CB LIVE! Courage to Leap & Lead Guest: Peter Hawkins, Episode 95

Hello everybody, it's Tuesday and you know on Tuesdays your favorite personality is here, CB Bowman. I don't think you know my married name, it's Armanelli. Can we talk, right? Hey everyone, I'm here with, um, a sore throat due to allergies here in, um, In Colorado. So I have asked my favorite person, my colleague, my friend, my mentor, Howard Morgan. You know what, don't tell my husband I said all this about him because, you know, those Italians.

He does listen though, doesn't he?

When he wants to. It's called selective listening and selective hearing. Right? But it's a war of the roses between the Black woman and the Italian man, right? So we have fun. Um, hey, listen, today I don't even have a secret for you because we have an amazing guest who Howard is going to interview. So they're both going to be in the hot seat as I watch 2 men battle it out here. Okay, can we talk now? All right, we have Dr. Peter Hawkins, and I have— this is the secret I have to tell you. For years, I used to call him Stephen Hawkins.

There's a compliment.

That is definitely a compliment. But I guess genius runs in the Hawkins line, right? So today we're going to talk to Professor and Dr. Peter Hawkins, who is the guru, the absolute guru on teams in the workplace. And we're going to talk to him today because, you know, our platform is about courage. And what kind of courage does it take to, one, build a team, two, lead a team, And 3, have a team be productive. So with that— excuse me— I am going to let Howard take it away and ask Peter questions. And I want you to write in on how Howard and Peter did. Can they do as well as CB? We'll see. The results are out. Let's go, guys. Peter, why don't you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? And then Peter, you do the same. And then let's roll it out.

Grazie.

Oh, well done. Howard Morgan. I started my first company when I was 12. That's my greatest part of my story. And I've worked in corporations, including an executive at an international corporation. Was the youngest, I think. executive member ever in Canada, and until 38. And once 38, really decided to start working with organizations and individuals around how to have impact. So I'm most honored by being able to talk to Peter because I think he and I's wavelengths are somewhat in alignment on really trying to help people help other people. And certainly that's where I spend most of my time with with organizations and especially executive teams now on how to anticipate and think strategically around the impact of people on both inside the organization, on their colleagues, and on the outside environment. So Peter, why don't you tell us a few things about yourself?

Well, I always say the 2 most important roles I have in life both begin with G. That, that is being a gardener and a grandfather.

Excellent.

Because they're both about not, not what you do for this generation, but what you do for those who— those generations that will be here after, after we've gone. But, uh, I haven't been both of those all my life. Gardener, most of it. Um, I've done many things. I, I spent a First part of my career, I was very involved with drama and then psychodrama, and one of the first, probably one of the only people to take psychodrama into the boardroom. Um, I've run several companies, I've chaired several boards, I've been a professor of leadership. Um, and, and I might talk a bit about this in terms of courage. My early career, I was running a therapeutic community for people coming out of psychiatric prison and mental hospital. So, um, I, I learned most of my group work from, from, um, murderers and arsonists and, and psychopaths and psychotics. And it's very helpful when you work in the boardroom to have had that background.

And that might be actually a great first question. I'm fascinated by what led you to use psychodrama in the boardroom. And since that would be so unique, what gave you the courage to do it? What was the need?

Well, first, what is psychodrama?

Ah, so first of all, psychodrama comes from a contemporary of Freud. Jakob Moreno. They both came— Freud and Moreno both grew up about the same time in Vienna. Moreno went to America, and, um, there's a great story about, uh, when he met Freud later in his life. He said, Mr. Freud, you analyze men's dreams, I give them the courage to dream again. That's really relevant to our subject. And psychodrama, developed by Moreno in the 1920s and for many years, is the origin of a lot of Gestalt therapy. So Moreno encounter groups, a lot of humanistic psychology grew out of Moreno's work in different forms. But how do we embody what's going on in the dynamics, whether it's individual or group or organizational? So Constellations work, a lot of that draws on psychodrama. And, and my own history was that, that I was all set to, um, go and be a TV producer and a theater producer-director, and I got far more interested in what was happening in the rehearsal room than what was happening in the performance. And, and then I got involved with, with community arts with children and with adults. I was very involved in the beginnings of drama therapy and then psychodrama, um, and then that drew me into mental health. So that's why by 26 I was running a therapeutic community for— community of about 35 people, 24 patients, 6 staff, 6 people in our training program, um, training people to run communities around the world. And that just taught me so much. That's what got me to be systemic. Yeah.

How do you— what are some of the lessons that you learn from psychodrama or Gestalt to systemic work? How did— what's that bridge like?

