Why High Performers Need Executive Coaching

In this episode of The Small Business Show, we delve into the transformative power of executive coaching for high performers. With insights from elite executive coach Carla Fowler, MD, PhD, we explore how performance science and best practices can be leveraged by CEOs, entrepreneurs, and senior leaders to achieve their goals efficiently. 

Learn about the critical balance between output and energy management, and discover practical strategies to optimize performance without compromising well-being.

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/carla-fowler/
https://twitter.com/DrCarlaFowler
www.thaxa.com

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Transcript

0:18

The Small Business show is the official podcast of Garuda promo and branding solutions. Hello everyone, you're listening to the small business show. My name is Swire Ho. You can also call me the promo guy. My guest today is Kyler Fowler from thexer executive coaching doctor. Kyler Fowler is an MD, PhD and elite executive coach. For the last decade, she has been a secret weapon for score of CEO's, entrepreneur and other senior leaders. Carla's unique approach combined the latest research from performance science with timeless best practices to help top performers up and achieve their goal. How are you doing, Carla? I'm doing great, Swara. Thanks for having me. You know, excited to have you on the soap, but before that, I'd love to find out a little bit more about your background and then I kind of hold up on this question a little bit. Can you tell us more about the backstory of your company, Dexter? Absolutely. As you alluded to in the intro, I have not always been an executive coach, but that is what I've been doing for the past eleven years. And my executive coaching practice is called Thacsa. And the meaning of that or the reason I picked that name was because it means a task in Latin. And from a very young age, when I started thinking about performance and how we go after the goals that we've set for ourselves, I think I either like through my parents, or maybe it was some intuition, but I understood that if you could just break the big stuff down into the right set of tasks that you could do right now, you would be able to accomplish a lot. Just stacking those tasks one after another and really getting the compounding out of that. That's where the name comes from. Nice. I love that. So I've been wanting to find out the answer for this question, and I think college, you will be the best person to answer it. Like, in your world, how would you consider individual to be a high performer? Is this someone who said they're always busy, or is it someone that, you know, in the extreme? One of our guests, you know, he only worked like four days for the week, for the month, and then he took off and. But he had multiple businesses. Like, what's your definition of a high performer? Well, I think you really sort of cued something up there for me, which is one of the things we get wrong about performance is like this idea of busyness. So like that we might be doing a lot, but I think a lot about performance as both what are the results you're producing? And I also think about how are you using that time. Right? Because that very much relates to what are the results you get out of your time. And then I also think there's an element of how do you feel while you're doing it? And this is a tricky one, because, of course, there are lots of parts of trying to obtain really high performance that take grit, that are not fun, that take really deep work. But I do think it's important to think about our resiliency, because, of course, if one, like, puts their head down and just grinds on a problem and really sprints for a year, you might achieve quite a bit. But if you've destroyed your health, if they haven't left, and if you've really burned out your motivational engine, then your total trajectory of performance over, like, what you could achieve in ten years is going to be much smaller. So I think there is this important piece of performance that is not just what are the results you can achieve, but also how much energy does it take you to produce those results? And are you kind of optimizing, like, that balance of how much you have to spend to get the results that you're getting? Yeah, I really like that. And sorry, I apologize in advance, everyone. When I had the pre interview call with caller, I keep using sports analogy while you're talking. Okay, I'm thinking about that right now. Like it would be example, say, you know, I want to be the strongest man in the world, for example, right? So I watched YouTube video, I hire ten coaches, and I train every single day. But in six months, I burned out my body. I got hurt. You know, I lost all my friends, and I, my diet is a mess. So I think it is very interesting, right? You want to get somewhere, right? You have a goal, but if you don't do it correctly, going back to the business standpoint, you can hurt your business and you can also mess things up, uh, which they, they might be working out for you, but, you know, since you wanted to go, you started poking things around, and then it actually messed everything up, right? Or, you know, you. You work so hard on it and you get some of those results you want, but then you get disinterested in working on it anymore, right? Like, you're just burned out. So these are, I love sports analogies because I