Leadership Coachability: Why Great Leaders Never Stop Learning

00:06 — Anthony Presley:
Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. Kevin, if there is anybody in the coachability or learning space that doesn’t know a little bit about you, would you mind spending just a minute and tell them a little bit about yourself and introduce yourself?

00:18 — Kevin Wilde:
Sure. Happy to had a 34 year corporate career, General Electric and General Mills, mainly in the leadership talent development space. Last number of years I’ve been teaching at the University of Minnesota, a fellow in the business school in leadership and that’s sort of my passion and student of that. A number of years ago I started doing research on this topic called coachability. Wrote a book and done some other things over time, but that’ll be a fun topic for us today.

00:43 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, you just breezed through that 30 years of corporate leadership, I believe while you were out in that career. Did I see right? You were like a chief learning Officer and you got to do all kinds of exciting things.

00:57 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah, I’ve got to be the Chief Learning Officer at General Mills. Dealing with the top 500 executives in the global leadership development front part of my GE career. I was actually at their corporate training center, Crotonville and had a chance to help develop executives and got to know some of the top leaders at the time as well. So been very fortunate over the years of having great role models and inspiration on us thinking both in the business world and then outside. I’ve had a chance to meet some other really terrific leaders over the years and have tried to continue to contribute to the field as well.

01:27 — Anthony Presley:
Wow, that’s exciting. I’m sure you have some amazing stories from that time in your life. Probably both on the awesome side and probably on the very extreme side as well, if I had to guess.

01:39 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah, well, one thing fun about writing a book is you get to think about, okay, here’s what I put forward on how to be a better leader. And as you’re writing, you’re thinking, okay, but I wasn’t a good leader here and here. So it’s been a learning journey for me as well.

01:53 — Anthony Presley:
One of my favorite parts of your book actually is the reflection side. I used to tell my team all the time that, you know, if you look at like a UFC fight with two folks who are, you know, they wake up every day, they’re sure they’re going to win, they walk into an arena, they are completely shocked and surprised that they didn’t win. And I often think that most people probably feel that way about themselves. There’s very rarely does someone sit down and have the conversation with their Wife, like, I got terminated today because I was not amazing as I thought I was. I think very few people have that reflection capability. But that’s just my view. Do you think that’s something that most people have or do they have to grow into that?

02:38 — Kevin Wilde:
And part of it is, and I’ll just mention two things that it’s in the book and on my website that you can post for everyone, is this notion of we all have blind spots. You know, things that we don’t know, that we’re not doing as well as we could, or we could be even better given our talents and abilities. And that led me down the path of why coachability is so important, to reduce those blind spots and work on important things. So we’ll get into that. But back to the, you know, I wasn’t at my best. I’m reminded of an early story that I’ve got in the book. Got a master’s degree in leadership, read all about it, thought I knew everything. And then I was rotated into a manufacturing startup as a plant supervisor. And, Anthony, this was way back in the day.

03:16 — Kevin Wilde:
This is a long time ago. Dinosaurs roamed the earth and all that. But that first Friday, I had to pass out physical paychecks to my staff. So imagine this. I had 34 technicians, two shifts, assembly area. We were making Mr. Machines for GE. And I remember I thought, this is really boring, you know, passing out paychecks. So I thought, well, I’ll spice it up, so I’ll just make a little joke. So I would pass out paychecks and say, hey, big money here. Or, anthony, here’s your paycheck. Did you earn it this week, etc. I thought I was the funniest supervisor in the plant, right? So I go back to my little supervisor cubicle. I’m sitting there and my lead technician, Jim, shows up and he says, I got to tell you something, Kevin. Like what?

03:55 — Kevin Wilde:
He says, you know, we think you’re going to work out as our new boss find. But let me tell you, when you’re passing out paychecks, shut up. And I was horrified. I went out. I apologize. It was a complete blind spot on my part, but it’s reminding me of the story that, you know, if I didn’t have this relationship with Jim, he might not have told me that. And I would have had this huge blind spot of, you know, thinking I was being really funny, as opposed to, don’t mess with pay. Just pass it out, be grateful, move on. And I think all of us can seek a little more Feedback and get a little more coaching to keep us as good as we can be.

04:30 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, no, I think that’s a great story. I’m curious, did you take that on the chin? Was that. That was a surprise to you? That again, you thought you were being funny and it wasn’t. Was that. Did you have to kind of take a second and recorrect your thoughts.

04:44 — Kevin Wilde:
Back to the, you know, athlete that thinks I’m going to win today and you find out you’re on the canvas instead? I think I go through the different emotions of, you know, just shock, amaze. Like, what’s going on here? Immediate defensiveness. You know, I’ve got, you know, based on my studies and what’s in the book, this notion about we just all have natural defense mechanisms. You know, things that pick up on our brain and say, you know, I don’t like that feedback. It’s got to be your problem, not mine. Or if you think, you know, you’re giving me feedback, I want to give you some feedback. Okay? All that doesn’t help. What helps is just to reflect. As you said, slow down. Said, gee, if they didn’t care, they wouldn’t be telling me this.

05:17 — Kevin Wilde:
So maybe I should take it, you know, again, as the gift, but more of a, hey, I can better. What can I make out of this? And I think at the end of the day, you know, I just learned in my workforce, you know, as much as I read all about leadership, actually doing it is a whole nother level, and getting good coaching and support from others is important on the journey.

05:36 — Anthony Presley:
That’s amazing. I have two thoughts that came up there. I’ll save one for just a few minutes. But I’m curious. You mentioned the leadership that takes time to develop, and you and I have chatted about this off and on over the years. But, like, do you find that organizations often will take. And my phrasing, and just from the grocery background is they’ll take the best meat cutter and they’ll turn them into the meat cutter manager, and then they’re surprised when it doesn’t work. Right. And now you’ve taken the best at one skill and you put them into a role that you thought was just like, oh, they’re managing. How hard can that be? Do you find that’s a. Is that a common problem in organizations.

