About Coaches and Inflection Points

I today's newsletter edition I am excited to share with you an interview with Rashmir Balasubramaniam, a coach supporting clients who want to identify and strengthen their core purpose.

I've previously described my journey to become an independent and remote consultant and hotel manager with a fractional work portfolio in Greece. My coach at that time played a key role in this process: he allowed me to find my purpose, confidence and priorities which ultimately led me to make this major life decision and embark on this journey.

That's why I want to give you some insights into the work of a coach and highlight when it's most useful working with a coach for your personal and professional journey. So that you can also find and strengthen your purpose!

Dear Rashmir, tell me: What do you do as a coach??

Rashmir: This is one of those questions that's surprisingly hard to answer. In some ways it's simple: coaching is a safe space for people to reflect, to process, to question, to be challenged, to be provoked in their thinking, in their being and in their doing so that they can grow and develop and be more effective.

In practice, there's a huge range of things that I cover. I love working with people to help them reconnect to who they are at their core and rediscover their essence and lead from a place of sovereign being. This enables people to bring their true selves, their aliveness, their brilliance to the world in more effective and powerful ways.?

Part of that work is helping them connect to their higher purpose. And purpose for me is not just about that thing that we're here to do. It's a combination of being, doing and becoming. So, the question is: who are you at your core? What's your highest mission? What messages does the world need to hear through you? Who is your divine audience, so to speak? And how to grow your impact, the impact only you can have??

There are many other parts to the work as well, depending on where people are in their work and lives and what they most need. Most of my work is with people who are grappling with a leadership transition or the complexities of leading change, leading teams, leading organizations and evolving organizations. And being an effective leader ties to who you are and how confident you are in yourself and therefore your ability to include, to engage, to lead with wisdom. And that's a journey, as few of us are born as natural leaders.

And given the nature of challenge in the world and the evolving needs of the workplace and teams and people, a lot of the work in coaching is about exploring, problem solving, having a safe space where you can talk to someone about whatever issues you're grappling with. And the beauty of the coaching container is that there's no judgment. I'm not judging my clients. I'm meeting them where they are, but I do challenge them to step into their potential and to keep leveling up.?

And I will call them on things sometimes when I see things that are suboptimal or they're not living in alignment with their values and their desires and their purpose. And I will support them in overcoming or addressing the things that get in their way of that. I have a huge range of tools, skills and experience at my disposal, allowing me to help my clients with deep inner work as well as strategic thinking and problem solving when that’s appropriate. It's a long answer to the question, but I hope this gives you a good sense of what I do.

?

Thank you. Now, tell me more about your clients. Who are they? Why would they come to you??

Rashmir: My client base has evolved over my journey as a coach. When I first started, I was thinking my clients would be primarily women in the social impact space. Currently I've got more male clients than female clients, which is very interesting. And I'm also finding I'm having more people of color coming to me, though this group is mostly women.

The commonality amongst my clients is they know that they're here to make a difference in the world. They may or may not know what that difference is. They may or may not be working in the social impact or nonprofit or philanthropic arenas. In some cases, they are, in some cases they're not. But they know that they're here to make a difference.

The second thing is that they are usually at some kind of inflection point. For instance, they're wanting to make a shift from the private sector to be more impactful and do work that matters more, or they're stepping into a new level of leadership, or they're feeling called to something, but they don't know what that is or what the next step is, or they're feeling stuck and frustrated or bored and don’t know why. I also have clients who frankly have been in places and positions where they are stifled, where they feel stuck in boxes that they can't seem to get out of, and they're not able to bring their full talent and capability to the fore. This seems to happen more often to women than men as women are not as good at self advocating or going after what they really want. They play too small a game for who they are and what their capacity is, but there is so much more they can do and be happier doing it.?

It may also be that their businesses are at an inflection point. Some of my clients are entrepreneurs and founders, and it may be that their business is at a point where it's requiring a new level of leadership, or possibly a new level of purpose and impact, where they've gotten off track or gotten so caught up in the doing that they’ve forgotten their why or simply are ready for their next level of organizational purpose. These are examples of different types of inflection points my clients tend to be at.?

The third thing that my clients tend to have in common is they tend to have what I call a contemplative edge of some kind. And what I mean by that is that they have a deeper sense of spirituality, even though not everyone will identify with the word. Either they have a spiritual side to them that they may or may not have brought into their work, it may or may not be well developed, or they're wanting to have some kind of mindfulness or meditation practice because they recognise the value of it. They recognize its importance for them being able to lead effectively and be effective in the world. And it's often tied to that sense of purpose and mission.?

