Working with a Coach with Keith Cupp
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"A coach is someone who's gonna help lead someone to a new level of leadership or growth, primarily through inquiry."
— Keith Cupp
Assessing Team Functionality and Trust
The first year involves working with the coach and CEO to clarify role descriptions and evaluate team capabilities.
Assessing the team's level of functionality or dysfunctionality to identify areas for improvement.
The 5 dysfunctions of a team exercise helps diagnose trust level, conflict resolution, accountability, commitment, and results.
The CEO is encouraged to go last in team exercises to foster open dialogue and prevent influencing others' decisions.
Becoming a student of the team and learning from others' perspectives during the sharing process.
The Relationship between Coach and Client
The importance of credibility and chemistry fit between a coach and CEO.
Research conducted with top coaches in the field reveals similarities between great CEOs and great coaches.
The value of asking the right questions as a coach is based on personal experiences and feedback from CEOs.
Coaches as confidantes, creating a safe and trusting space for CEOs to discuss anything.
Coaches as curators of resources, constantly reading and staying up-to-date to provide valuable content.
The Role of a Coach in Personal and Professional Growth
Coaches help individuals address emotional or personal issues affecting their performance.
Assisting in finding therapists or obtaining help to repair relationships.
Evaluating leadership teams to ensure clarity of roles and adherence to core values.
Ideal team members align with core values and are productive.
The process of building the right team, especially in family businesses, takes time.
Choosing the Right Coach
CEO criteria for engaging with a coach: being ready for positive discomfort, being a learner, willing to be accountable, and investing in coaching.
Selecting coaches based on credibility, expertise, a proven track record, and experience in coaching leaders.
The importance of character traits like integrity, honesty, and empathy in a coach.
Compassionate coaches who genuinely care about the CEO's success and growth.
Coaches committed to the CEO's development, investing time and effort.
Monographs: Condensed Insights for Busy CEOs
Monographs as a solution for time-constrained CEOs.
Written by coaches around the world, covering various topics in a 10,000-word condensed format.
Currently, 6 monographs are available, with new releases twice a year.
Key topics related to agile growth and the 7 attributes of effective leadership.
- Providing evergreen content accessible during short flights.
Shifting the CEO's Focus and Cultivating Positive Culture
Clarifying responsibilities and intentions, promoting joy and purpose in the role.
The ideal ratio of working on the business versus in the business is 80/20.
Cultivating a culture of accountability and ownership.
The importance of a positive culture shift with long-term rewards.
7 steps to achieve level 5 leadership, including clear role descriptions and KPIs.
Making an Informed Decision and Commitment
Factors to consider when choosing a coach: credibility, content, tools, and speaking to current or previous clients.
Measuring return on investment and improvements in operations and leadership.
A one-year commitment with a 90-day check-in to assess progress.
Developing a leadership development roadmap in the first year.
CEO's responsibility in defining role descriptions and KPIs for measurement.
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I am really, really looking forward to this episode. My guest is Keith Cupp. He's the founder, CEO, and head coach for Gravitas Impact, a global mid market coaching community with over 60 coaches worldwide. Keith has had an eclectic background of life experiences, including 35 years as a business person.
Five years as an officer in the U.S.Navy, 40 years of marriage to Jeanette, 20 years of business coaching and leadership, 35 years of parenting. You know, Keith, I don't want to check your math, but that adds up to 135 years and you don't look quite that old. He's traveled to six continents, authored one book, and has had scores of many failures in all aspects of his life, which have been some of his greatest teachers.
Now, I've known Keith for over 10 years. He is the business leader with the biggest heart. I know we've done it all together. We took a trip to Uganda and we could probably do a whole other podcast episode on,
the washed out bridge and on a mini bus. And more than anything I'm proud to consider Keith.
A friend, so Keith, welcome.
Thank you. And we should do that Ugandan podcast. So your listeners can find out a little bit more about Mike Goldman.
So, but glad to be here. And I've enjoyed our over decade relationship together. So thanks for having me today.
