Leadership Testimonials

The program that Sai conducted for us was designed for our team to explore somatic practices and their role in unlocking potential. The outcomes of the program were manyfold. As OD/ OF practitioners we are often not the recipients of some of the amazing support and enablement we provide our client groups, so it was great to treat ourselves as special and worthy of the investment! It helped the team gain deeper insight into each other. It also created opportunities for the team to have a shared experience of their aspirations, what they care about deeply, and where their biggest unlock could come from. What I specifically liked about the work was the ease with which Sai engaged with the team, her openness to flex the design to meet the teams’ emerging energy and needs, all the time considering if she was still able to deliver the value we were looking for in our limited time.

We place great importance on developing strong leaders in our organization and over the years Sailaja Manacha has helped us in several ways. Through her programs at TA101, Women at Work, Step Up and most recently a customized development program targeting senior women in the organization, she has been able to work with different groups of employees to help them better understand the importance of making a positive difference in every aspect of life. Her techniques and abilities to bring around self-awareness and self-engagement have created a significant impact on both the employee and our organization.

Sai conducted a bespoke leadership development program for our high-potential managers. One thing that stood out for me was that the program brought about a real change in their behavior and attitude. Some of them went that extra mile and really transformed themselves. There are tons of training programs and facilitators available for leadership development, but very few aim at bringing about real change and impact. Sai is one such rare breed who is passionate about her craft. Her in depth approach towards understanding the specific needs of your organization and designing from scratch to address your needs is commendable.

The program that Sai conducted for us was apt to cater to the learning needs of our senior leaders. She covered the pertinent concepts related to Presence, Stakeholder Engagement, and Empathetic Leadership that encourages “Care Conversations” to address difficult issues. The outcomes of the program included Leaders understanding the essence of Presence and its relevance. Sai demonstrated how to use the concept of Care to initiate tough conversations. The team allocated time to thoroughly explore their established relationships with stakeholders, as well as strategize on enhancing stakeholder engagement.

What I specifically liked about the work was ‘Shift the conversation to shift results’.  When anticipated outcomes are not achieved, leaders must adeptly adjust key communications to guide stakeholders effectively toward achieving our goals.

Sai has been a formidable force in our efforts to develop women leaders and a key partner in our organizational journey over the years. She brings in key insights from her psychology, counseling, and corporate experience, and intense work with women across the industry. This comes across in her sessions and works wonders in enabling breakthrough behavioral change and accelerating personal transformation.

Her deep empathy and “soft power” contrasts with her powerful presence and ability to drive provocative, difficult conversations – it’s an honor to work with Sai and I’ll forever be in awe of who she is!

I had the opportunity to undergo a leadership course under Sai almost a decade ago. It was primarily focused on transactional analysis. The course was well-designed and very interactive. I would rate this course as one of the best in my professional career. Sai was fantastic as our coach. I would highly recommend her and look forward to an opportunity to learn with her guidance again.

Sai is an extremely passionate transformative C-Suite Executive Coach/Leadership coach and has been Coaching many Leaders for the last 20 years on Transformations, Transitions, Successions, Impact, and influence from top to first-level leadership.

I am familiar with her work from my days at Huawei Technologies. With her Expert Coaching interventions, she helped our managers on making better decisions & lead their lives with purposeful clarity and guided them on how to master their untamed minds and develop the art of emotional, social, and spiritual intelligence in a holistic manner. Her Coaching interventions ignited the lens of wisdom in many leaders.

We had conducted many deep People Management and Mindset transformation Workshops for our leaders and her impactful coaching helped these managers to reflect on their ability and improve their effectiveness with enhanced accountability & ownership, eventually engaging top talent and helping build a high-performing environment at Huawei.

She had also done multiple mindfulness-oriented workshops for our leaders on Self-reflection, understanding self’s/ own strengths & weaknesses and Better handling of situations, better relationships/connecting with team members & building trust. Her Leadership Coaching interventions are highly recommended especially Individualised Role Plays & and on-the-spot feedback has received very high appreciation from participants.

