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5 October 2016 In Change, Character, Coaching, Comfort Zone, Communication, Emotions, Habits, Lead From Within, Leadership, Life, Organizational Leadership, Personal & Professional Development, Sales Leadership, Talent Management By Lalita Raman

The One Trait Every Human Being Must Have

Recently, I delivered a workshop to 400 university students. There were two sessions and each session was attended by approximately 400 students. The duration of each session was for 2 hours. Since the number in the audience was large, this workshop would be different in that it would involve least amount of interaction or group activities. In the first session, I had planned on some interaction by way of asking questions, or having them discuss some of the questions asked or doing the activity with the person sitting next to them. I realized that even this limited interaction was not yielding the desired results. I still attempted different ways in order to get the students to interact but overall participation was at a bare minimum. In session 2, the topic was the same as session 1 and thus the content was the same. Based on what I observed in Session 1, I realized that I have to change my structure, examples and make the presentation as a lecture but in a conversational style, to achieve the desired impact. I had to adapt to the requirements on the fly, had to think on my feet, yet remain calm and impactful. [Tweet "#Adaptability is a

5 July 2016 In Coaching, Communication, Integrity, Lead From Within, Leadership, Life, Personal & Professional Development By Lalita Raman

6 Ways to Express Yourself Effectively

Two weeks back, whilst I was at my yoga studio for my yoga class, a lady stomps her feet on my mat whilst I was cleaning my mat with a disinfectant tissue. Her behavior infuriated me and worse still, she did not bother apologizing. This is something that happens so often at the yoga studio. There are days when I ignore and wipe my mat again or fold the mat in the area that is likely to be trodden by others. There are other days when I am silently agonizing and wondering why are people not courteous? There are yet other days when I share my frustration with my friends, family at home or with my neighbor in the next mat if he or she expresses the same frustration

19 February 2016 In Change, Character, Coaching, Communication, Customer Service and Sales, Emotions, Employee Engagement, Habits, Integrity, Lead From Within, Leadership, Organizational Leadership, Personal & Professional Development, Sales Leadership By Lalita Raman

Four REAL Ways To Create Customer Service Excellence

√Customer Service Excellence is the single most distinguishing factor to maintain critical competitive advantage - LR√ During one of our travels, one of the airlines in China cancelled our flight and they sent us an email asking us to call them. When we did, we went back and forth for the next 3 hours, , sandwiched between the bureaucracy of two airlines. As it happened, we had booked our entire journey through one airline, and we had to use the other airline for one sector. Every customer service person of the airline that we had booked our flights through kept telling us to speak to the other airline and that they could not reissue the ticket to the new flight following the cancellation by the other airline because they had nothing to do with the cancellation. After spending over 3 hours, we finally managed to speak to the manager and get the situation resolved. This experience left us exhausted, frustrated and not wanting to return back to that place. It showed lack of care, empathy and above all, we were made to feel as if they were obliging us (the customer), when the airline had decided to cancel a flight. In

11 January 2016 In Change, Coaching, Comfort Zone, Communication, Emotions, Habits, Lead From Within, Leadership, Life, Organizational Leadership, Personal & Professional Development, Sales Leadership, Talent Management By Lalita Raman

Four Mindful Ways To Be More Effective

One of my friends is into mindfulness and has engaged in it for past several years. In almost every conversation with him, I have observed that he gets irritated with something that has happened or something that is about to happen. Yet, he is quick to clarify that mindfulness has helped him and he swears by it. I am not sure why he offers this clarification every time. Mindfulness and courses on mindfulness has grown in geometric progression in the past two years. Anything with a mindfulness angle surely gets noticed. ⇒Are all those who talk about mindfulness and those who promote mindfulness, always mindful ? ⇒How can we be mindful in the time driven world of ours? Does it necessarily involve hours of practice, silent retreats and meditation?⇐ I read an interesting article on HBR that piqued my interest The title of that article was Mindfulness -Search Inside Yourself It talks about "just six seconds of mindfulness" can make you more effective. The crux of this article which caught my attention is that you can do away with the mental baggage, during your day, when you approach each new situation with a present, focused mind. You achieve a calm and agitation free mind by consciously taking one

30 November 2015 In Change, Character, Coaching, Comfort Zone, Communication, Emotions, Habits, Integrity, Lead From Within, Leadership, Personal & Professional Development By Lalita Raman

Four Easy Ways To Let Go Of Judgement

Two weeks back on Friday, when I was walking down to a meeting, I suddenly noticed an old man struggling to balance himself on the four or five stairs down the hill. I immediately stopped and asked him if I could help him and he readily consented. I made sure he was okay and asked him if he needs me to help him further down which he politely refused. He indicated that he will hold the railing down the footpath. I continued to be worried because of the steep slope and occasionally kept turning behind. I noticed he was slowly making his way down. I immediately wondered why would a man at his age risk, going on his own, down such a steep slope. Why can someone not accompany him or why can he not take a different path? He is putting himself at a huge risk of falling by going down such a steep slope, especially when he seemed to be challenged with his balance. Then I stopped in my thoughts and asked myself who am I to pass judgment? I don't know him or his circumstances. →How many times do we judge others and their situation, based on what we see? My

