The following is a transcript of our podcast conversation with Sarah Wilkins and Kedar Kale. You can listen to the full episode on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Sarah Wilkins
Hello, and welcome to Humans Beyond Resources, an HR podcast by Reverb, where we cover topics from culture to compliance. Reverb believes that every decision a leader makes reverberates throughout the organization, from hiring your first employee to training your entire workforce. We believe in building healthy, inclusive cultures that engage your team. I’m your host, Sarah Wilkins.
Welcome back to this episode of Humans Beyond Resources. Today I’m speaking to the founder of Pebble Compass, Kedar Kale. Kedar is going to speak with us about value -based coaching and his journey in becoming an executive coach and leadership coach today. So welcome. We’re so glad to have you on today.
Kedar Kale
Thank you, Sarah. So great to be here.
Sarah Wilkins
As usual, we’re going to dive right in. First, Will you tell me a little bit more about your background and your current work?
Kedar Kale
Yeah, sure. I grew up in Mumbai in India, spent the first two decades of my life there. And I was shipped over to the west coast of the US for grad school at Stanford. And I was an engineer at that time. And I was about to go into a PhD program when I realized I’m not a depth person. I need to spread out a bit more. So I quit my PhD program, returned back to India, started working for an engineering company, built a team, built a startup. And then that drove me towards business school. I attended business school at INSEAD, which is a great international experience, both in France and Singapore. And I ended up getting hired with Apple in Singapore with the operations team. So still very heavy analytical and strategy work. And you might think, how did I become an executive coach from there? The story there is that about three years into my journey at Apple, I got a chance to build and lead a learning and development team for Ops. And that was at the intersection of the startup I had done before business school, which was in the e -learning space, and then working in the context of the operations team and figuring out a way to develop skills and the people strategy for the organization. And while I was doing that, I also worked with our Singapore site lead to execute her three -year people strategy roadmap, which got us into topics like skill development, leadership development, and recruiting programs. So all the work that I was doing as the L &D person paved my path to eventually join the people team with Apple in Cupertino about four years ago. And the latest role I held at Apple involved doing strategy and operations for the SVP of the people team. So I got broad exposure to a lot of different people and leadership topics. And along the way, got introduced this idea of executive coaching, where I realized the importance of asking the right questions in facilitating deep and meaningful conversations around leadership. And last year, I attended the executive coaching program at Berkeley and got certified as an executive coach. And this summer, I left Apple after about 10 years at the company to start Pebble Compass. And that’s where I’m at right now.
Sarah Wilkins
Wow, thank you for sharing your journey and so much great experience in your background, which I’m sure, you know, leads to you being an excellent executive coach as well. You know, one thing when I was reading is you shared kind of a story about the symbolism of your company’s name. And so I was hoping you could share a brief summary of that I think it leads into what we want to talk about with values -based coaching.
Kedar Kale
To me, pebble compass represents values -based coaching, and we’re going to talk more about that. But the symbolism really comes from the Zen or Taoist thinking where pebbles represent being grounded in what matters to you. It also represents a sense of balance. And to me, the interpretation is to say, focus on what matters to you as a person. Those are your values and they become the compass to help you understand what direction you want to go in. So that’s the symbolism behind Pebble Compass.
Sarah Wilkins
That’s great. And so you started, you know, there to describe value -based coaching. And so really my next question was, you know, can you share more detail and what that looks like in action?
Kedar Kale
Yeah, as I said, value -based coaching to me focuses on really thinking internally and deeply about what matters to you as an individual. and then pointing your compass in that direction based on what you find there. And the intent is to say that a lot of times we are focused in achieving extrinsic goals that might be ahead of us. And let’s face it, we don’t always control the outcome with those extrinsic goals. But what we do control is our efforts, actions and attitude towards the goal, which if we ground those things in our values, what we’ll find is that journey is more meaningful and more enjoyable. And the extrinsic goal then becomes a by-product. And when you get it, you get the same amount of joy, but you also get greater joy on the journey itself.