I'm really looking forward to it. And today with Keith, we're going to talk about, of course, one of my favorite topics, is coaching and I want to start off Keith and just tell you. You have changed my life. For those of you that don't know, I was a part of the coaching organization that Keith is gonna spend a little time talking about it today.
I was a part of that organization for many years it literally changed my life. And I know you've changed the life, you know, hundreds of other coaches, you know, and their clients. So number one, I want to thank you for that.
Well, you're welcome. And I want to acknowledge Ron Huntington, who really was the founder of our community. We're celebrating 20 years next year, and we've had the privilege of working with over 500 coaches in 20 years. And those are the insights I'm going to bring as we talk about coaching today.
Beautiful Keith. So start it off for those that don't know, tell us a little bit more about gravitas impact and your role in the organization.
Okay. Yeah the community of Gravitas goes back to, as I mentioned, 20 years ago, when Ron Huntington, my mentor, whom you know well, founded the organization of a small group of coaches. It eventually became part of the Gazelles organization, and then in 2018, we founded Gravitas out of that. And as I mentioned, we've worked with over 500 coaches and at Gravitas, we do three things.
Number one, we develop the leadership skills of the CEO. Number two, we help them build an accountable leadership team around them. And number three, we simplify execution through the use of one page tools. And we feel that's how we can help CEOs build a better business.
Beautiful. And talk about the difference. People also talk about, training. Consulting coaching and in different countries. They may use different words. They may use advisor, but especially between consultant trainer coach, especially because I was a consultant for many years in your definition. Keith, what's the difference between a consultant, a trainer and a coach?
Ok and I want to answer this from two perspectives. And so the first one is if we look at a continuum, a coach is someone who's going to help lead someone to a new level of leadership or growth, primarily through inquiry. Asking the right questions at the right time in the right way. Okay pure coach.
And at the other end, a consultant has tremendous amount of experience, education, etcetera, and they're guiding and more telling a CEO on how to solve a problem. And that's the continuum of coach to a consultant. I'm doing a research project, Mike, which you've been a part of interviewing 50 of the top mid market coaches in the world.
And it's shedding light on not only where the greatest coaches in the world fall on that continuum. But there are three or four other roles they play in becoming what we call a great coach or a maestro coach. So that's one look. Now I want to turn it 90 degrees and help define terms a little bit cause there's so many coaches out there today.
The industry is proliferating. It's fragmenting a bit. And so from my perspective, when we think about coaches, I think about leadership development coaches. These are coaches that work with CEOs or executive team members to grow their leadership abilities. And we like to focus on Jim Collins level five model.
And then the second major area of coaching is when a coach works with a leadership team to scale a business using tools and content. They're growing the culture of the team and then helping them build strategy, execution, profit, and so on. And then the third area is what I call cultural coaching, which we also could call training.
And this is where a coach comes in and they change the beliefs, the thinking, and the actions of the entire culture as a group. And so a one on one coach, one of the greatest ones, is like a Marshall Goldsmith. Okay. Very good. Executive CEO coach, and then Gravitas plays in the business leadership team area, and then an organization like the great game of business, or our colleague, Michael Bungy Stanier, they go and they change how cultures think and act believe in order to grow the entire culture.
So that's how I look at coaching on a continuum, but also the different types of coaches in our space.
So tell us again, so for Gravitas, and I want to go back to something you said a few minutes ago, the, how you see the role of the Gravitas impact coach and how that might differ. And you had said in all your interviews and research of some of the best mid market coaching, you said there were a number of roles that they play.
Talk a little bit about those roles.
Okay. Okay. And I'm going to grab my little Pellegrino water bottle here real quick and just use it as an illustration. And so this water bottle is thick at the bottom, but it's got a bottleneck at the top. And so what we find in growing organizations. The bottleneck is at the top. It's a term that our mentor and former colleague Vern Harnish used when he talked to CEOs is if you don't grow the CEO, the organization downstream in the business will not also scale sufficiently.
And so in Gravitas, we focus first on the CEO. We want to get to know the CEO. We want to analyze where they are and then what their road to growth will be in order to get personal professional growth. So the organization can scale and grow. And then that's the second part of what we do. We help them build an accountable leadership team of A players.
