My husband never said it to hurt me. He said it because he believed it.
“You are already coaching people. You just haven’t called it that yet.”
He was right, though it took me a long time to admit it.
Looking back, the signs had been there for years. Back in 2019, I was not happy in my job. I was recruiting around thirty people a month for junior roles, and the placing itself had stopped exciting me. What I actually loved were the conversations around it. When someone spoke to me about a career change, a job shift, or simply wanting to get better at what they did, I came alive. That was the part of the work that felt like mine.
And it went back even further than that. Between 2010 and 2013, long before I had any title for it, I was already doing this. When friends and colleagues complained about their jobs, I would sit with them and show them how to use LinkedIn, how to find the right connections, how to build their profiles, how to put themselves forward. I approached people about their skills and their opportunities. I did it naturally, because I cared, and because helping someone find their footing gave me something the recruiting numbers never did.
I had spent 20 years in HR, leading teams and sitting across from people in their hardest moments at work, helping them find their way again.
In time, I decided to honour that pull properly. Between 2019 and 2021, I trained as a coach and earned my ICF ACC certification. I had done the work. I had the credential. And yet, even then, I still hesitated to fully claim the word coach.
It felt too big. Too presumptuous. As if I needed even more proof before I could truly call myself one. Then Saloni, my own coach, asked me a question I was not expecting.
“What would you do if you stopped waiting to be ready?”
I did not answer right away. I sat with it for days. And slowly, the answer arrived.
I would show up, fully, as a coach. Not when I had one more certificate. Not when I finally felt confident enough. Now. As I am.
Because the truth was, I already had every reason to call myself a coach. I was trained. I was certified. I had been doing this work in one form or another for most of my life. The real question was no longer whether I was qualified. It was why I kept waiting to practise what I already was.
That was the day I stopped waiting. And started leading.
Here is what I have learned, and what I now share with the leaders I work with. So many of us wait to feel ready before we step into the thing we are clearly meant to do. We collect one more qualification, wait for one more sign, look for one more piece of proof.
But readiness is rarely a feeling that arrives. More often, it is a decision you make, and the confidence follows after you begin, not before.
So let me ask you the question Saloni asked me. What is the one thing you keep telling yourself you will do once you are ready? Whatever just came to mind, that is your answer. And you are more ready for it than you think.
With love,
Usha Nagrani, Executive and Leadership Coach
Usha Nagrani, an HR Leader turned ICF Executive Coach, empowers senior management professionals and business leaders to achieve breakthroughs as expats, build cross-cultural teams, and navigate the exciting journey of career acceleration.
