I coach senior leaders, board directors, founders returning to the chair — and the high-potential leaders being prepared for those rooms. The work is structured, measurable, and confidential by oath. What follows on this page: the engagement model, the frameworks, who I coach, who I do not, and how to apply.
Engagements run twelve months, in two halves. The first six are the RE:CODE™ sprint — three phases that establish the objectives and change what the leader does. The second six are consolidation: the months in which a new behaviour stops being an effort and starts being the default. The shape is consistent throughout — one coaching session per fortnight, monthly stakeholder calibration, OKRs at every checkpoint. All six phases are below, because the second half is where most of the durable change actually happens.
Stakeholder mapping. Strengths audit. Fear audit. The N-GAGE grid maps current role demands against developmental needs. We name the real problem under the surface problem. End of Phase 01 — three OKRs, agreed, written, signed.
Behavioural change at the level of daily operating rhythm. Decision velocity, stakeholder ritual redesign, executive presence calibration. Monthly stakeholder check-ins with two or three peers. Quantum Coaching applied to the structure-vs-flow paradox where the leader is stuck.
OKR delivery. Stakeholder feedback re-collected. Promotion conversation, board reset, succession announcement — whichever applies. End of Phase 03 — the leader is not just changed; the room they walked into has changed how it sees them.
The most uncomfortable phase, and the one nobody advertises. The leader can now name the limiting behaviour precisely — and still catches themselves doing it, often mid-sentence. Awareness has arrived ahead of control. That gap is not failure; it is the sequence working. The work here is to stop treating the relapse as evidence against the change.
Awareness converts into a deliberate pause — the half-second in which the old response is available and not taken. The new behaviour starts appearing on its own, under low pressure first. It is real but not yet robust: it holds in a routine review and still collapses in a hostile one. We coach to the conditions under which it fails.
The new behaviour begins to displace the old one rather than compete with it. At the close of a twelve-month engagement a realistic ratio is roughly 60:40, new to old — not a replaced leader, a leader whose default has moved. A full 360-degree review closes the engagement and tests that claim against the room rather than against the leader's own account of it.
A twelve-month engagement does not delete a behaviour that took twenty years to build. What it reliably does is move the default. By month twelve most leaders are responding in the new way most of the time, and recognising the old way quickly when it returns — usually under fatigue, conflict or time pressure. Anyone promising complete replacement in a year is selling something the evidence does not support, and the leader will discover that the first time a board meeting goes badly.
The closing 360 is what separates a felt change from a demonstrated one. It gathers structured interviews from the leader’s immediate manager, their direct team, and cross-functional peers who work with them regularly — the same stakeholder set mapped in Phase 01, so the close is measured against the opening. Where the room reports no shift, that is reported too.
Coaching at Nirvedha is not improvisation. The frameworks below are deployed in specific phases, against specific patterns. Each was developed in the room and refined across nine years of engagements. The five-stage protocol beneath them is set out at The Quantum Wave Coaching Method™.
A six-month, OKR-driven coaching sprint. Three phases — Re-orient, Re-pattern, Re-deliver. The brand-locked framework that organises every Nirvedha engagement.
Nirvedha's Goal Achievement Grid Enabler. A 2x2 mapping of role-demands vs developmental-needs across current and future roles. Surfaces the real gap before we set OKRs against the wrong one.
The structure-vs-flow paradox of leadership, addressed via wave-particle duality. Senior leaders carry both states; most are stuck in one. Quantum Coaching restores the switch. See the Zenodo paper The Quantum Switch — Wave-Particle Duality.
Influence-Momentum-Followership. The triad that determines whether a leader's authority is structural, earned, or borrowed. Applied to executive presence calibration and stakeholder rhythm redesign in Phase 02.
A structured introspection protocol that surfaces the fears blocking decision velocity. Most senior leaders cannot name the specific fear that is freezing a specific choice; LENS gives them a vocabulary, the Fear Audit gives them a release.
From The AI-Ready Leader. Five quadrants: Cognitive Augmentation · Decision Velocity · Workflow Redesign · Talent Architecture · Ethics Posture. Used in 2026+ engagements where AI integration is the defining transition.
SVPs · CXOs · SBU heads · independent directors · founders · across IT services, banking, pharmaceutical manufacturing, hospitals, and global capability centres in India and the United States.
I do not run open-ended retainers. Where a company sponsors the engagement, I require its consent at the HR level; where a leader funds the work themselves, no employer is consulted and none is told. And I never make publicity a condition of the work — I name no client, and I trade on no testimonial. What a leader chooses to say about their own growth, in their own voice, is theirs to offer freely; it is never the price of admission. The First Discipline applies.
Reviewed internally, 1 January 2017 – 31 May 2026. Source: Nirvedha engagement records.
Twelve months, in two halves. The first six are the RE:CODE™ sprint — Re-orient, Re-pattern, Re-deliver — which set three signed OKRs and change what the leader does. The second six are consolidation: recognition in real time, the pause becoming a practice, and the ratio shifting, closing with a full 360-degree review. Throughout: one session per fortnight, monthly stakeholder calibration, OKRs at every checkpoint. At the close a realistic outcome is roughly 60:40, new behaviour to old — the default has moved, not the whole person. There are no open-ended retainers.
A thirty-minute call. No agenda, no slides. It exists so both of us can decide whether the fit is real. If it is, we sign a twelve-month engagement letter and the work begins the following week. If it is not, we part with the half hour well spent.
