Episode 22 – From healthcare to coaching: Sudhir Daya’s approach

In this episode, host Neil Mackinnon is joined by AoEC faculty member Sudhir Daya for a lively conversation about his journey into coaching and what continues to shape his approach today.

Sudhir shares how his background in healthcare – working with trauma, pain and performance – sparked a deep interest in human behaviour and the mind–body connection. That curiosity now sits at the heart of his coaching, alongside a strong drive to make a meaningful difference.

He reflects on how his practice blends non-directive coaching with insights from across disciplines, and why supervision played a key role in helping his coaching really ‘click’.

Sudhir also offers an inside view of the AoEC Practitioner Diploma, highlighting its experiential design, the emphasis on self-awareness, and why the questions “who am I?” and “how do I coach?” are so powerful for developing a personal coaching style.

Looking to the future, the conversation explores where coaching is heading – from growing client expectations and the role of supervision to AI as a useful partner rather than a replacement.

This is an episode about curiosity, growth and showing up as yourself – whatever stage you’re at in your coaching journey.

You can connect with our speakers here:

·       Neil Mackinnon, senior faculty, the AoEC – host

·       Sudhir Daya, faculty, the AoEC and founder of The Life Architect - guest speaker

Useful Links

Find out more about some of the resources mentioned in the discussion here:

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Transcript

Neil 0:06

Hello, my name is Neil Mackinnon, Senior Faculty at the AoEC, and welcome to Coaching Conversations with the AoEC podcast. I'm delighted to be joined today by my colleague Sudhir Daya. Welcome, Sudhir. Sudhir interjects - Hi Neil. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Well, thank you for joining us. It's a great pleasure to meet with you in this format. We spent a good amount of time in rooms, both physical and virtual, but I'm looking forward to learning more about you and your approach to coaching and what you're seeing in the faculty role and what you're valuing. Perhaps as a place to start, I wonder what was your professional background pre-coaching?

Sudhir 1:00

So I started off my career in healthcare. Particularly, I started my career off in physiotherapy, and I worked in many different situations, but I worked with people who were in persistent pain, people who experienced trauma, and elite performance athletes. And from that, my work evolved, and parallel to that, there was also a personal journey happening. And I studied and learned many different things from traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, Ayurveda, yoga, hypnotherapy, neuroscience, an array of things that were connected to mind-body interaction and disease. And over time, my interest in human potential, psychology, all those things merged, and I started transitioning my career more into the learning and development space.

Neil 1:58

Fantastic. And where did you first discover coaching as we understand it? So non-directive work-based coaching.

Sudhir 2:11

I think I discovered it more in supervision, where I started anchoring post-qualification. So I've definitely got threads of it in my qualification, but I really understood it more in supervision after I qualified and what it looked like, what it felt like, and what it meant in practice. So I got it in my training, but I think it really started landing and filtering into my work more and more through the help of supervision. Neil interjects here - Where did you do your initial training? Sudhir - I trained in the Animas Institute, was my original qualification.

Neil 2:53

And what had led you to deciding to train as a coach?

Sudhir 3:05

My partner came to me one day and said, I think you'll be a good coach. So it's one of those things where I was doing it, didn't know I was doing it, didn't know it was even called that. And because in the healthcare world, there's a lot of work around behaviour change, there's parallel things of motivational interviewing, there's quite a lot of aspects of coaching in it. And it was probably before coaching was really getting such a critical mass in its understanding and getting buzzy. So my partner said to me, Why didn't you go train as a coach? And I was like, Well, it sounds a bit pop psychology, you know what I mean? And I was like, oh, didn't really was interested. Anyway, went along, had a look at it, and I liked the way Animas was presenting it as transformational and how you can really help people. And I thought, okay, let's do the training. And that was, I don't know, over a decade ago, and here we are.

Neil 4:08

And post-training, how did you begin using it in your professional practice?

Sudhir 4:14

I was probably, like I said, always doing it, but didn't realise I was doing it and didn't know it was what the name was called. So then I started formalising it more and started finding my way as to how to integrate it into all the existing work I did, and then how to also partition it out. So it was an interesting blend of the pure coaching and the integrated coaching. So it was a journey of discovery that took me many years to figure out, and with help of many super supervised to figure out how to integrate it and how to keep it pure coaching, which I still do. I have a blend of the two in my practice.

