E1 | Defining Coaching Mindset | Marcia Reynolds

Welcome to lead with a coaching mindset, a podcast where every conversation sparks new ideas on how the best leaders unlock their followers potential. I am Dr Damian Goldvarg, and I am here to inspire you to become the best leader you can be, be sure you subscribe and rate us. Let's jump right in. I am so thrilled to welcome you to our very first episode of Lead with a coaching mindset. This project started three years ago with a question I couldn't get out of my mind, what is the future of leadership? The paradigm that leaders need to have all the answers was not ringing true, given that in the last five years we have faced disruption after disruption. At my consulting firm, I coach leaders. So this quest was not just curiosity, but the need to serve better. I started writing a book called post COVID leadership, but last year, when I published it in Spanish, I decided to call it coaching en tiempos actuales, or coaching in current times. When I translated it, I realized that the name lead with a coaching mindset was more appropriate. Why? Because the future of leadership is for leaders to adopt the coaching mindset with the impact of technology and artificial intelligence. Leaders need to be more human. But what is exactly leading with a coaching mindset? It's a way of leading that is grounded in awareness, responsibility, trust. It's about seeing the potential in others and helping them bring it forward, not by fixing or directing, but by holding space for growth, for challenge, for meaningful conversation, just like coaches, like we do, this framework is rooting on 30 years training leaders, on coaching skills and my experience as a professional coach, embedding the eight core competencies from the international coaching Federation in the next episodes, we will explore each one of them. Now the practical component of this framework come from interviews. These interviews I have made with people who are in the trenches doing the work. That's why in each podcast, I will start with a little introduction, and then I will share a short interview where we will bring this concept home. See, this is an introductory episode, I thought it was highly appropriate to invite a dear friend and fellow coach, Marcia Reynolds, to explore why leading with a coaching mindset is so important today. And a few examples from the real world. You are someone who cares about building something meaningful, who wants to challenge others and support them to grow. I think you're going to love what's ahead here in my interview with Marcia, I hope you enjoy and subscribe to this podcast. Hi. Welcome Marcia. It's so great to have you in our first podcast. Liz, thank you. We thought about starting this. You were the first person that I thought. You wrote the preface of my book, coming up in September. Lead with a coaching mindset,

honored to do that.

We know each other for many years, Marcia, we know I was making memory. We met at the Global board of directors meeting. You came as a guest speaker.

Oh, right, yeah, Atlanta or something like that. Yeah. We have an amazing time

sharing our stories. Years later, you wrote several books. The last one breakthrough coaching, an amazing book. I think that this is a best seller, translated in I don't know how many languages already, you're very well known and appreciated because of your trajectory, we have in common that we have been president of the International coaching Federation, we have also been involved together in National Speakers Association in a completely different context, right? I really admire you very much, and I feel privileged to have you here today, we are going to be talking about leading the coaching mindset. I'm curious, because you have been in coach for many years. You were one of the pioneers. You started ICF originally, we are celebrating 30 years now.

I know now when you're working with leaders

these days, because this podcast is for leaders, right? How to bring a mindset to our work, but before we get there, what do you see some of the challenges that leaders are doing these days? Well, you

know, I don't necessarily think they're new. I think they're intensified. Because, you know, prior to coming to coaching, I spent 16 years working in companies, teaching leadership. So. Trying to help the leaders get better engagement communication skills. And then I shifted into coaching and found, oh, coaching is a much better way to help people learn, but the challenge is still taking a moment to connect. Because I always say I always wanted my leader to really see me and understand me, really listen to me. But I never expected it. But the employees today are expecting it. They expect for you to take a moment to really hear them, to feedback what you hear them saying, to make sure there's a shared understanding and to know, help them know you are significant to me and how far that goes, and then you're going to take the time to help me develop. So it's whether you, as a leader, think that it's they're too demanding or selfish. It doesn't matter. This is what it takes to engage them, to keep your best talent with you and to have people desire to give their best. I always say, Damien, there's people will do what they have to do, but giving their best is discretionary, discretionary effort. So how do you motivate that? I will give my very best to you, and it has to do with the relationship. And then I feel seen, I feel heard, understood and valued.

And when you feel that way, your motivation inspiration is very different, right?

It's an internal motivation, not external. Based on giving me a raise, which only lasts for a short time, and then you got to give me more.

In the preface of the book you wrote about that you shared that when you asked leaders, when they are their best, what they are doing, and the answer is about productivity and result, not necessarily I was in time listening on their development, yeah,

it's still within their mind that they have to get results and move the organization forward. Very directive. We'd like to think that's evolved. But even when I ask leaders, I have an exercise in the last six months, what are you most proud of? The sentences always start with either I or we. This is what I did, or it could be what we did, me and my team, that I motivated the team and we solved this problem together. But there's very few times, in fact, only once in asking that question in class did someone say what I'm most proud of is that my team did all this work without me, that they accomplished great things, the courage to develop people and trust them and then let them go do it and know that you're still significant, even more significant, because now you can spend your time on strategy and other things, but to create it to where they have the autonomy. I can do this on my own. You've helped them in their mastery, in their development, help me to feel that way, and I will do my best, and I will do work without you being in the room. So it's can't. How can you shift to I'm so proud they did it without me, and that's where the coaching mindset comes in, that I need to really sit down and listen to how you see things, and be curious about your ideas so you feel important, and then maybe there's something else for you to consider. I can add on to what you give, but that we're we partner the leader partners with their team members to develop to work at their very best, and knowing that I can do this on my own, nothing

