Author: Vinita Bansal

High agency is about finding a way to get what you want, without waiting for the conditions to be perfect or otherwise blaming the circumstances. High agency people either push through in the face of adversity or they manage to reverse it to achieve their goals. They either find a way, or they make a way.

Leadership / Management

High Agency: Quality that Sets Leaders Who Win From Those Who Whine Apart

High agency is important at every step of the career, but it’s even more crucial as you ascend the ladder and take up a leadership position in an organization. For a leader, vision and ability aren’t differentiating factors anymore. An ambitious vision for the future only sets the direction. It’s the high agency that gives life to that vision and makes it possible. It’s the high agency that sets a leader apart. Learn to recognize and cultivate it.

A leader’s job in any organization isn’t to tell people what to do, be involved in every problem, or deliver 100% perfect outcomes. Their job is to enable their people to use their knowledge to make their own decisions, motivate them to build the skills necessary to feel confident, and use their own time effectively to look into the future and solve hard problems. They can do this by effectively implementing decision tree model to seek better alignment at all levels.

Leadership / Management

The Decision Tree: Alignment Model Leaders Need to Make Better Decisions

A leader’s job in any organization isn’t to tell people what to do or be involved in every problem. Their job is to enable their people to make their own decisions, motivate them to build the skills necessary to feel confident, and use their own time effectively to look into the future and solve hard problems. They can do this by shifting from control to context and seeking alignment using the decision tree.

As a manager, the uncertainty of your decisions along with the daily struggle to make things happen can be quite taxing on your personal health and mental wellbeing. Unless you learn to take care of yourself, you can’t really be productive. Practicing self-care as a manager isn’t just necessary, it should be your topmost priority.

Leadership / Management

How to Practice Self Care as a Manager

As a manager, there isn’t a rule book for all the decisions you need to make and all the steps you need to take. You will make plenty of mistakes on the way. You will have a hard time getting your ideas heard and convincing others. The uncertainty of your decisions along with the daily struggle to make things happen can be quite taxing on your personal health and mental wellbeing. Practicing self-care as a manager isn’t just necessary, it should be your topmost priority.

Giving difficult feedback is the most difficult thing you may have to do at work, but building this skill is like building muscle. It only gets better with practice. It never gets easy, you only get better.

Leadership / Management

How To Be Comfortable Giving Difficult Feedback

What’s more dreadful than receiving difficult feedback? Giving one. Worried that negative feedback will hurt the other person and ruin your relationship is one of the biggest deterrents to avoid saying what you need to say. Giving difficult feedback is the most difficult thing you may have to do at work, but building this skill is like building muscle. It only gets better with practice. It never gets easy, you only get better.

The difference between leaders who push their teams to the ground and those who take their teams to great heights isn’t knowledge, capability, or competence. It isn’t even their motivation and desire to succeed. They both want to achieve success. What sets them apart is the difference in how they handle their ignorance. An ignorant leader's ignorance isn't limited to their skills and abilities, but also how they come across to others.

Leadership / Management

Your Ignorance is Causing You to Fail as a Leader

The difference between leaders who push their teams to the ground and those who take their teams to great heights isn’t knowledge, capability, or competence. It isn’t even their motivation and desire to succeed. They both want to achieve success. What sets them apart is the difference in how they handle their ignorance. Their ignorance isn’t limited to their skills and abilities, but also how they come across to others.

Pluralistic ignorance is a psychological state in which we believe that our private thoughts, feelings, beliefs, attitudes and judgments are different from those of others and yet when part of a group, we all seem to behave in the same way.

Decisions / MentalModels

Pluralistic Ignorance: Why Smart People Do Dumb Things

We do not conform to cultural and behavioral expectations around us that exist, but to a version we believe exists. Stuck in a vicious cycle of pluralistic ignorance, we continue to support the very behaviors we deem bad. Call it peer pressure, fear of rejection, our desire to fit in, or simply the fear of standing out, we think one thing and do another because we are deluded about other people’s real views and feel compelled to adhere to that delusion.

Imposter syndrome, though a commonly shared feeling turns out to be quite a unique experience. Its impact on each individual varies in not only how they feel, but also how they behave and act afterward. Look at these 5 types of behaviors to determine which one is your default strategy to deal with feelings of being a fraud. What type of imposter are you?

Personal Development / Productivity

What Type of Imposter Are You?

Although imposter syndrome is linked with feelings of inadequacy and thinking that nothing you do is ever good enough, how it plays out in your day-to-day life and impacts you varies from person to person. Acknowledging what you are feeling is important, but what’s even more important is to pay attention to the underlying behaviors and actions that such feelings tend to evoke. Your feelings of being a fraud can turn you into a procrastinator, perfectionist, overworker, people pleaser, or a self diminisher.

There’s no getting away with some amount of stress at work and we shouldn’t try to either. After all, all stress is not bad. But what if your stress is debilitating? What if it gets in the way of making meaningful contributions? What if instead of energizing you, workplace stress sucks into your energy and hurts your motivation?

Leadership / Personal Development

Workplace Stress is Costing You. Know How To Reduce It

All stress is not bad. Oftentimes, it signals you are doing worthwhile work. That you care about adding value and creating an impact. Stress can also energize you enabling you to put in the effort required to make something happen. But what if your stress is debilitating? What if it gets in the way of making meaningful contributions? What if instead of energizing you, workplace stress sucks into your energy and hurts your motivation?

Getting your ideas heard and approved is one of the first steps to creating impactful work. It’s easy to adopt a victim mindset and blame others for rejecting your ideas. But all it does is make you feel defeated and stressed. To get buy-in and gain support for your ideas, work on your process. Take responsibility for your outcomes.

Communication / Leadership

Not Getting Your Ideas Heard? Here’s How to Gain Support for Your Ideas

Failure to get buy-in and have your recommendations shut down can crush your confidence and make it difficult for you to voice your opinion the next time around. Apply these strategies to not only confidently present your ideas, but get your ideas heard and gain support too. Learn to influence the decision and make positive impact on your organization and your work.

What’s the difference between people who end up loving what they do and those who are on an endless pursuit looking for the one thing that will fulfill them only to be left disheartened, dissatisfied, and unhappy? What matters more - progress or passion?

