Lawrie Philpott: Well, I’m here today with Peter Ledbetter, a longstanding colleague who, like me is in the field of leadership coaching, and that’s the subject we’re gonna cover today. Peter and I met 20, I’m thinking years ago Peter in Sweden, where a big Swedish bank was having an event, and the first time I saw Peter was on stage talking about leadership and change.

At the time you were in one of the big four accounting firms and I thought this guy knows some stuff, so it’s great for you to be here this morning. So a little bit, Peter the overview of your story to end up as a leadership coach.

Peter Leadbetter: Hi Lawrie. Interesting one. Really, I don’t think when I started out my original career as a child and educational psychologist, I imagined I would end up being where I am now. I morphed, I think from enjoying being a child psychologist to desiring, wanting to make a bigger impact with people as a psychologist, and I was very fortunate to get the opportunity to move into a big four consultancy involved in large scale programs of change and change management.

And gradually, over a period of time, it became evident that the need for coaching of the leaders involved in major change programs was really quite significant. So I was able over a period of time to build my skills through training development, experience and being supervised to develop  a coaching profile.

And if I’m honest, I think my, when I left at the Big four and then set up on my own, that was possibly the best time in my career because coaching. If you really get into it, can be one of the most fulfilling aspects of anyone’s professional wife. And it certainly was the case for me. So I still think of myself as a psychologist, but probably I would introduce myself first and foremost as a leadership coach who happened to be a psychologist.

That makes sense.

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah, that certainly makes sense. And like you, I was in one of the big four accounting firms 25 or so years ago, but migrated into the world of coaching when I had my first coaching experience. In other words, my being coached back in 1995 and I went 38 weeks out of 52, and I thought, this is so good.

I’m gonna have to put this into my organization consultant portfolio. On another day, I think, Pete, we are gonna talk about the process, which is really quite detailed and I think we should come back to that on a, just to have what I call a chemistry meeting in the first place. Let’s see if the coach and the person being coached get on well together.

Then there’s 360 interviews and all that goes with that. Then there’s the feedback. Then there are the sessions that are one-to-one over a period of time. And I reckon that if you think about the timing of that, it’s probably a one year process then followed by occasional top ups, keeping in touch with the client because their world, their leadership world is changing.

Does that sound as if it’s what you’d recognise as well?

Peter Leadbetter: In general? Very much so. Lawrie, I think the initial chemistry meeting that you described is absolutely critical. This is an opportunity for the client to be introduced to the person who is going to work with them as a coach, and I think that meeting requires absolute honesty on the path of the coach and the client.

For me, it’s about building trust. But also building an understanding as to what coaching is actually all about. In my experience, most clients haven’t actually been coached before and they have some, sometimes irrational, sometimes very overstated beliefs as to what coaching involves. But I think most importantly there is the issue of building trust and that in real terms, that initial meeting is about.

Assuring the client that what goes on between both of us is totally confidential. Any details would only be shared with other parties if they request me to do so. And once that’s been established, there is this wonderful moment where having spoken to each other for quite a while, you end up saying so. What do you think? Do you want to progress with coaching? And in most, and in fact, I can only remember one case where an individual said, oh, no thank you. That’s not for me.

Lawrie Philpott: He didn’t wanna take the lid off and, and I think it’s interesting to ponder, isn’t it, how the coaching comes about, because it can come from the individual, him or herself as a Chief executive, but quite often it comes from somebody I would call a sponser.

It might be the chairman who has a conversation with you or me and says, I’m interested in your doing work with somebody who happens to be the chief executive who may at that stage not even know about it. So there’s a conversation with the chairman as sponsor, and then moving to a position where you have that confidential, trusting relationship with the CEO. And I think you’re right. As the Americans say, what goes on in the barn stays in the barn, and my habit is to say to the CEO, in this case, if the chairman wants to know more about what we are talking about, then he can either ask you. Or he can ask both of us, in other words, in a three-way session.

ç Yeah, I think that is absolutely critical, Lawrie. For me, part of the initial conversation is asking the individual why they think they’re sitting opposite me. So how did it come about? Because in some cases, you rightly say it’s on the basis of a very well-intentioned recommendation. But increasingly I have found myself with new clients who’ve been referred by colleagues, friends who’ve said, I think you would benefit from this.

