A Field Guide for Navigating Work with Clarity, Credibility and Calm
Over the years, I’ve noticed that no matter the organisation, the industry, or the job title, the same fundamental question eventually shows up in every coaching room and classroom:
“What does it actually take to be effective at work?”
I see this question from CEOs leading complex systems, from mid-career managers navigating cross-functional demands, and from new graduates stepping into their first real accountability. And I see it every time I teach Personal Effectiveness at SP Jain School of Global Management - Dubai, Mumbai, Singapore & Sydney, where our executive EMBA participants arrive carrying years of experience and a healthy self-awareness that they still want to operate with more focus, more confidence, and more influence.
What’s striking is that, regardless of seniority, people want the same things:
To work with more intention and less reactivity
To communicate with more clarity and less friction
To feel more in control of their time, attention, and energy
To show up in meetings with authority rather than autopilot
To build professional relationships that actually help everyone get better work done
This is why the core premise of the Personal Effectiveness course and now this newsletter is simple:
Effectiveness is human, not hierarchical.
The behaviours that make you successful are not “soft skills”; they are performance muscles.
They determine whether you are trusted, whether your ideas land, whether your team follows you, and whether your week flows or fractures.
After fourteen years coaching professionals across Asia and teaching leaders at SP Jain, Manchester, INSEAD and beyond, I’ve accumulated thousands of data points about what works in the real world, not in textbooks, not in theory, but in the messy, political, high-stakes environments where most of us spend our days.
The Professional Effectiveness newsletter is my attempt to collect this work in one place.
Not as a curriculum. Not as a lecture. But as a living archive of field-tested insights you can use immediately, whether you’re running a business or running your first meeting.
The Professional Effectiveness Archive
What You Can Expect From This Newsletter
Each edition of Professional Effectiveness tackles one essential skill; the kind that plays out daily in how you lead, collaborate, and think. These are not abstract concepts. You can apply them in the next 7 days. You’ll see:
Evidence-based ideas drawn from organisational behaviour, psychology, and leadership research
A clear mental model you can use to diagnose your own habits
Practical tools and scripts for meetings, emails, decision-making, prioritisation, and influence
Short experiments you can run in real work situations
Stories and patterns gathered from coaching senior leaders, EMBA participants, and mid-career professionals navigating transition
Think of it as the informal “working textbook” to accompany the Personal Effectiveness course. A place where theory meets practice, and practice becomes habit.
And because professional effectiveness is not a finish line but a discipline, this archive will grow and evolve over time. Some topics will be tactical. Others will be reflective. Many will be informed by the questions people like you send me after a session, a class, or a coaching conversation.
An Invitation to Join the Practice
If this newsletter is an experiment, it is also an invitation: To treat effectiveness not as self-help, but as a professional responsibility.
Whether you are a CEO making strategic calls, a project manager aligning cross-functional teams, or an individual contributor navigating your first corporate landscape. The way you work shapes the way others can work with you. And that makes personal effectiveness a shared endeavour.
So as you read, try the exercises, test the scripts, and experiment with the ideas, I’d welcome your reflections. Tell me what landed. Tell me what didn’t. Tell me where work gets messy for you so we can turn it into something useful for thousands of others.
Let’s make effectiveness a habit—something practiced, refined, and shared across roles, industries, and career stages.
I hope this archive becomes a resource you return to often.
Welcome to Professional Effectiveness.
Let’s get to work.