Carol Kauffman: Harvard Faculty, CEO Coach, Keynote Speaker, Thinkers 50 top 8, MG 100 coaches #1 Leadership coach

This week’s podcast, host Alex interviews Carol Kauffman, an authority in leadership coaching and a Harvard assistant professor. 

Kauffman, who is also the founder of the Harvard Institute of Coaching, shares her expertise and insights drawn from her book "Real-Time Leadership" and her extensive career in coaching.

Kauffman delves into the transformative power of coaching, distinguishing it from therapy and performance training. She discusses the critical importance of creating a shame-free environment in coaching sessions, emphasizing the role of honesty and directness in the coach-client relationship. 

Through her experiences working with CEOs and leaders, Kauffman highlights the significance of self-awareness and responsibility in effective leadership. The conversation also explores the impact of storytelling in coaching, underscoring how narratives can enhance the coaching experience. 

Kauffman reflects on the evolving landscape of coaching in the context of technological advancements and artificial intelligence, suggesting how these developments might shape the future of coaching.

Kauffman offers a deep understanding of the intricacies and nuances of coaching, illustrating its vital role in personal and professional development. Her perspectives provide valuable insights for coaches, leaders, and anyone interested in the field of leadership development.

Transcript

Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee
Carol Kauffman

(interview blurb)

Carol: That’s what makes us great as coaches is we can say the most outrageous things but because we’re doing it from a spirit of caring and we’ve developed a bond, they will hear us.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of Coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today was named number one leadership coach in the world by the Marshall Goldsmith Group. She founded the Harvard Institute of Coaching. She’s also an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and a visiting professor at Henley Business School. She recently co-authored a new book, Real-Time Leadership: Find Your Winning Moves When the Stakes Are High. Please welcome Carol Kauffman.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Carol.

Carol: Hello there, my dear.

Alex: So good to have you in the podcast today.

Carol: I’m happy to be here.

Alex: Let’s start where we always start on Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. What are we drinking today?

Carol: I confess, it’s vodka.

Alex: I have to go get mine, I think.

Carol: Electric ice water. 

Alex: Electric ice water. That’s a good way to put it. So you started drinking coffee in your 30s? I did as well. 

Carol: Oh, really? Usually I just try to keep it to a cup in the morning, sometimes two, but I tend to like white Americanos the best. 

Alex: White Americano, so that’s an Americano with a little bit of milk? Nice. Regular milk?

Carol: Yeah, I’m just a regular milk person.

Alex: Yeah, you know, it tastes the best, I think. 

Carol: Yeah, well, I think so too but my daughter would think otherwise, my friends think otherwise. They all want, “Oh, this or that,” but…so, anyway, yes, coffee is yummy.

Alex: Well, I’ll be seeing you in London very soon and I know some really good coffee spots there that make some good flat white style coffee so we’ll probably be sharing one pretty soon. 

Carol: Excellent. 

Alex: Carol, so good to have you here today. So, let’s start with your journey. You’ve done so much for the coaching profession. You’ve been doing this work for many years. Do you remember the first time that you heard about this thing called coaching? 

Carol: Well, I maybe me heard it in the background but the way I became more seriously involved is I’m a little bit of a procrastinator, and as a former now psychologist, you have to have continuing ed credits and I had procrastinated and so I was looking around crazily for a workshop and there was this one by this guy, Ben Dean, this company called Mentor Coach, but Marty Seligman was involved, I’m like, okay, great, so I took it, and I really loved it. But I’m a bit of a cheapskate so I really wasn’t — I don’t think I was going to buy it but it was this thing that afterwards, there was a phone call, group of people and one person would win and I won. So my coaching began because I won it. However, and this is a story I don’t usually tell, what was important about that? What was important about it, and this is the only reason you know me today is because of three words. So when I won it, here’s the thing, right before I got that email, I had this feeling like, Carol, you’ve won the coaching, and I remember going, “Oh, now I’m gonna be really mad when I don’t.” How come I didn’t realize that meant I should just enroll? That didn’t occur to me. Okay, so then I got the email, that’s 1 to 35, to dash the winner, and I remember, okay, I was just a clinical psychologist, I did peak performance training, but I remember suddenly having this feeling and so I rolled my little desk, my chair over to the wall, facing the wall and I said to myself, “Okay, there’s a life lesson I need to know right now. What is it?” And the words that came to me were “Don’t hold back.” And I thought what does that mean? So I was reading the American Psychologist a few days later and, like a normal person, like, oh, wow, this guy sounds really interesting, I should email him. Well, actually, I thought, call him. What’s the next thing a normal person would think? Really? This guy’s going to want to hear from me? And then I heard the words “Don’t hold back.” And I realized it meant unless I had a really good reason, I had to do whatever came to mind. So I didn’t call, I emailed the guy and to my shock, he emailed back and back and forth and back and forth, we wound up traveling the world together, I hosted his birthday party for seven years in a row and his name was Martin Seligman. 

Alex: That’s amazing. 

Carol: And that’s why you know me.

Alex: The father of positive psychology.

Carol: Yep. That’s how it happened. That’s how it became real.

Alex: I mean, it was meant to be. It doesn’t sound like you would have signed up unless you won it. 

