While large organisations focus on identifying gaps within their ecosystems and metrics, Devika Das—a coach from India now based in Hong Kong—is supporting leaders in emotional intelligence, awareness, and influence through her unique author’s technique.
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**The Role of Leadership in Business Success**
The success of a company directly depends on who is in charge. According to McKinsey, the business world will transform again in 2025. Increasingly, we hear that traditional leadership models are outdated. Control and KPIs are no longer the prime indicators of a strong leader.
This shift is further supported by Harvard Business Review, which emphasizes that modern “executive presence” is no longer about wearing a suit or having a loud voice. Instead, it is grounded in deep self-reflection, calmness amidst instability, and empathy in negotiations.
By 2026, Gartner estimates that more than half of leadership development programs will have evolved to incorporate strategies based on coaching, emotional intelligence, and psychological safety.
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**A New Leadership Approach: Integrating Psychology and Eastern Philosophy**
As leadership styles are reconsidered globally, a novel method has emerged combining foundational psychology with Eastern philosophy. Where simple psychoanalysis may fall short, Eastern wisdom offers effective insights. Leading this innovation is Indian expert Devika Das.
Devika is the founder of The Soul Soup Limited and has built a reputation working with senior managers and top executives worldwide. Her work demonstrates how organizational change can begin by transforming one person from the inside out.
To make her coaching more effective, Devika combined diverse approaches and tools, creating a method that has proven successful over twenty years.
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**Techniques for Becoming a Leader “From the Inside”**
Many people think of leadership in terms of external attributes like position, charisma, appearance, and rhetoric. For Devika Das, true leadership starts within.
She developed the **CORE Executive Presence** methodology, a framework refined through years of work with senior managers, founders, and leaders of multinational teams. The method draws on psychodynamic psychology, which Devika studied at INSEAD, along with Eastern philosophical practices found in the Yoga Sutras and Ashtavakra Gita.
While most leadership models focus on external behaviors, CORE delves into internal operating systems that underpin behavior, reactions, and influence.
Devika explains the three core elements of the process:
– **Self-awareness:** Understanding your unconscious drives and triggers beyond surface strengths.
– **Reading others:** Developing fluency in the unspoken human dynamics and tensions that shape every interaction.
– **Adapting with power:** Translating insights into conscious leadership choices that create conditions for others to thrive.
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**Why CORE Executive Presence is Unique**
The CORE method helps leaders uncover unconscious drivers, internal tensions, and habitual responses—such as fear of abandonment, the urge to control, or a desire for approval—that often impair clarity and freedom.
The program guides leaders to look beyond language and key performance indicators, enhancing emotional intelligence, cultural attunement, and the ability to read group dynamics. Leaders learn to identify disengagement, rising tensions, unspoken concerns, and individual needs within their teams.
This “tuning in” allows leaders to act with precision rather than blunt force—to build trust, avoid unnecessary conflict, and respond thoughtfully to changing circumstances.
At the highest level, leaders use their understanding of themselves and others not to manipulate, but to make conscious choices about how to communicate and act.
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**Balancing Leadership with Eastern Philosophy**
Eastern philosophy plays a vital role in Devika’s approach. It emphasizes stability and comfort as two essential aspects of leadership—whether physical posture or strategic direction.
In coaching, this translates to maintaining firmness and flexibility simultaneously: staying the course without rigid stubbornness.
This integration of mindfulness and presence from Eastern practice complements Western tools that uncover motivations and interpersonal dynamics, resulting in a practical and deeply personalized leadership development approach.
Devika shares, “This is not about adding another technique to your toolkit. It’s about fundamentally changing how you show up. Through practices that cultivate emotional steadiness, genuine presence, and resilience under pressure, leaders develop the capacity to observe events without being overwhelmed and to act from clarity rather than fear.”
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**Transforming Organizations One Leader at a Time**
For a leader to succeed and inspire confidence, self-assurance is critical—something Devika actively cultivates in her training.
Her coaching journey includes work in Sri Lanka, Egypt, and Indonesia before moving to China, where she worked as an independent coach with clients primarily from Europe and Asia. Later, she established her own company focused on international executive presence training and coaching.
Today, Devika works from Hong Kong, coaching C-suite leaders and aspiring executives across global corporations.
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**A Case Study: Changing Sales Strategy Through Internal Transformation**
One of Devika’s significant projects involved a senior leader from a fast-growing IT consulting firm in Asia. The goal was ambitious: double revenues by 2028.
This required shifting from a slow, “farmer” sales approach—which focuses on building long-term, trusting customer relationships—to a fast-paced, “hunter” strategy targeting new large customers in unfamiliar markets.
However, the team resisted this change. Long-standing values of care and trust were seen as outdated, causing decreased productivity and risking the loss of key employees.
Devika began working with the internal leader, advocating for an “internal transformation” rather than applying pressure or brute force. This transformation emphasized presence, conversation, and reinvention over orders.
Practical steps included workshops to redefine KPIs, raising awareness about identity and complexity, rebranding sales roles, valuing cross-selling, and developing joint career paths.
This approach preserved the company’s identity while steering it toward its growth targets—a true example of transformation from within.
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**Recognition and Influence in Global Leadership Development**
The CORE Executive Presence approach signals a profound change sweeping through global organizations. Devika Das’s pioneering work has garnered international attention.
Since 2021, she has been a member of the Forbes Coaches Council and the Harvard Business Review Advisory Council, where she contributes to shaping trends in management.
Her contributions to fostering informed leadership earned her the **Global Woman of Influence 2024** award, recognizing her impact not only on individual leaders but also the broader business environment.
Additionally, Devika is a member of the **World Economic Forum Expert Network**, a community of nearly 3,000 experts working to address global challenges through system leadership and collaboration.
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**Devika’s Ongoing Work and Legacy**
Alongside coaching, Devika actively shares her insights through her book and blog posts. She serves as a learning coach at INSEAD Executive Education—one of the world’s leading international business schools—helping to train responsible leaders capable of transforming business and society.
Her role at INSEAD involves mentoring senior managers and assessing leaders who apply conscious leadership principles within their organizations.
This is not theoretical work—it is a proven system that has already catalyzed a paradigm shift in corporate cultures worldwide. Many companies now look to Devika to help develop their leaders.
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**The Growing Need for Skilled Leadership Coaches**
In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, the demand for highly skilled coaches to train and develop leaders and managers is stronger than ever.
Coaches who can expand departmental effectiveness and enhance overall company performance are in high demand—and Devika Das stands out as a leading figure in this vital field.
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By blending deep psychology, Eastern philosophy, and practical leadership techniques, Devika Das’s CORE Executive Presence method offers a transformative path for leaders ready to evolve—from the inside out.
https://www.freepressjournal.in/latest-news/leadership-from-within-how-one-indian-coachs-method-helped-it-giant-double-revenue-without-losing-key-talent-2
