The Learning Leader Show With Ryan Hawk - 592: Ed Batista - How To Give Useful Feedback, What Great Leaders Do, and Why We All Need An Executive Coach

Episode Date: July 21, 2024

Read our book, The Score That Matters https://amzn.to/3XxHi7p Full show notes at www.LearningLeader.com  This episode is supported by Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing company dedicated to empowering people. Please CLICK HERE for premier staffing and talent. Notes: Commonalities of excellent coaches: Not defensive Respond well to feedback Ability to learn "Leadership can't be taught but it can be learned." Coaching is not therapy, but it can be therapy-adjacent. It's not telling people what to do and it's not just asking questions. It's a combination of all of them. There is ample research on the benefits of writing. It clarifies your thinking. The questions to ask someone who might need an executive coach: Why do you want a coach? Why now? What do you hope to get out of it? What do great leaders do? First, do no harm. Walk the talk. Be an embodiment of the culture. Have high standards Take risks Coach people up Train people "Coaching is accomplishment through others." "Feedback is not a gift." Feedback is data. Signal and noise. Signal - Important and good. Noise - Byproduct of someone's distorted lens. "Praise, Criticism, Praise (PCP) is terrible." Don't give the compliment sandwich. It's disingenuous. How leaders best overcome adversity – The most critical skill is "adaptive capacity..." It's composed of two primary qualities: the ability to grasp context, and hardiness. Coaching - Asking evocative questions, ensuring the other person feels heard, and actively conveying empathy remain the foundations of coaching. Connect: Establish and renew the interpersonal connection, followed by an open-ended question. Reflect: Having elicited a response, reflect back the essence of the other person's comments. Direct: Focus their attention on a particular aspect of their response that invites further exploration. Support and Challenge - A client once said, "It feels like you're always in my corner, but you never hesitate to challenge me." Master the Playbook, Throw it Away - Coaching involves a continuous and cyclical process of learning, unlearning, and relearning. Power Dynamics - The longer I coach, the more I appreciate and value the work of Jeff Pfeffer, a leading scholar on power. philosopher Ernest Becker: "If you are wrong about power, you don't get a chance to be right about anything else." "Meaningful coaching is always an emotionally intimate experience, no matter what's being discussed. In part this is a function of the context: two people talking directly to each other with no distractions... Intimacy in a coaching relationship also results from a willingness to 'make the private public'--to share with another person the thoughts and feelings that we usually keep to ourselves... And yet an essential factor that makes such intimacy possible is a clear set of boundaries defining the relationship, which creates an inevitable and necessary sense of distance..."

Great leaders train people to become leaders. I mean, ultimately, leadership is about accomplishment through others. One of the most prolific executive coaches in the world. Given all of the amazing leaders you've worked with, over 8,000 coaching sessions, I am so curious to learn about sustainable excellence. The first thing that comes to mind, I would say, is non-defensiveness and response to critical feedback. Would you be cool to, like, take me inside a coaching session?

Coaching is definitely not telling people what to do, but it's also not just asking, questions. Leadership can't be taught, but it can be learned. Welcome to the Learning Leaders Show, presented by Insight Global. I am your host, Ryan Hawk. Thank you so much for being here. Text Hawk to 666866 to become part of Mindful Monday. You, along with tens of thousands of other learning leaders from all over the world, will receive a carefully curated email for me each Monday morning to help you start your week off right. You'll also receive details about how Our new book, The Score That Matters, will help you become a more effective leader. Text Hawk to 666866.

Now, on to tonight's featured leader. Ed Batista is an executive coach and instructor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He launched his coaching practice in 2006 after a 15-year career in management, during which he earned his MBA from Stanford. Ed has also been writing on coaching and related topics at Ed Batista. com since 2005 and has been a contributor to HBR since 2013. He is also a co-author of HBR Guide to Coaching Employees. During our conversation, we discuss the most optimal way to give and receive feedback.

Then he shares the behaviors of the most excellent leaders he's worked with. Talked about why most of us would benefit from having a coach. Then he shared what a great executive coach actually does. And then we did a mini coaching session where Ed coached me right in the middle of this conversation. I think you'll find it interesting. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Ed Batista. All right, Ed. It's so good to get a chance to talk to you because I've read so much of what you written.

Welcome to the Learning Leader Show. Thank you very much, right. I'm delighted to be here. And thanks for the invitation. Given all of the amazing leaders you've worked with, over 8,000 coaching sessions, I am so curious to learn what you think about sustainable excellence. So if you had to break it down to figure out the uncommon common commonalities among the leaders you know, who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time,

what are a few of the things they all seem to have in common? Great question. And the first thing that comes to mind, I would say, is non-defensiveness and response to critical feedback, whether that's coming from somebody else or whether that's just life punching in the face and saying, you didn't do this very well. And that's hard, right? Most of the people I work with have been very successful. They've reached a point of being able to invest in themselves and their development as a leader. And so they may not have had a ton of really serious professional or personal setbacks. But they've had their share. And the ones who are able to sustain that excellence over time, at least in my experience from my perspective and

certainly in my own life, is the ability to say, oh, wow, this didn't go well. And I'm getting some pretty tough critical feedback, sometimes directly from other people, sometimes just from the results that aren't what I expected. And can I be non-defensive about that? Because I'm going to get defensive, then I'm not going to learn from it. And if I'm not going to learn, then it's going to happen again. So I'd say first thing is non-defensiveness. Interesting. I wasn't sure where you're going to go

because there's probably a million different qualities. What else besides being non-defensive? Well, extending from that is the ability to learn. And not just in a conventional sense, in a classroom where there's a curriculum and a syllabus provided for you by somebody else, but the ability to learn on your own. I've worked with a lot of folks who've kind of gone

through a number of very structured learning programs, either earlier in their lives as students or in some kind of more kind of structured professional setting, like a management consulting firm or some setting in which talented young people are invited to kind of learn what the system has to offer them. They absorb those lessons and then go out in the world. And yet, eventually, those kinds of structures fall away. And eventually, at some point in our professional lives, We find ourselves more or less alone as a learner. And you'll have peers and people around you, but you're not going to have the kind of structured program that you had as a student or earlier in your professional life.

And if you aren't able to sort of structure a program for yourself, your career is going to plateau. The folks that I work with largely are CEOs who often find themselves somewhat isolated in their own companies. They've got they've got a lot of peers. they've got a lot of employees, they've got people who are often able to give them some feedback, but they don't have anybody who's sort of advising them or guiding them or even mentoring them. I also work with folks who are later in their career who had excellent mentors early on, but those mentors become fewer and further between. They retire from active professional life, they pass on,

and your ability to guide and mentor yourself become super critical later in your career. So if you've been blessed, as I certainly was, with excellent teachers and excellent learning programs around you. You also have to learn how to teach yourself, how to guide yourself, because those kinds of learning systems are just not going to be available to you indefinitely. You've become one of the most prolific executive coaches in the world. You were doing this before, I think it became in vogue. Now it seems pretty popular. It's a thing. A lot of people have coaches more so than they did probably when you started. I'm curious, what was it about this idea, this thought of executive coaching that 8,000 sessions ago, you said, yeah, I think I'm meant to do that.

Well, the seed of my practice took root when I was a client. I got exposed to coaching as a client. I had gone to business school because I was really passionate about helping nonprofits and NGOs use technology more effectively. That's the world I came out of and I saw that they were, this is in the 90s. They were very ineffective at using technology. And I was like, ah, we can do this better. That led me to Stanford, which was a great place to be interested in sort of helping improve the world and using technology and being entrepreneurial in the process. And after business school, I was hired by this consortium of charitable foundations that invested in infrastructure and some big technology companies that wanted to help make

the world a better place. And they brought me on board to turn this enterprise, this idea into a living community. And so I was super passionate about what I was doing. And I was lucky enough to have a mentor on my board, a guy named Vince Staley, who essentially took me aside. He said, look, you're a talented guy, but you have a bunch of rough edges. I advise you to invest in yourself and go get a coach. And I went back to actually one of my profs from business school, a woman named Marianne Huckabay. And I said, hey, would you take me on as a client? She said yes.

