Vedansh Sharma’s Post

Transcript

Hello and welcome to Malingin. I'm sitting with Coach Shitij. He has been working in the coaching industry for more than two decades now and have worked with more than 3000 clients. His he also teaches and you know coaches people. And now I'm here to his recent written a book about executive presence. Or so I called Demystifying Executive Presence and I would like to get his insight on the book. So first of all, welcome to the podcast Come meeting Kochaj. And the first question to you would be as a coach, could you please tell our audience who do you work with? Yes, hello Vanish. Thank you for inviting me here. Glad to be here and meeting you and all your audience through you and through this podcast. So I primarily work with senior corporate leaders or entrepreneurs Co founders who have their own business to support them, to enhance their overall executive presence. So I work specifically on a one-on-one basis with these leaders for a period of six months or so. Alright, alright, so would I be wrong if I said you work with high performing individuals? In that sense, absolutely. Absolutely. All my clients are high performing individuals, high potential individuals, and they are really doing very good at their work. And in fact it wouldn't be wrong to say at all that they are extremely good in their overall competence or their technical domain subject matter expertise. However, some of them have certain areas where they really need to. Own their executive presence and that's where I come into the picture. Alright, can you please share, you know what according to you, makes a high performing individual? You know a high performing individual. Is it just a vertical expansion of their skill set or is it? Do you witness a horizontal expansion of their skill set as well? Yeah, and exactly. So just expanding on my previous point, so all these leaders, high performing individuals are high performing because there are already good in what they are doing. They are domain expertise. For example, if they are a stock market and they are very good in the stock trading or if they are a banker, they are very good in their banking knowledge and competence. However, still they experience over a period of time they hit the roof. They are not able to really scale up or grow. In their career some of them and that is because the other areas which are important, you know besides the technical competence is also their ability to build long term sustainable relationships. Their ability to build trust with their stakeholders, influence others, take courageous stand ability to connect with others, have clarity. So all these aspects which are just mentioned are. So put together forms a powerful executive presence and that's what is so important for a high performing leader to nurture it in order to really grow, become more fulfilled in their career. All right. Do you see, you know the clients that you work with, Do you see an aspiration of these people to grow their personalities outside their working environment or it is just about work? Is it a switch on or switch off kind of a mode for them that, OK, now I've entered my space, this is my business space or this is my corporate space. So is it just the space that that makes them, you know, that high performing individual or is it that they want to exert their presence in? The social domain as well, Do you see that? It's exactly the opposite way ranch. In my years of experience having worked with these high potential leaders, high performing leaders from last 25 years, what I've observed is these people are constantly they have a growth mindset first of all, and the growth mindset is not only pertaining to their work. Or their exact technical expertise. They have to really focus on holistic growth, which also means, you know, like you rightly mentioned, outside of their work, how are their relationships? How are their relationships with their colleagues? Outside of the work, how are their relationships with, with, with their family members? How much are they focused on their health? How much are they focus on their how much clarity they have about their life purpose? Why are they doing what they are? Meaning the why below the Y. What drives them? Are they clear about that? So how much are they aware about their innate strengths or their talent? So it's not that OK if I'm I'm a banker to be just good in banking. You know, are they involved in in some community projects? Are they visible? Are they comfortable even in showcasing about what they do? Are they comfortable talking? Because a lot of leaders, especially who who do not have a powerful executive presence, are the ones who have a belief system that, you know, I should not speak about my work. It would appear as if I'm complaining about it or I'm bragging about it. But that's a misconception, you know? You need to be comfortable talking about it. So you know all these things are important and of course it's important to really leverage the other sources like constantly invest in their own learning. So if we are just focused on you know only expanding in our domain area and technical expertise, then you know we can grow up to an extent, but like the saying is what got you here won't get you there. And that's where a lot of such leaders experience stagnation. That's great. Which brings me to my next question. Do you think, you know I've been working in India, currently I'm in Birmingham, you know pursuing masters, but I've been there and industry there working in in Delhi and in Mumbai. Do you think of the working hours allowed them to grow their social or their networking landscape as such? Do you think the, the working environment in India allow these people, you know who are carrying the burden of the entire company in certain? You know the example, so do you think you know they have that enough time for themselves to grow? Do you see a regular complaint or is this how do you see that? Yes. So it's a great question with answer. And I would say that whether it's in Birmingham or India or anywhere else, it doesn't. It doesn't depend on the environment, culture or organization. It depends on the individual and what's their perspective. So if you are somebody who would only be focused on, you know, focused on your work and just feel bad about, OK, my organization doesn't have that culture where it encourages, you know, me to share things outside