Do you need a career coach?

Here's an article that talks about my coaching niche - #careers. Specifically, how do you know that you need a career coach.

Not all accomplishments, no matter how great, belong on a resume. 

This is a line from the article that I have to regularly remind my clients

Read on here - and write to me if you find something in the article that resonates with you, or if you just have questions.

Why Great Bosses rarely give Negative Feedback.

An intriguing article about giving negative #feedback to your team (the sandwich doesn't work).

I think one has to be clearly aware of the team members' readiness and ability to work on the task, before assigning it to them. This means that it would be good to have a discussion with the employee when assigning the task so that expectations are clear.

Otherwise, the feedback when given, may not be applied in future, for the reasons mentioned in the article. Read it here

Pics of Coaching & Mentoring Session for Mumbai Educational Trust, MET League of Colleges.

It was fun to design and conduct this 4 hour session along with my colleagues from the Association of Mumbai Coaches, Saira Kale and Ambuj Jain  on coaching and Mentoring Skills for the faculty at Mumbai Educational Trust, MET League of Colleges.

Due to the short time we were given, we partly facilitated the session and ensured it was interactive.  We used Fishbowl role plays, group discussions, a listening skills activity along with carefully prepared slides and a video.

We were willingly aided by the participants who enthusiastically joined in for each activity, and also with their questions. We'd love to do this again.

Click this link to go to their LinkedIn page, where they have appreciated the session.

Here's some pics of the action:

STEPPING INTO POSSIBILITY

A super article by Scott Perry about managing #adversity and navigating #uncertainty while reaching your destiny.

From the article "It’s an approach that’s easy to understand, execute, and weave into the life you’re already living. When you feel like life is happening to you, these disciplines remind you that life is happening through you and empower you to live your legacy."

Read the rest of the article here.

Why Learning cultures need to be reframed as Awareness Cultures

Super read on how to improve your #trainingeffectiveness in the organization by creating a #culture of #awareness.

From the article" 'a culture of awareness that ensures that the learning that is offered is targeted appropriately to be efficient and personalized and leverages the power of self-direction and self-regulation in learners themselves'

Great to know that I (thanks to mentors and other #facilitators) already ask these questions of my clients so that we have co-designed a focused #learning #intervention .

Read the rest of the article here.

Seven leadership development areas the C-Suite should not ignore

The job of the C-Suite folk just got tougher over the past 2 years.  Well-being is one of the many items at the forefront of the already numerous things they have to focus on in 2022 and beyond.  They have to really, really prepare themselves for all these challenges.

This article talks about 7 areas they can focus their self-development efforts on.

Read it here.

My thoughts - The C-suite has to work as a well-oiled team, simply because no one person has all the answers.  The need to hire people with #complimentingstrengths is stronger now than ever before. So there must also be focus on building this team of complementing talents through strengths based hiring.

7 steps to successful stay interviews – and ongoing conversations

Superb article on #stayinterviews

In my experience, the stay interview proved very effective in understanding what is going on within various functions of the organization, and getting suggestions for improvement. It's great for reducing grievances and at times, #resignations , because the employee feels heard.

Get the steps to conduct stay interviews here

Finding Diamonds among Gems - The Career Gap Candidate

Photo by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels 

Career Breaks  or Career Gaps are more common than ever before.  The reasons will differ for each candidate, but it is essential that we don't take the easy way out and reject them on paper just because we recruiters and HR folk have a ton of resumes to go through.  That's an injustice to the candidate and your organization since you could be throwing away a diamond along with other gems.

This is what I did when I was in the corporate world:

1. Reviewed and shortlisted resumes based on the skill-job match alone.
2. Did not reject any candidate who was returning from a career break or gap of any sort if there was a match between the skill-job match, and call them for an interview.
3. Kept 2 or 3 questions to understand the nature and reasons for the gap in career during the interview.
4. Conducted the interview as fairly and as objectively as possible.
5. Rejected the candidate if I found them unsuitable for any role-related reason other than having a career gap.

Just like cutting a diamond from ore takes care and time, so too does this. Then why invest this time?

My reasoning:

• Such candidates can join faster since they don't have a notice period to serve.
• They are more willing to negotiate on compensation because they want to get back to work (doesn't mean we shortchange them on the CTC because they will find out sooner or later and then become disengaged).

For those recruiters / managers that think of this as time being wasted: 

• Remember that interviewing candidates is a key part of your role.
• You are anyway going to interview candidates, so it might as well be someone whose skills match the job, irrespective if there is a gap in service or not.

If shortlisted, explain this reasoning to the next interviewer, especially the skills - job match.

As you can see, any recruiter can do these things - it requires a little courage to not take the easy way out. 

Why You Should Work Less: A Second Look at the 10,000 Hour Rule

Most of us would have heard about having to invest 10000 plus hours to develop mastery.

Many have interpreted this as working extra hard, putting in more effort, and burning the midnight oil.  

From the article "But what's most interesting, and what had been generally overlooked, is that they only practiced on average four hours a day. Over a period of 10 years, this amounted to about 10,000 hours. And this was not just any practice: It was practice that was alone, deliberate, and very effortful. "

Read the rest of the article here.

A Blueprint for Smart Decisions

 A lucidly written article on #decisionmaking - if there's one skill that keeps leaders and managers awake, it's this one.

From the article “In every market, strategy is a theory about how to do well. Which means you have to be specific about a lot of things: What is my Market? Who are my customers? What value am I providing to them that's unique? And how am I going to fulfill that in a way that allows me to make that gap between revenue and return.”

Read the article here