Randy Noe - Leading Well (G0117)

Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care. Welcome to the Exit Coach Radio show, the show for baby boomer business owners who are looking for cutting edge information as they plan their 3 to 10 year business succession and exit. Every week we interview top professional advisors for their best tips, strategies, and precautions so you can be well planned. And don't miss our one minute exit coach tip of the day on Exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit. Coach Bill Black. Welcome back friends. This segment of the show is brought to you by Holland Company CPAs and features Randy, um, Randy No coaching in Encinitas, California, and Randy's going to talk about leading well, the concept of leading well. So we're going to continue on leadership issues. He's a coach and uh looking forward to it. Randy, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Our pleasure. Um thanks for joining us, Randy, before we get into the content of leading well. Uh, we always like to get to know our guests a little bit. So if you could just share a few minutes about your background and what led you into this line of work. Sure, uh, yeah, thanks for having me again, Bill. Uh, my background is in finance and business leadership. Uh, prior to becoming an executive leadership coach, I worked for 20 years in leadership roles. I led a Southern California financial evaluation practice for a global accounting tax firm, mergers and acquisitions for a public software company. Uh, treasury operations for a $500 million apparel firm and managed a number of billion dollar size transactions. So that prepared me for the work I do now and, and I connect well with leaders because I understand the pressures that they face. I've been there, I speak their language and know the drivers that are creating and sustaining their business value. You've been all through the C-suite, uh, in the, in every facet of it and Ah, what led you to decide to become an executive coach or leadership coach? Well, in the, in the season of transition, I did discover this path, looking for a way to put things together, all the relationships, all the experiences, and, and once I did discover it and started to take steps towards it. I really found that sense of calling. It's really been a very fulfilling experience all the way through ever since. And we were just talking about this with our previous guest is that you, you've reached the stage where you've all got this collective wisdom and now what do you do to use that to help others? Ah, and turn it into an a career of your own is at, uh, I guess they call it encore career if you're, if you're getting towards the later stages of working, your working life, but I think it's a, it's a wonderful gift to be able to take that knowledge and then help others. So what are some of the, the biggest issues you see in leadership today and what are, what are some of the problems? Well, I think, uh, particularly as a coach, the temptation coming out of this wisdom is to try to move into a telling mode and telling people how to do what they do. One of the most appealing parts of coaching is working with highly motivated leaders who really want to elevate their game to be all in. And when I mean all in, it's, it's everything, not leaving your emotions at the door, it's putting all of it on the line, and there's a lot going on in the research in these days in leadership. Uh, I do work with executives, leadership teams, and the high potentials trying to help solve their problems and make confident decisions. They're, their answers, not my answers. I have a lot of best best practices and perspectives from working with thousands of leaders, and I can give them some insights around solving problems, keeping calm under pressure, uh, building high value relationships, navigating change, managing complexity, that kind of thing. Um, and I think what helps in that connection is that battle tested part. So I can empathize with where they're coming from, you know, I've I've seen companies succeed, you know, wildly succeed, I've seen companies fail and violently implode and everything in the, in the middle, um, and I can, I've had to summon the courage to stand and make tough decisions in those, in those moments, so. It, it just helps when they're facing their own problems and issues to, to have someone come to decide that can really identify with it and help them through it. So I'm kind of picturing you, you're a, you're a master carpenter with a big tool kit and all the tools and all the solutions, but before you start work, you need to understand what are we building, where are we right now and where do we have to build from here, and that's Uh, the, the discipline to sit back and say, let's really dive into what what your issues are. And the key to that is finding someone who wants to be coached. absolutely couldn't have said it better. I work with highly motivated leaders that want to improve. I don't, I'm not in the fix it game or or saving game or changing game. Sometimes I catch leaders. But I'm really in the in the place of helping people that want to to improve. They know the context of where they are, they're ready to make a move and then the, the part about chemistry and connection is what's in there too. So, now, do you have any uh leading questions to ask leaders to find out if they're in that mode and, and if they, if so, what are they? Well, I think the, the place to start is who are they and what makes them unique. Um, so I really start with an understanding of where they are, the kinds of things that they value. I ask a simple question, what do they