Unlocking Leadership Influence: The Art of Communication

As leaders, one of the thing that we are expected to do is to communicate with the teams that we work with all the time. In many cases, our effectiveness as a leader may even depend on our ability to communicate. We might communicate to inform, inspire or influence. We need different strategies for different objectives. If we are communicating to inform, we need clarity in our communication. If we are communicating to inspire, we need our message to have contrast and colour. We need to be able to paint a picture of what is possible. If we are communicating […]

Bear it with a Smile and Learn from Mistakes

Julia Child was a phenomenal cook and a TV personality. This is a quote from her book – My Life in France: Usually one’s cooking is better than one thinks it is. And if the food is truly vile, then the cook must simply grit her teeth and bear it with a smile, and learn from her mistakes. – Julia Child, My life in france In my experience, what she said about one’s cooking is true about every aspect of our lives. We are usually better leaders that we give ourselves credit for, we are better person that we give […]

What can we learn from Bertha Benz?

I recently read a blog post by Dave Trott and was blown away by the story of Bertha Benz and the role she played in the wide-spread adoption of motor vehicles. You can read his post here. The story, in short, is as follows: Karl Benz built his internal combustion engine based vehicle (3 wheeled) and was continuing to iterate to try and make it perfect, without being able to sell them. Bertha at one point in time lost her patience with this continuous tinkering and decided to take things in her own hand. One fine day, early in the […]