Virginia Mansell: Founding Partner at Stephenson Mansell Group

Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee
Virginia Mansell

(interview blurb)

Virginia: I think it’s a very, very exciting time in the coaching industry right now and it’s on the precipice of change with technology, with AI. At the end of the day, it’s how to understand, get knowledge, and, fundamentally, we still have to stop, breathe, self-reflect, understand the universal themes of how human beings behave and work and build relationships and connectedness so we can work together.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today is a registered psychologist with over 30 years of experience, coaching senior executives and CEOs. She’s the founding partner and chair of the Stephenson Mansell Group, a leadership development firm providing services focused on organizational change, team and culture, executive coaching and mentoring. Please welcome Virginia Mansell.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Virginia. 

Virginia: Hi, Alex. How are you? 

Alex: Good. It’s great to see you. 

Virginia: Yeah. Good to see you too, Alex. 

Alex: Welcome to this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. Let’s start where we always start. What are we drinking today? 

Virginia: Okay, so I always start off with a lemon and ginger tea, so it is eight o’clock in the morning here and a nice, light, refreshing tea is how I start the day. 

Alex: That’s wonderful. Thank you for making this happen on a Saturday at 8 a.m. 

Virginia: It is.

Alex: That’s special, yes. We wanted to catch you before you were not going to be available for a little bit so this is great that we were able to make it happen. I am drinking a green and peppermint tea so kind of matching you. It’s the afternoon here so caffeine probably not a good idea. 

Virginia: So both being healthy. 

Alex: Yeah, I think so. So, Virginia, you and I know each other really well. 

Virginia: Yeah.

Alex: You are in the board of coaching.com. We met about five years ago so this is kind of like a cool episode with someone that I work with a lot so it’s kind of fun to get to know you a little bit more in a different capacity, learning more about your journey. You’ve done so many really cool things in the coaching industry. You really propelled the coaching industry in Australia, which is an incredibly interesting coaching market. So, I am sure that our listeners would really enjoy learning more about you. So let’s start at the beginning. How did you get started in the coaching industry? 

Virginia: Interesting question but I guess my background being in HR, working in HR for sort of about 10 years, and then I worked as a psychotherapist, so I did a great dip in counseling and did sort of like about 8 or 10 years, and in working in an institute in, so a service, sort of psychological institute in Melbourne, we were really do — we had a section of the corporate market where we were doing assessment of leaders, which was actually quite deep assessment around using very thorough and comprehensive psych assessments and then we would do a report and then we set up a program of six sessions to work with those people. And it proved to be really interesting in that it was sort of professional development. It wasn’t called coaching in, but we’d look at the presenting issues of the leader from different angles and the training that I had at that institute has really influenced the way I’ve built coaching and our coaching practice here in Australia. So, in about ’98, ’99, there was starting to be a bit of a movement around a shift from training, that group sort of training, get knowledge and go and become a manager or become a leader, to more this sort of one-on-one idea about coaching and looking at skills and competence from a development perspective. So it was quite sort of experimental and there weren’t any really qualifications or guidelines around. So, I worked with maybe five or six companies to start my practice and I developed my own guidelines and standards of a process and a program because we needed to have sort of some key differentiators between counseling and coaching and training and consulting. So the start was quite experimental but it always had a deep, I guess, underpinning of psychological theory and framework but within the context of the role of the leader. And so it really was starting to work with a few leaders who some progressive HR people felt, “Let’s give this a go,” and we’d take a brief and do an assessment and then actually implement the programs. So I’ll stop there and then there’s a lot more around all of that but that’s pretty much sort of — it was a bit of the Wild West of coaching.

Alex: I know, that was like late ’90s, early 2000s. 

Virginia: Yeah. 

Alex: So, one of the transitions that are common people coming into the coaching industry is therapists and people with clinical backgrounds coming into coaching.

Virginia: Yeah.

Alex: What are some of the challenges from coming from that world into coaching? 

