This is The Coaching Inn, a podcast from 3D Coaching. Welcome to The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm in the good company of Mary Devine. Mary's just written a cracking book called, I'm just looking at the chapter title. It's called Leadership Transition Coaching that's just come out. So it's great to have you with us today, Mary. Thank you, Claire. Tell us a little bit about you. Okay, I'm based here in Ireland.
I'm in County Tipperary and I've probably lived most of my life here, along with heading to cities for work and all the rest. So my background is suppose in terms of the book, if I just bring into that context, is I've worked predominantly in utilities industries for, I probably spend the best part of my working life 40 years. And that's worked across the various utilities, the electricity, water, gas in latter times.
So I set up my own business about eight years ago and I continued, funny enough, I thought I was retiring at such at that stage in my head, but things moved on in life and other transitions came into my life. And I set up a business thinking for short term, but it went a bit longer. And from there, life took off in terms of more work again and some work similar to what it was at, but more in leadership roles, from spacious to leadership roles. And that was interesting.
when I look back now, a lot of my work has been very much around projects and change management, embedding change in organizations and different contexts. Yeah. Yeah. And what was the appeal of writing the book? The appeal of writing the book, think, was it two teams really come up for me and have always stayed with me. And it's very much around leadership and what is leadership and the impact that leaders have.
on the organizations they work for and serve and the people, the teams they work with and society in general. So they have quite the span of influence. And I think also be mindful of the world has changed so much in the last decades, every year, decade it changes so much, but the pace now has moved at such a pace. But even back, I could go back 20 years now and even then leadership transition, the pace was different, but the context was unique at that point in time.
and leaders as they transition from being specialist high contributors into leadership. That was a step change. I could see it. It's more about what we do to how we are and how we are in that role of leading others. And then coaching later on came into that piece as well. So I can talk further on that.
I'd like to hear about that in a minute, but I'm just absolutely captivated by your statistic in chapter two that the potential derailment is estimated at 50 % for leaders within the first 18 months. That's extraordinary, isn't it? It absolutely is. Yeah, it is.
And that's those studies have been there for over 30 years or so, know, the capturing information and up to 50%, you know, and that can be very much based on what are the parameters that influence that it can be anything from politics to culture, you know, to the more complexity that you have as well, let's say. and working in ambiguous situations as you're going to new territory. So what got me here will not get you there as Goldsmith says, you know? So it's very different.
Yeah. And that derailment is a cost to the individual, number one, and it's a cost to the organizations that they serve because it can take such a lengthy period of time. It's flux. It causes flux within an organization as well. And it's not always that the person is asked to leave the organization. It can often be that the person decides themselves to leave the organization because of the fit. It's because of the expectations and the fit may not be what they expected.
So it's important to consider these transitions. And also transitions are not change events. They're not events as such. It's not as if you just pick up the role, you walk into the new building or organization or you just log on to a new team. There's a transition to be made. And it's about thinking about considering that for the individual. Yeah, and it's funny, isn't it?
Because so often organizations are more willing to invest when something looks wobbly than they are to invest at the beginning. But when I read that chapter, I thought, well, my goodness, of course, that's why organizations should be bringing in coaches as people move into a new role. There are one salutes, there one developmental option. The invest, organizations will invest a lot in actually attracting.
talent and their brands, very conscious of brands and attracting people in and they through all that process time wise, cost wise to bring good people in and the talent acquisition. And then there's that bridge when they do bring them in, they onboard them. So the onboarding piece, what's that look like? And then, you know, the developing them and bringing them forward.
And then you have all the performance indicators that leaders are, know, plenty of data analytics there, plenty of reports in front of them and information and data. And ultimately the decisions that they will make. as part of that organizational setting as well. So it really is important. then so the coaching piece really is one solution, but I think it's tailored. It can be tailored to the time and the uniqueness of the situation, which is really important. So it's not one size fits all.
absolutely. But yeah, such an interesting thing. And you talked about uncertainty and complexity and how much more that's true now that even it was when you must have started writing. Absolutely. And in the research, so I interviewed eight leaders back in 2017. And even to get access to those leaders, that's, know, I was in the university college cork at the time in Ireland. And so that was research and supervision for that as well.
