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Craft Your Vision Even When You Are Not A “Visionary”
As we grow in leadership roles, having a vision and communicating that to our teams becomes essential. Senior leaders often bring it to me as their challenge. Even though they already have a track record of delivering results, the executive level expects leaders to inspire through vision and alignment. Unfortunately, the new execs sometimes feel stuck on how else they would lead. In this article, I listed systematic ways to craft an inspiring vision. 1. Identify The Root Cause of Your Challenge Discomfort with Ambiguity If you tend to be more detail-oriented and not comfortable with ambiguity, visioning could be hard for you. Some have a misconception that a vision…
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Career satisfaction, Coaching, Personal Brand, productivity, Self-leadership, Stress Management, Time Management
A Workshop Emerged from the Themes of Coaching Tech Clients
After 12 years of coaching software engineers to VPs in the tech industry, I found this common theme: feeling fulfilled about our work and contribution is challenging. Managing a thriving relationship with the boss, peers, and other stakeholders is not easy. They would always want more from us; our passion would be interpreted as aggressiveness, our analytical thinking style would be seen as a lack of executive presence. And the list goes long. In addition, managing a family, kids, along full-time demanding work becomes a losing battle at times. No wonder 55% of the adult population feels Languishing, a lack of zest. As high-performing, high-achieving leaders and individual contributors, all of my…
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Career satisfaction, Communication, Executive Presence, Happiness, Leadership, Personal Brand, Self-leadership
Is “Authenticity” Backfiring On You? Here Is Why
Theresa, a senior developer in a tech firm, said that their management encouraged them to be authentic. It prompted her to be passionately sharing some of her opinions. There was only one problem: others saw it as negativity bias, resulting in some stern feedback from his manager. Prakash, a senior Director, was frustrated with his team’s progress and didn’t hide it during the team meeting. It cost him a promotion. Jim, a business development manager, said that he felt lonely to be constantly fighting for the right thing when others were too comfortable tolerating the mediocre decisions the team was making. All three stories have one thing in common. They…
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Managing up/Self-promotion : What To Do About It
In my recent survey, an amazing 79% of people said that Managing-up/Self-promotion is the most challenging aspect of their work. I didn’t expect it at all! I then started thinking about it more and realized it is the tip of the iceberg. Based on my experience, the real issue underneath is our reactive mode. A more effective approach is to be purposeful in our engagement and align it with our bigger vision and core values. Deviations are fine as long as they are exceptions rather than the rule- as it doesn’t sustain for very long. Interpretation of the Data A good majority of people think Managing-up/Self Promotion is their biggest challenge. As a manager or a…
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Know your Strengths, Capitalize on Them
Too often, we send employees to training to fix the areas of weaknesses. We expect people to be well-rounded to be successful. The fact is, excellent performers, are rarely “well rounded”; they are sharp. The difference between an excellent performer and an average performer is that the former is aware of their strengths and regularly cultivates them. In contrast, the latter one spends time and energy in a scattered way. What I Mean by Strength 1. An activity is your strength when you can do it consistently, repeatedly, happily, and successfully. 2. You don’t have to have strength in every aspect of your role to excel. 3. You will excel by…
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Courage From Within – Conviction And Trust Can Help
Growing up, I didn’t think I was very courageous. One day I saw this quote saying: Courage is not the absence of fear. It is acting despite — because something is important to us. It made perfect sense! Fear will always be there, which might be a good thing as it forces us to prepare well by doing due diligence. Conviction is an essential part of courage. I can bring courage because my conviction about the matter is stronger than fear. Twenty-two years ago, when I first came to the US for my grad school, it was the very first time for me to be in a foreign country; it was not…
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My Interview with The International Voice
A few weeks back, Japnit Sethi from The International Voice, reached out to me to be a guest in his new show on YouTube. Japnit, a Computer Science graduate student at Virginia Tech (my alma mater), founded this with a mission to inspire the next generation of international leaders from all over the world who aspire to make their mark within the North American Tech Industry. We talked about a wide range of topics, starting with how I got into tech, my early days in the US, Job interviews, learning from my career at Microsoft, and finally, my work as an executive coach with leaders in technology. Japnit did an…
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Curb Your Anxieties Using This 3C Model – How to make good choices during the home quarantine time
We are living through an episode of world history. The way we know life has come to a halt. The leaders, scientists, the medical community, and all the essential service providers are working round the clock to keep us safer from the curse of this COVID-19 pandemic. The rest of us are asked to do one thing – stay in our homes to help reduce the spread of this highly contagious virus. Everyone is reacting, coping, adapting in their way – be it a child or an older person. What is different is the magnitude of struggle and sufferings – both internal and external. Neuroscience says uncertainty creates anxiety –…
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Working on Your Confidence? Watch Out Your Go-to Words and Root Cause
Confidence is a common topic my clients bring to coaching. Anyone working on it knows that confidence is not a simple binary thing. It shows up as a part of a complex set of behavior that stems from inside more than outside. Our word choices often can hinder how confident we appear. “Think” is one such word that got my attention lately. The ability to think – about complex problems, gives us an edge as knowledge workers. Ironically overuse of the word may not serve as much. This tendency is common among women and people who are more analytical. One of my clients, let’s call her Tatyana, is working on…
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Why You have a Hard Time Saying “No” – Look into these Root Causes
A client of mine said she is always too busy with other peoples’ requests and she struggles to complete her own work. Her manager advised her to say “no” more often. But she doesn’t know how because helping others and being useful is a high value to her. As she and I looked into it, few scenarios came up. a. Assuming “No” will Hurt Relationships “I know I am already busy, but if I say “No” I will hurt this person. For damage control, maybe I will make time by being more efficient, by canceling the coffee with my friend or skipping my exercise.” What is the underlying assumption when you say…
