Whitney Johnson: CEO and Co-founder of Disruption Advisors, Bestselling Author & Keynote Speaker

A conversation with Whitney Johnson, a leading thinker on driving innovation through personal disruption. 

Johnson, CEO and Co-founder of Disruption Advisors, shares her transformative journey from Wall Street analyst to a trailblazer in leadership coaching. 

She explores the concept of personal disruption, illustrating how embracing change and leveraging unique strengths can catalyze growth and innovation in both individuals and organizations.

Johnson discusses her career transitions, highlighting how each pivot was a step toward harnessing her full potential and refining her disruptive innovation theories. She emphasizes the significance of staying true to one's strengths while continually seeking challenges that foster growth. 

Through her discussion with Alex, Johnson provides valuable insights into applying the principles of disruptive innovation to personal development, advocating for a mindset that embraces change as a vehicle for transformation.

Her approach to leadership coaching is rooted in the belief that personal disruption is not just about adapting to change but actively seeking out and creating conditions that promote continuous growth and learning. 

Johnson's experiences and methodologies offer a compelling framework for understanding how individuals and organizations can navigate and thrive in the face of change, making this conversation a must-listen for anyone interested in innovation, leadership, and personal growth.

Transcript

Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee
Whitney Johnson

(interview blurb)

Whitney: We don’t want to be driven by money but we also know that if people are willing to pay for something, they value it and, therefore, it is valuable.

(intro)

Alex: Hi, I’m Alex Pascal, CEO of Coaching.com, and this is Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee. My guest today is the CEO and co-founder of Disruption Advisors. She has been recognized by Thinkers50 as one of the Top 10 Leading Business Thinkers in the world and named to Inc. Magazine’s 200 Female Founders of 2023. She is an Amazon best-selling author of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company. Please welcome Whitney Johnson.

(Interview)

Alex: Hi, Whitney. 

Whitney: Hello, Alex. 

Alex: It’s so good to have you here. We were just talking in the green room about the last time we saw each other in person and it was longer than I thought it was.

Whitney: It was a bit of a time warp. Yeah, the last time we saw each other was at the Institute of Coaching. I think we were estimating it was 2017 and I was doing a presentation with the wonderful David Peterson, who passed away all too soon, so it’s fun to be able to reminisce about him and his impact on our lives. 

Alex: I’m sure he will come up throughout the episode because he had a big impact in both our lives and he’s greatly missed. Let’s start where we always start on Coaches on Zoom Drinking Coffee, as our listeners know, it doesn’t always have to be coffee, what are we drinking today, Whitney? 

Whitney: Okay, well, I am drinking water because water is very good for you. Oh, and I’m going to take a sip of water because I’m going to follow your lead. 

Alex: Yeah.

Whitney: Those mirror neurons, let’s keep those going. And I’m going to disrupt you by telling you I’m also drinking Diet Coke, because it’s the afternoon for me. 

Alex: I like that. I rarely have Diet Cokes. You’re the third person to bring one into the podcast. The first one was in our very first episode with Marshall Goldsmith and that was the drink and I had Diet Coke. I actually think I went to the health food market and I bought like one of those healthier versions, but, once in a while, a Diet Coke is not bad. I add lime to it and it actually tastes really good.

Whitney: That’s funny. So who was your other person besides Marshall? Do you remember? 

Alex: You know, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask because I think actually it was recent and I am struggling to remember who it was because, as you do many episodes of your podcast, we do many episodes as well. Sometimes, I feel like some of the past episodes just blend into one just joyous experience of talking to great people. 

Whitney: One joyous experience, well said, Alex. 

