What is coaching?
Coaching is an exercise that the coach and client undertake in order to capitalize on client’s skills and bringing out the true, many a time, untapped potential to maximise their performance. This includes several elements, of which ascertaining goals, breaking them down into short-term achievements and subsequently devising actions to achieve these short-term targets are key parts.
According to the domain of the client, the coaching can take the form of manager coaching, executive coaching, business coaching, life coaching etc. The one we deal with is academic life coaching which focuses on improving students’ academic skills and accelerating their performance.
We at Suvipra serve as academic coach of the students and endeavour to reshape academic talent in a way that it matches with current trends and is not superficial but comprehensive. You may want to know how coaching, specifically that provided at Suvipra, isn’t something already available in abundance and hence, it is useful to distinguish coaching from similar activities;
- We aren’t a teacher
A teacher teaches, we by contrast facilitate talent. Teacher is an expert, knows something the students don’t and passes the same to students. Coaching is the exact opposite. The students are considered the experts, know better about their goals and personal strengths and weaknesses. As a coach, we assist you in doing away with these weaknesses and deriving maximum out of your strengths.
- No, we aren’t a trainer
Trainers is an expert who devotes time in making the audience aware of some specific job and trainees in return put to use the knowledge they gather from such sessions in doing those particular tasks. As mentioned earlier, in coaching, client is considered the expert and the coach and the client works as a team. Also, unlike coaching, training is usually one to many.
- Sorry, not career counsellors either
Want to know about the suitable career option and available courses? Go to a career counsellor. But if you have queries like; How can I study more efficiently? How can I retain the material I learn for a longer time? How can I manage my time better? How can I be more motivated? How should I pursue my passion? then Suvipra is the right place.
All these queries are dealt with effectively at Suvipra, since we do not help in identifying the goal but in assisting you in the path to attaining that goal.
- Mentors? No
You can find mentors at your college campus and in workplaces. These ‘seniors’ have spent some time in gaining insight into the environment and hence they can inform you of various challenges and opportunities. These mentors can play a key role in your lives since they can make you aware of processes and ways to get work done in a more efficient manner.
Mentoring is a long-term relationship focused more around developing the mentee’s professional career. By contrast, coaching is much more. As a coach, Suvipra doesn’t want you to perform specifically on a given task. Rather, we endeavour to be a partner in your journey to success by being an enabler who identifies impediments to growth and provides you with workable tools to push away these bottlenecks and emerge as a powerful and learned individual.
Mentoring can be an informal interaction between seniors and their newly inducted counterparts and meetings can take place as and when the mentee needs some advice, guidance or support while coaching is more structured in nature and meetings are scheduled on a regular basis.
- Counselling and therapy? Not even close
Counselling is working with a client who feels uncomfortable, or dissatisfied with their life. They are seeking emotional healing and relief from mental pain. Counselling is reactive and is undertaken when there is a problem to help the person get away from pain or discomfort. Coaching is proactive and growth oriented and is undertaken when a person wants to achieve growth and success in his life.
A counsellor works remedially on a client’s problem. Coaching is not remedial, it is generative. It generates development through well thought actions.
Counselling is more likely to involve understanding and working with past experience while coaching is concerned with achievements in the present and the future.
What is Academic life coaching?
This is a ten-session, personalised one to one programme, which is devised to cover more than 25 tools, the end result of which is summarised as follows:
- Improving students’ academic skillsby identifying unique styles of thinking and learning. Accelerating their performance by way of identifying desired outcomes and meticulously designing actions, systems and habits to attain these outcomes
- Increasing self-awareness, building personal fluency and stronger communication skills. Effectively encouraging emotional intelligenceand nurturing inherent skills and experiences to thrive in the future as fulfilled, effective adults
- Assisting in devising short-term and long-term vision
- Cultivating talents and passions
- Imbibing a spirit of leadership with a view to enabling them become capable of leading an independent and a proactive life
- Empowering students to aptly respond to bottlenecks and failures, and subsequently thrive towards attaining success, and at the same time sparing some time to celebrate success and achievement
- Developing one’s support team/support group
The academic life coach uses specific tools in combination with powerful questions to encourage the client to consider solutions that might not have been implemented up till now. The coach assigned to the individual customises the process in accordance with the interest and goal of the client. Questions are asked, their answers explored and discussed, any hindrances that have until now kept the learner from attaining desired outcomes are pushed away from the path, and the true talent of the individual is discovered and nourished with a view to helping her/ him emerge as a competent and learned professional, capable of shining brighter than peers.
