Play to Potential Podcast

Welcome to the second episode of CONNECTING THE DOTS. We pick a theme for every episode and try and look at that topic from multiple lenses. Where appropriate, I also try and bring in my experiences as a Coach and a Sounding Board and from my journey as well. In this second episode, we discuss External Self-Awareness. How do we tune into the feedback that we get from the outside world and become a...

Welcome to the first episode of CONNECTING THE DOTS. We pick a theme for every episode and try and look at that topic from multiple lenses. Where appropriate, I also try and bring in my experiences as a Coach and a Sounding Board and from my journey as well.  In this first episode, we discuss INTERNAL SELF-AWARENESS. Barry Schwartz (Author of Paradox of Choice) states that in a world of abundance,...

GUEST Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. This quote is attributed to Viktor Emil Frankl, an Austrian neurologist, psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, devoted his life to studying, understanding and promoting “meaning.”  Carol Kaufman and David Noble give us practical tools that we can use to make the ‘space’ count.  Carol and David h...

NUGGET CONTEXT Carol and David speak about their M.O.V.E framework; M – Mindful, O – Options Generating, V – Validating the Vantage Point, E – Engage and effect change. The key, they say, borrowing from Viktor Frankl, is to create the space between stimulus and response. This is a “sampler” of what a nugget looks like in our podcast. While we have a few nuggets on popular podcast platforms, entire...

GUEST Stephen M. R. Covey is an American writer and public speaker and the author of the books: The SPEED of Trust, Smart Trust, and Trust & Inspire: How Truly Great Leaders Unleash the Greatness in Others. He is the co-founder and CEO of a company called CoveyLink Worldwide and former President and CEO of Covey Leadership Center. He happens to be the son of Stephen Covey, the author of the pa...

NUGGET CONTEXT Stephen speaks about how he initially focused on the business side of things while his father was the ‘larger than life’ thought leader. He speaks about how, over time, his insights around the high cost of low trust have emerged and how he has found his voice a thought leader over time. This is a “sampler” of what a nugget looks like in our podcast. While we have a few nuggets on po...

GUEST Roger Federer is somebody who needs no introduction. While, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal have overtaken him in terms of the overall Grand Slams won, when there is a discussion about the Greatest of All Time (GOAT), all fingers very often still point to Roger. One could attribute that to his fluidity, his charm on and off court, his longevity, his stable family life, and much more.  I had...

NUGGET CONTEXT Chris speaks about how people were talking about Roger’s potential when he was just 13 or 14. He speaks about how Regis Brunet saw Roger in action in Florida and then immediately ran to the payphone to get hold of Roger’s parents back in Switzerland. This is a “sampler” of what a nugget looks like in our podcast. While we have a few nuggets on popular podcast platforms, entire libra...

GUEST Michiel Kruyt is CEO of IMAGINE, an advisory boutique helping executive teams develop future fit leadership and company vision. He had a fifteen-year career at McKinsey and Co, where he was a partner focusing on top team effectiveness, large-scale transformations and culture change. He helped many top teams around the world increase their ability to lead with impact. Michiel has co-founded a...

NUGGET CONTEXT Michiel speaks about the arc of his journey and how he shifted trajectories over time and over time his interests and passions shifted from Sales, Marketing and General Management at Unilever to driving Personal Transformation at McKinsey and beyond. This is a “sampler” of what a nugget looks like in our podcast. While we have a few nuggets on popular podcast platforms, entire libra...

GUEST Jeffrey Pfeffer has been teaching at Stanford since 1979. He has Co-Authored or Authored 16 books, the last one being, 7 Rules of Power. He is in the Thinkers 50 Hall of Fame, a list that celebrate the all-time greats in the world of Business that are moving the world forward with their original ideas.  We spoke at length about his recent book on Power. More specifically, we spoke about the...

NUGGET CONTEXT Jeffrey speaks about how he came around to studying Power. He also goes on to speak about the kinds of career choices he has made and what he has said No to over time as his Power increased over time. This is a “sampler” of what a nugget looks like in our podcast. While we have a few nuggets on popular podcast platforms, entire library of Nuggets (Categorised by themes) is available...

