by Atchara Juicharern, Ph.D., MCC

Over the past few years, AI has moved from the edges of organizational life to the center of it. It is no longer simply a tool for efficiency. It is shaping how organizations analyze, decide, and move.

At first glance, this sounds like progress in its clearest form: more speed, more insight, more support. And in many ways, it is.

But the more I work with leaders and organizations, the more I see a deeper reality. Even with better tools, more dashboards, and increasingly sophisticated AI-generated outputs, many organizations still struggle to make clear decisions, move in alignment, and think well under pressure.

So the question is no longer only, How well are we using AI? A more consequential question may be: Are we thinking well enough to use AI wisely?

That is why I believe this: AI does not make coaching less important. It makes coaching a core organizational capability.

Because what organizations need now is not simply more information. They need better thinking. And better thinking does not emerge by accident.

When Information Scales, Thinking Becomes the Constraint

Organizations now operate in a world where information is abundant, immediate, and increasingly AI-generated.

AI can analyze vast datasets, generate insights in seconds, and offer multiple pathways forward. Yet many organizations still struggle with slow execution, misaligned decisions, and what I would call superficial alignment, the appearance of agreement without real shared understanding.

That is the paradox. The constraint is no longer access to answers. It is the quality of thinking applied to those answers.

Daniel Kahneman’s work reminds us that under pressure, people tend to default to fast, automatic responses. AI may accelerate output, but it does not automatically deepen judgment.

Without the right conditions, speed can simply allow shallow thinking to happen faster.

The Real Gap Is Often Conversational

Despite all the progress in tools and technology, many organizations still live with familiar patterns:

• meetings rich in data, but poor in insight
• silence at the very moment challenge is needed
• decisions shaped more by hierarchy than by inquiry
• teams that appear aligned, but are not actually thinking together

This is why I believe the real gap in many organizations is not only technological. It is conversational.

Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety shows that performance improves when people feel safe enough to speak up, question assumptions, and admit uncertainty. But psychological safety is not created by good intentions alone.

It is created, moment by moment, through everyday conversation. Through how leaders ask.
Through how teams listen. Through what people feel safe enough to say.

That is where coaching becomes far more than a leadership style.

Coaching as Infrastructure™, Not Just Intervention

For many years, coaching has been positioned as one of three things:

• a leadership style
• a developmental tool
• a skill practiced by certain individuals

None of these are wrong. But in the age of AI, they are no longer sufficient.

If the quality of thinking inside an organization depends only on whether a few leaders happen to be good at coaching, that organization will not be able to scale trust, learning, or thoughtful decision-making.

This is why coaching must move from being seen as a skill to being designed as an infrastructure. It means coaching is no longer something extra. It is not something leaders do only when they have time. It is not reserved for developmental conversations once a quarter.

It becomes part of how the organization thinks.

The Coaching as Infrastructure™ Model

To make this practical, I use a simple three-layer model.

1. Thinking Space Infrastructure

From Reaction to Reflection

In fast-moving organizations, almost everything is designed for speed. But very little is designed for thinking.

That is why the first layer is about intentionally creating moments where reflection can happen.

This might include:

• reflection built into meetings
• strategic pauses before key decisions
• question prompts embedded into workflows

Without structured thinking space, AI can accelerate reactions rather than improve decisions. This layer helps people move from immediate response to more deliberate reflection.

2. Learning-in-the-Flow Infrastructure

From Activity to Learning

The second layer is about closing the gap between work and learning.

Too often, organizations treat learning as something separate from real work. Yet some of the most meaningful learning happens inside the work itself.

This might include:

• after-action reflection
• coaching check-ins during execution
• feedback conversations that invite thinking, not just correction

When learning is embedded into the flow of work, development becomes more natural, more relevant, and more sustainable.

3. Coaching Habit System

From Occasional Skill to Repeatable System

Many organizations train leaders in coaching, yet the behavior fades over time. Usually, this is not a motivation problem. It is a systems problem.

If coaching is not reinforced, practiced, and built into routines, it disappears under pressure.

That is why the third layer matters. This layer also resonates with the work of Michael Bungay Stanier, whose book The Coaching Habit helped many leaders see that coaching creates greater impact when it becomes an everyday practice rather than an occasional intervention.

This includes:

• reinforcement mechanisms
• peer coaching
• structured practice
• integration into performance routines
• AI-supported coaching simulations and feedback
• metrics that track conversation quality, not only outcomes

This layer helps coaching move beyond individual intention and become part of organizational habit.

From AI Adoption to Human-AI Intelligence

Many organizations are investing in AI adoption. Far fewer are investing in how people think with AI. And in my view, that is where the deeper opportunity lies.

The real question is not simply whether your people can use AI. It is whether they can think well with AI.

The greatest value in human–AI collaboration comes when people remain actively engaged, when they critically evaluate outputs, bring context and ethical judgment, and resist the temptation to outsource thinking entirely.

This is exactly where coaching infrastructure matters.

• Layer 1 creates space to question AI outputs
• Layer 2 embeds reflection into real decisions
• Layer 3 reinforces disciplined thinking at scale

I often summarize it this way: AI increases the speed of thinking. Coaching increases the depth and consistency of thinking.

Organizations need both.

Conclusion

AI does not diminish the importance of coaching. If anything, it elevates it.

Because in a world defined by information abundance, accelerated speed, and growing complexity, the organizations that thrive will not simply be the ones with the most intelligence.

They will be the ones that can think, learn, and adapt together. And that capability does not emerge on its own. It must be designed. That is why coaching is no longer just a skill. It is a core organizational capability.

And in the age of AI, it may be one of the most important capabilities an organization can build.

Modupe says BCA’s achievements to date can be measured in the difference its support has made to leaders, and the subsequent impact on their organisations. Another milestone has been raising the profile of executive coaching in the region; according to Modupe, it is now recognised by significantly more African leaders and entrepreneurs than before. 

“Prior to BCA Leadership, there was no pan-African brand in the executive coaching industry and many coaches toiled in isolation, carving out local niches for themselves and being invisible to multinationals and INGOs,” he explains.  

Modupe believes one of the most exciting areas within executive coaching is the enormous potential it has for making a decisive impact in Africa. 

“Imagine what the continent will be like when every country’s president, every cabinet minister, and every managing director of a state-owned enterprise in Africa has an executive coach?” he says. “The transformative effect of giving these leaders the ability to leverage thinking spaces with a coach to devise solutions that they will be committed to following through, is mind-blowingly exciting.”

The possibility that young adults in Africa may be priced out of the benefits of executive coaching over the next decade is a growing concern, however. The upfront price for executive coaching remains out of the reach of a vast swath of young people who need the support to achieve their entrepreneurial and professional goals. 

Looking forward to 2026, Modupe has identified three key trends impacting coaching: demographics, nationalism, and diaspora.

Demographics

In the global south, there is a bulging youth population that is increasingly urban and highly entrepreneurial. This will place a demand for coaching because most of these youth are in danger of failing to achieve their dreams without a thought-partner to help them through the challenges they face.

Nationalism

Brexit and the rise of Trumpism, tariffs, and right-wing politics indicate a trend towards nationalistic protectionism – away from aid and social programs that protect the world’s poor. This means that national and municipal governments will have to depend more on generating their own revenue to fund public services, which places a higher burden on public sector leaders, who will then seek coaching support to help optimise their performance. 

Diaspora

The south-to-north migration of the nineteenth and twentieth century has slowed down – in fact over the last decade it has reversed. Africans, Latin Americans, and Asians who lived or were educated in Europe and North America are migrating in large numbers back to their home continents driven by technological and logistical advances (as well as the rise of western nationalism). This will increase the demand for coaches in the global south – with their networks and experience of navigating the political and economic systems.

Alex was inducted posthumously into the Thinkers50 Coaching Legends in 2025, having sadly passed away earlier in the year. To honour his legacy, Thinkers50 was in conversation with Charlotte Saulny, CEO of Coaching.com, to explore Alex’s vision for the business and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead for the coaching industry.

“Alex always had this vision that he could create a piece of technology that would enable coaches and coaching organisations alike to manage the delivery of coaching services at scale,” says Charlotte. “We saw a need in the market for people to become organised around how they deliver coaching; that vision evolved over time to be more than just what technology delivers or what enterprises deliver. We recognised that in order to deliver effective coaching, coaches need ongoing education, support and personal development.”

Coaching.com wants to help coaches build their business and one of Alex’s biggest achievements is the incredible coaching community he created – one which continues to grow. 

Charlotte believes coaching is at a pivotal moment because of the emergence of AI. “There is a lot of variance in the quality of coaching and in coaches who have done many years of training and those who have done a short online course. The profession needs to be clearer around what the expectations are of being a coach and what that means in practice. Metrics is another area the industry needs to get better at, such as assessing the return on investment for businesses, and gauging the impact of coaching.”

It’s this debate around the quality of coaching that she says Coaching.com is committed to elevating. “There are expectations and regulations around what it means to be a coach that are problematic. We need to get clearer on the expectations, make them more accountable.”

Her thoughts on trends in 2026? “Many in the industry may see AI as a threat but it’s an extraordinary tool and we are just scratching the surface. We do need to be mindful of the ethics when using it, but it will help coaches get better – not just in relation to their coaching skills but in terms of how they manage their business. If anything, it’s going to challenge the profession to up its game, to think about what differentiates us. Change and disruption, and how coaches are best placed to help businesses manage this, is a topic that will continue to test us.”

“Another interesting area that is emerging within our community is a focus on wellness – how we identify burnout and recognise the signs before it is too late. And coaching is taking the lead.”

In memory of Alex Pascal (1984 – 2025), founder of Coaching.com.

Magdalena was recently announced as a 2025 Thinkers50 Coaching Legends inductee, which honours executive coaches who have made significant and lasting contributions to the field of coaching and management. 

Speaking to Thinkers50, she highlighted what the ICF has achieved over the years, why coaching is now becoming the norm across organisations, the potential of AI within the industry and its benefit in helping to tackle mental wellbeing.

The majority of ICF members and credential holders identify as organisational/business/executive coaches. As such, ICF is equipping them with research, trends, updated competencies and education to empower them to work and to enable their clients, individuals, and organisations to thrive.

In 2025, the ICF recorded 60,000 active credentials, meaning that many individuals are providing a proven, professional service to their clients around the globe. 

“This global standard of excellence, aligned with ISO standards and based on research, is a true world-class offering to coaches, but mostly to their clients, ensuring quality and impact,” says Magdalena. 

She believes that coaching permeates all sectors of the economy and facets of life and that it’s particularly exciting to see coaching applied by large corporations and governmental entities alike. She’s also noted its increasing use within education and social progress organisations, and a growing interest from younger people. 

“Seeing coaching becoming a career of choice for younger people and seeing coaching embraced and desired in almost all parts of the world is exciting too,” she says. However, “the fear remains that untrained individuals, calling themselves coaches, are diluting the true potential and sustainable impact of professional coaching.”

Magdalena sees AI as a powerful enabler of coaching to reach an even greater number of people. supporting coaching practice, the process of coaching education, and maintaining and growing the level of coaching skills. Coaches utilising AI, she says, will continue to thrive and the provision of better education around AI in coaching may support both coaching and clients, eliminating unnecessary fear. She cautions however that use of AI in coaching needs to be applied with strong ethical standards and transparency.

Looking ahead to 2026, Magdalena expects to see a continued increase in the use of AI to support access to coaching and coaches alike, more coaching to support clients’ mental wellbeing, and coaching cultures becoming a norm within organisations.

“I hope that my work over the past three decades in coaching has encouraged a greater focus on evidenced-based practice, firstly providing evidence that coaching works, and more recently exploring factors to enhance coach training and development and the organisational application of coaching,” he says. “This commitment has led me to give away as much as possible of my work for free through my website, and to support colleagues who share this aim.”

One of his concerns for the industry is that many of those who practice in the area have no training, no background in psychology, and focus more on hyping their personal excellence and uniqueness rather than on what is at its heart a simple process: “one human being engaging with another human being in service of their learning and growth.”

Another challenge is how the industry uses AI. Jonathan notes that the past three years have seen an explosion of AI coaching and learning tools and, as in any new industry, the quality varies.