Had the opportunity of engaging Sailaja Manacha on the Indegene D&I- IAMPOWER Women’s Leadership program. Our need was to build impactful conversational capabilities for women in mid-managerial roles. Sai, with her thorough understanding of people and their needs, and our organizational imperatives, masterfully crafted and delivered the immersive program virtually over 3 months. In every session, she ensured the whole group had significant learning that they could experiment with, and come back for feedback and validation. The coaching sessions, somatic work, and facilitation practices were all a unique combination that met the needs of every individual as well as the group. Considering that she has been working in the Women’s Empowerment space for a long time now, our expectations were high and we are glad to have invested in a rich program such as this one, which has enabled our women leaders to grow into our future leaders.

Working remotely during the pandemic while at  Cerner posed a challenge to new team members as they often felt lost and unconnected with the rest of the team. As a leader during these testing times, it’s important to prepare your leadership team for the challenges that you’ll face as a team.

Sailaja Manacha suggested two learning sessions: Virtual Teaming and Change Management. She designed a program named CCC: Connections, Conversations, and Change, which she delivered to all the people managers in my organization. These CCC sessions, though conducted on a virtual platform, were very engaging and impactful. With her outstanding facilitation skills, Sai could elicit a lot of participants to open up and speak about their challenges and share their best practices.

Post these sessions, I have seen a change in my managers. They seem more focused on building relationships and strength in the team. While dealing with ambiguity, they are actively sharing care and concerns, and providing feedback, and communicating effectively. My heartfelt thanks to Sai for designing and delivering this impactful program for my organization.

Sai stepped in to coach a senior leader as they transitioned into a leadership role.

Sai navigated the coaching with enough empathy, and challenge and used a combination of various tools for this. Key stakeholders reported visible changes in the way this leader led their team, the business, and also in their stakeholder engagement. Sai has been a trusted partner and her direct involved manner of engagement makes it very easy to work with her. Her coachee acknowledged her quickness to dial into the real issues, hold them accountable, and challenge them towards outcomes, all while creating a sense of safety and trust. It’s been great working with Sai, and I always find her to be a very engaged partner.

I had the opportunity to work with Sailaja or Sai as she is known a few years ago. As an executive coach, Sai helped me better understand several aspects of my work style and personality, which directly contributed to improvements both at work and in my personal life. Her style of exploration and generation of solutions and alternatives to handle diverse situations has been of great help to me.

You may be doing great in your personal and professional life, but the presence of a coach will help you scale hitherto unknown heights.  I will highly recommend Sai as an executive coach to one and all.

For leaders looking to drive impact, Sai’s unique coaching is invaluable. Insights will be followed by an action-oriented plan and she will hold you accountable to the goals you set. For me personally, there were quite a few aha moments and tenets that continue to be relevant.

For leaders looking to drive impact, Sai’s unique coaching is invaluable.

As an executive coach, Sailaja Manacha brings in a powerful combination of radical care and candor. Through this, she provides a high degree of clarity to the leaders by helping them know themselves better and supporting them to confront their limiting behaviors and beliefs. Sai holds the mirror for the leaders in a psychologically safe and strongly ethical way. She creates high accountability in leaders to own their development journey and ensure to move forward by seeking support from people across the hierarchy. Sai ensured a transparent and seamless alignment among her, the coachee, the coachee’s manager, and me to facilitate a supportive journey for the leader (coachee) to move forward in their growth. I absolutely enjoyed working with Sai and I look forward to working with her in the future for co-creating such experiences for more leaders.

Working with Sai on multiple development and coaching interventions has been a joy. Her profound need analysis, investment of time and energy to understand the problem, balanced view of the situation, and questioning techniques provide a perfect playground to experience solutions. I have heard from different stakeholders lovely feedback and have immense respect for her work. It’s been a pleasure to work with her.

