Career Coaching Secrets

Human Touch Leadership: Fusing Neuroscience and Empathy with Tasneem Virani

• Davis Nguyen

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In this Career Coaching Secrets episode, host Rexhen interviews Tasneem Virani, a seasoned leadership coach and human dynamics expert. Tasneem started as a trainer but found her passion in coaching, where she helps leaders understand how their mindsets affect their behavior.

Her clients are managers in service-based industries. Tasneem's most effective marketing is word-of-mouth, and her primary goal is to grow her Human Touch Leadership Accelerator program.

She advises coaches that their best investments are in self-development, and her worst have been with marketing agencies. She encourages coaches to be authentic, listen from the heart, and find a clear niche.

Connect with Tasneem Virani:


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Tasneem Virani:

Okay, so that's a very good question. Each person comes to a coaching relationship identifying goals that they want to have out of the relationship. They set goals. If it's a manager who wants to improve their management style, that could take between 6 to 12 to 18 because you're looking at the whole organization and you're helping them develop competencies then support their growth as a leader within the organisation. If somebody is coming to me to say, I'm really lost and I want to change my career,

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven- and eight-figure career coaching businesses myself and have been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over $100 million each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, You'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business.

Rexhen Doda:

Hey everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. I'm your host, Rejan, and today's guest is Tasneem Virani. a seasoned leadership coach, human dynamics expert, and the creator of Human Touch Leadership. With over 30 years of global experience across industries like healthcare, education, technology, and hospitality, Tasneem specializes in helping leaders thrive in multicultural, multigenerational, and hybrid work environments. Certified in emotional intelligence, Conversational Intelligence and the Berkman Method. Tasneem combines neuroscience, communication, and empathy to help leaders build trust, transform culture, and lead with greater clarity and connection. She's also the author of Human Touch Leadership, where she explains explores how emotional intelligence can serve as a stabilizing force in today's rapidly changing world. Through our company, Claris Coaching, Tasnim supports growth-oriented leaders and teams via tailored coaching, group development, and accredited leadership accelerator programs designed to spark authentic transformation. And it's a pleasure for me to have her on the podcast today. Welcome to the show, Tasnim.

Tasneem Virani:

Thank you. Thank you.

Rexhen Doda:

It's a pleasure to have you on the podcast. So I want to know how, and we were talking a little bit earlier, you and I both like to travel. I want to know, when it comes to the story behind starting the coaching business, how does that story look like? What inspired you to become a coach and then start your own coaching business?

Tasneem Virani:

Well, you know, I didn't really start to become a coach. I was a trainer and consultant. And I think ever since I was a child, I didn't like conflict or family dynamics and businesses. But, you know, there was so much conflict and I would always be curious about human behavior. I think over time, I was drawn to deal with issues that affected people, people's growth and caused pain in relationships. As I started as an organizational coach, I went out really wanting to fix the organization. But gradually, that drew me more into providing one-on-one coaching and building on emotional conversation intelligence. It really sort of evolved because as you work with organizations, sometimes you're an organizational consultant, or you become a mentor, and then you become a coach. And coaching was when I could see the real change within a person.

Rexhen Doda:

And how long has it been since you started the coaching business?

Tasneem Virani:

Oh, no. Okay, I think, you know, I think before I was a trainer and I started training people in communication and hospitality, giving them ideas on customer service and retention. When it became when people couldn't cope with some issues and they couldn't get it into the training, then I started the coaching, saying what's behind that person? What is it behind that person that's going to make them better within the organization or a better version of themselves? And I think that evolved about 20 years ago. It started evolving. And, you know, just like technology has evolved, psychology keeps on evolving. Because you're learning all the time about human behavior in different circumstances. And I think that's what drew me more and more into coaching.

Rexhen Doda:

Towards coaching. And so you mentioned psychology. So you kind of do a blend of coaching and you look into the psychology side of it as well. And we talked about you being certified in emotional intelligence and also psychology. neuroscience, how does it all come together? Because oftentimes I do make this question, I do have some clarity over it, but I will always like to get different perspectives of this. When it comes to that line that divides the coach and a therapist, from your perspective, how does that look like?

