“They held their nerve” – that’s often what is said of champion teams and champion sportspersons, when they emerge from tough situations in games that have high stakes. I witnessed one such game on Saturday when the Indian men’s cricket team won the ICC T-20 World Cup in a game that went down to the…
“Need to do something disruptive again”. This message popped into my WhatsApp chat. Let’s call this individual Maya. I have worked with Maya previously on aspects relating to career choices. At that time, Maya had made a disruptive choice in her career as a result of our coaching conversations. This time, Maya was concerned she…
I was speaking to a fellow coach on the importance of rapport and trust in a coaching conversation. Let me sum up the whole conversation in a simple manner: rapport in a conversation, is like oxygen in the air. If it is absent, the conversation is dead. Look at all the different situations in life…
I have stopped counting how many times a post from Sunitha Krishnamurthi has triggered a different idea that translated into a post here. Sunitha’s original post is here, and it aptly talks about need for feedback and how one goes about acquiring meaningful feedback, but also how one puts it to use towards a constant…
Background: Last week, a coach colleague reached out to enquire about using “not knowing” state while coaching. This is my fundamental state to be in, whether I am doing 1:1 coaching, therapy or facilitating a group workshop or intervention. I won’t go into the actual topic of the demo coaching conversation as that is confidential,…
That’s a whole world being revealed in one small sentence. Let’s first be very clear, this is very real for a lot of professionals out there. Be it the load of work at home, workplace or both, it is a very real situation. But in my work as a coach, I have noticed that the…
When the director on a movie set says “cut” and the scene ends; or the curtain falls when the last line in a play is uttered; the curtain has fallen on 2023, and it’s an opportunity to gracefully take a bow and exit the 2023 scene! Like worn out clothes in our wardrobe, it’s a…
I was at a day long walkathon once, the route of which meandered through villages. In the evening leg and on what was going to be a full moon night, a participant ahead of me had his headlamp on proactively. We were coursing through a field and I noticed there was a low tree ahead…
My most used word while teaching Neuro Linguistic Programming is “practice”. I can sound like a broken tape or vinyl record sometimes. Often when people enquire about the program, they enquire and ask if I teach certain techniques or tools. Those are fair questions to ask. I am also contacted for enquiries on what I…
In a recent coaching conversation with a sales leader, we explored the intriguing distinction between plans and strategies. It became evident that his team’s operational approaches were more tactical and immediate, not truly strategic (I’m intentionally avoiding the term “strategic” here). At best, he had devised a solid short-term plan for the quarter’s targets, while…