We engaged with Sai on Leadership coaching for senior leaders, which included group sessions followed by personal coaching sessions while I was at Huawei Technologies. I can confidently say that it transformed us by creating complete self-awareness and empowered us with powerful techniques to deal with people rightly under any difficult situations. Without hesitation, we recommended this to the next-level leadership teams as well. This is a MUST course for any organization if you want to build result-oriented empathetic leadership.

Personally, I attended the coaching session by Ms. Sailaja while at Huawei Technologies, when I was getting into a bigger leadership role. That coaching helped me a lot to improve various aspects of people and stakeholder management. The skills acquired by me brought a big change in my leadership style and complemented my business skills to achieve great results. Later I suggested this training and coaching to other managers and many of our managers benefited from her workshop.

In the journey of growing the school, I have grown myself in ways I find impossible to believe and something I look back on with deep fulfillment and joy. Through my work with Sai, I am acutely aware of how I can have a deep impact on the school. Sai has gently and lovingly shown me how to work through shadows and of course, how to stand in the light recognizing and honouring my gifts.

Sai has accompanied through tough terrains that the school’s biography has meandered through. I have always left those conversations revitalized and hopeful or when those emotions are elusive, with the feeling of having the capacity to simply bear the truth.

She has been a coach and a mentor. She has been the voice of love and courage. She has been a gentle hand. She has been strong and conviction. She has been a holding space and a companion spirit. She has worked not just with me but also with the school leaders and at times the parent community of Yellow Train.

I was introduced to Sai through her powerful work with Transactional Analysis and since then it has been for me a journey of discovering psychology and its place in leadership development. One of her most amazing strengths is to ask thought-provoking questions with care.

I’ve had the pleasure of introducing her work to teams in my organization and seeing her nurture in them a curiosity for understanding oneself to truly impact others.

I’ve been immersed in Sai’s journey with Generative Leadership through StepUp and Power Up, – as she crafted it, taught it in an in-person experience, and finally demonstrated how she would StepUp – by creating the virtual experience at scale and a bestselling book!

I’d highly recommend Sai to leaders who are keen to Step Up!

Sai- you are an angel who played, and still plays, a critical guiding light role in my life. Your powerful questions touch me so deeply and have helped me get in touch with my own self at the core. I am filled with gratitude and probably words can’t explain what I feel. You are a blessing for me.

This program was very profound for me. If you had not invited me personally and called out the need, I may have missed the great insights and learning. Thank you so much for your thinking, care, guidance, and holding the space as well.

I haven’t met a person who is more passionate about women’s leadership development than Sai! She has been running the Step-up program for mid-career women leaders for many years for our business. Her colleague Jacintha teaches the Rise Up program for young career women. The aim is to help these women to get ready for the next steps in their careers. These programs have helped build their confidence to take the next steps in their roles and provided guidance on how to work through challenges that might be unique to women leaders in our ecosystem.

I’ve had the pleasure of introducing her work to teams in my organization and seeing her nurture in them a curiosity for understanding oneself to truly impact others.

I’ve been immersed in Sai’s journey with Generative Leadership through StepUp and Power Up, – as she crafted it, taught it in an in-person experience, and finally demonstrated how she would StepUp – by creating the virtual experience at scale and a bestselling book!

I’d highly recommend Sai to leaders who are keen to Step Up!

The tools provided by Sai helped me to understand the roots of the inner critic, develop constant awareness about how it holds me back, and overcome it to the best of my abilities.
The ‘CARES’ concept introduced by Sai about ‘what truly matters’ motivated me to introspect and bring focus to the important areas of my professional and personal life. The learnings of Step Up helped me to believe in myself. It gave me the courage to take up a new opportunity.

Sai’s coaching style is engaging as it delivers the most thought-provoking lessons with force, but also in an empathic and gentle manner. Her style of facilitation is all about co-creation and the learnings really stick with you, even months after the program.

Finally, I would highly recommend Sai as a coach to ‘step up’ in your life journey.

Can I call her a magician an angel or a Godmother? This is how I feel when I think of her. I was lucky to be part of her Step Up program which transformed my life personally and professionally.

