Pratap is unique among executive coaches in that he has extensive business experience as CEO and in other senior leadership roles. The large majority of executive coaches have a HR background. Pratap’s business experience allows him insights into the machinations of corporate world. He knows how people’s minds operate in large global organizations – particularly people in senior executive positions. His business experience and insights have been very evident from the coaching sessions with me. Pratap helped me correctly assess what would transpire based on certain developments in my work situation. Despite my own extensive business experience – I consider myself relatively naive when compared to Pratap’s insights and experience!

Pratap has a unique coaching model which I believe will work for many people who seek his help to improve their business performance. He asks penetrating questions that will make you feel awkward and uncomfortable. He will challenge you on what you really want to achieve and assists in changing perspectives and behaviors. He uses a few psychological assessments like Genos emotional intelligence assessment to increase self-awareness. His 360-degree feedback interview approach is unique because he doesn’t use standard tools which provide broad but generic feedback on a large spectrum of leadership attributes & behaviors. Instead, he personally interviews and talks directly to people who work with you and know how you operate in the workplace. Using this approach, he has been able to get amazingly rich insights. When delivering feedback, F’ratap has the unique ability to be brutally honest and capture your attention. Yet, because of his sincerity he retains the ability to inspire self-belief and confidence in his
clients.

Pratap’s devotion to his clients is unquestioned. He does not hesitate to spend weekends or even extend his coaching session to well beyond the time he has allocated for you. He is passionate and his desire for his clients to think positively and succeed is truly infectious.I would highly recommend Pratap to any senior business leader who wants to improve his business performance. If you are looking for a coach who has both a rich knowledge base in executive coaching as well as lots of business experience of his own – he will be the right person for you. Based on my experience, I’m sure that he will be able to help many of his clients have much better clarity about themselves and what they need to do in order to be more successful in their respective leadership roles.

Chris Chua
Regional Director
SE Asia, A&NZ
Abbott Nutrition International

“Pratap has provided me with invaluable insights, which have facilitated my integrating into the Kraft organization, post its acquisition of Cadbury.

What I valued most about Pratap has been his insight into how organizations work, his perspectives on different leadership styles, and his very practical suggestions to translate that insight into effective actions.

Pratap uses a holistic and flexible framework for coaching, that takes into account both personal and professional aspirations, is grounded in values, and is focused on leveraging one’s strengths.
He has a deep commitment to the coaching process, and I found him to be an excellent sounding board for discussing challenges and possible outcomes. He takes these challenges to heart, and looks to help in jointly finding a way.

I have personally benefited greatly from the time that I have spent with him, and count him not only as a good coach, but also as a good friend.”

To give a full appreciation of the power of Pratap’s coaching expertise, I first need to give you a brief background of my situation.

I have spent 28 years in the corporate world with Kraft Foods, the world’s 2nd largest food company. I have worked extensively in Europe, U.S.A., Latin America and Asia in different roles and levels of the organization.

I have been fortunate enough to work for some great leaders and have had many coaching and training interventions which have supported my personal and career development.

Suddenly, at a critical stage of my career, I started to feel a loss of purpose and direction resulting in a loss of clarity and energy in my life. I was then introduced to Pratap and within 10 minutes, I knew that my life was going to change for the good, and believe me, it has!

Pratap is unique. He not only has extensive business and life experience but also an engaging style supported by incredible HR & Coaching Capabilities.

It is “ALL ABOUT YOU” and his skilled questioning and supportive nature helps you dig deeper into yourself, internalizing the knowns and the unknowns which bring you a fresh perspective. Pratap does an extensive 360o interviewing process that draws out compelling feedback which adds much richness to the in-depth personal sessions that you share with him.

Pratap has also been very supportive (often working at weekends) in helping me define my action plan for the future.

Pratap’s unique ability makes the experience engaging, personal and very fulfilling.

My time with Pratap has helped me set an exciting course for the next phase of my career, and I would like to personally thank him for his sincerity and contribution to my future.

A new journey began for me after you started coaching me, showed me a direction of hope to succeed. You opened my mind to show me the green pastures of life to enjoy & cherish. You are a true guiding force for me & my people in the organization, the strategic workshop you conducted, gave us a direction to show us the potential we had to look beyond our success. Your support will drive us to grow with passion to win our goals.

“The thing that I have valued most about Pratap has been his insight into how organizations work, and how that insight can be translated into effective actions that senior business leaders can take forward in setting and delivering the strategies for their organizations. Pratap presents this insight with a passion and conviction that inspires people to sit up, listen and then take action.

Pratap has proven to be an excellent sounding board for discussing business challenges and possible outcomes. He takes these challenges to heart, and looks to help in jointly finding a way that meets the business need in a way that best complements and fits with the strengths and values of the people that he coaches.

I have personally benefited greatly from the time that I have spent with him, and count him not only as a good coach, but also as a good friend.

Pratap Nambiar’s long term involvement in streamlining our business model and coaching our management took the business to an entirely new level. What stood out was his ability to help us grow in spite of the usual resource crunch that all start up entrepreneurs face. From a Singapore headquartered SME , we have ranked 86 in Deloitte’s fast growing technology companies list in Asia Pacific for 2010. I am convinced, he will be helping more and more entrepreneurs to achieve success and wish him good luck in all his assignments.

“Pratap came into our life at a very critical stage when I was working hard with the rest of my leadership team to win one of the most strategic business contracts for our organization. He came in to coach us and provided us with the strategic direction and platform to prepare a winning proposal. He showed us how we could deliver more value to our client than our competition. With his unbridled optimism, amazing levels of energy, and great attention to detail, he inspired me and my team to work very hard and with much enthusiasm to eventually win the trust of the client. I thank Pratap for the experience and guidance which my team and I will cherish. It has provided me with the impetus to take our organization to a whole new level of growth”.