Alex: Well, thank you. Well, one of the funny things that has happened in this episode was when MBS introduced me to my own podcast because he’s so used to doing this and that was hilarious. He called himself out and we had a good laugh and I’ve heard some people listening to that episode thought it was hilarious. So I’m sure we’ll have some hilarity to this one as well, Whitney, because you’re very emergent, very funny. It’s going to be fun. Continuing to that first question that I usually ask, we usually go to the second question, which is an overview of your journey. I find it fascinating to hear from people in coaching and leadership development how they got into this profession because, as we all know, it’s relatively new. I’m sure that a lot of the newer generations, leadership development is going to be more ingrained in the way they think about things. It’s definitely more strategic in organizations today. But, a lot of people that got into the field kind of like when we did, it was not really the most popular thing or something that you knew about. So I’m really excited to hear about your journey into leadership development, coaching, and all the great work. 

Whitney: Okay. Well, I actually majored in music in college and when I graduated, I moved to New York with my husband, he was getting his PhD at Columbia, and because I majored in music, naturally, I went to Wall Street. 

Alex: See, I told you you were funny.

Whitney: And so — but because I had never set foot in a business course, I started as a secretary. And it was a really, really exciting time to be on Wall Street. So this is the era of Liar’s Poker and Bonfire of the Vanities and so I was just like, “This is amazing, I want more,” and so I started taking accounting and economics and finance at night and then I had a boss who believed in me which allowed me to move from being a secretary to an investment banker and did investment banking for several years until my boss got fired and they probably would have fired me too except that I had really good performance reviews and I was pregnant and so you don’t usually fire people with good performance reviews and who are pregnant and so they just moved me. They basically shoved me into what was called equity research. So I was disrupted, but it turns out that this was a career maker for me. I was really good at spotting momentum, at picking stocks, at building a financial model. But along the way, like early 2000s, I have this big discovery where I realize, we’ve just put together this big meeting for all the equity analysts, it’s the era of American Idol was at its zenith and I just read Tom Peters, A Brand Called You, and I was doing all this analysis of every single equity analyst on my team, if you were a brand, what would you be? Would you be the forensic analyst? Would you be the earnings estimate analyst? Would you be the industry expert? And spending all this time thinking through this and I started to realize that I was actually a lot more interested in the momentum of people than I was of stock so that was like this first data point of, hmm, maybe I’m not in the right career for me. Meanwhile, I had people sort of around that time telling me, “Oh, Whitney, you’re really good at coaching. Have you ever thought about coaching?’ and I thought I don’t want to be a coach, I want to be an equity analyst, I want to be a banker, that sounded much more impressive to myself and pretty much everybody else. But then, several years later, I’ve left Wall Street, I’ve gone to work with Clayton Christensen, who wrote the book, The Innovator’s Dilemma, he was at Harvard Business School, and have this big aha around the idea of disruptive innovation that is not about companies and products and services and countries. I mean, it is about that but it was also about people, that companies don’t disrupt, people do so that’s this next big aha that I have, focusing on how do you apply this theory of this management theory to individuals. And then the third big data point came for me probably around 2011, 2012, I’ve written the book — or not the book but the article, “Disrupt Yourself” in Harvard Business Review. We’re also using the S-curve in our investing to help us figure out how quickly an innovation will be adopted. And, of course, I find myself applying the S-curve to an individual. It’s not just how groups change, it’s how people change. At this point, there’s so much data. I’m looking at people as stocks. I’m looking at the theory of disruption as a way to think about individuals. I’m looking at the S-curve as a way to think about individual growth. And I had Clayton and a number of people say to me, “I think you might wanna consider doing something around people,” and so that was really — that was back in 2012 and so I actually left, sold my stake in the disruptive innovation fund that I had co-founded with Clayton and his son and started on this journey, this leadership development journey, which now includes, among other things, coaching and offsites, etc., but really looking at is how can we help people and teams and organizations build capacity for growth. And even though I was reluctant to do this, and maybe this happens with a lot of people in coaching, I was reluctant, I definitely feel like I have found my calling and my purpose. Nothing brings me greater joy than to walk alongside people in this journey of becoming more of who they can be and the unfolding of self. 

Alex: I love it. Thank you so much for taking me through your journey, which is very interesting. So many things to explore. Let’s start with that hesitation to jump into coaching. It seems like you believe, and I agree, that other coaches resonate with that so let’s unpack that. 

