Jul 26, 2019
Do you want to accelerate your leadership development? It starts with gaining self-awareness and leveraging a coaching relationship that adds value and magnifies your results.
My guest, Dr. Ellen B. Van
Oosten will share critical elements that you need to have
in your coaching engagements to amplify your impact and
growth. She will also share the data and science that
demonstrates the ROI of coaching as part of your Leadership
Development Strategy. Learn how move across the
continuum of telling to inspiring as a leader through
coaching.
Podcast Transcript:
Hi, this is Jill Windelspecht. Welcome back to
another episode of Brain Hacks 4 leadership. I'm really excited
about today's episode. (jillwindel@talentspecialists.net)
I'd love to welcome my guest Ellen B. Van Oosten,
PhD, an Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and
Faculty Director of Executive Education at the Weatherhead School
of Management, Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Van
Oosten is also Director of the Coaching Research
Lab. Her research interests include coaching, leadership
development, emotional intelligence, and positive relationships at
work.
- Directs the Coaching Research Lab, which she co-founded in 2014 with Professors Richard Boyatzis and Melvin Smith
- Co-Author of Helping People Change: Coaching with Compassion for Lifelong Learning and Growth (available through Harvard Business Review Press in September 2019)
- 24 years experience as an executive coach
Well, Ellen, thank you so much for spending time with us today.
Really looking forward to your topic. It's something that's near
and dear to my heart, so why don't you introduce the topic.
Sure. Thanks so much, Jill. I really am delighted to be with you
and your listeners today. The topic that I thought might be of
interest to a lot of individuals and organizations is coaching for
leadership development and I know you've done a lot of work around
that, so tell us what is some of the science that you've
applied?
Sure. We've known each other for a lot of years and even going back
to the early days when we were doing some work together. A lot of
my experience over the past 25 years has been in helping
organizations develop their leadership talent and that space has
been one that I've not only spent time with organizations designing
and delivering programs, but served as the bridge to pull together
different faculty and instructors to create customized leadership
development experiences. Most recently in the last seven years,
I've added to that some focus in the space of research and that's
what I'm excited to share with you and your listeners. Some of what
we're understanding and learning in terms of how coaching can
really help.
That's great. What I love about what you're doing with yourself and
your partners is not just saying coaching works, but
measuring it in a very systematic way to demonstrate the
benefit.
Yeah. That's something we feel really passionate about and are very
committed to do at the Weatherhead School of Management. One of the
activities that helps us organize ourselves around that and make it
a priority is called the Coaching Research Lab. It
is a collaborative between industry practitioners and faculty at
the Weatherhead School and Organization Behavior and so through the
Coaching Research Lab we conduct a number of different studies -
including one that I'd be happy to share with you that supports or
is interesting to our overall topic of coaching for leadership
development. So this study that I'd like to share with you, it
started a number of years ago where we had an opportunity to
conduct a leadership development program for a financial services
firm in the Midwest and this particular organization was interested
to break down some silos between various areas of the business and
were challenging their senior leaders, the top 300 or so leaders in
the organization to collaborate in new and different ways.
The way they thought to go about it was to equip the
leaders with some new knowledge and some new skills. And
through that experience worked with us at the University to design
a leadership development program. And as part of it, we included
360 feedback and coaching. So that's the backdrop.
So the study looked at two things, primarily does emotional
and social intelligence of leaders have any bearing on desired
outcomes, and those desired outcomes at the organization level were
job performance, which is kind of the gold standard. Very
difficult to get that data. But if you can do it, it's really
compelling. And then also we looked at some more
subjective outcomes including work, engagement, career
satisfaction. And then also the extent to which the
leader could create a personal vision. So here's what we found
through this study. Emotional and social intelligence had a
positive direct effect on job performance and also we found that
when you add a coaching relationship to the mix, it has an
amplification effect on other outcomes including work, engagement
and career satisfaction as well as personal
vision.