Virginia: Yeah, I think it’s a really good point because I think that with a psychotherapy background and what I’ve observed over time now is that there’s a big difference between focusing on the competency and the commercial aspect of the primary task of a leader and looking at what they’re doing really well and then what they just sort of need to slightly shift, it might be an insight or a skill or a different perspective, as opposed to with a psychotherapeutic lens, there’s a tendency to relate and to connect with the pathology of the person so they can look at potentially the anxiety or the stress and the psychological sort of energy that the person is giving as opposed to — and I think that it can be useful with a specific brief but it’s always got to be understanding that this person is working in a system and they’re not actually coming to you for counseling and for therapy. There’s a clear, very clear demarcation and it takes quite a lot of experience, both for coaches who have a commercial C-suite type of background as opposed to a psychotherapist who can do really good work but they don’t have business experience of being knocked around in a large organization and having the understanding and the experience of knowing how systems in large corporations. So we have, out of our 60 coaches, we probably have one or two who just have a pure psych background without the business experience, but they’ve now been with our organization for maybe, say, 20 years and they’ve been doing so much work, either in groups, in large organizations, or one on one that they’ve absorbed and immersed in that understanding of this is about the person, it’s about enabling them, it’s time limited, it’s outcome driven, and being really sharp about what the outcomes we’re trying to achieve. 

Alex: Bringing you back to being more on the clinical side and then transitioning to focus on business, I know you now as a business leader, you’ve been running a business for a really long time and scaled it up, but taking us back then where you were coming to the industry without necessarily a business background, how was your journey to learn about business?

Virginia: So I ran my practice for about, let’s say, five years, five to seven years, and in that period of time, I did work for another organization which was — it was called Source International and it was run by actually an American PhD psych out of Denver, Colorado, and she came over to Australia and she was very, very commercial and we ran like performance management and career conversations in large numbers for a very large bank here and a couple of other large organizations and so that really was the sharpening, I think, for me, in terms of getting out of the luxury of having 15 minutes with the person listening and being empathic to, okay, we’ve got an outcome and we need to achieve that outcome. I guess the transition from running my own practice with a few associates into then stepping up, we bought actually a business called Students in Partnership and they had about 25 ex-CEO coaches and mentors that all run large corporations. I had recognized in that first five years that I didn’t have the lived experience of running an organization and I saw the value of that 20 or 30 or 40 years of experience in corporate and I felt that taking a service to large organizations without that background was going to be limited or it would be quite narrow and I felt that amalgamating the two lots of experiences where you’ve got that very, very expert management leadership C-suite working with boards and the deep psychological frameworks where we could train and build really a community of practice with very, very smart people was going to be a winning combination and I think it’s my journey of buying a practice then going in and having all of a sudden being surrounded by very, very smart C-suite people who have the acquisition, that was very supportive, but I think running a business compared to being a practitioner then having a community of coaches was the steepest learning curve I’ve ever had in my career because every tiny micro decision on how you interact with someone is profound and has a big impact and I didn’t have that background and experience so everything was new and everything was a trial and there were things you would react to more emotionally than what I would have if I’d had some more sort of really deep business experience. So, on reflection, I think I did some things really well and I think I did some things that were, if I was more mature and had more experience at the time, I would have made different decisions and that just would have been karma. And I think — because it’s your own business and there’s a lot at stake and you’re out in the market and you’re internally building something that’s a new industry, you’re building standards of practice. So, it was very challenging, rewarding, frustrating, all of the above. 

Alex: I know, I know, I know what it’s like to just kind of have a dream or a vision and then not necessarily slowing down to think about all the things that need to happen for you to cross that gap between that vision and the execution of it. 

Virginia: Yeah.

Alex: I guess if we knew maybe we wouldn’t do it. And the thing is, if you do it again, you already know what that is so you can leverage your experience. But it’s that first time kind of jumping into the abyss that you kind of — sometimes it’s better not to know everything. So, how was it for you, like that experience of being a practitioner and becoming a business leader running your very successful leadership development company? Was it a concerted effort and a definite decision for you to say, “Look, I love being a practitioner but I wanna focus on growing a business around my practice and bringing other people into it,” like how was that decision determined for you? 

