Richa Bansal, Author at PINKCAREERS

Want Your Team To Grow? Let Them Make Mistakes.

September 12, 2019July 30, 2019 by Richa Bansal

Great success does not come without failures. Experienced leaders allow their teams to fail and support them along the way. If your employees constantly fear failure, they will stay in their comfort zone and not think of innovative, out-of-the box ideas. Allow them to fail without fear of repercussion. They can only achieve great success by making mistakes.

Learn about how we can help our teams learn from their mistakes and achieve great success.

Does Your Outlook Control You?

July 24, 2019July 23, 2019 by Richa Bansal

Outlook is a necessary evil! Email is the most ubiquitous form of communication at workplace. Unfortunately, it has also become one of the biggest killers of productivity. According to Forbes, an average employee spends 23% of their workday checking emails, checking their email 36 times an hour! I have been prey to the email mania as well, until one day I realized it is completely taking over my workday. I was using email as a running to-do list, basically jumping onto whatever task came to my attention next through the inbox.

I have since then taken steps to reduce the time I spend superficially looking at my inbox several times a day. At times my team gets an immediate reply from me, which means I am regressing to the old, unproductive email habits. Therefore, writing this post is also an accountability check for me.

Don’t let Outlook control you! Here are some ways you can master your interactions with your email provider, ultimately making your day more productive:

7 Mistakes You Must Avoid For Good Leadership

July 18, 2019July 16, 2019 by Richa Bansal

Thank a bad boss as their mistakes will make you a good leader

In my 8 years with the company, I have worked with 10 managers so far. In my last post on “14 Leadership Lessons My Managers Taught Me – Part 1”, I shared 7 positive practices that I learned from my previous managers. Not only did I learn about the strengths in their leadership styles, but also I took note of the mistakes that must be avoided to lead my team well. Today, I want to share with you 7 lessons I learned on what NOT to do to be a good leader.

7 Positive Leadership Lessons My Managers Taught Me

July 18, 2019July 10, 2019 by Richa Bansal

In this post, I will share 7 positive lessons I have learned from my past managers. These have helped me define my own leadership style, and I hope you can learn from them as well.

Interview Question: What is Your Biggest Weakness?

October 6, 2019July 7, 2019 by Richa Bansal

In this post, I will talk about one of the interviewers’ favorite questions – What is your biggest weakness? The question may come in many forms:

What is your greatest weakness?
What would your manager say is your key area of improvement?
If there was one thing you could change about yourself, what would it be?
Etc.

I will expand on what the interviewer is really asking for, how to answer and how not to answer this question, as well as walk you through a sample answer, that you can use to tailor for your specific situation.

Interview Question: Tell Me About Yourself

July 8, 2019July 7, 2019 by Richa Bansal

In this post, I will talk about one of the most common interview questions – Tell Me About Yourself. I will expand on what the interviewer is really asking for, how to answer and how not to answer, as well as walk through a sample answer, that you can use to tailor for your specific situation.

7 Secrets of Highly Productive Women

August 17, 2019July 6, 2019 by Richa Bansal

I work full-time in a pretty demanding role. At work, I lead a large team of professionals and interact with clients across the globe to support a diverse portfolio of projects. At home, I transition into my second full-time job as a mother of two very young children, who dislike to eat and sleep. In the last four years, both me and my husband also did our MBA while working. I therefore have little to no time to bring my office work back to my home, meaning I must make the best of the 8 hours I spend at work everyday.

In this post, I want to share with you my 7 best kept secrets of how I manage to be highly productive at work. Some of these tricks I have learnt through experience and some through a very useful leadership course for first time managers. I still don’t perfectly execute them, but everyday is a new day, and I try again!

So here goes…

Top Five Leadership Books for Women That Shaped My Career

July 23, 2019July 6, 2019 by Richa Bansal

I love to read! Ever since I learned to read, I devoured books. As I transitioned from being a student to a frequent traveler for work, to a busy mom of two, I have graduated from reading my favorites on paperback, to scrolling them on kindle and finally to listening to them on audio. The genre I enjoy reading has also matured over time. As I have grown in my career, I have shifted from being a passionate lover of historical fiction to learning more about leadership skills and emotional intelligence.

Through this post, I want to share with you my list of five favorite leadership books for women that have shaped my career. This is not at all an exhaustive list, I already have several other books on my reading list (which I would love to share with you in a future post). However, I found these five to be a great resource, especially for young and rising women leaders, as they define their leadership style and grow their tribe.

Why Being the Only Woman in the Room Rocks

October 22, 2019July 6, 2019 by Richa Bansal

Being in Engineering and Oil & Gas, I have often been the only woman in the room. I would like to start my very first blog post by talking about why being the minority gender is great for your career.