Sudhir's Story: From Data to Leadership

I’ve always loved data. Numbers make sense. Models, tests and predictions all follow logic, they can be optimized, and they don’t come with unexpected emotions or office politics. If I could spend all day in the details, experimenting and refining, I would.

But I’m also ambitious. I want to provide for my family and grow in my career and have greater impact in my industry. I knew that to earn more and have greater stability, I needed to take on more responsibility. I knew it meant stepping into a leadership role and that was something I wasn’t entirely comfortable with.

I chose coaching to help me. I wanted strategies for managing a team, improving

communication, and making sure I didn’t completely derail my own career growth just because I preferred working with data over people. I just wanted people to do their work and let me do mine.

At first, I approached leadership the way I approached problem-solving. I figured there had to be a formula like 5 steps to becoming a good leader. Coaching helped me see that leadership isn’t just about strategy, it’s about connection and leading to help others grow and develop. My son is just 3 years old. I thought about how much I want him to be happy and successful and how much it meant to me for him to learn about connection and collaboration.

One powerful question that I was asked in coaching was…“What would it be like to lead in a

way that feels natural to you?” I’d never considered that before. I assumed leadership meant

becoming someone else. I realized I thought of leadership as a role that you played. I would just act charismatic and be more extroverted.

Through coaching I started to see my analytical mind as a strength, not a weakness in leadership. Among other things, I learned that the same curiosity I applied to testing models could be applied to people. I started practicing people curiosity.

It wasn’t easy. There are still times I want to retreat back into the safety of data and where it feels like I have more control. But leadership, like problem-solving, is about iteration. The more I tested myself, the more I learned. And the more I learned, the more confident I became. It was really surprising for me to realize how much my beliefs about leadership and leading people were “leading” me in the wrong direction.

It’s so interesting to me now that I don’t see leadership as something I reluctantly have to do. It’s become an opportunity to grow in a completely new way. Coaching helped me stop resisting leadership and start embracing it on my own terms.

These are real stories from real clients. Names and some details have been removed to protect confidentiality.