Virginia: Yeah. I don’t think there is a clear linear rational process. It’s clearly intuitive and instinctive around the feeling of that I was out there developing some great programs, had a group of good associates, getting some really good results with executives, and we’d had the chance to work on a couple of significant programs and I felt that I could make a difference and it was instinctive around bringing this idea of coaching in the context and sort of a framework to influence, to help other coaches understand how to work and get to the core issue quickly and how, even if you’re not a psych and you’ve never done a counseling course, I could get a CEO and train them in this sort of advanced way of working and I could make a difference just with a few questions and I felt that — so working more in a larger group and team where I could influence and train our coaches to do really great work, that that would then get out into the larger marketplace. We’d be influencing more leaders and fulfilling our purpose. So, I guess when we first took over this coaching practice, I was still very much focusing on at that stage in the early 2000s was about standards of practice. It’s quite different now, but, back then, we really needed to establish integrity and credibility about what we were doing and achieve outcomes and it always had to be commercial, get to the core issue, and get those outcomes. So I think that I felt where was I going to spend my time was helping others in the practice, which I spent a lot of time on in that beginning, we ran peer supervision groups, I did one-on-one supervision with each of our coaches, I moved out of doing a lot of direct coaching myself at that point and really just facilitated the group. And I think the other thing that I found that I was quite good at was going out into the market and understanding the needs of the client and I really just loved spending time in the market with leaders in businesses and understanding the complexity of what might help them in terms of building talent and facilitating change at those top ends. So I think moving from that one-on-one psychotherapy role to the complexity and challenge of both the market, understanding the market needs and then building our community of practice was really exciting and challenging. 

Alex: Yeah, it sounds like it. And as part of that process, you also wrote a book.

Virginia: I did. 

Alex: So tell me more about, that’s one of those facts that I didn’t know about you and, again, we know each other pretty well. We’ve shared many meals, some good wine, lots of coffee.

Virginia: All good fun.

Alex: We always have fun with you and your husband. So, tell me about your book, The Focused Executive. I am remiss that I didn’t know that you have written a book. 

Virginia: The genesis of the book was really, I guess, a development from an original script of another book called The Naked Executive and Peter Stephenson, the business that we bought, he wrote three or four books in the early days of executive coaching, so The Bulletproof Executive and he wrote a book called The Naked Executive and it was really based on six pillars of fundamentals around leadership and management and how to run with teams and how to work the workforce and how to build trust. And I sort of looked at it and thought this is a really good framework. It’s simple, it still stands way through the test of time but it just didn’t have any insights around psychology and insights around systems thinking and social dynamics and interpersonal dynamics so I decided to rewrite it and called it The Focused Executive and I tried to make it very practical, because so many books on leadership can be very, very focused on one angle, sort of like The 7 Habits or the three answers to this, and that those types, that can be really useful, but a framework around some simple fundamentals around leadership and management and what does that mean, how do we understand teams from a social dynamics and interpersonal theory, how do we really build trust, what happens in the interpersonal relationship in coaching with transference and countertransference and how can we really understand what’s going on between the middle, so I felt that there was, while we had the fundamentals, it was important to bring that aspect in as the underpinning and so I wanted the book still to be very short, practical explanations with a bit of a checklist at the end of each chapter, because executives are busy, they just want to know simple things, what does this mean quickly and right now we can do that by ChatGPT or Google, back then we didn’t. So, it was meant to be like a resource tool for execs. And it’s been pretty successful from that point of view. I’ve always had good feedback. 

Alex: Thank you for sharing. So, thinking about your many decades of experience in coaching, coming into it when the industry was really in the early stages, what are some of the fundamental changes that you’ve seen in the coaching industry as a whole? 

