Fulcrum – Debunking the ‘Born Leader’ Myth: One Man’s Journey from Ambition to Impactful Leadership

Sachin Govender is the Managing Director (MD) of Fulcrum Premium Finance – a successful insurance premium financing company based in Johannesburg. He’s an impactful leader who has led his company to great success since he took over at the helm in 2023. 

His journey to becoming MD was one of intentional learning and growth alongside his coach, demonstrating the power of leadership coaching and demonstrating that with the determination to step outside their comfort zone, anyone can evolve into an influential leader who delivers stellar results.

A chartered accountant by profession, Sachin started his career at Fulcrum as the Head of Finance and Risk where he thrived in his role of managing the day-to-day functions of his team. He started his coaching journey with Grow in June 2022 upon recommendation by his manager, who was planning for her succession and identified Sachin as a potential candidate to one day take over her role of Chief Financial Officer (CFO).

After an introductory session with his coach from Grow, the coach identified that Sachin was ambitious and motivated to accelerate his career. “His vision for himself was to become a CEO,” his coach said. “CFO was a stop along that journey. And he wanted to have the complete set of skills in order to be a really successful CEO.”

His coach started by unpacking Sachin’s strengths and weaknesses with him, where they identified that as a chartered accountant, Sachin had strong technical skills such as managing financial strategies and analysing risks. He also had the ability to manage a small team and their day-to-day deliverables. He however lacked focused leadership skills and interpersonal relationships with his team members.

With relationship building being an important component of leadership and career growth, Sachin’s coach challenged him to start building relationships with the team members he managed. He was encouraged to be less reliant on formal scheduled meetings with his team and instead, be deliberate about building individual relationships so that his team members could feel like there was an open line of communication.

Sachin started by having regular one-on-one meetings with his team members to understand their personal backgrounds and motivations. He understood that it would feel uncomfortable at first, but being driven and goal-oriented, he challenged himself to succeed at this task.

In addition to building strong relationships with his team members, Sachin was also determined to build a high-performance culture within his team. The one-on-one conversations he was having with his team members enabled him to group them according to their various strengths and identify his A players and B players through tools provided by his coach. While his B players were great assets to the team, Sachin wanted to make sure that they became even better. Through regular conversations, he helped set specific goals for his team members to succeed. In doing so, Sachin explained that “…one of the toughest things I had to do with the team was gain their trust. Because if you don’t gain their trust, they’re not going to buy into you trying to improve them.”

“He really wanted to be a better leader,” his coach said. “One that inspires and motivates his direct reports to continually grow and be better at what they do. And he’d know that he’d achieved this if he was able to train his direct reports to perform his monthly financial reporting tasks while he worked on their wellbeing.”

An inspiring example of this was when Sachin identified that one of his employees had not completed their tertiary finance qualification. He encouraged them to continue improving their technical knowledge so they can continue to grow in the business. “She’s now moved from doing invoice capturing to the lead accountant in the biggest company in the group,” said Sachin. This is also testament to Sachin’s own growth in becoming a better, more impactful leader – his ability to develop and grow his own team.

As the Head of Finance and Risk, Sachin was often required to present the work of his department to senior management and shareholders. He frequently found, however, that he couldn’t articulate himself in a way that stakeholders with a non-financial background would understand. “I’ve always been good technically… able to solve many problems, analyse the data; any CA should be able to do that,” explained Sachin. “But one of the concerns was, how do I portray the feedback of the data and problems in a manner that’s easy to understand. So that was one of my weaknesses when I first joined [coaching].”

With his goal of becoming CEO, Sachin needed to improve on this. He had to learn to communicate effectively with senior stakeholders, build trust and influence their decision making.

Sachin therefore sought out to connect with directors and managers outside of his scheduled presentation times and position himself as a solid business partner. Together with his coach, he developed a ‘relationship management plan’, which ranked the quality of the relationships he had with management from weak to excellent, the value propositions at play for each relationship, with goals and interventions for improvements where needed. Sachin tracked this plan regularly with his coach and managed to build these strategic relationships and maintain them over time.

The resignation of the previous MD from the premium finance business in the group left an opportunity for Sachin to demonstrate his suitability for the MD role. After various interviews, the management team was unable to find suitable candidates to replace the previous MD. 

Having spent time building relationships with senior management, learning to communicate effectively, and given his track record of improving the performance of his own finance team, Sachin believed that he was well positioned to step into the role of MD. He put his hand up for the role and interviewed with senior management, where his previous learnings, achievements and development over time convinced them that he was the right person to turn the business around. And in February 2023, seven months into his coaching journey with Grow, Sachin was promoted to MD of Fulcrum Premium Finance and has since turned the business around.

Overall, Sachin’s leadership coaching journey focused on improving communication, relationship-building, and team management skills. Becoming MD is testament to his commitment to his goals, and to the coaching process. His coach explained that “He came to each coaching session prepared. He was willing to do the work, always did his homework and made a plan to come to every coaching session despite having a busy schedule. He was very committed very early on and that’s why I think he was able to derive such value from it.”

Stories like that of Sachin show what’s possible with grit, a determination to succeed, and the right tools and support. Grow is determined to continue playing its part in developing leaders that will help grow South Africa’s businesses to even greater heights.