And that’s not to say you’ve got a problem. You need to get a coach to sort you out, it’s really about this coaching process can be a big part of a range of ways in which you evolve, you develop and you critically analyze yourself with the help of a critical friend, ie a coach, in order to progress and develop as a leader.

More and more I found it was beginning to become almost a rite of passage. If I’ve reached the point of being a leader, where am I going to get my independent coaching from? Because I recognise that’s going to be hugely important to me in enhancing the skills I’ve got and understanding where I’ve got gaps.

Lawrie Philpott: And I guess, Peter, the coaching can come into two sort of classifications, remedial or developmental. In other words, we’ve got a high flyer and they qualify under the heading Developmental. Yes. Or you’re having a conversation with the sponsor who says, we’ve got problems with this person and therefore there’s a remedial approach.

Any thoughts on What kind of proportion? One encounters of those two sets?

Yes. I think in general, Lawrie, I’d agree with that. There’s one other, just before I answer your question. There’s one other group which I came across, which is individuals who were at a critical stage in their career. I. They, they had to make decisions about which way to go, whether to take up an entirely different opportunity and wanted a dispassionate, independent view to help them through a relatively short process.

In most cases, it ended up carrying on for quite some time.It’s an interesting question that I think my experience has been. When I first started out, this must be 10, 15, oh gosh, no. 20 years ago doing it, individuals would often be presented to you as either facing a significant challenge, for example, leading a major change program on top of doing their day job.

So this was a big deal and they, there was a recognition by the organization. They needed some additional support. The other was maybe that they were experiencing some real problems because leadership can be a very lonely place. It can be a very exposed place and a very stressful place. But I think gradually, particularly I would say over the last five or six years, individuals have seen it as part and parcel of how they move from being maybe good to great. And most leaders are very ambitious for themselves and their organization. Often very critical of themselves. And they’re seeking support in a variety of ways and coaching can be a big part of that.

Lawrie Philpott: And I often think, Peter, the move from wherever you’ve been before, the final move to becoming a CEO.

Is really a much bigger move than most people think. They underestimate it, and I think your point about the loneliness of the role loneliness is, as I understand it in psychological terms, the most powerful emotion. So more powerful than love or hate or whatever. So the loneliness, when you get there, you are it, and you’ve got either a very large number of people beneath you and some of the very big organisations have, you know, 200,000 plus. Or you’ve got an organization of a dozen or 20 people, and I always think that. You should apply a multiplier to whatever that staff number is, that the CEO is, because there are spouses, children, grandparents, and so on and so forth.

And I think in due course later in our conversation, we need to come up against the interface between the pressures of work and trying to blend that with what are significant pressures in home life? For most people these days, and I often think that whoever you are passing in the street and whoever you are talking to, the facade may be a wonderfully positive facade.

Smiling, hello, how are you? But behind the, the veil. There are very often statistically just the natural course of life, a lot of really significant pressures, which also I think come out in the coaching process.

Peter Leadbetter: Completely. I think to be a coach is a great privilege, Lawrie, but with it comes a huge responsibility because if it works, and if you are a capable coach and you build a relationship with that senior individual.

What normally happens is that they are prepared to move away from the image. I’m the top, I’m the top man or woman I am. I am here in charge. All eyes come to me, and of course, I’m very relaxed and capable. Very few people in my experience are actually feeling that in reality and the coaching process allows them to gradually open up about feelings and about their expectations, their hopes, but also the suggestion that actually quite a lot of people say, I don’t quite know how I’ve got here because one of the very interesting early questions I like to put to my clients is. Tell me the story of how you became the CEO or the COO or this very senior individual, and that’s about their career and how they progressed and often they will talk quite lucidly and openly about various opportunities that arose and how they seized them. And now here they are. But the second question is, and how did you become the person that you are? That’s often a very interesting, in fact, it always is a very interesting and separate discussion.

The one about the person often then enlightens the difficulties that they may be facing as a professional leader and for me, therein lies the challenge of a coach. Because it’s now in your hands to work with that individual to help them be brutally honest, not only about what they’re really good at, and Brits are terrible at doing this. They’re actually laying out in front, this is why I’m in the position I’m in, I think. And then separately, and these are the areas that I really need help in developing.

Lawrie Philpott: It’s very interesting. I. In our previous conversations, we’ve divided the coaching role into two things. The sort of structural what a chief executive has to do.