Tasneem Virani:

That's a very good question. I think I never wanted to be a therapist because a therapist goes into the pain of at very, very deep levels. Where you're coaching, you're coaching for performance. But I think over the years, because I have a strong interest in human dynamics and people, I understand the psychology of people's mind. And when neuroscience comes into it, I can see how the mind and your thoughts and emotions affect your behavior. Now, if you're thinking negative about the situation or you're reacting negatively or you see things in a very negative way, you release a chemical called cortisol in the brain. And what cortisol does, it shuts your brain from thinking. So you're talking to a person with a can't do attitude. As a coach, you can try and move them. But if they have many chains of pain and many chains of pain and they just don't move, I would send them to a therapist. And I'd say, look, work with your therapist and come back to me. because I want to get them to have a growth mindset. When they have a fixed mindset, it's really difficult because you've got to unravel things that are going on in their psyche. Neuroscience has given us a really good indicator of how you can shift the chemicals in your brain by creating new conversations, by learning to acknowledge your own emotions and talk to people so that you understand their emotions much by acknowledging them, asking them to reflect on it, and getting them to see things with different perspectives. When you shift that person to look at things with different glasses, then you know they're starting to move. And people don't pay enough attention to meditation. But actually, meditation is the driver for success. or emotional intelligence. Because you need time to step out of you to look at you. And if you're always in you, you become a victim of your own life. Where I try and move people to become a creator of their life. You don't become a victim of circumstances. The weather is terrible, I can't do this. My boss is always hammering at me, I can't go back to work. How about looking at it a different way? What can you do to create a new situation and a new environment? And then, When they start looking at the things that are much more positive of what they can do, you shift the chemicals in the brain. You bring in more oxytocin. You bring in more dopamine. That's why it's so exciting to be a coach. Because you see that transformation.

Rexhen Doda:

Interesting. So now I get it. Now I have more clarity around this. So I already knew what it means to be a coach and what it means to be a therapist. But... I've always had coaches in the podcast that have always studied neuroscience, have studied emotional intelligence, look into psychology. And I was like, so why do they have to look into that level of depth if they're not a therapist? I always thought that that is something that like a therapist might need to look at, but actually you bring a good point because being certified in emotional intelligence, having clarity around neuroscience can help you understand, uh, at some degree how much you can help or if they need to go to a therapist. So it can help you know when they actually exactly need to go to a therapist because it's beyond what you can do.

Tasneem Virani:

There's a simple rule of thumb. Good coaches don't give advice. Good coaches unravel the person's mind to come up with their own solutions. So the power of listening and being able to listen is really, really important for a coach. But being a good coach is not just listening, it's listening to the heart of the situation. If you listen to the heart of the situation, you're listening to the emotion. And understanding psychology is paramount for every coach. They need to understand how the mind works, what's going on with the person. Because even the way they ask questions as a coach, the art of asking the right questions, you are asking it from a non-biased perspective. That's why all coaches need to go and have a coach. Literally, they either need supervision or they need to understand because the beauty about a coaching business, you're constantly transforming yourself. Like for instance, if I'm dealing with somebody who's on alcohol or drugs and I know that their mind is constantly flooded, I haven't got the skills for that because they're going to deceive me, they're going to lie, they're going to go around in circles because they have an addiction issue. I'm not the right coach for them. The minute I recognize there are forms where they're not moving and there could be an addiction or something that is deep-rooted, I will say to them that, you know, I really want to help you, but let's partner with a therapist. Because a therapist has got four years of clinical study when they dealt with

Rexhen Doda:

that. Interesting.

Tasneem Virani:

Yeah. But I do know that when I tell people, ask people to do meditation 20 minutes a day, for three weeks and as they do it regularly, the chemistry of their brain literally changes and then they become a little bit more.

Rexhen Doda:

Cool, thank you. Thanks so much for helping me also with this distinction. Now, when it comes to the people that you work with, you've done this for many, many years. What is it What do you find the most rewarding going through your coaching journey with your clients? What is that thing that you find the most rewarding?

