Speaker 1 (00:00):

Hi Frank, this is Lois Sonstegard and I’m here with Frank Wagner. He is a coach with Marshall Goldsmith, the stakeholder centered coaching and has been instrumental in coaching some of the key, CEOs around the world and uses a methodology that has been proven to be incredibly effective. And so I wanted to have frank begin by sharing a little bit about who he is and how he came to do what he’s doing. So Frank, tell us a little bit about yourself.

Speaker 2 (00:38):

Well, I, I got my start in the academic world getting a PHD in my initial plans were to be a university professor and in fact, just this past weekend I kicked off a cohort MBA program and this is people that are fully employed. They come in fundamentally for weekend classes and I’m kicking off a new cohort that will be together for 15 months, taking one class at a time. So I still do some academic work yet. When I started, Marshall Goldsmith was also one of the PHD candidates. We’ve talked together at Loyola Marymount university in Los Angeles and then became business partners. So our career really started as trainers and for then a couple of decades we did nothing but leadership training. In that time we would be working with leaders to give them feedback based upon 360 feedback sitting down one on one and doing goal setting and action planning.

Speaker 2 (01:32):

Yet that was the extent of if you call us a coach, what we did. Then around 1999 Marshall really came up with this amazing elegant, sophisticated, effective coaching methodology in terms of working with effective leaders and asked me to be involved in that at the beginning and then eventually asked me to overall be in charge of the design and training of other people to coach like him. So I’ve been doing that literally since about, no, just say 2000 still do training. I’ll be doing some next week. Yet the focus now is on coaching either individuals or executive teams.

Speaker 1 (02:13):

So Frank, when you work with, leaders. I know one of the things that Marshall speaks about is he coaches successful leaders and so people who are already successful at what they do, but why do successful business leaders need a coach?

Speaker 2 (02:33):

Well, by the way, everyone could use a coach. It doesn’t matter what your level of success is. Now it’s something we’ll find maybe confusing as is. Why does someone who was highly successful, and even when I say successful, we’re talking about successful not only in the business side, in terms of results, they’re also successful in terms of people really admire and respect them as leaders. So why would like that need a coach? Well, for one reason, that’s part of why the most successful are seen that way. They never consider that they can’t continually improve themselves. So you take any field, you can take the field of music and the music could be a musician, it could be a singer. You take acting world, you take sports and everything out of the business world for ever. The most successful people continue to work to get better because they know it’s hard enough to get to the top.

Speaker 2 (03:29):

It’s even harder to stay on top. So, and, and by the way, a lot of successful leaders don’t need anything to work on to improve because they’re doing something wrong. Yet they can actually build on a strength so we all can get better all the time. In fact, Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner who are probably two of the most respected people that do research in the field of leadership and really cross over between the academic world and the kind of world that we live in the corporate world. They wrote a book called the truth about leadership. And it’s the 10 enduring truths about leadership that transcend changes in environment, changes in situations that will always be the sign of an effective leader. And one of those 10 is the best leaders are the best learners. So think about it. You want a leader at the very top, very successful. They actually see that their organization and all the people around them need to continually learn. What’s one of the best ways to ensure that happens lead by example.

Speaker 1 (04:33):

So frank, for an individual like that, that is , like a sponge soaking up learning and wanting to share that with their colleagues so they can just be better. what does the coach bring to them? How does that coach add value so that they can really go to the next level?

Speaker 2 (04:57):

Okay. Well the, well first of all is you know Lois cause you are one of our certified coaches is that one of things that Marshall did that is very different from most coaching is spreading out the coaching. Most of Corporate America coaching, when someone hires a coach there, it’s a, it’s a single point success or failure. I mean they think they’re hiring a coach for the coaches expertise. The coach is going to be an advisor. The coaches are going to help the leaders see things through a fresh pair of eyes, see things differently, bring a different experience base to help that leader. Our methodology makes pretty much a large section of people around a leader into their day to day coaches. So we call them the stakeholders. Now. In other words, our methodology which we’re bringing is a methodology, not necessarily any content expertise and in a pure sense that can still work and be highly effective for a leader because what we’re providing is a way in which a leader gets feedback and what Marshall Point is feed forward or suggestions on an ongoing basis for reinforcement of what they’re working on to improve.

