My Writings
Reflections on Life and LeadershipGet Started
Emotional Intelligence
- How to Deal with Your Emotions In The Workplace And Make Them Work?
- Why Our Emotions Can Be Overwhelming? Learn 5 Steps to Deal with Them Effectively
- How To (and not to) Deal with an Emotional Employee?
- The Role and Importance of Emotions in Our Professional and Personal Lives
- Discover 10 Myths and Realities about Emotions, And Change Your Life?
- Do You Know Your Emotional Triggers? And What To Do When You Are Triggered?
- How Can We Overcome Negative Emotions And Create Joy And Fulfilment?
Conflict Resolution
- Understanding Conflicts Better – The First Step to Conflict Resolution
- What Not To Do When Conflicts Happen?
- How to Prepare for a Conflict Resolution Conversation?
- Eight Practical Tips for Making A Conflict Resolution Conversation More Effective
- Focus on Interests, Not on Positions – And Make Every Conversation More Productive
- What To Do If You Can’t Achieve Consensus in a Conflict?
- There Are Only Perspectives, No Truth. And Five Perspectives You Can Use Anytime
Most Recent Articles
One-on-One Meetings – How To Prepare, Questions To Ask, And Best Practices
In recent times, there has been a drastic shift in how organizations around the world view 1-on-1 meetings. For a long time, communication between managers and their employees typically revolved around either occasional over-the-desk check-ins or group meetings. Without a regularly scheduled 1-on-1 meeting, employees don’t have an option for...
8 Leadership Skills & Qualities to Lead Yourself and Others
Many people view leadership with a narrow lens - as simply directing others to meet certain goals. However, leadership is not a role; it is a mindset. It is about taking a stand and operating from a place of responsibility in all situations - and that includes the possibility of making mistakes and stumbling on the way. A good illustration of why...
How to Answer People’s Questions To Serve Them Best
Whether it is from those who work under us or our coworkers, we are all faced with questions in our daily lives. Of course, not all questions may warrant a response. But when a reasonable person genuinely enquires about something, it is important to listen and respond in a manner that serves them best. The truth is that answering questions...
6 Things You Must Not Do As a Leader To Ensure High Team Performance
While there are enough leadership experts, there isn’t any one-size-fits-all manual for leadership. That is because every team is different, every employee is different, and every leader is different. Leadership by definition means working with people, and people are more unpredictable and inconsistent than we might like to believe. It is easier...
5 Ways to Influence & Impact Your Emotions
Our emotions play a major role in determining the quality of our lives. Have you ever asked yourself why some people live a life full of joy and contentment while others struggle with anger and depression? It all comes down to how you cope with life’s stressors and unexpected events. No one is immune to emotions like cynicism, anger, and...
6 Advantages of Strengths-Based Leadership and Management (And Why Should Managers Stop “Fixing” People?)
Does your manager focus only on your weaknesses and never talks about your strengths? You are not alone. According to Gallup, only one out of 3 employees would say they have the freedom to do what they excel at every day. That's because many managers tend to focus more on fixing their employees' mistakes than promoting a strengths-based...
8 Reasons We Should Know Our Values, Worth, and Purpose
A lot of my coaching work involves working with people to figure out what their deepest held values are, and what they consider important in life. It is often surprising that many people have no idea what their values are. And that included me too for a long long time. If I introspect, I realize that I had never thought of my values before I...
5 Steps To Deploy Yourself And Live An Authentic Life
A lot of us, especially in our youthful days, struggle with how to deploy ourselves in the world. Instead of being true to ourselves and charting our own unique course, we tend to follow paths that others have decided on our behalf. However, if we take the long-term view, taking the path less traveled and Deploying Ourselves can make all the...
7 Essential Work Skills For The Future – The 2020s And 2030s
Do you remember a time when you couldn’t ‘Google’ something? Or had to rely on a piece of paper to find your way to a location? Or when ‘social networking’ just meant meeting up with people in real life? Our world is changing fast, with new technologies and ways of doing business. So much has changed since 2000 - and the next 20 years will be no...
How to Train, Grow, and Manage Your Middle-Level Leaders and Managers?
Middle management is usually the weakest link in the chain of every organization. A study that gathered data from the most unengaged employees found that middle-level managers form the biggest bulk of the bottom five percent. The results are startling, considering they play a key role crucial to the company's success. They have a direct impact on...
20 Questions Every Manager Must Ask In One-on-One’s To Help People Find And Do The Best Work Of Their Lives
As a leader, my most important meetings are my 1-on-1’s with my direct reports. It is the single best investment of my time, and yet I have seen most leaders clueless about its importance. These 20 questions will help you turn your 1-on-1 meetings into sources of insights and connection. Insights into the desires and fears of the human being...
Know What Great Managers Do? A List of 8 Expectations From Managers That Employees Have.
According to research by Gallup, the most common reason why people leave their jobs is bad managers and bosses. The study, which questioned more than one million working Americans, revealed that 75% of workers who left their jobs did so because of their managers and not necessarily the position itself. No matter how many perks a position offers,...
9 High Leverage Skills We Should All Learn (And Why Aren’t We Teaching Them Already?)
“It's not only children who grow. Parents do too. As much as we watch to see what our children do with their lives, they are watching us to see what we do with ours. I can't tell my children to reach for the sun. All I can do is reach for it, myself.” - Joyce Maynard From a young age, children are taught various things. However, most of the...
10 Prerequisites for Management I Learned from Bad Bosses and Being a Bad Manager Myself
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 skills required to do their job, the reality is that most don't have a clue. According...
I Got Promoted To Management. Three Reasons Why That Was A Bad Idea And Doesn’t Work
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 are good at their current jobs. I got promoted to management this way too....
How To See The World Differently – To Create New Possibilities, New Actions, and New Results
Imagine this. You are moving teams within your company today. Today is the first day you meet your new colleagues, and they greet you warmly. You meet your new boss, and he asks about your well-being and informs you about the team and the wonderful work they do. He gives you space to settle in, provide all the help and support you need to do your...
A 6 Step Framework To Take Your Team Culture From Blame to Accountability
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 deserves, and the consequences are always detrimental. If you fail to shape your...
How To Use Both Conscious and Subconscious Mind to Maximise Creativity And Solve Our Biggest Problems?
We would all agree that our mind is our most important asset. The human brain is often called the most sophisticated machine in the universe. Everything we do is only possible because of our brains. Be it writing a letter, loving our family members, playing a game, preparing a presentation, or planning for the future - none of these...
How To Create Psychological Safety At Work
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 greatest threat people perceive these days is harm to their psychological identity -...
How to Powerfully Step into the New Year 2021
I think it was 1989 when I, for the first time, realized that the 1st of January was a special day. The biggest change for me, one that always took a few weeks to get used to, was to write 1990 instead of 1989 in our school notebooks daily. While the whole world celebrated and wished each other on the 1st of Jan, nothing much else seemed to have...