love to do? A lot of analytical people actually struggle with that because they'll answer, I I like something and I don't take notes. I want to know what they love to do and and get that starting point. And then, and then I want to understand where they are now, what they see as their challenges, what their strengths and values are, and then we can broaden and build from there. So it starts with the passion and the values and right, and, and then you can build on something, but if you don't like you said, if you just say you like something. Well, that's not, that's quicksand. We're, we'll be a quicksand. That's right. And, and often they may have passion, but they may not be expressing it very well. They may not have clarity about that because they are so tied up in a whole bunch of struggles and complexities, and they may have even forgotten some of those things. And so it's the ability to kind of look through. And see from within what they're what they're sharing about their values and their beliefs and the things that are important, put a mirror up, listen to them carefully, and then offer up some tools and some questions and some resources to help them get clearer and express clearer their passion. It is one of those. Key tools you bring to the table, teaching people how to delegate better so they're not so mired down in all the minutia so they can focus on those passions. Do you find that comes comes up often? It comes up often, um, for the people that have been living a lot of their lives in the analytical, in the detailed world, thinking bigger picture, being more strategic, often that's high degree of difficulty stuff because they may think they know what that means, and at the same time, they've got a Actually be curious enough to go talk with people that think differently and speak differently and, and, and find out it might be bigger and broader than they realize. So now what is your philosophy or style of leadership? What, what, if you, if I ask you that question, what would you say? Well, I, it's the opposite of what I experienced well too often in my career. It's, it's the opposite of command and control. If I have a mission myself, it's around helping people see about how to empower others. Starting with who they are, affirming what's already there and broadening and building from that, um, a couple other things I believe that building higher value relationships is a tremendously successful business strategy, but that starts with being curious, not having to know the answers, not having to figure someone out, but asking the curious questions. And the last thing on, on this piece on leadership, um, Bill is I believe that little things can make a very big difference. I don't have to look for the big sweeping transformational change. Often little tweaks here and there on something that's already working well can result in very big change. So it's like fine tuning the engine, not having to rip the whole thing out. Great answer. I mean, that's, that, that's very interesting and, and I guess one of the questions I would have is, um, should people work on their strengths or their weaknesses? Well, the philosophy here on the positivity research is they should be nurturing, clarifying their strengths, and then building and broadening from that. We spent a lot of time trying to fix the problem and work on the weaknesses. Sometimes our strengths, when overused, can become weaknesses, and an appreciation of that's important. But I do believe starting with the good, like the plant, the rose, cultivating and feeding that part and then pruning away and pulling the weeds and taking away everything else. Great analogy. I'm gonna have to listen to that like twice because there's a lot there. There's a lot of wisdom there and uh I appreciate you, you, uh, sharing that with us. Now, um, what are some of the insights or lessons that you've learned that have shaped you as an executive leadership coach? Yeah, great question, and I appreciate it. It's these learnings sometimes come from the challenging times. Um, one of them clearly has been learning how to have the liberation and the power of letting go. So navigating change has been hard for me, and you hold on to the things that are romantic or you think that that were there and that holding and clinging just doesn't work and I have discovered. That every time I have let go, I have found something better, taking steps forward and exploring and finding new paths and new this new vistas and new breakthroughs and discoveries. And related to that is, is giving up the need for certainty. I don't know what I don't know and, and learning to accept that that's just OK, that's plenty OK. Because if I map myself to a tunnel vision, a narrow focus, living life through a straw kind of thing, I may miss a lot of new ideas, a lot of new people, even miracles that come by me and, and I don't want to do that. So letting go that need for having to know what the future looks like. So a curiosity, um, a natural curiosity, and it used to be that business owners were told, keep your blinders on. And now it's, it's almost more important to keep your peripheral vision open for those new opportunities that may be coming along because of technology and new markets and all those types of things. Do you find that a lot of people are still mired in the keep your blinders on, uh, mindset? This is a great example. Uh, being all in is taking the blinders off, learning what your blind spots are. And focus itself has a lot of dimension to it. It's not just narrow, tight focus, which looking at a number or a spreadsheet, that's important, but so is pulling back and looking with