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Leadership Testimonials

With the help of somatics, psychological models, 5-finger solution and care modules, Sailaja Manacha and her power-packed persona made an everlasting and magical impact on my approach and outlook to life.

The change is going to last long and stay deep-rooted. The positive impact on my personal and professional life is immense. I’m in a much happier place and immensely satisfied. I’m happy to meet the new leader in me with a lot of enthusiasm.

Sharmila Singh

Sub-segment head, Senior Manager - Product Development

Step Up is a beautiful journey of self-discovery, how to overcome hurdles at your workplace and deal with your inner critic.

I’ve made it a point to practice audio-centering on a daily basis. This has helped me immensely to mold myself when dealing with complex project-related issues and to help build a better relationship with my colleagues and teammates. My vision of becoming a great leader is finally a reality. When I first met Sailaja Manacha, I could see she exudes an aura of abundant positive energy and how beautifully she spreads that energy to people around her.

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

Vidya Srivatsan

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 behaviours.

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.

Garima Agarwal

Senior Technical Writer

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.
Susmita Vaikar

Global Product Manager

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.

Ragini Mahara

Professional Services Leader

I have been part of Sailaja Manacha’s “Step Up” program and can confidently say that it transforms the way we think about ourselves, and those around us. Sai has this amazing gift of connecting to women, helping them realize their inner roadblocks and guiding them to overcome them.
Ms Hemalatha Gupta

Assistant Vice President

It was like I got on a “Roller-Coaster Ride” of “My-self”, where I got a chance to get deep insights about me, my ups and downs and where I am now. I have seen a “Shift of Energy”, a very positive energy in myself, which I would pass on to my team as well.

Anjana A.R

Lead Software Engineer

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.

Neeta Gaikwad

Sr. Software Developer

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, and for sharing her wisdom and for those nudges and pushes.

Rema K Giridhar

Director, Process & Design Educationist, Psychologist & Visualiser

I enrolled for the Step Up program so that I could move ahead in my career without a sponsor.
The course has provided me with enough tools to achieve this. I’m able to make offers and declarations, both at work and at home, which I found difficult earlier. The course has helped me to be mindful and powerful!

G S Rajarajeshwari

Head – Business Controlling and Reporting

I’ve learnt immensely from Sailaja Manacha. Not only has she been a coach but also a sounding board throughout my professional life. Through the programs, TA 101 and Step Up, I’ve been able to take an inside view of myself and my behavior. I also learnt the benefits of centering, taking action and holding conversations that are crucial for my professional success. I would recommend Sai and her work to anybody who wishes to do inner work and leverage that experience to improve professionally.
Simren Mehn

Senior Talent & Leadership Development Partner

I have gained inspiration from Sailaja Manacha’s work and hope that she will continue to inspire me and many others as she continues on her chosen path. I first got to know of Sailaja as a TA practitioner when she came to teach us TA101. Since then, I’ve had several interactions with Sai and my impression of her as a professional and as an individual has only grown. She is extremely thorough when she takes on a subject. She examines it through multiple lenses and takes all her participants on an amazing journey. Her ability to fluidly use various tools is fantastic and indicates her expertise and ease with them.
Snehal Mulajkar

Head - Talent Development

Organisations

We place great importance in developing strong leaders at 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 significant impact to both the employee and our organization.
Srikanth Vachaspati

Head – Human Resources, Siemens Technology and Services Pvt. Ltd.

As an executive coach, Sailaja Manacha brings in a powerful combination of radical care and candour. 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, coachee, 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 future for co-creating such experiences for more leaders.
Veena Sethuraman

Head – Learning & Organizational Development, InMobi

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 at 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, 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 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.
Pushpa B N

Director - Learning and Development, Indegene

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 in her coaching has helped us nurture our women leaders.

Vikram Deshpande

AVP & Segment Head, Siemens Advanta, Smart Buildings

Until the pandemic hit us, we relied heavily on face-to-face interactions to connect and motivate our team members. Working remotely poses a challenge to new team members as they often feel lost and unconnected with the rest of the team. As a leader during these testing times, it’s important to prepare your team for challenges that you’ll face as a team.

When I discussed these pertinent issues with Sailaja Manacha, she suggested two learning sessions around these two topics: 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. This program had two 90 mins sessions for each of the topics conducted on a virtual meeting platform. Each session was a combination of tips from her and well-planned sessions. 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. She summarized the key take away at the end of each session and gave the participants an actionable plan to take forward.

Post these sessions, I have seen a change in my managers and I have Sai to thank for that. 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

Lalitha J S

Senior Director, Strategic Growth India Org

Personally I had attended the coaching session by Sailaja Manacha more than 10 years ago, when I was a senior manager and was going to move into a bigger leadership role. The 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
Pradip Das

SVP-Engineering and Head Cloud & AI India R&D, Huawei Technologies India Pvt. Ltd.

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.
Prathima Prabhu

Senior Director - Human Resources, Marlabs Innovations Pvt. Ltd.

Working with Sailaja Manacha on multiple development and coaching interventions had been a joy. Her profound need for analysis, investment of time and energy to understand the problem, balanced view of situation and questioning techniques provide a perfect playground to experience solutions. Different stakeholders have provided good feedback and immense respect for her work. It’s been a pleasure to work with her.
Mamta Thapliyal

Head HR- America's

Sailaja Manacha’s unique background of 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.

Sai’s thoughtfulness, her ability to deeply listen, observe, and identify all make her a favourite. She asks powerful and insightful questions that allow you to overcome your blocks through reflection and practice, which ultimately makes you a better leader.

Sai’s skill and presence in each conversation or each program has greatly added value to my own learning and practice. She’s 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.

Kobe Bogaert

Managing Director, Altus Growth Partners

I have known Sailaja Manacha 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. We were also in the same 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 then. Her interpretations were highly regarded, not only by our learning team, but the entire cohort of respected coaches and leaders.

With a deep understanding of human beings and of leadership, Sai is powerful, rigorous, and extremely compassionate as a program leader and an executive coach. Each of the senior leaders in these groups / organisations we worked with had greatly benefited from their engagement with Sai. Above all, I benefited immensely from working by her side and learning from her.

Sameer Dua

Senior Vice President and Head of UK, Institute for Generative Leadership

I had the good fortune of meeting Sailaja Manacha in person a few years ago. Her powerful, gentle presence is the first thing I noticed about her. I’ve been her co-facilitator and student ever since then. She is a powerful generative practitioner, through applied practice, she is a living embodiment of generating possibilities in others. Sai is a gift in my life and for that, I’m grateful.

When she announced her book, Step Up: Women’s Journey to Identity, Success and Power, I was eager to read it. Her written word is just as powerful & accessible as her physical presence.

Andrea L. Bordenca

CEO, The Institute for Generative Leadership USA

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