Articles

A library of reflections on leadership, consciousness, and the work of awakening to a more aligned way of being. 

These essays are for leaders navigating the frontier between inner stillness and outer impact.

Categories
Leadership

The Silence of the Narrator

The limitation one faces at the highest altitudes of human potential is rarely a lack of capability. It is the unconscious deployment of it. This is not about how one is using their capacities, but the unconsciousness of using them at all in the first place. The mind constantly authors a script about circumstances and our place in it. Often leaders come with stories about the boardroom, the friction across levels, and the stakes. Mistaking

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Leadership Philosophy

What Got You Here Will Get You There

Contextual observations often degrade into dogma when they are impressed upon people who do not have the lived context of the observations. The axiom “What got you here won’t get you there” is a prime casualty of this phenomenon.When a heuristic is applied indiscriminately, it descends into absurdity. But the intellect loves these repeatable phrases because they simulate strategy while bypassing the actual labor of direct perception.The mind hides behind heuristics to escape the isolation of

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Philosophy

Money and the Friction of True Desire

"I don't know what I want" is one of the most common defenses of a divided mind.The conflict inherent in it is rarely an absence of clarity. More often, it is a refusal to tolerate the presence of a desire.One might want opposing things. Or want something that they will not allow themselves to experience, or pursue what they believe they ought to want to satisfy an inherited template of security. To hide from this internal division,

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Philosophy

The Innocence of Effortful Living

I grew up in a tropical beach town on the east coast of India, watching coconut trees reaching up into the skies. Every time their branches moved, a pleasant breeze washed through the air. For a long time, I believed the trees produced the wind.It was a logical conclusion. We had hand-fans made of dried palm leaves that produced a current of air when waved. Therefore, it made sense that to cool the heavy, humid

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Philosophy

Relationship between Spirit and Matter

Who we are is spirit. Who we are is also matter. In fact, these are two words to describe the same thing. But for most of us, these describe two different realities in which we live.Talking about these as two different aspects can help us in understanding them with precision. But talking about these as two different realms can be a pitfall.When I say who we are is spirit, most identify this as the realm of wisdom, of aliveness, of love,

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Personal

On Turning 30…

Three decades of being in a corporate role is generally considered a long and substantial amount of experience to have.In a three decade working period, the amount of time spent being in a corporate role is about 25 percent of the amount of time spent being alive.This means three decades of being alive is structurally four times longer (and infinitely more substantial) than three decades of playing a corporate role.Still, three decades of being alive

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Coaching

What I Look for in Potential Clients

When organizations invest in coaching on behalf of their leaders, the outcomes are relatively more defined - in that there is usually a business impact that they are hoping out of it. At the beginning of the coaching engagement, significant time goes into stakeholder alignment, establishing agreements, and having the leader fully onboard in a way that is meaningful to them while also realizing the hopes of their sponsors.When I am speaking with the sponsors,

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Coaching

Coaching Beyond the Persona

In my experience, one of the factors that dictates the level of impact and ease involved in an executive coaching engagement is whether the client enters the coaching container only as a Leader, or as a Human Being who also happens to be a Leader.Most of the people I work with are senior executives in global organizations. Many spend their days maintaining an engineered persona for their stakeholders. This created identity can be a useful

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Coaching Leadership

Stakeholder Management: Beneath the Surface

Clients come with varying desires for what they want out of our coaching - there is more variation than I can list. For example, the last three clients I worked with were navigating challenges with managing upwards and across, cross-cultural communication, and executive presence respectively. They are easy to solve at the surface level. But if we only optimize the surface mechanics, the leader will succeed outwardly while suffocating inwardly. And they will likely assume

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