ICF Delhi’s transformational partnership with Save the Children India demonstrated the immense power of coaching in rethinking, reimagining and revisioning the future at a critical timeline in the leading humanitarian organization’s development journey.
Save the Children India—one of 30 national members of the overarching global membership organization Save the Children International, united by an ambition for all children to survive, learn and be protected—was shortlisted to launch the coaching program for its leadership team in partnership with ICF’s Delhi Chapter under the 2023 Ignite Initiative.
The Ignite Initiative, a six-month coaching engagement, uses the collective power of ICF Chapters, members and credential holders to accelerate the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Save the Children India discovered the true power of coaching while undertaking the Ignite Initiative in the throes of a sudden unexpected crisis for the organization. A sudden change in government legislation resulted in the organization’s license for international fundraising being revoked, resulting in unprecedented disruption overnight and leaving the NGO grappling with tremendous uncertainty for the way forward. Save the Children was unable to collect over $60 million of pledged funds from around the world or even access the funds they had in reserves. Forced to make swift pivots, the organization reduced its workforce from 1200 to 500.
The severity of disruption was high and immediate and the mood on the floor was low and downright discouraging. It hardly seemed like the right time to begin a coaching program. But it was also the best time to embrace the hidden message in the crisis, to confront the most confounding fears and to press the reset button. They decided to move forward with the coaching kickoff meeting as originally planned.
At the kickoff session it was clear that the leadership team was navigating choppy waters. A few chairs were empty, as people had already started leaving the ship. But as the leadership team sat down brainstorming for possibilities, recalling strengths, and reframing challenges as opportunities, a new vision to rebuild the organization started emerging on the white board.
The organization’s CEO, Sudarshan Suchi, stood like a lighthouse for his team,” said ICF Delhi Chapter Social Impact Leader and ICF Coach Suparna Banerjee.
After the kickoff meeting, each of the 10 members of the Save the Children India leadership team was paired with a seasoned ICF coach to work with one-on-one, including Sudarshan. He knew it was important to not only support the team through their coaching, but to walk the walk by participating in the program himself.
The optimism Sudarshan projected didn’t always feel real. Despite being a seasoned civil society leader with over three decades of experience, he was filled with the same doubts and fears as the rest of his team. He worried about the current predicament, and whether he truly had their trust necessary to lead them out of it.
The first few times Sudarshan met with his coach, they met in a comfortable, informal setting, over a coffee, which put Sudarshan at ease and built trust.
“When you’re most vulnerable, that’s when you most need that sounding board. My coach wasn’t judgmental, he did not rush to tell me he knows my problems better than me. That led to trust, and I started sharing my biggest pain points,” said Sudarshan.
Sudarshan confronted his fears and hesitations in decision making, sought ways to engage and encourage his team, collaborate and build consensus as they rebuilt the organization moving forward. Working with his coach, he found ways to balance time to explore ideas with his team, while still providing the confidence and clarity they needed from their CEO to set a path forward.
“I am not able to emphasize this enough, how challenging it felt ….as to how we were going to address things was a major concern in people’s minds. We were in extreme crisis,” said Sudarshan.
But when Sudarshan applied his coaching to provide clear direction—and the shift in tone and body language that came with his newfound confidence—the entire team responded in kind, and it became contagious across the leadership team, the board, and the rest of the organization. Through the coaching journey Sudarshan also adopted a new practice of writing out his thoughts to explore with a new discipline. The more he took the time to organize his thoughts, the more strategically he could apply them.
“We [Sudarshan’s team] could dig into ourselves and find all the resources which we never thought we had…to start solving problems which we never thought could be solved and to come together with both individual and collective goals and for a much larger purpose,” said Sudarshan.
A year after the abrupt cutoffs rocked Save the Children India, the organization has a fresh approach to leadership strengthened by coaching. Despite the challenges they faced, they remained true to their mission to ensure that nothing stops the children of India from learning, growing and flourishing. Just in 2023, over 7 million children’s lives were changed through their work.
Note: Since the time of this program, Sudarshan has moved on from Save the Children India, but the organization has continued to build on the progress from it.
