Welcome to Back in Your Leadership. I'm Chris and I'm Lorenzo. And Lorenzo.
On this episode, we're continuing our discussion about the Forbes article on pieces of advice that coaches would give their younger selves. You know, we know coaching is such a large part of leadership, and because different organizations define it differently and talk about, you know, what it is and what's important to it, there are there are some leaders out there who they they don't know their coaching when they are and they don't know how to coach, or
they believe it's something that it's not. And so going through this list of pieces of advice that coaches would give their younger selves, I think it helps kind of quantify the elements that it takes to.
Be a good coach.
On the less episode, we talked about embracing discomfort and about the fact that failure is an attempt at learning. On this episode, there's a few more I want to go over. The first is this idea that you can go further with a mentor or a coach. And I like this a lot because this is something that in a lot of cases, it takes experience in life and
in work. To realize that you can and if you if you know this earlier on in your career, if you if you know that you can go further with a mentor coach earlier on, it will serve you better. And to me, what this speaks to is the importance of network because because mentors and coaches, it doesn't have to be a formalized mentor mentee, you know, formalized relationship where you you know, you you scheduled time with a person every week or every month.
That's great if you can, but doesn't have to be.
It's it's the importance of a strong network and strong relationships with others who will open doors for you or help you figure out where those doos are.
Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's less about the maybe the structure of when you know, formality wise, you have these calls and you have a you know, formal mentor and a type of thing, and it's more about the quality of the content and the conversation and discussion.
I think it is good to have mentors in your life that that you don't work with every day, that are not a or the organization that you're in, because you know, it allows you to have to explain I think in more depth, maybe what's going on, what the situations are, what are you're working through, what are you trying to figure out? And it allows somebody that doesn't have all of the day to day context to just listen and then provide you with some perspective or some
thoughts on that. So I definitely think that there's a you know, there's a specific need, especially as you continue to elevate your career you become a leader of leaders, the leader of leader of leaders, where a lot of what you do is messaging, is vision, it's influence. You know, somebody like that can be very very helpful in having
you work through some of those things. But then to your point, coaching and mentorship can happen every single day by those that you surround yourself with and the peers that you have and the people that you connect with in your network, so long as you're intentionally using those relationships to help you to learn and to grow. I know a lot of people that have really really big networks and they know everybody, but they don't they just they don't talk to them about things that they need
or things that are working through. They just talk to them. You know, it's just like let me I'm we call some and so, hey, how's it going? How's the family? You know, And it's just like dialogue, how how's work? How you feeling? Versus Hey, Chris, Like, I'm calling and working through something here, and I know that you probably have worked through something similar or I've noticed that this is not an opportunity in your business or with your team.
So I'm calling you to ask about this specific thing. Can you like walk me through this? What did you do? How did you approach it? How did you get there? What were some things that you learned? Like that type of intention when it comes to like when I when I hear coaching and mentoring, I believe is needed. You have to be the one to proactively start that dialogue and work through that dialogue if you're looking to gain as much as you possibly can from the relationship and
from your network. Right, for sure, I look at this.
A great analogy of this would be like think about you know, healthcare. Right, So a lot of people they they keep their network strong, and they go out to lunch periodically, and they make sure that the phone calls are there and the happy birthday emails are there and there's a periodic check in, and they do all these things not to be able to influence the health of themselves and their abilities to move through problems on a daily basis. It's just to make sure that it's there
for the catastrophic. So it's like, my network is strong, so if I lose my job or if I want to quit my job, there's a stronger people I can reach out to help me find a new job. And that's great to have that, But what about a strong group of people that can help you get better at who you are now and get better at the job you're currently doing if you're running into issues, that would
be the kind of the healthcare tie in. So you do you only use your doctor when you get a catastrophic diagnosis or do you talk to them all the time about what's going on about the issues that you could be doing to make yourself better throughout to make it less likely that you will have a catastrophic diagnosis.
And this is the exact same.
So if you are if you're using your network not to get through the individual little problems you might be having, and you think you can do that part on your own, then yeah, you might have a strong network, but you're not going to be making yourself better as you go and these people can do that. And I will tell you, as someone who has has been on the like I've reached out to people to help with things that have gone on on an individual basis, not just the catastrophic
but on the daily stuff. And I didn't do that until it was done to me. Someone reached out to me and ask me for help on something. And it wasn't just hey, I got fired, you know what can you do? It's it's I'm working through something and you've worked through this before, what did you do? And that was so it was a great call. I felt I felt needed. I felt like my contribution had been valued to this person in the past and they recognized that.