So that was my bridge from being a practitioner into the world of academia. So it was new territory for me and I didn't know what I didn't know at that stage, but I was curious. I was always being curious and open to learning. So learning has been a part of my DNA over the years. And I'm quite curious. that was good. But I had a lot of learning to do in that transition as well, you know. So with all of that came, let's say the research and interviews with the individuals.
So context around ethics and meeting all the requirements of the research was there as well. But equally well, I jumped forward then and into 2020, I actually interviewed further, you know, more leaders and people were making further transitions at the time of the pandemic. And that further adds to the book. and the content of the book.
it does give that context, I I want to, to, to, suppose maybe I'm supposed to size a point here and it is more about, it's not so much what is the crisis that's happening? What is, you know, specifically happening in the environment? It can often be about how we are and how we deal with it. And the teams that came through, you know, our teams that resonates, they're timeless in terms of how we might look at them.
Yeah, and I'm really struck by what you said a few minutes ago about the shift from being sorry, from doing to being and that being so fundamental as people step up into those roles. Yeah, absolutely. It really is because the doing piece is a given that the person has the skills, the wherewithal and the competencies or whatever they might be to come into the role and that they can learn.
The quick learners, probably, you know, they've been high contributors, high performers before they've arrived. but it is how they will hold themselves in uncomfortable places in the unknown and the ambiguous situations. How they are themselves because how they feel safe with themselves is how then others can feel safe with them. And that psychological safety is really important in relationships and organizations.
And I think that's where the coaching comes in because the coach is often the trusted agent or person in the room with the leader if they're coaching them and stuff like that, because where else can you walk into a room and have that? openness and feel safe to express maybe even emotions about something as much as why we think about something. Yeah. Well, that's the emotional intelligence as well, allowing that to come through. That's the awareness. The self-awareness is so important.
Yeah. Yeah. So I'm really interested, Mary. Yeah. When you were in business, did you have a coach? I did. Yes. And that might be surprising to some because I often find, you know, I'm in coaching forums and I expressed that and people said, gosh, never thought about that. But I did. I've had a coach, it kind of happened accidentally as such, but when I engaged with that coach, it was very much about my own learning development. CPD I decided was part of it.
But along that journey over a number of years, I've been meeting the coach maybe twice a year. And actually I'd like to call out my coach at this stage and that would be Billy Byrne. And Billy, he was a comrade of mine in a private few years of work life, but we had never really worked together. but I got the offer of some pro bono coaching on something, particular initiative I'd been working on.
And Billy came into that picture and then from there on I might've met him infrequently over the years. But what the question he asked me at some point when he had heard I'd carried out the research or I'd undertaken it was, would you think of consider presenting at a conference, a coaching conference? And I thought, gosh, not too sure about that. But I did, I actually thought about it, reflected on it as we do as coaches, reflected on it and I decided to do that.
So I got invited then to attend the research conference for the EMCC in the UK. And out of that came the opportunity to write the books. Laura Pacey from the Open University Press McGraw Hill approached me and from there that journey took off. Yeah, that's how she approached me. It's a conference. Yeah. And I must say her approach and I have to say at this point in time, all of the interactions I've had with the Open University Press McGraw Hill have been absolutely excellent.
you know, they're, support you all the way, very encouraging. And I want to give a shout out to Laura, Pacey and Tara Heathcock. I hope that the names right here now. have a number of people there and I had Zoe Osmond as well, Ali Davis and Tim Baker, cause they really were super as a team to support me as an author. Cause I was working remotely. I very much took COVID. I'm not as part of an organization, my freelance coach now at the moment. So top class to them. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic.