Those are the three key things that tend to define my clients and differentiate who most resonates with me and for me with them.?

In which cases is coaching like yours a good solution or a good approach to support tackling that inflection point? At which point do you think a coach is an ideal support function in that very crucial life phase??

Rashmir: Obviously, I'm a little biased. One answer to the question is, it's always useful to have a coach in your camp. And I say that because I only realized fairly late in my journey there was such a thing as coaching. I must have been in my early to mid-thirties. I hired my own coach to begin with - she was a life coach, and then I got my organization to hire a different type of coach, a communications coach for me as well. And these experiences, Nora, made me realize there's something incredibly powerful in this coaching thing. And it made me wonder what the impact on my life, my career and my impact in the world would have been if I'd had a coach much earlier in my life. So that's a big part of my drive for being a coach.?

There is so much potential in the world, and it is often untapped or stuck or trapped or in some way it's not being unleashed. Coaching can unlock that potential at the individual, team and organizational levels. There are different stages that coaching is incredibly helpful with. Anytime you're at a pivot point is usually a great place to have a coach, particularly if you don't have strong mentors or role models or advisors around you.?

However, there is a difference between coaching, mentoring and advising. So let me step back for a second and explain that I put coaching on a spectrum from therapy to consulting and coaching is somewhere in the middle. And you've got many, many different types of coaches. You've got some coaches that are much more geared towards the consulting side of things. I would put very traditional executive or leadership coaches a little bit more towards the consulting side of the spectrum. And then I would put life coaches and or coaches that go very deep in terms of the methodologies and the approaches that they use more on the therapy side. I tend to push the boundaries a little bit on both ends because I’ve done the trainings, got the experience and I know what's really worked well for me and my clients.?

While I have a wide range of expertise and experience, that's not to say that I am the right coach for everyone. There's some people that are going to resonate with me more than with other people and vice versa. There are other coaches that will be much better for some people than I will be. And some of that is about chemistry and resonance and how aspects of my purpose and being and skillset are or aren’t relevant to where they are in their journey. So it's chemistry, but it's also relevance and resonance.?

And then the third thing I would say is: I look for coaches whenever I feel there's the next level that's needing or wanting to happen for me, but I'm stuck or uncertain or unclear about what that level is or how to get there. I have a suite of coaches that I go to because it's a little bit like massage therapists. Some are very good in certain areas and not so good in others. Others may have a technique or a something or an essence or a blessing or whatever it is that I need in that moment. By having a suite of coaches in my support network, I can usually find someone with what I need right now. And when shifting levels, not all the coaches that I've worked with in the past will necessarily be the right coach to take me to the next level. It depends on what that next level of growth looks like and what is required. Perhaps it’s a business coach, or a leadership coach, or a life coach, or a coach with some specific speciality that will be useful.

Really great coaches will be able to cover a wide range. You can go to those coaches for a lot of different things, but you still might want to be judicious about who, when, and how you engage and make sure that what they're offering is aligned to what you need in the moment.

Thank you very much dear Rashmir for this enlightening exchange about your coaching journey and practice!

Rashmir is a Transformational Leadership & Executive Coach. She unleashes joy and aliveness in pioneers and purpose-driven leaders. She connects them to their essence, purpose, and authentic power so they can express their genius and create positive change in the world. Over the last 30 years, Rashmir's work has spanned the globe, ranging from finance and investment banking to health and international development. She loves working on worldwide systemic challenges and bringing people together across teams, departments, sectors, and disciplines. She does this through a mix of coaching, consulting, teaching and facilitating, all of which enable her to ask provocative questions and name the elephants in the room. It pains Rashmir to see talent and potential wasted—in the boardroom, at the desk, and in the field. Creativity and game-changing capability are everywhere waiting to be unleashed. She helps exceptional leaders to do just that.

Rashmir's website: www.rashmir.net

Her purpose checklist: https://pages.rashmir.net/purpose-checklist

Her latest podcast episodes: Inside Out by Tammy Goolder Loeb:?https://www.tammygoolerloeb.com/podcast & Reframe & Reset Your Career Podcast by Harsha Boralessa:?https://www.harshaboralessa.com/category/podcast/

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