06:12 — Kevin Wilde:
In terms of, you know, who do you want to invest select? And on our end, you know, how to position ourselves for that next role is important. And I think, you know, you’ve mentioned a Few things here, that notion about, you know, what got us here may not get us there where we need to go next. But I also say that for the organization, have you really helped that person understand, here’s what’s important in the new role. One thing I do when I’m teaching, you know, my leadership course at the university and doing some exec coaching is I’ll say, in any time you’re transitioning, there’s three good questions to ask, right? One is, what do I need to let go of? And I think for the meat cutters, like, yeah, you’re the technical expert.

06:47 — Kevin Wilde:
You can share that wisdom, but that’s not your job anymore. And I had that in my career, too, that there were things I love doing, but as I moved up, like, no, that’s not my job anymore. I need to enable and coach others to do that. And then the second question is, what do I need to add? What are the new skills I need to develop? And I think that’s where organizations can fall short. You know, they never assign a coach or a mentor or again, give them some early feedback for development. And I think that’s such an important transition. But then the third question, so, you know, what do I need to let go of as I’m moving up or changing jobs? What do I need to add on to new skills and abilities and mindsets?

07:22 — Kevin Wilde:
And the third one is what’s still true about me. So part of that reflection is, okay, this is who I am. Here’s where I’ve won in the past, here’s my confidence, and I think you need to bring that forward as well.

07:33 — Anthony Presley:
Which one of those is hardest?

07:34 — Kevin Wilde:
Oh, I think it can vary by person and circumstance, certainly. I think what I need to let go of is we cling to our successes, right? And to some degree, they should be almost springboards to what’s next. So knowing those and reminding ourselves is important. But one thing I found, just going back to this notion of coachability, you know, I started by interviewing 50 executive coaches. When you’re working with leaders, which ones are coachable? What do you see? If it’s not there, what do you do about it? From that, I did some original academic research on, okay, let’s look at a couple thousand leaders. And then over the years, I’ve actually worked with another group that we’ve looked at, I think over 100,000 leaders, those that are coachable, those that aren’t.

08:14 — Kevin Wilde:
And there’s a couple common denominators that I think help you in that transition of what do I need to let go of or hold on to. And one of them is that mindset. And what we found is that the people that were not coachable had a mindset about, I’m done, I’m finished, this is as good as I am, right? So it’s clinging to those old successes and then not being open for GMEBI could better. And I think the coachable leaders start with that mindset about, I’m an unfinished product, I’ve got the capability to grow, get better, succeed in new ways. And I think that mindset of curiosity and confidence, that’s something I call a learning zone. Fascinating little study we did. We looked at 200 leaders.

08:51 — Kevin Wilde:
We had their ratings on how coachable they were based on input from others, but we also had a personality assessment judging their internal confidence. And so the question was, gee, is there any correlation between how coachable you’re seeing from others and then confidence? And what we found is it wasn’t linear, it was curvilinear. It was like, you know, low confidence, low coachability. And I call it the I can’t zone, right? I don’t want to go there, I’m too defensive, etc. But then there’s the other end, which is the way too much confidence, a little bit of hubris there. And that’s like, I call it the I don’t care zone, right? And I think that also could get in the way. It’s not just, hey, I can’t do it because I’m threatened or it’s something new, but also that, you know, what, I’m doing fine.

09:33 — Kevin Wilde:
Don’t bother me with that feedback stuff. And what I found in my research is, you know, there’s this thing called a learning zone. Enough confidence to ask and enough curiosity to want to know to get better. And I think all of us have that notion about being in that zone. And back to your questions, like, well, you have to figure out for yourself, how do you get in that learning zone to be the most coachable, the best leader you can be? And there’s a variety of things. Some people, you know, what I’ve learned and I’ve studied, you know, it’s about they need challenge, they need psychological safety. I’ve had a couple who say, you know, I need failure. Once I am on the ground, that gets my attention. And for some people, that’s the right thing.

10:10 — Kevin Wilde:
Others, it’s more of a being reminded of success, but being supported and curious to try things and to be experimental. So it may vary. But one of the things I would throw out to the folks watching this and listening to this is what’s your learning zone? And how do you as a leader get that mindset of confident enough to ask and curious enough to improve?

10:32 — Anthony Presley:
I love that there’s a lot of talk and learning about generations and how different generations. We got six generations in the workforce, if you believe in it. Other people think it’s a little bit like a horoscope. You shouldn’t classify people that way. But I think there are different life events that certainly split up generations. Do you see the coachability changes based on the generations or age of them?

10:56 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah, I’ve never been able to figure that one out. And I think you laid out the arguments on both sides. I think the notion about being aware of differences in others and how to best modify your style to, you know, to connect well and again, to influence, to lead, et cetera, I think that’s the magic. But depending on, you know, ages and other circumstances, you know, it can vary. I do find early career. There’s that notion about. In fact, one of the other tips I’ll start passing along is I found highly coachable leaders. Once I’ve got that mindset, I’m confident enough to learn. What am I doing that could better? Right. What I find early career people usually just say, how am I doing? And they haven’t learned that. That question doesn’t get a good response. The better response is being specific.

11:41 — Kevin Wilde:
Hey, I’m trying to get better at delegating. I’m trying to get better at being more professional. As I present, I’m trying to get better. Give me some tips. What am I doing well, what could better? And I think both being specific and asking helps early career people and then build the confidence. And I do like the, what I call the two question technique, which is what am I doing? Well, I should continue because I think we all need that confidence, right, to ask, but especially early career. And I think the what got to be even better is more the other side of it. So, yeah, even though you’re a successful leader and you’ve got lots of people reporting to you and you’ve got a great track record and resume, no guarantee of success. How do I keep getting better? What could better?

12:19 — Kevin Wilde:
And I think being able to ask that question later in a career, what could be even better is important to keep asking. I just last year I did a big training intervention for a large pharmaceutical company out east, and one of the senior leaders was sponsoring the Training and we did. One thing I’ve done is I’ve created a coachability profile and a little assessment. And she was shocked. She did the assessment early that she used to score very high as a coachable leader, but now seeking feedback was very low. And she thought about saying, you know, I’ve lost the practice. Early on I was curious, I was a sponge. I wanted to know, you know, what are other people doing that I could be doing as well or better, etc. Now she got so busy that she’s lost that, you know, that practice.

