High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 261: 7 Steps to Be On Point with Executive Coach and Keynote Speaker, Pam Borton

Episode Date: July 6, 2019

Pam Borton is a renowned expert on developing high performing leaders and teams. As the President and CEO of Borton Partners, Pam provides elite senior executive coaching to clients and delivers inspirational and dynamic keynote presentations on leadership and peak performance topics for organizations nationally and internationally. As an International Coaching Federation (ICF) certified senior executive coach, Pam is committed to taking C-suite and senior level executives, and their high performing teams, to the “next level.” Her leadership coaching spans organizations of all sizes, including Fortune 500 companies, and across industries including finance, retail, IT, hospitality, higher education, healthcare and more. Her business coaching clients include Best Buy, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Hyatt Corporation and Merrill Lynch, to name a few. Pam brings her executive coaching clients the unique experience of navigating the pressure and expectations of a highly visible position in an ultra competitive environment, having served as the winningest professional coach in the history of the University of Minnesota women’s basketball program. In this podcast, Pam and Cindra talk about: · What the best leaders do · Why we need feedback to be our best self · The role of confidence and resilience in leadership · How to have grace under fire · The 7 steps to be On Point

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Sindra Kampoff, certified mental performance coach, speaker, and author. And I'm here to help you master your mindset. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best each week. I talk to leaders, experts, coaches, athletes, and consultants all about the topic of mindset

so that we can reach our potential or be high performers in everything that we do. In today's episode, I'm excited to introduce you to Pam Borton. Now, I know Pam from The Speaking World. I also know her because I witnessed her coaching at the University of Minnesota. And now she's a keynote speaker and executive coach. So let me tell you a little bit

about Pam. Pam Borton is a renowned expert on developing high-performing leaders and teams. As the president and CEO of Borton Partners, Pam provides elite senior executive coaching to clients and delivers inspirational and dynamic keynote presentations on topics such as leadership and peak performance. She does this for organizations both nationally and internationally. Pam is an International Coaching Federation certified senior executive coach, and she's committed to taking C-suite and senior level executives and their high-performing teams to the next level. Her leadership coaching spans organizations of all sizes, including Fortune 500 companies, and across industries such as finance, retail, IT, hospitality, higher education, and healthcare. So her business clients include companies like Best Buy, Blue Cross Blue

Shield, Hyatt Corporation, and Merrill Lynch. So as I mentioned, Pam brings a really unique executive coaching role to her clients, having already navigated the pressure and expectations of really highly visible position in an ultra-competitive environment, and that is Division I athletics. She served as the winningest professional coach in the history of the University of Minnesota women's basketball program. And that's how I first learned about Pam. So Pam and I, in this interview, we talk about a variety of different things, including what the best leaders do, why we all need feedback to be our best self. We talk about the role of confidence and resilience in terms of leadership,

how to have grace under fire and what she means by that. And we talk about her book On Point and the seven steps to be on point. We'd love to hear from you in terms of what stood out to you about this interview or just comments or questions that you might have for Pam and I. You can head over to Twitter and I am at mentally underscore strong and Pam is at Borton underscore Pam. All right.

Look forward to hearing from you. And without further ado, let's bring on Pam. Okay. Today, I'm really excited to welcome Pam Borton on the podcast here. So Pam, I'm so excited for you to be here. I've heard you speak numerous times. And I'm just looking forward to hearing more about your perspective and sharing it with those that are listening. Well, great. It's great to have you. And it's an honor to be on your podcast today with the space that you're in. And, and I'm looking forward to bringing in some value today. Awesome. So, you know, one of the ways that I know of you, and I know your background is you were the winningest head coach and program history at the University of Minnesota. So go gophers.

