Coaching in the Clear

Jeff Hunter:

Hi, I'm Jeff Hunter, the founder and CEO of Talentism. Today, I'm speaking with Dave Fano, the

founder and CEO of Teal. Dave is an architect by training and a serial entrepreneur by

compulsion. He founded the successful building information and technology consultancy Case.

He then sold Case to WeWork and took on the role of chief growth officer there, where he was a

key driver of their meteoric growth. I met Dave when he started his latest venture, Teal. I

remember when Dave was first talking about his career experiences and how he wanted to

make things better for the people who actually build companies, the employees, he told me that

it struck him that the way people think about their careers and their jobs was broken, and he felt

that the need to create a company to fix that. That compulsion led Dave to create Teal, an

incredible group of people dedicated to providing the education, community and tools to help

professionals build successful and fulfilling careers. I'm especially grateful to be talking to Dave

today because Teal is one of Talentisms, first IP partners, and is using our big four framework

and methodology to help people create their own unique path of professional excellence. I

encourage you to learn more about this amazing company at Tealhq.com. That's Tealhq.com.

Dave, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the conversation.

Dave Fano:

Thanks Jeff, I'm super honored to be a part of this as you know, someone who I look to as a

mentor and someone that's really paved the path for some really incredible things. And so I'm

really appreciative to have the time to talk to you and to do this with you.

Jeff Hunter:

So, Dave the way I understand it, at Teal you provide career coaching. You've worked with me,

you've partnered with Talentism. So, you know, our approach and thinking, and of course I know

you've done a lot of coaching over time as a successful executive. How do you think about the

value and importance of coaching?

Dave Fano:

So I think coaching is critical and I think that for anyone to push beyond their understanding of

their limits, some kind of external force is incredibly valuable, right? I think you know, for the

short time that I had a personal trainer, I was able to push myself, they were able to push me

further than I was able to push myself, just because I think we kind of you know, we like to play

it safe. We don't want to hurt ourselves. We don't like to fail. And so there's something about

having someone who you know, has your best interest in mind and helps you push to what they

think your potential is. And also that they've seen it done before, right? I mean, a lot of, I think

life is quite lonely in the sense that we're doing these things and we're experiencing them for the

first time and having that broader perspective, because even though that thing we’re

experiencing for the first time, there's a high likelihood someone else has experienced it. And so

I think that that is a lot of the value that, that coaches bring. I do think there's an important

distinction between coaching and advice and you want both, but I think that distinction is

important. Now all that said, that's not really what we do at Teal. I think that coaching is a

component of what we do and we're trying to be quite cautious about how we engage with the

theme of coaching. I think one of the things that's inherent in coaching is this one-on-one

relationship with an individual. And I think one of the things that you guys have done great at

Talentism is that you're establishing it as more of a platform. But you're still obviously have your

association to your coach that is using the platform. We're hoping to take that a step further,

mainly because we want to make it accessible to more people. There is an inherent cost

structure that comes with, you know, the livelihood of a person being based on, you know,

advising and this one-on-one high touch way, that I think is great for those that can afford it. And

a lot of times it's funded by companies, but we really want the consumer or the person that

works at companies to be able to do this and have agency with their career. And so that puts

the pressure on us to figure out ways to make this cost accessible and really leverage

technology and develop a platform and a methodology and framework that allow people to do it

on their own without the need of the high touch one-on-one coaching. So then that pushes us to

invest in tooling, content and frameworks that people can do in a self-guided way with the ability

to level up into a coach as necessary, but even that we're trying to figure out ways where that

can happen through chat or other low cost models and mainly so we can make it accessible to

more people, because that was kind of one of my contentions that you brought up earlier on in

the introduction is that these kinds of resources that I've been incredibly lucky to have. I got later

in my career, once I was sort of fiscally eligible. I have very few regrets, but I just think that if I

would have had access to these kinds of things earlier, I might've made better or different

decisions, and I really want to help people get access to those things sooner. So that's kind of,

so I think there are aspects and essences of coaching in what we do, but in terms of like a

delivery model and methodology, we're trying to break some new ground.

Jeff Hunter:

Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about something that you said at the beginning of what you

were talking about. So I've shared with you that, you know, seven years ago, when I started

Talentism, I really didn't intend to start a coaching organization. I had these theories about the

human mindand how things work and a way to unleash potential. And it turned out that what I

thought was going to be a consultancy ended up being very much a coaching organization,

because as I worked with leaders and brought these frameworks and this way of thinking to

those leaders, they said; Hey, would you coach me? And so then I went out and started trying to

figure out the world of coaching, cause I had never done it before. And I know there's a lot of

incredible coaches out there and I wanted to sort of respect the craft as also learn about my

blind spots and ended up really differentiating or at least trying to differentiate what I was trying

to do from what I experienced most coaches trying to do. And I think you brought up a little bit of

what I experienced most coaches trying to do, which is be almost like a change agent or an

accountability agent in a person's life. Like there's a, I'm gonna push you or I've got a better way

of doing something. And what we've been trying to do is figure out how to be a good detective in

your life to help you make sense of the evidence that you're producing as you try to achieve

your goals. So it's really not an attempt to provide a place of security or safety. It's not an

attempt to say; Hey, listen, you said you were going to go out there and, you know, apologize to

people and he didn't apologize or whatever the thing is that the pushing of the, towards a

person's limits, but more to help them gain a level of se...

Renee DeAngelis:

And so I think it's really all about being uncomfortable. And I don't know if balance is achieved. I

think that balance is achieved by testing things out and potentially falling, but when you break

through it's the craziest most awesome feeling in the world.

Jeff Hunter:

Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to Coaching in the Clear, the podcast

committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we

believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best

way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your

coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their

potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is a

production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders

achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a

weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues

affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to

enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. So Renee,

thank you so much for joining us today on Coaching in the Clear, my first question for you is

how did you come to use a coach? How did you get to the place where you decided you wanted

to use a coach?

Renee DeAngelis:

Well hi Jeff. Thank you. Coaching came to me through an acquisition and merger involving

private equity. And so we were merging with another company that did the same thing as we do.

And that's when I met you and your team and we, there are a lot of intricacies to those types of

deals. And so we met and we decided to, that having a coach would help me navigate through

some of the challenges with what happens with a transaction like that.