Speaker 2 (06:08):

Now, having said that, the other thing that we bring as a value is an outside perspective. A lot of times, especially at the most senior levels, it’s like people feel they almost have no confidant or someone on the outside they can talk with and we can provide that avenue. Also in terms of work, and most of our coaches do bring levels of content expertise. You know, for instance, Marshall and I got our, our cut our teeth as trainers in corporate America teaching a framework developed by Paul Hersey and Ken Blanchard called Situational Leadership. And I’ll be watching a leader, either I’m coaching and they may be working on something that really doesn’t directly relate to situational leadership yet on notice that they’re not applying that framework very well and I might point it out to them, then send him a quick article and then all of a sudden they start incorporating back. And that little little thing makes a big difference in what we call a tipping point in terms of helping that leader be effective. So we primarily play a role in our methodology as a, as a orchestrator, a facilitator of a process. Yet we also can also provide some level of expertise that will help the leader.

Speaker 1 (07:24):

So frank, could you just share a little bit about what stakeholder centered coaching is and how you go about it and before you do that? I think one of the things that just really fascinated me and still, really engages me with the process is how pragmatic it is. It isn’t a tiny meter and so many things that you get involved with by the time you’re finished, I’m not sure if the exhaustion that follows or comes with it almost exceeds the value. And I, I think the reverse happens with stakeholder’s center coaching. So if you could just speak a little bit about how it works and, yeah, what, what you, what you you with that

Speaker 2 (08:13):

Right, sure. Lois The, yeah, and that’s what really excites me about it is the, I mean it’s amazingly effective and, and also it leads to the right outcomes, which you pretty much alluded to or more clearly actually mentioned. Is it the end of it is would the benefits outweigh the costs? In other words, was this worth it? Was He investment? We all have a limited pool of energy and a limited areas of priority we can focus on. And was this worth it to the leader now see are psychogenic coaching, first of all is based upon a number of might say principles. And the first principle is that what we’re really doing is we’re focusing on stakeholders, and the reason we do that is see a lot of people and I would say I was part of this naively think that the leaders find to actually improve, which means changing behavior.

Speaker 2 (09:05):

Our area is leadership behavior that it’s all about the leader changing. And you know what? It’s not just that everyone around the leader needs to change. And so you know part of it is that the principal is we’re using stakeholders. That’s why we’re focusing on them for another principle is that behavior has to change and perception has to change and we always ask the question, you know, how hard is it to change a habit? And you can put a number on it, you know, a scale and you know, most people go pretty high up on the scale on changing behavior for an adult that’s got an ingrained habit. The second thing is how hard is it to change opinion, no perception using the same scale money. Most people when you actually ask this question, they’ll end up saying harder. And there’s also a lag even for a person to change the perception.

Speaker 2 (09:55):

They need evidence. Absolutely. The change has to come first and for change first comes, there’s a cognitive dissonance , in all of us that, Ooh, that’s, that’s different from my sense of reality. I probably should reject that. It’s probably just an anomaly of the situation. Is this person really changing or not? And it takes a while for them to say that person is actually changed. So there’s a lag between behavior change and perception of change. So that’s why we heavily invest in stakeholders. Also, you had mentioned, you know, Marshall Works with successful people. Well, you know what? I haven’t met a person who in their own heart to heart looking at themselves, see themselves as any else yet they aren’t but successful. They’re successful now, not necessarily successful, some other people, but we’re all successful. And because of that, we like to be the cause of success.

Speaker 2 (10:48):

And so if you’re the cause of success, you know you’ve earned it. And that’s what our methodology does. Here’s how it basically works. A leader chooses a goal. And that and how they choose a go variety of ways that can happen. As part of choosing a goal though, we have them do a cost benefit analysis. What are the benefits of this change? And when they get better at what benefits they will accrue if they don’t change, you know what would be the costs? So in these, and if you understand that, and those are benefits, but yet all things have a cost too. As you said you to put an energy, you got it. You guys spend the time, you got to do the heavy lifting. That’s cost. So, so they do the cost benefit analysis. They say it’s worth. So they pick a goal.

Speaker 2 (11:31):

Now here’s where our methodology has really divergence. They actually pick stakeholders who’s relevant. You know, this can be anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen or more stakeholders. Then they go public. They actually make this an open door, not behind in some closet, somewhere with a coach. Now the stakes are raised because now other people are aware they’re working on this and they’re asked to participate, they’re involved. And guess what? A stakeholder would like to be successful too. So they, they want to help this leader be effective. So now we have a team effort. The leader uses this, these stakeholders to actually give suggestions on the goal. And then we build an action plan fundamentally based on stakeholder input. So now we’ve got a much more active involvement of a cast of characters as opposed to just a coach working with a leader. And then the rest of the process is simply the process of sharing the goal and the plan.

