One-to-one coaching
The counsel who will not decide for you.
Senior leaders sometimes come on their own rather than with a team or a brief. This is the smallest and least packaged thing he does, and deliberately so — there is no programme, no fixed number of sessions and no curriculum. There is a decision, or a pattern, and someone to think it through with who has spent a career studying how organizations actually behave.
Whether it is a fit is the first thing worth establishing, and it is a short conversation.
What arrives
Three things senior people bring on their own.
None of these is a training need, which is why they rarely arrive as a programme brief. He has described them turning up unannounced — “senior executives and industry experts often ask me…”, “one of the usual predicaments senior professionals share with me…”
A call that cannot be delegated
Every model has been run and the analysis is not the problem. What makes it hard is that the cost of acting falls on people the leader knows by name. The site’s reading of the Bhagavad Gita opens on this exact paralysis, and treats it as the real problem rather than the arithmetic.
A new seat, and nobody to ask
A step up, a move across, a first year in a role where the honest conversations have quietly stopped. He has published on what determines whether a senior person settles and performs, and on the barriers that hold careers back without ever being said out loud.
Something that keeps happening
The same argument, the same stall, the same people going quiet. His research covers what unfair treatment and isolation actually do to senior people — how they turn into knowledge hiding, disengagement and a slow withdrawal of discretionary effort.
Before you ask
Four things this is not.
Easier to rule out early than to discover three conversations in.
- It is not therapy. He holds a Masters in Psychology and it informs how he listens, but this is work about decisions, roles and organizations. If what is needed is clinical support, that is a different professional and he will say so.
- It is not a packaged programme. There is no set number of sessions and no published cadence, because none is fixed. What it takes depends entirely on what you arrive with.
- It is not somebody making the decision for you. The point is a sharper version of your own judgment, not a borrowed one. A leader who wanted the answer handed over would be better served by the advisory work.
- It is not separate from everything else. It draws on the same published research and the same systems view of organizations as the programmes and the consulting.
Behind the conversation
Where the judgment comes from.
Not a coaching qualification — a research career spent on how organizations and the people in them actually behave.
- M.A. Psychology — Indira Gandhi National Open University, specialising in organizational behaviour and human resource management.
- PhD in Management, Strategy and HRM — IIM Ahmedabad.
- Faculty in Strategy and Human Resource Management — XLRI Jamshedpur; previously IIM Kozhikode and SPJIMR.
- SHRM Senior Certified Professional — and ten peer-reviewed papers on careers, fairness, well-being and how leaders decide.
What leaders say
In their own words.
Written by the senior professionals who have worked with him — notes sent after programmes ended, and recommendations left publicly on LinkedIn.
When I first learned that we had a subject called HR Research Methods, I thought, okay… this is going to be a lot of explanations, derivations and theories. 😅 But Sudhanshu Sir gave it a completely different perspective.
The way he showed us how to actually identify a problem statement, approach a case and think about it from a practical HR perspective was genuinely fascinating.
And with the group case presentations, discussions, and even acting out the cases in class - the concepts didn’t just stay on paper. We actually experienced them. ✨
Definitely one of those subjects that changed the way I look at research.
Sudhanshu was a professor at SPJIMR for the Leadership LAB, where I witnessed his profound expertise in combining behavioral science with strategic leadership principles. His method of explaining complex concepts was highly impactful and easy to grasp.
I have also sought his guidance on various other matters, and his advice has always been insightful and sincere. His ability to mentor individuals in transforming leadership into a strategic business driver makes him an exceptional mentor for anyone looking to elevate their leadership skills and drive organizational success.
I had the opportunity to attend Prof. Sudhanshu Maheshwari's engaging and insightful session on Strategic Negotiations during our IIM Kozhikode Women Leadership programme. The way he explained BATNA and ZOPA concepts was extremely clear and practical, helping me realise how to harness the power of negotiation in real scenarios.
While it's not a skill one can master overnight, his session made me more conscious of ensuring that I am neither undervalued nor overlooked, and that I can confidently articulate and protect the value I bring to the table.
I particularly appreciated how he kept the discussions light, relatable, and rooted in real-world applicability. The blend of theory and interactive conversation made the learning both memorable and impactful.
