#199 - Think Like an Engineer, Talk Like an Executive, and Go Beyond Your Limits - Pramoda Vyasarao

[00:01:40] Introduction

Henry Suryawirawan: Hi everyone, welcome back to another new episode of the Tech Lead Journal podcast. I have a guest today. He’s an experienced engineering leader turned coach. So he has two decades of experience working at Oracle and Meta.

Pramoda Vyasarao today is with me. I’m really excited to talk to you today about communications, how we can get better at it. And also like some learnings from your coaching and also like goal setting kind of experience. So welcome to the show, Pramoda.

Pramoda Vyasarao: I am so excited to be here, Henry. I watched your episodes earlier, but excited to be here as a guest.

[00:02:13] Career Turning Points

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. Pramoda, I always love to ask my guests maybe first to share a little bit about yourself, particularly, if you have some career turning points that you think we all can learn from that.

Pramoda Vyasarao: I can share two turning points from my career. One is, as an engineer, I struggled with communicating in public, especially presenting ideas to a group. Luckily, I learned about a club called Toastmasters back in 2003. I joined the club and I went to their meetings for about three years, from 2003 to 2006. This was a huge turning point for my career because after those three years, I became so good in communicating, clarifying, and ideas selling with people that actually gave me a new opportunity in my career. I became a product manager for a couple of years, then enterprise data architect, then went into engineering management career. So that was a big breakthrough in my career. It opened new doors of possibilities for me as an engineer.

The second breakthrough in my career has been last year. There was a massive layoff at Meta last year in January 2023. My role was also eliminated. I was at a choice point. Should I go get another job in Big Tech or do something on my own? I always wanted to be a coach, author, and help other people with leadership. I decided to take a two year career break from 2023 to 2025 to teach courses, to do one to one coaching, and publish a book. Those two are important turning points in my life. The journey of Toastmasters and becoming an author coach after the layoff at Meta.

[00:03:42] Going Through Layoff

Henry Suryawirawan: Well, thanks for sharing these two definitely great turning points, right? So the first thing, maybe if I can pick a little bit, about the layoffs, I know some people might get affected through some layoffs in some big companies. What is your personal experience going through this journey and maybe some tips for people who may have gone into the same situation?

Pramoda Vyasarao: My number one tip, Henry, is anyone who goes through this should not make it personal because it is not you or me. It’s all the result of the economy and how the business is doing and we don’t make decisions. In fact, in my career, I have made decisions where I have let go other people in my list, in my team. So I understand how the process works, how the list is made, and how things work. My message to folks is please never take this personally. It is not about you as an individual. It’s a lot of variables involved and you have no control.

The second advice I have is find a coach or a mentor who you can talk and share your idea. Here is what I’m doing, here is my plan right now. If you want to take a couple of months break or work for some smaller companies or do some consulting work, work with a mentor or a coach who can help you guide in the right direction. Because if you’re all doing all alone and thinking all by yourself, sometimes you start doubting yourself and that does not help, especially in the time of not being employed. So two things to summarize, one is don’t take it personally, find some professional help from a mentor or a coach.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, I think it’s very important not to couple this situation with your identity, with your capability, right, with your situation, right? But sometimes it’s rather unfortunate. I experienced it before as well. I mean, like many, many years ago. So I think it’s always very important. Don’t let yourself down simply because you think it’s all your fault, right? So I think that’s a very good message.

[00:05:25] Joining Toastmasters

Henry Suryawirawan: And I think another thing that we want to talk about today is about communication. I know that in the beginning you mentioned about your career turning point, which is joining Toastmasters. I think Toastmasters have been around for many, many, many years. Maybe just a little bit of, I don’t know, like what’s your take about Toastmasters should engineers start considering joining Toastmasters to improve their communication?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yeah, my answer is absolutely yes. In fact, there was a time where we used to, I was a vice president of membership at Oracle’s Club, the sponsor. We used to run around the building and pull people to the meeting. You should come. You need this skill. You should come. And they would ask me, I am an engineer. Why do I need public speaking skill? What people don’t realize is you are looking at one aspect of communication, which is standing in public and speaking. But there is a lot goes on behind it. You create a speech for about five to seven minutes. So you write 500 to 700 words on a Word document. You prepare on a topic. That’s an excellent skill to gain as an engineer. You’re researching. You’re thinking and you’re using methodology to write your speech from beginning, body, and ending. And you’re able to persuade people, narrate stories, and informational speech, inspiring speech. Many things you can achieve in Toastmasters. Writing, making a case for a story, emotional aspects of a speech, and connecting with the audience. These are great skills to learn. You will become a better writer, better speaker, and better human being by meeting more people.

So there’s a lot of things you can gain with Toastmasters. Most people, unfortunately, think it’s only public speaking. I’m not interested in speaking in public and entertaining the audience. I’m not of that personality. They just cop out giving that as a reason. But there is a lot you can gain by being a member. These days, there are online clubs. Back in the days in 2003, there was no online club. We had to go to the club meeting in person. These days, there are online meetings on Zoom and other mechanisms. So find out a club in your area. You can go to the website toastmasters.org. You can find out clubs in your area and join them. You will not regret the decision. I can tell you from my experience, you will never regret the decision.

[00:07:34] Tips for Being a Great Speaker

Henry Suryawirawan: I personally haven’t joined Toastmasters. Although, I have joined some of the meetings just to get a glimpse of what Toastmasters is all about, right? So one, maybe one question. I mean, you have said it, like many engineers think they don’t want to do public speaking, they don’t want to be a great presenter, orator, whatever that is, right? And sometimes joining this meeting feels intimidating because you see a lot of great speakers doing their speaking, right? So what’s your takeaway for us not to get disheartened looking at the great speakers? Like how do you actually start, you know, when you join Toastmasters until you become a great speaker like now?

Pramoda Vyasarao: I love the question. This comes in my one to one coaching as well. I coach a lot of senior engineers and managers. This question keeps coming that I don’t like self promotion. I don’t like talking about myself or about my project. I don’t like, enjoy, I don’t like standing in front of people and talking. My answer always to my clients is, there is a distinction between self promotion and self expression. There is a huge difference. When you are standing in front of people and talking, please don’t think you are self promoting. Think of it as a self expression activity. You have some ideas, you have some thoughts in your mind, you have some experiences in your life, they are unique to you. You can bring all that experience and make it a matter of self expression in front of a group. Not to impress them. But just to express yourself. That will burden, that will reduce the burden from your shoulder that you’re not impressing people with your skills. You’re merely expressing your ideas in front of people.