While direct and powerful questions are the basis to awaken the underlying potential in a student, some of the tools that are used in support are;
(Below listed tools are only to give a broad idea and is not the complete list)
- Academic thinking styles – Understanding thinking styles help the students seek out and organize information in a more effective way.
- Science of learning – Develops long term learning.
- Core motivation – This tool help students to understand what really motivates them. It is also a tool to develop self-awareness and gain a better understanding of how to take advantage of personal strengths and weaknesses. It suggests exercises that encourages students to develop stronger communication skills and become a more effective leader.
- Wheel of life – Helps students take a snapshot of their life and identify the areas which needs more attention.
Building empathy – Empathy is the ability to imagine what another person is feeling and thinking and to see situations from their point-of-view. It strengthens students’ emotional intelligence and improves their communication skills. - Future-self – Helps students create a vision of themselves 10-15 years into the future. The coach leads the students through visualization to have a clearer picture of oneself.
- Building empathy – Empathy is the ability to imagine what another person is feeling and thinking and to see situations from their point-of-view. It strengthens students’ emotional intelligence and improves their communication skills.
- Leadership projects – An exercise where the students are encouraged to pick a project, small or big, in relation to their passion and mission. This provides an opportunity to the clients to cultivate their passion. It also helps them become proactive in life and demonstrate leadership.
- Resilience – Leadership is about riding success and recovering from mistakes. The more the students learn to recover from setbacks and build up resilience, the better leaders they are going to be. The aim of the tool is to cut down the time taken to recover and bounce back quickly.
The above-mentioned elements are a glimpse of what Academic Life Coaching has on its agenda. The desired result, which we can promise to attain with your participation and perseverance, is learner’s overall academic development. As the programme reaches its completion, the learner emerges out as a focussed and more passionate intellectual.
To summarize, academic life coaching is a 10 session, one to one programme to develop students’ academic skills, foster emotional intelligence and develop passion. It equips young people with the skills and tools they need to have and meet challenges in the future.
Why Academic life coaching?
The 4 cornerstones of academic life coaching
The academic life coaching program has four cornerstones that comprise the program. These cornerstones provide a foundation for students to thrive, not just academically in school but throughout their life. If something is not working as well as it could, one of these four cornerstones is missing. The ALC program helps students put all four in place.
First cornerstone: Academic Systems
- The first three sessions of the ALC program focus on providing a foundation for creating sustainable systems to improve grades and reduce stress. You will learn how to create systems and habits that make your life easier and how to identify the little changes that can make a big difference. Sometime the solution is not to try harder but develop new methods, tools, and systems to sustainably handle more work.
- To begin, you will determine your academic thinking and learning styles as well as your motivation and personality type. You will use valuable tools and exercises to put what you learn into practice.
Second cornerstone: Personal Fluency
- The second part of the program focuses on increasing your self-awareness and building your fluency with your thoughts, emotions, values and habits.
- We each have an internal language and dialogue made up of empowering or limiting beliefs, assumptions, and perspectives. When you learn how to speak and interpret this internal language, you will soon discover what actions you need to take to be more fulfilled, effective, and less stressed.
- This segment lays foundation for building stronger communication skills and becoming effective leaders. It helps to build on skills and experiences to thrive in future as fulfilled, effective adults.
Third cornerstone: Passion, Leadership and College
- This cornerstone focuses on identifying passion and building mission statements. It will encourage you and charge you for becoming proactive in life.
- One of the most important aspect that third cornerstone takes care of is personal leadership that naturally leads to the ability to create an outstanding college application.
- Leadership is not necessarily having a “leadership position” such as being the president of a club or captain on a sports team. Leadership is more about having a vision of what’s possible, what you want to create, and the impact you want to have on your community.