Looking ahead to 2026, Jonathan identifies three trends for executive coaching. One is the increasing popularity of ‘outdoor coaching’. Like AI, he says, outdoor coaching – walking and talking outdoors – has grown over the past three years. While he believes it will be more of an underground movement, it will become just as popular as digital and AI.

He also forecasts the prevalence of group coaching and AI-powered celebrity coaches. “If team coaching was 2024, group coaching will be 2026 and 2027; then there’s AI-powered celebrity coach avatars. For some while I have talked about the creation of celebrity avatar coaches. Marshall Goldsmith took the first step with his last year, but this will become more popular in 2026 and 2027.”

“We are still at the dawn of a new age and over the next decade AI tools will become integrated into work – so it will be hard to imagine a time when AI was not part of the way we work,” he says. “Our challenge is to leverage this power in a sustainable way, in planning for eco-power generation, sustainable water usage for cooling, and incorporating recycling of materials from last year’s tech hardware and products for the creation of this year’s.”

She believes the pace of growth in this field is extraordinary. Every year, more organisations are weaving coaching into their leadership operating models and workplace cultures. They’re recognising that coaching conversations build trust, fuel engagement, and accelerate performance in ways traditional leadership styles simply cannot.

“I look forward to the day when we’ll look back and say, ‘Can you imagine there was once a time when coaching wasn’t considered a natural part of leadership?’ That’s the future I see – one where coaching isn’t something leaders are doing, but it’s how they are being. And we’re already moving in that direction with many organisations beginning to embed coaching into their leadership DNA, transforming how people work and relate.

One of Brenda’s biggest achievements has been building her global executive coaching business over the past 23 years, having taken the risk of leaving a highly successful corporate career. She launched her business at a time when executive coaching was still in its infancy, but she had seen firsthand how coaching – as a leadership approach – could not only grow individuals and teams but drive outstanding business results too.

She also knew from personal experience that there was truth in the old saying, “it’s lonely at the top”. “When you’re leading at that level, where do you turn? It’s an incredibly high-pressure environment, and I wanted to change that – to make leadership at the top more easeful, purposeful, and yes, even enjoyable,” she says.

One of Brenda’s growing concerns is the increasing number of untrained or lightly trained individuals who label themselves as coaches, who she describes as ‘comma coaches’, as in, “I’m Joe Smith, Coach.” Coaching has become a popular title but without proper training, certification, and experience, she believes its true impact can be lost. When coaching is not done well, it risks undermining the very trust the profession is built on. Coaching transforms lives – but only when it’s done with depth, rigour, and respect for the craft.

As the industry continues to evolve, Brenda’s hope is that it will maintain strong standards that uphold the integrity and transformative potential of executive coaching, ensuring it remains a respected and rigorous profession.

And her take on a future trend? Coaching will increasingly integrate AI as an enhancer, but not as a full replacement. AI can streamline preparation, track progress, and surface insights, while a human coach brings intuition, nuance, and contextual judgment. Together, they create richer, more scalable coaching experiences. “Coaching is fast becoming the new language of leadership – and I look forward to the day when it’s simply how we lead.”

Tom’s biggest achievement thus far has been establishing the concepts of interaction effects – leadership improvements interacting with one another so the whole is greater than the sum of the parts – and the time value of coaching leaders: interactions improving leadership many years after the initial coaching experience.

He founded a program at Rice University which has now coached more than 7,000 undergraduate and graduate students and he also helped to build a leader development classification with the Carnegie Foundation, which is offered to all 5,200 colleges and universities in the US.

Thinkers50 asked Tom Kolditz to give his insights into current executive coaching trends and future challenges.

“The best coaches make major differences in the performance of leaders, improving not only business, but the lives of those being led,” he said.

His biggest fear is that coaching continues to expand with very little measurement of effectiveness and few performance standards.

“Currently about 60-70% of coaches know little about leadership, have never led themselves, certainly not as executives, but market themselves extensively, put leadership memes on Tik Tok, and are kept engaged by coaching companies and groups,” he says. “Many perform ‘leader-tainment.’ Coaching is more difficult than people think, and measured standards are almost nonexistent.”

He believes that using AI to support coaching can deliver the benefits of coaching to people who could otherwise not afford it, and that the industry should have some level of continuous coaching for leaders at all levels.

“Universities should have coaching available to all students – only about 30-40% will participate, even if it is free,” he says. “At the executive level, AI can be used for a continuance of development following one-on-one coaching.”

Tom is keen to see AI help scale leader development as well as the certification of ‘triple competence’ executive coaches with 1) professional coach training; 2) graduate-level education in a particular field such as psychology or business; and 3) experience as an executive level leader.

Renowned coach and “people whisperer” Dumi Magadlela is co-founder of the Ubuntu Coaching Foundation at the Coaching Centre in South Africa. He served as chair of the International Coaching Federation and in 2024 was inducted into the Thinkers50 Coaching Legends. His latest book is Ubuntu Coaching and Connection Practices for Leaders and Managers: Selected practices to grow your team in a fast-changing world.

In this conversation with Marshall Goldsmith, Dumi reveals how the ancient wisdom of ubuntu can address modern leadership challenges and he provides three key words for next generation leaders:

• Connect – practice “conscious greeting” and genuine relationship-building
• Systems – recognise the interconnectedness of all things
• Humanise – create safe spaces where everyone can express their unique gifts

“We need leaders that can see systems everywhere, can see the connections, because it is these connections that nourish human life. One of the things that has made humanity or human beings as a species succeed over millennia is the capacity to collaborate, cooperate, and work together.” 

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH DUMI MAGADLELA BY MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

Transcript

Des Dearlove:

Hello, I’m Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50, and it’s my great pleasure to introduce the latest episode in our Coaching Legends series. In these sessions, we talk to exceptional coaches: individuals who have worked with top business leaders. Our aim is to bring you insights and learnings that can make you both a better leader and a better coach. This is a collaboration between Thinkers50, 100 Coaches, and BetterUp. And I’ll be introducing our special guest in just a minute.

But for those of you who don’t know Thinkers50 so well, our mission is to be the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age, ideas that we believe can make a positive difference in the world. That mission dates all the way back to 2001 when we published the first ever global ranking of management and business thinkers, and we’ve published a new ranking every two years ever since.

In 2011, we introduced our Distinguished Achievement Awards and Gala, which the Financial Times very helpfully calls the “Oscars of management thinking.”

In 2023 with our friends at 100 Coaches in BetterUp, we added our Coaching Legends list, which recognises and honours the lasting influence and contribution of exceptional coaches.

So what’s the red thread that connects all of our work at Thinkers50? Well, we think Thinkers50 connects the most practical thinkers with the most thoughtful practitioners. Our mantra is thinkers plus doers equals impact, and that’s really what this series is all about. Coaches play a vital part in developing leaders. They are the connecting tissue between the world of ideas and the world of practice.

So let me, without further ado, introduce our special guest. I’m delighted to say that joining us today is Dumi Magadlela.

Described as a people whisperer for his ability to establish genuine connection with his clients and teams, Dumi is the champion of Ubuntu Intelligence, a concept and practice that ignites greater human engagement and connection. Promoting a philosophy of doing human better, he co-founded the Ubuntu Coaching Foundation, a non-profit coaching organisation that provides access to coaching for leaders and community members who would otherwise not be able to afford coaching services.

He is in the recent past president chair of the global board of the International Coaching Federation. That was in 2023 and 2024. With over 30 years experience in human development work, including contributions to the United Nations Development Programme, Dumi is co-founder of the Ubuntu Coaching Foundation at the Coaching Centre, in South Africa, where he delivers a module called African Wisdom in Coaching. He’s also on the international faculty at Coaching.com’s Team Coaching Programs. Dumi is an avid gardener and loves planting vegetables and ideas, so he’s a great fit with Thinkers50. He lives in Johannesburg, South Africa. Dumi’s recent book is titled Ubuntu Coaching and Connection Practices for Leaders and Managers. Dumi, welcome.

Asking the questions today we are delighted to welcome another legend of the coaching world, Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall, welcome and over to you.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Hello.

Dumi:

Thank you, thank you, Des. Hello, hi, Marshall.

Marshall Goldsmith:

How are you doing?

Dumi:

I’m doing great. It’s winter now in South Africa, so it’s quite crisp and chilly, enjoying it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, before we get started on the other questions, tell me a little bit about your journey through life, how did you get into coaching anyway, what led you into this journey?

Dumi:

Yeah, I studied human behaviour, call it behavioural science and just understanding the psychology and sociology and anthropology and of human behaviour in general. I grew up in a rural context where we ate what we grew really. I learned to farm and to really live off the land in a true sense of it. And I have huge respect for people that grow our food because I know what it takes to grow something and harvest and that, and in a large family.

And then sometime in the early-2000s, Marshall, I was on an executive development program with the Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, in fact, in the US. And that program exposed me to incredible work around intervening in organisational systems. That is after I’d been a lecturer-teacher, faculty. In the US, they’re called professors in universities. That was my first job after graduating with a PhD in behavioural science.

And in that program of Gestalt Institute of Cleveland, one of my senior teachers, hopefully you remind me of him because he was a bald man and grey-haired, Edwin Nevis.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And very good-looking, I might add, very handsome.

Dumi:

Yes. Edwin Nevis, yes, I have huge respect for gray-haired human beings because where I come from, Marshall, that’s a sign of wisdom.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I agree, by the way.

Dumi:

Yeah. This teacher of ours, Edwin Nevis, said to me, “Dumi, you have such a beautiful coaching approach,” because I kept asking what later on I learned with open-ended questions and then just being silent while another person is speaking and really tuning into them and listening to them. And I didn’t know then what coaching was really. And he said, “You have to go and get to find out what coaching is. You are a natural coach. Dumi, you’re a natural coach.” And then from then I got to find out what it is, and as they say, Marshall, the rest is history.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And here we are.

Dumi:

Here we are.

The ancient wisdom of “ubuntu”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, my next question to you is ubuntu, ubuntu is a concept meaning humanity, at least in some definitions. Tell me all about its history, and what does it mean to you?

Dumi:

It’s a great question, and we’ll need about half a day of lecturing and talking and all that, but I’m going to try and put a synopsis of it. There’s a concept called Ma-at. It’s M-A-hyphen-A-T, like Ma-at, which is an ancient name that has been given to ubuntu beyond Egypt and ancient days. What it means is the godliness in all of us.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see.

Dumi:

So ubuntu is really about the essence of being human, Marshall. It is humanity at its greatest or human beings at their best. What Ubuntu means is humanness, the quality of being humane, human with an E. It is something that is globally available. In other words, it is a universal phenomenon. Ubuntu is not an African way of being only. The word ubuntu is African, it’s Nguni, it’s from Zulu ethnic group, which is my background, and what it means in my language, it means I am because we are. In other words, I cannot be fully me if you cannot be fully you, we are here to co-create spaces, safe spaces where everyone can be their best selves. How amazing is that?

Marshall Goldsmith:

I love that, I love that. And if you had to look at this concept, which is a beautiful concept, how would you say, number one, it influences your work? And then if you look at coaching in Africa as opposed to coaching around the world, how might coaching be different in Africa than every place else? Because I know a lot of it is similar because people are people. Are there differences?

Dumi:

Yes, there are. And they’re very complementary differences. I always use the word in Africa, coaching is a hybrid practice.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Okay, tell me what you mean by that.

Dumi:

What I mean by that is that you seek to connect first. And in the global well-known practice of coaching, we call this, you develop and grow the rapport with the client.

Now, in the African sense, you see the person and all that they’re connected with. You don’t see the individual here. You see all that they are. One of the greetings in my language isiZulu, we say Sawubona. I’ll write it out. What it means is I see you and all that you are and all that have come before you that brought you here, your ancestors, your heritage, your language, your culture, everything that you are, I’m meeting it here. This is why we spend a bit of time connecting with each other because we are connecting not just with the individual in front of us, we’re connecting with all that they are connected to or with in their background.

And in most African coaches that I’ve interacted with, that I’ve had the pleasure to work with, they value that. But what we see because of global corporations and organisations and human beings travelling around the world, Marshall, we adopt a lot of other ways, especially the dominant paradigm of the Western way of doing business. And we take that, and it becomes the dominant way of doing business, including connecting and greeting.