13:03 — Kevin Wilde:
And the thing that I keep putting out there is, you know, what’s in your learning zone. Then go out there and be curious.

13:10 — Anthony Presley:
Love that. Being curious. Yeah, I think that’s. We’ve seen, I’ve seen over my career that’s just, you know, being curious and trying to stay a little bit humble, learning new things as we sit on this giant rock that’s spinning through space that, you know, we got things to learn. And I think that, you know, that 1% better every day seems to be a nice little platitude to, you know, kind of drive at least our core philosophies of, you know, just getting a little better every day and you have to be coachable. I am curious in all of your background and the learning side of things and have, do you have an opinion on being really good at one or two things or being a well rounded leader? Is there something everyone should vie for?

13:58 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah,.

13:59 — Anthony Presley:
If the feedback to me is, hey, you’re kind of a jerk, Anthony. Like, but I’m getting some stuff done. And I’m like, top of the getting stuff done. Do I want to be less of a jerk or do I just want to get more stuff done?

14:10 — Kevin Wilde:
A tough one if you’re in those spots. But clearly a couple parts of this I’ll just comment on. One is that notion about one thing I do in a lot of my programs is you’ll get some feedback from others, right? 360S, et cetera. And you guys help me with a couple of my tools. And I always say there’s a three part to look at your report and how others are experiencing you on a bunch of leadership dimensions. One is, do you have a fatal flaw? Do you have something that is just you got to fix it before anything else.

14:39 — Kevin Wilde:
And I’d say about 25% of the time that I’m teaching or I’m coaching, I’m seeing those kinds of reports and I’m telling that you got to fix this thing before we talk about anything else, you got to fix it about one out of four times. So like, yeah, if you get yourself a jerk, yeah, you know that’s going to come back at some point. You got to at least get that to neutral to be a collaborative team player and figure that one out. But then to spend all your time on your low scores, to spend all your time on the weaknesses is just not productive. And I’ve seen some research that, you know, 75% of the time, if you’re always working your weaknesses, you’re not going to be as good as you can be. So stage one is a fatal flaw.

15:19 — Kevin Wilde:
Two is what could you be great at? And I think that’s the point about what. And there’s always a three part formula. There is. What do you love doing? Right? Very hard to be great at something if you don’t love it to begin with. Two is, you know, what’s your current skill level? Right. You know, are you good enough to go to great. And three is it relevant to the organization, to the circumstances? Because if it’s not, it’s just your hobby. And there’s always this alignment about what does the place need, what do I love doing and where could I build great skills? So to answer your question, yeah, you should absolutely have towering strengths, your signature two or three things, but you should always be open for, okay, this is getting in the way, I’ve got to fix it.

15:58 — Kevin Wilde:
Or in some cases I’ve got some leaders that, yes, you’ve got a few towering strengths. Now you need to diversify now you need to, you know, if all your results are based or all your skills are based on getting great results and change management. Maybe you should add in a strength on collaboration or influence just to balance that out. And I think in today’s AI disruptive era, I think we need both. You never know if your skill set’s going to be out of date tomorrow. So as much as you got to build those, I think that continuous learning and figuring out what’s next is there. So long answer. In short, I would say, hey, you know, having towering strengths counts. Having diversity of towering strengths, I think over time is the survival formula.

16:43 — Kevin Wilde:
But also every once in a while, you know, stop telling jokes when you’re passing out paychecks. You just gotta stop that. So there are times to be funny and times like not.

16:53 — Anthony Presley:
Right.

16:53 — Kevin Wilde:
And once you fix that, then I think you can move on.

16:56 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, yeah, no, I think that’s great. That’s a great framework of how to think about that. That’s awesome. You brought up AI. I didn’t have to. It’s on every leader’s buzzword bingo, I think, and every trade show I’ve been to for the last two years. How are you thinking about AI and how are your customers thinking about AI? And maybe you could talk a little bit about where you see that falling into. On the leadership growth curve, because see a lot of HR tools out there that are trying to, you know, talk back and forth. Anyway, we can talk about this probably for an hour by itself, but I’m curious what you’re seeing and how do you. How do you think it’s going to help or hurt?

17:35 — Kevin Wilde:
Well, first of all, I’m probably the. Not your top interviewee on this topic, right? I’m just a student. I’m curious. I’m learning. I do have. I did hire someone as an expert, as an AI coach. We do a session. I’ve got one tomorrow to keep me learning on the curve and to do things. I’m also advised a couple organizations that do original research on the workforce and what’s going on. And very much AI is part of where it’s going. But I think the consensus is, yeah, it is disruptive, it’s moving fast, everyone feels they’re behind, but we got to stay up with it. Where it impacts leaders. I think there’s some evergreen topics. I think this notion about we’ll always have a workforce that’s not just agents, right?

18:18 — Kevin Wilde:
And being able to deploy them in the right places at the right time to enable them to succeed in this environment, to connect as a human being authentically. I think that’s going to matter moving forward as we’re all going through disruptive era. Beyond that, I don’t know. I’ll tell you one quick story. Given my teaching at the ua, I’m always checking in with the professors, like, hey, what’s going on AI? Because now your students could ace all their papers with AI, et cetera. And I don’t think there’s an academic out there that’s figured it out. And everyone’s kind of on this learning curve. One thing I do in my leadership courses is pretty much I flip the course. So the classroom is a place to experiment, to run exercises, to have discussions, et cetera.

19:01 — Kevin Wilde:
And 90% of the content is delivered, hey, read these articles, look at Kevin’s video, etc. Ahead of time. And they do a little worksheet. And it was very clear last year that some of my students were, rather than grinding through the homework themselves, Giving it to AI. All right, answer this for Kevin. Come back. And at that point I could tell, like, yeah, it’s not really authentically you. And so going into this year, I was thinking, what do I do about that? And where I’ve decided is to think about it as an experiment. So as I kicked off the course this year, I said, hey, we’re going to learn about leadership. It’s a very personal topic. If you want to use AI, completely up to you. But don’t lose the friction, because learning takes friction.