Henry Suryawirawan: That’s actually a very great tip. I remember Kelsey Hightower also mentioned about this, right? It’s about telling your story rather than to impress or even imitate other people, right? So I think it’s about expressing yourself. So thanks for highlighting that.

[00:09:17] Think Like an Engineer, Talk Like an Executive

Henry Suryawirawan: So one thing that you do is actually to create this course called communication engineering, right? So I think the selling pitch of this course is think like an engineer, but talk like an executive. So maybe this is something from your past experience as well. Tell us like what’s the gist of this course and why we should think like an executive actually?

Pramoda Vyasarao: What happens, I have seen in an engineer’s career, Henry, is in my own career and others I’ve been helping, there is this notion that either or mentality. I am either a strong coder, engineer, technical problem solver, or I am a leader or a communicator or a presenter. This has to stop. This either or has to stop in the industry. That is why I keep bringing this concept of, you are always thinking like an engineer, but you need to communicate like an executive. It’s a combination of both. You don’t have to drop your technical skills. You are the expert in your domain. But the more you start communicating with people without using jargons, technical words, whenever it is required, with a business team or your leadership team or customers, the more you can build flexibility in your communication, you will not only enjoy your career, you will have more opportunities. You will have more impact in your job. That is the number one reason I tell people to consider communication is it’s a combination of both.

So what I did was after I started my own company last year, the company is called Changesmith Coaching. I thought how do I bring my experience of Toastmasters, people who don’t want to go for a long time, like three years or four years, how do I condense all my experience in a four week course where they get all the foundational elements and they can develop habits in four weeks? That was my intention behind this course. I condensed all my experience in communicating. Connecting with people, sharing feedback, conversations with people. I took all the various framework of authors and my experience.

I packaged that into a four week course called Communication Engineering. The premise of the course is based on the audience, based on who you’re speaking to, you need to flexibly change your style as well as mode of communication. How much do you share, like how much detail? It’s like you are in the elevator. Depending on your audience, you can go higher in the elevator, which is more abstract and high level information. Or if somebody is your peer engineer, you can go down in the elevator and tell them everything about details. So this is the flexibility of communication elevator from ground floor to 10th floor, depending on who you’re communicating with.

[00:11:45] Your Communication Gives You More Opportunities

Henry Suryawirawan: Right. I think like almost many engineers, right, would go into details, especially when people ask, and sometimes they use jargon like what you said, right? And sometimes like explaining it from the tech point of view. So I think speaking like an executive definitely is very important, you know, especially you mentioned in the course pitch as well, like if you want to progress in your career, right? Going into the ladder, maybe becoming a more experienced engineering leader, senior VP and things like that. Why do you think this is such an important thing to progress in your career?

Pramoda Vyasarao: If you really see, software engineering is a team sport. It is not an individual sport. You see any company, they are developing in teams, whether it is a clear product development company or a traditional IT company or a platform engineer. Any group you go to, you don’t work in isolation. You always work with people who are non-technical. These non-technical people can be other people like data scientists, product managers, business analysts, or business systems analysts, marketing, sales, finance, customer support. And your own customers, for example, they may be non-technical. So when you communicate with these people, it is extremely important you connect with them.

What happens is as you grow in your career and you build these skills, invariably you get invited to go to meetings where communication skill is required. If you don’t have this skill, so you will not get these opportunities. When you have these skills, I’m sure if somebody has a skill, their manager will say, can you attend this meeting? We want you to communicate to the customer in that meeting. You have the skill, technical skill already, but adding those communication aspects will become helpful to you. You will become more valuable in the conversations because you can connect with people. You can speak their language, not only your language, but their language of business, their challenges, their user journey, and so on. So in one word, it’s flexibility in your communication gives you more opportunities in your career.

[00:13:41] Written Communication Skills

Henry Suryawirawan: Yeah, so I think also sometimes it’s very important to convey your idea, you know, like how do you think from the technology rather than just following from others, right? Be part of the critical members of the team, right, in order to bring the company forward. And definitely communication, be it verbally or in, you know, writings, right, are very, very important. So what’s your take about writing communication skills? Do you think this is equally important as well?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Absolutely! Both writing documents, writing emails, your Slack messages. In fact, even presentations as well, the way you design presentations. See, some companies don’t like presentations like Amazon, they like six page document, that’s fine. But both of them require thoughtful writing. Writing is not easy because you need to crystallize your thinking. It needs new skills, it needs practice. So writing stories, writing your memos or a structured document, as well as compiling your top five ideas on a presentation, both are extremely important skills. You start with verbal communication, you communicate orally and share your thoughts. But at some point, to scale yourself, you need to start documenting well, writing things well. And there are many benefits. At some point, you can start your own newsletter as an engineer. You can start your own blog. There are so many things you can do these days. These skills, if you pick up along the way, they can become your life skills, and they can also help you monetize them later. So there are good benefits of becoming a better writer and communicator.

Henry Suryawirawan: So I can attest, right, in the very beginning. I think both writing and, you know, speaking to me were very difficult, right? But like you said, it’s a skill, right? We all can learn from it, we can get better at it. Maybe we can find coach and mentor as well. So I think those two skills, especially if you wanna progress in your career, definitely, very important.

[00:15:24] TALL Framework for Communication & Leadership

Henry Suryawirawan: You also have this framework called TALL framework in your communication engineering. Maybe give us a little bit of a glimpse, like, what is TALL framework? How can we use it to improve our communication?

Pramoda Vyasarao: What I’ll do, Henry, is I’ll give you a quick overview of the four aspects, and you can go deeper into any of those. I brought up this TALL framework, because these are the four areas I learned as an engineer and then as a product manager and engineering leader that these four areas are crucial for communication, leadership, and personal development.

