Alisa Cohn on Startups, Executive Coaching, High Stakes Conversation, Better Decision Making, Meditation, Pausing, and more

And the Buddhists say with every breath I am a new person and getting practice doing that and recognizing you have to do that and leave the past, meeting the past situation, the past, you know, sort of discussion in the past and go into this next situation with a different mindset.

Hello ladies and gentlemen, this is Nishant and welcome to another episode of the Nishant Garg show. The mission of the show is to spread mindfulness awareness and my job on this show is to invite world class experts to extract the practices, routines and habits to live a fulfilled life. Today's guest is Alisa Kuhn. Alisa is an executive coach who works with senior executives and high potential leaders to help them create positive, permanent shifts in their leadership impact and the results they achieve. She was named the number one startup coach in the world at the 2019 Thinkers50 Marshall Goldsmith Coaching Awards in London and also named one of the top 30 global gurus for startups of 2020. Alisa provides practical tools and serves as a thought partner to support the challenging process of change. Leaders get the chance to practice their new behaviors and troubleshoot before doing them live. In this episode, Alisa discusses how she coaches the founders and the co founders in the startup world. Adapting to different styles in a high growth environment, 360 degree feedback, conscious communication and much more. Please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Lisa. Alisa, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here.

I'm super thrilled. And I would like to start with. You were named as a number one startup coach in the world at the Thinkers50 Marshall Goldsmith leading Coaches Awards in London.

Yes.

So I would like to ask you, how do you coach the founders and the co founders in the startup world?

Well, I think if I think about founders, they really have a few common elements. So first of all, they're not always aware that like they're the founder and they're the CEO and people are looking at them a certain way. They're just thinking, hey, I'm me. And they have to kind of get used to the fact that they show up as the boss. The second thing I would say is that they are constantly having to adapt their style. That's what a high growth environment is. It requires you to adapt your style. So they have to be constantly learning and accelerating their own growth to keep up with the needs of the growth of the startup.

You mentioned that they have to adapt to different styles. Do we have different kinds of styles?

Yes, we definitely have different kinds of styles. In fact, leaders will often say to Me, I am not a micromanager. This is my leadership style. But the truth is it's much more effective to figure out what is the situation here, read the room, figure out what's the situation requiring of me, and adapt to that situation. Because everybody needs something different. I have a client I'm working with right now, and he realized that one of his direct reports needs a lot of positive feedback and positive strokes. Another one just needs to know, what do you need me to do differently? Kind of like just the criticism, just the facts. And so he's got to adapt his style to each of these different direct reports to be effective with them, to get out of them what he needs. And that's the name of the game, getting out of people all they have to give.

I'm sure this is not easy. This is so difficult. How do you coach them to adapt to different styles? Every human being is different.

I know it is difficult. I mean, also each founder is different. So how I coach is different depending on the founder. What I try to do is I meet people where they are and we actually go over specific case studies, really to find out what's actually going on in your environment and how do you need to adapt yourself. But it's also just highlighting the need for them and the opportunity for them to recognize that yesterday's playbook is not going to necessarily work today. And the last thing is that I do 360 feedback. And 360 feedback is when I talk to people all around the founder to find out what's working and what's not working about their style so they have an opportunity to make changes.

When you say what's not working, is it kind of a feedback?

Yeah, people give the founder or the CEO feedback. They give me the feedback so I can give it to the founder about how they need to adapt their style. So, for example, one of the clients I work with, the CEO of a really great company, and he's fantastic. He just wasn't communicating enough and people didn't know what he was thinking. So that was not working about his style, by the way. It wasn't criticism. Also, it didn't mean he was a bad person. It just meant that he had to be more conscious of communicating what was on his mind so that people would be able to follow him better.

Conscious communication is something that we all struggle with because sometimes when we are not having a great day in our personal life, we go with that mindset into our work. So how to juggle between personal and professional mindset when we go to Work, we have to switch some gears.

