Coaching for Change

Help your child overcome Public Speaking fear I dedicate this article to my favorite age group… the youth of today. This is a topic about which a lot has been said and written and yet it remains an enigma to most of us when it really shouldn’t be. It should be as easy as it is for a 4-year-old to tell a story. Recently I was invited to mentor a bunch of kids to polish their Public Speaking Skills. These kids were going to present their project to a group of judges and the best idea was to win an award to fund their idea. I first asked them to tell me about their project. As they told me about why they chose the project, the passion, enthusiasm, and energy in their gestures and body language was apparent. Then I asked them to present their idea to me as they would to the judges. Suddenly the whole dynamics changed, the same bubbly bunch became uptight, nervous and robotic. When I asked them what the reason was, they said:  -It’s a formal presentation so we need to look and...

DOES YOUR CHILD PROCRASTINATE? The school my girls went to for primary did not have much workload in terms of homework. Whatever they had was easily manageable with all the other activities they were involved in. The only time management they needed was to learn to be on time at various places. Things changed dramatically when they entered secondary school. The demand was high not only in terms of the workload but also, they were expected to be able to plan for: -homework due by next class -projects due in a few weeks -assessment in a few days’ time. -extracurricular activities. According to them, they had:  -too much work -too many activities -too busy -not enough hours in the day -not enough holidays And this problem I have found with quite a few teen clients of mine. They are always busy, but work doesn’t seem to get done. At the end of the day, they are spending late hours studying and sometimes even finishing tasks at school. Most parents tend t...

DO YOU HOLD YOURSELF BACK? “There are so many good bloggers and good articles out there. Why would anyone read yours?” Said a tiny voice as I sat down to write my blog. I looked around. There was no one in the room except me. As I began writing again, this time a bit less motivated and a bit more skeptical, it tweeted again. The voice was so subtle and yet so mesmerizing. If I had not known better I would have actually given up on the piece I was working on. This was my inner critical voice. We all have it. It’s there somewhere in our subconscious, pulling us down all the time. Especially when we are trying to do something new, or difficult or public facing. The problem is not really the voice. The problem is the behavior or the action that follows it. We end up just giving up without even trying. This tendency is most prominent in tweens and teens. Here are some of the things our inner critic tends to say: I don’t think I am good enough. What if I make a fool of mys...

IN THE MOMENTS OF CHOICE... What you sow, so shall you reap. In other words, our actions decide the results we get. So we have all heard. But even before we act, there are 2 steps that happen in our mind which we most of the times do not pay attention to. In fact, these 2 steps that we are unaware of are so crucial that they actually dictate the action we take and the result we get. These 2 steps that quietly take place in our mind unknown to us are … ATTENTION and CHOICE. Most of us, at any given point in time, when we choose to undertake a particular action; we actually choose based on where our attention at that point in time is. Every minute is a tradeoff. The fact that you are reading this piece is because you chose to over every other thing on the earth you could have done. And that you chose this is because something about this piece caught your attention. Let me explain further. The video games these days have almost every teenager hooked to it. While coaching a teena...

RECEIVING COMPLIMENTS One evening I was Coaching a student of mine for Public Speaking when her 4-year-old sister came in. " Hello Dear ..... you have such beautiful big brown eyes," I said. Immediately, the child's eyes lit up, became bigger and her face became bright with an angelic smile. And softly she said "Thank you" I knew instantly my compliment had been received, accepted and appreciated. On my way back from the session, I was on Whatsapp and happened to notice a profile picture of a friend of mine with her child. "Both of you are glowing. Beautiful display picture" I wrote to her. Within seconds I got a reply " Glowing because of the sunrise that time" Her reply made me wonder... - why do we try to give reasons when we get complimented? - why do we try to compliment back? - why do we try to negate it? A genuine compliment means the giver has taken out time to notice you and found something about you that...

RAISING KIDS FOR FUTURE Change is the only thing that does not change. This is something that we all know. And as we enter, what Professor Klaus Schwab calls, The Fourth Industrial Revolution, it is being said that 65% of the children entering primary school today will be doing jobs that do not exist yet. I had once attended a lecture by Education Scientist Prof. Sugata Mitra. As a concerned parent, I asked him that with technology disrupting the world we know not just the work but the way we live and learn also, what skills should we teach our children today so that they can be successful tomorrow. He said, “train them to be adaptable and resilient”. Living in the affluent developed world where the external environment is predictable today and in the era of the smartphone where everything can be summoned at the touch of a button without even a second’s delay, this is something we parents and educators need to think about “Are we raising adaptable and resilient future genera...

