Coaching Chronicles with Surbhee Singh

Tell us about your coaching journey?

I have been a coach for 8 years. I had self doubts when I actually started coaching. So I was trying to pick up different things and go back, you know, how do I be the best coach, and he would always tell me, it’s not about you being the best coach. It’s all about being there for your clients. And something that my mentor said then has stayed with me. And that is what so I found my confidence as I moved along with practice.

How do you see coaching has trended from the time you began?

If I talk about eight years back, people did not understand coaching, like they understand now. There are a lot of self proclaimed coaches.. Global organisations understood the concept  they had an inkling about what coaching is maybe because of their global presence. But when it came to individuals, it was a very confused market. Are you a career counselor, or therapist or a psychologist?

Why should I go with a life coach when everything is going on well in my life? Eventually, I realized that no, we have to first bring in awareness of what a beautiful gift coaching is. And overtime, if I look at the trends, the the awareness about coaching has also held opportunities, which were coming to us through the global organizations already, we’re understanding they are engaging with us, but then the traditional Indian organizations, legacy organizations, and we started getting opportunities from a lot of different places which were earlier not there for us. So I think we’re somewhere all of that works.

Why should one get an ICF Coaching Certification?

When clients are looking for coaches to connect with, they do like to look at your credentials and certifications, specifically in the corporate space, I feel that is very important, it gives you a lot of structure. ICF certification has a lot of value. It does help to understand what are the best practices, the frameworks which can be followed. So for me, you know, Your credibility is established with the client and it helps you to get businessI feel certification is important to give more value to your clients.

In your time at Erickson, how would you describe your breakthrough?

With Erickson a lot of beliefs were broken. One of the beliefs that I broke, which really liberated me was that I have to be the nice one and say yes to everything. So, I would not say no even to conversations which did not involve me or would take up possibilities or tasks which otherwise were not suited for me. So the first talk about myself is that, you know, where is it all coming from? Why is it so important for me to say yes? And the day I got that and I worked on it changed a lot for me.

Did you face challenges that were specifically because you were a female coach?

I will not have too many episodes to count here. People have been kind and generous. They had a lot of trust in my ability. In one case though there was a client. And after everything went through with that client-  – the engagement, the pricing, everything. They said, “Surbhee we really love what you are doing and we have great trust in your ability of being a coach. We would like some profiles which are male coaches as our leadership cohort is all male and they may not feel comfortable with a female coach.” So I faced a little bit of it to get in my stride. And did not let it impact me because what is important for me are the ones who did put their trust in me.