Whitney: Yeah, you know, I think part of it was, I thought a lot about this, about strengths. So we oftentimes talk about people’s strengths and you just need to know what your strengths are and then you play to your strengths and you’ll be successful. But I think it’s a little bit more complicated than that. What I have observed about myself and about humans in general is that when we are really good at something naturally, not only is it so reflexive, we can’t necessarily see it so we’re blind to it, but I do think that, oftentimes, because it’s so easy for us, we don’t actually value it. And so when someone says, “You know, you’re really good at this,” we don’t value it. We think, well, no, I mean, that’s so easy, anybody can do this. Why don’t you want to choose me or hire me to do this other thing that I had to work really hard to figure out how to do? I worked really hard to figure out how to build financial models, how come you’re not valuing how good I am at building those models? And I was good at it. But what people were saying, and I think this happens to us frequently, is they’re holding up a mirror to us and saying, “No, that is your superpower. You are excellent at that,” and only when we’re willing to not only identify what we do uniquely well but we’re willing to lean into it can we make that idiosyncratic outsize contribution in life, but I think that was a lot of it is that unwillingness to value what I did uniquely well because it was so easy. I didn’t value it.

Alex: That is so interesting. Sometimes, the things that come naturally to us, we take them for granted, absolutely. And how did you go about recognizing that you’re good at that and kind of mapping out how those strengths could manifest into a career or that next stage in your career? Were you thinking about writing a book? Were you thinking about kind of like the service offering? Did you already have some clients lined up? Tell me a little bit about that transition.

Whitney: Oh, sort of the evolution or emergence of the business? And then I want to ask you, what’s one of your strengths that people told you that you’re good at and you’re like, “Oh, no.” So do you want to do that first? 

Alex: Well, I love evolutionary emergence. That is quite the combo of words. I love that. Evolution and emergence are like things that I really like. So I guess you’re asking me about one of my superpowers?

Whitney: Yeah, yeah, I’m curious. 

Alex: In the scope of coaching, actually, there’s something that I’ve always found fascinating. There’s something about — I have this ability to be able to, when I’m in a coaching session or talking to a friend or someone, sometimes I pick up on words they’re not even saying that are part of their lingo. I don’t know how it works. Over time, if you get to know people, you listen to the words that they say and you start using them and reframing, using that same word, but it’s happened to me with many kinds of coaching clients where I’m using some terminology and verbiage that I would typically not use but with that person, it comes very naturally and I pick up on some words that I’m saying that really resonates with them but they haven’t said themselves. So it’s just the ability to kind of tap into this kind of connective tissue almost between two people and leverage that for coaching and creating cohesion and a shared vision and a shared standpoint to kind of then explore together. That’s something that I’ve never been fully able to understand but it’s one of my strengths and it’s coaching related. 

Whitney: It’s interesting when you said that because it’s like the image, because, as I said to you, I was a music major, that came to mind for me is this idea of jazz, where someone plays a melody and then you riff off that melody and then the two of you collectively create some music. There’s this collaboration and co-creation that takes place and it comes through words and that must be really fun and really kinetic. 

Alex: Yeah, I really like the way you’re framing it around music because it is kind of like a jazz ensemble. And if you can get to that in a coaching flow, I mean, you can do a lot of really cool things. The only problem is that, maybe it’s not a problem but it makes me more selective to the people that I want to do coaching with. You don’t want to play jazz with someone whose tunes and rhythm doesn’t align with yours, right? So, when I was learning the trade and working at CCL doing a lot of coaching, I had the distinct honor to be the youngest coach in the history of CCL to ever be put in front of a client. maybe someone broke that record now, but they let me know, “Well, you’re breaking a record here,” I was 27 and they put me — and my first time was this C-level guy who was awesome so we had a good time. So, at CCL, I would do assessment and debrief for the leadership development programs so it’s a gauntlet, like the program coordinators try to match the coachees with the right coach but they have a lot of different data points but they have a lot of coachees to match with a number of coaches. so the matches sometimes are great and sometimes are not and it’s kind of hard, the chemistry, kind of read it from sometimes even with all the assessment work. So I learned to be a good coach with different types of folks. But now, at this stage of my career, I would only want to do coaching that feels like jazz. 

