Transforming your Leadership: Insights from an Executive Coach

Laurie Fuller: I think realistically a sounding board is a really critical part of it, whether they’re talking about strategy, people management issues, strategic HR …

Darius Teter: Do you know what a coach could do for your business? For you?

Laurie Fuller: This time that I have with my client is a way to reflect, remove ourselves from the business, and try to see the forest from the trees.

Darius Teter: Welcome to season three of Grit & Growth from Stanford Seed, the podcast where Africa and South Asia’s intrepid entrepreneurs share their trials and triumphs with insights from Stanford faculty and global experts on how to tackle challenges and grow your business.

Most of the entrepreneurs I know are constantly striving to improve themselves. They devour business books, they expand their networks, enroll in classes. They listen to excellent podcasts with handsome, articulate hosts. They want to be the best versions of themselves and they want the same for their business. But improvement is hard to accomplish by yourself, especially when you’re a busy entrepreneur. And going it alone is like trying to give yourself a haircut without a mirror. How are you supposed to know if you’re focusing on the right things or if you’re making progress?

That’s where an executive coach comes in. Back in episode two, we shared the story of Kenyan business owner Kunaal Rach, whose company and leadership style were transformed through his work with a coach, our very own Laurie Fuller. If you haven’t had the chance, go back and listen to that one. It’ll pair well with today’s episode. Laurie has helped dozens of businesses like Kunaal’s all across the world. Each one presents its own unique challenges, but through her work, Laurie has created an arsenal of techniques to tackle entrepreneurship’s thorniest challenges.

So on today’s masterclass, one of our top business coaches shares tried and true methods to strengthen your team, recharge your battery, and help you focus on what’s truly important.

Laurie Fuller: So my name is Laurie Fuller. I am a proud coach, certified executive coach, with Stanford Seed based in Nairobi, Kenya, and I am also active in venture investing.

Darius Teter: Laurie had an accomplished career in the private sector. She could have easily retired, but her curiosity brought her to coaching.

Laurie Fuller: A few years in, I realized that I really had a passion for learning, and to be honest, Darius, that really has guided all of my choices, both personal and professional, during this whole time.

Darius Teter: It’s that curiosity–combined with her experience–that makes Laurie such a great coach.

Laurie Fuller: Because I have worked with so many different companies, I can do a lot of pattern matching, and I think that this is an undervalued skill that coaches have. I think it’s just not appreciated enough. I can go into a client and I can share best practices of other clients — anonymously, of course — that have faced the same problem, have had the same people issues, have had the same cultural issues. And if you’re curious about so many things, how the culture operates, how the business operates in that culture, across cultures, there’s so many aspects of learning and I just find personally I’m very fulfilled when I put myself in situations where I’m continuously learning and challenging myself from a growth perspective.

Darius Teter: To get the most out of coaching, you have to go in with a similar mindset, and that might be quite different than your approach as a leader.

How will you know after the first couple engagements whether this relationship is going to work and you’re going to get anywhere?

Laurie Fuller: It’s a great question. So, similar to maybe the reason why a person is a good coach because they love to learn and they have curiosity, a good client also has those attributes. I think also they have to be comfortable with experimentation because if you are evolving yourself as a leader, that means that you’re going to experiment in how you act, what you say, your mindset … is practicing. And so it’s committing to practice. How did this go? Collect feedback, try again. Collect feedback, try again.

So you have to be open to the experimentation and then you have to take the responsibility. So I think that you’re looking for some kind of qualities and acceptance that they’re willing to go through this journey with you and they’re willing to ask for support from others when they need it.

Darius Teter: So openness, an ability for self-reflection, a certain amount of humility, and courage was the last thing I heard.

Laurie Fuller: Sounds good.

Darius Teter: These qualities can help you decide if you’re even ready for coaching.

The thing that’s hard to distinguish — is this coach not the right coach for me, or am I actually not ready for coaching, right? That’s the self-reflection that’s needed. And the answer might be, “You know what? I’m not there yet. This is too hard for me,” or whatever. And that’s an honest self-reflection, too.