Conscious greeting

There’s a concept I use called conscious greeting. I believe that we need to bring this back to all our interactions as leaders around the world. Conscious greeting, meaning I connect with another as they are here and now, mindfully, intentionally, hence conscious greeting. It’s a gift we give to ourselves and the relationship of the one in front of us. And many coaches in Africa do that. Others adopt the other ways and cut it short, and we find that it’s the same as in the global metropoles.

Marshall Goldsmith:

See, I love what you’re doing. I have a question, if you look at the changing world today with social media, with people’s limited attention spans, I completely agree with your philosophy. By the way, I’m a Buddhist, but I completely agree with your philosophy. My Buddhist monk, Thích Nhất Hạnh, was a great believer in what’s called interbeing, very similar to what you’ve just said. So I think what you’re doing is beautiful, number one, and really important, number two. Give me some of the challenges of dealing with younger people who are brought up in this hyperactive environment where really taking the time to recognise who you are, your history, your culture, what you bring can easily get lost.

Dumi:

Yeah, easily. And I love that. That’s why I’ve got this concept called you need to understand that in everything you do in this world now more than ever before you can really succeed if you are able to establish working relationships. And it’s about working with that. I work a lot with young people around the world, but of course, the African continent is the youngest continent on Earth right now. And in 10, 20 years time, we’ll have the youngest working age population globally on the African continent. And I’ve had the privilege of being invited to train, talk to, engage with workshop with young people on this concept of ubuntu and Ubuntu Intelligence, which is the practice of living with ubuntu as norm.

And what my invitation to answer your question is we need leaders that can see systems everywhere, can see the connections, Marshall. It is these connections that nourish human life. It’s the disconnections that corrode what we all need, the disconnections that we feed by emphasising separation is a cancer in human evolution, in human nature. As a species we all know that. One of the things that has made humanity or human beings as a species succeed over millennia is the capacity to collaborate and cooperate and work together like we’re doing now. Very important to see each other and to understand that we can learn from everyone we encounter, hence conscious greeting because everyone we meet is a teacher or a mentor, a coach.

Connecting authentically

Marshall Goldsmith:

Like I said, I love what you’re doing. If you look at leaders in Africa, what might be some differences in terms of leadership? I’m writing a new book right now or in 50 new books, but one of my books is about situational coaching, and it’s about different coaching styles in different situations. If you look at leaders in Africa, what are some of the differences perhaps in leaders there?

Dumi:

One thing I worked with recently, I was with the CEO of a media company earlier today, in fact, we’re doing our last coaching session, and what we spoke about was his interest in the concept of leadership transformation. What we see is that the speed of change has accelerated recently. So we have leaders that need to be available with heart, Marshall, and this is one thing that I’m seeing across the African continent, young leaders that are coming into executive roles are combining what they learn in the Harvards of this world, in big business schools, with their, what they call traditional wisdom, such as the concept of ubuntu. We’re very busy on ubuntu now being brought and invited to give talks on ubuntu.

So to answer your question directly, it’s where I’m seeing leaders that have a hunger and a thirst for wisdom that makes them refine or grow or develop, sharpen their ability to connect and build relationships. Not the individual hero or the CEO who takes care of the company, but more someone who is able to be an orchestrator or a conductor who even faces their back to the audience, but making sure that they conduct something that will… a number of instruments producing harmony in that together. That’s understanding resonance, understanding the capacity of different people to pull together and produce something magical. That is the leadership that’s needed now. And many African leaders that know this but have adopted other ways so that they can be effective in the corporate world. They’re now hungry more than ever before for this indigenous wisdom, ancient wisdom that helps them connect authentically. Not to fake it; to be real.

Marshall Goldsmith:

What you’re saying, I think, is important, not only for leaders, but just human beings around the world. If you look around the world right now, especially with young people, what you see is in spite of dramatic increases in economic wellbeing, a country, let’s take South Korea, huge positive economic growth with massive amounts of depression, anxiety, world’s top suicide rate, no babies, lots of problems. Ideas maybe, how can some of the wisdom that you’re sharing really be useful to help? I originally was asked about leaders, but I just changed it to human beings because really it’s not just about helping leaders, human beings need this. I mean, human beings, there’s a massive amount of emptiness around the world right now. What are some of your thoughts?

Dumi:

Marshall, I cannot emphasise enough, I so agree with you. Mine and other coaches, African coaches, coaches around the world who resonate with this and yourself, Marshall, we believe that we need to find ways to serve, and that’s the key. We talk sometimes glibly about servant leadership, the ability for leaders to serve. For me it’s the practice, the way of being a servant, the way of attunement to values that serve humanity.

I love your idea that this is not about leaders and coaches, it’s about humanity, Marshall. This is why this concept on ubuntu and Ubuntu Intelligence is an invitation to all humans to come back home to humaneness, the ability and capacity to connect with others and to know that we are here to… of the over 8 billion of us on this planet to help co-create safe spaces where everyone can express the unique gifts that were placed in them because we are all unique, and we all have a gift. The work we need to do as fellow human beings is to co-create safe spaces for everyone to be their best self. Imagine what we can do with that. That’s the work.

Marshall Goldsmith:

As I said, something I think that’s needed not just in Africa, but around the world. What you’re saying is very, very important.

If you look at the new world of social media, I mean, I spend hours on social media. And I wake up this morning, I do a LinkedIn post, thousands of people see it. I did one the other day, a hundred and something thousand people read it. It’s mind-blowing. And as you know, I’m working on my own artificial intelligence computer bot, marshallgoldsmith.ai, where I give everything away anyway. If you look at what is the impact of AI in the new world, give me your thoughts, I’ll give you my thoughts. We’ll have a talk about it.

Dumi:

Yeah. I follow you on LinkedIn, I read your posts, I quote and comment on it, and I love your AI bot. I think we all need to have that as coaches, we need… So my response to that, Marshall is that-

Marshall Goldsmith:

And before we leave, thank you. Now, go ahead.

Dumi:

Every leader today needs to get on with the technology. We need to partner with the technologies today, with AI especially. We need to all understand what it is and how we can leverage it and work with it, partner with it. Yes, they’re not sentient beings as they are tech beings, they’re alive and living and learning fast. They have access to vast knowledge that they can compute things in a millisecond that human beings cannot do. So we’ve got to partner with it.

My view of it, Marshall is every leader, every coach especially, but every leader, every human being who has access to technology, to the internet, because it’s not everyone, everyone who has that access needs to get on with it. We need to understand what it is and how it works. Now, not tomorrow, because tomorrow it will be different tomorrow. So we need to get on with it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I agree. And as you know, I work very hard.

Let me ask you a question on a personal note.

Dumi:

Sure.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I’m always doing… and I appreciate your comments because you make comments on a lot of my social media stuff, so I greatly appreciate it. What is some of the value-add you found from that? And then I will get to you about stuff we collectively can do.

Dumi:

You mean besides the fact that this grey-haired man is way ahead of me in developing his own AI, I need to get on with it. So it’s the inspiration for me from your messages, it’s just rallying and mobilising us to really understand what’s going on and that we are connected. Because what your messages say is the world is systemic, and we need to see each other, we need to connect because you give everything away. Imagine we all did that.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And one thing I didn’t think about until this conversation, we should have a meeting with all of the Coaching Legends, and code for old people. But anyway, we should have a meeting for all of the Coaching Legends.

What’s something that collectively, people like you, people like me, some of the other people who have been around for a while, what can we do? Because right now, there is a need in the world. I want to go back to what you said, and the need goes beyond just leaders. The need is for human beings. There are a lot of human beings not doing well out there, just lost in a rat race, what I call the winner-take-all economy. Just what can we do, what can you do, what can I do to make the world a little better?

Dumi:

I’ll use a metaphor. I love using metaphors in coaching, Marshall, it’s a dance flow. We are all dancing, and we need to be willing and ready to leave the dance floor and allow others to continue to dance. And sometimes the music changes, so we need to change step. Sometimes we need to get out of the way for others to come forth and do what they need to do. And we need to see that we are together in this. And there are many leaders like ourselves.

Like I was saying to someone earlier, I’m close to 60 now, and two years or so, and I’m aware that I’m an elder in my community, and I’m supporting others more now. I’m more interested in watching and supporting and mentoring and coaching and supporting other leaders to emerge. It’s very, very important that we all need to do our part to support younger leaders, other leaders. Sometimes that support is getting out of the way. Sometimes that support is opening more opportunities. Sometimes that support is giving away what we have, the wisdom and knowledge that we’ve gathered over the years like someone I know.

Marshall Goldsmith:

What are some of the things that people like you, like me, the other people in this group, what can we do to help younger coaches? And let me give you a little context to see. When you and I got into the coaching business, there weren’t 12 million people in it. Today, there are too many coaches, there are more coaches than there are people. And a lot of the coaches, it’s really tough for them today because they’re good people, they want to do well, they want to contribute to the world. It’s hard, and it’s, by the way, only going to get harder. That’s just the numbers and the reality that exists. What advice do you have for young people who want to be like you or me when they grow up someday?

Dumi:

Find your niche, find that thing in you that drives you. It may be coaching, it may be something else, it may not be, but what is it? There is that unique gifting that you are here to express through your life and deliver. Find what that is. Don’t try to be a copy of Marshall or someone. See what they do, learn from them. But you’ve got to find your own magic. What is it that I can and will do with my life that’s unique to me, that is really true to me?

Marshall Goldsmith:

I like that, I like that. And I think in the new world, that’s not going to become less important. In the new world, it’s going to become much, much, much more important because if you’re just a generic coach, you say, “Well, I’m a coach.” Well, okay, that’s nice, but why you, what’s special about you? There’s thousands of generic coaches out there. And I like your idea of what’s in your heart, what’s special in this for you? So I thought that’s a wonderful point.

Now, if you look back on your younger years, what’s the toughest challenge you ever had in coaching?

Dumi:

One of the challenging ones, early on in my career, I was part of the coaching panel. It’s an interesting example. I used it in teaching too. In this manufacturing company, about eight executives, and one of them, the chief financial officer, CFO, was a woman. But if they were by the coffee station over there, you would not see that there’s a woman there because she dressed exactly like the men, wore pants and a suit and a jacket and short hair, and then a scarf around her blouse. She turns around until you saw in the face and said, “Oh, that’s a female, that’s a woman. Okay.”

And she chose to work with me. And she said to me when we got into a private room for coaching in confidence, she says, “Dumi, I have to tell you I’m not in this coaching thing. I do not need a coach. I deal with numbers and spreadsheets and balance sheets. I work with numbers, and I don’t need this psychological babble in my career.”

And then we were supposed to be for half an hour, so I asked questions, and it was early on, I was feeling myself sweating, like okay. And I had been coaching for, I think, about five years, thereabout. And so I thought I have some experience, and I’ve been working with leaders before. So I find my way around the boardroom quite easily. This was one major challenge of I’ve got to pull this off because this is big. And here is my client saying she doesn’t want this. How do I navigate this? And all I did, Marshall, was to ask her questions about what are the challenges she’s facing in her role. And something opened up, she said, “People don’t normally ask me this because they know I’m a high performer, I’m on top of my game, I get things done.” And from that half hour, we ended up over an hour of just her pouring her heart out, and she said, “When is the next session?”

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see.

Dumi:

And 12 sessions later, she became the poster child for coaching in the company.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, what are you working on right now that’s exciting for you?

Dumi:

This one I was thinking as you asked that, I can’t share that at this moment, but I’m working a lot with young people across the African continent who are doing… young innovation leaders across the African continent. I just did a webinar with them last week, 90 minutes talking to them about values that the new world needs. And they loved it, even sent me a message of appreciation about that today. So young people and understanding that they don’t need to join any tables to be invited to a table, they need to make their own tables.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I like that, I like that. I want to go back to another point you made with a little story. Years ago in Las Vegas, I went to a show, and the singer was called Frank Sinatra Jr., was Frank Sinatra’s son, and he looked like Frank Sinatra, and his voice sounded like Frank Sinatra, and he moved around like Frank Sinatra, but he wasn’t Frank Sinatra.