have been an athlete for my entire life, but they have good, um, analogies into business as well. So let's talk about becoming a high performer normally from coaching client. You know, what prompt them to say, you know, I really think that I need a coach to go to the next level. So what, prompt people for doing nothing compared to someone? No, I really would start to work with a coach who can help me to get to the next level. Yeah, this is an interesting question. It has a couple different elements. One of the first elements is inherent in hiring a coach. Like, if someone is sitting in a position where they do not like the results they're getting, one of the first things that has to happen for them to hire a coach is to actually acknowledge that they might not have the answer themselves. Like that they might need help. And actually, for highly capable people who maybe have done quite a bit of, like, generated good results in their lives, sometimes that asking for help is actually difficult. So I'll say that first. But then I think the second piece is, you know, they might be feeling a couple of different pain points that might prompt them to say, okay, I think I need a coach and I'm open to that help. The first one might be a sense of lack of clarity. Right? Like, if you're kind of looking around with your business and you're like, it's not going as well as I would like it to, or maybe even it's. It's going fine at the level it's going. But I don't really see how it would make that next jump. That might be a sign that it would be a good time to look at coaching. Another sign could be you have an acute pain point, right? Let's say you had a business pipeline that was working well, a sales pipeline, and then, you know, that partnership, I don't know, they got acquired or shut down their thing or whatever, right? And so suddenly you have an acute pain point of like, oh, my sales pipeline is going to shift a lot and it might go back to zero. Acute pain point is sometimes a reason. Sometimes people look for coaching because they like running their own business, but they're feeling burnt out and they are realizing that, you know, maybe their hands are in all the parts of the business already too busy to be able to scale, and they can't sort of imagine wanting to run it this way, you know, for the next ten years. It may be a little bit of burnout or loss of motivation, and they're kind of trying to find that spark. And then sometimes people are starting businesses, they're doing a startup or like, they haven't done it before, and they're very knowledgeable at their craft. Maybe it's the service or the product that they want to be building the business around. But in terms of all the elements of thinking about the business and getting organized and how to think both about the making of the stuff, but also the selling of the stuff. Sometimes that's a good reason. So many different things that could lead someone to look for a coach. But those are a couple key signals that I find are commonly true. Thanks for sharing. And I think most people listening to this podcast will know what executive coach can help them. But I want to get your take on as an executive coach. What are some of the things that you cannot help people with? Because if you expect the coach to help you on a certain part of your business, it's true, but I don't think executive coach can help on everything for an individual in the business. Right. Like what? Some of the things that not for the executive coach to help. To be clear, executive coaches do a range of different things, and so each coach may have a different set of things. I would say, generally speaking, it's important to differentiate executive coaching from therapy. This would be, I would say, a pretty broad standpoint. Both are very important specialties and partners that you can have. Sometimes people want both. But I would say therapy is its own specialized kind of training. More deep expertise in, again, often processing the past, dealing with some deeper emotional issues and things like that. So I think that's one boundary now within executive coaching. We, of course, talk about how people feel. We might even explore the past to some degree to look for, hey, what are some things that worked for you in the past or sometimes when you felt better about how work was going in the past? So again, it's not that there's this like hard line wherever all we talk about is work or all we talk about is non feelings. That is certainly not the case. Because I would say for many people who run a business, that business is a piece of their identity often, and it is deeply important to them. And so, of course, they have emotions and feelings about that. That's one element, though, that I think it's good to distinguish if someone were actually looking for more of that therapy support versus executive coaching. Thank you for answering, Carl. Yeah, and I think I'm reading on one of the notes. It struck me, I really like that and want you to elaborate more on that. You mentioned high performer are just like us, except for the few surprising things they do differently. What do you mean by that? When I set that up, the thing that always has occurred to me is that we sometimes think that high performers are like just a totally different kind of person, right? That maybe they have no feelings, they have no lacks of confidence 30 hours in the day, instead of 24. Right. But that's not true. They deal with time