Believe In Yourself: Making a Difference by Encouraging Everyone to Become Best Version of ThemSelves
Harlina Sodhi
Co-Founder
Established in 2018, Believe in Yourself is a boutique consulting professional services firm that specializes in areas of organizational culture and uses powerful transformational tools as executive coaching, workshops, technology driven solutions, leadership journey programs and end-to-end culture consulting to catapult all growth.
The Co-Founder of Believe in Yourself, Harlina Sodhi took a leap of faith and shifted from employeeship to entrepreneurship after working in corporates for over 25 years. She has led sales & marketing functions, managed large scale change & transformation projects, designed & headed contemporary HR centres of excellence, and built several learning universities, in addition to being the HR chief of a large businesses.
In an exclusive conversation with CEO Insights, Harlina explains how they design and deliver bespoke solutions that facilitate mindset shift in employees at all level and provide implementation and follow-up support to help them blossom into their true potential, thereby via their interactive and insightful interventions, empowering professionals to realize their aspirations and live fulfilled lives while of course creating significant business impact.
Can you provide us with a glimpse of your professional journey before the establishment of your firm Believe in Yourself? What are your skillsets & strengths that you consider to be unique?
I am a diverse HR and business professional with experience in a variety of areas including business, HR & HR technology, leadership,consulting,learning & development, and business & sales. Overall, I have 28 years of work experience, including 17 years in senior management and leadership. I operate at crossroads of talent, technology, and change. I have worked across several industries and sectors such as Financial Services & Banking, IT, Manufacturing, Oil &Gas, Consumer & e-Commerce, IT & ITES, Consulting and Technology.
I started my career as a salesperson, which I believe honed my resilience, optimism, spirit of collaboration and partnership, and most of all, taught me to be agile. With the ability to think win win, generate value to all stakeholders, develop innovative products & services, provide six-sigma service and exemplary experience. Working for a global MNC and an Indian conglomerate, as well as a startup bank and entreprenerial firm has instilled in me a unique ability to build and scale businesses, be innovative & disruptive at the same time, build & leverage networks & communities, and scour the global marketplace for great collaborations and partnerships.
What inspired you to establish the firm? Share with us the inception story of the company.
This above all To thine own self be true! said Shakespeare 405 years ago. Which was the beginning of Believe In Yourself. I felt that all of us have the potential and power to be far more than what we settle for. All that is needed was unflinching belief in self. Mindset matters! This is how it began. I took a leap of faith and moved out of my corporate career to build and scale-up the firm. Our vision was crystal clear. To impact lives at scale of professionals across the organization as well as all individuals. We wanted to work
purpose backwards.
Hence, chose to focus on working in the areas of organization culture which is all about company purpose, core values, behaviours of its people while alongside building and using powerful tools of change and transformation such as leadership workouts and retreats, build out-of-organization culture strategy, architecture & roadmaps, alignment workshops and executive coaching. We fired from multiple cylinders. One thing led to another and now, we are seen as a credible firm with stellar client list, comprehensive culture, coaching and inclusion products and credentialed coaches.
Kindly throw some light on the content selection process that you follow at your company. Also, what are the various topics that you cover under your programs for leadership development?
Since our inception, the firm has been pushing the envelope in the areas of Organization Culture, Coaching, Inclusion & Diversity and Building Future Leadership Skills. We offer end-to-end consulting & advisory, implementation & execution, compliance & governance for corporations looking to build, reignite and crescendo its values and behaviours. We design several bespoke interventions to support leadership integrations, succession planning, preparation for organization growth, build-up of confidence, contemporary communications and gravitas to take on CXO positions. We do this via developing an approach and 1-3-5 year culture journey roadmaps to supporting policies, processes, and programs, creating & buying learning content, designing engagement practices to embed culture into the DNA of the organization. Enabled by diagnostic tools to measure the change and business impact, our focus is towards ensuring all interventions are designed to scaleup, processes are streamlined and easy to replicate across lines of business and leadership cadres.
We believe our network of 191 coaches, thousands of hours of executive, life & leadership coaching experience, 5 copyright leadership and coaching products & interventions help professionals prepare for growth, build brands, master their emotions.
Elucidate the unique selling points that segregate you from your competitors and help you to attract customers?
Our primary differentiators are our agility and enthusiasm to create 10x value for our customers, our vast network, huge domain knowledge in an area of organizational culture and mindset of growth powered by deep belied in alliances and partnerships. Our intent is to grow the marketplace, collaborate rather than compete, contribute to India's startup ecosystem and eventually democratize life and leadership coaching.