The first area is called Talking with structures. When somebody asks me a question in a business forum or in a customer meeting, I need to think about how do I ensure I answer in a way that people remember information. And structures are extremely helpful for people to remember information. So in that aspect, I teach a lot of structures to communicate. One example could be what happened, so what, like why is it important, and now what. So what, so what, and now what is a nice structure to communicate. If you tell me what’s happening with this release, give me an update, I can say what’s happening. Why is it important? And what are the next steps? That’s one example of structure. We can go into more details later.

The second aspect is, in the TALL framework, is Asking insightful questions. I realized in my own career I knew how to answer, how to make statements. But I did not know how to ask good questions. My questions are primarily binary questions that elicited yes or no answers. Did you do this? Is this ready? Those are all yes or no answers. But if you ask open ended questions, you can make people think and respond well. Like why, what, how, where, when, how. Asking these questions will elicit more information, it will help them clarify their thoughts and tell you what’s happening in their mind.

The third one in TALL framework is Listening. Listening deeply to go beyond words. Because many times in a conversation, we are not trained to listen. We are trained to interrupt and respond, look for the opportunity to talk, and then there is a pause, I take over the conversation. So in this framework, we talk about how do we listen well, how do we demonstrate that we are listening as well as reconfirm our understanding through listening. That happens in the L framework, which is Listening.

The last one is called Leadership Development. I’m a big fan of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith who wrote the book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. In fact, Marshall also endorsed my book. If you remember the book title, he endorsed my book. He is a gracious person. I love his leadership methodology. In the last framework, we talk about a simple model called, uh, Stakeholder Centered Leadership Coaching. There are three steps to it, we can go deeper later. I call them as ABC method: Awareness, Behavioral Change, and Continuous Measurement, ABC. We can go to that later.

So these four aspects, talking with structure so that people can remember your information and digest and understand. Asking good questions to make people think. Third one is listening well in conversation so you can understand their perspective and reframe things. And last one is you put all these things together, how do you grow as a leader with your own self awareness, getting feedback from others consistently, making behavioral changes, and continuously measuring what is working and what is not with your stakeholders. That is a great package called TALL Framework for Communication and Leadership.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow. Thank you for highlighting this summary, right? So I think even just by listening to this summary, right, everyone can benefit. You know, improve their communication. So, maybe if you don’t mind, we go a little bit for some of the elements, right?

[00:19:08] T= Talking with Structures

Henry Suryawirawan: So the first one is talking with structure. I find, like, people sometimes talk just by, you know, going through their thoughts, right? Like whatever their thoughts, they just narrate it in that way. And sometimes it’s not intuitive for us to come up with a structure. I think you gave one just now, like what happened then why is it important and so what’s next, right? And I think in some interview tips also, they kind of like advocate things like STAR method and you know, whatever that is, right? So maybe if you can give some frameworks that we can use to actually structure our communication better. Are there other frameworks that you think we can use to talk much more effectively?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yeah, we could also consider a couple of more. One example is I call listicles. Essentially, you make a list of things. If somebody asks you a question, what is holding us back? What’s the challenge right now? You can simply say there is, number one challenge is this. Today, we are going through this challenge. This is the number one challenge. If we address this, we can move forward easily. Or you can say there are two major challenges here. Number one and number two. Or three major challenges. Number one, number two, and number three.

Typically, I don’t recommend more than three, because we love one, two, three. Anything beyond is difficult to remember. This way, what happens is, Henry, the moment you say, I have three things to say, your listener is most likely to listen, okay, what’s happening now? I’ve got one and two and three. They will listen to you, they’ll remember these three things. As opposed to you randomly saying four paragraphs or three paragraphs. See, you already gave them a heads up that I’m going to share with you three things. It’ll come to you right now. So that’s really one structure I strongly recommend called listicle structure.

The second one is a common consulting model from McKinsey and other consulting companies called Situation, Complication, and Resolution. So here is a Situation right now we are in. You can explain what’s happening right now. Then you can explain the Complication in that situation. What is complex about this? What is difficult? What is most challenging? It’s the Complication. And then you can go to the Resolution. Now, knowing the situation, knowing the complication, you tell me either a solution, a possible solution, or your recommendations to solve this challenge. So you explain the Situation, then the Complication, then the Resolution.

Now there is high chances that people who are listening to you will remember what you said, because there is a coherent thread across these three things. There is a story. The situation you’re explaining, your mind is able to connect. Now you’re telling the most important challenge to tackle, and then you are showing me two or three ways to solve this challenge and what’s your strong recommendation as an engineer on the team.

Henry Suryawirawan: You mentioned something that people always mention about speaking, right? It’s about story, storytelling, right? And I think the coherence is one aspect of, you know, why storytelling is very powerful, right? Even though you are talking about facts and non-fiction stuff, right? So I think storytelling is definitely one aspect that we always need to remember, right?

[00:21:59] L = Listening Deeply

Henry Suryawirawan: The other one that you mentioned is about listening, right? For me, at least sometimes like we are guilty of not listening. Sometimes when people speak, we even like come up with some potential answers in our mind rather than listening very attentively. So for engineers here, how can we improve ourselves in terms of listening? Because this, again, doesn’t come intuitively. Sometimes we want to gather facts and reply the question as soon as possible. So maybe some tips here as well that we can do in order to effectively listen to other people.

Pramoda Vyasarao: In my experience, I have seen two distractions. One is external distraction, like there is a phone in front of you while you’re listening. There is a laptop open. There are 16 browser windows open, tabs open. They will disturb you. I recommend if you are in a one to one conversation or in a group meeting, as much as possible, reduce distraction, which are external distractions like phone, media, and other things. The other one is internal distraction. We are wired to think when somebody is talking, we are always preparing the answer. We are preparing our response to that person. This will require some practice. It’s not easy, I understand, but it’s not difficult as well.

You need to start practicing. I will listen to this person. Because sometimes you will realize if you listen to a person for two minutes, you will realize in two minutes there is a common theme. You will hear their emotion. Either they’re frustrated, they’re angry, they’re upset. You will see that they’re repeating the same point multiple times. There is a thematic version in their structure, but you will realize it only after you listen for two minutes.

My number one tip for people is in the next one-on-one meeting, whether it’s your manager or a peer or a cross functional partner. Set a timer for two minutes and say, today I will listen to this person. And make notes. If you really have to say something, why not make notes and say, okay, this was important. This topic was important, but do not interrupt for two minutes. This one skill can take you to a whole new level of listening.

