Coaching for Leaders

Lesson 3: Take Action, Joyfully

Changing behavior is hard in the midst of busy schedules. In this lesson, I invite you to create an anchor that will trigger the daily action you want.

Academy Applications Close Friday, March 24th

The Academy is an intimate cohort of participant leaders who work personally with me to accelerate their leadership development and organizational results. Discover more and submit your application by Friday, March 24th.

Resources

Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything by BJ Fogg

Related Episodes

How to Change Your Behavior, with BJ Fogg (episode 507)

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Lesson 2: Plan Daily Movement

Behavior change works best when we work to create small wins, consistently. In this lesson, I invite you plan out a 5-minute daily action that will support who you are becoming.

Academy Applications Close Friday, March 24th

The Academy is an intimate cohort of participant leaders who work personally with me to accelerate their leadership development and organizational results. Discover more and submit your application by Friday, March 24th.

Resources

Great at Work: The Hidden Habits of Top Performers* by Morten Hansen

The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals* by Chris McChesney, Sean Covey, and Jim Huling

Related Episodes

How to Actually Move Numbers, with Chris McChesney (episode 294)

Six Tactics for Extraordinary Performance, with Morten Hansen (episode 337)

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Lesson 1: Decide Who You Are Becoming

The first step in getting traction with a new habit is deciding who you are becoming. In this lesson, you’ll discover the distinction between goals and identities and how to get started.

Academy Applications Close Friday, March 24th

The Academy is an intimate cohort of participant leaders who work personally with me to accelerate their leadership development and organizational results. Discover more and submit your application by Friday, March 24th.

Resources

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear

Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company by Whitney Johnson

Related Episodes

How to Become the Person You Want to Be, with James Clear (episode 376)

How to Help People Engage in Growth, with Whitney Johnson (episode 576)

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Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide.

Listener Questions

Susan asked about assessing the difference between an employee who has addressable gaps in their skills and knowledge versus when they are in over their head.

Elizabeth asked our advice on managing a team member who appears over-confident in their abilities…and how to hold them accountable.

Steve wondered how we handle household tasks between the two of us in the midst of our busy schedules.

Resources Mentioned

Analyzing Performance Problems* by Robert Mager and Peter Pipe

The Alignment Problem by Brian Christian

Wonder Tools by Jeremy Kaplan

The Home Edit by Clea Shearer and Joanna Teplin

Related Episodes

The Way to Stop Rescuing People From Their Problems, with Michael Bungay Stanier (episode 284)

How to Challenge Directly and Care Personally, with Kim Scott (episode 302)

Five Steps to Hold People Accountable, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 306)

Finding Joy Through Intentional Choices, with Bonni Stachowiak (episode 417)

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Claire Hughes Johnson: Scaling People

Claire Hughes Johnson is a corporate officer and advisor for Stripe, a global technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. She previously served as Stripe’s Chief Operating Officer, helping the company grow from fewer than 200 employees to more than 8,000.

Prior to Stripe, Claire spent 10 years at Google leading various business teams, including overseeing aspects of Gmail, Google Apps, and consumer operations. She is a board member at Hallmark Cards, The Atlantic, Ameresco, and HubSpot. Claire also serves as a trustee and the current board president of Milton Academy. She is the author of Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building*.

You are charged with leading a reorg, but do you know the mindset, actions, and steps to take? In this conversation, Claire and I explore some of the key lessons she’s discovered as an executive leader in a quickly growing enterprise. We discuss the key triggers for a reorg, the three phases of reorganization, and common pitfalls leaders should avoid.

Key Points

Reorganizations or restructurings and often seen as a sign of a problem, but that's not always the case.

Why reorganize? Two triggers: (1) your team structure doesn't match your strategy and/or (2) you have a talent issue.

While there are times to go slower, the bias should be to move with haste. Don't leave ice cream on the counter for too long.

Be very cautious about creating structure around a single individual.

Three phases of a reorg:

Phase 0: Decide whether you need a reorg and determine your new structure.

Phase 1: Get buy-in from the key people who need to be involved.

Phase 2: Create a communications plan and inform all of those affected.

Resources Mentioned

Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building* by Claire Hughes Johnson

Transitions* by William Bridges

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Manage Former Peers, with Tom Henschel (episode 257)

Three Steps to Great Career Conversations, with Russ Laraway (episode 370)

How to Solve the Toughest Problems, with Wendy Smith (episode 612)

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Sally Helgesen: Rising Together

Sally Helgesen has been cited by Forbes as the world’s premier expert on women’s leadership. She is a best-selling author, speaker and leadership coach. She has been named by Thinkers50 as one of the world’s top 20 coaches and ranked number 6 among the world’s thought leaders by Global Gurus. She is the author of several books, including The Female Advantage: Women’s Ways of Leadership and The Female Vision: Women’s Real Power at Work.