Carol: That’s true, because they said it’s good for your private practice, but I already had a full private practice, I already was doing peak performance training, but within a week, I realized it was like a near car accident feeling, like I could have missed this because coaching is so different from peak performance training. Completely different. And I didn’t know. And I think coaching is so powerful. And one of the things that’s so powerful about it to me is it’s the most shame-free way of changing. Everything else is hierarchical. Even when you’re like a really enthusiastic coach to someone in terms of peak performance approach versus pulling from people then making an offer and then pulling from people, completely different.

Alex: Were you doing therapy work before you started doing coaching?

Carol: Yeah, I was a trauma specialist so I did trauma work and peak performance work for over a decade before I switched to coaching, then there was an overlap of about five years where I did some of each, then really starting 2009, I got my training 2003, 2009, I was 100 percent all just leadership coaching. 2007 to 2009, I was also doing some life coaching.

Alex: So it’s interesting, you’re making that distinction between peak performance and coaching. Can you expand on that a little bit?

Carol: Sure. In peak performance, I had this model, it was called perfect scan, physical, environmental, relationships, feelings, effective thinking, continuity, and trends, and I would fit you into my model.

Alex: Wow, great, you can pull that model up on demand. I love it.

Carol: Yeah. And it’s fine but it’s like I’ve got this structure and it might be emergent but I am here as the expert telling you stuff and try this and try that. And in coaching, so first of all, it’s like you’re starting with the vision rather than the problem, like who’s the vision of who you want to be, blah, blah, blah, how do you pull on the person’s strength to do that and navigate through questions? Now, I don’t believe in 100 percent questions, and, by the way, Magda Mook, CEO of ICF, and I’ve had a lot of conversations about it, it turns out she doesn’t either, which no one knows. Well, actually, everyone knows because we’ve talked about it. But it really is a very different energy because I’m not coming in looking at your peak performance issues and saying, “Okay,” and then, because I would also do how do you find your correct agent, because if you’re going to be successful in the art and sports world, your actual talent is a percentage of what does it. Very different with coaching. Coaching is more you approach coaching with a sense of delight in the person and it’s much more fun exploration rather than let’s find — and that’s even true when there’s a specific set of goals. It’s just a very different mindset.

Alex: How do you find your clients? I mean, I guess now and when you’re starting is obviously different but what you were just saying now, it made me think of Marshall’s kind of coachability, you have to be good at choosing your clients. How do you do it and how has that evolved over your coaching career?

Carol: Well, my advice to everybody in the beginning is to follow what I call the Mikey will eat it approach to clients, which is anybody who’s sent your way, you take them. So in the beginning, you just say yes all the time. Over time, I think you try to notice who gives you energy and also what circle do you wind up in. It’s not that it’s random, but if you want to access the — because I now coach CEOs of Fortune 50 companies, some startups that have gone really big, most everybody right now in my practice is C level, except now I’m doing a little bunch of work at Google and some other places where they’re VPs, but the motto that I had was I’m not in charge of my destiny but I am in charge of my probabilities. So that’s where, as you’re trying to make contacts that will connect with people that will eventually refer to you, you just have to go with the probabilities. So, at the end of the day, it’s not, “Did I make a sale?” that’s very linear and salesy, as opposed to, “Did I increase the likelihood of my connecting with someone who could connect me with a client someday?” And some days, it’s like 10 years. Other days, times, it’s right away. And also for me, I got a lucky break in terms I’ve worked with this guy, Nick Craig, who bought me into this six-year Unilever gig, which is I described as the highest paid internship in my life. And so do whatever you can do to get lots of experience with leaders, get yourself on a coaching panel, even if it pays peanuts, because the more time you lug with leaders, the more you can be you and be ego free. And when we’re looking for people to coach CEOs, tell me if you agree with this, one of their most important qualities is would this person feel comfortable hanging out in an airport lodge with a CEO? And that’s sort of the ego freeness that you have to get to before you can be comfortable with these people.

Alex: I agree 100 percent. It has to be natural. And especially at that level, there’s an element of this kind of kindred kind of spirit that has to be underlining that relationship too. These are very busy people, they tend to be very powerful people so there needs to be a special latch to that relationship that enables them to be open to it. So, yeah, I would agree 100 percent. One thing you were saying earlier that I think is very interesting and I think we should explore a little bit more, especially in the context of coaching CEOs, is that advice component. So you’re talking about Magda, the ICF is known for a long time that the advice is not the way to do it, there’s Michael Bungay Stanier, MBS, has this book on the advice trap. So advice — and I think the ICF has a more nuanced approach to it now but I’d love for you to kind of give me your perspective on advice in coaching. When yes, is it always yes? Is it always no? I know it’s not always no for you but, yeah, let’s talk about advice in the context of coaching, which is something that I think a lot of people are interested in.