Personal Development / Productivity

Progress Not Passion is the Answer to Loving the Work You Do

What’s the difference between people who end up loving what they do and those who are on an endless pursuit looking for the one thing that will fulfill them only to be left disheartened, dissatisfied, and unhappy? Progress and not passion was the answer I was looking for all along. 3 strategies that have worked for me over the years to love what I do while letting my passion grow behind the scenes for me.

In a fast-moving, ever-changing, dynamic work environment, the ability to collaborate effectively isn’t a necessity, it’s a superpower. Learn about the cross functional collaboration challenges and the steps managers can take to make it effective.

Leadership / Management

Challenges With Cross Functional Collaboration and What to Do About It

In a fast-moving, ever-changing, dynamic work environment, the ability to collaborate effectively isn’t a necessity, it’s a superpower. When collaborating across teams, communication, coordination, visibility, execution speed, and decision-making can turn into a mess. Learn about the cross functional collaboration challenges and the steps managers can take to make it effective.

Authentic leadership goes wrong when leaders try to live up to some grand image. To match their behaviors and actions to an idealized version of an authentic leader and feeling exhausted and defeated when they fail to inspire the necessary changes in their teams and their organizations. By getting hung up on becoming their best versions, they fail to show up their authentic versions.

Leadership / Management

Being on the Wrong Side of Authentic Leadership

Authentic leadership goes wrong when leaders try to match their behaviors and actions to an idealized version of an authentic leader and feel exhausted and defeated when they fail to inspire the necessary changes in their teams and their organizations. By getting hung up on becoming their best versions, they fail to show up their authentic versions. To practice true authenticity, knowing what not to do is as important as knowing what to do.

Organizations that thrive are run by leaders who see opportunity in uncertainty, who cut through ambiguity, and those who lead with the mindset to gain clarity. Done right, ambiguity can be exhilarating, rewarding, and mentally stimulating. Done wrong, it can be exhausting, emotionally consuming, and even downright demotivating. It’s only by considering different perspectives, asking better questions, and learning from their own systems, leaders can build the curiosity and flexibility required to purposefully deal with ambiguity.

Leadership / Management

How Great Leaders Deal With Ambiguity

Organizations that thrive are run by leaders who see opportunity in uncertainty, who cut through ambiguity, and those who lead with the mindset to gain clarity. Done right, ambiguity can be exhilarating, rewarding, and mentally stimulating. Done wrong, it can be exhausting, emotionally consuming, and even downright demotivating. Apply these 7 strategies to learn how to deal with ambiguity.

People who like to keep commitments are careful about their choices. They understand that doing something always comes at the cost of not doing something else. So, they carefully evaluate their priorities and say “yes” to only a few things. Identifying what adds value to them and to others and taking time to actually fulfill their commitments builds trust, creates strong relationships, and makes the other person feel valued and respected.

Decisions / Personal Development

7 Steps for Keeping Commitments at Work That Leads to Growth

There are two types of people at work – those who like to make commitments and others who like to keep them. People who like to make commitments don’t pay much attention to how those things fit into their schedule. People who like to keep commitments are careful about their choices. They understand that doing something always comes at the cost of not doing something else.

A sense of control in our life not only rids us of the fear and anxiety that comes with feeling out of control, it’s the single most critical factor in helping us stay productive at work. Apply these strategies to regain your freedom and take back control of your life.

Leadership / Personal Development

How to Reclaim Your Freedom and Take Back Control of Your Life

A sense of control in our life not only rids us of the fear and anxiety that comes with feeling out of control, it’s the single most critical factor in helping us stay productive at work. It’s our internal sense of freedom to know that we have the autonomy to make corrections, drive to be persistent and the power to influence the outcome. Apply these strategies to feel in control, do more and achieve more.

Ostrich effect is a cognitive bias that makes people avoid negative information, including any feedback that can help them get a sense of how they are doing on their goals especially when the information is perceived to be unpleasant, undesired or evokes strong negative emotional response.

Decisions / MentalModels

Ostrich Effect: Are You Avoiding Unpleasant Information?

Ostriches bury their heads in the sand when they sense danger assuming that the danger will pass if they just avoid it long enough. We humans are no different. When dealing with unpleasant information, or information that challenges us in a way that we don’t want to be challenged, we pretend the information doesn’t exist. We bury our heads in the sand just like the ostriches.

If you are around one of those people who have the tendency to constantly complain, who turn a perfectly good outcome into an unsatisfactory one with their negative outlook, those who are overly critical or bring out the worst in others with their offensive comments, toxic behavior and pessimistic attitude towards everything, chances are these negative people are already controlling your emotions and limiting what you can achieve. Learn to deal with negative people in your life.

Communication / Personal Development

How to Deal With Negative People Without Going Crazy

Negativity can be contagious. It may not be obvious at first, but it’s easy to get trapped into a negative person’s way of thinking if you are not careful around them. Left unhandled, their cynical, gloomy, and defeatist behavior can emotionally drain you, impact your productivity, and turn you into the very person you hated at first. Learn how to deal with a negative person without going crazy.

Becoming a manager isn’t easy. All the uncertainty and confusion can either leave you disoriented and feeling overwhelmed with a lack of control or you can embrace it and use it as the force to push ahead. You can succeed as a manager by looking beyond all the randomness and chaos to adopting a mentality where nothing can pull you down. You can lead and succeed by practicing these 20 principles.

Leadership / Management

Becoming A Manager: 20 Principles To Learn and Lead

Becoming a manager isn’t easy. All the uncertainty and confusion can either leave you disoriented and feeling overwhelmed with a lack of control or you can embrace it and use it as the force to push ahead. You can succeed as a manager by looking beyond all the randomness and chaos to adopting a mentality where nothing can pull you down. You can lead and succeed by practicing these 20 principles.

Most people kind of assume that the complete responsibility of giving the right feedback lies with the feedback-giver while ignoring the role that they play in the equation as the person on the receiving end of this feedback. You aren’t getting growth-oriented feedback not because others are unwilling to share it, it’s because you are not willing to do what it takes to get it right.

Leadership / Personal Development

Are You Getting The Feedback That You Need?