GOAL SETTING Goals are critical. They keep you focused on what’s important, and allow you to make the best use of your 24 hours each day. We all know that. And yet research shows only 20% of the population sets goals and 92% of those goals are never achieved. And it becomes more challenging when the person you want to set goal is an Adolescent! It is difficult for teens to see beyond the present. Goal setting challenges them psychologically because it involves having to wait for a long time to see the results, which, again, is a good lesson to teach as kids grow up. They should learn that anything good is worth working for and that it is only over time and effort that we see the true results of all of our hard work. Very few things come to us immediately. We all know without a goal in mind we can end up wasting time and energy and are finally left with nothing in hand. In a bid to demonstrate to them how gratifying, energizing and fulfilling goal setting and accomplishing can...

ARE YOU EMPATHY TRAPPED? Do you spend more time thinking about your friend's/partner's feelings than about your own? -Do you focus your attention on what the other person is saying during an argument, to the exclusion of what you want to say? -After leaving an argument, are you preoccupied with what the other person was thinking? -Do you spend more time trying to figure out why someone let you down than deciding whether his/her reasons outweighed your feelings? A "YES" answer to any of the above questions is a red flag to being trapped in empathy. Its normal and necessary to tune into someone else's feelings, especially when one is very close to that person. What we all must remember is that while we put ourselves in other person's shoes, we MUST strike a balance between OTHERS and SELF. Otherwise, empathy becomes a trap and one can end up feeling psychologically impoverished. Know your needs and wants and have your say for a healthy self ...

CONVERSATION STARTERS FOR TEENS Vacations can be a great time to socialize and to forge new bonds and renew old ones. But for youngsters (especially shy ones) it can be a stressful time. Some of them do not know how to carry out a conversation with people they meet for the first time or with the ones they hardly meet. This is a generation that is more comfortable texting than carrying out a face to face conversation. Throwing this bunch in front of strangers can leave them at their wits ends. “Conversational Competence might be the single most overlooked skill we failed to teach” as Paul Barnwell writes in The Atlantic. Here are some things that have helped some of the youngsters I have coached hone their interpersonal skills. 1. Ask your youngster “What would you like to be asked about by others? “ It is a good starting point to get them to start thinking about topics to talk about and then think which ones will be appropriate for which age groups they meet. 2. One Q...

CONVERSING WITH EXTENDED FAMILY Talking to the extended family can be daunting for young children, especially if they don't get to meet them very often. Lack of knowledge of what to talk about with whom often interpreted as shyness or arrogance. Here are some tips to share with your child for the next family get-together so they can make conversation with people of different ages. Does your child feel awkward with people he is not familiar with? Reach out for a 30-minute session to see how Coaching can train him to be socially adept.

HAVE YOU FOUND YOUR "SIDE HUSTLE" YET? The corporate world is changing at a pace it never has before. It’s not just because of Artificial Intelligence. People are also changing in what they want from life and how they want to live it. They are more and more becoming multi-passionate which means they have/want other outlets that bring them joy and income. One only needs to look around to find that people are becoming more entrepreneurial now. The avalanche of new products, new technologies and new ways of working are helping people to become more creative in order to benefit from these changes. While people are becoming entrepreneurial, one also finds people who are: 1. In comfortable jobs but want to do something more 2.Are afraid of being made redundant and are looking for a backup 3. Have resources but don’t know what to do next. In the video below, see how “Side Hustle” is changing the way people live and work. Have you discovered your Side Hustle? If n...

CAREER PATH FOR NEXT GENERATION The corporate career progression today is being called “jungle gym” in contrast to "ladder" as it was traditionally expected to be. Which means instead of taking a predictable series of upward steps from graduation until retirement, today’s professionals are making lateral moves and unexpected jumps. Goldman Sach's CEO, Solomon’s advice, he likes to tell ambitious millennial's of their career path, “You don’t have to know where it’s all going to go. Just live it and try to enjoy it as much as you can.” Does your teen have what it takes to be in the "Jungle Gym"? Read what Goldman Sach's CEO has to say to the next generation here .