Speaker 2 (12:32):

So now the stakers know what to look for and then it’s the follow up. How much does a leader implement their plan, follow up with their stakeholders, check in, how am I doing? Any further suggestions we have, we put them through charm school and not to be defensive in these conversations to say thank you, work with the coach, implement their plan. And then finally, the only other thing that makes us different is measuring results. So what we call a mini survey. Now, the mini survey is a little bit more elaborate in this, but for this, the argument here, the most important question is a leader, leaders, stakeholders are asked on a minus three to plus three scale the way that the middle choice is zero. So there you can go, you can go minus three minus two minus one meaning I think the leader about worse to a certain degree.

Speaker 2 (13:19):

I’m by trying this new behavior, or they didn’t change at all with a zero or plus one plus two or plus three. This is anonymous know electronic survey, anonymous survey. And this validates the change. And I love this because it gives them leader credit. The leader in the eyes of others have said they got better and and, and also then when they share their results, not all the details but they share results that I appreciate you for your, all of your responses that I got better. The stakeholders feel like, wow, I contributed to this cause they benefited from this change in the leader’s behavior. So that stakeholder centered coaching, you know, simple form.

Speaker 1 (14:02):

Yeah. You know, Frank, part of what you’re saying with that that just I think resonated with me was I’ve, I’ve been a part of organizations and worked with teams and leaders and one of the things that I’ve observed is that when you have a group that has made up their mind that something isn’t working or it’s not, the leader isn’t resonating with them, they may have already imbued failure into the stake, into the leaders. So no matter what they do, they’re perceived as having failure. And what I love about the mini survey is it forces them to make an evaluation as to whether or not there’s improvement. They can’t just have this value judgment that they hold on to for any period of time that says this person can’t succeed. And, you know, part of the importance of, I think comes from research that’s been done, especially in the academic setting with young learners where in first grade for example, teachers found that or research found that teachers made decisions about first graders in the first, first 15 minutes of school in the first day of class. And that then carried with that student, that label for the next six years. It took six years to effect some change. But the problem with organizations is the organization moves and changes. And so if people can’t see that you’re moving and changing with them, you are, it’s like you can never catch up. So the beauty of this is it really rewards effort in every war. It’s a team effort of recognition and you are absolutely right Frank. I have not seen any other model that really addresses that so people can really be successful.

Speaker 2 (15:57):

Yeah, the main thing is we all, you know, I have a very hard time changing our view of the world around us. You know, we like to stay the stability of saying I can predict, I know what’s going on around me. There’s a safety in that. You know, change is hard for everybody and whether it’s the behavior change or the perception change, and see, if you look at what we do in Sacred Center coaching, if you describe what we do is we help leaders achieve a sustainable longterm positive change in behavior. And here’s the key part. It’s recognized and acknowledged by others. So there’s that acknowledgement part, which by the way, you know, if I say Lois, you know, I used to think you weren’t that good of a listener. I’m not saying you’re the world’s greatest solution now, but I do believe you are becoming a very effective listener. Me, I’m voicing myself that reinforced that I, that I’m changing my perception of you. Right? And that’s why, you know, it’s such a systems approach to change, did Marshall came up,

Speaker 1 (17:05):

right? And it’s that acknowledgement, isn’t it? That makes all the difference. Because until we verbalize it, we don’t internalize it. So are there any times when it doesn’t work? When you look at a situation, you say, you know what? There are people for whom coaching simply won’t work.

Speaker 2 (17:27):

Yes. Yeah, there’s, I mean there’s a lot of people, well, first of all, you know, our methodologies around behavior change. Now again, that doesn’t mean that the goals themselves are specified as behavior. Then the very first assignment I did, and we are making this up as we went. I mean, Marshall asked me to coach in this agile technologies that just split off from HP. They sort of the top 24 people and this 24 wasn’t just by the organization. Charter was considered to be the people that they thought would bring agile to the next plateau and be successful. And in fact, one of these was a young guy in his thirties that I was asked to coach and he worked on treating people with respect. That was his goal. Well, treating people respect is not a goal. It’s an outcome. And you know, people you know, cause your behavior can either you could behave in a certain way to two people, one found it very disrespectful, another couldn’t care less.

Speaker 2 (18:19):

So what are the behaviors that lead to this treating people with respect? So we’re working on leadership behavior now, some of them, if someone leaders, first of all working on somebody that’s not really a behavior or relating to that aspect of leadership, our methodology isn’t that relevant in terms of what we do the other thing is we cannot change people’s fundamental nature. So, for instance, ethics, if someone is doing something unethical, this isn’t going to help in terms of what, what we’re going to be doing. And the other thing where our methodology does not work is if someone really is, I hate to say I just use the word a bit delusional about themselves. They have very little self awareness. So number one, they don’t blame anything but the environment and everyone else for their problems, they’re not gonna. This isn’t going to work with them.

