Foundational Principles and Core Values

One of the foundational principles of Voohy is that the best professionals to work with are

1. Kind
2. Smart

That's it! These foundational principles highlight the core values of kindness and smartness.

This is true whether you're in a leadership role or not. Now, of course, those two words are deceptively simple. However, the individuals who work on constantly improving on both of these values, are the ones who people want to work with the most.

Every feature in Voohy is designed to make you either smarter, or kinder. Usually, both.

Why Kindness?

Why do we focus on kindness? Aren't leaders supposed to all about making tough decisions, and not concerned with the mushy-wushy stuff?

There has been extensive research showing that one of the main reasons people leave their jobs is because of their manager. Usually the problem is not just that those managers are not smart - but more importantly, they showed lack of kindness is some capacity.

Think of your worst manager. Were they kind?

Keep in mind that kindness doesn't mean necessarily mean politeness. Often being kind requires you to keep it real instead of keeping it nice. Honesty of part of being kind. And sometimes being honest means stating uncomfortable facts. Kindness means showing empathy for a person and making sure you do the best for them. Over time this sustained kindness generates trust.

Being truly kind requires being aware of your own, as well as others' emotional state. This kind of emotional awareness requires a certain kind of smartness in itself.

Why Smartness?

When I think of the best managers I worked for, I always found things I learnt from them regularly. Whether it was by simply observing them, or by something they said, they made me smarter.

When people think of great leaders, they think of people being inspired. Being stirred into action. Doing things they never thought possible. What people seldom mention is that great leaders made them grow.

So what do we mean by smart? It covers a number of things.

How to do the fundamentals of your job is part of smartness. So is dealing with uncertainty. So is advocating for yourself and others. So is reflecting on past experiences and learning from it. So is asking the right questions. So is knowing when to keep quiet and lift up the voices of others. So is dealing with 'difficult' colleagues. So is communicating clearly and setting the right context.

All this and more is part of smartness. All this and more is part of what is required of leadership.

Methodology

The Voohy methodology is defined by a set of fundamental concepts

• Reflecting on your thoughts and actions is one of the best things you can do to grow yourself.
• Structuring your thoughts can be immensely beneficial, and help you gain clarity and insight.
• We can learn from the wisdom of others.
• There is an immense amount of knowledge and wisdom which is inaccessible to the people that need it.
• Unlocking that knowledge + giving a space for structured reflection can create amazingly smart and kind leaders.

Every feature in Voohy is designed with the intention of either providing structured reflection, or unlocking knowledge from the best sources.

It is only when you synthesize high-quality outside knowledge with high quality internal reflection, that you end up growing and improving in a way you never thought you could.

Like any self-improvement resource, Voohy also requires that the person using it invests some amount of time using it.It won't magically make you better if you do not invest time in your own improvement. But if you do, then Voohy will help you level up as a leader, manager and operator better than any other way.

With you,

• 

  Shwetank Dixit

  Founder of Voohy