Having depth of knowledge but using that knowledge for the benefits of others needs great skills — Professor Sudhanshu is well versed with impeccable skills of using vast knowledge for the benefit of others.
I had an opportunity to interact with him during IIMK course. I was impressed how easily Professor handled critical topics like organizational behaviour, culture, how to handle conflicts, team collaboration, reflection and so on.
I strongly recommend Professor Sudhanshu to organizations who are going through tough times in handling organizational behaviour or culture issues, or want to set up ideal SOPs.
I had the chance to attend Prof. Sudhanshu's classes during my Executive Business Management program, and I genuinely admire him. He has an incredible knack for spotting potential in people and bringing out the best in them.
His sessions were never just lectures — they were lively, interactive conversations filled with real-life examples and thought-provoking questions. The depth of his knowledge and the way he made learning engaging left a lasting impact on me.
It was really a mind opening session I had with Mr. Sudhanshu. His in depth knowledge and command on the subject is mind blowing, which is really based on the real world activities happening in today's life.
Being a scholar on various subjects in his academics, he binds all the participants in an active session — active participation, full engagement, open discussion, ideas generation, and narrating the case studies — converting the whole class to learn the reality as a lifetime lesson for everyone, by allowing each member to put forward their real experience into ease of learning.
Thank you for guiding me through the subject of Effective Hiring, Compensation, and Reward Management. The course has been a truly insightful and enriching journey for me. Previously, I believed that most decisions in this area relied largely on intuition based on my past professional experience. However, after attending your sessions, I have realized the critical importance of making data-driven decisions instead.
One profound lesson I gained is that technology serves as an enabler, but it is humans who harness its potential to enhance lives. This has reinforced my understanding that human capital is the most essential resource for any leader — managing and developing it is key to building a motivated team capable of achieving organizational success.
If I apply metrics rigorously across hiring, compensation, and reward processes — making data-driven rationality my foundation of decision making — I am confident that I will become a respected leader in the future.
I wanted to thank you for the four sessions on HR Management that you took for our batch. Recently, while preparing for our capstone project, I revisited your lectures and found them extremely insightful.
The way you conducted the sessions — making them engaging, fun and interactive — made a huge difference. The matrices you shared for each topic were also very interesting and helped simplify the concepts beautifully.
We are currently restructuring our company and I was responsible for non-technical hiring. You took a lecture on recruitment and although the exact points were not directly applicable to my situation, the clarity I gained from your session made the entire process much easier. It also gave me the confidence that I was making the right decisions.
I am truly grateful for your teaching, and I think everyone in the batch would agree that you are our favourite professor so far.
Thanks a lot for your contribution in explaining not only the subject in detail but multiple dependent and independent references, stories and incidents.
Personally the concepts, references and experiences shared by you really helped me be a balanced person both in professional and personal life. I will practise class learning to develop a great leader within me.
Thank you for making the Leadership Lab so interesting and exciting. It was really an enjoyable journey we walked together. Your knowledge in various kinds of topics, from History to Cricket, is very much appreciable.
It would be an absolute privilege for me if we can sit together to discuss a few ideas, history, cricket or maybe human psychology over a cup of tea during our next meeting. Please keep teaching with your smiling face, wittiness, and last but not the least quoting Faiz Md. Faiz.
Indeed it was one of my eye opening kind of lectures. I personally learned a lot and there is so much to practice. I will reach out in case anything comes up while implementing the concepts you taught us.
Really loved and enjoyed the journey of these sessions of Leadership Lab. Admired by your passion and knowledge. I have saved your number and am going to disturb you in the future when I need support.
It was a very enriching learning experience, Prof! Thanks a ton for being so patient, cheerful and energetic. Looking forward to implementing these — will keep you posted on the developments.
It was indeed a very dynamic experience for us as well. Though it was a very short span of time, we got to know insights which we will recollect in our day to day professional and personal interaction.
It was a great and memorable experience to attend your class. The techniques are excellent, to say the least. I feel it will always be echoed in my memory.
It was an amazing experience to learn about research methodology. The activities were really interesting and different to what some of us had experienced earlier. Having said that, this also helped us as a team to work together in such a short span of time.
Next step
Say so in the first message.
Tell him it is the one-to-one work you are asking about, and what you are carrying into it. He will tell you whether it is a fit — and if it is not, which of the other three is.