SharminBanu
My name is Sharmin Banu, I am a Career Advancement Coach. I live in Seattle WA with my husband and our daughter. I hold a CPC(Certified Professional Coach) and a BS and an MS in Computer Science. My clients achieved these results after coaching with me: Job promotion, desired career move, better understanding of corporate culture and expectations, more connection with their family and better work-life balance. To learn more visit my website: http://GreenLeafcoach.com or send me a mail to sbanu@GreenLeafcoach.com.
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Finding A More Enjoyable Career: It Could Be Easier Than You Think
The other day I talked to an engineer from a big brand-name company. I asked her what is that she liked most about her job. She said when she knows what needs to be done, she can finish it on time. Also, she wanted the money and the benefits. Do you see a problem here? Curious, I asked, “What else do you like? What do you like about the work?”. “Nothing much; I do this because I have a college degree for this; I can’t afford to change my career,” she answered candidly with zero enthusiasm. I am sure she is not alone; there are many others whose favorite part…
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A Tale Of A Coaching Session
In corporate, coaching means helping someone do their job by giving them advice. Some examples are “have you considered XYZ?” and “If I were you, I would do it this way.” But professional coaching is about helping someone maximize their potential by creating awareness and developing an implementation plan according to their choice. I will describe one coaching session here to shed light on it. I got this new coaching project; I met the client for our first session last week. A woman in her mid-30s, a manager at a Biotech company, showed up on my Zoom screen. Let me call her Kate. We spent 10-ish minutes getting to know…
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The False Dichotomy Between Success and Failure – They Are Not Opposite of Each Other
“Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.” Author and Harvard professor Sarah Lewis mentioned this famous Churchill quote in her book The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery while making a case for mastery and continuous improvement over those milestones we revere so greatly. Recently Stacy Abrams gave us a masterclass on turning failure into powerful learning. After her highly contested, narrow-margin defeat in the 2018 gubernatorial race, she focused on organizing at the grassroots level. Two years later, it resulted in Joe Biden’s historic win in Georgia. Abrams captured the process in her book (After the loss) “I’ve made myself…
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Remote and Hybrid Work Is Here To Stay: How Are You Catching Up?
Even five years ago, calling into a meeting was not very encouraged. But this Covid19 pandemic suddenly turned the culture upside down. Nowadays, organizations are having difficulty bringing people back to physical offices. Two years of forced remote work taught us that we don’t have to be in one physical place to be productive. Historically, pandemics changed societies. In 1347, the Black Death’s most significant socioeconomic legacy was its role in ending feudalism. In 1819, the Spanish Flu revolutionized public health, spawning the new fields of epidemiology and virology. In addition, it led several Western European countries to adopt universal healthcare systems that are still in operation. Remote and Hybrid…
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Super Mom Katherine’s Time Management Dilemma
On my way to walk this morning, I saw my neighbor Katherine in her signature pink sweatshirt. Both of us were glad to have company for the walk. The weather was exceptionally nice for a Seattle morning; the temperature was mild, and the sky was clear with the golden rays of sun sparkling on 84th avenue, my usual walking route. After a small talk, I asked Katherine how she was doing at the new job she had started recently. “I am not there yet; I need to start making some boundaries for all my responsibilities, my work, my children, my parents…” she started. My question just hit the center of…
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Conversations To Foster Greater Understanding
Recently this post by an organizational psychologist at Wharton, Adam Grant, went viral on LinkedIn. He said: The clearest sign of intellectual chemistry isn’t agreeing with someone. It’s enjoying your disagreements with them. Harmony is the pleasing arrangement of different tones, voices, or instruments, not the combination of identical sounds. Creative tension makes beautiful music. I commented there, which became most popular on that post (80+ likes and 20 comments). I would add, keeping the intention of understanding as the purpose, and not so much of agreement or disagreement. That way, it becomes less subjective. For example: instead of “I disagree,” one can say, “Can you give me an example where…
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From Jerk to Genuine: How These High Performers Built Trust With Their Teams
Result and efficiency-driven high-performing individuals often have a blindspot when relating to others. It can create unintended harm to team morale and trust. Others tolerate such “jerk” behavior as subject matter expertise, and “get things done” competencies are valued more. It is not that they don’t get any feedback to correct their behavior, but rather the opposite. They don’t get timely and precise feedback. People want to understand the feedback before they can act on it. And when they do, they commit to it and eventually become more impactful. “I have been receiving this feedback for so many years. However, this is the first time I can understand it.” This…
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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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Life Lessons From Adopting A Pet
A few months after the pandemic started, we decided to get a kitten. Even though my daughter had been asking about it for a while, I was not looking forward to the additional responsibility. I was afraid of the mess the cat would create around the house. And it did. You can imagine the stress and the fights we had during those early days. Fast forward 18 months, and the mess is still happening occasionally, but fortunately, I no longer am stressed about it as I was before. What has changed? Over the past 18 months, we taught ourselves about taking care of a cat and its behavior; we experimented…
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How To Think Of Your Career Growth, Agile or Waterfall?
Anyone familiar with software development knows agile is the way to go when developing new software or a product. But when it comes to a career, what does it mean? I didn’t think about it until that moment when I was in the middle of a coaching session with a senior technology leader of a Fortune 500 company. Let’s call him Peter. Peter was planning a transition, leaving his corporate VP job and starting doing something on his own in about a two-year timeframe. But he was getting frustrated that he didn’t know what it would be, and he couldn’t make any progress because he didn’t know “it.” It sounded…