Are you not getting the feedback you need because others aren’t giving it to you or is it because you aren’t taking the initiative to get it right? Getting the feedback that you need requires taking full responsibility with the belief that you have the power to drive your own growth at work as opposed to blaming someone else for not moving forward.

Delivering bad news to your boss is not exactly fun. Imagining how they would react, what they would say, and how they would judge you can be terrifying and reason enough to try to cover it up. But knowing that with the right strategies you can turn things around and even win their trust and respect, you can get over your fears and take the necessary steps.

Communication / Personal Development

7 Strategies for Delivering Bad News to Boss, Build Your Credibility and Still Look Good

Delivering bad news to your boss is not exactly fun. Imagining how they would react, what they would say, and how they would judge you can be terrifying and reason enough to try to cover it up. But knowing that with the right strategies you can turn things around and even win their trust and respect, you can get over your fears and take the necessary steps.

Too many meetings at work is an easy escape and excuse to avoid the things that demands your time and attention - planning for the future, identifying better opportunities for your team, or investing in your own learning. Don't let the “too many meetings” and “this is a manager’s life” excuse go on for too long. It's time for you to be real. Take one hard look at your life and face the reality of your situation.

Leadership / Management

Too Many Meetings At Work? Here’s How to Stop the Meeting Madness

Are you in a constant state of frenzy throughout the day moving from one meeting to the next only to be left exhausted, disoriented and grumpy? Don’t let the “too many meetings” and “this is a manager’s life” excuse go on for too long. Get over your own nonsense and start putting some sense into your work

The person who makes it to the top isn’t the one who faces many hardships and obstacles along the way, it’s the one who persists and resists - persists in their efforts and resists the easy path to give up. In other words, it’s not our failure, but our reaction to it that determines where we end up. Failing to succeed requires getting over our fear of failiures to increase our chances of success.

Leadership / Personal Development

Failing to Succeed: Key to Success and Coping With Failure

The person who makes it to the top isn’t the one who faces many hardships and obstacles along the way, it’s the one who persists and resists – persists in their efforts and resists the easy path to give up. In other words, it’s not our failure, but our reaction to it that determines where we end up

The simple three-letter word “yet” is the sound of possibility, a positive intervention in our life to help us see straight. The nudge we all need to take control of our life by looking beyond the obstacles in the present to the opportunities of tomorrow. “Yet” carries with it the expectation that we can reach our destination. It creates an excitement into the future about all the incredible things we can’t do yet. This is the incredible power of yet.

Decisions / Personal Development

Incredible Power of Yet: Positive Intervention to Help Us See Straight

The simple three-letter word “yet” is the sound of possibility, a positive intervention in our life to help us see straight. The nudge we all need to take control of our life by looking beyond the obstacles in the present to the opportunities of tomorrow. “Yet” carries with it the expectation that we can reach our destination

Strategic thinking is a muscle that we all need to build because using it right at work can be a strategic advantage in your career growth as an individual. Much like a rubber band, you need to stretch and exercise your thinking. It requires crossing the boundary of the comfort zone to think about an idea to its extreme without mental guardrails to put it down. It requires uncovering new insights that moderate thinking would never surface.

Leadership / Personal Development

Embrace the Strategic Thinking Mindset: How to Develop Your Strategic Thinking Skills and Stay Ahead

Strategic thinking is a muscle that we all need to build because using it right at work can be a strategic advantage in your career growth as an individual. You need to cross the boundary of the comfort zone to think about an idea to its extreme without mental guardrails to put it down. You need to uncover new insights that moderate thinking would never surface

wrong-about-burnout-at-work

Leadership / Management

I Was Wrong About Burnout At Work and You are Probably Too

Promoting vacation time, taking breaks between work, doing walk-and-talk audio calls instead of video calls to deal with zoom fatigue, and even asking people to have no meeting days are all super useful techniques to deal with the problems of work related exhaustion, but by themselves they are not sufficient to solve the problem of burnout at work. That’s because work overload is just one of the causes of burnout

Building resilient as a team requires knowing that failure is a part of life and not an excuse to stop trying, avoid risk or ignore challenging circumstances. It’s not displaying toxic positivity, but rather having a sense of realistic optimism. It’s staying flexible and adapting to the change around us and not being rigid about our beliefs and expectations. Resilience is building a sense of coherence, both physically and mentally by observing, adjusting and adapting to the world around us.

Leadership / Management

Bounce Back: How to Help Your Team Fail Fast and Be Resilient At Work

Irrespective of how much we tell our teams to move past failures and learn from mistakes, we know that it isn’t easy to accept a failure. The expectation to do well at work makes people believe that failure isn’t an option. There’s a huge difference between feelings of disappointment and letting those emotions turn into feelings of devastation. Building resilience as a team is all about understanding that difference

managing-leadership-anxiety

Leadership / Management

Leadership Anxiety: How to Lead When You Feel It

Leadership anxiety can be a good thing when managed well. It can inspire you to question your choices, confront your own feelings and engage proactively with the desire to do better. The problem occurs when you let your leadership anxiety prevent you from seeing the reality of your situation. When you are so caught up in your own anxiety that it fogs your ability to think and see clearly

If your employees fight in the workplace, as a manager, it's your job to define a healthy boundary between constructive disagreements and destructive behavior. Freedom to disagree with others cannot be boundaryless and it cannot come at the cost of creating a toxic work environment for the team.

Communication / Management

What to Do When Your Employees are Fighting in the Workplace

When your team members are fighting or are otherwise engaged in an uncordial relationship, the rest of the team can’t function very well. Freedom to disagree with others cannot be boundaryless and it cannot come at the cost of creating a toxic work environment for the team. As a manager, it’s your job to define a healthy boundary between constructive disagreements and destructive behavior

To build accountability at work you need to build awareness of the measure of accountability by setting clear expectations and aligning on those expectations, create acceptance around behaviors and actions that demonstrate accountability, communicate that you care while showing the openness to be candid and engage with your employees by acting as their support structure.

