Be an Agile Leader Featuring Chuck Mollor

We help consultants, coaches, entrepreneurs, and small business owners build their businesses after long careers as employees. We believe you should be able to do what you love and get paid what you're worth, consistently. I'm your host, David Shriner-Cahn. Today on Smashing the Plateau, I'm speaking with the CEO of MCG Partners, Chuck Mollor. In today's episode, you will learn how to be an agile leader and build a business that is modeled to serve your clients and you well.

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That's smashingtheplateau.com/15, or go to our website at smashingtheplateau.com. Now, let's welcome Chuck Mollor. Chuck is Founder, CEO, Executive Coach, and advisor at MCG Partners, an organization that specializes in leadership and talent optimization, aligning business and people strategy for maximum results. He is the author of his new and bestselling book, "The Rise of the

Always been very curious and I get bored very easily, David. Consulting was a really good career path for me and I spent most of my career in management consulting, and, based upon that description, no surprise, I actually bounced across a number of different practices. Most people kind of stick to one practice or methodology. Yeah, no, not me.

I started off doing business process reengineering for a year that I got involved in some strategy consulting, and then I moved into the change management practice, which I did for a number of years. And then probably about 25 years ago, I got into the leadership development, talent management space and I never left. I was fortunate where, I did consulting work, I managed projects, managed teams.

And I got involved and I experimented, I liked the big consulting environment in terms of early your career, providing some good mentorship and foundation in terms of the best practices. And then I did a couple of boutiques, one boutique I should say in particular. And then I did a global startup ,and I built a practice for a global firm. So I I liked experimenting my career and I liked, getting exposure to those different, practices and methodologies.

And then I, advanced my career to running a practice. I ran business developments and then I also became the CEO. I was a CEO of a global consulting firm for about four or five years, and then we got acquired twice in one year. And then I started my own firm 15 years ago. So I'm a little unique in the sense that I am a coach, I'm an advisor, but I also own and run a consulting firm. We got about 50 people.

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. I would say that is unique, that a very common path is someone who is in the corporate world or an industry and rises up the career ladder gets to a point where she or he would prefer to, the way I describe it is take more control over their destiny. And, sometimes they leave voluntarily and sometimes they get pushed out and they use the transition as an opportunity to really kind of double down on what it is they love doing, what they're best at doing.

And they do it in a coaching format. Often it's solo, sometimes it's in a firm, but often it's solo. And your career trajectory was a little different. Yeah, I know it was, and, but I did design this role of my business to suit what I was interested in. I liked the idea of having a business and having a team and having a, people that I could manage and develop and lead and scale on some level. I decided I did not want to open up offices around the us, the or globally, like I had done previously.

Cause I had, I, at the time, I had three out of my four young children that I wanted to be involved in their quality of life. Coach soccer and go to dance recitals and all those things you do as a parent. So I kind of desi designed the job to fit both my personal lifestyle needs and the least desires, but also a role that made sense for me. I came full circle. I've been in the ivory tower for a number of years and I wanted to get back and make a difference with the clients again.

And I'm still living in the business where I'm learning, I'm learning about industries and companies and the challenges that people are facing in the marketplace. And I think if you have that, I hate to say classic consulting mindset and interest, which is you're motivated by learning, you're motivated by problem solving, you're motivated by making a difference. It's really a nice fit for me personally, in addition to, running the firm. So yeah, I have this hybrid job, but I enjoy that.

That's, it's satisfying for me personally. David Shriner-Cahn: And I gather, Chuck, that you also have, a wide variety of interests both on the kind of work side and on the non-work side. I see that, you were a cranberry grower? Owner, right? Yeah. David Shriner-Cahn: And also board member of several organizations. No, I've been involved in a number of boards over the years, both for profit as well as nonprofit.