Neil 4:55

Okay. And I'm really fascinated in both the blend and the pure coach. So how I understand that perhaps as a jumping-off point is that they're it in your practice in other areas, you employ a coaching approach and you hold a space for pure coaching. Correct.

Sudhir 5:18

So I'll have my corporate clients who I'll see executive and professional coaching clients. And then I'll also have people who have personal coaching clients. I then have currently some old clients from previous work with legacy that I've done, maybe they've come to me for different treatment or in a different app, and there'll be aspects and elements of coaching interrelated into that. How we engage, how we communicate to each other, our ways of working will be blended in.

Neil 5:48

And one of the things that we experience as faculty members at the AoEC is a broad base of approaches into the the coaching ecology, and also an interest in different ways of building a business. And I hear in what you share there, there's quite a wide net of of capture into your into your business.

Sudhir 6:13

Yeah, definitely. And I think health coaching is becoming more formalised, there's more talk training and frameworks around it because it is a niche area, so to speak, because it crosses over in competencies. Because in some regards, healthcare is regulated and coaching is unregulated, and healthcare people have certain competencies and abilities that in coaching there aren't. So the field of health coaching is emerging and training and bodies are emerging, recognising that as a speciality in its own right.

Neil 6:52

Okay. Thank you. As a a stepping stone into more fully exploring your faculty work with the AoEC, I'm going to turn the two questions that we frame the entire practitioner diploma through on you and see what comes up. So if I were to ask you, who are you and how do you coach, what answer might you have for us?

Sudhir 7:20

Oh yes, such a good question, Neil. Who am I and how do I coach? I am a curious person and I'm very curious about people. I am that person who loves people watching. So anything about anyone can just catch my eye and my attention from the way someone is holding a pen to their energy as they walk down the street. And that curiosity about people also makes me ask questions like why do we do the things that we know are unhelpful to us? And why don't we do the things that we know are helpful to us? And more about who am I? I have a zest for life. One of my values is experience, and so I want to experience so many things, and hence I have FOMO. I love fun. I went to do a couple of things recently in London, like Activate and Landa 23 Punch Drunk, which I just loved. So all those immersive experiences, and I guess that speaks to my activist style of engagement with life, you know, and so currently I'm into paddle, I do indoor skydiving, I'm doing Japanese jujitsu, and on my vision board is to get my paragliding license. And I guess purpose and meaning are also important to me. I want to make a difference, I want to contribute and help. And I guess that shows up in all the work that I do because all my work involves people, helping people, whether it's been through education, healthcare, executive coaching, facilitation, it's all connected to people. And in that journey, I'm also connecting with more what matters to me. And so I'm just becoming more and more comfortable in my own skin. And I guess when you speak of who am I in my journey, that's that journey from me growing up in apartheid South Africa and now living in an international city of London, and someone who identifies as having so many intersectionalities and aspects of my identity that I live with.

Neil 9:47

Thank you. And if we turn that frame onto the psychological underpinnings of your coaching practice, which schools of thought appeal to you?

Sudhir 10:03

I think mine is a mixture of approaches. I don't think there's one single approach that really I think everything offers something. And so in the smorgasboard of life and in an integrated sense, I like picking and choosing the aspects that appeal to me. So there may be stuff from experiential work that I love in the year and now, there may be aspects of reflective thinking, there may be aspects of systemic thinking, and I love just threading all of them in and seeing what's relevant and appropriate now when working with people in conjunction with them and partnership and allyship with them.

Neil 10:46

I'm going to take a sort of slight right turn, might be a left turn, but what what led you towards or how did you first discover the AoEC?

Sudhir 11:00

Oh, so it's a funny story if you indulge me. So I'll try not to go on about it. So I my journey with the AoEC is a serendipitous one, and that's important because it speaks to some of my values and how I see the world. So the serendipity is relevant. So I got locked out of my LinkedIn account for some reason. I think LinkedIn thought I was being hacked. Anyway, it took a while to me to get back into my LinkedIn account because I was worried about identity theft, etc. etc. Eventually I got back into my LinkedIn. And this is like after three weeks, I finally got back into LinkedIn, and the very first post I see is from co-faculty John Gray. And John Gay's reposting of Lucy's job advert for faculty at the AoEC. And I was like, huh, I can do that. That sounds really cool. There's something that just hit me and appealed, and I just applied. And it was so interesting because John and I knew each other in another context doing some charity work around gender equality. And my intuition just immediately said yes, and then I applied and interviewed for the job. So that was my journey into faculty with the AoEC.