It strengthened the relationship and it allowed that person to get done what they needed to get done because of the advice that I gave. And there was the kind of like this epiphany moment for me where I was like, oh, I could do this for me too, Like it's not just I can do this for other people. I think a lot of leaders tend to think that way. They tend to think of the fact that that they need to be there for others, and they don't think about the fact that there are others who will be there
for them. And not only is it something you should be doing, it will validate that person who if you believe in what their skills are, they could use some validation.
Probably that's kind of a good.
Thing to do. And it will help you get better in the way you lead and coach other people in the moment, So it goes both ways. You don't arrive someplace where all of a sudden, your role as a leader is only in what you can give to others. You still need to be improving yourself, and that happens
at every single level of your career. And the moment you stop doing that the moment you lose a part of even your ability to help others because you're not kind of strengthening that idea that says that you need other people. It's if you think you can do this by yourself now that you've gotten to a certain level,
you're wrong. But you will project that onto others and they'll be less likely to reach out to you if they can't see you modeling that behavior in terms of how you solve your own problems.
Yeah, it's such a great point. You know, like you made me think about the role modeling aspect of this, because I even think many times, how often do I use the language with with my leaders, like hey, you know, I was speaking with my mentor the other day, or you know, hey, like let me share with you something that I learned from one of my peers, Like like you know, like like so much of that is you know, something that that that I do, But do I share it in a way that also role models for my
leaders who may never see me in those spaces.
You were born with the information and you just have it now just from it all that.
Yes, you know I watched The Dark Crystal and yes, and I got all the information. Yes, yes, No, it's it's one of those things that I think not just giving the advice or talking about the importance of a coach and a mentor, but sharing those those that impact and sharing the lessons that have been learned and how where you spend time, I think is a critical point because I think that's the thing that people go, oh wait a minute, Chris has a mentor and a coach.
He was just talking about like I need to do I need to figure that out right, I need I need to. I need to for those that want it, and to your point as well, like for those that don't want to get you know, comfortable and you know, complacent in their roles and feel like, Okay, I finally got the job. I do a good job at the role. I pretty much know everything I need to know to be successful here. You know, it could be really easy to get pulled into that like everything is going fine
and I don't really have to push myself anymore. But but that in fact is not the case. And if you're looking to continue to evolve your leadership and bring your team along and role model that for your leaders you have to also be new in those things, right right.
The next one of these pieces of advice I want to go over kind of relates to this a little bit. The next one is vulnerability is a strength, and I agree,
you know that's not news. You have to be not just vulnerable, but visibly vulnerable, meaning you can't just know and have the self awareness to know that it's needed and to know that there are shortcomings you may have that you need to improve on, but you need to partner with people in that journey because the projection of that vulnerability is what will strengthen the relationships.
That you have with other people.
And I think that that relates right back to going further with a mentor or a coach, because if you have to admit that you need one before you will go that route. And if you're going if you're trying to have a mental relationship with somebody, not because you believe you need it, but because you're trying to think about, you know, how can I leverage this relationship or what can I do to get something out of this relationship,
you're going about it the wrong way. You have to go at it from a standpoint of humility that says there are things that I don't know that I want to know, and this person clearly does know them, so I can reach out to them and try to make that happen. Over a time, to admit that vulnerability is a strength that ties into coaching because a person that you're trying to coach is not going to learn anything
from someone who they believe is just trying to school them. Right, So, if you're trying to coach somebody in a way that says I'm here to help you try to get better, it doesn't mean that I think I can do your job the same way that you can. When we think about it from a coaching in like professional sports, most of the great coaches cannot do the thing that they're coaching anymore. Maybe they could at one point, they almost
never can do them now. And if you are a coach in business, chances are the people who you are coaching to get better at they know inherently the ins and outs of how to do that job better than you do, because.
You're not doing that job anymore. You're in the leadership role.
And if they believe that you're trying to coach them from a stand point of you know how to do their job better than them, so therefore you shove the credibility to coach them, you will lose that battle every single time because they know inherently that you don't know as much as they do, that you're not doing the role every day, that you are removed from it, at least partially or maybe wholly remove from it, and they
can do it better. And so if you're going through and coaching somebody, you have the strength behind you of what the outcomes are.
And what they should be.