So let me unpack those a little bit more. A lot of organizations
always want to look at the return on investment for
leadership development and that is especially true when we
consider what a lot of folks in organizations consider to be soft
skills such as emotional and social intelligence. It's just really
hard to measure it in a lot of cases. In this program, individuals
received 360 feedback on their emotional and social intelligence
and the organization was able to provide me access to annual job
performance ratings. Those sets of data along with surveys that the
individual leaders answered allowed me to triangulate the data so
that we could look at the interrelationships between emotional and
social intelligence and those competencies and outcomes such as job
performance and others. The fact that we're able to show through
our analysis that definitely emotional and social competencies led
to increased job performance was really important for this
particular organization and I think a lot of organizations, but
then also what was interesting is when you added a coaching
relationship that the individual perceived to be high quality to
the mix. It had this incredible effect of amplifying what the
leader reported around working engagement, career satisfaction and
personal vision. So that's really compelling when you think about
the decisions and investments that organizations make to develop
their leaders and it was definitely something that this particular
organization found very gratifying and helpful to their leadership
development.
That's great. You said it wasn't just the self awareness
around their own emotional and social competency, it was the
coaching on top of that, when they saw the coaching is
adding value, that amplified their job performance and engagement.
Did you find anything specific around the coaching relationship?
One or two things that when they were present people saw it as a
more beneficial to them.
The main thing is that a coaching relationship is really
important and has a lot of benefits to the individual and to the
organization. So that is really kind of one of the big
takeaways from this particular study and the implications of that
extend at a number of different levels. For individuals working
with a coach that's important to know that the relationship and the
connection that they have together in the work that they do
together is as important and often a big catalyst for their
particular work. So taking some time to think about and maybe get
to know your coach to make sure you're working with somebody who
for you is a good fit and somebody feel really comfortable with is
important. Another would be for professional coaches, but also for
internal managers who are seeking to develop their own coaching
capabilities, so they can develop their individuals and teams in
the organization in expanded ways. This really points to the
importance of developing a relationship and being able to have
relational skills. And then for organizations who have coaching,
either provided through internal coaches or who are hiring external
coaches to understand the importance of coaching relationships in
the mix.
Yeah, that's an important piece. I agree. As a coach myself, I
often have chemistry meetings first just to make sure that I'm a
good fit for them. They're a good fit for me. And I think that's a
really important piece because coaching is really personal, but the
outcomes can really be tremendous.
Yes, exactly. Yes. And I know, right?
Yeah. So Ellen, how have you applied this to yourself?
So for me, I'm, since I've been in this space of leadership
development work for almost 25 years now, it's really personal and
it's personal in a couple of ways, it is validating to the work
that so many of us are doing with organizations that we see so many
intangible incredible outcomes. Right? Just like you said, so many
amazing benefits are often part of the experience and it's hard to
measure it. So we see it, we know it, we can speak to stories and
stories are definitely powerful. But when an organization needs to
commit a couple hundred thousand dollars for a leadership
development program, or even just five or $10,000 for coaching for
a leader or whatever, the amount that becomes a business decision.
And so being able to provide some evidence about the benefits and
the value to the organization, but also to the individuals is
something that I feel really excited by. And then for me as a
coach, as I also been coaching and still do a lot of executive
coaching, it's a great reminder for me of the importance of
establishing a good open relationship with the people that I'm
working with. So being able to come to that fully present, fully
able to engage in an effective way as a coach is something that is
important to me and what I take away from it.
Yeah, that's powerful. So Ellen, what are other ways that
leaders can apply this themselves or their team and organization so
they can get this benefit?
Well, I think if we stepped back from this particular study and
just think about coaching overall, I think such a great reminder of
how valuable coaching can be. And so, you know, if
we think about what that even means, coaching is basically, or the
way I think about it and the way we do it at the Weatherhead School
is partnering with another individual or a group or a team to help
them discover and achieve whatever their ideal self is. And so we
do a lot of work with people and individuals, helping them to
imagine what they really want to do and who they really want to be
in the future. And the future we've pushed pretty far out and then
work backwards from that and fill in the blanks around how one can
take some step to move towards that. Not in a transactional way,
but more in a transformational way. So for me,
it's really a knowing and having some more collective understanding
around what's really happening in coaching. What's the potential
that's there? And you need to be able to then consider what some of
the benefits, real time financial benefits could be for
organizations.