But tell it. Yeah, go gophers. Tell us a little bit about your passion, Pam, and what you're doing right now. Yes, you know, I think my passion and my purpose really hasn't changed from when I started coaching when I was 22 years old to when I stopped coaching, and it was 27 years of coaching Division I college basketball, those elite athletes, for almost three decades, and, you know, it was really to make a difference and an impact in people's lives and getting athletes and also building high performing teams in order to get people to be able to accomplish something they never thought that they could accomplish. And I think that's what true coaches do is getting individuals to a point

they never dream of going. And what I'm doing now is continuing to coach, but not just, I'm not coaching with a basketball. I'm still coaching people. I'm still coaching teams. I'm coaching within organizations on getting executives, whether it's college coaches, elite athletes, executive teams, organizations for them to experience their own final four. Awesome. Their own final four, whatever that looks like. So tell us a little bit about your transition from athletic coaching, basketball coaching to now

the coaching that you're doing in the speaking. When I was looking more at all your credentials, I'm like, wow, I don't know of anybody that's as highly trained as you are in coaching. It's very, very impressive. So tell us about like, you know, why you transitioned to that and where you're going in general when you made that decision. Yes, well, you know, I had a great experience. I used an executive coach when I was coaching and I hired an executive coach right after I took my team to a final four because of all of the high expectations and the public scrutiny and the pressure and the stress and really everything that college, you know, all coaches at that level go through, even elite athletes go through that now. And so I worked with an executive coach for three years

and had a very transformational experience. I became a better leader for my team, for my staff and for people. I became a better coach and I was able to see things differently. And when I transitioned from coaching sports, you know, I, I, you know, for 27 years, I'm like, you know, I still enjoy what I'm doing, but I don't, I can't see myself doing this for 15 more years. And so I felt like I was young enough to start another career. And I went on and transferred my coaching skills on building teams and culture and individuals into helping corporate business people that actually sat in the chair that I sat in that have the same challenges and struggles. And it's been actually a very seamless transition. I've added some credentials and certifications and tools to give me some structure and to add some credibility to my resume and my bio and all of that. But it's given me great tools and great credibility to go into different organizations like healthcare or retail or technology companies in order to work with them effectively. I'm just finishing up a certification in resilience, resilient training,

and I'm just finishing up a certification in health and wellness, which is around mental health. Oh, wow. That's awesome. So what I'm hearing is you're continuing to learn and grow your expertise, which I think is a trait of the world's best, you know, world class. So that's awesome. You know, I could imagine that it was a little scary making that transition to start a new career. So tell us a bit about your decision on that. And, you know, what advice would you give other people who are maybe knowing that, like long term, that they don't want to do this thing that they're in, but you know, that there's something else calling them, but that's a really scary, it's really easy to stay in our comfort zone. Yes, you know, it is. And, but I gave myself some time, you know, I gave myself a transition time, like a runway to take some time off. I think

after you leave a profession that is as demanding as coaching and something that you've been in for so long, I felt like a hamster on a hamster wheel for 27 years, just going and going and going. You know, I gave myself permission to take some time off and to figure out if I wanted to continue coaching or if I wanted to do something else. And while I was figuring that out, I continued to stay relevant. I continued to stay visible. And I went forward and got my certification in executive coaching. And at the end of the day, I'm like, if I want to go back to coaching, I still have my certification in executive coaching.

But if I don't go back, I'm going to head down this path. But it is scary. But sometimes you just got to jump in and get uncomfortable and just take that chance. Yeah, love it. Take the chance on you, you know, and following your passion and your calling. And so tell us a bit about building that culture there at Minnesota or just, you know, the other teams that you coached as well. You know, I think about all the success that you had there. You led Minnesota to the first Final Four appearance, right? Three straight Sweet 16 appearances. And so you can't do that without a strong culture.

