The Science of High Performance with Carla Fowler
Watch/Listen here or on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your podcasts“I believe as the leadership team goes, so goes the rest of the company. So if you don't have that consistent and significant sustainable growth, you've got some work to do.” — Mike Goldman
“The thing about science that I love is it's a whole profession built around the idea of showing up at work every day, not knowing the answer.”
–Dr. Carla Fowler
MD PhD and elite executive coach with over a decade of experience.
Founder of THAXA, a boutique coaching firm specializing in performance science.
Works with CEOs, entrepreneurs, and senior leaders to improve performance through a blend of research and best practices.
Defining Performance Science
Performance Science: Multidisciplinary field studying human performance across mental and physical realms.
Applied in various sectors including athletics, the military, and business.
Combines elements of physiology, psychology (mindsets, confidence, motivation), strategy, and productivity.
Key Practices of High Performers
Brutal Focus:
High performers are selective, focusing on what truly drives impact.
Effective, not just efficient—focus on doing the right things, not just doing things right.
Strategy is about deciding what not to do.
The 90-90-90 Rule:
90% of people don’t start.
90% quit too soon.
90% don’t iterate their approach once started.
High performers avoid these traps by starting with a good idea and iterating over time.
Experimentation Mindset:
Approach tasks like a scientist, testing ideas rather than seeking immediate perfection.
This mindset reduces performance pressure and fosters learning.
Visibility of Performance:
Success often involves making results visible to others.
Visibility matters for performance recognition, especially in ambiguous fields.
High performers promote their results in ways that benefit the team, not just themselves.
Leadership Insights
Leadership teams should prioritize clarity—everyone should know how the team wins and how individuals contribute to it.
Thinking Time: Essential for focus and strategy. High-performing leaders block time for deep thinking to clarify goals and strategize on how to achieve them.
Thinking should occur both individually and in collaboration with teams.
Role of Executive Coaching
Coaching is one-on-one, tailored to individual leaders pursuing ambitious goals.
Helps leaders focus on key performance areas, develop strategies, and execute effectively.
The coaching process involves a mix of strategy, execution, and mindset work, based on performance science principles.
Practical Advice for High Performers
Morning Routine: Spend time each morning identifying the most important outcomes for the day.
Celebrate Wins Together: When sharing wins with leadership teams, focus on the broader team’s success, not individual accomplishments.
Conclusion and Resources
Dr. Fowler encourages prioritizing focus, experimentation, and visibility for sustained performance.
For more information, visit her website at THAXA.com or follow her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-fowler/
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Mike Goldman: Dr. Carla Fowler is an MD PhD and elite executive coach for the last decade. She's been a secret weapon for scores of CEOs, entrepreneurs, and other senior leaders who are unique approach combines the latest research.
From performance science with timeless best practices to help top performers level up and achieve their goals. She founded THAXA, a boutique coaching firm where the fields of strategy, productivity, and psychology intersect. Since it's inception in 2013, THAXA's scientific approach to individualized coaching has attracted a devoted client base of dozens of executives at firms ranging from.
Fortune 500 technology companies to venture back startups, to innovative nonprofits, Carla, welcome.
Carla Fowler md phd: Hey, Mike. Great to see you. Yeah. So that
Mike Goldman: where does that come from? That it's an interesting name.
Carla Fowler md phd: Yeah so Thaxa means a task in Latin and I picked it because as I was starting my coaching firm, I was thinking a lot about performance science. And one of the first principles of performance that I can ever remember understanding clearly in my life was fifth grade. And it was that really difficult things can be broken into simpler pieces and that almost all big challenging goals. That is how one can approach it.
And so to me part of the role of a coach is that you help people break down. Whether it's like behavior change or things they're trying to build skill and you help them break it down Right? Because when we're trying to think about the whole picture all at once Of course it can be overwhelming. If you're picking challenging enough goals, it will almost certainly be.
So that's why I picked THAXA as the name of my firm.
Mike Goldman: Love it. Love it. So, first question I always ask after all, this is the better leadership team show. So the first question I always ask is about leadership teams from all of your experience with leaders. What do you believe is. The one most important characteristic of a great leadership team.
