Meet Pei Ying Lim, the founder of Collective Change Institute (CCI), a renowned Coach Training & Coaching Services organization. Established in 2017 during Lim's corporate finance career, CCI has become an ICF-approved coach institute specializing in leadership coaching, executive coaching, and coach culture development. Based in Singapore, CCI has delivered over 15,000 coaching hours and trained 600+ ICF-certified coaches worldwide.
Under Lim's leadership, CCI launched the Coaching for Change (C4C) initiative, raising $45,000 in donations. In 2022, Lim transitioned full-time to coaching, embodying 'The Growth Catalyst' ethos, focusing on purposeful growth. CCI's achievements include successfully implementing coaching cultures in major Singaporean educational and financial institutions, highlighting Lim's commitment to impactful leadership development.
Tell us a bit about yourself and your family?
Life was challenging growing up. As the eldest grandchild, I wasn’t born male as expected, and was constantly compared to my male cousins. My dad’s business failed when I was still in primary school and my mum became the sole-breadwinner to bring me and my 2 brothers up while grappling with my dad's frequent requests for money to fund his business ventures which didn’t take off. We were living from paycheque to paycheque, and I had to grow up fast, taking care of my brothers when my parents were around.
I excelled in my studies and went to an elite high school where my peers mostly came from privileged backgrounds and were status driven . It made me ashamed of my family background and determined to prove that I could succeed in life in spite of not coming from a privileged background.
I learnt to play the piano as a kid and lost interest in my teenage years due to the pressure and monotony of exams. But I persevered and completed a diploma because I saw how hard my mum worked to invest in my development. Whenever I’m met with challenges, it helps me to persist and overcome them.
Given what I had experienced growing up, I was driven to excel in life to ensure my family will not have to suffer as we did before, and to have my own successful business where my dad had failed.
Have you had any formal training or family business?
I have a double degree in Business Management (majoring in Finance & Ops Mgmt) and Economics from Singapore Management University. I tumbled down the rabbit hole of coaching in my undergraduate years when coaching was mostly unheard of in Asia.
The life-changing transformation inspired me to become a coach and allowed me to leverage on my coaching abilities as I embarked on a career in finance. I was able to bridge between the voices on the ground and the decisions of senior management and get the needed visibility to accelerate my career journey up the corporate ladder in a short span of a decade to become a senior finance leader for the APAC region of a US Medical Device company. My role as a commercial business partner placed me in a pivotal position to drive growth, synergies and efficiencies across the business.
This also supported my journey into entrepreneurship, especially when it comes to B2B-facing work.
How did you come up with the idea for your business, and what was the process of turning that idea into a reality?
This business started by chance. I managed and trained coaches for a few years after becoming a coach, and eventually decided to focus on building up a career in finance.
In 2016, an ex-student reached out to myself and 2 other coach trainers for training to become a credentialed coach with International Coaching Federation (ICF), the certifying body for coaching.
In order to do so, we had to design and deliver a 60 hours coach training curriculum to a group of minimally 5 students and get it accredited by ICF in order for the students to apply for their coaching credentials.
Given the amount of effort to make this happen, we felt it would be a waste to use it just once for this purpose.
We decided to start a coach training institute in 2017, with the training we have developed to see if more could benefit from it, with the aspiration to become Asia’s leading institute for coaching.
How have you grown as a leader since starting your company, and what have been some of the key lessons you've learned along the way?
I’ve learnt to step back more and empower my team members to rise up to their potential so I can focus on growing the business. As the eldest child, I tend to be highly responsible and also a protector. A few years ago, when a couple of my team members were down, I burnt out trying to cover the gaps that surfaced and ensure they did not affect CCI’s reputation.
I overextended myself, and did not feel like doing anything for a while after.
It made me look at the responsibility that I’ve carried all my life, and reconsider if this would be in support of my future.
I made a decision to let go of responsibility from my self-identity, and instead empower myself with “choice” instead.
That meant not taking everything on as it comes, but deciding if it is something I want and taking it on powerfully if so.
Otherwise, let someone else take it on instead.
This helped me to step up powerfully in areas where I have made a choice to, and step away from responsibility that comes from a place of obligation.
Can you tell us about a time when you faced a major setback or failure in your business, and how you overcame it?
In the early years of Collective Change Institute (CCI), coaching wasn’t mainstream or seen as a skill that leaders should have in managing team members.
Mentoring took centerstage and coaching was primarily accessible only to senior leaders sponsored by their organizations.
Within the coach training industry, CCI is relatively unheard of as a brand name.
It was a challenge to educate people about the benefits of learning coaching, and it took more for people to buy in. We organized live coaching workshops for people who were interested to find out more. As our initial cohorts of trainee coaches underwent their own personal transformations and experienced the positive impact of coaching to their lives, they became advocates for CCI, referring our programs through word of mouth. The success stories of our trainee coaches increased our value proposition and attracted other aspiring coaches to our programs.
How do you stay motivated and focused on your goals, especially during challenging times?
Having 2 other business partners as sounding boards to discuss challenges, bounce ideas and develop strategies at a regular cadence keeps us focused on what’s important to the business. Knowing I’m not alone in this, but rather, we are all in this together and have each other’s backs, helps us to keep an eye out for one another to bring us back on track when needed.
Knowing we have a team of people willing to step up to support in challenging times keeps us going as well.
How do you balance your personal life with the demands of running a business?