Yeah, I love that. And thank you for defining coaching and the
coaching approach that you're using as well. And so just to level
set so people understand, what is the typical length that you've
seen is needed from a coaching relationship to make an impact. So I
know it's not one or two sessions, that's just the tip of the
iceberg, but what have you seen that is a minimum expectation for
people to expect to get some real results from us?
That's a great question, Jill. And at this point we don't really
know from the science or from studies. I can offer some experience
though and I would say it's somewhere between four and six meetings
or sessions. They don't have to be in person meetings, but in
sessions where you're interacting with the individual or the
coachee. It seems to be that the sweet spot somewhere around there
and the longer you can work together, often the more change you're
able to affect or to see at a minimum we would suggest three
sessions so you can get pretty far in three but you know, and in
all fairness or to be fully transparent around that, what you can
get to is laying a good solid foundation. And then the individual
does a lot of the work around implementing the plans on their own.
If you're able to have a coaching engagement that has four or five,
six or more session, then the coaches able to walk side by side
with the individual or again the group of teams and help them as an
accountability partner to be able to implement a lot of the steps.
So really goes back to what the overall objective is for the
coaching engagement from the beginning. But in general, a good rule
of thumb I'd say would be somewhere around four to six
sessions.
And how long is a session?
Again, I can speak from just experience. We don't have good data or
science on that yet, but at least an hour seems to work at the
beginning of getting to know a client and working with them. We
find that 75 to 90 minute sessions are not uncommon. So we often
plan for about 75 minutes and allow 90 minutes for the first two
sessions or more. And then as you move into having a plan
established and the coachee is kind of working their plan towards
their desired change, sometimes your sessions could be shorter,
more around an hour or so. There's also something that , I know a
lot of coaches embed within coaching engagements, sometimes it's
referred to as spot coaching or intermittent coaching. What that
refers to is when our clients and coaches are able to connect with
us as coaches at a moment's notice, so as needs arise or you know
they're going into an important meeting, they might benefit from
talking to their coach. So those types of coaching conversations
range, that could be as short as 15-20 minutes and it's very
discreet. It could be 30 minutes, 45 minutes. But in terms of
scheduled, planned deliberate coaching sessions, I'd say on average
is at least an hour.
Yeah, that makes sense. So the spot coaching is in between the
sessions to just keep the momentum, maybe help with something
they're experiencing right there that they know they're working on.
What other examples have you seen, and maybe you go to the book
that's coming out, "Helping people change, coaching with compassion
for lifelong learning and growth". What's one or two things that
you learned and doing the work around this book that you could
share with us?
Sure. Jill, thank you so much for allowing me to share a little
bit about the book that we have that's coming out soon because
we've been working on that for a long time and it's been really an
exciting and um, just rewarding project to work with my coauthors,
Richard Boyatzis and Melvin Smith around them. There's so many
nuggets of, of information for me that it's hard to pick one or
two. There's a couple of stories that really stand out for me in a
couple of times that have been reaffirmed for me so I can share a
couple of those. One of the stories that is in the book is a
coaching client that I had the chance to work with years ago, and
he was a senior leader in a large multinational US corporation and
he was CFO at the time and had received some 360 feedback as part
of a leadership development program that surprised him.
