Category: Leadership

Difficult conversations though necessary are hard to crack. Fear of a bad outcome or not knowing what to say can prevent you from engaging in meaningful dialogue right when you need it the most. To handle difficult conversations well, practice these 6 rules of effective communication.

Communication / Leadership

6 Rules of Effective Communication in Difficult Conversations

Difficult conversations by nature are tricky. They are touchy topics that no one likes to talk about. They involve addressing differences of opinion, emotional issues, sensitive subjects or other potential reasons of conflict. They are challenging because they require us to navigate through discomfort, uncertainty and a wide range of complex emotions. No matter how hard a conversation is, you can’t put it off or delay it forever. Addressing issues directly, providing clarity and seeking closure can help you gain trust, respect and also alleviate stress.

Most managers are too busy playing a catch up game—handling unexpected issues, calendars filled with meetings and pacifying unhappy stakeholders—that they fail to pay attention to harmful practices and mistakes that hurt their team’s productivity and performance.

Leadership / Management

Good Managers Don’t Make These Mistakes

All managers make mistakes. However, some mistakes are not only avoidable, they’re costly to business and hinder team’s development and growth. Most managers are too busy playing a catch up game—handling unexpected issues, calendars filled with meetings and pacifying unhappy stakeholders—that they fail to pay attention to harmful practices that hurt their team’s productivity and performance. To break unhealthy patterns of thinking and acting, managers need to pay special attention to how they communicate, collaborate and get work done. In particular, they must pay attention to five critical mistakes that other good managers don’t make.

Ego is a destructive force for leaders because it not only impacts the way they think, but also how they act. Left unchecked, ego can make them turn down great opportunities, punish those who disagree with them and stick to outdated beliefs that no longer serve them well.

Leadership / Management

4 Ways to Keep Your Ego in Check as a Leader

Ego is our biggest enemy. It not only makes us blind to our flaws and imperfections, it magnifies our desire to be right and prove others wrong. Unlike threats in our environment that we can instantly feel and pay attention to, ego is hidden deep within our subconscious. When we react to other people, we often don’t realize that it’s our ego that has hijacked our mind and is making us act in self-destructive ways. While ego is harmful to everyone, it is the most dangerous thing in a leader. It compromises their ability to think clearly, makes them rigid to their ideas and beliefs and prevents them from staying closer to reality.

If your team is underperforming, stop pointing fingers and try to identify what might be causing it. Blaming, shaming or scolding people won’t fix the problem. It won’t turn your team around. Rather, being offensive or rude in such situations will demotivate your team and make them perform even worse.

Leadership / Management

5 Causes of Underperforming Teams

Dealing with an underperforming team can be quite overwhelming if you don’t understand what’s causing subpar performance in the first place. Without knowing the root cause, any strategies you apply to tackle poor performance will be ineffective—they will only make you feel defeated, discouraged and let down. Blaming, shaming or scolding people won’t fix the problem. It won’t turn your team around. Rather, being offensive or rude in such situations will demotivate your team and make them perform even worse.

It doesn’t matter how smart, capable or intelligent you are. Navigating the challenges and unknowns as a leader requires a basic skill—curiosity. You’ve to be open to the idea of improvement. You have to differentiate between behaviors that push your team to the ground and those that lift them up. A great way to do this is a quarterly self-reflection exercise to take a fresh look at your leadership style.

Leadership / Management

Ask These 10 Questions to Take a Fresh Look at Your Leadership Style

Higher up in the hierarchy you go, the bigger are the problems you need to face. Not only do you need to deal with complexity, what others expect from you goes up as well. It’s also lonely at the top, which means there’s less feedback on how you’re doing and what you can do to improve. This is where most leaders go wrong. Instead of paying attention to their leadership style, they pack their schedules with meetings and run with a long list of things to do.

False urgency culture in an organization misleads employees by keeping them super busy, stressed and anxious without doing impactful work or creating any value. Here are the 5 strategies to root out false urgency culture in your organization.