SVPs, CXOs, SBU heads, independent directors, and founders — and the high-potential leaders being prepared for these roles — across India and the United States. The one condition I hold firm: where a company sponsors the engagement, it consents at the HR level. Most coachees fund the work themselves — that room is theirs alone. Four shorter one-to-one tracks run alongside this engagement; they are compared side by side here.
Absolutely. The First Discipline: I name no coaching client on this site, in any pitch, or in any conversation outside the coaching room — and I never publish a testimonial as proof of my own work. If a leader chooses, of their own accord, to speak publicly about their experience, that is their decision to make, never a term I set.
Three OKRs, agreed and signed at the end of Phase 01, then tracked at every checkpoint. Stakeholder feedback is collected monthly and re-collected at the close. Across the practice: 180+ unique leaders coached since 2017, and a 5.8-month median time from kickoff to promotion, across the 103 leaders who engaged specifically for promotion coaching — reviewed internally against Nirvedha engagement records. Every figure’s population, formula and limitations are set out at Evidence & Methodology. If you are still deciding whether to engage a coach at all, and how to choose one, start with How to Hire a Coach.
There is no rate card. The fee follows a competency benchmarking exercise that establishes the gap between where the leader is now and what the current and intended roles demand — plus the kind of change involved (behavioural change and role transitions are the most demanding of a leader's time and commitment), the duration and cadence, and the size of the stakeholder set interviewed at open, calibration and close. You receive a written fee before committing to anything. The full basis →
The same coaching agreement covers every client — individual or organisation, three months or twelve — so these terms do not change by track. Rescheduling is flexible whenever both of us agree, with twenty-four hours’ notice as the rule; below that a session may be deemed to have taken place, and if more than three sessions are cancelled I may end the engagement on notice. If I cancel, the session is rescheduled. On cancellation: in nine years no engagement has been cancelled mid-way, because one or two chemistry conversations exist precisely to surface the reasons an engagement would fail before any letter is signed. Both sides hold termination rights, and on a valid termination the balance for the unexpired period falls due. The full terms →
A needle-movement report: whether the agreed objectives moved and by how much, drawn from structured interviews with your immediate manager, your team, and cross-functional colleagues in the closing 360. They receive no session notes, no transcript, and no account of what you disclosed. You are told exactly what will be reported before the engagement begins. The First Discipline applies to the party paying the invoice.
The practice is based in Hyderabad. Engagements run in person and remotely, across India and the United States — the room is wherever both of us can be undisturbed for the hour.
There is no rate card, because there is no standard engagement. The fee follows the work, and the work is sized in the chemistry conversation before anything is quoted.
Four things drive it:
You will have a written fee before you are asked to commit to anything. Shorter, fixed-scope tracks are set out at compare engagements.
One agreement covers every engagement. The same coaching agreement is used whether the client is an individual or an organisation, and whatever the duration — a three-month track or the twelve-month flagship. Only the session count, the commencement date, the fee and the payment schedule change. Nothing in the terms below is specific to a track or to a kind of buyer.
Rescheduling is flexible in practice, with a rule behind it. A session moves whenever both of us agree to move it, and in nine years that has almost always been the end of it. The rule the agreement sets is at least twenty-four hours’ notice. Below that, a session may be deemed to have taken place — not as a penalty I enjoy applying, but because a held hour that is released too late cannot be given to anyone else. If I cancel, the session is rescheduled at a time we agree; it is never lost.
There is one further limit worth knowing before you sign rather than after: if more than three sessions are cancelled during the engagement, I may end it on notice. That clause exists because an engagement that cannot hold its own calendar has usually stopped being an engagement, and saying so early is kinder than billing through it.
Cancellation has not arisen. In nine years of practice no engagement has been cancelled mid-way. That is not luck: it is what the chemistry stage is for. One or two conversations before any letter is signed exist specifically to surface the reasons an engagement would fail — fit, timing, readiness, sponsorship, appetite — and to stop it there if they are real.
Both sides hold termination rights, set out in full in the agreement, and on a valid termination the balance of the fee for the unexpired period falls due. You read all of that before you sign it.
A sponsor who funds an engagement receives a needle-movement report: whether the agreed objectives moved, and by how much.
The substance comes from the closing 360 — structured interviews with the leader’s immediate manager, their team members, and cross-functional colleagues. Those interviews are the real outcome measure, because they test what the organisation experienced rather than what the leader reports.
What the sponsor does not receive is the contents of the coaching room. No session notes, no transcript, no account of what was disclosed. The First Discipline holds against the party paying the invoice, and the leader is told exactly what will be reported before the engagement begins.
I do not guarantee a promotion, a pay outcome, a role, or a board seat. No coach can, and the engagement letter says so in plain terms: no representation is made that a method will work in a particular set of circumstances.
Coaching is demanding. It can be personally and emotionally difficult, and the work between sessions is the leader’s to do. A leader who will not do it will not change, and I would rather say that at the chemistry stage than bill for twelve months of it.
Coaching is also not therapy, not a clinical intervention, and not a substitute for one. Where something belongs with a clinician, I say so and stop.
The figures published on this site describe observed outcomes for leaders who completed engagements — not a forecast for yours. Definitions and limitations →
Engagement starts with a chemistry conversation — a thirty-minute call, no agenda, no slides. If we both decide to proceed, we sign a twelve-month engagement letter and the work begins the following week. Apply via the form on the contact page; I will read it personally and reply within seventy-two hours.
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