Dumi:

No.

Marshall Goldsmith:

No, it was more sad than anything else. He wasn’t Frank Sinatra. So I’ll go back to your point, don’t be a copy of you and don’t be a copy of me. Now, you got to be yourself, and that Frank Sinatra Jr. thing doesn’t work.

Dumi:

Do you.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah, you got to be you, you got to be you. And by the way, Frank Sinatra was an original. Well, when you try to be a copy, you’re not Frank Sinatra because he was not a copy.

Dumi:

Yeah, that’s why I’m not going to try and be Marshall, but I’m going to be me. Beautiful.

Connect, systems, humanise

Marshall Goldsmith:

That’s right, that’s right. Now, talk about the next generation of leaders, which by the way, tough for a lot of them, it’s tough out there. What advice do you have for this next generation of leaders, and how can you or other coaches, me help them on their journey?

Dumi:

I’ve got three words for them; connect; systems; humanise.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And tell me what you mean by those words.

Dumi:

In a world that it’s easy to move on, the pace of change, Marshall, requires that people move on, move along very quickly, and that’s okay. Understand your own pace and things to understand relationships and humanity and fellow humans. So establishing connections, that conscious greeting that I spoke about, greet consciously, intentionally, and mindfully with everyone. And when you connect, you are able to do the beautiful coaching that you did with me now, which I’m grateful for. There’s a connection already right there.

And then the one about especially humanising, which links to the systems part, understand that everything is connected at some level, but climate change will show us that, whether it’s COVID or other things, illnesses, diseases, trade, commerce around the world, everything is connected. We need each other as fellow humans. So there are systems that connect us, understand them, and then know that the humanising part is building relationships that honour others for who they are and the gifts they bring into this world because we are together. So these three things are interrelated; connect; systemic; humanise.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, we’re in this little club called The Legends of Coaching. Who knows why we’re in the club, but we are in the club. So anything collectively you, I, and the other people like us, what should we be doing together maybe to help? Is there anything we can do together to help people because it’ll be fun for me to work with you?

Dumi:

The one thing that we should do, and we’re saying this in this public platform, is that we need, by the time towards the end of the year, we need to put together a book that you’re going to edit and we all write, or we can do this together. Does that… 

Marshall Goldsmith:

Let’s do it, let’s do it.

Dumi:

Everyone submit a chapter and we-

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, this book needs a leader. I nominate you as the leader of this book, is that clear?

Dumi:

Happy to do it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You’re the leader. I’m happy to help.

Dumi:

Okay, let’s do it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

But you lead, I’ll help. How’s that?

Dumi:

Happy to take the initiative.

Marshall Goldsmith:

That’s wonderful. Well, this is wonderful. I’ve really loved talking with you. You’re such a good guy and you’re a good person, good guy, trying to help young people out there. It is wonderful to talk to you. Any final comment? Because I could talk to you for hours. Any final comments for everybody listening?

Dumi:

It’s magical being here, talking with you and seeing how you pick up on those things and point them out. And then, of course, I know that, of course, yes, it is. I think the beauty of it when you’re in a moment like this is being able to see the mirror, and you held that up so beautifully these couple of moments. For me, I want to say to you and to others viewing, listening is that we are the human family, and we are better off tuning in, being attuned to ourselves and each other and tapping into that gift that’s within each one of us and expressing it while we can in this world today that needs humane human beings.

Marshall Goldsmith:

In closing, I just want to say, number one, thank you, thanks to Thinkers50 for organising all this stuff, thank you. Very honoured to talk to you. And I think the world’s a whole lot better off because you’re in it, and I just hope more people get to know you. So thank you very much. And anything I can do with you personally, I’ll be honoured to do it. So thank you very much, thank you.

Dumi:

Thank you, Marshall. Thank you, Thinkers50.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Bye-bye.

Dumi:

Bye.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COACHING LEGENDS

Why do we find it so hard to listen? Listening is one of the essential skills of great leadership, so why do so many leaders find it such a challenge?

Erik de Haan is the director of Hult Ashridge Center for Coaching and the author of 16 books including Relational Team Coaching (Routledge, 2023), The Gift of Coaching (McGraw-Hill, 2022), and What Works in Executive Coaching (Routledge, 2021). He specialises in working with the organisational unconscious and in surfacing hidden levels of the company or group culture. He is also an expert in listening.

Discover the art of deep listening, including:

• Present-moment focus: Listen to what’s happening “here and now” rather than just content about the past or future.
• More than just words: Pay attention to emotions, intentions, metaphors, and what’s not being said.
• Whole-body listening: Use your entire being to pick up on subtle cues and underlying meanings.
• Look for the intention: listen for the “why”.

Hear more from Erik on leadership and listening in conversation with Marshall Goldsmith, from the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW WITH ERIK DE HAAN BY MARSHALL GOLDSMITH

Transcript

Des Dearlove:

Hello, I’m Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50, and I’m delighted to be here today to introduce our Coaching Legends series.

In these sessions we talk to exceptional coaches, individuals who have worked with top business leaders. Our aim is to bring you insights and learnings from their experiences in the C-suite that can make you both a better leader – and a better coach. This is a collaboration between Thinkers50, 100 Coaches and BetterUp.

I’ll be introducing our special guests in just a minute. But for those of you who don’t know Thinkers50 so well, our mission is to be the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age. Ideas that can make a positive difference in the world. That mission dates all the way back to 2001, when we published the first ever global ranking of management and business thinkers. We’ve published a new ranking every two years ever since. In 2011, we introduced our Distinguished Achievement Awards and Gala, which the Financial Times calls the Oscars of Management Thinking. And shortly after that, the Thinkers50 Radar and Hall of Fame. In 2023, with our friends at 100 Coaches and BetterUp, we added our Coaching Legends list, which recognises and honours the lasting influence and contribution of exceptional coaches.

So, what’s the red thread that connects all our work at Thinkers50? Thinkers50 connects the most practical thinkers with the most thoughtful practitioners.

Our mantra is: Thinkers + Doers = Impact. That’s what this series is all about!

Coaches play a vital part in developing leaders. They are the connecting tissue between the world of ideas and practice. As well as being originators of ideas, coaches are the honeybees of best practice – cross pollinating the leadership world with the best ideas wherever they come from. So let me introduce our special guest.

I’m delighted to say that joining us today is Erik de Haan. Erik has over twenty-five years of experience in organisational and personal development, and has 16 books to his name, including, most recently, Relational Team Coaching (Routledge, 2023), The Gift of Coaching (McGraw-Hill, 2022), and What Works in Executive Coaching (Routledge, 2021). He brings to his work a sensitivity to what moves and motivates people, and a strong analytical ability. He aims to support people in their search for what is ‘right and just’ for themselves and for others in their organisation.

Erik is the director of the Hult Ashridge Center for Coaching, having joined Ashridge, part of Hult International Business School, in 2002 to further diversify and internationalise his external consultancy practice. He is also a professor of organisation development at VU University. His consulting approach is informed by his counselling and group-dynamics training. He specialises in working with the organisational unconscious and in surfacing hidden levels of the company or group culture. In 2024, Erik was inducted into the Coaching Legends.

Erik, welcome.

And asking the questions today, we are delighted to welcome another legend of the coaching world, Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers include What Got You Here Won’t Get You There and Triggers. After more than a decade in the Thinkers50 Ranking, in 2017 he was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame.

Marshall, welcome! Over to you.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here talking to Erik. Erik, a legendary guy in our field. Very, very, very happy to be talking to you and a well-deserving person to be a coaching legend.

Now tell us a little bit about your journey through life. I mean, you’ve had a fascinating life, you’ve done tons of books, you’ve got an interesting background. Tell us about your story of life.

Erik de Haan:

Story of my life. Oh, wow. Well, I guess as a young boy, I was in your state. I lived in Palo Alto for a year, so my life was international from the beginning. My father was a math professor, so professorship is like normal surroundings for me. But math was too abstract, I saw that immediately because he didn’t have that much contact with the real world, including his own family. So that was an important influence.

And yeah, what else do you want to know? I mean, there’s so much to say and we have only 40 minutes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, let’s start with how you got into coaching.

Erik de Haan:

Yes. How come I entered coaching? It started out with maths and then I studied physics. I stayed in theoretical physics and particle physics for 11 years, so it wasn’t next door. It wasn’t obvious, but I think it goes all the way back to me wanting to help my mother.

And so my father was influential, but my mother, as with most people, even more. And she suffered from some mental illness, for example, bipolar feelings. And I think as a small kid I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be with her and take the edges off that sort of experience. And I tried ever since and now I get paid for it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

That’s wonderful. That’s wonderful. Now, one of the areas where you are a kind of world expert is the area. And by the way, my background is I have an undergrad degree in math.

Erik de Haan:

Ah, that’s interesting.

Marshall Goldsmith:

We have more in common than I realised. Yeah. I have an undergrad degree in math and like you, it was kind of like I took nine courses of math past calculus. Once you get beyond a certain point, it becomes incredibly abstract.

Erik de Haan:

Correct.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And you wonder, what am I doing? What does it matter? It seems very, very interesting. Yeah. So we have more of a similar background than I realised. Now you’re a world’s expert at listening. All right. I’d love to talk to you about this, but in my work I see this all the time as a challenge. All right. It’s a great skill. Why is it so hard to do?

Erik de Haan:

Oh, you say I’m a world expert. I know that I’m still a very poor listener.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I didn’t say I was a good listener either.

Erik de Haan:

Okay, good. Then we share even more in this conversation. Yeah, so I’m just someone who realises how much more there is to listen to or to find out, that we can’t actually pick up because we have to deal a lot with gestures and words, which are only translations or manifestations of what might be going on inside that we don’t know about.

And even the person speaking doesn’t know in large part what’s going on inside them. And then we use what’s inside us to make contact with that. So I’m a great fan of listening with the whole body, but it’s damn hard. It’s really very hard.

I heard some new research on people who can listen to their gut. There’s a kind of challenge that you could do. You can try to tap with your heart without measuring your heartbeat. So just picking up your heartbeat from inside your body. And apparently it makes people better strategists if they can listen to their own bodies, which I found fascinating research that came out this week. So there’s so much more to discover on listening in my view.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, if you look at listening, I mean to me the words people say are we’ll say here.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

But underneath the word there’s a lot. And especially in the corporate world. In the corporate world, really whatever is said on the surface is vaguely sometimes connected to what’s really going on. So what I try to teach people to do is just try to have a vague idea of what’s really going on here. And it’s not easy. It’s not easy.

For example, let me give you an extreme example. I work for Saudi Aramco. And I said as a Westerner, I’ve been to Saudi Arabia many times. I said as a Westerner though, “I’ll probably never really understand what’s going on here.” Because you have the government hierarchy, you have the business hierarchy, you have the religious hierarchy, the tribal hierarchy, and the family hierarchy. It’s all going on at the same time. You got five different shows going on.

And I said, “To be honest, I have trouble actually understanding what’s really going on here.” The guy said something very profound that, as an executive I was talking, he said, “You think I understand what’s going on here?” And he said, “It changes every day.” So in the corporate world, I love your thoughts on this. Nobody talks about individual self-interest.

The major pretence of all corporation is I have no self-interest at all. I’m only here to do what’s good for the corporation. But people are humans. They obviously do have self-interest, they just pretend not to. Now ironically, I coached one guy from Goldman Sachs. And he said Goldman Sachs, one of the most honest people he’s ever worked with in one way, they actually say, “What’s in it for me?” They’ll just say, “What’s in it for me here?”

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Almost no corporation people say, “What’s in it for me?” They all hide and pretend there’s nothing in it for them and they’re sacrificing their soul for the corporate God. How do you get people to get beneath this surface manifestation of communication? At least have some vague idea of what’s actually being said?

Erik de Haan:

Yeah, good question. I think you probably need to be deserving of hearing what’s really going on. And if you work in a different culture like in your example, then you have to earn that right probably to an extent. When it comes to listening, for me it’s very important that we listen to what’s here now. You said that actually, you said listen to what’s here.