Leadership / Management

How to Combat a Culture of False Urgency at Work

Some leaders ruthlessly prioritize to ensure important work is not compromised at the cost of urgent actions. Other leaders treat every request as a priority and don’t pay attention to how much something deserves their attention. Attaching a heightened sense of urgency to every request makes it difficult for their teams to get any meaningful work done. Jumping from one task to another and being in a constant state of overwhelm and reactivity can drain team energy, increase stress and can even lead to burnout.

Thinking clearly isn’t something you can achieve in a day. Building mastery in it is an iterative process because the things that get in the way of clear thinking never really go away. You only get better at catching errors in your thinking and applying the right strategies to remove brain fog that gets in the way of clear thinking.

Decisions / Leadership

What Gets in the Way of Clear Thinking?

Our thoughts aren’t clear most of the time. Instead of a clear blue sky, they often appear as dark clouds and storms in the sky. While some people are able to look beyond this temporary darkness into the hidden bright blue sky, others get bogged down by it and feel trapped, unable to think and act clearly. Clear thinking is a point of leverage—it helps you make better decisions and avoid deadly mistakes with far-reaching consequences. Many forces—some within our control and others outside it—delude our thinking and judgment.

We all have tremendous hidden potential waiting to be unleashed. Some people utilize their potential to achieve amazing feats while others never realize what they’re capable of as they let their self-limiting beliefs get in the way of their growth.

Leadership / Personal Development

How to Unleash Your Hidden Potential

We all have tremendous potential waiting to be unleashed. Some people utilize their potential to achieve amazing feats while others never realize what they’re capable of as they let their self-limiting beliefs get in the way of their growth. When you consider talent as the only measure of success and don’t give enough credit to effort, attitude and practice, you construct an artificial wall in your mind that limits your visibility and makes you believe you don’t have what it takes to reach the other side. It’s not your natural ability, but your attitude to learning that determines where you end up.

In all our endeavors, success is a desired end state. It brings a moment of exhilaration, joy and pride that’s hard to explain. Failure on the other hand is disappointing, frustrating and can even demotivate some people from trying to reach for their goals. There’s no playbook to success because it’s often a culmination of many different factors—depending on not only what you’re trying to do but also your circumstances, knowledge, experience and luck.

Leadership / Personal Development

6 Factors That Determine Whether You Will Succeed or Fail

In all our endeavors, success is a desired end state. It brings a moment of exhilaration, joy and pride that’s hard to explain. Failure on the other hand is disappointing, frustrating and can even demotivate some people from trying to reach for their goals. There’s no playbook to success because it’s often a culmination of many different factors—depending on not only what you’re trying to do but also your circumstances, knowledge, experience and luck. These 6 critical factors provide a blueprint to success to guide you in your journey towards your goals.

You can’t get employees buy-in by enforcing change. You can’t let them play a guessing game. To lead through change, you have to be on top of your communication game. Here are the 5 strategies that work extremely well to lead effectively through change.

Leadership / Management

How to Lead Through Change

Change is necessary to adapt, innovate and move ahead with the changing times. Organizations that don’t embrace change and stick to the status quo are often left behind. When leading through change, leaders have to face many obstacles, but the biggest bottleneck isn’t the challenges along the way, it’s how change is presented and communicated to employees. There’s too much focus on strategy, execution and operational excellence and too little on ensuring effective communication. Communication which is the key driver of ensuring a smooth transition is mostly an afterthought.

There's a lack of leadership in organizations because managers with great leadership potential often get stuck fulfilling the demands of their role. Managers shouldn’t be promoted and given a leadership title without building essential skills first. Use these 5 strategies to rise from management to leadership.

Leadership / Management

How to Rise From Management to Leadership

The path from management to leadership is often not clear. This makes many managers with great leadership potential get stuck in their jobs. To rise from management to leadership, managers need to commit to practicing a few essential skills. They need to expand their thinking skills, contribute beyond their team and learn to connect ideas from different disciplines and domains. Instead of trying to earn the leadership title, they need to focus on being seen as a leader first.

If your employee is unpredictable or inconsistent in their performance or if they are not reaching for their potential, helping them bridge this gap is your responsibility as a manager. Don’t assume there’s something wrong with them or that they simply don’t care. Many factors play a role in determining how people put their talents to use.