Laurie Fuller: Absolutely, absolutely. Timing is everything. So I think it is equally okay to say, “This isn’t the right time, I’m not ready.” And if you’re distracted, if there’s a lot going on in your life, whether it’s personally or professionally, it just may not be a good time because it does take a lot of mental energy and you want to be there and you want to be present just like the coach is there and present.

Darius Teter: So in your broad experience of coaching, particularly entrepreneurs, whether it’s a startup or a growing business, what are some of the most common areas that emerged that you find yourself supporting these entrepreneurs on?

Laurie Fuller: Well, I definitely think that a sounding board is a really critical part of it. Whether they’re talking about strategy, people management issues, strategic HR … Besides being lonely at the top, this time that I have with my client is a way to reflect, remove ourselves from the business, and try to see the forest from the trees. I think they very much value that because often, as a leader, we get pulled into the urgent and we don’t have time for the important.

We can protect that time together to make that the important, the big picture, and to really think deeply through questions, through discussion, what that would look like, not only for the leader on their leadership journey, but also for the company.

Darius Teter: I love that. Putting aside the urgent to focus on the important. It’s just really flipping the script for the business leader because they’re like, “No, it’s all important. It’s all important. This is on fire. It’s all going to go to hell tomorrow.” What’s interesting about that is … This is my hypothesis — you push back if this is wrong — the long-term job then is to get them out of the urgent and build the structures and accountability systems and build the team that allows them to spend a lot less time on the urgent and a lot more time on the important.

Laurie Fuller: Absolutely. The way I often talk about it is: Are they focused on the business, which is really external strategy, relationships, reputation, or are they focused in the business, which is all of those day-to-day tactical things that are around the execution? But the question is: The execution of what? The execution to what end?

Darius Teter: One of the most essential things a coach can offer is perspective.

Laurie Fuller: Coaches — we expose blind spots and we allow that space for reflection. And the way that we do that often is holding up the mirror so that they can look at themselves and have an honest assessment of what they’re doing well, what they’re not doing well, and where there’s an opportunity for improvement. Because the understanding has to come from within them.

Darius Teter: Laurie has an exercise for that. As you’ll find out, Laurie has an exercise for pretty much everything.

Laurie Fuller: Interestingly enough, when I work with my clients, one of the things I always start with, Darius, is: How do I spend my time? And I ask them for two to three weeks to track their activities. And then I have a blog that gives an approximation of 40 percent of your time as a CEO or an entrepreneur should be spent in this area, et cetera, et cetera. Now the percentages can be slightly changed, but what’s so interesting is that when we talk before they do the tracking, they think they’re spending their time on certain things, and then after they do the tracking they realize, “Oh my gosh, this isn’t what I thought at all.”

Darius Teter: I have this sneaking suspicion I should do this exercise for myself.

Laurie Fuller: Well, I’ll send it along and we can debrief before and after. Don’t worry, it’s free. I won’t charge.

Darius Teter: Often, Laurie encounters “heroic leaders.” And while that might sound like a good thing, heroic leaders can actually hurt their own business, by trying to save the company all on their own. Rather than facilitating discussion and empowering team members, these leaders make unilateral decisions. And that mindset can manifest in unexpected ways.

Laurie Fuller: I’ll give you an example of something that perhaps entrepreneurs don’t realize I’m listening for, and that is language. So one of the things that can be said is: Beware of the evil letter “I.” It’s not just what you’re saying, but it’s how you’re saying it. And if you’re a heroic leader that is micromanaging and not delegating and wants to control everything, I, the coach, will know because you are using the word I or the letter I all the time.