Well, well, let me make the link to therapeutic communities. Okay. Because therapeutic communities grew out of the Second World War. When they discovered that many, um, people who were invalided out with what was then called shell shock, that was called kind of battle fatigue, and it's now called post-trauma disorder. Yeah. Yes. Um, many were coming from the same units, and they thought this was because those army units were under more pressure than the ones that had low rates of shell shock. But they found, to their surprise, this was not true. Some of the frontline units had very little people coming out with breakdown, whereas some of the, the ones with far less stress had very high levels. And then they found the ones that had very high levels of breakdown had high levels of addiction, high levels of conflict. high levels of, um, disorder. So they started to realize that we need to look at the health of the unit, not of the individual. That any one of us— CB, Howard, myself— if we were put into an unhealthy army unit, it would bring out our latent unhealthiness. We would go to, you know, one of us would become psychotic, one would One of us would probably become depressed, one of us aggressive. You know, I won't say which.

I know which one I'm claiming.

So then, and this is very relevant to organizational work, they thought, well, can we, instead of putting people into hospital and treating them individually, can we put them into a community where they are responsible along with all the staff for creating the health of the community? And would that bring out their latent healthiness? Now, that's a pretty radical idea, right, from the Second World War.

Mm-hmm.

And so, um, when I was reading your questions about, you know, where I have— I've been courageous— when I was— I'd been working this organization for 3 years before they asked whether I would run their largest community, which was very rapid emotion. I was younger than most of the— my staff team, younger than most of the patients. And so what I decided to do before I said yes is I said, I'm going to go and I'm going to ask the staff group, do they support me taking on that role? Because I'm not going to do it unless they would support me. And then I went to all the patients and I said, look, I've been asked to take on leadership. Do you think I should do that? And will you support me? And they said, absolutely. Fantastic. That, I think, was a courageous step. And the second courageous step was one of my first acts was we had a cleaner and we had a cook.

Wait, wait, Peter, I have a question.

Yeah.

When you went to these 2 groups, did you do— did you talk to them individually or as a group?

Was it groupthink or Well, I talked to them collectively, but I made sure we had everyone's voice in the room.

Okay.

Individually. Yeah, I did go around and talk to people individually as well, but, you know, um, but I did ask them, so what are your reservations about me taking on the leadership? Let's get that out on the table because I'd rather, I'd rather know about that before I take the job or don't rather than afterwards. Yeah, because I think already I kind of knew in my bones that leadership does not reside in leaders.

Right.

Leadership is always relational, right? Not just between leaders and followers, which lots of people write about, But I always say leadership is triangulated. It's co-created between leader, followers, and most importantly, a shared purpose.

Mm-hmm.

So I was also asking, are we the right combination to do what's necessary here? Yeah, I don't want just your followership, but if I take on the leadership, what is it we're going to do together?

Oh, Peter, when you ask this question— and for some reason I'm getting a little bit of an echo— but so when you ask this question, how did you provide the space for them to say, no, I don't think you would be a great leader, or no, I don't see what you're proposing as being a benefit? How did you provide that space for them to be courageous to respond to you?

Um, that was more important with the staff than it was with the patients, because, you know, when you've been locked up for, for murdering someone for 20 years, they don't hold back on being very straight and very direct. Yeah, as I, as I always say, you know, working with that group was far easier than working with a boardroom, because when you work with that group, the madness is on the table. It can't be denied, you know, it's not under the table. That makes sense. With this, with a staff group, um, With the person who was the number 2 there, I'm still quite a close friend of. I said to her, look, I'm only going to do this if you are going to be supporting me and working closely with me. I can't do this without you.

Yeah.

So that was an important way of opening up that conversation. So I think there is something about asking. The courage is to ask with humility, yeah, and to ask from your heart. Then I think you get the honest answer. Whereas if it's a the next agenda item is will you support? You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And one of my first things I did, which also took courage, is I said, okay, if I'm going to take over, I'm going to not have an employed cook and an employed cleaner. Because yes, there's lots of distress in the community, but we're all able-bodied adults. Right, so all the cooking, all the cleaning, all the decorating, all the gardening will be done by the community. That's staff and patients together, right? And of course there was— Oh yeah, I'll tell you, within 2 months we had better food and a cleaner community than we had So Howard, how does this relate to how you run your organization?

Well, I'm fascinated. I mean, I think what Peter's saying is there's— I'm fascinated by the concept of the learnings that come out of taking the courage to make that challenge, right? Because I think one of the things in going to people, and in many ways he's been kind to himself and understated understating it, is the building of the trust to be able to ask the question and conveying it in a way that allows people to feel comfortable in responding is the real challenge. And I'd be fascinated, Peter, to say— so for me, part of it is that they are used to me. They know me. They know I'll tell them the truth. In a lot of corporate settings and even community settings, to your point, people may not have that luxury. How do you sort of build their comfort and trust to be able to step forward and give you candid feedback?

So, you've raised the whole issue of trust.

Right.