Leadership / Management

What To Do If Your Employee Isn’t Reaching Their Full Potential

If your employee is unpredictable or inconsistent in their performance or if they are not reaching for their potential, helping them bridge this gap is your responsibility as a manager. Don’t assume there’s something wrong with them or that they simply don’t care. Many factors play a role in determining how people put their talents to use.

Pressure is inevitable when you’re trying to do worthwhile work. Reacting to pressure can put you at a disadvantage as you end up making poor choices and terrible decisions. Leading under pressure requires the ability to keep your calm and think with a clear head—being purposeful in the way you behave and act.

Leadership / Productivity

How To Stay Calm and Thrive Under Pressure

How can you bring your best to every situation when dealing with the pressure of high expectations? You know that you can’t screw up when doing something that matters to you or when you really care about the outcome, and yet high pressure situations make many people react poorly and lose their calm. It leads to poor choices, bad decisions and can sometimes even lead to inaction.

Spending all your time analyzing while failing to act leads to analysis paralysis. Desire to make the perfect decision turns into indecision. You struggle to reach a conclusion because you keep chasing certainty which does not exist—no one can know with surety if a particular decision is the best or will lead to the desired result.

Decisions / Leadership

How to Stop Analysis Paralysis and Make More Confident Decisions

When making important decisions with possible life altering effects, the uncertainty of the outcome and the fear of stepping into the unknown keeps us locked in an unproductive cycle where the more data we collect and the more we analyze it, the more we overthink our decision. Spending all your time analyzing while failing to act leads to analysis paralysis.

Effective leaders, though rare, are inspirational. They bring people together and enable them to collectively achieve great things together. They put the welfare of the organization and their people above their own self interests.

Leadership / Management

9 Powerful Behaviors of Highly Effective Leaders That Sets Them Apart

What makes some leaders produce excellent work while others barely do a part of their job? When leaders aren’t conscious of their time, let fear guide their decisions, worry about being disliked, and use excuses to delay or put off things that need their time and attention, they fail to do their job. Their behaviors push the organization back instead of lifting it up.

Becoming a manager may appear like a step up in your role. It definitely comes with a better pay and more responsibilities. But are you ready for it?

Leadership / Management

Am I Ready To Be a Manager?

A big mistake that employees at all levels make is confusing career development with attaining specific positions. Rush to climb the career ladder makes them take on positions which make them miserable because they actually don’t enjoy the role or not having the proper skills to do their job well leads to exhaustion and burnout. Becoming a manager when you’re not ready is the worst of all. Your job is not just about you. You’re now responsible for other human beings. Take a long term perspective. Don’t be short-sighted.

As a leader, making your employees comfortable to criticize you isn’t easy. Don’t expect them to walk over to you and give you the feedback unless you take the first few steps in seeking it. Get actionable feedback by following the right practices.

Communication / Leadership

How Leaders Can Get the Actionable Feedback They Need to Grow

Feedback is a crucial part of growth. If you don’t know how you’re doing, it’s impossible to take corrective actions and improve. Many leaders fail at this. They either do not explicitly seek feedback or the way they ask for it only boosts their ego by getting feel-good praise about what they’re doing well without surfacing the actual areas where they’re falling short.

For a manager, being effective is not optional, it’s a crucial part of their job. Without effectiveness, more time is spent on inconsequential tasks and less on forward moving activities.

Leadership / Management

6 Micro Habits of Highly Effective Managers

For a manager, being effective is not optional, it’s a crucial part of their job. Without effectiveness more time is spent on inconsequential tasks and less on forward moving activities, effort spent never matches up to the results, opportunities are missed and problems linger on. Effectiveness is nothing but a habit and much like other habits in life, it too can be learned. If you want to be an effective manager, master these 6 micro habits.

To turn your managers into successful leaders, don’t be too involved or too disconnected. Find the sweet spot where you know just enough to coach when needed while giving them the space to explore, work things out on their own and learn from their mistakes. Ask your managers these 5 questions every month.

