You have to get out of their way!

The world's second-largest Starbucks operates in Shanghai. The Reserve Roastery is the world's "highest-grossing Starbucks." Starbucks currently has 3,300 stores in 141 cities in China and projects to have 6,000 stores in 230 Chinese cities by 2022. That's a pace of almost two new stores a day!

It’s hard to imagine going to a Starbucks without thinking of a cold Starbucks Frappuccino® blended beverage and the green straw. Starbucks didn't invent the Frappuccino. An employee did.

Is there anything achievers (professionals who get serious stuff done) detest more than not being able to determine their own destiny? I don't think so

To want to do things that are significant, but not have the authority to act, is professional prison. To be certain, top talent won't settle for sitting around in prison. They flee. And fast. Leaving entire teams comprised of people who will tolerate being disempowered. 

People ultimately resent leaders who creates a pressurized workplace that undermines autonomy. Driving for results by adding pressure and tension blocks people's creativity and ability top focus, leaving them feeling inadequate or ineffective at coping with the circumstances - which undermines competence.

We all know of a "Boss-Zilla," - leaders whose tactics  include persistent psychological abuse as such using aggressive language and tone, criticizing unfairly, blaming, applying rules inconsistently, stealing credit, making unreasonable demands, issuing threats, insults and accusations and assigning pointless tasks.

That kind of leadership is not sustainable. It might produce decent performance in the short term, but there's no way that fear leads to any sustainable result in the long run.

As a leader, I'm far from perfect. At the beginning of my career, like many young leaders, I thought my role was to tell the team how to work, and theirs was to carry out my directions. There have been plenty of times in my career when I have allowed my hard-charging energy to bring down the people around me. It has taken me years to be more mindful. As time went by I learned to control my temper. I find I need daily practice. My dispositional nature is to be quick to judge and react. I get a rush from the self-righteous indignation that comes from knowing I am right and someone else is wrong.

Eventually I realized that a great performance would happen only when the motivation sprang as much from them as from me. I learned to see my job as simply creating an environment where that could happen. 

If a leader wants his people to truly own the work, then he has to be willing to let go of some control. You can force compliance with your directions, you can require obedience, but you can't mandate enthusiasm, creativity, fresh thinking or inspiration. If you value that, then people must feel the ownership of the work, and the leader must cede some control to them.

I have witnessed the transformation of team members in the environment I create today, one that's open and safe, where they're allowed to be themselves and have a point of view and take risks. What happens is I have a team that is more centred, committed and willing to take the hill. I've got a team that can overcome adversity because they're a lot more resilient.

It just makes me feel good.

Lead with compassion

A premature ejaculation drug has sparked a $150million legal battle. Jeff Abraham tried to sell his sexual wellness start-up to Reckitt Benckiser for two years - opening his books to RB during confidential negotiations - only to find RB advertising a new PE treatment just like it after the negotiations fizzled. The case illustrates the challenges faced by a scrappy startup with giant multinational companies using their large presence in the marketplace to bully.

If you have been bullied as a child or adult, you know how demeaning it feels.

The department of Justice defines bullying as "repeated acts that involve an imbalance of power" between dominating individuals and meeker ones. They cite three kinds of bullying: physical, verbal (making threats) and psychological (intimidation, social exclusion). My intuitive read on bullies is that they're power-obsessed, eerily empty and devoid of empathy. Anger darkens their hearts.

Over the years I have learned to address anger, whether justified or not, and learn how to cope. You are like my younger self, if you are one of these:

...when I'm hurt, I want to hurt the other person
...little things make me mad
...I am frequently irritable, bossy and argumentative
...I say things during a conflict that I regret later
...I make judgmental and cutting remarks
...my anger hurt loved ones
...I hold onto resentments
...I lose my temper in traffic jams and queues

Today, as I proactively work on developing compassion and empathy, I am much nearer to a peaceful zone. Sure, you can act spitefully and dump anger on others. Being compassionate doesn't mean you'll never get angry or that you'll be a doormat.

A coworker takes credit for your ideas. Mention this to the coworker, your boss or HR, and don't trust him with ideas in the future. However, try to forgive the coworker for being such a greedy, insecure, mean-spirited person that he has to stoop so low as to steal from you.

In our society, people tend to use words as weapons. I am a sales leader. I make my living using words. I know that words matter. We all have a slip of the tongue or a moment of verbal indiscretion. Maybe more important, I've learned of the degrading effect that inappropriate words can have on all of us.


Muhammad Ali said it best :“ I don’t trust anyone who’s nice to me but rude to the waiter. Because they would treat me the same way if I were in that position,"

After so many books and seminars, why hasn't my life change?

30 lessons I learned before turning 30. Taylor Swift in a piece for Elle said “it’s healthy for your self-esteem to need less internet praise”, “it’s good to mess up and learn from it and take risks”, “All that glitters isn’t gold, and first impressions actually aren’t everything”, “They don’t give out awards for winning the most fights in your relationship. They just give out divorce papers”

Many of us believe that when we graduate from university, our education is finished. But our true schooling has only begun as we shift from word lessons to world lessons

There's no denying that in my younger days, understanding the unique language of money and how the financial system worked has always been my blind spot, and I was too proud to admit it. I would make a dollar and spend a dollar and fifty cents. The more money I make, the more broke I got.