And I worked with her for about two years, and it really transformed my sense of leadership. I had come in thinking, my job is to have the best ideas and champion them really aggressively, and that led me into reliable conflicts with other people who also had pretty good ideas. And I soon realized, oh, my job is to actually be a steward of this community and help the best ideas arise from the community. They don't have to come from me. And so I kind of got my ass kicked, and it was very humbling. And I realized, oh, I need to actually adopt and modify, I need to modify my approach to leadership and adopt a style that's going to be more welcoming and get, it's not just about sort of championing me as being the sort of the figurehead.

but it's really about being a steward. And that left a big impression on me. Some years later, I thought, I'm actually kind of doing some coaching. I was working in a volunteer capacity with the leaders in this organization. And we weren't calling it coaching, but I was like, huh, this kind of feels like coaching me. I've been a client. And I developed the idea like, well, maybe I can actually try this myself. So I went to talk.

I was very, very privileged. I had a number of people who were willing to take the time and sort of talk with me about their own paths and their careers as a coach. And I had a long conversation with my wife. And I said, I think I could do this. And she's like, all right, give it your best shot. So I quit my job, pushed all my chips into the middle of the table and launched my practice. And that was in 2006. And so now nearly 20 years later, yeah, I find myself lucky enough to wake up every day and pinch myself because that's what I get to do for a living. Wow. What was it like those first few years? How effective were you? How bumpy was it? Or did you just take off like a rocket? What was it like?

I was totally terrifying and I'm sure I was completely ineffective. And my early client, I think, they benefited in spite of me, not because of me. But I was really, really lucky. I had a network of folks when I reached out and said, hey, I'm launching a coaching practice who responded and said, well, actually, we think you could be pretty good at this. Let's, I'll sign up. I was also very lucky because I did have this ongoing relationship with the business school at Stanford. I went back there because they run a facilitator training program that's associated with one of the most kind of iconic classes that they teach there, which I later taught many years later called interpersonal dynamics,

otherwise known as touchy-feely. And I got into the training program to become a facilitator in that course. And that just led a whole bunch of, set a bunch of wheels in motion. I was then asked to join a guy named David Bradford, who was another mentor of mine and a really brilliant guy as his teaching assistant. And that probably kind of in contact with a bunch of people who were in the process of revamping the curriculum at the business school at the time, including a guy named Garth Salonar, who was a former dean.

They basically were saying, hey, we're teaching a lot of technical topics, but, you know, that's become kind of a hygiene factor. Anybody coming out of a top management program knows this stuff. What we're in a position to do is really help people become, much more effective interpersonally. And we need to revamp the curriculum to make that happen. And they were assembling a team of in-house coaches to be a part of that. You had Bill George on your show a while back, and he's got this great line.

Leadership can't be taught, but it can be learned. And what we were doing at Stanford at that time really embodied that. We said, look, we're not going to lecture about leadership from behind a podium. We're going to put people in a bunch of experiential situations, give them some role plays and other kinds of scenarios, ways that they will act. They'll be actively engaged with their peers and colleagues, and that's how they're going to learn leadership. We're not going to teach it to them by providing some prefab curriculum. They're going to learn it. And I was lucky enough to be invited to be a part of that team.

So from 07 until 2016, I had a full-time role down at the business school and maintained my private practice on the side. And then in 2016, I was like, I need to stretch my wings a bit. And so I resigned focusing my time on my coaching practice. continue to teach at the business school for one day a week until 2021. And then in, and then pandemic and so forth. And then 23, just last year, I retired from Stanford entirely. So it's primarily what I've been doing for the last seven years. And it's all I've been doing for the last three. Wow. Okay. Would you be cool to take me inside a coaching session? Maybe we even role play it. I know I wouldn't probably be your typical client because you work with guys and girls running bigger

businesses than I do, but I am fascinated by what it sounds like inside the room, right? Like what kind of questions you ask, why you ask them to back and forth, is it more therapy? Is it more telling you what to do? It probably depends on the client. I'm just curious. So could you give me a high level outline and maybe we'll drill down on what a coaching session sounds like? Happy to provide some high level thoughts and then actually to jump into it.

First, coaching is definitely not therapy, right? And I know the difference because my dad, my dad was a who's still living but retired, who's a clinical psychologist for over 50 years. My wife and I have both been in therapy, saved our marriage. I'm a huge fan of therapy, and coaching is not therapy. It can be sort of adjacent. You're talking with somebody about challenges that you're facing, but there are many distinctions. And it's really important for a coach to recognize there are certain limitations on what we can do. Like I, there are a number of issues that come up with some frequency in my practice, anxiety being a core issue.

I can talk with people about sort of garden variety anxiety. We're an anxious species. But if someone's dealing with anxiety is a clinical issue, it's really incumbent on me to recognize the limitations on what I can do as a coach and to refer them to an appropriate provider. That's just one example, but there are many others. Also, coaching is definitely not telling people what to do, but it's also not just asking questions.

For example, I work a lot with leaders of, say, mid-stage technology companies where they're reaching the point where it's ready to, to kind of move beyond the initial kind of high potential early stage employees and bring on some more experienced leaders. And what happens reliably in that stage of a company's development as an executive team starts to form and become more institutionalized. Well, I've seen that process countless times. So I've got a perspective on what's likely to happen. And so I'm not just going to ask a client a bunch of questions about what might happen in their company, although I will do that, of course. But I'll also say, look, here's a perspective that I have on executive team formation

drawn from experiences I've had with clients in similar circumstances. So I have a point of view on some issues. So it's not coaching isn't therapy, for sure, and it's definitely not just telling people what to do, but it's also not just asking questions. But in a coaching session, we will reliably just spend a little bit of time catching up. In some cases, there's a little bit of small talk. And then what I'll just ask somebody is, well, what's up in your world and what's on our

agenda? So let's do that right now. What's up in your world, Ryan, and what would be on our agenda if we were to have a coaching conversation. Wow. Delegation being a problem for me as a control freak. I've recently brought on more people on my team to help me with some of the leadership development work that we're doing because I am maxed out. And that is hard because I'm used to doing everything the way I want it to be done. And I'm the actual one who's executing on all of it. And I've certainly been in leadership positions before at different companies and I've worked in a leadership role as an athlete playing

quarterback on a football team so you're dependent on other people but you're kind of the trigger guy. So yeah, I think of all of that, those are the immediate things that pop into my mind when you ask about like things that never really leave my mind because I want it to go well, but I know I'm also not in complete control of all of it. And that is a sensitive topic for me. You bet. Well, a theme in my practice is that we all have superpowers and those superpowers all have shadow sides. So it sounds like a superpower of yours is being able to set a really high standard and to drive towards the execution and accomplishment of that standard. And it sounds like there's a shadow side to it. What are you experiencing? What's the shadow side of that superpower for you? Well, not having complete control. And it's funny. You mentioned the good and the bad that comes with things and you call it a shadow side, which I like that terminology. So for example, I was on a walk with my wife. We were just talking. talking about this, where I am very productively paranoid. That's a Jim Collins term from Great by Choice, meaning like part of what makes me good,

like on stage or working is being overly prepared, practicing like crazy. But what also comes with that is, it never leaves my mind, like whatever the work is. I have a speech in Florida on Tuesday and I can't stop thinking about it because I just practice and practice. And so this productive paranoia, it's hard to relax. I would say. And the same is true now with growing my team because I have to empower others and trust that they're going to go perform at a really high level. And I believe they will because I know that I picked the people myself, but it's still, it's not me doing it. So I think that's that stuff I just

battle. And these are very, very adjacent issues, right? The obsession with the business and the constant thinking about it and the difficulty in letting go and delegating. So these superpowers of yours, what impact are they having on the people around you, maybe personally as well as professionally? Well, definitely personally, I think it adds a level of pressure because of the expectations you set for yourself that you end up hurting, Paul Rabel and I talked about this because he says he has this issue where he will show like the utmost respect and defer to people that aren't like in his inner circle.