I'm a big believer, I even talk about this in, in my book, about making sure you have healthy time in each of our quadrants of life, which essentially is yourself, your family, and friends, your community, and then of course, your work. So I, I like to make sure that I'm spending enough time in each of those quadrants, not just one or two.. David Shriner-Cahn: Right. It's really important to living an integrated life. I agree. David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah.

Could you talk a little bit about how you came to really double down on your specialty? You do have a pretty broad background, yet you've now really specialized in one area. Yeah, I, for me personally, yes, I specialize in what I do in terms of the work I provide to clients. As a firm, we're broader, we have essentially three practices.

We have a leadership development practice, which includes everything from executive coaching to leadership development, to management training, to succession planning, to leadership alignment. So that's actually fairly broad. our organizational practice is everything from work around culture to work around change. We have a DEI capability in there.

We also work around point engagements and we do a lot of work around team effectiveness, team building, including hybrid and virtual workforce effectiveness, which as you could expect the last two years has been huge. We did a lot of work around that. And then our talent practice essentially is assessments. Where we do everything from behavioral assessments that we have a tool that we use that we're we have a, long term sort of global certified partner relationship.

And then we also do a lot of 360 assessment, employee engagement surveys. So that's what we call our telepractice. So as our firm, we're actually pretty broad. That allows us to really David, partner with our clients actually. Smaller mid-size companies that really want a partner to help them throughout the talent management life cycle. We do a lot of work with Global and Fortune 500 firms as well, where it's a bit more specialized either around leadership development or executive coaching.

David Shriner-Cahn: And how did you personally decide on your niche in the service that you perform with clients? Yeah. I think, as I was starting my firm 15, over 15 years ago, I knew that I wanted to be, was a self-funded, business startup. So I was going to do it on my own and I wasn't looking to scale that quickly. So I was experimenting early on my first year to say, okay, what really role I wanted to have.

And in that I knew what my business model was going to be, as I already described it, we really haven't changed that business model in 15+ years. Maybe we've, we've obviously up, you know, modified and, upgraded in terms of best practices and research, including what the book is based upon, which is this new leadership model we design called The Agile Leader.

So we continue to make sure we're staying current with what the needs are in the marketplace, but from my role, it really is a reflection about my own experiences as a leader, david, I had, I was one of those leaders that got tapped on the shoulder and said, Hey, we had a 360 assessment.

So my own personal experiences of leading and managing my own trials and tribulations as a manager, in the moments where that were very transformational for me to really figure out what leadership meant for me, made a huge difference in my career. So based upon those experiences, I thought becoming an executive coach, would be a good fit for me. And, it's really a combination of coaching and doing some advisory work that's been a really good fit for me.

I've really had such amount of, I'm just so grateful to be able to do what I've been doing the last 15+ years. David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. Congratulations on what you've built, this success you've achieved, and also congratulations on the release of your new book. What led you to write it? Yeah, I asked the question actually right before Covid to my team. I said, what do we think is the future of leadership? And the leadership model has hadn't really changed that dramatically the last 10+ years.

And yet the world had been changing rapidly, and this is before covid. Cycles innovation are getting shorter and shorter of a pace. The intensity of change, the digitalization of business, the multiple generations in the workforce. And then, obviously Covid just accelerated all that. Including issues around diversity, equity, inclusion, the virtual hybrid workforce became an issue. So we have all these things going on, but what are leader, what do leaders need to do to be effective?

So we interviewed CEOs, we interviewed clients, we looked at research. We came up with this leadership model that we coined The Agile Leader. So that became the impetus to the book, David. In addition to that, I really wanted to provide a roadmap to help leaders at any level get to the next. So, you know, for some people, 95% of the roadmap is completely, new and transformational. For maybe a very seasoned leader, 10% or 20% of the book is going to be very impactful.

But the point is, no matter who you are, your background or your level, I want to have a roadmap that's going to be hopefully helpful and a very practical level. Tools and strategies, methodologies that a person can incorporate in their day to day. So that was really the what motivated me to write the book. David Shriner-Cahn: Chuck, what are some of the techniques that you, that the book recommends for leaders who want to be agile? Yeah, there, there's a number of things.