Jeff Hunter:

Great, and just say for the audience, that was a very successful transaction. So congratulations

on that and has helped you build an amazing company. So tell me a little bit about what you've

learned about coaching and how you experience it. You came to it pretty new and I've really

enjoyed our relationship and the opportunity to coach you. And I've seen you grow a lot through

that process. So tell me a little bit about how you've experienced it and what you've learned

about over time.

Renee DeAngelis:

Oh my gosh. So much. I think the, I mean, overall I think coaching is this opportunity for you to

become the best version of yourself. And I, one of the biggest takeaways I've had is I had often

lead a team and managed a team and run a company, grown a company a lot through this

instinct that was deep inside of me. And I think working with you, I've been able to put a

framework together around it and language around it that not only I can use, but also my

colleagues and people I work with can use, so it's been a sort of common, we've created a

common language. We've been able to all learn together through using that framework. I also

think that throughout my whole life I've always had a coach and I think, I truly believe coaching

is not really a one-dimensional thing. You know, as a coach, as a person who leads a team or

leads a company I find that I learned just as much from the people I'm working with or coaching

as I do, hopefully help them as well. So I feel like it's for me and either seat or either hat that I

wear, I feel like it's a, there's a lot of growth and opportunity and an opportunity to master

something and a lot of opportunity to learn something new.

Jeff Hunter:

So I'm going to let the audience in on a little thing. So one of the things I love about our

conversations is you are not only an expert and a professional in the world of climbing, you're

also an enthusiast and you’ve spent a lot of your time, free time such as it is, there isn't a lot,

climbing and so I'm always trying to impress you by bringing up climbing references. And you're

always very patient with me as I stumble my way through that. And that's been a very cool

dynamic in our relationship, but one of the things that I've found when I'm coaching people is

there's usually some area of their life where they pursue excellence. It's not always in their job,

but there's some area of their life where they push themselves and they're testing themselves to

really uncover what they're capable of. And I not only have seen you, I mean, we've talked

about climbing and what that means for you, but also I've seen that in the world of your work, is

there some way you can connect those two things for me? Like what it's like to climb versus

what it's like to lead?

Renee DeAngelis:

Oh my gosh, there are, it's all the same. Well, first of all, I want to say, I'm not an expert climber.

There are so many people who are way beyond me. I think I'm, I have a deep love and passion.

I've been climbing for so long It's almost embarrassing, cause I should be a lot better than I am,

but I love it. And that's the wonderful thing about this sport is that at any level you can enjoy it,

but there's so many parallels. I often, you know, when you're climbing you are, well actually let

me give you a story. Back in 2008, when I was just with planet granite, which is the company

that I was part of and helped grow before we had the private equity merger and acquisition, I

went to climb El Cap and the actual El Cap in Yosemite. And I remember standing at the bottom

of the route and looking up and thinking, oh my gosh, I am, how am I ever going to do this? It

looks really steep and long. And during that time we were in a really busy growth phase at work.

We were opening a new gym. We were hosting a national competition. I had a brand new team

of people that I had just assembled in anticipation of this growth. And so it was really crazy at

work. And I just thought, I looked up at that rock and I thought, well, if I can get through all of

that, I can get through this climb. And you just kind of tackle it one pitch at a time. And I think

that, that's what we did in that moment at our company is that we just slowly crept up the, you

know, indoor climbing version of El Cap to accomplish all the things that we had to do. And so I

think the, you know, when you're standing on the top of it, or when you're through, you've got all

your gyms open in your past, all the competition and craziness, you feel that same sense of

success. So I think an overall sense that is, there's so much similarity and I've always loved it.

And it is, you're constantly pushing yourself. And if you feel like I'm always driving myself to

excellence both at work and in my personal time, and there is no one thing, but I think I'm fairly

lucky that it is so similar and there are so many overlaps.

Jeff Hunter:

One of the things I've experienced in our conversations and it's really helped me sort of

formulate this in my mind. So Talentism is constantly talking about goals and unleashing your

potential. And because people talk about potential in different ways, it's so...

Jeff Hunter:

Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you were listening to Coaching in the Clear, the podcast

committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we

believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best

way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your

coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their

potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is a

production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders

achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a

weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues

affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to

enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today I'm

speaking with Eric Kinariwala. Eric is the founder and CEO of Capsule, the pharmacy of the

future. Over the last five years, he and his team have built Capsule into a multi-city, multi

pharmacy platform across the United States. Eric and I met soon after he started Capsule and

I've enjoyed watching him learn, struggle, and grow as a successful entrepreneur and a

self-aware leader. We'll talk about talent, being a craftsman, helping others to do the same,

contextualizing intuition and much, much more. Eric, thanks very much for joining and welcome

to the conversation.

Eric Kinariwala:

Thanks for having me excited to have the conversation.

Jeff Hunter:

Yeah, well, let's give this a shot. So Eric, you have envisioned designed and built an incredible

company. You've worked with me, you've partnered with Talentism. So, you know, you're

familiar with our approach and our thinking. And of course I've seen you do a lot of your own

coaching over time as a successful executive and investor. And that leads me to ask you, how

do you think about the value and importance of coaching?

Eric Kinariwala:

It's been really interesting. I'd never had a coach before you and I started working together a

handful of years ago now. And I think there was sort of initially I had some trepidation around

coaching as almost a sense of like, you know, I don't need a coach. I can kind of figure it out.

And I think the phrase, the idea of like; Hey, even tiger woods has a coach that kind of always

resonated with me which is like, no matter who you are and where you are in your own kind of

journey. I think everyone needs somebody to bring out the best in them. Then that can mean a

lot of different things. But for me, it's really been, I think what's been valuable, has been a

couple of things. I think one has been to create a safe space to really have somebody be able to

work through with you some of the unique challenges that really only, you know, in my case that

only the CEO has to deal with and to have somebody who can provide and share a framework

that I think that not only has helped me, like, think about the specific sort of situation that I'm in,

but what are the kind of guiding principles that let me then apply that framework to the same or

similar situations are gonna happen over time. I think the other thing that's been really helpful is

sort of a process of self discovery around, you know, my own mental models, my own

assumptions that are bacon decisions. I make that I might not even know their assumptions

because they're so deep rooted. So this idea of a mirror and somebody who can both

understand who you are, but bring that mirror back and help you kind of work through what the

impact of your words, your decisions, your actions are on those around you all with sort of, I

think the consistent goal of unleashing the greatness within, you know, that exists in each of us.

