Mar 17, 2021 | Leadership and Management |
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...
Feb 18, 2021 | Leadership and Management |
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...
Jan 27, 2021 | Leadership and Management |
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...
Jan 22, 2021 | Leadership and Management, Life |
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...
Dec 20, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
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...
Dec 15, 2020 | Leadership and Management, Questioning |
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...
Dec 10, 2020 | Leadership and Management |
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...
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....