We have to switch. Not only that, but when inside of work, you have to switch to might be communicating to an all hands and talking to everybody. You might then be having a difficult conversation with one of your executives. You might then be trying to sell and close a candidate, another executive. And then you might have to have a conversation with a sales prospect. You've got to be constantly sort of recognizing what's needed here and find tools to help you switch between mindsets from personal to professional and the different contexts in your professional life. So the first thing to do is to recognize I have to be able to do that and, and to leave time and space. You know, it could just take really one or two seconds to breathe in and breathe out and realize I am now in a different, I'm in a different situation to breathe in and breathe out. And the Buddha say with every breath I am a new person and getting practice doing that and recognizing. You have to do that and leave the past meeting, the past situation, the past discussion in the past and go into this next situation with a different mindset. That is the trick that helps really make people powerful.

Do you specifically tell executives to breathe in or breathe out or do you use the term such as mindfulness?

I sometimes use the term of mindfulness and they don't always relate to that. So sometimes it's breathe in and breathe out. Sometimes it's put your hand on the door handle and when you feel your hand on the door handle of that conference room or that meeting that you're going to, when you open the door, realize that you're crossing over into a threshold of something different and switch gears. Then it's about. But it is about being present. It's about being present and realizing that I can be present and then switch gears and be present and then switch gears and be present.

It's kind of a transition between two activities. When we are going from one activity to another activity. Do you recommend any other practice when we are in that high stake conversation or when we are going to any important meeting or what should we do before going to those high stake ventures?

Well, before you have a high stake conversation, it's actually really important to plan for it and to plan how you're going to be, what's going to happen, like predict inevitably they're going to upset you in some way. Inevitably you're going to get thrown off your game. How will you get back on your game when they throw you off your game? How will you recalibrate your equilibrium when you get sort of a little bit like ruffled and then also in predicting what they say, how do you then predict what you. What sort of. How you plan to be more conscious of what you'll be able to say in response?

Can we practice this technique all the time?

Yes, we can always practice this technique. Do you want to practice it now?

Yes, let's do it.

Okay, give me a situation.

So let's say you are talking to a high profile executive and you are not sure you are having some sort of anxiety before going to the conversation. So what would you do if that.

I am. You mean that I might be having some anxiety? Why would I be having anxiety?

Don't you have anxiety ever? Just curious to know.

I do sometimes have anxiety, but I'm not sure why I would have anxiety if I was going to talk to an executive.

Okay, if we can switch this scenario to another, how would you coach your client?

Let me coach you. When was the last time you had some anxiety?

I have anxieties whenever I do a podcast recording a little bit of anxiety. Because whenever starting is always a critical part to start the podcast.

Yes, Starting is always. Okay, good. And so then you feel anxious before you start.

Yes. Little bit of anxiousness is there.

Okay. Do you think it's like stage fright, like excitement, or do you think it's anxiety? What does it feel like?

I'm not sure, but I tell myself I'm excited. I'm excited.

Well, you've already figured out a good tool, so we often will tell ourselves, I'm so anxious, I'm so stressed. And instead you could tell yourself, actually, I'm excited. I don't have to do this podcast. I get to do this podcast. And framing it in a more positive way for yourself helps you probably calm down your anxiety, but still leaves you having energy. There's nothing wrong with having energy. That's, you know, that's excitement.

Right. Does it ever happen to you that your client is saying, yeah, yeah, I got it. This is so simple. Reframing technique. Tell me something else.

Well, of course, yes, yes, that does happen. Are you telling me, tell me something else?

Yes.

Well, I think what's very helpful is if you can sometimes look and say, I wonder, like, really, like genuinely why I'm so anxious. What am I anxious about? Would the technology fail? If a technology fails, what would I do? Probably reschedule or probably fix the technology. If the person isn't nice to me or like, is kind of a jerk, what would I do? Probably end the podcast as soon as I can and not air it if the person.

Right.

I mean, you know what's going to happen so bad. So if you plan out what you're actually anxious about, what we often find is that the things we are so worried about don't actually make any sense. It's a lot of irrational fear. So if you force yourself to be rational about what might actually happen, it helps you get a handle on your fear or anxiety.

And I would like to ask you, do you recommend any other calming techniques to your clients?

Yes. Walking around the block is very calming. Being in nature is very calming. Calling a friend who will remind you of your greatness is very calming. Meditating is very calming. Reading spiritual literature, inspirational literature is very calming.

Ask you your personal favorite.