Merry Christmas and Best wishes for 2023!  As we wind down 2022, we share the Highlights from the year gone by. If you have been following the podcast, you would appreciate that we are offering the Podcast as a service. All the content is free and there is no advertising on our podcast. If you are deriving value from the podcast, this festive season, consider taking a moment to share your gratitud...

GUEST David has been teaching the landmark Interpersonal Dynamics course (informally called as Touchy Feely by many) at Stanford for over 50 years. He has distilled some of his learnings and insight from these five decades in a recently published book titled – Connect: Building Exceptional Relationships with Family, Friends and Colleagues. It is always a pleasure to speak to somebody who has spent...

NUGGET CONTEXT David shares 6 markers of what he calls as “Exceptional Relationship”. 1) You can be more fully yourself and so can the other person.  2) Both of you are willing to be vulnerable 3) You trust that self-disclosures will not be used against you 4) You can be honest with each other 5) You deal with conflict productively 6) Both of you are committed to each other’s growth and developmen...

GUEST Ethan is one of the world’s leading experts on controlling the conscious mind. He is an award-winning professor in the University of Michigan’s Psychology Department. His research has been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The New England Journal of Medicine, and Science. He has recently published the book – Chatter. The book goes deep into talking abou...

GUEST Manjari Jauhar is Bihar’s first IPS officer and one of the first five IPS officer in India (Kiran Bedi being the first).  After an unexpected turn of events upended the homemaker role her parents had planned for her, Manjari Jaruhar overcame extraordinary odds to become the first woman from Bihar to join the country’s elite police cadre. Her journey is a masterclass in courage, resilience an...

GUEST Tarun Khanna is the Jorge Paulo Lemann Professor at the Harvard Business School (HBS), where he has sought for two decades to study the drivers of entrepreneurship in emerging markets as a means of economic and social development. At HBS since 1993, after obtaining degrees from Princeton and Harvard, he has taught courses on strategy, corporate governance and international business to MBA an...

GUEST Raghu is formally trained as an engineer with an MS in Bio-Medical Engineering from IIT, Madras, He has been in immersive involvement in questions of human life.  He says that three extraordinary teachers mentored him when he was going through a very difficult phase of life, namely, J Krishnamurti, Yogacharya Krishnamacharya and Pulin K Garg. He was intimately involved with them for more tha...

GUEST Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg is the author of What’s Your Problem? (Harvard Business Press, 2020), a book on how to solve the right problems. His research has been featured in Harvard Business Review, The Economist, The Sunday Times, The Telegraph, BBC Radio, Bloomberg Businessweek and the Financial Times. His work on innovation led HR Magazine to recognize him as a “Top 20 International Thinke...

GUEST Ayelet Fishbach, Ph. D., is the Jeffrey Breakenridge Keller Professor of Behavioral Science and Marketing at the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business and the author of Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation. She is the past president of the Society for the Study of Motivation and the International Social Cognition Network. She is an expert on motivation and...

GUEST Alisa has been coaching startup Founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. She has recently authored the book - From Start-Up to Grown-Up.  Alisa is a guest lecturer at Harvard and Cornell Universities, Henley Business School and the Naval War College. She serves on the board of the Cornell Advisory Council. Her articles have appeared in HBR, Forbes, and Inc and she has been...

GUEST Daniel H. Pink is the author of five New York Times bestsellers, including his latest, The Power of Regret: How Looking Backward Moves Us Forward, published in February. His other books include the New York Times bestsellers When and A Whole New Mind — as well as the #1 New York Times bestsellers Drive and To Sell is Human. Dan’s books have won multiple awards, have been translated into 42 l...

GUEST Pradeep Chakravarthy is a behaviourist who uses Indian models of L&D to alter behaviour. He has recently published the book - Leadership Shastra which looks at some of the rulers of the past and culls out lessons in leadership and culture. He has written a book - Thanjavur - a Cultural History (2010) and A Road Less Travelled - A Historian’s Guide to lesser known temples in Tamil Nadu (2...

GUEST Ravi Venkatesan has been on the podcast about 5 years back. In that conversation we spoke about his journey and his transition from Cummins to Microsoft to Board Roles. In this conversation, we dive into his recently published book - What the Heck Do I Do with My Life.  Some of the topics we cover include the notion of a punctuated equilibrium and the implication on how we adapt, being inten...