Leadership / Management

The Fine Balance Between Caring for People and Holding them Accountable at Work

Caring for your people and holding them accountable for their work aren’t mutually exclusive. You don’t need to be nice and kind to people to show them you care. And caring for them doesn’t mean you don’t care about the outcomes. Build accountability at work by helping your employees differentiate between taking responsibility and showing accountability

Saying no to your boss is never easy. But saying yes to things you don't want to do or shouldn't be doing is not an option either. It may seem uncomfortable in the moment to say no to your boss, but facing a little discomfort in the moment is far better than a miserable life later. Know what truly matters to you and using that as a guiding principle to decide.

Communication / Decisions

I Said No to My Boss and It Didn’t Work Out So Well for Me or Did It?

Saying no is never easy. And saying no to your boss may actually backfire like it did in my case. But, saying yes to things you don’t want to do shouldn’t be an option either. You can either choose comfort in the moment by saying yes and then live with the regret afterwards or you can face brief discomfort in the moment by saying no to live a life in which you can feel at ease with your decisions later. Choice is yours

In his book, The Ride of a Lifetime, Robert Iger writes about his personal leadership philosophy that has guided him in the last 45 years. These 43 leadership lessons from Robert Iger will help you become a better leader.

Leadership / Management

Disney Chairman Robert Iger’s Lessons For Great Leadership

Robert Iger, now Executive Chairman of The Walt Disney Company is the former CEO of Disney. During his 15 years as CEO of Disney and as President of ABC Television prior to that, he led the company to amazing new heights. Under his leadership, Disney’s market capitalization increased from $48 billion to $257 billion. Every leader needs to embody his personal leadership lessons

From strategy to execution to results, no leader can be effective without the foundations of trust. Trust is the single most critical driver of every leader’s effectiveness and the hidden element in the formula of every business’s success. Lead with trust by practicing positive behaviors that strengthens your relationship with your employees.

Leadership / Management

Leading With Trust: 4 Effective Ways to Build Trust as a Leader

From strategy to execution to results, no leader can be effective without the foundations of trust. Trust is the single most critical driver of every leader’s effectiveness and the hidden element in the formula of every business’s success. Trust can only be earned and evolved by consistently practicing positive behaviors over long periods of time

We spend a large part of our life at work, and yet when it comes to making a decision “Is this the right company for me,” most of us rely only on our expert intuition without any solid data to back it up. Data or intuition alone can’t help you make the right decision. You need both data and intuition to make an informed decision.

Decisions / Personal Development

How to Decide If a Company Is Right for You

When you meet a new person, you take time to decide if it’s a relationship worth investing in or not. When it comes to your job though, do you apply the same level of due diligence? Companies are after all in some sense similar to people. You can think of a company as a group of people with a shared identity. Spend effort into knowing this identity as you would with any new person. Determine if it’s a relationship worth investing

You do not need to go out of your way to get noticed. You only need to adopt a set of simple behaviors that can make you stand out at work and effective in everything you do.

Leadership / Personal Development

8 Powerful Behaviors to Stand Out at Work

Being good at what you do cannot make you stand out at work. How you operate and interact with others play a crucial role in your success at work. You need to adopt powerful behaviors that can make you influential, impactful and move you forward. Adopting and practicing these behaviors will bring about the biggest positive change in your work life

Our imperfection combined with the fact that the future is unknown can lead us to make very bad decisions. But instead of feeling helpless, we can invest in our decision making abilities. We can learn to make better decisions to make a positive impact in our own lives and the people we work with

Decisions / MentalModels

Avoiding Bad Decisions: Why We Make Bad Choices and How to Fight Back

Our life is nothing but a sum total of our decisions. From health to relationships to professional and personal growth, our decisions form an integral part of our overall well-being. An understanding of why you make bad decisions will profoundly enhance the success of all your future decision-making by preventing you from making choices you end up regretting

As a manager, you need to learn to scale yourself while also scaling for impact. The only way to do that is to learn to delegate work effectively. Giving up control can feel hard, but it’s also necessary for growth.

Leadership / Management

How to Delegate Work Effectively: 5 Steps to Let Go of Control and Start Doing More

To delegate effectively, managers need to be intentional about the work that only they need to do and create clarity for their team on the rest. They have to learn to invest in those around them by letting go of control. Giving up control can feel hard, but it’s also necessary for growth. It’s the only way to scale for impact in an organization

Even if you are a great manager who really cares about their employees, open yourself to the idea that your actions might be unintentionally contributing to a toxic work environment. Being self-aware and showing willingness to accept reality can help you identify the role you play in supporting the toxic culture, even if in small ways and build strategies to combat it.

Leadership / Management

Are You Contributing to a Toxic Work Environment Without Realizing It?

Most managers discard the notion that they could be toxic due to a flawed assumption about what contributes to toxicity. The standard list of toxic behaviors is well known. What misses attention are the subtle behaviors that also impact employees’ well-being. If you are a manager, open yourself to the idea that your actions might be unintentionally contributing to a toxic work environment

Every manager deals with the fear of having to tell an employee they are not ready for a promotion at some point. The disconnect between the expectation and the reality happens because the manager doesn’t take steps to bridge the gap between the two. Fear gets in the way.

Leadership / Management

How to Tell an Employee They Are Not Ready for a Promotion

What’s more crucial than not promoting the person who isn’t ready for one? The right kind of communication. Because this is where most managers fail to do their job. As the manager fails to communicate, the employees continue developing a chip on their shoulders with their unfulfilled wishes and desires. It amplifies every time they lose an opportunity to get promoted

Effects of the role conflict can vary from person to person. While some learn to deal with the friction that comes with a role conflict and thrive by staying positive and seeking measures to counteract it, others stop functioning and stop being productive by choosing to stay with stress and resentment

Personal Development / Productivity

We Need to Talk: The Science of Productive Role Conflict

Effects of the role conflict can vary from person to person. While some learn to deal with the friction that comes with a role conflict and thrive by staying positive and seeking measures to counteract it, others stop functioning and stop being productive by choosing to stay with stress and resentment. Learn to increase your productivity and general well-being when dealing with a role conflict

How can you bring your best to every situation when you are dealing with the pressure of high expectations? Difference between a successful person and an unsuccessful one is their ability to mitigate the negative effects of pressure. Performing under pressure isn’t based on some innate talent. Anyone can learn to tackle the damaging effects that pressure can have on their performance. You can learn it too.

