Whether you’re a leader or entrepreneur, we’re all caught up with overloaded email boxes, deadlines to meet, presentations to be done, etc. We are forever busy, but instead of constant acceleration, leadership demands a period when we take a moment to stop and reflect. Self-reflection is not about spending hours putting together a gigantic plan, but simply taking 15 minutes a day for yourself that can make a significant impact on your life balance and performance. Self-reflection is also a basis for understanding others. How could a leader read other people without having an awareness of her/himself? Self-reflection is about…

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Human Resources and training professionals, coaches, and consultants are some of the most dynamic and interesting people in my personal and professional life. They are also a terrific pipeline of clients for our job search and career transition coaching firm, so it may appear self-serving to lay on the compliments. But, I assure you that my accolades are beyond self-serving. There is no more deserving client for coaching than you – the HR professional. Often, however, you are the last to go to the professional “self-care well.” Day in and day out, you lay your professional (and sometimes personal) life…

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Recently, at the 2nd World Technology, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Conference in Istanbul, I was asked to present on ‘Talent 4.0’ in response to the developing business environment. For someone who doesn’t feel comfortable with the word ‘talent,’ I was nonetheless super excited to speak on the subject. For the purposes of this blog, we will define talent as “a person or group of people with a special ability to do something well.” It is without a doubt that the HR profession has been evolving more rapidly now, and has done a remarkable job focusing on the ‘war for talent’ for…

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We have been talking a lot about how HR is now at a crossroads. Despite some criticism and suspicious looks, we believe all functions involving people operations – whether they call themselves the ‘human resources’ function or similar – can and will rise to the occasion in time. The challenges we have in business are never one-way streets. If we have a sales challenge, for example, it would be wrong to assume there is an issue with only the sales department. If we have a quality issue, it would be wrong to assume there is an issue with only the…

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May was the mother of all busy months for me. I hopped continents, meeting potential clients, providing status on current work, and presenting at major conferences. Now that I’ve had a little time to reflect, I realize there were so many key learnings from my spring business trips. The biggest of all? Learning how to speak up, clearly and concisely as a woman in business. See… Just a few years ago, in a corporate job, I belonged to a reading club with a group of female colleagues I adored. We got together once a month in one of our flats,…

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In April, our Founder, Sesil Pir, was invited to speak at a highly-regarded HR event, HR Tomorrow Conference. You may recall we published her notes from the event, found here. Many of our readers asked about the presentation. We are overwhelmed by the interest – thank you! For a copy of slides presented at the conference, click here. For those interested in speaking notes, we put together two short videos (one above) on Shift in Business Context and A New Motto for HR  to give you a sense of dialogue that took place. For interest in speaking engagement requests, we encourage…

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Following up on our earlier post summarizing ILO’s Global Future of Work Dialogue on ‘Future Focus Areas on Work‘, in which we shared trends in a pdf format, we received feedback from our readers that they really appreciate the ‘take-away’ material. Therefore, as a second set of notes to  our  “What Does the Future Hold in Store for Us?” blog – sharing our notes from World Technology, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Conference, we have build a page on key trends to watch for. For HR leaders of the 21st century, one big question remains looming for us: How do we create the right environment for…

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A world of hope, a collective leap of faith Transformation of any type invites us to an imagined future. It asks us to lay down our tired assumptions and well-worn methods to embrace new ideas and almost unimagined possibilities. It begs us to see incremental change as an imposter. It asks us to suspend disbelief and take a leap of faith. Organization transformation is no different. To hold a vision of a fundamentally transformed organization is simultaneously an act of charity and an act of hope. The charity should be applied to ourselves, for we are the defenders and perpetuators…

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I recently attended the 2nd World Technology, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation Conference, hosted by Istanbul University. I had the immense pleasure of representing my home country, Turkey, and my discipline of studies: people management and organizational effectiveness. As we stress time and time again through our articles and v-blogs here on Whirling Chief, the world is at interesting crossroads. From psychology to spirituality, all that we hold close to our hearts is evolving. Even the way we think about humanity and our world is evolving. The world of business is no different… You name it, the way we’re doing, well, virtually…

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There seems to be so much being published about ‘change’ in all management and leadership journals at the moment. Indeed, if you Google ‘change,’ you get 3.7m hits to study. And, as you look round the world (particularly in the world of politics), we seem to be voting for change. That is of course by definition, not what we currently have – even though we don’t know what it might bring or where it might lead us! So let’s get back to a few fundamentals, and some very human principles. Change has been a constant in our human experience, and…

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