Bill Gallagher delivers a short YouTube monologue arguing that sustainable organizational change depends on leader coachability. He recounts an anecdote about a CEO who modeled tardiness and monologue-style meetings, which taught the leadership team to be passive and late. Gallagher’s key message: change starts with the leader—tools, agendas, and processes won’t stick unless the leader changes behaviors and becomes coachable.
Chapters
So I'd like to talk to you about being coachable. I think human beings aren't naturally very coachable. We think we are and we want to be coachable, but we're not normally naturally very coachable. And sometimes the news of coaching can be kind of bad news. I met a guy some years ago who brought his whole team to meet with me and work with me at one of our workshops. They had about 10 people in one of my workshops and they were going through their business looking at stuff, and then they hired me and they said, bill, we want you to work with our team and help our company scale. And they were already a fairly sizable company. They already had presence in multiple countries, they already had a sizable thing. They already had noticeable market share in the world. And they had a great product, like a really great product, smart people, good product, does good in the world I'm in. So I said, yes, of course. And we started working with them and we got the functional accountability done, we started honing up the strategy and we did quarterly planning and we started that anyway. We're like three, four months in and I got a call from somebody on the team, I don't remember who exactly now that things were a little off, it wasn't working and things were getting rejected, but it wasn't clear where it was happening and what could I do. And so I listened to the situation and I thought, you know, I need to kind of see it firsthand because I'm not hearing it here. And they had a meeting like the very next day, not far away from my home office. And so I reached my schedule and I drove down there and I and I met with the team and I got there a few minutes before their weekly leadership team meeting where the CEO was going to come in who'd been all gung ho for doing this, scaling up, coaching work, right? So I get there and then one other person of the whole leadership team showed up at the time of the meeting and, and then a few more people trickled in. At 20 minutes after the start time, the CEO founder came in huffing and puffing and kind of, he'd been just back from an international trip and he was really well prepared for this meeting, looking forward to it. And he pulled out his notes and he talked to the people for about two hours and on a 90 minute meeting. And then at the end of going through all of his prepared agenda, it was really good and important things there very thoroughly. He said, does anybody else have anything else to add? And you know, by now we're kind of talked out and gone long, and he'd covered most of it anyway, and everybody just kind of shook their heads. And then he asked me, did I have any feedback? And I said, well, there is a design intent to the meeting. Our meeting agendas have a certain underlying design intent. And while you can actually customize them and bring your culture into them, there is a kind of a flow that needs to happen, and we want to get the whole team engaged and leadership team arising. And it's embedded in the struct structure of the design of the meeting. So. And I said, we can continue the debrief in your office. Joining office next door. So we excused everybody. They said, great, we'll go review the design of the meeting. And then I went into the other with the CEO and I said, hey, so what do you think? What? Like, how did that go? And he said, you know, I forget exactly what he. He said a couple of things. And then he said, I really want your honest opinion. What's going on? I said, well, do you remember why you brought me in, what your problem statement was to me in the beginning when we began working? He said. He said, well, kind of like this, that I said, you said to me that your people were always late on everything, and they were kind of passive. They weren't really leaders stepping up to the challenge of running and growing the business. He's like, yeah, that's right. And I said, okay, great. So here's the good news, bad news. Good news. Bad news is you can change all of this with your behavior. It all starts with you. You started the company, you built team, and those two things are right there embedded in you. He's like, what are you talking about? And I said, you showed up late, 20 minutes late to a meeting that you set. And at a standard time, you've taught them that late is okay. And it turns out like, he did that all the time. He showed up late for things all the time. All the meetings were late, but it wasn't him always on time, everybody else late. He was just as late or more late than everybody else. I said, and then you talked at people for two hours, not listening, but like, interrogating and that kind of thing. You've taught them to be passive. You've taught them to wait and shut up until you're done talking and that you run the thing. It's not totally a safe space. So your people are passive and they're late, and it's all your fault. And I smiled and kind of laughed because, like, it's a humbling kind of thing, I said. But it's great news because if you'll shift yourself, we can shift the whole company around it. And none of the agendas or dashboards or planning methods or tools for scaling are going to make any difference if you aren't willing to change some of your approaches. He listened. He nodded. He said, thank you very much. He said, we'll be in touch. And that was the very last conversation I ever had with him. Don't be that guy. If you want to change the company, you have to deal with yourself as well. The good news, bad news is it is in some regards all your fault. Or actually it's everybody's fault. But the only person that really matters is you. The leader. Whoever I'm talking to right now. If you'll take a look in the mirror and deal with that person and your behaviors, you'll start to alter everything in your universe and that ripple will affect the whole company. If you're not interested in doing that, none of the other tools and stuff are going to make that much sustainable difference because you'll just unwind it. I hope this been helpful. I hope that you'll look for a way to use that and apply that for your own benefit. It certainly has helped me to look in the mirror for myself. Keep scaling until next time. Time.
