Tess Cox - Coaching: The 5 C's of Leadership & Life-Long Learning

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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. Coach tip of the day on exitcoachradio.com. And now here's your host, the exit coach Bill Black. Welcome everyone. Thanks so much for joining us today. You know, we're a big proponent here at Exit Coach Radio about getting coaching, getting help so that you can improve your life situation, your business situation, and just have in general someone looking over things for you so you can get some feedback and clarify things. And our next guest is Tess Cox from Tess Cox and Associates in Valencia, California, and she's going to share with us the five C's of leadership and lifelong learning and really help us get clear about what coaching is and what it can do for you. So Tess, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining us. Thank you, Bill. It's great to be with you. Thank you. It's great to have you on the show. Tess, tell us a little bit about you and your background and how you got into coaching. Thank you. Well, I began building the blueprint of my leadership as a personal mentor, professional counselor, teacher, speaker, and global executive, leadership coach, and consultant. I know it's a mouthful there, but I began to realize that the five Cs of leadership are really most important to our character, our competency, how consistent we are, creative and confident in the way that we lead ourselves. So over the years, I've expanded my ability to lead in Influence others as I've discovered my own strength as a coach, developed effective processes and strategies for consulting, and helped my clients experience ultimately the outcomes that they desire when working with and influencing others. It's an exciting journey. I live an amazing journey with my clients as they learn how to build their communication effectively and working with and through others, communicating through change, handling issues of conflict. All of that is key. And no matter what area of business, whether they're in nonprofit organizations, as directors, lobbyists in DC, Sacramento, doctors, nurses, business leaders, sales leaders, artists, advertising, leaders in um hospitality. And actually leaders who are farmers providing food on a global scale and leaders in education, everyone needs to learn and increase their communication skill sets and working with others and making decisions and solving very complex issues as you, as you can imagine. So the desire to utilize. Talents and competencies in building leadership and influence within their business and organizations and teams is what truly matters. So everybody has a leadership role at some point, and they can all do better than that. But why is having a personal and professional philosophy important in leadership? That's a great question because there's a, there's a common mistake that people tend to make when they think of the word leader, and most of my clients are learners. That's the ideal client, and the common mistake is that they view a leadership role. As someone being in charge or in a position of authority, they don't look at it within the context of their leadership strengths, their own personal leadership story, the personality that they have, the way they handle conflict, uh, the way that they include others, influence others, connect with others, and create goals for themselves and others. So the personal philosophy is, is very, very important. Uh, my personal philosophy is everything that I do, uh, needs to benefit my family. I've got a, I have a growing family, and that's the most important thing to me. So all of my decisions get funneled through that grid of what is going to benefit my family. It helps me scale my time, it helps me manage my finances, it helps me to dream for the future for them. It's a, it's a powerful component when you're living with a leadership philosophy. That's part of the blueprint. And I guess a lot of people we're getting pulled so many ways these days with so many different messages on a daily basis that I would imagine it helps people to come back to center, to to have something to go back to something that they've thought through. How often should they reexamine their philosophies or is it, is it a lifetime thing? It's an everyday thing. In fact, I was coaching a client yesterday and she, she felt really frustrated. And we went back through and I said, let's go back to your philosophy. What is your philosophy for living your life? And she Looked at it and reviewed it and she said, oh my gosh, I'm not in alignment with my philosophy what's most important. She got caught up into things that appeared to be senses of urgency when in reality they were not things that she really needed to be involved in because they took her off her path of the personal philosophy. Certainly things come up and we need to be flexible and adaptable. But in every day, if we're in alignment of focus with our philosophy, that's the foundation in which we build and it's incremental like marginal gains, and it increases over time to where you're really fulfilling your life goals and dreams when you are focused on that philosophy. I think Pete Carroll, the coach of the Seahawks, is a great example of that. He had a personal philosophy. And he's taught his team very well to stay focused on a philosophy of winning and winning in life. Yeah, and I guess for many people they may be thinking, well, how do I, you know, obviously this is why people like yourself, like coaches exist to help people go through what the right categories or subcategories might be in developing that philosophy, because a lot of people might say, well, I'll spit out a paragraph and that's my philosophy, but that might not be the correct way, the correct format, if you will. Of course it could be different for everyone, but getting in touch with what's important to yourself is so