a more open, bigger picture perspective, zooming in, zooming out, looking around and, and learning about that and giving up. Um, a limiting belief perhaps around blinders or even the awareness that I even have blind spots and, and I want to know what they are so I can do something about it. Yeah, it's an amazing time. Uh, there's a lot of, uh, opportunities surrounding all of us and again emerging technologies and markets. Uh, I'm talking with Randy No of Randy No Coaching. We're gonna take a short break and then when we come back, I'm gonna ask Randy to share some stories, tips and ideas and precautions that you can use. So please stay with us, we'll be right back. You're listening to ExitCoachradio.com, the show for age 50 plus business owners. We're interviewing over 250 professional advisors for their tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new 20 minute interviews and 1 minute highlights every day at exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. As a business leader, you're instrumental in setting the example and tone and the culture in which you work and live. You influence, empower, and inspire others around you to act. You're creating a legacy and your actions and behaviors speak louder than what you say, but who do you talk to when you want to talk about values, relation. and career alignment and leadership strategy. For many years, business owners and leaders have been calling Randy No executive leadership coach. Call Randy at 760-650-6586. That's 760-650-6586. Welcome back friends. Just a reminder that we've interviewed dozens of advisors on a wide variety of topics, and you'll find all of their interviews and highlights online at exitoachradio.com or on iTunes at iTunes.exacoachradio.com. And I'm talking with Randy No of Randyn coaching, and he's sharing just some tremendous tips and. And, ah, ideas for us about leadership and how you can take the blinders off and look for the peripheral opportunities that will help you to lead into the future. And it's so important these days. Randy, you mentioned that a little earlier that it's important to explore and and do and be what you love. What do you love? Well, I absolutely love the work that I do. Um, it's the payoff is, is not a point in time, it's ongoing. I love working alongside highly motivated people, learning what makes them unique and successful, uh, helping them get very clear about what they love to do, uh, the feedback that I'm affirming and seeing things in them that they haven't seen in 20 years of doing the work that they do, and then wit witnessing their own human resilience in that spirit of stepping up and rising to face their challenges and being with them through it as they step out of their comfort zones. And then realizing new insights, new solutions, and then seeing them, of course, enjoy their job, having more fulfillment both in their careers, their families, and everywhere else. That's great. So your passion that you found is really to help people that may have Uh, been successful, but they're, they're just not quite there and, and peeling away some of the layers of, of problems and, and things that they maybe surrounded themselves with sometimes over periods of 20 years or more, and, and then being able to watch the, the rose bloom again, as you say. So that's right, that's fantastic. Now, uh, one of the things that we'd like to share with our listeners are client stories. So do you have a particular story you'd like to share of someone that you've worked with, um, that maybe what was the situation before you came along and, and how, how did your work help them? Yeah, I, I, uh, I do have lots of good client relationship stories. Uh, one significant one is, is, uh, an executive leadership team and 25 of their leaders for a consulting firm, really getting everybody aligned on the same page, strategically and tactically executing what they want to do. The one on one coaching not only went tactically with the firm and how to execute, but also personally, how to manage the complexity and overwhelm and chaos and navigate their new roles or develop high potential leaders and not do whatever's been doing before if they've been getting any kind of feedback that they could grow in that area. Um, and then facilitating group sessions and, and ultimately what happened by getting this alignment and having a safe place for them to grow the way they want to grow in their own way, ah, the firm realized that incredible growth outpaced its historical results. Uh, one was elected to the firm's board of directors. Many stepped up in new leadership roles, and, ah, new partners were promoted within the organization. So by coming into a situation that was somewhat chaotic, just kind of the way it was, and uh, again, through your process of questioning, deciding, you know, what's what works here, and then you create an alignment and then that translated into breaking, breaking sales records and, and people's careers. That that's very rewarding. Well, indeed, they, they just didn't have that resource, that uh trusted advisor, consigliere, sounding board, accountability partner too. I don't kick them in the butt, they do well enough on that their own, but I keep showing up. And trying to habituate what's important to them. Well, that's what coaches do, right? This is you, you, ah, you don't swing the club, you, you, you correct the swing, you know, you work on the swing and help, help them see what they can't see and then bring that so that they do better and better. Uh, and of course with your background of, of the valuation firms and the M&A and working treasury all through the C-suite, uh, you have the