My personal favorite is reading or listening to something inspirational and also taking a walk and I should say moving my mostly moving my body. Like I work out every day and I find that fitness really changes my mindset no matter what.

And what are you reading these days?

What am I reading these days? I'm a fan, actually of Tony Robbins and I will sometimes listen to Tony Robbins because I feel it gets me all amped up. That's for sure. I will. I'm reading, I just read this, a fantastic book called the Biggest Bluff by Maria Maria Konnikova. And she's a former she's a journalist who took a leave of absence and learned to play poker and became a really pretty good professional poker player for a few years. And what I like about that kind of a book is it gives you a lot of tools about how you can use her insights in your own life. In terms of decision making.

The Biggest Bluff pays off. This is your recent post on Forbes.com?

Yes.

You mentioned one of the techniques in that add curiosity and subtract certainty.

Yes.

In this Covid world, in this pandemic and whatever is going on in the world, how can we subtract certainty?

I think what leaders need to do now and what everybody needs to do now is recognize that they don't know what's going to happen in any given day, that they have to accept that there's a lot of uncertainty coming at us and begin to live in the discomfort of uncertainty. And there's a lot of freedom in that, in being able to sort of plan the best you can but adapt to changing circumstances with agility. Developing your agility, developing your ability to sort of almost like be just balanced and ready for anything is a very powerful skill right now.

Got it. And before we go further, I would like to ask you one. One of my favorite questions. How would your family describe what you do for a living?

Help people make better decisions and live better lives.

Make better decisions is kind of challenging. And you talk about so many frameworks as part of your executive coaching. You talk about better managing your energy, energy management. So what is energy management as part of decision making?

Well, energy management is first of all having self awareness about what sort of your natural state when you are able to do the best thinking, when you are at your most energetic, when you are at your lows. Also doing the things we need to do as human beings to take care of ourselves. Getting enough sleep, eating right, moving your body, so sort of taking care of the basics. And then it's about inserting the things in your world, in your work life and in your personal life, things that bring you energy at the right time. And the last thing I would say is about having a vision for your future and your ability to take steps forward to achieve that vision, even if you don't feel like it right this second.

There is a book, the Power of Full Engagement. It talks about different categories.

Yeah, Tony Schwartz, that's a great book.

Spiritual energy, physical, mental, emotional. So when you coach executives, do you talk about different categories?

I do a little bit. I guess I would say that that's not always the focus of my coaching, but I think, I think that is the focus of my coaching when that kind of shows up with people. So what that means is when they say I'm feeling depleted, I don't have time for myself or I'm feeling depleted because I just feel emotionally empty, you know, those are triggers to help them. Actually there's a tool that we use in coaching called the wheel of life to help them assess the different elements of their kind of their life and help them see where they need to make changes and improvements to improve the energy in that particular area of their lives.

Is it possible that when we run out of our emotional energy tank, it's difficult for us to take better decisions in life?

Yeah, it definitely is. You've got to fill up your emotional energy tank.

Do you recommend some practices for that?

Well, I think one is just to do restorative things, right? So you guys step away from work or step away from the task that is making you feel so depleted and do things which restore you. So it's both again the physical activity and getting enough sleep. And it's also finding the things that bring you joy.

Don't you think telling all these things to executives is not easy because they are super busy people.

I think that, yeah, I think that everybody's struggling with demons that we can't always see. I also think that executives are certainly busy and sometimes they're addicted to being busy. What I really think is that we all have a lot more control over our schedules in our lives than we realize if we will choose to. Choose to use it, choose to access.

It, choose to access. And is it possible to access that inner critique that self talk sometimes gets way of decision making?

Totally. Well, I think if the inner critic. The inner critic actually you asked what emotionally depletes us? Even like just your self talk, like your inner critic depletes us. You know, the sort of constant brow beating yourself that is very depleting. So I think it's very helpful to think about to tune into the negative voices I am bringing to my mind's eye. I'm bringing into my head where they're coming from. Maybe unpacking them again, sort of counteracting them with evidence. And I guess I would say finding inputting, specific, more nourishing content into your self talk so that it's more nourishing to you and not depleting. Now by the way, doesn't happen overnight. You've got to practice, you've got to get committed to that and then you've got to practice it over and over again. Doesn't just naturally happen.