He thought he was doing pretty well and had pretty good
relationships with his seven direct reports, who they themselves
were senior leaders as well. However, the feedback he received from
his direct reports and others indicated that they really didn't
feel like he was approachable, that he knew them, that they had
good relationships with him or vice versa, and ultimately that he
was listening to them. So this was really a shock to him. And I
find that sometimes working with leaders and executives where in
the absence of feedback, they think everything is fine until they
have a chance to learn a little bit more about how people are
experiencing interactions with them. And so working with this
individual, we started to break down that feedback and that was an
interesting process in and of itself of just self awareness for
him. And so we unpacked it and what he decided to work on was
pretty discreet and it was how to become a better listener because
what was happening on a daily, weekly basis was that he operated
with an assumption that he didn't want to micromanage.
He had very talented people on his team, so he wanted to get out of
their way, which he translated to be not interacting with them
really at all. And when they did come to him, it was usually around
a specific problem that they wanted to either update him on or just
bounce off of him. So the nature of the discussions and
conversations the senior leader in the C-Suite was having with
other senior leaders that reported to him were these short, 20-30
minute transactional conversations, he really didn't know anything
about them. He trusted, they were running their particular business
issues, their business competently and they were, but at the end of
the day they weren't feeling connected to him. And as a result they
were less engaged. What we set out to do together was to really
unpack a typical day or week for him and to have him consider
different ways to engage with his direct report, which really meant
getting out from behind his desk and being able to concentrate on
listening to what individuals had to say, which means he had to
learn how to ask questions and learn the art of developmental
conversation and even just the art of a conversation period.
But one that engaged the other individual and demonstrated he cared
and demonstrated that he was listening. So we worked on that for a
number of months, very discrete steps, and through that process and
him really working on being a different kind of leader, he was able
to create a different type of relationship with the people who
reported to him. A positive one, one where 18 months later when he
took it another 360 degree feedback, he received much more positive
and much different input from his direct reports. So that's one
story that is just a great reminder for me of how simple some of
these steps are, but how crucial they are for us to be able to
engage with one another in meaningful, authentic, and caring
ways.
I love that example because in working with a lot of executives
myself as well, I know that they may avoid trying to be that
micro-manager so much that they're removing themselves too much.
And you said that these are senior leaders he's working with, they
knew how to do their job, but they wanted to feel connected. Yes.
Yeah, to them. Yeah. It's very mindful.
A lot of managers and certainly leaders and executives, this is
absolutely true. We have jobs to do, tasks that have to get done,
but those tasks get done through people and the higher up one goes
in the organizational hierarchy - there's more people that we need
to work through. And so the approaches and the styles that we use
to engage people then becomes even more crucial for our ability to
be effective in that. And it becomes much more about inspiring
others, motivating others, and less about telling. So the
transition from task to relationship requires us to move
from telling to inspiring and that those are continuums for people.
They're not absolute states, but I find a lot working with
Directors on up to those in the C-Suite that some people have never
really thought about that continuum. It might still be managing
others in a way that is just not resonant or effective for the
individuals as well as the span of control that they have.
Yeah. The continuum you pointed out from Telling to Inspiring.
Yes. Jill another take away from the experience of writing the book
that I would share. That's top of mind for me is the importance of
renewal for all of us. Renewal for all of us as coaches, renewal
for all us as leaders renewal for all of us in all of the roles
that we serve in our work and in our life. And so we know more and
more from the neuroscience that's being conducted at our University
and elsewhere about the role of stress and the importance of
renewal. And part of it is that as human beings, stress is
inevitable. It's just that stress, that chronic and stress, that
extreme, which is often associated with increasing levels of
responsibility in organizations and elsewhere is something that we
need to be aware of and be able to not so much manage, but be able
to address.
And so one of the important ways to address the inevitable stresses
in our lives is to be intentional about renewal. And so that starts
with being aware of how we respond to stress and what some of the
sources are. It also requires us then to make it a priority to be
intentional about renewal. Now, the good news is there's lots of
different ways for us to do that. And for any given person, what
might be renewing for one individual, you know, could look
different and often is for another. So we get to customize that, be
authentic to ourselves, which is really important. And also just a
lot of fun. For some people it might be meditation. For others it
might be exercise. For others it's prayer. For others it's walks in
nature and usually it's not just one of these things. It's a
combination. And so we're learning so much more about how different
resources like meditation for instance, really can help us stay
centered and help us with that renewal. There's also renewal for
longer periods of time that we need, such as like taking a vacation
and taking a vacation where we're actually able to disconnect. Not
a vacation where you bring your computer and you're on your
computer the entire time. That's just virtual work that's not
really renewing.