Sarah Wilkins
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I mean, that approach makes so much sense. And I know as individuals and, or those of us in corporate roles um, are often striving for extrinsic personal and professional goals. Do people struggle to make this shift? And if so, you know, how do you help make that, that shift in thinking?
Kedar Kale
I mean, one of the key things to being a coach in this space is to help people also identify how this connects to the way they operate in the real world. So that it doesn’t just become an esoteric concept that’s sitting somewhere. I’m going to give you an example that I’ve seen in a lot of different coaching conversations. And one of the values that we talk about at Pebble Compass is presence. And a lot of times you might have heard feedback, or people get feedback around executive presence. They’re like, hey, you’re talking to executives, you need to show up with executive presence. And people have come to me saying, I have no clue what that means. Feels very nebulous. People have told me that you see it when you see it, but when it’s not there, you won’t see it. And that’s not very helpful. So then to put the value -based coaching lens on that topic, let’s think about three things that can be ingredients to executive presence. And I think about mastery, authenticity, and mindfulness. The mastery meaning knowing your stuff, demonstrating mastery of the craft. Authenticity meaning showing up as the best version of yourself and mindfulness meaning being present in the current moment. So if you take mastery, authenticity, and mindfulness, all of which you have full control over and you be the best, you can be at those three things. My belief is that greater executive presence would be a byproduct of that.
Sarah Wilkins
That’s a great example. And, in particular, the presence, or executive presence is such a thing often given maybe, a piece of feedback given to women or other underrepresented groups and so I kind of wanted to see if we could talk maybe a little bit more about that. It’s just something I hear a lot.
Kedar Kale
It’s really about finding what that means to you and having that dialogue and a coaching conversation is a fantastic place to have that dialogue because as a coach you will be able to see an environment of no blame and judgment will help you say okay what does that mean for me and what are the challenges that I’m facing as barriers between being fully myself and the way I’m currently showing up at work and that might uncover some really nuanced topics around background, diversity, the operating environment that you’re working in and so on so forth.
Sarah Wilkins
You mentioned how this approach can tie into, you know, a company’s inclusion and diversity efforts or goals. You started to talk more about like how that could be uncovered through the course of coaching, but like focusing on value -based coaching, but do you have any more to share kind of on that, that front?
Kedar Kale
Yeah, absolutely. And for that, I want to talk about the other three values beyond presence that we talk about at Pebble Compass. And those are meaning, truth and openness. Right. And these four things actually came from the work of Dr. Angelus Arian, who was a cultural anthropologist. And one of the biggest pieces of work for her was to synthesize cross -culturally what was the universal principles that she identified in traditions across the world. And she came up with these four principles, which I have espoused as values for Pebble Compass. And basically she said, show up and choose to be present. That’s presence. She said, pay attention to what is heart and meaning. So to me, that’s the meaning value. State the truth without blame or judgment. That’s the truth value. And be open to outcome, not attached to it. That’s the openness piece. And when I think about inclusion and diversity, one of the biggest things that I’ve observed as a catalyst to help that conversation go forward is some of these values. So we talked about authenticity being part of presence. That’s an ability or the environment to create space for people to show up authentically. When you talk about meaning, it also talks about this idea of awareness, empathy, and compassion, which make up the idea of meaning. And if leaders in the workplace are able to demonstrate these values, they’re also opening up more opportunities for people to be vulnerable around them, for them to be vulnerable with other people, as we’re talking about such complex topics as inclusion and diversity. And then finally, when you think about truth and openness, for truth, what I really like about the way Dr. Angelus Arian put together that principle is this idea of no blame and judgment. And that’s the hardest part. even as a coach, that’s something that I feel is the hardest and the trickiest part to talk to walk on because you’re trying to frame the reality in a way that you’re talking about the problem versus the person and helping them see the same reality from a non -judgmental lens. But as we train leaders to do that, even simple one -on -one conversations between a manager and an employee they can become so much more open to a productive dialogue versus one of the persons coming out of it feeling that, hey, they were a judge, they’re not sure whether they’re able to represent themselves fully and authentically. And finally, when I think about openness, it’s this idea of saying, what can we do to honor every perspective in the room? And that ties back again to this idea of inclusion where everyone, if they feel seen and heard, then we are as leaders creating an environment where people feel that they can bring their whole self.