And I think that’s very important because the content always refers to something out there or in the future or in the past. But what’s underneath, the emotions, the intentions, the in-between the lines, the metaphors, the repeat language, the words not used and chosen. That is all now. That all happens now. So we need to really attune in the present moment. That’s very important in my view for listening.

Marshall Goldsmith:

It’s very interesting. I was in something called encounter groups. Eight hours a day, two days a week, for six months and then three years after that when I was a student. They don’t do that stuff anymore.

So I spent hours, why are you saying this? What’s going on here? All that stuff. Hours of training in that, which is incredibly valuable. They don’t teach it anymore. But I learned more from that than I learned all the classes I took. Well the thing is-

Erik de Haan:

Don’t you have SLN in California anymore?

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah, it’s somewhat similar to that. Yeah, same idea, right? And yeah, it was very interesting because I learned a lot about life. And I learned that there is this massive gap between the pretense of what’s going on and the reality of what’s going on. And I try to help people, at least as I said, understand a little deeper what’s actually going on.

I like the way you said it, I’ve never thought of it this way, is the present. So let me give you my interpretation of what you said. At any second in time, there’s millions of things anyone could say. Millions of things. Why did you say that particular comment at this second? Why? And it seldom has anything-

Erik de Haan:

That gets you into. Yeah, that’s what I use a lot as an executive coach as well. That gets you into what somebody perhaps needs in that very moment or wants or what the ultimate aim might be of this conversation. So I agree with you. That ‘why’ question directed at the here and now is very important for me as well. Gets you into the intentions of another person, which is often more important than the content of what they have to say.

And they will repeat many times the content, but the intentions they will only put in corners, it lurks in the background somewhat, what they really want to say. You were saying that a lot of people don’t communicate their self-interest, but I think if you learn to read between the lines in a conversation, then you get access to that.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I like that word intention. Why? What is your deeper intention of saying this comment right now?

Erik de Haan:

Yes. What do you therefore want for me because you want me to hear that comment? Yeah, that’s a question I often ask myself.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Another question. One thing I try to teach people, especially at the CEO level is, I’d love your thoughts on this, look like you care. The reality is the CEO sounds like some glamorous job. A lot of it’s just boring. You’re sitting there meeting after meeting after meeting and you’re listening to crap you’ve read 1,000 times before anyway. Everything’s sanitised to death before you even hear it.

Some kid is making some presentation. You’ve already heard the presentation. It’s already been sanitised. But what I teach them is you got to look like you care. You might be bored shit-less, but you at least need to look like you’re listening because if you don’t, the poor kid is going to be demoralised. How do you feel about teaching people at least to look like they give a shit?

Erik de Haan:

I’m not sure. I’m really not sure. There might be some intercultural difference between the two of us as well. It sounds like your world is a little bit cynical and that might be happening right now in the United States.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Stop. You didn’t understand me. I’m not being cynical at all.

Erik de Haan:

No, maybe not.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I’m the opposite.

Erik de Haan:

You’re saying pretend to care.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I’m not being cynical. I am A CEO. I am legitimately bored to death. I legitimately have heard this thing 1,000 times before. I’m a human being. Human beings do get bored, by the way.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I’m not being cynical at all. Why do you do this? Because you want to be considerate to that kid. I’m not being cynical. I’m being the opposite. You want to be kind to that kid and make that kid feel good. You want to make… And if you act bored, you’re going to destroy that kid.

Erik de Haan:

Yeah. Yes. Well, it’s true. It’s not very helpful if a CEO is bored. Then it would spread through the ranks, I suspect. Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Oh, yeah. And you’re human. CEOs are humans like everybody else.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

They get bored.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

One thing I teach people, look, it’s not only important to listen, look like you’re listening. Some people are actually listening but don’t look like it either. Now, what do you think are some other important skills for leaders in the future?

Erik de Haan:

Important skills for well, the future. It looks like there’s going to be even more crisis. No? We have multiplication of crises around the world. And if not crisis, we have change, volatility, pace of change, IT replacing us. And so there’s a lot to contend with I think in the future.

And I think we’re a little late to come up with the leaders that are suited to that world, that new world. So we are a bit late at developing democracy around the world in various countries. We had a chance at it, I feel, but it’s only limited around the world.

And similar I think in organisations as well. Organisations are still very hierarchical, patriarchal, et cetera, et cetera. So they’re a little bit suited more to more slower-moving times, I would say. So it’s going to be very tough, I think leadership in the future.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, there are two issues, macro and micro.

Erik de Haan:

Yeah, I was connecting the two in a way.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You were talking about micro.

Erik de Haan:

For me a great value is democracy.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. The reality is nobody I meet is going to influence the global economy that much. So at the micro level, what are some of the important things that a real human being could do in a real organisation in the real world?

Erik de Haan:

Yes. Okay. Well, for me, there’s several things. We already spoke about listening, so I think that’s really important. The ability to connect and to collect information from let’s say even if only the next level down or maybe the people outside the business that you speak with, relevant people, experts. So to be able to collate that information and make better decisions I think is incredibly important for leaders. You’ve probably seen the book Wisdom of Crowds.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yes, I have.

Erik de Haan:

Which tells us that a decision made by more people, more experts, is a better decision. And that tells me that leaders in every organisation, but in particular when there is a crisis, they need to be able to get the input, the opinions, the decisions that their staff would want to make onto the table, let’s say, into the open. So they have to be very good listeners for that, I feel.

And another thing is they need to contain or hold the organisation and hold this kind of top job on behalf of others. Even if they’re middle managers, they have a top responsibility for other people, so you have to hold them together. I think that’s very important as well.

And I think for that, it’s important to have some self-knowledge. Some regulation of your more shadowy sides, like what you said, boredom, cynicism, all sorts of toxicity that might come out because you’re in power that you can regulate that. That’s very important for me as well. Self-care, maybe if you want to put it that way.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah, that’s very, very important. If I look at the greatest leaders I’ve ever met, they’re very good at creating an environment where they… One of the great leaders is my friend Alan Mulally, who was the CEO of the Year in the United States. And when someone would ask him a question, his comment was always first, “Is there anybody else who can answer this better than me?”

Erik de Haan:

Ah, wonderful. Yes, wonderful. I like that.

Marshall Goldsmith:

“And if so, I shouldn’t talk.” So why don’t we get some people in here who know what’s going on?

Erik de Haan:

Yes. Fantastic.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I love your idea. One thing that I’m working on now is a new idea for an advisory business where coaching has basically been a hammer looking for a nail. Basically this is what I do, therefore that must be what you need.

As opposed to most coaches say, “I have a solution.” Not, “What is your problem?” And the idea, I work for the Mayo Clinic. The Mayo Clinic does exactly what you have said. It’s an amazing organisation. You come in, they have a team of doctors, they actually analyse what you need and a team works together to try to provide to help you.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now that sounds childishly obvious. Virtually no hospital does it. Literally 1,000 hospitals have sent people to the Mayo Clinic to copy their model. Zero success, pretty much no success. Ego, too much ego. See what you’re talking about requires really dropping a lot of your ego.

Erik de Haan:

Yes, yes, correct. And I’m not the first of course. I mean people like Jim Collins. It’s very easy to rattle off characteristics of great leaders. And we’ve done that for decades.

I do feel that something else as well. I mean I mentioned two things around the listening and around the self-care, but I also feel that many leaders need to know what leadership is. And I think it’s not very well known. It’s very difficult to define. Coaching is very easy to define. Your task is just to be of service to another person through means of conversations.

Leadership is much harder to know what it is. And I think a lot of mistakes are being made there because leadership is already there. If I look outside the window and I see some birds foraging for food, they know who the leader is, they know who goes first and who goes second and then third. And they haven’t got a language, they have tiny little brains.

Leadership is everywhere in nature. And I think that’s why we often misunderstand what it is. Another thing that I often say when I work with groups of leaders is let’s try to understand what leadership means and then come up with an agenda or a vision on what leaders do. That’s also very important to me.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see. Well, what does leadership mean to you?

Erik de Haan:

I knew you were going to ask that. It took me five years to understand because there’s so many different definitions around, and some of them are a little bit empty, nihilistic. But for me, my favorite definition is around making the next level perform in your organisation.

So making sure that you get the best out of the team or the board or the next level down. And that might mean that you don’t need to lead. If they are all independent, mature professionals, they might not need much input from you. That translates very differently in different situations, but it’s not always what leaders do.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. So basically it’s situational leadership. Everybody needs different things.

Erik de Haan:

Yes, exactly. Rather than influencing or driving things through or changing things, for me, it just means bringing the best out of the next layer.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now I like this next question because I can relate to this next question.

Erik de Haan:

Okay.

Marshall Goldsmith:

How can leaders continue to listen, enrich themselves throughout their careers? And what happens as we get older? And by the way, I’m very proud of something on my LinkedIn. I did a post, I was ranked as one of the top 10 LinkedIn creators in my field, and I’m 76.

I did calculate, I am 28 years older than the average of the other nine. So I said, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Now back to this question, as you get older, all right, what are the changes that happen over time? And how can we continue to learn and grow as we get older?

Erik de Haan:

That’s such a good question. I’m not an expert, I’m not a doctor. I wouldn’t be able to answer that really well. But I do often challenge people and say, “You were your best learner when you were a baby.” It’s unbelievable what very tiny, babies, toddlers, small children, how much they learn every day.

So we have to be, as we grow older, we have to be a little bit self-critical, I think in terms of what we can take in and what we’re really learning. So yeah, so I think we do. It does become more difficult. Even though of course our prestige and our status as senior coaches and leaders only goes in the right direction for us. There is a bit of a discrepancy between what we’re really learning and what we appear to be.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And who knows all those young coaches out there, someday if they do really well, they may become a coaching legend like you and me.

Erik de Haan:

Yes, yes. Well, I hope they push us aside fairly soon.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, what is the most difficult coaching challenge you’ve ever had?

Erik de Haan:

The most difficult challenge, in a coaching conversation you mean?

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yes.

Erik de Haan:

Well, I’ve had several. I’m from Holland so I can be very blunt and direct. And I saw it even between us when I said the word cynical and I related that to the US versus the European cultures. I think I unnerved you a little bit.

So I do that a lot in my sessions, even though it’s only a hypothesis, it’s nothing that I know anything about. I’ve had several times that people got up in the middle of a session and shouted at me and then went out of the door, slammed the door, and things like that. But I’m very proud that in every case that I can remember, at least they all came back or they stayed in the room.

So I’m proud of that sometimes I can contain fury. So that actually usually has a happy ending for me. What I find harder is when I can not really access the emotion and when I start struggling. A typical example, which doesn’t happen very often, is if somebody comes into a session, tells me something, and then gets moved and cries.

I have had that somebody in that session never stops crying and then they have to leave when we come to the end of the session. And I often feel like I haven’t really accessed your sadness, otherwise you would’ve stopped. If you had conveyed what you were trying to express with your tears fully to me, you would’ve stopped crying. So that’s happened.

Also for other emotions by the way, that we just struggle to share the full emotion and you get stuck there. I don’t know if you recognise that, but that has happened to me.

Marshall Goldsmith:

If you had to look at your career, what’s your biggest mistake?

Erik de Haan:

My biggest mistake, well, was studying physics in the first place, I guess. 11 years detour.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I can relate to that. I spent many years studying stuff that I can’t remember it all.

Erik de Haan:

Yes, yes. I should have studied something like medicine, maybe, psychoanalysis. I started psychoanalysis, but I never became a psychoanalyst. So those are regrets that I have. Yeah, but you can’t do anything.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now, what are you working on that’s most exciting for you?

Erik de Haan:

Well, today we’re just closing a questionnaire. I always do some research on the side, randomised controlled trials. Quantitative research because that’s what I was being trained on in physics. And I’m doing one at the moment that we just close in the data collection and it’s about money.

So that’s often called the last taboo, after sex or mental health or power, that we now quite freely can talk about and open up. Money is something that lots of people… I think again, there’s a difference between Europe and the US properly, but lots of people keep a bit quiet about their money and would like to know what other coaches charge for example, or what their cancellation terms are. And they don’t dare to ask.