In fact, I did this with one of the clients two weeks ago. He tried with his team. They are now surprised. Like, why are you not talking? Why are you not interrupting me? What’s happening with you? Am I not making sense? Then he had to tell them in a group meeting that I’m going to be a better listener now. I’m practicing some things. So when I’m quietly listening, I’m actually listening to you and making notes. He had a significant improvement in just three weeks by making these things, small things, changes in team meetings and one-on-one discussions to listen to people for a couple of minutes, make notes, and see what’s the best response after he made notes.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow, I think that’s also something that we all can try, right? Try to just listen two minutes without replying, right? And maybe taking notes if you don’t want to forget. Because sometimes, when you first practice it, right? It doesn’t come intuitively, right?

Sometimes you forget what other people said in the two minutes. Please try to do that. The other thing that I find really important is that actually your expression, right? When people speak, right? Look at their eyes, you know, smile, nodding, or even say uh, yeah. And at the end also try to repeat what the other people is saying, right? So I think that’s also some tips that I learned throughout my career, right?

So definitely listening is very, very important, especially if you become a leader, right? Because leader is not there just to solve problems, but also to listen to others and making sure we can grow other people as well.

[00:25:19] ABC Framework for Leadership Development

Henry Suryawirawan: So the other aspect that you mentioned about the leadership growth, something that you learned from Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. By the way, congrats for, you know, having him writing the foreword of the book. So you mentioned about this ABC framework. I’m quite intrigued to learn more. What is this ABC framework? Maybe if you can teach us here as well.

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yeah. So this is ABC framework, which is something I simplified from experience. I have been reading his materials since 2007. I went to his live workshop when I was in India. I did several certifications from his organization, which is called SCC Coaching, Stakeholder Centered Coaching. I model this ABC for simplifying to people.

So one is called awareness. In the first step, we look at two areas of awareness. One is, what do you think about yourself? Let’s say you are my client, Henry. The first question we ask together is, what do you think about yourself? In the sense, what are your strengths? What are your areas of improvement? Which kinds of people irritate you? Why do they irritate you? Which kinds of people you partner really well with and why is that? We go through this inventory of what makes you tick in an organization. That’s one aspect of you discovering yourself through reflection, self reflection and discussion. Like, what are you really good at? What are your strengths? What do you enjoy doing? What kinds of partnerships you are really building well in the organization? That’s called self awareness.

The other side of that coin is the other people’s awareness. What do other people think about you? We do this through an anonymous feedback. We do a survey with a few questions to understand what’s working well with you as an individual or a manager working with other cross functional partners. And we keep it anonymous so that people can be honest. Some organizations are willing to do it non-anonymous, some are not. My strong recommendation is for leadership growth, it is always beneficial to keep it anonymous, because it’s not performance appraisal. I’m not measuring your performance by this survey. It is purely for your leadership development. So the more truth you hear from people, the better for you as a leader.

We collect that feedback. Now we have got two pieces of information. One is your own self awareness. And now what other people think about you, your strengths, where you are really good at, what areas you need to improve as a leader, as a partner in the organization. We work together and say, okay, what’s really working well with you as a leader? We just look at all the positive things you already have. We also look at what is the perception of people, like where do they think you’re not ready yet? Or you’re not a great partner.

In my experience, most people jump to the second one. They ignore the strengths. They jump to this and say, look at these things. People are not liking me. They’re biased and so on. But we always go back and say, first, let’s appreciate all the great things they’re saying and let’s see what can be improved. Because everything cannot be improved. It’s okay to ignore some things. So we look at common themes. And that’s how we decide to improve on what one or two behaviors you can change. Maybe they’re communicating better, influencing more, writing better documents.

Remember, all of these are behavioral feedback. We don’t do 360 for technical feedback. Like somebody, how does he or she code? How do they design systems? We don’t do 360 for this. We only do this for leadership skills, like listening, behaviors, feedback, handling difficult conversations, communicating in high stake environments. How do you manage emotion in front of, you know, it’s a difficult conversation. How are you able to manage your emotion? Those are the things we address in 360 feedback.

Once we gather all that and decide two things we change, two things we want to change in our engagement, we then work with about six to eight stakeholders. I call them stakeholders. If you’re working with them on a weekly basis and they’re watching you weekly, either on a Zoom call or in one-to-one in person meeting, those are your stakeholders, because they need to watch you every week. And then you consistently change your behaviors. For example, if your behavior is listening more, interrupting less, asking good questions, understanding other people’s perspective, and handle open conversations when there is disagreement.

If these are the skills you want to improve, you start changing those behaviors every day at work. In every meeting, there are some techniques we use, things like a conscious reminder like this. You know, if you see, whenever I go to any podcast, I have this right in front of me. It’s called pause, breathe and smile. It’s a conscious trigger, because we all are habitual creatures. We may digress, but having a reminder like this will tell me, hey, you are the best version of yourself today. You pause, you take a breath and you smile in your conversations.

So these are consistent behavioral changes I help my clients do at work. Because it doesn’t happen automatically. You might have all great intentions about becoming a leader, but the behavior decides your intention. It’s your direction that actually matters, not just the intention. So step one is awareness, we discussed that. Step two is behavioral changes in meetings and in one-to-one conversations.

Step 3 is continuous measurement. There are two aspects to it. One is called as a follow up meeting with these six stakeholders. We strongly recommend meeting at least once a month for about 10 minutes to ask two questions. Hey, you know that, Henry, I’m changing these two behaviors. I want to listen well and communicate better. What am I doing well in the last one month? What could I improve? Give me some ideas. I ask these two questions to you. You are my stakeholder and I simply keep quiet for next five minutes. You tell me, okay, Pramoda, I’ve been noticing you, I like that you’re doing these changes. I make notes. And you tell me the second question’s answer. Maybe you can do these three things to improve better. Or maybe make some changes in your style of communication. I take that, I thank you. No debate. No discussion. No argument. I simply thank you and come back in 10 minutes. That’s called follow up meeting. It’s also called feed forward by Marshall Goldsmith, but I simply call it as a follow up meeting. It is not a debate. It’s simply what have you noticed so far in my behaviors? What’s working well? What could I improve?