Believe in Yourself believes in using all aspects of Social Leadership to grow. With over one million followers on its social media account (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube), our aim is to build awareness of power and potential of executive coaching. We do this via several LinkedIn Live presentations, culture tweet chats, coaching hackathons and other initiatives such as Believe In Yourself book club, broadcasts, culture confluences, and coaching festivals. In fact, this has always given us inroads into APAC geographies, and we now have coaches and clients in Dubai, Nepal, Malyais and Singapore.
What client success stories are you particularly proud of?
While there are several that tested us till the time we cracked them, these three are the ones we take a lot of pride in. Peak of Pandemic As the CEO of a technology firm, she had tough choice to make. Get the leadership together & fanatically focus on growing the business, given this was an opportunity for them to significantly scale-up and grow. Or, take a pause, look hard at the skills & capabilities of the leadership team, work on two pronged strategy Strengthen them
Hence, chose to focus on working in the areas of organization culture which is all about company purpose, core values, behaviours of its people while alongside building and using powerful tools of change and transformation such as leadership workouts and retreats, build out-of-organization culture strategy, architecture & roadmaps, alignment workshops and executive coaching. We fired from multiple cylinders. One thing led to another and now, we are seen as a credible firm with stellar client list, comprehensive culture, coaching and inclusion products and credentialed coaches.
Believe in yourself is on a journey to impact lives such that everyone believes and then becomes a best version of themselves
Kindly throw some light on the content selection process that you follow at your company. Also, what are the various topics that you cover under your programs for leadership development?
Since our inception, the firm has been pushing the envelope in the areas of Organization Culture, Coaching, Inclusion & Diversity and Building Future Leadership Skills. We offer end-to-end consulting & advisory, implementation & execution, compliance & governance for corporations looking to build, reignite and crescendo its values and behaviours. We design several bespoke interventions to support leadership integrations, succession planning, preparation for organization growth, build-up of confidence, contemporary communications and gravitas to take on CXO positions. We do this via developing an approach and 1-3-5 year culture journey roadmaps to supporting policies, processes, and programs, creating & buying learning content, designing engagement practices to embed culture into the DNA of the organization. Enabled by diagnostic tools to measure the change and business impact, our focus is towards ensuring all interventions are designed to scaleup, processes are streamlined and easy to replicate across lines of business and leadership cadres.
We believe our network of 191 coaches, thousands of hours of executive, life & leadership coaching experience, 5 copyright leadership and coaching products & interventions help professionals prepare for growth, build brands, master their emotions.
Elucidate the unique selling points that segregate you from your competitors and help you to attract customers?
Our primary differentiators are our agility and enthusiasm to create 10x value for our customers, our vast network, huge domain knowledge in an area of organizational culture and mindset of growth powered by deep belied in alliances and partnerships. Our intent is to grow the marketplace, collaborate rather than compete, contribute to India's startup ecosystem and eventually democratize life and leadership coaching.
Believe in Yourself believes in using all aspects of Social Leadership to grow. With over one million followers on its social media account (LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube), our aim is to build awareness of power and potential of executive coaching. We do this via several LinkedIn Live presentations, culture tweet chats, coaching hackathons and other initiatives such as Believe In Yourself book club, broadcasts, culture confluences, and coaching festivals. In fact, this has always given us inroads into APAC geographies, and we now have coaches and clients in Dubai, Nepal, Malyais and Singapore.
What client success stories are you particularly proud of?
While there are several that tested us till the time we cracked them, these three are the ones we take a lot of pride in. Peak of Pandemic As the CEO of a technology firm, she had tough choice to make. Get the leadership together & fanatically focus on growing the business, given this was an opportunity for them to significantly scale-up and grow. Or, take a pause, look hard at the skills & capabilities of the leadership team, work on two pronged strategy Strengthen them
during the time when everyone had been thrown into the deep dark sea of ambiguity & uncertainty via the process scale-up the business & build leadership benchstrength. The CEO reached-out to partner with us on an eight month executive coaching journey interwoven with 1:1 coaching sessions, master classes, cafe chats and coaching simulation. This resulted in significant needle movement on leaders self awareness & mastery over their emotions. Their readiness for growth, leveraging uncertainly is all time high. They are been seen as people leaders who are inspiring, communicative, inclusive and empowering. Stakeholders are reporting visible mindset shift & behaviour change.
Our 'How' is as Critical as our ‘What’ - The company's rise was meteoric. 'Where' the company was headed was very clear to all to be the best product and operations enterprise. The 'How' of it was getting blurry. It was time to rewire the 'Values' with all the lights in the house on! The CEO, CHRO and Product leaders formed a SWAT team, and together, we got down to articulating, then training and now embedding new values of agility, critical thinking, accountability and collaboration into the DNA of the company. Believe In Yourself team worked with the client for over 15 months, partnered with creating their culture approach, detailing values & behaviours, building content, training the leadership team and the inculcating the behaviours into company processes.
