcome barriers.
Below are some insights from Likky Lavji. Enjoy!
What is your personal definition of success?
- Success is a myriad of things that come into play:
Having real personal self-awareness of how your actions and behaviors affect others and how it affects your performance. In other words, having awareness of your BS, or as I like to call it, your blind spots - Having a real sense of your core values and beliefs and staying true to them. If you are a leader in an organization the core values and beliefs should be the guiding beacon to everything the organization does. And it is so important that the whole of the organization is aligned with those core values, its what keeps the company focused and moving forward.
- Having the ability to empower and impact people’s lives by giving value. Every individual by design of nature, whether it be your customers, your employees, your co-workers, they each have a desire to feel valued and connected.
When you can serve others by offering empathy, appreciation, consistency, & excellence, you build human connection and trust. These are the fundamental principles that build your individual uniqueness and unifies organizations. It also builds trust with your customers to a point where they no longer see you as a means to an end but as someone who creates an impact beyond a transaction.
Can you share the steps you take daily to improve?
Every morning I align my thoughts and do self-check-in. I ask my self what are the 2-3 small success I can do to impact others and provide value.
I also do a check-in throughout the day asking myself what Is my purpose for today, am I staying on course to my values and beliefs? For example before having a call with a client, or conference organizers I ask myself who are the people I am going to serve and what are their struggles and wants? What are the things I know I do really well that can best serve them?
I am always trying to improve on my listening skills of when others are communicating to me, its the mindfulness of bringing your mind to be clear of any background thoughts and being fully present and trying to build a connection with others.
What is your advice for someone making an important decision?
1. You must know your passion and purpose. Ask yourself these questions: The decision I am making it today, is it going to be meaningful? Will it give me fulfillment or momentary happiness. You see, fulfillment hits your inner core. It’s the thing that tells you your actions have impacted you in a way that brings outcomes to serve others. Studies have shown we are the happiest when we serve others. People function better from the gratification of serving others. My heritage is Indian and if you were to ask an Indian what is the true purpose of your life? He will likely say “seva” which is the Indian term for serving others.
2. Always look at your core values and beliefs. Ask your self the decision I am making does it align with my core values and beliefs? If it doesn’t and you still make that decision, somewhere down the line the misalignment from your decision and your core values and beliefs will show up. Whether it be lack of motivation, not feeling fulfilled, dreading the choice you made, etc.
Tell me about a specific moment that set you on the path you’re on now?
I had an IT company for 25 years so I knew what it took to be an entrepreneur, but what I could have learned more of was to be an effective leader that touched, moved and inspired the people that work for me. As you can imagine being in the IT world can be very stressful and demanding as customers want things working right away. And rightfully so because their business depends on it.
What I found was my employees were becoming frustrated and less motivated. When I was given this Book the Go Giver by Bob Burg is when I realized the importance of Value. I then went down to see Bob Burg and became so passionate about the simple philosophy of human emotion and how understanding it can change people’s lives. I started appreciating my employees and customers and really offering empathy. This is when I began to notice the change in my employees. They too started modeling to my customers what I was giving to my employees. And I could see this transformation happening in my company, my people, which then transcends to sales growth.
Since then I sold my IT company, and am now using my 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and what I know about personal and organizational blind spots and using that as my message to help people and organizations break their barriers on sales and business growth. I am loving my second passion, which is helping people to power performance. And in life, you will discover along the way many different passions as you evolve, but the essence of your passion should always lead you to help or bringing value to others.
If you look at the most successful companies out there like Apple, they shifted the entire globe by staying true to their passion – which was to “impact every individual by changing the way we think, work, learn and communicate”
If you could recommend one book for our audience, what would it be?
Definitely It would be “The Go Giver – A Little Book About A Powerful Business Idea”
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Which character traits do you value most?
Vulnerability, Courage, Authenticity, Appreciation, Mindfulness, Integrity
How do you push through tough times?
I step back. Identify what is happening now and how it relates to the big picture. Failures can either derail you and your organization or you can take the learnings from it and get back in the game and use those failures as your motivation for doing better and making sure that mistake does not happen again.
When I had my IT company I was going through a tough time, my customers were not happy, employees were stressed and not performing, the business started going down, to the point of shutting down in 6 months if things didn’t change. When I began looking at my core values and beliefs and then looking at the people in my company to see if they fit with the core value and beliefs of my company, I found a few people who were not aligned with that. And when I looked at their performance reviews those were the same people that had low-performance ratings out of the entire organization.
I made the toughest decision I ever had to make and that was to let go of these people knowing we would be short-handed and everyone would have to work harder to get the company into a more profitable state. But it was the tools I learned from Bob Burg, from all the personal development books and courses and brought into my company which pulled my team together. Within 3 months of extremely hard work, long hours we got back on track and I owe all of that to the people in my company. Because they shared the same principles of Value, appreciation, empathy, excellence, and consistency. was That’s when I knew the importance of always making sure your organization and its people must stay on course with the core value beliefs.
What inspires you?
Seeing the transformation in people and organizations after having worked with them, or done a keynote speech that inspires people to take action. When I see people all of sudden having revenue growths, their people are excited about working and new ideas and collaborations are happening as a result of what they have learned in my coaching and workshops, that’s my fulfillment.
I had this one young female entrepreneur who was struggling with sales and her team. We spent literally 3 months trying to hone in on the company’s passion and purpose, their Core values and how to build connections, customer loyalty and how to bring value to your opportunities.
By the time 6 months rolled around she looked at her financials and had increased her net profit by 30% compared to last year. And she still had 4 months left to go. Just recently she called me up and said she has secured another $200,000 contract.
When you see these successes that’s when you know your impact on others.
How do you manage and prioritize opportunities?
My google calendar is my savior and I have a fantastic virtual assistant who helps me manage my schedule and appointments.
And Evernote is a fantastic tool I share with my team so they have up to date info from my meetings. That is captured and put into my CRM Active Campaign. Immediately a thank you email is sent to the person I have met and in that email, I will share value-added resources of books, articles I have read online, and videos that could benefit them.
What advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?
Find your passion and purpose. What is it that you really want to do that will fulfill you, that will get you excited every morning to jump out of bed? Money should not be the motivator for choosing your career.
Also, develop your self-awareness early. Read books. Take self-development courses. It will really set you apart from others and you will attract more people in your conversations.
Lastly find a mentor who can help you find out your passion, who can guide you and be a source for inspiration and teaching.