So if the outcomes aren't being met, then you start there obviously, and then then you can at least align on something. But to go in and say, I want to work with you, but you got to help me too. I don't understand necessarily how to do every part of
your role. So if you're running into difficulties with this because and the outcomes aren't there, talking about why that might be, let the person define what's wrong, not you saying to them the numbers aren't where they need to be and you need to fix it, and here's how you're going to fix it. That's not coaching, that's prescribing. And if the person doesn't believe you have the ability or the authority to do that because you don't know
the role, they're not going to listen. But if they themselves articulate why the numbers aren't there, then now you have a place to start with. And in order to do that, you have to admit that you don't know everything about what their role is and what they do, and that takes vulnerability.
Yeah, I was having a conversation with the leader a couple of weeks ago, and you know I tend to when I'm getting to know leaders, I tend to ask, you know, really specific questions in different ways to better understand kind of who they are and how they lead. And the question I like to ask is kind of like if I was if I was working for you, if you were my leader, and I was asking that I wanted to understand, like what do I need to be as a leader to be successful under your leadership?
Like what are the three things that you need to see for me that make me a successful person under your leadership? And shout out to Troy. He said, vulnerability, passion, and drive and you kind of walk through each one of those three things. And you know, I stepped back for a second. I said, you know, Troy, I really appreciate that you said vulnerability and not humility. And I was like, because vulnerability is the action that shows people
that you are actual. You're like, you're actually humble, that you're willing to learn, that you're open, that you don't know everything, that that you're you're being very vulnerable with them. Because we don't get to assign self humility. I don't get to say, like, Chris, I'm really humble. Right, We've talked about this before, right, People get to say like, oh, Chris is humble, right, and and so I I really appreciate it that ever said that the only time it's
ever been said was right now, Yes, eight seconds ago. Correct, snippet that and put that on on social media. Yes, but it's it was a great conversation because we talked a lot about vulnerability and what you were just sharing and and and how that is a superpower when it comes to building trust and relationships, when it comes to to kind of human to human conversation, When when when it helps people to relate to you as a person
and not just assume that because you're a leader. Now you you have this agenda of wanting to like, you know, all these types of things, but you know when when you want to help somebody or coach somebody in this context of being a coach to being able to say like, hey, this is a this is a two part journey here, like I'm here to learn too, write and and maybe one of the best ways that I can maybe teach before we go is like, let me try this as
your leader, and then you give me the coaching. Mm hmm, right, you tell me how I did, and you like, what did I what did you see? What did you, like, what could I, you know, have adjusted or done differently. What are the things that you appreciated that might have been different than what you would have done, and what
did I miss? And let's because like, this is about learning, right and a part of my role and responsibility is that I'm making sure that you are learning and that you are developing on the things that you're focused on, and that you're having as much success as you can possibly have. But I also know that that requires both
of us to learn something in this interaction. So not only do I want to make sure that I'm coaching you to a degree, but that I'm also sharing with you, like what I'm learning through the coaching and what I'm learning from you around the role, the responsibility, the expectations that you have. And that's a very powerful thing.
I agree. I don't want to get off on tangent here, but I'd love to know what he defined the differences between passion and drive, because when you said those things, I was thinking that that you said that you liked that he said vulnerability and not humility, because humility is kind of like the byproduct of vulnerability. I would I would say the same thing that drive is kind of
the byproduct of passion. I mean, you can fake drive without passion for a short period of time, but probably not forever.
So what's what's what did you say? The difference was passion was was round, Like, you really have to love what you do. So if you're a leader, you really have to love to like lead people. You have to have a passion for wanting to see people become successful. You have to have a passion for for learning, building relationships, connecting, like you have to have a real passion for that
piece of leadership. And then drive was more in the context of like you want to you want to win, like you you want to say, like how do you measure my work? And can I be as good as I could possibly be? In how you measure that? Matter of fact? Can I be the best? And in how you measure that? So that was kind of the context of those two things, which I thought was was a great balance as well, especially like in the context of leading people. Yeah, no, completely agree.
So if there they feed into each other and they and they hold each other accountable. So if you're if you are driven to win and you don't have a lot of passion around it, then you will end up doing things to win that don't align with values, and it's a lot harder to do that. It's a lot harder to break a system of values in your drive to win if you have passion around it, because you're not just looking at the outcomes, you're looking at the
journey itself. The journey has to has to you know, the journey has to give you something like almost intrinsic out of it to keep going. And without that passion, if it's just the drive to win, it's fleeting like it's it's okay, when when's the next win? When's the
next win? When's then win? And that's how people fall into the trap of doing things that you know, maybe you know as as as bad as unethical or as not or as little as just kind of not valuing the individual employee relationship and just looking for whatever the outcome is and and not valuing the you know, the humanity of the people are putting to you.
