Project YOU

  Likability is a double-edged sword at work. Wanting to be liked is universal and nothing wrong with that. To varying degrees, most of us seek the approval of others. Let’s talk about how it can hurt us first.   When you take on a People-Pleaser identity, you start compromising your personal preferences to be liked. You abandon yourself, your feelings, and your true nature. You incorrectly assume that by being agreeable you will be seen as kind. You can’t say no, you feel responsible for how others feel, and you apologize even when it is not your fault. This behavior can backfire when others start seeing you as less confident and competent. If career progression is a goal, watch out for behaviors that can be perceived as subservient. Don’t play small just to be liked. Moving on to the helpful side of likability. When you are seen as a competent and confident go-getter, you may unconsciously take on an aura of arrogance. The conversations you have at work are all about you and...

  In honor of your bright future, plant a seed today. The path to the harvest will not be easy but know that nothing of value comes without a tradeoff or a difficult choice. Often, we give up on our dreams because the effort to get there can feel daunting. The days, months, and possibly years it takes to realize our dreams may feel lonely, and difficult. But, know that without those days there will be no bountiful harvest of our dreams realized. Building daily consistent habits will get you closer, and faster to your goal. When we act on our vision in bite-sized increments, the journey feels less challenging. Take a few minutes every day to intentionally take that one step outside your comfort zone.  🎯You are in control. You get to choose -the pain of regret or the pain of discipline. Don't you owe it to your future self?

  Passed over for a promotion yet again? You put in the time and effort to grow your self-awareness after the last couple of performance cycles. You worked on sharpening your communication skills, stepped outside your comfort zone, and showed up every day with an attitude of service, and yet, here you are being tested again. This time around, the invalidation hurts.   First, take the time to grieve. Acknowledge that you are feeling lost and unsure of the path ahead.  If your frustration leads to crying into your pillow at night or in the shower in the morning, let the emotions flow.   Remember, “What doesn't kill us makes us stronger”- Friedrich Nietzsche. When you are feeling centered again, reflect on the situation and take the time to recall a time when you navigated a storm well. That experience made you stronger and built up your resourcefulness. We all have valor within us, and this reflection on a prior trial will give you the confidence that you will find a w...

  Team Leaders – Are you frustrated by a disengaged employee in your team? Do they appear cynical and recalcitrant to you? That is often a presentation layer of an underlying hurt. Here is something you may want to consider about the team member.   -There is a likelihood that the employee has been burned before, especially when they were passionate and wanted to serve with the noblest of motives. It is easy to lose faith after a few poor experiences. -They start believing that their skill and passion are of no value to their leaders. -When all they see is a minefield ahead for sharing their knowledge and gifts, cynicism starts taking hold. Sadly, it also leaves them with an unfulfilled desire to make a difference.  These steps may help- 1.     Focus your one-on-one conversations on their passions. Be sincere. If possible, avoid scripted lines from a manager handbook, because they rarely flow out as sincerely as one would hope. People can smell a ...

  Do you retreat and hide when you feel rejected at work? Do you stop speaking up in meetings? Do you try to stay under the radar? Rejection often signals that something is wrong in terms of your perceived value or social standing in the corporate hierarchy. Your instinctive reaction to retreat is normal. Taking a little time for analysis and reflection is just what the doctor ordered. However, if you retreat for too long, you deprive yourself of growth opportunities and lose valuable time in which you could have showcased your gifts and talents. Playing small serves no one, especially you. To come out ahead after a perceived rejection, take the time objectively to assess the situation. Ask, is it personal? Know that our filters and biases may be clouding our perception. Most of the rejections we face aren’t personal and can be attributed to factors we can't see yet. Here, assuming good intent will help alleviate the pain and accelerate our recovery from the perceive...

  Are you listening to the whispers from your intuition or paying attention to the little breadcrumbs the universe is laying out for you? If not, what clues are you missing? I can’t say I was always tuned into that inner voice, but for whatever reason, I was listening when a colleague remarked “You need to do more of this in your day job.” The ‘this’ she was referring to, more than a decade ago, was speaking from the podium after she heard one of my speeches at our Toastmasters club. That suggestion inexplicably took hold! My corporate role at that time was mostly leveraging my technical and analytical skills and I knew I had to invent opportunities for presenting. With the help of my leaders, I recrafted my role slowly to include more speaking opportunities. In hindsight, this was the inflection point but I did not know it then.     After that inflection point, in the years that followed, I stumbled upon another unexpected discovery (aka breadcrumb from the universe) whi...

