Enlarge. Excel. Evolve.

" Biryani with Blogger " is a series on blogger interviews where Chief Blogger, Enlarge Excel Evolve Dr Amit Nagpal chats with prominent bloggers of the world over a plate of Biryani.  The first interview in the series is with Dr Uttara Pattanaik, Executive Coach / Leadership Coach.  Dr Amit - You have a different take on Strategy and Leadership.  Can you please explain that? Dr Uttara - Strategy and Leadership are most over used words in most organization.  It is hyped, over-rated and positioned as hierarchical.   I look at it differently.  According to me, strategy & leadership is central to professional and personal growth.  Each one of us, irrespective of where we are and what we do, need to be strategic in our approach and discover our leadership style to maximize our full potential and discharge our responsibilities to the best of our abilities. Each individual needs to discover their leadership potential in order to be eff...

Vasudhaiv Kutumbkam* Interview series (Global Leaders who have Enlarged, Excelled and Evolved into Global Personal Brands) Area of Thought Leadership -Life Mastery/Self-Mastery Tell us about your journey as a coach. I think my journey as a coach started when I was 5 years old & I arrived at the school gates for my first day of school. There was another first dayer waiting there with her mum. She looked at me, then looked at her mum, said I can go in now, took hold of my hand & in we went together. I continued to coach other children with their school work all through school. This is such a great question; it has me reflecting that the main theme of my journey has been joy. The sheer joy of seeing people begin to believe in themselves & of them coming into their own. Professionally, I began coaching about 20 years ago now in London, before anyone was using the term. We realized that we could use the same techniques that one of my colleagues was using wi...

A coach can play so many roles in our life. He/she can be Co-Discoverer, Motivator, Advisor, Critique, Counselor, Trainer, Listener, Networker and a Friend-Philosopher-Guide. To Read more, click here:- Put Your Career on Fast Track; Find a Coach

The increasing popularity of the Triple P concept (Planet, People and Profit) fills us with hope that the corporate world is moving in the right direction and is symbolic of holistic corporate growth in the future.. The corporate world has become symbolic of never ending greed. Gandhi rightly said that there is enough in the world for everyone’s need but not enough for a single man’s greed. Two classic examples of leadership with balance, grace and sustainability at its core are Ratan Tata (Taj Terror attack case) and Amber Chand (USA). In fact, personally I was so overwhelmed by the Taj terror attack case that I decided to teach it as a case study to my students (and warned them not to cry, at least in the classroom). Amber Chand, born to Indian parents in Uganda, is a superb example of rising from the ashes like a Phoenix and is well known for her foundation which supports international artisans in conflict zones. In a way both the cases are related with conflict and supporting peop...

“Each individual creature on this beautiful planet is created by God to fulfill a particular role. Whatever I have achieved in life is through His help and an expression of His will. He showered His grace on me through some outstanding teachers and colleagues and when I pay my tributes to these fine persons, I am merely praising His glory. We are all born with a divine fire in us. Our efforts should be to give wings to this fire and fill the world with the glow of its goodness.” Dr APJ Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire Dr Abdul Kalam has been one of my role models for his passion and compassion besides being a pioneer in the missile bastion (I wanted to be atomic research scientist at one point of time). If only we could ignite the divine within us and others, the world would be a different place altogether. I have always believed that life is like a stress interview being taken by Supreme Consciousness. If we refuse to get stressed and instead consider problems as learning opportunities...

We live in a world where we look everywhere for solutions, for problem creators, for literally everything everywhere except within. Sometimes I have found my students feeling shy in telling that they meditate as they would become a butt of jokes among their peers. When I conducted a learning styles test and found that three students in the class of thirty had intrapersonal styles, I briefly talked about spiritual tools like meditation, how society needs them badly and how one can even make money ethically by teaching such practices. The three students who had intra personal styles were hanging their heads in shame while the other students remarked that they could become some Baba (saint). The truth is often bitter and let us accept this bitter truth. While the elite of the western as well as eastern world is slowly accepting spirituality, the middle class still considers it as an aberration and exception. If there is something close to panacea to cure most of the social ills, it i...

As soon as a friend saw, I was sitting on my desk, writing on love and leadership, he immediately objected, “Why are you mixing oil and water? There is absolutely no relationship between love and leadership.” I was equally firm, “Open the parachute of your mind, my dear. Love is the highest ideal of leadership. It is difficult to mix them of course but they are like a husband and wife who become the most compatible after the long battle during the honeymoon is over” We tend to have narrow definition of love (and Valentine’s Day) equating it with man-woman or life partner emotion. But love is the essence of spirituality, once you understand the unity and oneness of humanity, you discover the bond of love which connects us. Love means care, it means warmth, it means nurturing, affection, trust and so on. Four well known international leaders who have written on love and leadership include Janiece Webb, (Sr VP, Motorola, USA), Lars Kolind (CEO, Oticon, Denmark), NS Raghavan, (Jo...

The universe is pulsating with limitless information, which comes to us at conscious and unconscious levels in various ways. We may receive information through our senses, dreams, intuition and divine. What are the barriers which stop the natural flow of this information? Are these barriers internal or external? How do we break these barriers? These are some of the questions which come to our mind as we grapple to use our intuition to make decisions. We must struggle with forces such as fear, negativity, illness, stress and lack of faith in higher consciousness, which act as barriers. The best tool we can use to break and destroy these barriers is spirituality. Once we are able to do that our decision making (one of the most critical skills for leadership) becomes very easy and natural. In the beginning of our spiritual journey, more and more questions arise in our mind, and then we receive few hints at answers, later we start receiving complete answers and over a period of time a stro...