Yeah. It's all about teamwork, isn't it? And collaborating. Yeah, it is. It's reaching out and working with others. And I have to say as well, Inge, my supervisor in the research, who is my co-author here, has been overseeing the work I've been doing in the writing as well. So all of those people and my coach, you know, the coaches, I Billy as well, previously, have made a big difference to where I am today. That's fantastic. Yeah, so thank them all.
Yeah, and I think there's something isn't there about about being honest with the people we coach that actually we also have thinking space. Absolutely, yeah, and I'm also an advocate, a very strong advocate of supervision. Yeah, supervision is very important as well, and that we get that reflective space. I find when I go into supervision that I'm actually just like coffee percolating I'm actually once I know the date set, I start thinking about the session.
and how I'm going to bring to the session and how I'm thinking about it. So sometimes in coaching for myself, I said, you try and coach yourself, of course, too, sometimes. It's how we think about things. It's often the difference that makes a difference. It's not what we, it's how we think. And that's such a great example, isn't it? That the coaching isn't only what happens in the room, because you've just described that it happens as soon as you can see it in the diary, it starts the process.
Yeah, that is, yeah. And we start to hold ourselves accountable to ourselves as much as the session will hold us accountable because we'll go in there as well. And that's part of maybe the psychology of coaching or the psychology. You know, if we take up any exercise and we are going to commit to working with somebody else, we hold ourselves accountable and they hold, you know, they hold us accountable too. Yeah. And we also speak things that we may never have said before, don't we?
Yeah. Sometimes we don't actually know what we're going to. say until we talk it through and from that often comes another thought another thought and that comes together in alignment and then we can make an insight or we have another way of looking at something so it's in the process that the pearls come out I think of the the thoughts that we have and see where we go from there. yeah which requires great courage from both of us doesn't it?
It does absolutely yeah so that's back to the relationship in the coaching scenario. And that, know, as much as all the rest, and I know I've read your book, Claire, Simplifying Coaching. And at the end of the day, it is about the relationship. is about the trust and that openness, because you can have tools and techniques and all the other pieces that one might use in a scenario if they want to use them. They may not be needed at all.
But the bottom line it is, it is about that relationship and the openness and it's partnership. You're kind of sitting together, thinking through, you're thinking partners. and then we take it from there. Tell us a bit, Mary, about the framework and those themes that you've recognised from your research need, you know, useful to explore. Yeah, well, the teams are four main teams and so the first team is Time to Think, Collaborate and then the second team is Clarity and Focus.
The third team is Collaborate with Others and the fourth is Development. Yeah, now I had a lot of huge amount of data. so I actually took it and I'd sent it to Excel sheets at one point and I took that data literally. My goodness, that's a lot. It was huge. I actually started out, I had 15 questions that I posed and they're actually in the book as well. So I had to take that data and make sense of all of that.
So I literally would have, you know, captured all that data and Then from there, I know I had 72 Excel sheets, I put it on Excel and I started my coding from there. I didn't start saying I need to match this with theories. I literally wanted to get my own findings, my own research and find out what was in there. So the supervision was essential in all of that.
And I mean, that's where I come back to Inge again, it's, know, that's so important that you have that sounding board and that she has eyes because she's used to carrying through research and stuff like that. So it's qualitative research as well. And it's based on semi-structured interviews. But back to the themes, the themes have subordinate themes as well. And what can I say about them?
I think that when someone wants to look at the, know, get the book, whatever, you can look into the themes and stuff like that. But I think that there's nothing necessarily new in it, right? But what is there is under the time to think or any of those, let's say, you can look at the various components of what that is about. And I think it'll resonate. I'm hoping that some of the language and some of the phraseology, the voices of the leaders really is where this all.
the piece comes in because that's where it can resonate with another leader. And that's where the coaches, it makes more sense, I think, when people look into that level. the subordinate, the main teams, the four main teams, the subordinate teams and the voices of the leaders who support those teams are really where the stretch is in the book and it's evidence-based.
So I think that's the kernel of it as much as I have other chapters in there as well, which gives context, but the voice of the leaders is what it's about. The voice of the leaders is what it's about. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? And it's also them who can say whether coaching is effective or not. Yes. And the other thing is it's often, you know, with theory and stuff like that, you can hear a phrase or, you know, a sentence or a phrase and that's the theory.