Personal Development / Productivity

Performing Under Pressure: 5 Mental Tricks to Do Your Best When It Matters Most

How can you bring your best to every situation when dealing with the pressure of high expectations? Performing under pressure isn’t some innate talent. Anyone can learn to tackle it. You may have all the expertise, skills and the knowledge to do well, but if you don’t know how to handle pressure situations well, pressure will make you do worse, and lead you to fail utterly

Growth mindset in the workplace shows up when hard work, determination and perseverance are valued over talent. When employees are coached to learn new skills, experiment and use failures as valuable learning opportunities.

Leadership / Management

How To Promote a Growth Mindset in the Workplace

Growth mindset in the workplace shows up when hard work, determination and perseverance are valued over talent. Employees who work for growth mindset organizations have far more trust in their company and a greater sense of empowerment. They welcome challenges which makes them more successful learners and better contributors to their organizations. Learn to promote this mindset

Are you ready for a leadership position? Any manager looking to grow into a leader needs to do a self-evaluation of their skills to the demands of the role. It’s only by staying true to yourself, you can embrace the role with openness and curiosity.

Leadership / Management

Are You Ready for a Leadership Position?

Any manager looking to grow into a leader needs to do a self-evaluation of their skills to the demands of the role. It’s only by staying true to yourself, you can embrace the role with openness and curiosity. Developing your leadership style is always going to be a work in progress. There’s no end state. But recognising a few essential traits can get you started and help you identify if you are ready for the leadership position

Goal setting helps us step outside of our dreams to execute in reality. It gives us guidelines and boundaries and keeps us on track. It gives us direction when we feel lost and helps us stay put and be resilient when we face challenges and setbacks

Personal Development / Productivity

Goal Setting: Get a Clear Fix on Where You Want to Go

Most of us have many desires at work. We fantasize about a positive future. But we are always too busy or too lazy to turn them into goals. Without defining what it is that we want, we let many opportunities slip by. We fail to make the best use of every situation and let distractions eat away into our mental energy and time. Goal setting mitigates the problem by helping us step outside our dreams to execute in reality

Bad managers suck so much emotional and mental energy from their people that there isn’t any energy left to do real work. The hard truth is as more and more time is spent in “pleasing the boss” and “dealing with their tantrums,” there’s less time left to do any quality work

Leadership / Management

Bad Managers: What Not to Do When Everyone Looks to You

Are you a bad manager standing in the way of your employee’s true potential? You may believe that you are clearing the path for employees to produce great work. What you may end up doing is standing over their heads thereby preventing them to think clearly. You know what’s worst about the worst boss? They are ignorant of their own ignorance. Learn to recognize signs that lead to bad boss behaviour

Confident humility is the confidence in a leader’s ability to make the right decision while acknowledging that they need others to do it right. It’s knowing what they don’t know and having trust in what they do. It’s having faith in their strengths, while also being aware of their weaknesses. It’s accepting that they don’t have the required knowledge, but enough confidence in their ability to acquire that knowledge.

Leadership / Management

Confident Humility: Paradox of Successful Leadership

Confident humility is the confidence in a leader’s ability to make the right decision while acknowledging that they need others to do it right. It’s knowing what they don’t know and having trust in what they do. It’s having faith in their strengths, while also being aware of their weaknesses. It’s accepting that they don’t have the required knowledge, but enough confidence in their ability to acquire that knowledge

Managing conflict demands that we calm down and think clearly. Instead of letting our reaction slip through our unconscious, we need to take charge of it in conscious awareness. Instead of letting destructive patterns of behaviour be our default reaction, we can choose to engage in positive action. Seeing the conflict for what it is and not how it manifests at first

Communication / Personal Development

Managing Conflict: Abandon Overconfidence And Engage In Rethinking Cycle

Managing conflict demands that we calm down and think clearly. Instead of letting our reaction slip through our unconscious, we need to take charge of it in conscious awareness. Instead of letting destructive patterns of behaviour be our default reaction, we can choose to engage in positive action. Seeing the conflict for what it is and not how it manifests at first

Giving constructive feedback is a particularly difficult skill to master. But even with some small changes, you can make a big difference. Once you learn about the right and wrong way of giving positive feedback and sharing criticism, you can take steps to incrementally build the skills you need to be effective in your role as a manager and a leader

Leadership / Management

How To Give Feedback That Matters: Art of Constructive Criticism And Positive Feedback

Even with the best of intentions, giving constructive feedback is hard. It isn’t intuitive and most of us aren’t good at it. Even when we dare to do the right thing, we may not do it right. Telling people what they are doing right and wrong is not enough, you need to learn the art of giving constructive criticism and positive feedback to your employees

Asking for help signals self awareness of our own limitations, humility to accept what we don’t know and the courage to ask for it. It’s a sign that we are confident in our abilities to tackle whatever is standing in our way to get to where we need to go.

Communication / Personal Development

The Right Way To Ask For Help At Work

Why are we so afraid to ask for help when we need it. Is it because we are worried others will question our intelligence and smartness? Asking for help signals self awareness of our own limitations, humility to accept what we don’t know and the courage to ask for it. It’s a sign that we are confident in our abilities to tackle whatever is standing in our way to get to where we need to go

Path to success goes through failure. It’s scattered with mistakes, big and small and when confronted with challenges, we emerge on the other side more confident than we began. We can learn from our mistakes by shutting down the siren song of self-justification

Decisions / Personal Development

Strategies For Learning From Mistakes: How To Beat Self Justification And Think Clearly

Path to success goes through failure. It’s scattered with mistakes, big and small and when confronted with challenges, we emerge on the other side more confident than we began. Instead of letting self-justification cloud our judgment, we can learn to embrace those painful moments that are essential for progress

Both big picture thinking using "why" and nitty-gritty thinking using "what" need to co-exist. Big picture thinking acting as the motivational force to guide decision making, encouraging clear thinking and reminding everyone of the benefits of sticking to larger goals of the organisation while using nitty-gritty thinking to achieve those goals by reminding people to focus on the task at hand

Decisions / Personal Development

What Matters In Goals: Big Picture Thinking or The Nitty-Gritty?