He's his, his brother is one of his main business partner. And he's like, we will fight and I will yell and I will treat him so poorly. because we're so close. And I think that happens in our lives, especially for people who demand a lot of themselves as you start demanding maybe too much from the people you love the most, and that can create a lot of conflict and a lot of problems. And I think that's something I've battled too. Yeah. And how is that affecting the performance of the business? Because ultimately, caring about the business all the time and setting high standards, it should translate into more productive, more effective, higher quality outcomes. What's the impact on the business

of all this? Business-wise, I think it's been good. I think the issue is where you can do that personally with people, especially people that you love that are not a part of the business, but you have the same type of relationship with them. You bet. Well, certainly a theme in my practice is this precise challenge. I can't stop thinking about the business as a client. And that's an asset, but there are times when people in my life outside the business need me to stop thinking about it, need me to really be present with them. There are also times in the business where people, they need me to let go. They need me to be able to trust them to execute, which doesn't mean I don't hold them accountable. So when it comes to shutting the business off, allowing

your mind to go elsewhere and really be present with the other people in your life, how's it going? I think it's up and down. I think there are times where I can do it well, like taking my nine-year-old to the swimming pool and being the all-time dad to throw the kids. I feel like I'm pretty present in those moments and I love it. I love smiles on people's faces. That brings me great joy, especially the ones I love. And so there are moments where I think I can do it pretty well. And there are other moments where I still struggle with it.

Yeah. We're such a function of our environment. We are very heavily influenced by the surrounding the situation around us. I'm guessing you take your nine-year-old to the pool. You're probably not on a device. There's a lot of stuff going on that keeps you very present. What's happening when you find yourself distracted by the business when you should be present with somebody? My life is spent usually that that's why I'm almost, I pause for a second, Ed, because like,

I spend the bulk of these podcasts and working with clients asking them questions and being the one who shows up with curiosity and not talking about myself. Sure. But at times, you want to kind of like talk about yourself. you want to share what's happening. So I'd say my wife probably feels the brunt of that because I don't do that anywhere else. And it's funny, one of my friends said he hired a coach because he didn't want to burden his wife with that of like she has to, because like it's not all good. Like it's all it's like you're just dumping everything out. And so he hired someone. He said it actually helped this relationship because he still, he still talked to her about some of the stuff, but he wouldn't just dump out all of the stuff on her.

And so I thought like, ah, that's probably like a good idea. It'd probably be a good idea because I end up doing that specifically on our walks because that it's just us and our dog and there's not the chaos of kids at the house where you're more focused on them. So I think that's one of the things that I've been thinking about. You bet. Well, and a couple of thoughts first. A standing bad joke of mine is that I've got a job because people's spouses and families

get tired of talking about the business. For sure. Like they've heard about the business. and they've all got a willingness to listen and they're readily available and they'll be patient and they reach that capacity. There's also a challenge where sometimes folks in my client's personal lives and maybe you experience this as well don't necessarily know how to respond because they often they may like kind of jump into problem solving when you're like, well, actually, I just kind of wanted to vent a little bit. I just needed somebody to listen. Or they've got some advice that isn't really

relevant. Try this and you're like, yeah, I kind of tried that. I thought about that. So sometimes just having a coach can be useful because it's somebody who is professionally trained and experienced in providing a lot of empathetic listening, not necessarily jumping in with advice, but not only listening, jumping in with advice that is relevant and helpful, typically on the basis of clients with similar experiences. Isn't that kind of the therapy element of this? It can't. It's why coaching can look like therapy in some sense. Yeah. Yeah. And yet first, recognize most people are getting into therapy. And the kind of the presumptive model is,

And I don't, it would be, we can draw like really broad stereotypes. And I think coaching and therapy are extremely sort of diverse professions. People go into them from all different points of view and have very different perspectives as practitioners. But often there's the presumption that there's some kind of dysfunction when somebody's getting there. And certainly like what my wife and I got in the therapy? Hey, our relationship, even though we'd been together for at that point 13, 14 years was dysfunctional.

We needed somebody to come in, diagnose what was going on and actively help us in the way that a therapist can't, and our therapist was awesome. That's not necessarily the presumption in coaching. There may be a challenge. There may be something that's some presenting issue that's leading somebody to say, you know, I think I would benefit from having a thought partner who's got some expertise in these issues. But I'm not hearing you say, my life is dysfunctional because I can't focus on people who I should be present with. I'm distracted by the business.

I'm hearing you say, this is suboptimal. I'd like to do it a little bit differently. The additional wrinkle with coaching is, at least in many cases and certainly in my case, I'm coming in with a degree of expertise on the person's business. I build myself as an executive coach, and even though we wind up talking about issues that might transcend the narrow confines of the business, as you and I did briefly just now, I'm coming in with a point of view about things that happen in a business that's similar to many of my clients' organizations.

and I'm going to offer some explicit advice on that basis. That's not necessarily going to be a case. I think it would say very rarely be the case that a therapist is going to have that kind of business orientation and say, oh, let me give you some advice on how to structure your executive team. So there are certainly parallels between coaching and therapy, and it's important to recognize that they're very, very different disciplines. Gotcha.

I kind of interrupted you there and I was digging the like, oh, we're getting into like a coaching session. Was there more you wanted to get to or you want me to keep going? Either. It's bide with me. Yeah. I just like hearing the inside of it because of the type of questions you ask. I could tell like you're obviously a very good listener by the sense of your follow-up questions. And I think that's the mark of someone who's really good at listening.

And that's why probably more of us would benefit from this than we even realize. And it is becoming more of a thing. Now, I had Marshall Goldsmith on. I'm sure you've talked to Marshall about he seems to be a really good coach. He uses a lot of 360s and assessments and others. Is that part of your work, too, where you seek out knowledge and information about your client from those that they work with? It used to be, but it's not today. And I can give you a little bit more context on how I apply that. So it's very common for a client of buying to be going through a 360.

Maybe they are administering one to all of the executives in the company or maybe they're initiating one for themselves or for their executives. and I let them know, look, it probably doesn't make sense to have me interview everybody that you're going to have kind of providing this data. But retain somebody to do it or retain a firm to do it. And whoever that provider is will probably want to walk you through the report. That's great. And then when you're done, we're going to talk about it further. The dilemma with 360s, and I think they're extremely useful tools, but they also have some built-in biases. We essentially pursue a 360 in part because we kind of assume, well, people aren't being candid with the leader, right?

We're not getting, and anything that they say to the leader is going to be biased. So we've got to do an anonymous 360. Well, the shield of anonymity actually introduces some additional biases. Number one, and the common structure is peers or subordinates, occasionally like a board member or a superior, provide the person feedback. And it's basically structured in such a way that the person, the recipient of the feedback is viewed as the player on the field. And everybody else is kind of on the stand, sort of observing. Well, that's not the way it actually happens in real life. Everybody who's providing feedback is also on the field with the player.