Leadership / Management

5 Questions to Ask Your Managers Every Month to Help Them Grow as a Leader

When you stop managing individual contributors and start managing other managers, a lot needs to change. Your role is no longer about assigning tasks, meeting deadlines or taking care of your team’s work assignments and other responsibilities. Your managers are now doing the work you used to do yourself. So, how can you let go of the control? How can you trust them to do the job while you’re still responsible for it? Ask these 5 questions to your managers every month.

To be an effective manager create a safe space for employees to voice their opinion, help them build creative thinking skills by leading with questions and strike the right balance between challenging and personally caring for them.

Leadership / Management

Want to be an Effective Manager? Build These 3 Skills

As a manager, you may feel that there are too many things to learn and too little time to put everything into practice. However, working hard to catch up to the demands and expectations of the job will only leave you tired and exhausted. Good management does not require being a superhuman with extraordinary skills. It only requires practicing these 3 important skills.

Beat feelings of self-doubt and unworthiness and build confidence by following this 3 step process.

Leadership / Personal Development

Bridge the Confidence Gap: How to Build Confidence That Lasts

When you fall for your mind’s thinking traps, you may assume it’s lack of competence that stops you from going after the things you want. But it’s not competence that’s holding you back, it’s your lack of confidence. When you lose sight of belief in yourself, no amount of competence can make you successful. Competence gives you the skills, confidence underpins your ability to actually get things done.

Building extraordinary workplaces with high performing teams requires more than hiring the right talent and equipping them with the right opportunities. It requires cultivating the right habits and incorporating them into daily work and life.

Leadership / Management

5 Excellent Habits of High Performing Teams

What makes some teams do exceptionally well and others to perform poorly? Do they have more talented team members, better resources or are simply being lucky? Teams that stand out are not more talented, better skilled or have greater opportunities. What sets them apart are their habits and practices. Empowering work culture, support from leaders in the organization and clarity of vision and goals is important, but they’re not sufficient to drive excellence and high performance in teams.

Making good decisions isn’t just about making the right choices, it’s also about being able to recognize and eliminate bad ones. Here are the other 4 thinking traps that add to leadership ineffectiveness. #effectiveleadership #cognitivebias #psychology #cognition #implicitbias #decisionmaking #thoughtleaders #entrepreneurship #makingdecisions #bias #leadership #mentalmodels #thinkingtraps

Leadership / MentalModels

Break Free From These 4 Leadership Thinking Traps

Thinking traps are the biggest cause of leadership ineffectiveness. When leaders don’t pay attention to how they think, make decisions and the impact it has on the organization and its people, their actions—however well intended they may be—cease to produce the desired effect. Making good decisions isn’t just about making the right choices, it’s also about being able to recognize and eliminate bad ones. Effective leaders make good decisions by paying attention to their errors in thinking and taking steps to reduce them.

Leaders are ordinary human beings who make mistakes from time to time. While some mistakes are insignificant or have minor negative consequences, others might be potentially harmful and damaging to the organization and its people. Most of these mistakes are unintentional—they stem from thinking errors, applying shortcuts and not using the right mental models. When leaders don’t pause and reflect, they make poor choices and terrible decisions which hurt the productivity of their people and performance of their entire organization.

Leadership / MentalModels

These Thinking Errors are the Biggest Cause of Leadership Ineffectiveness

Leaders are ordinary human beings who make mistakes from time to time. While some mistakes are insignificant or have minor negative consequences, others might be potentially harmful and damaging to the organization and its people. Most of these mistakes are unintentional—they stem from thinking errors, applying shortcuts and not using the right mental models. When leaders don’t pause and reflect, they make poor choices and terrible decisions which hurt the productivity of their people and performance of their entire organization.

When employees think they’re not fairly evaluated or their manager lacks information on their true value and worth, it affects their performance and productivity. Not being recognized for what they bring to the table hits them hard—they don’t see a point in taking up new challenges and opportunities or going the extra mile. That's why it's so important to take performance reviews seriously and do them well.