19:41 — Kevin Wilde:
And I think AI can take friction out of things. It makes it easier. But did you really learn the lesson? Did you really reflect as we talked about earlier? Did you really digest that experience you’ve had? And you’ve got to know when you need to dial into that. So having said that, what I now do for my pre class worksheets is I’ve added another question. And the question set is, tell me if you used AI. No penalty judgment. Just tell me if you’re using it, what did you learn from it? How did it do? And so as much as class is going to go for the whole academic year, I’m looking to see how students are both learning their lessons of leadership, but also are they using AI in the right way. So at the end of the day, it’s an experiment.

20:25 — Kevin Wilde:
I said, I’m experimenting too, but don’t lose that grind, that friction of learning that if it gets too easy, it’ll be superficial.

20:34 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, that’s interesting. We were hiring for an IT role not that long ago, and our recruiter has always had, you know, once you get through certain gates, one of the gates is a written test and it’s 10 questions. And he made a comment to me. He said, hey, these folks going through the recruiting process, I’ll make sure they don’t use AI. So I’ll run it through and make sure they don’t use AI. And I stopped and I was like, actually, I want them to use some AI. These are very technical questions and these are things that AI is really good at. So I want them to use AI, but then I want them to be able to read the response and decide whether or not it was actually a good response.

21:17 — Anthony Presley:
Because if they’re able to use the tool properly, they’re going to be more efficient and they’re going to better at their job. But if they’re just throwing everything there and they don’t know what the output is, they’re not going to be any good at their job at all. And so now I need like a grader for the AI as you interpret it. And then this gets very sci fi very quickly.

21:35 — Kevin Wilde:
Back to that tension point about if I don’t use it, I may not be as productive as I could be. If I use too much of it, I’m losing something. And I think we’re all trying to figure that out.

21:45 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, no, it’s created an interesting problem in the world. We spend a lot of time talking about and thinking about AI and actually just did a panel for a bunch of retailers at UTD here, UT of Dallas and they have a rise academy, so student organization that I’m involved with. And last year we did1on AI and employees and one of the discussion points that came up was, hey, if I’m an up and coming worker or an employee and I want to better at my job, do I focus on technical skills or do I focus on soft skills? And the interesting thing at the by the time were done with the panel and got it was soft skills win all day, every day because you’re just not going to be able to out AI. Some AI probably.

22:34 — Anthony Presley:
But you need to know about the AI this year we talked about customer success and interestingly enough the discussion was all around how you deliver great customer success. And yes, the online ordering needs to work and yes the POS system needs to work. But ultimately how you deliver the best customer success comes down again to the soft skills and being able to grow within the organization. I just thought it was really interesting that for all the tech, the thing that you metric your interaction with another person is how that person works.

23:07 — Kevin Wilde:
So I think it’s not either or, it’s both. We need to be curious to balance that out. But it goes back to take AI out of it. But just say there’s a new skill to develop or something going on that the tension points always I’ve been successful without it, how do I trans? And I think there’s a lot of middle managers and even senior leaders that are kind of struggling with that one internally. Like, okay, to what degree do I use these things as this is moving so fast. So back to that mindset of curiosity, that confidence that I can learn and experiment in having a workforce and environment where that’s okay and still deliver great customer service, still deliver the bottom line and don’t forget about those outcomes.

23:47 — Anthony Presley:
Right. Have you found that coachability is something that with a little bit of survey, a little bit of feedback that people can grow like it’s is that’s Not a, is that a native intrinsic thing or do you feel that it’s core that you can grow like you can grow other skills?

24:02 — Kevin Wilde:
I’ve done you know, years of research on this and now thousands of leaders in both one time studies as well as ongoing longitudinal things. And the answer starts with yeah, there’s some environmental or some personality things that would either get you a little ahead or behind. But based on my measurements I’ve seen people improve and more importantly their raters have seen people them improve. So again the, you know, the study, I’ve done both again what I’ve got online as well as the book, etc. Talks about there’s that mindset of, you know, okay, I can learn, I’m open, I’m curious, I’m in the learning zone. But then there’s four practices and there are four things that I think any person can use to up their game, to be more coachable, to avoid blind spots, to be the best they can be.

24:44 — Kevin Wilde:
And it starts with okay, so what do I want to seek? How good am I of asking for feedback? And that either comes again those questions that I want to know how to get better at X or having a gym, having my paycheck friend, that is my truth teller and having an advisor or a coach that you check in with and say hey, you know, from what you see going on, what should I be focused on? Or hey, I got this bit of feedback, help me think it through. We lose those mentors too as time goes on. I think getting that seek practice of being curious, knowing where you want to improve, having coaches and mentors along the way are so important. But then secondly then responding well when it shows up, either because you’ve asked for it or it just shows up.

25:25 — Kevin Wilde:
And again you can go through stages, but I think the, if you will, the athletic muscle there is to stop and to not listen to the internal voices that are being defensive about it. And it’s just data, right? It’s feedback given for me, not about me. So okay, how can I make this helpful? Usually it doesn’t arrive clean, so you got to think it through, what does it mean, etc. But being able to respond well, to understand the message and the opportunity. Again it’s a skill set, but then three then to reflect and to, you know, so you got a mindset, you’ve got, I’m asking for it’s showing up, I’ve heard it.

26:02 — Kevin Wilde:
But rather than rushing off to either dismiss it or to act on it, have I Thought about and thought about it enough and then finally, you know, can I follow through if it’s important and I do want to get better. And what I’ve seen is leaders, you know, score differently on those practices, but again, if they work on them, over time things improve. You know, back to my leader that used to ask questions. What was fascinating is we did a follow up assessment after she spent a few months, I expected her seek scores to go up. What went up were her ACT scores and what that meant was she was getting enough, but she wasn’t following through.

26:39 — Kevin Wilde:
And with the follow through on what she had heard, got to be seen as a more coachable leader and in fact, you know, continue to have a great impact. So back to there’s habits, there’s practices and the more we can get back to them because I think in many cases we had them early in our career, it pays off.

26:56 — Anthony Presley:
That’s amazing. A mentor of mine likes to say that everything you needed to know about being a great employee, a great team member and a great entrepreneur, you learned in second grade. You just forgot it all. You know,.

27:08 — Kevin Wilde:
Reminders help.