Virginia: Yeah, it’s around this idea of the maturity and the maturity of coaching. When you think about it, it’s still only like — it’s not that old, the industry, it’s 25 years old, 30 years old, and so the idea of being able to help people to change fundamentally and in a sustainable way is still developing, I think, and there’s a lot of fantastic new theories around adult development and different ways. I think it’s matured in that people understand that it does help and it does get results. I think the key issues, I think, around change and transformation is that rather than just doing it as an ad hoc basis but to bring it in as a strategic intervention into the organization and have it as a consistent resource or tool to be able to use as part of what you’re doing as growing and developing into a role. So, I think aggressive organizations that are using it in that way, so whenever there’s transitions going on, it’s really just a common sense thing to do is to get a coach and be very precise about the brief but get the matching really right and get the style and the orientation of the coach to really work and to do this systemically with stakeholders in an organization where there’s good engagement and good key account management so you’re working together in partnerships as opposed to, in a sense much — in the early days, it was seen as remedial where leaders and managers just would get frustrated in people not performing and, “Oh, let’s get them a coach,” but, of course, that’s never going to work because it’s a systemic problem and it involves really, really good management leadership internally as well as having the coach to develop that person to the next level. So, I think it’s about the industry moving to understanding it is strategic, it is systemic. I think building the DNA coaching into organizations is a really, really great way to go, you know, building the muscle. It takes commitment and it takes a CEO and the C-suite to drive it because if you don’t have that commitment from the top, these things can fall away. But with organizations that we’ve really stuck at it over a period of time, even through CEO changes, we’ve really seen fundamental changes in how organizations operate. So, I think we’re still in some aspect in the early stages but I think — you know, understanding where longer term development is required for executives who are going to really embrace becoming self-aware is really, really important and we can do much more work around with the boards for them to understand that development is about becoming self-aware. And they’re two quite different concepts in business, and then down in the middle of the organization is skills development, it’s getting people performing to be really effective, self-awareness and growth. So, really understanding all those different stages. So it’s quite complex, requires a lot of planning and requires a lot of strategy, and I think some organizations are getting there but many are just still doing some ad hoc, trying it out, see if it works. None of that really answers the question but it’s just my observations.

Alex: No, that’s powerful. Thank you for sharing. When you’re doing coaching yourself, what are some of the types of executives that you find yourself you’re able to work with in the most successful way? Are there some characteristics? Let’s think about Marshall Goldsmith and looking for coachability. When you’re looking at a potential client and looking at your previous experience, what are some of the things you’re looking for and what are some of the types of coaching where you feel like you personally have been more effective?

Virginia: I think that, with my background, when I’m doing a brief, because often I’m taking briefs for our cohort, and when I’m making that judgment call, it’s really around with an executive who needs to build EQ. We all know the development and understanding of building emotional intelligence over the last 20 years, that’s been a big drive in the corporate sector, and raising self-awareness and for executives who really sort of might be stuck or have some blind spots around their emotional triggers and their interpersonal effectiveness so where they just may not be aware of how they’re coming across, if they’re building, save the day, a general counsel, or an AGM of a big operational expertise, and they’re going in trying to influence and engage, not stopping and reflecting and thinking about how they’re coming across and how they’re landing. So it’s really people who are willing to work at that level with me and I’ll be very straightforward and direct and say, “Well, this is how I’m gonna work. We’ll do six sessions. I’ll be challenging you around the self-awareness and the development of where I think you’re at and where you can get to, but I won’t be going into advising around how you’re going to build strategy with the executive and report to the board because I’ve got far more experienced people in my cohort who can do that.” The request always comes from HR where it’s someone that just can’t shift. The more talented, really, really valuable, really smart and they just need to make that nudge in that direction and so I will spend quite a lot of time in assessing their readiness and their ability. They have to be able to obviously build trust but I do tend to end up with the more challenging assignments, but probably one of my most exciting was with a CEO of a very large mining company and I did a few sessions around his triggers around he had a massive role and huge complications, international business, but about around the pressure of the job was telling him to react emotionally outside with his family and so they brought me in to build some sessions around dealing specifically with what was being triggered around his anger and responses. And it was really rewarding because we only had about half a dozen sessions and he got some insights and practical strategies and tools, we’ve got to the core issue within one or two sessions, and he was so bright, he could make those fundamental shifts and really started to make some big changes so it was great. 