Carol: Sure. Well, first of all, when you’re in the office of some of these people, unless you’re unbelievably brilliant, which I’m not, if you don’t have a point of view on some things, you’re not going to get a second session. They want a free ranging brain in the room that will challenge them, will talk to them. So, recently did an interview with a CEO of a major organization and the other person interviewing the two of us said, “What does Carol do?” I actually have no idea what I do. He said, “Oh, yes,” he goes, “I have this entire house of cards, Carol comes in, and she asks a question and pulls out the card and the whole damn house comes down and I have to figure out what do I really think.” But here’s the thing, here’s the way I think of it, is here’s a C over here for coaching, here’s a C over here for consulting, and you put them together and it’s a figure eight. So you see the figure eight and I call this the infinity loop. Now, imagine instead of the figure eight being this way, the figure eight is this way. It’s between you and me and so what I will think of it is this is the coaching, this is the consulting, but I only consult with a coach approach. I don’t do regular consulting. I am against actually you telling a client what to do. I do not do that, except if it’s a touch the stove experience, “I’m gonna go in and I’m gonna —” no, don’t, but if it’s anything short of that, what I do think of it as is as an offer, so I’ll be pulling from you and then there’s an offer and it might be something like I’m noticing that you’re not including your peers in what you’re thinking about and the data is that peers predict derailing more than your boss or your reports. So does that land with you? Or is it going to be expensive if you overlook that? So I’ll pull from the person then I’ll make an offer, which for me is usually a kind of more teaching offer, or CEOs at this point typically do blah, blah, blah, but then I’ll pivot it back quickly with a question, like does that mean for you? Does that seem right to you? And so it’s this dance back and forth and it could be I tried to do 80-20, 80 percent pulling and then maybe 20 percent saying something. Sometimes, it’s more one, sometimes it’s the other, but I think there is a difference, a really big difference between not even necessarily advice but offering, “Here’s my point of view, this is what I think, I think this is a good idea,” or my big intervention is, “Really? That’s a good idea?” They’re like, “What?” then pull the card. That’s it. So I think of it as that kind of, of dance, but actually telling someone to do, I think you take your life in your hands with that one. And what happens is when these guys get really comfortable with you, they ask you, like one guy said, “So, listen, do you think I should overthrow the chair?” I’m like, “Hon, when have I ever run a multibillion dollar organization valued at like $100 billion? That would be never. That said, what are you thinking?” So you have to really because these people — and the other thing that’s really important is to not feel like you’re so great. I think as soon as you think, “I’m a great CEO coach,” you should leave. It’s just this spark, as you said, between you and the leader, and something kind of sacred that I think — that’s what’s really important is that level of connection.

Alex: I like that last piece around if you think you’re a great CEO coach, you should leave. That reminds me of, let’s say, meditation. If you are pursuing this advanced state of meditation, you’re already not actually in the process of getting to that state, you’re in the process of fantasizing about getting to that state. So it is a practice. I love that we call coaching a coaching practice, it’s like yoga, like meditation, you got to be in it and not really think too much about how good you are. Also, CEOs live very dynamic, evolving, fast-paced, living in those type of environments so you always have to keep moving and if you’re thinking about how good you are, you’re probably not as good as you think. I love that.

Carol: So I do a lot of supervising of coaches. So I was supervising this CEO coach and he’s like, “You know, Carol, when I’m with these people, I feel so inadequate,” and so I said, “That’s because you are.” He’s like, “What?” I go, “You are inadequate. We cannot possibly compare ourselves to these clients. They are stupendous, they are resilient. They have been torn down, they have pulled themselves back up, they’re in charge of tens of thousands of people, we’re not their equal, for God’s sakes.” So don’t think that makes you inadequate, we’re just getting to play with the lions and the lionesses.

Alex: So that’s interesting when you think about how you position the role of the coach in the context of that relationship because the coach is always from the perspective of the client sometimes seen as there’s something about the coach that appeals to you that you want to open up yourself. But if the coach doesn’t see themselves at the same level, that may actually interfere with the dynamic that the client wants to feel. So, how do you balance the reality of the client operating at that level and doing all these things with the coach being able to come in and for it to feel like there’s something about that relationship that creates value bothways?

Carol: Yeah. I mean, I feel really comfortable with my clients. I’m just really clear that if I was basing my comfort on ego, if I was basing my comfort on “I am as fabulous as you are,” I would feel bad about myself as opposed to I — again, I think of them, they’re like lions and lionesses. That’s why they’re so much fun, I feel like if you get something really wrong, they’ll just claw you, and I find that — because I specialize a lot, about half my practice are overly powerful, sort of bully clients. So I had one the other day I basically yelled at. He was going on and on and on and this and this, I’m like, no, no, I go, “Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop.” No one has ever interrupted the guy, he’s like, “What?” I said, “Let’s talk about this.” And so he stopped and he like — he was actually the only person I thought was going to be uncoachable and so I just warned the people, I said, “Okay, I don’t think this is gonna work. I’ll throw myself in the lion’s den but this is so not gonna work.” Everybody’s terrified. Nobody had ever — because he’s disappointed at the 360s, he goes, “I know all this, Carol. I know all this. I know that. I know this.” He’s going, “I don’t need information. I need help. Don’t give me this, what I am,” and so it’s like, bang, a lot of times, you have to really push back with these people in a content-free way as opposed to, this was just I had to get him to shut up. And, again, and he loved it. He loved it and he’s making really good progress, which is slide me off the floor on that one. But, again, you have to not care what the person’s reaction to you is going to be to throw yourself at the end of a branch like that.