The other aspect of continuous measurement is there is a formal survey we do every quarter, sometimes every quarter, sometimes every six months, which focuses on two things. One aspect is how consistently I am if I were the one making my changes as a leader. If you are my stakeholder, there are eight stakeholders, I would survey with eight stakeholders, how consistently I am coming to you and meeting them every month? That is a key indicator. Follow up every month. So there is a rating. I think it’s a minus five to plus five or minus two to plus two is the range. So we say, okay, he’s always consistently meeting me every month. He never shows up and so on. There is a scale.

The second question is to these stakeholders. All right, Pramoda has been doing these changes on these two behaviors. Tell us the effectiveness of the change from minus two to plus two. These two questions will objectively measure every quarter or every six months or every 12 months to tell me, as a leader, how is my effectiveness growing with my stakeholders? By the way, stakeholders can also include my team members, my direct reports and skip level as well. It doesn’t matter. I choose these stakeholders.

So we finished the awareness. We talked about behavioral change. We talked about continuous measurement. One is subjective one-to-one discussion every month. The other one is objective measurement is every three months or six months. So that completes the ABC framework for leadership development.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow. Thanks for, you know, giving us this summary. So ABC is like Awareness, Behavioral change, and Continuous measurement. And I think thanks for highlighting that stakeholders doesn’t mean always your bosses, you know. But it could be your team members. It could be people who can give you good feedback, right? Critical feedback. And I think there’s a lot of vulnerability aspect here as well, because you listen and you don’t debate, argue about certain feedback from others. And the important thing is about improving yourself. So I think this is probably a great thing to do with a coach. I think you, probably, it’s very hard to do alone. So definitely ABC is something that people can learn how to improve themselves in terms of leadership.

[00:33:31] Why Writing “Beyond Your Limits” Book

Henry Suryawirawan: So Pramoda, the second part of our conversation. I would like to talk about your book, Beyond Your Limits. So I think this book is quite inspiring, right? So you kind of like go through goal setting kind of experience. You know, 52 goals that you mentioned in the book. Those are some are like lofty goals for some people. So tell us like, maybe the first thing is about the background story. Why you come up with this book and why actually you come up with this long journey of goals setting?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yes, uh, I will give you a short story. It’s a long story, but I’ll keep it short. In 2001, I lost my father at age 22. And in 2003, I lost my grandfather. Within two years, I lost both of them. At that time, I had a good job, great salary. Life was great. I was single. One thing I lost was there was not much meaning in my life. You know, life seemed like a treadmill. And everybody around me were just focused on making more money, promotion, and so on. I somehow did not like it. I was always looking for more meaning in my life.

After two deaths in the family, within two years, I was looking for meaning. My focus was mostly on seeking knowledge, either through spirituality or through self help books back then. 2003, I’m talking about. I kept reading so many books on self help and personal development. I took some courses and you know, they were helping me to feel good. But I wasn’t changing anything in my life. There was no consistent action I was taking in my life. Back then I was obese and overweight. You cannot believe I was 90 kilos back then, about 92 kilos in 2003. At that time, I was thinking if only I can learn time management skill, my life can change.

So this was October 2003. I went to a training, a time management training at Oracle. Oracle was a great company. So many training. I signed up. I went there. It was a full day training from nine to five. During the training, the trainer talked about a person named John Goddard. John Goddard lived in the U.S. He’s called the greatest adventurer of the world. At age 14, he listed about 127 goals, goals like climbing the Mount Everest, climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, crossing the Nile River on a kayak, and learning five languages, reading scriptures and so on. Amazing goals he wrote. And by the age 80, he had achieved all of those goals, except one or two.

When I heard the story at age 24, I was just 24 back then, I said, this is phenomenal. Until then, I thought, how do I find meaning in my life? I was asking question, what is the meaning to life? What is so funny is I realized I was the one to answer that question. I cannot ask that question to life. What’s the meaning to life? The life is asking the question to me. And I can answer that question by my lifestyle, by the action I take, by the goals I achieve in my life. That was a significant turning point in my life.

I went home that day. I listed five goals to begin with. Five simple goals. You will not believe the kind of simplicity in those five goals. I wanted to lose about 35 pounds. That became my goal. I was scared of public speaking. I wrote a goal to become a confident public speaker. The third goal was I was scared of water. I wanted to learn swimming. I joined a course back then. The fourth goal was, as a kid, I was a fan of Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan, but I never learned martial art. So my goal number four was learning a martial art for three to four years to achieve a few belts. So I wrote that as a goal. And goal number five back then was donating blood 50 times before turning age 50. Because my family needed some emergency blood transfusions back then. So I knew the value of blood donation. I wanted to ensure it became a goal I could pursue over a long time.

So I added those five goals as a starting point. After that, my whole life became a goal oriented life. In fact, in the book, I talk about my 52nd goal, that is to publish a book. So the book actually compiles all of my goals from 2003 to 2024 in a nicely packaged book with the last goal becoming the book itself.

[00:37:39] The Power of Thoughts

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow, very inspiring, right? So you just took like two years to achieve those 52 goals. I think that’s kind of like inspiring for people. I would recommend people if you are looking for motivation, right? Because sometimes when we set goals, almost everybody set goals in the beginning of the year, and we are coming into it soon. But somehow they kind of like drifted and kind of like withdraw from the goals itself, right? Maybe sometimes they pick something that is too difficult. Or sometimes life happens and they just forget about the goals. So maybe 52 goals, these are a lot, right? And some are like really, really hard for people. Even though you mentioned in the beginning, like weight loss and all that seems easy and seems simple, but for some it’s like maybe never ending kind of like battle, you know, with those goals. What are maybe some of the unintuitive things that you maybe learn from this two years journey, setting goals and meeting them one by one, right? So maybe if there’s something that you find as a new self inspiration or something that you can share.

Pramoda Vyasarao: One clarification. I achieved those five goals in the first two years. But in the remaining years, I achieved many other goals. So just to be clear, it’s a long journey from 2003 to 2024. 21 year goal journey. And I still have many goals unachieved on my list. They are being pursued at this point. One thing I’ve realized, Henry, is over my own journey, a lot of people talk about motivation. I have learned that motivation is a state of mind. It is not something outside you. It is always inside you. What happens is you set a goal today, and you’re excited, pumped up. You are excited about your goal and the actions you are gonna take. In three weeks, you’ll fizzle out. The motivation tanks. It goes at the bottom. People think it is all external. I also thought initially, it’s all external. Like, okay, I’m not getting results, so I’m feeling bad.

