Lockdown inspired executive coach, Salma Shah to create a coach training programme around diversity, inclusion and belonging – and to write a book on the subject. It’s vital, she tells Liz Hall, to meet people in their lived experiences
Executive coach and coach trainer Salma Shah has been busy during the pandemic, launching a diversity, inclusion and belonging coach training programme and writing a book.
“Mastering your Power [programme] came into being because I had space due to lockdown. And I wrote a book too! I’m a lockdown cliché!”, she laughs.
Shah’s book, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in Coaching: a practical guide (Shah, 2022) is set to be published next month (April), while her Mastering Your Power (MyP) programme, which trains coaches to operate with a wider systemic lens of diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB), launched in June 2020.
For Shah, work around DIB needs to be about meeting people where they truly are, both individually and systemically. So, too, is being kind to ourselves in the process and accepting that all of us may have gaps in terms of our privilege and are just as prone to bias as the next person. These beliefs and messages come through strongly in her coaching and training, and in her book.
Mastering your Power (MyP)
Finding herself with extra time due to lockdown, “and to stop driving my family mad!”, Shah designed and offered a pilot MyP programme
pro-bono to existing clients, including to organisations such as British Transport Police (BTP) and charities.
Although unplanned, the timing of MyP’s launch – one June Saturday just weeks after the murder in Minneapolis, USA, of black man, George Floyd by a white police officer, which saw the #BlackLivesMatter movement gain traction – meant that many individuals and organisations were starting to look more closely at their policies and processes around DIB.
“It felt like the universe. I was already in that space but suddenly companies were at least willing to talk to me,” says Shah.
BTP, for example, had recognised that while coaching by its nature is inclusive, “an uncomfortable truth” it was facing in early 2020 was that despite its “diverse talent there was a disturbing lack of diversity among the internal pool of coaches…. [and that all its] coaches needed a wider systemic lens of inclusion, belonging and equity” (it wrote in its successful submission for the Public Services People Managers Association – PPMA – 2021 Best Inclusion and Diversity Programme/Initiative Award).
“The seismic shifts of major events such as Covid-19 and the #BlackLivesMatter protests meant that our workplace would never be the same again. Retention and development of staff and officers from under-represented groups is a key strategy going forward,” wrote BTP.
Following the initial highly successful pilot, BTP ran with Shah an in-house version of MyP, Moving the Needle, which helped it win the award and to bring about a collective increase in coaches from under-represented groups including Black, Asian and neuro-divergent employees from
11% to 27% of its coaching pool.
In addition, minority coaches are now coaching senior staff: “This is a ground-breaking result and in many ways more impactful than reverse mentoring – this was reverse coaching,” wrote BTP.
Personally, Shah was driven to launch MyP partly by her own experiences of micro-aggression within the coaching profession, including facing a backlash when she suggested at a board meeting that we need to actively support coaches from different backgrounds. Shah “got very triggered and upset”, which she has worked through in coach supervision, and says, “there’s lots of talk about diversity in coaching but when you raise solutions, the door gets slammed.
“Although my reaction to [a particular micro-aggression] made me feel action-oriented, this work for me is humanitarian and inclusive. It’s about, we’re all fragile, we all have places in our lives where we have privilege and we don’t have privilege. And I strongly feel the work has to come from such a humanitarian point of view in coaching.
“Also, something that was burning in the background for me was that as much as I loved my coach training experience, at some level, I felt on many occasions it hadn’t understood the complexities of me being of a minority under-represented background. I felt this was missing.”
MyP is accredited by the International Coaching Federation, and is delivered twice four times a year. The programme, which is also available in-house, consists of six modules – 85 hours – plus supervision: “Supervision is really important when you get into this work because you need to let go of lots of ‘isms’ that surface.”
The course is based on psychology and systems among others. The approaches taught include neuroscience, cognitive based coaching, systemic coaching and Transactional Analysis’ Drama Triangle.
“I feel there shouldn’t be one model for all. Coaching is a powerful conversation to help people move forward but with awareness around what’s happening in the wider system around them. And we should be able to draw on all sorts of ways to have these conversations, including, for example, issues around loyalty and entanglement. I feel coaches should be open to using a variety of approaches and models and not be constrained by just one.”
Lived experience
Given that Shah strongly believes that individuals’ lived experiences and where they feel they fit into their various systems needs to be given primacy in coaching, particularly around DIB, it’s fitting that we start the interview for this profile with Shah movingly sharing some of her personal story, her “ancestral journey”.
She says that “although I never really met my grandparents, I really connect with them,” and how she’d recently told her 11-year-old daughter her parents’ – her daughter’s grandparents – story of having to suddenly leave Kashmir in India for Pakistan when they were the same age as Shah’s daughter is now:
“I said to her, imagine you wake up one morning and your mummy and daddy say to you, ‘you’ve got to leave our house, you’ll never see your cats or the local park again, we have to walk 20km to a different country, we can’t walk during the day because it’s dangerous, we have to walk at night to be safe and we’ll never return to our home again.’