Whitney: Oh, and you get to choose.

Alex: I do get to choose. Yeah, I’m actually — since I don’t have a lot of time, I’m very selective with my time. And also, it’s not how I make my living, so if I was a coach full time, maybe I’d have to flex a little bit more but, yeah, so I ask a lot of questions in the podcast so very few people ask questions back so that was fun. Thank you for doing that. 

Whitney: Oh, sure. 

Alex: Very disruptive. 

Whitney: So one of the ways that I knew that I was good at it and I think this is one of the big clues that we can get that we’re good at something is that when people would give me compliments. So whenever someone gives you a compliment, they’re holding up a mirror to you and they’re saying, “This is something that you do really well. It’s a superpower for you,” and people would tell me over and over and over again. I mean, I would have people tease me because they would call me like Pavlov’s dog because if someone would start even mentioning a dream that they would have, I was like slathering to talk to them about their dream and how they were going to accomplish their dream, like there was just something so exciting about that opportunity to work with someone to help them realize a dream that they had. And so I would hear that feedback over and over again. That was the clue. I think that — how did I make that transition? Probably — you know, I had this wonderful privilege of working with Clayton for the better part of a decade, first in a nonprofit and then in investing and watching him speak and I think that there was this element of me of watching him speak and do keynotes and advocate and evangelize these ideas that he had around disruptive innovation and now I wanted to talk about personal disruption and so part of I think the flip for me, there are probably a number of flips, but one was recognizing that, as I was advocating for personal disruption and for change, one of the best ways to help make that change happen was going to be through coaching and so it became this natural evolution or the emergence, if you will, of recognizing that the coaching was a means to be able to unlock that potential for people. I think also there was this element of me just growing up and realizing I have this talent and am I going to use this talent or am I going to reject this talent? And then I think there was a third element, which was having this privilege of working with Marshall Goldsmith, when he put together the 100 coaches, I got to be in the very first cohort, and I think the thing that was really helpful for me is that, obviously, Marshall values coaching and when I first started working with him, I was charging very little for coaching and Marshall will say to me you need to basically increase your rates by 10 times. I mean, it was something, some sort of astronomical number. And that conversation said to me coaching is valuable and your coaching is valuable and there’s something about the monetary piece of it and we don’t want to be driven by money but we also know that if people are willing to pay for something, they value it, and, therefore, it is valuable. And so I think it was just this combination of recognizing that it was a means to unlock potential, it was me growing up and owning my unique idiosyncratic strengths, and then also Marshall valuing coaching which helped me recognize that it was, in fact, valuable. And then, over time, you have the proof points to see that is, in fact, valuable. So I think it’s this mosaic of experiences and data points.

Alex: So much to unpack there. I mean, the coaching pricing is just the whole thing. And I do think a lot of coaches undervalue themselves. They feel privileged to be able to do something that they love and they’re good at and that privilege comes with, I think, a sense of, well, you know, how much can you charge to do what you love, and that’s okay when you’re getting started, I guess, in many cases, but as you progress and you get really good at and hone your skill as a coach, there’s an inflection point where you’re at the top of your game, you’ve written amazing books, you work with incredible clients, I mean, you’ve had a very long career that’s been successful, multifaceted, you command a very high price for your coaching. But there’s that inflection point where you’re not describing that value into the fees and, suddenly, you have an experience with Marshall and Marshall charges, I don’t know what he charges these days, maybe $250,000 a year for coaching.

Whitney: At least. 