And so, quick story. I work with so many senior leadership teams. And quite a few years back, several of them would be having this discussion. Do we have enough trust here? Do we trust each other or not? And by the time I'd sat in 3 teams going around that cycle, I thought, I don't see this as a helpful conversation. So I said, look, we just pause this conversation. So I said, while you've been having this discussion, I've been thinking, who in my life do I totally trust? My children? We're still living at home that— but I said, my children, most of the time. My wife, more than my children. Myself, less than my wife. So I said, let's get real. Let's get real, right? I'm not interested whether you trust each other or not. I'm interested, do you trust each other enough to put your mistrust on the table?

Wow.

Wow, that's interesting.

We can measure mistrust in a way we can't measure trust, right? And I have an equation, right? So you might like this that you can utilize. Our mistrust quotient is if I have a difficulty with you, Howard, or CB, I count the number of people I talk to about it before I talk to you directly, multiplied by the number of days between having the difficulty and talking to you. So if I have a difficulty with you, Howard, and I tell 5 other people about my difficulty with Howard, before I said anything to you, and there are 30 days go by, I have a mistrust quotient with you of 150. That I can do something about.

Yeah.

I could bring it down. Yeah. Because, you know, it's like a lot of these concepts is that, um, we make them absolutes and I always love the quote, I think it was Mark Twain who said, the more people talked about honor, the faster we counted the spoons. The more they talked about honesty, the more we checked that nobody was stealing. And it's the same with a lot of these core values, they become abstract. So when people talk about, you know, do we try, I say, Do you trust who to do what about what? Or do you— and this comes back to courage, because we often blame lack of trust for our failure to have the courage to have the difficult conversation. Yeah.

So if you're saying that Then, excuse me, what is the answer if you have lack of trust? What's creating it? What's truly creating it?

What we have to enable, I think, as systemic team coaches or consultants or individual coaches, is the ability to put the mistrust on the table. And to be absolutely concrete about it and non-blaming of the other. To say, look, I want to share something with you, but I don't trust that if I share it with you, you might share it with 5 others. So let's talk about— because if we can talk about mistrust, then we move forward. If we talk about we ought to trust each other, Then the mistrust could go under the table. Yeah. And part of that is to create a culture and a team where we always locate the issues in connections, not in individuals or parts of the system.

You know, this is fascinating. For many different reasons. One is, as a leader of a group of coaches, I've made many mistakes.

Me too.

Recently, I stepped down as chair of member services because I saw a person in the group who I felt was going to make an incredible leader over myself. And her name is Erica Lamont. And Erica Lamont took the lead with such great humility and respect. And recently she said to the group, I've made a mistake in taking the leadership on this group. And being the chair. And I couldn't imagine what she was going to say. And she said, I have not taken the time to meet with each of you individually. And I thought, oh my God, is this not the right person? This is an amazing thing. But ironically, only one person took her up on it.

Immediately. Mm-hmm.

And so as I'm listening to this and reflecting back, I thought, you know, that is something I never did with this group. And it's an amazing group of people, and there is something getting in the way. So the question is, now that I'm not the leader, is it too late? for me to do that as the CEO of the organization? Do I involve the new leader? I mean, what— you know, there— I guess it's what I'm saying, for every 10 steps forward as leaders, we seem to take 10 steps back, and you never know which of those 10 steps back is the right step to take you forward again. I love what you're saying about giving people the opportunity to embrace you as the leader. Don't make assumptions. But then we go to the next step. If you've made assumptions, how do you correct? And I love how your eyebrows just went up, Peter.

See, So, so one of the things I was thinking when, when you said you've made many mistakes and I said me too, I, I like to call them quality failures.

I love that myself.

And, and I, and I, and I, um, for me, a quality failure— what makes it a quality failure is if we can generate more learning out of the failure than the cost of the failure. Yeah, and I think we can sometimes do that quite rigorously. You know, I know Netflix talks about sunshining your failures. Well, I worry a bit about that because it's like, you know, look at my great— But the notion of the discipline of, can we generate more learning, not only for us, but for others through our failures? Can we compost our failures into new learning?

I like that. Just the visualization works. Well, okay. So When you have a team that you're working with and you want to get to either root cause of issues or you want to move the team along, and the team is stuck in terms of individual contributions because there is What do you do about that?

Right. So let me just take that at 2 levels. 2 levels. One is because I think, you know, I train systemic team coaches now right around the world through the Global Team Coaching Institute. So we have people from over 100 different countries. And it's fascinating how often the question comes up, well, how do we deal with stuckness or resistance? And I love to go back to— oh, the name's going— who wrote, who started the National Training Laboratories and And talked about force field analysis that every force creates its equal and opposite force. Yeah, and I say resistance. There's no such thing as resistance. Right? There's only someone else's energy flowing in a different direction than yours. Hmm. So how do we understand the need behind the stuckness or the need behind the resistance? What's the need that we haven't yet connected with? So that's my first inquiry, if you like. My second inquiry is, you see, we've often put the resistance or the stuckness out there. So what has to shift in me? To shift my relationship with the team, for the team to shift their relationship with each other. Does that make sense?