Changed my thought process and revealed an abundance of power, learning, and growth. I’m immensely touched by her coaching style. Her powerful voice always comes as a reminder during difficult times and allows us to find the best way forward.

Highly recommend everyone to attend all her training programs and get the benefits. Thank you Sai for being present and connected to my growth.

Sailaja Manacha introduced me to Transactional Analysis and personal coaching and thus began my journey of self-discovery. The TA journey was a realization of sorts and helped me evolve as a person. The course was a wonderful experience and addressed those deep inner aspects of our personality, which we have come to accept as a part of us over time and take comfort in. STEP Up course is also a great initiative to create awareness and transformation for women leaders.

Sailaja Manacha has been instrumental in conducting many of the leadership programs that we have been doing for our women leaders for the last 4 years. She has coached and mentored their talents, and helped them to grow in their careers.
The overall feedback for Sai from all our participants has been very positive. The energy and care she puts into her coaching have helped us nurture our women leaders.

“Transformative” is what comes to my mind when I think about Sai. Sai has helped me immensely in my transformation journey! I have known Sai for more than six years now and she has been my trainer and coach. I am always in awe as to how she is very compassionate and at the same time continuously challenging my thought process.

Her coaching has helped me to cross boundaries and talk myself into taking opportunities that I would have otherwise not taken. I have been able to think differently and continuously grow and broaden my areas of responsibility because of her training and coaching. Sai has helped me to unleash my potential, find and hold my ground, and communicate aptly both in my personal and professional space. She is deeply invested in her work and can truly transform anyone! Working with groups and at leadership levels, she brings in a lot of experience and her programs are action-oriented. I would highly recommend anyone (Individuals and organizations) to work with her. You will never regret that opportunity and will only be thankful to her!

The Step Up Program with Sailaja Manacha helped me to conquer my inner critic and connect with myself. Sai is an expert leadership coach and offers practical tools and techniques to identify missing skills or missing conversations and how to shift from your practiced behaviors.

Thanks to the Step Up program, I’ve begun to say no and preserve my valuable yes for the aspirations important to me. Now, I know myself, my priorities, my goals and articulate my thoughts freely.

I have interacted with Sailaja Manacha at two different trainings. Her dedication to the subject of women in leadership is highly inspiring. The Step Up program was like taking baby steps in leadership, where you know there is a friend and guide at every step of the way. The structure and the thought process bring immense self-awareness and inspiration to move forward with care, to fall but to get up again with conviction, and to have the right conversations with clarity. Thank you so much Sai for sharing your learnings! It helped me when I was surrounded by ambiguity and while I was taking up new challenges in my career.

I’m one of those lucky ones who got to work with Sailaja Manacha. I can say that my time with her and the Step Up program has helped me believe in myself and embrace who I am. Specifically, I worked on controlling my inner critique. I also made some declarations— things that challenged me and put me out of my comfort zone. One such declaration led me to take up a stress project as a program lead that spanned across three different countries.

My journey has been transformational and so has meeting Sai.

Step Up has made me realize that it’s time to change my lens. It taught me how to shape my future with simple yet effective tools and practices like Centering, Power of Greens, reflection, and problem-solving.

Thank you very much, Sai, for helping me create new possibilities, through Step Up.

Until I joined Sailaja Manacha’s Step Up course I didn’t know that I could find a space where I could step up, extend and expand. I thank her– for the clarity, for hand-holding, for clearing up my vision, for sharing her wisdom, and for those nudges and pushes.

“Don’t hesitate to take the first step.”

My interaction with Sai was when I got the opportunity to attend her TA101, she made the experience mutually rewarding. It was so effective that I feel she is my mentor forever.

All of her support and long-term guidance helped me to make decisions. She shared her personal experience about life in general, which gave insight on navigating the process(women come across) successfully, this can be possible only when the mentor is also a woman:)

Sai helped me to learn a lot about myself- how well I am able to control my emotions, whether I am able to provide a vision that motivates others, and so on.

I’m grateful that I can interact with her. If there’s any way you can interact with Sai, Please do so.

