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:
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
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.
Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
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Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
United Kingdom
Thinkers50 Limited
The Studio
Highfield Lane
Wargrave RG10 8PZ
United Kingdom
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