Makes absolute sense.

So, so those are the first kind of inquiries I want to engage with, and, and actually not to see resistance as, as a problem or something to be overcome, but something to be engaged with. Yeah, and, and, and it relates to another issue, which is to go back to what I said just now, that one of the things I'm very tough on is, um, the blame game.

Right.

Because for me, in most teams, it's the biggest waste of time and energy. So the moment— and I say to coaches, for every minute you listen to someone who is blaming somebody else in the system, or a part of the system, or them, or the government, or whoever, a stakeholder group, the board— every minute you listen to them in a blame game, you are increasing their victimhood.

Right.

Their sense of powerlessness.

Yes.

Yeah. So I say we have to, as coaches, as team coaches, we have to interrupt it the moment it starts. So when someone says, a team that I'm with, oh, um, but you know, the problem is the, um, the board, I, I immediately reframe. From a blame to a what's the need, what's the request. So my reframe would be, oh, the problem is the board, they never give us any direction. I would play it back as, so what I'm hearing is you haven't yet found a way of getting clearer direction from your board.

Right.

Yeah. Oh, the staff don't The next level don't step up to leadership. I'll reframe it immediately and say, sorry, could you just pause there? What I'm hearing you say is you haven't yet found a way of creating the right space and enabling the next level to step up. So that— and sometimes it's just one word when they say, but you can't do that in our organization. I just say, yet. Hmm, that's great. You can't do it yet.

Yep.

Because I'm constantly having to return people from blame and victimhood into, we've got work to do. If it's blame, you know, if, if CB, you start to blame Howard, I'd say, so, so what's your request to Howard? And I would do that across the room. Don't tell me about Howard. Don't tell me what's wrong with him. Tell Howard what it is you need from him and in order to do what.

Yeah.

And I think most coaches are so trying to be supportive and empathic to the individual They go into collusion with that blame and powerlessness and get into the drama triangle of coachee, victim, some— somebody out there is persecutor, and them is rescuer. And that makes things worse. It doesn't just not helpful, it actually makes things worse.

I want to continue this conversation, but I want to recognize my friend Holly Teska, who is listening in, and she's agreeing. She's a Power Pack woman, I tell you. Courage, curiosity, compassion, the path to honest conversation and understanding. Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with that. I want to take this back a second because I want to tell a story here. In this group that I was talking about before, I had asked members of the membership committee, what are they doing about bringing in new members? And it was a very interesting month of conversation, or 2 months. And finally I realized, because the conversation went, well, we need this and we need that and we need this and we need And after I had done everything to provide all the needs, the answers to the needs, I was still having that communication from members. And I thought, tearing my hair out, I don't know what to give them. And finally, I realized, it was a very powerful realization. It's not what's needed, you're asking the wrong people.

Hmm.

And so people who love and respect you don't want to say, I don't want to do that. But instead they'll say, but I need this and I need that. And I finally realized, wait a second, you're asking people because they're on the membership committee, you're making an assumption that they want to identify new members. and talk to them. So wrong an assumption. You're in essence saying, go and be salespeople. By nature, coaches are not salespeople. I thought, CB, you're an idiot. You're an absolute idiot. You did not recognize the fact that you have One, not been asking the right question. Two, to the right people. And so I said to them, I made a mistake. I have been asking certain members of this group to go out and market because you're in member services, not realizing that that may not be your cup of tea. So I'm going to invite you send me a note and say, CB, I don't want to do this, I want to do that, and I'll be okay with it. But ironically, I haven't gotten any responses, so I'm still not doing something right.

Yet, yet. You haven't got responses yet.

Yet.

Yeah, I've learned, Peter.

So, CB, let me tell you, if I'd been in the room, what I would have done Yes, please. If I'd been your systemic team coach at that moment, yes, and you said, um, what do we need to do to bring in new members? I said, pause a moment. I think the role of the leader is to, is to frame the challenge, right? And I think, see, I said to the— I just said to your group, I think CB is saying She's concerned that we're not reaching out to fresh energy coming in, and she's wanting some help with that. Because I think you asked a question that people would take to their cognitive left hemisphere neocortex. So I'd have reframed it because underneath that, you're asking for your heart for help. Yeah?

Yeah.

And I'll say, is that right, CB? Yeah, you're concerned here that we're just talking to the choir, not bringing in new ones. So I said— and then I'd say, let's do it right now. And this is where the psychodrama comes in. I'd say, here's 3 empty chairs. All right, or 3 new ways you can join the Zoom conversation, right? I want 3 people from this team— each of those chairs are people we're not yet reaching that we need to connect with— and I want 3 people from this team to go and sit in those chairs and imagine someone who could bring great value to this group who we're not yet connecting with. And I want you, from that position, to tell the rest of the team what they need from you in order to connect. Does that make sense?

