October 26th, 2018

How do you gain experience without becoming cynical?

Early in my career, there were many things that people did that I couldn’t quite understand. Like when a manager would make the exact opposite decision of the one I would’ve made. I used to pester my colleagues all the time to try to get explanations. Some of these guys had been in the […]

August 15th, 2017

Mindfulness and Politics

Political discussions can be some of the most challenging places to practice mindfulness. It’s so easy to get caught up in mindless debates that generate more heat than light. But if we pay close attention, I think our political conversations can be a source of insight. What are the lenses through which we view […]

October 6th, 2015

How Open Source transformed my career

[ This post is also published on opensource.com ]

I was introduced to open source through immersion, when I learned C and Perl in college. Compared to previous programming languages like BASIC and Pascal which I had learned only from textbooks, I learned C and Perl in the context of the Internet. I would ask […]

July 26th, 2015

Spiritual Development and the Polarities of Type

Here is an extended slideset for my presentation at APTi 2015.

Abstract: The lessons of meditation and psychological type theory reinforce each other in fundamental ways. Meditation can be thought of as an exercise in expanding awareness. When we notice that our mind has taken on the narrow form of a train of thought, we […]

August 18th, 2014

Evaluating Leadership Advice

This is an excerpt from my book Enlightening Technical Leadership.

Leadership advice comes in a lot of flavors – from the soothing stories of a grandmother, to the salty screed of a hardened skipper, to the bland babbling of a bureaucrat, and many others. But when we digest them, we see how they break down […]

July 25th, 2014

Influence

This is an excerpt from my book Enlightening Technical Leadership.

When we want to influence others, it helps to be aware of what is influencing us. When you want to influence someone to do something, or to think or feel a certain way, first ask yourself a simple question: why do you want to influence […]

July 15th, 2014

Performance Feedback

This is an excerpt from my book Enlightening Technical Leadership.

Whenever we get feedback, whether it’s formally at an annual performance review, or informally during the course of our work, we have an excellent opportunity to observe our identifications. What do we feel proud about? What do we get defensive about? Sorting out our triggers […]

June 25th, 2014

Identity Labels

This is an excerpt from my book Enlightening Technical Leadership.

As we participate in open source projects or open learning communities like Wikipedia, Quora, Stack Exchange and others, we frequently encounter people from different countries who work at different companies. It’s not unusual to see people change organizational affiliations while working on the same project, […]

June 12th, 2014

Letting Go of Mental Models

This is an excerpt from my book Enlightening Technical Leadership.

What I particularly like about GIS mapping programs like Google Earth is that it’s just as easy to add a layer and take on a new perspective as it is to uncheck a layer and let go of my current perspective. If I bring up […]

December 11th, 2013

Enlightening Technical Leadership

I’m happy to announce that my first book, Enlightening Technical Leadership, is now available! You can download the ebook for free from my web site, and the paperback is available at amazon.com:

http://kartiksubbarao.com/enlightening-technical-leadership