Because one thing we find, Mike, most CEOs that we encounter and begin to work with, they don't have the team around them in order to scale. And so what they're doing, they're making excuses for that. And so a great coach is going to call them out on that firmly, but lovingly. And have them and help them make those decisions.
So now we're growing the CEO takes about a year to get the right leadership team fully around them. And then we can go to the business as a Gravitas coach to use simple one page tools to build strategy, to work on profit systems, execution, and so on. And so that's the one, two, three approach we take with a CEO and a leadership team.
At what point in the maturity of a company should a CEO start thinking, and you don't have to restrict this just to gravitas, maybe coaching in general, like at what point should a CEO be thinking hey, hey, maybe I ought to think about hiring a coach. How do they know it's the right time?
Yeah, it's a great question. In fact, I've been giving this some thought because in addition to leading Gravitas and singing the world through 500 coaches through 20 years, I also work directly with CEOs with a couple of clients, and I listen carefully to the stories our coaches talk about the CEOs and so zooming out.
I want to use a Jim Collins analogy. Jim uses the term in his level five leadership of the window in the mirror. And I want to modify that concept a little bit. And before a CEO would want to engage a coach I would want them to have the mindset of the mirror and the window. What does that mean?
First, I would want them to look in the mirror at themselves and ask the question, Am I ready? Are we ready to be coached? Before they even say, okay, what is the criteria for a coach? We need them to look in the mirror and they need to answer a question and then there's three criteria that I like to apply based on my research and listening to coaches.
The question is, Am I ready to be made positively uncomfortable in order to grow? What I mean by that, and I'll tell a little story. When I was an ensign in the United States Navy years ago, I went through the nuclear power program and then served aboard the USS Enterprise. I was a hotshot, 23, 24 year old thought I knew the world.
They humble you through all the training, you go through nuke power school. And you get out to the fleet thinking you can do this. And they stretch the tar out of you to lead men and to do things you'd never imagine as a 23, 24 year old. And then when you get out of the Navy, then you move into the civilian life you come back to a new level of leadership.
It's not where you began, it's not where you're stretched under stress, but you have a new level of leadership that you operate in. And so that's the positive discomfort we want to create with the CEO. So the first thing, looking in the mirror, am I ready to be stretched out of my comfort zone? And then the three questions under that are number one, am I a learner?
Am I ready to read and learn the content the coach points me toward? Because in putting more ideas in our mind, then we have a bigger view from which to choose uh, decisions. Number two, am I willing to be held accountable? And then number three, am I willing to invest real dollars in an engagement with a coach?
And if someone answers yes to all three of those, then I would say, hey, let's turn to how do you choose a coach? And before I share on that, Mike any thoughts or insights you'd like to share?
A question and maybe an insight slash question
Yes.
because I'm with you 1000% in terms learning and accountability and investment. Absolutely. I also think that there are many leaders who would answer all those questions. Yes. I'm ready. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I'm coachable. But they're not really coachable.
Most people think they're a lot more coachable than they are. When you're talking to a potential client, or when you're coaching coaches who are talking to potential clients. Is there a killer question or a killer set of questions that truly does get to the heart as to whether that leader is truly coachable versus they just believe they're coachable.
Yeah, there's two ways I think one can approach that, and I've approached it in the past. One is I like to look for two things in their CV. One is a failure that they're willing to talk authentically and deeply about, because it's in our failure that we learn to change and become coachable. And then the other thing, I like to look for a competitive season in their life.
Perhaps they played collegiate sports, or they were on the debate team or whatever, and looking for that competition, great champions always have great coaches to get to the top. So it's like breadcrumbs to look for, and then failure leads us to, what did you do with that? What did you learn? And then the flip side of that is, and this is hard, is, find their number two in the organization that will have an authentic dialogue with me as the potential coach and get in their world and inside their head offsite.
And then also if the CEO is willing, talk to their spouse. And with that data set of those four data points, you're going to deter, you're going to be able to say, yeah, pretty good probability this person is coachable.