Alex: That sounds like fun. I mean, I don’t do that much coaching these days because I’m otherwise engaged with everything we do at Coaching.com and I miss it. One day, I hope to go back to doing more coaching, but it is those kinds of clients that I think pique my interest. So, oftentimes, I hear from someone, it’s like, “Hey, we have someone we think would be a good client,” so I keep like one client at a time but I’m very selective. Right now. I’m not working with anyone, but it has to be something like that where you’re like, “Okay, this sounds interesting. It’s challenging.” The odds of success are not clear but that is kind of where I think you do a lot of the really cool work. 

Carol: So my favorite nickname is what some of these people call me is the lion hugger.

Alex: The lion hugger. That’s why you call them —

Carol: I love these guys, and that’s really important. I really see who they are and see through the miasma that they sometimes create, but I think, that’s the other thing. I think if you can’t find what to actually, in an agape way, love your client, that’s really your superpower is if you have the ability to care about these people, because nobody does. Everybody has an agenda.

Alex: I haven’t heard that word in a while, agape, I love it.

Carol: So, yeah, it’s the Greek word for altruistic caring.

Alex: So now that we’re talking about leadership, let’s talk about your latest book that I haven’t had a chance to read yet but I’ve heard great things about the book. 

Carol: Thank you. 

Alex: And it positioned you to be one of the eight finalists at the Thinkers50 Gala for let’s call it like the best coach in the world. 

Carol: Yeah. 

Alex: So Real-Time Leadership, how did it come about? How’s it going?

Carol: It started in literally 2017 when my co-author, David Noble, and I were trying to sort out what was actually helping these CEOs that we were working with. And one of our pet peeves is when someone comes in and says, “Here’s my model of coaching, here’s my framework.” Well, we went, okay, what are the frameworks we use? So we filled up the whiteboard with like a hundred different frameworks that we pulled on and then we sort of started going through them, everything from business strategy, military strategy, special forces, every psychological theory you can throw a stick at, shake a stick at, and all the leadership theories, and then kind of integrated them all into four components, which spell the acronym MOVE. So M is to be mindfully alert. Okay, we know about mindfulness and centered but alert like an athlete. Alert to what? And that’s we call the three dimensions of leadership, what you need to do, who you need to be, how you need to relate, which connects a lot with Frances Hesselbein in Harvard Business School but those three things so that’s the M. O is for your options generator, that you need to have four sets of pathways forward in any situation, and like what I’ll tell my leaders is I don’t care what you do but I want you to have four possible pathways forward. Then V is validate your vantage point and there’s like a bunch of ways to do that and, there, the enemy is really ego, and ego in terms of, “I know what I think and I’m stuck in my vantage point,” or the opposite, which is still ego, which is, “I don’t know, what are people gonna think if I say that out loud?” but how do you really overcome the ego and then assess “Am I seeing clearly?” and we have five ways to do that. And then to engage and effect change, which is how do you understand how change happens but how do you really identify your signals? Then as you get further, how to do it only you can do, which is like the word general comes from the word generalist, which means you’re not the expert, you’re the generalist and how do you lead through others? And so that’s the MOVE model in a nutshell which started out with David Noble and I at a whiteboard.

Alex: That’s awesome. And how is the journey going? I mean, publishing a book, it’s a whole journey, right? The conception, the execution, and then the reception like it’s out and people are interacting with it, what’s been the experience like and the reception from this work?

Carol: Surprisingly good. 

Alex: Surprisingly? Are you surprised?

Carol: Yeah, yeah, like people would come up to us after a thing and it’s like does anyone know a word other than inspiring? They would say, “Oh, this was so inspiring. This was so inspiring. Can we get what the source is?” But I mean, what a wonderful thing that that’s what I hear everywhere is that it’s inspiring. And part of the reason I think for that is it’s — a lot of it, it’s about how do you really become an extraordinary human at the same time you become a good leader, that those are really linked together. But also if you read the book, it’s like an operating manual so I talked about the M for move, there are three chapters with massive details on how to make your decision tree on each one of those. The same with O, there’s like chapters on all of them. There’s three chapters on one part of O. So, it’s very — I think it really helps people and, as I told you today, which is that the workbook is being launched right now, Harvard Business Review felt like it was very pragmatic and asked us to write a playbook so there’s now the Real-Time Leadership Playbook with me, Doug Choo, and David Noble.

Alex: Congratulations, and it’s coming out actually today, of all days. 

Carol: Yeah, yeah.

Alex: That’s awesome.

Carol: Well, I don’t know when this is going to be aired so whatever today was, it was today today.

Alex: It will be out by then. 

Carol: Oh, really? Oh, great. So it’s —

Alex: I mean, it’ll be out soon. Yeah, but we’ll direct people to it on the resources for the podcast. 

Carol: I’ve been traveling the world basically for the past — I’ve been out of the country five months this year. And one thing I do like about the book is if any of you and you have a client that’s like, “Coaching? Ugh,” this book is really great for the leader that is utterly uninterested in coaching. We do not make a case for coaching. We do not say why our book is better than other books, we just dive right into a story of one of our CEOs who was failing in front of the board and called us in and it’s a lot of kind of stories written almost as fiction, but so if there’s somebody who’s not interested in coaching, they’ll like this book.