“Well, I should have done that. I didn’t do it. I did this. I hit these goals, I didn’t hit these goals.” So I had a client and I said, “Do you have your 2023 plan?” “I don’t have it.” “Well, why not? Well, I don’t have it because I set the goals for last year and then I didn’t meet them, and so I have a mental block, I can’t do it.” I said, “Did you realize that it’s not just about you, it’s about your business? And perhaps one of the reasons why your goal wasn’t achievable is because you didn’t think about it from a business capability and capacity perspective.”

So whenever a client says “I,” I ask them, “Can you stop in the moment and do you really mean I, me, or do you mean we? And if you mean we, and you change and say “we,” that helps us change our mindset to it’s a team. I am part of a team. I am part of the company, which changes your behaviors, changes your actions.” And so my recommendation to this client was, “Is 2023 the year of we?”

Darius Teter: To overcome heroic leadership, you’ve got to learn to delegate. But that’s easier said than done.

Laurie Fuller: When we think about something as a bottleneck, it’s literally the neck of a bottle. It’s at the top. And so often a key opportunity for us working with a client is to help them understand that. When it’s a young company, you as the leader can delegate things that you don’t like to do, things you’re not interested in, things that drain your energy. But when you become larger, then if you’re really focused on the business, which is your role, then you end up having to delegate things that you might be good at.

You may think you’re the best one in the company to be doing it, but not now, not in this role. So the risk actually in delegation, the blind spot you have to look for, is that you may put your company at risk in the area that you think you are best suited to do. So I think there was one example where the founder very much wants to be in the lead, facilitate everything, to make sure that we get the right answer from our team.

Darius Teter: The right answer meaning the answer that he already had in his mind?

Laurie Fuller: Exactly, yes. ‘Right answer” in quotes. I already know what the answer is, but I’ve been told that I need to get input from the team because that’s best practice. So let me get up and let me facilitate something really quickly and then let’s move on. Right?

Darius Teter: To get them to what I want them to do.

Laurie Fuller: Yes, exactly.

Darius Teter: That’s awesome. Okay.

Laurie Fuller: So we agreed that this was something that he wanted to change. And so the idea was, “You are not going to facilitate. You’re going to have someone else on your team facilitate and you’re going to sit in as a participant. You have a voice, but you’re one voice of the team. And the first time that we did this, he sat down, someone else started facilitating, but you know, Darius, it just wasn’t moving fast enough.

We weren’t getting to the right answer fast enough. And hey, we only have 15 minutes of the meeting left and we need the answer. So he jumped up, ran to the board, and just took over. So the good news is that he tried and he did sit and play a different role for a period of time. So that’s progress. And then we debrief afterward: “What happened? Why did you jump up and take over and what was the outcome of doing that?”

Darius Teter: Delegation requires a shift in mindset, and that’s something a coach can help you with. This is something I really want to dig into because what one coach told me is, “Darius, you need to embrace your leadership role.” I think what she was saying is, “Get out of the weeds.” And I thought about, why do I sometimes like to dive into the weeds? I think the negative interpretation is because it’s easier. Those are technical challenges, not adaptive challenges. They’re fixable. So you can get a little bit of endorphin rush. “I fix this problem, I fix that problem. We’re moving the ball, we’re moving the ball.” And I get a satisfaction out of each incremental step, even though those are incremental steps off a cliff. Right?

So I think part of it is, might be … psychologically it’s nice to solve little problems and it’s easier to solve little problems than to think about big challenges.

Laurie Fuller: And I think also with delegation, you really have to be comfortable. This is my opinion as a leader with “good enough” because so many executives say, “Hey, I’m the smartest in the room, which means I need perfection from everyone else.” And that’s not going to work. That’s not going to scale. I mean, when leaders go through and question and understand that viewpoint, at the end they say, “Wow, this is actually preventing me from scaling.” And so the question I have to them is, “What’s good enough? Good enough is not bad. Good enough is good, but good enough is not perfection.”

Darius Teter: But delegation is also a skill you can practice. And Laurie has a method she uses to teach it.

