Unlocking Leadership Potential: The Power of Executive Coaching with Vivek Iyer

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

Mike Sacopulos: My guest today is Vivek Iyer. Vivek has deep experience in the fields of strategic planning and process improvement. He's worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers, Ernst & Young, and A.C. Nielsen. Vivek has become an internationally recognized executive coach and is the principal of Swanvesha Executive Coaching. Welcome to SoundPractice.

Vivek Iyer: Thank you so much, Mike. It's quite an honor.

Sacopulos: I am sure that our audience would like to know more about your background. Could you tell us a little bit?

Iyer: Sure, thank you. I got into coaching literally after COVID. I was let go and had to reinvent myself. That's when coaching emerged as a very natural extension of my corporate career. In that life, I was privy to senior leadership discussions and acted as a sounding board and thought partner for them. I always tried to help colleagues at work, whether with management-related things or otherwise. That's something I've always loved doing, even as a child. I really got a huge kick out of it. I'm really happy when I'm able to help somebody move ahead in their life or bring a positive impact to them.

Once I decided to become a coach, I got trained in executive coaching and then certified by the International Coaching Federation. I was also able to make use of my experience of having lived in four countries. I speak six languages and understand a couple more. All of this has given me a broad perspective of leadership and organizational challenges. Today I help leaders cut through the complexity in their minds and help them find what they're looking for.

Sacopulos: Very interesting. I'm wildly impressed that you speak six languages. Very, very envious. But let's get to specifically what is coaching. I know that's kind of, at a certain level, a silly question, but maybe you could delve into the particularities of coaching.

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Iyer: Sure. There are a lot of definitions for coaching, but I always like the simpler version. Let's take an example. Anybody who wants to work on fitness or weight loss can always go to a gym, take a membership and work on the equipment. But when you hire a physical trainer, the results are always better. It's not that the trainer does the job for you, but they work on building a plan, designing a plan for you, encouraging you when you are implementing it, and helping you stay accountable. This is what a coach does too. The coach does not do the work of solving a problem or helping you achieve your goal directly, but they create the space for you to feel comfortable and then go through your thoughts and find your own answers.

I also want to add a subtle distinction because a lot of people get confused between coaching, mentoring, consulting, and therapy. Mentoring is about guiding the client with the mentor's own experiences. Consulting is about providing solutions that they already have. Therapy is about healing wounds. But coaching is different. Coaching is about helping you get your own answers. A coach's role is to act as a catalyst for the clients to find their own answers and achieve their goals.

Sacopulos: That's very helpful. Nice distinctions because I think you're right — people oftentimes confuse one category for another. So help me with the specifics. How does coaching work?

Iyer: We can break down a coaching engagement into three parts. The first is discovery, second design, and then finally implementation. I'll explain this with an example. Suppose someone wants to work on their leadership presence. The discovery phase will be about defining what leadership presence is according to the client. It might involve a few assessments like personality assessment or a 360-degree feedback. But more importantly, the reason why a discovery phase is very crucial is that everyone's definition of these things is different. Your definition of leadership presence could be different from mine, and so on. The client's definition — what they want as leadership presence — is most crucial. So the discovery phase is completely about finding out what the client wants.

Once that is done, we get to the design phase where I work with the client to find out what is the best thing they want to work on. Sometimes when we do assessments, you find out a little bit about the client's strengths or values that they're really good at. Maybe the client wants to emphasize and enhance those in their leadership presence. Or sometimes you find there are a few areas where the client thinks they need to work on. That's where the design phase comes in — how do you want to improve your strengths or work on things you want to work on.

Finally, the implementation stage is where you start implementing these plans in real life. That's where the client needs a lot of encouragement. They're trying out something new, so there'll be times they might fail, but you need to constantly encourage them to go ahead and be confident that they're trying something new. Over a period of time, they find what they're looking for.

Typically, a coaching engagement is anywhere between six to nine months. What I also do is after the implementation phase is done and the coaching engagement is completed, I always try to keep in touch with the client in a three or six month period just to check if they're doing right or going back to their old habits. That gives me a holistic view about how the client is progressing.

Sacopulos: How often do you find that clients start with you in the discovery phase and really don't have a crystallized idea of what they're after?

Iyer: This happens many times. When we meet somebody for the first time, we are always guarded. There are defense mechanisms. Everybody has some way they talk to somebody. There are social norms and such. The coach's job is to go past all of that so that you're able to connect with the client meaningfully. That is a very crucial part of the discovery phase where it takes a few sessions often — three, four, sometimes even five sessions — for the client to finally be comfortable with you and open up about what they really want.