management issues. They also deal with worrying about failing. Right. They're not different from us in many ways, but there are a few things that I routinely see they tend to do differently is what's helping them produce a higher level of results. So the first thing that I see is they tend to have a sense of brutal focus. And by that, what I mean is they work towards. So just to be very clear, it's not that they just, like, naturally have this, it's magic. They spend time working on a clear sense of what it is they want to have happen and not, like, wanting it. All right? Like, they have a sense of like, nope, I want these things or these results more than I. I care about these other results. And then the second piece of brutal focus is that they have a sense, a very clear sense of what is actually most important to drive towards those results. So they actually know that they're not going to do all the things and that it may look a little messy at some point because they're not going to do all the things that other people might be doing to go after a particular result. But they've actually said, no. I think these things give me more impact than these other ones for my time. And so I'm gonna let fully invest in these. So that's the first thing, brutal focus. I think the second thing that they consistently do differently is they're very clear that, like, knowing something doesn't equal doing it. And I think, and this is gonna sound really simple. And again, I think this is a fallacy that we get about high performance is that somehow we need a new hack or a new tool, that whatever is the new idea is always better versus taking something we already know and applying it really consistently. And so when I look at high performers, I think they understand that, like, number one, there's going to be a long arc. They're going to have to really compound day over day. The things they're working on. They know how to get started, which is the first, most important part of that, because 90% of people don't get started on something, they know how to keep going on it to build that habit and that consistency. And I would say the next 90% of people who start often, they stop too soon. And then the third thing they know how to do is after they've sort of figured out how to get in the habit of something, they know that now they have to improve whatever is the habit. So how to iterate on that, how to make that practice more effective. And I think that's the third place that people often fail in this sort of cultivating of capability, is that they maybe they build the habit, but they keep doing the same thing over and over again and they don't improve how they're doing it. So, like, a practical example could be, you start a business, you know, you need to get out and sell. So, like, the first thing is you gotta make some calls and, like, set up some meetings. So that's getting started. And then, like, maybe you tell someone about your service and it's kind of awkward. I certainly, when I opened my practice and started kind of pitching myself as a coach, it was not smooth at the beginning, but I had to get in the habit of just going out and doing that anyways. But that third piece was, of course, I needed to improve at how I talked about my service, how I asked people questions to understand where coaching might be of benefit. So that third piece was really like, okay, now that I've got the habit, how do I improve that? Those are a few things that I think are really different and a little bit surprising about what high performers do differently. And I think you talked about, you know, different things that, you know, high performer can do and wanted to ask you to touch on the performance science piece a little bit more. You know, how, how can science benefits to our behavior? And then, you know, like you mentioned, you know, some of us are more outgoing, so a sales call may be natural for us, but if you have us down to balance our books, then, you know, you, you might as well kill them. Or, you know, for me, put an example. I could talk for all day, but if you ask me to write a blog post, wow, it would take me, I don't know how long it would take me to do that. So how does science put into high performing individuals? This is a great question. And one of the first things when I talk about performance science that I do is I actually break it down into, like, three simple parts. The number of studies out of the psychiatry departments and the sociology departments and the business schools. It's just very noisy. And so that can be kind of overwhelming. I just like to break it down and say, listen, where performance is concerned, you can approach it from the angle of what are the most important things, or what's your strategy that you want to invest in versus saying you're going to do everything. I think the second big bucket is about execution. So how well are you, or how consistently are you doing, or how efficiently are you doing those few things? That you've said are most important. And then I think the third angle or bucket of performance science ideas are all about mindset. How do you stay confident? How do you stay motivated as you're building over time and doing something really hard in terms of then, examples of how these things really help people when you attack them from different angles. One example, so starting with the strategy or the focus angle, for example, I had a client who was an entrepreneur who wanted to