About a year back, when I read the practical handbook for the bestseller, “The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari” by Robin Sharma, one of the things that stuck with me was the advise to “Get a Coach”. During the years 97-99, I had been through the entire Landmark course series, including the extremely transformational (for me atleast) ‘Self-Expression and Leadership Program’ (SELP), and fondly remembered the dialogue and self-exploration I would have an opportunity to engage in during the sessions with coaches. All of a sudden, I missed it!

Just then, out of the blue, a very close uncle in the USA who had been a practicing Business and Life Coach (a Certified Professional Coach) in the USA had to come to India, and as usual like on all his previous visits, he engaged me in a beautiful dialogue to help me solve some of the business challenges. The admiration between him and I, is mutual, owing to our spiritual leanings.

This time though, we engaged with each other in a long-term long-distance Skype/GTalk based personalised coaching, which has lasted over a year.

The personal transformation that I have experienced has been immense through this year. It is not that I have become a ‘thorough leader’, yet, I have seen myself grow through these personalised coaching sessions over the year in some of the following ways:

• ability to seek, negotiate and create win-win agreements
• clarity in thinking and getting the business priorities right
• increased ability to hold people accountable fearlessly
• ability to get over ‘fears of failure’ faster (I guess entrepreneurs have to live with some level of uncertainty and risk)
• ability to investigate before jumping to conclusions (ask questions)
• ability to observe my negative qualities clearly and be conscious about them
• ability to share, express, and care with more genuineness and involvement
• growing muscle, understanding and ability in ‘accepting reality gracefully’ (rather than fighting it, which is one of the biggest cause of agony in humanity worldwide)
• ability to coach and mentor colleagues at work
• much improved personal and family life
• more time (inspite of increased responsibilities)

Here’s a little sneak preview of a recent advertisement he is taking out in magazines and journals. I wanted to share my experiences with other entrepreneurs out there, who may benefit from him or from other professional business and life coaching programmes/coaches out there.

A lot of entrepreneurs/to-be-entrepreneurs that I have met have over these years have had the good fortune of having had a business (and in some sense – life) mentor as a boss or senior colleague, including some very successful businessmen, even in Europe, who I know turn to their spiritual mentors every now and then, to do a bit course-correction – yet often, most entrepreneurs do not talk about such a support structure openly.

Like many other initiatives to give a human face to Srijan, this one took a little ‘convincing myself’, to put down on our blog (after all, what are our customers going to think – that the business head of Srijan is a normal human being with good and not-so-good qualities just like most of us!! what a loser!!). Well, that’s the world we have, and it’s not a bad idea to take some bold steps in changing it.

Hope you could relate to the successes I have been able to create for myself with this coaching engagement.