Her book The Web of Inclusion: A New Architecture for Building Great Organizations, was cited in The Wall Street Journal as one of the best books on leadership of all time and is credited with bringing the language of inclusion into business. She co-authored How Women Rise, with executive coach Marshall Goldsmith, examining the behaviors most likely to get in the way of successful women. Her newest book is Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace*.

When we get triggered, our default response tends to be either venting about it to others or suffering in silence. In this conversation, Sally and I explore how to respond in a more useful way. She invites us to consider being less invested in our initial response, creating an alternative script, and finding a path forward to influence different behavior.

Key Points

When we get triggered, our tendency is to either vent about it or suffer in silence.

Being overly invested in our first response limits our ability to respond better. This is the authenticity trap.

Create an alternative, positive script that helps your own mental well-being and precipitates a more helpful action.

Whether the alternative script is true or not isn’t the point. The aim is to find the line between not humiliating the other party and also not letting a poor behavior be unaddressed.

Wisdom from Sun Tzu: indirection or redirection to disarm an opponent is preferable to the direct engagement or combat.

Resources Mentioned

Rising Together: How We Can Bridge Divides and Create a More Inclusive Workplace by Sally Helgesen

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

The Way Out of Major Conflict, with Amanda Ripley (episode 529)

End Imposter Syndrome in Your Organization, with Jodi-Ann Burey (episode 556)

How to Create Inclusive Hiring Practices, with Ruchika Tulshyan (episode 589)

How to Respond Better When Challenged, with Dolly Chugh (episode 615)

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Kathy Fiddler: TidalHealth

Kathy Fiddler is the Vice President of Population Health for TidalHealth, a non-profit two hospital health care system on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. She has been instrumental in building community programs supporting improved access to healthcare services on the lower shore.

Kathy is a registered nurse and a retired Major in the United States Air Force Reserve. She served for 26 years in the US and abroad and supported Operation Restore Hope, Operation Desert Storm, and Operation Enduring Freedom. She is also a lifetime member of the Reserve Officers Association and a board member for the United Way of the Lower Eastern Shore. In 2019, she was recognized as one of the Top 100 Women in Maryland. She's also an alum of the Coaching for Leaders Academy.

In this conversation, Kathy and I discuss her career growth over time from mostly clinical and operational work to leading at the executive level. We explore how being intentional about surrounding oneself with a diverse set of voices helps to both build confidence and surface better outcomes. Finally, we look at how working through discomfort in service of others can help us to make the world better through our work.

Key Points

The work of a leader is very different than the operational and technical work most of us did earlier in our careers.

Having a smaller meeting before a larger meeting can help a more introverted leader engage in the way they want.

We sometimes sell ourselves short by concluding we won’t add value. By leaning into that discomfort, we find it’s often the case that others struggle with similar fears.

Shifting from having the right answers to asking the right questions will help a leader to uncover what may have been unsaid that’s critical.

Finding communities of other leaders helps you to find the diversity of perspective to support you building your own confidence.

Related Episodes

Create Margin Through Intentional Leadership, with Amy McPherson (episode 429)

Personal Leadership is a Journey, with Michal Holliday (episode 436)

Lead Best by Being You, with Elena Kornoff (episode 474)

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Adi Ignatius: Harvard Business Review

Adi Ignatius is Editor in Chief of the Harvard Business Review Group, where he oversees the editorial activities of Harvard Business Review, hbr.org, and HBR’s book-publishing unit. Prior to joining Harvard Business Review in 2009, he was the No. 2 editor at TIME. He is the editor of two books: President Obama: The Path to the White House and Prisoner of the State: The Secret Diaries of Premier Zhao Ziyang. Both made The New York Times Bestseller List.

Adi lived and worked for nearly 20 years overseas. He was Editor of Time’s Asian edition and earlier served as Beijing Bureau Chief and Moscow Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. He is also host of the HBR Channel. It is the 100th anniversary of Harvard Business Review.

Should leaders and organizations take a stand on current events, politics, or causes? Adi and I discuss this tough question in detail. While the answer will be different for every leader, we invite you to begin thinking about how you might approach this in your work.

Key Points

The traditional advice of “Don’t talk about politics and religion” is still the norm in some places, but increasingly leaders and being more vocal.