bend there, done that. abilities to really take a storied look at it, experienced look at it, not just someone who's never been there and done that. Do you, do you have another story for us? Yeah, another example would be a company where they've got high potential leaders. It's an emerging rapidly growing privately equity private equity backed software firm. Uh, they wanted to expand their leadership capacity for their emerging leaders who are hungering to have greater responsibility and advancement. What they needed to do, and it's not, it is often the case, shifting from tactical execution to being more strategic in their focus, and then also growing their own emotional intelligence and awareness for influence and empathy skills for developing their teams. In this case, the, the coaching resulted in leaders being assigned new roles, new responsibilities, promotion. One moved up as a VP and general manager of the European operations. The company's tracking to an IPO now and doing quite, quite well and wonderful people. Great story. So, you know, coaching is one of those things that you don't really appreciate it until you have somebody coming in who knows what they're doing, and a good coach will really help you go from good to great. Uh, take what you're doing and, and take it to the next level. Now, Randy, uh, what tips or ideas or precautions would you give our listeners when they're thinking about looking into coaching? Well, the most common, uh, initial one I run into is how to manage complexity, overwhelming chaos. I hear people tell me often, I'm trying to do 50 things today, and if I ask them, and I, I, I do ask them how long it would take to do all 50, it would take about a month if you, if you tracked it out. So they're wondering why they're in a sense of overwhelming chaos. Um, you know, the research shows that we can actually focus on a task about 11 minutes before we are disrupted by an external or internal distraction, someone knocking on the door or maybe our own self talk. And then the research says that it takes about 25 minutes to return to that original task if I return to it at all. So when you think about that, how long does it take to do a 1 hour task? The awareness of that is really about big picture and taking some focused time up front to center, and I've worked with global leaders running multi-billion dollar complex organizations that will spend 5, 10 minutes before they start anything deciding what the 3 or 4 most important things are. I would highly recommend one of those intentions to be behavioral, because if I think about and decide that I want to enjoy the day. Then that emotional awareness is the catalyst that tips off the dominoes of all the other EQ competencies. So that would be the first one. That's a great one. Do you have, you have more beyond that? That's fantastic, right there. That's a fantastic tip. Give us, give us one more and then, then, uh, we'll talk about your book. OK, uh, the other one is that I would suggest is a very basic one too, and it's catch people doing right. We easily see problems. We've done it all through our careers. Problems to be fixed or solved. I've worked with people that are off the charts on problem solving. They can consolidate plants under budget on time like nobody's business, but they leave a lot of dead bodies in their wake. So we treat people like umpires. We boo when they screw up and then we do nothing if they don't let them go home. Look for excellence, reflect on what that excellence means to you, look them in the eye and tell them. The research is compelling and it's not that surprising when you think about it. Actively practicing gratitude leads directly to joy. And celebrating more builds resilience. And when I say celebrate more, it's not the one-off special event occasion. We're talking about frequent ongoing daily recognition of what's working well and catching people doing right in the moment. Excellent. Randy, you have a book out. It's called Leading Well, The Essence of Wholehearted Inspirational Leaders, correct? Yes, and it's available on Amazon. We will have it also available on our website at exit coachradio.com, and people can find it on your website. And what is that? My, my website is www.randiknow.com. R R N D Y N O E.com. And how else can people get in touch with you? Well, that's the most effective way. Uh, they can go right there and and have a contact form and I can reach right back and and connect with them. And are there resources there besides the book? Are there things that they'll find as well? They'll find an awful lot of resources around the coaching process, the all kinds of tools and and ideas that, uh, at least get them started and hopefully open up their curiosity. Ladies and gentlemen, Randy No is a coach who knows what he's talking about. Go to his website, check it out, and, and look for his book Leading Well The Essence of Wholehearted inspirational Leaders and such a fascinating interview. I wish we had more time. I'll have to have you back some time to talk more deeply about some of these topics. Randy, thanks very much for joining us. Appreciate it, Bill. Thank you. I've been talking with Randy No of Randy No Coaching, and we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing over 250 top advisors for their best tips, ideas, and precautions so you can be well planned. We upload new one minute tips every day. Exitcoachradio.com. Come listen for a minute. Thank you for listening to Exit Coach Radio. Time is precious and so are our pets, so time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow ups for up to 5 pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.