- College admission officers are looking for positive examples of leadership. They want leaders—individuals who have the vision and the ability to create experiences for others to take part in and share—at their campus.
- From a leadership point-of- view, you are able to look at yourself and your action differently. You also add more meaning and fulfilment to your life. Leadership is one of the most important skills you can develop. The third cornerstone of the ALC program is designed to help you understand your particular brand of leadership.
- This segment also focuses on understanding the importance of recovering from setbacks and taking time to celebrate success before moving towards the next set of goals. Leadership is about riding success and recovering from mistakes. The more the students learn to recover from setbacks and build up resilience, the better leaders they are going to be. The aim here is to cut down the time taken to recover and bounce back quickly.
Fourth cornerstone: Support Team
- The final cornerstone is present throughout the program, and at times, especially the first, fourth, and final session, you will take part in consciously designing your support team.
- Asking for help can be a challenge. For many it represents the admission that you cannot figure it out on your own or that you are not enough on your own. School teaches us that asking for help when it counts, such as on a test or quiz, is cheating. Of course, cheating is wrong, but outside of school, asking for help—especially when it counts the most—is a characteristic of strength.
- Learning when and how to ask for help effectively is an important skill that leads to creating a network and community of people who are committed to supporting you and providing help when you need it most. In time, you will also give back and help others; and really, this kind of giving and receiving is an important element to fully participating in your community.
When you complete this program, you will:
Achieve academic objectives
- Identify thinking and learning styles
- Identify desired outcomes
- Design systems and habits to achieve them
- Study smarter by improving learning methodology and developing skills in time management and goal setting
Reduce stress by creating effective systems
- Goals are great but often create more stress than they resolve. An academic life coach helps client design action steps that are more effective and actually reduce stress and helps achieve results
- As the whole programme is combined with life skills, it helps the student lead a better life by helping her/him determine priorities
- Boost confidence and excitement about future
Increase self-awareness and build personal fluency and stronger communication skills
- Boost self- understanding through increased awareness of character traits
- Determine one’s personality type
- Understand one’s motivation style and become more proactive
- Build fluency with own thoughts, emotions, and habits
- Build stronger communication skills and become effective leaders
Improve emotional intelligence
- Develop stamina and skill to be more empathetic
- Deeper awareness about the surrounding environment and develop interpersonal skills
- Understanding the importance of creating own network and community of people
- Gain skills and experiences to thrive in future as fulfilled effective adults
Devise vision and cultivating one’s passion
- Develop short-term and long-term vision
- Understand unique strengths and cultivate talents and passions
Identify one’s leadership brand
- Improve personal leadership that naturally leads to the ability to create an outstanding college application
- Leadership is not necessarily having a “leadership position” such as being the president of a club or captain on a sports team. Leadership is more about having a vision of what’s possible, what you want to create, and the impact you want to have on your community
- Write more successful college applications because student will more naturally demonstrate the skills valued by admission officers as they are looking for positive examples of leadership. They want leaders—individuals who have the vision and the ability to create experiences for others to take part in and share—at their campus
Foster resilience and develop one’s support team/support group
- Understand the importance of recovering from setbacks and taking time to celebrate success before moving towards the next set of goals
- Consciously designing their support team
- Asking for help can be a challenge. Learning when and how to ask effectively is important for creating a network and community of people who are committed to supporting and providing help when the student needs the most
Once a client experiences the benefits of the Academic Life Coaching Program, the client establishes a positive spiral of enjoying better external results, while developing more internal capability. Such an upward cycle not only helps clients thrive in the present moment but establish habits and mind-sets to enable flourishing throughout their lives.