And so I think for me, it's been two things. One has been sort of a set of tools and a framework

to approach problems over time. And the second has been a mirror to be able to uncover blind

spots or to better understand myself, to be able to be more effective with others over time.

Jeff Hunter:

That makes a lot of sense and so thank you for saying that and thank you for saying that

because of course that's what we're trying to do. So it's good to know that it's working in some

way. The thing you said about self discovery is something I wanted to pick up on a little bit. So

as you know, cause you and I have talked about this frequently, the way I think about it as the,

you are the only tool that you have to bring to the table when you're a leader or a manager like

fundamentally, you've got this mind and the mind has models and capabilities and impressions

and all these things in it. And the most valuable thing you can do is to get to know that tool

better and become a real craftsmen with that tool, as opposed to trying to acquire new tools,

because fundamentally, if the underlying thing that you're working with, the, you know, the brain

you've got is something that's a mystery to you. All the other tools are going to be secondary to

that primary problem of you don't know how to use that thing. So that self discovery is a critical

part of what we're trying to do. And of course, as you and I have talked about many times, what

makes that especially difficult is you yourself, can't really interrogate your own mind to figure out

what's going on underneath. There's this really thin channel between your consciousness and

your unconsciousness, the consciousness of what you're going through and how you think and

what you believe, etcetera. And then this whole huge mass of intuition and instinct and memory

and emotion and all those things that are really not accessible. So you have to go into battle in

essence, you have to like get to work and you've got to do things and then try to take the data or

the evidence that you produce and bring it back to the table and say, okay, how am I going to

make sense of this. How am I going to make sense of what this says about me? Because

frankly that surprised me or I thought I was better at that or whatever it was. I think the role of

coach, at least a clarity coach is crucial to try to help you make sense of that. So one of my

questions would be just for you personally, what's been one of the things that, because you and

I have worked together so long, what have been the things that you started out and thought, you

know, I'm pretty good at this thing. I think I'm good at it. And then over time through the process,

through the work and through just being a successful executive, you've come to maybe a bit

more humility or a perspective of like, wow, I've learned that's much harder than I thought, or I'm

not as good at it as I thought.

Eric Kinariwala:

A lot of things. Hey, you know, one of the things I spent a lot of time doing is building an

amazing team to tackle the mission that we have, which is large and ambitious. And so I spent a

lot of my time recruiting and interviewing, and I think there's, I think getting more, in some ways

getting more sophisticated abo...

Jeff Hunter: 

Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to coaching in the clear, a podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is a production of talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to enable you to unleash your potential. Learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today I am speaking with George Arison. Talentisms’ been working with George and Shift, the company he co-founded with Toby Russell for over three years. I've come to know him as a hard-driving entrepreneur who has worked with the team at Shift, overcoming incredible obstacles. The results of all that hard work paid off this past October when he and the team at shift went public. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know George as a person over that time and I'm excited to have him share that story with you. It's pretty extraordinary. In our session today, I'm going to ask him about how a kid growing up in the former U.S.S.R. dreams of moving to America and becoming a successful business person. I'm going to ask him about the inspiration for those dreams, his plans for the future, what it takes to become incredibly successful by overcoming even more incredible obstacles. And finally, we're going to talk about how he's tried to stay humble in the face of that success and as he's learned from his many, many mistakes. George, thank you so much for being a guest on Coaching in the Clear just as background for everybody George and I met about three and a half years ago. I've had the great privilege of being able to work with him. His co-founder Toby Russell and the team at Shift over the last three and a half years, and have learned a ton from George. And George, I'm just really grateful to have you on the show and to learn from you and be able to tell your story to the audience, so thank you so much for joining. 

George Arison: 

Thanks for having me. And likewise, it's been awesome to be working with you for all these many months now. And you've been really instrumental in helping shift get to where it is. So we are super appreciative of that as well. 

Jeff Hunter: 

Thanks, George. I appreciate that. All right, so for the audience that has listened to our last nine, 10 episodes or so they may hear something a little different. I'm always in the process of experimenting and learning. I'm going to try a little bit of a different approach now. And so rather than having a back and forth about coaching, I actually just want to learn about you and I want to learn about your story and where I'd love to start is actually with your professional career. If 

you could just take the audience through your career, where did you start? What was your first job and take us up to being, you know, founder and Co-CEO of Shift. 

George Arison: 

Totally. So I think to answer that I need to just start a little bit, even more back, which is that I'm originally from Georgia, the country. I was born in the Soviet Union when it was still very much the Soviet Union and then grew up while, you know, Soviet Union is going through a lot of transition. I had the, I guess, big fortune of learning English when I was quite young and we can talk later about how that happened, but that allowed me to get out. And I ended up leaving Georgia when I was 14 in 1992 to come to the U.S. to go to high school. I was the first Soviet kid they allowed to leave to go to a private U.S. prep school. And you know, my life kind of took off from there. I, in some ways you know, joke that I was reborn once I came to the U.S. cause a lot of what I probably would become would not have been possible had that not happened. And obviously it was a very fortunate event for me. I always thought that my life would take kind of the shape of; Hey, I'm going to learn, then I'm going to earn some money and eventually go back to Georgia and run for office and be in politics there. That was kind of always my aspiration for a long, long time. And being in business for the long term was never the plan. I thought I would start a company, but I never thought that I would start a company in technology, kind of the things I always thought about had to do with government relations. Cause that's pretty much what I knew. I actually thought I was going to become a lawyer first, because that's the logical kind of path you choose if you want to be in politics most of the time, right? So I got your technology a little bit, a roundabout way, and I'll talk about how that happened. So after college I moved to DC and I took a job at a small consulting firm locally which mostly did consulting without traveling. So that pitch was; Hey, you do the same work that you might do at McKinsey or BCG, but you don't have to be on the road. That sounded intriguing to me. And I liked the idea of living in Washington because it was so close to the types of things I'm really passionate about in politics, but obviously getting a job in politics was not an option because I was not a U.S. citizen. So I had to do it more of a businessy style job. So that's how I started my career. The first job I had was quite frankly, a horrible experience. I really hated it. It seemed super rudimentary and basic, and I really didn't like it, but I started to get to know more and more Georgian politicians and people in DC who were working on Georgia. And I was this kind of really unique animal who knew a lot of what was happening in Georgia and spoke Georgian really well obviously, and understood what was happening there, but also knew a lot about U.S. politics as well because I had always followed U.S. politics so closely, so had an opportunity to switch within about nine months to a job at a think tank with me, myself, having raised the money to fund my presence at that think tank to work on Georgia. And so then I spent the next couple of years writing and presenting a lot of information to you as policymakers on what was happening there and why it was really critical for the U.S. to stay very actively engaged on promoting democratic change. Georgia had a government that needed to be transitioned out. The president was very old and was ready for the new younger folks to take over. And there was later, two backups of people who could take over the country. A set of very socialist and ultimately not very democratic folks, and then a set of more pro-business and more democratic set of folks and the goal was to try to push the ladder, contra the former. So eventually in 2003 that many of the people I was working with asked me to come back to Georgia and help run 