We decided to produce a whole questionnaire about charging, cancellation, what you would do for a client who cannot pay, all these things. And it’s been an incredible success because we wanted only 100 or 200 responses to do the statistics and we’ve got 800 or so and we can do really good statistics on that. Yeah, that’s exciting.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Wonderful. I’ll give you a little historical perspective on this. All right, let me describe what you’ve been taught not to do. One, don’t be overly ambitious. Two, don’t strive. Three, don’t talk about money. Four, don’t express your emotions too much.

Who told you that shit? You know where that came from? Old upper-class royalty that used that to keep down poor people. That’s exactly where that bullshit came from. You know why people don’t talk about money? Why they don’t talk about ambition? They’ve been trained by the upper class not to do that. And the upper-class Brits were so good that if you were ambitious, you tried to make money, whatever, not only did you get crapped on by them, you got crapped on by your own people.

Erik de Haan:

That’s fascinating, Marshall. That’s very interesting. Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

It’s very deep.

Erik de Haan:

Yes. So it’s an imperialist taboo. Yeah, I like it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Why is is taboo? You know why?

Erik de Haan:

Exactly.

Marshall Goldsmith:

They’d never had to talk about money. You know why they didn’t have to talk about money? They were brought up rich.

Erik de Haan:

Interesting.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Did you know the idea of amateur athletics came from the upper-class Brits?

Erik de Haan:

Sorry, amateur, did you say?

Marshall Goldsmith:

Athletics?

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Came from the upper-class Brits. The original Olympians were all professionals. You know why they did it? Keep out poor people. That’s it.

Erik de Haan:

Yeah. So maybe the last liberation we have to kind of undertake is around money then and start really sharing that. So we are going to share the results. We’re going to show everyone what- 

Marshall Goldsmith:

Get over being ashamed to be ambitious. By the way, most coaches make no money. Most coaches make no money. I mean there are way too many coaches anyway. The market is saturated with people and most of them, they make less than secretaries.

Erik de Haan:

And they do it for the love of the work.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And they do it because they’re terrible business people. And they’re ashamed. They’re ashamed to try to make money. They’re ashamed to be personally ambitious. They’ve got all those voices in their heads.

And let me give you three things to help coaches. Ready?

Erik de Haan:

Okay. Take my pen out.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I found it to be killer stuff. Three questions. Question one. Peter Drucker taught me this. If you became more powerful and influential, would the world be worse off or better off? Almost every coach says better off. Two, does trying to become more powerful and influential make you feel uncomfortable? Uncomfortable? Almost every coach says yes. Question three, what’s more important to you, making the world a better place or being comfortable?

That works. They get over that crap. You want to make the world better? You want to be comfortable? You want to be comfortable, then quit bragging about it. Yeah, quit bragging about it.

It’s really good what you’re doing and it’s totally needed in the field of coaching. Now, if you had to give some advice to the upcoming coaches in the world, the younger versions of us, the ones who are going to be on this show in 10 years, what advice do you have for them?

Erik de Haan:

Well, again, they will be dealing with those crisis situations. I really believe that. Not just macro but also micro. Much more crisis than we already have. So they need to be very good with leaders in crisis.

And that means they will have to be very good at challenging them in the safety of the confidential coaching space. You need to be able to challenge. Even if you say it wrong, maybe I should have said a different word like fearful instead of cynical. That’s a possible alternative that I could have used.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I think, here is an interesting, I challenge people all the time.

Erik de Haan:

Yes, I noticed that. Yeah, that’s good because you have the practice.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I challenge people all the time

Erik de Haan:

I guess. Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I’m an adult. You’re an adult, right? What the hell? What are we going to do? Die?

Erik de Haan:

Yeah. And so I think we need more of it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You’re not going to die here, right? I challenge people. I am like you. Most coaches are taught not to do that. Most coaches are taught not to express an opinion. Most coaches are just taught to ask Socratic questions. I’m not that way.

Erik de Haan:

But they are very challenging too. So when I spoke about the definition of leadership, I got that from Socrates. So there is a dialogue of Plato where he interrogates leaders only with questions. And the leader finds out that he cannot even define his own leadership. And he thought he was so good at it and he thought he was learning, sorry, teaching it to young people. And he was very humiliated only by questions. So we can challenge by questions as well.

Marshall Goldsmith:

An interesting point, you can challenge by questions, but most of those are not really questions.

Erik de Haan:

If they are like rhetorical questions.

Marshall Goldsmith:

They’re rhetorical questions.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Most coaches do not ask rhetorical questions even.

Erik de Haan:

No, no. It’s more the kind of questions, what is leadership and how do you pass it on? And then it’s sometimes very hard to give a really good answer. And usually Socrates then takes, so he didn’t ask a rhetorical question, but it does take the answer apart and say, “That definition is not valid.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Now I don’t know you, but you do more than ask rhetorical questions.

Erik de Haan:

I do, yes. I try to avoid those.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And so you see, I think one thing that the young coaches can learn from you and me is if you know something and you have an opinion, don’t be afraid to express it.

Erik de Haan:

Yes. And even better, if you know something and you have a hypothesis, don’t be afraid to express that. So the best challenges are hypotheses about what might be going on, I think.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, thank you for this wonderful conversation. Let me tell you some things I’ve learned. Okay. One thing I learned is to focus on the present. I was doing that but I never phrased it that way. Very helpful to me. Two, I like the word intention.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

What is the intention behind what you’re saying? I never use that word as such, but I find that to be very, very helpful for me. Why are you doing this? What is the deeper intention? Not what are the words. So focus on why are you saying this now? That was very, very hopeful to me. And so I like that. Now what-

Erik de Haan:

Can I say one more thing?

Marshall Goldsmith:

Sure.

Erik de Haan:

Because what you’re doing there is impressive. So what you’ve just done is you summarise half an hour of conversation. And you’ve drawn out two, and you were about maybe to go to a third, essential within that. And I think one of the best things coaches can contribute is not so many questions and less questions is better, but summaries.

And especially these very crafty summaries, you just gave one that covers half an hour. Half an hour of input and you can summarise it into two lessons or three. That’s brilliant. That will help you to really retain something from this conversation, I think.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, I had a high opinion of you to start with, but when you pointed out that was brilliant, my opinion only went up. Now let me ask you a question. All right. What is one thing you learned in our little conversation today?

Erik de Haan:

I learned how to speak. It’s about speaking truth to power. I see you as a powerhouse in our field and I discovered you’re a human being and we share so much. So those are two things that really struck me. And of course I wrote down how to empower coaches. So those one, two, three for empowering coaches, I also loved.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, thank you so much. It was fun to work with you. I hope I get to know you in the future.

Erik de Haan:

Yes.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You seem like a really interesting character, fun to talk to, and coming up with lots of fun ideas.

Erik de Haan:

Please come and visit. I’m near the Heath in London. And you’ll visit London a lot, so you’re very welcome.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Thank you. I’ll be there for Thinkers50 at least.

Erik de Haan:

Exactly.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Anyway, thank you so much. Thanks to Thinkers50 for setting this up. And again, Thinkers50, we’re going to do some more of these. And the other thing I think, I don’t know how many of these other quote legends of coaching you know, but on the whole, they’re really good people and also fun.

So I think you will really enjoy being around them because like you, they have a good sense of humour. They’re not so stuffy, they’re open to new ideas. So I think you’ll enjoy them.

Erik de Haan:

Scruffy, but not stuffy.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Thank you very much. Bye-bye.

Erik de Haan:

Thank you, Marshall. Thank you.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE COACHING LEGENDS

Recipient of the Thinkers50 2023 Coaching and Mentoring Award and bestselling author of The Coaching Habit, and How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, Michael Bungay Stanier was one of the first inductees into Coaching Legends.

In this enlightening exchange with Marshall Goldsmith (Thinkers50 Hall of Fame), Michael reveals why curiosity is the ultimate leadership technology in today’s AI-driven world and shares some valuable tips for coaches and leaders to elevate their impact:

• “Tame your advice monster”: exceptional leaders “stay curious a little bit longer” rather than rush to give advice.
• Harness the power of simple questions: “What’s on your mind?”, “What’s the real challenge here for you?”, and critically, “And what else?”.
• Practice “fierce love”: show up in full and don’t let “being nice” get in the way of saying what needs to be said.

As Michael eloquently puts it, in an era where AI can provide answers to almost anything, your value as a leader and a coach comes not from having all the answers, but from “putting the humus back into humility” – and asking the questions that matter most.

WATCH THE FULL CONVERSATION WITH MICHAEL BUNGAY STANIER BY MARSHALL GOLDSMITH:

Transcript

Des Dearlove:

Hello, I’m Des Dearlove, co-founder of Thinkers50, and I’m delighted to be here today to introduce the next episode in our Coaching Legends series. 

In these sessions, we talk to exceptional coaches, individuals who have worked with top business leaders. And our aim is to bring you insights and learnings from their experiences in the C-suite that can make you both a better leader and a better coach. This is a collaboration between Thinkers50, 100 Coaches and BetterUp. And we have a real treat for you today. I’ll be introducing our special guest in just a minute.

But first, a quick word about Thinkers50. Our mission is to be the world’s most reliable resource for identifying, ranking, and sharing the leading management ideas of our age, ideas that we believe can make a positive difference in the world. That mission dates all the way back to 2001 when we published the first ever global ranking of management and business thinkers, and we’ve been publishing a new ranking every two years ever since. In 2011, we introduced our Distinguished Achievement Awards and Gala, which the Financial Times called the “Oscars of Management Thinking”. Shortly after that, the Thinkers50 Radar, 30 exciting up-and-coming new thinkers, we launched as well, which is published every January, and the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame to honour the careers of exceptional thinkers. In 2023, then it was natural that with our friends at 100 Coaches and BetterUp, we added our Coaching Legends list, which recognises and honours the lasting influence and contribution of exceptional coaches.

So what’s the red thread that connects all our work? Well, I like to think the Thinkers50 connects the most practical thinkers with the most thoughtful practitioners. Our mantra is Thinkers + Doers = Impact, and that’s what this series is all about. Coaches play a vital part in developing leaders. They are the connecting tissue between the world of ideas and practice. As well as being originators of ideas themselves, coaches are also the honey bees of best practice, cross pollinating the leadership world with the best ideas wherever they come from.

So without further ado, let me introduce our special guest. I’m delighted to say that joining us today is the bestselling author of The Coaching Habit, Michael Bungay Stanier. Amazingly, that book, which has sold over a million copies and been translated into 20 languages, is coming up on its 10th anniversary. Michael’s most recent book is How to Work with (Almost) Anyone: Five Questions for Building the Best Possible Relationships. Michael is the founder of the training and development company Box of Crayons, which has taught coaching skills to over half a million people across the world. Clients include Microsoft, Salesforce, Telus, and Gucci. A native Australian, Michael is a former Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University and now lives in Toronto, Canada. In 2023, Michael was the recipient of the Thinkers50 Coaching and Mentoring Award and was inducted into the Coaching Legends.

And asking the questions today, we are delighted to welcome another legend of the coaching world, Marshall Goldsmith. Marshall’s New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers include one of my all time favourite book titles, What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. After more than a decade in the Thinkers50 Ranking, in 2018 he was inducted into the Thinkers50 Hall of Fame. Marshall, Michael, welcome.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Hello, hello. So happy to be here. Great to see you. And again, thanks to all the great work you and Thinkers50 are doing. So Michael-

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Marshall.

Marshall Goldsmith:

… welcome, welcome. Great to talk to you. Now-

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Always good to see you as well. Thank you, Marshall. I know this is Coaching Legends, and I’m being admitted into it, which is amazing, but I feel like you’re the legend of the legend. So thanks for being a champion and a mentor and encourager of me in all of this.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Now, one thing before we get onto the questions I think is great about you is what you do, which I think is of interest to our listeners, is not just provide input for coaches who are coaches your work is really great for leaders who are also coaches. So I like to think about both, because I think you are very unique in our field, providing leaders for input about how to be better coaches as well. So before we get into the questions about coaching and your books, just if you had to have a couple of insights, not for coaches, but for leaders who want to be coaches, and a lot of listeners are leaders, what advice would you have?

