Drawing lessons from the performance of world’s best cricketers, the conversation examines Paddy Upton’s book on coaching, mindset and leadership principles that help individuals thrive under pressure.
The best advice on giving advice: Don’t not give It.
Dr CA Sangeeta Shankaran Sumesh
The Gain Enabler | CFO turned Business and Leadership Coach
I chose this book for three reasons. First, because there is so much we can learn from the world of sports — both personally and professionally. Second, I was genuinely curious about what it truly takes to coach such highly accomplished global cricketers. Third, because I always tell leaders: if elite sports players work with a coach, why should it be any different in the corporate world?
The Barefoot Coach is written by Paddy Upton, a South African who served as the mental and strategic leadership coach for the Indian cricket team. Before I go further, two quick disclaimers: I am not a big cricket enthusiast, and our focus today is not on the game itself or the cricketers. It is on leadership, management, and life. That said, for avid cricket fans, this book will certainly not disappoint.
The book is a collection of Paddy’s experiences as a mental coach for various cricket teams, including the Indian team that won the World Cup in 2011. It also unveils the not-so-glamorous side of being a celebrity cricketer — the sacrifices, coping with injuries, and handling enormous pressure when an entire nation’s eyes are on you.
Let me share the three most precious takeaways from the book. The first: commitment means your will to win must be bigger than your fear of losing. How committed are you to your goals? The second: the antidote to post-podium blues is having another goal to work towards. What is next for you? The third: every day you must do something to better yourself as a person.
Three powerful quotes from the book stayed with me. Sachin Tendulkar says, ‘Who I am as a person is permanent. My results on the field are temporary. It is more important that I am consistent as a person, because that is what I can control.’ Explorer Mike Horn, who addressed the Indian team, says: ‘You achieve your dream by making it to the top — but once you get there, plan what is next.’ And tennis champion Rafael Nadal: ‘Press the reset button after every high or every low. Get back to zero and start again.’
What deeply resonated with me as a leadership coach is how Paddy redefines coaching itself. Traditionally, coaching meant giving instructions — quick, easy, and familiar. But that approach is disempowering, frustrating, and compromises learning. A coach does not tell. A coach asks powerful questions, gets you clarity, enables improvement, fine-tunes your thinking, and works with you on your desired outcome. Paddy shares the example of a financially successful but internally broken company — over 50% of its managers were on anti-stress medication because of a tyrannical leader. His core insight is this: playing to your strengths delivers excellence, but patching your weaknesses will never lead to excellence.
The book also offers fifteen leadership reminders applicable in both sport and business: choose your battles wisely; question the status quo; intelligent players have awareness of their own game; giving your best and losing is better than cutting corners and winning; reprimanding and blaming are tools that serve only the coach’s ego; and leadership effectiveness reduces when leaders place their own interests first. One that particularly struck me: the mind does not hear the word ‘don’t’. And one that is quietly profound: the best advice on giving advice is to think twice about it — and then not give it. This is a must-read for cricket fans, leaders, and coaches alike.
‘I want you to be my firiend’
Avinash Jain
Global CFO, Alldigi Tech Limited
My first impression of this book is that it has nothing to do with cricket — even though it is full of cricket anecdotes. It is a compendium of leadership lessons. The essence of leadership is not creating followers but creating more leaders. And that has been beautifully crafted here. Leaders are not born or made; they are nurtured — shaped like a chisel working on stone.
One thing I especially liked is how Paddy and Gary Kirsten approached the Indian team when they arrived in 2008. The previous coach had been dictatorial and instruction-based. Paddy and Gary did the opposite. They ensured the players took ownership, worked in close consultation and negotiation, and that is one big reason our Indian team went on to win the World Cup. What they practised was servant leadership — not autocratic leadership. Those days are gone. Leadership today has to be participative.
When Gary and Paddy asked Sachin Tendulkar what he expected from them as coaches, his answer was disarmingly simple: ‘I want you to be my friend.’ That is the essence of leadership. Leadership does not carry a title or a position. It lives in the minds and hearts of colleagues. You must earn respect — not demand it.
I also liked the chapter on ‘noses and s’ — asking why. Why am I doing this? What value am I adding? Whether you are a student considering an MBA or a CFO at a company, that fundamental question matters. During my ITC agri business days, we had over a hundred standard operating procedures. I kept asking: why do we need a hundred? Could a simple card listing fifteen key steps serve the person on the ground better? Once we start asking why, better answers follow. We see it today with AI too — every project must be evaluated: will this give us operational efficiency, accuracy, enhanced margins? Start with why.
On the subject of fear of failure: Paddy splits things into what is controllable and what is not. Focus on what you can control; let go of what you cannot. That framework helped me through the CA exams, where pass rates were around 3-4%. In my ITC days, when the government suddenly opened wheat exports, our entire team faced something entirely new. We laid down the systems, visited the port, and in ten months scaled from zero to six-and-a-half lakh tons — making ITC the largest private wheat exporter of 2012-13. Overconfidence, though, is equally dangerous. In the same period we took large commodity positions in soybeans and ended up absorbing a loss we could have avoided. Both lessons — from fear and from overconfidence — taught me the same thing: stay sincere to your goal, focus on your strengths, and be perseverant.
The key Is to give up the need to always be right…
Viswanathan Hariharan
Director-HR and Head of Business Services, VIVA-IT
Talent is inborn. Each one of us in this room has unique talents. But talent alone is not enough — it must be identified, nurtured, and aligned to organisational expectations. In HR, this is where talent acquisition and talent development meet. You hire people for their innate abilities, but then you must shape them through training, mentoring, and role alignment. Sachin Tendulkar is the best example. He was gifted beyond measure, but in his teenage years he would visit every ground, play at least three matches a day, and work relentlessly to maintain his standard. He did not rely on talent alone. He combined talent with discipline and coaching. That is what the mushrooming of corporate coaches today is about — they do not do things for you; they enable you to do things.
On the battle of egos: all of us carry egos — that is simply a fact. The corporate dressing room is no different from the cricket dressing room. I will share a real example. We needed to hire a recruiter for our team. My CEO in the US asked me to conduct the first-level interview. I shortlisted a candidate and gave my feedback. The manager reporting to me felt bypassed — he had not been consulted first. Instead of speaking to me directly, he gave a conflicting feedback to the CEO. That is the ego at work: not upset about the candidate, but upset about who was asked to evaluate. Ego is not confined to corporate life — it exists in families, among friends, everywhere. You cannot eradicate it. You can only manage it. The key is to give up the need to always be right, ask yourself what you truly stand to lose by listening to the other person, and find a common agenda. Many years ago I attended a five-day leadership programme that transformed how I handle this. When my father passed away and his elder brother did not come to the funeral, I held onto that grievance for months. After that programme, I called him, said I was sorry, and let it go. That is where it begins — the willingness to give up what is holding you.
The fear of failure is universal, but it is especially magnified in the corporate environment. The moment fear sets in, it starts consuming your executive time, your managerial energy, your leadership bandwidth. A good leader cannot be paralysed by the fear of failure. A leader has to bring the team forward with a mindset of positive psychology — anticipating where failure might occur and addressing it before it arrives. Right now, I have been unable to hire a Python developer for the past four to five months. My CEO calls from the US every week to ask why. That fear is real. But the answer is not to be driven by anxiety — it is to stay methodical, keep looking, and not let the pressure distort the process. The book’s chapter on riding the wave of fear resonated deeply with me on this. Psychological safety in the workplace matters enormously. When people are afraid to raise problems, the problems do not disappear — they compound. Leaders who create safety create teams that speak up, course-correct early, and ultimately succeed.