And, and, and that’s quite a challenge because there’s 1,000,001 things you can choose from, but there are only so many hours in a year. And in our conversations, again, we normally reckon it’s about 2,500 hours a year is working pretty damned hard one way and another. So selecting that right selection of the structural things, in other words, what you do with the hours of the day is actually quite a difficult choice to make.

I think. Then on top of that. The coaching asks the question, how good are you at each of those things? And I think what I quite often find is that against my presupposition, that somebody who’s gonna go into a CEO post has got all the basic tenets of being a CEO. I think in my experience, quite often you find that there are gaps.

I call those training gaps. And I think that begs an interesting question of the HR function as to why somebody has got to the level of CEO and there are training gaps, and I think the answer is probably because the HR function, which we’ll debate about I think in another podcast, says at a certain point these people are too senior to come on training courses and so on, and it just doesn’t happen.

So there’s all of that. Structural stuff and then on top of that you’ve got the kind of behavioral psychological stuff and the commanding question, why am I the way I am and do I really understand that kind of stuff? Have I ever had a conversation with anybody about it? And that’s where the real, if I may say so intimate conversations can come that are really meaningful for people who probably don’t have those conversations with very many other people at all.

Peter Leadbetter: Completely, right. Most of my clients will if, because I, in preparation for this chat, I’ve been thinking through some of the key clients I was privileged to work with.

Most of them will have explained a route to their senior position because they were good at the roles that they have been put into. Not only were they good, they were probably exceptional. And added to that, they were quite ambitious individuals, so they had drive and push. An interesting question is, where does that drive come from?

But we may come back to that in a bit. They then find themselves, having moved into a very senior position, were the demands and the pressures. Are enormous. And at that point there is the need for them to be very strategic about how they actually allocate their time, but also how they recognise where they have great strengths and maximize and really make the most out of those strengths, but also recognizing where they’re not so good.

And the classic, Lawrie, is an individual who has reached the position as a leader and then finds, actually, I struggle with communication. I struggle with the ability to engage with my team in a way that brings them in so that they work with me, or I’ve got to this point, and my goodness, the stress levels are enormous.

How do I cope with those? The time demands are enormous, and of course, as you rightly say, there is the private, the emotional aspects. In the initial conversation with the clients, I always say whatever you want to bring into, as it were, the agenda of our coaching sessions is in your hands. I usually highlight that it may be that you want to talk about your life outside of work.

Most people initially say, well, I’ll probably leave that aside. And invariably, of course it comes into play. Because what is going on in commercial, their professional life can have a huge, sometimes quite challenging impact on their life outside of work with their families, relationships, friends, and health and personal wellbeing. So tho those factors gradually find a place, a very important place in my thinking in the coaching process.

Lawrie Philpott: And I think you are skirting around then the sort of the imposter syndrome. Yes. And I think, Pete, one of the things that I found over the years. Which we can talk about generically now because of course we’re not gonna mention anything about particular clients for obvious reasons. But one of the things I’m conscious of having done hundreds now over the last 25 years of one-to-one coaching assignments is the frailty that there is. Immediately beneath the surface frailty you know, gosh, you know, when are they gonna find me out?

Gosh, I’m really in the big seat now. You know? What are the expectations of me? Who tells me the truth? Who gives me anything like real feedback, which circuits in as well. I think, Pete, on the question of whether, as some organisations, do they have Internal coaches, and I know we’ve operated in a commercial setting, but I’m pretty pretty skeptical of internal coaching because the relationship isn’t truly independent as the outside one would be.

Peter Leadbetter: It’s very difficult to do that. I have been involved in both situations, Lawrie. I frankly think that as an independent external coach, you have a greater ability to be challenging. A large part of being a coach is asking incredibly difficult questions within the nature of the conversations that you’re having.

Those questions sometimes can be seen as really quite personally. And professionally challenging to the individual. If you were a part of the organization. It’s much more difficult to do that, and in a sense, you are immersed in the same pool. So it adds an additional demand. For me, with the imposter syndrome in all honesty, I cannot remember a client who at some point didn’t say. Of course, I have no idea. Ultimately how I got here, did I think I would ever make it, or I might have had thoughts and ambitions, but hey, when I suddenly did, I began to realize this is an incredibly difficult position to be in because leadership is hard.