But the structure of the 360 leads them to say, well, I'm not going to take responsibility for my contributions. I'm just going to point the finger and say, well, this is what you're doing. This is what you have to do differently. And often, especially when we're providing feedback up, we don't empathize up. We do not afford people that we perceive to be in higher status positions, the kind of full range of human emotions. So we rarely offer a lot of positive feedback in a 360. There's some in part because the question structure usually requires it. But the bulk of the feedback is usually very negative.

And in some cases, there's just a lot of bomb throwing. People are like, I can't wait to get this off my chest. So what happens then is that the leader gets the 360 report and they're like, what am I supposed to do with this? Everybody's blaming me as if I've got like some unique authority to make, wave of wand to make things different. Nobody's talking about their own contributions to the problem. And it's all very negative.

So at that point, you know, my work with the leader, is let's start to unpack this. First, like, let me just normalize this. Everybody sees some similar pattern to that. You're not unique. You're not the first leader in history who's gotten this kind of feedback. And the key then for the leader is how do you talk about this with other people, especially the people who provided the feedback? If we view the completion of the 360 as like the finish line, we're totally missing the point. The completion of the 360 is a milestone. You get the report. But then, especially as a leader, you got to go talk to everybody about it. Really interesting look on that. Ed, one of the things that I admire about you and want to do more of is you essentially give everything away for free.

You write so much. You're a prolific writer and it's really well written essays and ideas just on your website. I think somebody, if they can't afford you or can't afford any coach, you could teach yourself just by reading all of your essays. Can you share more about the writing element of your practice and why it's so important and critical for you to get the thoughts out of your head down on the page and then publish them for others to read? Yeah. Well, thanks for the kind words. I appreciate that quite a bit because writing has been really important to me. As an undergrad, I took a log circuitous route through undergrad, but I wound up as a history major. And it didn't train me to do any one thing in particular, but it did train me to write. And even more importantly, I'd say it trained me to research. And I recognized, especially as I was learning more about the world of coaching and all of the

disciplines that contribute to it, I was like, I have a ton of learning to do. I have a ton of homework. And that's never going to end, right? Learning about the fields that I need to understand to be an effective coach is going to be a lifelong journey. And I've realized about myself, first, I learn when I read and then when I have a deliverable. Like, I've got to really cement and solidify what I'm learning. I've got to translate it into something that I can put out to the,

world. I've also found it. My primary reason for writing, first is just my own learning, but secondarily, it's being able to provide clients with some content that has a shelf life. I'm not writing sort of ephemeral posts that are going to be irrelevant because they're highly topical on an issue of today, but a year from now, we won't wonder what I was talking about. I try to write some things that have long-term value and to also recognize that the role that I play and a kind of information ecosystem is to be out there in the world, digesting a lot of stuff that my clients don't have time to read, and translating it into a relatively short form piece that they can read usually in a single sitting and in language that feels very relevant to them as business leaders.

I draw on resources from all sorts of fields, including a number of academics. And I'm standing on their shoulders, right? I'm not an original researcher. I'm not a PhD. I'm a humble MBA. And yet I'm in a position to kind of weave all of those sources together into something that I think my clients find useful. And a long time ago, I made the decision to say, I'm not going to try to monetize my content. Number one, that comes with a bunch of obligations, right? To make that really work, I think you have to be writing on something of a schedule because people have expectations about when the content they're paying for is going to arrive. And I'm a little bit more sporadic that way. I will write very intensively for two, three, four, five months, and then I'll take a

month or two off. I just need a break. So I didn't want to be on anybody else's schedule. It also just, it felt like there's something of an act of service. There are, coaching is, coaching isn't cheap. And there are coaches who provide their services kind of at many different prices. So if you're looking for a coach, especially if you're earlier in your career, you should be able to find somebody who's going to be within your budget. But there are, of course, many, many more people who are never going to be able to afford coaching. But they still should be in a position to benefit from the kinds of things that I talk about with clients. So I started blogging in 2004 before I got the year before I got serious

about considering coaching as a path. And in that world at the time, there was sort of an ethos of like, hey, put your stuff out there in the world and see what you can share and how you can benefit from other people doing the same. So when I started publishing my site, I did so under a Creative Commons license. It's out there freely available for people to use and remix and repurpose as long as as they credited back to me, which is kind of standard Creative Commons license. And I feel like that's it's just been a the way I've liked being I I monetize my time I ask people to pay me for a coaching conversation but everything I write I make freely available and I'm very committed to that I actually liked the the design it's kind of minimalist it's not fancy you're coming here to read

useful stuff there's like no frills it looks like you probably built it a while ago and felt like hey I'm not going to spend a bunch of money to update it it's all about the content and the writing is that intentional It is, but it's also sort of happenstance. Yeah, I spend 120 bucks a year on my content management system, and I'm very proud of the very simple low frills, low budget design. I actually had a woman say to me once, and I remember this very vividly, I love your ugly website.

I'll take that as a couple. But I probably do need my old school CMS, occasionally has a few technical hiccups. I'll probably upgrade the platform, but I'll keep the same look and feel. and it's it's it's it i feel like it reflects who i am yeah i like it now i found writing to be i've i've signed up to publish books primarily as a project for myself to create a deadline to get the thoughts out of my head onto the page because i think teaching is the ultimate tool for learning and writing is a

is certainly a form of teaching and so it's almost as much for myself as anybody else do you push your clients to be writers, to have a writing practice? No, not at all. No, really? Writing is useful when you want to do it, and if it feels like an obligation, then I'm, now that said, there's ample research on the benefits of writing, particularly writing a journal. And I will recommend clients to explore that a little bit to understand the utility.

The problem, though, is that when we hear that, we think, oh, what am I supposed to do, keep a diary like I did in middle school. I talk about who I sat next to in lunch. I mean, no, it's like that's not, but people conceive it that way. So they often don't pursue it. What I let folks know is there's research about the benefits of journaling in some form and writing your experiences down. But it's got to be in your personalized way, like, and which includes the fact that

you've got to be intrinsically motivated to do it. If it feels imposed by somebody else, you know, what I've seen countless times in my practice, is that people, high achievers are very good at sort of understanding, well, what are the rules? I'll figure out the rules and I'll excel. I will follow the rules to a T. However, you reach a certain stage in your career and my clients are all at that point where it's like, I'll follow the rules, but I'll get sick of them if there's somebody else's rules. At a certain point, I will have mastered the system and then two weeks, two months later, it's like, yeah, screw this. I'm done following somebody else's rules.

So while I can point out to clients, hey, there may be benefits to certain practices. I don't have the kind of relationship. I'm not an authority figure telling clients what to do. I'm not a teacher assigning home. Now, I'm in a position to say, hey, there are all kinds of options on the menu here, but they've got to do the ordering for themselves. What percentage of the time, this may be hard to quantify, but what percentage of the time are you providing answers?

Because you've already been shown that you're adept at asking questions, being empathetic, being a good listener. What percentage of the time are you saying, hey, based on what I'm hearing, I think you should do fill in the blank or it seems like fill in the blank. What percent is that happening? Very rarely, but when I do, I'm pretty emphatic about it. I had a guy. I was working with a guy recently and he described some situation with a problematic employee.

And I was like, hold on. Right now, today I want you to get legal counsel because this guy's going to sue you. I just like, I know this. And he turned out, yes, that was the case. And he's come back to me since my client and said, that was good advice. I'm really glad that you're so insisted on that. So there's a degree of pattern recognition in a small number of circumstances where I can say, I'm certainly going to leave room.