And in your blog you talk about the power phrase. Do you have your favorite power phrase?

I mean some of my power phrases or my power phrases for my clients might be I, you know, like I got this or you got this or now we can run, eliminate blockers even, you know, what was it? Add, add the nuanced, subtract the obvious.

This is kind of an external validation. Is what external validation when we are having those power phrases?

No, that's internal. Because you're telling yourself them and you're telling your team them and there's nothing wrong. By the way, with external validation, I personally, I do really well with positive feedback. When I get positive feedback, it really lights me up and it makes me feel energized. So rather than fight that about myself, I just seek out positive feedback.

But sometimes do you think we need to have that support system that can give us positive feedback, not negative feedback?

We do. We surround ourselves with people who will give us positive feedback. We need to surround ourselves with the right people in our lives who will nourish us. That is super important.

Feedback is definitely something that can boost our confidence. I would love to hear.

Yeah, do you Find that in your own. Do you find that in your own life?

Yes, exactly, Absolutely. So I'm very self sufficient, self reliant person. But yes, positive feedback definitely helps sometimes when I am in my low moments, it helps some sort of. Yeah, you are, you're doing great. You got this. Keep going. You know, we need that and I definitely need that a lot of times. But when we don't have those support system to give us positive feedback, how can we nourish ourselves emotionally nourish ourselves to go to the next level when.

You don't have that positive feedback around you? I mean, that's, that's a good point. Because CEOs, they say the CEOs are lonely because they don't always have. They're the complaint takers all the time.

Right.

I mean that's like so true that like, oh, this isn't good and this isn't good and you didn't do this right. You didn't do this. Right. And so there can be surrounded and bombarded by negativity. So I think what's very helpful is journaling. I think what's very helpful is remembering you have a vision in mind and that you're taking steps towards your vision. Another power phrase. And what's also true is that I don't have to be perfect, I have to be perfect. Yeah. These are kinds of tools that can be very meaningful for people when they're bombarded by or like sort of steeped in difficult times and negative feedback.

As part of journaling, do you suggest specific prompts or it is a free flow journaling?

That's a good question. I think there are some nice prompts out there. You can prompt yourself to say, what are the things that energize me the most? What am I most grateful for? What are some things that I've learned today or in the past? How is this difficult situation making me better? Those are some prompts that you can think about to journal on. And also you can journal on your. Frankly, I think people are like, oh, don't journal your negative feelings. No, you should be journaling your negative feelings. That's how you get them out of your system.

Yes. Journaling is a powerful tool that I use every single day. And do you find it helpful every single time? I actually journal it multiple times. And my prompt is what's on my mind. What's on my mind. That's very good.

That's a great prompt.

It's kind of a mental burst on a piece of paper and then I can think clearly I meditate actually. Do you recommend meditation to the executives?

I do, I recommend meditation if they're open to it, yes.

But meditation can be considered as some sort of spiritual or religious thing. So how would you explain a meditative practice to a high stake executive?

I explain it as a way of tuning into yourself and that self awareness is one of the keys to personal mastery and to excellent leadership. And so that's how we approach it, like mindfulness and being present and tuning in. That is very helpful. However, let's face it, everyone's heard about mindfulness and meditation these days. So it's a less, it's a less hard sell, right?

It is less hard sell. Meditate in your personality.

I do, I meditate. How can I say? Irregularly and imperfectly, but yes I do.

So when you meditate, what does that meditation practice look like?

Well, I just, I do it in the morning after my, after my workout typically. And I set my timer for 15 minutes, sometimes 20, sometimes 10. And I just do vipassana meditation, insight meditation.

Vipassana. This is, is it a silent meditation?

Yes, silent meditation. Typically I don't use guides typically.

This is interesting that you do vipassana meditation and I think it might help us, you know, working on our main priorities in silence. Then there is no distraction, there is no music around us. We can focus on main things we can do. Block time chunking.

I like it that way better. Yes.

Because I come from a corporate background so I see people listening to music all the time. They have some sort of thing in their ears all the time when they're working and it is difficult for me to work. Do you recommend that, that kind of a work style?