Neil 12:22

And since taking up the faculty role, how has that experience been for you, having the opportunity to facilitate the practitioner diploma?

Sudhir 12:34

So firstly, a shout out to faculty. I love faculty, I love my colleagues, I love working with them, genuine people, so thoughtful, intelligent, deep wisdom, you know, very sagacious people. So, and also fun and friendly. So, faculty is great, and that's important because it's a big appeal to me. I learned so much from them, and we have so much fun together, and everyone is so different, and they bring so much to the table. So that's the first shout out, is just to colleagues and working with a great team. Your question, Neil, was around work at the AoEC. I teach on the practitioner diploma and I do some mentor coaching and other roles and pieces I do of work. I sit on the Jedi working group, so I do some pieces of work there. Yeah, thank you.

Neil 13:36

As regards looking at your broad-reaching coaching practice for a moment in in relation to facilitating on the programmes, how is your work with the AoEC informed your coaching practice?

Sudhir 13:58

I think every day is a learning day. So and we learn from like so many so even participants on the course teach me so much and make me rethink and re-evaluate faculty. You're constantly learning. So in a way, when you teach something you get to know it even deeper and deeper. So, of course, then I can apply it with a depth that I perhaps haven't applied previously. So many levels. It's such a constantly looping and iterative system in a virtually upward way. And then supervision and chatting to colleagues about issues and challenges. I'm trying to think of a way it doesn't inform. Maybe that's a simpler question to ask, Neil. Well, how doesn't it inform? Yeah, because actually the way it does inform is got such breadth and depth to it.

Neil 14:55

Yeah, that definitely aligns with my experience, both the opportunity to return to core principles of coaching and have a multitude of forums in which to explore those. So our privilege of getting to encounter cohorts meeting the core principals, perhaps for the first time, and witnessing their work as they begin to grapple with both the learning and the unlearning. And also, I am in complete agreement that it is a real joy to be in a faculty body that has so many wise and wonderful people and the opportunity for lively debate about coaching and many, many other things besides.

Sudhir 15:42

And I think Neil, also to give a shout out to our participants. They also are, you know, really wise and wonderful. They've come with such rich lived experiences and they inform so much and also challenge us to look at things, and that's part of the evolution. it's a great melting pot.

Neil 16:03

Agreed. And I'm also struck by your framing of the I'm going to paraphrase the language slightly, but the open system, I see it as a virtuous circle of taking these ideas, the psychological models, the frameworks, into the real world. And I think that's where participants consistently keep us as practitioners honest, that it doesn't exist within the black and white of a textbook or sit in some ivory tower, but rather it is in the doing and in the awareness that for the vast majority of the participants on the programme, they are at the pointy edge of work in various realms and are encountering how these models in their purest form do and sometimes don't meet the needs of their clients.

Sudhir 17:00

That constant tension in theory and practice and real world and classroom world, you know, and how they merge and collide and what comes out of that.

Neil 17:11

Yeah, yeah, agreed. And I think it's one of the many reasons that the the practice or the practitioner part of the practitioner diploma is is so valuable. It's our flagship programme and has been mentioned on the podcast before. It tends to last around six months. It's currently in it's current iteration, it's three two-day modules with a seventh day of learning in the assessment day, and we're always working with the three accrediting bodies that accredit the programme to understand the the needs of the broader landscape and flex and adapt the programme as things shift in their criteria. But I wonder from your experience of facilitating the programme in its current form, which parts of it do you particularly enjoy?

