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You were given Feedback to Improve your Executive Presence – What do you do now?
The other day, a senior leader contacted me to hire me as his coach. His LinkedIn Profile was immaculate – multiple graduate degrees from top-notch schools and a strong track record of professional work in his relevant field. He was given feedback to improve his Executive Presence (EP). However, he didn’t know what that actually meant. After further conversation, we discovered that during meetings with senior leadership, his challenge was thinking on his feet and being clear and concise in his delivery. Here is an example from another client; let us call him Joe. Joe was doing a presentation on the next direction of their product. Towards the middle, his…
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The Myth of Multitasking
Too many times, I hear that you can’t survive without multitasking. Checking emails during a meeting, responding to a door knock while trying to focus on your work seems to be a common scenario at the workplace. While it often pays off to take care of multiple things at once, it would be useful to look at our brain to see when it is NOT the best strategy. According to this book, any task requiring a small amount of analysis or decision-making is processed in the brain’s pre-frontal cortex (PFC). The PFC is a tiny and very much energy-hungry part that sits right behind our forehead. If the rest of…
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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 a tiny part compared to the rest of the brain (where permanent memory resides, in the form of patterns). PFC mainly performs executive functions (processing, analysis, decision making, etc.). PFC needs lots of energy to function, not only that, at a time it can handle only a few pieces of information, e.g., three numbers at a time. For example, think about a ten-digit phone number, when you have it like 4258234417 VS 425-821-4417, notice, which format is easier for you…
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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 okay with taking a break from my weekly posts. But then I found this gift, call it the law of attraction or anything else! Here it is: When I was walking my daughter to school, I noticed she was holding the light-up ring in her hand (she bought it with her allowance money last week). I knew she misplaced it last night and had asked me about it. I got curious and asked her how she found it. She smiled wisely. “You know…
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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 tension rises, if she doesn’t head out in 10 minutes she will be late for school. My voice is about to go up…, just in time another thought stops me – if I do this now she may be in school on time but I will feel miserable the entire day. I take a deep breath and assure her that I will see about it if she eats first. As she starts the reluctant bites I tell her a little story that goes like…
