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Most Recent Articles

What Not To Do When Conflicts Happen?

We all deal with conflicts in the workplace. In the last 12 years of my professional career, I have had my own share of conflicts. That has left me with some learnings about how to navigate through them successfully. This article is the second in a series of articles. To understand conflicts better, find the first one here. While there are...

Understanding Conflicts Better – The First Step to Conflict Resolution

CONFLICT! Is that a word that scares you? Is that something that makes you run in the opposite direction? Do you wish you had the skills to handle conflicts better? If you are like most people, you are no fan of conflicts and have often been caught up in the maze of a conflict. I certainly have, and I can honestly attest that conflict (or the...

How To (and not to) Deal with an Emotional Employee

As I wrote previously, every human emotion is valid. However, the story behind them might not be, and we always have the choice of how to respond to an emotion. If we want to master how to deal with others’ emotions, our own emotional mastery is the prerequisite. Studies have shown that emotions like frustration, cynicism, enthusiasm, etc are as...

Don’t Allow Yourself to Use the Word TIRED

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine, who has been a state-level Taekwondo Champion for the state of California. She was telling me about her strenuous training program which she used to follow when she was training. Among other things, the one thing which she told me was that she was not allowed to use the word "tired" even if...

Why We Should Break the Safety Wall Around Us (to be Happy)

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult. " - Seneca We all have built 'safety walls' around us that are unconscious to us, and are strengthened over time. They determine what we can and cannot do, what we try and what we don't. Almost all our actions are determined by these...

How to Deal with Your Emotions In The Workplace And Make Them Work For You

Fresh out of college, when I started to work professionally as a 21 year old, I dived into work passionately and emotionally. Not only did I do great work during that year, but I also had a lot of fun with my team, many of whom are still my good friends. I was emotionally attached to the work and the people around me, and I considered that a...

How to Use The Surprising Power of Compound Interest in Life

When I was young my mother used to wake me up 5 minutes earlier than I had told her to and made me study any of my school books before getting ready to go to school. I often used to ask her - “how would studying this for just 5 minutes make any difference?” And she would say - “You will know that by the end of the year.” It took me a few years to...

Five Things A Leader Must Do By Default

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. By promoting the good performers to be managers and leaders, people have assumed...

How our Listening Filters Create our Reality and Limit Us

One of my most vivid memories from my childhood is when my grandmother mistook me for my father. I first thought she had gone crazy, but I was relieved when it was diagnosed as cataract in her eyes. Within a few days and after a small surgery, I was back to being her grandson. That was an easy fix — I thought at that time. I had no idea that many...

How to Listen Well and the Massive Difference It Can Make

Listening is one of the most basic skills required in human communication. Then isn’t it strange that there is no formal training on how to listen in our school and professional system? The lack of emphasis on listening could be because we believe that listening comes naturally to us as human beings. But from what I have learned in life,...

Investing in Yourself and Making Powerful Choices

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 and it came to a stop soon after. After struggling for a few seconds, he...

The Power of a Pause

When Atal Behari Vajpayee was the Prime Minister of India, I always wondered what could be the reason behind the pauses he took while speaking. Sometimes I thought it was because of his old age, and sometimes people even made fun of him for this habit, but I was always amused by the wisdom of his words - not just his political speeches, but his...

The Only Real Opponent You Have, In Work or in Life, Is Yourself

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 fight our battles in the outside world. Everyone who has reached the pinnacle of...

Are you Interested? or Are you Committed?

When one says he is committed to something, does it mean a trade? Does it mean that I will do this or that only if you do some other this or that? Does this commitment expect something in return from the other side? Will the commitment waver if one doesn't get a response from the other side? In my experiences over the years, I have realized that...