important. And you know, from a leadership standpoint, you mentioned that and excuse me, from coaching standpoint, you mentioned that there are 5 Cs of leadership and lifelong learning. What are the 5 C's? The five Cs are character. Our character matters. competency. we all lead with a competency, a skill set of how we do things. The characters who we are. Consistency matters. how consistent we are every day, and the follow through that we're able to execute. Creativity matters mainly in the arena of how we build relationships where every day we're creating new relationships. Today, this is a new. A creative relationship that we're building ourselves, Bill, and then confidence when we have confidence that we are a person of character, we're leading with our best intent, we're using our skill sets at our highest level, we're consistent, we're creative, we have confidence to continue to forge ahead even with the most complex scenarios, and we all know that every day there can be levels of complexity that require us to make decisions. This is why philosophy is so important and bringing that piece in. It's also important to really know who we are, build that self-awareness in order so we can self-manage our own behaviors, our thoughts, our paradigms, the way we respond to people and uh focus on the outcomes that we want. Now Tess, when I go to a doctor, the first question they usually ask me is where does it hurt? when if I were to come to you and you were my coach, what are some of the questions, the initial questions that you might ask someone to understand where they are and where they would like to go? That's, that's a great question, Bill. Um, in fact, I've worked with doctors and, and they're always so fascinating to work with because they always focus on the patient and it's, it's difficult for them to focus on themselves often. Uh, the first place that we always start is, what are your leadership ranks. You certainly have strength. Uh, you wouldn't be doing what you're doing today with, uh, as an interviewer, uh, without using strengths that you have. Um, I start. I love personal story. I believe our personal story tells us the depth of who we are. Each one of us has a personal story, a legacy of those who have gone before us. There are always secrets there that that can be brought out if you even had one client say, oh my goodness, I have a legacy of teachers in my story and I didn't even realize it. And she was wondering why she was so drawn to teaching. It was there. It was present. Um, personality matters, who we are, as I know Myers Briggs can be overused at times, but it's so true that how we gain energy. Um, whether we're extrovert, introvert, how we process information, whether we're sensory or intuitive, how we make decisions, whether it's thinking logically or feeling what's best for the whole, or whether how we like our world ordered, whether we like systems and schedules and plans and procedures, or whether we like it more casual or open ended all matter. And so those are the components that continue to be built in along with how we handle conflict and how we Um, ultimately manage ourselves with others, include others, and Uh, so now that process gets built in and we start to analyze it, look at it, we build that self-awareness, and then things come up. They start to show, here's a gap, here's an area that I could work in, and if I shored that gap up, I could have some greater success. Or if I made an adjustment, I could have pa with those that really need better communication from me. I find communication is really key. I had one client who was great at communicating in the boardroom. And yet when he went home, he lacked the ability to plug into his family and young family at that, and we worked on that so that he was bringing his best self, his character, into that family dynamic just as much if not more importantly, as he was in the boardroom. So I, I misspoke earlier. When I go into the doctor's office, the first thing they do is someone takes my history, right? The first thing they ask is about your history. And so it sounds like that's where you start is who have you been and who do you want to be and then how important is it for, for your um for your people that you're coaching to, to buy into the why do you want that? Well, typically they, they come to me first of all, they, they've actually heard good things, so that's a positive. Um, often they'll they'll say so and so has had these excellent results of building their business, building their team, communicating and. and I, I want, I want that. And, and so I have the pleasure of and privilege of, of working with people to discover what essentially is, is the problem and the process helps us understand the root of the problem. If I can, let me just share a quick story. I worked with a couple recently who has owns the family business 5 generations long. Can you imagine that being a part of a 5 generation family business? a lot of, a lot of artifacts there, a lot of this is how we've always done things, um, and, and so I began to coach the, the spouse first and um in that in that process he was the he was the heir to the to the to the business. He was frustrated. He said, you know, we've been going through this process. We've been analyzing some strategies and things, and he said, I still come back feeling like I'm stuck. And the reason why he was stuck is his personality profile, very casual, not very systematic. Um, wanting to be the dreamer, the envisioner of the company, not wanting to be in details, and guess what? His day in and day out was dealing with the details. That was not going to be a win-win for him. And so he in the course of the conversation we said you need an operations manager, and he was excited. He said, You're absolutely right. Let's work on this immediately. And then the next morning I'm talking with his wife, coaching with her, and she said, Tess, I'm just always picking