Alex: Yeah. And that used to be like only Marshall would charge something like that and I think those are his old prices back from when I first met him maybe eight, nine years ago. So there’s a lot of really elite coaches today that charge $100,000, $150,000, $200,000, $250,000, $300,000 a year for coaching, and I do believe, to your point that coaching is valuable, that if coaching wasn’t valuable, people wouldn’t be paying those prices. And then not every coach can charge those prices but you can make a very nice living charging prices that someone, let’s say, providing coaching to director level and above folks in organizations, and that exists now and it used to not. 

Whitney: And I think the other unlock for me as I’m listening to you talk is there was an instructor actually on your platform and I’m not going to remember her last name but her first name is Lisa so maybe you’ll remember her last name and she talked about valuing coaching not on a per hour basis but to have the client look at what’s the ROI on this investment. So —

Alex: Lisa Ann Edwards.

Whitney: Lisa Edwards, thank you. Lisa Ann Edwards. And I thought that was so — I remember taking that course from her years ago on your platform and finding that so valuable of saying, okay, so if you’re going to charge someone $10,000, for example, will the ROI on that be $70,000? Yeah, probably a lot more. And so helping people think in the context of what’s going to be the return on the investment of that coaching, that was a big unlock for me as well. 

Alex: That’s awesome. Let’s talk about disruption because you were working with one of the fathers of innovation and disruption and right from Harvard Business School, though, it seems like all these great folks that you and I used to work with, so many of them have passed, unfortunately, the late Clay Christensen, how do you apply some of this understanding around innovation and disruption with coaching? 

Whitney: Yeah, so if you think about the idea of disruption, he coined it as a silly little thing that takes over the world and he would use the examples like Netflix, which originally no one took seriously, disrupted Blockbuster and the telephone disrupted the telegraph and the automobile disrupted the horse and buggy, and the aha for me, as I said earlier, was it wasn’t just about products and services and I actually had the aha when I was an equity analyst and I was covering telecom and the emerging markets and had this big aha, that the reason every single quarter my estimates were too low is because wireless was disrupting wireline, it was just completely taking over the market. Even though early on, the sound quality wasn’t very good but no one cared because bad sound was better than no sound. So I had this understanding of it as a mechanism to recognize why my estimates were too low and then I started to think, well, how does this apply to people? Now, as you think about what is personal disruption, well, the big difference with personal disruption is that you are the disrupter and the incumbent, you’re the silly little thing and you take over the world because you are disrupting you. And a really good concrete example of this is Lady Gaga. So let’s talk about Lady Gaga for a minute, because if you think about her, in 2008, she went straight to the top of the music charts, but then what did she do? She disrupted herself. For an encore, instead of doing something that her fans were expecting, she collaborated with Tony Bennett on a jazz album, she did a Sound of Music tribute at the Oscars, she produced a country album, but every time she was disrupting herself, that paid off because when she performed at the Super Bowl in 2017, it was the largest music audience ever. And then, of course, A Star Was Born. So you’ve now got this idea of disruption can apply to an individual and what are you doing when you’re disrupting yourself? Well, you’re basically saying, I am on the Y axis of success, at a certain number, let’s call it a 12, however you’re defining success, and right now, the slope of my line on the graph paper of my existence is maybe an over one, up one, or over one, up one, or over one, up two even, but when you disrupt yourself, what are you doing? You are making a conscious decision to move down that Y axis of success, maybe to a 10, you’re making a conscious decision to rewire your brain, a conscious decision to build new neural pathways because you believe that in the future, the slope of your line will be over one, up three, or over one, up four. You’re willing to say, “I understand that I want a new self. I also understand that the price of that new self is my old self. So I’m willing to step back from who I am today into who I want to be.” And those little D disruptions, sometimes it’s big D disruptions where you change jobs or change careers, but, frequently, it’s those little D disruptions, like, “I’m gonna play to my strengths,” or, “I’m going to take a step back to rest and reflect so that I have the energy that I want and need in order to be productive.” And so that’s how it applies in coaching is using this notion of if you want to move forward, sometimes you’re going to have to step back in order to slingshot forward. It gives people a way to picture it, to understand it, to think about it mathematically, and to have it make more sense so instead of just, “Oh, I’m giving up all this stuff.” No, you’re not giving up all this stuff, you’re giving up something because you believe in the future, just like you would make a capital investment, there will be a big ROI, except for with personal disruption, it’s the ROI on who you are as a human being. 

