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Career satisfaction, Coaching, Happiness, Leadership, Self-leadership, Stress Management, Work-life integration, WorkLife balance
Foundation for Growth: Four Simple Practices Make My Clients Successful
People come to coaching for many reasons. Some want to lead a significant change management initiative, while others want to improve team productivity or develop leadership skills for the next promotion. Whatever the reason, one needs to create the foundation for growth to achieve these outward goals. These building blocks – mindfulness, intentional focus, reflection, and self-care – are essential for coaching success. 1. Mindfulness Mindfulness serves as the cornerstone of this foundation. In a world where we often operate on autopilot or react to external demands, we must pause and ground ourselves. By incorporating bite-sized mindfulness practices, my clients gain the capacity to observe their thoughts and emotions rather…
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What Causes Conflicts In Teams
No one wakes up thinking, “I will ruin the day; I will create trouble today.” But even when everyone on the team is decent, stress, conflicts, and drama happen. I have identified a few underlying causes behind them. For this article, I am leaving out the toxic cultures where the main actors are ego, selfish interest, and lack of trust. On a team I led, there was a very energetic, proactive, independent-minded person who was very good at generating ideas and following through with them without help. Let’s call him Ron. I felt lucky to have Ron on the team. But the problem was that some other folks were annoyed;…
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Three Strategies That Reduced Stress for a Busy Executive
Sheela, a senior executive at a renowned Fortune 500 company, sought my coaching services to improve her quality of life. She said her demanding job was taking a toll on her. Early morning meetings disrupted her morning self-care routine, and recent layoffs added even more stress to her already crazy schedule. As a result, Sheela felt exhausted, overwhelmed, and helpless. Sheela’s story is all too common among high-achieving professionals. Running after work deliverables alone was no longer feeding her soul; she valued her relationships with her family, friends, and team. Balancing these different areas of her life became a challenge, but with coaching, Sheela could find a way to improve…
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Career satisfaction, Coaching, Executive Presence, Happiness, productivity, Stress Management, Success Strategy, Time Management, WorkLife balance
Are You Sabotaged By Your Inner Hyper-Achiever?
A tech leader, let’s call him Jason, said, “I can’t relax; I always have to do something useful. Nobody makes me do so; it’s me. This is how I am”. Jason is not alone. Many of us have such hyper achievers in us, pushing us to do more. This trait may have helped us be where we are, yet its overuse can cause more harm than good. Growing up, we all developed different traits that kept us safe, got us what we needed, and helped us succeed. Other than the hyper-achiever, there are several additional traits: pleaser, perfectionist, and victim, to name a few. My top two are hyper-achiever and…
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This Holiday, Build Resilience Through Family Stories and Connections
It’s the season. Despite the job losses, economic downturns, and everything else, holidays are in the air. This season reminds us to connect with what is important that we often forget amidst our daily grinds. Every culture and religion celebrates holidays, some at different times of the year. Still, all those have a common theme – people reunite with their near and dear ones through food, festivities, stories, and other rituals. A few years ago, in a rare family get-together, I got another chance to remember how these connections and touchpoints help our resilience and overall well-being. In Nov 2017, after 20+ years, my geographically dispersed family – my mom,…
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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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Feeling Stuck and Unmotivated? Invest in Your Emotional Vitality First
Feeling stuck and unmotivated in your job? Not getting enough recognition or the upward mobility you deserve? Getting feedback that you are not doing enough? A software engineer in the mid-level in her career, let’s call her Veronica, came to me with this recently. She sounded pretty frustrated and depleted. As we spoke further, I realized that she had been feeling this for a few years; the pandemic only made it worse. The current job was no longer serving her; she needed to move out. But the only reason for staying was her lack of energy to focus on a job search or interview preparation. It became a chicken and…
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What Gets in the Way of Guilt Free Self-Care?
“Finish your homework before you play “ – Our parents’ well-meaning advice worked well in our early days, but as adults, it is backfiring. These days, most of our work is a continuous process and is hardly completed on a given workday. We postpone all the play (self-care) until we finish the work. We mistakenly think that completing the work and the recognition will be enough to keep us going. But the truth is quite the opposite. Regular play (self-care) helps us be at our optimal condition; it builds the muscles for us to face the challenges of work and other areas of life. In the last year, I saw…
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Struggling with Time Management? Look into the Root Causes
Time management is one of the topmost challenges for almost every functional human being. When my clients come with this question, I tell them that time is a fixed resource. No matter how hard you try, you can’t make it unlimited. However, there are other ways to look into this challenge. We “hide” under the time question only to avoid addressing some other underlying issues. I ask: What would you achieve when you have better time-management? A typical answer: “I will be able to do everything I want to do and will be able to spend time with my family and for myself and do exercise …” and the list goes…
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Beat Your Zoom Fatigue With These Three Tips
A few weeks ago, I had a headache almost every time I was in a Zoom video call. This phenomenon has become a common issue these days as so many are working from home and meeting virtually. Hence we got a new word in our vocabulary, called Zoom fatigue. I have been using video communications tools since 2009, a long time before Zoom was born. It allowed me to meet and coach people and attend classes without spending energy and money traveling for work. The pandemic made it a necessity when we are to stay home and minimize travels and in-person interactions. Like any good thing, moderation is the key, even…