Speaker 2 (19:09):

They see other people as a problem. I’m not the problem in terms of what I’m going to doing, I that I need to change. And so you know, those kinds of people’s not gonna work. The other kinds of people it’s not going to work for is our methodology does require a certain level of courage, humility and discipline. And by the way, if any one of those three is missing, it’s not going to work. They need some of all three of those things, right? The discipline to check in with stakeholders, the discipline to implement their plan, the discipline to follow up and all of this to going public on. And all that really requires a vulnerability by the leader, which requires what? Both courage and humility. So, you know, if you tried to put this system on a person that lacks those things, don’t hold your breath. They’re going to implement.

Speaker 1 (19:59):

Frank, how about culture? we have so many companies now that are global. They’re multinational companies. What’s your experience in, this being a culture based, not being a culture based, tool or methodology?

Speaker 2 (20:16):

Yeah, well, first of all, you know, I, I can, I can give secondhand information. Marshall Goldsmith literally has been all over the world now. Maybe he hasn’t done a workshop on Antarctic yet. You know, just about every place else he’s been. And, and this methodology works everywhere. Now, I’ll just speak from my personal experience. I’ve coached a number of Asians, for instance, Japanese, Chinese, Singaporeans, Malaysians. So I’ve got personal experience there. I’ve coached Europeans, you know, a number of Europeans. I’ve, you know, I’ve helped bring this methodology to, into the UN in terms of UNICEF with many, many, cultures represented there. And it works. Now, when I say it works, it requires nuances changes given an awareness of culture because culture is a, you know, is actually not that hard to explain. Culture is fundamentally not, I’m going to, I’m being sure I’m just giving short change treatment to this here is that you understand the culture by what gets rewarded and what gets punished.

Speaker 2 (21:31):

Now for instance, you take a culture that generally punishes you know people that admit they’re weak. If they then this methodology can be seen as oh, admitting you’re weak, that’s not going to work. Or we have a culture where saving face is important. Well you’ve got to modify it where the methodology is seen as helping someone save face or other people save face and that’ll work. So you do customize the methodology in different parts of the world. Yet we find it works pretty much everywhere. I will say though, if you want to say which cultures are harder versus easier, it’s cultures. The more authentic and autocratic the culture is, the harder this will be for all the players to play. It’d be hard for the leader to be going out to others and asking for help. It’ll be hard for the stakeholders to feel they are in the position to give help.

Speaker 2 (22:28):

So those things have to be modified. And then just the last thing though, I’ll say about culture and I’ll give you a perfect example. I love this example. This was not, it was sort of coaching. I was brought into a very prestigious consulting company. It’s near Stanford University because it was, it came out of the decision sciences school there. A Dr. Howard founded this thing and every person in this consulting organization had at least one phd, I swear if not to, and I’m not just exaggerating the, and these people could take apart any, did anyone’s sort of logic stream and show them what’s wrong with their decision making. I was so scared to be in front of this group. Each one of them got a 360 feedback report. I did some, a variation of a program. Marshall I developed called the excellent manager and, and they all got feedback and they all sat down with me one on one to put together an action plan.

Speaker 2 (23:22):

Now this is all before we had stakeholders and coach per se and, and, but part of the, the, the way we taught this program was we showed a movie, a classic movie called one 12 hold on man. Gotta get the right one bridge on the river Kwai and in the bridge on river kwai require your, you’re focusing on two cultures, the two characters, one represented the British culture and this is a character played by Alan Guinness, Colonel Nicholson and the other is played by sexual hack power plays a Japanese commander of a prison of war camp. We focused on these two people while we’re doing this case study. Now Remember, I’m now debriefing this with a bunch of smarter people than me. And when we’re talking about Cejudo, they start telling me how wrong I am. Now, interestingly enough, one of the members and who was brought over from Japan who worked in the Japan office was a jet, a born in Japan, true Japanese consultant.