build his company and sell it two years in the future, was trying to figure out how to maximize that value and that sale price. And I asked a lot of questions about, really to get to the root right of what is most important here. What are all the things that go into that successful outcome, that to set it up for success. And over the process of him talking it out and being like, okay, here's how it works. He had a really big insight, and this is where looking at strategy and focusing on that question matters a lot. His insight was he needed to raise prices immediately, and in doing so, that that was going to be one of the most impactful things for the sale of his business, which he did successfully two years later. And it added, I think, at least a million onto what was ultimately the price. Like, linked back to that decision made two years in the future. So that's just an example of, like, how does that piece of the science help us uncover important things? A different example might be one about mindset, right? What do we believe about ourselves? And so an example of this would be, I had a client who was put in a leadership position at their firm to work with one of the firm's largest clients and to try and build really big deals and build that relationship and have it be fruitful. Multiple people before her in the position had failed to kind of lock in a big deal. And so you could imagine coming into that standpoint saying, well, gosh, really competent people have been in this position before and have not succeeded. You could have come in and said, how am I going to get this done? And we did a lot of work on what was her approach? What was her confidence about it, how to really trust in that she was bringing in some different and new things and to trust in those, and just to give it some space to see where it led. She was successful in closing an eight figure deal where other people had not before. But you can imagine the amount of mental fortitude that takes to go into a situation where several people have already failed to do so. So again, these are where having different angles of approach, I think, help us look at the challenges we face in our businesses and start to say, how could I attack this? And even, how could I attack it in multiple ways? I really love that. And while you're talking, I think a good coach will kind of like Yoda in Star wars or Mister Miyaki in karate kid, right? You know, the students is there or the client is there. In this case, they have the potential, it's the coach job to see maybe what is lacking or what needs to be worked on more. Until you could, you know, fight the Darth Vader or, you know, to one karate or whatever they need to do. Do you think that what a good coach should do, like, observe what the person have or, you know, still needs to work on and then just bring out the best in them? Is that one of you, you know, would you agree with that? I would agree with that. Particularly what you said about, you really need to ask questions and, like, draw out for people, not just so I can see it, but also so they see it for themselves. Like, what are all the strengths and the capabilities they have? Again, because different people have different kinds of strengths and experiences, even two people in the same role in the same industry might be approaching it totally differently. I actually, there's a, you know, the strengths finder. I don't know if you've encountered that set, that book, and that particular test, but one of the things I liked about it was that they make the case that you could be in any number of different jobs and roles, but using a similar set of strengths as someone else who decided to be something totally different, that the strengths themselves don't necessarily direct you to like a particular profession. And I just. I always liked that point. I think the other thing a coach does really well, that's important is to be able to help people approach things that are new and uncertain, because often people are coming to coaching and they sometimes do have a sense of, like, I'm not very good at this thing, or I don't like doing this thing, or maybe they don't. And over the course of conversations as a coach, you might realize that there's an area that they might have a blind spot. So the other thing is, how do you help people really approach things that feel new or uncertain? Not in the sense of, like, there's something wrong with them, but just saying, here is your next edge of opportunity, right? That you might be strong at a and b, and if you improved your confidence or your experience with c, like, you might have some real sort of multiplicative effects that really help your business in big ways because you, even if you are never as strong in that weaker area or in that gap area, just even taking it to a level where you're, like, comfortable with it could have a really big impact. And so I think as a coach, how do you help people move into that uncertain realm where they're not confident or it's something new is another important thing that I work with people on. Yeah, thanks for sharing that. Let me ask you, I think this is an important question. Right. So you mentioned, you know, a good coach will ask the right question to uncover what's needed or what needs to be, you know, changed sometime in a client. But on the client side, let's say we determine, right, we want to be achieve our goals and we wanted to find out what a good coach is for us. So