them, their political campaign for parliament. Obviously I said, I don't really know anything about how to run political campaigns, but perhaps we could hire somebody from the U.S. who knows a lot when it comes to what to do. And that's when I came in contact with a guy named Mike Murphy, he's a political consultant who had run Jeb Bush’s campaigns and Mitt Romney’s campaigns. He's really amazing actually. And so I convinced him to come to Georgia with me and run this political parties’ campaign for parliament ...

Jess Hunt:

Because what you want, you want progress to be the idea of the person you're managing. You want them to drive the bus. And so you want to elicit, you want to pull from them the best ideas and to do so you have to start with understanding.

Jeff Hunter:

Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you were listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Jess, thank you so much for joining me on Coaching in the Clear. I'm very grateful for your time and for your participation. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. 

Jess Hunt:

Thanks Jeff. Delighted to be here. 

Jeff Hunter:

Okay. So let's start at the beginning. As I love to know how people come to the world of coaching, when you first hear about it, what you think about it, the first coach you have, can be in an athletic or an executive setting or any other setting. And just generally how you think about coaching.

Jess Hunt:

Well, I remember when I had my first professional coach, my CEO at the time was at a tech enabled startup, New York City, early odds. And my CEO at the time recommended that I get a coach and it was a cohort coaching. And so there were a number of, sort of up and comer managers that I think there were six of us in a group with a coach. And I did the first coaching session with, you know a framework, very thoughtful framework. I now realize, and I went through the first coaching session and we were sharing our challenges, learning more about her framework. And I walked out of the room and I walked down to my CEO, who I was close with, and I said, well, that was a bunch of bullshit. And I really, really wasn't comfortable with what I now know, coaching can ask of you to get a lot out of it, which is vulnerability and self-awareness. And then if you're lucky, self-acceptance and there was a lot of learning involved for me in that first coaching experience, I think, which lasted almost two years and to a coach that I'm still close to.

Jeff Hunter:

Okay. So I love that. I love that you have that experience and goes, that's a load of bullshit. Two reasons I love that. First of all, because I think in the first minute, the audience just got to know you really well. I've had the good fortune of knowing you for a while, but that was awesome. And then the second thing is I believe a lot of people who are suggested into coaching are recommended like a, should get a coach, sort of have that. Like there are the people who are, I think they sort of fall into three camps. There's the people who say no, I'm not going to do that because I don't need a psychologist and that's bologna. Two is like, sure, I'll do it. But in their mind, like no way. I think it's sorta like Matt Damon and Goodwill hunting. It's like, sure, I'll just go mess with them. Or the third is like, they go and they're like, oh, this sort of surprises me. So tell me about going from, Hey, this is really bullshit to, I remember when you and I first met, you're like, well, how does your coaching work? Cause I'm sort of used to this way. How do you go from one coach to another, because you obviously had a profound experience with that first coach.

Jess Hunt:

Yeah, well, she was, I think coaching, that was earlier in my career, coaching at that stage became useful quickly because coaching is highly applicable, at least at that stage in my career, coaching that was highly applicable to my work every day, the content of my work and everyday my interpersonal relationships at work became useful very quickly. And I, in retrospect, I believe that was because I was probably within my first five years of any major management responsibilities and becoming a really good manager, which my coach helped me do, I hope, just made me a lot more effective at work. So I think that coaching experience was earlier in my career and it was management coaching. And management’s a skill as I've moved along and certainly most recently with Talentism, I mean, that's, you balance the management, whether you're managing an executive team or managing a board or investors executive management with executive leadership. So certainly the kind of coaching that I think I've probably required has evolved and what that coaching has asked of me, hopefully it's stayed the same, which is I get as much out of it as I put into it. 

Jeff Hunter:

Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And one of the things we talk about is different forms of coaching, and this is just sort of our language around it, nothing that's, I think, widely accepted in the industry and probably derives from the fact that we came to coaching sort of as outsiders as executives ourselves. So we were, we were executives and then had never, I'd never coached anybody before and people asked me to do it. I thought, well sure, but I wonder if I, what it is and if I could even be good at it. And through that research a lot and try to understand and simplify this incredibly complex world of all these, you know, career coaches and life coaches and executive coaches, business coaches, yada, yada, there's just a ton of them. And so we came with this thing like there's times when you just need a safe space to talk, there are times where you need someone to show you the way, like, you know, help you train in a specific skill or craft. And there are times people actually need to help you get to clarity, which is obviously where we're trying to operate, but just take me through that a little bit in the nature of our engagement and the nature of how you think about coaching. If you were recommending coaching to somebody, how would you help them think through other than just really in their career later in their career, how would you help them think through when they need someone who helps them sort of hone a particular skill and when they need someone who's identifying for them, how they're standing in the way of their overall success, given their cognitive profile and how they're thinking and behaving?

Jess Hunt:

Yeah, well, you've seen much, much, much more than I have, but I've certainly managed lots of people. And tried to be cognizant and incur, cognizant of when someone needs coaching or could really benefit from coaching and proactive in helping them get coaching or becoming open to coaching. When that is true. The two times I can see coaching being or feel easy to me as a manager, a leader of executives is when someone really does need a space to work through challenges at work that are yes, practical, but may have something to do with their emotions or psychology or thei...

