I am a part of the real number that is self-aware. If this is the first thought that comes to your mind on reading the headline, you are highly likely to not be self-aware! What is self-awareness? Self-awareness is the will and the skill to understand who we are and how others see us. Why is self-awareness so important? Alan Mullaly, former Ford CEO put it best. “Self-awareness sets an upper limit to our effectiveness in all that we do” Vision, communication, teamwork, execution, design, negotiation, selling, persuasion, strategy, art, literally anything you do; how much you will succeed and how far will you go is decided by how self-aware you are. Imagine that your life-work is a car. Self-awareness is the driver. How much mileage you will get out of driving your car is decided by your self-awareness. What can I do to develop my self-awareness? There are two tools that Tasha Eurich offers in a podcast. Daily check-in At the end of the day, ask 3 questions 1) What went well today? 2) What did not go well…
Coaching – Letting the cat out of the bag
The unexamined life is not worth living – Socrates The more I experience coaching, the more Socrates seems wiser. Even coaching is ripe for a thorough examination. Every field that has canonical principles and prescriptive guidelines actually is. A certified coach enters coaching with a deliberate structure and an expected flow. The coach may feel like being in control. Life’s glorious spontaneity almost always shakes the coach out of a reverie. I was coaching an enterprising working professional the other day. We had arrived at a clear coaching goal. I was balancing head and heart in continuing the dialogue. The path seemed straightforward – in my mind. The heart was at ease.. And then, suddenly, things changed! My coachee became emotional and wasn’t in a good place. As coaches, we are taught to be prepared with our plan. In that moment, I realized one has to be prepared to let go of the plan as well. And so, I did. A silence, a prayerful silence enveloped our conversation and brought in a recovering pause. Initially, silence holds the thread of…
Jose Mourinho’s take on Coaching
In ‘The Playbook – A Coach’s Rules for Life’, Jose Mourinho straightaway flags down the warm-up questions. Asked about his formative influences, he says he doesn’t want to go there ( talk about it). Don’t want to talk about other people, he adds. You think the guy is so egotistical but soon he shows that if it were so, it has not stopped him from realising and accepting perhaps the biggest truth about himself in relation to the game he is passionate about – He wasn’t good enough as a football player! What is best for the team, do that! For Jose, the team is one living, breathing creature. Team above self. The best decision is in the interest of the team. In Jose’s team, he once found two players telling each other – You are a better captain than me. You should captain the team. Mourinho heard this and knew this team is right on track. Rev yourself up for the biggest challenge As a coach for FC Porto, Mourinho and his team are watching the live telecast for…
Significant Leadership : How to find where it lies
Take a look at the accompanying visual. Visuals simplify the appearance of complex reality. With the caveat of this being a conceptual model, it is still a useful one to find our place in the world. Significant leadership is the space where your greatest competence, your greatest passion and the world’s greatest need overlap. Where does one begin? Sachin Tendulkar began with his passion, and you might be surprised to know it was not batting! Tendulkar wanted to become a tearaway fast-bowler. When he went for Dennis Lillee’s fast-bowling camp, Lillee saw him bat and told him to forget about fast bowling. Isn’t that interesting? One of the greatest batsman in modern times needed feedback on his greatest competence! What comes in the way of identifying our competence? Ironically, it is the sheer ease of it, so much so that we do not think about it at all. What comes easy to us is dismissed. You can reflect on what is it you find very easy to do that is something of a task for your peer group ( people who…
Doing what we love. Not quite.
There is a widespread belief that once we know what we love doing, everything will fall in place for us. I believe it is worthwhile to know who we are first. Rather than figuring out what we love to do. In figuring out what we love,we tie ourselves in knots.We look for a pedestal.We stand our ground to know what we are. That does not mean it is easy. I have taken a long time to know who I am. And my answer takes on subtle shades of meaning when I continue asking. The answer can change, but that is fine. As long as what I do is an outcome of who I really am at one specific point in time, I believe I can cherish the work as a form of self-expression, as a means of contribution. Even if I change later on. I accept everything, including my responsibility for the actions, and their consequences. Of course, what we love matters & matters a lot. And if we truly love something, it is an expression of what we are.…
Coaching – A basic introduction
At its simplest, coaching is a one-to-one learning conversation. In the conversation, if one person asks more than he tells, and builds upon previous questions, we can call it an elementary form of coaching. Asking questions is what coaching boils down to. We can trace this art to Socrates- perhaps, the world’s first coach. Going by this historic legacy, coaching has been around for a long time. Coaching as a practice with coaching models and frameworks is only a few decades old. This development was spurred on in 1974 by the publication of a book, called ‘The Inner game of Tennis’ by Timothy Gallwey, a tennis coach. The word ‘’inner’’ was used to refer to a player’s internal state or, in Gallwey’s words, “the opponent within one’s own head who is more formidable than the one the other side of the net”. Gallwey challenged the tennis coach to do away with instruction – telling the player what to do or not to do. Instead, if the coach can help the player remove the internal obstacles (self-limiting beliefs, negative assumptions) to…