Rajiv Vij
Life and Executive Coach
Personal Alchemy
Rajiv Vij has many years of experience at senior management positions and in his last assignment, served as the Managing Director, Asia and CEEMEA for Franklin Templeton Investments. In this capacity, he was responsible for building Franklin Templetons retail business in the Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa region and under his leadership the firms assets under management in the region grew rapidly from about US$6bn to over US$24bn in less than four years. Prior to this position, Rajiv was the Regional Head of the India, Middle East, and Eastern Europe region and was instrumental in Franklin Templetons successful acquisition and integration of the Pioneer ITI business in India. He has been a member of the Executive Committee of Investment Management Association of Singapore (IMAS) and previously served as a member of the SEBI Mutual Fund Advisory Committee and also served on the Board of Association of Mutual Funds in India (AMFI).
With a mission to help transform lives, Rajiv left a lucrative career to set up his life and executive coaching practice called Personal Alchemy. He has been drawn to coaching as he believes facilitating individuals in their journey of significant personal changes can be a truly rewarding experience. Rajiv brings to his coaching practice an ability to analyze diverse and complex personal and organizational situations, a strong willingness to work with stretch goals and a commitment to his clients experiencing meaningful positive results.
Rajiv is committed to a host of community activities in India and spends 20% of his coaching time working with founders and leaders of voluntary sector. Rajiv lives in Singapore with his wife and two children. He earned a degree in engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Delhi and earned his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Calcutta.
Personal Alchemy (www.personalalchemy.org)
Personal Alchemy is a life and executive coaching practice with a mission to help corporate, business and community leaders to discover and fulfill their personal and organizational potential. The practice is built on the vision that every individual and organization can always make a significant positive change in some aspect of their existence. The challenging and yet very supportive environment provided by coaching can truly help transform lives – making them more effective, wholesome and meaningful.
What is Life/ Executive Coaching?
Life/ Executive coaching is an interactive process that helps individuals make significant positive changes in their lives. A professional coach works with clients in any area that impacts them and where the clients are keen to make big improvements – including, leadership, career, income, health, relationships, personal well-being, stress levels etc.
Corporate, business and community leaders who participate in this one-on-one coaching relationship can expect new perspectives, enhanced decision-making skills, greater interpersonal effectiveness, improved productivity, and increased confidence and commitment towards carrying out their chosen work or life roles.
Coaching is a journey of self-awareness where the clients come up with all the solutions to their goals and dilemmas on their own. The coach does not mentor or advise them at any stage. Coaching can be challenging but clients going through coaching find the experience truly rewarding.
The Coaching Process
The process that I follow involves working with a client for a series of 12 sessions of coaching. Each session lasts about an hour and can be done once a week (sometimes stretched to once a fortnight). Thus, the coaching engagement typically lasts between 3 and 6 months. In the first session – based on the discussion about various areas of a client’s life, I would draw out 3 inspirational goals that the client would really like to achieve during the course of this engagement. These tend to be inspirational and not incremental goals. Further, my endeavor would be to not only help the client achieve these goals, but also facilitate the conversion of the actions that the client takes to meet these goals into new-formed habits….that’s where the real life-impacting changes take place.
Who Can Benefit?
Individuals looking to
– build on their potential in areas of work or life effectiveness
– address specific challenges related to work or personal life
– make improvements in areas of work-life balance, relationships, or personal well-being
Organizations looking to
– help their leaders through transition
– grow the talent and effectiveness of their top performers
– support their staff in making improvements in specific goal areas
– build leadership, team-effectiveness and organizational productivity
Current Clients:
Current clients primarily include senior executives, small/mid-size business owners and leaders/ founders of NGOs (on pro bono basis). These clients are based in Asia/ India.
Specific Services for the Social Sector:
Rajiv typically spends about 20 percent of my coaching time working with leaders/ founders of social sector organizations on a voluntary basis. The one on one coaching process (as outlined above) involves helping the leader make significant improvement in their work or personal effectiveness.
Type of Goals:
The types of goals leaders work on include developing teams effectiveness, enhancing their personal leadership styles, improving work-life balance, building courage, addressing health or fitness issues, developing self-confidence, reducing stress levels, strengthening work or personal relationships etc. Through the process of 12 one-hour sessions, the individual is able to successfully come up and implement their own relevant solutions. Coaching allows the time and space for some deep personal thinking and is fully focused on future and solutions that the individual wants to achieve. Coaching is relevant for all leaders as theres always an area that all of us can improve upon.
Please read the details of the coaching process and the 3 goals methodology in the earlier comments.
Targeted Clients:
Leaders and Founders of NGOs.
Commitment from the Clients
This is the key to the success of this coaching program. Coaching believes in that we cannot teach people anything, we can only help them to discover it in themselves. Hence, while the coach will guide the entire process, the process relies heavily on the commitment and initiative of the client. Besides the one hour session, the clients generally have to complete certain actions in-between sessions. These could include doing some thinking, making notes, doing some research etc. Typically, these could take a couple of hours. Further, since the coach would stretch the client outside of their comfort zone (necessary to bring about meaningful change), coaching can be challenging for most.
Having said that, coaching is also a very supportive environment. The coach has no other agenda but to see the client achieve their agreed goals. Thus, while its a challenging process, most people who go through coaching find it truly rewarding.
Fees:
Nil; on a pro bono basis
Email- rajivvij@personalalchemy.org