Jim Wagner:

I think as a leader and being fortunate and privileged to be in a position to lead an organization, it's incumbent upon that leader to create the space for everyone to thrive and to recognize when and if there are either systems in place, structures in place, that need to be broken down to create opportunity for everyone.

Jeff Hunter:

Hi, and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market-leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the sense maker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. So, Jim, thank you so much for being on coaching in the clear today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your time

Jim Wagner:

Thank you for having me, looking forward to the conversation.

Jeff Hunter:

Good. So listen, I'm starting all my conversations the same way, which is, I would just like to know how you decided to enter the world of coaching, how to get a coach when was the first time he got a coach? Just take me through some of that narrative and background about how you approached coaching.

Jim Wagner:

Absolutely. So I think there's the long version, which is my own history going back as an athlete who was fortunate to have some incredible coaches and really learned about how important a coach is to anyone's individual success as well as team success. I think often times when we get into a business context and certainly as a first time CEO, which I was at, at Roland foods, when I started working with you as a coach you really realize you're in a position by yourself. It's actually a very lonely position where there's lots of decisions you need to make. There's lots of responsibility. And while I have mentors, I have friends, I have confidence. What I knew I needed was somebody who was going to work with me to provide the unvarnished feedback and help me to remove or see some of the blocks that existed in my own leadership style as well as in the business. So I was fortunate that I had great experiences with coaches in a different context and knew that I thrived when having that. So that's how I arrived at that.

Jeff Hunter:

Wonderful. So tell me, because you were an athlete, a very highly regarded athlete, and in incredible collegiate program as a waterfall polo player, I was a water polo player. Although I would imagine comparing your skill to my skill is a not a fair comparison, but let's just say we were both in the water splashing around. So tell me. Something that's fascinating, I was just talking to somebody this past weekend who was an athlete, and they were talking about the role of coaching and in helping get better. What do you think is a similarity between the sports context and the business context with that role of coach? Because obviously coaches take on different jobs and different contexts, but from what I've heard, people had coaches in their prior lives, in their, you know, sports and those kinds of things really seem to gravitate towards it more in business than people might not have had that experience. Could you help me sort of navigate that?

Jim Wagner:

Yeah, definitely. So I think that again, the good fortune that I had of having excellent coaches, even in high school and in college and with the under 20 U.S. national team was that great coaching is a constant feedback loop and it's about learning to learn and that every practice and every game is very much an experiment in the sense of improvement as opposed to the idea that winning is in kind of, the aspect of winning a game is about winning the game, which it’s not, it's about all of the preparation and all of the feedback and that, you know, you get that feedback in a game, then you realign, you get the feedback from your coach, and then you go and you try it again. And I think that's very much how I think about business, which is while we have a goal that you cannot just achieve the goal, the goal is about running a series of experiments and getting that feedback and quote-unquote being coachable. So I think a lot of people who haven't had that are challenged with the idea of coaching because they don't understand that feedback mechanism, that it's about a constant practice and it's about constant improvement as well as going into the unknown. There isn't an athlete that's ever played a game or run a race that didn't do something they hadn't done before, which is very much what business is all about. You're trying to achieve something that the company hasn't achieved before. You're trying to develop a product that hasn't been developed before. And so I think having that history and knowing to try to, the ability to figure out what you don't know, you can't do it yourself. You need those feedback mechanism. And I always found a coach to be the best way to do that. 

Jeff Hunter:

Yeah. One of the things I know you and I have talked a little bit about in the past and I speak with my clients frequently about is the difference between goals and measures. And I think a key point of confusion since, as we have talked about many times, confusion is sort of our shtick, it's the thing we're taking a look at, we're reviewing performance and cognition through that lens. One of the things I think is very common is that people confuse goals and measures. And so in a sports sort of context, as an athlete, of course, as I said, honestly, not as accomplished as you, but as an athlete, what I figured out was if excellence is the goal, the win is the measure, but if the win is the goal then it gets pretty confusing because it creates a certain fragility and identification with the win, as opposed to the practice and the process of constantly pushing ourselves to find that outer limit of potential in the moment and outer potential in the game and find our own potential in that game. And I think that's something that I've always found very similar in a lot of different things, whether it's world working with world class performers on the stage or in film, or it's in business or sports or whatever it is, there's this thing of not confusing the goal of excellence with the measure of the win, the win is a nice sort of point in time. They can tell you things are probably on the right path, but you never know you could have gotten lucky etcetera. And I've always experienced in working with you that you kept those two things very clear in your mind. And I think that's what you're talking about.

Jim Wagner:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that the phrase that I use consistently is “if you run the system, the goals will come” sort of in, in the athletic context. And I think it's in the business context as well, which is if you're not running a sys...

Jeff:

Today, we're speaking with Kerry Van Voris. For over 15 years, Kerry has been completely focused on the world of talent, attracting, placing, and growing people across the technology, financial and healthcare industries. Kerry is currently Chief People Officer at Oscar Health after leadership positions at Amazon, Microsoft, and Bridgewater. We'll talk about inspiring individuals and finding their loyalty to the purpose of an organization using that inspiration as a common thread for different styles of coaching, and the way that focusing on blind spots can be the best approach to increasing effectiveness. Kerry and I have known each other for almost a decade, and I am thrilled to have her join our conversation and share her wisdom. So Kerry, thank you so much for being a part of Coaching in the Clear and welcome to our podcast.

Kerry:

Thanks for having me, Jeff. I'm really happy to be here and having the opportunity to chat with you.

Jeff:

Fantastic. Okay. So let's just start at the beginning. What was your first experience with a coach?

Kerry:

When I think about coaching, I mean, for me it really comes down to sixth grade. You know, I was just a kid growing up and, and somebody, a friend of mine in school who happened to be in seventh grade, said, Hey, you should try out for the basketball team. And I'd never touched a basketball in my life and, you know, I didn't know anything and, and thought it was just kind of a, it would be like one night after school, a week and found myself found myself kind of playing basketball for two and a half hours a day after school. All due to the, the gentleman who was coaching the team and his name was it's, his name is Dave Margraf. And so that was really my first experience with a coach and outside of it being, you know, apparent or anything like that.