There's definitely this self-awareness component. we've been talking about self-awareness for a lot of years. That's not new. But how do you really apply that in a very practical way?

And by the way, what techniques and tools, they're not necessarily new either, are you doing in terms of how you ask for feedback and how you focus on what you're developing and frankly, if you're now focusing on self development, You're letting yourself down, including your organization, your team and I think one of the challenges I've seen, especially the last few years, David, with a lot of leaders, is they don't recognize that leadership and managing in itself

is a skill in itself, is a profession. Okay. A lot of people, because they're bright, they're highly competent individual contributor. They're incredibly successful as a performer. They're thrust in the management very often and they're in it for a lot of years in advance, quickly. And next thing you know, they, they just take for granted that, management and leadership is just part of their mindset or part of their personality in itself. It's a skill, it's a profession.

and if you take that mindset of understanding that how do I continue to get better as a manager, leader, as a skill, as a profession, that's how you're going to continue to develop yourself. The moment you think, Hey, I of reached the pinnacle of my expertise, that's when you're let yourself down for potential failure because. it's a constant, lifelong approach of learning and development. So I think that's, to me, one of the most critical elements that I talk about that in the book.

I cover really a lot of material in the book. There's 20, I can't even remember how many chapters, like 26. I cover a lot of different sections David. One thing in particular I talk about is triggers. I've done a lot of work. I've come up with my own methodology and how people help them manage their emotions and manage their triggers. Now, whether you're very intense and very, sort of assertive personality, or you're very low keyed, in laid back and calm.

We all have triggers, and it all impacts on how we interact, respond, develop relationships, and address specific situations. I talk about conflict. I talk about managing, multiple generations and managing a hybrid workforce, a virtual workforce. So I really cover a lot of, managing change. So I really cover. To me, I try to cover really the critical aspects of managing, leading in today's work environment.

And again, trying to give people some really practical tools and techniques on how to be David Shriner-Cahn: effective. Chuck, what are some examples of, some leaders that follow this kind of methodology and have done really well? That's a really great example. I think a couple of things. I think a leader that I know particular, and I use this metaphor in my book. I, we, and I like to be visual, right? And give people to close their eyes and visualize in a lot of ways a leader is a surfer.

Right now, no, I may not resonate with a lot of people but let me, continue. What I mean by that is, and I'm not a surfer, which is even funnier, I'm using that as a metaphor. But my point here is that when you're surfing, you have no idea what's going to go on in the ocean at any given day, frankly, any given moment, whether it's the conditions of the ocean you know the direction of the waves, the choppiness or a storm brewing. As a surfer, you're surfing in chaos, essentially.

The key is balance. How do you find balance on that surfboard? Well, guess what, in life it's similar, right? As a leader, you're swimming really, often in an ocean in your organization. You even know what direction your business is going in. What's the business climate? What's going on with your people? The challenges that everyone's facing. You've gotta create stability.

You've gotta find, create a stable environment for your people to feel safe, for your people, to feel you're there to help support them. That they're grounded in their environment even though there's chaos all around us. So you try to use that as a visual, but also as is the methodology for leadership. And that really ties into, and I already just said this kind of creates safe work environment. What does that really mean?

Safe work environment means that, people feel they can, challenge, they can make mistakes, they can fail, they can challenge the status quo, that they're not going to get shot down with their ideas and opinions. They're not going to get thrown out or lose their job or slap them the wrist if they make a mistake or failure. And the challenge is, we all remember in our careers, we learn by failure.

When we look back at our careers and our profession, we recognize how we've gotten better is how we've learned, overcome our failures and mistakes. Yet when we get into management, whether it's the pressures of, the executive team or if you are an executive team member and it's the board. Or it's your investors or your shareholders. We sometimes put so much pressure, we forget sometimes the formula for success and the formula for success is creating an environment where people can thrive.

