Jitesh Chauhan

Jitesh Chauhan is the founder of My Leadership Coaching and an ILM7 certified coach. He is the eldest child of immigrant parents that came into the UK during the 1960’s and 70’s from Kenya and India. His father was a Factory worker and his mother an admin clerk for the NHS. Coming firmly from a blue-collar background the need to work hard for what you wanted in life was firmly demonstrated. With a desire to make a mark in the world, Jitesh graduated with a master’s degree in Physics with Astrophysics from the University of Leicester. He started his career with the UK civil service as an Analyst & Project Manager.

From here his personal growth journey really took hold, moving away from familiar multicultural surroundings and immersing himself into the world of work. Here he discovered how under-represented ethnic minorities and other diverse groups are in leadership roles and how diversity of thought was not embraced.

After three years he left the civil service and joined a management consultancy to help with large scale business transformations and change management projects. The lack of representation of ethnic minorities and other diverse groups was still prevalent. During this time, he led teams of up to 100 and managed £10m+ budgets. He soon realised that the success of a project is not based on how well the plan is developed or how good the requirements are but is based on people and their relationships with each other. The better the relationship, the greater the chance of success, however a lot of projects still favour technology over relationships.

This is where the coaching journey began for Jitesh. He noticed that leaders were trying to fit the stereotypical leadership mould, he noticed the challenges that leaders have when trying to bring their authentic self to the workplace, and he noticed how leaders move on when they feel undervalued. He also noticed how these challenges are more pronounced for leaders coming from ethnic or other diverse groups.

It was from noticing these patterns that Jitesh started to take a deep interest in human behaviour and started to coach managers and leaders. Jitesh has seen leaders really grow through coaching, but not enough from ethnic or diverse groups.

It is for this reason that Jitesh has established My Leadership Coaching to focus on coaching those from an ethnic or other diverse groups.

He wants to accelerate diversity in leadership, do you?