But the language that the leaders use and how they say it. So what they say is one thing, but how they say it, I think is where it comes, the light comes into it. Right. So that's the feedback I've got so far. So I should thank some of the reviewers as well who have reviewed the book so far. It's got quite positive feedback so far. I see. Yeah. So it's taking that link between theory and practice. Yeah. And bringing it into its own, you know.
And then I think there's enough in it actually, even for somebody to read it, dip in, out of the book, and they'll get enough of a sense of what a transition is and what they might need to be thinking about. On top of that, the icing on the cake for me then was How was I going to make this more valuable for the people who might read it?
So what I did is coming towards the end of the book was I put, some questions under each of the subordinate themes purely just to help people in their thinking again or to assist or to use in whatever way they wish. They're not prescribed. I want to emphasize that they're not prescribed as these are the questions asked by no other transition, not by any stretch, but they are something to think about, you know? Yeah. Some buckets to thinking.
Yeah. And I'm working with somebody at the moment actually who's on the first 100 days of their transition and they have seen it and they have more or less said it gets me to step back and look at it instead of being stuck into the operational piece right and that's number one and number two is that I now realize I need to do it I really need to create a stakeholder map and look at that because I'm more than I thought maybe. They're just pieces.
Everybody's going to see something different in it. Yeah. So that one's encouraging a little bit of distance. Yeah. To look from a different place. Yeah. Because when you're in the middle of a new role, you're taking in a lot of new information. know, even your stakeholders, internal, external, it depends on where you are, how big the organization is as well. can have, you know, so consider those things.
And it was about being smart and it's about being resilient, know, keeping your resilience as well. because I even think of resilience and wellbeing and I'm thinking it's about being well. And sometimes coaching is about being the best that you can be in that situation. You can't do everything, but you can do the best. It's about being, it's working smart and it's conserving the energy as much as you can. And it's that bit of thinking time.
And I suppose if I jump back a little bit, that's where the psychology, a sports psychology triggered my head first. It's throughout performance, it's back to performance. so it's back to clarity and focus and about keeping yourself in a good steady state to move forward. And if we bring that into today's world where there's so much going on 24-7, so how can we stay in shape to meet whatever is in front of us that we need to deal with or work with? And that's good, back to the being again.
It just keeps coming round, doesn't it? It does, I suppose. Yeah, because it's in the moment in time that you end up in a context, whatever that might be in your personal life, your work life or wherever. I know I'm talking about leadership transitions, but we've transitions in other parts of our lives too. But if I stick with the leadership transitions, it is in an organizational setting, but it is about the being and staying on target as much as possible. And I can't say much more than that.
Yeah. Yeah. Being, yeah, being and yeah, I just think it's a great filter for people just to notice and kind of do a hover around their world about these different areas. It's a really excellent kind of shape to hold people's thinking, I think. Yeah, and that's it. And holding the space sometimes, like even in the world of coaching. you can come into a room and you can hold space.
that's something for coaches there, maybe as well that when nothing is said, but sometimes there are the magic moments because something is happening. And then it comes through, but it's allowing the person to catch their breath, to catch their thinking, to hold themselves nearly to hold themselves metaphorically. And then. through with the next piece because we have 70,000 thoughts to say, I don't know, in a day. And that's a lot of thoughts. It's a lot of movements.
So but it's the quality of those thoughts, you know, and when we get tired of when your body, you know, have to, it's the embodiment of how we embody the change that we're experiencing as well. And tapping into that. So the more conscious we are as a both of how we're thinking about things, how we're feeling about things, how the body is, that's well-being to me is the fully full It's the full piece, it's not just part of us, you know? Yeah, Wholeness. As much as we can get it, yeah.
