An Evening with Mr Anand Rangaswamy
Introduction
On Friday, Nov 14, we had an insightful session by Mr Anand Rangaswamy, a Leadership and Life Coach, with a global industry experience of over 27 years.
About Mr Anand Rangaswamy
Mr Anand Rangaswamy has worked in senior roles in India, the UK, Argentina and Chile. For nearly a decade, he was the CEO of Godrej Consumer Products. As CEO, he mentored and coached his teams to bring out the best in them. Then, as the logical next step, he decided to leave his corporate role to focus on his passion—Coaching.
Mr Rangaswamy describes himself as a ‘Gardener’ who is focussed on bringing out the best version of his coachees. His coaching style blends his learnings as a successful senior business leader and his love for people development.
Mr Rangaswamy sees coaching as his Dharma/Calling. He helps his coachees to unleash their potential by helping them to connect with their most resourceful self. In his role as Coach, Mr Rangaswamy helps to create a safe space for clients/coachees to learn and grow tremendously through increased self-awareness. His style empowers coachees to define and pursue ambitious and stretch goals. Mr Rangaswamy coaches CXOs, Senior Leadership team members, high potential middle management team members and entrepreneurs. He has clients across several geographies and across different industries.
In addition to his coaching practice, Mr Rangaswamy works as a Mentor and Investor in a few businesses. He loves travel and mountaineering and likes to learn new things by pushing himself out of his comfort zone. Mr Rangaswamy practices calisthenics, yoga and nutrition based on the principles of Ayurveda. He sees himself as a lifelong student.
On Leadership
Leadership has three components:
- Leading Self
- Leading Others
- Leading Business
Usually, leaders focus on the business—efficiency, profit, market share, etc. But if business outcomes are the fruits of a tree, leading self and leading others form the roots and trunk. If we lead ourselves well and lead others well, the business is bound to perform well.
Moving to the UK
Mr Rangaswamy spent 18 out of his 27 years as a corporate professional with Godrej Consumer Products. When Godrej acquired a company in the UK—the company’s first acquisition outside the Indian subcontinent—Mr Rangaswamy was deputed to that country.
He found the UK to be culturally very different from India. In the UK, there is a high level of privacy with limited social interaction. In India, inviting office colleagues home is common, but not so in the UK. The UK is efficiency-driven with little place for emotions. Stability is encouraged, and a growth rate of 3–5% is considered acceptable. In contrast, India sets far more ambitious growth targets.
Mr Rangaswamy adapted well to the UK environment. The business grew well, and he also grew into more important positions between 2006 and 2009.
Connecting with the Authentic Self
As part of self-development, Mr Rangaswamy worked with a leadership coach. The coaching sessions helped him build self-awareness and appreciate the importance of embracing who he was rather than becoming what others wanted him to be. He learnt how to connect with his authentic self.
During one visit to India with his CEO and Finance colleague from the UK, the colleague fell seriously ill and had to be hospitalized in the ICU. While it is unusual in the UK to visit hospitalized colleagues, Mr Rangaswamy followed his authentic self, interacted with doctors, and spent three days at the hospital to support his colleague. This act stemmed from his authenticity.
Taking Over as CEO
In 2011, Mr Rangaswamy began preparing to take over as CEO. The incumbent CEO, who was highly respected, became his mentor. One key advice he received was to be himself and not try to fit into someone else’s shoes.
His first presentation as CEO in April 2011 surprised many colleagues. He spoke openly about his human side, his family, mountain climbing, shark diving, and other pursuits. He also shared ambitious goals, including doubling revenue in three years. Though some doubted this, his authentic leadership soon paid dividends.
By being compassionate with himself and authentic in his leadership, he led both himself and his people better. This approach yielded strong results, and he was later invited to join the board of the Cosmetics, Toiletries, Perfumatory Association as Vice Chairman.
Compassion and Empathy in Leading Others
Six months into his role as CEO, Mr Rangaswamy noticed a quiet member of the Finance team. After a light-hearted interaction, he later realized the need to check whether his behaviour had made her uncomfortable. When he called her to his office to apologize, he realized how intimidating leadership positions can feel to others.
This incident reinforced the importance of empathy. Over the next three years, revenue more than doubled.