The TA 101 course has been an incredible journey, offering deep insights into Transactional Analysis, a powerful tool for understanding human interactions and communication. I’m grateful for the knowledge and skills gained, and I can’t wait to apply them in both my personal and professional life.

A big thank you to Sailaja Manacha and Ragini for their excellent guidance and engaging teaching. I’m now better equipped to enhance my communication, build healthier relationships, and lead with empathy. I look forward to putting these learnings into practice and continuing to grow both personally and in my career.

My first interaction with Sai was when I did her TA101. It was a two-day program but the learnings from it have lasted a lifetime, thanks to Sai’s effectiveness as a trainer and facilitator. It inspired me to further my TA studies.

I also did her SALT program.. Integration of TA concepts with somatic practices and mindfulness exercises was particularly helpful and has stuck on. I could immediately apply them in my work and there has been a noticeable positive impact in my interactions with people and my approach to situations. It was insightful being coached by Sai during SALT and also watching her coach others- it was like seeing problems magically unfold and become crystal clear.

I recommend Sai as a facilitator and coach to anyone who is looking at a holistic approach to bring about sustained change in their professional or personal sphere.

I highly recommend Sai to executives and senior teams for leadership development, senior team development, and executive coaching for C-level leaders at B2B corporations. Her focused approach will help leaders and their organizations drive for stronger results.

I met Sai when we were both students and colleagues in the IGL Leadership program. We would actively explore and collaborate on how to apply the learning for our clients. Over the years, we have been in the design, creation, and development of various leadership programs, where I found her to be a provocative and action-oriented thought partner. We still have regular conversations to continue to further our work and grow our ability to impact the world.

Sai’s unique background in psychology practice, corporate experience, and leadership development make her a unique and powerful contributor to any organization. She is a respected leader in psychology, executive coaching, and leadership development.

What impresses me the most about Sai is her thoughtfulness, her ability to deeply listen, observe, identify, and name the tendencies that block your progress, and her deep level of empathy. She asks powerful and insightful questions that allow you to overcome your blockers through reflection and practice, which ultimately makes you a better leader.

I greatly value Sai’s skill and presence in each conversation, each session, and each program. Her insight has added great value to my own learning and practice, and she is one of my highly trusted thought partners. I am also fortunate to call her my friend, and I consider her a true asset to any leader and firm that wants to produce great results.

I have known Sai in various capacities: as a co-student at the Institute for Generative Leadership, as a colleague, as an author, and most importantly as a dear friend.

Sai and I were on the same learning team in our CEO program at the Institute for Generative Leadership. In every learning team conversation, Sai brought forth extremely valuable insights and new ways of looking at the concepts and concerns we were dealing with. Her interpretations were highly regarded, not only by our learning team but by the entire cohort of respected coaches and leaders.

We have also done some projects within large organizations together. Sai has a deep understanding of human beings and of leadership. She is powerful, rigorous, and extremely compassionate as a program leader and an executive coach. Each of the senior leaders in these groups/organizations we worked with had greatly benefited from their engagement with Sai. They had only outstanding things to say about Sai. Above all, I benefitted immensely from working by her side and learning from her.

I also had the privilege of going through Sai’s book, “Step Up” prior to its publication and I can unequivocally state that it is an important piece of work for all leaders, but more particularly for women leaders.

If there’s any way you can engage with Sai, for your own sake I would encourage you to do so.

I was fortunate to meet Sai in person a few years ago. The first thing that struck me was her powerful, yet gentle presence. Since that time, I’ve had the privilege to be a student with her & a co-facilitator. Sai has a masterful way of asking provocative questions with love & curiosity.
When Sai announced her book:

“Step Up: Women’s Journey to Identity, Success, and Power” I was eager to read it. Sai’s written word presence is just as powerful & accessible as her physical presence.

Sai is a powerful Generative Practitioner, in that through applied practice, she is a living embodiment of generating possibilities in others. Sai is a gift in my life & for that, I’m grateful.