How – The process of academic life coaching
- The academic life coaching programme is a 10 session, one to one programme, carried on between the coach and the client/student
- Each session is a personalized, one-on-one meeting with a trained academic life coach who can help the students improve their academic skills and overall performance
- Each of the sessions are designed to take between 40 to 60 minutes and is conducted face to face between the coach and the client over zoom (online medium)
- The programme is designed to cover more than twenty-five concepts over the course of these sessions. However, if the coach thinks apt, a few concepts might be covered in greater details and a few might be only discussed, depending upon the strengths and weaknesses of the client and the goals the student is trying to achieve
- The concepts are compiled in the form Workbook which acts like a roadmap
- It is a complete program, and yet, like life, we circle around to deal with issues and challenges that we have dealt with before. The workbook is both a guide and a reminder. The coach’s job is to tap into a client’s natural curiosity about herself or himself and point the client in a direction that she or he hasn’t looked before
- The timing of the program is important. We do not recommend going through all the sessions in a weekend or rushing the program. We have found it best to spread the sessions out to once a week or once every two weeks. It is important to take time between sessions to put the concepts into action and really try them out in your life. You want the program to have a long-term impact, and stretching out the learning over a few months is a great way to ensure you are really changing habits, not just learning interesting and useful concepts.
Who is eligible for ALC programme?
You are eligible if;
- You are in school (13 years or older) or in college
- Looking to build your academic skills and accelerate your performance
- Increase self-awareness and build personal fluency
- Improve emotional intelligence
- Identify your passion and your leadership brand
In short, if you are someone who wants to succeed, live a fulfilled and meaningful life, you are eligible!
Know your coach
Shruti Gupta
Founder, Suvipra – Advance Your Career
Shruti is a chartered accountant turned entrepreneur and a certified academic life coach.
She started her career in the fields of auditing, direct taxation and international taxation at a multi-national firm, from where she moved to handling project financing and management consultancy at her family-owned firm in New Delhi. With a strong experience of more than 5 years, she embarked on her entrepreneurial journey with successfully setting up Suvipra, with an aim to elevating the level of education and raise the overall experience for students. Following the track, Suvipra is revolutionizing the traditional education system with its best-in-class innovative tools to make students and young professionals future-ready. Currently providing academic life coaching programme and running a knowledge portal for enhancing general awareness and intellect, more about the organization can be found at About Us.
Do not let anything kill your mojo!
A topper throughout her school life and ranked among top 0.1% of students in India by CBSE, she understands what needs to be done differently to be successful. Hungry for knowledge and an avid participant in extra-curricular activities, she learnt the art of balancing multiple things at a very young age. The turning point came when she failed in CA Final. Two years, lonely room and a whole lot of books to study taught her the biggest lesson of her life. An ardent believer of “Do not let anything kill your mojo”, she experienced first-hand what can lead to an unexpected setback, what it takes to come out of a failure and bounce back with full spirit to clinch the win. (Resilience has been made as one of the most important part of the academic life coaching programme. Shruti will motivate you to even celebrate failures, for they give the requisite shape to your personality and approach. At the same time, she will skilfully lead you to the path of success.).
Life lived passionately is a life well lived!
“Live your life to the fullest” is what she believes in and “passion” is what she lives by. Highly driven, energetic and enthusiastic, passion is what one can find in every segment of her life, be it personal or professional, who gives her 100% to whatever she puts her hands on. Loves reading and writing, swears by yoga and meditation, ensures healthy eating, bursts stress through baking (her cakes are to die for), a fan of Novak Djokovic, plays badminton, she believes in being a constant learner. It won’t be wrong to say that the course is in fact an extension of her personality.
An awesome coach, her expertise lies in academic improvement, life skill training, recovering from setbacks and following passion. She stresses on constantly challenging oneself towards growth while enjoying the present moment and following one’s own life clock! (You can expect visible academic improvement, skills enhancement with Shruti as your coach, besides discovering a new you who fearlessly faces challenges and setbacks and braves all odds to achieve what is desired).
Formal Education and Training
Associate Certified Academic Life Coach, Coach Training Edu, Oregon, USA
Compassionate Integrity Training, Life University, Georgia, USA
Chartered Accountant, The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, India
Applied Valuation and Securities Analysis, London School of Economics and Political Science (Summer programme), UK
Bachelors of Commerce (Honours), Delhi University, India
Schooling from Sanskriti School, Chanakyapuri, New Delhi, India
Other Associations
Sanskriti School Alumni Association as the Batch Representative
Shruti regularly writes on educational and financial topics and her blogs can be found at Suvipra.com
Achievements
Selected as one of the 60 World Youth Leaders for promoting Kindness through education by UNESCO MGIEP
A topper throughout the school life and ranked among 0.1% students all over India by CBSE