27:09 — Anthony Presley:
That’s right. Yeah, you mentioned, you just mentioned truth tellers. Can you explain that a little bit and maybe how somebody, I mean I’m further along in my career, how do I find one and like recruit them to just not agree with me all the time?

27:24 — Kevin Wilde:
All right, so I’m just put a little plug in here that if you go to my website thecoachableleader.com and again Anthony helped me post it. I wrote a whole blog on that. I found six ways that people have both recruited as well as enabled truth tellers or trusted advisors just to pick off a few of them. You know, obviously you just start with an inventory. But okay, who’s in my world that I respect their opinion that they get? So one, you know, I respect them. Two, they get my world right, so they kind of know me the only environment, etc. And then three, they care about me. And if you go to list, let’s say it writes five names down, five, six names.

28:01 — Kevin Wilde:
And then you go through that and say, gee, which of these score well on this notion about okay, I respect their opinion, they get what’s going on in my world and I know they would give me feedback and coaching in my best interest. That where that all works. That’s identifying. Okay, I need to see that person more often. And it doesn’t even hurt to say can we just get together for a lunch or a coffee or a little zoom Call and even say, would you mind if were just having little chats every once in a while, Pass along a few tips, let me share a few things with you, and just if you will get in that being a coachee habit with one or two people over time, I think really matters. The flip of that is also true.

28:43 — Kevin Wilde:
I would also say, who are you helping, coach? Who are you the role model, not just receiving, but also then helping and giving. It reminds me of anytime you would say, hey, Kevin, could you come in and teach my leaders to be coaches? I would say, great. First session takes five minutes. Get them in a room. You want to be a great coach, Go out and learn something, come back in a month and tell me how it goes. I think there’s empathy on both ends of that, but I would just boil it down to just being a little more curious, a little more open, and being a little more intentional at your learning routines. The people that could help you.

29:19 — Anthony Presley:
I love that. Do you find that it’s better to have that be more formal or more informal for the folks who are getting the coaching?

29:28 — Kevin Wilde:
I think it comes in all flavors. I think again, the impact starts with, okay, how do I get my learning zone right? How can this connection with this person? Again, maybe I need the more formal routines or maybe I need the informal thing. But as I’ve always said, do a little class exercise. Who are your two or three trusted advisors? Who are your truth tellers? And then, okay, when was the last time they told you something hard to hear? When did you meet with the truth teller and they told you something hard to hear? And if you haven’t had it lately, they’re waiting to tell you, come on, put on your learning hat and say, hey, you know, what am I doing that’s getting in my way?

30:08 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah.

30:09 — Kevin Wilde:
Now could an AI agent do that, Anthony? Maybe someday. I think it’s more of a secondary thing. I ran this little fun little experiment, so I do a little exercise based on Marshall Goldsmith Feed Forward anytime I’m teaching leadership. And I was guest lecturing another university course, Mid Level Leaders going through an mba. And I said, all right, pick something you want to get better at. Okay, half of you leave the room. We had about 25 people leave the room and in the hallway catch each other and ask them, hey, any ideas on how I can get better at giving presentations or listening better, etc. And write down ideas and help each other out and try to see Everybody for about 15 minutes. The other half stayed in class.

30:52 — Kevin Wilde:
And I said, all right, go to your favorite AI tool, you know, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc, and ask the coach, the online coach, the question. We brought everybody back together again and we did a little survey and first question was, are you happy with the amount of ideas you received? So again, half the class I got it from AI, half of it I got from other people. Equally positive. Equally positive. So I think both seeing human beings as well as seeing what comes online, you can get ideas. Right. The difference was the second question. And the second question is, how likely am I to use any of these ideas? Dramatic difference. Those that talk to other people were much more committed to the ideas of self improvement. And again, I think that’s both the richness of AI.

31:46 — Kevin Wilde:
You can get things easily, but are you really committed to it? And that notion about having other people around you to coach and be coached increases the likelihood of follow through, increases likelihood on efforts to get better.

32:01 — Anthony Presley:
Wow. Yeah, that’s a fantastic experiment with AI. I might steal that from you.

32:07 — Kevin Wilde:
Oh, feel free. Again, I’m not dismissing AI. It’s great. I use it in a lot of my work and again, I’m getting feedback on how to keep learning from it. But losing to your point about soft skills, losing that human element, I do see a day that I think, and I think it’s starting to, that if you give AI permission to look at everything you do, it can coach you. And hey, you’re spending too much time on this or you missed this memo here, et cetera. I see the day when that will get much better in a lot of organizations. But I think you’ll be missing that human connection element that we all need to really learn to be open to improve.

32:41 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, no, I think that’s totally valid. And you did an experiment with it and it seems like that validates it as well. So I love that. Yeah, I appreciate you plugging your website. We will definitely plug the website. We’ll plug the book the Coachability. Right. This is fantastic. I actually ask all of my team to read it. Recommended all over the place. One of these days I’m gonna have to make sure you and I are in the same spot so I can get it signed.

33:05 — Kevin Wilde:
Oh, okay.

33:07 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, no, it’s, it is a superpower and maybe the only superpower in my book because it seems to be hard to find sometimes. And I don’t know if that’s, again, as you mentioned, you know, if that’s something that you can tease out of folks as they grow. But a lot of our customers are in Retail medical facilities where there’s frontline workers that often don’t get they don’t get, we’ll call it the leadership touch. Right? They’re not going to off sites. They’re not going and getting that dedicated. As you rise the ranks where that might be a dedicated curriculum that they’re trying to grow leaders, what might you say or provide to someone who’s a frontline worker that wants to. Wants to grow? Like, how would you approach that?

33:55 — Kevin Wilde:
Well, I mean, first of all, I’d say, thank goodness you’re not going to off sites on leadership. And as much as I get invited to do those, like, all right, because I think the trap there is I’ll just keep doing my job. And then someday someone, hey, Kevin, go to this course or, you know, whatnot, as opposed to how do I drive this myself? So the first thing I would ask is, you know, back to the, what are you trying. How you doing, what’s important to get better? And then how do you find ways of picking up the information? And sometimes, yeah, it is, you know, getting that truth teller, the trust advisor. Sometimes, yeah, I’m going to pick up a book or look at some TED talks, etc.