Yes.

And that's where one of the simplest things I do in boardrooms is I bring in empty chairs. And I say, that chair is for the customer. That's for the investor. That's for the employees. That's for the ecology or the future generations. And at any moment, I say to the board, that you get into a conflict situation, I shall say, stop, timeout. I want 3 of the board members, 4 of the board members to go and sit in those empty chairs and speak from that stakeholder position. Does that make sense?

Yes, that's brilliant. Maybe I shouldn't let them see this video and I should try it.

Or send it to them.

But I say that because I think we have to do that with leaders, um, and, and I include myself. You know, I'm— I, I help all these others, but then for my sake, my own medicine.

Yes.

Yeah, I had to really work hard recently to say to my associates, listen, I want to transition this organization, but I can't do it. I want to, within a year's time, not be leading or managing anything in this organization. Please, would you— I need your help. Will you meet without me and work out how do we do this transition? Because I need that help. Because I don't want to carry on until the whole thing You know, I keel over and the whole thing keels over. Yeah.

You know, it's, it's very interesting because the people that are on this committee, I adore. I have so much respect for them. They are brilliant, brilliant coaches. And I thought to myself, I'm failing. I'm totally failing. Which is one of the reasons why I stepped down as the chairperson of this group. And I'm so glad I did because I am learning a lot being in the seat other than as the chairperson. I almost want to say, based upon what you're saying now, is that all leaders should at some point move off the leadership chair and sit in the committee chair. Sit in the listener's chair and let somebody else lead, and you learn. Doesn't have to be permanently, but there's such value in learning from others.

So what's one of my, one of my future books, which I've sort of sketched out, is called The Charismatic Founder Syndrome.

The Charismatic Founder Syndrome.

Syndrome.

Oh, I can't wait to read that one.

Well, I'm hoping you'll help me write it.

Oh, I'll be a perfect model for this.

But because, because, um, I've had the privilege of working— my— when I was working that mental health organization, the global founder, very charismatic, amazing, strong Dutch woman extraordinary. So, so I watched it from, you know, and, and the reason I got promoted very young is I think I got her— she had 3 daughters, and I think I was the son she never had. And I think I put— I probably played on that, um, got away with a lot. Um, but, but then I, you know, I've started several organizations in my life, and I've worked with many charismatically founded organizations in the private sector, the, the not-for-profit sector, um, many different ones. And I've, I've chaired some organizations where there's been a charismatic CEO, so I've seen it from many different— but, but, you know, what I say to charismatic founders I work with is, you know, I've been there, and we become the biggest asset and the biggest liability to the company. And the thing is, it's not just to do with the personality of People who are charismatic planters. It's the people they collect around them who are lovely, lovely people, but who get attracted to charismatic founders because they love being around charismatic founders not taking over.

So, question—

it's a co-created dance.

Absolutely.

What's the difference between a charismatic founder whose company has become a billion-dollar company versus a charismatic founder who's an entrepreneur of a small, small company?

Well, I think, I think a lot of the syndrome or the pattern is similar, and we have to realize it's no good just the charismatic founder changing. Or, or the followers changing. You've got it. We've got to change the, the dance, not just the dancers. Yeah.

Okay. I, I, Howard, I love you, but I think I'm also going to have— ask Dr. Peter Hawkins to be one of my mentors. I need help.

You're in good hands.

So let me just tell you one phrase, one phrase I said to a charismatic founder just recently I'm working with. Very successful growth organization, but very, very dependent upon the charismatic founder. He said, look, please help me with the whole succession plan. I said, you are unsucceedable. You are unsucceedable.

Yeah.

I got it.

Don't even start thinking about succession planning until we do the cultural transition, that you've got a leadership team that a, a CEO could come in and work with. At the moment, anyone who takes over from you is doomed to failure. Hmm, that, that was a tough conversation. I'm sure you've seen that as well, Howard.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

So Howard, how do you help prepare founders to let somebody take their place?

Well, I think, I mean, I'm fascinated by some of Peter's comments because a lot of my work is around the question of what's the relationship between commitment and to self-improvement and actually believing in your ability to be better and governance, right? So to what degree, if you constantly try to get better, does that create a better environment than if you believe that because you're, for example, in this case, the founder and you have most of the answers and what the relationship between that is. And I think to Peter's comment, he's right. It's what environment do you create? So if you're a founder, am I building into that environment something where people will feel able to play a part and understand the boundaries and the roles in those parts so that in essence it becomes almost detached from the founder? So, because there is a time when you, if you have the charismatic leader, and I've worked with one about 3 years ago where the person knew what they were successful at. So, when they replaced themselves, nothing happened because the rest of the team knew that this new person would not jump in and start micromanaging them or start giving them guidance when in effect, the former founder was really about external focusing.