Tasneem Virani:

Transformation. Literally when the light bulb comes on and they come up with solutions, because one question I say to them is what three suggestions do you have to the problem you just said? And they have to come up with three suggestions because they say to me, tell me, tell me. I said, no, you tell me. And when they come up with that and they actually act on it and they come back and say, okay, that I had such a good breakthrough. And also when they stopped needing me.

Rexhen Doda:

So actually, so the coaches, it's an interesting kind of business or line of work to be because you're kind of like working your way out of that relationship. So you kind of like help the people and you're obviously, you reach a point to their potentially don't need your help anymore. So you kind of like You come in a place of need and then you work your way out. When it comes to the transformation for anyone listening, because there could be, like I mentioned, we do mostly go and do this podcast for other coaches for information. But also what happens is that most of the coaches that come into the podcast generally share the podcast episode with their audience. So now there's also a portion of their audience that listens to our podcast. So we could potentially be reaching out to people that you would work with. And if anyone, if any of that audience is listening, how would you How would you specify where these people... fit into is there a specific demographic is there a specific industry is there a specific problem that unifies the people that you work with

Tasneem Virani:

okay so that's a very good question each person comes to a coaching relationship identifying goals that they want to have out of the relationship they set goals if it's a manager who wants to improve their management style that could take between 6 to 12 to 18 because you're looking at the whole organization And you're helping them develop competencies that support their growth as a leader within the organization. That can take longer. If somebody's coming to me to say, I'm really lost and I want to change my career because I need to achieve some clarity, that's when I love doing the Berkman Assessment Market. Because I want to get to know them. I want to get to know them and I want them to know themselves and where they are and what's happening about them. Because what the Burton Method shows, it shows me that whether a person's behavior, they're acting out on their stress behavior or they're acting out on their usual behavior. We are two people. When we are under stress, we behave more with the chimp in our mind. We are activating the limbic side of our brain. So the decisions we make are really from that perspective. When we are... When we are not under stress and we are able to see clearly their behavior, they get motivated to see their behavior on what they want to be. And that's when we use emotional intelligence. Okay, you're in stress. Now let's use emotional intelligence to get you back on track. What is emotional intelligence? I go through that. With the coaching engagements, with a person going from A to B, and it could take up to 12 sessions, maybe 12 sessions. And also now they get a CPT accreditation for their coaching engagement with me that relates to human touch leadership. Because human touch leadership is based on human understanding how their mind works, their tests, their self-awareness, everything. And then the touch is how do I emote emotional intelligence to become a better version of myself. And also our self-talk, you know, conversation intelligence is about communication. What are the things you say to yourself? I'm awful. I'm not good. I'm not worthy. That sets up different chemicals. But if you say to yourself, you learn to reprogram the way you think about things and break the habit of being your own self, you move into a new habit of a future reality. Is that making sense?

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, that's making sense for sure. I just wanted to also clarify. I assume that there's no specific industry when it comes to the people that you work with. They're not divided into a specific industry or specific demographic, right?

Tasneem Virani:

Well, you know, I have a lot of experience with hospitality and service industries. So care, service industries, and also people who are industries where they're serving people. So not-for-profit, for instance, would also be there. where you're giving service because they are measuring, they need, they're measuring factors on retention and they are also looking at relationships. So client retention, customer retention, staff retention. And if you want to be a great leader, even if you're in a small business, you want to retain those six players that in your organization. So whenever it is that you are, I have a mindset, you want to grow people. And that's why I think my background not just as a coach, but as an organizational coach. Are you hiring right? You have a culture. But if you hire people that don't fit into the culture, it doesn't work, no matter how much I coach them.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. And now when it comes to... And this is a question most of the other coaches are going to be interested in. When it comes to you finding the people that you work with or them finding you. So we're talking about marketing. Is there a specific marketing channel that is working best for you? What are you typically utilizing?

Tasneem Virani:

I use LinkedIn, but I don't do much marketing on LinkedIn. I'm going to stop that now. So there's more because I've sort of taken a break for six months, but now I'm getting on and using a marketing engine. And LinkedIn, I have a lot of followers on LinkedIn. So that's sort of my go-to. Because the clients I've had so far, the ones that stick with me, even as a retainer, it's word of mouth.