up a responsibilities. I'm always managing. things that get dropped and and I know we need an operations manager and I wanted to, I want to do that. That's in my wheelhouse. I'm detail oriented and I said you're absolutely right. That sounds like a win-win. So we got together the following day and we approached it from this standpoint bill, which I think you'll appreciate. It wasn't a matter of you're not doing this, you're not doing that, the why. It was the approach of personality isn't fitting the roles and responsibilities that you have. So if we make that adjustment and make that shift and give those roles and responsibilities to your wife, which is in her wheelhouse of all the details. And keeping everything organized and in order that can be such a win-win and the meeting went beautifully. Everyone was in agreement. They are excited. There's new energy and you and I both know that when there's energy in a business, in a room, everyone thrives and longs to be part of that energy, and that's what's happening. There's a whole new energy within. This business they have switched their roles and responsibilities. They are both happier. The business is thriving and their family and marriage is thriving as well. So the idea of business and personal life being separate, I don't believe in. Our personal and professional life are really congruent, and they need to be congruent because when both are in alignment. We do our best work. Yeah, it's fascinating. It's a great story, great. It really illustrates how sometimes small changes can have big results. And Tessa, I have one last question for you, and you talked about influential influential behaviors and why is building self-management of influential behaviors so important in leadership? That's a, that's a great question. Self-management, it means that we are intentional in everything that we do. And, and I'll answer it this way, the, the self-management of, of knowing who you are and how you perform and how you view yourself. These three areas are built and worked together, much like the components of, of a sound structure, any kind of sound structure, and what we're able to self manage and lead our life well. And beginning with that character and the pillars of confidence, consistency, and creativity where all things are working together to build that confidence and a confident person is going to self-manage their life well. They know that how they think and how they use their intellect matters. They know that how they process information. And use their personality matters in relationships. They know that in developing their skills and using their expertise also matters. How they order their world and develop their personal habits matters, and then how they're engaged with others. It's an emotional intelligent understanding of how to lead yourself, and it truly does matter. I'll use Aristotle's quote. It's wonderful to end. Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution. It represents a wise choice of many alternatives. Choice, not chance, determines your destiny, and I'll, I'll add on to that that choice. Not chance determines your leadership destiny, a personal professional leadership blueprint, a philosophy, and it's essential in being who you are, who you want to be, and how you ultimately manage your life. It, it's what creates the meaning. That's fantastic, very powerful, very insightful, and a very interesting interview with you today, Tess. We're out of time, but tell our listeners you you offer, you're offering 5 free 1 hour coaching sessions and a copy of your book that's in its final editing stages, uh, when it comes out. How do our listeners get in touch with you? You can get in touch with me through TESS.OX at me.com. Tess.co@me.com. And your website is Tessco and associates.com as well? Correct, yes. OK, so listeners, you've heard some very insightful, clear information about the benefits of coaching, getting, getting a good understanding of who you are, where you're going, and how that can help empower you, so. Please get in touch with Tess. Take advantage of her offer to to talk with you for an hour, to coach you for an hour. Learn from her wisdom. Tess, great interview. I really appreciate you coming onto the show and I know we could probably easily fill up another show with some thoughts and ideas. So will you join us again sometime? Absolutely, Bill. This has been delightful. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back after this, so please stay with us. Just thinking about what will happen to your business if you're gone keep you awake at night? Will you get the price you need from your business to carry you through retirement? The BEI Network of Exit Planning Professions is the world's leading advisor network with the power to help business owners transition out of business on their own timeline and terms. Ask your most trusted advisor to create a BEI plan for you, or visit us at exitplanning.com. That's exitplanning.com. You're listening to Exit Coachradio.com, the information station for age 50 plus business owners, where we're interviewing 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. Hey friend, I know how it feels, waking up exhausted after multiple trips to the bathroom and feeling embarrassed by sudden leaks. I used to be constantly on edge, searching for a restroom whenever I was out. Then I discovered better woman. I was skeptical at first, but two months in. Everything changed. I experienced improved bladder control. No more heart-stopping moments when I laugh or sneeze, less urge to go, deeper and more restful sleep. I finally felt like myself again, confident and in control. Better Woman is natural, effective, and trusted by women for over 25 years. Ready to take back your control? Head over to Bebetternow.com to order your supply today. That's Bebetternow.com. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Users directed individual results may vary.