Nikhil Damle

With over 23 years of experience in global banking and technology at Morgan Stanley, including roles as VP and Chief Administrative Officer, Nikhil possesses deep insights into the challenges and opportunities facing today's professionals and organizations.

He leverages this experience, combined with his expertise as an internationally certified NLP Trainer and Business Coach, to empower individuals and teams to achieve peak performance.

He started Iridium Coaching and Learning in May 2021 with an aim to enable workplaces to transform and achieve their organizational mission and business outcomes. People are at the heart of any business, and Iridium aims to empower individuals such that they become high-powered assets for their organizations.

Nikhil began his career working as an industry analyst at Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy (CMIE), covering a range of industries in monthly primers that captured factors influencing demand/supply trends.

Between 2003-21, Nikhil worked at Morgan Stanley’s Global Knowledge Centre based out of their Mumbai office. He was involved in setting up the investment banking research functions and led the business for APAC-Japan. He was also instrumental in setting up various new functions for the India business, and in the last 5 years of his tenure at Morgan Stanley, he was COO for Corporate Services and then the Technology divisions. He has expertise across operations, finance, business research, risk/governance, people development and culture enablement.

Between 2015 and 2026, he was a domain expert in business and financial management with TREE Society, imparting business viability training to rural entrepreneurs across 7 states in India. He is also a National Resources Personnel (NRP) and has done consultation work with the National Rural Livelihoods Mission, which is a Government of India program.

With organisations, Nikhil focuses on bringing applications of NLP in the following areas, with the main themes being developing leaders, articulating culture/values, enabling change and transitions and facilitating growth in business. He does this through learning interventions designed as journeys, which can include components of executive coaching, interactive workshops, game/activity based simulations, group coaching as well as behavioural assessment labs.

With individuals, Nikhil primarily works through delivery of courses in NLP which are: NLP Foundation Course (40 hours), NLP Practitioner Course (130 hours) and NLP Master Practitioner Course (130 hours). He believes in "teaching by demonstration" so that each participant discovers their unique way of applying and practicing NLP as relevant in their life's context, and is sufficiently equipped in using NLP dynamically as second nature. 

My work in organisations, working with leaders and large groups is where I have found most success. I specialise in contextualising unworkable patterns and helping leaders, teams and groups create workability and make differences in operating styles and orientations, a starting point, rather than a stumbling block. This allows me to work with organisations irrespective of their industry or size.

My work with individuals is focused on helping them self-model their successful and excellent behaviours in a manner that makes everyday application of NLP easy and seamless, almost like play.

Through my Master Practitioner course, I have had success in teaching my students the heart of NLP - which is to cultivate imbibed behavioural modelling skills that satisfies both tests of modelling: 1) Can you do it? 2) Can you teach someone else to do it?  

What sets me apart is that my way of teaching NLP allows me to teach and transfer the skills in a structural, content-free, process oriented and imbibed manner. I try not to get stuck with teaching techniques or tools, but rather teach my participants the process and principles behind the tools/techniques, so they can cultivate the instinct to utilise the process even in contexts where tools/techniques don't work. This approach participants to apply NLP in a creative, free and instinctual manner, allowing them to create applications in everyday situations.

Participants will start seeing NLP as a life enabling "practice" as opposed to seeing it as a set of tools and techniques. Participants discover joy, assurance, clarity and lightness, as the focus is on making NLP simple to use!

People can hire me for individual coaching or consulting engagements where they would like to create greater impact in their careers and lives.

My belief is that no matter what domain or industry a business works in, it is in the people business first! So, organisations can hire me for various team and group level interventions to help them navigate through changes and transitions in response to internal or external factors. Organisations also hire me for interventions with their entire staff on aspects such as culture, values and excellence. I am also called in to do keynote and offsite events for leadership teams.

Working with me is an easy going, focused, collaborative and satisfying experience - like playing jazz and riffing off each other! 

Am I the right person to help them?

A simpler way to address this is to indicate who would be the right client that I can work with: 

• For individuals, that would be someone who seeks to be in charge of their own destiny and intends to use my coaching or course as a means to accelerate their aspirations and goals. And is willing to take action for that.
• For organisations, I work best with clients that have a clear business outcome in mind, and are willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to achieving those outcomes.

My services may not be fit for clients looking for a quick and easy fix to surface level problems and are not willing to do the work required to discover and act on new choices that might present themselves in the process of working with me.

My services also won't suit businesses that look at people development as an exercise in ticking the box or just using up the budget before it is over.

My clients usually find me easy to work with, see me as someone who makes change easy to navigate and is willing to go the extra mile in helping client's achieve their intended outcomes.