Speaker 2 (24:21):

And as these people are now telling me how wrong I am, they asked him to validate and he gets up and stands up. You hadn’t been standing there quiet and stands up and says you people are all alike. You have a stereotypical view of Japanese, you think all Japanese are the same and you think and your sense of the same as this, you couldn’t be more wrong. And, and, and I just always loved that example because I don’t care what culture you’re in, it may not work so much in a culture, yet every person is a bit different. And there are people in every culture where this just take this as is and make it work for themselves. So don’t, you don’t, we don’t get limited by culture as a roadblock to any of this stuff happening,

Speaker 1 (25:10):

right. Part of what I observed when, I’ve, I’ve worked with us and as we, I went to the training with you is,

Speaker 1 (25:22):

when I’m working in other countries and I do a lot of work like you in Asia, I do work also in Europe. And what I’ve noticed is just simple business is constrained by language. I was in a meeting once in Hong Kong with my Japanese distributor, Hong Kong, you use a, Chinese, a Taiwanese, Chinese and a Singaporean. And we were using a and a Korean and we were all using English as the common language for everybody. And about halfway through the meeting I thought no one’s communicating. We’re not understanding each other. And what I realized was one had learned English, the Kings English in, in London, another had learned it in Australia, another had learned it in Boston, another in California. So our use of idioms and language varied. And so part of what I realized when I took the stakeholder’s center coaching that I loved is you’re going back to your own group for feedback and for input. So you’re ostensibly of similar mind and culture growing. You may be fitting it into a larger cultural context, but your immediate growth and development will be the context of the group with rich, you have familiarity. And so it helps us become, exceed language I think in culture. And that’s part of what I love about it because, you don’t have to be limited by that.

Speaker 2 (27:00):

So you’ve got that great awareness. So that’s why we like having people like you in our network as coaches.

Speaker 1 (27:06):

Well, thank you. You know what, any one last piece of somebody is watching this and is on the fence. I’m thinking about coaching. Any last bits of wisdom that you would like to impart to them about why they might really want to seriously consider a coach?

Speaker 2 (27:23):

Well, well first of all, you know, I had mentioned earlier that when you asked the question about, well, does this work for everybody or are there people that, you know, this is not going to work with? And, and it’s part of my answer. I’d mentioned courage, humility and discipline. Yes. Is if that’s just a muscle, those are old. Say three muscles that you want to exercise. This is a great methodology. Allow people to exercise those muscles. So you know, it’s like how do you build your reputation? And I think most people would like to be seen as both courageous, humble and disciplined. And this gives people an opportunity to practice that with them. And again, even if they’re good at this, get better at it. Yeah. And, and again, the other thing too is you know the, again one of the basic wisdoms about leadership and influence is the power of example.

Speaker 2 (28:21):

And so you know it number one, it helps leaders achieve that. So you know, I actually never really care what a leader is actually working on in terms of their stated goal for that reason is number one, a benefit they’re going to get is seen as being better at those things than they were before. And the the impact that other people are also going to be changing, giving credit to what’s going on. And it changes the relationship because like every muscle, you know, you don’t use it at atrophies, you use it to get stronger. And, and you know, when we talked about communication just now what Lois is that is that okay, we’re all having to give each other feedback or at least we need to, we all can help each other through helpful suggestions and this methodology by just practice opens up and makes all that easier in both directions.

Speaker 2 (29:21):

So we all need the flow of information in both directions. So it helps stakeholders do a better job of influencing up. It helps leaders do their job of the role they have to play with direct reports below them. And it just builds much stronger relationships. So that’s the, you know, I think the ultimate benefit of this. And then last thing I’ll say is, you know, you said, well you get one or one thing or, so I got to remember things is I think what I love about our methodology for the current reality is that is that is time efficient. It actually doesn’t take as much time as most people think in terms of for stake holders, their involvement for the leader, their involvement. And for us coaches, you know, it doesn’t take a lot of time to make this stuff work.

Speaker 1 (30:09):

Frank, do you, it’s so wonderful to listen to you and to hear your wisdom and your experience. And, I do think that it is such an incredibly pragmatic system and useful tool. personally I feel like I gained so much and it also, I realized, you know, there’s a tremendous fun and your own personal growth. So I think one of the things that happens is not only is the, uh, the organization and the leadership that you’re working with growing, but I think we as coaches also grow and really stretch as we go through this process with our leaders.

Speaker 2 (30:57):

Yes, I agree. And by the way, thank you so much Lois, for inviting me to this.

Speaker 1 (31:03):

Frank, thanks so much and I look forward to, other future discussions with you and if any of you have questions or would like to, follow up, please call us and get in touch. We would love to get you in touch with a coach that could be meaningful to you and to help you achieve your goals and the results that you would like to achieve. Thanks everybody for your time and for listening to us. And Frank of course to you. Thank you very much.

Speaker 3 (31:34):

Sh okay.