that you talk about partnering, because in the book, I talk about different competencies that international coaching Federation framework coaches apply to leaders, and one is about partnering, how we collaborate, how we co create. Yeah, many times when clients come to me and we have coaching sessions and they're leading teams and they say, I don't know what to do, how they partner with their teams to get the solutions, instead of feeling that they had to come up with all of the answers, something that one of the area that sometimes we go, that they get by themselves without me telling them, okay, you know, what about collaborating with your team? Yeah, and getting your team to come up with the answers when it's appropriate and possible? Well,

you know, Damien, oftentimes when I ask leader if I'm coaching them, it's like, define leadership for me. I mean, really, what are your major responsibilities as a leader? And hopefully they're not just saying getting making a profit, getting results, but as a leader, not managing the processes, but as a leader, and especially. A leader of leaders. If you have leaders working for you, isn't that your responsibility to help them be the best leaders they can be? The responsibility to the company that I'm promoting and developing more leaders for this company and somebody to replace me, just in case I go for some reason, that's a major responsibility that leaders often don't take on and realize how critical that is to the organization's success. When

you think about developing a coaching mindset, can you think of any story that still stick with you? Yes.

So I was coaching the vice president of a supply chain management of a global company, and he'd been promoted, and was a real technical process guy, and and he came to me, he says, I know that I have to connect with people better, that it's not my preference, but in the position that I'm in, and he had sites even to be promoted to senior VP in the organization, when I said, connect with them. What does that mean? And that, even that, just that question, made him think so. It's not just me talking to people. What's the difference between talking to people and connecting with them? And there was an article. The suggestion was, you got to go out and be curious and talk to people, ask them questions. How do they see this going? What suggestions do they have to improve the process? Because they're doing it. This is global. So each division or each region runs it differently. He said, Okay, that's what I need to develop, not just going out and being present, but how do I engage them in conversation? And that took a lot of shifting for him, from I'm the technical expert who knows, to I have a coaching mindset, wanting to know what you know and how we can make what we do better based on your knowledge and expertise. And there was a lot of his letting go, even in order to have a coaching mindset. And it was hugely successful. I had done a part of it was I had done a live 360 and even the people that work for him said, need to see him more. He needs to come out and be with us and talk with us. So he knew he had to do that, but they went through a very difficult time. It was one of those times our economy kind of crashed, and this was a company that made something for consumers, and he had to really engage and change a lot of the processes in the supply chain. He was able to do that based on their input and then their engagement because they felt important and really wanted this whole company to be successful, not just their own success. So it really changed his mindset of what leadership is when bringing a coaching mindset into that and also his courage to get out there and be with them instead of hide behind his desk and his computer, that was a huge success. We talked a lot about the transformation he had to make and how much courage that would take, and it was really something to watch him do that

when you share the stories is that he showed up like, Yeah, before he was not. But the relationships investing time in relationships that I think is something to consider to everybody who's listening to us today, what extent are we investing time in building the relationships, in cultivating the relationships? Yeah. They say, Marcia that many people leave their bosses, not the organization, yeah?

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's not even loyal to the companies. It's loyalty to the boss and team. If they feel like they're not getting what they need, their social needs, respect, feeling understood, feeling important. If they're not getting that, they'll go, and it's the best people who will go because they know they can get a job somewhere else. You said

something before that made me think is to develop a coaching mindset, we need to let go. Yeah, I'm of always of being like being an expert, or having a lot of answers, or feeling that we are a great leader if we can give all of the answers, our experience of being an expert, if we let that go, yeah, there is a space for something else. What do you think need to let go to create and, yeah, develop the coaching mindset.

For 10 years, I taught leadership for Maersk, the shipping company, and it was based on the book the leadership pipeline. And what I love about that book is that every level of leadership that there was different values that must be developed, like developing people, helping leaders. Leaders be leaders. So they develop people, you know, and you move up into enterprise and having business acumen, and so the skills that have to be developed to meet those values are really important. But they also said, here's what you can't do anymore, you know. So if you move up to being a leader of leaders, you have to quit being overseeing the processes, you've got to develop your leaders enough to trust them and let them oversee the processes, otherwise you're getting in the way. So to take on a different value set. Values is a part of who I think I am. I define myself by what's most important to me in my life. So if you're shifting in work values, there has to be also a shift in who I think I am, which means I got to let go of the old me in order to be the new me as a leader. And letting go and letting that old self die is not that easy, because you were successful as the old self. Oh, and now we're saying, okay, great, you were successful, but now you've made it into a different area, and now you got to be different, and

particularly now with all of the technology AI and none of the new trends that we are all navigating, yeah, it's even more important time in building The relationship and distrusting you talk about trusting relationships that allow people to feel as you said before important value, yeah, so they can be engaged. So time flies. We need to start wrapping up anything you want to say before we go. Any comment, observation, any last thoughts. Well,

one of my favorite quotes, quoting myself, is they truly want you to be present more than they need you to be perfect. So that deepening of the present. And you know what, it doesn't take extra time. So leaders that say, I don't have time for that, you know, if somebody stops you in a hallway, it just takes a moment just to turn around and look at them, instead of walk with me, and I'm not really listening to you, but look at them. Just look at them. I see you. And if this is not a good time to say, I see you, I see this is important. Let's schedule time so we can talk about this. You know, give people a moment at least, to be with them fully. You have time for that

great way to wrap up today, our podcast. If people want to reach you, what is the best way to contact you?

Well, my website is CO visioning, one word co visioning.com, or you can find me on LinkedIn. That's where most people are finding me these days. Great.

Thank you very much for your time, for coming to our first podcast. Thank you for asking, and I hope you come back. We go, we are going to definitely in the future with other topics. So thank you again for being here with us today. Thanks for listening to lead with a coaching mindset. I am thrilled to have shared this time with you. Don't forget to subscribe and give us a rating. Stay excited for more episodes. Keep growing and see you next time you.