I left my corporate career to run this business in order to experience freedom and flexibility in the way I live life. Applying this intention to organizing my life is what helps me balance personal life and well-being with the demands of running a business.
That means carving out time to immerse in nature, going on new adventures and experiences, and spending time with myself, my family and loved ones. I firmly believe that by taking care of myself, it empowers me to take care of others and the business better. My business partners are of the same mind, and this supports the balance we all need to bring our best selves into running this business.
What are your plans for the future of your business, and how do you see yourself evolving as a founder and leader?
I envision having CCI Human-Centric Coaches in every organisation, to create a thriving work culture. We spend the bulk of our waking lives at work, yet interactions can be quite transactional and soul-less. People don’t feel comfortable being themselves at work and believe life happens after work. Regardless of the ranks and hierarchy at the workplace, and of the day we are all humans.
Only when we can begin to see and connect as human beings can people bring their full selves to work and thrive in what they do.
When that happens, organizations will thrive too. This is why we develop human-centric coaches here at CCI, who learn and embody the mindset and skillsets needed to connect as humans, to draw out the wisdom and learnings from within, and to operate from their empowered selves. Imagine how the workplace culture will change if leaders are trained to be human-centric coaches.
As a founder and leader, it means stepping up to the front more and putting myself out there as a thought leader to inspire leaders and organizations toward this vision.
If you could go back in time and give your younger self one piece of advice, what would it be?
You have what it takes to succeed in business and the support/resources you need. Trust yourself and ask for help when needed.
What's the most unconventional thing you've done to grow your business, and what was the result?
CCI is positioned as a development provider instead of a training provider.
This means we focus on providing them the development needed, beyond training sessions, to leave the program confident to take on real clients while making a positive impact. We offer a coach practitioner experience through the Coaching for Change (C4C) program where our trainee coaches get the opportunity to coach real-clients through a 6-session coaching engagement.
In return, based on the value received from the coaching, the coachee will donate to CCI’s beneficiary of choice at the end of the engagement.
Last year, our coaches raised $20K which we donated to the Bone Marrow Donor Program (BMDP).
Our mission is to impact 10,000 lives and with the C4C program, we particularly want to introduce coaching to workplaces that can benefit tremendously from it, especially the not-for-profit organizations which tend to have limited resources and need support in developing their leaders to increase engagement and retention.
This unique offering has helped us stand out from other training providers, build our brand presence, and attract students who are serious about their journey to becoming coaches and getting the practitioner experience needed to make that happen while achieving their coaching credentials.
This is a quadruple win - for the trainee coaches, the coachees, our beneficiaries, and CCI.
What's the most important lesson you've learned from a failure, and how have you applied it to your business?
Back in 2019, I wanted to climb to the peak of Mt Kinabalu for my birthday and got a few friends to join me, hoping to reach the peak together as a group. But that didn’t happen. I was the only one who reached the peak. While I had clear reasons and motivation for ascending the peak, they did not. They were there for me, not for themselves.
Without a strong internal motivation, they eventually succumbed to their limitations along the way. The moment of reaching the peak was one of hollow triumph.
While I made it up to the top, we didn’t make it up together.
From this experience, I’ve learnt to always make space to discover the desires and motivations of the various stakeholders and bring them on the journey together, be it our team members, coaches or clients - to align what we offer or are working towards with what they want, to arrive at a mutually beneficial outcome.
What's the most meaningful compliment or feedback you've ever received from a customer, and why did it resonate with you?
One of the most meaningful compliments received is from one of the participants in a career coach training program we conducted for an organization.
He is a member of the senior management team, and during lunch on the second day of the workshop, he went up to his HR peer and told her that the entire senior management team should attend the coach training program.
It created a buzz to the extent that the senior HR leader pop-by to check out the training session after.
Being seen at that level was a huge acknowledgment for us, it tells us that our past efforts and experiences in enhancing the development and delivery of our training have paid off. It tells us the level of impact we are capable of.
If you had to choose one thing that makes your company truly unique and sets it apart from the competition, what would it be, and why?
The team behind CCI, the aspiring and credentialed coaches who walk through our doors are all aligned to the higher vision of what coaching can do for society/humanity and for every one of us. We believe in walking the talk - we have a strong genuine dedication to our personal growth, we are still doing the inner work and taking active steps to grow as individuals after almost 2 decades in coaching. We stand for the growth of each other, the growth of our coaches and students and clients.
With 5 Master-Certified Coaches on the faculty team walk the talk by not only training and mentoring coaches, but are also active coach practitioners in their areas of coaching expertise, bringing rich coaching experiences to the trainee coaches
The trainee coaches and clients whom we impact often provide positive feedback on the heartfelt care and attention they receive, and see us as a part of their life journey, and see the ecosystem we have created as one which they can continue to be part of.
In fact, half of our team members are aspiring coaches who graduated from CCI’s coach-training programs. That is one of the best affirmations for the organization.
Find Pei Ying Lim on Social Media:
- LinkedIn - Personal Account - https://www.linkedin.com/in/pythegrowthcatalyst/
- Companies websites - https://www.collectivechangeinstitute.com/
- Instagram (Personal) - https://www.instagram.com/pylim66?igsh=MTk3YnZucHhrcHpsZQ==
- Instagram (Business) - https://www.instagram.com/collectivechangeinstitute?igsh=MWhmYzdxNGt3cHF4ag==
- Email address - peiying.lim.66@gmail.com
Hope you enjoyed reading Pei Ying Lim’s story!
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