Carla Fowler md phd: I like that you asked this question and I actually, it was fun to look back at some of your episodes and see like, Oh yeah, what do other people think about this? Because we all have these different experiences. And as I thought about it more and more, it's sort of two, two parts. The first thing is that, I think it's really important when a leadership team can be very clear and articulate how the team wins.
Right. and so you could think about that as like having real clarity that is shared with the team and also people like who, roll up under that team, like where everyone knows what are our objectives, like, what are we trying to accomplish if we're all playing a game together, how do we score and, and also how am I contributing to that?
And so that piece about really team clarity and providing that clarity, because. again, often the leader is the person who needs to do that, or that leadership team needs to be in alignment on that, but, the other piece that I said, okay, well, but where does that come from? Because this is something I think about a lot.
And, I think the characteristic is it's often leadership teams that take time to think. That are not just always, in meetings executing as leaders, but they are, really working to say, I need time to independently get mental clarity so that when I'm showing up with the leadership team, with the teams that roll up under that, that I'm really clear.
That's what I think.
Mike Goldman: I love that. And I think that when I think of taking time to think, some of that happens outside of meetings. And I think in the best meetings that also happens in meetings and interestingly enough, I was just with, and I just wrote a social media post on this is I was with a team and I want to try to. Not share too much and kind of protect the innocent and protect the guilty. But I was with a team who has a CEO that tends to the dictatorial side and can get frustrated by too much debate and too much brainstorming and likes to, this is the answer, let's just go do it. and I met with the leadership team recently. without the CEO. And it was amazing how the leadership team was freed to think and perform at a whole different level because they were now free to think together with each other. So I think some of that thinking happens before the meeting, but some of it happens within the meeting. So,
Carla Fowler md phd: I,
Mike Goldman: I love that.
Carla Fowler md phd: Mike, I'm so glad you brought up that point. Cause it actually, Very few things are only one thing, right? Like where, oh, you just have to do this one thing and then everything will come together. And what I love is you've brought up the synergy between like having that thinking time outside of a meeting that really primes our brain, but that there's also thinking that can only be done together that, because.
Again, very few things in a company are a single player game. You need buy in, you need, to have some peer relationships. You need to get input from other people who see things from a different angle. But if we're all prepared when we show up for that meeting and we kind of have clarity about what we think, we are so much, better prepared then to work together in good ways and then do that collective thinking.
So I think you brought up such a great point there. Love it.
Mike Goldman: Thank you. so where I want to transition into Carla like what you do and your thoughts on performance science is, and interestingly enough, this is the through message of my new book that my new book that just went to the publisher for the, you know, the first draft. So depending
Carla Fowler md phd: Congrats.
Mike Goldman: you might be listening to this, maybe the new book's out, maybe it's not out yet, the whole driving message is that the number one driver of.
Profit growth is people growthand what I want to focus on with you is that idea of people growth and what we need to do as individuals to grow as people for ourselves, for the team, for the company and, in your introduction, you know, I talked about, the idea of performance science define that for us.
what is performance science?
Carla Fowler md phd: Yeah, great question. So I think about performance science as the multidisciplinary field of study of what helps human beings perform at a high level, and its origins are much more in the physical realm. So we obviously thought about performance a lot in terms of athletics or, you know, that physical performance, but it grew into, sort of places where we saw some crossover.
Right. So the military or the operating room where it was like, well, okay, there's both a mental element of these, arenas, but there's also still kind of a craft or a physical component. And then of course, like, business and our commercial world was like, Well, we are interested in performing at a high level.
So how does this, you know, come into our arena as well, but I think there are lots of different places that these ideas come from, about what helps us perform at high level comes from like the study of even just our physiology. Like the biology of it all, but there is also, the contributions from our business schools or like the study of strategy.
How should we think about strategy or, how can we think about psychology, all the work on mindsets or confidence or motivation, right. Whether that's for an individual or for a team. And, then there's also the whole productivity movement. Right. How do we be really effective or efficient at executing on things?
And how does that relate to how our brains work? so lots of different contributors. And so it is a noisy field. And that is of course, always a downside, lots of ideas, but of course, one of the roles then, of coaching using that as a basis has been to say, well, we have to distill from this. What do people most need to know?
