A famous American tennis player, Arthur Ashe once said « One important to key to success is self-confidence, and an important key to self-confidence is preparation ». What is self-confidence? For one, it’s the biggest differentiating factor between people who obtain what they want and those who don’t. Self-confidence is all about believing in your intrinsic unique value, … Read More
Leadership
GET IN THE DRIVING SEAT OF YOUR CAREER!
How are you feeling about your job? Let me guess. The chances are you are not very satisfied. If so, you are not alone. Most employees (between 60-75% globally) are unhappy at work. At a time of high unemployment and lacklustre job growth, many employees feel stuck in their jobs and unable to consider a … Read More
Awaken a change-maker inside you!
Minus 10, minus 8, minus 10 again. The temperatures in northern Tajikistan have stayed well below zero Celsius since mid-January. The snow-covered roads are hard to navigate, village schools are not heated. Children have been staying at home, with entire families squashed in one stove-heated room. Last fall it was the cotton harvest that distracted … Read More
New Year: think of new habits, not resolutions!
Why do so many people hit the gym and buy more self-help books in January (both gyms and the self-help books’ publishing see a huge jump in sales in the first 2 months of each year) and then… go back to the old habits? Why, for most people, New Year resolutions stay just as “resolutions” … Read More
Feeling stressed? Do something different!
When Claire put down the phone, she was hyper-ventilating. Her heart was racing. It was 3pm on the last work day before the Christmas holidays and she just learned that one of the managers had not finished the report that was due by tonight and was leaving early to attend to her sick child. Claire … Read More
Gratitude + Low Expectations = Happiness
We all have challenges and issues in our lives to resolve. A difficult colleague at work, a fight with a significant other, there is often a source of stress and frustration. Thinking about those things adds to our stress levels and makes us feel anxious. What if we focused on what’s going right in our … Read More
Assertiveness: do you speak up?
“I spoke up about the issue!” my client Julie looked radiant. She shared that she had raised her long-standing concerns about how a large-scaled project was being managed to the top management of her company. The issue had bothered her for a long time and she’d been speaking about it to everyone but… her bosses. … Read More
Eight lessons from Deauville
1300 business women gathered earlier this month in Deauville for the ninth Women’s Forum. The sun was shining on the sea, the champagne was glittering in flute glasses, and the participants who came from around the globe exchanged, debated and networked in powerful ways. What did we learn? What beliefs were confirmed? What myths were … Read More
Smart Leadership: how good are your people skills?
A twenty-year old study of leadership effectiveness conducted by Stanford University’s School of Business concluded that about 15 percent of one’s success in leading organizations comes from technical skills and knowledge, while 85 percent comes from the ability to connect with people and engender trust and mutual understanding. Through my coaching and leadership training work, … Read More
Google’s management lessons
People typically leave a company for one of three reasons, or a combination of them. The number one reason is that they have an unpleasant, to put it mildly, boss. The second one is that they don’t feel a connection to the mission of the company, or sense that their work matters. The third reason … Read More