And, and so much of what he taught me and how he coached still rings true, actually in my personal and professional life. I mean, one of the, one of the biggest things that I, I realized about him is that he coached each one of us on the team very differently. And he was adept at recognizing what would motivate each one of us and how there were some of us that really responded to encouragement and positive reinforcement. And there were others on the team. Particularly one, one girl who was just an incredible athlete that that responded more to with the coaching. That was, that was really hard and actually was much more negative and much more about everything that she was doing wrong instead of pumping her up and motivating her too with encouragement. And I found that both super interesting and and also really effective.

Jeff:

So you bring up a great topic and what I've experienced over the course of doing these podcasts is typically this will come up later, but you just gave a great intro segue into it. So two things, one I want to explore what makes somebody coachable and you have a, you have a great perspective on that because as a leader at Oscar, you're a person who thinks about coaching and how coaching will work with leaders, et cetera. And so I want to talk about that. And then the other thing is in our coaching, at least we're sort of going in and we check for this when we're matching people, but we go in with a very clear goal. What we're trying to do is unleash your potential. And that means we're going to be focusing on trying to get you to find your individual point of excellence or greatness and drive you towards it, which means, you know, to do that, it's really hard.

And you've got to have a certain motivation to want to go down that path. And not everybody does want to go down that path. So we try to sort it out, but a lot of people don't want to go to coaching for that. A lot of people want to go to coaching for something else, for a safe space to explore issues, et cetera. And it sounded like this coach was figuring out, Dave was figuring out how to put together an incredible team where there were different motivations on the team, but ultimately he wanted the team to win and function well together. Am I, am I getting that right? Yeah.

Kerry:

That's exactly right. And he had to kind of handle each individual differently in order to get there.

Jeff:

So now let's take that to your, to your current life, to your professional life. When you're working with leadership teams and you're trying to put together this fantastic team, that's gonna achieve incredibly difficult goals. Oscar has done amazing things. You've worked at very distinguished, amazing organizations like Bridgewater and others. So you've actually been a part of teams that have, that have striven for excellence and know that they're going to have to work incredibly well together in order to get there, but are very different people and have different motivations to try to function well together as a team and achieve that goal. How do you, in that thinking like Dave, how do you take a look at each person around that table and think about what they need and what their motivations are.

Kerry:

Yeah. And, and it's, it kind of, there are just certain themes that I look for Jeff and, and the first one, the first one really is across the team. I look to ensure that each individual is aligned to the larger goal. I mean, that's one of the first things and just make sure that each individual believes in the vision of the company, or team or whatever it is, and truly wants to be part of it. I think that's, that's one, one the main thing. And then for each individual, when I think about coaching and what makes sense, and that could be, that could be hiring an external coach that could be individual one-off, you know, sidebar coaching from me, et cetera. The, the first, the, the first thing that individual has to have is just a hunger for improvement. They have to actually want it, like you mentioned, and want to evolve and want to improve.

And then secondly, I think, I think they have to have this raw openness to feedback, because like you mentioned, it's not, it's not, coaching isn't pretty things are gonna come up as you're being coached. Even as you're coaching others where just, just ugliness is going to come up or you're going to hear things that are really hard to hear. You don't want to hear. So someone having the openness to feedback is going to be a really important thing. And then, and then third for an individual, I think there's gotta be an awareness that, that each person has blind spots and they don't have to necessarily know what those blind spots are, because I think that's part of the, the excellent part of coaching is that you get to unearth those blind spots and then figure out what to do about them. But you have to at least have the awareness that we're not, none of us are perfect. And, and that each one of us has blind spots and, and, and coaching is part of the process to really identify those. And then, and then, then figure out what to do about them.

Jeff:

Awesome. So I've asked that question now, I think six, six different people, and the answers are similar and you're, I think you're answer encapsulates it particularly well. There's elements of the hunger, the drive for improvement, the desire to get better. And there's the humility of entering that arena and being open to what you're going to discover about yourself. It's more than curiosity. There's a humility to, like, I do have blind spots. I do have problems. I don't have it all the, all the answers and I have to enter that arena sort of understanding that and, and being okay with that....

Neil Parikh:

Truthfully, it's a little bit hard to accept because as a perfectionist, I want to be right or successful a hundred percent of the time, but you know, you're, it's an interesting point to think about you have, if you don't engage in the values, you never learn. You never get better. And so you can never realize your vision unless you're continuously doing that. 

Jeff Hunter:   

Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth, personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market-leading big change businesses.

Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the sense-maker, where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content and enable you to unleash your potential. Learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today we're talking with Neil Peric, the co-founder, and chief strategy officer of Casper. Casper has been an amazing story of growth and success, but it's also had its struggles along the way. Neil has been there leading since day one. He and I met about three and a half years ago, and it's been a true honor to watch him and his co-founders and the team of Casper take the dream of a better-rested world and make it a reality. Through our time together Neil has consistently demonstrated a huge vision and a desire to make a big impact on the world. We're going to talk about accepting shortcomings and leaning into strengths, catching frustrations at the root of the logical fallacy, the way safety plays into acceptance, and discovering capabilities that the perfectionist in us wants to hide. Neil, thank you so much for joining and welcome to the conversation.

Neil Parikh:

Thanks for having me, Jeff. It's an honor to be here and an honor to work with you. 

Jeff Hunter:   

Well, thank you, sir. So, Neil, you have helped build and grow one of the preeminent sleep brands. You've worked with me and partnered with Talentism. So, you know our approach and thinking, and of course, you've done your own coaching over time as a successful executive and investor. You and I have often spoken about how I think you have a significant talent for coaching in your own right, and so that all leads me to ask, how do you think about the value and importance of coaching?

Neil Parikh:

Thanks for the introduction, Jeff. So coaching is a, it's a kind of a funny thing because to your point earlier, it can be so many different things, right? From giving advice to helping people understand something. What I've always loved about the model that we've been working on and that you've brought us into is that to me traditionally, coaching was about behavior change. And in my life before this, it was you're doing something wrong. You need to get better at it and work on this. And the problem is that when you're in a fast-paced environment, you know, you're reordering every six months, you have new problems every three months. I used to joke when people said, hey what's, you know, what's our year-long plan. I said I don't even know what's going to happen next month, let alone six months or twelve months from now.

