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How to Deal with Office Politics – 5 Tips

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how to handle office politics

“Office Politics” is often thought as a nasty phrase – something to avoid, but the fact of the matter is as long as you work with other people in a company, office politics exist.   See my article on “Should I leverage Office Politics to Further My Career” to understand more.

How you deal with office politics can have a great impact on your job success at a company.   Early in my career, I was burnt by office politics.  In my first job at McKinsey I was blamed for something I didn’t do, and ended up with a bad project review.  The Manager who blamed me was up for promotion and had great relationships with key partners in the office. He needed a scapegoat for a major client complaint.  I was an easy target as I was junior, and no one knew enough about my work.  I protested; but without concrete evidence, his words meant more than mine. ...  read more

How to Be Happy at Work – Ask Yourself 3 Questions Every Two Years

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Are you happy at work? A 2019 study conducted by CNBC of 8600 professionals across multiple industries showed that 85% of American professionals are somewhat or very satisfied at work. Ironically the same study also shared “30% have seriously considered quitting their job in the last three months.”  ...  read more

Why Intelligent People are Full of Doubts – 5 Tips to Improve Your Self-Confidence

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Self-confidence is essential to high performance. When you exult self-confidence, you can better take risks, learn faster, and go beyond what you think may be possible for your career. There is only one problem – many skilled professionals have more doubts than confidence.

Why are intelligent people so full of doubts? Here is my take on why. Look at these three sentences below. What do they have in common?  ...  read more

Why Do Incompetent Men Become Leaders & What We Can do About it

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Do you work for leaders that are incompetent? Do you think our political leaders are incompetent? If either is true for you, read on and find out from Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic – why do so many incompetent men become leaders? This 9 min Ted talk is hilarious, eye-opening, and actionable.

Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders – A summary

I have probably watched this Ted talk 5 times in the last few weeks. The facts he share are true and frustrating. Each of us is still contributing to helping incompetent men become leaders. Here are the three aspects of why so many incompetent men become leaders. This unfortunately also applies to incompetent women leaders.  ...  read more

Coaching Call Recording – How to Lead Effective Meetings

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how to lead effective meetings

More than 50% of work hours is filled by meetings. The percentage is even higher if you are more senior in your role and you work for a big organization. Being able to lead effective meetings can have a profound impact on your productivity and on your reputation and the types of relationship you can build.  ...  read more

How to Help Your Teenager Choose a Career – 7 Tips

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This is a guest post with heavy edits by Lei Han

Probably one of the most awkward and challenging phases in our lives was our teenage years. As adults, we probably remember how it was. We went through a lot of mental, physical and emotional changes and life during that period was often confusing and scary. Now that we are adults and have growing kids, it is important to understand how to help our teenagers think about what they want to do when they grow up. Discussions with your teenager will not only help them but will also forge a closer bond between the two of you.  ...  read more

What is the Easiest Soft Skill to Develop

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I got this question on Quora – What is the easiest soft skills to develop?. This question stomped me at first as soft skills by natural are a bit more difficult to develop. With that said, I think listening skills is perhaps the easiest to learn.

You have to be intentional and understand what active listening skills really mean. It’s the easiest to develop for four reasons. ...  read more