Sep 27, 2021 | Deploy Yourself, Leadership and Management |
“Politicians are of no use.” “Bureaucrats just slow everyone down.” “The new CEO is no good. Look at what he did in his previous company.” While the above sentences don’t directly mention “responsibility”, all of them are blaming people for not taking responsibility...
Jan 14, 2021 | Deploy Yourself, 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...
Nov 10, 2020 | Deploy Yourself |
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...
Nov 2, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Life |
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...
Oct 30, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Life |
When faced with difficulties as human beings, our natural reaction is to avoid the situation rather than power through it. Years of evolution have wired our brains to seek the comfort of the familiar and avoid the discomfort that comes with new and challenging...
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 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 25, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Emotional Intelligence |
In my previous article on anger, we saw that anger hides what we care about. If we look deeper and take the time to introspect, anger can tell us what we really value, and which value has been violated that resulted in the anger. Anger can communicate a lot of...
Aug 20, 2020 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself |
Winning and Losing Is Everywhere Most of us grow up in this world in a culture where the idea of winning and losing is omnipresent. Movies often celebrate the victory of the good over the evil. We cheer for our teams in sports when they win. We strive to get better...
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...
Aug 10, 2020 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself, Life |
I still remember that morning of excitement. It was supposed to an relaxing long drive in my new car, but I had no idea how the day would turn up. As I started the engine and pushed down on the accelerator, I got busy admiring the posh interiors and the sophisticated...
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 20, 2020 | Deploy Yourself |
The dictionary defines procrastination as “the action of delaying or postponing something”. There was a time when I used to believe that procrastination is a bad habit and that only bad or weak people procrastinate. However, after reading a lot of psychology and...
Jul 5, 2020 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself |
If you have a lot to do, take regular breaks. Find out about the counterintuitive advice of taking breaks to get more done. Are you surging ahead in life? Is your life becoming too fast for comfort? Why not take a break? What did I just say? Do you think you have a...
Jun 30, 2020 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself |
What comes to your mind when you are asked about the most powerful investments you should make? Is it stocks? Is it bonds? Or a new house? Real estate is the safest investment, you might have heard. If you ask me, I would say, neither! Over the course of my life, with...
Jun 25, 2020 | Coaching, Deploy Yourself |
Have you ever achieved something you aimed for still felt like “meh”? Do you feel “empty” on the inside despite being successful by usual standards? Here is how to achieve meaningful success by overcoming our deep psychological need to play it...
Jun 19, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Questioning |
After leading teams for the last decade and a half, if there is one skill that has made the biggest difference in my ability to improve individual and team performance, it has been my ability to Ask Powerful Questions. This is not to say that other skills like...
Jun 15, 2020 | Deploy Yourself, Emotional Intelligence |
“Anger is the deepest form of compassion,” poet and philosopher David Whyte wrote. Most people do not associate anger with compassion. In fact, at first glance, it looks and feels like the exact opposite of compassion. But as with most emotions, the more attention we...