I love that. I love that. And a couple things I'd add is one clue to me, and I say this because as you are listening to this, a leader, if this is you, it may give you a clue. You're not as coachable as you think. But one of the things I see is when I'm talking to a CEO that wants to work with me or wants to work with a coach, but when I talk to them about their challenges and all they're doing is blaming the people around them, it's not about them.
It's not about where they can improve. It's about the people around them. So that's a clue. If you're doing a lot of blaming, you may not be as coachable, you know, as you think and you know, you talked about learning, it's one thing to say you're learning, but I'll often ask a leader.
What's the last book you read and tell me, what you know, what have you done to try to implement that in the organization? And if they say, man, I haven't read a book in five years and there's nothing a book can tell me that I don't already know about my business, you know, that's yet another clue that you may not be as, as coachable. I actually have a whole other episode that is either, I believe it's out there. It'll be out there by the time this comes out, around how, you know, if you're coachable. So being coachable is so important. There's so many ways to figure that out. And I want to move on Keith to the, what kind of alluded to that you wanted to talk about next, which I think is great, which is assuming you are coachable, assuming you're ready for a coach.
How should people think about selecting the right coach for them?
Okay. And before I go there, Mike, I want to make one comment. I think you did a podcast on Locus of Control, and you just touched on that a little bit. That's a very important concept for a CEO to understand, not only for their own growth. But in order to develop those around them. So I'd include your listening audience to reach back and listen to that podcast or your content on that.
Two articles to that are important here. One, Jim Collins, HBR article level five leadership and the triumph of fierce resolve. And then Adam Grant did a very interesting article. It's called humble. I think it's called humble narcissism. Okay. And both articles talk about leaders that have the balance of human humility, but fierce will, and both of those point to moving towards a level five leader who is eminently coachable because.
They see failure as an opportunity to grow. And so those are a couple of resources I'd encourage your readers to dig into now. So let's say as a CEO leader, you said, Hey, I am ready to be coached. I'm ready to be taken out of my comfort zone. I'm ready to invest some money. I'm going to be accountable.
I've come to the conclusion and others to that I'm coachable now, how do you choose a coach? And so the these five items, I call them the five C's of selecting a coach have been forged through the last 20 years of insights and watching great coaches like you, our colleague, Mark Green Les Raminovich, etcetera.
And the first one is chemistry. And chemistry is about core values. Do we share core values? It's hard to create change in a relationship if you don't fundamentally share how you see the world. Okay, so chemistry is the first one. The second one is credibility. As the CEO being coached, you need to look across, be able to look across the table and say that gal or that guy is a credible fill in the blank, business person, coach. Whatever you need to have respect for that person. And so credibility, this can be hours of coaching clients. What industry years of coaching. Who they've been certified for. There are many things to look for in the credibility, but. You have to have that respect and that credibility.
The third area then is content. I encourage CEOs to have a conversation with their coach. Hey, what are some of the tools that you use you've been trained on that have made a difference with others? And so what is their content and tool set? The fourth area is clients. Okay. Talk to their clients. Don't just read the testimonies because great coaches are going to, good coaches are going to have testimonies, but have them put them in touch with.
One or two CEOs that they've coached so they can vet the chemistry and these other items. And then the last area is cash, the last C. Well, what do I mean by that? What is the return on investment for your engagement with the coach? Can they articulate, okay, this is how we're going to improve in order.
Improve the operations, the leadership in order to have it drop to the bottom line. How are you going to measure that? What are you going to do? What's that look like? Have you done that for others? So if you can have a conversation with a prospective coach around those five C's and they can hold their water with confidence and then verification of clients and track record, you've got a pretty good coach in front of you.
Love it. And I especially love the first, I love them all, but the first C of chemistry is so important because a coach can have all those other things. But if you don't click with them, if it's not someone you want to work with, that you feel comfortable working with, that you could be open and honest and vulnerable with, doesn't matter if they've got all of the other five, like crazy.
If that chemistry doesn't work with you or your team, it's not going to work.
Absolutely. And what's interesting about that, Mike, that doesn't happen on a phone call. And so again, I coach our coaches and CEOs that it's a partnership and it's mutual due diligence. It's not a vendor relationship, have a meal together, go for a walk, have a couple of calls. You've got to be almost always nose to nose at some point to really make sure that you vet those five areas.