The work style where you have. You're always listening to something. Yeah, you know, I recommend the style that works for you. I am not the kind of person who wants to have music or even audiobooks in my ears all the time. I feel like daydreaming and reflecting is actually good. I feel like we have a problem when we're constantly busy. I think what's very helpful is to see what works for you and also give yourself some time to reflect and not always have your brain be busy.

Yes, that is very important. Can we talk about conflict resolution for a while?

Sure. What about it?

Conflict resolution? It happens all the time between team members? Between a team member and a manager. It happens all the time. So do we have certain practices to resolve those conflicts in a healthy, loving, kind way?

Yes. Well, first of all it's normal for a smart adult to disagree, right? So starting from the point of view of we should expect conflict, conflict is baked into everything that we do. Then it's very helpful to learn how to handle conflict. So one tool is to listen to the other person's point of view and repeat it back to them like it's your point of view. And I think that's a very powerful tool. Another tool is to think about, you know, sort of have empathy. It's actually very similar to see it from the other person's point of view. Like as in why would a perfectly reasonable, well meaning person say this when you know, when it's not what I believe? That's very helpful. And then it's also very helpful to decide in advance who's going to decide. So conflict is normal, but it can also get in the way of company progress when we don't know how we're going to break the conflict.

And in that conflicting conversation, can we use this powerful habit of the power of pause?

Yes, that's a very powerful habit indeed. The power of pause.

Could you give us a real time example of that power of pause when or from any of your client experience that they took that pause? If you, if any instance comes to your mind, sure.

I just spoke to a CEO literally today who was having an issue with his co founder. And, and what happened was he was sort of telling about telling about it. And what he said was as they were getting more and more heated, he just kind of heard, in his mind's eye, he heard my voice saying, just pause, you don't have to decide right now. And so he kind of, you know, sort of heard that in his head, he paused. And in that pause he realized two things. One is that he was just arguing his point to be right. He didn't really care all that much. And that the relationship with this co founder was actually more important to him than winning this point. And so after he paused and saw kind of the truth of the situation, he was much more. He just was able to say, you know what, I'm happy to talk it out, but at the end of the day, whatever you want is fine. Now that's not always the right solution because it's not always true that whatever you want is fine. But in the pause he had a new insight, a new realization, and that's what's powerful about the pause.

And in that pause, can we remind ourselves about what kind of the outcome we are going to have or what is our goal or what is our intention in this conversation?

Absolutely, yes. What our intention is who we want to be in the world, the kind of person we want to be. All those things.

Before I go further, I would like to ask you that. Do you recommend any sort of coaching for individuals? They may not be startup founders, executives for. For a normal person, absolutely.

Everybody needs partnership and input from somebody else who doesn't have a personal agenda attached to what you do.

That is interesting that that person doesn't have any personal agenda. Are there some prerequisites to hire a coach that. Let's say, if I'm going to get a coach for myself, for my personal life, what should I look for?

You should definitely look for someone who you get along with, who you can kind of imagine spending time with. You should look for someone who feels like they can help you and for someone who you feel like specifically you can talk to about your topics and they can offer you wisdom or a framework in a way of thinking about something.

Framework of thinking?

Yeah.

What is that?

Well, it's just a way. It's not, you know, as a coach, I don't tell people what to do. I help them think through what they want to do. And to do that, I need to have access to frameworks and ways of approaching something to give somebody new ideas just about how to approach something.

So you just ask questions, good questions, and they come up with the answers?

Yes. Or other frameworks and ways of thinking about different. Like we talked earlier, like reframing things.

Does it ever happen that they are not. They mean your clients, they are not able to come up with creative thinking and then at the end you have to suggest them do this.

Yeah, that definitely happens. Yes, it does.

So coach doesn't mean that they just have to ask questions they can suggest.

Right. I think some coaches sort of think that it only means asking questions. In coaching, we talk about the distinction between inquiry, advocacy. So inquiry is when we ask a whole bunch of questions to interrogate the topic to really understand what's going on. Advocacy is.

Here's what I think you should do that is interesting. And you do advocacy at the last, right?

Yeah. You should really spend most time in the question space. And at the same time, there are times where it's like, let me tell you what I think or here's what you should do. I've seen this movie before.

I want to save time because answering questions can be difficult when a coach is asking. I know it can be difficult.

Yes, I'm sure that's true.

