Unfiltered: The CEO and the Coach

I have interacted with Saurabh, the "CEO" in this book. I have invested with Saurabh. I even passed the NISM Mutual Fund Distributors Certification Examination just to recommend that friends who have money to invest do so with Marcellus, the multi-billion dollar asset management firm that Saurabh founded. So far 5.5 crores of principle has been invested because of me into Marcellus. So take this synopsis with a pinch of bias because I am a fan. 

Saurabh comes across as someone who is authentic. He is a clear thinker, an excellent writer and an even better communicator. Just Youtube his name and listen to him talk to understand what I mean. I put in a lot of time in 2020, the year of the pandemic, listening to Saurabh and reading his books. I was trying to figure out whether I can trust him to manage my money. Everything I heard made sense to me. I invested.

While his previous book The Victory Project was right down the ally of a productivity nut like me, this book is very different. You get to see that a rich successful grounded man like Saurabh is just as human as you and me. He is relatable. He is vulnerable. For him to share his insecurities and issues publicly must have been hard. There is a lot of wisdom in these insights between Saurabh the CEO and Anna his Coach. I hope you learn as much as I did.

SHOULD YOU HIRE A COACH?
Support can accelerate development, personally and professionally.

It can help you to expand your horizons, adopt a growth mindset, and get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ faster than you might be able to on your own—or even sometimes realize your passion lies at ‘C’ instead.

Good coaching, in short, allows you to show up as a better version of yourself.

INTERVIEW 3 COACHES BEFORE CHOOSING ONE
Generally, I recommend interviewing two or three coaches that, on paper, meet the key selection criteria for you. Interviewing more risks creating overwhelm and indecision.

Experienced coaches will, likewise, make their decision about whether to take you on or not, as they too will want to feel that there is chemistry and that together you can deliver excellence.

To choose the right coach, it is key to get curious. Ask yourself and your prospective hire some good, tough questions.

What gets your coach out of bed in the morning?

I suggest looking for coaches who love to keep learning.

Individuals who become coaches without doing the heavy lifting of working on themselves are a risk to the profession, to clients and, frankly, to themselves.

TRUST YOUR GUT
As with any therapeutic relationship, the relationship between coach and client is essential to success.

After your first analytic screening of the coaches you interviewed, ask yourself: in your gut, which coach feels right to you?

I thanked him for his time and suggested that he reflect on whether he would like us to work together. He looked at me for a split second and declared, ‘I know already that I want to work with you.’ That was quite the gut reaction! When I asked him what made him decide so quickly, he said, ‘I get a sense that I can trust you. You feel real, and I appreciate how transparent and open you have been on this call. This is exactly what I need.’

After every introductory meeting, I also ask myself three questions: Does my gut tell me to work with this individual, and if yes, why? If I sense hesitation, where is it coming from, and do I believe it can be resolved? What difference do I think we might make together?

THE RIGHT COACH CAN UNLOCK YOUR FULL POTENTIAL
The importance of fulfilling one’s potential and applying it to create an inspiring future for others has occupied a good part of my mind for as long as I can remember.

Happily, attending to meaning and purpose is also my job.

Coaching is a thrill, both literally and figuratively. I like to call it a high-impact experience that requires clients to venture into unknown and often uncomfortable territory.

It’s a little like skydiving—in that finding a trustworthy and reliable partner is crucial. You wouldn’t normally jump from a plane without a trained professional to help you reach the ground safely.

The space of human change is inherently complex and messy.

Just like a sculpture waiting for Michelangelo to bring it to light, the real self of the client is uncovered with the help of the coach, revealing strengths, blind spots and hopes that had previously lain hidden.

Strong coaching enhances a leader’s personal and professional effectiveness and well-being.
Often, it directly changes a leader’s life, and when it does, it can indirectly impact many other lives.

COACHES CHALLENGE CLIENTS BUT ALSO PROVIDE UNCONDITIONAL SUPPORT
The central tenets of coaching are: (1) to support the clients; and (2) to challenge them so that they can reach their goals in a much shorter time than if they tackled them alone.

COACHES CAN ONLY BE EFFECTIVE IF THEIR CLIENTS TRUST THEM
For coaching to work, coaches and clients must contribute as equal partners in the process.

Clients provide the material.

Coaches, while chiselling away at their clients with their questions, offer them their undivided attention, experience and, where appropriate, advice.

If the leaders are not able to carve out any time for their own growth and improvement, then the coaching process will only frustrate them and the coach.