Alex: It’s nice when you can see the work making an impact right in front of you, right? 

Virginia: Correct. Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, it doesn’t always happen, and, sometimes, it happens in the background and you don’t see it as much but, sometimes, it really is right there for you to see it and it’s powerful. What are you the most excited about now with the work that you’re doing?

Virginia: I think that with our business, the combination of I think being able to work strategically through our leadership practice plus the very deep work with coaching and mentoring, so we do both coaching and mentoring and we do a combination of and we do separate coaching and mentoring, but the golden egg, I think, or the golden nugget for us is lifting our coaches and mentors to a point where they can bring this really deep commercial experience but then do a deep dive quite seamlessly into what might be going at a behavioral or interpersonal level around being able to give some really profound feedback which is going to shift people really significantly and getting their ability to be able to do that does take a lot of work and a lot of experience and it’s not following a formula or a particular sort of A, B, C, it’s just integrating a huge amount of experience and nuance and knowing where to go. So, when I see — right now, I’m running an advanced leaders coach program for 28 of our cohort and that gives me the most excitement at the moment because we started off doing the sessions by virtual then we had a full one day in face to face and they’ve all requested to come back face to face. So I think the excitement around that is the learning, seeing really experienced people really opening up to being able to work at a deep level and at a really sophisticated way and make a real difference out there in the organization. So I think our service offerings, when they’re strategic and systemic and we can make significant shifts and we get really good client feedback, so I think that’s one part of it. I think the other part is, and I know this is your vision, Alex, but I think we share this, it’s how do we get this support and help to people out to the world, out to the big larger communities where they can work with people and cultures and systems in organizations where their managers and leaders are coaching them day to day and they’ve got the muscle, they’ve learned the skills, and through our business in Asia, now with ProgressSMG, we’re going to be taking out accreditation out to the Asian market which is very exciting and we’re getting more and more requests to be able to build the DNA of coaching into organizations. We’re just starting another project right at the moment with a request for a professional asset management company where we’re going to be doing internal mentoring, training the mentors, bringing mentor coaches in, and so those customized solutions around what we do is — and then being able to take those out to other organizations so that everything is not just a process and not just a sort of cut and paste, it’s tailored, customized, getting available to many, many, much more of the population. 

Alex: Interesting. When I think about Australia and the coaching market, I think it’s very, very strong coaching market with great coaching programs in Australia, in the Sydney University, and we all know the legacy the Tony Grant left behind. 

Virginia: Yeah. 

Alex: What is it about Australia that makes it such an important hub for coaching?

Alex: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I think, is it the fact that we’re an island and we’ve just got to create our own, we just have to do it ourselves? It has been very self-driven. I mean, I’ve always looked for intelligence and ideas and expertise outside of Australia. So the Center for Creative Leadership has had a huge influence. We worked on a wonderful program together for years and years and they had all the research. So you bring that IP in and you recreate and bring that expertise. Another one of my I guess hero mentors was Manfred Kets de Vries out of INSEAD and he looks at the clinical paradigm with the — he’s an economist and a clinical psychoanalyst. And so, me, personally, I’ve always looked, we’ve developed like the Sydney University programs, etc., but we’ve had to bring in more innovative, from other really, really, really deep, smart thinking professional people into how we work, I think, yeah, in Australia, it is quite sophisticated, in a sense. We really take it seriously and the market is very saturated with providers. I don’t really know. Is it just the island factor? Potentially.

Alex: Yeah, I’m sure there’s like a cultural layer there. And it’s similar in some ways to the UK and the UK is also a very strong coaching market. 

Virginia: It is.