Sudhir 18:08

So I spoke earlier to how I'm an activist pragmatist in my learning styles, and this course is highly experiential. And that really appeals to me because it's the doing, you know, that we learn for me that I learn the most. So there is definitely theory components for it, and it's set up really well, and I think the balance is correct between the theory and the practice with a leaning to the practical and the practice. So that's the first thing that appeals to me. The second thing is what I would call the pedagogy and structure of the course. That the three ways, the beginning, the middle, and the end, the parallel process there of how the course mimics an individual coaching session and extends out to a coaching package or coaching offering. So that parallel appeals to me. And I think the two fundamental questions that you started our chat with who am I and how do I coach? I think are really powerful threads that eventually inform so much of how people go on to coach in their own practice, in their signature presence style.

Neil 19:26

Yeah, absolutely. And are there any particular sections of a module that that stick out for you as as really interesting or exciting parts to facilitate?

Sudhir 19:41

Oh let me try oh that's tough. I have to narrow it down. How many do I get? Neil interjects - You can have between one and three. One and three. Maybe I choose one each module. So module one is seeing people's response to non-directive coaching is really interesting. And the tapping into themselves, yeah, module one, who am I? That exploration of who am I, and tapping into some of the models that um like coactive, for example, what is the belief we hold of our client? Module two is fun because it's around the creative techniques and tools, and that's nice as a someone who enjoys doing creative things. I enjoy that. And module three is around challenge, and how do we find that big middle ground between support and challenge? So I think each module offers something that speaks to me.

Neil 20:54

Yeah, lovely. Thank you. One of the things that I found interesting to consider is what it's valuable for participants to know who might be considering taking the practitioner diploma. I wonder from your experience of facilitating the course and the participants that it draws towards it, what do you think it's useful for potential participants to know who are who are considering coming on the practitioner diploma?

Sudhir 21:29

I'm going to go in a roundabout way to answer that one. So we I think there was some research done in healthcare some time ago. I can't remember the reference off the top of my head. And it was looking at what a patient's looking for in a practitioner and whether conscious or unconsciously. And they were asking roughly the the, you know, if we kind of distill it down, they were asking two questions. Can I trust them? And second question, do they have the knowledge and skills to help me? So I wonder if we could take those questions and Like you know, port them over to your question you're asking me. So, does the AoEC have the knowledge and skills to help me train to be an executive coach? I'd say yes. I would say faculty is highly experienced, highly qualified, doing the work in their own practices so they can bring lived experience and real-world example into the depth of teaching that they offer with strong facilitation and teaching backgrounds. So it's the blend of the practical experience because they're doing it, and being very skilled educators, which is a difficult balance to get sometimes. So, knowledge and skills, yes. The structure of the course in the way it is experiential and scaffolds your learning in a way that is creates building blocks. So, and parallels the journey that you would go through in a one-to-one coaching conversation. And going back to the first question, can I trust them? That's always a question that's difficult to quantify, you know. And we can unpack it, we can use, you know, Brene Brown's braving acronym or something to unpack trust. And I think trust you can hear that from feedback from other people who have gone before you, you know, read the reviews, go to the open events where people who have done the course speak to it, and you can hear what they say and what their experience has been, and then that will build the trust for you.

Neil 23:38

One of the things that's been emerging for me in doing these interviews with faculty members is this sense of how many people find the practitioner diploma transformative. We keep coming back to this piece of feedback around transformative. And I wonder if you in this moment were to give a go at capturing how we we qualify that transformative aspect of the practitioner diploma in a way that we can explain to people, what would you say?

Sudhir 24:21

Trying to say something wise and sagacious eludes me, but it's in a weird negative way. I'm going to say something, and this is going to sound an odd, and I'll try and paraphrase it. But sometimes there's a saying you hear colloquially, like hurt people, hurt people. And I wonder if I could paraphrase that now in a different way, and saying, when we do work on our own personal growth and understand who we are and are comfortable in our own skin, and we are authentic and congruent with ourselves, I feel that places us in a better position to support others. And part of I think what the practitioner diploma does is it facilitates that introspection and potentially in a world that is so outwardly focused and so metric-driven, and all the binary terms you want to use, yeah, that the value of non-productivity, the value of introspection, the value of space, the opportunity to have genuine support with no agendas and politics and all those things we face in the world, I think is at first a bit of a oddity, and then as it's kind of accepted, is seen as the gift.

