• Two People Talking Over Coffee
    Coaching,  Success Strategy

    Why Hire a Coach When There Are So Many Books, Podcasts?

    It will be almost impossible to find someone who hasn’t read a self-help book, listened to a podcast, watched a TED talk, or any other YouTube videos that tell you how to improve your productivity and wellbeing, so on. I do have some of my favorites, giving me ideas, insights, and validations. One might ask, why would someone work with a coach when all such advice is already available? The short answer is, they are not mutually exclusive. One does not replace the other – both are useful. Reading books, listening to a podcast helps our overall awareness, we learn a thing or two. And there are times we need…

  • Leadership,  Success Strategy

    Leading in the Era of AI

    How far are we from machines replacing humans? While much of the corporate research and development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is happening under Non-Disclosure Agreements, a recent demonstration of a personal assistant by Google CEO Sundar Pichai illustrated how advanced their AI research is . Similar research by Microsoft and a plethora of other technology companies, suggests that the impact on humans and our work will be profound. AI is developing as a powerful driver for good; in the field of medicine, for instance, it is already accelerating the development of cures for diseases. At the same time, AI releases human potential for higher-level jobs as robots are already replacing…

  • EQ,  Leadership,  Success Strategy

    Take The Fear Out Of Feedback Giving

    Imagine your boss is saying, “I have some feedback for you” – notice what reaction you get. Very often it feels like a threat, as “We have a problem”! According to this article by David Rock of NeuroLeadership Institute (NLI), “Feedback conversations, as they exist today, activate this social threat response. In West and Thorson’s study, participants’ heart rates jumped as much as 50 percent during feedback conversations. (Equivalent spikes have been found during some of the most anxiety-producing tasks, such as public speaking.) In their self-assessments, participants reported feelings that mirror what just about everyone has experienced personally: nerves, uncertainty, and anxiety. All this physiological stress has the unfortunate…

  • Career satisfaction,  Leadership,  Success Strategy

    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 average performers so soon after hire! First as a manager and now as a coach, my observation is the raw potential the employees bring often gets underutilized because of the chaos in the workplace. Despite the relative maturity in the high tech industry we still depend on Darwin’s “Survival of the fittest” theory. I believe a coach can be a catalyst to increase the odds for each employee to be of the “fittest” species in the corporate jungle. Below are the stories of two…

  • Career satisfaction,  Happiness,  Success Strategy

    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 junior professional, coaching bears a very diverse context. One common denominator though is about helping another person getting better at some skill. In the professional world, coaching is becoming more common in recent years. And that is where it could use little more clarity. According to the International Coach Federation(ICF), coaching is partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. The basic premise is, the person being coached is whole,…

  • Leadership

    What is Coaching

    Most of my time as a coach is being spent educating people on the concept of Coaching. Every time I have a hard time explaining the difference between therapy and coaching. Recently I realized, it’s better to say “forget therapy for now”! This is how I want to say it: You are a smart, well-functioning adult, mostly successful, and pretty much independent in your thoughts and actions. There are certain times you feel stuck, a little confused, or just need someone to talk to. Someone you could go to and bounce off your thoughts and ideas by, someone you could have as your wise sounding board. Someone you feel safe…

  • Happiness,  Success Strategy

    Everyday Creativity: Find your next best answer

    The more I learn about coaching, it boils down to how to make life more satisfying from inside-out, from a higher level of human development. I see Life as our biggest creative pursuit – only if we focus on it with the right attitude, it is on us how we design it. Coaching can empower the client to focus and to design it in his/her own way. Photojournalist Dewitt Jones has described it as how we can discover extraordinary things from apparently ordinary things when we have the right attitude. His Everyday Creativity teaches a surprising truth about creativity: that it’s not a magical, mysterious occurrence, but a ready tool that enables you to look at the…

  • Coaching,  Uncategorized

    ICF Coaching Client Study – top motivators: Self-esteem, work-life balance & career

    Here are some nuggets from the ICF Global Coaching Client Study 2009: Clients are generally satisfied with the coaching experience. In addition to awarding very high ratings to all of the coaching criteria tested, the vast majority of clients also indicated that they were very satisfied with their experience. Further confirming the success coaches are having is the fact that almost all (96%) clients showed that they would repeat the coaching experience given the same circumstances that lead them there in the first place. Interesting facts –96.2 percent of coaching clients report they would repeat their coaching experience. — 82.7 percent of coaching clients report they are “very satisfied” with…

  • Leadership

    Professional Coaching – an Introduction

    Ever since I started talking to people around me about my new career as a “professional coach,” I have got many questions. “Is this a sports coach”, “Is this like mentoring”, “Is this counseling”, “Why would someone go to a coach” are some of those. I thought it would be a good idea to compile some introductory information on coaching to help me answer those. Coaching has been widely used in the business world for leadership development. In recent decades, with the fast-changing world, people in every walk of life are facing life challenge and demands that has created the need for life coaches even outside the business regime. Coaching, as a profession,…