Sarah Wilkins
I love those principles and how you’ve, you know, made them part of Pebble Compass. Visually, I was able to kind of like apply all of those concepts and how that’s so helpful across a company’s kind of efforts and how you can work with your leaders to support them in those principles. So thank you for that. Yeah, anything else, you know, on values based coaching, or kind of the current landscape with everything that’s going on for managers, right. So again, back to this approach seems so great setting aside this time, you know, really focusing in on what matters to you. And there’s a lot of competing priorities or competing things with, you know, economic uncertainty, no budget wars, just all sorts of things that are going on that like, yeah, how how do people stay focused?
Kedar Kale
Yeah, one of the things that we have recognized over the last few years specifically, is that the rate of change has grown exponentially, and leaders have had to adapt to new and unprecedented situations more than ever, right? And in presence of such uncertainty, which you have very little control over, what are those things that you can fall back on as your center? To me, the answer is your values. And what I think we’re trying to create with this framework is creating a vocabulary for people to talk about those things, and then have a conversation about it. because those are things that can stay centered and constant even in the presence of most uncertain situations. And then I have observed great leaders in action. What I observed is they’re able to apply the same level of consistent rigor and leadership independent of the situation they’re in and independent of whether they have experience with dealing with such a situation in the past. And more and more we are coming across situations that are unprecedented. And then we ask ourselves, oh, we don’t have a playbook for the situation, what do we do? But when you look inside, you do have a playbook in there, you may not have the answers, but you have the code to decode the answers for the situation. So while it feels that this is sort of the higher level path, in some sense, not necessarily linked to operational excellence and execution, in some ways, it can be the key to unlock your productivity in such situations.
Sarah Wilkins
Yeah, I agree. Because, I mean, I think with decision making in general at companies, it really should be coming back to your values. And so it seems to me like also the right approach with an individual and how you can approach kind of value based coaching, right? And so what are your values? and how do you make those decisions no matter what or you know the outside factors right and sometimes they’ll be really hard because that’s what value sometimes you do right is make really
Kedar Kale
right yeah and as a coach what I observed is once people have understood what these values are a coaching conversation helps people come back to these values in the moment because as you are in the depth of executing in a fast-paced environment, there’s a tendency to move fast. But these coaching conversations create the space where the leaders can slow down their thinking and say, okay, I’m making these decisions. How do these align with the values that I said I am subscribing to? And those are great conversations for the leaders to pause, reflect, and sometimes, sometimes just adjust their heading and say, Oh, maybe this is what I need to do, even if it’s the harder part to take right now.
Sarah Wilkins
Yeah, absolutely. So we’re nearing the end, kind of any closing thoughts or things we left out that we would just want to leave people with today on this topic.
Kedar Kale
There’s one thing that I want to share. It’s a story I heard. And it’s a secondhand story. So I’m unable to attribute it to the original author, but essentially, the story was around a leader’s journey and they were focused on a very extrinsic goal, which was to be part of a C -suite. And after being rejected for that role for seven times in a row, they were in despair and they went and talked to their mentor. They said, I’m doing everything I can, but it’s just not happening. And their mentor said, you’re focusing on your clock. Don’t focus on your clock, focus on your compass and you’ll be just fine. So that’s what I want to leave the audience with. Don’t focus on your clock, focus on your compass.
Sarah Wilkins
Perfect way to end. Thank you so much for all of this. I really enjoyed our discussion today.
Kedar Kale
Me too, Sarah. Thank you so much for having me here.
Sarah Wilkins
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