The unintuitive learning in the journey, Henry, has been my own thoughts. I’m a creature of thoughts. I’m constantly thinking. And these thoughts are triggering feelings and moods in me, and those me and those moods and feelings are influencing my behaviors. It’s always thoughts become feelings, feelings drive your action or behaviors. This is the best learning in my journey. I realized motivation is not fleeting. Motivation is with me, my own thoughts. The mere awareness. I’m not asking you to change thoughts or challenge your thoughts. No such thing necessary. Simply being aware that I am feeling bad today because I have bad thoughts or unhelpful thoughts is a real freedom. If you can get to that point to realize that, oh my God, today I’m thinking this, and hence I’m feeling rushed. Hence I’m feeling scared. That is a great liberation. If you can go to that level. And I’m glad I learned that early in my journey in goal setting that my own state of mind influences the choices I make at every moment of my life. That’s the best learning in the last 21 years.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow, that’s really powerful, right? I kind of like remember this quote, all men’s suffering comes from their own thoughts, right? So I think again, like what you mentioned, thoughts is really powerful, right? Sometimes we all think external factor, maybe like simply they think they couldn’t achieve the goal, because they are not capable of doing it. But I think by simply changing the thoughts, I mean, I said simply but it’s not so simple. By changing your thoughts, actually, you can actually kind of like create more possibilities. I think the first thing is about possibilities, right? And obviously after changing your thought, you need to take actions and, you know, create the habits and all that. And not to get disheartened if you don’t meet some of the milestones of the goals. I think that’s really important.

[00:41:12] Top 3 Saboteurs of Goal Achivement

Henry Suryawirawan: In your book, you also mentioned a few things that kind of like sabotage our goal achievement. You mentioned about purpose, you mentioned about time, and you mentioned about belief. So I can relate to those saboteurs, you know, in my goal setting as well. So maybe share with us like how can we actually deal effectively with these kind of saboteurs in our goal setting,

Pramoda Vyasarao: Let’s start with number one. People… Usually, when I work with people, I ask them, what are your intrinsic goals? What do you really want to achieve in your life? Not career because career is one dimension of your life. There are so many other domains of your life. When I ask people, people don’t have clear goals. They say, I don’t know my purpose in life. This is actually a wrong thing because there is no single purpose for life. It’s difficult. It’s difficult to be that clear and say, this is my purpose. Because things change. You grow as an individual. Your choices change. Your experiences make you different. And my recommendation to people is you can have multiple purposes in your life, not just one. You can have so many life purposes. Why do you want to stick to one? You can pursue multiple and see what is really good for you. Some can be small, some can be big, some can be long term, some can be short term.

By just shifting this mindset that it is not life’s one big purpose, otherwise you will waste several months or years to find that purpose. And when you find it, you realize that you don’t like that anymore. You like something else. Instead, what do you really enjoy? What are your values? If you come back to that, if your value is fitness, if your value is kindness, if your value is a disciplined life, embody those values every day. If you can bring those values to life every day, you are already happy. You’re enjoying your life because you are living your values, your virtues in action. So that’s how we address purpose issue.

The second one is sometimes when people say, I don’t have time. What I do with people is we audit together how they are spending their time every day. When do they wake up? How many times they check their phone? How many hours on their phone, various apps? We check that because sometimes people are not accountable to themselves. They may keep ignoring their habits of checking their phone or social media, but when they are working with the coach, there is more accountability. You look at what’s happening objectively and see where you can get more time. Even 20 minutes a day can be life changing. 20 minutes of personal development every day on health, fitness, maybe sleeping better, being kind to your family, writing something on the internet, creating something on the side. Anything can be possible in 20 minutes a day. We come back and say, how do we look at small blocks of time to create something meaningful over a period of time?

The other thing I explain to my clients in this aspect is, there are two words. There are two words to describe how you approach your day. You can be creative or you can be reactive. They are anagrams of each other, the same eight letters. But one is you are creative, you are creating your routine, because you want to achieve something today. The other one is you are reactive. Everything around the world is making you react to things. This is a big mind shift when they learn about this. Okay, they can create the first three hours of their day as sacred so that nobody else can invade that time, do something creative, productive before they do something reactive. That is how we address the time management issue.

And the last one is belief. I touched upon this earlier in my own journey. Beliefs are like, think of this as a giant cable. Giant cable, if you have visited San Francisco, Golden Gate Bridge, there is a giant cable. And that cable is made of maybe thousands of wires, small wires, tiny wires. Our beliefs are like a cable. And individual wires are daily thoughts. The more thoughts you have about something, you believe that that is true for you as a person, as an individual, or about this world, or other people. So we start questioning their beliefs about why do you believe that this is not something you can do? Whether it is public speaking or writing a good document, writing your own newsletter, becoming a little more confident and showing yourself fully in the world.

We discuss the beliefs, like what do you think? And most of the time they are childhood beliefs. Maybe they tried something in their childhood, they failed as a public speaker, it did not work out for them. That has influenced how they think about themselves. And many other situations. Maybe they did not have a good work culture. Maybe not a good organization. Maybe not a good manager in the organization. We don’t know. But one experience they take, they generalize their whole life. I’m not good at people. I’m not good with conflicts. I’m not good with writing documents.

So all these opinions they have about themselves, we start questioning and peel them out. And the book also talks about a lot of ways you can unpeel those and say, okay, what’s happening here? Why do you have those beliefs? When you reflect on your past and say, how did I come to this conclusion? You may get a higher level of awareness. And then you realize I may be wrong. These are not the real me. The real me is something else.

So we address the purpose. We address the time, as well as the beliefs. In the book, I give some insights that is good enough as a starting point. But I also have a seven week course, by the way, on the same concept, Beyond Your Limits. And I also have one-to-one coaching based on similar ideas where people can go a little deeper with me as a guide and a practitioner working with them.