Alex: So perhaps there are some cultural foundational aspects that just lead to a higher proclivity for openness to coaching. I mean, the US market is also very strong but we have some really exciting things happening also in markets like Latin America and Africa and one that you know really well, which is Asia. So, what do you make up of the Asian coaching market and the expansion of the amount of coaching that’s happening in those countries? 

Virginia: Yeah. I mean, the Asian market, again, is very different to Australia in the way they learn and I think you’re right, I think that — I mean, culturally, we probably look to the UK sort of directionally, although I was very drawn to CCL, where you started working, Alex.

Alex: I did. I remember when I was an intern, we’re trying to validate an assessment that ultimately I actually I used the validation, the data from that for my dissertation, but I remember calling and they told me, “Call this company in Australia,” so I found like a time at 8 p.m. at night where I could call Stephenson Mansell Group and I didn’t know that life would bring us together in such a cool way where, yeah, maybe seven years after that, we met, you liked the platform, your team liked the platform, and you and your husband were the first people, like outside money outside of family and friends, that invested in what was then CoachLogix. So, yeah, we have a lot in common and it all started with that little story around me kind of trying to ask for help for validating the C360, which was the name of the assessment. You remember that? 

Virginia: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I know the history. I think the coaching industry, in essence, there’s a lot going on in every country and there’s really great good innovation. But when you meet people like yourself who’s very committed, has a great vision, absolutely can see the determination of how you want to influence and build a market and build an industry. There’s people who are leaders and visionaries, a few, and then there’s others who are happy to do the work and that’s fine but there’s a rare few people who really want to go out on the edge to really drive it and create it and be entrepreneurial about it, so I think that I’m attracted to, obviously, to the more entrepreneurial sort of thinking around and trying new ways and partnering. I think the partnering, and we’ve done it a few times, like with CCL, for example, and now with you in a very sort of determined way, working together through the platform, and because that just brings efficiencies and it brings scalability and availability to the market, which is, there’s no other way of doing that and that’s our sort of joint vision. But, I mean, another example was we worked with Sanford Coaching in a program out of Cape Town University, Integral Coaching, and so I think the other thing is being extremely open minded about other ways and so the Center for Coaching, the Integral, we had a philosophical underpinning, and so because I’ve got a psych background, I welcomed that perspective of that other angle and I think it’s really important. So that’s a note, when the GFC hit and our business was in dire state, we worked with the Center for Coaching for 12 months and just developed all our people in training for a very big project that we then worked out here in Australia and was doing group coaching and we all sort of didn’t make any money that year but we had a really great experience and we all developed and we now have integrated all of that way of working into our group work. So, every time we embrace and partner, it takes us to a different level in a different direction but all within the framework of what we’re trying to achieve. So I think it’s a very, very exciting time in the coaching industry right now and it’s on the precipice of change with technology, with AI. At the end of the day, it’s how to understand, get knowledge, and, fundamentally, we still have to stop, breathe, self-reflect, understand the universal themes of how human beings behave and work and build relationships and connectedness so we can work together so we all trust each other and build empathy and work together in a really consensual, collaborative way. So I don’t think that’s ever going to change but the efficiency of how we are able to get there to do that is the advance of technology. 

Alex: I would agree with that. We didn’t finish talking about the Asia market, we got distracted with our CCL origin story. So, what do you think of the Asian market? I know, culturally, it’s different, there’s some different orientations. We come from, you and I, more individualistic societies. Asian cultures tend to be more collectivistic. There’s some foundational differences in how certain perspectives are structured in those societies so more respect for authority and perhaps less questioning in certain ways. So, what is it about the last five, ten years that have shifted and have enabled a deeper penetration of coaching as practice, tools, service that is a lot more appealing and is growing in Asia?