How to stay curious a little bit longer

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, I think one of the challenges with coaching is if you’re not part of that world, it kind of can show up with a whole bunch of baggage. Lots of people have heard of coaching and they kind of know what it is, but they’re not quite sure what it is. And they’re a bit worried that they have to light incense and wear a kaftan if they’re going to become a life coach or they have to be hardcore and driving if they’re an executive coach.

And what I think that does is it scares people away from a really powerful technology, and that technology is fueled by curiosity. So I often say to managers and leaders and individual contributors, basically anybody who works with other human beings, “The goal is not to turn you into a coach. The goal is to have you be more coach-like. I’m not trying to change your job. I’m trying to add a leadership behaviour to the work that you do.” And when people go, “Well, what does that even mean, Michael? What is more coach-like?” I think it’s a really simple behaviour, simple but difficult.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

And it says, “Can you stay curious a little bit longer? Can you rush to action and advice-giving a little bit more slowly?” Because the truth is most of us are advice-giving maniacs. As soon as somebody starts talking, after about five seconds, you’re like, “Oh, look, I already know what I need to say. I’m going to pretend to listen to you for a little bit, but actually I’m just waiting to interrupt.” And these days, Marshall, answers have never been as cheap and as accessible, and therefore as non-unique, as they are right now. Because honestly, we all have AI on our devices and our computer. Most of the time, we can ask it a question. It’s going to come back with a pretty good answer. So if you think you add value by your answers, I think you may be kidding yourself. I think you add value by the questions that you ask, and I think that’s what I want people to do. Just stay curious a little bit longer.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I love that. I love that. And you mentioned AI, as you know, I’ve got my own AI, MarshallGoldsmith.ai. And Marshall Goldsmith can answer it. My goal was it would answer 80% of the questions as well as me about 80% of the time. Now, it can answer any question better than me.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Exactly. It can answer 120% of the questions 120% better than you. It’s really… It’s extraordinary. But it also means that we just have to… And it’s very disruptive, because a lot of us feel that our value lies on our history and our expertise and what we’ve learned. But rather than thinking of that as, “This is what fuels my answers,” it’s like, “This is what allows you to be present, to hold context and to ask great questions.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well, and to connect what you’re saying with one of my books, one of the things that I talk about is don’t add too much value.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And a classic problem of smart, successful leaders, especially by the way engineers or people with technical background, adding too much value.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

That’s it.

Marshall Goldsmith:

So what they don’t think about is let’s assume that my comment increases the quality of the idea by 5%. It may not, but let’s pretend it does. 5%. You may decrease the commitment by 50%.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Exactly right. So it’s about understanding the game that you’re playing. And if you have somebody who, through the way that you show up and the way you’re more coach-like with them and you guide them, they increase their level of commitment, even if their answer isn’t quite as good as yours but it still gets the job done, you win a much bigger prize. Now, it’s fair to say, Marshall, that, look, I’m not saying coaching is the only way to lead.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Daniel Goleman years ago wrote an article in Harvard Business Review called Leadership That Gets Results, and he said, “Look, six different types of leadership, the very best leaders use all six in the appropriate moment.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Of course, yeah.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

“The typical leader uses one or two of those. But coaching was one of the least utilised, even though it has a real impact on engagement and impact and bottom line, the 2 DNA strands of a successful organisation.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. I highly recommend what you have written, not just for coaches, but for leaders who need to be better coaches. Now, speaking of your books, taking a cue from your book, let’s start with the first of five questions from How to Work with (Almost) Anyone, what you call the Amplify Question.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

That’s it.

Un-weirding coaching: it’s not just the thinking, it’s the doing that increase the impact

Marshall Goldsmith:

What is your best? What are you good at, but also fulfilled by?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, it’s an interesting setup, isn’t it? Because it’s not just what am I good at, but what am I fulfilled by? Because one of the things is that when you hit a certain age, and I’ve hit that certain age for sure, I’ve actually become good at a whole range of things that quite frankly I’d be happy to never do again in my life. And I think one of the things that makes for a successful life is when you’re doing things that you are fulfilled by and you’ve got a mix of stuff, some of it you’re going to be good at, some of it you’re learning to be good at. If you had to pin down what accounts for some of the success I’ve had, after you’ve taken luck off the list, because there’s been a whole lot of luck, as timing and luck is a significant influence in everything, one of the things that I think I’m pretty good at is trying to find simplicity on the other side of complexity.

So what I do is I try and take big challenges that feel a bit abstract and a bit hard and a bit overwhelming, and I go, “How do I make this feel practical? How do I un-weird this for people?” One of the… The engine behind me writing The Coaching Habit was I wanted to un-weird coaching, make it feel accessible and doable and practical for people who might be otherwise a bit skeptical about coaching. And then ability to sit with ideas, wrestle with ideas, and try and turn them into something that’s actable on, doable. It fits really well with the whole Thinkers50, which is like, it’s not just thinking, it’s the doing that increases the impact. You need both thinking and doing. And my work is often a bridge between the thinking and the doing to try and increase impact.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. I like this idea of taking the complex and making it simple. So let’s do that right now. Let’s assume that I am a manager, and I have someone coming into me to discuss a potential issue. I’m a great believer in just write down little notes to remind yourself, because people have good hearts, but they forget.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I mean, the engineer gets excited with the content and blah, blah, blah. They start talking. What are a couple of little notes that that leader might write down to his or herself at the meeting? Just keep it in your mind, the stuff you’re talking about, being a great coach.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, I’m going to say there are two bigger picture things to remember, then two really tactical things that they can keep in front of them.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Good.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

The big one is just to notice that the way they’re probably going to add value is not by having the answer, but by asking the great question.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Okay.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

So stay curious a bit longer, not for hours, not for days, not for weeks. I’m just talking for 90 seconds.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right, right, right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Stay curious for 90 seconds, that’s a win.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

And then to make that practical, your goal is to notice your advice monster. Your advice monster, that thing that loops up out of the darkness and goes, “I’m going to add value to this conversation.” So here we go. So that’s the kind of big picture, which is like, “Stay curious, tame my advice monster.”

And then what I’d be doing is I’d be writing down two favourite questions, two questions just to remind you what the questions are that you want to ask.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Good.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Now, a great one to start almost every conversation is simply, “What’s on your mind?” It’s the kickstart question. It accelerates people into talking about the thing that’s most important for them. Another great question is, “What’s the real challenge here for you?” That’s the focus question. That’s when you kind of like, “So what’s hard about this? Let’s actually get into what the challenge is.” And the third great question is, “And what else?” I often say that it’s the best coaching question in the world, because their first answer is never their only answer, and it’s rarely their best answer. So if I was guiding this manager, I’d say, “Pick a question, or pick two questions if you have to, and maybe just keep those in front of you and see if you can ask them at least once in this conversation.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

So I like that, because again, the people that I work with are very bright people, as you’ve met many of the people I’ve coached, they’re very smart people.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And they’re all good-hearted people. Yet, they’re busy and a thousand things are beating them over the head at once. So I like the idea of just some very practical little suggestions, little questions. And as you said, they go into the meeting, just a reminder to breathe, slow down that 285 mile an hour brain just a little bit.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Breathe. So I like that. Now, the world is changing.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

It is.

What sort of leaders do we need in the new world?

Marshall Goldsmith:

What sort of leaders do we need in the new world?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

That’s a very juicy question, because I don’t know about you, but when we were together two years ago in the Thinkers50 Gala, it just felt like a very completely different world than it is now. And it’s changed in so many ways. So I suspect me, like a lot of people, I look around going, “What is happening right now?” Because it all feels like it’s accelerating and becoming a little… The centre is not holding, to quote Yeats. So if I’m to trying… So I’m giving myself this advice as much as I’m giving it to anybody else, Marshall. And I think the things I’m trying to say is I want to stay curious, because under stress, under chaos and in ambiguity, our curiosity has a tendency to shut down. So I want to understand context as much as I can.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Okay, let’s stop. Tell everybody, what do you mean by the word context?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, we have a way of projecting onto a situation what we already know. And if I step back and I go, “What’s the context? What’s really happening? What other weak signals can I pick up from here?” What I’m attuning to is the complexity and the ambiguity of what’s going on and actually trying to stay in the grey a little bit longer rather than rush it to black and white.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Now, that’s less comfortable, but it’s actually a way I think of staying more attuned to the nuances of what might be happening.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I see.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

I think there’s something around courage here. Because what happens when things are chaotic, when things are ambiguous, often one of the things we do is we freeze, that classic fight or freeze response. So I think it takes courage to say, “I am going to take an action. I’m actually going to move on something around this.”

And then the third thing, I think it’s about maintaining a moral compass. This will sound a bit… I’m not sure what it sounds like, but it’s like, “So what does it take to be good in this world?” What does it take to… To quote a writer and a talker and an executive, Jacqueline Novogratz, the CEO of Acumen, it’s like, “What does it take to give more to the world than you take?” And it feels like there’s a way in this world has shifted a little bit that people are looking to take more than they can give. And I would love us to kind of go, “Well, how do I give more to the world than I can take?” So curiosity, courage, and that question around, “How do I give more than I take?”

Marshall Goldsmith:

It’s a great way to look at leadership. Okay. Speaking of leadership, how about some new skills leaders need to strive in today’s environment, especially, what about the impact of AI?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah. Well, I think, again, we’re all going, “Holy cow, that came up fast.” I mean, I know for the people in the AI world, they’re like, “No, we’ve been working on this for 20 years.” But for normal people, it’s like suddenly AI has shown up. So where I would start instead of, “What are the new skills I need?” I might do an inventory of what skills I currently have and go, “Which skills do I no longer need? Which skills can I let go of?” As human beings, we are very wired to always look to be adding on, add, add, add. I mean, if you read Leidy Klotz’s work, his wonderful book called Subtract. He’s like, “Oh, well, we are just wired to assume that adding on is always the answer.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

And I wonder, it’s like, “What do I need to stop doing? What do I need to remove? What skills no longer serve me?” And I think it’s harder than ever to, for instance, lead change by decree, “We’re doing this now.” I think more and more there’s going to be a need to move over and go, “How do we get this done together,” as a way of doing it.

So this invitation to perhaps look at some of the different forms of leadership, the Daniel Goleman forms of leadership, and go, “Of those forms of leadership, which one am I less strong in at the moment?” And it might be a leadership which is more invitational and collaborative, but it also might be an invitation to willingness to step up, take the lead, make a decision, and be bold. Great leaders have this faceted approach to what it takes to lead. And in this new world, I think perhaps we’ve got to look at our mixing board of leadership skills and go, “Where do I need to make some changes?”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. I like that, because you said, just information, information’s going to be accessible to everybody and at a level beyond any normal human can even pretend to compete with. So one of the things you talked about is elimination, letting go. In one of my books, I talk about the wheel of change. One part of it is creating. What do I want to create?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

One of them is what I want to preserve or keep. And what do I want to let go of, and what do I need to accept? Just make peace with. Maybe I’m not going to let go of it. I’m not going to change it. It’s bad, and there’s nothing I’m going to do about it.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Let it go. Well, letting go is a very big challenge. I do LinkedIn surveys. And in my last LinkedIn survey, I said, “What is your biggest challenge? Is it creating, or is it…” The biggest challenges were two, which are both related, they were either eliminating or accepting.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And I think you’re right. We have a tendency to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to just do more and more and more, as opposed to saying, “What do I want to get rid of here? What do I want to get rid of?” Or in a way parallel, “What do I want to just make peace with?”

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right. And for me, Marshall, in part that comes back to a more profound question, which is, “What do I want?” Which is… That has a resonance that is in part going, “What does success look like for me?” But it’s kind of like, “What’s calling me forward? What matters most to me? What’s the impact I want to have?” It’s an existential question. “What do I want?”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

And once you understand what you want, then it becomes easier to understand what you might come to acceptance with. “This is the way it is, I can’t do much about it, so I just have to let go of my need to change that.” Exactly. This is the famous Marshall Goldsmith hand move, which is like let it go. Or it might be something where it’s more actively like, “I need to remove this. I need to get this out of my life somewhere.” It might be a person, it could be an experience, it could be stuff. But there’s this idea of once you understand what you want, then it becomes that much clearer to understand what you need to say no to, so you can say yes to the stuff that matters most.