what kind of questions you suggest listener or potential client who are reaching out to coaches to ask to determine what's a good fit for them? Yeah, this is a great question. So looking for a coach, I've had many potential clients talk to me about this. It is a challenge and it's a noisy field. And so I'll just say to start, I always recommend having a couple of different conversations with multiple coaches. And generally coaches will do some kind of like, free anywhere from 15 minutes to 45 minutes intro calls. But I think even just talking with three different people will help you understand some of the range of what's out there. Before you ask questions, you'll often get a sense of like, oh, I feel like I could really talk to that person or that felt a little harder with that person. So that's a great baseline. But. But in terms of questions to ask, certainly there are the nuts and bolts questions, right? Um, like, depending on if someone is like, we meet weekly and that's how we do that. And you're like, that just wouldn't work for me. All right. Or like price point, for example. Um, but I think. But the higher the price, the better. Sorry, great question. Like most things, I do think that there is some correlation around, like value and price point or experience level and price point. Highest price point would not necessarily guarantee, like, best coach for you as a person. So the kinds of things I might look at and ask about are, number one, what is their experience with coaching? Right. How long have they been coaching? That might be really important to say, well, I don't want someone who just did their six week certificate and now is hung out their shingle. I would like them to have a little more experience. Another question you might want to ask is, for example, sometimes people have done other things prior to coming into coaching that do represent an important part of their experience. For example, someone might have been a CEO prior to becoming a coach. Like my training was in medicine and science prior to becoming a coach. I think it's important to ask because sometimes you may be looking for someone who has had a particular set of experiences prior to that might be worth asking about. I also think trying to understand what their methodology is matters a lot. Now, I have a bias on this because I think it's wonderful to have a thought partner as a coach who you can dialogue with. But fundamentally, I believe a coach needs to be moving you or being a support and moving you towards your goals. That coaching shouldn't just be a series of coffee chats, right? Like you can go out to coffee chat with your friends, you know, or your spouse, but the coach's job, while they can't, like, do the work for you, is to be a partner and some accountability around are we moving forwards? And if we're not moving forwards, why is that? You know, what do we need to troubleshoot? So I think understanding what their process is like, how do they make sure that both it's a good fit for you as an individual, but also that you're moving forwards matters a lot. Other questions people often ask me are like, have you worked with someone like me before? That can be like industry, it can be background. Often behind that question is, we want to know, like, will this work? You know, will this work? For me, it is a great question to ask. And so one of the important things is knowing in the answer that certainly if someone has worked with people who are in your industry or something like that, they have some experience with it, but also that their job as a coach is not to necessarily say, oh, so you're just like all those other people in that industry, or your situation is just like that. You want to make sure that they maybe have some experience, but also that they have the ability to see what might be changing or what might be different about your situation. Yeah, I think finding the right coach is, you know, really it's not an easy task. Right. You know, even, you know, you know, color you, you mentioned a lot of good question to ask, but, you know, by aligning yourself, I think personality plays into play. Like if you are, you know, more of a person who wanted someone to take you under the wing, so then you might not want to some ask for someone who challenge you with different questions. So I think that's no right or wrong in that question, but, you know, finding the right coach who could see you perform and then make a little bit of suggestion. You know, using analogy in soccer, for example, I think all of us can kick the ball into the goal, right, if you get close enough. But then when you are under pressure or when you are under stress and deadline, can you actually kick that ball into the goal so that separate me versus people who are higher paying, you know, in playing the european league so the right coaches can change you. Just that. So you can set that ball through that goal, right. And so you both need a person that, like, you're willing to listen to, that you trust and respect, like you want to trust and respect your coach. And they also need to, like, trust and respect you as a client and be able to be curious about and interested in, like, what is your experience? What is the wisdom you have, like, of already knowing many things and how do they help bring that out and make it really useful? What would you suggest? A potential client. Right. When I pick the right coach for me, some of the people, especially