And take risk and fail and be innovative because without innovation, not just in terms of products and services, but internally, you're risking the organization that's going to get stale and that's not going to grow and that's not going to thrive. And that people are not going to give, beyond discretionary effort. So that's one of the foundations that I I often talk about. David Shriner-Cahn: That's a huge challenge.

And I love the metaphor, the surfing metaphor about, trying to achieve balance in a world of chaos. It's so true. No, thank you. I'm not a surfer either. We all can visualize it, right? We all can visualize it. David Shriner-Cahn: We all can visualize it. And, I grew up near the ocean, so I spent a lot of time at the beach, so I know exactly what you're talking about.

Yeah, I think it's important we think about that because again, if anything, the world continues to be, especially with the access to media and digitalization, everything feels like it's in our backyard. And so how do we create a mindset as well as a work environment and psychologically where people, again, there's a lot of work around psychological safety and a lot of that's what I'm referring.

About, how do we create environment where people feel they, they can do all those things and we, and we have to remember the relationship between innovation and failure. and I talk about this a lot, David, which is, without failure there is no innovation. And we sometimes, especially when you get to senior manager and we forget about that, we figure about the principles, what innovation's all about. David Shriner-Cahn: That's a really important point, Chuck.

I wondered if we could shift and talk a little bit about, for someone who is in a consulting role, particularly for those folks that may be earlier on in their consulting business, and they're not looking to grow a team as large as yours, how do you choose the right business model? Well, I mean, I think there's got, I'm going to become a formula person. I think the formula first has to start with what are you really passionate about?

Because look, if you're not passionate about this every day, if you don't believe in yourself and believe in the solutions that you're offering, my mindset's going is very simple. If I can't, if I don't feel I have a world class offering in terms of expertise and solutions and impact, I'm not going to offer it. It's just too competitive world out there.

Doesn't mean that necessarily everyone's going to want to buy from us when it comes to those capabilities, but to me, I feel we're going to be world class and we're going to continue to, by the way, research and invest in. And that's so critical of consulting. You just cannot continue to lean on models and solutions that you created five, 10 years ago.

You've got to constantly be out there and doing research and evaluating best practices and looking at the future trends, what's needing out there. So that's, that to me is number one. David Shriner-Cahn: So you got to be on top of your game. Yeah, you got to, you've got to be passionate about it, and you've got to invest in your expertise and your knowledge and think about the future, not just about today. Not overly rely on the methodology that you've been using for a number of years.

The other, second thing that's really critical, and I can give you an example of this and I will, is where is the demand? So I'll give you an example. One of the things I first did when I created my business that we still provide it, is I really thought that the future was going to be about new leader onboarding.

Because, new leaders, especially hired externally, they still fail at a, like a 45% failure rate after 18 months, which is astounding when you think about the impact of productivity, performance, stability, culture, morale, and then performance of your people. There's a lot of instability, unrest when a new executive comes in from the outside and fails after 18 months for a variety of reasons. So to me the solution was a new leader onboarding coaching program and toolkit.

I thought it was going to be a home run. And guess what? Crickets. You know why? Because in the priority of what companies wanted to spend money on, they all saw the value, but they didn't say, I'm going to spend money on it. So the lesson learned there is, I might think I may see what the need is, and I may try to convince as many prospects and clients that they need to use this. But the of the day, if it's not a demand for them, It's not going to be the right solution.

So, it sounds like a very simple, example, but trust me, I see too many people trying to provide a solution that there's simply no demand in the market for. So the demand in the marketplace is really critical. And then third, the last thing I'll say, just to keep it simple, is where do you spend your time? Especially becuase you know, I think we can agree that the majority of consultants or coaches out there are individuals. So how are you?

