My Story - From PepsiCo to Coaching

Posted on July 05, 2022 by Anuj Chadha, One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

Many people move from a corporate career to entrepreneurship – there are different drivers: Pull for greater sense of ownership, desire to have greater sense of control over your time, motivation to put your business ideas into action, and higher financial growth are just a few examples of these drivers.

After 23 years of working at PepsiCo, from Management Trainee to Senior Director and GBS PMO for AMESA (Africa, Middle East and South Asia) Sector of PepsiCo, having grown through Sales, Marketing and General Management roles in India, Indonesia and AMESA Sector, I was thriving in a highly empowered culture. With growth oriented trusting senior leaders, and part of a team with a highly collaborative mindset, it had been an extremely enriching journey as part of the team setting up PepsiCo’s Shared Service arm, GBS or Global Business Services.

Over the last 5-6 years, since the time I was a Country GM for PepsiCo’s Indonesia businesses, I had starting gaining interest in, what I like to call the “Inward Journey”. It started off in the form of 1:1 coffee conversation with my direct reports, which were focused on the support they needed to achieve their goals, connected to, but often going beyond, the daily nuts and bolts of the business. We also kicked of a 30-minute fortnightly team session called REFLECTIONS, where we would pick up a topic of common interest like, “90/10 Principle”, “Start with the Why”, “How to Say a High Quality NO”, “Flow” and so on. Work related, reflective topics, that would be typically shared in the form of a short video, followed by a round of reflections from each of the team members in the room.

My continued interest in this reflective inward journey, led me to offer coaching to colleagues, and direct reports of peers, and soon I was coaching 4-5 team members. And then after 1 year of work from home during the pandemic, in July 2021, I came across an online Coaching Program which caught my imagination – and I said to myself, since coaching is making me feel good from the inside, how about learning the ropes and deepening the skill. And soon after I enrolled I came across the definition of coaching and learnt what coaching was not – it is not advising, not suggesting, not counselling, and not consulting! And here I was thinking that I had been coaching for the last 5-6 years!!! I learnt that as a coach you start with the belief that “Every Client comes to you whole and complete; and fully capable of finding their own unique solutions!” This one statement struck such a chord with me that I was sold! This seemed so true in my own experience. I learnt coaching techniques including deep listening, paraphrasing, mirroring, and asking powerful questions…to enable the client to find their solutions!

Six months into a set of insightful coaching classes with super encouraging Mentor / Teachers like Sandhya Mathur and Afsheen, and several like-minded class-mates, I figured this was a powerful path that could truly leverage my experience at PepsiCo, and help me to deepen my inward journey of Self-discovery, while sharing my learning with others around me. And this is how I came to the decision that I would become a full-time Life and Executive Coach – with a focus on successful mid-life professionals who are looking for a greater sense of fulfilment and balance in their super busy, and often stressful, lives. It seemed to me like I was ready to take off the mountain table-top runway on a hang-glider – the 23 years at PepsiCo was my run-way to gather the momentum that allowed me to take off into the amazing flight called Coaching!!!