Neil 25:52

Thank you. From eloquence to your entrepreneurial spirit, coming back to the range of your business endeavors and an awareness of both the coach education landscape, the many people that go through our programme and and do go on to employ these skills in their own businesses, whether they be large organisations where they continue a role, everything from people at the beginning of their career right the way through to perhaps people in more senior positions, and of course those that choose to go on and set up executive coaching practices or life coaching practices. Well what's your take on the coaching landscape as you look at it now as a business owner and as a coach educator?

Sudhir 26:43

So my sense is that coaching is and will remain an integral part of our lives, and I think we'll grow more. I think the profession itself is also evolving. I see that the market has shifted, and many corporate clients are more sophisticated and they are clearer and more specific about what they want from their coaching engagements. looking ahead, I would not be surprised if some form of regulation is introduced. And alongside this, or sitting within this, that supervision becomes mandatory, as it is in many other helping professions, strengthening both accountability and professional standards. There's lots of talk about AI. I'm not particularly overly concerned about AI replacing coaching. There was a lovely article written now in the AoEC Knowledge Bank, specifically speaking to that. I reference a lot. It's a great article, and maybe we can put a link to it. I instead see AI as a useful tool that can enhance practice and used in a very thoughtful hybrid way can be supportive rather than substituting. And I think the human relationship sits at the heart of coaching for me. At the same time, I also see the profession faces some important existential questions. I think one of those is what I would describe as potential C-suite collusion, like the extent to which coaches challenge and hold senior leaders accountable, particularly when their behaviors have such wide-reaching organisational impact. And this raises questions about how honest and robust our feedback is as coaches at different levels in an organisation when that has an impact of potentially losing a client. And I think there's also a connection here for me to the profession and diversity. To what extent does the coaching profession reflect the diversity seen or mirrored at senior levels? Or do we risk becoming an echo chamber that exists that reinforces existing perspectives rather than broadening them? So some broader systemic things there also come up for me.

Neil 29:19

And what I experience in what you've shared there is essentially enough material for another four or five podcasts. I'm minded of the time available to us today. So perhaps if I endeavour to do some justice in teasing out each of them a little more, if we come back to regulation, and for anyone that's spent a bit of time investigating the practitioner diploma, they'll hopefully have an awareness that it's triple accredited by the three main accrediting bodies operating in the UK and beyond, particularly with the ICF and the EMCC and the Association for Coaching to some extent. I wonder with your awareness from regulation in the healthcare professions, what do you see that looking like should it begin to gain ground within the coaching profession?

Sudhir 30:19

I think it'll be a while to be a collaborative process around all the stakeholders in the field. And the regulator will start setting enforceable competencies that can be and sanctionable fitness to practice things. So where the public is really safeguarded, and what will look like to safeguard the client. So, and what is needed to maintain those competencies and eligibility to practice. So they'll have different roles and they'll work together. So a lot of professions have professional bodies which may look after them from an insurance point of view, from some supportive development, growth, and competency or guides to practice. And the regulator will be more the enforcer, fitness to practice, a more dictatable what you need to show us and audit is needed. So that's what we see in the healthcare. And the idea is that as a reflective practitioner, you'll be inclined to go that way. But my sense is that supervision is seen as a luxury, it's potentially seen as an extra, a not needed, and I think that will change if a regulator comes into play. I think everybody supervision will just be mandatory across the board, which I think is a good thing.

Neil 31:54

Yeah. And if you were to give a headline on what supervision is for those that are perhaps newer to the coaching ecology, how would you encapsulate that again in one to one to three sentences?

Sudhir 32:08

A space to speak to a qualified, experienced coach, supervisor, practitioner who can help with many aspects of your coaching practice, including developmental aspects or where to grow and learn, aspects around ethical issues, dilemmas, competences, and also around checking in around your wellbeing as a coach and how to prevent burnout and self-care?

Neil 32:43

Beautifully expressed. If we turn our attention to this concept of executive collusion and the potential for an echo chamber, what do you see as the ways coach practitioners can support people operating at these executive levels to step out of the echo chamber or perhaps gain a more clarifying perspectival shift so that they aren't only digesting or only receiving, consuming, and digesting the messages that are the most palatable.