When I interviewed Michael Ben-Yeh, Colouring Coloring— The Coloring Box, I think, is his company's name.

Yes.

And he— when he stepped out, he said exactly what you just said and what you said, Peter. He wanted to ensure that the culture that the new leader was going to bring in would be equally, if not more, respected than the culture he was leaving.

And part of that is, is the organization founder-led or purpose-led?

Absolutely.

Because I wanted— when I read your questions around courage, I love the phrase, courage is feeling the fear and doing it anyway.

Mm-hmm.

But I don't think the phrase goes far enough because the word courage is courage, you know, from the heart. So it's not, you know, we can feel the fear and do a bungee jump anyway, or Feel the fear and still complete the marathon. But it's also, what are we doing it in service of? And the difference between mission-based courage and purpose-based courage. So mission-based— I'm trying to ban 2 words from work with organizations. The word want. Asking coaches what they want— wrong question. And the other word is mission. If the word mission comes from warfare, from evangelism and colonization— Columbus has a mission, NASA has a mission, many companies— it's about going out and conquering the sector. It's still a colonizing mindset.

Right.

Right. Let's be number one in mainframes or whatever it is. Whereas purpose is never self-out, it's always future-back and outside-in. What are we in service of? What can we uniquely do that our stakeholder ecosystem of tomorrow needs?

But does that mean that your organization can't really exist unless you take a perspective of, of service. Now, I'm going to ask that question in 2 different ways. One of the reasons why I left corporate America is I worked for Fortune 100 companies, and I was in marketing and branding. And I just got to the point where I was tired of marketing— well, we used to say selling— selling people things that they don't want, convincing them that they needed it.

Yeah.

Back in that day, that's really what we talked about. We've moved a lot from that in the description of marketing, um, but, you know, it was all based upon what the board wanted. you know, what the shareholders wanted. They wanted to see money in the bank, you know, um, as in Shark Tank, uh, I forget his name, says, I want to see money, you know. But if we're talking— I think the way that you're talking about it is that all organizations need to be more in service of people, like the Red Cross or You know, the, the not-for-profit space.

No, no, I— if we talk about purpose, all I'm saying is it's outside in and future back. So if you think— I— one of the phrases I use a lot is it's the purpose that creates the team, not the team that creates the purpose. If there was purpose, we wouldn't form the team. Now, that doesn't— we don't— who we're in service of, I also then say, actually, um, and, and Michael Porter, you know, after many years of being the number one strategy guru, in 2011 had a road of Damascus experience, and he wrote we need to move from shareholder short-term value, uh, shareholder value creation, to shared value.

Yes.

And I've done a lot of work over the years, including with an organization in this country around Tomorrow's Company, which says if you are not co-creating value with and for at least 6 stakeholder groups, right, you are not long-term sustainable, whether you're a private company or a, um, a not-for-profit. The same 6 exist, which are your investors or funders, your customers or your clients or your patients or whoever, yeah, your suppliers, your employees, the communities where you operate, and the more-than-human world of our ecology.

Mm-hmm.

Co-creating— the phrase is very important— co-creating value with and for all of those 6. Because some organizations then go into making them all demands and don't realize that all 6 of those are also partners who are resources to you. Your customers are a resource. Your suppliers are a resource. Your employees— they're all resources. So when I have chaired a couple of companies, I would do an annual report showing what we'd received from each of those 6 entities and what added value we had given back. And that for me applies whether I'm working with a Fortune 500 company, an international charity. I'm just about to go and work with the government in Singapore. Exactly the same. I would use the same framework. Yeah, yeah.

How do you define giving back?

Well, that— we've looked at measurement on all of those 6, right? There's a lovely book, I've got it here somewhere, by Paul Polman called Net Positive. He was the the CEO of Unilever for 10 years, how companies can thrive by giving more than they take. And if you want to know how to measure it right around all 6 groups, Paul Polman in Andrew Winston's book Net Positive is a great example. And that company became more profitable, right? The share price did incredibly well, and it became one of the most sought-after companies to go and work for in the world. Yeah, it thrived by giving more than it took to all of its stakeholder communities. And Paul Polman was on the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals Committee and spent lots of time on major business sustainability committees around the world.

Yeah. I think, well, maybe I should only speak for myself in terms of When people say to me, have you given back? I relate it to Marshall, Alfred Marshall's Feed Forward, and I'm thinking, I'm too small. How can I do that as an organization? Or what does that mean for an organization of coaches? One of the things that I've put in is in our certification process that you have to identify volunteerism, right? But I challenge myself in thinking, is that really giving back? Is there something missing in that whole concept? And that's why I'm asking these questions.