And it's a win both way. One of our core values here at Gravitas is we win together or we don't play. And what we mean by that is, hey, what is the win for you? I'm looking for that. And what is the win for me in the relationship? And if it's not clear, we both don't agree to it. Let's not take the playing field because there are many other opportunities.
So we win together, we don't play. And very important guiding core value.
Love it. And I think regardless of the coaching model, you know, whether it's, as you said earlier, Keith, you know, leadership coaching or culture coaching or, you know, or any of that, I think those five C's apply, but I know specifically within Gravitas Impact, you know, it's obviously very similar to my model because I learned most of what I know from you and your coaching organizations.
It's more about working with the team, with the leadership team, many of the coaches also work one on one with the CEO and maybe some other members of the team. But when most people think about coaching, they think about one on one and I know this model is a little different. So talk a little bit, Keith, about the power of a coach working with the entire leadership team.
Okay, and I'll filter that through a narrative process of what that journey might look like. And so it starts with as we talked about the mutual due diligence and once the coach and the CEO say, Hey, this is a good partnership, let's do it together. My recommendation is that they commit to work together for a year, but they do 90 day day check in.
Why is that? You can't get results in a few weeks or even a couple of quarters, you need to take a year look, but at 90 days, you will have vetted what you believed about the five C's substantially. And so, we coach our coaches commit to a year mutually, but have that 90 day meeting where you say, Hey, Mike, is it working for you?
Is it working for me? Either one can opt out or they can say, okay, baby, here we go. We've got three more quarters and then we're going to keep going after that. And so in that journey in year one what the coach wants to do number one is help the CEO develop a leadership development roadmap. Okay and I've, again, been doing a fair amount of research and writing on this and we found.
I found in my research, there are seven steps to help a CEO to get to level five leadership, not guaranteed, but there are seven rungs on a ladder they need to deal with in order to move in that direction substantially. And I won't go into a lot of depth here, but I'll give a couple of example. One is, do they know who they are and do they have a clear role description?
A lot of CEOs, Mike, here's a dirty little secret out there in presidents, do not have a current written role description, including the three to five KPIs that measure their success.
And
Hold on, Hold on, Keith, I'm going to argue with you that they all, their role description is to do everybody else's job, isn't it?
Well, there's part of the problem, right? There's part of the problem. And I pulled this up real quick. So our colleague Brad Giles wrote the book, Made to Thrive, and this talks about, he solved that problem. Here are the five things CEOs should be doing. So they're not doing everybody else's job.
And by the way, to Keith's point, Brad was on, check out Brad's episode. I believe it's called the role of the CEO and Keith's absolutely right. Great book. Brad knows his stuff. So listen to that, but sorry, Keith, keep going.
Yeah. And so these seven rungs. So one of them is, do you know who you are in your role and are you aligned? And as Gravitas coaches, we run an advanced insights assessment to look inside the heart and the mind and how the C.E.O.makes decisions and it shows us their blind spots too. And then we look at their position description.
And then if they don't have one that's one of the steps on the journey. Know who you are, your strengths or weaknesses, put them on paper, share them with others and have a clear role description that everybody is aware of with your key accountabilities. So that's on the positive side on not the negative side, but every CEO needs to pause on the journey to level five and say, is there anything?
Is there any blind spot or anything deep within me that needs to be cared for? That has not been cared for. And our colleague Kevin Lawrence speaks about this at times. There are issues of addiction, broken family relationships. There's all kinds of things that will encumber a CEO from being great on their journey to level five.
And what a good coach wants to do is say, Hey, let's take a moment. There may not be anything, but let's lift the curtain to your heart. And is there anything that we need to deal with? And this is something a coach wouldn't do, but they can help them find the right therapist, get help in order to repair a relationship or grieve a relationship that is now gone, like with a parent, so that they can close that and move on.
