Relationships

The Power of Strategic / Complementary Partnerships No man is an island – John Donne Many of us try to be a swiss army knife, capable of doing it all.  But even the most advanced swiss army knife can’t have all the tools squeezed into one single package.  If we…

I love optical illusions, don’t you?  They show us that the mind doesn’t see reality as it is, but rather interprets the information which then gives meaning to it.  This just about interpreting some abstract concept, but sensory information itself which we base our experience on and assume to…

I’ve been reading this book “Conversational Intelligence” by Judith E. Glaser, and I highly recommend it! We are first exposed to Intelligence Quotient (IQ), and subsequently learnt that Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ) was as important, if not more important, to a person’s success.  I’d like to introduce what Judith…

The skill of giving feedback is so important that it affects everything from personal relationships and leadership, to team cohesion and productivity.  If you haven’t already read my earlier post on Giving Strengths-Based Feedback, I highly recommend that you take a look at it.  It was based on some…

In the strengths-based approach, we always start with talent, and finish with strength. This is where the role of 360 feedback becomes powerful.  Although the tool is named StrengthsFinder, what the results really tells us is our talent themes. To develop those talents into strengths, we need to invest time…

The topic of friends and friendship has always been something that has been close to my heart.  As someone with the StrengthsFinder Themes of Empathy (#1), Individualisation (#2), Relator (#9) and Includer (#11) as my dominate themes, that shouldn’t be surprising.  My good friends know that I treasure my…

“Can I give you some feedback?” ​ Most people have a churn in their stomach when we hear this, and the first internal response that we have is “Oh no, what have I done wrong?”  Giving proper feedback is extremely powerful, but given wrongly, feedback can be ineffective or…

I recently came across this article “How to be a Truth-Teller in the Trenches of Leadership” by Scott Cochrane.  And although the article was in the context of leadership, I believe that telling the truth is crucial building trust in any relationship. Extracting and paraphrasing from Scott’s article, there are…

In one of the webinars I attended, I was exposed to the idea of “Active-Constructive Response”, and here’s a nice diagram that came up in google when I did a search: This helps us to think of how we respond on two axis: (Active-Passive) and (Constructive-Destructive) When someone comes…