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Interview with Deepak Sawhney, Executive Coach: Achieve more by pushing for more

Executive coaching, a term that may sound new to the ear of many, is slowly becoming a fundamental pillar in smooth running of corporate and modern organization.

To understand executive coaching, we need to recall the axiomatic title of the book by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith - “What got you here won’t get you there.” The title, in plain language, believes in the idea of forging ahead in spite of tasting sweet success. But how to, exert furthermore in the field of sales, personal and personnel performance. Herein lays the role of executive coaching.

“Executive coaching means regular meetings between a business leader and a trained facilitator, designed to produce positive changes in business behaviour in a limited time frame.” Broadly defines the functional aspect of executive coaching. The perceived value and credibility of coaching are recognized and are at an all time high in country like US. So much so that an executive coach from Washington DC vouches that, “Coaches are being called upon to help clients deal with the complexity of change, managing stress on day to day basis.”

However, it would be erroneous to confuse executive coaches with business coaches. The latter has wider scope of assignment along with the longer engagements and help clients to develop knowledge and skills, whereas executive coaches work on business behavior. According to 2012 executive coach survey-“Executive work with their client more often, whereas business coaches have been making more use of videos. However, this year a significant amount of executive coaching has also shifted to internet and high definition video. Face to face coaching and use of video conferencing are now about equal between executive and business coaches.”

Having learnt the benefit of executive coaching one ruminates, if India too has this kind of practice. Thence, we are introduced to the director of “OverAchieve” – Mr. Deepak Sawhney, who is a forerunner in executive coaching. Mr. Sawhney in his interview with ‘Business for all’ acknowledges that this concept is relatively new in India, and for that matter in Asia. He forayed in this field with the cognizance that the people are the assets and the people power is the bottom-line. His association with the corporate world for past 27 years and the last 10 years of experience with human resource molded his realization of indomitable strength and capacity of people waiting to be harness.

He refers to the quote of Executive coach survey of 2013 to identify the beneficiaries of executive coaching, “Ideally, anyone in the leadership position can benefit from coaching and the improved business behavior it produces. Executive coaching for a few years was being democratized, spreading across all levels in the organization. Now, it is once again the province of senior leaders and top executives.” He understands the relevance and importance of differentiating between coaching of an individual and coaching of a group. Practicing client-centric approach as a solution, he offers his first session as complimentary, so that the client understands the effectiveness it will cause to the business. And in subsequent sessions the coach team help the company define at least three clear goals that are achievable with available resources. The focus in on encouragement for participation at all levels.

He further explains that, “Partnering with client in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential” is the true essence of executive coaching. He summarizes the attributes of his service in the words that, “In any company you find two types of people – Those who are very good in achieving target and second category who are not that capable and have no idea to achieve the set goals. It is here that we enter and help the organization achieve target by realizing the potential of their executives.” When questioned about the root cause of such disparity in the performances of the employees apart from the fact that each individual has his own capability, he says, quite candidly: “Companies don’t set targets scientifically, for example if the target set for each sales manager to sell 100 cars in a month, than all the managers might not be able to meet that target. That means, in any company you will have categories of excellent, very good, average and poor performers. Executive coaches like me will advise companies to remove the poor performers and raise the performance levels of the average people. But since companies need people, we suggest them to add excellent people. Subsequently, it raises the average performance of the group. ”

The service spectrum provided by his executive coach team is broadly categorized under four heads of executive coaching, impact training, sales performance consultancy and organization of design interventions. . In order to cater his clients in Mumbai and Pune, he manages dedicated team in Hyderabad, Bangalore, Chennai and Aurangabad Mr. Sawhney dispels the doubts about the effectiveness of the coaching with alacrity, saying that coaching is more about defining the goal in the first place, than finding a solution. “This is because top executive keep several important things in mind but no definite goal. Our expertise helps them in defining the goal and putting it across on the table. If the goal is set, it is easy to conceptualize actions,” is his definitive view.

He pushes his aforementioned idea by giving an example of an esteemed COO-entrepreneur running a manufacturing firm with Rs 200 crore turnovers. The COO of the company was assailed by the issues like: business communication skills of his employees, spending quality time with children and above all, preparing a ‘performance dashboard’ in his organization. This was the confusing agenda. So, the goals were first identified and then the solutions were provided on priority basis by the executive coaches.

The second vertical in his services kit is Impact Training. This training outlines the core pillars of skill, practicing, harnessing and then impacting the potential output. In his words, “Working with companies and help them achieve objectives of training” is the purpose of this exercise. So here he applies his inventive training principle 70-20-10. He explains his principle thus: 20 percent of his focus efforts are on the employee acquiring the actual technical skills, 70 percent of focus is on practicing the skills and interactive communication. The remaining 10 percent represent the result of creating the impact and implementing it at workplace. He elaborates by way of an example of impact training say an organization adopts the “coaching-style” of management. Which means “not directing and delegating the responsibilities but asking what we can do?” Such coaching culture program is evaluation based, that is on 70-20-10 principle. Sales Performance Consultancy is another crucial element of executive coaching. Mr. Sawhney has keen interest in the problems faced by small and medium enterprises. He informs that the structure adopted by sales team of such firms, often lack effectiveness, despite the efficiency. In such cases, the practiced system by these companies are reviewed and corrected to augment the sale coefficient of the sales executives and eventually catapulting the business by generating momentum.

He admits,”SMEs are our focus. Big companies can hire good people but SMEs cannot.” A few companies in Hyderabad’s real estate and pharmaceutical are presently availing the ‘Sales performance consultancy program’ of the ‘OverAchieve’. The fourth prowess, which is the ‘Organizational Design Intervention’, helps companies to scrutinize and develop the areas of talent management, talent development, performance management and competency mapping. The basic task under this head is to help the companies recognize and define competencies required for their growth.

‘OverAchieve’ is the result of scientific research in the potential of human resources. Executive coaching is about challenging the boundaries and edging ahead by corrective and cognitive solutions. An organized booster, which can make teams and enterprises succeed. ‘Business for all’ shares Mr. Sawhney sentiments, when he tries to invoke entrepreneurial courage, saying that, “Young and budding entrepreneur will never have any dearth of energy and enthusiasm. However, they get stuck with their vision. One reason for not going forward from this phase can be the lack of a mentor.” His vision is to help big companies to step up from the complacent positions and forge ahead by capitalizing on their employees’ talent bank and to help SMEs by providing a firm and definitive bedrock of enhanced sales for their future growth.