34:33 — Kevin Wilde:
But if you will, owning your own learning, I think is the place to start figuring out what’s important. Back to my three parts of, you know, what are you pretty good at? You love doing, you want to get better at it and it’s relevant. That’s the place to invest. So being very formal on, okay, here’s where I want to grow. Putting a little, you know, 90 day little, okay, I want to work on this for 90 days and then figuring out what are my resources. And oftentimes they’re around you. Right. There’s other good role models, I think if you have a good relationship with your manager or someone else in the hierarchy to be skillful at learning from them.

35:09 — Kevin Wilde:
And I remember back in the days, I just gone from one GE division to another and I was meeting with a manager and I was trying to understand how this business works and actually how they make money. And I remember I’m sitting in his office, he’s doing this phone call, and when he’s done, we’re about to plan the meeting. I was going to facilitate for him. I said, before we do that, just give me two minutes here. I was listening on that phone call. What did this mean? Help me understand this. And I was just curious about the business and why, you know, having that learning mindset. So I think that’s the formula being intentional, having that learning mindset, knowing where you want to grow and then finding those places you can plug in.

35:45 — Anthony Presley:
Love it. Staying on like the survey thought here. A lot of companies will do annual surveys. They’ll go, you know, do a survey of all the employees and then they come back, they put together a slide deck and then nothing really changes. Right. Like what do you see in an organization where they’re doing surveys, they’re getting employee feedback? They are. And then they’re implementing those changes. Whether or not it’s inter, you know, right within their org chart, it’s just them and their leader or across the whole organization. You’ve got a lot of experience with folks making and doing change management. Where do you see that work and where does it not work?

36:21 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah. And I was even thinking back in the day, you know, it was much harder. We almost had to do with number two pencils and paper to. Then we finally went online and then suddenly it got too easy to do. I think the practice is a good one. The degree that there’s follow through speaks more to your culture than it does the tool or instrument or the technique. Right. And so I go back to, okay, are we an improving organization? Do we have a culture of curiosity, confidence, learning zone, trying to get better, being coachable? And if you don’t have that, no amount of amazing software, no amount of tracking improvements is really going to matter as much as have I made the investments, do I have the role models, do I reward, do I tell stories of how we’re going to get better?

37:02 — Kevin Wilde:
And that starts at the top. And I was fortunate. Back to my General Mills days, anytime we would do a survey of how are you as a leader? The senior, most leaders went first and that included the CEO. And I gotta tell you a funny story. At the time, Steve Sanger was the CEO. Great guy and a great track record. I invited him in to teach one of my classes. So here we’ve got frontline leaders. It’s the kickoff of a number of days classes. We’re all excited. The CEO comes in and at one point completely goes off script. And he says, hey, are you guys getting a 360 survey as part of this class? And he says, oh, I hate those. And I’m like, oh no, this is bad, this is really bad. And, but that’s. He was a jokester, right?

37:46 — Kevin Wilde:
So then he says, hey, I just had one, let me show you mine. And he puts up on the screen some of his Leadership360 results. And of course they were Good scores. And he said, you know, yeah, yeah, that’s what I do as a CEO. And he said, look at this. I got really low scores on coaching and giving feedback to my team. And he says, that’s not acceptable. I got to work on that. And at that point my shoulders just relaxed and everyone said, okay, so the CEO is not perfect. But both confidence, here’s what I’m good at. Right. As well as curious. I need to work on this. Right.

38:18 — Kevin Wilde:
And it was funny, was that I always bring Steve in after that and it was kind of good validation about anytime you get feedback, whether it’s an employee engagement survey or a 360, you know, what are you going to do with it? Where’s your self improvement ethic? But he came back about two years later and he said, I got a new one and I improved on this score. In fact, my team is now saying, enough, no more feedback. And that was funny too. But again, I think he set the tone. He set the tone about, you don’t have to be perfect here. You got to know what you’re good at so you can make a difference, but what are you working on? And he put himself out on the line and I think that set a great learning culture.

38:57 — Kevin Wilde:
So that would be part of my formula about. Yep. Do the tool, do the tracking, do the, you know, senior leaders do that, junior leaders do whatever. But do you have that culture that is going to make a difference?

39:07 — Anthony Presley:
That’s fantastic. And that’s a great story. Like, yeah, we’ve got enough feedback, please. And you brought up 360. So, you know, 360 sometimes get a mixed rep. You know, sometimes they’re viewed good, sometimes they’re bad. They get weaponized or they get gamed a little bit. Like where do you land on it? What kind of frequency do you think works? And.

39:30 — Kevin Wilde:
The field’s all over the place on this one. And I can tell you how I use it. I think other people can use it well. But again, it goes back to. Because I do 360s in my class, right. And I always say, hey, you know the GPS to take you where you want to go in your career, you got to know where you are now and blind spots, delusions, etc as well as you’re missing what you could be great at. Sometimes 360s can tease that out, but it takes both a good instrument, but also then good support. And I think one thing we fall down as we just. Here’s your results. You’re bad at this, you’re bad at as Opposed to, okay. And I tell people, like, first time you read a360, you’re not going to like it, right?

40:09 — Kevin Wilde:
You’re going to go to the bad score, you’re going to go to, I know who wrote that, I’m going to get back at them, etc. If you put the weight of promotions and paid changes, there’s a lot of baggage if you go there. I tend to use it just for development for the most part, but it’s with a support system. And I tell people, okay, you gotta go back, you gotta read it a second time, you actually gotta read it a third time. And then I say, throw it away, don’t. And just pick out a couple highlights because it’s just a data point, it’s a snapshot and your leadership is a movie. And I think one of the other things that fall down on 360s is see it as, this is the final result as opposed to, again, coachable mindset, trying to improve.

40:50 — Kevin Wilde:
How can I make this feedback work for me? What are the good scores that reinforce getting me in my learning zone? And then what’s that one thing I need to work on? And I’ve gotten the point about just pick one thing, you know, the rest will come and it could be, I got to be more collaborative, I got to listen better, I need to figure out this technology, I got to follow through stronger and get that support system that helps you. And that’s, I think that’s the best way to use Data points. Whether. 360. One other comment I’ll make back to looping, back to early one.

