Why am I an executive coach?

There are three things that happened in my life that resulted in me pivoting to a leadership and executive coach today. 

I have been a technology leader for the past 35 years. In all these years, I’ve worked in companies of all sizes – from a one-man startup to a large global enterprise. I was successful and it led to where I was a year ago – working in a technology product company leading global teams and working on products ranging from embedded databases to cloud data warehouses. I was coasting along and proud what I had achieved along the way. So why did I decide on switching to a different career path?

The first thing

Going back almost 18 years, I had just been promoted to a Vice President from a Senior Director position at Oracle. Human resources assigned an Executive coach to me as a part of this new responsibility. I was transitioning from a pure technology leadership role to a business leadership role. I was younger and cockier and thought what could I learn from him, that I didn’t already know? In addition, John didn’t even come from the field of databases!

As I started my journey with him and met him initially weekly, then every other week, John started to uncover my blind spots. As a first step he helped me go through a 360-degree assessment which helped open up some interesting aspects and I understood habits and perceptions that prevented me from being even more successful. In addition, he asked me some powerful questions for which I discovered that I already had the answers hidden away somewhere in my head. John became my thinking partner over the course of that year. It wasn’t that I leaned on him. I always led the agenda and John was very supportive throughout the process.

The second thing

About a few years later, our executive vice president wanted the various business leaders to work as a high performing team and brought in HR facilitators to help work with us. As we went through many sessions and discussions, various HR persons would tell me on the side that I would make an excellent leadership coach based on my observations and inputs. These inputs stayed with me.

The third thing: Covid-19

As Covid struck and we were all in lockdown, I was getting impatient and wanted to spend my ample spare time doing something. Evenings were now spent indoors and my grownup children were out and on their own. After many renovation projects and YouTube and Netflix cruising, I started to ruminate on the first thing. Was it John the person who changed my trajectory or was there a method to this madness? 

After many hours of research, I discovered the International Coaching Federation (ICF) and the training needed for a certified coach. The Center for executive coaching helped in the foundation with 125 hours of training and certification. Now I was a certified executive coach!

Pivot

But I was still working in my technology leadership role full time, and it was December 2020. In the new year I mentioned to many in my network (along with my New Year wishes), that I was now a certified executive coach and had learnt many things along the way. Four of them asked me to spend my spare time coaching them as they were stuck and needed guidance. After about 3 months each of them came back to me and said that I was good as a coach and should pivot to it as my career. This helped me make up my mind, and I got into a Leadership and Executive coach career starting May 2021. After 100 hours of coaching, and working with a mentor coach who observed my coaching, I under took a 3 hour long written examination, which led to the ICF-ACC credential.

What's next?

As I work with various people, I see the metamorphosis and the aha moments that they discover during our sessions. I am currently focused on Executive coaching for technology leaders (since that is my initial network) however the coaching process is the same – active listening, asking powerful questions and watch clients unleash the potential that they have to be even more successful!