And so those are just a couple of examples on that seven step ladder of moving towards level five leadership. So, Yeah, so that's that's part of the working with the CEO. Getting back to your question. How do we work with teams? So the conversation we want to have with the CEO once we get them moving on their growth road map for their health and their greatness is then we need to evaluate the leadership team around them and we need to see are their roles clear and then are they A players living the core values and being productive in their role?
Are they B players living the core values but not as productive? They need to be coached, need to be trained, mentored, whatever or are they not living the core values and whether they're productive or not? Someone who's not living the core values is not long for the game.
And so what I found, Mike, it usually takes a full year to make the changes in the leadership team, which is one of the hardest things the CEO will ever do, especially if they're family members, that's a whole nother podcast, but it takes about a year to go through this process and get all the right people in the right seats around them so that in year two, you can move quickly, more quickly. Now this changes by industry. Tech industries move a lot quicker but it's still hard to find the right talent. And then family businesses move much slower okay because of family dynamics. And then you simply build your strategy, build your business plan, work on execution, got the right people around you.
Now the enterprise is really getting to move very nicely. And that's what we do at Gravitas.
And I want to be clear, with working with the team, you know, you're working with the CEO in parallel, you're working with the CEO and the team as well. And what I've seen, and I'm sure you've seen a lot of the same, is very often when it comes to strategy and the big organizational decisions, sometimes they, they, it's the CEO sitting in a room by his or herself and then the tablets coming you know, from the mountain, you know, here's the decision I've made.
Talk a little bit about the power of actually collaborating as a team to do that. And some of the work coaches do not just with the CEO to help the CEO evaluate the team, but the work the coach is doing with the team to make sure the right decisions are made. There's ownership for those decisions. All of that.
Talk about the power of the team in that way.
Yeah, and it's a good insight. So let's look at that first year together. It's going to take a few quarters, maybe a quarter, a couple quarters, coach working with CEO to make sure the role descriptions are clear. And each individual is evaluated relative to their role, their capability and so on using assessments, conversation and so on.
And then the second half of the year is if you need to make change, but you don't put on hold making progress as a team. And when we come into a company. We like to take a look and see how functional or how dysfunctional is the team. And on one end, you may have a highly dysfunctional team.
And at the other end, you may have a highly functional team, which is evidenced by trust. And so one thing we like to do early in a relationship is run Pat Lincione's five dysfunctions of a team exercise, which really diagnosis how their level of trust. Can they have conflict? Will they be held accountable?
Will they commit? Will they get results? And then working with the CEO, you know how quickly you may need to move in making changes. But in that process of working with the team, there's one little technique that we like to use. And I would encourage CEOs listening to this podcast, even if they're not using a coach, always go last.
Because what we found, the coach in the room becomes the independent third party and a great coach will carry their weight when they have the CEO pause and work with the CEO and let everyone else share first because when the CEO is the coach in the room what they say goes and subconsciously people are changing their decision process in deferment to the CEO and a good coach can call foul on that.
And he'll have a dialogue or she'll have a dialogue with the CEO. Very gracious dialogue and say, Hey Mike, we're starting our work together. I would like you to become an incredible student of your team. Are you willing to follow my lead? When we do these exercises, I'm going to make sure everyone shares.
But I'm always going to ask you to go last and in that time when others are sharing, that's when you are the greatest student of your team and you're learning a lot. And we'll talk about what you learned after the session. That dynamic makes an incredible difference on the team.
Love it. Love it. So Keith, we have spent a lot of time over the years talking about and working on what makes a great coach, but I want to ask a different question given the folks that are listening to this podcast, some might be coaches or aspiring coaches, but more are leaders if we assume. So someone has said, okay, I think I need a coach.
They've gone out. They've used your five C's. They've hired a coach. What does it take to be a good client? What have you seen mistakes made, which may make a leader or a company, not a good client or the opposite, what should people think about so they could be the best client and get the best benefits from the coaching relationship?
Yeah, it's a great question. It's one that's not asked very often, but if I'm in the client's shoes, I'll think in terms of one of my personal clients, Patrick Ginn here in the Vancouver, Washington market, just genius young man just has led a great company to new levels, level five leader, without a doubt.