41:18 — Kevin Wilde:
I always like the practice of telling people, okay, when you get your report right, go give it to a truth teller, go get it to a trusted advisor and say, you know what, I’ve looked at this, I’ve thought about it, but I want a fresh pair of eyes. What, what jumps out at you? Or I’m thinking, this is what I need to work on. What do you think? And again, if you go it alone, it’s tough. I think having coaches and mentors and support people is part of the formula. And anyone that, you know, to me would be, you know, we’re doing 360s. I would say, well, okay, you know, let’s be clear on the support to help people get through it. And then where are the coaches? Where are the mentors?

41:52 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, no, I love that first 360 I ever did. After I got it, we had brought in a corporate Coach, they were. We were doing across the executive team. He handed me a printed. I mean, this was probably back in 2016, 2015, somewhere in there, handed me a printed copy. And it was like, we’d taken the time. This was, like, bound and had a plastic cover on the front. This was fancy. And as he was handing it to me, he said, now, hang on. What I want you to do with this, we’re going to go through it real fast, and we’re not going to spend a lot of time on it, but I want you to go take it home and share it with your wife and see what she thinks about it.

42:28 — Anthony Presley:
And then tomorrow we’ll meet again, and then we’ll decide whether or not any of this is right. I was like, oh, that cuts pretty hard. Anyway, so I did take it home, and actually, my wife immediately was like, oh, yeah, all of this is. Is 100% true.

42:43 — Kevin Wilde:
Good for her and good for you. I was liking that story. I’ve heard versions of that before. Like, yeah, it’s good, but it’s also kind of tough love.

42:51 — Anthony Presley:
Oh, yeah. And.

42:52 — Kevin Wilde:
To me, it’s like, I don’t want to keep getting 360s or what I have to do. So, I mean, how do you make it more of a natural process of, you know, checking in on the questions. You want to get better at having truth tellers so that you don’t have to go through this big, you know, this big process. And I think that where we fool ourselves is we’re helping people get better because we’re giving them this big tool. I gotta tell you my favorite story on this. We got time for one more story, right?

43:15 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, yeah, Fire away.

43:16 — Kevin Wilde:
All right. So years ago, I was working with a friend of mine. He was coaching in a heavy manufacturing industry. He was doing leadership 360s, all that. And he had gotten down to. All the senior leaders had gone through the program, 360, all that. We’re down to the frontline supervisors that have avoided the program. This was the tough route. And he said, kevin, come in and help me with this. Like, all right, fine. So we’re the group, about a dozen supervisors, they’re off the plant floor. We’re in this training room. And I know that one person’s about to get a really negative report. Because I read it, right? And this guy was like, the tough guy. Came up from janitorial to that, but really tough character, right?

43:55 — Kevin Wilde:
And so we pass out the 360s, and I’m doing the session, and, you know, I, you know, take a Breath and say, all right, anyone have any report, any feedback? Boom. Guy’s hand goes up, right? We’ll call him Peter, right? Peter’s hand goes up. I’m like, okay, this will be interesting. Peter, what do you think? The guy stands up, he’s got his report, and he says, I have never seen anything like this in my life. I’m looking through this and I got to tell you, this is true. This is all true. I am surrounded by idiots. 360 Degrees. Sat down, the session went on and everyone laughed. We went on from there. I don’t think he took 360 as a positive thing, but I was reminded that story about, you know, it’s like, you know, if you’re not used to, can be really hard.

44:46 — Kevin Wilde:
And I think, how do you make it easy? I think you got. You got to. Whether it’s a copy coaching session, A 360, I think you invest in the mindset of coachability. How do you help your leaders before they go through that? Be confident, be in their learning zone. Remind themselves when they did get better with some feedback before and how they could work through the emotions about, I don’t like this. It’s negative, I’m surrounded by idiots. But wherein, this is something I could work on.

45:10 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, no, I think that’s all great feedback. We found that the 360, certainly some organizations do them, but it seems like the trend over the last five or 10 years has really been more into, we’ll call them pulse surveys and more like, you know, constant feedback. Smaller, smaller lifts. To your point, maybe getting good at one thing. What’s the one thing you could have done differently or better today rather than this, you know, massive tome of information you’re trying to digest and figure out how to get better at. Do you see that with your customers as well?

45:41 — Kevin Wilde:
Think about taking care of your body. I mean, a good physical every once in a while is a good thing. So I wouldn’t dismiss the notion about having a more comprehensive feedback, and that’s what we do in my program. But then I quickly winnow it down to both. Okay, what’s the one thing you want to work on? And I tell Susan, you know, per my earlier 75% of you are wasting your time on that low score. It is not a fatal flaw. What you need to do is you need to take something you’re pretty good at and get great at it or build your portfolio to be diverse. Go work on that. And that’s hard for people to do. And So I said, all right, fine, pick two things. One thing you’re not good at, they bug you, okay, fine.

46:17 — Kevin Wilde:
But pick one thing you could be great at. Because I think there’s more emotional energy and positive excitement. And I’m always reminded of whenever I’ve seen a really highly coachable leader, particularly higher up. What I often find, surprisingly, is they’re very busy people, but they have a hobby. They have a part time thing that they do. And I don’t know whether it’s watercolor or it’s woodwork. I had one senior leader I worked with once, that man, he. His whole basement was a wood shop, right? And he made cabinets and things like that. And I both. I think there’s both. That your identity needs to be more than just, I’m a leader in this company, right? And having a variety of things. I’m a great husband, wife, family member, plug into my community, etc.

47:02 — Kevin Wilde:
I think that’s part of the formula and an indicator of that is a hobby. And as I dug into that, one thing I find of interest is if I were to ask you, hey, at work, do you want more feedback to get better at work? Yeah, maybe. Kevin, if I were to say, okay, you’re working on this hobby, how often do you ask for tips on how to do it even better? Oh, all the time. All the time. And I think that mindset of a hobby is I don’t have to be a, you know, the perfect professional here. I just like doing this and I like getting better at it. And I think if you can transfer that mindset to the job, you know, good things happen.

