Coach Spotlight: Coach Mara

Welcome to the BOLDLY Coach Spotlight, where we're thrilled to introduce Coach Mara, an international leader with over two decades of experience across multiple countries and cultures. Mara's impressive career spans major corporations like Kraft Foods, Danone, and Cadbury's, where she honed her skills in consciously leading people and systems through significant organizational changes. With her creative growth mindset and authentic leadership style, Mara now brings her wealth of experience to inspire and develop leaders from startups to major corporations as an entrepreneur and coach.

1) You are based in Malaysia, one of my favourite countries to visit! What is the best thing about living there?

I am loving the nature surrounding us, the pace of living and being surrounded by a diverse cultural context.

2) It must be quite different to Portugal where you grew up, how often do you get to visit your hometown and what is one thing you would recommend people see when they travel there?

Well, I have left my hometown when I was 22 years old and since then I visit it in average twice a year mostly to see my family and close friends. What I often recommend people to do when visiting Portugal is to start with the Capital Lisbon or with Oporto, my town. There you can calmly enjoy the food, wine, the scenery and immerse in the culture. From there, you can easily travel around and along the country to further explore the landscape and food.

3) You have an impressive 22-year career in R&D leadership within FMCG corporations, can you talk us through your transition into coaching and how this shaped your coaching approach?

Although I became a Coach 5 years ago, I practiced it as a side hustle, not giving it enough dedication when it comes to my business. However, I did bring it to my corporate job and my team as often as I could. It was with my relocation to Malaysia in 2023 that I fully embraced my role as a full time Coach and Consultant, which resulted in a shift in my Identity that took a while to reconcile with. However, alongside my personal transformation, my work as a Coach evolved from being fully focus on professional mums, to a broader client base. My story helped me shape my work and my message and every day I connect with it one way or another.

4) Working across several boarders and cultures including France, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, UK, Vanuatu and Netherlands must have made quite an impact on you! Given this experience how do you adapt your coaching style to different cultural contexts?

As a result of moving around the world across many working and living cultures, my adaptability and flexibility around change became rather trivial to me, having become very resilient around personal and professional challenges. When it comes to coaching, I easily connect and engage with different and diverse backgrounds of people, and meeting them where they are with ease.

5) How do you perceive the current state of coaching culture in Malaysia, and what challenges or opportunities does it present compared to other regions you've worked in?

I see that Coaching, although it is in its infancy on the one hand as it is not well understood, on the other hand it is evolving very fast, particularly in the corporate arena. I am part of the Malaysia certified coaches community and also there a lot is being done to prepare Coaches to support clients at a high level of professionalism. There are a lot of topics taken from granted in other areas of the world, but here, there are huge opportunities such as professional females empowerment, D&I, assertiveness, resilience, wellbeing and many more.

6) In what ways does coaching contribute to improving employee engagement and retention in Malaysian and International companies, and what strategies have proven most effective?

Providing the employees the opportunity to have a Coach who helps them create the awareness to their development needs, aspirations and to set personal growth goals, empowers them to actually achieve them. In the end it is a mutual gain for both the individual and the organization. They feel supported and that the company cares for them, resulting in a boost of motivation, confidence and accountability to perform towards the organization objectives. Ultimately, there is an increase on employees and leadership satisfaction, growth and retention. Everyone wins. Working for an organization that cares and have people focus programs to support employees development and wellbeing where coaching is made available either internal or externally for individuals and teams, plays a crucial role for employees recruitment, engagement and retention.  

7) Do you have a preference for online vs face-to-face coaching? How do you establish and maintain a strong coaching relationship and rapport with clients in an online setting compared to in-person interactions?

I am flexible to accommodate to the clients’ needs and availabilities. Most of my coaching has been virtual and it has its benefits in comparison to in person, like time efficiency and the need for senses awareness. On the other hand, I love coaching in nature and although some virtual and AI solutions can be used to bring it into the coaching, there is nothing like actually being in and around nature to evoke connection to self and transformation but I appreciate it is not always possible particularly across borders. If I can choose, I would go for hybrid.

8) How has your experience as an entrepreneur and consultant influenced your approach to leadership coaching in both startups and major corporations?

Considering my vast and broad corporate experience where I played a business and personal leadership role for over two decades, it helped me hugely when I came to set up my own business where I must apply my diligence and dedication. Moreover, my corporate career experience and expertise enables me to extrapolate this knowledge and skills to other organisations, from small to major. From company cultural differences to ways of working and resources availability, my business awareness and savviness supports my great interpersonal skills.  

9) As well as a coach, you are also a facilitator, how do you use your facilitation skills to enhance organizational agility and deliver return on investment?

I have huge experience and training facilitating workshops and presentations having worked in R&D for all my corporate career, where cross-functional connections are crucial as well as innovation and productivity creation. Besides, team building, engagement and development was core to my leadership roles, which enables me to transfer this experience and knowledge to my team coaching and group facilitation. When there is the opportunity given to individuals to be themselves, to develop and to contribute to shape the organization, feeling of belonging and job satisfaction will influence employees happiness engagement and performance. Agility is attained with ease both individual and organization results are seen (ROI).

10) Lastly, what unique value do you bring as a coach that would make a company choose you to coach their employees over others in the field?

I can not deny that accountability is a dear value of mine that I expect from my clients besides deploying it in every relationship. Coaching is a journey that I do together with my clients where a mutual commitment towards this Coach-Client relationship is established from the very beginning when designing the alliance. Being a people’s person, I easily connect and gain trust, which accelerates this commitment to mutual accountability.

Thank you so much for joining us Coach Mara and for all the insights you shared! To book a coaching chemistry session with Coach Mara, or to learn more about the full range of services BOLDLY has to offer, contact connect@boldly.app

About the Author:

Lisa Singh is an Australian, living with her family in the beautiful South Pacific. As Coach Business Partner Lead for BOLDLY, Lisa's team screen and onboard coaches onto our global marketplace, then enable the matching and engagement process so that coaches can do what they do best: deliver exceptional coaching journeys to our coachees. In her role with BOLDLY she loves meeting top coaches and promoting their work for a win:win. Connect with Lisa here.