Laurie Fuller: People think delegation is a soft skill, but it actually does have an underlying process that helps you be more successful. It’s important to understand that delegation includes introducing the task, demonstrating clearly what needs to be done, ensuring understanding, allocation of authority, information resources, letting go, but then monitoring. So those are things that we have to work on.

Darius Teter: Laurie doesn’t just work with founders and CEOs. She’s often called upon to help teams and she’s got techniques for that, too.

Laurie Fuller: All clients come to me: “I want a high performing team. How do I do that?” Guess what? There’s a great framework by someone called Tuckman in the 1960s, and it is the stages of team formation. So hey, you don’t put people in a room, close the door, and say, “Create your team.” The idea is the team forms, it storms, it norms, and then it performs. So you have to go through each of these stages to get to a high-performing team. What’s really fun is whenever I introduce this framework to even an existing team that’s been working together for a while, I say, “Read this, then write on a piece of paper — no one else will know — what stage is the team at currently?” And I collect everyone’s pieces of paper, and guess what? No one agrees.

Darius Teter: That’s fascinating.

Laurie Fuller: Some people think they’re norming, some people think they’re storming, some people think they’re performing, and we don’t know where we are. Yet we’ve been meeting as a team. We’re called the senior management team, and by the way, we’re supposed to take the company to the next level because that’s our role. So let me give you another example because sometimes I think we make things too complex. So I was working with a client and he said, “Most of my senior management team is new. New within six months or less.” So guess what we normally do as a leader? We put these people in a room. They don’t know each other. They’ve never worked together. And we say, “Okay, go work together as a team. Just go figure it out.” The leader says, “Well, we have to get things done. We have KPIs. We have the strategy. We’re going to focus on all these things, and that’s going to be the focus of the meeting.”

And I said, “Let’s try this a different way.” Now, I didn’t know these people. I was new to the client at this point, and I said, “We’re going to get in a room and the first thing we’re going to do is every person is going to give three successes of the week.” Because I felt like the environment was a bit negative, to be honest. It’s very easy to understand all the problems, all the reasons why problems can’t be solved, but there are successes. You’ve been here, not that long. Positive wins build positive momentum. So everyone went around, here are my three successes.

Next I said, “I’d really like everyone to talk about one challenge that they’re currently facing and they’re working on.” So that person would state the challenge. Then I said, “I would like every person to tell this individual that just spoke how they can support her on this challenge.” So then each person went around and said, “Here’s how I can support you on your challenge.” So we did that, took about an hour because everyone went through, said, “I have a challenge.” And then people would say, “Here’s how I can support.” Great.

Darius Teter: Changing habits requires practice. That’s especially true for leadership and organizational culture.

Laurie Fuller: The next week I show up, I said, “Hey, hi, how is everyone? Guess what? Guess what we’re going to do today? The same thing we did last week, start out, successes, challenge.” And the leader is looking at me like, “What are you doing? Are we making any progress? If we made progress on the work plan, KPIs, we’re not even discussing these.” We did that for four weeks. Why? Because the most important thing is to build the relationships and to understand the interdependencies and the synergies between functions. And the best way, in my opinion, to do that is to start at the human level.

It’s about supporting someone when they have challenges. It’s about recognizing that we can all be successful despite the demanding environment. Once we have those relationships, then we can talk about KPIs. Then we can talk about project plans. Then we can talk about strategy. But if we don’t have the underlying relationship as individuals and part of a team, how are we going to move forward in business?

Darius Teter: What I really like about this exercise that you did is that it’s building relationships, but through the business. Right? So by hearing what other people value as their success, you’re understanding what motivates them, what’s important in their line of the business, right? And by offering to help, you’re also expressing empathy and you’re stating out front, this is how I’m going to collaborate. And so that breaks down silos.

Laurie Fuller: Absolutely. I think the point also is, focusing on the KPI is not going to create the relationship. That’s just a layer on top of. And so I think you’re right. I mean, I think we just have to make sure that we know what success looks like at the beginning, and it’s about the relationship. And then to your point, the question is, how’s the best way to build that?