It is relentless. It is every day. And even trying to switch off when you’re on family time, you’re away is incredibly difficult. Leader who eventually retire often in my experience, contact you afterwards and say, My goodness, I was on Mega Drive. I didn’t realize until I actually stopped. I might have been enjoying it.

I might have been really performing well, but whoa, was it  taking a lot of energy out of me.

Lawrie Philpott: And do you find Peter over time that there are some clients, coaching clients who have almost, in a sense arrived at leadership positions by accident, you know, sort of turn, and we’ve only got him or her, so we are going to appoint him, and I know it’s not perfect, but we’re going to do it anyway.

Peter Leadbetter: I think in some cases, Lawrie, we’ve got to accept that is the reality. There are some roles very demanding, exceptionally challenging, where very few people want to actually apply for them, either because they don’t want to take on the levels of demand and stress, or they don’t think they’re up to it.

They don’t. Or as one client of mine rightly said, I really didn’t want to expose myself in case I fell over, but I was persuaded to do it because I have a loyalty to the organization and others weren’t coming forward. That’s not to say that in any way, those individuals end up being lesser as leaders.

I do find that they probably are much more open and honest and much more willing to say, look, I need help from a myriad of different sources. I need to talk to other people in my position. I need to have honest feedback within my organization. But having a coach who can distill the conversation and the feedback and present them with honest realities and ask them those really difficult questions without coming up with a pet answer.

I think that is fundamentally a core element of the coaching process, and it continues over time. And coming back to our earlier point about the people’s private lives, my experience was that gradually by about the third or fourth coaching session, the individual will say, you know. There are other issues outside of the job that are having an impact in one way or another, and I need to have a chat – I need to bring it in because it’s part and parcel of what I’m coping with, when I go to work, I don’t just switch off. I am actually, I’m still a dad, I’m still a wife, a husband. I’m still somebody with often these days, elderly parents who I’m concerned about. And, and the these are the realities of professional life that we’ve all experienced.

Lawrie Philpott: And it’s interesting, isn’t it, that you can find somebody who is the big I am in the office. You know, the sort of narcissistic big I am. And they’ve got a 16-year-old I daughter at home and there’s a one liner, and you know, I like one liners, which is, nobody calls me sir at home.

Switching now to organisations. I’ve, we’ve, I think both of us seen organisations where they say. No, we don’t want anybody to be coached. Thank you. Because, and the individuals wouldn’t want to be coached because if they seem to be needing coaching, then they’re on the slide to failure.

Peter Leadbetter: It’s an interesting area that Lawrie, because quite a few of my clients, particularly going back to 20 years ago, would say, look, can we meet offsite?

I want this to be kept very quiet. I don’t want it to be seen that I’m needy and the coaching had the perception of they’re not doing as well as they should, therefore they’ve brought in someone from outside to help them. I’m pleased because I think that is changing and I think younger aspirant leaders see coaching as part and parcel of how they develop in various aspects of their life.

Sporting coaches or coaches to do with other aspects of of their life. For me, a critical issue early on in the coaching process is to explain that they’ve not been naughty. That the coaching is not about how do we develop an easy exit for you out of the situation you are in. It’s about actually

developing you as an individual. So this is about giving you a level of very personal, it is, it’s one-on-one support to enable you to overcome difficulties, to go from being a very good performer, to becoming quite an exceptional performer and understanding how you’re doing that. Because so often there is a belief amongst, certainly in my case, a belief amongst leaders that you learn to be a leader by osmosis, or maybe you’ve been lucky enough to work for somebody who appears to be exceptional.

You’ve read a good few books, or maybe you’ve even done an MBA that includes leadership development aspects in it.

Lawrie Philpott: Or listen to the Leadership listening podcast.

Peter Leadbetter: Indeed. I mean, clearly it’s about building a mosaic of Influences and support around you and adapting what you take from that, including the coaching, because there coaching is not, I mean, trying to explain coaching to people who are skeptical about it or worried about it. It’s important to say. It is not about banging through a well a well-developed methodology. As a coach, you have to have the ability to develop and adapt the way in which you go about your science or your art in such a way that you are responding to what’s in front of you with the client. So it’s not formulaic. It has a structure to it, but the skill lies in reading what’s going on in the room and in adapting and responding in a way that leaves the individual at the end of the session. And I always ask people this at the end of a session, how was that? And as you get to know the client better, a number of them will say.That was really difficult and I’ve had clients who’ve said there were moments in our relationship, Peter, where I really loathed you. I hated the fact that you were pulling at a saw, you were exposing me to stuff I didn’t want to to see, and that wasn’t pleasant. So it isn’t about massaging. It has to be by definition, really quite a challenging process to get individuals to really aim high and to use a cliche, I think there is an aspect of coaching if it works really well, and if there is a good relationship where the individual discovers that they actually have capabilities that maybe they didn’t believe they had previously. That’s the golden, that is the golden moment.