And so when you actually apply a different lens to it and think about, how do we get people to be unconfused? And secondly, how do we think about, how do we design systems to enable success rather than just people? Because people are kind of hard to change. It takes a really long time, a lot of effort, and maybe, I've always believed, maybe you can get five or 10 degrees off of center, but you know, it's very hard to radically change people in a short amount of time. And so it kind of goes back down to, for me, coaching has been a space first and foremost for self-reflection and understanding to have somebody to bounce ideas off of, or to be that person for people to help them work through a framework, to get unconfused, to take something that seems like it's creating chaos in their world and to try to make sense in order of it through a systematic process. So that's a repeatable thing. And so that both for me, so that I could, you know, be successful in whatever it is that I wanted to do. And for the people that I've worked with as an investor mentor do the same. 

Jeff Hunter:   

Yeah, so, I'm glad you brought up the concept of behavior change. First of all, just using one of our principles and starting with me, I have to be open and honest with the audience that I have a huge, what we call autonomy trigger and that leads me to be a contrarian about most things. So if everybody's saying, Hey, it's all about behavior change. My mind habitually really goes to, it must not be, it must be about something else, but even within the context of that self-awareness, the thing that sort of struck me about growing up and, you know, being a founder of fast-growth companies, venture-backed companies, working with very fast-growth companies. I started my career at a place called Connor peripherals, which at that time was the fastest-growing company in history. And you know, in my formative years being 21, 22 being a manager inside an organization that was achieving billion-dollar $2 billion marks year after year, just growing at an exponential rate and listening to the CEO say the most important thing about a five-year plan is how you rewrite it every three months.

And so really growing up inside of that and realizing that human beings, as you were saying are just so difficult to change, right? And not, I think this is an important distinction and I think it's consistent with what you were saying, actually change isn't that hard. Attention is really hard. And so like I, if I say I want to change my diet, I can change my diet. I just have to put all of my attention on it in a fast-growth environment. You don't have that attention. The attention is going through to the context shifts, rapid changes in the environment, and trying to make rapid decisions with limited data, stay one step ahead of the competition or funding, or whatever it is. And you just don't have the attention to allocate to behavior change. So the question is going to be, how are you going to get successful?

How are you going to unleash your potential and achieve your goals when you just don't have that attention available? Then I think it really is through the concept of self-awareness, knowing yourself, and then designing for that, you know, and I've seen you, who've been especially good at the South awareness piece of that, which is, I think is incredibly difficult for people. We, human beings are not wired for self- awareness, it's a habit that has to be developed. Some people are lucky they developed very early in life. Some people have to develop it through struggle over long periods of time, but it doesn't come naturally. The mechanics of our consciousness is very much about trying to make sense of the world by blaming others and believing we've got the answer and nobody else, you know, anybody who doesn't see it is a dummy and all those kinds of things.

So to put ourselves at the center of any co...

Chloe Drew:

That grounding in your values and principles again and again, every day can be the, okay, my feet are planted solidly on something and it allows me to make better decisions. And what I always say to leaders, when it comes to diversity inclusion, to bring it back to that is, it's a lens you apply to every single thing you do.

Jeff Hunter:
Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in depth, personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the SenseMaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content and enable you to unleash your potential.

Learn more and sign [email protected]. Today I'm speaking with Chloe drew. Chloe can spent the past 20 years achieving significant impact in both the corporate and political worlds in the areas of social justice, philanthropy, diversity, and inclusion. We'll discuss her first experience with a transformational coach and how it helped her find direction and purpose. You'll also review ways to make ourselves more coachable. Then we'll shift our reflections on empathy and creating safe spaces in the world of business and how critical this is in our current business environment. Finally, we'll explore how business leaders must challenge their blind spots around social, gender and racial inclusion by starting with more self skepticism. So Chloe, thank you so much. Joining me today on coaching in the clear I am so grateful that you've made time for us and just really appreciative of you making the space to have this conversation. So thank you.

Chloe Drew: 

I'm really delighted to be part of this. Thank you for asking me Jeff.

Jeff Hunter:
Of course. So let's just start out with how you found coaching, everybody comes to be a part of a coaching experience in their own way. Some people have been athletes and got to know it that way, other people have just through being successful executives, but everybody sort of comes to it in their own way. And I'd love to hear your story. 

Chloe Drew:
Yeah, no. And I have experienced coaching, frankly, in both of those parts of my life and being. I ran cross country and track in high school and I was thinking, and sort of preparing to talk to you today. I was thinking about coach Cody, who was my cross country coach and track coach when I was 14 years old. And he sort of had a bunch of qualities that I think are good professional coaching qualities, good managerial qualities. And one thing that really struck me as I thought about him is he used to tell us running tips and sort of coach us real time in races, but he also ran with us and there was this feeling of hanging with the team, solidarity, literally sort of sweating in the hot summer with us. And then on race day, we were kind of on our own except he was there and, you know, every lap I would do or every sort of, you know, break in the trees or he'd pop out and yell something he was there.

And, you know, I think the important through line for me from sports coaching to professional coaching is the best of coaching wires in your very sort of cellular makeup and musculature, the better way of doing things. Because you're hearing feedback real time, you're then practicing it. You're screwing it up. You're getting more feedback, you're trying it again. And that's sort of the definition of sports coaching, at least in my life. And then the best kind of professional coaching had those qualities too. So that was sort of my high school years. And he's one of the most memorable coaches I had. And then I had three different sets of professional coaches. One was when I was a very young executive director of a nonprofit and I had a very young untested coach and she was, I would say sort of friend-like and her approach.

It was a weekly session for me to download, vent, get some tips on managing. I did not know how to manage at all. I manage this team and all these volunteers and this board, and she had some sort of valuable frameworks for me, but then I had this truly, truly transformational experience of spending time with a coach and Carol Morley who had the right approach for me at the time that I came to her because I was probably about 32 and needed to move on from the nonprofit that I was running, but didn't know who I was or what my skills were or sort of how to think about the change I wanted to make in the world. And it was this very rigorous, I mean curriculum is probably the best way to put it, of sort of soul searching, strength searching.

And we never talked about the job I wanted to have until one day it came to me as if it was sort of the hand of god, and I was brushing my teeth one morning and I realized, Oh, that's exactly what I want to do. And for the first time in my life, I had the idea of what I wanted to do and I went out and got the job and it was, and I really credit it to that, that coaching experience. And of course I've had my most recent, incredibly, incredibly valuable, critical lifeline experience with Doug at Talentism, which was very different, very important and suited what I needed at that moment, because I was in, I would frankly just call it a professional crisis. And he was my life raft, kind of got me to calmer shores. And then as sort of now, even helping me think about what the next phase looks like.

