Fay­ola K J Fras­er

Steve Sankar is a trans­for­ma­tion­al life coach from T&T. He is known for his unique ap­proach to coach­ing, which fo­cus­es on shift­ing clients’ at­ti­tudes from fear to faith. This shift helps clients ex­pe­ri­ence hope, courage, and a new sense of pos­si­bil­i­ty in their lives.

Sankar launched his eight-week coach­ing pro­gramme to al­low peo­ple to “be­come fear­less, step in­to your pow­er, align with your po­ten­tial and own your des­tiny.” He says, “Serv­ing the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go is a big part of who I am.”

Sankar con­sid­ers hu­man and per­son­al de­vel­op­ment not on­ly to be his ca­reer but al­so his life call­ing and pas­sion, ev­i­denced by his free med­i­ta­tion class­es and pro bono coach­ing ser­vices.

A trained and qual­i­fied coach, Sankar be­came an ICF Ac­cred­it­ed Coach Train­ing Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion with In­ter­na­tion­al Coach Acad­e­my in 2022, where he re­ceived the Cer­ti­fied Pro­fes­sion­al Coach cer­ti­fi­ca­tion. The ICF (In­ter­na­tion­al Coach­ing Fed­er­a­tion) is a glob­al gov­ern­ing body for coach­es.

He al­so holds a Mas­ters de­gree in Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion from Heri­ot-Watt Uni­ver­si­ty. Sankar is a ded­i­cat­ed med­i­ta­tion prac­ti­tion­er for over a decade, with ad­vanced train­ing from re­treats in Mount Abu, In­dia. His unique abil­i­ty to com­bine in­ner still­ness with ac­tion-ori­ent­ed coach­ing al­lows his clients to cul­ti­vate clar­i­ty, con­fi­dence, and pur­pose-dri­ven mo­men­tum.

Up­on re­turn­ing from a med­i­ta­tion re­treat in In­dia in 2022, Sankar, who was still em­ployed as a man­ag­er in a tra­di­tion­al cor­po­rate job, re­alised that his per­spec­tive had shift­ed. At the time he had be­gun coach­ing clients vir­tu­al­ly part-time, but af­ter speak­ing to his then-CEO, he knew that the call­ing to delve in­to full-time coach­ing was too pow­er­ful. He left full-time em­ploy­ment in Oc­to­ber 2023 af­ter eight years in the cor­po­rate world.

“I left lots of re­la­tion­ships,” he says, “I left a good, sta­ble pay cheque to start coach­ing, and I’ve nev­er re­gret­ted it. This is where I need to be; this is how I can sup­port peo­ple in a re­al way.”

Sankar’s ex­pe­ri­ence in coach­ing is not lim­it­ed to in­di­vid­ual clients but al­so in­cludes coach­ing cor­po­rate en­ti­ties across a va­ri­ety of sec­tors—bank­ing, in­sur­ance, tech­nol­o­gy, and NGOs, among oth­ers. Of­ten­times, Sankar coach­es clients who suf­fer from stress, anx­i­ety, and de­pres­sion and seeks to delve in­to the root caus­es of their prob­lems and give them the tools and strate­gies to re­spond to sit­u­a­tions that trig­ger those emo­tions.

He de­scribed an ex­pe­ri­ence with one of his clients where, as a re­sult of his coach­ing, the client re­port­ed to Sankar that “he’s nev­er felt this ca­pa­ble of tak­ing on life.” Ex­plain­ing that coach­ing is dif­fer­ent from long-term ther­a­py or coun­selling, Sankar said that the ses­sions are of­fered by a lim­it­ed num­ber “and there is al­ways an end in sight be­cause I want my clients to feel in­de­pen­dent, de­vel­op wings, and fly.”

“Con­fi­dent, op­ti­mistic, cen­tred, ground­ed, and fear­less.” These are the ad­jec­tives Sankar us­es to de­scribe him­self, and what he hopes to con­tin­ue to trans­late to his clients for them to al­so em­body. “It’s fear­less or death,” he says frankly. “I don’t want my clients to feel afraid.”

He pro­vides a nur­tur­ing space for clients to talk open­ly and freely, with­out fear of judge­ment or ret­ri­bu­tion, of­fer­ing new clients a 30-minute free con­sul­ta­tion to prop­er­ly meet and un­der­stand the client. He en­cour­ages peo­ple who may feel the need for sup­port or guid­ance to get in touch with him via so­cial me­dia, email, or phone.

Sankar feels that this process of step­ping in­to his own and help­ing clients has been a re­ward­ing process every step of the way. One par­tic­u­lar stand­out mo­ment was his sup­port to a client, a wife and moth­er, who had no in­come and min­i­mal sup­port from fam­i­ly and called him one day in de­spair. Af­ter agree­ing to do the coach­ing, two months lat­er she was of­fered a job.

Af­ter fac­ing some dif­fi­cul­ties in ac­cli­ma­tis­ing to the work­ing en­vi­ron­ment, she did fur­ther coach­ing with Sankar, and one year lat­er, “she’s liv­ing her best life and in­cred­i­bly suc­cess­ful.”

For those who may feel vary­ing de­grees of scep­ti­cism about coach­ing, it is, in fact, sup­port­ed by sci­ence. Neu­ro­science shows that coach­ing can ac­tu­al­ly change the brain in pos­i­tive ways. Stud­ies us­ing brain scans (Rock & Page, 2009) found that coach­ing strength­ens ar­eas linked to self-aware­ness, de­ci­sion-mak­ing, and han­dling emo­tions.

It al­so helps peo­ple fo­cus, set goals, and man­age stress. Re­search on brain plas­tic­i­ty shows that coach­ing helps rewire the brain by en­cour­ag­ing re­flec­tion and pos­i­tive think­ing (Siegel, 2010). This shows that coach­ing isn’t just about mo­ti­va­tion—it cre­ates re­al, last­ing im­prove­ments in mind­set and suc­cess.

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