Alex: Yeah, sometimes you gotta slow down to speed up, right?

Whitney: Exactly. 

Alex: What is your favorite type of client, if you have one? Or what’s the kind of client that you meet and you have your first conversation and they’re exploring working with you and you’re like, “Yes, I want to work with this person”? Is there a general trend? What gets you excited when it comes to working with new clients? 

Whitney: I think that one kind of client that I love working with are people who, just like an undervalued stock, who have tremendous capacity and ability and are very, very hungry but they don’t recognize just how good they are and how good they could be and being able to work with them to unlock that for them personally but then what that can mean for an organization is incredibly exciting. 

Alex: I love to think about people in terms of stock and I haven’t done that. I actually think it’s very helpful because you’re looking at a stock, you’re looking at a company, has tremendous potential, it’s undervalued. Why is it undervalued? Why hasn’t it not fulfilled its potential? Does it have the potential to fulfill it or will it be unfulfilled potential? I mean, it’s actually really good analogous way to think about people. I love it. And with your background, I can see why you think like that. 

Whitney: Yeah.

Alex: Yeah, pent up potential is always exciting, isn’t it? 

Whitney: It’s so exciting. And when you get someone who’s willing to do the work and they’re like, “Oh, yeah, I want this, I’m willing to do the work,” that is so exciting. That’s what I get most excited about. 

Alex: So kind of turning that question into kind of systems and the systems that people operate in. So your book, Smart Growth, I love the topic, how to grow your people to grow your company, because it’s implicit in a lot of the work that we do in leadership development and coaching that the ROI, we can calculate it, we can try to calculate it, we can think about impact, but most people that go through coaching and most talented leaders and a lot of C-suite executives these days in organizations recognize that there’s an implicit value that comes with development, we have to hone it, we have to understand it, there’s a lot of room for the development of scientific understanding of the levers that coaching moves, how they move them, and, really, there’s a lot of research to be done. But I think at this point, we can agree, coaching is powerful and it has, in many, many cases, a tremendous ROI when implemented correctly. I love just how subtle that is, how to grow your people to grow your company, because that is the implicit belief that drives a lot of the work that we do. 

Whitney: Yeah. In fact, it’s interesting. It is the implicit belief and I do you find, though, that sometimes it’s really important to be explicit about it. So the very first line in my most recent book, Smart Growth, is that growth is our default setting, that we’re wired to grow, and I think about our work as a way to operationalize the growth mindset but I think one of the reasons that it’s so compelling and so intriguing for us is that we all believe that we can grow until we don’t believe that. And I think that’s part of what coaching does is that it helps us not only believe it when we’re believing it but also help us reminds us to believe that we can grow and change even when we’re in that moment of not believing it and that’s where our work really dials in is not only from a personal disruption standpoint but also thinking about the S-curve which allows you to have this very simple visual model of what growth and change looks like so that it does feel less scary, so it does feel more possible, because if growth is, in fact, our default setting, which you and I are both agreeing that it is, then if we’re not growing and we’re not moving forward, then there’s something that’s blocking us. So how can we make it so that it feels like I can do this? And, yeah, maybe I’m a little bit scared right now but that’s just because I’m at the launch point of the curve and I’m going to figure it out because I’m wired to do this. And so that’s what’s fun about the work that we do is helping those unlocks, when someone says, “I wanna grow, I wanna change,” we can help you. Coaching will help you do that. 

Alex: I love that and I agree 100 percent with the default mode is growth. Growth is thorny, when it comes to an individual and also, culturally, societally. Sometimes, when I am talking to someone, it could be on my private life, it could be professionally, but I was thinking something more along kind of like in my kind of private life, like a friend or a friend of a friend, and sometimes you see that they just kind of found themselves and they’re like, “I found myself.” Oftentimes, the easiest way to get lost is to find yourself because it’s those inflection points in your life where change is brutal, in many ways. I mean, it’s the unfolding of something new, but the rapture and the breaking of another pattern, another way of operating, another mode. So change is always tricky and it could do an offshoot and you grow and you grow into a more elevated stage of your life in whatever facet. I like abstract thoughts. 