I'm not going to, I don't have a crystal ball. But I occasionally will say, I am pretty certain that the patterns that I'm seeing here are going to lead to a certain outcome. Either I think there's some incredible opportunity here. I think you should pursue. There's something really good. Or there's some grave risk that I am very concerned about. And I want you to take that very seriously.

So I don't hesitate to jump in when I feel emphatically about something. And that should be pretty rarely. And I even say this to clients at the outset. I'm not going to withhold information that I think is going to be beneficial to you. I'm not going to be rigid about coaching as a methodology and just ask you questions. That feels actively misleading. But I'm also going to be explicit to say, essentially, this is an opinion. I think it applies to your circumstances based on work that I've done with other clients in a similar situation.

and take it with a great assault because I'm not going to be 100% accurate. And my intuition isn't always going to be right. But I'm going to speak it. I'm going to share it and say, look, let's explore it because I think there's something here worth digging into. How do you set the framework with, let's say, a new coaching client? And let's say you're working with a person in a position of high power within a company. So they're used to kind of running the show. And they either have been referred to you or they realize, yeah, I probably need somebody.

how do you set it up? What's the before the first meeting sound like? What's like then the first meeting? I am fascinated by the starting of things. How does that work? Yeah. Well, a key here is just recognizing it's got to be a partnership between equals. The piece in which I wrote about my 8,000 coaching session, one of the things I talk about there is power dynamics. And a coach should not be an authority figure. I'm not here to lecture. I'm not here to preach at clients. My clients don't need that. They are in positions of power and authority. They don't want somebody who's on a power trip

and try to be dogmatic about any particular thing. But I'm also not a subordinate. My clients also typically have lots of employees and lots of people who are used to being deferential to them. It's got to feel like a conversation between equals. And if it ever doesn't, I let folks know that's data. If I don't feel like I'm being treated like an equal partner, and if you don't feel like you're being treated like an equal partner,

That's really important data for us to surface because it's going to get in the way of the work. And also, it enables me to be free to share my opinions, to share my perspective, to not be rigid about coaching as a question-oriented methodology without it coming across like some kind of of power trip or lecture or sermon. I'm not here to do that. And I don't think it serves a client. And so in that spirit, I let clients know, look, I'm not going to ask you a bunch of highly specific or detailed questions to surface information that I think I know.

need to get started. I'm going to ask when I when I have a discovery conversation when somebody's learned about being said, hey, I think let's talk about coaching. I basically have three questions. Why coaching? Why now? What are your hopes and expectations for a coaching relationship? I want to keep it really basic and very open-ended, which empowers the client, right? It allows them to share with me what they think is most important, what they think is most kind of salient. And that certainly that gets at the initial reasons that led them to think about coaching. But it also doesn't put this presumption on them by me, which is like, hey, I need this information in order to determine whether we're going to be a good fit. My trust and faith is that what they think I need to know is going to be the best information to start with.

I was reading one of your post about what great leaders do. And this was, I think, written in early 2017. And you cite Warren Benis, Jeff Feffer, Bob Sutton, a few people I've had on this show. And it's funny. This is sometimes a question I will ask at the beginning of a leadership offsite if I'm with an executive team. Like, how do you guys define great leadership? What do great leaders do? Let's see the difference between great ones and not so great ones. And it usually leads to really interesting and fascinating dialogue. And people don't always talk about that. It seems like it would be the most basic thing. And so I'm curious now, a lot of time has passed since that post. I don't expect you to remember it. People sometimes ask me stuff. I've written in books. I'm like, did I write that? So I forget. But, but, but honestly, I'm I'm curious to you now when you think about what great leaders do, what is great leadership. It seems like an important question, but also a basic one. What's your updated answer to that question? Yeah.

Well, I do remember that post, and I go back to it because I think my citation of work done by Bob Sutton and Jeff Feffer, both of whom I really admire, is that we should be extremely skeptical about first of the idea that there is great leadership or that leaders should do anything in particular. They basically say, look, there's much more bad leadership than good leadership. And the critical step that a leader should take is just sort of essentially avoiding well-practice. First, first do no harm. Don't be bad. Yes, exactly. And so I lead that piece off with that example from their research, and I take it very seriously. And I've certainly seen some hallmarks, some characteristics. One is, I think that, and this also goes,

goes to Warren Bennis was also another. I mean, I know Bob and I know Jeff personally. I never met Warren Bennett, but he's certainly somebody who's work I admire and I read a lot of his stuff. You know, the ability to really walk the talk. People see a leader's hypocrisy a mile away. If a leader is not walking a talk, if a leader is saying, hey, follow the plaque on the wall, but I'm not going to do that stuff.

That's for you little people. People get tired of that. First, they can spot it. They can smell it. it breeds a degree of cynicism. And I think we see countless examples of that in in the world today. And so for a leader to say, look, if we're going to put a plaque on the wall, then we're all going to abide by it, starting with me. Another theme that comes up in my work is what I call leader as avatar, right? The leader is the embodiment of the organization. The leader is the

embodiment of the culture. And people pay extremely close attention to a leader's behavior. and when they see a deviation between the ostensible culture, the plaque on the wall, and what the leader actually does, that registers. And in some cases, they'll speak up about it. But in most cases, they'll just acknowledge that silently. I think great leaders also, and this goes to a point that you raised earlier, they have an extremely high standard. They can often do something better than some of the people around them.

And it leads them to be anxious about delegating. but they're able to do so and take some risks and coach people up. I think great leaders train people to become leaders. They recognize, I can't do this all myself. I mean, ultimately, leadership is about accomplishment through others. And it's not simply like, hey, I've got to be the heroic person. One of the ways I talk about it with clients who are often in the process of scaling up from being a relatively small-scale venture where they're like, they're personally turning the crank

constantly to get things done and recognizing that there are limitations on that. One individual can only do so much, especially if you have an intention of operating at scale in most businesses, you're going to have to bring other people on board and work through them. And it's not simply a matter of like giving orders and issuing commands, but rather creating a culture in which other people adopt the same high standards, actually bring their own ideas to the fore. And so are you building a culture that's accomplishing that because then you're going to have a much greater impact. It's not just going to be reliant on you. And I've worked with plenty of leaders who are at some point in time feeling kind of

oppressed by the burden of leadership. It can be a really lonely job. We don't empathize up. But I've also worked with leaders who've kind of reached this moment and it doesn't necessarily last indefinitely. But they've reached this while we're like, oh, wow, look, I actually get, I've constructed this system. We've got a culture which is really kind of bringing forth the best in people.

I don't have to be on the clock 18 hours a day. I can actually like disconnect, recharge, go spend time with my family. I'm not being derelict in my duty. Instead, I'm actually investing in my capacity to come back and be the best leader I can. So there certainly are moments where the heavens part and the sun shines out and somebody says, hey, leadership isn't such a bad gig. Yeah, that's the coolest responsibility, but a massive one too. We talked earlier about feedback.

And I think this is so critical on both ends of the spectrum. So based on, again, all of your work, what are the keys to being excellent at both giving and receiving feedback as a leader? Well, a core line, as I talk about feedback with any client is feedback is not a gift. And we've been taught that for so long. And I used to teach it myself, oh, feedback's a gift. We should be. And you know what?

It's not because it's often somewhat surprising and unpleasant. And it causes, I mean, how do you feel when someone says, kind of give you some feedback? You don't feel good. You feel stressed out. All right. So if feedback's a gift, well, some gift. Instead, I say, feedback is data, right? Feedback is data.