Henry Suryawirawan: I think thanks for sharing these kind of like three different saboteurs. I think everyone, I would say, everyone would be able to relate with this, right? Sometimes like we don’t find meaning in our life or purpose, right? Some people call it, right? Or maybe some also categorize that as a passion, like what is your passion? Sometimes we couldn’t even answer that. So I think finding the purpose, definitely important. And maybe what you mentioned is like purposes. It’s not just like one purpose, one giant purpose that you pursue. But it could be multiple purposes in multiple aspects of your life, right? Don’t forget, like, you have work, you have maybe family, you have personal development, maybe your spirituality as well. So I think, uh, purpose is definitely important.

I like also the part where you mentioned creative versus reactive. I just realized that they are kind of like the same words but in a different way. So I think sometimes, yeah, we all get reactive in life. You know, whatever happens, somebody asks us about something, and we just follow them rather than taking the initiative to do creative stuff that we like. So coming back to the purpose, maybe we take time to actually do those things rather than being reactive to others. And I like the belief, like always mentioned in any kind of a self help book as well. So your belief is actually the most important thing, right? And sometimes, in many parts, childhood belief, self limiting belief comes from bad experience in the past, right? So I think unpeeling that, maybe getting help by somebody to actually know about those things will be very important.

[00:47:56] 7 Step Framework for Goal Achievement

Henry Suryawirawan: So you mentioned about the 7 Step Framework that you cover in one of your course. Maybe if you can give a little bit of highlights for people to kind of like understand what are these 7 steps. And maybe if they like it, they, maybe you would like to sign up to your course as well. So maybe what are those seven steps?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yeah, absolutely. All these seven steps, they came from my own experience in 21 years of goal achievement. And I am a fan of self help books and leadership development. I keep reading so many books. All of these came from my experience and the combination of research from various authors.

The first step in the 7 Step framework is begin with the end in mind. You can consider these as 7 mental models or 7 levers, not necessarily steps, because some steps you’re already great at, some steps you’re not. So think of this as a lever for your goal setting. Begin with the end in mind, that is number 1, which is you get clarity on what you want to achieve.

Second one is become accountable. Because without accountability, I don’t think we will achieve our intrinsic goals. For extrinsic goals, you will have your manager coming after you and saying, okay, what’s happening with this project? But intrinsic goals, you are the one who cares about it. That’s why accountability from a coach or a mentor or a family member is critical to make progress on your intrinsic goals.

Step number three is define milestones. A lot of personal development goals, people drift away and stop pursuing just because they don’t have clear milestones. We all overestimate what we can achieve in one year, and we underestimate what we can achieve in five years. This is extremely critical for people to understand. If you can understand in the next five years, you can achieve great things. And then define smaller milestones. You will definitely achieve your goals as opposed to stretching everything in 12 months and achieving more in 12 months, especially with personal goals.

Fourth step is taking one day at a time, because each day you have to create your routine; rituals, routines, and habits so that you can execute on your goals. That’s fourth step.

Fifth step is bounce back when there is a setback. There’s invariably, there are setbacks. You are pursuing a goal, something happens, you have to come back and start again. But you plan it earlier and say, okay, I might step back. I’m traveling next month. I may step off my workout routine, but how do I come back? How do I bounce back? That is step number five.

Step number six is quitting strategically. There are some goals are not worth pursuing, because they’re not aligned. It is not the right time. You’ve got other priorities and there are conflicts in goals. So you have to be mindful about conflicting goals. And always say goodbye to some goals. May not be the right time. You may come back later. So happily you can say goodbye to some goals. That is the lever number six, which is quit strategically.

Number seven and the most critical one is enjoy the journey. It’s not the destination. You have to enjoy the process every day of climbing the mountain. The summit is not your goal. The experience of climbing is actually your goal. You become better. You become a better person, better individual. You’ll grow in all dimensions of your personality.

[00:51:01] Creating Milestones & Habits

Henry Suryawirawan: So I think definitely you mentioned one aspect that I like to cover, right? So you mentioned sometimes intrinsic goal is kind of like more difficult. I mean, we all have external goals, right? Be it in our work, be it maybe with our family and responsibilities and things like that. But sometimes the intrinsic one definitely is more difficult. Take for example, you know, losing weight or doing more exercise or sleep more. I think these are some of the challenges that people are struggling with at the moment. You mentioned something about creating milestones and habit as well. So maybe I want to cover a little bit, how do you actually effectively come up with the milestones? Because sometimes milestone, if it’s too easy, maybe it’s not meaningful, some people think. If it’s too big, also sometimes very difficult to achieve and because of that people kind of like lose motivation. So how do you actually create these milestones and habits for us to actually achieve the goals?

Pramoda Vyasarao: See, we all have our own way of dealing with commitments. We have to be aware of how do we respond to internal commitments. There are external commitments and internal commitments. Most of us are great at external commitments, because we know there are impact of not doing it. There are consequences. But for internal commitments, we have to find smartly what’s the best way.

For example, you could join a community of people who are losing weight or running a marathon together. Most likely, if you join a community, you will join them every weekend for a long run. So for many of my clients, this trick works because they are now accountable to a community. There is energy in the community. It’s called goal contagion. There is a psychological word called goal contagion. It’s like contagious. So the moment you’re part of a group, you tend to follow them, because you don’t want to upset them. You don’t want to feel disrespected because, okay, everybody else is doing, but I am not committed to my team. So if you are somebody who needs that, join the community.

Or the other option is you work with the coach. Because sometimes when you work with the coach for three or six months, there are some great habits you can develop, whether it is nutritional coach or fitness coach or running coach or weight loss coach. There is a lot of options available these days. Take advantage of that coaching aspect to hire somebody, pay them, and, you know, be accountable to the change.

And lastly, I would say you have to come back to this thought awareness. Think of this. How is that some days I am motivated and you are motivated and some days you are not motivated? What’s happening? It’s the same Henry. It’s the same Pramoda. Everything else is the same. The world is the same. But my state of mind is not the same day by day. And the more awareness you bring to this mindset and say, what am I thinking today? How am I feeling? You will get more clarity on why do you ignore workouts on some days and you realize that it’s all your thought based reality. You are reacting to your thoughts and hence you’re feeling some way and hence you’re making some choices.

I gave you some tips, but I would say find a coach who can help you in any area of your life, fitness, nutrition, health, or other this thing. I don’t think people need technology coaches these days. They need something else these days. It’s not technology. I hope that answered your question.