I mean, if blueberries are a superfood, well, that's great, but that's probably not the thing that's going to be most important to help me, you know, ace this presentation I have to give later.so, you know, that's just a silly example, but I think we can get overwhelmed with information and I do love science, but I also have always been someone who likes applied and very practical science.
So how do you take stuff out of academia? And like, give it to people in a way that they're like, Oh, okay. I see how I can use this and I see my performance improve.
Mike Goldman: So,
Carla Fowler md phd: So that's what I think about the field.
Mike Goldman: so love where you went and as a way to simplify it, what do high performers do differently? everybody else. So let's, and the answer probably comes from, point, not just eating blueberries, but probably doing some other things as well. but how do we bring it all together to something somebody could implement?
what's different about high performers?
Carla Fowler md phd: Yeah. this is a great way to approach things. And so we can both look at it from like, what do people do? And then what is often the mistake we can run into, that we want to avoid. So, one of the first things that high performing people do is that they have a sense, well, actually a sense, but also.
They practice, being focused, like in fact, being like brutally focused because, one of the biggest constraints that we all have is we have a certain amount of time, but this also comes into, we have a certain amount of resources often within the business world. and we really have to think about how do we get the most impact out of ourselves, out of our time and out of our resources and out of our teams.
So like team attention. Is a limited resource, for example. So one of the first things is that I think high performing people start from the assumption of, I am not going to do it all like that is, we can just accept that as fact. So now, as I start to think about my performance, I'm not approaching it from the standpoint of how do I try to do everything, which often by the way, roots people down the productivity, like wormhole.
And. I love productivity, but what, if you've ever seen this, like the person who is so busy running around looking for that, like extra one minute saved, but isn't necessarily like getting all the impact they could. Like there's too much energy sent into trying to do more things versus, from a high performance standpoint, asking the question, how do I improve my performance by being selective?
Mike Goldman: I love that. and the two words that I've used is to try to drive this point home, because I love this point is being efficient versus effective. And I've always said efficient is doing things right. What are all the things you do and do it the right way and be most efficient. Effective is doing the right things. it sounds like the idea of Brutal Focus is more focused on that, doing the right things versus how do we just get more effective with the thousand things we're doing.
Carla Fowler md phd: yes, I agree a hundred percent. And actually this is kind of what's at the root of strategy. In some ways, what strategy is asking at a basic level is to say, What are the most important things that we are going to do to achieve the goal or the objective we have? what is most important? What are the right things, out of all the things we could do?
And thus it also says, okay, and then what are all the things we're not going to do? Because there's going to be a lot of those. And, so that's one of the first things. And of course, When we are running around trying to do it all or where our teams are trying to do it all, we risk burnout. we also risk working really hard and not seeing results that feel commiserate with our effort, you know, because we really diluted everything we're doing.
So again, there are lots of great reasons to be focused. And I think One of the best tools, like if we were going to look at that, it's great to say, okay, I need to be focused, but Carla, what do I do?
And, this goes back to where we started, which is, I think one of the tools of focus is actually creating time for yourself to think and ask yourself the questions about what are we trying to accomplish either?
What am I, as an individual trying to accomplish, or what's this, my team need to accomplish? And then, also then asking the question, what is actually most important or what are the most potent drivers for us of this thing and spend some time with those questions. They tend to not have easy answers. Um, but that's okay because, part of the benefit of thinking is both trying to work towards an answer in the moment, but as we said, it's also priming your brain so that in for, future conversations or even like.
Mike Goldman: A week later in the shower, you know, you have an idea where you're like, Oh, wait, I am now connecting these two dots. And, I think we're overly invested here and we need to actually start investing over here, for example. So. interesting because, you know, I work with teams all the time to help them prioritize what's most important for the company,
Carla Fowler md phd: awesome.
Mike Goldman: where we're focusing now, which is so important or where I want to focus is that individual. Right. So yes, they're an individual, maybe the CEO, maybe the VP of sales, whatever your title is, but yes, the company has a vision.
The company has maybe three big priorities for the year for the quarter. But the question with that think time is, you know, what's most important for me? Which part of that is about the company and part of it may be about your own. may be about your family or it may be about your own mental sanity.
Carla Fowler md phd: Or how you do your best work again, people get their best performance. There's some individual variety to that right? or Variability. And so having that time to process company goals, but also say, yeah, what's my part of that? where do I stand to most impact that thing? what could I contribute?