When you have an individual who suddenly says, my goodness, I didn’t think I could do that. And I’ve gone ahead and done it and I’m proud of myself for doing that.

Lawrie Philpott: It’s the, I didn’t know it was impossible, so I did it syndrome. Getting them to go beyond what they thought was possible. I think also, Peter, listening is a huge part of it and sometimes I call coaching, sort of truth consulting. And one of the kind of things that I really trade on is making the rules clear right at the outset. That we’re going to base the conversation in the best kind of reality that we can draw out of everything we know about each other and about the subject of leadership.

So getting those rules straight right at the beginning about confidentiality, about the fact that we’re gonna deal with the truth, and I guess it then pushes in the direction of this famous question. Are leaders born or made? And it’s an interesting one for, I’m sure the academics will be shouting at us, left, right, and center.

But it’s an interesting question still.

Peter Leadbetter: It is indeed. Lawrie, I smile because how many times has this been a discussion point? A fascinating area. If I’m brutally honest, I think most successful leaders have a recognition, often going back to their childhood that they were a bit different, that they actually wanted to take the opportunity to be in charge of the game, to be the captain, to be the one that others look to, but not always.

And I am certainly of the view that there is no such thing as the innate wonderful leader. All leaders evolve and develop right up to the point where they move on to other things. Take up fishing. They’ll probably be end up being the leader of the fishing club, mind you. But I think there is, I think there is a recognition that some people just don’t want to be leaders.

If they are forced by circumstance into being in that position, a good coaching relationship will immediately identify the poor individual sitting with you actually does not want to be in that role and is being an honorable individual or doing it for the benefit of the organization to which they’re very loyal, but actually really doesn’t see themselves.

I think that’s an honest outcome that can come from coaching, recognizing it’s not for me, and maybe making a decision to move elsewhere. One other thing I would say about this whole development issue, Lawrie, is that in the early part of the coaching relationship, I find it useful to ask people who influenced them in terms of their development as a leader.

Who are they modeling themselves around? Which folk actually had an impact on them within their organization and their careers, but also externally, you know, who do they see in the wider world as an individual who projects aspects that they would really wish to exemplify, really wish to try and harvest for themselves, because most of us, if we’re honest, I think develop and evolve in various aspects, a drawing from a wide variety of sources.

And if you are inquisitive, which a lot of leaders are, then you’ve got a lot to draw from and if you ask, if you ask the question of leaders, how do you lead, Tell me about how you make decisions. Tell me about how you actually communicate and engage with people of a wide variety. And tell me how you deal with the underperformers.

In a way, I think you’re tapping into aspects of their emotional intelligence. And there’s an aspect which is massively on the agenda of a coaching relationship.

Lawrie Philpott: It’s interesting sometimes when you meet a new prospective client for the coaching process, sometimes the initial conversation shows you that they’re so exhausted and so confused and so battered and so on.

I’ve resorted to a walk. A day’s walk.  And it has a very interesting psychological. Impact because we have the walk, we go from Overton down in Hampshire, I think it is, to which church, and we go all across country. Real nice bridal paths, hopefully mostly on a sunny day. And I think the psychology of walking along and facing forward as opposed to facing one another in a office or a boardroom is really quite interesting.

Phones are off. Let’s say the sun is shining, the birds are singing and we have a conversation that goes from 10 o’clock in the morning, beginning of the walk. We stop the lunch somewhere, no alcohol, lunch, and and finish at about 4:30 in the afternoon with scones and a cup of tea. That kind of conversation can be a real kind of foundation then that ensues.

Peter Leadbetter: Completely, Lawrie, I’m a great believer in changing the coaching environment. If you are, if you are working in the client’s offices, what you often find is they find it difficult to switch off. They’re watching who’s moving around. They are listening to the noise around in the environment. So in many cases, I said, let’s get away from this.

