COACHING, TURNING MY EGO INTO TEARS
The Certified Professional Coach (CPC) graduate speech was delivered by Coach Dash Dhakshinamoorthy at CCA 17th Convocation on 23 November 2024.
To CCA, thank you so much for such a grand event.
Arthur Schopenhauer said that “the purpose of philosophy is to turn tears into knowledge”
I have graduated before from other institutions of higher skepticism, and when I got into coaching, Dr Michael Heah turned my ego into tears.
It wasn’t easy; like the first speaker said, today he can crush your ego and tomorrow morning his guiding hands will lift you up again. And the whole CCA team is so caring to guide us along.
I grew up with two loves – one is philosophy and the other is entrepreneurship.
In philosophy, you learn to give someone the gift of presence, awareness, listening without any judgment, helping someone with active listening and guiding with insightful questions.
After I was told that I should do coaching being in the entrepreneur space for 30 years – mentoring, guiding entrepreneurs, Government leaders, CEO of large companies, I thought I didn’t have much to learn.
But after I was exposed to the Core Competencies of coaching, I thought “Oh my goodness! this is what it means to be human”.
Now, if I ask you today, what is going to change in the next 10 yrs, what would you say? Artificial Intelligence (AI), climate change, demographics – everything is going to change.
But if I ask you, what is not going to change? What would your answer be? It’s the art of being human, the art of being present with your loved ones, the art of being present with your employees, asking them questions, being aware and helping them solve problems in the most human way.
These are the things that are going to make us human, these are the values that are not going to change. It shows the power of coaching that it is here to stay although you find that AI can do most of the work.
The thing about coaching is once you become a coach, you cannot un-coach yourself. The way you speak to you family members, the way you speak to your children, it is transformative. It transforms you at the very fundamental level.
As I said I am an entrepreneur enabler. The concept of entrepreneurship has changed, it is no more about building companies, it is a skill that everyone needs to have. So, the belief is that you should teach entrepreneurship to everyone the way you would teach science to everyone.
I would propose that you should teach the coaching conversation to everyone from school. So, this is my challenge to CCA. Your next wave should be to democratize coaching to take it to everyone, make everyone benefit from the valuable lesson you get from humanizing problem solving. Thank you.
Written by: Dash Dhakshinamoorthy
Dash is an Entrepreneurship Enabler on a mission to inspire more people to think and act entrepreneurially. With over 30 years of experience in the entrepreneurship space, he is the founder and mentor of StartupMalaysia, act2.life, and Dash Insights.
Corporate Coach Academy (CCA) is the World’s Top 3 ICF Coaching School and Top Coaching Provider in Malaysia. It is known for its ICF coaching programs Malaysia and offers the best Corporate Coaching services.