COACHES MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE YOU ARE NOT ALONE
Having a coach by my side provided me with the much-needed sense of no longer ‘going it alone’.

3 THINGS ARE NEEDED TO BUILD TRUST
Three ingredients are necessary to build trust—credibility, integrity and intimacy—and as the steward of the relationship, the coach will need to lead this process of building trust:

Credibility: The coach is qualified

Integrity: The coach and client are all in

Intimacy: There is chemistry between the coach and the client

‘A good coach ideally has also had some good life crises under their belt before they come to coaching.’ Hardships at work and in my personal life have helped me in coaching and in understanding my clients’ challenges.

COACHING INEVITABLY BECOMES PERSONAL
For most leaders, work and life issues are closely intertwined. Unsurprisingly, almost 80 per cent of coaches end up supporting leaders in their personal challenges.

I believe that going deep is the only way to ensure that change will be meaningful beyond the short term. (For example) If a client wants to resolve her lack of self-confidence but the coach can’t help her understand the underlying reasons for her inner critic, then the attempted change is unlikely to stick.

COACHES NEED TO BE AUTHENTIC IF THEY WANT THE SAME FROM THEIR CLIENTS
Coaches who wish their clients to show up as their authentic selves must do likewise.

And this means that coaches should be prepared to lose some mandates, simply because their authentic self is not the right match for those clients.

I have increasingly begun to share personal and professional examples with my clients. The idea is that coaches learn to use themselves as another ‘tool’ in their quest to support the client’s aspirations: the chisel that works away at the stone. The governing principle here, however, is that I will only share with my client what I judge to be helpful to them and their goals and aspirations. The coaching ideal remains intact: it is not about the coach but about the client.

Bill Campbell, the Silicon Valley coach to Apple’s Steve Jobs and Google’s Eric Schmidt, was known for hugging his clients.

With clients where we are geographically apart for most of the time, my facial expressions, tone of voice and language are essential to express warmth and create connection. Many clients draw on this and find it helpful, particularly at tough moments.

I also introduce quite a bit of resilience and well-being into my practice. I will, on occasion, teach breathing methods for stress management or recommend yoga poses to help clients relax.

Take care to note what your coach is like, as these character traits will very likely work their way into their approach to you.

ASK COACHES ABOUT THEIR PHILOSOPHY
It can be useful to explore how a coach feels about the world, and whether she has a particular focus or coaching philosophy.

After exchanging some pleasantries, Saurabh began asking questions: ‘Can you tell me a bit about your coaching approach?’

IT'S A GOOD IDEA TO GET A COACH WHO IS VERY DIFFERENT THAN YOU
Ideally, coaching should provide a new lens that helps expand a client’s universe. A coach with a range of experience can sometimes be more useful to clients than one who is their carbon copy.

When we come from a place of curiosity and do not feel threatened but rather intrigued by someone’s otherness, real growth can happen.

LASTING CHANGE IS HARD
Without an individual leader’s commitment and some form of checks and balances in place, regression to the previous status quo—or ‘reversion to the mean’, as investors call it—is a real danger.

Initial change is not as difficult. It’s often exciting to try out something new. Sustainable positive change is hard, and this is true even if we want to change.

No wonder four out of five people drop their New Year resolutions by February every year.

We know from research that even positive change can destabilize those involved.

Wherever there is gain, there is also often a sense of loss: think of a move to a new position where excitement awaits but also the loss of familiar faces and networks.

LEVERAGE YOUR STRENGTHS INSTEAD OF TRYING TO RECTIFY YOUR WEAKNESSES

In coaching, rather than working with clients on fixing their weaknesses, we can help them identify and leverage their signature strengths. Turkeys run faster than squirrels can (and they can fly, which squirrels cannot).

In business, the challenge is to ensure that the turkeys do most of the running and all the flying, while the squirrels do the climbing.

When coaching business leaders, the opportunity to bring change in them lies in finding ways to enable the turkeys to run and fly faster and the squirrels to climb higher.

The art is in learning how to leverage one’s strengths and not to under- and over-use them, as well as avoiding going around in circles by trying to rectify weaknesses.

IF YOU'RE A COACH, WORK WITH ORGANIZATIONS NOT INDIVIDUALS
When I started coaching, an experienced leadership coach told me: ‘Never work with individuals, only work with organizations. Individuals do not want to pay you properly and will expect miracles.’ After working with private individuals, I decided to follow his advice.

My mantra has been to charge organizations fair fees, incorporating their budget and my experience in the quote.

