Post-Communist Bulgaria may not be the first country you’d associate with world-class leadership, yet International Coach Federation Bulgaria co-founders Peter Goryalov and Irina Goryalova are spearheading some remarkable changes
To say that Peter Goryalov and Irina Goryalova have got coaching off the ground in Bulgaria is an understatement. They won the International Coach Federation (ICF) President’s Award for their leadership and contribution to coaching and the ICF in Bulgaria in September 2011, and their chapter won the ICF’s Breaking Barriers Award in 2012, along with Australia’s Victoria chapter for a joint project.
They’re launching one trailblazing executive coaching initiative after another, they’ve been interviewed widely in Bulgaria, and former prominent journalist Irina has had more than 20 ground-breaking articles published, establishing a new language for leaders and organisations. They’re encouraging authentic conversations in all sorts of settings which have never seen the like, some of which have led to huge organisational savings for their client.
However, the pair have certainly had their work cut out for them. Bulgaria was under Communist rule for 45 years. In the two decades since the country transitioned to a democracy, Bulgarians have still to find their voice, point out Peter and Irina.
The nation’s sense of self-worth is low, says Irina. Peter adds: “In Bulgaria, we have all these beliefs about being worthless and helpless, and we hope for change.”
Authenticity, if understood at all, tends to be associated with being “rough and rude”. Understandably, for many decades it’s been safest to keep one’s cards close to one’s chest. “ ‘Manager’ used to be a dirty word – used for people who were laundering money from the Communist Party and the Mob,” says Irina.
Coaching and a new language for leadership and organisations are desperately needed, she says.
“I strongly believe our problems are coming out of poor leadership, of people not connected to themselves, who get lost…. It seems to us that the coaching approach is what’s needed as a tool to get human again, to get people back to themselves and have a real conversation.”
How has growing up under Communism affected them?
“I am becoming more grateful to the Communists because they definitely taught us that the ‘telling system’ is not sustainable”, says Peter. “We need something different, a system where we listen to people with our hearts and guts, and then we can improve the next generation, not only in this country but in the world.
“So this was like a deeper lesson from Communism. It showed us what it means not to be yourself.
If you were yourself and expressed your voice, you were put in prison. So being yourself is something significant,” says Peter.
Irina adds: “We talk about empowerment…we need [people] to think, be courageous, be here with their hearts and minds….
But how do you do it?”
Simple listening
The pair did it by co-founding Bulgaria’s first coaching company DreamersDo, working with CEOs, where they felt they would have the most impact. They set out to explore what the impact of listening – rather than telling – would be in society.
Back in 2006, Peter was the only accredited coach in the whole of Bulgaria, apart from Victor Haimov, who was on a different route, as a trainer. By 2008, this had grown to three – Irina became certified and the other two launched ICF Bulgaria with another coach. By November 2012, ICF Bulgaria had 26 members, bringing the total of trained coaches to around 51, counting non-ICF members.
Nevertheless, coaching is still very new. There are no ICF-accredited programmes and only two books in Bulgarian on the subject – and they confuse coaching with mentoring, as do many businesses, requesting it as a form of ‘training’. ICF is still the only coaching body.
Yet the act of ‘simple listening’ has already delivered impressive results, they reveal, including helping open up an opportunity on three markets worth €600,000 for one client of theirs.
The pair have learnt that small steps are best. “We really wanted to start big with a coaching conference so everyone [will have] heard about it,” explains Irina.
However, after seven months of hard work, including lining up people such as Tim Gallwey, gaining the support of the nation’s largest newspaper and attracting thousands of euros in sponsorship, the recession hit. The funds were withdrawn.
“We went back to basics as the magic started to happen….But it nearly broke the company,” she says. “There wasn’t so much magic in that,” agrees Peter.
There has been magic, though, in other initiatives, including the ICF Bulgaria Masterclass, which has so far rolled out 11 masterlasses, with the aim of raising the benchmark for coaching and helping to build Bulgaria’s vision. The masterclasses have been run by former UK ICF and ICF Global presidents, Coaching at Work’s Liz Hall and coaching champions from the BBC, GlaxoSmithKline and IBM.
Another milestone was the Executive Breakfast on “Coaching for Sustainable Change in Business, in the Economy and Larger Society”, with former ICF Global president, Diane Brennan.
Influential leaders from organisations, including Hewlett-Packard (HP) and Siemens, attended.
Brennan led an executive masterclass organised by ICF Bulgaria with the country’s biggest business weekly Capital. Some 35 people attended, mostly CEOs and senior managers. The aim was to increase awareness among executives in Bulgaria about coaching as a new management style in the knowledge economy. For once, people were listening rather than telling, says Peter:
“We saw the possibility for everyone to be authentic….It was amazing because…I could sense inside of me for the first time that coaching was an industry – a small piece – but symbolically, business acknowledged it. Four years ago, it looked like a lonely planet.”
However, the Australian-Bulgarian Cross Development collaboration between Australia’s ICF Victoria chapter and ICF Bulgaria, proved that Bulgaria is no longer separate from the world.
Beginnings
The founders of DreamersDo overcame a great deal of self-doubt to achieve all of this. “I thought when I opened the office [of DreamersDo], who will come? Who am I to do this? I needed to believe in myself, that I could create something….The biggest challenge was the lack of belief in myself,” says Peter.