Harnessing the power of questions for continuous learning

Marshall Goldsmith:

Martin Lindstrom is a good friend of mine, who… You know Martin.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Just a great guy.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Brand thinker. Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And it relates to your next question, how can leaders ensure that they continue to learn during their career and learn to change over time? I asked Martin, I said, “Look, shit, I’m old, right? I’m 76. How did I keep going this long?” I mean, usually, I’d fade away at a certain point in time, but I just sort of keep bumping along. How’d I do that? One thing you said is, you’re curious.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You’re always learning, you’re always doing new things, you’re never really just sort of coasting along. So I think that’s a really important point for leaders. How can leaders ensure that they continue to learn throughout their careers and change over time?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And I think a variable that’s changed, that’s always been an important question, but I think if I had to give my thought on it’s the speed of doing that has changed.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right.

Marshall Goldsmith:

In the old days, yeah, you still needed to learn over time, but the rapidity of learning wasn’t as high as it is today.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Today-

Michael Bungay Stanier:

I’ve got a couple thoughts on that, Marshall. Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

So what are your thoughts? How can leaders continue to learn throughout their careers and learn to change over time?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, a couple of things. One is building a regular practice of asking questions that force you to stop and reflect. Now, you and I have had all sorts of back and forth around this. We both have different morning questions that we ask and answer. I’ll tell you the three questions that I ask myself every morning, well, Monday through Friday, I sit down. The first is, “What do I notice?” And that question makes me check myself internally, what’s in my head, kind of what ideas are rattling around. “What am I feeling?” I’m not that good at connecting to my feelings, so this is helping me actually try and get some emotional intelligence there. “What do I see out of my window, which is just over there?” It’s really kind of a, “Be present, Michael. Be present to what’s happening inside you and outside you. What do I notice?”

The second question I’ve already talked about, and I love it, hate it every morning, it’s, “What do I want?” And it’s like, gosh, if I had to, it’s always challenging to answer that question, but it forces me to start seeing patterns in my answers to that.

A third question I ask in the morning is, “What’s the one thing today that actually matters?” Because I tend to chronically over schedule rather than under schedule my life, and I could easily spend my days ticking off miscellaneous to-do tasks. But never quite get to what matters most.

And then the question I ask at the end of the day is, “What made today a good day about?” It’s kind of a build on Teresa Amabile’s question, which is like, “How did I make progress?” Her Progress Principle. People want to make a little bit of progress every day on stuff that matters to them. But it’s like some days you don’t make progress, but it can still be a good day. So what made it a good day? So that’s the first thing, which is regular questions.

And then in the coaching experience, the last question in The Coaching Habit book is, “What was useful or valuable here for you?” It means that you are constantly seeding learning opportunities into every conversation you have.

And then the third thought for me, Marshall, and I’m looking down there, because I have a ukulele down there. And I am a bad ukulele player. And I take some delight in being a bad ukulele player, because in the learning step up, it means… There are four stages. You are, first of all, unconsciously incompetent. In other words, you don’t realise you suck.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Then you move into consciously incompetent. You realise you suck.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

That’s absolutely where I am with the ukulele. And what I like about that is it makes me be an amateur. It makes me struggle. And I’m in that place in my life where actually I put myself in situations where I’m pretty good. I’m pretty good at coaching, and I’m pretty good at speaking, and I’m pretty good at writing. So most of the time, I’m just setting myself up to get this nice reinforcing, “Well done, Michael. You’re so clever. You’re so good at this.” And to stay consciously incompetent at something and just be like, “Man, this is hard, and I’m bad at it. Nobody’s going to be admitting me into the hall of ukulele legends anytime soon.” And I think that’s a really important discipline, which is keep finding the stuff that you don’t need to be good at that you need to keep learning.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Next question. You mentioned coaching. What is the toughest coaching challenge you ever had, and how did you handle it?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, I’ve had plenty of coaching conversations that seem to go really well. A lot of coaching conversations that felt thoroughly mediocre. Just somehow the conversation didn’t catch, I couldn’t find the way in. And that’s frustrating for both the person coaching and the person being coached. But I think the hardest situations for me are when I realise I’m out of my depth when I’m dealing with something that’s beyond my level of expertise.

I mean, just the other day, I was working with somebody and it’s quite clear she had PTSD from a traumatic incident from six or seven years ago. And I’m like, “I know just enough about this to be dangerous.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

And part of it is around being able to recognise this and to stop and to say, “Here’s what I’m seeing. This is the support I’ve got for you around this. What additional support do you need? How can I help you find the additional support you might need from this?” Because that’s the danger with some of this stuff is you wander into dangerous places, and you don’t even realise that you are potentially not in service to the person you’re trying to help.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah, it’s very interesting. I think that, in my case, I’ve seldom had what you mentioned, because people I work with are usually so high up the food chain that that’s usually not their real issues.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

On the other hand, I have business issues they bring up, as if somehow I knew what they were talking about. And as you know, know absolutely nothing about business myself. So I think it’s a great discipline to say, “I don’t know about that field”-

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

… as opposed to talking, which is a temptation, just don’t talk. Alan Mullally, our friend, who was CEO at Ford, had a great discipline. Somebody asked him a question, his first comment, “Does anyone in the company other than me… Who’s the most qualified to answer that question? Anybody more than me?” Well, there always was.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

So he said, “Well, why don’t we just talk to them?”

Putting the humus back into humility

Michael Bungay Stanier:

So one of the words I love is this word of humility. And humility often shows up badly representated, because sometimes people think humility means kind of being self-effacing and groveling.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

And I don’t think it means that. And sometimes people go to a humble brag, which is like humility.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

But for me, humility, which has the same origin in its root word as a kind of humus, the rich soil, so I always think of it as humility means you are grounded, you have your feet on the ground, which means you have a clear-eyed view of what you’re good at and what you’re not so good at, and you’re quite comfortable at owning both of those.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Right.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

I know what I’m good at and I’m comfortable claiming the moment around that. I’m also very aware of the many, many, many things, ukulele and more, around the stuff that I’m not so great at, and I lose no status by acknowledging that and saying, “I don’t know.”

Marshall Goldsmith:

Oh, I think quite the contrary. I think anybody in a thought leader position that says, “I don’t know” gains status, not loses status. Because number one, you don’t know everything anyway. I mean, there’s only a very tiny amount any of us actually know.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

All right. Speaking of learning, what was your biggest mistake, and what’d you learn from that?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Oh, Marshall. So many mistakes, so many lessons learned. I rarely frame things as, “This is the big mistake I’ve made.” I do go, “There are moments that I would be very happy not to repeat again. And how do I learn from that?”

The mistakes that have lingered longest, the wounds that have felt hardest to heal, have typically been when I have hurt another person. And that is because I have typically wimped out of doing something or saying something that I should have done. When I talk about coaching people, I talk about a way of being in a relationship with them, which is fierce love. I want to show up with fierce love. I want to love them fully. I want to see the very best for them, to champion them, to help them become the very best version of who they are. And I want to do it fiercely, meaning I don’t want to let nice get in the way of me saying what needs to be said, showing up how it needs to be said. It’s not about fierce to them, it’s about a fierceness, it’s a standard to hold myself to.

So I would say that if I think back on mistakes I’ve made, the lesson I’ve learned from there is to try and hold myself to the standard of fierce love to the people with whom I interact. Because they’ll get the best of me that way, and I’ll get the best of me as well.

Marshall Goldsmith:

On a one to 10 scale, ten is high, one is low, what score do you give yourself on, “I do a good job of forgiving myself”?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

It’s pretty close to 10.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Good. Me too. I thought you’d get a good score on that one.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

And people-

Michael Bungay Stanier:

I’m very generous. I’m like, pretty much all the time, I’m doing the best I can in the moment. And that doesn’t mean I’m doing the best I ever can, but it’s like what’s the point of beating yourself up from this? It’s like be kind to yourself as you would be kind to others. Be generous. And if you’ve screwed it up, try not to screw it up that way again.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

I would say sometimes I’m not even being the best I could be in the moment. I’m an asshole. But I still forgive myself.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah. Yeah. Like you say, let it go, right? Let it go.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. Why does it matter anyway, right? Forgive yourself. Hey, back to my surveys. A lot of the people are not like you and me on this one. I mean, I’ve been shocked at how hard people are on themselves.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Let me give you one survey I just did on LinkedIn. I’d love your thoughts on this. I asked a question, “If you were as hard on yourself… If your manager was hard on you as you were on yourself, how would you feel?” Happy, sad.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Right.

Marshall Goldsmith:

80% sad. Now I’m not in that 80%.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

No, me either.

Marshall Goldsmith:

You’re not in that 80%. But 80% of the people said, “If my manager talked to me like I talked to myself, I would be sad.”

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Yeah.

Marshall Goldsmith:

So what’s your thought about that?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, first of all, this is why you and I don’t have managers, because we are both unemployable. So nobody in their right mind would want to manage us. That’d be a nightmare.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Well said!

Michael Bungay Stanier:

I have a standard sign-off on my emails, and it came from teaching. I was facilitating a session, and I was getting people to practice coaching, and they did a bit of back and forth, which is great. And then I said, “Now, look the other person in the eye and say to them, ‘You are awesome, and you’re doing great.'” And it was extremely awkward. The first time, they were like, “I don’t know. This feels bad. And why would I do that?” And by the fifth time, because they went through five cycles of practice, the room was filled with this enthusiastic appreciation.

And one of the things that is often unspoken about the power of coaching, beyond the help you get to the heart of what the challenge is and help you bring out the best of another person, is when you don’t rush to give advice, when you stay present and ask to stay curious, you help people feel seen and you help people feel heard. And people are so hungry for that.

And this idea of… So I moved this, “You are awesome, and you’re doing great,” into the sign-off line of my email. And three times a week, I get somebody emailing me back going, “Thank you. I really needed to hear that today.” And what it is, is an unconditional, “I see the best of who you are. Whether it’s going well for you or whether it’s not going well for you, you’re doing great. I bet you you’re doing your best or as close to it as you can.” And it’s like, “Keep going. I see your essential awesomeness around that.” And I realise that I’m lucky to have that as an ongoing talk track in my own brain, because fundamentally, I’m like, “Michael, you are awesome, and you’re doing great.” Thank you.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Yeah. Now, finally, one bit of advice for the coaches that you haven’t already given maybe and one bit of advice for the leaders.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Well, I mean, what I’m hoping people have already heard is the power of fierce love, being present to that, the power of humility, being clear eyed about your own strength and your own weakness, and the power of staying curious a bit longer rather than rushing to advice.

I think the thing I would just want to end on and really emphasise, Marshall, is you have to realise that just people are not as interested in your advice as you think they are. And your advice actually isn’t as good as you think it is. So there is still a place for advice, absolutely. It’s the Thinkers50, people with ideas that they want to share. So there’s a lot of wisdom that can be passed on through advice and through teaching. But there’s a way of slowing down so you actually know what’s going on, you know what’s at the heart, you know what they’ve already figured out that can actually elevate you as a coach and as a leader.

Marshall Goldsmith:

One of the things… You’ve been a member of our thinkers, our 100 Coaches group for a long time, what’s one of the things you’ve learned being a member of that group and hanging around with all those other people?

Michael Bungay Stanier:

I would say, and this is actually the experience of being part of Thinkers50 as well, which is, you are elevated by the people who are in your close circuit. So find great people to hang out with and see if you can spend as much time as possible. And related to that, having both you and Des as part of this conversation, which is learn how to be a good host. Because both you and Des invite people in and you gather people together and you celebrate people. I’ve had many lovely meals with you, sometimes with the big group, sometimes it’s just you and me in Nashville. I’ve had the same with Des coming to Thinkers50 for a number of years now. And that willingness to be the person who reaches out and says, “Hey, come. Why don’t you come on in and spend time with me and other people I know?” That is a great and generous gift.

Marshall Goldsmith:

Thank you. Thank you. Well, it’s been my honour to talk with you, as always. You’re a great guy, and I think you’ve given a lot of great messages to both coaches and leaders. And I think it’s something we can all take back and use, including me, including me. So thank you so much. Thank you.

Michael Bungay Stanier:

Thank you, Marshall. It’s lovely to see you. Bye-bye.

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