What are, you know, some strategies, tools, you know, what did you do to build that strong culture there? Well, it's a lot of what I do now in helping, you know, the CCC people and organizations build culture and a very strong foundation and organizations. And number one, it's really having a vision. It's having a vision of where you really want to go with an organization, that future state. You might not be there yet. You know, I want to be the best of the best, or I want to be the best IT company in the world, or I want to

create this holistic, you know, culture, whatever that is, is really having that vision of really where you want to go. So the people around you have that direction. You know, also building culture is getting the right people. It's all about people. And I don't care what industry we're in. It's all about people. And it's getting the right people surrounding you, surrounding me. It's getting people that were better than me, that challenged me to be better, also challenged my thinking. You know, we all make mistakes on how we hire people. And if we surround ourselves with a bunch of yes people that think that, you know, I'm the best thing since sliced bread, then that's I have the wrong people around me. And then it's, you know, when you're building a team, it's those players, it's getting the right players, the right people, the right fit,

that have the same values and has the same vision as you do as a business person as a coach. And then once you have that vision, and you have the right people, then it's really setting those expectations as far as how we're going to move forward together. And that's, you know, great communication, that's expectations, that's real-time feedback, and that's really creating a culture of accountability on how we really build a very successful organization. That's good. And so when you think about your time at Minnesota, what kind of culture did you want to create? Like, what was your vision for that? Well, building a culture where everyone is building a healthy culture, a culture where

people wanted to stay, a culture where people wanted to come to work, a culture where it was a family culture. You know, that's how you retain people. That's retention. Creating an environment where people just couldn't wait to get to a culture where people could flourish you know on and off the court you know in and out of work a culture of connectedness where people can can really connect and you know that's a big part of mental health is those relationships and that positivity and how people saw themselves and how people valued themselves

within their roles and that's the culture that you create is is Creating that family and that dynamic connectedness culture Hmm awesome And one thing that you said that I could imagine people struggle with is when you know You're talking about having a vision getting the right people and then having great communication you said real-time feedback and a culture of accountability those are the two things I want to ask you about because real-time feedback can be really tough and then this culture of accountability it's really easy I think for people who maybe don't like conflict so

what are your thoughts on that and like how do you do you do that? Well, it's, it's, it's really, it's really simple in sports as a coach. And I give this example all the time when I'm speaking or I'm doing leadership training. And it's like, you know, we have these, these wonderful performance reviews where people get performance reviews every quarter or every year. And I'm like, imagine a coach, you know, giving their players, they don't give them any feedback until the end of the year or at the end of the month. And I'm like, when you think of a

coach and the constant immediate feedback that players get in a timeout at halftime, at the end of a game, or when they're bringing the ball up the court or the field, they're getting instant immediate feedback. And that's the only way that individuals and players can improve immediately. They can make immediate adjustments, immediate corrections, in order to improve on the spot and not to make the same mistake again. And that's what people want. People want to get better. People want a career path.

People want to climb the ladder. People want to see themselves improve improve and it improves their confidence. And so that's real-time feedback. And that creates a culture of accountability when they know what the expectations are. You're giving them positive feedback immediately or constructive feedback. And the whole accountability, if people, you know, can't handle the feedback. I dealt with this a little bit in my last like five years of coaching because of the generation that was coming into, you know, the program and now into the workplace is you have to communicate to them why you're giving them the feedback. Why are you, why are

you challenging them? Why are you giving them that feedback is because you care. I see that potential in you. I am trying to bring that potential out of you and know that I am correcting you or I'm challenging you because number one, that's my job and I see so much potential in you and I believe in you. Yeah. Why? And I think a lot of people don't communicate the why I and I agree that like this generation you know it's like they need that they need a little bit maybe more explanation and they need to know that you care about them or they might not make the change or they might feel like it's not a family culture right it doesn't help create the culture that you just kind of described.