So how much time, I don't know if you've, you've measured this, you
can say we haven't measured it yet or you could tell me what your
greatest guesses, how much renewal time the leaders need. Is that,
are you talking take a week off a day? Is it, can you renew in a
half an hour?
Well, there's different timeframes for renewal right, so in any
given day, if you think of 24 hours, one way to just make sure
we're staying healthy is to look at how many hours we're dedicating
to good quality sleep. There's a lot of studies that are emerging
have been in our continuing to emerge about the importance of
sleep. We are a sleep deprived nation and it starting at younger
and younger ages. I certainly see that with my high schooler and
the kind of stress and the hours that a lot of high schoolers are
keeping and then that continues often through college. We see that
in the students on campus. The issue is that for many individuals
as they move into their thirties forties fifties we are in a sleep
crisis or sleep deficits are very real. So it's not uncommon for
people to get five hours of sleep or less a night. Yet we need a
minimum of seven hours of sleep to function minimum.
And so in any given day, starting there and really working on
getting better quality, sleep is a good place to begin. Meditation
throughout the day is important. So being able to take 10 or 15
even 20 minutes throughout the day where you can pause and use
meditation and Meditative techniques to be able to center yourself.
So it's really about managing the mind on a daily, weekly basis.
However, longer periods of time are needed for true deeper renewal.
There's no science we're aware of currently that says, you know, it
should be 8.5 days or anything like that, but here's what we know.
Taking a weekend allows you to break set from the hecticness. So if
you take a weekend away, maybe you can, you know, catch up on your
sleep and just relax for a day or so, but you're not really away.
If you take a week, it takes most people a couple of days to wind
down from just the stress of getting out of town.
I'm making sure the dog got to the Kennel, making sure that they
mail is stopped, to making sure that the bills were paid, making
sure that you know the water tank is turned off in the house or
whatever the list is for each person. By the time you actually get
to a point where you're really just connecting, that's assuming you
don't bring your computer or you're not on your phone. Answering
emails is often two or three days in. If you only have a week, you
have a couple of days before, then the same thing's happening on
the other end and you're starting to crank things back up. You've
got to figure out how to make sure your travel plans are in good
shape and you're going to be packing up to leave and head home and
so you really want to only get a limited amount of renewal.
Ideally, a lot of our friends around the world who are able to take
two, three, four weeks off and often have that as part of the norms
in their organizations or countries have figured this out a long
time ago, that really two weeks or more allows us to truly renew.
And yet for a lot of people, I know that sounds like that's
unrealistic or out of reach, but that's one of my dreams. To be
able to affect that for people or to give them permission to be
able to take it.
Yeah, I need to, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so important. Yeah.
Yeah. The timing is right. It's so crucial on so many levels and
it's just so reinvigorating if you're able to do it. I know for a
lot of your listeners having something practical that they can do
to even get started around this is helpful. So I wanted to offer an
exercise. That's a great way to begin. It's in our book as well. We
call it mind, body, spirit, heart as shorthand. I can walk you
through it briefly here. If you just draw four circles, and in
those four circles, have them be connecting and write the words,
mind, body, Spirit, and heart. In each one of those four circles,
and ask yourself, what are you doing currently that supports the
health of your mind, body, your spirit, and your heart? And then
take those four circles, draw them again and ask yourself the
question, what would you ideally like to be doing that would
support your renewal in each one of those areas? So you're
examining what you're doing now and then you're dreaming and
imagining in a perfect world, you know, what would you love to do?
And that exercise help you to take some personal inventory and also
be able to then consider where might you begin to incorporate more
intentional renewal into your life.