And in any data, there's going to be signal and noise, right? So recognizing, okay, when I'm getting some feedback, there is going to be some signal in there. There's going to be something important that I should pay attention to. There's also going to be some noise. Some of the noise is going to be a byproduct of the, other person's distorted lens, right? Anyone providing me with feedback doesn't, they don't have the entire picture. They've got their perspective. But some of the noise is also a result of my distorted lens. What is it about my relationship with this person that's causing some distortion? What is it

about the topic under discussion that might be causing some distortion? I mean, some of the, I mentioned earlier on the importance of being non-defensive in response to critical feedback. Well, in some cases, like we're getting feedback on an issue that's actually particularly important to us, it's particularly meaningful to us, and it stings a little bit to hear that feedback. You've got to recognize, oh, that's actually, that's me contributing to some of the noise here. It's getting in the way of the signal. So being non-defensive isn't simply a matter of like, well, let me suppress all my negative feelings about the critical feedback that I'm receiving.

Instead, it's also a matter of saying, okay, I'm going to experience some critical feedback doesn't feel good. It's not a gift. But if you're able to recognize, oh, like, there's a. this distortion here. There's a bunch of noise and kind of surrounding the signal. Some of it's coming from the other person, some that's being generated by me. I've got to be able to put that aside to manage those emotions, not suppress them, but regulate them, and then actually uncover the signal. The other thing that I think is really important, and it's actually reflected in what

I just said, the emphasis is on the negative, and we often, we kind of fail to appreciate the importance and the value of positive feedback. Positive feedback gets dismissed very easily, and in part, because we often have this anxiety that it's insincere. We think, oh, what if I, if I allow myself to really appreciate, to really acknowledge and accept positive feedback, boy, I'm taking a bit of a risk, because what if it's insincere? Then I'm going to feel really vulnerable.

But then that creates this, I think, this negative spiral where we neither give nor receive really meaningful positive feedback all that often. And so we don't get that good at it. We don't practice it. And then when we do try to offer it, it comes off as a little clunky, and then it doesn't necessarily go as we envision.

So a theme in my practice is certainly encouraging leaders to offer more positive feedback, which also entails getting over their anxiety. Oh, if I offer somebody positive feedback, they're going to slack off. Well, okay, maybe. Maybe some people once in a while have that response. That's not my general observation. My general observation is that when people get positive feedback, well-crafted, heartfelt, positive feedback, they feel great.

And they actually do a better job in response. So I think the currency of people, positive feedback is highly underutilized. A hundred percent agree there. I think it's a good practice that anytime you're thinking something positive about somebody tell them, text them, email them, call them, just say it to them. Anytime, anywhere. Move your default setting to tell people good news, to spread positive gossip, to speak

kindly behind the backs of others and to their face. You hear about negative gossip all the time. What about giving feedback? Okay. coaching session, you've heard of these things like PCP, which is praise, criticism, praise. So they sandwich the criticism in between the praise to make it like not feel as bad. And now that's getting a bad rap. And I understand why because it seems inauthentic if there's like a formula for it.

So I'm curious like when you're giving feedback and let's say for leaders who are in the position to give feedback to others, what are some of the optimal ways to provide feedback to people that you're leading? Yeah, I will say I hate that formula. I totally hate it, hate it with the passion. And one of the primary reasons is you're training people to value positive feedback as worthless. Right. You're training people to say, okay, here's some positive feedback. Here's the real message.

Then here's some more positive feedback. So you're training people who say, when I'm giving positive feedback, ignore me. Don't pay any attention because there's going to be like the real message is going to be sandwiched. Right in the middle. Yep. Yeah. So first, just I think the point you made earlier very, very relevant here, don't wait for a special occasion. offer a theme in my work is certainly make feedback normal don't wait for a performance review it doesn't have to be a performance review so when you see an opportunity to offer some feedback both positive and negative make it normal we don't and now constant yeah performance reviews aren't going to go away right there are reasons why why organizations retain them even though there's plenty of research on how they're not really useful as learning experiences but if you save the feedback up for a performance review it's not really going to have the same impact the impetus the intention behind this

terrible formula. I mean, there's a logic there, right? Which is when we say, can I give you some feedback, the other person usually gets a little stressed out. So it's not wrong at all to be deliberate and intentional, let's say, let me make sure that this feedback kind of registers with this person and doesn't overwhelm them. So pick your spots, right? Do you have a sense of like what's going on with the other person at that moment? Have they had a terrible day? Do you have a sick kid? Are they in the midst of some kind of crisis? If so, not a great time to give them feedback. The other dilemma that I think people have with feedback is they give too much of it, in part because they've saved it up. And what they fail to see is that receiving feedback can be

a stressful experience. So you do have to be very thoughtful about offering feedback in such a way that acknowledges that it is stressful, it's not a gift, and that any given person is going to have a certain capacity to receive that feedback at a point in time. Now, the other value of offering some positive feedback over time, not in a formulaic way, is it sends a signal that says, I see you. I see you in the sort of breadth of your capacity as an employee, maybe even more broadly as a human being. I'm not just paying attention when things go badly. I'm paying attention when things go well. That helps to sort of lower the stress level when you're offering critical feedback to somebody because they're aware, oh, right, I've gotten

some positive feedback too. You mentioned before, and I brought it up too. And it's actually which what peaked my curiosity was your post about 8,000 sessions, man. First of all, I was trying to do the math. Like, how many a day? How many years? You're working on the weekends? I mean, that's a lot of coaching sessions. And you mentioned one of the things you learned from it is like this is we're on equal footing here. We're peers essentially. I'm not bigger than you. You're not bigger than me. Equals. So after 8,000 of them outside of that, what are a few of the other things that you've learned through the course of years and years of coaching people. Yeah.

Well, I will say that that trajectory is increased. I launched my practice in 06 and then I had a full-time role at Stanford, which included some coaching of MBAs while I maintain my practice on the side through 2016. So since 2016, I mean, over the last seven, eight years, that's coaching has been what I do primarily. And it's all I've done for the last. That's all you do. You don't, you don't give speeches.

You don't do anything else. You don't consult with companies. you just do one-on-one coaching. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so I used to do, I would facilitate workshops and I used to teach. And I found, like, I just, I love the one-on-one work. I love developing long-term relationship with clients. I feel like that's where I contribute the most and have the most to offer.

And so that's all I do these days. Now, since I've retired from teaching, you know, I still love working with groups. I haven't led a group since my last course at Stanford in 21. And I might do some small group workshops with clients again. But at this point, these days, all day, every day, this is what I do. And I feel, as I said at the outset, I feel really privileged to do it. It's not, none of it is impertent. I wake up every day.

Is that emotionally taxing, though? I mean, given the fact that like, you're talking about some deep stuff, I would imagine. And after a while, and if you do a handful of them per day or more, I feel like at the end of day, aren't you like, you're just dead? I've got some pretty strict limits on that. So I'll do six sessions a day, no more. It's extremely rare. Well, yeah.

And at the end of the day, I'm depleted. I'm not exhausted. I'm tired. I'm going to go for a walk with my dog. Also, to be clear, it helps. I have a relatively simple life. And I've designed a simple life without a lot of complications. That enables me to be extremely focused on my practice.