Greater achievement comes from realizing how our thinking impacts our goals. By adopting the right mindset and using the right mode of thinking, we can overcome the challenges that stand in the way of achieving our goals. Learn when to use the big picture “why” and when you need nitty-gritty “what” based thinking

Learned Helplessness leads to pessimism in which even minor failures can turn into catastrophic events while learned optimism leads to adopting an optimistic attitude in which setbacks are considered temporary failures

Decisions / Personal Development

Learned Helplessness vs Learned Optimism: How To Train Your Brain To Be More Optimistic

How do you deal with adversity? Are you an optimist who is briefly disturbed by the experience but soon bounce back and storms out of the phase with the belief that it’s only a rough patch or a pessimist who continues to be paralyzed by fear of failure and spirals into hopelessness with the belief in the permanent nature of their situation. Learn to shift from learned helplessness to learned optimism

Instead of placing all criticism into the same bucket, it’s usually useful to categorize them into four different types of criticism. Out of many who criticise your work for no reason, there’s usually one with valuable feedback and the uncomfortable truth you need to hear. You possibly don’t want to lose that nugget of wisdom.

Communication / Personal Development

How To Use Criticism To Fuel Your Growth

No doubt some people are bad at delivering criticism. But aren’t we far worse at receiving it? We don’t know when it’s useful to tune in to someone’s criticism and when it makes sense to politely shove it aside and move on. It is easy to ignore feedback with the attitude that it doesn’t apply to you, but accepting the uncomfortable truth, even if it’s painful at first is the only way to grow

Leaders who focus on growth operate with a learning mode. They don’t claim to be genius, but promise to invest in development, their own development and development of their people. The drive and enthusiasm to grow their companies makes them adopt long term strategies over short term tactics. They aren’t in the game to boost their ego or establish their self esteem. It’s the pure joy of shaping the future of their company that excites and motivates them. More than prestige, they are in it for the challenge

Leadership / Management

Leadership Is About Growth, Not Brilliance

Leadership isn’t about personal greatness and entitlement, it’s the humility to lead with courage and passion. Leaders who focus on their brilliant mindset spend time and money in enhancing their image, and use people in the company to feed their ego as opposed to leaders with a growth mindset who show drive and enthusiasm to grow their companies

Work life balance is not a state you need to achieve, it’s a journey to make right choices every step of the way. Don’t push aside your life waiting for a magical day when it would all come to you, take control of it now. There will always be some obstacles, something more to be done to finally get the life you want, but knowing that these obstacles are also a part of your life can help you start now, this very moment.

Personal Development / Productivity

How To Make Work Life Balance Work

Are your actions inline with the life you want to lead? The problem of work life balance isn’t about more work, it’s about staying productive in what you are doing. There will always be some obstacles, something more to be done to finally get the life you want, but knowing that these obstacles are also a part of your life can help you start now, this very moment

A common language for team communication is an agreement on how to communicate effectively and it is the binding force that connects people in a team together through shared understanding

Communication / Management

Managers, Do You Have A Language For Your Team?

What’s your contribution to the communication structure of your team? What assumptions did you make, how did you separate what’s acceptable from what’s not and what problems do you see in the current way of working together. Letting every team member develop their own communication playbook is not only inefficient, it leaves a lot to interpretation

When leaders practice effective listening, they listen more than they talk, they not only bring their ears to the conversation but observe with their eyes as well, they commit to being mentally and physically present, they keep their judgments aside and make the other person feel comfortable by using positive body language and engage wholeheartedly in the conversation

Communication / Leadership

How Effective Listening Can Make You A Better Leader

When leaders don’t practice effective listening, they are disconnected from their people and their problems. These leaders fail to recognise that true value is created only when people listen to each other, when they are free to share an opinion and when they feel heard and respected for their views

We can either lead with vulnerability and form meaningful relationships or hide behind our protective armor where others cannot see our true selves. Creating an image that we are perfect, we have all the answers and that we are never wrong stifles our own growth and those of others around us

Leadership / Personal Development

If You Dare To Lead, Lead With Vulnerability

Lead with vulnerability. It’s the courage to let your guard down, courage to be seen, courage to accept you don’t know, courage to acknowledge mistakes, disconnect your identity from your ideas, embrace discomfort and the ultimate belief that you are not perfect, you are always work in progress

High performers in any organisation aren’t easy to manage. With their uncanny ability to produce outstanding work and an appetite to solve tough problems, they demand even greater attention and engagement from their managers. As a manager, you need to care enough to not lose your high performers. Nothing will be more valuable than the time invested in helping your excellent performers achieve further excellence

Leadership / Management

High Performers: 7 Proactive Steps To Lead Them To Excellence

Do you take time to tell your high performers that you value them and care enough to be invested in their growth? High performers are 400% more productive than an average performer. Losing them robs the organisation of excellence. Nothing will be more valuable than the time spent in helping your excellent performers achieve further excellence

What separates a good manager from a bad one is in the choice - do they accept vulnerability and commit to learning or put on an armor and try to save themselves?

Management / Personal Development

What Type Of Manager Are You?

Signing up to be a manager is an act of great courage. While the change demands letting go of our existing identity and embracing new one with openness and curiosity, it’s our mindset that determines what we make of it. What type of manager are you – do you accept vulnerability and commit to learning or put on an armor and try to protect yourself from the challenges that lie ahead?

With your decision making rooted in reward and punishment, you develop a strong tendency to be a people pleaser. People pleasing is not harmless though it may seem like it. You are not acting out of your sense of goodness for others but rather it’s deeply seated in your fear of rejection, feeling of helplessness, risk of failure, discomfort from displeasing others and not having the courage to receive their disapproval

Decisions / Personal Development

Stop Being A People Pleaser: Don’t Let Reward And Punishment Drive Your Behaviour

Do you act out of your sense of goodness for others or out of fear of rejection, discomfort from displeasing others and not having the courage to receive their disapproval? Being a people pleaser will trap you within the boundaries of your own limitations by seeking external validation instead of utilising your true potential. Learn to create value instead of doing work to satisfy others expectations

The recency of events and the emotional response that they generate influence our decisions in a huge way. When looking for information to guide our decisions, we rely on instances that come readily to mind without validating the specific content, their relevance and even their probability of occurrence. This specific bias known as availability heuristic is deeply entrenched within the human operating system