What's going to set me up to do that? you know, what do I need? Maybe what resources or support do I need? there are all sorts of questions then that you can kind of mind map off of that to then understand what might be most important. And sometimes we don't know the answer, but it sets us up to say, well, who else could I talk with?
To talk through some of the uncertainties, maybe that I'm dealing with, or the ambiguities to help me answer that question. But, we often don't go have that conversation if we haven't had some time to kind of prepare and almost identify and set up some of the questions. So, thinking time doesn't have to be all about answers, some of it is priming our brain.
Some of it is preparing us to see where we need to go do some learning or, get some other viewpoints, but it just has such a valuable role that is what I see as the most important tool of focus is like that time to not be doing and to not be in a meeting, but to actually say. How do I think right now?
Mike Goldman: Yeah. And how often, and I'm sure there's no one right answer to this, but what's been your experience with, you know, is this, am I thinking, is it about every morning, what's most important today and what are the drivers? Is it every month? Is it every quarter? Is it every year? Or is it all of those things?
How often should we be setting aside that thing time to answer that question?
Carla Fowler md phd: this, it depends a little bit on what people's situation, is, but I find that there can be some different roles for different kinds of thinking time. So, for example, I think it's great to actually proactively Block some time on your calendar, like send a recurring calendar invite to yourself for like, at a minimum, an hour a week, that is your time to like, pause, and really, Think deeply about whatever might be most important.
That's sort of happening.again, this is, I'm giving a very general answer, but most people have no thinking time right now. And so if you can get them to go zero to one, do that. And then you can start to say, All right. What are the benefits of this? What am I getting? And if I could use more in what form would that be?
Now you brought up a daily thing and one of the daily practices that I find is very useful that a lot of executives feel a sense of relief when they have it is it's like either putting your day to bed or waking your day up in the morning. And that is, that can be like 20 minutes. 30 minutes doesn't even have to be more than that, but it's a way to say, how is the day shaping up?
What are my priorities for the day? What do I intentionally want to get done knowing that you're never going to get your old to do list done? The nature of work is work keeps generating itself when you're successful. So, but it's really. Looking at, okay, what came into the inbox? How do I want to handle the almost always shifting set of priorities and schedule to deal with stuff that comes up in the moment, but it's a way where people don't feel like they immediately start reacting the moment they show up at work.
And again, the reason I talk a lot about thinking time as the answer to your question about what makes a great leadership team is because I think those teams, Do you have to react to what's happening, but we don't want to set ourselves up to always have to be in reacting mode. And that's where having even 15 minutes at the beginning of the day that you've blocked and you're like, I'm not yet in a meeting, I'm not yet doing work, but I kind of get my head on straight.
I see what's coming. That is a way of saying I start my day, not in a reactive mode. I will almost certainly need to react at some point, but we can practice spending more time out of that. And I think that just really, is a great thing for teams.
Mike Goldman: I love it. And what, one of the things I do, and you're talking about 20 or 30 minutes in the morning, I think I take about four and what I do, and I learned this from a, one of my coaches way, way back, probably 15 years ago, you had this grandiose term, he called it executive creation and decision making time.
Carla Fowler md phd: Okay. Love it.
Mike Goldman: think time is another way to say it. And what I do every morning. Is I will come up with what are the two, three or four most important outcomes
Carla Fowler md phd: Yeah.
Mike Goldman: to achieve that day, not to do's.
Carla Fowler md phd: Yep.
Mike Goldman: I'm gonna have that meeting. It's I'm gonna close the deal,
Carla Fowler md phd: Yes.
Mike Goldman: not I've got a coaching call with a client But I'm gonna help them solve that, you know this problem, whatever it is But so that's an interesting way to say so I love I've been doing that every morning for about the past 15 years so it's great so so back to where we were talking about what high performers do differently and the first Practice is brew is brutal focus.
Carla Fowler md phd: Yes.
Mike Goldman: the next one?
Carla Fowler md phd: So, The next one is this.
This is sort of related to a mistake that is very common. I have made it many times, and that is that often when we're trying to do something or we're up against a challenge, we can be like searching around for some new idea. We are looking for a solution, and we think we don't have it yet because we're like, Well, this just seems really hard.