And it's like the three or four legged stool, depending on how many legs you want to talk about. We already talked about one of them, which is, investing in your expertise, investing in your best practices, and your solutions that you're offering. The second, leg is obviously delivering work. Having clients, they're working with you and you're providing services and you're executing. And remember of the cliche, and I use this with my team every time.

You're only as good as what you deliver today. Doesn't make a difference what you did yesterday or five years ago, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. So make sure that when you're delivering, you're delivering what you're there to deliver, and it's only as good as what you're doing today. And the last stool, or leg, I should say, of that stool is external.

Building relationships, networking, doing business development, being involved in the business community, finding partnerships and alliances, investing in professional associations. And again, I think what happens to a lot of individuals is they get so busy delivering a project and they're trying to find balance in their own personal life, they're not investing in those other two legs.

And that's honestly the biggest challenge for any individual versus being part of an organization is how do I, Now there's a lot of really successful people that can do that, but they're all, they've also disciplined themselves in a way to be able to make sure they're focusing on each one of those stools or each one of those legs, excuse me.

David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah, no, the discipline is really critical to be able to have the balance and then make sure that you're feeding what is needed in each area of your business. Agreed. David Shriner-Cahn: Chuck, is there anything that I haven't asked you that you want to share before we close out? No, I, I I think, look, there, there's always going to be good days and bad days. There's always going to be good experiences and bad experiences.

If there's any advice we give to anybody, don't be a lone wolf. And what I mean by that is, yeah, surround yourself with friends and mentors and associates, that are interested in you, they care about you. It doesn't have to be a formal board. It doesn't have to be even a formal advisory group or committee. But, make sure you've got people you can talk to that can give you feedback. That can be able to support you when you're having a bad day or a bad week, or maybe even a bad month.

stay optimistic, stay positive, believe in yourself, because guess what? Just like I talked about earlier, about leaders and innovation around failure. Guess so you're going to make mistakes. You're going to sometimes fail and forgive yourself. Accept youself. Learn from that and move on and grow and continue to be better. So that's my last piece of advice.

David Shriner-Cahn: And I have to say, I was reflecting as you were describing, who you need to surround yourself with and why, which is, one of my primary motivations for founding and leading the Smashing the Plateau Community for consultants because it's designed to help consultants and coaches that are primarily working alone.

And you do need to spend time with like-minded people who will give you support, give you feedback, point out some solutions you may not have thought about when you ha when you're facing a challenge, and really just be there to help you achieve the kind of things you want to achieve and you can't do it alone. Agree, completly. David Shriner-Cahn: Yeah. Chuck, I want to thank you so much for joining us today.

If somebody wants to go deeper with anything we've discussed, get a copy of your book or access any resources you have, get in touch with you, where would be the best place to go? Sure. I would say connect with me on LinkedIn. Again, it's Chuck Mollor, M O L L O R. I have my own website, under my name, predominantly because of the book, which is chuckmollor.com. And then, of course, my business, which is mcgpartners.com. So those are the three options in getting in touch with me.

David Shriner-Cahn: Thank you again, Chuck. My guest today has been the CEO of MCG Partners, Chuck Mollor. Thank you, Chuck, for joining us. Thanks David, its been a pleasure to be here with you today. David Shriner-Cahn: When you visit the Smashing The Plateau website at smashingtheplateau.com, you'll find a summary of each episode along with the links we mentioned on the show.

On today's episode with Chuck Mollor, we learned how to be an agile leader and build a business that's modeled to serve your clients and you well. Are you building a community? Check out Circle, the all in one community platform for creators and brands. Bring together engaging discussions, members, live streams, chat events, and memberships all in one place, all under your own brand. Circle is the platform we use in the Smashing the Plateau Community.

I love the way Circle puts your people, discussions and content all in one place. Get a free 14- day trial of circle at smashingtheplateau.com/circle. That's smashingtheplateau.com/circle. I'm David Shriner-Cahn. Thank you for taking the time to listen to our show, I'll see you on our next episode.