Rexhen Doda:

So mostly

Tasneem Virani:

word. They're used to me and it's word of mouth and the trust.

Rexhen Doda:

Is there any specific goals? For you right now in your coaching business that you're looking forward to working towards for the next one to three years, how does that look like?

Tasneem Virani:

I think that's a very good question because I took time to design programs like the Human Touch Leadership Accelerator program. Before, I used to find that people would come to a training session a whole day or two days and they would have some coaching, but very little change happened. So the accelerator program takes all the managers in the organization on a journey together with me towards the culture of the organization. And then if they want one-on-one coaching on the side, they can have it. But there's a start and there's a finish. And they get CPD credits for it. Now, I am still... I've had good results from that. It's only been... a year since I put that together, but it's got a formula that's customized. If I had a goal, I would like to see that out more in the marketplace and see the impact of that so that people come in, they have a session every once a month or twice a month, 90 minutes on Zoom. They can have one-on-one coaching with me and they follow me. We have sort of four to six months of them going through this and they begin to see their transformation themselves. They have homework, they're made more accountable. And for me, I feel much more, how can you say, it serves as more integrity that I'm really delivering what the client needs. I think when I see the transformation, it's not about the money for me as much as really seeing the change. If somebody doesn't change, like I would do one day training or this and they would only retain 20%. And then they would go back to your own behavior and go, oh my gosh, poor company spent so much on this and there's very little change. So I would like to see Human Touch Leadership Accelerator program or the coaching that's resolved around human behavior towards competencies and impact be my driving force for the next three years.

Rexhen Doda:

When it comes to investments that you've done in your coaching business or in yourself, What would be some good investments that you feel like you've gotten some return from or that you feel really good about? Or what would be some investments that you feel not so good about or like they're not good investments? Because I'm looking for bad investments and good investments as well. I

Tasneem Virani:

think I've had a lot of bad investments over five years where I spent a lot of money on either this person promising this or that. And then I realized at the end of the year, there was no ROI. There was no impact. I've had a lot of experiments that I took. And I think that's when you go into business, experiment on this and that. And if you don't see an ROI, then you feel, oh my gosh, what have I done? For myself, when I go on to certification programs, those are good investments for my own training because I add that to my business. Like I just went to Joe Dispenza's seven-day advanced program. And that was a very good investment for me. I saw the transformation in myself. I saw the neuroscience. I saw the results of the neuroscience. I met incredible people and it took me in another dimension of me. And I think I would try and do that every year because it helps me think clearly and where I want to go in my business. The other thing that I've done, which I have enjoyed and I had stopped for a while, but I'm just going back into it, There's a business coach network. And what they do is $4 million sprint. They have, you know, you have sessions with other coaches and they support you with creating your own marketing vehicle. Now, I haven't had much success, but I'm hoping that now that I'm clearer in my head that I will have more success. But I've had a lot of people who say, let's reframe your brand. Let's change your website. Let's do this. Let's get you on the top of Google. And those are all the bad investments because the search engine of Google is so big, so big. There's no way

Rexhen Doda:

you

Tasneem Virani:

can get it. Yeah. That's what I would say. I would be very careful.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And actually the search engine, the other problem is now with the rise of AI, there's less people are Googling, I think, the more people are using ChatGPT. And that's kind of growing. There's still... A large amount of people are still using Google, but some people are switching to ChatGPT. So that also has been a challenge because now you have to think of how you get yourself in front of ChatGPT, which is a lot more challenging. than ranking on Google for certain keywords. And that comes from my perspective because I've also in my past worked on search engine optimization. And right now I do see that as a challenge because the traffic is kind of like being divided between the search engine and the AI chatbots. So yeah, that's always a challenge. I wanted to look into also for you right now, what would you say is a challenge that you're trying to solve for next in your coaching business? What is the bottom knife for you right now?