And we keep searching for the hack or the silver bullet versus getting started with a good or decent idea that we already have.we confuse knowing something with doing something, right? We're like, I just need to know the right thing. And when I know the right thing, then, you know, everything will just happen.
And so I think high performing people are very good at getting started with a decent idea. And so And then building momentum with that. And yes, there is some figuring out that happens along the way, but, they don't wait to know it all before they're going to do anything at all. And, and again, not cause they have more sophisticated ideas.
um, so my best example of a tool around this is I call it my 90, 90, 90 rule or tool, and, it's just as an example. To help people get going on things and, really not get stuck in that. Oh, I just need to like, there must be an easier way to do this. And I just don't know it yet. So I'm going to wait to get started.
so what the 90, 90, 90 rule is about is that, when we're trying to learn something new or solve a challenge, often like 90 percent of people don't get started. Like, this is where we get stuck. Most people get stuck before we start. the second 90 is that when we get started, what often happens, for 90 percent of the people who do that, is we quit too soon.
So, we do like, make some efforts towards things, we try some different things, sorta doesn't get fully off the ground, and then we're like, okay. We fall off.the third 90 refers to like, okay, you got started, you know, you kept going on it, but the third mistake we can make is that then 99 percent of the people who are still going never change up what they're doing, so they don't iterate or try something new.
And I like this rule because to me, it says, Hey, you know, There are only three ways we can fail, but there are a number of different paths by which we can actually succeed. And so what we have to do is try to not fall into one of those 90 percent along the way and just recognize where and when that might be happening.
So, in terms of getting started on something, often if we, even if we have, I like your four minutes in the morning, four minutes is enough to like sit with like some kind of post it pad and just say, what could it look like to get started? And just say, all right, is there something I need to learn?
Okay, great. Like what could the zero to one look like? Could I, you know, even, listen to a podcast on this thing? Could I go talk to an expert? Someone I know who's really good at this thing. How about I go talk to them? Right. what if I, if it's something that has participation involved, what if I just went and did it once?
Didn't worry about how it went, just like, went and had the experience. But there are lots of ways we can get started, and often it's, we need to think of a couple of ideas, we need to pick one, and then we need to put it on our calendar.
Mike Goldman: I love that. And I'm thinking, and I want to ask you a question about this because I have a client and he will know who he is if he's listening to this. but,and I've dealt with a number of folks like this, where to get started, he wants to make sure he's got all the answers, like the opposite of what you're talking about.
He wants to make sure
Carla Fowler md phd: He wants to skip to the third 90.
Mike Goldman: and his,
Carla Fowler md phd: what I call this.
Mike Goldman: and his, you know, his standard thing is I have a question, I have another question. I have another question. And I've actually, there are times I've said to him, okay. and he hates me when I do this, but there are times I've said, okay. You have 10 seconds to make a decision, 10, 9, you may,
Carla Fowler md phd: Okay.
Mike Goldman: because my point is, you know, there's very often there's no right decision, there's only a decision, and then we execute on it, and we zig and we zag, but how do you, other than helping people understand the 90 90 90 rule, is there another, technique or another tool to help people who very often let perfect be the enemy of good.
Carla Fowler md phd: Oh,
Mike Goldman: question, Mike.
do you get them off their butt to actually get moving when they're so hesitant to do that?
Carla Fowler md phd: Well, this is where I draw on my science background, but everyone can use this tool. You do not have to be a scientist, to use it. And, that is, I teach people how to run good experiments. So we take it out of the performance realm, because I think often when people are asking all those questions, it's because they feel like they need to show up and like, On rep one or day one, they have to be perfect.
They have to be performing at a performance level. But of course, you know, I mean, whether it's the arts or whatever, that like people rehearse that many times before they're actually performing. And a lot of those rehearsals went sideways. So, the thing about science that I love is it's a whole profession built around the idea of showing up at work every day, not knowing the answer.
And like, the reason you have a job is because there are things you still don't know the answer to. You might have gotten the answer to the thing yesterday, but now your job is like, Oh, well, now I need to figure out the next thing. And also as a scientist, you run lots of experiments where the results were not like I cured cancer.