I like you. I’ve occasionally done the walking. I’ve often suggested to individuals that we go outside. If it’s, if it’s a good day, let’s find a space out in the open air away from people where we can have a conversation in a different environment and miraculously, that can often be a stimulus for the individual to open up quite considerably.

I should say, Lawrie, that my experience with a lot of the leaders I’ve been very privileged to work with is they’ve never had an individual being so interested in them as a person. And certainly many people from a background in engineering, the commercial world, the law, even I’ve been privileged to work within the NHS.

These are individuals who developed their career on the back of their technical skills. No one’s actually sat down and said, how are you? How are you coping? What is life like for you? Tell me the story of your life. And I am often amazed that during that process of telling the story, for example, of how you became the person you are, individuals will feedback at the end and said, I really enjoyed that.

I hadn’t thought about those issues. It’s been really quite interesting. And then the next time round we go back and I peel the layer of the onion off a bit more, and underneath there is another aspect to it, which requires open discussion sometimes on a positive way, sometimes in a not so positive way, but it’s that honesty that you bring you open everything up for discussion and the bits of that individual’s working life. A more realistically.

Lawrie Philpott: Yeah, absolutely. I also think the first a hundred days, much spoken of for somebody going into a chief executive appointment is really quite critical and, you know, useful to have the coaching process applied during that period.

I think I’m right in saying if we look at the the US statistics then it’s really frighteningly quick for CEOs to fail. Like a couple of years. Maybe even shorter on average. So that first a hundred days is also pretty damn important. I think also we ought to mention in this conversation the word mentoring, which kind of comes in and I do find some clients actually the words and juxtapose the words coaching and mentoring as though they’re the same thing.

To me mentoring is. An unstructured, quite probably an internal process. 

Lawrie Philpott: But it could be external, internal, very senior person, you know, leadership, team member talking to a 30-year-old, 35-year-old who’s, who’s really in fast track mode. So. Mentoring, the passing on of experience, the whole notion, and you’ve mentioned, you know, somebody being interested in the coaching client.

I always think that, you know, there are two dimensions. You’ve gotta be interesting and interested.

Lawrie Philpott: You’ve gotta have both of those factors. I think in play.

Peter Leadbetter: A number of my clients have said, oh yes, I’ve got a mentor already. And that’s been very useful. Mentoring to me is a much more general, and I don’t mean to be pejorative in that you use me as a confidant within the organization, but within a mentoring relationship, it’s often the case that you are openly sharing your own experiences, your offering career advice about career progression, career development and information about the organization. It is less personal than a coaching relationship, and I think also mentoring tends to be much more, less intrusive at a personal level. Coaching for me, by definition, has to get at the heart of the individual, the person, the person’s emotions, as well as the range of skills and capabilities, their technical skills and capabilities and their business and organizational knowledge.

There is undoubtedly an overlap, Lawrie, but I do see,  I do see quite a distinct difference and I think it’s easy, if I’m being quite brutal, I think it’s easier to be a good mentor than it is to be a good coach.

Lawrie Philpott: Another sort of characteristic is that what I find, if you are working in a particular kind of organization, and you might say it’s banking, anybody who goes into banking at the bottom and ends up at the top has got, if you like, the struggle to be a really great banker all the way up and I call that working in the organization as a banker. But there’s a whole pile of stuff, a lot of which we’ve been talking about today, which is working on the organization. And if you’ve got a hundred thousand people in an organization and you are the chief executive, you’ve gotta learn an awful lot about people and organisations and leadership, and communication, motivation, remuneration, training, development. And bankers, Let’s not pick on them too much, tend to put their head in their hands and say, my God, you know? I’ve got enough trouble trying to be a good banker and what I’ve always found pretty well, always, and it’s not just in banking, but in almost every organization, the ON stuff is the poor relation. When compared with the IN stuff, they haven’t kind of developed that as they’ve risen through their career, perhaps because they’ve been struggling to do the in stuff.

Peter Leadbetter: The in and the On differentiator is a big one, be because I’m minded to reflect on a number of conversations I had with clients where you talk about their responsibility beyond the immediate series of critical decisions, the people they work with, the objectives they need to meet, and the performance levels they have to achieve for themselves and the people who report to them.