I love that. That's a great exercise, a great place to just get
started, Mind, Body, Spirit, and Heart. What are you doing today?
And then what you would like to do. Then obviously next step would
be what do you want to put in action that you want to do but aren't
doing today?
Absolutely. In fact, there is another story is a powerful one that
is in our book and it's one of my favorite ones and it's the story
of a gentleman named Bob Schaffer and Bob went through that
exercise that I just shared with you and your listeners in a
leadership development program. And for him it was just a moment
where he thought to himself, I'm not the kind of person that I
really want to be in terms of my physical health. And he had
formerly been really active in college, played college football,
and his wife, who he met in college, was also quite athletic. Due
to work and the pressures of raising kids and traveling for work
and just life, he had not been very committed to a regular program
of physical exercise for a lot of years and found himself, as he
talks about, it a hundred pounds overweight. And through this
exercise, he made a commitment in that moment that he really needed
to change and wanted to change.
It's really the wanting, Jill. That's the key that he wants to
change. Nobody was telling him he had to lose a hundred pounds
because we know that doesn't work. This is where inspiring versus
telling comes into play. Right. So it was important for him and he
talks about his dream, which is be able to walk his three daughters
down the aisle so it'd be healthy enough and to be around for that.
He also talked about another element of his dream, which is to run
a race with his wife because she was a runner and he would take the
girls to see their mom run, but he was always on the sidelines with
his kids. And so part of what he wanted to do is to run a race with
his wife. And so he walked out of that leadership development
program and this exercise and called one of his buddies who had
been seeing a personal trainer for years and said, I need the name
of your trainer.
And he called the trainer that day, told them the story that I'm
telling you, and the guy said, I'll work with you, but I only have
like 5:30 AM that's left as a possible slot and he said, I'll take
it. So the next morning he began a journey of meeting with this
personal trainer five days a week at 5:30 in the morning. And I
fast forward the story over several months. He began to just
transform his life physically and as a result, many other things
began to be transformed for him personally. He ended up losing 96
of the 100 pounds. His trainers said I think you're, based on body
mass, I think this is your equivalent of a hundred pounds. And he
had galvanized this energy in the organization and his department
and everywhere, because his transformation was so visible, he was
in a senior leadership role.
And so he became a role model for others and gave them permission
to go out for a walk at lunch or to work out, even if it meant they
didn't get there until 8:30 in the morning versus being in their
seats at eight, even though that company official hours were 8:30
but in some organizations, it's important to be there and to be
seen even earlier. So he gave them permission to go workout and
take care of themselves just by his own actions. And then he just
talks about many other things that happened for him, including
being able to run the race with his wife that he had dreamed about.
And to this day he heads up as a chairman for one of the local race
organizations because it's near and dear to his heart. So, you
know, on so many levels, this exercise for him created the initial
spark and inspiration. And so we know it's powerful as it was for
Bob.
I love that story. So that's a real simple thing while, just
because it sounds, just because it's simple doesn't mean it's easy
to implement, but something that anyone listening right now could
really take the time, draw those circles, mind, body, spirit and
heart, and really do the work of thinking about where they are
today and where they really want and need to be, and then take
action for that towards that. I love it. Yeah.
And then bringing it back to one of our topics, if you're able to
do that with a coach, whether that's somebody you're working with
through a workshop, professional coach, or a leadership coach,
that's even better because again, somebody else will be there as a
partner to help you think things through maybe a little more deeply
or maybe a little more differently. But for those of us who maybe
don't have a coach or aren't working with one currently, seeking a
peer coach is equally as helpful and important. So maybe that's
there's somebody who you share a desire to be more effective or to
develop your capabilities at work. And so maybe it's something you
do together and you could help one another in that way. Or maybe
you do this with somebody in your family, maybe it's a spouse or
significant other, or maybe even it's a child or maybe it's
somebody in your extended family.