I mean, I'll be honest, I always had that dream when I walked into the lab every day in my past life, but, you know, most days are not curing cancer. And so I like the framework of saying, how could we run an experiment about this? Because it, it takes it out of right and wrong. Did I get the right answer?
Did I get the wrong answer? And it says, what answers can I get? And what can I learn from those answers? Because, one of the best pieces of advice that I got from my PhD mentor, while I was doing that, that piece of training was I would sometimes come in and say, Oh, I'm going to run this experiment.
He would say, well, why are you going to run that experiment? And it wasn't a rhetorical question. It was, he wanted to understand like, what is it I could learn from the experiment, whether it went one way or the other way, right? Like, what were you going to measure? Like, what were the kinds of things that would be relevant to know?
And I just like it because it, engages, it takes us out of the piece of our brain that is binary and that is very performative and puts it into more of an analytical, exploratory, creative piece of our brain. And I think that just helps. So,
Mike Goldman: that.
Carla Fowler md phd: is a big experiment, right?
yes,
Mike Goldman: you may, Oh, you screwed up that decision. Now you're done. No,now you get to run a different experiment. I love that way
Carla Fowler md phd: You could just show up again. Yes,
Mike Goldman: We've got,we've got this idea of.
dealing with the uncertainty and moving forward anyway, what's the next thing that high performers do differently?
Carla Fowler md phd: this is a good one. Okay. Um, there, we talked about sort ofthe feeling of needing to perform. Well, one of the interesting things about performance is that performance is performative. And what I mean by that is, high performers both are thinking about what are their results, but they're also thinking about what is the visibility of their results.
Because it turns out that, for things that are not as easy to measure fully objectively. So for example, In the Olympics. Well, it's less clear sometimes than we think. But regardless, it's usually pretty clear who won the race. I understand that there are any number of contested, results that have happened.
But at any rate, it's usually pretty clear. You time everyone. And you watch the race and it's like, okay, well that person won, but most of life and most of business and particularly like teams and operating in teams, we are producing results, but it is not always super objective in how we measure those results.
And, there's a great book. the author's last name is Barabasi, but, it's called the formula. And I love this book. It's, he is a social scientist who studied success and separated out like. What do our results have to do with success, but are there things beyond just the objective results? And he found that in these arenas, where it was more ambiguous how you'd measure things, that the social network's perception of your results was a very important component of success.
That it wasn't enough to just be producing great results. And so, I think I often hear from people that they're like, well, I like, and these are humble, wonderful people who are like, well, my results should just speak for themselves. Like, I'm not super braggy, I'm not overly self promotional, and I just want to do great work and people will see my great work and, I both love like that, like this is how people feel, but I also know that actually there is a lot of noise in the workplace and, we need to make our results visible because that is actually part of how we help others get the most value out of us, get the most value out of our teams and what they're producing.
And so, I think this is an interesting area because. Sales or promotion is often an area, unless you are a salesperson and you love that for most people, they don't like sales. In fact, for every person who's had a bad sales experience where someone tried to like push you to buy something that you didn't want, like we feel it can feel a little dirty.
It can feel like, like, I don't want to, I don't want to sell my results, but I think sales and the willingness to make visible what we can offer and the impact we can have is actually one of the most. underlearned and underutilized and undervalued skill sets because we are always in the business of sales, selling an idea, selling some impact that we can offer.
you know, it's not just about selling a product or a service. So yeah. This is an interesting piece about performance that I think we can often miss is I've almost decided to call it the fourth 90 in my 90, 90, 90 rule, which is once you're really up to speed and improving what you're doing, then you need to think about like, who else cares about this?
Who might be a stakeholder who could be impacted? How do I let those people know all the great things I'm doing and how I could help, right? How could I help with their concerns? Like, how could I?
Mike Goldman: what would be an example of that?
If, you know, let's go back to the leadership team and I am the, you know, VP of marketing on the leadership team, and I. Perform well that, you know, the last, you know, email marketing campaign we did brought in 10 new marketing qualified leads and my goal was five.
So man blew it away. And three of those folks became clients, you know, big win from this new marketing campaign. How, what does it mean to literally, what does it mean to make that visible? How do I do that? And how do I do that without it? Just. Looking or feeling like I'm tooting my own horn.