Yeah, yeah, I think there is something missing in that. So let me be very bold and say there is something Yes. Because there we go back into— right, so Friedman's stuff about individualistic-based, shareholder-based capitalism, right, has been one of the main things. I'm not— this is, you know, the British, the Europeans have been equally responsible— that has created the ecological and climate crisis. and that has fed individualism and greed, right? But the way out isn't to say, well, I'll earn my money from doing my corporate work and then I'll do some voluntary work on the side. That, that's a splitting.

Right.

You know, if I work for, for a commercial organization, I'm going to charge them a big fee, but I will say we've got to work out together how in partnership your time and investment what you're paying me, how that is going to create exceptional return on investment, not only for you as a team, but for your organization and all those stakeholder groups. So I start every coaching conversation with not what do you want, but what's the work that life is requiring us to do today?

Hmm.

How are we— so right at the core of our work ought to be Uh, collective value creation. I'm not, you know, I'm not here— um, I wrote this book, Systemic Coaching: Delivering Value Beyond the Individual. It came from— it starts the story of being in South Africa, helping the whole of the Western Cape look at how to become a coaching culture. And they developed this strategy, and I said, all right. They wanted me to come and comment, and I said, no, let's bring all your stakeholders into the room— frontline leaders, middle leaders, senior leaders, people from the hospitals, the schools, the taxpayers. We had 2 people representing the future generations of the Western Cape and 2 people representing the ecology. And the moment I never forgot was a young, very tall, Black frontline team leader stood up and said, when I listen to this strategy, it sounds like the people with the big offices, the big cars, right, the big paychecks now get the big coaches. He said, sounds like coaching is very expensive personal development for the already highly privileged.

Oh my God, that's so true. That was my experience in corporate America.

And it hit me in the stomach.

Yeah.

Is that, is that what I'm doing? Is that what I want to be doing?

Yeah.

So it took me 10 years from that happening to be able to write a book which was all about how do we not have coaching as very expensive personal development for the already highly privileged? How do we stop making the coachee our client but our coaching partner? And, and I, and I very clearly say my first meeting is Tell me about you. Often I say, tell me about you in a way you've never described it before. Then I'll ask you about what you really care about, what makes your heart sing. Then I'll say, so now tell me, who does your work in life serve? And my next 15 questions are, and who else? And what else? And who beyond your family? Who beyond your organization? I keep asking that question. I say, right now, let's invite all those people into this room. And if they were all here, what would they say is the work, CB, you and I need to be doing together that you can't do by yourself, I can't do for you, but together we can? What would they be telling us is the most important value-creating work we can be doing? Because I want to be on that agenda, not the agenda of what you think you want from coaching. Right now anyway, but—

Okay, Peter, you're leaving me speechless, and that's pretty hard to do. I need to play this back and think about this because there's so much that went through my head. Um, I— okay, and I'm trying to get rid of the echo too at the same time. You know, when I was in corporate America— oh, I forgot, you know, we were going to take a break and we just— this is just too hot to stop. And by the way, Holly says, this is a very powerful conversation. Thank you all. I remember when I was— thank you, Holly— when I was in corporate America as the solo Black woman. And I, I so resonate with what you're saying because I would see my colleagues all around me who were entitled to have coaches, were entitled to go to professional development programs, and I was always told, no, you can't go, you're not ready, it's not the right thing for you. And so what this gentleman said to you in Africa, so much exists here in the United States. And I remember when I first started the work that I'm doing now, I started as a career coach, and I was giving a presentation to a junior group of executives. They're all Black, part of the I forget the name of it. There's an executive corporate executive leadership is what it's called, and it's all very senior people of color. You have to be one step removed from the C-suite, which I always thought was very elitist. But I was talking to their junior group, which was three steps removed. And about the importance of having a coach. And one of the women raised their hands and said, I have a coach. And I said, that's terrific. Is the company paying for it? And she said, not only are they not paying for it, I can't tell them I have a coach because I would be admonished.

Wow, that's—

And I've heard that for so many people of color. It goes back to slavery. Stay in your place. Stay in your zone. So, you know, when you were talking, this flashed before my memory. And I thought, you know, we're doing a lot of work around the world in leadership. And we have so much more To do here in the United States?

Well, well, let me just say, if there's anyone listening who's in that situation that you were in, that woman was in, somebody says you're not ready for coaching, just ask them one question: how do you know that investing in someone else will create a bigger return on investment for the organization and all its stakeholders in giving coaching to me? And where, where is the evidence?

Great question, and you probably would have been terminated asking the question because you're considered sassy, out of your league, a troublemaker, all of the above. And so that's where the rubber meets the road, Peter.

But that's where we have to help them, first of all, have the courage to ask the question, but then to ask the question without any attachment or judgment or criticism from the heart. That's the hard work.

Yes, well, we'll have continued conversation about that.