“Strong coaching foundations are built on trusted relationships. Pratap has the uncanny ability to inspire trust. He takes you on a path of self discovery to bring out the best in you. The width and depth of his professional experience enables him to relate to the challenges faced by today’s corporate executives. He is passionate about his coaching role and he genuinely cares about the success of his mentees. I benefitted a lot from having him as a coach and would not hesitate to recommend him to other Senior Executives”

As part of the assignment, Pratap helped me in getting my Coaches succeed in their jobs and they enjoyed the experience which changed their perspective about life. It is very rarely that a person connects so well at both personal and professional level. I would recommend Pratap strongly for any leadership assignment.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has made a pledge to create an inclusive society in Singapore, where “no one is left behind”. Singapore politics, he said, is evolving in response to new economic and social realities. Information Communication and the Arts Minister Dr Yaacob Ibrahim and Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean have promised to find more ways to connect with citizens to ensure that their concerns and aspirations are heard, understood, and considered in the process of policy formulation.

The Straits Times published a wonderful article by Andrea Ong (October 5th) where she quotes Kishore Mahbubani’s response to a lecture given by Lord Peter Mandelson “the two key words to take away were emotional connection.’’ Policies, Lord Mandleson said, were rational but politics is emotional. Emotional connection cannot be forged by political style alone. It has to do with truthfulness, authenticity and being consistent with what you think, feel, say and do. It’s called leadership.

Two other articles written by David Chan and Joseph Chong (Straits Times 27 October) comment on the ongoing debate on the happiness of a nation and the need to measure and understand what makes Singaporeans happy or unhappy. Life happiness is clearly about the relative presence of positive emotions such as joy and feelings of accomplishment, and absence of negative emotions such as anger and feelings of neglect.

I had an interesting conversation about all this with Dr. Ben Palmer the
Australian founder and CEO of Genos International, an IP firm that has
developed excellent psychometric tools to assess emotionally intelligent
behaviors, motivation, and people engagement in the workplace. In particular, we discussed the ‘soul searching’ that the PAP is embarking on to regain its credibility based on a deeper understanding of how ordinary Singaporeans feel. Also how it could actually learn from what businesses have been doing quite successfully in terms of improving performance through high quality engagement.

“Emotions,” Dr Palmer said “have a conscious and unconscious influence on the way we think, behave and perform.” This influence can be both productive and unproductive. Emotional Intelligence involves a set of skills that define how effectively we perceive, understand, reason with and manage this influence, within ourselves and others. Research has shown these skills to be integral to effective leadership. Leaders high in emotional intelligence are most effective at building teams, inspiring high performance and generating adaptive, innovative thinking.

Emotions influence decisions

Emotions can contribute to our thinking in purposeful and productive ways.Ask yourself – have you ever decided to not hire someone because something just didn’t feel right? Or conversely made a poor hiring decision and wished you had listened to this “intuition” or “gut feel”. Being more conscious of your emotions can help you maximize their productive influence, and minimize their
unproductive influence, in thinking and decision-making.

Emotions influence behavior

Emotions influence our behaviour, appearing in our tone of voice, facial
expressions and body language. A leader’s behaviour has a big impact on others. Being more conscious of emotions and the influence emotions have on behaviour helps leaders become more aware of the impact they have on others and understand why others behave they way they do.

Emotions influence performance

Positive emotions produce positive results. When people feel valued, listened to, cared for, consulted, understood and experienced other such positive emotions, they perform significantly better than when they do not. Being more conscious of how you and others feel, both at the present moment and collectively over time, is the first step to maximizing positive emotions and therefore maximizing your own and others’ performance.

There are seven specific skills of emotionally intelligent behaviors developed by Dr. Palmer that relate to leadership effectiveness. The most critical step is to ensure that all of the PAP leaders are assessed to see how developed their skills are, and if they demonstrate the appropriate behaviors that will help them connect with their citizens. Technical competence alone can get completely overwhelmed by the limitations of social interaction. People do make decisions based on emotions and then justify it with facts. Connecting at the level of the heart is a skill that many leaders do not develop in the early
stages of their careers. They make progress based on their technical
competence and when they reach leadership positions, they find the going tough because they have not learnt how to reach out and interact with their people in a way that engages and motivates them to perform.

Dr. Palmer also pointed out the need to set up an effective mechanism that will help to scientifically assess the motivation and engagement levels of Singaporeans at different socio-economic levels. This can be done online, and at regular frequencies which will help leaders keep a finger on the pulse of the nation. In the corporate sector, this is a given. Business leaders have a scientific way of measuring people engagement, and know that at the heart of every productive and successful business, lies a thriving organizational culture. Gignac and Palmer in their research study have found a positive correlation between motivation fit and performance, particularly as it applies to
the alignment between what an individual is motivated by and what he/she experiences at work.

Jon Katzenbach in his book on Peak Performance, talked about the need for leaders to align the hearts and minds of their people who through their emotional commitment will deliver the sustained competitive advantage that organizations seek to achieve. Countries are no different. Singapore needs to tap into the emotional energy of its people and help them to deliver extraordinary performance through greater emotional connection and commitment by its leaders who demonstrate consistently high levels of emotionally intelligent behaviors.

The writer is a Business Performance Coach and Chairman of Thought
Perfect Pte Ltd(www.thoughtperfect.com)