But I also have the luxury. So coaching session is just under an hour, 55 minutes. and I block a half an hour in between sessions. So what I see in so many of my clients, many of whom are working at least part of the time remotely and so are engaged in virtual calls with their colleagues or other stakeholders, they feel obligated to go back to back to back

to just to make it a productive day. Well, I know that that doesn't enable me to do my best work. So I finish a session. I will go, I'll go take my dog for a short walk, I'll come back, I'll recharge, and be ready for the next session. So it's very much about kind of organ, I mean, I advise coaches.

live a boring life. If you want to put yourself in your position to do your best work, keep things really calm and predictable. Yeah, because like how much prep is needed and post work is needed for each client? Absolutely. I mean, that's, that is very critical. So take notes during my conversations and I review those notes prior to each session. Now, it helps that I tend to work with folks for relatively long periods of time. And so I, and I'm, and people are very sticky for me. Like, I retain a lot of information about the people I work with, but I do review the notes before each session. And then similarly, after each session, review the notes that I just took. And then I'll often follow up with an email. It says, hey, here's some themes that emerge from this, from this

conversation. Here's a little bit of further reading. I'm not assigning homework. We don't have that kind of relationship. But because I've been doing this a long time and writing a lot on the topics that come up regularly in my client's lives, I may say during the course of a conversation, here's an idea, here's a framework, here's something that I've written about before. I'll talk about it briefly in the session, but then I'll email them a link to the piece if they want to do a deeper dive and have some further food for thought. Interesting. Okay. I cut you off when I asked about the 8,000 sessions, just because I'm fascinated again by process and just how this whole stuff works. And I'm in the market as well. So a side conversation that maybe we can have. But what are

some other things you learn from over the course of your time through 8,000 sessions that have been some themes that have popped up? Well, another theme that came up, actually, I was reminded of this when I was writing that piece from another very important mentor of mine, a woman named Carol Robin. She had this great line, initial conditions matter. And at the time, this came up in the course of our work together with various kinds of groups at Stanford, but I've very much applied that to coaching. It's really important to have a point of view on what's bringing the person to coaching in the first place and how do you meet that person. What I was talking about earlier in terms of, hey, we have to meet as equal partners. I can't meet as an authority

figure. That's really critical. But, you know, what is leading the person to come to coaching? In most cases, at least in my practice, it's a senior leader who's given some thought to, I think I could benefit from working with a coach. Most of my clients have friends and colleagues who've worked with a coach. And in fact, most of my clients come from some kind of word of mouth referral from somebody I've worked with previously. And there's usually, there's something is up. Maybe they just founded the company or the company just scaled up or they just closed a round of funding or they just took the big new job and they thought,

a coach could be beneficial. Occasionally, though, somebody comes to coaching at the behest of someone else. I do work with folks who have experienced some kind of big setback, and the firm, the company, the leader has said to somebody else, you should go work with a coach. Well, especially under those circumstances, the initial conditions matter. If somebody is being forced into coaching against their will, that's not a recipe for success.

I'm not going to take on an engagement like that. But if somebody is being obligated to consider coaching, coaching, then I want to first ensure that they feel a lot of choice in agency. So they can't, I can't be assigned to somebody. They've got to get there under their own steam, even if the organization is saying to them, look, we think it's very important that you work with a coach. So paying attention to the initial conditions of that relationship and ensuring that we get off to a really strong start as equal partners, I think just incredibly important. Related, another theme I talk about in that piece is the integration between support and challenge. All right. Coaching

starts with empathetic listening and it can't stop there. I don't have a job if I can't be really still, really present and let a client talk at great length sometimes about what's up for them. And that was a, you know, you just observe yourself in conversation sometimes. If somebody's got a lot to say, at a certain point, you start to feel a little agitation, like, oh, I kind of want to get in here. And that can come from a number of places. I can come from, wow, I'm tracking a lot of information. Or I can just come from like, I feel like I've got to get in. Well, as a coach, you really have to manage that because in some cases, somebody has quite a lot on their chest and they need a lot to express. They need the room to kind of to fully flesh out what they're thinking and feeling.

And so I've got to cultivate the ability to be a very empathetic listener, and it can't stop there. If somebody just views coaching as like, well, I'm going to be like a source of support, I'm probably failing in my obligation to them. But the converse is also a risk, right? I talked earlier about the risk of a coach kind of being on some kind of power trip. I'm going to show you how wise I am and how much, I'm going to give you some really great advice that's going to blow your doors off.

Or I'm going to really challenge you. I'm going to give you some tough feedback. The two have to be integrated. If a client is experiencing me as a source of support, they have to know that I will challenge them when I feel it's necessary. But when I'm challenging them, the client also has to know

that it's coming from a place of care. I'm not challenging them because of my ego. I'm not challenging them because I've got something to prove. It's got to be in service of the relationship between us. So finding this balance between those two dynamics is critically important. How do you figure that out? That seems like a tough thing to balance. Yeah, 8,000 coaching sessions.

You got to get the reps, right? You got to get the reps. You got to get their reps. I said earlier, my, my early, my very first clients probably were worse for my interventions. And thankfully, they were. patient off with me but it's there's there's a real degree of of practice that's necessary for some some intuition to emerge there this intuition is i mean one one kind of school of thought is it's really just subconscious pattern recognition right we kind of we sent something out there in the data

we get this feeling and what i've learned and another another another colleague i learned much from a woman named bonnie wentworth she had this great line she's like look you got to trust that something's there when you feel an intuition. Your interpretation of what's there could be wrong. So trust that something's there, but hold your interpretation very lightly. And I really took that to heart. And that very much comes to mind in finding the right balance between support and challenge. So I once had a conversation with a guy, and he was actually being encouraged to consider coaching, a guy in a pretty high-level role. And he came in and he had a lot to say. And I don't know, it was maybe 10 minutes into the conversation, 10 minutes into him,

just kind of going on at some length. I was just like, pause and said, what are you so angry about? And that kind of blew him back a little bit. And he's like, whoa. And that led to an entirely different conversation and an entirely different relationship. And I didn't say it in some challenging way. Like, what do you have to be angry about? I just said, what are you so angry about? And it was reflecting back to him in a way that was, at least I experienced and I believe he experienced it as both supportive and challenging. I'm aware that you're angry and you may be justified it. I'm not going to lead to the conclusion that your anger is unjustified. But I'm also not going to pretend that you're not really angry because you're really angry. I'm going to reflect that back to you.

So that was if I had, it wouldn't have occurred to me to do that earlier in my career. I would, I would have missed me entirely or I would have been hesitant to actually interrupt and to kind of jump in with that or I would have bungled it. I would have said something much longer. I would have gone on a great length. Instead, just notice what I'm feeling, find the right moment, pick my spot, and say it very concisely. What are you so angry about? So that was a very kind of intuitive leap and you hone intuition with years of practice. Lots of reps. Do you turn away more people than you accept? I do turn people away and on a number of bases. One is I recognized, wow, some time ago. I was working with a guy.

He was the sort of classic director who didn't get promoted to VP, something like that. And he was really embittered. And he may have justifiably been embittered. But, you know, it kind of turned into just he was the honest man in the den of thieves. And management was out to kind of. And I realized just because of who I work with in general, I was like, I'm actually more empathetic to management. You've got a challenge here.

And I'm not saying your concerns are unjustified. But I more typically am working with management who's. kind of trying to figure out what to do with this guy who didn't merit getting promoted and is now really embittered about it. And I was able to navigate that engagement to a successful conclusion. He found another role. But it was a big aha for me. I thought, ooh, I have to work with people who feel responsible for building a culture. If somebody feels like they're being oppressed by a toxic management culture, and of course, like, there's lots of toxic management cultures out there. Lots of people are justifiably oppressed by them. And they deserve good coaching. But because I

typically work with folks who are responsible for a culture, I need to work with somebody where that's obvious to them, and it's a part of our engagement, which doesn't make it easy, right? That's really easy on paper and read a bunch of management books and you'll get a bunch of great advice about how to build a management about the terrific management culture, but it's really hard to put in practice. And so because I spend my time talking with leaders who feel that responsibility, it's just got to be, it's got to be a part of their makeup. And it's not just a function of job title. Sixty-five percent of my clients are CEOs, another 15, 20 percent are C-level executives. In those roles, you have an expectation that, yeah, I'm going to feel responsible for building

a culture in which people are able to do their best work. But that's not all. I work with folks who are lower in an organization, more junior with a smaller scope, but they feel like, hey, with my two, three, four direct reports, I'm still responsible for building a culture on this team. So if somebody feels responsible for building a culture, then I think I could be a good fit. If somebody feels like, wow, I'm just at odds with this toxic culture, then I can recommend a number of people I think would be a better fit for them. Also, it's more enjoyable to work with people who take full ownership over their careers and their lives.

