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
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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Coaching

Vetting a Coach Beyond Credentials

I have invested hundreds of hours of my life into being a client to coaches at the pinnacle of their craft, and thousands of hours being a coach to successful leaders running global organizations. This is my opinion on what to pay attention to in deciding to work with a coach. It is immediate and obvious to me that transformation at the highest levels does not happen just through the coach holding credentials. Credentials represent

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Coaching Philosophy

The Pothole Paradox

Earlier this week, one of my clients in our second session together realized that she was innocently lying to herself about her future. This brilliant woman, in the second stretch of her career after a break, was paralyzed by her fears of what could go wrong with her life. To her, all those fears seemed valid and real. Her holding those fears made sense, given that she really wanted to avoid that future. Except, a

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Coaching

Unlearning Your Struggles

We all want good feelings. But for a lot of us, no matter what we try to do in order to get them, they seem just one more action or achievement away.So we get what we want. And we do feel good momentarily, fleetingly. And so we pursue the next thing and the next.This is the sure path to being seemingly successful on paper but feeling hollow on the inside. How do I know this?

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