If We don't do it Now, When will We? This was the war cry of the CEO. 2020-21 has been a watershed year for the pharmaceutical industry across the world. Given their industry leadership, this company chose to focus as much on their culture as their scorching course of action driven growth. All progressive leaders know that 'growth' can be as painful and derailing as a downturn. We worked with them to define tenets of culture that will serve them best, dugout stories of success and failure from their roast to be the beacon of light for their future. We created several nuggets of culture and trained their leaders to be Coaches. A competency which is mission critical given workforce of today is dealing with abnormal new normal. The outcome was that across the board, leaders started to behave like a coach, listening, exploring and nudging people in the right direction. Collectively, they brought their employee engagement to a 'tipping point'. Today, their focus is to build a coaching mindset and skills in every manager. Business will happen!
Is there any recent innovation comingup in your company? What is the future roadmap set for your centre?
We are always disrupting and innovating, and our company model relies heavily on being agile and pivoting. We have recently forged partnerships with three global organizations to expand our global footprint and business offerings a worldwide consulting firm, a technology pioneer, and an international coaching firm.
Clients we work with will soon be able to feel the impact to positive change and transformation in the readiness for growth of their leadership teams, strengthening of their middle management with contemporary life skills, shift in mindset and values across their organization that powers their culture into the future. Business performance at scale!
We are getting ready to launch Season-6 of our unique and patented coaching initiative called Experience Coaching. Besides this, given our fanatic focus on growth for not only ourselves, but our entire ecosystem of clients, coaches, companies, we are in final stages of going live with the 'BIY Growth Festival'. Stay tuned to know more on all our social media handles.
Harlina Sodhi, Co-Founder
Harlina is a multifunctional business professional with experience in the areas of organizational culture, leadership, consulting, learning/od technology, diversity & inclusion, and business & sales. She is an entrepreneur who co-founded believe in yourself in 2018 as a firm and consulting practice that fuels culture, coaching, and inclusiveness. Herself a PCC coach, harlina's single point agenda is to ensure that believe in yourself takes root deeply into the minds and hearts of everyone it touches!
Our 'How' is as Critical as our ‘What’ - The company's rise was meteoric. 'Where' the company was headed was very clear to all to be the best product and operations enterprise. The 'How' of it was getting blurry. It was time to rewire the 'Values' with all the lights in the house on! The CEO, CHRO and Product leaders formed a SWAT team, and together, we got down to articulating, then training and now embedding new values of agility, critical thinking, accountability and collaboration into the DNA of the company. Believe In Yourself team worked with the client for over 15 months, partnered with creating their culture approach, detailing values & behaviours, building content, training the leadership team and the inculcating the behaviours into company processes.
If We don't do it Now, When will We? This was the war cry of the CEO. 2020-21 has been a watershed year for the pharmaceutical industry across the world. Given their industry leadership, this company chose to focus as much on their culture as their scorching course of action driven growth. All progressive leaders know that 'growth' can be as painful and derailing as a downturn. We worked with them to define tenets of culture that will serve them best, dugout stories of success and failure from their roast to be the beacon of light for their future. We created several nuggets of culture and trained their leaders to be Coaches. A competency which is mission critical given workforce of today is dealing with abnormal new normal. The outcome was that across the board, leaders started to behave like a coach, listening, exploring and nudging people in the right direction. Collectively, they brought their employee engagement to a 'tipping point'. Today, their focus is to build a coaching mindset and skills in every manager. Business will happen!
Is there any recent innovation comingup in your company? What is the future roadmap set for your centre?
We are always disrupting and innovating, and our company model relies heavily on being agile and pivoting. We have recently forged partnerships with three global organizations to expand our global footprint and business offerings a worldwide consulting firm, a technology pioneer, and an international coaching firm.
Clients we work with will soon be able to feel the impact to positive change and transformation in the readiness for growth of their leadership teams, strengthening of their middle management with contemporary life skills, shift in mindset and values across their organization that powers their culture into the future. Business performance at scale!
We are getting ready to launch Season-6 of our unique and patented coaching initiative called Experience Coaching. Besides this, given our fanatic focus on growth for not only ourselves, but our entire ecosystem of clients, coaches, companies, we are in final stages of going live with the 'BIY Growth Festival'. Stay tuned to know more on all our social media handles.
Harlina Sodhi, Co-Founder
Harlina is a multifunctional business professional with experience in the areas of organizational culture, leadership, consulting, learning/od technology, diversity & inclusion, and business & sales. She is an entrepreneur who co-founded believe in yourself in 2018 as a firm and consulting practice that fuels culture, coaching, and inclusiveness. Herself a PCC coach, harlina's single point agenda is to ensure that believe in yourself takes root deeply into the minds and hearts of everyone it touches!