Carla Fowler md phd: Great question. And of course, there, there is an art to this, but some of the questions you could ask yourself before even going into the meeting where you're going to say this, if I'm the marketing director, some things I could ask myself are, okay, what are the implications of this for the team? Right.
And it sounds like this is good news. So generally good implications. But one of the ways you can look at it is to, think about, okay, so we're bringing in more qualified leads. Like what does that mean for the capacity of the sales department? Right. Who's going to like, start to convert these leads. or what does that mean in terms of like, Where else we could be looking or thinking about, the marketing campaign and who might have an opinion on that.
So I think there are a lot of ways where we can talk about the good news and sharing good news is not like, I do not believe that's overly, promotional. I think we can also think about who contributed. So that's always an important thing to bring up as well. Like the more that when you're in a leadership team, the understanding that we all depend on each other and that, if marketing is winning, but sales is not winning in terms of like turning the great inbound into conversions, like, Then that's not a good.
That's not a good scenario. So part of it is to recognize like, Hey, how is this a win for everyone? you know, if you're obviously your team participated, so it's always worth recognizing your team at the leadership level. That is an important piece because again, it's not like I did all this. It's like, no, actually my team executed really well and I'm proud of them.
yeah. But then you can also think about like who else from the team contributed like, you know, sales like took those leads and converted them. Like, good job. So you can recognize others. but the other thing you can then start to ask questions. So asking questions about like, Hey, what Knowing this, what opportunities might this represent for all of us?
Right? or does this represent any challenges for all of us and really starting to engage people in it? to say, this isn't like, Oh, this is my moment and my prize. It's Hey, When we have wins, we celebrate together, but we also think about what can we do with this together? What can we, what do we need to mitigate together?
So those are some ways that just take it out of just the, tooting my own horn context and really put it into a, let's win together as a team. But also it makes it visible. it's great for other people to know that Hey, your marketing team is doing awesome.
Mike Goldman: Yeah. And what I like about what you said is it goes beyond just the individual. Look what I did.
Carla Fowler md phd: Exactly.
Mike Goldman: it's getting the team involved. It's one of the implications. and I was right before this interview, I was talking to one of my clients about, you know, the idea, you know, there, there've been some tough things going on. They haven't been winning a lot lately as a company, but in those situations, it's really important to find the small wins because winning breeds more winning and losing could breed a losing feeling. You feel like losers and it's always going to be that way. And morale goes down and it starts to become self fulfilling. So I like what you said, because it's important to find those wins, not to toot your own horn, but to make sure. The team owns it as well. And that winning is going to breed more winning. And ultimately you create a winning culture that everybody benefits from. So I love that.
I want to talk a little bit about executive coaching. So, so
Carla Fowler md phd: Sure.
beyond
Mike Goldman: the idea of performance management and what some of those best practices are, you know, coaching is one of those things, you know, these days, almost everybody's a coach, right. and,but there are. Life coaches and there are executive coaches and there are sales coaches and I coach leadership teams, which is different. Help me understand what is your flavor of executive coaching? What does that actually look like?
Carla Fowler md phd: Yeah. Great question. and you are correct. I mean, it is a noisy field. I would agree. So my flavor of executive coaching is that I work with individual leaders who are setting ambitious goals for themselves and for their teams. And, I work with them to both help them use performance science, but also, to really, Focus and have some time to think and a thought partner as they are working through like getting to those goals.
And so I do this in a one on one setting. And again, there are roles for coaches in like teams as well. But in, in my sense, I do this one on one with leaders and a piece of that is because I just know, number one, it can be lonely at the top. And number two, it also, can be hard to find and protect that time to really do some of that thinking.
So just bringing it back to what we started this conversation with, that, sometimes it is great to have a thought partner and someone to dialogue with. And, In terms of like how I do the coaching, I, took the noisy field of performance science and asked myself the question, what are the most important principles that we might want to be incorporating, like baking into a coaching process so that it just helps people use them all along the way.
As they're going towards their goals. And so just as an example, we talked about brutal focus to start in our conversation, but one of the ways I start my coaching process is with a longer form session. So it is, multiple hours. and. We use that time to actually get set up and ask those brutal focus questions.
