Nov 24, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
I have a confession to make – I know almost nothing about people management and motivation. The more I learn about leadership and what motivates people to do their best work, the more I realise how little I know. Although few managers would admit they lack the...
Nov 20, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
Your manager is most likely a bad fit for being in a managerial role. I was a bad fit too when I got promoted to management as nobody told me that management is a completely different role that requires a new set of skills. People get promoted to management when they...
Nov 15, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
Culture plays a key role in determining an organization’s overall performance. It determines how employees interact with others within and outside the organization and give them a sense of direction. Ironically, executives rarely give culture the attention it...
Nov 5, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
People perform best when they feel safe and don’t have to watch over their shoulders. These days, uncertainty looms in almost every element of our lives. Hence, creating a safe workplace for people is in the best interest of any organization. At work, the...
Oct 15, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
Many people have a rather simplistic view of how people and teams perform. People don’t perform based on their abilities alone. Any person’s performance is the sum total of their own abilities and effort plus the prevalent culture in the company (and team). A...
Oct 10, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
Do you use feedback as a tool to improve performance? If your answer is yes, you are not alone. Most managers see (and use) feedback, most of which is negative or critical, as a tool to improve performance. If you give positive feedback too along with the negative...
Oct 5, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
According to this study cited in Forbes, more than half of the US workforce is unhappy. Gallup surveys show that nearly two-thirds of employees are disengaged at work. In my own experience of the last 15 years and the numerous stories I have heard from people in...
Sep 25, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
People are often capable of far more than we realize. It is not uncommon for people to work below their true potential (Kaplan, 2008). With the right knowledge and tools, we can learn to expand the capacity of our people, and get them to perform at a level they...
Sep 10, 2020 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people do look forward to coming to work in the morning. – John Mackey I have been leading teams for 12 years in companies such as Yahoo, Booking.com, etc in India...
Aug 15, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
If you are a leader or manage a team, it is not uncommon to come across someone in your team who intimidates you. This might be because they are better than you in a particular skill and that brings your insecurities to the fore. Or it might be because the person...
Jul 30, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
What causes employees to put themselves between a customer and bullets from a terrorist attack? It is very difficult to imagine anybody valuing their work so much that they put their lives at stake to protect customers. Yet, that is what many employees of the Taj...
Jul 25, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
Why would a monkey not go after a bunch of bananas placed within his reach? An experimenter puts 5 monkeys in a cage. High up at the top of the cage is a bunch of bananas. Underneath the bananas is a ladder. The monkeys immediately spot the bananas and one begins to...
Jun 9, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
I stood next to my car door, stunned and frozen in place. I had just walked out of my workplace to leave when a stranger walked up to me and casually handed me a large, white envelope. Divorce papers. My children were waiting at a friend’s house for me to fetch them....
Mar 10, 2020 | Emotional Intelligence, Leadership and Management |
Bryan, an 18-year-old, graduated high school at the top of his class. He then headed off to attend Columbia University. Now, Bryan feels petrified. He is convinced that the admissions department at Columbia has made a terrible mistake. He feels he does not deserve to...
Mar 29, 2019 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
One of the most fundamental human needs we all share is to make meaningful progress in what we are doing. At the workplace this means knowing how does the road ahead looks, and how can we learn and grow to the next milestone on that road. If you lead people, you can...
Apr 20, 2018 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
In today’s age of always-connected devices and nonstop notifications, we all have more to do each day than the hours can fit. Crossing items off the to-do list always feels good and gives one a feeling of accomplishment, but have we ever stopped and asked ourselves...
Apr 20, 2018 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
A Global World Today, we live in a globalized world which is more connected than ever before, and the movement of people and goods has never been easier. It is driven by economics and money, and it is possible to sit on your couch and order what you want from the...
Mar 8, 2017 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management, Life |
In today’s corporate environment, after a few years of doing your job well enough, chances are that you will be asked to step up and lead a team. You trained and studied to be good at your job, and now getting to manage people seems like a reward for a job well done....
Nov 11, 2016 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management, Life |
John was pushing on the gas as he didn’t want to be late for this meeting. If he can crack this deal, it would be a game changer for his company, and he had worked hard for it. But just as he was visualising what he would say in the meeting, his car engine fell silent...
Jul 2, 2012 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management, Life |
Mahatama Gandhi once said – “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves.” And indeed, it is one of the greatest myths of this world that we have to...