And so what Patrick reminded me of and taught me a little bit about being a great client. Number one is very clear expectations. There were no surprises in our engagement. This is what he expected. This is what I expected. Very clear in writing. Number one, the process we're going to go through don't need to go all the detail, but overview of the process and the outcomes were pointing to.
Okay. That's number one. Number two is ongoing feedback is after each session, whether it's one on one. with Patrick as a CEO or the team, all of our coaches run a one phrase exercise. And what we do is at the end of the session or one on one is I would say, Hey, Patrick, in our last hour together of our deep conversation, take 30 seconds, close your eyes.
And what is the most important thing of value to you, we discussed today. And then we let silence be our friend. And it's in the silence that one thing arises in the CEO's mind or the team member's mind. And then we share that with the CEO going last. And so that is great feedback. And I like to coach our clients to please be brutally honest.
Okay. If we blew it along the way, either I did, or we did, let's just put it out there. Let's deal with it and let's move on. So those are some of the things qualitatively that make great clients. Quantitatively, Hey are they reporting their numbers and are we seeing a difference? That very, very important.
Measurables are very important that they become a culture of measurement and accountability in the process.
Excellent. Excellent. I want to follow on to the measurement piece. So when a leader hires a coach, there is, in most cases, an expectation that we're going to see top and bottom line growth, maybe greater than we've seen before or in some cases, we both work with some companies are maybe running so fast, growing so fast.
They're afraid the tires are going to fly, they look at the numbers and of course they want to see top and bottom line growth in addition to the numbers for the the right coach client relationship. What are the other types of benefits that a client would see from a coaching relationship?
Okay. Let's see. So personally for the CEO, they're going to, they're going to find more joy in what they do because as their role becomes clear and they step into the role and they let everyone else know, this is what I'm going to do and not what I'm going to do. Then you get this harmonic tuning of the role and the desire of the CEO and who the CEO is.
So number one, they're going to have more joy. They're going to have more time spent working on the business than in the business. And when I like, when I started coaching relationship, I like to say, Hey Hey, Patrick, right now, I want you to write down on a sticky note. What percent of your time are you working in the business?
And what percent are you working on the business? And then I ask that question. I like to ask it every quarter for the first year. And it's very interesting. It goes from a majority of in the business versus working on the business. And somewhere in the middle, it flips. And I like to see it 80/20.
Okay. And now again, we're talking mid market, not real early stage companies where the CEO is spending 80% of the time working on the business, which includes strategy and key relationships in a partnerships. And then 20% of the time actually in the business doing the work day to day. So more joy, more focused time less time, but more time on the business for it's in the business.
And then the other thing is the culture changes. The culture going back to the locus of control concept, you've got blame and you've got full accountability and it's good to measure this early culturally and a lot of companies are like over here, but you begin to see that move where people stand up and say, Hey, man, I blew it.
That's on me. Can I do it different next quarter? Here's what I learned. Can I get your support? Okay. So you move, you see the culture more joyous and move as you put more a players living the core values getting things done being accountable in the seats takes a while but it's a beautiful thing when it happens.
Soit's about a lot more than just dollars and cents. So we we talked a little bit about what makes a good client. Now I'll ask you the more typical question that you and I have talked about many times, which is, what do you think makes a great coach?
Yeah, It's really several things the first the context is the relationship with the client. It's hard to say. There's just a great coach model But in the context of the client we talked about is there credibility? Is the chemistry fit in those things, but zooming out in this maestro research, so Michael Bungy, Stanier, Liz Wiseman, our colleagues, great authors influence the study of coaches in my world, and they've given me some input on methodology, but I had a hypothesis.
That there are seven things that make a great coach. I call it a maestro coach. And so built this research project with 35 questions. I'm asking these coaches identified by their peers at the top of their game. And it's very interesting. A lot of things that make a great CEO are directly related to great coaches and so back to the Level 5 Leadership article in HBR by Jim Collins.
You want to know what makes a great coach? Read that article. If you're going to be a coach, if you are a coach, read that article, because that is reflecting on who we are as a coach. Now, some other things the research the research is showing.