I do not believe in selling myself short or in being discounted as a single business owner for a Fortune-500 client.

I also believe in giving back, as I offer reduced rates for non-profits and take on pro-bono coaching engagements for select start-ups.

IN COACHING, TIMING IS IMPORTANT
In my work, it’s always important to know when to share and when to hold back. It’s a little like dancing—timing is everything.

SOME QUESTIONS FROM COACH TO CLIENT
- ‘Briefly describe your current responsibilities (including work hours per week, whether you primarily manage people or projects, and the number of people reporting to you)’.

- ‘What complaints do you think your direct reports/peers/supervisor have about you? How do you think they would like you to change?’.

- ‘What do you consider your biggest personal failure?’ or ‘Who has influenced your choices in real life and why?’.

- To the question ‘Which historical figure do you most identify with and why?’, Saurabh replied, ‘Winston Churchill—We will fight on the beaches, we will fight on the streets … we shall not give up.’ I sensed perseverance bordering on toughness.

- ‘What keeps you up at night?’, he responded, ‘I worry about whether I can give the kids the life they deserve. Will their upbringing be happier than mine was? Will they be more comfortable in their skin than I am?’

- To ‘When you die, what would you like people to say about you?’, he shared, ‘He was a force for good.’ There was a degree of tenderness coupled maybe with a sense of purpose and the hope of making a difference.

-  How could he really shift from an autocratic leadership style to an inclusive ‘leader as coach’ style?

- How might he move from micromanaging behaviours to focusing on asking open-ended questions and encouraging direct reports to find their own path?  And how could he make those direct reports embrace their newly won autonomy?

- If he were to fast-forward to his ninetieth birthday, what would really matter to him on looking back on his life?

THE COMMON NARRATIVE ABOUT SAURABH, THE CEO CLIENT IN THIS BOOK
As I began interviewing key stakeholders within and outside the bank, I found several common narratives:

Saurabh was bright, hardworking and a man of principle. He also had a track record of professionalism that many admired.

The main areas in which they wanted him to grow were his interpersonal relationships and communication style.

Once all the raters had shared their feedback, I discovered that the ultimate problem area for Saurabh was going to be difficult to overcome: people were afraid of him—and everyone felt this way, all the way up to the most senior executive levels.

When Saurabh heard that his colleagues and peers were afraid of him, he was surprised.

Saurabh’s temper made the talent on his team reluctant to take risks and caused his peers to avoid him.

I openly told him how his email had made me feel; that I felt a pang of unpleasant surprise in being scolded like a child.

I told him that my decades of professional training and experience had let me see it as it was: a response from someone unaware of his impact, probably as harsh with himself as he was with others (if not more), and clearly under an enormous amount of pressure.But his colleagues, who didn’t have that context, were likely to feel very differently.

This feedback allowed me to see his more vulnerable side to an extent that he had not shared in our previous three sessions.

I felt privileged and honoured that he would trust me with his emotions so soon. ‘I am shocked and hurt,’ he shared. This was a man who went to great lengths to keep his company competitive and his colleagues effective. As far as he was concerned, he was doing everything for everyone else’s ‘good’. He firmly believed that pushing people beyond their limits was part of his leadership responsibilities. But the truth was that others saw this behaviour as aggressive and commanding.

‘What stings the most is that people are afraid of me,’ he went on. ‘I never wanted to be that type of leader and person.’

For Saurabh, curiosity had come out on top. He was a voracious reader and a knowledgeable, educated man.

Managing stress and setting boundaries were going to be key for any positive change to become visible. Taking care of himself was low on his list of priorities, well below work and providing for his family.

Saurabh had too little time and too much stress—he was running on empty.

The coaching I received helped me break through the anger and confusion swirling in my head to understand what I really wanted from my career—namely, to build something that I deeply cared for, to do work that I really enjoyed and to find an outlet for my creative instincts.

In effect, Ana helped me cut through the clutter and supported me in my realization that Marcellus had to be built.

SHARE THE FEEDBACK WITH STRENGTHS AND DON'T TRY TO SUGARCOAT THE WEAKNESSES
This 360-degree feedback report managed to touch him in a way our previous conversations had not. We were no longer in pretend land—we had now entered a space that felt raw and real.

My approach to sharing the 360-degree feedback is to first summarize the feedback highlighting the key strengths that emerge as well as where the client has room to develop.

Then I share quotes, which I have stripped of any content that could give away who said them. I also group these quotes into themes—this, I find, facilitates the client review.