Alex: You mentioned earlier being a good human as well. It is so important in today’s world to have very well-rounded leaders that understand the complexity of their decisions and the systemic cascading impact of those decisions. I mean, the world is so interconnected, technology enables change at a much faster pace than ever before in human history. 

Carol: Yeah. 

Alex: And we need very, very well-rounded leaders. So when you say good humans, please expand on that, like what does that mean for you? What does it mean in the context of your book?

Carol: One thing that’s interesting is so I work two days a week for Egon Zehnder, a search and a management consulting, leadership consulting organization, and we did a survey of 1,000 CEOs with a combined income of $4 trillion a year so these are not little CEOs and what happened, what really stunned us is one of the questions was about is how much do you have to personally transform yourself to be a better leader and like 90 percent of them said you have to transform yourself first in order to be a good leader. And we gave them that same survey and three years earlier, it was only 30 percent. So I think people are getting that things are moving so rapidly and so quickly, you really have to have your rudder in the water. And if you can have your psychological, emotional, physiological, spiritual rudder in the water, then you can navigate these more tricky situations. And the other thing is you cannot really lead alone anymore. There’s just too much going on. So you have to be very good at picking who your team is and getting them out fast if they’re wrong and then really leading more as a collective. And I think in order to do that, you have to overcome ego. So I think a lot of being an extraordinary human is, one, overcome your ego, and then know how much you know John Whitmore, he was a racecar driver and he started business coaching, he decided out of the blue, by the way, to be my coach. He used to call me all the time. I’m like, “Okay, how odd,” but I was happy, but he said that coaching is about two things, increasing self-awareness and self-responsibility. So I think if you’re self-aware, self-responsible, and overcome ego, that’s the path to becoming an extraordinary human. 

Alex: The growth model. I mean, it’s one of the most well-known models in coaching. What a legend and what a great life he’d lived. I mean, incredible impact. So you mentioned transformation as one of those basic components or experiences or processes, however we want to define it, that CEOs in that survey point to.

Carol: Yeah. 

Alex: Can you break that down for me? Like transformation for them, what does that mean? Is it transformation, a change of perspective as you go through your career? Is it deeper? Or is it more shallow? What are we talking about when we talk about transformation?

Carol: Okay. Everything you said plus. So one thing is like your identity, like who are you. And so when you’re earlier in your leadership, you are you. But when you really get further up, you have to lose your identity and you have to be able to lose your identity and be in a state, I talk about this in the book in a section on when you have your first big job of entity identity. And I learned that actually at the Institute. So sometime at the Institute, there’ll be like 600 people at a conference and I’m trying to just like get back to my room because I’m just a loudmouth introvert and I just need to stop and I’m trying to leave and everybody in the world wants to talk to me. And Carol just wants to go read a novel in her room because that’s how she revives herself. But I’m not me. I am in those situations the entity of the Institute of coaching, and so that’s the entity identity I need to be willing to take on even if it’s at odds with what I want to do. And I think that’s really true and a major identity shift in a bigger way with the leaders that I work with. And it’s painful for them. Just recently, actually two of them have a lot of opinions on what’s happening in the world right now and they’re like, “I can’t say anything, I can do sort of a general whatever but I see the wrong thing, our stock price goes down. I have to submerge myself,” and for this particular guy, the entity identity concept was incredibly comforting to him because instead of feeling like, “I’m a hypocrite because I’m not speaking out,” it’s like, “I’m in service of my organization so I don’t speak out.” So the other thing is moving from a subject matter expert to a leader of leaders. That’s the other big transformation you have to do. And that’s really hard. When your whole sense of self is on what I achieve and what I do and what I write and now my sense of self, I have to leave that and become a leader of leaders and not get direct credit for everything and my self-esteem now is super wobbly because my rock has been what I deliver, that is really hard. I mean, as I say, all my leaders crack up when I say this, I say the secret of leadership that nobody tells you is leadership sucks. It’s not fun being a leader. And the other thing I think for them is really being aware of your impact. You can never stop being aware of the impact. And that’s also transformational to realize that I’m not who I am in terms of entity and I’m not who I am in terms of my impact. I can have this huge impact on people and not know it. And another thing I talk about in the book is that I learned everything I needed to know about leadership when I was seven and my girlfriend, Robin Kamphausen, and told me a joke, which was a 1,000-pound gorilla walks into a really crowded bar. Where does it sit? Anywhere it wants. And then what I say to the leaders is, and this is not just big leaders and it’s true in your family as well, if you have an impact on somebody’s — the projects they can access, their renumeration, their promotion or not, you are the gorilla and you’re always the gorilla. You are never not somebody’s boss, ever. And so you have to remember that and that’s a transformation and a sacrifice.

Alex: Thank you for breaking that down. It made me kind of think about the journey that we go through in our careers and how important it is to have someone by your side at different stages, maybe different coaches, different points in that journey, but it is so important to have that. I think these younger generations are more used to development in the workforce and they all want to work with coaches. We come still from a generation that coaching was seen as remedial, right? I guess I’m a millennial so I’m part of like this generation that is more oriented in development, but that transformation in coaching from remedial to an absolute must is I think one of the things that I’m the most excited about. 