Turning Around the Business in Argentina
In 2014, Mr Rangaswamy was asked to lead the Latin America/Europe cluster. The largest business was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where two acquired companies continued to behave as competitors. Cultural integration was poor, and the environment was filled with conflict.
Despite not speaking Spanish, Mr Rangaswamy relocated to Buenos Aires and focused on cultural change. He introduced unorthodox practices such as buddy systems pairing people who did not get along, long non-transactional walks with leadership team members, and quarterly team-building activities like yoga, cooking and salsa dancing.
Within 18 months, the business transformed culturally and financially. One of the most unprofitable businesses became one of the most profitable in the Godrej portfolio. Revenue grew 2.7 times and profits increased eightfold.
Leading Self
Key building blocks include:
- Building self-awareness
- Getting comfortable in our own skin
- Accepting that we are human
- Displaying self-compassion
- Not equating setbacks with failures
- Viewing setbacks as learning opportunities
- Practicing “best friend talk” with ourselves
Leading Others
Key building blocks include:
- Looking at people as people, not projects
- Listening to understand
- Focusing on empathy and non-transactional interactions
- Embracing the gardener philosophy—creating an environment where people can thrive
When we lead ourselves well, we become the best version of ourselves. When we lead others well, we enable them to become the best version of themselves. When both are done right, business performance follows naturally.
For Mr Rangaswamy, coaching has become his ikigai—the sweet spot where passion becomes profession. He loves it, the world needs it, he is good at it, and he is rewarded for it.
Q&A
Mr Rangaswamy had been in the CEO’s role for 10 years. He had a set of boxes to tick. Once that was done, he realized his role was to help his teams to grow. Around 2016-17, he began asking himself every now and then how much he loved his job. The answer every time was he had the best job in the world. Within that job, the element he liked the most was interacting with people and unleashing their full potential. He wanted to unlock people’s potential on a bigger stage. That is how he got into coaching. It took 2 years to make the transition. Finally, it happened 20 days before the lockdown, when ironically enough he flew back to the UK.
There are crores of students in Indian higher education. How can faculty coach the students to help them realize their full potential? Mr Rangswamy feels we should apply the gardener philosophy.
People need not be the same. A fish cannot climb a tree. People should understand what they can bring to the table. So we need a degree of flexibility and enable each student to be his or her best version.
The focus should be on self-understanding rather than comparison with others. We should be less prescriptive. We should allow students to discover for themselves what is right. We should provide the right environment (the way a gardener provides the right compost) for the students to bloom.
Every generation is different and inherits problems created by the earlier generation. So, we should have an open mind. Today’s generation has easy access to knowledge. So they have their own opinions on what needs to be done. We should try to listen to them and get their perspective. A lot of reverse learning is possible. By showing empathy and understanding we can unleash their full potential.
The biggest barrier to coaching is loss of the student mindset. That is when coaching becomes difficult. We should not take ourselves so seriously that we start thinking we have nothing to learn.
As a coach, Mr Rangswamy tells clients that they own the car and are also driving the car. His role is that of co passenger. 90% of the talking is done by the coachee. Mr Rangaswamy’s role is to ask powerful questions. The key in coaching is building self-awareness and making the coachees aware of the impact they are making on themselves and others through their behaviours. It is about making them realize that mindsets that were once desirable are no longer relevant. Mr Rangaswamy creates a safe space for people where they can be themselves and express themselves without being judged. He encourages people to discover solutions on their own. In contrast, mentoring is about offering solutions.
The role of luck should not be underestimated. Mr Rangaswami grew up in Nagercoil, a small town in Tamil Nadu. He feels without luck he could not have come so far in life. In contrast, consider someone equally talented, living in Afghanistan. Luck is completely against that person. Luck can be a factor in deciding business outcomes, but it is not a controllable factor. We should focus on the controllables and not the uncontrollable factors.
Being soft/understanding/empathetic should not be considered a weakness. Even while being so, we can take tough decisions that are in the best interests of the business. Leaders are not in a popularity contest. They are there to safeguard the interests of the business. Mr Rangaswamy has let people go even while being an empathetic leader.
Women need not think that only old-fashioned macho leadership will be recognized. They can embrace key aspects of the feminine. They can be comfortable in their own skin. In this context, Mr Rangaswamy referred to the book, Women who run with the wolves.