So I like that. It's great, great definitions from from Troy there absolutely, and with that it brings us to this episode is one minute hack. But first, if you work from our sponsors.
All right, for this episode one minute Hack, here's I want you to do. I want you to make a list of the people who you consider part of your your close network, someone who wouldn't find it weird if you reached out to them in a phone call or an email to catch up and to talk about business. Write in a list of those people and write down two or three things that you think highly of them for traits or leadership characteristics or things that they're good at.
Write all those things.
Down for each of those people, so you kind of have them labeled as their there's kind of their skill set. I want you to go through that list and look at those skill sets and think about the things that you wish you were better at, like the things that you kind of look at yourself as thinking, Okay, maybe I can do that, but I want to be able
to do it better. Those are the individual leaders and people in your network that can be a mentor for you, and you should absolutely reach out and ask them if they will have an informal or even a formal mentor relationship where you have scheduled time and you can reach out to them periodically, even if it's just you know, once every other month, to have an hour long or hour and hof long conversation, and then you need to be prepared for those conversations with questions that you plan
on asking and examples you plan on giving and advice that you can ask, and you just send it to them in advance so they can look at it so that they're not trying to come up with answers for you in the moment. They have time to prepare and take the relationship seriously and ask them to take the relationship seriously.
Ask them, tell them.
What your goals are and what you're looking to do, and tell them how you believe they can positively impact those goals. And you'd be surprised at how quickly people will rise to the occasion to help and to kind of better articulate why they were able to do the things they've been able to do. Start there, and it will take vulnerability to do it, and it will take having that that strong network of people that you can go to it, that you can go to for it.
But you will get a lot out of it, and you will you'll become a better coach and a better mentor yourself.
Yeah, I love that hack, and just kind of like the openness of the conversation and the dialogue, And I think the more that leaders can be vulnerable and transparent with what's going on, with with what you're looking for within the outcomes of the relationship, Like I think that those are things that that leaders don't do enough of.
And the more that you have that level of dialogue with people, the better connection that you'll have, the more clarity that you'll get from them, And that's super helpful. And when they give you expectations on what they need from you as a leader, and that's really kind of what you know, I'm always looking for is like how how do you need me to show up so that
you can do your best work? That's really important. And in the context of having those conversations, when you start to get into things like accountability, saying things like how do you like to be held accountable? What does that
look like? You know, Like we tend to think about accountability as the thing that has to happen, when it should be the thing that's like, hey, like there's gonna be times when I need to be avail able to provide you with coaching, or when I need to talk to you about, you know, behaviors or things that we're
working on. How do you prefer that to happen, and why can't we get a preference, Why can't we kind of like get a definition work on their terms, Because then you say, hey, like we've talked about this, and this is what it is, and it's not something that you know is like this personal things. It's because of this conversation that we've had, and it's a part of the job that is we're all expected to do, and it's part of my role and responsibility as a leader.
So anyway, I think it's just good to have more conversations like that that help to really establish what the go forward is when it comes to the relationship and how you can work together.
Right, And a really key thing to remember here most of all, I think is that these are the kind of things that strengthen the network and the relationship to begin with. So you don't hurt your relationship with someone in your network by asking them if they could be a mentor for you, if they can help you with something,
you help it. So just because it changes the nature of the relationship temporarily into a mentor mentee kind of relationship there, it doesn't mean that they are that they now are are going to be less willing to be part of your network when it comes time to hey, I need to find a new job, or I would like to change careers, or I would like to have a leg up in this interview process, it will strengthen your ability to reach out to those people for those things.
Because people inherently want to feel needed in a relationship, and if you can make them feel like you, like they are needed to you in this relationship, they will rise to that occasion. They will they will provide you with the things that you need, as opposed to it being the transactional Hey, I'm gonna send the occasional email.
We'll get coffee every once in a while. I'm not saying that's not important too, but the real relationship that last a long time, they're not built around the happy birthday emails and the occasional coffee when you're both in town together. They're built around the mentor menee relationship and the ways that two people can assist each other with the things they're looking to get better at.
And move up in their own careers. Absolutely, and with that it brings us at the end of this episode, this is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and we'll talk to you all next time.