Carol: Yeah.

Alex: And the ability to be able to scale coaching as well. And one of the things I wanted to talk to you about and this is probably a good transition and inflection point of the conversation for this is to talk about the current state and potential future state of coaching. There’s so much happening right now with artificial intelligence and ChatGPT and how it’s going to impact coaching so I would love to hear your thoughts on the current state of coaching, what you’re excited about, and kind of looking into the future, let’s say, the next five, ten years, what are some of the things that you’re the most excited about? And then we can also talk about some things that perhaps you’re not as excited about. 

Carol: Well, like you, I’m very optimistic about coaching. It is really finding its place in the world in a very powerful way. The number of people, the net promoter score of coaching, would you recommend coaching to someone is now really high. It might have started out as a two and now it’s probably a nine, or even — not a ten but close to it.

Alex: I think you’re going somewhere interesting but this reminds me of like our beloved friend that we share, David Peterson, and one of the conversations that I always used to have with David was let’s make sure that when people evaluate coaching, that they don’t evaluate satisfaction, because everyone is going to be — most people are going to be satisfied but if coaches focus on the satisfaction, are they really kind of pushing and delving for deeper impact and are they meeting their clients where they need to meet them or are they just nice? Are they going on a joyride together or are they actually doing the work? And I kind of feel like you probably have some deep thoughts on this.

Carol: I do. I do. Well, first of all, I was NPS-ing the field of coaching, not an individual person in their own coaching, because you’re right, as one of the things David says, it’s really easy to be a good coach and it’s hard to be a great coach. And I’ll tell you the one thing that David Peterson said to me that has changed my practice a couple times very dramatically, but I don’t know that we’ll have time to share the story about it, but I was interviewing David for a journal, a coaching journal I used to be the founding co-editor and so I was interviewing him and one of the things he said that has stayed with me is if you’re coaching someone and you know what you want to say and you’re reasonably sure that when you say it, you’re going to get fired, if you don’t say it, you’re not doing your job. So in terms of being all kinds of hunky dory and happy, I think on one hand, we want to create a very powerful bonding experience, but if there isn’t a capacity for like 98 percent truth telling, this is not a coaching relationship, it’s fine, and that’s what makes us great as coaches is we can say the most outrageous things but because we’re doing it from a spirit of caring and we’ve developed a bond, they will hear us. And, oh, the other thing that David has changed my coaching is a lot of people start out as their first session and they sort of really talk about coaching is this, it’s not this, it’s like this, it’s like that, it’s like this, and then they do whatever, David and I start out with the one sentence intake. And did he ever tell you what it is? Do you know what it is?

Alex: No, tell me.

Carol: How can I be the most service to you? 

Alex: Oh, yes, totally. Yes.

Carol: Because he says you’re talking with these people and they can be called out of the room in seven minutes and they better have gotten something out of it in the first seven minutes. So I’m a little bit of a renegade like David in that, and then I find out what I need to know through the conversation. Now, that’s not something a beginner coach should do, probably not even a middle coach, but when you have a lot of experience, you can just be context free and go, “How can I be the most help to you right now?”

Alex: I think increasing value per minute is something that is becoming a lot more important in coaching because people are busy and we’re moving away from the idea that you have to have a 60-minute coaching session and that’s really — that’s the amount of time you should spend. Sometimes, you need five minutes and sometimes you need three hours and the more advanced you are in your coaching practice, you’re able to recognize that. I was just talking to David Goldsmith on the podcast. 

Carol: Oh, David. Love David.

Alex: Yeah, yeah. David’s awesome. And he was just looking at his calendar and talking about the different session lengths that he has coming up and just that kind of adaptive approach to understanding kind of where to meet your clients is powerful. But, I agree, it’s something that develops over time. I love that one question intake. This is making me miss our friend, David. We should probably spend a couple minutes talking about David’s impact. I mean, it’s his — David passing is fairly recent, I think we’re probably about six months out from that and he was such an incredible person that I know we all miss tremendously but he had such deep impact in guiding the evolution of coaching. I love that you shared a couple of aspects of how David impacted you. How do you think David impacted the coaching profession?

Carol: For one, I think that one book he wrote about leader as coach, I mean, I think he probably really started, he was like the first domino I think for leader as coach. Although I don’t do leader as coach anymore, I’ve done — I probably in that head set trained few thousand people, but I actually now call it the coaching mindset, how do you bring a coaching mindset as a leader, as whatever, but that really started with David. And I think that’s one of the major areas you’re talking about where is coaching going, I think a major area is how is it integrating into leadership in general, sort of being woven through how you learn to be a leader.

Alex: Yeah, I love that transition into mindset and I think we have to thank Carol Dweck for her work on mindset but it’s such a good way to frame it in the evolution of leader as coach. This reminds me of my dissertation, which was on managerial coaching leader as coach.

Carol: Oh, was it? I should have known that and I didn’t. 