Silence used to be the default. Silence now many send a message that leaders and organizations don't intend to convey.

While every leader needs to decide how they will navigate this, beware your feelings of certainty.

Resources Mentioned

Harvard Business Review

Related Episodes

Start With Why, with Simon Sinek (episode 223)

Handling a Difficult Stakeholder, with Nick Timiraos (episode 581)

How to Begin Difficult Conversations About Race, with Kwame Christian (episode 594)

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Carol Kauffman: Real-Time Leadership

Carol Kauffman is an international leader in the field of coaching and has more than 40,000 hours of practice. Her clients are C-level leaders and their teams or elite athletes and creatives. She was shortlisted by Thinkers 50 as one of the top eight coaches around the globe for her thought leadership, entrepreneurial spirit, and contribution to coaching best practices. She is a founding member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches and ranked the number one leadership coach in the world. She founded the Institute of Coaching with a $2 million gift from the Harnisch Foundation.

Carol is an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, a visiting professor at Henley Business School, and a senior leadership adviser at Egon Zehnder. At Harvard she launched the annual Coaching in Leadership and Healthcare Conference, one of the school's most highly attended events. Her professional development program, Leader as Coach, won Harvard’s inaugural Program Award for Culture of Excellence in Mentoring and has been rolled out throughout the United States. She was also the founding editor-in-chief of Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research, and Practice. Carol is co-author with David Noble of Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes are High*.

In this conversation, Carol and I explore the mindsets and tactics that are helpful when taking on a new, big leadership role. We discuss how vision, resolution, scope, and altitude play a key role in your success early on. Plus, we invite listeners to consider the importance of peer relationships and recognizing how others see you as your role begins.

Key Points

Having the right altitude often means looking much more broadly at the organization and moving past a subconscious bias towards your old role or department.

The “subject matter expert trap” is a common one. Your awareness will help you avoid it — or recognize it faster.

Good peer relationships are one of the strongest predictors of success in a new role. Make time to build these critical connections.

Learning to accept recognition is a key competency for an executive leader. Treat it as you would receiving any kind of gift.

Have an enterprise mindset and remember that people perceive you as representing the organization vs. just yourself. Thinking like the entity can help you show up in the way you intend.

Resources Mentioned

Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes are High* by Carol Kauffman and David Noble

Interview Notes

Download my interview notes in PDF format (free membership required).

Related Episodes

How to Manage Former Peers, with Tom Henschel (episode 257)

How to Nail a Job Transition, with Sukhinder Singh Cassidy (episode 555)

How to Genuinely Show Up for Others, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 590)

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Joe Hart: Take Command

Joe Hart began his career as a practicing attorney. After taking a Dale Carnegie Course, Joe reassessed his career path and future, ultimately leaving the practice of law, going to work for a top real estate company, and then founding an innovative e-learning company and serving as president of health and wellness company. In 2015, Joe was named president and CEO of Dale Carnegie.

The CEO Forum Group named Joe as one of twelve transformative leaders, giving him the Transformative CEO Leadership Award in the category of the People. He is the host of a top global podcast, Take Command: A Dale Carnegie Podcast, and he speaks around the world on topics such as leadership, resilience, and innovation. He is the author with Michael Crom of Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want*.

In this conversation, Joe and I explore how to discover another person’s values through meaningful conversation. We examine three types of questions to ask that gradually illuminate what’s important to another person. By knowing what to ask and what to listen for, we can uncover values without asking a more awkward question like, “What are your values?”

Key Points

Dale Carnegie invited us to, “Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.” Use three types of questions to frame a conversation that uncovers another person’s values:

Examples of factual questions:

How did you first find out about…?

What keeps you busy during the week?

What do you like to do for fun?

What hobby or activity holds your interest?

Examples of causative questions:

What got you interesting in doing this kind of work?

How did you get involved in that hobby?

What do you like about…?

What caused you to enter into this industry?

Examples of values-based questions:

Tell me about someone who’s had a major impact on your life.

If you had to do it over again, what — if anything — would you do differently?

Tell me about a turning point in your career.

Tell about about something that you look back on as a high point or moment of pride.

How did you get through a major challenge in the past?

How would you describe your personal philosophy in a sentence or two?

Resources Mentioned

Take Command: Find Your Inner Strength, Build Enduring Relationships, and Live the Life You Want* by Joe Hart and Michael Crom

Related Episodes

Three Steps to Great Career Conversations, with Russ Laraway (episode 370)

Discover Who You Are, with Hortense le Gentil (episode 459)

How to Genuinely Show Up for Others, with Marshall Goldsmith (episode 590)

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.