Whitney: Yeah. 

Alex: Or it could actually be an opening for kind of going down the spiral of development. So that is one of the aspects that I find the most fascinating about growth is that it’s a spiral and, sometimes, when you’re going up, you feel like you’re going up, you may be going down, and sometimes when it feels like the challenges are overwhelming, that you can’t do it anymore, suddenly, you are able to reframe and to see that the challenge is the opportunity and then have that leap of growth. So I agree, growth is ongoing. It’s the default setting. And it doesn’t always present itself in the way that we would want with rose-colored glasses, right?

Whitney: A hundred percent. So two things are coming up for me as you say that. Number one is that what we talk about in Smart Growth is this S-curve and one of the things that is fascinating is that when you’re at the launch point, growth feels very slow. It feels like a slog. You feel like you’re not making any progress, it takes a lot of time for anything to happen, you feel uncomfortable and awkward and impatient and all those things. But, mathematically, that’s where the growth is the fastest. Growth is mathematically the fastest when you’re at the launch point of the curve. So that’s the first thing that came up for me as you said that. I think the second thing that came up for me is that we’re really excited about growth until the moment that we’re in the growth and it feels so uncomfortable and we feel out of our depth and we feel like we might be stupid or look silly and I think what’s fascinating, Alex, is that the older we get, the more we can insulate ourselves from ever doing anything new. And so we get really bad at changing. And one of the gifts of the pandemic, and there were many gifts, but one of the gifts for sure of the pandemic is it forced all of us back on to the launch point or forced all of us to do new things and so we got a little bit better at changing. 

Alex: Absolutely. Robert Keegan has the grade line about this, the subject of one stage becomes the object of the subject of the next.

Whitney: Oh. Say that again. I’ve never heard that before. Say that again.

Alex: It’s hard to process and once you — once it clicks, you’re like, “Oh.” The subject, so you’re living your life and you’re the subject, of one stage of development becomes the object of the subject of the next, so you’re able to embody it and see that subject from a different lens, a different perspective, and you’re able to see that shift. 

Whitney: He’s a smart guy. 

Alex: Yeah.

Whitney: We were just talking about Immunity to Change earlier today so, yeah.

Alex: Yeah, Lisa Lahey and him had done a great work on immunity to change. It’s just a framework. It’s similar to that one-liner, right? It’s like immunity to change, it’s kind of you have to sit down and pay attention for a little bit and process what they mean but once you get it, you’re like, okay, this makes a lot of sense, right? You probably really enjoyed it because you like this kind of mathematical way of thinking about development so you’re kind of like the Spinoza of leadership development. Spinoza was kind of like a geometric kind of philosophy and he would find proofs for his philosophy based on kind of geometric laws and proofs. 

Whitney: I love that. I’m going to remember that, Spinoza of leadership development. That’s your gift that you just gave to me for today. Alex, our little jazz riff.

Alex: Yeah, love it, yeah. Yeah, actually, he’s one of my favorite philosophers. Panentheism, I find very interesting, that concept. He was excommunicated from the Jewish community and I think it was Portugal or Spain and then he ended up living as a lens grinder in the Netherlands because — and The Hague, I think, I may be wrong with all those facts, but it’s somewhat along those lines. It’s fascinating because it was like his perspective was like God was embedded in everything and everything had the absolute amount of God in it or something like that. And obviously the fellow Jewish folks that were very religious that he lived with, they didn’t really appreciate their God being reduced to being sitting there on or being part of that chair over there. So very interesting. But without kind of putting everyone to sleep, I think you’re the Spinoza of leadership development with all these mathematical analogies for growth and development. 