Tasneem Virani:

I think it's really being able to get people onto human touch leadership accelerator program. I want to see how it works. I don't want to redefine myself every year because, you know, before I used to do 10 things. If you look at my website, I'm offering a lot. I want to really be able, the challenge is really to see if the niche works and give it six months. I think that that's really a challenge. I think that is. But, you know, and the competition. the

Rexhen Doda:

sorry

Tasneem Virani:

and the competition

Rexhen Doda:

the competition okay yeah interesting point that you bring with competition because i've discussed that in the past in the podcast with other coaches one thing that we've noticed is that generally between coaches there's a little bit more collaboration than competition but maybe there's that inactive or like A passive competition where just people have to make a choice. There's a lot of people that they can choose to work with and then they will choose you or someone else that is doing something similar. So yeah, that's definitely a thing.

Tasneem Virani:

You're right about that because I'm gravitating more towards people who are collaborating with me. I don't do everything. I'm looking at collaboration with people collaborating with having a similar experience. mindset and focus.

Rexhen Doda:

The

Tasneem Virani:

competition I meant is things are moving very fast, very fast. I mean, just this AI is mind-boggling now. It's moving. If I looked at using chat GPT When I started last year, now it gives me more complexity, gives me more research data and check, GPT does, on when I'm looking at trends and statistics to help me with my articles than

Rexhen Doda:

Google. Yeah, it also gets a lot of the admin work out of it because normally in Google you would have to do a lot of that yourself. ChatGPT does it for you. I also need to do some fact-checking, but yeah, it does shorten the amount of time that you have to put onto But yeah, yeah, there's definitely, I would say, maybe more collaboration. And what happens with collaboration is that it works to your advantage because there are certain clients that you might feel that they're not the best fit for you, but they might be the best fit for some other coach in your network that you know, and you might refer it to them and they might refer another one to you that they think they cannot serve, but you

Tasneem Virani:

can serve them best. Absolutely, I'm not referring... people who i think could do a better job than me with a specific time

Rexhen Doda:

yeah because that way yeah definitely you'll also find the right audience that you want to work with because other coaches will know what style you work with and might refer you the right person that is for you you also do the same for them so that's why it's so powerful to have a good network of coaches that you could collaborate with and the sense of community as well because that's kind of get lonely when you're working as a coach I feel I'm not a coach myself but I've gotten that feedback from other coaches that I've asked so yeah I'm just knowing

Tasneem Virani:

I would not go if somebody says and then the financial industry you've got more experience because I always say to a coach that when you're becoming a coach your biggest asset is where you were before like for instance if you wanted to be a coach then your whole background is in marketing so that's your asset and you would have more experience to Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Rexhen Doda:

So... Yeah, thank you. Thanks so much for coming today. My final question is, again, for coaches is what advice would you give to other coaches who are looking to scale their impact? And by impact, I mean just touching more lives, making a change in their lives. and that having that ripple effect, because you work, let's say, with a leader. If you work with a leader, you'll affect the whole team, their family, and then it just has a ripple effect after that. So what advice would you give to other coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Tasneem Virani:

To scale, I don't know, but to be a better coach, I would say be authentic, listen from the heart, and also work on your personal biases. Increase your own self-awareness and work on your personal biases. To scale, I would say... Have your messaging, have your niche and your messaging really clear so people know that this is you. Because everybody is unique.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah.

Tasneem Virani:

It lies on your own uniqueness.

Rexhen Doda:

Absolutely. And from the marketing perspective of it, that is very true because it's very, it gets easier to speak to a niche audience than to speak to everybody. Because if they feel like this is, exactly for them they will trust more than if this could be for everybody so yeah that does does apply although there's a discussion like when you're beginning as a coach probably feel like you could help everybody so you can start with that and then find where that ideal client is and then probably niche out would be would not be a bad idea uh from my perspective okay thank you Thank you. Thank you so much. Tasneem, it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can search your name, Tasneem Virani, on LinkedIn. They'll be able to find you. Is there any other way that they could reach out to you? And what is the URL on that?

Davis Nguyen:

ClariceCoach?

Tasneem Virani:

ClariceCoaching.com

Davis Nguyen:

That's it for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by... Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you visit joinpurplecircle.com.