Darius Teter: Do you find that often the entrepreneur in their mind, they have a very clear idea of the culture they want in their workplace, the accountability and all of that. And they assume, or they think that that’s obvious, but it isn’t to their teams?

Laurie Fuller: Very much. There’s so many things, to your point, Darius, that go unsaid. It’s just expected they know. It’s just expected that we have alignment, but everyone internalizes and interprets things differently. So, interestingly enough, I just met with a client yesterday and we were talking about values. One of the things that I’ve seen very successful in understanding and interpreting values is role play. Because if you take your team and you put them into small groups and you say, “Okay, we would like you as a team to role play this value and do it in front of everyone,” it really requires them to think about and internalize, what does this mean to me? What does it mean to the company? And how do I communicate and act that out?

Darius Teter: Huh? You’re really making me think now, Laurie.

Though it may seem like Laurie can fix anything. There are limits to what a coach can accomplish. I think of coaching as helping someone become a better leader. But what about all the underlying psychological baggage that a person might be bringing there? To what extent does a coach start to become a psychotherapist? Is that part of the training? Is that okay? Is that “it is what it is.” So the ways in which a person’s childhood or upbringing or other non-work experiences shape their personality. I’m trying to understand: What’s the boundary between “I need a therapist” or “I need a coach,” or is a coach a therapist?

Laurie Fuller: No. In my experience, I’m not a therapist. I’m not trained as a therapist. I’m trained as a coach. So they are different. And it is important, I believe, to respect that they’re different. I’m really focused on work — work behaviors and how you present yourselves to others at work in a work situation.

Darius Teter: While she can’t improve your relationship with your mom, Laurie does help clients with the emotional aspects of running a business. After all, CEOs can’t just check their feelings at the door. I’ve heard you use the phrase before, the emotional runway. I know what a financial runway is. What’s an emotional runway?

Laurie Fuller: I’m really glad that you brought this up because this is such an important part of being a coach. Really, it’s about the energy and the passion that you have to continue to move the business forward because it is difficult as an entrepreneur. There’s always challenges. Everyone is bringing you their problems to solve. They’re always giving you reasons why something won’t work. Because it’s lonely and because, especially in emerging markets, there’s so many things outside of your control. Emotional runway is: How much energy do you have available to move things forward and address these challenges?

Darius Teter: And presumably it’s a direct function of your passion for what you’re doing or what problem you’re trying to solve with your business.

Laurie Fuller: I think that’s part of it. I also think within the business, while you’re running the business, are you focused on the things that are most interesting to you and give you enough energy? So I think it’s a combination of both.

Darius Teter: And as you’ve probably guessed, Laurie has strategies to handle the emotional aspects of leadership — because of course she does.

Laurie Fuller: There’s a couple things that I do with clients that maybe I can share around the emotional runway because I do think this is a topic that doesn’t get enough attention with entrepreneurs. So when we do the “how I spend my time,” this is a great time in the discussion, after the tracking, to say, “What of the things you are doing drain you and you do not like to do?” That’s the first thing you delegate. And we talked about how to put in the process so that the delegation can be successful.

The second thing I do with an entrepreneur is I think about and discuss work-life balance or just time away where you can reflect, you can think, and you can see the forest from the trees. And guess what? As a coach, I’m a good accountability partner. Did you do that? Did you take that Wednesday morning that you committed to yourself? And did you do that? And if not, why? Let’s talk about it. Understand. The third thing I do is these entrepreneurs find ideas everywhere. When they look at their strategy and they look at strategic options, the first question I ask is: Which one are you most excited about? And that should be a very important filter in determining what you do as a business.

Darius Teter: So I imagine then that sometimes the outcome of coaching is that the leader is actually in the wrong place. Maybe the reason they keep focusing on this thing that’s tangential to the business is because that’s what they really love, and the rest of it is actually drawing down on their emotional … Their emotional runway is getting shorter and shorter because they’re not admitting to the fact that actually it’s this thing over here that really gives them life and all the rest of it is just a drag.