of my work. You know, then you would end up finding such people around you. But if you are somebody I have come across with leaders who despite their strict like 12 to 14 hours of work schedule, still they are able to carve out time. Because they are very clear about it, They find opportunities. They are very clear. And because they are very clear, that clarity leads a lot of other people to reach out to them, to involve them into projects of higher significance. And especially now that I'm working in India with so many organizations, corporate organizations and every organization is a lot of organizations are very conscious about this holistic engagement. Like what are very important buzzword these days, this employee engagement. How will the employees be engaged once they will feel valued? When they are aware about what their values are and are they aligning with organizational value, then can they pick up certain certain activities which are aligned? So I feel that it's it's a matter of individual clarity and then intent and then ability to take actions. There are no excuses, OK. So when we speak of, you know, executive presence, you have written a book about demystifying executive presence. The question the next question should be what do you think are the basic, you know, misconceptions regarding executive presence? Because in this day and age of social media, you know this executive presence can mean different things to different individuals pertaining to who you look up to. So everybody has got their own choice. So speaking to a wide range of audience, what do you think are the misconceptions regarding executive presence? Yeah, that's again a great question and that's precisely the reason Vansha have titled my book as team is defying executive presence because there is a lot of lack of clarity. Different people have their own perceptions about executive presence. And a lot of times when, you know, I come across, I meet clients who have just stepped out of their meeting after an appraisal where they have heard their manager saying that everything is good, but you know you lack executive presence. And they really don't know what is executive presence. So the biggest misconception is that OK, if I wear a good dress, I'm suited booted, I I can speak good, you know, language. If I have a good command over language and I have a good persona, that is enough. For an executive presence. But believe me, that is a partially true definition that's incomplete. I'm not saying that all these things which I just mentioned are not important. They are important because these are certain external aspects of executive presence. But if you see executive presence has the word presence in it. Which means being present to the people around you. Being present to your stakeholders, your customers, your manager, your subordinates, your colleagues, their needs, their challenges. So only when we are present to all these aspects which are so important, then one can really start identifying those innate and of course, above all, being present to yourself. What are your innate talents? What are your strengths? What is your purpose? Once a person does that, they rediscover that innate greatness in them and then they start impacting their ecosystem in a great way. And that's what I call is as the executive presence. Alright, because, yes, right. Like you mentioned, you know, all these things that we think of as an executive presence, they are basically a superficial layer, you know, the way you dress, the way you speak, the way you carry yourself. Because if I before this interview, I spoke to a few friends of mine in the university and I spoke to them about executive presence. And when I asked them that, OK, what do you think about executive presence, most of them had the same reply that OK, you need to dress in a certain way, you need to carry yourself in a certain way. But the point that you mentioned about. Presence, you know, being present for yourself and for the people around you. That speaks volume about the integrity that a person needs to hold within himself or herself. Spot on with them. Point. Finally, you know, because your coach yourself, anybody and everybody would want to know, how do you practice creating that aura of executive presence in your life? Do you get the time? Do you? Because you know you're constantly working and try and get in touch with you, but it's really, you know, working hours are quite busy. So how do you manage to execute your executive presence? No, And that's a very significant point Yet again, Vedanta, because you know if I have to be a coach or a mentor on executive presence and I like I mentioned executive presence has the word presence in it. So in first case I need to be present with my clients. So every, every opportunity of the interaction that I have with my clients, I'm, I'm of course present to them and also hearing where they are, where they want to reach. And that's where I think the listening ability connecting with my clients is, is so important and that's a vital aspect of. So I exert my executive presence by being available, by being present, by listening very effectively to the client. Is .1 I constantly invest in my own self development, so every year I invest in doing some course which is relevant to enhance my overall skill. So that I can give a better experience to my clients so that I can really provide more value. So, like, I always tell that being a coach is like being a boatman when you ferry people from point A to point B. You also grow. You also move from point A to point B. So that's an that's an exciting part of this business where you are constantly learning through podcasts like this, through various books, audio books, so like that. That's the second point. I exert my executive presence and of course by by showcasing my work. You know, I very interestingly, sometime back I was one of those who would say that, you know, I'm a good coach and people should find me. Why should I reach, reach out to people And I was speaking to a mentor of mine and he said should that you will be doing a big disservice. To the whole world, if you will. Just keep yourself to yourself. So you really need to reach out. And that's when I started making a series of videos. I wrote a book, had a TEDx talk, so that it was my effort to reach out to people. So that's how I work, to kind of continuously exercise my executive presence.