Decisions / MentalModels

Availability Heuristic: Trade-Off Between Efficiency And Accuracy In Decision Process

Availability heuristic which optimises for efficiency is error prone as it exaggerates the probability of an event based on ease of recall. Learning when we can rely on efficiency and when we need to be accurate can help us in making better decisions. Apply the right strategies when deciding on the likelihood of something happening again or determining how the future would turn out

After being stuck in a spiral of feeling frustrated, you panic about the situation, add stress and anxiety to your life, feel powerless with your situation and then do absolutely nothing about it. Instead of wasting time overthinking through situations that cause you frustration at work, know that you cannot get rid of them, but you can learn to respond to them in a healthy manner

Personal Development / Productivity

5 Emotionally Intelligent Habits For Handling Frustration At Work

What do you do to deal with frustration? After being stuck in a spiral of feeling frustrated, you panic about the situation, add stress and anxiety to your life, feel powerless with your situation and then do absolutely nothing about it. Instead of wasting time overthinking through situations that cause you frustration at work, know that you cannot get rid of them, but you can learn to respond to them in a healthy manner

Decision fatigue leads to poor quality of decision making. We show reluctance to make trade-offs, fall back to easy choices and may even find it difficult to exercise self-control after making a series of decisions

Decisions / Personal Development

Decision Fatigue: Don’t Squeeze Out Every Bit Of Your Attention

Do you control the number of decisions you make by choice and dedicate your peak mental energy to those significant decisions that impact your life in a huge way? Learn to make active choices and design a systematic approach to reduce the effect of decision fatigue and maximise your chances of making the best decision

Great leaders aren’t perfect and they are not always right, but they clearly exhibit a set of leadership qualities that makes them stand out. You can see it in the way they navigate chaos in a complex world, visualise future and speak of it with a strong conviction, draw out the path to what success looks like and take people along in their journey to a better and brighter future

Leadership / Management

Leadership Qualities: 21 Leadership Traits That Define Great Leaders

Great leaders aren’t perfect and they are not always right, but they clearly exhibit a set of leadership qualities that makes them stand out. To understand what makes someone a truly great leader, we need to move from a superficial attribution of their characteristics to the underlying behaviours and actions that make up these qualities

Sunk cost fallacy causes us to ignore the promise of a better experience in the future by making an attempt to negate a loss in the past. In other words, our past investments over influence our current decisions

Decisions / Leadership

Sunk Cost Fallacy: Know When You Need To Pull The Plug

Do you base your decision on what’s going to happen in the future or what investments have been made in the past? By not shifting our mental frame from the cost of moving on to the cost of not moving on, sunk cost fallacy causes us to ignore the promise of a better experience in the future by making an attempt to negate a loss in the past

Striking up a conversation at work can be intimidating. We avoid eye contact, turn our heads away and pretend to be busy on our phones all in an attempt to save ourselves from the awkward moment of meeting someone and not sure what to say. Learn how to start a conversation by being curious about others, paying attention to them and trying to form a connection

Communication / Personal Development

How To Start A Conversation: Get Beyond Small Talk To Forming Meaningful Connections At Work

Striking up a conversation at work can be intimidating. We avoid eye contact, turn our heads away and pretend to be busy on our phones all in an attempt to save ourselves from the awkward moment of meeting someone and not sure what to say. Learn how to start a conversation that does not involve small talk and adds value to work without making you feel uncomfortable

Thinking big is not daydreaming or imagining a beautiful future, it’s a mental practice that allows us to take active control over our own life. Learning how to think big can shift us from being prisoners of our mind to finding freedom in our thoughts

Leadership / Personal Development

Thinking Big: Mental Practice To Achieve Success

The ability to think big is the first step to break out of our bubble of self imposed limits and channel our energies to explore a bigger and better future. Thinking big doesn’t end with the visualisation of a better future, it’s rather the beginning of commitment to think right every step of the way

Distraction not only impacts the quality of our work, but our life too. Being able to focus requires us to have a strong sense of the kind of distractions that rule our lives and the ability to control them instead of letting them control us

Personal Development / Productivity

How To Stay Focussed And Manage Distractions

How do you know if a distraction is good or bad for you? Distractions do not ask for permission, they have an autonomy of their own. Learn to design your own personal system to make your distracted identity collaborate with your desire for focussed attention instead of fighting against it

Navigating the path to each employee’s success is not trivial and requires a commitment to be patient, dedication to push ahead despite failures and devising unique ways to inspire and bring out the best in every individual. One-on-one meetings is a slow process, but done right it can be your ultimate advantage as a manager

Leadership / Management

One-On-One Meetings: How Great Managers Navigate The Path To Employee’s Ultimate Success

Navigating the path to each employee’s success is not trivial and requires a commitment to be patient, dedication to push ahead despite failures and devising unique ways to inspire and bring out the best in every individual. One-on-one meetings is a slow process, but done right it can be your ultimate advantage as a manager

We all face multiple conflicts at work, but it’s the conflict with the boss that can be our biggest source of stress and exhaustion at work. Does your manager push your buttons, takes away your high hopes, crushes your desire to be innovative and refrains you from producing your best work. Are they a micromanager?

Management / Personal Development

Stop Being Micromanaged: How To Deal With A Micromanager The Right Way

We all face multiple conflicts at work, but it’s the conflict with the boss that can be our biggest source of stress and exhaustion at work. Does your manager push your buttons, takes away your high hopes, crushes your desire to be innovative and refrains you from producing your best work. Are they a micromanager?

Empowering teams by giving up control is not easy. The fear that others are not capable and lack the required amount of clarity to make the best decision interferes with our ability to relinquish control. Empowering teams is not a matter of intent but rather how we put that intent to action. It’s the shift in mindset from “I am responsible for making the best decisions” to “I am responsible for developing people who can make the best decisions"

Leadership / Management

Empowering Teams: To High Performance And Excellence

How can we transform from the command and control style to leveraging the power of self-direction that energizes and engages people? Empowering teams by giving up control is not easy. The fear that others are not capable and lack the required amount of clarity to make the best decision interferes with our ability to relinquish control

Is motivation a state of mind or a muscle we need to build. How can we kick off our motivation flywheel to help us achieve goals in the long run. Reading a great book, a blog post, watching a video, listening to podcasts are all prominent things to set our thinking in motion. But by themselves, they do not help us achieve anything. Each one of us can design our own flywheel by recognising that motivation is in action

Personal Development / Productivity

Put Your Motivation Flywheel To Action

Is motivation a state of mind or a muscle we need to build? Lack of motivation is not lack of information, it’s the lack of behaviour to put that knowledge to use. Only the act itself can set motivation flywheel in action. It can turn impossible to possible. We do not fear failure once we learn to find pleasure in trying.

