
The Power Of Yes – Leadership Lessons from My Car Dealership
I was in the waiting area of the dealership while my car was getting an oil change. Tony, one of the service reps saw me and asked if I had ...
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“Tell Me About Yourself” – Why It Is Hard and What To Do About It
Those frequent flyers in the job market already know how this apparently easy question could become quite daunting at times. During an interview coaching, I ask the clients to answer ...
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How Coaching Can Increase Employee Engagement
I have worked within the high tech industry for over a decade and I have always wondered why a large number of the great hires end up disengaged, identified as below ...
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Everyone And Their Mother Is Talking About “Coaching” – What Is It Really?
It will be rare to find someone who never heard "coaching" and yet it is one of the most overloaded terms today. Starting from sports coaching, tutoring or mentoring a ...
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Women In Tech – Let’s Tap Into Our Own Greatness
[Look for a special discount code inside -Sharmin] Background Story - Last year I attended a global conference in Warsaw with a few hundred International Coach Federation (ICF) leaders from across ...
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Nervous About Networking? Find Your Own Sweet Spot
During my corporate career I once attended a class on “how to show up confident”. It had quite a few tips I don’t remember those exactly. But today I remembered ...
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Aspirations – Find Your Own Unique One
Few years back we went to Zion national park in Utah. We hiked on a mountain in the scorching 80 degree heat. The destination was the “upper pool” a small body ...
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Looking Back: Five Years of My New Career and Life
Today is the 5th anniversary of my post-Microsoft life :). Hard to believe how time flies! It was not just a new career I wanted to pursue; I also wanted ...
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Afraid of Feedback? Find How It Serves You Best
If you are a corporate employee, notice the feeling you are having when you read the word “Feedback”. “I have some feedback for you” often creates the same or worse visceral ...
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There Is More Than One Reality – Choose That Serves
“Reality is reality, there is no point to sugar coat it “– a friend of mine uttered with a great sigh! I agree and there is more. It reminded me of ...
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Too Many Emails? Some Real Causes and Solutions
In the corporate world, people often complain about too many emails. It is a modern-day challenge for sure, however, over the years I have noticed a few underlying causes and possible ...
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“What do I Want” is a Hard Question
A few weeks back I was giving a talk at a big tech company about focusing on the vision. As usual, someone asked this basic question- “I don’t know what ...
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Job Interview : How to Avoid Negativity about Your Employer
Everyone knows this interview tip: “Don’t bad mouth about your employer”. But interesting enough this happens quite often. I got some clue when I was talking to my client Tom ...
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Focus on Your Vision: A Positive Approach to Life’s Challenges
[Key point: I have described how vision focus works as a great parenting tool for me. It not only helps to manage the current situation more gracefully, it gives a ...
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Fulfilling Achievements are Good, Experiences are Even Better
I often ask this question to my clients and class participants: Describe some occasions from the recent past when you felt excited and fulfilled. The common responses I get are, ...
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Align with Passion – What, Why and How
“I don’t get it, how do people mix passion with their career? I do love to paint but I can’t even think of taking it as a career and doing it ...
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Don’t Focus on the Problem – Focus on your Ultimate Vision
Last year, an engineer, let me call him Tom, came to me. He looked very tired and unhappy. “Sharmin, I am working long days, late nights, still my manager wants ...
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Why Do You Do It? 3 Steps to Clarify Your Commitments
Common wisdom goes as we do paid work for money and volunteer work to fulfill other needs. Whatever we do, paid or volunteer work requires some commitment from our part ...
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Find an Enjoyable Career : It is Easier than you Think
The other day I was talking to an engineer from a big brand name company. I asked her, what is that she likes most in her job. She said when ...
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Are you suffering from “Not Enough Time”?
"Some people have lots of time in their hands", "I could have used the time for something more useful", "Let me check on Facebook/Internet/email quickly before I start doing my ...
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Procrastination – How to Manage this Common Vice
If you are reading this you might be like many of us who suffer from procrastination. But don’t stop there - this is just the tip of the iceberg, the ...
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Ready or not the New Year is coming – Will your resolution be a small talk again?
In January, the common topic of the office kitchen conversation is the New Year’s resolution. Until recently I never actually did much of planning for the year, so when asked ...
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How are you setting your goals, Inside-out or Outside-in?
Last week I was describing the concept of “Living from inside-out” to my class participants in a high tech company. The example I gave - If you target to become ...
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Happiness theory and my Exercise routine
The other day at the end of my class, people got quite hyped up to make time to do something for themselves. Few of them made a commitment to start ...
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Improve your EQ fitness – Self reflection
A few weeks back I wrote this blog post, Feeling- A vital part missing from the thinker’s head. Since then Tom made some progress. These days on the feeling question he ...
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Work-life balance in my own backyard
Among so many articles about work-life balance, this one in HBR, the Imperfect balance between work and life caught my attention today. The main idea is 1. Pick a few ...
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Alignment with Passion-Why it is important
A client of mine is in the job market for a while. A bit frustrated by the lack of success, he called me this morning wanting to find more ideas. ...
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Feeling overwhelmed? You might be overloading your PFC
Do you often feel overwhelmed? Do you wonder why it happens? Understanding how our brain works might give you some ideas. The part of the brain behind our forehead is called the prefrontal cortex(PFC). PFC is ...
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Too many to-dos… Not enough time…Cause or Symptom?
My friend Amy calls herself lazy as she is always running behind her infinitely long to-do list. Even when she is sitting down she feels guilty that she was supposed to ...
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A Baby step isn’t just for the Babies
In my 1:1 coaching and group classes, I have been teaching this concept from TED on how to create your own vision (what do you want) and design baby steps ...
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Overnight Success – How Realistic is that Assumption?
I sometimes wished one fine morning I will get the results I always wanted; I will get the solution to my problems. But alas it never happened that easily! My grandma used to ...
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Career Change – 4 Things Helped Me Make the Move
Last week I saw two relevant posts on this topic, one in the Forbes magazine and the other in the TEDx talk. I have been wondering where these article/talks were a few ...
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TED finds the lost ring
I have been busy with this week’s webinar. The topic is from the Power of TED; Empowerment is all I have in my mind. I even empowered myself to be ...
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Katherine’s Time Management Dilemma and the Power of TED
This morning on my way to walk I saw my neighbor Katherine in her signature pink sweatshirt. Both of us were glad to have a company for the walk. The weather ...
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Being an Introvert is not so Bad After All!
Have you ever heard an extrovert having a development plan to become quieter or making an effort to have lone time for them? Probably not too often. But if you ...
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Drive – The Surprising Truth about what Motivates us
Carrot and stick - reward and punishment- is an age-old technique for getting things done by others. The corporate world has adopted this mantra almost as the panacea for employee ...
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The Silly Brain that makes Hasty Decisions
Monday morning @8:35AM: My daughter Farheen is supposed to be at her breakfast table 5 minutes ago. She comes downstairs with a long face, “Mommy, my bracelet is missing”. My ...
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Already Off Track for your New Year’s Resolution? Find out how to do better
Found these statistics - almost all Americans make a new year’s resolution. The bad news is that half of them break their new year’s resolution by January 2 and more ...
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There is always more than one solution!
We are having a record amount of snowfall here in Seattle. My little girl is having the fun of her lifetime, snowball fight, making snowman, sledding, you name it! Though ...
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