Oh, absolutely. And then you say, well, if I didn't give you this feedback, if I didn't, you know, point out on how you can get better, then I must care about you being successful. Then I must care about your career path. Then I must not really care. And if you can't take the feedback and you're going to take a personal and you know and it happens in coaching I'm moving on

to the next player right because we have to win and and it's like that in corporations now I mean corporations aren't around for 35 years anymore they've got to be able to change and and pivot and adapt and move faster and faster and faster all the time. And if you're not making changes and you're not correcting people, then the whole company is going to become behind. Absolutely. And so I know you speak on a lot of different topics, Pam. One of the ones I wanted to talk to you about and pick your brain about is like the mental toughness piece that you talk about in having this mindset for success. So my first question is when you think about, you know,

you've worked with some of the most incredible athletes, businesses, you know, as an executive coach throughout the world, tell us what you see separates the best from others from a mental standpoint. Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is really that confidence. Is that inner self-motivation and that inner intrinsic motivation and that inner confidence. And it's not that arrogance, it's not that ego, but it's really that belief and that conviction of your values, your purpose, your why. You're confident in yourself as a person.

You're true to yourself. You know, that means a lot of things. That means preparation. That means knowledge. That means caring your own skin. You know, that confidence is a big word. It is a big word. It is a big word. And so what have you seen in terms of, you know, the mindset of the world's best? And, you know, you and I were talking before we hit record about how, you know, not everybody quite understands the importance of

mindset or mental toughness. So tell us about your perspective on that. Yeah, I really believe a lot in resilience. I said, I really believe that, you know, going back to culture is you got to create a culture that's where people can fail and people can make mistakes and know that that's okay. And, you know, that creates opportunities. Those are your biggest growth areas. But some of those best leaders also, besides confidence, is really surrounding themselves with great people and really, you know, building those relationships, you know, relationships with people. Those are the world's best leaders when they have the confidence in themselves to surround

themselves with the best and allow and empower people to do their jobs. Yeah, that's really good. And you know, I know, I think this was on your website and I picked this up and I really liked it is you said there's a simple equation, the 1585, while 15% of business success comes from our IQ, the real success evolves from our EQ, our emotional intelligence. So tell us what your thoughts are on that and how that connects to some of the best leaders that you've come across, you know, in sports and in business. Well, it's really, that's research. That's from the Harvard Business Review is 85% of our business success is those soft skills. It's those relationship building skills.

And really 15% is our technical skills and our knowledge and our IQ and grades and all of that. But it's very true in the 21st century. It's really, you know, how to effectively and successfully lead people in teams now in the 21st century. There's so much change going on. There's five generations in the workplace for the first time in history. You know, it really, leadership is harder than it's ever been before. And, you know, it's, you can't do it alone and you have to really rely on the people around you. Awesome. And what do you know, I've heard you say build relationships a few times and how that really is the soft skill, more of our emotional intelligence. What do you see that the best leaders do in terms of building know your people, you know, on a personal level. And, you know, it's, it's, that's how you build relationships is, is, you know, understanding people's children and their families and what their passions are, what their purpose is. And,

you know, those types of things motivates people and empowers people and inspires people. And people don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. And really become that type of person and that type of leader. You can get people just like in sports to run through a wall for you to dive over the press table after a loose ball. I mean, that's what people will do for leaders. And that's what that's what's really important. That's really impactful. People don't leave jobs, they leave bosses. Yeah, I can think of jobs that I've had where I've left because of my boss, not because I didn't like it or I didn't like the work, right? But it was maybe this culture or maybe the boss wasn't as honest and coming from a place of value and values like you were talking about.