47:39 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. I listened to a podcast over the weekend, very similar to that, and it was talking about. The word was obsession, but it was folks who were obsessed with their craft and, you know, whether or not they’re musicians or. And then were talking, the podcast was talking a lot about, we’ll call it left brain versus right brain, but how folks who are on the creative side, that they often are asking for lots of feedback and then you get. And they’re getting better and better. And then you get into this professional side where you, maybe that isn’t your obsession, it’s just your job and that, you know, it’s harder to get the feedback, it’s harder to go, well, I’m just supposed to be good at this, but I really enjoy this other thing.

48:18 — Anthony Presley:
And it turns out that you’re actually getting feedback on those items and then you’re getting better.

48:23 — Kevin Wilde:
And Then you know, what’s the transfer of learning? How do I take the, you know, the hobby or the one time I did learn something and I tell that. That Jim payroll story because I’m probably doing something today that’s stupid.

48:34 — Anthony Presley:
I know I am for sure.

48:36 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah. Do I have the signal that. Yeah, Coach Kevin. A little bit, but I’m okay.

48:40 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah.

48:41 — Kevin Wilde:
Yeah. See, I’m racking my brain off to do this. A follow through. I read a really good academic study that looked at if you’re not good at something, are you looking for feedback or if you’re the expert, do you look at feedback? And I can’t remember one is better clear the point about, you know, how do you regain that coach. Coachability later in a career is so important and some of those early instincts are worth revisiting and whether a hobby or whether it’s. It’s work. Yeah.

49:06 — Anthony Presley:
We focused a lot on this conversation about individuals and their leaders. But is there an organization size where this kind of feedback makes sense? Like if you’re two guys in a garage trying to figure out how to build the next computer, like, do you really need a lot of that going back and forth? Like, hey man, don’t microwave the fish. We’re here in the space we’re in. Right. Like, you know, but as you get into these large organizations, there a sweet spot in the middle where if folks adopt it’ll stay within the organization as they grow or what do you think?

49:35 — Kevin Wilde:
There’s a lot of studies done on large organizations, interventions, all of that. Again, I’m a student of it and also someone amused by all of it. But I think it’s clearly the unit of one, you know, regardless of what’s going on, how do I bring in here? And I’ve studied both and I wrote about this and it’s on the one online site. Can you be coachable in a toxic environment? Like, well, you got to be safe about it, but you got to figure out some way but. And I’ve seen leaders do it but to have that healthier environment. I think it’s a unit of your team. So as much as like here’s where the whole organization needs to blah, blah, and our reward System and on 360s and all that. What can you and your team do?

50:12 — Kevin Wilde:
And I think that is the culture building block is how you as a leader with your team members build as positive a culture as you can and if you will, as a learning and a coachable and supportive culture. That’s. I think that’s where the best intervention is big company, small company, you and your team.

50:31 — Anthony Presley:
Got it. Got it. Yeah. I love that. Love that. If you can get your, I assume your team being your manager and everybody around you get them all bought into how you get better.

50:41 — Kevin Wilde:
And everyone contributing to that. Again, what do you want for the culture? What do you want and how are we going to treat each other? I think that’s the reality. And again, back to your. Why do a lot of engagement, big processes fall down? I think it doesn’t really attend to what that team needs because there’s that relevant of my team. Right. What are we trying to go at? How clear are the objectives? What’s. What resources do we need? Are we getting enough information to get the work done? Are we making. I just read this great quote the other day that, you know, see if I can get it right that you know, organizations that move slow is probably because some qualified people are waiting for permission. Organizations move slow because there’s qualified people waiting for permission.

51:26 — Kevin Wilde:
And I think back to, okay, so what decisions get stuck in our team that we could attend to. So again, I, I think there’s so much you could do at the team level. But again, it starts with that. That to me, again, just coachable mindset. What are we trying to get better at? How can I step in to better myself in my learning zone? But then collectively, how can all of us have the kind of team and have the wins we want and then treat each other in the way we want to?

51:53 — Anthony Presley:
Yeah, I think that’s fantastic. Do you want to take two seconds and tell us a little bit like a commercial, for lack of a better term. I mean you’ve got an amazing program, you’ve got a book. How do people engage with you? Where do they go? And then we’ll put, obviously put links and stuff on the LinkedIn. But.

52:09 — Kevin Wilde:
Well, I think from the point of, you know, if you want to learn more and we’ll just leave it at that one is I did, I do put a lot of stuff up on the website. So the coachableleader.com I’ve got all my, you know, I got podcasts like this one and I’ve got videos. I, I do have a series of short articles on different topics and they typically, they just come from these kinds of conversations. My latest one was does feedback have a freshness date? And so like okay, how do I know when I should act? And etc. But back to the can you find a trusted advisor Truth House. So a lot of good stuff online if you’re interested.

52:43 — Kevin Wilde:
Again, a lot of the online retailers have the book the Coachable Leader, and it’s a simple read and most people pick it up and said, yeah, I can read this and there’s some good practical things in there. But then also I do have the self assessment tool, the Coachable Practices Review cpr. If you go to the website, you can do that as well. I’m adding more resources on that one over time, but so there’s both, you know, free stuff you can read. You can download a couple worksheets. That’s great. Anybody wants to contact me with some questions, happy to do that.

53:16 — Kevin Wilde:
And for the most part, my mission is like, okay, how do we get back to that learning thing as we’re faced with the challenges we have, and I do think some of the mindset and the practices of coachability we need to bring back.

53:28 — Anthony Presley:
Love it. Well, thank you so much for spending time with me today.

53:32 — Kevin Wilde:
Fun, great questions and I love the topic. So happy to keep this going. But you know, Anthony, by. By the one thing I do in these, and I’ll just show this to everybody, is once you hit stop, I’m going to ask you two questions, so get ready.

53:44 — Anthony Presley:
Okay,.

53:44 — Kevin Wilde:
So it’s going to be the, hey, I’m gonna do more of these podcasts and video things over time. What’s one thing as a guest I did well and what’s one thing I could do better? So I just love giving a little coaching to Kevin. We’ll do that once you hit stop. Two questions, get ready.

54:00 — Anthony Presley:
I’m ready. I think I’m ready. I’m going to hit stop.