Henry Suryawirawan: Yep. So definitely, so accountability, definitely very, very powerful, right? If kind of like you find it difficult to find self motivation, accountability, I think I would also suggest, right, for people. Be it, you know, with your family members, friends, close friends, or it could be, you know, community or other things that are more public, right?

So I think accountability is sometimes, yeah, like what you mentioned, right? If we are part of a group or we are accountable to other people, we tend to follow along and kind of like meet those commitments. So thanks for sharing that.

[00:54:28] Pramoda’s Biggest Goal Achievement

Henry Suryawirawan: Maybe I know that this is difficult, apart out of those 52 goals that you mentioned, what do you think are your biggest achievements in those goals?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yeah, if you personally ask me, everything is a big achievement, because there were so many limits I had in myself and all of these goals were beyond my limits, and hence the title Beyond Your Limits to inspire people. But if you were to pick, there are a couple of goals I will tell you. One is I ran a marathon in under four hours. Now if you look at my background, I was about 92 kilos in 2003. And I lost about 50 pounds by 2019. So I became 67 kgs from 92 kgs. And I ran a full marathon about 42 kilometers or 26 miles in less than four hours. And to me, the transformation from somebody who was overweight, obese, and not enjoying any physical activity. I was like a couch potato sitting and just coding on my computer and watching things. I never enjoyed physical workout. From that in 20 years changing to somebody who is a marathoner who can call myself as a marathoner has been transformational. That is one.

The second goal I’m really proud about is publishing a book. Like I said in the beginning, English is my third language. I learned the alphabet, English from A to Z in fifth grade at age 11. And only in, probably in my graduation, I spoke in front of people for 15 minutes in English. Before all of that, I never spoke in English. I was writing good English, by the way. My written English was great. But I wasn’t used to communicating, conversing in English. And from there, coming all the way to the U. S. and then publishing a book in America. I think I’m really proud. It is doing number four on Amazon two weeks ago. It keeps changing, of course, based on the book sale, but last week it was on number four in the new age self help category. Now, somebody who studied English at age 11, I’ve come a long way to publish a bestselling book. I’m really proud and content.

Henry Suryawirawan: Wow, very beautiful achievements, right? So thanks for sharing that by the way. So I think for people, definitely, these two things are probably most of the goals that people aspire to achieve as well. You know, like be a marathoner, be more fit in terms of physical activities. And under four hours, I would say that is really, really fast. So I think, from someone who is kind of like overweight to becoming like a fast runner, I think definitely that’s a great transformation. And publishing a book, I think it’s also maybe many people’s dream, right? I think the story here that you mentioned means that it’s something achievable, even though maybe you think it’s too far fetched. But it’s actually definitely very possible, especially if you can kind of like come up with the goals and actions to actually achieve those things.

[00:57:13] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

Henry Suryawirawan: So Pramoda, I really enjoyed this conversation. Before I let you go, I have one last question that I would like to ask you. I call this the three technical leadership wisdom, but it could be any leadership wisdom as well. You can think of them just like an advice that you want to give to us. Maybe if you can share your version to us, I think that would be great.

Pramoda Vyasarao: Absolutely! In fact, I watched a few previous episodes, I think about three episodes toward the end. I listened to what people said in the interview. So I want to be radically different and give you three different answers. One of them may be common from other people, but two of them are unique.

Now, one is regardless of who is listening to this episode, please discover and pursue and prioritize your intrinsic goals. Nobody else will come chasing to list intrinsic goals for your life and achieve them. You need to take ownership and leadership of that.

Number two. Regardless of your background, please focus on improving your communication, storytelling, and writing skills. Writing involves long form writing, short form writing, as well as building presentations. These are crucial for whatever you do in your life, whether you become an entrepreneur in the future or CTO or CEO, doesn’t matter. These are critical skills in your repertoire. Please add them to your skill set.

Number three. Please develop your thought awareness, because moment to moment, we are always thinking. Those thoughts are influencing your feelings and your feelings are influencing your actions and behaviors and choices you’re making. Most of us think that I’m feeling today because of the outside world. It’s always inside. Your thoughts are creating your feeling. If you can develop this one awareness, this can be significantly different in your life, how you can show up, because you are the creator of your feelings. The environment is influencing you with what’s happening around you, but how do you respond is within you. Your own thoughts, which triggers feelings, which triggers behaviors.

So to summarize again, discover your intrinsic goals, pursue them with passion. Improve your communication skills, storytelling, writing skills. And then develop awareness of your own thought and how you are responding to your thoughts and the world around you through thoughts. Those are my three bits of advice.

Henry Suryawirawan: Amazing stuff. So I think that’s really beautiful, right? So thank you so much for sharing those things. Again, if you haven’t taken the gist of it, right, like self awareness, your thoughts, it’s been mentioned a couple of times in our conversation. So for listeners, I think, again, like work on your self beliefs, your thoughts, right? And mindset. I think these are definitely the levers for you to actually improve much more things in your life. So Pramoda, if people would like to connect with you or maybe find your books or your coaching. Is there a place where they can find you online?

Pramoda Vyasarao: Yes, three places. You can go to LinkedIn and find me on LinkedIn, my name. I post a useful content on leadership, personal growth, and goal setting every day actually, Monday to Sunday. You can find something useful every day. You can follow me. You can find my book on Amazon. It is available in all formats, digital, paperback, hardcover, and audio book. If you have a Spotify membership, my book is also available as an audio book in Spotify. Number three, you can go to my website, changesmith.me. Changesmith is one word, dot me, slash courses. You can see my courses, all of these things I talked about, communication, engineering, storytelling, and building great slides. They’re available as digital courses. And a lot of engineers love the course, both engineers and managers, because it has practical lessons from my experience in 20 years. And all of them in less than two or three hours of training, like bite sized training for various aspects. So you will enjoy, invest your time and effort in developing these skills.

Henry Suryawirawan: Thank you for sharing this. I will put all of them in the show notes as well. So I think, thank you so much for this conversation, Pramoda. I hope people kind of like understand, you know, some things about communications and some things about goal setting. And kind of like achieve something beyond their limits. So thank you so much for this.

Pramoda Vyasarao: Thank you. I really enjoyed the conversation.

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