Laurie Fuller: Absolutely. So I’ll give you an example. We had a session where this leader, this entrepreneur, went through a strategic plan. So much energy, so much opportunity. We’re going to do it. Let’s go. Go team. Everything sounds great. The next week he and I meet, he closes the door, and the first thing he says to me is, “Laurie, I can’t do this anymore. I should have been gone a year ago.” Can you imagine that’s the starting point? “I can’t do it anymore.” And then COVID hits. And that’s exactly the time when as a leader, you have to stand up and lead through a crisis. Where’s the emotional runway? What’s left?

And if we’ve gone through all of those things and the result is, “You know what? I’m just not the right person to take it to the next level,” that’s okay. Then let’s have that conversation. Let’s put in a plan to transition out or to move to a different role, and let’s be proud that we are doing that.

I think that these are really important conversations to have and to normalize. We should be proud of the work we’ve done and let’s have someone else take a turn at running the firm. That’s a good thing to do. It’s a very noble thing to do. So there’s no shame in any of this, and I really want people to understand that there’s no shame in saying, “This is not for me now, and I’ve got other things that I’m more excited about and I can add more value.” A coach can help you work through the practical implementations once you’ve made mentally that decision that you need to move on.

Darius Teter: As you work with a coach, you and your team will develop. This growth might be hard to see from the inside, but a coach can help you monitor your progress.

Laurie Fuller: I’m continually trying to understand: What’s the progress the leader is making? What’s the progress the team is making? Are we moving with enough similarity so that this whole thing can be successful when we put all these pieces of the puzzle together and it becomes the company operating?

Darius Teter: So how do you make this progress of coaching sticky?

Laurie Fuller: This is a great question. You have goals and you’re working towards those goals, but I try to simplify it and just reflect on, have we made progress and has the progress been consistent? Because it does always take longer than you think it will, and you may think you’re starting at step five, but you’re actually starting at step one. So I think it’s reflecting on the progress, not the end goal that you may have defined at the beginning.

Darius Teter: Laurie is evidence that a coach can transform a business, but your coach won’t be around forever, right? Well, not necessarily. Plenty of clients have engaged coaches for additional sessions beyond their initial agreement. Some have found them so indispensable that they’ve invited them to join their board.

Laurie Fuller: I think realistically, it’s a longer relationship. So clients that I’ve been working with for many years are much stronger because of it, stronger as leaders, stronger financially, better business performance. It always takes longer than you think to make change. So don’t wait. Get a coach and start working on it then so that you don’t get in a situation where you’re like, “I should have done this two years ago.”

Darius Teter: As an entrepreneur, you’re trying to be the best you can be, and theoretically, it’s possible to improve without a coach, just like it’s possible to learn without a teacher. But why do it the hard way? A coach offers tangible steps to improve your business and yourself. What’s more, they give you invaluable perspective to diagnose your issues as well as accountability and support along the way. I’d encourage you to try some of the exercises from this episode.

I know I will, but that barely scratches the surface of what a coach has to offer. Laurie has something for every business challenge you could think of and plenty you haven’t. So if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, get a coach. I’d like to thank Laurie Fuller for sharing her practice and passion with us. I really will be taking her up on that free coaching offer. I mean, Laurie, I knew this was going to … I was up late preparing for this thing and then I was like, “Why am I worried about this? This is going to be awesome.”

This has been Grit & Growth from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. I’m your host, Darius Teter. If you like this episode, follow us and leave a review on your favorite podcast app. Erika Amoako-Agyei and VeAnne Virgin researched and developed content for this episode. Kendra Gladych is our production coordinator and our executive producer is Tiffany Steeves, with writing and production from Andrew Ganem and sound design and mixing by Alex Bennett at Lower Street Media. Thanks for joining us. We’ll be back soon with another episode.