As in not taking our head off and letting it act independently. Well, yeah, this is, I've been aware of it because sometimes, you know, it's about grounding ourselves too. Yeah. You know, you can be in the head, because I've been there in the past, I can tell you as well, I have no qualms about saying it. You know, you're in the head and that's moving at a pace and your body is feeling stretched or tired or whatever it might be. But it is being conscious, suppose. Look at that.
It's a full bodied experience here. And it's for others as well. So wellbeing isn't just about one part of us. It's about all of us and how we are. And I think as well, like it's been mindful as well because resilience is something then we talk about resilience and wellbeing, but you can be over, you'll be very resilient and that can be, you can overplay that.
And if you, if I'm very, very, very resilient, let's say, and I'm working with people who have a different resilience level, I don't want to burn them out. Right. So, I mean, it's been mindful of that. So what can be our strengths, you know, can be our default as well going in another direction. So just to watch it. Yeah. So who are you hoping is going to read your book, Who I'm hoping can read the book.
Well, first of all, coaches, probably coaches might consider it as part of their own development and coaches and maybe practitioners, trainers, leaders, I hope as well. Leaders, new leaders, people new to leading. or well-seasoned as well because I have case studies there, let's say, as well around people moving to board level and director levels and different levels. Probably people in the organizational development side of things. But I think it's open to anybody.
People can gift it to somebody, colleagues might be moving a role or whoever. But I think I'm hoping that word amount, know, referrals and the reviews maybe and whoever might see it. It can transcend itself across the globe, I think, because it's not specific to any generation. There's five generations roughly in the workplace at the moment, five, six, maybe even at this stage. It's not specific to anyone, but it does have something in it, think, for everybody.
It's got something, some nuggets in there. And the thing I'll say about transitions as well, one thing I'd like to say about transitions, has three components. Mitchell would say, let's say that it's three components. It is the start, the front piece, we're leaving something, you're leaving something behind, you're moving forward. And so you're leaving what you're used to. Maybe you're people you knew, the way of being, the habits you had, what the place was like, the culture.
You're now, you then move into the new space, which is an unknown for a while. And that's uncomfortable. Most people want to run out of there and get out of there as fast as possible. It is not a nice, pleasant, easy space sometimes. But that's where the curiosity can be as well and the creativity and the exploring.
And that's often where the coach works actually with a person is they're working through the change and then there's arriving into the new, they know the space is settling in, starting to feel a little bit kind of more normal now here. Now, again, you're feeling more, the comfort levels is increasing here and you've got the clarity and your division and you're moving forward. so it's different. it's, that's what I want to say about transitions. It is something that has components to it.
It's interesting because Bridges, William Bridges has a similar model, that endings and then he calls the middle bit the neutral zone and the new beginnings. Yeah. I call the middle bit the wilderness. And probably 20 years ago, I walked across the wilderness on a charity trek. And it was so interesting experiencing for myself what that absolutely felt like, which was so exciting. and absolutely death defying me scary. Yeah. And, one minute it was amazing.
In the next minute it wasn't one day it was absolutely dry as dust. And there was a storm that lasted about three seconds. And during that storm, bushes started emerging, but because we had our eyes closed, cause there was a sandstorm as well as the rain, we didn't see them growing. But suddenly you open your eyes and there's all this green everywhere. So that extraordinary in between where it's so very uncertain and yet there's excitement and terror and all of those things. That's it, yeah.
And it's like a paradox in itself because it has all those elements in there. So again, it's back to how you kind of can maneuver through all of that. yeah, and I can indeed just speak about it as Claire. can, you know, I think for me, because I've been changed as being a part of my life, very much so in different ways. And I get quite excited about change. I like the unknown and I kind of curious about it and interested to find out what this could be. So it's that piece.
And maybe that's what's partly brought me to this book. Some people would run for the hills, probably. Yes. We're going here, you know, was no, it's it's and like you described, it is all that the mix of pieces that can be happening again. Some people are aware that's coming out. and see that as normal, don't they? And other people are a bit side swiped by it. Absolutely, yeah. And that's mentioned in the book, suppose, too.
