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About the Interviewee: Siddharth Bhasin
Siddharth is a result driven and seasoned HR professional with deep content and people management expertise. He currently leads a team of highly competent and passionate HR Business Partners across APAC, who support Leaders, Managers, and Googlers in Tech, Trust & Safety, Marketing, and Support Functions. Additionally, he dawns the hat of Global Lead for HR Support Specialist team, who work on operational, reporting, and analytics requests for HRBP teams.
Coaching and Team Development are his passion areas. He voluntarily works as Internal Coach to Leaders and Googlers, Team Development and Effectiveness Guru, and Designer cum Facilitator for multiple programs at Google.
A firm believer in continuously improving his knowledge and expertise, Siddharth is an accredited coach (ACC) from ICF, Certified Coach from Erickson Coaching International, Chartered MCIPD accredited from CIPD (UK), SPHR and HRMP certified from SHRM / HRCI (USA).
Tell us a bit about your career journey.
I have been an HR practitioner for 14+ years and worked across HR Consulting, Specialists, and Business Partnering roles in APAC and EMEA regions. In my current role at Google, I have the privilege to lead a team of highly competent and passionate HR Business Partners across APAC, who support Leaders, Managers, and Googlers in Tech Products, YouTube, and Support Functions.
The interesting thing is that I am a Marketing and Information Systems MBA from XLRI Jamshedpur and all my experience in the HR field has been on-the-job when I started with Aon Consulting as campus placement.
I am a firm believer in continuously improving my knowledge and expertise. And hence, at different points in my career, I picked up certification / accreditation such as ACC from ICF, Certified Coach from Erickson Coaching International, Chartered MCIPD from CIPD (UK), SPHR and HRMP certified from SHRM / HRCI (USA).
When did you realise you were ready to be a coach?
My earliest memory of seeing coaches in action was way back in 2009 with my clients. And I was blown away by their presence and approach to arrive at breakthroughs in thought patterns of clients without advising them. Over the next few years, I built up my foundations in coaching through self study or short programs. I continued to search for a coaching school that would resonate with me to pursue a formal training program and finally went ahead with Erickson Coaching in 2017 to be trained as a coach.
How has your experience been with Erickson?
Erickson comes with a strong reputation and rightly so. I have done all four modules of coach training from Erickson as I felt the value of their methodology going up with each passing module. The program is well structured to make the first one comfortable with the coaching approach / tools / concepts while simultaneously working on the coaching mindset.
Borrowing Gaurav’s oft quoted line – who you are is how you coach – it truly has been a personal transformation journey on this coaching journey. I am grateful to all the trainers and fellow coaches who have been part of this journey.
How long have you been coaching?
I have been coaching for 4 years now and have clocked 400+ hours.
What factors do you believe have contributed most to your coaching career success?
1) Right training – going beyond the tools and really imbibing the spirit of coaching
2) Support from mentors – having mentors to talk about the challenges faced while coaching to be a better coach
3) Support from my managers and leaders – I am an internal coach in addition to my full-time role. My leaders and managers have been very supportive of pursuing coaching
4) Wider coaches community – I have tapped into other internal and external coaches to learn from them. I am standing on shoulder of giants
5) Coachees – I am grateful for the trust that coachees have entrusted and walked the coaching path with me.
According to you, what is the relevance of getting certified in Coaching?
There are a number of institutes / colleges that will certify you to coach. The trick is to find the one which combines together strong methodology, great trainers, post training support, and a community if you are really serious in embodying coaching as a practitioner.
Certification helps you to understand the standards, mindset, tools, and process of coaching which would help you to gauge your current reality and chart out a path for the future.
How has being a coach changed your insights? Tell us about the transformative period.
Who you are is how you coach’ – when I first heard this, I wasn’t so sure that it is anything more than a sentence. BUT over the last 4 years as a coach, I have seen this transformation in myself.
A coach is like a mirror, reflecting the realities of the coachee, and also like a candle lighting multiple paths that are possible for coachee to choose in alignment with their inner compass. If as a coach, I am not able to be there in the moment and hold the space for the coachee, it defeats the purpose of the session.
The beauty of this is that once you understand this simple truth, it transcends into other areas of your life such as managing your team, resolving conflict, navigating ambiguity, personal relationships, and even parenting/care-giving etc.
And it is not a one-time exercise, it is a path full of twists and turns, roadblocks and smooth roads, so while you are walking on it be sure to enjoy the journey.
How do you get into the zone of setting up a coaching session? Do you take time to perceive how each individual functions? Is there another process you follow?
Before any coaching session, I keep a 30 mins no-meeting / work time, to do my basic centering and mindfulness exercises. It allows me to shut off all the competing priorities before the session and be fully present with my coachee during the session.
If you are fully present, trust your coaching mindset, and process then more often than not the session will be valuable for the coachee.
How was coaching during the pandemic different from coaching before that?
The pivot of coaching conversations has evidently tipped during the pandemic. I find the coachees’ topics have moved away from a unidirectional view of their goals into a more holistic and well-rounded view of how they would like to live their aspirations. The topics now look at balancing wellbeing, family, and resilience with professional goals. There seems to be similar satisfaction in exploring and achieving non-work related goals to find sustainable meaning in life.
What message would you give to aspirants looking to forge ahead in their coaching career today, regardless of industry sector?
In order to forge ahead with own coaching career, you can choose to see which of the below tips work for you:
1) Continue to work upon yourself as a coach – train / upskill / attend webinars / speak to other coaches
2) Be part of community and contribute to it – what you put out there multiplies and comes back to you
3) Serve people – and other things will follow
4) Know you own true worth and be bold to assert that