No, for sure. It's, you know, going back to resilience, I think, you know, our environment, you know, whether it's sports, whether it's our youth, whether it's the workplace and businesses, resilience is what 95% of HR directors are thinking about and talking about. It's that resilience in the workplace, which is mental toughness, which is being tough, which is being able to adapt positively. It's our purpose. And all of these things, you know, transfer from sports, all the things that you work with with your elite athletes,

transfer into the workplace. And, you know, that resilience is being able to bounce back and move on to the next play and quickly, as quickly as we can, being able to brush off, you know, mistakes and failures and being able to change and adapt, you know, when we need to. And you see that from your players on being able to change and adapt to positions and roles and plays and mistakes. And people have to be able to do that in the workplace as well. Absolutely. So Pam, you segued me into a perfect question. So I always ask people to share with us a time that they failed and what they learned from it as just an idea that kind of like what you said is that failure

is part of growing and learning and being a great leader or a great boss or a great coach. So tell us about a time that didn't go so great for you and what you learned from it and what we can learn from your experience. Well, you know, I've had so much success, you know, all the final fours and sweet 16s and the winningest coach in program history. But, you know, I feel like, you know, all the final fours and sweet 16s and the winningest coach in program history. But, you know, I feel like, you know, I've had to fail and I've had to make a lot of mistakes in order to be that successful. And, you know, I feel like those times when you fail and make those mistakes are your biggest opportunities for growth that have been so impactful for me. I actually write about it in the first chapter of my book on points. It's one of many mistakes and failures is, you know, I write about it, like I said, in the first chapter of my book, where I had to learn to have grace under fire. And I didn't have a very good experience in a game with one of my players, and I benched one of my players for an entire game during an NCAA tournament game.

And I was very tough on the individual. I was tough on the individual in the press conference. And it came back and bit me right in the rear end when the player actually left school and transferred. And that was a snowball that turned into an avalanche with my program. And, you know, I believe that I did not have grace under fire. I felt like I did make the right decision in the game, but I didn't have grace under fire in the press conference and didn't protect the individual and should have taken responsibility for whatever happened. And so that was a lesson that I learned in a mistake and one that really changed the way that I handled a lot of things, whether it was in the media, whether it was in front of people, taking responsibility, blame,

and just really learning how to have grace when, you know, things are hitting the fan. Yeah. And so what does grace under fire mean to you? Like, I can think of this image of what it means. But when you think about what you what advice you give to others, and being graceful under fire, tell us a little bit about what that means to you. I think that's how how leaders, you know, have to show up. You know, people that are in our positions and, you know, there's executives and there's head coaches that walk around with a fire hose all day long and you're putting out fires all day. You know, there's stuff going on all day until practice starts and practice is really kind of your haven.

That is what you were born to do and that's what you love to do is be between those four lines. And that leader has to have that calm, cool, and collected, calm as a cucumber, even keel, you know, unflappable, you know, on the outside. On that outside, inside, you know, there's, you know, those little duck, you know, feeder under the water are going like this. But you have to show up and be that leader that looks calm under pressure and calm under stressful situations. You know, because everyone is watching you. Everyone's going to react the way that you react. And, you know, having that grace under fire for your people is one of the most important things on how you handle crisis,

how you handle all types of situations. And I appreciate just your vulnerability on that story about the athlete you transferred, because I can feel how difficult that was for you. What did you, what did you learn about when to give feedback, when to not? or, you know, I think about other coaches I've seen maybe do the same. And then I wonder, like what it does for the athletes confidence, you know, what did you, what did you learn about that? And maybe how does that connect to relationships and building relationships and culture like you were explaining before? Yeah, well, I think you have to know each one of your your players or each one of your people different you know differently everybody's different you know I'm going to take feedback you know differently than you are and I'm going to take feedback differently in a different setting

maybe than you are you know whether it's publicly whether it's one-on-one whether it's behind closed doors and I think that's a coach's or a um a leader's responsibility to find out what makes that individual tick. You want to be a motivator. You want to empower and you want to inspire. You also want to challenge and you want to push. I think every athlete or every person is different. And I think it's a leader and that coach's responsibility to figure out what buttons to push and how far I can push that individual and what to say and what setting and in front of people or one-on-one. And I think that's an art for a leader and it's an art for a coach, but it's our responsibility to be able to figure that out. There's times when you need to put your arm around somebody and there's times that you need to kick somebody in the pants.

