To form a successful relation with others, we need to relate with our own negative qualities I had been feeling guilty about not spending enough time with some houseguests who were staying for the weekend. Being in their seventies, the couple was quite happy to chat with my mother who had also come over to [...]

A lot of the times we end up saying or doing something we regret later.  One aspect of Emotional Intelligence is self-regulation- or impulse control, or simply self-control. Recently I was discussing this subject with Prof Sudhir Jain, Director of the new IIT at Gandhinagar, who is a rare combination of an academic with international [...]

What is assertive behaviour? Assertiveness is the middle ground between aggression and passivity. It is about reasonable behaviour and finding solutions that suit both sides. Assertiveness means: Acknowledging your own feelings to yourself (“My boss gives me bits and pieces of tasks without total responsibility of the entire project, and I am feeling restless and unfulfilled”); Understanding [...]

Communication at the workplace (particularly with the boss) is as important as lubricant for our car engine. Without it our career will sputter and stall, and work life will be full of breakdowns and headaches. In quiz, you saw a few situations, which if not clarified, have the potential to worsen our irritation with time.  [...]

Yesterday, I was at a Best Practices seminar organized by one of the reputed MBA colleges of India. After the inaugural session when the Chief Guest and Guest of Honour had left, there was a tea break followed by a talk by Srikanth Surampudi, the Regional HR Head of one of the largest IT firms [...]

“How do you react if your bottom were pinched?” Yesterday, our 14-year old daughter, worry writ large on her face, hesitantly raised this question at dinner time. Welcome to the grown-up world, I thought inwardly. So what had happened was that in her school bus (unusually crowded as they were heading from school to a [...]

Once the jungle was ruled by a lion who was impartial, scrupulous and straightforward in his dealings. The one thing that the animals found difficult to reconcile with was he could not be defeated when he hunted for food, which meant that they lived in constant terror. They did not know which friend or relative [...]

If at a meeting you fail to utter a single squeak or make any contribution whatsoever, you will make as much impact as a mouse. For heaven’s sake take the plunge, and make a point or two. I was at a meeting recently where we were to review training and development needs for the organization. [...]

Today I had an altercation with one of my staff members. I had assigned her some work, and when I reviewed it, I found she had done a shoddy job. So naturally I called her attention to it and reprimanded her. ‘What is this?’ I demanded.  But her retort was very rebellious. She flounced out [...]

Recently I was with a group of people who holidayed together for 3 days on the occasion of their company’s first off-site. The spouses met each other and their husband’s colleagues for the first time. It was a beautiful natural setting in god’s own country – we had Kerala’s gentle monsoon breeze, verdant green swaying [...]