  It’s Not Fair! We have all heard children scream these words when they experience an unjust outcome. As rational adults, we acknowledge and accept that life is not fair, but somehow unwittingly get trapped in a cycle of misery and bitterness when things don’t work out ‘fairly’,  in our favor. We doom ourselves to unrelenting frustration when life doesn’t meet our expectations. For example, you are burned by toxic office politics. You are exhausted watching less experienced and less competent team members get ahead. You question the futility of your skills and efforts. Most of us have been sucked into the ‘woe is me’ vortex, at some point or the other.   Your read of the situation ‘may’ be accurate, but ruminating about it incessantly, only adds insult to injury. The unfortunate outcome of replaying the latest  ‘unfairness’ saga repeatedly in our heads leads to chronic misery and bitterness and impacts how we show up every day. The personality that comes throu...

  Does it annoy you when people waste your time? I have to assume the answer is a resounding ‘YES’, especially when you are working on important activities. Have you experienced weeks when you wanted to wrap up an important task, only to have a coworker hijack your plan with impunity for their urgent tasks? This lack of planning on their part was a pet peeve of mine and that raised my sensitivity to the limited time of my colleagues. In fact, year after year, in my annual performance self-assessment, I would include a line about the care and respect I showed for everyone’s time. I wore it as a badge of honor. We experience this lack of respect regularly when we spend more time than we should on comprehending poorly formulated emails, or sit through a meandering meeting with no agenda. Sadly, time is the only thing in life that you can never get back once it’s gone. How are you protecting your most valuable resource? Care to share? I protect the first three hours of my day ...

Have false comparisons and the accompanying judgments brought you down? The operative word here is ‘false’. Comparison is valuable when deciding between ‘similar’ products and we do that often before we order online. Humans, on the other hand, are unique, complex, and multi-dimensional. When we compare ourselves to others, the judgment we make and the conclusions we arrive at are often counterproductive. Often, the data gathered is faulty and the filters we use are skewed toward one outcome, which is to confirm our bias that the other person has it is better than us. At the same time, we ignore our gifts, strengths, virtues, and values. Social media posts with exotic vacation pictures, glamor shots, and recognitions are highlight reels of others. Sadly, we compare that to our everyday. It is easy to fall prey to comparisons and doubt our own competencies and self-worth. As Theodore Roosevelt’s famous quote noted, ‘Comparison is the thief of joy”. Besides stealing your joy, the ...

  I sometimes get mad at myself after a couple of hours of directionless internet surfing. Do you? It is so easy to jump from one interesting link to another. I convince myself that I was CURIOUS to learn more and that can't be all bad. Did surfing the internet lead to learning and retention? Maybe, maybe not. Research tells us that for deep learning to occur, our exploration dig has to be an effortful journey, with confusion and cognitive dissonance thrown in for good measure. That is why failure is a phenomenal teacher. The lessons of failure are rarely forgotten.  We use the phrase ‘connecting the dots’ often in our daily jargon when we recognize that there was a gap in our knowledge and this latest discovery, propelled by curiosity, helped close the gap and connect the dots. An attitude and a mindset that takes us in the direction of inquiry, helps us see patterns in all kinds of situations, which is essential to distilling life’s many truths. To live and experience your b...

  People are quitting their jobs like never before.  The pandemic has given us time and space to reflect and evaluate the quality of our lives. The decision to change jobs may be triggered for various reasons, job satisfaction, meaning and fulfillment, money, and flexibility are a few examples. The idea of reclaiming control and taking ownership of our careers has taken hold for most of us. I quit an executive position with good perks last month because I had this aching sense that I was not living my purpose and calling. My talents and competencies were not being utilized. I tried to proactively create opportunities to live my calling at work but a gnawing feeling of uneasiness was consuming me. The voice inside me cautioned me about the regret that was going to envelop me in a few years for not living my calling, which was using my insights from lived experiences and lifelong learning to positively impact the lives of others. You may be sensing discomfort now. But befor...

I magine you are in a work meeting and hear a question for which you may have the answer. But you choose to stay quiet because you are not 100% sure if what you know is right. You want to avoid appearing unintelligent because you believe it will reveal a weakness. This scenario spotlights the moment when you were overpowered by your fixed mindset thinking. A person with a growth mindset leaning would have spoken up at that moment. Because what drives them is not the desire to safeguard their current slate of skills, knowledge, and talents but a hunger to expand their capabilities and reach. We have learned from studies that mindsets can be different in different domains for the same individual. For example, a person may have a growth mindset in the kitchen when they are experimenting and cooking up new and novel dishes but on the other side of the spectrum, the same person is fearful of experimentation and expansion at work. Mindsets are not absolute, immovable states and can be shifte...