Earlier when we began, we talked about coach, ask a lot of questions, lead someone to a greater area of growth and impact and leadership. A consultant comes in and takes their functional and their expertise. They're learning and says, Hey, here's the problem. Here's what you need to do. They're more directive.
And so a great coach does more than inquiry. What we're finding in the business model. We're talking about mid market business. A great coach. Number one is there. They are a great coach. They ask a lot of the right questions that no one will ask the CEO at the right time. And I'll never forget. I was coaching Andy Warren personally at Marrakech homes in Phoenix.
We're in the middle of the session and I asked him a question. The team is assembled and he said, stop. And it went silent for about 30 seconds. And he was thinking, and I said, Oh no, I'm about to get fired. But he said, that question you just asked as our coach is worth a year's worth of coaching engagement with you because no one has ever asked me that question.
And that was the question to be asked. And so, great coaches are great at questions. They are good business people so they can take the coach hat off and say, when I was a CEO, or when I was in business, here's what I would consider doing. But in addition to that, they're confidants. Okay, so the third area, they create a safe space of trust.
where the CEO can talk about anything. They can talk about their marriage. They can talk about their kids. They can talk about their failures. They can talk about their joys. So there's this confidant space for the loneliest room in the company, the corner room, the CEO's room. They also are a curator of resources.
What do I mean by that? A great coach is reading, okay, and this is based on our experience, Ron and I over years. A great coach is reading typically about 20 books a year, 20 to 30 books a year. We have a colleague, Jeff Redman in Minneapolis, he reads a hundred books a year. And so in reading all that information, they're able to curate content that their current client needs in an area.
Could be a bestseller, could be an older book, like Good to Great. So they're a curator of content and learning for their clients. And the research is showing a few other areas too, but those are some of the five key areas that a great coach can be, beyond being just a coach with a CEO.
And speaking of books, Keith, before we start to wrap up, I know within your coaching organization, you guys have created a number of monographs.
Talk a little about what those are. And I don't know how many you're up to at this point. I know there's a good bunch of them, but talk a little bit about those monographs.
Okay. In fact, let me reach over here and I'm going to grab one. And I'll just hold this up. So this is what a monograph is It's probably most important to be seen this way. So the origin of a monograph we talked to CEOs through our coaches and what we found and then we did some research is that only two thirds of CEOs finish a book that they pick up and most books are too much for a CEO to read cover to cover and get through a sufficient number of books.
So think about the quantity within a book and the number of books. It's hard if you're leading a company to get through those. And so the problem we wanted to solve is if a CEO got on an airplane in San Francisco, California, and flew to Portland, Oregon, which is a two hour flight, what could they read in 90 minutes, two hours and get some valuable insight
So we're going to take a couple of tools. And out of that came the monographs from our coaching community about six, seven years ago, we were together and we said, let's solve this problem. And then what we did, we went to coaches around the world and we said, okay, Lee Pauldon, you are really good at strategy.
Lee's in Auckland, New Zealand. Would you please team with one of the other coaches? And would you write a 10, 000 word monograph got to be readable in 90 minutes on an airplane for the market. And so we put these out. Currently we have six. The sixth one just came out on execution and these come out about two times a year.
And what we try and do is find a key topic in an area of the seven attributes of Agile Growth, which is our content, and a great coach to comment on it based on their experience and some research. And so it's an evergreen way to get public publications and content into the market that can be read on that flight from New York City to Charlotte.
Excellent. Keith. This was amazing. Tell us if people want to find more about you, more about Gravitas Impact. Where should they go to find out more?
Yeah. I'd say two places you can find me on LinkedIn, Keith K E I T H cupp. Just search on LinkedIn and go ahead and connect with me. And then we have the Gravitas following on LinkedIn too. So you can find me or the Gravitas Impact community, or you can go to our website gravitasimpact.com. And then you'll see more about our community and what we do there.
Excellent. All of that will be in the show notes as well. Keith, you interviewed me on your podcast a couple of years ago.
Yeah.
I love being on the other side of the microphone. You know, This was great. Really appreciated you coming on.
Okay. And let's do that Uganda story podcast in the future.
There you go. Thanks Keith.
Okay thank you, Mike.