Elevating Your Storytelling

“Elevate your storytelling from just a taxi ride to the story of life and its meaning….While Uber is about transportation you can still inspire people with a good story”. - Uber founder Travis Kalanick

Insight
The key to a compelling story begins not by asking , “What's my product?” but by asking yourself, “What business am I really in?  What am I passionate about?” When your true passion becomes the subject of your communication, it serves to truly inspire your audience.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Your Life Plan Should Evolve

We have to find our own way forward. There is no perfect model that can imported and therefore rather than strive for “unworkable perfection” from day one, Singapore opted to let it's political system evolve to suit it's unique needs. - Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, referring to the country's Constitution

Insight
Rather than live life on borrowed templates, continuously evolve your life plan, and customise it to suit your particular needs and circumstances.
#KnowYourself #Connect2Coach

Simplifying Complexity

“If I look at the mass I will never act. If I look at the one, I will.” —Mother Teresa

Insight
The problem in decoding complexity is because we want to find the perfect solution in one step. Take a step back, find out what you have to do and start by restraining yourself within the limits of your comprehension and doability.”

The Voices in Our Heads

We have two very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2.
System 1 is intuitive, instinctual and automatic, makes us prone to look for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning in events.
System 2 is the voice in our head – the narrator who never seems to shut up – that enables us to plan and think logically.

Insight
The first voice is that of our biases that have to be questioned, and the second the voice of our instincts that have to be evaluated and critically examined. Both require a deep dive within and thoughtful reflection.
#KnowYourself  #Connect2Coach

Filter for Leadership Ideas

“This consuming interest in leadership and how to make it better has spawned a plethora of books, blogs, TED talks, and commentary. Unfortunately, these materials are often wonderfully disconnected from organizational reality and, as a consequence, useless for sparking improvement.” - Jeffrey Pfeffer, McKinsey Quarterly

Insight
Ideas for sparking improvement of your leadership style need to be curated using a two level filter system:
Are they relevant to your organizational reality and context?
Do they feel a comfortable fit with who you are and where you want to go?
#KnowYourself   #Connect2Coach

A Career That Excites

“I wake up every day excited and daunted by all we have to do here at Instagram.” Instagram COO Marne Levine, to a question whether she would go back to her previous role in the government.

Insight
Without challenges, the work we do becomes routine and unexciting. If the challenge is that the work itself appears boring and holds no excitement for you, it is time to rethink your purpose and life goals. #Connect2Coach

Baseline Leadership Qualities

“Our human resource system must recognize people who are able to exercise judgement, who know when it is time for man or woman to make rules. This involves courage, heart, purity of intentions and a very human touch.” Ong Ye Kung, Minister, Singapore.

Insight
This list of baseline leadership qualities is a handy checklist for anyone aspiring for a leadership position. Discover,  Develop, Demonstrate your leadership strengths. #Connect2Coach

Picture: People Matters

Energy of Motivation

“Success is never owned; it is only rented -- and the rent is due every day.” - Author Rory Vaden

Insight
Success can either inflate our ego, or it can inflate our motivation to do even better. The first is least desirable.  The second, motivation, can create positive energy which should go into defining new priorities that emerge from the strength and the consequences of the success to create a new balance. #Connect2Coach

The Art of Leadership

"The art of leadership is not to spend your time measuring, evaluating. It’s all about selecting the person. And if you believe you selected the right person, then you give that person the freedom, the authority, the delegation to innovate and to lead with some very simple measure.” - Pierre Nanterme, CEO Accenture.

Insight
As a leader how much do you trust yourself to trust your people? How much do you trust yourself to tell your people what to do and let them do it their way?

Your Paths to Happiness

Seven years ago, Adam Newman, co-founder & CEO, WeWork weighed 30 pounds less, smoked 2 packs of cigarettes a day and his hands used to shake. Then he met his present wife, who told him he didn't understand life - he was chasing money, which was never going to work. And even if it did come, he would never be happy. Instead, she told him, he should be chasing happiness.

Insight
Yogic tradition teaches that the four desires, Purpose, Prosperity, Pleasure and Spiritual fulfilment are the basis for all human happiness. What paths to happiness have you chosen within each desire? Connect2Coach

A Leader's Most Powerful Weapon

After reviewing the lives of 11 leaders, from Margaret Thatcher to Martin Luther King, Jr.,Harvard social scientist Howard Gardner concluded that the single most powerful weapon in the leader’s literary arsenal, was their ability to communicate a compelling story, “narratives that help individuals think about and feel who they are, where they come from, and where they are headed.”