And then there is this big question about, well, what’s your vision for the organization as it evolves? Do you now in your position, do you understand what it’s like to be lower down the batting order? What is it like to be a young entrant coming in here? And more recently, of course there’s been this whole issue of saying to to clients, do you actually understand the way the younger people in your organization operate?

Think. What’s important to them, the values that they hold dear, the attitudes, the aspirations. Because if you make the assumption as a leader that they’re all like you and they want to be like you, you’re making a big mistake. So, a big challenge, which adds onto the leadership list, is to go and talk to some of these individuals go and have an open conversation. Listen, you made the point, Lawrie, about listening. Then to me, as a coach, you have to do this all the time. It’s the whole question of active listening. I am really trying to understand what you are telling me. Let me play it back to you to make sure I’ve got this and think that’s a, a big part of the broader leadership challenge there. There’s another aspect that I might lay onto this because you’ve, stimulated my memory of a number of key clients. A number of individuals have said to me, one of the difficulties I have is that I could work 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. And when I make the decisions about how I allocate my time, that can be really crucial. So how do I get the right team around me so that I don’t have to do it all and I can rely on them? and as I’ll often interject, and you could listen to them and use them as a conduit because leaders with the skill to bring in good quality people around them have the capability Ithink to build a caucus, that means that they’re not isolated, they’re not on their own, and they have a body of individuals who can support, challenge, but be loyal to them. That to me is quite an important aspect.

Lawrie Philpott: There’s a bit of me, Pete, which says that chief executives very often try to do too much. They’re drinking from a fire hose. They’re trying to be all things to all people. I’m absolutely persuaded in this day and age, it’s a team game completely. And I think a separate podcast we’ll be doing later is all about the team development side of life. But as we focus on coaching, I’m gonna put in a last piece of conversation, which is about.

Well, how do I find the right coach and how do I make up my mind about whether I want to be coached? Because strikes me, having interviewed a lot of people who wanted to join the organization that I’ve had for the last 25 years, there are quite a lot of people who get fired. For something or another and say, well, I’m now going to be a coach.

And that isn’t a terribly sensible thing from the point of view of the prospective client. So finding the right coach. Any thoughts on where you’d put that?

Peter Leadbetter: Fundamental Lawrie, I was amused by your idea there. There’s also, I’ve retired early, so I think I’ve become a coach. I’ll go and do a course then I’ll be a coach. I could talk long and hard about this, but the responsibility on the coaches side is to be not only skilled and experienced and well developed, but to have a supervisor who challenges you in your professional performance and to whom you can be completely open in selecting a coach from the point of view of the client, I think you have to answer three key questions –

One is, do I trust this individual? They talk to me about confidentiality, but do I really trust them? Can I actually believe that I can have this open relationship such that I can expose myself, frailties, and all, and that individual will look after me in dealing with that. The second is. Does the individual who is presenting as a coach strike you very quickly as somebody who has experience and knowledge of the organisations or the the area in which you work such that they understand what it’s like.

Professional services covers a whole range of different areas. The public and private sector. Having an understanding of what it is like really genuinely important. And I think the third is that you as a client should have an assuredness. That when you’ve challenged the coach about what it’s going to be like that they give you answers which seem credible and which seem quite specific. So for example, I’ve actually been on the other side of saying, of helping friends who are looking for a good coach and offering them some questions to ask the prospective coach. And, one of them is, am I going to enjoy this? Is this going to be an experience?

What are going to be the hard bits and what are gonna be the enjoyable bits in the process? How do I ultimately, a good question of a coach is – how do you know when it’s working? How do you as a coach know when you are delivering to the client? That’s a very important question to ask. Otherwise, you get locked into a series of massaging conversations, which don’t actually help.

Coaching has to be, by definition, quite challenging.

Lawrie Philpott: A number of questions are coming in about particular subjects and one Is the difference between coaching in terms of gender, males versus females? Any thinking about how that goes?

Peter Leadbetter: Ooh, yes. Interesting topic, Lawrie. I’ve been privileged in my own career to have been surrounded by some very impressive, strong women, and I learned from that.

I learned from understanding that the male frame of reference. May not necessarily always be entirely as synonymous with the female frame of reference. In reality, I think as a coach. What I’ve tried to do with female clients is to be perfectly open and honest right at the outset and to say, I completely accept that as a man, I have a different view of life and a set of experiences which may be very different from yours.