So that's how we can adopt coaching and use coaching relationships
and to be coaches for others outside of even just formal executive
coaching roles. So I think the opportunities are endless and this
is just one way that we can help each other be even more centered.
And, and I'd like to think of it as even kind of returning us to
ourselves a bit so that we can be grounded and authentic and be
able to be the best version of ourselves. So part of the gift in
coaching is whether we're peer coaches or we're working with
executive coaches, or we are coaches ourselves in a professional
sense, is that we have the opportunity through the conversations
that we hold in the experiences we have together to help one
another return to the best of who we are. And from that place is
where we can lead authentically. We can be in relationships that
are meaningful and where compassion for one another becomes what
really holds us together.
I love it. Well thank you so much and I can't wait to read the
book, Helping People Change, Coaching with Compassion for
Lifelong Learning and Growth, and I look forward to having
you back as well to share a little bit more of some of the details
and your experiences as you build your coaching lab and continue to
work with executives and focusing on improving performance and
engagement. Is there else you'd like to close with today?
Well at first I want to, thank you so much Jill for the honor of
being invited to be on your podcast series, so I've thoroughly
enjoyed it, but also just really fun since I've known you for so
many years in some of our previous roles. So I just am inspired by
you and what you're doing here today. So thank you so much. Yes, I
I'd like to close with something that for me, I tried to keep front
and center as a coach, but also just as I walked through my day
interacting with a lot of different people, and it's something that
I learned from a short article that was in the Houston Business
Journal years ago. It was back in 2007 and the reporter had shared
a story. It was written about Andrew Carnegie, although some people
mention it, it's about perhaps another Carnegie, but the essence of
the story is that he was interviewed because he had 43 millionaires
working for him at the time, and he was asked how is it that the
people that worked for him were paid so much money?
And he said, the way that people are developed is the same
way that gold is mined. You go into the mine looking for
gold. You don't go into the mine looking for dirt yet you
need to move a lot of dirt to find the gold. And the takeaway from
me is that there's gold in every single one of us.
So there's gold in our kids. There's gold in our direct reports.
There's gold in our managers. There's gold in our coaches, and our
role is really to help one another, discover the gold and discover
the gifts within, and to kind of polish them up for the world to
see. So that's something that I'll like to just close with
something that I just, like I said, I tried to remember on a daily
basis, but it's inspiring for me. I've got a ways to go to be able
to put it into effect. But yeah, it centers me anyway.
I love that. I love that story. We have to go through a lot of dirt
to get to that gold. Just remind yourselves of that. Yes. The
journey will be worth it. Yes, no doubt. That's right. There's
riches at the end, right? Yes, there is. There is. Do the work. Do
the work. All right. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your
time and look forward to having you back. I'd love that. Thanks so
much, Jill, all the best. Thank you.
Well, thank you everyone for listening into today's podcast, brain
hacks for leadership and I hope that you were able to take a few
nuggets away, some things that you can put in place right away. I
love the exercise that Ellen shared with us. So there's a very
simple thing that you could put in place right away. Draw your four
circles. In those four circles, you write the words, Mind, Body,
Spirit, and Heart. And in each one of those circles, ask yourself,
what are you doing currently that supports the health of your mind,
your body, your spirit, and your heart? Then take those four
circles, draw them again, and ask yourself, what would you really
like to be doing that would support your renewal in each of those
areas? Examine where the gap is and start putting an action in
place that's going to make a difference for you.
And most importantly, everyone around you. And she also talked
about the importance of coaching as part of a leadership
development strategy. It magnifies the impact on overall
performance and engagement inside an organization. So if you're
looking at getting started with improving your leadership or the
leadership of your team or your organization, feel free to
reach out to me@ Jillwindel@talentspecialists.net. I love
coaching executives and leaders at all levels inside the
organization. And I know as Ellen said, that everyone has gold
inside. Sometimes we have to dig through that dirt to get to the
gold, but everyone has value. Everyone has potential, and a coach
can exponentially help you reach your potential. Thank you. And I
hope you have a wonderful day.