ACCOUNTABILITY REQUIRES MEASUREMENT
Accountability also means that we can assess and measure progress. To achieve this, Saurabh and I defined the metrics.

These metrics included continuous feedback loops from stakeholders, his own sense of progress on a scale of 1 to 10, the number of open-ended questions he posed against the number of directives he gave, how much he delegated tasks and crucially, how frequently he lost his temper.

HUMOR IS AN ASSETS
I admired Saurabh’s ability to inject humour into his reflections and how unafraid he was to poke fun at himself.

COACHING IS NOT THERAPY BUT IT IS WORK
While I am a fully trained and licensed therapist, coaching is not therapy.

I had to make sure to not venture into areas beyond the scope of what a client signed up for.

Coaching currently doesn’t strictly require professional training, and there are as many coaches as there are dentists. And boy, does going to the wrong dentist hurt!

Ana and I began our fortnightly coaching sessions in September 2017. The sessions were two hours long and exhausting. There was pre-reading to be done and exercises to be completed. It was hard work.

BE AUTHENTIC
There is an authenticity to Saurabh that is palpable—this is an incredible strength which, when carefully deployed, keeps leaders in their element and helps their colleagues and peers to trust them.

BREAKTHROUGHS CAN COME WHEN YOU LOSE MEANING IN WHAT YOU DO
‘Should I embark on realizing my dream of running my own business?’ he asked. After all, it would carry significant risks, such as losing the financial and structural security he had from holding a salaried position.

‘You have a strong track record of persevering against the odds, both personally and professionally. Your excitement about this venture is palpable. And a leader with passion is far more likely to succeed.’

I realized that part of my mental struggle was not dissimilar—at that point, for each of the preceding three years, I had been ranked as India’s leading equity strategist. From an intellectual perspective, my job had lost its appeal, and I realized that a significant part of my desire to become group CEO was an attempt to inject meaning and purpose into my career. I also realized that some of my counterproductive emotional outbursts were a manifestation of this frustration. That intellectually the job I was doing was now a dead end, and therefore I was operating at full throttle but with no purpose and with little sense of direction. The deeper realization in January 2018 was that I have nothing to prove to anyone, no need to conquer any more worlds.

OTHER PEOPLE MATTER
He no longer considered differences in opinion to be an unsolvable problem. Most fundamentally, Saurabh now sought connection with others.

PROGRESS IS WHAT MOTIVATES PEOPLE
What motivates people on a day-to-day basis is the sense that they are making progress. Managers who take this finding to heart will easily see the corollary: The best thing they can do for their people is provide the catalysts and nourishers that allow projects to move forward while removing the obstacles and toxins that result in setbacks.

CELEBRATE SMALL WINS
After reading this piece, I remember asking every team I managed to organize celebratory drinks every month, a practice that my current colleagues have more skilfully implemented than I was ever able to.

IT'S NOT WHAT YOU SAY, IT'S HOW YOU SAY IT
Stokoe found that people who had responded negatively when asked if they would like to attend mediation seemed to change their minds when the mediator used the phrase, ‘Would you be willing to come for a meeting?’ … As soon as the word ‘willing’ was uttered, people would say: ‘Oh, yes definitely’—they would actually interrupt the sentence to agree.

EMOTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS ARE MORE RESILIENT THAN JUST TRANSACTIONAL ONES
The commercial success of the business that I had been tasked with managing gave me the licence to get away without investing emotionally in a bunch of relationships with people older and wiser than me.

WHO ARE YOU AND WHO DO YOU WANT TO BECOME?

A life well lived is a life lived pursuing a cause that you believe in. So, what was the cause that I believed in? And what was it that I enjoyed?

I reflected deeply on who I really was versus what people perceived me to be versus who I wanted to become.

In parallel to working with Ana, I read voraciously about the psychological origins of identity and desire.

YOUR PAST SHAPES YOU
Those difficult years in the early 1990s, when we had next to nothing and when challenges used to hit the family one after another, left in me a deep desire to succeed.

To give credit to the British education system and job market, I discovered that if I pushed myself hard enough, I could keep achieving more.

BE CAREFUL NOT TO EMULATE YOUR PEERS AND FRIENDS BLINDLY
Ana’s coaching sessions and her candid feedback made me realize that I needed to snap out of my mimetic desires and find and embrace my own underlying identity.

I needed to become a person I was happy being rather than a twenty-first-century Indian version of Gordon Gekko.

BE CALM
My staying calm helps the rest of the Marcellus team stay calm. It also helps my family stay calm.