When he met Irina, however, they “created a space where we could dream, think big and be free to express my ideas and energy. She was supporting me to start seeing the ideas [become real]”.
For Irina, Peter offered a sense of grounding. “I can be brilliant with words, but if I have no clear centre and direction, what is the use of it? We fuel each other.”
“We can also stop each other too!”, laughs Peter.
Irina recalls: “When we said we would be doing leadership coaching, [people were] looking at us as if we were crazy….One manager said, what are you doing? You’re giving advice. We said, No. Then you’re mentoring? No. What are you doing then? Just asking questions. He said, My CEO doesn’t like to be asked questions!”
Peter’s journey into coaching began in 2004. He was a sales manager for HP, and had just won an award for being one of HP’s best sales managers globally. He was provoked by the then CEO’s message that the toughest walls are those within us. “It touched me deeply. I was wondering what this wall was and it seems I was ready to listen.”
He sensed that something other than training was needed to help people achieve their goals. When he discovered coaching through HP Bulgaria’s CEO, he realised this was what he’d been looking for.
In 2006, Peter took a leap of faith, left his job, sold his apartment and invested everything into training with systemic NLP developer Robert Dilts in the US.
After graduating and becoming accredited, he founded DreamersDo, the first coaching company in Bulgaria. Its focus was on leadership coaching for CEOs and business owners. He continued to believe in the importance of human beings as “whole people, not a black box, body, mind, heart and spirit”, and with Irina, that people have huge amounts of untapped potential.
Irina’s own move into coaching came from left field. She was a journalist – her dream job. Between 1999 and 2005, she was a diplomatic correspondent for the largest circulation daily newspaper, Trud. She was responsible for interviewing foreign officials during the turbulent years of the Kosovo war and the accession of Bulgaria to NATO and EU, then the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which Bulgaria supported.
As a result, she became aware of the power not only of the written word, but of a conversation and how it changes when it is brought to a human level. She became disenchanted with journalism. Her first experience of coaching involved helping Peter establish his company. She did it out of pure enthusiasm – that something so new and fascinating was coming up in Bulgaria.
“I didn’t really understand what Peter was talking about, [but] I was fascinated by his energy and magnetism.
“He’d sold his apartment to go and study in the USA. I thought it was crazy, but in a beautiful way, and I had a journalistic hunch that there was something in this.”
At the time, she was “stressed out”. Through Peter, she realised the “power of coaching” in helping to find a simple solution. She was hooked.
She was also inspired by a YouTube leadership video showing a picture of a man jumping off a cliff, with the strap: “Jump and the net will appear.”
So, instead of accepting a lucrative partnership deal with Cook Communications, she ‘jumped’, joining DreamersDo and becoming certified with Dilts.
“I was scared to death because I was jumping into something really new. I didn’t know what to expect, but it was one of those things that pulls you, and you have to surrender. It was a bumpy ride in many ways; the past six years have been very challenging. For both of us, they were years of growth and there were all sorts of challenges, including financial.”
However, she says: “From the beginning, we’ve been clear we want to support one person who is also responsible for engaging the team, setting the vision for execution within the whole system. So we looked at CEOs….They make the GDP of the whole economy…you don’t have to work with a zillion people…if you’re working with 20 CEOs, you’re working with 20 industries, and that is a beautiful way to impact in a positive way [on] the environment.”
But the pair came to realise that “even the greatest coaching is not enough to support executives to lead their companies at the cutting edge of their industry, and translate their vision and create a new market reality, especially when the map and the language for seeing and understanding it is lacking,” says Irina.
The vision
Instead, a holistic approach is needed: “Whole solutions in which coaching can be a central part are needed by executives to catch up with the pace of change and especially to lead the change.”
Their search for solutions crystalised in the DreamersDo Executive Leadership Platform, of which Irina is managing director. It’s aimed at acting leaders and decision makers – senior managers, CEOs, business owners and investors in Bulgaria,
says Irina: “The vision is for this to be a reflection and execution based community of business practitioners…with rolled-up sleeves who are committed to sustainable growth through leadership that inspires.”
Both are keen to stress they couldn’t have achieved this alone. “It was too big for one person; so much energy and capacity is needed to let the vision emerge,” says Peter.
It’s “about challenge, a calling to bring human capacity to its potential…this is one issue that will become key….Organisations can’t have control over financial results, but they can over conversations and decisions….I’m amazed when I ask leaders how much time they spend in conversation, and they say 70-80 per cent. Organisations and executives are sitting on a gold mine,” he says.
Peter and Irina are looking for coaching partners to deliver more sustainable solutions.
“We’re searching for people all around the world who can contribute with more perspectives and build leadership with both country capacity at national level, and how we can build an environment where Bulgarian executives can mark the next step to become world-class leaders,” says Peter.
“We’re lifting up the whole conversation,” adds Irina.
How does Peter see the future? “What will happen if we make a difference to the coaching industry? Improve on the vision and inspire stakeholders?”
One thing’s for sure, Peter says, “it’s not about the money”.
Instead, “Bulgaria can pilot new ideas, and be like a launchpad for excellence,” he says.
“We’re searching for the kind of people who can bring their perspectives to leadership, bring the whole system in…the question is, how to collaborate in this new way. Maybe [now], it’s a good time.”
Coaching at work, volume 8, issue 1