And I'll talk. I would like to talk about something on the personal mastery that you coach people on the personal mastery. And you talk about tools to build personal discipline and emotional self control. Emotional self control, what is that?

Emotional self control is when you're able to tune into what you're thinking and feeling, and rather than have a reaction, you're able to choose a response.

Is there any practice for that?

I think the practice is to pause. I think the practice is to feel in your body where you're feeling emotional or in overdrive and feel it in your body and recognize that that is telling you something and dive into that feeling in your body and recognize it as a messenger, as sort of some ambassador that has something to tell you. And don't give in to the experience some people have, which is just letting, you know, kind of letting their temper fly or even bursting into tears or even sulking. There's a lot of different ways that we handle difficult emotions when we have them. There's nothing, by the way, there's nothing wrong with crying in the workplace. I don't want to put it that way, but there are times where it's not appropriate for you to cry and there's certainly most of the time where it's not appropriate for you to lash out at somebody or sulk or shut down. So emotional self control is to notice your impulse to do those negative things and then choose a different response, including labeling what's going on, as in, gosh, I really am feeling like shutting down right now, or wow, I'm so moved I could almost cry right now. There's nothing wrong with labeling those things and narrating them for people. And that helps. Again, you get more in control of yourself in that pause.

That is a great explanation, Alisa and I would like to ask you that. Is it, does it, is it, does it happen because that we get emotionally attached to our work or to our designation, that we get lot of we get out of emotional self control?

Oh yeah. We get attached to our position, to our idea, to our agenda, to being right, to our identity, to our ego. Of course, we're constantly being attached.

And this is very normal in corporate.

World, in being human. It's very normal in being human. And yes, also in the corporate world.

Can I ask you some question or maybe you can coach me for a while?

Okay, sure.

So a few months ago, I was going to a presentation. It was a big presentation that I was giving in front of my team. And it was working, though my computer was working fine. And when I went into the meeting room, my computer stopped working. I don't know what happened.

Yeah.

And it Wasn't my boss made some weird face. I knew that he's not happy.

Yeah.

I told him I tried, was working and what. What I can do. And I knew that he wasn't. He was frustrated and he was giving me some not so good comments. I wanted to lash out. I took a pause, actually. I took internal breathing. I took internal breathing and I wasn't happy with what was going on. And he asked somebody else to give presentation. When I came out of that meeting room, I wasn't happy. I was constantly reminding myself I don't have to be attached to things and. And I can control what somebody else is feeling, even if they're my boss.

Yeah.

Did I do anything correct or could I have done something better?

I know. I think that's exactly right. I think you had to remind yourself that you did your best. It sounds like you and your boss might usefully talk about your relationship. It sounds like your boss could do a different. A better job encouraging people when things go bad. And you shouldn't carry that with you. At the same time, if this is important to you and if looking good in front of your boss is important to you, which there's no reason it shouldn't be, it'd be very helpful for you to think about how do I now make sure that I'm able to add value to my boss or impress my boss or be perceived as valuable to my boss?

Yeah. And after that I realized that next time I should do a better job that I should double check my system before going to important meetings.

Yeah, I think that's good. But I also think it's just helpful to think about something else you could do which is totally different.

Yes. And can we talk about excellent execution part that you talk about as part of coaching your founder, coaching your clients in terms of startup culture that how to strategically prioritize over time and how to excellent the execute our ideas. I would like to ask you. Sometimes our plans look great on a piece of paper. Execute. They never work. It happens to me all the time.

Yeah.

What to do about that?

Well, what is the part of your plan that's not working?

I would like to take a pause and mention to our listeners that this is not a personal coaching session between me and Elisa. So in general, if you can, to any instance that comes to your mind, what do you think of that?

Well, I think. I know it's funny that you say that. Of course I'm a coach and so I'm like, well, what do you think it's hard for me to Take us to make a straight answer. And the reason I ask that is because have you debriefed and analyzed what regularly goes wrong? And therein lies the secret to how you can retool yourself so your projects will go more off. So, for example, are you forecasting like too optimistically? Are you assuming that people will do their jobs as part of the project but not checking with them? Are you not giving any slack time at all for mistakes getting made or issues with people?

