It is an accepted fact that attitudes give rise to behavioral patterns, as it is essentially one's disposition towards the environment and other issues, which dictate the posture towards it. Hence, attitude plays a major role in shaping our performance. In spite of this, most of our educational institutions pay little heed to attitude orientation. N Vijaya Lakshmi in the paper, "The Impact of Attitudes in Improving Performance: "Attitudes Determine One's Altitude,"" examines the impact of attitude on performance.

Inter-personal skills play a major role in building and fostering organizational efficiency. The manner, in which an individual relates to other individuals and environment, basically depends upon how his/her brain processes the impinging stimuli. Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) helps individuals to facilitate better processing of such stimuli. Kunal Gaurav discusses the role of NLP in inter-personal relationships in the paper, "Building Human Psycho-Technical Efficiency Through Neuro Linguistic Programming".

One's performance to a large extent depends on one's self-belief and self-confidence as related to any particular activity. Self-concept and self-efficacy are distinct from each other and one must understand the subtle distinction between the two to plan effective interventions. M Madhavi Latha examines these issues in the paper, "A Perspective on Self-Efficacy Beliefs for Academic Achievement".

Success at workplace depends upon a balance between domain competence and soft skills. This is especially so in the present period when existing technology rapidly becomes redundant. Such an environment demands frequent unlearning, learning and relearning. The demands on people in such an environment weigh heavily in favor of soft skills. Manishankar Chakraborty addresses this issue in the paper, "Cocktail of Domain Know-How with Soft Skills".

In these days of stress and pressures in the corporate world, most of the people are on the lookout for means of alleviating stress by whatever ways possible. Music offers a very effective means of relieving stress. However, not all music need bring about peace of mind in all circumstances. Jyotika Saxena examines this in the paper, "Music: Therapy for the Soul".

In these days of fast life, everything seems to have transformed into rapid preparation and speedy delivery. Even English in its written form has been transformed into a form where punctuation is conspicuous by its absence. Unfortunately, such a transformation has robbed the language of its romance, and in the worst-case scenario, could bring about disastrous changes in the sense such language conveys. Brenda Coutinho reviews the book, Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation, which is apt to the issue.

Some of the common characteristics about successful people are passion and self-belief. Success assumes greater meaning when it is sustained over a significant duration. Laurainne Theogaraj reviews the book, Success Built to Last: Creating a Life That Matters, which deals with the way successful people think about life.

- T D Prasad
Consulting Editor