Alex: Yeah, it was first part of the dissertation, I validated the CCL 360, was looking at managerial coaching behaviors. So that was fun. That’s actually my favorite part of the dissertation, just the factor analysis of like understanding is this measure actually reliable and valid and that was fun. And then looking at how employee engagement is impacted by the use of managerial coaching behaviors. Unfortunately, I didn’t do a good job with my multilevel structural equation modeling setup and I didn’t really get any interesting data. I mean, the data really didn’t converge the way it should have, but you learn about how to set up a complex model like that so that was my learning. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you too much about how managerial coaching impacts engagement. 

Carol: Yeah. You need variance. If you don’t get variance, you’re screwed. 

Alex: Yeah.

Carol: If your measures don’t pull out variance, you’re screwed again. 

Alex: But I learned. But I can tell you that managerial coaching is definitely an area of tremendous impact. It was interesting enough for me to do my dissertation on. And I love that you make that connection to David’s work. I mean, I think that book has sold over, I think, one or two million copies so super influential and that’s something that people immediately recognized with or associated with David and I know that that was one of his — he was very proud of that work. 

Carol: Yeah. And it’s super simple. I mean, that’s the other thing that’s really great about it. It’s such an easy read. And he had his signature, he lived by that was, I forget who said it, Oscar somebody, and it was I wouldn’t give a fig for simplicity on this side of complexity but I’d give my arm for simplicity on the far side of complexity and that’s what David did with his book. I think that’s what Michael Bungay Stanier did with his book. It’s so simple but it’s simple like watching those ice skaters do a triple axel and go, “Surely, I could do that.” it’s like, yeah, right.

Alex: Absolutely. And you see that a lot with sports. You watch some professionals playing tennis and you’re like, “Oh, my God, that’s so easy,” and then you go and try to hit a ball at that speed and it feels different when you’re swinging your racquet than when you’re watching, drinking a beer watching the US Open.

Carol: Right.

Alex: And complexity is one of the most fascinating I think type of conversations we can have with David. And I remember, I think you were there in New York a couple years ago at the conference board and his presentation was all about suboptimizing.

Carol: Oh, yeah.

Alex: It’s counterintuitive to think that you have to suboptimize, but it is really the way you bring simplicity into a very complex environment. So those kinds of lessons, I think — I mean, a lot of coaches were influenced by David’s approach to understand simplicity in the face of complexity so I love that you’re bringing this up and I think his impact will continue to create a lot of value for people for a very long time and he was just such a — it’s one of the saddest things that’s ever happened, I mean, in my life to lose a friend like David, and I know you feel the same. We had some beautiful posts on LinkedIn that we both posted and just the traction was incredible because he touched so many lives so it was so nice to see. And I remember looking at your posts and seeing all the comments, it’s beautiful.

Carol: Yeah. May we all have a legacy like that.

Alex: Absolutely. So, to close out our conversation today, let’s wrap up really thinking about what are you excited about in coaching? What’s happening now that — we’re both optimists so how do we use that optimist lens and look at where coaching is, where the world is? What’s exciting for you.

Carol: So what’s exciting for me? I think coaching is going to continue to have a powerful impact because as I said, it’s just so shame free, because I think a lot of times, leaders don’t want to be self-aware, they don’t want to take responsibility because of the shame involved as opposed to really freeing people from that shame. And one of the things I’m interested in is — there’s two things that I’m interested in, I’d love your feedback, actually. One of them is about sort of good and evil in the workplace and there’s the Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn quote that the line between good and evil doesn’t lie between countries or factions, the line runs through every person’s heart. And the Carrol Kauffman codicil is, yes, and it’s a dotted line, that there are kinds of ways that we go back between being beautiful humans and self-serving or whatever and that that’s just how we are and how to not think that you need to be perfect but not to be in shame for some of these areas of when I feel competitive or whatever, and if you can lessen the shame of that, I think leaders will be more open, because that’s a big thing for me in coaching is deshaming flaws. And then also helping people who have really difficult leaders not to do that to themselves. So that’s one area for me that I’m interested in. The other one, this is the first time I’ve talked about this in public, so I’m thinking of doing, when people learn about my life because I’ve had like such a weird life, they say you should write a memoir, one movie director actually said we should make a movie about your life, I’m like, no, but I’m thinking of doing a series of stories called Carol’s Parables, stories with a point. These are my stories but you have them too because what happened to me could have happened to you. And the very first one that I’m just thinking about doing now is called the first time I was struck by lightning and then what came of that, which in this case was, for many years, absolutely nothing. People say, “What was it like to be struck by lightning?”

Alex: So you were struck by lightning, not metaphorically but like actually —

Carol: Oh, yeah, I’m not talking like, it like hurts. It like really, really hurts. And I’m very, very lucky I didn’t die. But I —

Alex: You say it so casually but I don’t think I’ve ever talked to anyone that got struck by it. Where were you?

Carol: I was — by the way, the second time I was struck. I was telling the story of the first time. Is that not crazy?

Alex: That is crazy. I’m going to stay away from you if there’s a thunderstorm. Or, actually, I’m going to get very close to you but not that close because you’re going to pull it all, you’re going to attract all the thunder, 

Carol: I’m lying a little bit because the second time I was holding on to something and as I was telling the story the first time, I said, I was going like I flew through the air and when I got my hand off of the thing that was struck, I just went like that, like I was four inches away and then, bang, I was like — so I was really only directly struck once.