While difficult people are a reality of life and everything we feel about them may be true, is it really in our best interest to navigate our lives by blaming them, holding them responsible for not reaching our goals and pretending that we didn’t succeed because of some mean co-workers

Communication / Personal Development

How To Deal With Difficult People

Difficult people push our buttons by acting in undesirable ways. Their behaviour gives us permission to pass judgement and offload responsibility by blaming them. Is it really in our best interest to navigate our lives by blaming them, holding them responsible for not reaching our goals and pretending that we didn’t succeed because of some mean co-workers

Without applying Hanlon's razor, we default to bad intention when things do not turn out as intended. The underlying assumption that the other person is acting out of bad intention can shut down all possible communication. The negativity trap can prevent us from reaching out to the other person. It can make us distance ourselves from others, avoid communication, collaboration, and ignore opportunities that might benefit us

Decisions / MentalModels

Hanlon’s Razor: How To Be Less Judgmental And Build Better Relationships

What do we do when things do not turn out as intended? Applying Hanlon’s razor can open our mind to seek alternate views instead of assuming bad intention, shift our perspective from a negative frame of mind to a positive one, from shutting down communication to actively engage and blaming others to finding solutions together

Overcome overthinking by identifying the fine line between thinking and thinking too much. The constant chatter in our minds is a downward spiral, the more we feed it, the more it demands. By understanding why and how these thoughts originate and attending to them, we can stop overthinking and start acting which can help us move forward and be successful

Personal Development / Productivity

5 Strategies To Stop Overthinking And Start Acting

Do you tend to solve problems in your head instead of putting them to action? There’s a fine line between thinking and thinking too much. Overthinking can make us obsess about the problem instead of finding solutions, bind our mental frame to seek negative and get stuck in analysis paralysis with the desire to find a perfect solution

Confirmation bias is a cognitive bias in which we interpret and selectively gather data to fit our beliefs as opposed to using opposing views to update our mental models

Decisions / MentalModels

Confirmation Bias: Going Beyond Our Personal Narrative

When confronted with information that challenges your personal narrative, are you curious about the new information and use that to update your beliefs or do you give in to confirmation bias and find ways to reject the evidence that contradicts your assumptions and look for information that strengthens your point of view

Skip level meetings provide a mechanism to dive deep into people’s minds, develop the intelligence and perspective required to stay close to reality. If you let hierarchy magnify the distance that you have from your people especially those who do not report to you, you can never learn about the issues that impact people on a day-to-day basis. Are they looking for more empowerment, recognition, engagement, growth or are they happy with the way things are? How are they learning?

Communication / Leadership

Skip-Level Meetings: Uncovering Your Organisation’s Reality

Do you let hierarchy magnify the distance that you have from your people, especially those who do not report to you. How do you learn about the issues that impact people on a day-to-day basis? Skip-level meetings are powerful conversations that can give you access to the personal map every person uses to navigate the organisation

Groupthink happens when herd mentality drives decisions instead of utilizing the collective power of group intelligence. Without the environment that encourages fresh perspectives, constructive conflict with a desire to learn new information, and a clear process for making decisions, groupthink can give rise to collective blindness

Decisions / Leadership

Avoid GroupThink: 6 Effective Guardrails To Shape Decisions

When you are part of a group, do you speak up and voice your opinion or avoid criticism and choose a path of less conflicts. When popularity takes priority over individual responsibility, people develop a tendency to conform to ideas that lead to conservative thinking and make decisions with incomplete and biased information leading to groupthink

Managing up is nothing but an investment in building a relationship with our manager to work better together. Navigating this dynamic requires taking initiative, caring for the person above, sharing responsibility and owning our own growth with a growth mindset as opposed to a fixed mindset. Managing up can also be referred to as choosing to communicate effectively upwards

Management / Personal Development

Managing Up To Take Charge Of Your Own Growth

Do you take charge of your own growth by managing up or believe it’s your managers responsibility to enable trust, build a strong rapport with you, give you work that will help you shine and remove all barriers that can impede your success at work. How do you see the other side of this bi-directional relationship?

5 areas of self reasoning and introspection to determine if you really want to be a manager. Before you decide to be a manager, answer the key questions raised in these 5 areas to determine if manager role is right for you or not

Decisions / Management

Do You Really Want To Be A Manager?

Management is a choice. Embracing it for the right reasons requires reasoning with self, questioning our thoughts, staying true to how we feel about the role and then making a conscious decision. If you really want to be a manager, explore possibilities and understand its unique challenges

To lead during a crisis, we need many people to step up and act as leaders by navigating unchartered territories together, planning for future contingencies while also addressing current needs. Leaders who take care of their people over profit during a crisis will build trust and long term relationships by doing what's right

Leadership / Management

10 Ways To Lead Through A Crisis

In times of uncertainty when there’s little clarity on how the events will unfold, fear and worry of the unknown can consume us. Risk of business and personal lives in such surreal circumstances can cause feelings of fear, helplessness, anger and stress. Learning to lead through a crisis will require people to step up in their roles and lead others through unsettling and uncertain times

Inversion mental model is the simple and most powerful mental model to think opposite of what we seek and unleash imagination by expanding our thoughts and questioning our assumptions. It helps us uncover possibilities we did not know existed and provide more success and growth at work and in life

Decisions / MentalModels

Inversion: Mental Model To Uncover New Possibilities

Thinking opposite of what we desire is not natural. Inversion mental model provides an objective way to explore the problem by thinking the opposite of what we seek. Going beyond our limitation requires questioning our existing beliefs and assumptions to uncover new possibilities and establish a better perspective to our original question with greater clarity and understanding.