I kind of do talk about our mindset, beliefs, mindset, and how we approach things because we have stories, you know, our belief systems, especially they're very, very strong. beliefs can take us to many places, but it is about how we understand our own stories and our schemas and then how we make meaning in the world. and how we make meaning out of the new territory then as we move forward.
So I've touched on that as well in the book, which might be helpful to people as we're working through transitions, because it gets you to consider, probably because I the program, I suppose, study program in the Faculty of Psychology in the University of Cork, there was that dimension of thinking about it from the point of view, what's the behavioral impact here, and all of that. part of the program I would have undertaken down there as well. was coaching psychology and positive psychology.
And I have to say that I am very much aligned with the thinking around the positive psychology. And Martin Seligman, me as being, I suppose, grandfather of positive psychology. When I arrived into that territory as well, it was ringing a lot of bells for me. Even as I reflect back on the leaders I would have worked with and the people who influenced me over the years and who are natural mentors without ever being called a mentor.
and old ways of being in the world without ever trying to describe it. So I often ask people like, I think when you may earn the leadership roles or moving into other roles, is to think about the people who we would have looked to and what was the difference that made the difference? And I could be going off track now again here a little bit. No, I think that's really interesting because there's something, isn't it, about people's capacity or willingness to give away? Absolutely.
Yeah. Yeah. And that's part of being a leader, isn't it? Absolutely. And in today's world, more than ever, leaders are coming into leadership at a much earlier stage, I would say, for very few years under their belt, as such, in an organizational setting, which is wonderful because there's wonderful opportunities there. But it is to be mindful, I think, of the territory that they're in because as their contributors, they want to carve out their careers.
There are other people who have been there for quite some time or at the same peer level as themselves. It's been mindful of how we lead others. And are we serving the organization and are we bringing people with us? Are we self-serving? And if we're self-serving, I don't know how long that will last, but people will see the woods and the trees in that one. And you can bruise people along the way. No, there's the dark side of leadership as well. It's very much alive and well.
And there's environments out there that may not be conducive to wellbeing and to a lot of other things. So I would call that out to say that That's back to the maturity of the organisation, the individuals who lead those organisations. And again, it's another aspect of leadership. Yeah. So much to wonder about. Yeah. But I think it's back to being the best version of oneself.
And I think if you have, you know, it's about preparing for the shift into leadership or as you move up into the leadership roles. And even when you meet the most senior levels in the organisation, still be mindful of, look, it's a different context here. You have to work with different people as it's a different time in the world and do consider it maybe it's worth considering where we are now. Yeah, brilliant.
So as we begin to wrap up, are there any final words that you want to say to our listeners, Mary? I think really the final word is that leaders have so much influence on the lives of others in organizations and the wider society and they will be influenced by so much around them. I think the coaches preparation for their work with leaders is a significant task too.
And the book hopefully has signaled some of the steps that the leaders will take as they navigate their journey of leadership transition. While it's also a roadmap I suppose for coaches in their work. Yeah, fantastic. So if people want to talk to you more about this or hear more from you, how do they contact you Mary? At the direct route I suppose is through my well LinkedIn, I'm at Mary Villette Devine on the LinkedIn.
and my website is mirydconsultancy.com and I'll pop that on the program notes so that people can find you. Okay thank you. Thank you so much Mary, what a delight to spend some time listening and talking with each other. Yeah absolutely and I've enjoyed your story and I say I'm reading your book at the moment Simplifying Fortune which is another dimension on things.
But no it is because at the end of the day it's an evolving that the industry that the coaching professionals was is evolving still and will continue and one of the things I'd like to see even going further is that bridge between maybe you know the practitioner and the coach the academia and stuff like that because it is about progressing and that whole
piece and more than ever leaders are becoming coaches themselves in the world too they're taking on that that that style of leadership which is wonderful so long may it last and move forward. Thank you. Thank you. So I'm Claire Pedrick and I've been in conversation with Mary Vallette-Divine about her book Leadership Transition Coaching that's now available on all good book platforms published by Open University Press. Bye bye. Thank you, Claire.
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