But there were some of my players and some of my people that I had on my staff that I knew exactly what was going to motivate them. I had to get on them. And some others I couldn't get on them. I had to get, it was a different way of getting on them. Yeah. So. You had to really know who they are and what's going to motivate them, when to push them, and when to build their confidence. Correct.

You know, sometimes it, you know, okay, I got to wait till tomorrow. I've got to wait for 12, or I got to give them an hour. But, you know, as I said before, you know, the individuals need to know why. Why am I getting, why am I, you know, screaming, yelling, or clapping, or because I care about you, you know, I care about you, and I want you to get better, like you have more potential, you have more ability than what you're showing right now. Absolutely, and so I know your book On Point, which is an excellent book, and you have a speech that you give on that about building high performance teams and organizations, and seven steps on how to be on point.

Tell us a bit about what does on point mean to you and then what are these seven steps that we could maybe use and apply to our leadership? Yeah, I did talk about them a little bit. Seven steps in building high-performing teams was just really setting vision. It's really setting a vision for an organization and a team on where we're going.

And this is why you need to be part of this organization. And this is why we have you part of it. The other one is, you know, really identifying what your role and responsibility is in part of all of us reaching this vision. Then it's really setting those goals and strategies, you know, during the process. So that's part of the process. Here's our vision. This is my role in it. And now it's a process in order to get there. And so what does that actually look like? And then it's really communication, communication, communication.

You know, how are we effectively communicate, you know, as an organization, as an executive team, as a team? Because along the way, we're going to have, you know, healthy conflict. We're going to have meetings. We're going to, how are we going to communicate effectively along the way? And then it's what I call the big three. It's that, it's communicating expectations, real-time feedback, and creating a culture of accountability. Awesome. Communicating expectations, accountability, and what was the one I missed? Expectations, and then it's a real-time feedback, and then it's accountability. Yeah. So other things that you've already talked about, you talked about those three

quite a bit today. Yes, I did. Yeah. I really believe in those. I really think that some of those things really get left out of leaders. They get frustrated because they're not communicating what the expectations are to people or they're not giving people feedback. Yeah. So Pam, I know one of the things that I've seen that you do, which is a pretty cool experience is some of your leadership training. Would you describe it as a retreat? You know, tell us a bit about what you offer for people as they're listening and they're like, oh, wow, I really want to learn more about Pam.

I want to read her book. I want to, you know, hire her as a coach or as a speaker. So tell us how might we connect with you? Yes. Well, you know, I coach individuals. I coach executive coach, whether it's, you know, college coaches, whether it's you know college coaches whether it's c-suite level leaders senior level leaders high potentials so i do a lot of individual coaching i work with executive teams and i i do half day retreats up to two day retreats with executive teams

and then i also put on leadership academies and those can be anywhere from two day to a full year academy within companies and right now i'm running those for high potential and professional women within IT companies, within hospitality, within insurance companies. And it's really in that diversity inclusion space. where can we find out more about what you're doing? And some of these, would the Leadership Academies more be like our company hires you or is there anything that individuals can go to as well? Individuals can sign up for coaching, but it's more for organizations and teams. But they can go to my website, pambortonpartners.com and get more information

or they can reach out to me and I pambortonpartners.com and get more information. Or they can reach out to me and I can connect with them individually. Awesome. And are you on social media anywhere where people could reach out to you and describe what they enjoyed about today's podcast? Oh, absolutely. They can go to LinkedIn and just type in Pam Borton, B-O-R-T-O-N. And you can message me and I would love to hear from you and maybe some of your takeaways, maybe some nuggets that you were able to take away from today's podcast.

Awesome. Thank you so much, Pam, for joining us today. I'm grateful for your time and your expertise and just helping us continue to be better leaders and build high-performing cultures. Thank you. Appreciate being part of this today. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you liked today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong. For more inspiration and to receive

Sindra's free weekly videos, check out drsindra.com.