So from a broad high level standpoint, what are the goals, right? What can we help them get some clarity? And they don't have to know the answers to these questions. Part of the coaching is to help them explore and say, okay, here are what, My goals are here. My team goals. and really get some clarity on like where are you aiming?
And then we also ask the question like what is most important? Can we actually connect the dots? Find some of those root drivers that are really the most potent ways you make impact towards those goals. And I love starting this way. I guess we also ask the third question, which we didn't talk about, which is what's extraneous?
Like what is actually distracting you or that is like really noisy, but actually doesn't matter that much, but we have to find a way to like deal with it or get it off the plate in order to move on to more important things. So that's the third question of brutal focus. But, we start.
Broadly using that time to set ourselves up for success because while, I often think about performance science as having like a strategy bucket, an execution bucket, and like a psychology or a mindset bucket. What I know is if we can identify what some of those most important or right things are from the start, we set everything else up to go much more smoothly.
And we do learn along the way. You know, sometimes something we thought was important, it turns out is less important than we thought, but because we sort of called our shot at the beginning, it helps us then really test that push on that and learn as we go along. so, that is how I start. And that's one of the unique things that not, that's not how many coaches will start, but I do start by really.
almost doing a mini strategic retreat for people at the beginning so that I really understand their landscape as well as, they have that clarity that then again, helps them set their teams up for success, helps them set their own kind of coaching process up for success. and then as we go along, Generally, our goal is to help them build momentum in those priority areas.
And sometimes that requires some skill development and I try to act as a resource. So for good ideas for how to do things, new approaches, I'm constantly reading across the self development and business literature. So that can span from. how to think about a sales pipeline to, you know, how do I build more confidence when I'm speaking publicly, you know, so lots of different things that people might need.
And I try to act as a resource, but I also act as a dialogue and a thought partner, because sometimes there's not a best practice, but there might be a right answer. Or, a good decision process for the client. So I also act to, ask questions, help them get clarity. And then I think the third role I often play is almost like a co creator, which is like, sometimes we need a safe place to, and an intellectual peer to bounce ideas off of and sort of say, have both of us say, well, what if you tried it this way, or what if you messaged it like this, what would that look like?
What's the story you could tell about this element? And, so sometimes it is nice to have someone else throwing ideas out there, as part of a co creation process that then of course, they, as the client can sort of alter, you know, with what resonates, and sort of say, oh yeah, I like that version. No, I don't like that version.
Okay. let's aim that way. But, so. As a coach, part of my role shifts depending on what the situation, needs, but I always approach things to say, most challenges and problems have multiple angles of attack. So sometimes we need to approach it strategically and understand what's most important.
Sometimes, we actually need to approach it from a, how do we just get you going and executing? Sometimes we need to approach it from the mindset standpoint to say what kind of perspectives or a different way of just thinking about this or feeling about this might really benefit you and overcome the challenge that is that you perceive right now.
So. one of the things I love about performance science is it gives you those different angles to say there's not only one way to solve something that feels like a problem or feels like a challenge. And so I love just being able to like, again, whatever people bring in, we can look at it from a number of different angles and pick the one that feels most appropiate.
Mike Goldman: Well, I am a, I am not an executive coach, but I am a giant fan of executive coaching. I've had coaches for God, it's probably almost 20 years now. And I've had the same coach for about, man, it's probably the last 12 or 13 years who I'm in love with. He's done. He's so amazing for me. And, you know, part of what my coach does for me is sometimes when I don't have the confidence, I could do something.
He lends me his confidence in me and boosts me up to
Carla Fowler md phd: Yes.
Mike Goldman: And that's such an important piece.
you know, Carla, if, and this will all be in the show notes, but if people want to find out. More about you and THAXA them more about coaching, where should they go to find that out?
Carla Fowler md phd: there are a couple of great places. My website is probably the first resource, and that is at thaxa.com T H A X A. And then, for people who are interested in performance science and want to follow along, I'm often having conversations or producing content about it. LinkedIn is a great resource.
And I'm at Carla - Fowler. So again, if you have questions about coaching, the website has a great FAQ and you can message me through the site, but also, LinkedIn is a great place to follow along.
Mike Goldman: Excellent. Well, I always say, if you want a great company, you need a great leadership team. Carla, thanks for helping us get there today.
Carla Fowler md phd: Thanks so much, Mike.