for entrepreneurs, small business owner, are not very coachable. Like you said, they might have the success in their business, but then they're kind of struggling or want to go to the next level, but then they're bringing everything that they learn. I've been in business for 20 years. I know all this and that. And in the industry, like, do you think some of the clients are not coachable to begin with? And what would you suggest when you decided work with a coach to change your mindset? So you, you ready to be coach? This is an interesting question. One of the interesting parts that I think is the art of coaching is people have different levels of openness and rigidity about their businesses. Right. Or about their work. And I think one of the arts is find where people are open. Start there, right. Like, some people are sort of completely open. They, they're like, I don't know what to do next. And I'm really open to suggestion. And if you say jump, like, I'll go jump, I'll give it a try. I'm really willing to do it. Okay, that's one end. And as you said, like, I would say it can often take enough to get going with coaching that there's always some openness there because if there was no openness, they wouldn't spend the money. Like, they just wouldn't, they wouldn't think it was worthwhile. So I look for the spot that's open and we start there and we try some things that just maybe create a little more space. And I think part of coaching is also building some trust, right? Like, hey, did the things Carla said have some value or some helpfulness? And so part of the art of coaching is also having them think about, well, what went differently when you did that? Or even if they're, like, not as open to doing something differently, you can say, well, you don't have to change your whole business. Let's talk about how you'd run a good experiment. And this is actually how I often think and talk about getting people to approach uncertainty in a different way, say, well, what would it look like for us to just run an experiment? You don't have to change your business. We're just going to try it and then we're going to see how did you feel? What were the results? You know, what would it look like to run the next experiment, to build some more experience with doing this a different way? Often you don't need tons of openness, but you have to run a process over time of building that trust, exploring the ideas together. And sometimes if there's a place someone doesn't want to go, well, I know there are some coaches where they're like, I have to challenge, and sometimes they have clients. I'll have said, I want you to challenge me, and if that's your agreement, then that is great. But I, I also think, um, you don't always have to start with challenging everything all at once. Yeah. In fact, that can be kind of stressful and sometimes can just kind of create more friction. And so I like to balance building momentum with saying, okay, are we ready to tackle a harder area? Right. And kind of balance that. And I think, you know how we started this conversation, saying that high performance is both about what are the results you're achieving, but also at what cost to yourself. Yeah, I think the same is true in coaching, to say that there is a currency of energy and focus and how much challenge can someone take on at once? And you need to know your clients and also balance that. And often that is how you help them get the best performance. It's not by, like, challenging every statement they make, which sounds ludicrous when I say it. I know, but, yeah, thankful answer is. You know, so, so quickly. And then I think, you know, if you decided you want to be coach, then be coachable, right? If you, if you don't want to change anything, why hire a coach, right? You could if you're fine with what you have, you know what you are capable of doing. You know, then you don't need a coach, right? But, you know, if you do decide to work on a professional, like, do you open up, share information, and then, you know, like I like you. Refer back to our earlier conversation. If you think that you're so busy, then you really don't have time to make room for change. And if you're so busy, are you really busy in helping your own business? So that's the question. So, Carla, I think it gets to the point that will be very individual questions for listener getting to know you better. So if they want to reach out to you, what would be the best way? Two great ways to do this. One, if they're interested in learning more about coaching, you can visit my website. And that is@thaxa.com thaxa. And there's a great faq section. You can also message me through the site. So that's a great way to get in touch. But also, if you're interested in just hearing more about performance science, I am on LinkedIn, Arla Fowler, and I'm always posting when I have a great conversation like this one. So you can find those there as well. And so feel free to follow along. Carla, thank you so much for coming on to the show today. I learned a lot from you. Oh, Swara, thank you so much for having me. I loved your questions and it's just fun to have this conversation. Thank you for listening to the show. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast and share with your friends or colleagues who might benefit from the conversation. Any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'd love to connect with you.

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