Alex: Where are you when you —

Carol: I was at a stable so I was like a stable girl back in the days with big phones on the wall and with a metal coil and I was on the phone and I couldn’t hear the person over the noise so I like pulled even like what and then lightning struck the phone. I apparently — I then like shot back at 90 miles an hour and woke up in a stall with a horse looking down at me and there was a shrieking noise like a fire siren and at one point, I’m like, oh my god, this noise is so terrible. I’m like, “Oh, it’s me. I can stop,” because I came back to consciousness screaming. Okay, so and then it was like 100 percent okay because I was popped. The floor was wooden so it struck me and popped me. Only later, only later, and I’m talking like recently did I truly realize how close I came to death because it was a stall door, so here’s the door and the top was open and there were bars up and down here and bars up and down there for the horse stalls and there was webbing, and what I didn’t realize is I shot through basically this narrow window, where if I had gone in the webbing or hit the bars, so what’s really — one of the points of the parable is, first of all, don’t waste a good crisis. Because for years and years, there’s no meaning. All these people get struck by lightning and they have all this meaning attached to it and this and that and I’m like, “Ugh, it hurts.” And it’s an example of not using a powerful experience to grow myself and to really think it through, as you said, it’s still with me a little because you’re going you’re saying to so casually but it really took me a while to not be casual about it. 

Alex: Carol’s Parables. I love it. I think people are going to clamor for it. I —

Carol: Really? 

Alex: Yeah, I mean, and it sounds like an interesting way to learn about wisdom through cool stories in someone’s life. I like it. And to your point earlier, learning from difficulty is such an important thing and I think we’re living through a time in our culture where we’re not so sure as to how to deal with difficulty. 

Carol: Yeah, it’s over the top.

Alex: The bottom line is it builds character and it’s the essential nature of existence, right? When you look at the natural world, I mean, just look at the animal kingdom, they’re all out there solving problems, encountering difficulties, resource constraints, and there’s a predator, I really I’ve always liked the predator relationship with its prey because there’s something beautiful about some of the qualities that the prey develops to avoid being eaten by the predator. So when you look at the depth of the relationship, it’s actually a very beautiful thing. On the surface, it’s just a brutal aspect of the natural world but when you look at the details, kind of like a bunny running away from its predator, it’s like, well, the bunny is kind of amazing because it developed the way to avoid that scenario that’s so raw and cruel. So, when you look a little bit deeper into things, there’s this whole other perspective and challenging times and challenges, in general, are things that we need to learn from, but, as humans, sometimes, it’s very hard to elevate ourselves to look at challenging aspects of our lives in that way so I think doing it in a cool way through story, I love it and I think it also rhymes, you know, Carol’s Parables, so I’m down. So sign me up for a copy whenever it’s ready.

Carol: If anybody’s interested, go to my LinkedIn and say you’re interested because I have when I was stuck in a jail cell with the underboss of the Genovese mob family. I mean, I’ve had just a lot of very strange experiences, I was hunted by a serial killer, talked him out of killing me. A whole bunch of things. I like have no idea, they were random, random things that happened to me. And I did learn things from all of them and then — but one theme is not really appreciating how scary they were until much later. 

Alex: I can’t believe we started talking about this so far in our episode today. 

Carol: Another episode. 

Alex: Yeah, I think we’re going to have to bring you back, Carol, and have this intimate conversation about —

Carol: Story time.

Alex: — the background of all these parables that we’ll be reading in your book pretty soon.

Carol: Yes, yes. I think I’ll put them in a newsletter so if people want to come to carolkauffmann.com and sign up for my newsletter, I’ve been putting this off for years because I’ve been thinking I don’t know how people are gonna respond to this. I mean, people in my newsletters are like leaders and coaches, then I realized I was just embarrassed to do it. So I’m just going to overcome my own ego resistance of people are going to think it’s dumb or something. 

Alex: Well, I’m excited about it so I’m going to go to your website and sign up for the newsletter. Thank you so much for joining me today. Had a lot of fun talking to you and looking forward to another episode and seeing you in person soon.

Carol: Thank you, thank you. You’re a great interviewer, by the way. You’re very calm. And we’ve talked about neuropsychology and calmness is contagious so it’s really been a delight to talk to you.

Alex: Thank you, Carol. Well, you know, I try to use a little bit of the coaching approach for the interviewing and it’s challenging because of the coffee. Usually, we’re drinking caffeine in podcasts so thank you. For all those coaches out there listening. I think breathing is the most important thing so when I feel like I’m not paying attention or I’m starting to think about what I’m going to ask while my guest is talking, I always come back to the breathing and I think it helps. And one of the things that I love about this podcast is that you can really feel like you connect with someone that is very far away and we’re just connecting through video. But when you are present in a conversation, it’s incredible how you can connect with someone at a distance and that’s something that I’ve appreciated a lot through the podcast and I know that through coaching and coaching people remotely but there’s something about the dynamic of having a conversation like this that just makes it kind of very apparent. So thank you for saying that and it was lovely to have you today and looking forward to having some coffee in person soon. 

Carol: All right, in London, Thinkers 50.

Alex: Yeah.