Virginia: I think the — yeah, all those cultural differences are really important to understand and working in Asia where what’s so important is face and status and doing good work but it is very hierarchical, but that comes with a lot of respect and a lot of politeness and so the learning happens, it’s a lot less overt. It’s much more covert, in a sense of framework is more in a training idea as opposed to deep questioning, bringing out all of your psychological sort of triggers and behaviors and family of origins and that deeper way of working. So, building trust is huge and building programs with an individual or group around key concepts where they can understand and apply and where they can build their skill, competence, and confidence to start with before they go into a more complex developmental framework, if that makes sense. So I think they’re very drawn to accreditations and qualifications, very drawn to knowledge, and so anything that you’re bringing in needs to have sound fundamentals around those accreditations and knowledge and then the relationships are extremely important and building long-term relationships. So, we started in Singapore with a large telco company and it was off the back of a telco company we’re working here in Australia. We were sort of told in the beginning that the relationship will probably take 12 months and then procurement will probably take 12 months but once you’re in, you’ll probably never leave. And that’s very, very, very, like you have to have a lot of patience, you need to be quite strongly detailed around making sure that everything — is the governance around what you do is right, and then once you build that trust and relationship, you can be there for a very long time. 

Alex: That’s very interesting, just like the different ways in which they look at relationships and like that long-term orientation. So, as we wrap up this episode of Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, any final thoughts on where coaching is headed and reflecting on these many decades of experience you’ve had in the industry? Where are we going? Is it exciting? What gets you excited about it? 

Virginia: As I was mentioning before, I think that the industry has been sorting out sort of the quality providers from there’s a lot of organizations who have gone in with a lot of different angles of what they want to achieve, whether it’s performance coaching or coaching for feedback or leadership coaching and so I think that the market is still sorting itself out. So the exciting part is the organizations that are going to bring it, it’s an integral part of their people strategy, they’re going to seek quality outcomes, they want to see return on investment. We, as the providers in the industry, have got to be able to do that. They need to know what are we setting out to do, what are we achieving, so I think availability of marketplace and coaches on marketplace, again, is going to be advantageous. The ability to select, get the right coach, do laser coaching, just-in-time coaching are all different ways of connecting and relating to people and being able to make a difference. So, being flexible around the needs of the market and how people can use coaching as a tool for really helping people grow in a way where they can sustain behavior change. And there’s, I think, as HR people and CEOs understand how it can make a big difference and I still think we still need to work with their CEOs and boards, so get them to understand. So I think it’s going to be worldwide, it’s going to grow at scale, but I think there’s going to be a premium offer of service that will stay where the fundamentals don’t change, where deep relationships need to be maintained, and the really good work at that really do one-on-one level and then the scalability is going to happen underneath. So I think it’s strategically extremely interesting and there’s going to be a huge transformation, I think, in the next five years.

Alex: I think so too, the next five to ten years are going to really inform a lot of kind of what coaching is able to do for the rest of the century. Like there’s this blend of technology and coaching. Well, I guess I’m going to take it back. I got too excited on a Friday afternoon, the rest of the century. Five years, in this day and age, it’s just like so hard to predict what’s going to happen, right?

Virginia: Exactly.

Alex: But I am very excited about the next five, ten years. I think they’re going to enable a lot more people to have access to coaching and I think we’re going to see a lot more higher quality coaching as well because coaches will have a lot of different tools to be able to understand how effective they are working with clients, to be able to easily benchmark themselves to other coaches, to understand what aspects of their coaching is impactful, maybe what other areas need more focus and attention, and I think coach supervision, mentoring, I mean, it’s a field that will continue to expand tremendously and that, combined with the accessibility of coaching driven by technology and the efficiencies it creates, really we’re going to look back and that time when you started doing coaching and we’re going to be even more appreciative for all those folks that decided to spend their lives working on a field that was just developing that now has really begun to flourish and is going to ramp up with the use of technology. Thank you so much for being with me today. Really enjoyed the conversation. We’ve had many conversations so it’s fun to do it in this setting so thanks for joining me and I’m looking forward to seeing you soon. 

Virginia: Yeah, thanks, Alex. It’s great to have a chat about coaching, our favorite subject. 

Alex: Absolutely.