“And she was saying, ‘never see my cats, my home again…that’s so sad’. She loves her little life, I could see her little brain thinking, this is so sad. I said, ‘well, that’s how old your grandparents were when this happened to them. This is your grandparents’ story.
“And the thing is, my parents never really talked about it. They talked about how lovely their home was but not how traumatic it was leaving it. My parents never talked about it as ‘poor us’, [it was more] ‘it happened, and we just had to get on with it’. As I get older, I’m inquisitive about what happened to my grandparents who were the adults. It’s a backstory I never really appreciated until I got a lot older. It resonates [more] when you have your own children.”
Her late parents – her mother died around 20 years ago, and her father around 11 years ago – moved to the UK in the Sixties “in the middle of flower power, very short skirts and hippie free love. It makes me laugh.”
“[But] they expressed nothing but sheer gratitude for the country and the opportunities it offered, they kept their heads down and worked really hard. They’d tell me, ’you’re lucky you were born here and get to go to school here’.”
Shah’s own story growing up is also partly one of clashing cultures, which created confusion for her.
“In any immigrant culture, being part of a community is very important, and in Pakistani culture, the community is more important than the individual and therefore you’re told the rules you have to comply with to fit in. As a child, I was constantly told who I was, how to think, feel and behave, and there was no negotiation on that. ‘You’re a female, and this is how you have to think, how you have to behave and what you have to do.’
“But there was an element of mixed messages, because [my parents] were very much focused on education. But then, when you encourage reading and exploration of ideas, obviously as a child, I started to question some of the things they were saying to me. So in some respects, my parents were creating little monsters who had different cultures at home and at school.
“As a child, it was very confusing. I always felt I wasn’t allowed to be me. I didn’t know who I was growing up as a child and a teen because I was told that ‘because of your culture, race and gender, this is how you have to be and behave to fit in and for us to function in the community we live in because the wider community is more important than you.’
“You start getting confused about the essence of who you are. It’s not ‘let’s spot Salma’s gifts and cultivate them’, more like ‘she’s strong-minded, let’s squash that because she’s going to get too big for her boots.’ It’s the opposite of how I’m parenting my own child where I’m constantly looking for clues so I can support her in her growth. My mum would say, ‘you’ll make a good husband’, because I was quite ambitious and quite organised. At the same time, they could see who I was but I could be quite fiery and determined, and my parents probably felt they needed to control that so it didn’t bring shame onto the family.
“[Actually] I was one of those really goody two shoes; my inner world was complex but on the outside I did what I was told. I still haven’t had my rebellious period!
“Growing up in an immigrant story, being told what to be but not really connecting with it, being confused about who I am, led me to study psychology at university to study my very dysfunctional family roots.”
Making sense of Shah’s story has “meant a lot of unpacking of old layers, having compassion and deep love for my ancestral story as well. It took time, but I love my family, my culture, where I’m from, I own that. It hasn’t always served me, but it’s helped give me wisdom and compassion for others.”
What does she love about her story?
“I come from a line of really strong women, and of wisdom and patience. I always say there’s wisdom in the system. I’ve always seen the bigger picture because [these people] had to suffer so much so these messages have always been passed on without me realising. I was always told to be patient. I saw men and women picking decisions from a place of wisdom. Wisdom was around in many forms.”
Getting into coaching
“Whenever I did career quizzes at school, I always used to get social work. I’ve been curious about people and I wanted to help [them].
“But I was shocked by the type of careers you could have with [a] psychology [background]. The other part of the immigrant story kicked in.
I wanted to have a nice lifestyle and some of the roles with psychology would say, after 15 years of this you’ll be earning £25,000, etc. It wasn’t about the money, but it made me feel confined and I wanted to do something where I could fly. I wouldn’t suit a hierarchical pay structure. I’d like to be somewhere where there is the possibility of achieving anything.”
So in the early 1990s, Shah went into the IT sector, travelling the globe, working in customer-facing roles in sales and business development, parking her interest in helping people and in psychology.
“I had a wonderful life. I became used to being the only Asian woman. It doesn’t really bother me, I can use it to my benefit, getting remembered! The tech sector gave me a lovely lifestyle, one I couldn’t have dreamt of as a little girl.”
However, in her early thirties, “something started to not feel right. I started to feel disconnected. There was no place for my desire to help people and for my interest in psychology and I’d look around the office, thinking, ‘I don’t want to be here in my forties’, but I had no idea what to do.”
She went on a two-week retreat on the Greek island of Skyros and met a woman there who helped her figure out what she wanted to do next.
“This was two decades ago but she was a coach, and in half an hour she helped me understand what I wanted to do. Within 24 hours of getting off the plane, I’d booked myself on to a course to qualify as a coach.”
A few months later, as she was due to start the course, Shah’s mother passed away aged 59. “We didn’t see it coming. I went from living this quite selfish life, trying to get fun back in my life, to suddenly my father was widowed and broken, and at the same time I was doing a coach training course unpacking who I was, letting go of parts of myself, with this deep grief. This is all in hindsight. I reconnected with my father and we rebuilt our relationship, and I left tech and dived in with two feet to build my coaching, coach training and leadership training company in 2006.