If they are, can we please bring them out? Can I ask you, in a sense, as part of the relationship between the two of us that you actually challenge me or answer my questions so that I can understand more honestly and more openly exactly where there are significant differences. In particular, Lawrie, I think at the end of each session there’s always the requirement to say to the client, how did that go and to take immediate feedback, I scrupulously with the advice of my actual female supervisor took additional time to ask that question about the male female interaction. And I must say, as a coach, I learned a lot from asking those sorts of questions. And at the end of the coaching relationship, one of the issues I like to say to a client is, could you feed back to me on what went really well between us and what would you suggest to me I need to work on or adapt?

I learned the most from female clients in that context. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, Lawrie, and I’m sure that in trying to operate across genders, invariably there are stones that you fall over, but if you have an open, honest dialogue. I think you can learn from each other. Certainly, that’s been my experience.

Lawrie Philpott: I quite like the notion of asking for feedback at the end of the session. Certainly very powerful indeed. ’cause we’ve got to hear feedback as well. Couple of small points then, while significant points, but points we need to bring in. One is coaching introverts as opposed to extroverts. I think it’s fair to say the world is, in my view, easier if you are an extrovert.

Lots of people are introverts and the difference is only the same as being left-handed or right-handed. It’s neither, you know, neither is right, neither is wrong. But, encouraging somebody through the coaching process to be a learned extrovert when extroversion is going to serve them and the other party or parties better.

Seems to me to be something that I’ve encountered quite a lot.

Peter Leadbetter: I think really importantly, when you meet the client in the first instant, you are beginning to develop a picture of what type of a personality they are. Interestingly, Lawrie, quite a significant number of my clients have been people who have progressed in a sense because they’ve been introverts, because they actually were able to concentrate less on the social presence or the persona and much more on the technical aspects. And then of course, the demands alter and change. For me, it is very much about asking questions. To enable the introvert or the extrovert to describe their view of the world and how they cope with aspects of the world.

And then as a coach to respond to that, to adapt what the next question is or what the next line of thinking is to treat all individuals as the same. Is a route to, in my main failure, awareness of the, the personality type is quite critical. I would also say the classic sort of gregarious, loud extrovert is often a fragile individual underneath in my experience. And the privilege of being a coach is that you. Are there when the individual actually opens up about that. That for me is a humbling experience on, on, on both sides, and one I have to be good at responding to.

Lawrie Philpott: That’s been a fantastic conversation and I hope listeners tune in and have lots of come back in our direction, shall we say, just in the way that we normally close.

Three very simple little questions. One. What kind of advice would you give to your 20-year-old self?

Peter Leadbetter: Ah, good. Very good question. I think Lawrie be open about where you think you are going to end up at the end of your career as opposed to where you think you will be. I think there is, for me, I was blessed by being presented with opportunities to make quite seismic changes in my career.

Which early on I probably would never have thought to do so. Yeah, because I came from a working class background where the drive was, get yourself the best possible job and stay in it, particularly if it had a pension.

Lawrie Philpott: Secondly, then that’s marvelous. Secondly, a pet hate,

Peter Leadbetter: Arrogance, unbridled, naive bullying, arrogance. It’s in my working life, I’m being very lucky that I haven’t come across too many of such individuals, but they bring out the worst in me, and I detest that level of lack of self-awareness and also a failure to understand the damage that such an outlook can have on other people.

Lawrie Philpott: And finally. Peter’s secret passion.

Peter Leadbetter: Yeah. Well, since retiring my, I guess my passion has become cycling and one of the, one of the things I love doing when I’m on my bike going along the canals is saying Good morning, good afternoon to people, because I love to see the reaction from individuals. It gives you a wonderful insight, a quick insight into who you’re facing, because they either look absolutely horrified that this person has spoken to me, or there’s a warm, smiling reaction back.

I enjoy that immensely with people of all ages and all cultural backgrounds, particularly around Birmingham. But I think when I’ve been with friends, they say, why are you so embarrassing,

Lawrie Philpott: Peter. That from the leadership listening podcast point of view has been a marvelous set of insights and a tour across the subject of coaching, I think we’re gonna talk again about other subjects that we know something about. But for today, thank you so much.

Thank you, Lawrie. I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s a wonderful area.