10 July 2015 In Change, Character, Coaching, Comfort Zone, Communication, Conflict Leadership, Customer Service and Sales, Emotions, Employee Engagement, Habits, Lead From Within, Leadership, Life, Organizational Leadership By Lalita Raman

Three Keys To Be An Impactful Communicator

"This is urgent. So please get it done ASAP" "Can you call between 9 am to 10 am?" "I would like to meet you sometime next week or so". "Can you tell her I called?" "Client is livid, can you look into it when you get a moment, please ?" What is the common problem you see in all of the above communication? Have you been in situations when you have told somebody it is urgent or ASAP and yet your request has not been met within your specified deadline? Has this caused you frustration and increased your stress and overwhelm? However, did you use specific language in your request or your instruction ? Let's take another scenario "I'm not sure I can do this" "I'm sure, I'm going to mess it up and not be able to make that presentation properly" "I'm not going to do this interview well" "I am in no good at public speaking. I suck at making presentations in front of a group of people. Does this form of self-communication sound familiar to you? There are three factors to impactful Communication, those that lead to inspiring and influencing others or what is often known as leadership communication 1. How do you communicate with yourself? Your thoughts lead to your inner talk. Is that empowering or

3 March 2014 In Coaching, Comfort Zone, Communication, Customer Service and Sales, Organizational Leadership By Lalita Raman

Top Ten Ways to Stand Out In Sales and From Competition

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages." - Henry Ford Every time a customer comes into contact with any aspect of your business, they have an opportunity to form an impression about you, your brand and business. How do you keep your customers engaged and loyal? David Brooks, the New York Times columnist in his op-ed column dated February 3, 2014 "What Machines Can't Do", states that We're clearly heading into an age of brilliant technology. Computers are already impressively good at guiding driverless cars and beating humans at chess and Jeopardy. As Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology point out in their book - The Second Machine Age, "computers are increasingly going to be able to perform important parts of even mostly cognitive jobs, like picking stocks, diagnosing diseases and granting parole

23 February 2014 In Change, Character, Communication, Emotions, Habits, Lead From Within, Leadership, Personal & Professional Development By Lalita Raman

Don’t Take LIFE For Granted

Don't Condemn Criticize or Complain This is one of the Human Relation Principles of Dale Carnegie. The simplicity of this statement is complex in itself. It is one of the most difficult to practice especially when things go wrong, you are experiencing a down and out day, and many moments in your life is filled with chaos, suffering and adversities. Take for instance, when a customer service doesn't take action and keeps saying sorry for the inconvenience caused and yet doesn't show any signs of resolving the issue, most of our reaction is to criticize and get angry. There are many such similar events in our life when our patience is tested and we either complain or criticize. If you observe, we criticize, condemn or complain not only about others but also ourselves. How many times have you chided yourself ? It is good to vent out, to seek improvement but we need to be thankful in life. Three years back, after finishing my boot camp, whilst getting down some stairs on my way home, I fell down and fractured my ankle. I realized, how much I missed walking normally, how much I used and needed my ankle. I have had many injuries and accidents and each

22 February 2014 In Change, Character, Coaching, Communication, Emotions, Integrity, Lead From Within, Leadership, Life, Organizational Leadership By Lalita Raman

Leadership And Compassion

I had met Victoria recently who had hired me as a coach. Victoria is a highly motivated, energetic, determined and passionate woman in that she is driven by her purpose and vision in life. She is a senior executive with a multi-national firm and she has progressed very well in her career. She is one of the youngest managing directors within her firm and somebody whom people within the firm envied and looked up to. Victoria is a caring and compassionate individual but at the same time very goal oriented and at times in that drive may seem to appear as impersonal. Victoria normally is prompt and punctual. However on this day, she arrived to my office 10 minutes late. She profusely apologized. I observed that she seemed agitated and particularly stressed about something. I accepted her apology, smiled and requested her to take a seat. I allowed her to calm down and I did this by being silent for several minutes. That helped her to calm her nerves and regain her composure. She had a glass of water and she started narrating how her day was, what caused her to be stressed out and the reason for her delay and

20 February 2014 In Character, Coaching, Integrity, Lead From Within, Leadership, Life, Personal & Professional Development By Lalita Raman

How Close Are You To Your Ideal Self?

Photo Credits : Lalita Raman We have our ideal self, the self we want out of life; the motivational core that focuses our hopes, aspirations, dreams, purpose, and calling. It is our source of positive affect that helps the drive for intentional change. This is the self we want to be. How many of us are close to our ideal self? We have our actual self or real self and there is our ought self. Our ought self is our understanding of what others want us to be and do. Actual self is who we are and what we do. The actual self over time, right from childhood, changes. What happens when our actual self doesn't match the ideal self? That is when the process of reflection and retrospection begins. New Year is a formal step to grow, develop and continue the path of learning and an improvement on our-self versus where we were.Yes, this should be a continuous process but I think New Year is a good time to take stock. A time to ask ourselves how close are we to our ideal self. No, this is not about New Year Resolutions. So how do we get there? 5 key questions to ask - For Full POST REFER