Photo Credit: Matthew Sleeper

In January 2016, I was assigned to a half-million dollar project consisting of 5 people: a project manager, 3 senior consultants and myself (a junior consultant at the time). Two weeks into the project, 2 of the senior consultants resigned from the company, and I was cast into the role of being responsible for half the project. I was excited at the opportunity but also awash with many emotions. Continue reading How to effectively manage stress

Failure is an inevitable part of life. Some failures define us to the core and others slip under the radar and go unnoticed. Usually, failure is accompanied by a sense of embarrassment and insecurity. Thus, we have to be careful to make our relationship with failure productive rather than destructive.

As children we are taught that failures are shameful and we should avoid them as much as possible. This leads to a fear of failing which leaves us paralyzed and unsure of how to act and proceed. The purpose of this article is to redefine failure, outline steps to effectively learn from failure, and provide a simple framework on what to do when faced with failure. Continue reading How to benefit from failure

I was having brunch with a new acquaintance I had just met, and after it was over, I knew this encounter is very likely to develop into a fulfilling friendship. Despite having over 700+ friends on Facebook, I can say that in reality I have only a handful of friends that I’m truly close with. What my close social network lacks in numbers, it more than makes up for in reliability, and comprises of people I can truly rely on for almost anything. Continue reading How to build powerful social networks

There have been countless books written on the topic of leadership and I’m sure there will be more written in the future. Leadership is an important quality that people focus on because we need people who are brave, who can make decisions, who can lead us towards achieving our objectives.

However, in recent years, extreme interpretations of these qualities have led to a wave of narcissism. Leaders who are overpraised, act entitled and privileged are now coming under fire. People can intuitively sense that though these people may have strong personalities and have some capacity to lead, they aren’t truly great leaders. Continue reading How to lead so people want to follow

Every year, around December, with the New Year just around the corner, we set goals and optimistically look forward to a new year. A clean slate. A new year. A new you.

Take a step back and reflect on 2016:

• What goals did you set?
• What progress did you make towards accomplishing them?
• What went well?
• What could have been improved?

Continue reading Staying disciplined and motivated

SHAWN ACHOR’S 7 PRINCIPLES OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY THAT FUEL SUCCESS & PERFORMANCE AT WORK

“Our most commonly held formula for success is broken. Conventional wisdom holds that if we work hard we will be more successful, and if we are more successful, then we’ll be happy. If we can just find that great job, win that next promotion, lose those five pounds, happiness will follow. But recent discoveries in the field of positive psychology have shown that this formula is actually backward: Happiness fuels success, not the other way around.” -Shawn Achor, CEO of GoodThinkInc. Continue reading Shawn Achors 7 Principles of Positive Psychology