Leadership / Management

How to Put People at the Center of Performance Reviews

When employees think they’re not fairly evaluated or their manager lacks information on their true value and worth, it affects their performance and productivity. Not being recognized for what they bring to the table hits them hard—they don’t see a point in taking up new challenges and opportunities or going the extra mile. Doing performance reviews well requires intention and effort, but done right, it can give big returns on investment.

Being a manager of managers is a great responsibility. Your behaviors and actions not only impacts your managers, but also people reporting to them. Even though you have a lot to learn, by applying the right practices you can step up and be the leader that your people expect you to be.

Leadership / Management

5 Things I learned the Hard Way as a Manager of Managers

Being a manager of managers is a great responsibility. The impact of your decisions and what you say or do not only impacts your managers, but also people reporting to them. Attracting great talent is not enough. You also need to hold them together and help them achieve excellence. Even though you have a lot to learn, by applying the right practices you can step up and be the leader that your people expect you to be.

What if employees at work mentally check out? They do not become lazy, irresponsible or stop taking their work seriously. Rather, they do what they are being asked to do—nothing more and nothing less. Quiet quitting is a mindset that safeguards employees from placing excessive focus on one’s work, ignoring personal time because their career comes first or becoming so dedicated to their jobs that friends, family and their own health turn into an afterthought. #quietquitting #greatresignation #tangping #lyingflat #quitjob #burnout #worklifebalance #lifebalance #timemanagement #career #balance #mentalhealth #mentalhealthmatters #wellness #wellbeing

Decisions / Leadership

Is Quiet Quitting a Good Idea?

What if employees at work mentally check out? They do what they are being asked to do—nothing more and nothing less. Quiet quitting is a mindset that safeguards employees from placing excessive focus on one’s work, ignoring personal time because their career comes first or becoming so dedicated to their jobs that friends, family and their own health turn into an afterthought. Disengaging from work can create a healthy balance between work and life but mentally checking out this way isn’t without negative side effects.

As a manager, hearing an employee quit is the most challenging experience. On the one hand, you’re worried about the impact it may have on your team, on the other you’re concerned about how it reflects on you as a manager. However by responding in a thoughtful manner, you can have a constructive discussion and may even convince them to stay.

Leadership / Management

How to Respond When an Employee Quits

As a manager, hearing that someone on your team quit is the most challenging experience. On the one hand, you’re worried about the impact it may have on your team, on the other you’re concerned about how it reflects on you as a manager. Losing a top performer, someone you value in the team or someone with great potential is definitely upsetting. It may be hard to believe at first especially if it comes off as a total surprise—they seemed committed and engaged and you really cared for them, so what went wrong?

Finding it hard to assert authority as a new manager? Not sure how you can assign tasks to your team, how you can raise concerns or how you can have tough conversations? Asserting authority as a new manager is uncomfortable and but you can do it right by praticing the right behaviors.

Leadership / Management

How to Assert Authority as a Young Manager

Not sure how you can assign tasks to your team, how you can raise concerns or how you can have tough conversations? Some discomfort is natural as a new manager. But letting your discomfort get in the way of your decisions, holding yourself back from giving your ideas and suggestions, hesitating to set direction and guide your team or delaying feedback with the worry how it might land with the other person not only makes you ineffective as a manager, it also hurts your team’s productivity and performance.

When you lose trust as a manager, it negatively impacts your team's productivity and performance. They are constantly on the lookout, watchful of how their actions will be perceived. Time and energy that’s better spent in doing work is wasted in useless arguments and discussions. Lack of trust turns minor disappointments into major setbacks. Negative outlook breeds suspicion, frustration, and resentment which leads to poor quality work.

Leadership / Management

Losing Trust As a Manager? Here’s How to Regain It

What’s the most important factor that impacts an employee’s motivation at work—the level of trust they feel towards their manager. High levels of trust make them feel valued, energizes them to work harder, and make them persist through difficulties and setbacks. Low levels of trust reverses the equation which negatively impacts their productivity and performance. You can lose trust as a manager if you don’t spend time noticing how you come across to others.

Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions is a phrase used by many managers—even the well-intentioned ones—who believe that it encourages their team members to be creative thinkers, while all it does is promote siloed thinking.The message you want to pass is one of encouragement and empowerment, but instead, it dissuades your team from bringing up problems—problems they find hard to solve or ones that need your support and guidance.

Leadership / Management

“Don’t Bring Me Problems, Bring Me Solutions” is Hurting Your Team

Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions is a phrase used by many managers—even the well-intentioned ones—who believe that it encourages their team members to be creative thinkers, while all it does is promote siloed thinking. The message you want to pass is one of encouragement and empowerment, but instead, it dissuades your team from bringing up problems—problems they find hard to solve or ones that need your support and guidance.

Finding it hard to be effective as a new manager? Apply these strategies to succeed.

Leadership / Management

Finding It Hard to Be Effective as a New Manager? Here’s How to Succeed

When you get promoted to a new manager, there are lots of questions in your mind. With so many questions unanswered, it’s completely natural to feel unprepared. Your struggles are real. When you started as an individual contributor and got to a lead position, you thought you made it. But now as a manager, you are back to square one. To be effective as a new manager, you’ll need to acquire a set of skills that can only come through practice.

How do you get better as a manager? You can use feedback from your manager, inputs from your team, and outcomes you achieve as a measure of your performance, but by themselves, they do not help you get better. Without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you cannot determine areas that need your attention and the steps you must take to improve. Ask these 9 questions to be a great boss.

Leadership / Management

9 Questions Great Bosses Ask Themselves 

How do you get better as a manager? You can use feedback from your manager, inputs from your team, and outcomes you achieve as a measure of your performance, but by themselves, they do not help you get better. Without a system in place to measure yourself and actively monitor how you’re doing, you cannot determine areas that need your attention and the steps you must take to improve. Use these 9 questions that all great bosses ask themselves to improve their team’s performance.

One-on-one meetings go wrong not because of lack of effort. They go wrong when you don’t pay attention to little things that are needed to get them right. Watch out for these common one-on-one meeting mistakes.

Leadership / Management

These One-on-One Meeting Mistakes are Hurting Your Team

Do you regularly meet your people, give them advice and help them with their growth? You might be doing a lot of things right, but do you also take time to analyze the mistakes that can turn your one-on-one meetings unproductive and leave your employees feeling dissatisfied? One-on-one meetings go wrong not because of lack of effort. They go wrong when you don’t pay attention to little things that are needed to get them right.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When leaders build a feedback culture that encourages people to give and seek feedback, it creates a feedback rich environment where feedback is part of day-to-day work

Leadership / Management

How To Create Feedback Rich Environment

Feedback culture built on the principles of openness and growth can give way to a feedback rich environment where employees feel safe to voice opinions and take charge of their own growth by giving and seeking feedback. The desire to work better and improve together shifts the mindset from one of fear to one of growth.

Learn the basic building blocks of engineering management to master and be successful in your journey as an engineering manager

Leadership / Management

Basic Building Blocks To Be A Successful Engineering Manager

Engineering management is a discipline, a subjective practice that’s hard to quantify. It requires a mindset shift from doing to enabling others. While there’s no one answer to all the problems an engineering manager faces at the workplace, learning about the basic building blocks can help people improve and find their own management style

What do leaders of today need - effectiveness or efficiency. Creating a right balance of effectiveness and efficiency can help leaders do right things right. They can create a future looking strategy that encourages innvotation, adapts to changing environment and aligns objectives with goals

Leadership / Management

Effectiveness vs Efficiency: Why Successful Leaders Need Both

Leaders who find time to create the right balance of effectiveness and efficiency determine what needs to be done first and then find a way to do it efficiently. They look beyond the bounds of the organisation with the desire for a better future laying down future strategy that leads to growing people and business

In the fast moving world of technology, leaders and managers need to embrace flexibility in the workplace. They need to build a culture of trust where output is valued more than the number of hours spent in office. They must drive it through their actions and not merely in speaking

Leadership / Management

Manifesto To Flexibility In The Workplace

How does workplace culture give way to inflexible working environments. Can we provide flexibility in the workplace where trust is the basis of all work and employees feel committed to company’s success and growth