And it's easy to say, oh, this place is political or this is that or this is that. It's like, I tend to kind of run in the other direction of those who won't take ownership over what's going on. And yes, there are some bad places I get it. But for the most part, I want some people who have agency and take ownership over themselves and take the responsibility when they mess up as well and not blame others. I feel like that's more. So how many people are you working with at a time? Agreed.

And I would say yes, yes and. The challenge is, look, leadership roles look great from the outside. You enjoy really high status. There are many perks. You're typically well compensated. And also, it's often the case, especially when you reach a certain point in your career and you've been successful as a leader, many people in your life, family members, friends, former classmates are not necessarily as successful. So from the outside, the people in your life

are like, oh, you're crushing it. Everything must be great. And the challenges, well, no, of course not. It's extremely, it's extremely lonely. It's lonely in the business, especially if you're a CEO, but also in any kind of functional lead. You're often around a bunch of people and you have to be very, very, very circumspect about what you share with them about your personal challenges. Nobody wants to hear their boss, bitching and moaning about how tough their job, the boss's job is. They don't want to hear. And you got to be really careful, too, about what you share externally because everybody thinks you're crushing it.

So what do you have to complain about, man? And yet, as a consequence, it's a lonely job. And there are some days, I mean, look, especially if you happen to be a founder CEO. Because if you're a founder CEO, number one, you feel the crushing way to respond. Right? You've gotten people to write you a big check. You've gotten a bunch of people to divert their careers. Everybody's following you. And they're expecting you to lead this enterprise to success to justify the big check or the diversion of their career. And so you can't quit. Your name's on the building. You can't walk away from this job. So some days it's a terrible job. It's often extremely lonely and you can't quit. How's that sound? Sound like a lot of fun? Not really. And so you need a coach who gets it and who also. isn't just going to be like an empathetic listening voice you if you are um if the coach is kind of taking that approach they're not they're not serving you right so so coach has to be an empathetic listening voice has to empathetic listener has to to to appreciate it it's some days the job sucks

it's often very lonely and you can't quit so so we're going to make some room for all of that and also though, what can you do? What? Because you didn't, you got this job because you do feel a sense of responsibility. You do feel a sense of agency. I work with high agency people who are used to making change in the world around them. And there are some days where it's just like, it's just a lot. It's maybe a little too much. And they need a little, they need a little sanctuary to come and share this stuff without

being judged. And that's not all they need. They also need some occasional challenges. Have you not thought about growing a big business out of this? Like the, like the Marshall Goldsmith, where I'm going to, certify 100 coaches in your style. Like it feels like you're just anti-that. You're like, ah, that's just too much work.

I just want to focus on the actual art. Like, what is it? No, not anti-that at all. And you mentioned Marshall earlier. I saw that he was on your show. He was actually a big inspiration to me. He was, before I even thought about coaching as a personal path, he was profiled in the New Yorker. I want to say it was like in 2002 or something.

You talked about that on this show. Yeah. I read that article. I was like, holy cow, that's really cool. And so this is like over two decades ago. And I once attended a workshop that he led and I was in awe of him. And he was just, he was a great sort of benevolent source of wisdom. So I mean, look, I am very much of the Let a Thousand Flowers Bloom kind of mindset.

Coaching is an extremely idiosyncratic profession and everyone's going to do it a little bit differently. The way I do it, I don't in the least think that people should do it the way I do it. This is just the way I do it and it's worked for me. I have, I've been asked to join firms. I've been asked why haven't I started a firm? And I guess I've just concluded that I like doing the work and I don't like meetings. And so the fewer meetings I'm in, the better. And I kind of reached a point in my life where I actually don't have to be in any meetings.

I just get to be in coaching sessions. Now, if you want to call a coaching session a meeting, that's one thing. It doesn't feel like a meeting to me. And I recognize that that's kind of the tax you pay. That's the cost you pay. When I taught at Stanford, I was in a lot of meetings. I reached a point where I was actually able to, my last, couple of years at Stanford, I'd say from like 2017 until 2021, I actually was able to teach

and I had zero meetings because I only taught my class, which I taught, I was like, this is a good gig. I like this. I get all the teaching, but I don't have any meetings. And what I found in my practice is that operating essentially as a solo practitioner, it just, it works the same for me. Now, that said, I know I'm also something of an outlier. Most people who coach the shape of their practice is a lot more diverse. And mine was too. When I started, I did. did what I called change management consulting. I would come in and work with organizations on a change initiative, or I would provide, as I mentioned earlier, I'd facilitate workshops for leadership teams or for groups of founders.

And I found that really rewarding. Over time, I found that I can actually do, I can get my interest met in working with groups at Stanford, but in my practice, I'm just going to work one-on-one. And most people I know who coach, coaching is a part of a portfolio. They've got a coaching practice in which they're working one-on-one or occasionally even within that portfolio. It's diverse. They may be a team coach kind of working with a CEO and his or her leadership team or they may come in and kind of shadow the team and facilitate a workshop or an off-site. There's a whole host of different models.

And I've just found, I just have a really big appetite for coaching. It is what I do all day, every day. And I may do some small group workshops with clients, but for me, I feel like I've just found the model that work. Love it, man. I know we went over, Ed. I really appreciate your time. Where would you send viewers, listeners to learn more about you online? Ah, well, so my website is Ed Battista.com. I'm also, I'm kind of active on what used to be called Twitter. I basically just have fun on Twitter. I'm also at Ed Batista on Twitter. I post a lot about living in the country, which I'll be doing for a few more weeks, and I post a lot about my dogbuster, which I will continue to do as long as he's with us. A treasure trove, by the way, Ed Batista.com, of useful essays that you've been writing for years and years. That alone is worth, who knows, priceless. It's amazing.

So I highly encourage people to go to Ed Batista.com. It's so good. Hey, man, I really appreciate this. I would definitely love to continue our dialogue as we both progress, man. I appreciate that very much. Thank you for the invitation. And we'd love to talk again. Awesome.

Thank you so much, man. Thank you, Ryan. Take care. It is the end of the. podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note, Ryan at learning leader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Ed Batista. A few takeaways from my notes. The commonalities of leaders who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. They are not defensive. They respond really well to feedback and they are

learning machines. Then the three questions to ask yourself about getting an executive coach. First, why coaching? Next, why now? Third, what do I hope to get out of it? And then I liked our conversation towards the end when I asked them, what do great leaders actually do? And first, they do no harm.

There are a lot of subpar leaders and bosses out there. I'm sure you've probably worked for one or two in your career. Next, they need to walk the talk. They need to embody the culture. They have to lead themselves first. They also need to set high standards and continually push them, both for themselves as well as for everyone within the organization. Then they've got to coach people up.

Leadership is accomplishment through others. I also enjoyed the live coaching session that Ed did, and we will have more of those conversations in the future, and I may record them. If you'd like to hear some of those conversations, send me a note, Ryan at learningleader.com. I'm thinking about doing this. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continually spreading the message and telling a friend or two. Hey, you should listen to this episode of The Learning Leader Show with Ed Batista. I think it'll help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that.

And you also go to Apple Podcast and Spotify or YouTube and you write a thoughtful review. You rate the show, hopefully five stars and you subscribe to it. And by doing all of that, you. are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so much. Talk you soon. Can't wait.