The Sprint: Pro-bono Coaching

The Sprint is our flagship pro bono coaching program, spread over 3 months, where a coach works one-on-one with the women in our community helping them find ways to move forward and create growth for themselves. When different people come together with the great intent of paying it forward and making a difference, it’s a win-win-win situation and magic happens! That’s exactly how we would like to describe our experience with ‘THE SPRINT’ — A collaboration between Lean In Network Bangalore and Navgati’s Coaching Collective to bring the expertise of ICF trained coaches to impact our community of fabulous women. Kickstarted, in Dec 2021, We had over 400 women embark on this journey and make a bigger mark.

Testimonials

Several months ago, I signed up for Lean In Network, Bangalore’s pro bono Coaching Programme which gave me access to Sebati Iyengar as my career coach. It was the first time I’d ever been exposed to coaching so we talked through what my goals were at the time and the sessions were immensely helpful in resolving a few dilemmas. She’s been amazing!

The process was eye opening for me - not only did it give me a much-needed boost of confidence since I defined and untangled problems my own and took ownership for answers that I arrived at but also helped me arrive at a broader realisation. As we need doctors for physical health, therapists for mental health, a coach is a much needed first aider for anyone intending to play the long game in their careers. Yes, we have mentors, work wives, friends, partners, trusted family members who give us advice but rarely are they trained to professionally coach you to find an answer for yourself which is for you to completely own.

Since then I’ve had several more career coaching conversations (with the amazing Emma Matthews) through King’s College and Fourthrev’s Product Management Accelerator programme (which I’ve just recently completed and more to come on that). So, over the past year, I’ve been privileged enough to have access to coaching and it’s been hugely gratifying as I’ve navigated through various situations in my journey.

Needless to say, I’m a huge advocate for having a career coach and I know I will always lean on one for as long as I’m in the workforce. Sebati was in town and we spent a lovely morning over tea and baked goods. As you can see, if these connections click, you’ll even carry them across continents

- Malavika Datar

I have completed my 4 sessions with Srinath and wanted to express my gratitude to Lean In and the team for doing this! I started with the objective that a coach can help me smooth the transition back to work after maternity leave. But the end result is much more powerful! I am more self-aware about myself - probably the maximum I've ever been; I feel stronger and much more cognizant about how and why I respond to certain situations. I feel that the learnings are life-altering and I am grateful to the Lean In team and Coaches Collective for this opportunity!

I started working with Shilpa through "The Sprint", Lean In Bangalore's pro-bono coaching program offered in collaboration with The Coaches Collective. Shilpa has helped me identify my way of thinking and reacting to different kinds of situations in the workplace. She has taught me to become much more aware of my actions and how they can be perceived. She has helped me to understand the value of self-confidence, self-awareness and networking in professional life. Shilpa is a wonderful motivator. The self-introspection exercises she has given me have been very insightful. Thank you very much, Shilpa!

I would like to thank you, the leanIn community, Navgati and specially Vandana who has been a wonderful coach; for providing this wonderful opportunity. The sessions with Vandana was empowering and eye openers. Thank you once again.

- Ambika

First of all, thank you very much for your valuable insights during our coaching sessions. I would like to share the feedback below which you can use as testimonial. At the beginning, Deepika took one introductory session (in addition to the planned four sessions) to explain the process and expectations from both of us. It set the right direction to gain maximum from the coaching program. She took keen interest in understanding the real problem. Her approach is very unique. At the start of every session she asked me about specific issues I want to talk about. After listening to me patiently she would ask me only one question which made me think again. Instead of spoon feeding she made me dig deeper and deeper to find the answers. Later she would guide on actions. In every session I discovered something new which I could never do in the past. How I have been benefited - I am learning to be less hard on myself, seeking less validation from others and finally surrendering and letting things just flow giving a break to my constantly active mind. Thank you Deepika for your expertise and Navgati for organising and letting me participate in this coaching program
- Priyanka Pande

Thanks for letting me participate in this coaching program. I had four great sessions with my mentor Deepika. I was able to immediately connect with her after just my first session. She put me at ease and helped me open up without getting judged. She was extremely patient when it came to listening to my queries and concerns. She was quite observant and extremely talented as she helped me find answers for my problems from within the conversations I had with her. It was honestly surprising in so many ways when she made me realize what was going on from the small window of just 1h and how to overcome those issues in a realistic way. I feel very grateful to navgati and LIB for providing me this opportunity to interact with Deepika.

- Pradeepa

I am writing this email on completion of my 4 coaching sessions. They just got over and I am very grateful to both of you for this opportunity.

The coaching sessions came at a time when I was switching jobs after a career break of 4 months, and the new role was in a different setup than what I had worked in. I was anxious to see how I would fare, and I also knew doing well would demand a lot more thinking from me. Prekshya was very patient and gave me simple, practical and easy to do exercises that not only helped me calm down, but also gave me enough confidence in my own abilities and skills. Being coached by Prekshya helped me deliver good work professionally and look at my own self-limiting beliefs objectively :-) Thank you very much! Please let me know how I could help you guys as well.

- Akanksha

I'm writing this email to share my feedback on the sessions completed as part of the Sprint initiative. First of all, thank you for organising such initiatives. These sessions really helped me understand parts of my professional and personal life, where I wasn't aware I was struggling and needed to be addressed in a sensible manner. A big thank you and shout out to Balaji for helping me understand my strengths and weaknesses in these sessions. He listened to my concerns very calmly and politely. His analysis and feedback helped me to improve my ways of working in the professional environment. Additionally, he had also shared a few reference materials/links which helped me to assess my self sabotaging traits which is a starting point of a positive transformation. He was active in follow ups and punctual in every session, which was not the case in my previous sprint coaching sessions. In a nutshell, I really appreciate the efforts and guidance provided by Balaji as a coach in these four sessions and am grateful to navgati for taking such initiatives.

- Neeta Malik

The four sessions over the last 3 months have been life changing for me. Neel helped me navigate through my issues and bring in much needed self-awareness. There was a stark difference in the way I was talking about my situation in the first session to the last session. I was able to gain clarity on my own thoughts and improve my perception of every situation turning issues and gaps into opportunities. Neel helped me take clear next steps from every session that I could act on and we discussed the learnings the next time we met. I feel better equipped to handle my own career and move forward with confidence.
This was my first coaching experience and must say this is a very effective medium especially when you have skilled experts like Neel coaching you.

I completed all my coaching sessions with Srinath and I would like to share my feedback. I must say that it was one of the best decisions I had made. From day 1, Srimath gave me the confidence that I can trust him with my objectives. He helped me to break my concerns down and address them from an entirely different perspective. He was very accommodating on the timings, ad hoc requests etc. I can see myself progressing so much in the last 3 months. I sincerely thank the lean-in team and Srinath for this wonderful opportunity.

- Parameshwari P

I started working with Shipa through "The Sprint", Lean In Bangalore's pro-bono coaching program offered in collaboration with The Coaches Collective. Shilpa has helped me identify my way of thinking and reacting to different kinds of situations in the work place. She has taught me to become much more aware of my actions and how they can be perceived. She has helped me to understand the value of self confidence, self awareness and networking in professional life. Shilpa ia a wonderful motivator. The self introspection exercises she has given me have been very insightful.

Thank you very much, Shilpa!

- Krushka

Coaching sessions with Vijay had been very helpful to me. After a gap I wanted to restart my career and was feeling stuck. The coaching sessions helped in gaining clarity in my thoughts, Vijay brainstormed, discussed several ideas and most importantly provided the push and much needed motivation to take the initiative. I would highly recommend coaching to people who want to take that next step but are feeling unsure.