Once I learned that the world didn't come to an end and that I could work my way back to being whole again, I gained enormous confidence and wisdom about how to live; how to have humility, what matters and what doesn't, how to succeed against all odds. It builds up enormous strength inside me. 

Most people find strength in things that are outside them; money, power, titles, wardrobes, cars. But most of the things that make a leader are on the inside: integrity, wisdom, confidence, passion, compassion, intuition. These things come from experiences of life's trials. You can't buy what's not for sale. 

I have learned authenticity counts, and that the best route to an authentic life is through your scars. As you earn them, you learn to drop the B.S. in your life. 

It's a scientific fact: you cannot have a rainbow without a storm. 

The storms of life offer an opportunity to respond in one of three ways to personal tragedy. You can give up...you can use whatever dulls the pain most, be it alcohol, drugs, work or money...you can grow and create something useful out of your painful experience. Giving up and coping are code words for avoidance, and the story of avoidance never ends well. 

Wisdom comes from dealing with your mess. All of it. But few people want to do that because it is just too much: too much work, too much pain. No experience is ever wasted because every experience contains a lesson. The lessons of experience are always positive, even if the experience is not.

Our presence speaks volumes before we say a word

The nude Mona Lisa – a charcoal sketch of a naked woman known as the Monna Vanna - might Have been drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, according to investigators from the Center for Research and Restoration of the Museums of France (C2RMF), following extensive testing.  The drawing’s hands and body bear a striking resemblance to the Mona Lisa, one of Da Vinci’s most famous pieces on display at the Louvre.

In a survey, "grooming and polish" was chosen by more respondents than "physical attractiveness" or "body type" as a key contributor to executive presence. It's a huge relief for me that the success factor relies less on what I was born with; rather, what I do with what I've got.

My Success Coach tells me that attire has a real impact on careers. It's also one of the first aspects we notice about someone. Over the years I've seen, and heard a lot of commentary around executive attire - most of it behind people's back. Nowadays, I carry this adage with me: dress for the job you want, not the job you have. I keep my wardrobe updated and make sure my clothes are properly fitted. Styles change as do waistlines. Even on casual Fridays, I will dress for presence, not for comfort. 

Seeing an ex-colleague of mine recently with revealing clothes at work reminds me of the words of Coco Chanel: "Dress shabbily, they notice the dress. Dress impeccably, they notice the woman."

Aside from dressing, my Success Coach constantly reminds me that how I act and how I speak are equally important with how I look.

Time and time again I made costly mistakes. Take my centre court joker phase. I may have what it takes to be the office joker but I failed to understand words and actions underline or undermine our executive presence. I now understand that my early struggles to command attention and respect did not centre on my work ethics and knowledge but centred on the way I presented myself. Twenty years later I hit another image problem. It turns out executive presence needed to be nurtured, invested in, curated. I failed to do this and fell flat on my face.

No man or woman attains a top job, lands an extraordinary deal, or develop a significant following without this combination of confidence, poise and authenticity. You may actually hit the numbers, attain the ratings or have a transformative idea. rather it's a matter of image whether you signal to others that you are star material.

If your presence doesn't make an impact, your absence won't make a difference.

Dealing with disrespect

Lady Gaga’s “Shallow” won best original song at this year’s Oscars. Lady Gaga had once said, “I had a boyfriend who told me I’d never succeed, never be nominated for a grammy, never have a hit & hoped I’d fail. I said to him someday, when we’re not together, you won’t be able to order a cup of coffee at the f**king deli without hearing or seeing me.”

You can't force a person to show you respect, but you can refuse to be disrespected! You don't ever have to feel guilty about removing toxic people from your life. 

Never make excuses for someone who disrespects you. Who they are or what they do isn't a pass to treat you like trash! It doesn't matter whether someone is a relative, romantic interest, employer, childhood friend or a new acquaintance - you don't have to make room for people who cause you pain or make you feel small. Angry, bitter, resentful, stressed out, physically maxed out, emotionally drained...all signs you are dealing with someone toxic but also where boundaries don't exist or have been overstepped. It's one thing if a person owns up to their behaviour and makes an effort to change. But if a person disregards your feelings, ignores your boundaries and "continue" to treat you in a harmful way, they need to go. Maintaining a relationship with someone who repeatedly hurts and disrespects you is more painful than letting them go. 

Think about how many people stay in relationships that stopped working long ago. Their reasons range from being afraid of losing the security of having a partner to simply not wanting to be alone - and everything else in between. In any case, fear motivates their decision to stay. 

Fear, a form of stress, is the mother of all negative emotions because we associate it with survival, perceived or real. We become puppets whose strings are pulled by this emotion; we suffer physically and emotionally as a result.  Understandably, we're easily overwhelmed by fear until we learn to disengage from its suction. 

Throughout history, people have consistently tried to gain power, personal or political, by instilling fear in others. Sad to say, it's a ploy that predictably works. The million-dollar question is, what prevents generations of intelligent people from seeing through this emotional manipulation? 

Like everyone, I have my share of fears to confront. It really pisses me off when darkness wins, even for an instant. Therefore, my credo now is: I will not give in to fear.

You too can make this shift. Just because you're afraid of something now doesn't mean you always have to be. Don't let someone get comfortable with disrespecting you. It's bad when they don't treat you right, but it's tragic that you continue to allow it.