Insight
As a leader, what narratives are you paying attention to, and communicating to your people? How do you collect the stories you want to tell? What forums have you created to share them? #Connect2Coach

Picture: Bates Communication

Becoming Exceptional

One of CEO of WeWork Adam Neumann’s earliest mentors told him, “I expect you to be a great husband, then a great father, then a great friend, then a great leader and then a great entrepreneur. And if you do all these together, this is what exceptional people do.“

Insight
To be exceptional you have to manage two things exceptionally;
1. Your intention
2. Not your time, but your energy,
#Connect2Coach

Wise Business Budgets

TaxiForSure founder Aprameya Radhakrishna believes the first half of 2015 saw a lot of money being poured into startups by investors. The plenty made startups splurge on things. Now with some biggies questioned on their spends, there is an overall correction.

Insight
In good times companies spend indiscriminately on initiatives, but when a slowdown hits, there is indiscriminate cost slashing. By making sure their today’s ‘Now’ is positioned in the long-term trajectory of organizational purpose, they can make sure to put the right resources behind where they want to head. #Connect2Coach

The Soft Side of Leadership

SoftBank president Nikesh Arora’s corporate identity has been of a no-nonsense high achiever who valued his privacy. However, at a recent business awards ceremony, Arora, held his wife's hand through much of the evening. And when it was his turn to speak, he choked up talking about his ailing father and family.

Insight
When a leader reveals his soft human side, people warm to him. Displaying vulnerability is as much required of a leader,  as showing the strong invincible side. The wisdom of leadership lies in knowing when.

Caring Leadrship

Mitu Chandilya, CEO, Air Asia India, left early from a recent business awards ceremony held in Mumbai. The reason? His people in Delhi, were having to cope with the problem of delayed flights due to the fog, and he wanted to offer them a much needed morale boost.

Insight
Not big gestures, but little ones like Chandilya’s go a long way to increase a leader's Personal #Leadership Power. They cost nothing, but show his human, caring side.
What does the Leader In You demonstrate to people? #CoachConnect

Each of Us Is Different

A post on Linkedin asks people to give an advice in 4 words. In the 3 months it's up, it has received 4000+ responses, each in some ways different from the rest. Presuming 20% of the messages may have had similar advice, that's a huge 3000+ different pieces of advice!

Insight
Life teaches us different lessons and shapes each of us differently. Reason a coach suspends judgement to look at the world from the coachee’s perspective. He brings to the coachee’s world an eye trained to spot gaps in her thinking. The coachee’s world does not change, but the coach has provided new eyes to look at it.

Brand You's Purpose Statement?

In the 1890’s,  William Hesketh Lever, founder of Lever Bros (now Unilever), wrote down the purpose for Sunlight soap, his revolutionary new product for the times.”Make cleanliness commonplace; lessen work for women; to foster health and personal attractiveness, that life may be more enjoyable and rewarding for the people who use our products”.

Insight
How about the purpose statement of Brand You? Have you got down to it yet? Do you want to? #CoachConnect

What Leadership Style Works Best for You?

Latest research by McKinsey across 81 countries, across diverse geographies  indicates the  4 key skills of successful leaders as:
1. Solving problems effectively,
2. Operating with a strong results orientation,
3. Seeking different perspectives and
4. Supporting others:

Insight
Search for ‘leadership’ on the Web & you get thousands of results. Research too, constantly throws up new and diverse results. But what works best for you? #CoachConnect

Navigating Emotions

To navigate something as intangible and changeable as cologne, industry “noses” require a vocabulary of sorts. But the key among all the nomenclature is the ”family” to which the fragrance belongs (eg ‘floral’, ’aquatic’, woody’). Like human families, these boxes often bleed into another and you can end up with unusual hybrids. - Bloomberg

CoachConnect
Human emotions, like fragrances, are just as intangible and changeable, and they too can end up as unusual hybrids. The coach, by helping the client give appropriate labels to his emotions provides a handle to better deal with them. 

Unproductive Emotions Take a Toll

The key to projecting an air of power is being self-confident, says the Business Insider. And the worst thing for self-confidence is having a nagging thought about a flaw in your appearance. No one may notice the missing button on your jacket, but as soon as start to worrying about it, your behavior may unconsciously draw attention to it.

CoachConnect
Has it happened that what you are worried most about, turns out as inconsequential as that missing button on the jacket? Unproductive emotions take a toll on our priorities. Conversations with a coach, help take a healthier perspective on life.