Sacopulos: What are the key things required to be a coach?

Iyer: The four key things that I think are important or required to be a good coach are curiosity, genuine empathy, objectivity, and good listening skills. These are in many ways quite straightforward, but the difficulty is that to be genuinely curious about what the client is saying or the person in front of you is saying and listening — it's difficult. You need to practice that. Otherwise, your mind's always running around and you're trying to decipher what they're saying. It's how we all process things.

Second is empathy. You need to genuinely feel that you are trying to help the client stay positive or push them forward. Otherwise, people just make out if you're not honest about it. You just know by instinct that this is fake, and that doesn't help.

Third is objectivity. There are a lot of good books written on it because objectivity is like the kryptonite for any coach. Everybody wants to give out suggestions or think this is the best for you and you should do this. Those things keep creeping up. You need to be very careful that you don't do any of that when you're coaching. You need to constantly look at yourself as a coach to ensure you're not falling into this trap.

The last is listening skills. If you ask me the most important of all four, I think it's good listening skills. Because when you're really listening to somebody, it does something magical. People genuinely feel that they can open up and talk and share, and it just works out. They find what they're looking for.

I wanted to add this — it's a bit funny, but it's important. At the beginning of any engagement, or as a matter of fact, in every session, any coach should start by saying this is a safe space and whatever you say is confidential. I learned to add three lines, which is in a way funny, but it's also very true. Whatever you say stays with me unless you do three things: one, if you say something that you're going to harm yourself; two, if you say something that you're going to harm somebody else; or three, if I have to defend myself in a court of law, because this vocation is not covered by attorney-client privilege.

Sacopulos: Well, it occurs to me — we'd had an opportunity to meet once before, and I remember my father trying to give me some advice. I don't think it rose to the level of coaching, Vivek. But when I told him about doing this podcast, he was older and didn't really understand podcasts, but he knew a lot about human nature and how to ask questions. He, in no uncertain terms, told me: No one wants to hear from you. It's all about the guest. Ask a good question and get out of their way. Pieces of wisdom like that have helped me. I imagine that you have some of those types of examples in your repertoire as well.

Iyer: Your dad was really wise and used the right word — wisdom. It is indeed wisdom. Because in coaching, what we try to do is to speak as little as possible. I know there are some coaches who speak less than 20% of the time if you are talking for an hour. That's a true hallmark of a coach. You want the client to feel comfortable and explore their ideas. Otherwise, the more you speak and if you keep constantly asking questions, you're not allowing the client to process and figure out what they want to do.

Sacopulos: Can anybody be coached? Are there certain people that are more receptive to it or some people that just maybe it's ineffective?

Iyer: In theory, anyone can be coached, but timing and fitment matters. The desire to be coached has to come from within. You cannot force it on somebody else. The second is that sometimes the coach's style or the personalities don't match with the client. At such times, the coach has to be honest enough to acknowledge that and then refer the client to somebody else who might be a better fit for the client. But to your point, yes, anyone can be coached, but it's when you really feel like you need help and you need to engage with the coach to find what you're looking for.

Sacopulos: It sounds like the need for coaching really needs to come from within the client. Is that fair?

Iyer: Yes, that is true.

Sacopulos: Tell me a little bit — I was curious about the name of your firm. Can you tell me the origin story of that?

Iyer: My company's name is Swanvesha. It's Sanskrit and it has two parts to it, Swa and Anvesha. It literally means self-inquiry. The core philosophy of coaching is that to improve yourself or solve a problem, you first need to look inward for solutions.

For example, let's take an industry, say healthcare, and there are many challenges working in the industry. As a physician leader, you are under so much stress and workload and things you cannot influence. While you cannot control everything, you can always control how you approach these things. By improving your actions, thoughts, and intent, you're better equipped to face challenges and reach solutions.

This is also reflected in all coaching questions that we ask. Questions like: What are your ideas? How can you make this work? What's within your control? Those are open-ended questions. So the name of my company is essentially symbolic of this looking inward.

Sacopulos: Very nice. Vivek, as you know, this is the podcast of the American Association for Physician Leadership. We have a number of physicians and executive healthcare folks listening to us today. When you're coaching people from this category, what are some of the common problems you find that they're experiencing that you have to overcome as their coach?

Iyer: I think the key challenge for physician leaders — and this is also true for industries like investment banking or high tech or big consulting companies where I've worked — is that there are primarily three parts. The first is self-doubt or imposter syndrome. The second is overwhelm. And the third is what I like to call intellectual hubris, where there are people who think they know everything. Those are the three major things that I think are key challenges for physician leaders and broadly any of these larger industries.