Jeff Hunter:
So that's wonderful. So let's pick up on something there. So you're talking about what coaching is both in different sorts of forms and also at coaching at different parts of your career or life. One of the things I've been talking to people about is what are the essential sort of elements of a coachable person? What is it that makes you want to be coached and what makes you successful in coaching? Because you've had what sounds like four successful coaching sort of engagements in your life, very different, very different approaches, different people, different times of your life. And yet the sort of through line of all of that is you. So what do you think makes a coachable person?

Chloe Drew:
It's funny, I love this question and I've started  coaching just as a pro bono offering to the world, two women, one who works for a startup for-profit enterprise and one who works for a nonprofit. And I've been thinking about that a lot, cause one is a more difficult engagement than the other. I think that coming to coaching with an, you know, such a cliche, but sort of openness and vulnerability, which means different things to different people, but a real willingness to be bare and introspective and absorb and think to really look squarely in the mirror at things that you're not doing particularly well. I think those are some really important sort of foundational elements. I think eagerness to, I would say curiosity about the world and curiosity about yourself, curiosity about other people. And, you know, I don't think that I'm particularly good at this, but I think someone who, I'm not su...

Christina Sass:

Yes, coaching is hard, but if you're coming to coaching with real shit, it's already hard. You know, like you're already not loving the situation and so you can do it feeling like you're developing new tools with which to do it. Or you can, you know, give up or decide that those are the only tools you want to use.

Jeff Hunter:

Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. We're going to help you better understand the value and application of coaching by having in-depth conversations with the people who use coaches to unleash their potential; The founders, leaders and managers who are shaping our world. Coaching is more popular than ever. And we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market-leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity.

We send out a weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content, to enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today I'm speaking with Christina Sass. I think Christina stands as a shining example of someone turning their compulsion into a lifelong career, into someone finding their calling. She held high ranks at some of the largest global nonprofits and worked closely with Hillary Clinton's office as an advisor, helping build solutions to some of the most pressing challenges in international relations. After amassing nearly 15 years of experience in those fields, she co founded in Andela, a company dedicated to the proposition that brilliance is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. And Andela has trained and placed thousands of software engineers from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Egypt, and Ghana. We're going to talk about her personal experiences with coaching on both sides of the equation, seeking out inherent blind spots in the corporate world and relating lessons she's taken from her experiences as a founder and activist and how we should be investing in people and handling growth both personally and as a nation.

Christina, thank you so very much for being a part of this experiment, not just the whole experiment, but also this more free flowing dynamic that we're going to try today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here.

Christina Sass:

Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here and I'm delighted to try it this way. It's what our conversations have always felt like and have yielded so much, so I'm looking forward to it.

Jeff Hunter:

Well, thank you. So Christina, you are the co founder of Andela and I’ve had the great good fortune, Talentisms had the great good fortune over the last four years of working with Andela, a company that I've been truly inspired by across the board, not only your mission, but also the benefit you're bringing to the world and just what you're putting into practice. I thought that just before we get into the coaching conversation, if you'd be willing to reflect a little bit on Andela a little bit on how you started Andela and also a little bit about how we met I'd really appreciate it.

Christina Sass:

Absolutely. Well, we started Andela in 2014 looking at how to get talent globally, to recognize brilliance, in particular brilliance among software engineers, which are so desperately needed by startups all over the world. At the time I'd been working across the African continent for about the last five years and knew the incredible depth of the talent pool and really the excitement and energy around tech careers. And so my co founder Jeremy, and another group of entrepreneurs, and I got together to kind of put this experiment out, to see if we could attract really extraordinary tech talent and then match it with the needs of employers everywhere that needed great software developers. The world was getting accustomed to remote and distributed teams at the time. And so we were kind of part of this wave to really bring that about and what an incredible six-year journey the company has now taken kind of many different shifts and turns and pivots as, as startups do.

For the first, probably three to four years, we were really focused on finding raw talent that had all the indicators of a great engineer and then honing them and really placing them in environments where they could succeed. Today Andela is more focused on big pockets of mid level and senior level developers and being an on demand marketplace for what other companies need. And so that entire journey I think, has been... I really can't, it's hard to, it's hard to state the value that you, Jeff, have brought to me and my co founder and the senior team, and Andela on our self awareness and big changes that we needed to make to move the business forward. So, how did we meet? I think this is a great story. So I worked with one of your colleagues at Talentism on a smaller project.

And one where candidly, I wasn't thrilled about the end. I think the gentleman I was working with was like on his way to I forgot what the circumstances were, but anyway, he was transitioning from Talentism to a full time role elsewhere and wasn't able to make a trip where he was supposed to facilitate a big conversation. And so in Talentisms IP had added a ton of value and then kind of the end of this thing, didn't go well. And so I got the final bill and I wrote you all and said, I will pay this. I'm happy to pay it, but can we get on the phone and can we talk and can I give you some feedback? And to my surprise the CEO of the company, you Jeff undertook the call and listened very carefully.

And you explained that you kind of knew that this younger employee who had a lot of promise, but that you're going to have to entrust them with some things, and they may not always go right. That you had been also experimenting and that you took full responsibility for that, that I indeed would not be paying that bill. And could you have dinner with our entire senior team and give feedback on what you thought, what your learnings were from the scope of work that Talentism had done. And so suffice to say I was blown away by that. And that was certainly the kind of leader that I hoped to be. That had the courage and strength to give my team members, my leaders rope to do an experiment. And then when it didn't go well to really take responsibility and make that relationship right.

And that's what I witnessed that you did. We had a phenomenal dinner with the C suite of the company at the time, and everyone was very impressed. And then I think I called you the next day. It'd be like you’ve got to coach us. You have to coach us. We know we have gaps in our self awareness and our knowledge and where we want to take the company. And to our great surprise and delight, you said yes. And that's been the beginning of a many year, very fruitful, painful at times, but overall incredibly rewarding relationship.

Jeff Hunter:

Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I like any human being enjoys caring how great I am, but I can assure you that in the mountain of my mistakes, that was a...