A “Peer Review” from a CXO
Today’s story is an interesting one since it has the potential to make a larger impact. KK Bhagchandani, also known as “KKB”, has been one of my supporters as well as a program participant for “Mindfulness & MentalFitness” & “Effective Leadership”.
KKB is an accomplished business leader, a CXO who has straddled the boundaries of IT, healthcare, and life sciences for more than 30 years, with stints across Industry leaders in the Pharma and Life Sciences industry globally.
When KKB expressed an interest in eventually moving full-time into the leadership coaching area himself and expressed a desire to attend my mindfulness and leadership programs to get a “Lay of the land,” so to speak, I was intrigued to see what his experience would teach him and me!
His initial motivations, therefore, were more to
One of the things I always ask industry leaders who come to me is, “Why Me”?
This, I have found, provides clarity about their motivations and initial feelings about attending my programs. In KKB’s case, this question elicited a comprehensive and well-thought-out response.
KK highlighted 2️⃣ main reasons for opting for my programs over the myriad options available.
1️⃣Substance over Style: KK highlighted the natural or put-upon flamboyance that many leadership coaches emphasize, but he opted for our course since he saw honesty and authenticity in our approach
2️⃣Comfort level: KK also stated our past familiarity, and since he was familiar with my personality and style, he felt immediately more comfortable with me.
One of the things he mentioned as we went along was a relatively new realization for him that professionals across industries and segments face multiple issues. It is quite OK to take help to try and deal with them!
KK mentioned a few critical things about our program that he saw as observations:
KKB mentioned that Sincerity of effort and the intent to truly get through to our participants, to make a lasting difference in the mindset and thought process, was appreciated and noticed by KKB!
From a personal and professional standpoint, KKB also pointed to the benefits he saw in being part of the program, albeit he was honest enough to acknowledge that his participation and attendance could have been better. However, this was not really in his control, as his professional commitments and some personal medical issues interfered with the course timings.
✅ Understanding the value and process of structuring information – KKB mentioned that his work profile and inherent skill sets make him a “big picture” guy but somewhere, the value of organization of data gets lost in this approach. Our program helped him appreciate the value of well-planned data organization and structuring
✅ Correlating the issues and topics to real-life situations – Our attempt to always provide a real-world context to the issues and problems being faced by the participants and provide solutions grounded in practical terms resonated with KK and was helpful to him in gauging his issues
✅ Adaptive leadership awareness – One of the things we always emphasize in our Leadership programs is to learn to be open to feedback and be adaptive and flexible in our team management approach, and this helped KKB to realize the need to practice the same in his professional environment as well
✅ Confidence to do it on his own – As mentioned earlier, KKB wants to get into the Leadership Coaching industry. This experience gave him some valuable insights and the confidence that he could do it himself, albeit his style might be a lot different than mine!
With his natural sense of style and confident public speaking abilities, KKB offered to help me improve these facets, and I’m eagerly looking forward to working on some of these aspects with him.
To quote a famous line from the classic movie Casablanca, “This could be the start of a beautiful Friendship.”
If you would like to learn more about this program, click on Details.