“The story behind the story was that I’d kept talking about leaving tech but had this irrational fear I’d end up living under Waterloo Bridge – that immigrant story of not taking risks and the fear of being poor again.
“I always have lots of compassion for people who are fearful of leaving their job, whether the fears are imagined or real. I’m not some brave risk taker – it’s always terrified and traumatised me, dipping my toes into new things. So I took a job in a small consultancy and… I left after three months, thinking I’d look for another job. Then someone said, ‘imagine you had to design a training course’, so I spent an afternoon in a coffee shop creating a course, and randomly reached out to some companies. One of them said ‘come for an interview’, and that was how my freelance career started.
“I’ve always had touchpoints – you know how sometimes you push, push, push, then suddenly instantly your life changes – right time, right place.
“I’ve also learnt that there are cycles and I’ve always overcome them; I’ve learnt to overcome my fears.
“The last scary cycle was the first lockdown, wondering if everything will change overnight. If that had happened 20 years ago, I would’ve gone to pieces. This time I [did have] my moments but I had the resources to think, OK, what do I do now?”
The book
Shah hopes her timely and practical book will be “read by leaders as well as coaches and [be] used as a conversation piece to progress the work, and support coaches who are looking for ways to build their coaching skills around coaching people from different cultural systems and backgrounds. I want it to be a useful tool, but also a gamechanger, to make a difference.”
Her book features many moving and inspiring stories of people from a range of backgrounds, including white working class coaches.
Shah interprets these stories in the context of the diversity and inclusion lens as applied in coaching, offering insights and practical tips for coaching approaches.
Writing the book was “deeply cathartic”, she says. “It took me to new places of awareness about myself, and in the book, I don’t just cover race and culture, I look at other underprivileged groups, which has given me a deeper understanding of [people’s]stories.
“One thing that really resonated with me was [reflecting on my relationship with] my best a friend at school, who has blonde hair and blue eyes. She would rescue me during my childhood and early 20s; [it would be] ‘poor Salma, her mum and dad are very strict’.
“But actually her childhood was [impacted by] her dad leaving her mum when she was six months old and she was carrying the trauma of her birth father never acknowledging her, while I had the privilege of a secure family unit.”
Having been prompted by me to say more on white privilege, Shah says, “We have to accept privilege exists in different flavours. But the privilege of being of a certain class and race does make your life easier, I think we have to accept there is ‘white privilege’ and ‘systemic racism’.
“I hear appalling things to do with a lack of understanding so I think there is still a lot of education to be done about this. And I think [more white people] need to let minority coaches speak. The whole ‘white saviour’ thing is very frustrating.”
Tellingly, Shah then says, “I was so pleased I was allowed to write this book,” then notices her language: “Oh, look, ‘allowed’, I was given ‘permission,’ lucky me – thank you!
“There are lots of ugly truths in the system of racism and prejudice – we can’t deny that. At the same time, the work I’m doing is choosing my battles and following my intuition. In a way, if I think too hard, I wouldn’t do it. If I did, I’d get scared!”
Shah’s is serious and important work, but she’s keen to ensure there’s plenty of fun and laughter, including with her daughter, particularly given her own serious upbringing.
“I grew up around sacrifice – adults sacrificing everything for their children and the parents they’d left behind. Fun didn’t come naturally in my family. I’ve had to learn how to have fun; it was always about sacrifice, ‘doing everything for you, for tomorrow’.
Shah shares that her daughter’s recent school report describes her as ‘humorous, charming and mischievous’. A girl after her mum’s heart. “I got the very same feedback from one of my clients. I like to keep it light and down to earth. I think we can connect through humour, and lightness, and poke fun at ourselves.”
As for her work, she says,“I feel it’s the right time in my life to be doing this work. Rather than me pushing, it’s pulling me, I just have to nudge a door and the door opens. I feel this is my legacy work. I can’t see me doing anything different, I feel it’s making a mark, it feels so right.
“My hope is that with the work I’m doing, it doesn’t become a thing but a norm to have a wider lens. I’m very respectful of the past, I’m deeply interested in history, and am very respectful of coaching’s legacy including from California and the GROW model but the coaching system has to keep evolving, and I feel this is the right evolution of it, with respect for the past. We can own our ancestral coaching past but keep evolving it.
“I’d like to see more people access coaching and more people become coaches. I’d like to see all coaches having that wider lens of belonging.
“Coaching has to be more aware of its own systemic biases and barriers to entry and hold up the mirror to itself as well. There doesn’t have to be a massive change overnight, even a trickle change, I’m happy with that. We have to meet people where they are, from a place of compassion.
“Little things we do or say have deep roots, and can make big changes.”
References
Mastering your power: www.masteringyourpower.com
S Shah, Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging in Coaching, Kogan Page, 2022
Masterclass
- Salma Shah will be offering a half-day masterclass for Coaching at Work on diversity, inclusion and belonging in coaching, on 31 May, 14.00-17.00 GMT. https://bit.ly/35AZ0Oi