Sudhir 33:24

That question has wider systemic questions to it because there's mirrors and reflexive. So, what happens in greater society who holds position of power gets mirrored in organisations, gets mirrored in in a professional world, who gets there? So there's something about a wider systemic lens. So I think we need to zoom out a little more. So, in a one-to-one conversation, there will be that opportunity to discuss with the leader how comfortable they are with challenge, what that looks like, and add that into your way of working in a healthy way. And there's many other ways, organisations are doing it in different ways. Shadow boards, reverse mentor coaching is happening, so where people from marginalised groups do reverse mentoring. So there's many other ways that are are being done on organisational levels, but in the one-to-one coaching session, the opportunity is to partner around a way of working that invites healthy challenge.

Neil 34:42

And I hear the invitation into productive discomfort. And I appreciate you dialing out to bring in the wider systemic challenges that we we face. As we move into the the latter part of our conversation today, I wonder what about coaching, perhaps coach education, is getting you excited at the moment.

Sudhir 35:12

One of the values is I spoke to earlier is making a difference. And if you look at some of the research in behavioural science, we're in a world where we are awash with information. We're flooded with information, and the behavioural science research tells us information alone is the least effective form of behaviour change. And all we want is people's behaviours to change, you know, organisations want it. Yeah, everybody, everybody wants it. And coaching is the vehicle and the mechanism to empower people to come to their own realisations and find things and their own internal motivations. So that's the interesting aspect of coaching that is so transformational. So that is one piece of it that and you can really make a difference. And I've seen it, you know, people change their lives, do things, and it doesn't matter how big or how small. It can be from someone just starting to look after themselves and go for a daily walk, or it can be some massive thing or organisation where they're shifting or in wider society and having societal impacts and that's exciting that you get to be part of someone's journey. I mean, wow, that whole pay it forward thing. It's just the ripple of goodness we can have in the world. I mean, wow, like that's a wave you want to ride. So that's the coaching, the contribution, the making a difference, the empowering and helping people, whatever level, sector, sphere, whatever. That and coach education just sits on top of that because now you're just magnifying, multiplying, and amplifying. So it's just plugging in this therapy because now you potentially can take some of my learnings and failures and iterations and help other people to grow and shine brightly in the spheres where they want to make a difference, where they want to influence and change things for the better.

Neil 37:37

Lovely. Thank you. It does sound like a a call to the point of for whatever reason the word leverage is coming up, but that sounds reductive. I guess relational leverage of positive intent. That's what I take from what you shared. That's a far more articulate way of saying what I just said. But I only got there on hearing you say what you had said. And if we broaden it out to the systemic, when you look at the field of coaching, what are the challenges and opportunities for coaches in the future?

Sudhir 38:33

It might be my noise and my interference, but a sense of I think there's one piece is people worried that the market may be saturated. The other piece I think is that being you and having your signature presence, which is different to a niche, I think. And a lot of talk about niching and coaching, and I think it's different to your signature presence, which is who are you and how you want to coach, which is different to the what do you want to coach in. Are you with me? So I think if anything, niche quality, and then that speak. Yeah, and that requires some work, I think, on knowing who you are, how you want to be, how comfortable you are in your own skin. Because that will then speak into your work. So the challenge may be a saturation of the marketplace, but the opportunity is being clearer on who you are.

Neil 39:46

Thank you. And as we move into the last few minutes of this conversation, I wonder what hasn't yet been covered that you might like to speak to.

Sudhir 40:01

I'm trying to put myself into the shoes of someone who might be listeners and thinking, oh, I maybe want to do the PD and I don't want to do the PD. I'm trying to think, what are the questions I would ask? You know, and I try to answer some of them. You know, people go through the usual, they'll go through time, money, effort, but then there's something that maybe I wonder what may be holding someone back and maybe speaking to that piece, yeah. And maybe come to the open events, speak to people who've done the course, and do something for you. Sometimes we do a lot for others, you know, whether you parents and you're doing stuff, whether for your organisation. This is really something for you that will have benefits and impacts for others.

Neil 40:51

Thank you for sharing so openly on all the areas that we've covered. It's been a sincere pleasure to have this conversation and also to learn a good deal more about you, new vocabulary, new perspectives. I appreciate you joining me.

Sudhir 41:13

No, Neil, thank you for having me and for asking some really beautiful questions and making me think about things.