I think for me, being too optimistic and setting too many priorities every single day, the plan look great. And it feels that, okay, we will, we will meet every deadline. In fact, before deadlines, we will do everything before deadlines. And expecting excellence from my team members, you know. Yeah. So I would say that, you know, expecting too much from my team.

Yeah. And by the way, do you even tell them what you expect from them and do they completely agree? Do they like, give a commitment to it and do you check with them?

Yeah, but they would sometimes say, you know, you are being too positive, too optimistic.

Yeah. So then they're actually telling you like, no, I can't get it done in time. And they're being polite, like, well, maybe, but you're being kind of optimistic. But really, you should hear that as no, because what they mean is no. Right. The other thing I would say is that when you say, I expect excellence from them, hey, man, they probably have other goals that you don't even know about. And if I'm in their shoes, I'm focused on my key goals and not your goal necessarily. So it's like really squaring that up with people and really figuring out how are you, what expectations are you setting, what commitments have you gotten from people and how are you using those to really, to feed into, to learn about how to do a better job managing projects, project management.

It keeps evolving. It keeps changing every single time.

Yes.

And influencing plays a big role. Persuading our team members or persuading our boss to, to adapt to our idea, Right?

Yes. Influence is big.

Are there some rules of influence?

Yes, of course. Always rules. First of all, you got to think about influencing in their mind, not in your mind. One time someone said to me, well, if you take this, I can't remember what deal it was, but like, if you take this deal, I'll be able to, you know, make my third quarter projection. And I was like, you're kidding me. That's not about me, that's about you. So you've got to put yourself in the shoes of the person you want to influence and figure out what will be influential to them. Another thing to think about is you have to build rapport with the people you want to influence. People will do much more likely be influenced by you if they like you. If you have rapport with them, also do them a favor and then one day they will do you a favor. That's the law of reciprocity.

As we are talking about influence, I have a small book in front of me right now how to Develop confidence and Influence people from Dale Carnegie.

From who?

From Dale Carnegie Carnegie. How to Genuinely Interested in Other People.

Yes, Genuinely Interested in Other People. That helps you influence everybody and everything.

That is great. And Lisa, since we are getting closer to our conversation and I would like to ask you some small questions if you are up to that.

Sure.

What's your morning routine look like?

My morning routine is constantly evolving and it's quite imperfect. But I definitely, I wake up, I have coffee, I try to read something inspirational or uplifting. I try to do my journaling. I definitely work out and then I try to meditate after I work out.

This is a crazy morning routine. There are so many things.

Well, I'm sort of imperfect, but I do, I wake up early. I do tend to wake up early.

What advice would you give to your clients to live a calm, happy, relaxed, fulfilled life?

Be happy now.

Be happy now. This is again mindfulness.

Yes. Decide that you're going to be happy and then be happy.

Awesome. And what are you excited about this year or in upcoming years?

I'm excited because I am creating my own little mini 30 second wrap video about coaching that I'm going to put on my website. I'm very excited about it.

If, if you can create that or if it is possible to create before that, then we can put that link into our show notes.

Well, it's going to take a little while, but yes, you can put my website into the show notes and you go to our website and see my video.

That is awesome. And before I ask you my last question, I would like to ask you what are you grateful for today?

I am grateful. I count my blessings every day. I am grateful to be doing work I love which is also of service of the world. I am grateful that the spring is here and the summer is now here and we are getting such beautiful weather. I am grateful to the beautiful and wonderful friends and family I have in my life who are so supportive and nourishing to me.

Amazing. And my last question is, what is the impact do you want to have on this world.

I want to make a difference. I want it to be said about me that the work of her hands mattered.

That is so powerful. Amazing. Thank you so much Elisa. It was an amazing, wonderful conversation with you. Thank you so much.

Thank you. I loved it myself. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for listening to this podcast episode today. If you did enjoy this please subscribe to this podcast on Apple Podcast or you can visit. N I s H a n t G a r g me. You can also share this episode with your loved ones to help them live a fulfilled life. You are not alone in this journey. We all struggle in life. There is no shame in talking about it. I go through my highs and lows. I get depressed and these practices help me in life. Living a resilient life. You can also do this. You got this. Don't judge yourself. You are doing the best you can. And thank you so much again.