Sacopulos: Do you have a story maybe to illustrate that a little bit more for me?

Iyer: Sure. Before the story, I'll explain a little bit about the three and how they impact the industry. Imposter syndrome is surprisingly lurking everywhere. This was a big surprise to me when I started working more and more with senior folks. Despite their achievements, many of these people have a fear that they're not good enough or they're missing something. It creeps up in places where you least expect it. That's very common.

The second one, overwhelm, is a direct outcome of how we work now. There is just too much data for everyone to process. There are just too many actions to be made. Nobody has time to step back and talk about what's in their heart and mind. This is also true for senior leaders because they don't find people who are confident enough for them to just open up and talk like a sounding board.

For the third one, intellectual hubris, I have a story. This is a Zen story about a professor of philosophy who once visited a Zen master and said, "I know everything about Zen, but I just wanted to hear what are your views." The master did not answer him directly, just offered him some tea. The master started pouring tea in the teacup and soon it started overflowing and fell on the floor. The professor just stood up and was like, "Stop, what are you doing? The cup is full. No more will go."

The master just smiled and replied, "This is exactly how your mind is. Your mind is like this cup. It's full of your own knowledge and assumptions and ideas. How can I teach you anything unless you first empty your cup?"

It's a very famous story. It's the kind of rigidity that comes over time. We have all done that and we just need to be smart enough about being flexible when required.

Sacopulos: I like that story. Let's talk a little bit more specifically about what services you offer and how you can help someone who may be listening today.

Iyer: For individual coaches, I offer leadership presence, leadership development, behavioral coaching, overwhelm, and transitioning into new roles. For organizations, I work on strategic planning. That space is something that I always liked, and I use facilitation to work on that.

When you work with organizations, it's similar to individual coaching — the process is broadly the same. We start with the brainstorming or the discovery part, then we find ideas or areas to focus on, then create an action plan, and finally move into implementation. In this space where you are working with organizations, implementation is actually more important because the best plans or strategies that are created often fail because implementation is not good.

Sacopulos: I'm interested — is the length of the coaching cycle different for individuals than organizations, or do they take roughly the same amount of time?

Iyer: It can vary. There's no benchmark on these things. I'll give an example of the strategic planning thing. I like to do it in a way where I break it into two parts. One is working with the core team, like the senior leadership and people who are important to work on the broad strategy. But I also do a separate one with the people who are on the implementation phase.

Let's say there's a board and top management, but then there are all of these vice presidents who will be on the implementation phase. I do the same kind of brainstorming, creating plans with both of them. Surprisingly, what happens is that the overlaps are almost 90%. So that takes the first part of this whole creating the strategy. It usually can be a couple of days of retreat, maybe a three-day retreat with them.

What it does is that the vice presidents who are involved in strategy planning automatically have a buy-in into the whole process because they're also part of strategy creation. So when you go into the second phase of creating this action plan, and all of them also have measurable goals — tangible goals — all of that is co-created. Then finally, when the implementation happens, the buy-in from the vice presidents is significantly more because in a way, it's their own strategy. But that implementation can take anywhere between six months to nine months or even more, depending on whether it's a five-year strategy, three-year strategy, and those kinds of things.

Sacopulos: That's helpful to understand. We're running to a close, but I'm very interested in what's next from you. You're always doing such interesting things. What can we expect from you in the future?

Iyer: Besides my current work, one of the things I also do is go for speaking engagements on leadership and such. I found the joy of writing in this last year and a half or so. I really like the way I'm expressing my ideas, and my newsletters are quite well received. Finally, I got the courage to start putting some of these ideas into a book about decision making. I'm taking the first steps. I'm quite nervous and excited — it's one of those things. That's the one I'm really excited about for next year.

Sacopulos: Excellent. We will look forward to a forthcoming book from you. But in the meantime, if people would like to reach out to you and learn more about coaching or potentially work with you, how best can they find you?

Iyer: One of the things about having this kind of a unique name is that when you search on any search engines, it'll directly take you to my website. I'm quite active on LinkedIn. So those are two places you can always reach out to me. I'm usually very prompt in responding.

Sacopulos: Excellent, and we will also provide contact information for you in the show notes to this episode. So if someone's driving, don't take your eyes off the road. The information will be available. Well, Vivek Iyer, thank you so much for being on SoundPractice and for taking your time today. This has been very informative.

Iyer: Thank you so much for having me. As I said at the beginning, it's a big honor.

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