Whitney: And then I’m going to just, you know, S for Spinoza them.

Alex: There you go. That is so funny thing. So it’s interesting, I’ve been talking to a number of people that were close to David Peterson, and I was very close to David, you were very close to David, and there has been a number of other people kind of like Carol Kauffman, that I didn’t really know that well when David was around and it’s been very special to spend time with people that loved and adored David because David had — I think people in our industry that we’re very close to David, we all have something in common as to how we look at change and disruption and complexity so just having this conversation with you, I can 100 percent see why you and David gravitated to each other and there’s this common thread of just the wonderful people that David left behind so it’s been nice to experience you and it’s really our first kind of in-depth conversation so it’s very cool to see that and I can totally see why you and David were close.

Whitney: Yeah. So two things. One is I love Carol Kauffman as well. 

Alex: She’s awesome. 

Whitney: Yeah. Talk about a brilliant coach. I mean, off the charts brilliant. David. So one of the things that I, a big thing that I will remember — two things. One is that he’s willing to push you, he’s willing to go there, he’s willing to make you really reflect and doesn’t pull his punches, but in an incredibly deeply caring, wise way so I loved that. And then from an understanding perspective, I really appreciated that he said whenever you start something new, the tendency for you is going to go into a place of performance, but if you’re in a place of performance, then you can’t learn and the only way that you’re going to make progress is to learn if you’re willing to be able to learn so you have to let go of that, “I’m gonna perform and impress everybody,” I just need to be in this place of how am I going to learn, how am I going to figure this out, and just stay focused on what you’re doing. And that has really, really stayed with me. 

Alex: I love that. And I was actually listening to your podcast and the episode with David earlier today and he was magical and I’m hearing like his voice and his stories and, yeah, the world lost an incredible human but he left so many beautiful connections and an incredible body of work. I mean, a lot of the work that we do today is thanks to people like David. They were the trailblazers in really establishing coaching as a practice, a tool, a methodology that organizations can leverage to develop people and deliver high performance so I think he will go in the history books as one of the legends. I think he already is —

Whitney: I think he already is, yeah. 

Alex: He was just recognized at Thinkers50 and then the other person, did you know Gary Ranker? 

Whitney: I did not know him.

Alex: So he was one of the other folks that was introduced, inducted into the Hall of Fame at Thinkers50. Yeah, amazing, amazing coaches that we have a lot to be thankful for. So, as we get to this kind of latter part, the end of our podcast today, I want to learn a little bit more about what you’re the most excited about. A new year’s coming, when I say that, I always feel like my podcast producer is going to be upset that I’m dating the episode, but there’s a new year coming, what are you excited about for these new upcoming year?

Whitney: So a couple things that I am really excited about is, one is that we have, we’ve talked a lot about growth capacity and being able to know where we are in our growth and know where our team is in their growth and know where our organization is in our growth so I’m really excited so we’ve been developing a tool that will help us figure out what that looks like and it’s been really interesting and fun to how do you develop a tool, something that’s physical as opposed to usually focusing on intellectual property so that’s been really fun. And then the other thing that’s been really interesting and — but the other thing that you asked is that we’ve got a certification that’s ICF certified and that was a really good exercise to go through of being able to certify your work because the ICF is just such a gold standard, I have tremendous respect for Magda Mook as well who I’m sure you know, and so those are two things —

Alex: Yeah, I love Magda.

Whitney: Yeah, she’s amazing, and so I’m really excited about those two things in part because we love to coach and we love to do offsites but it’s fun to be able to have data-driven insights that allow you to be able to measure what you’re doing and to see where the ROI is and then also just generally the process of building a business around this, of moving from being a solo practitioner to developing a business and developing a company. We coach so many leaders, it’s fun to be in the hot seat and trying to build my own business or our own business. 

Alex: Yeah, absolutely. Now, you’re doing amazing work, Whitney, so keep it up and I’m looking forward to staying in touch and reconnecting soon. 

Whitney: Well, thank you for having me, Alex. This was a lot of fun.