Uh, my, you know, one of the hardest things— I had a spiritual teacher when I was, well, most of my life, sadly now died. And he, on one occasion, he said to me, he was a man part— came from a whole Indian lineage, but was part European, part Indian. And he said, Peter, I want you to organize for your parents to invite me to their home to talk about you without you being present. And, you know, I just went into shock, horror. I never told my parents I was in therapy. I never told my parents I had a spiritual teacher. The world of my parents and the world of this man were so, so totally far apart. This could never happen. You know what he did next? He could see me going through this absolute— this is impossible. He said, before you answer and tell me that, that they won't do that, he said, let me just be clear. If you ask them from your heart, they will say yes. And I thought, you bastard, you absolute bastard, because you have cornered me now. You have cornered me. Because I knew he was right, and I knew I had no one to blame. And what he was doing in one move was he was confronting my keeping my worlds totally segmented and apart each other. And my needing— you know, the only way this could happen in my mind was if I was there to translate these worlds and be in control. He was taking away my control, and he was slamming different parts of me together. And boy, you know, was that a courageous gift. What a gift.

So I want to invite anyone who's listening Speak up from their heart, be courageous, and let us know the results. Write to me, tell me what happened. I know all 3 of us would love to know where and how it worked for you. And remember, that has to— you're opening yourself to be vulnerable. But you're also opening yourself to possible success and rewards that you didn't see coming. Howard?

Yes. Let me just add one thing to that.

Yes.

Because the courage to speak up is not against the other. What I try to help many leaders to do, which is quite hard, and it's taken me a long time, far too long to learn it, is to be able to use the words, We have a challenge. I can't solve it, and I need all of your help to do it.

I like that.

And that language from the heart, courage— we have a challenge— to name and frame the challenge, and then to say, you know, to go into the humility, I cannot solve it. I need all your help.

And Howard has given me that advice. And—

Now you have it 2 times.

And I have been chicken on occasion. Oh my God, my audience is probably falling on the floor laughing because they know I say it like it is. I'm just—

So Howard, that's because you and I haven't yet found the right way of saying it.

That's right.

But we will.

I think I have a gang against me here. Howard, any questions that you want to ask Peter?

Well, I have a broad question. I'd love to hear Peter's insight. And Peter, you may have to frame this somewhat. We're living in a world where everybody has a lot of reasons why something can't be done. In other words, we're more divisive than we are inclusive, to use words I think you've used. If you had one tip that would work one person at a time, what would that be that would help all of us get closer to where we want to be rather than disabling ourselves? Because I'm resonating back with your excuses, which I totally, totally think is powerful. But what's the one thing? And again, it can be small, it can be big. What do we need to do to empower ourselves?

Well, I With respect, I'm going to slightly turn the question because I think we are now living in a world where we are leaving for my grandchildren bigger challenges, a world of greater demand. There are, there are more than 3 times the number of people on this planet, right, than there were the year I was born. No other generation has experienced that. It was 2.4 billion when I was born. It's 7.9 billion now. No other generation has lived long enough to see the world's population treble.

Yeah.

Not only do we have a bigger population, we have greater expectations because of the internet, and we now know what the best are getting and everyone wants it. And we have diminishing resources, right? We are over each year we, we are using more than a year's worth of resources earlier in the year.

Yeah.

So we are leaving our children a world of greater demand for more at higher quality with less resource. Now, I don't think we can any longer change the world one person at a time. So I think we have to move from shifting individuals to shifting the connections. I don't think— I often say the road to coaching hell is paved with aha moments and action plans that never get acted.

Right.

Let's get beyond that. So I was once asked a question in one of these big conferences. It was the time of the Iraq War. If you were coaching Tony Blair and George Bush Jr., right, what, what would you say to them? I thought about it and I said it might be the same if we talk about the president of Ukraine and the president of Russia. I would ask them What does the rest of the world need from your relationship? This is the principle of triangulation. Not what do you need, President of Yugoslavia, from Russia, or Russia, what do you need from Yugoslavia? But what does— we have to find a third point that makes us shoulder to shoulder. We're both now looking in the same direction. So I think that the very simple thing we have to do, whether we're coaching individuals or teams, is we have to go shoulder to shoulder with them and look at what does their world of tomorrow need from them, not what do they need from each other. Does that begin to at least—

Yeah, I think it does.

Rather than sidestep it.

No, no, no, I think it does. I mean, it's, it's, um, I mean, it's very consistent with your speak from the heart, right? It's, it's how do you get, how do you get people to align so that we, we get some, some form of momentum going?

And, and not align with each other.

Exactly.

Yep.

But, but Again, you know, when I say the purpose creates the team, I say all partnerships. Um, I wrote just before my 40th wedding anniversary a few years back a blog, Partnerships Are Not Created by Partners.

Mm-hmm.

All right, and I was talking about marriages, mergers, and teams. I said it's the same principle. If you want a long marriage, right, um, there's a nice story. The, the, the man who, who'd been married for 70 years, and, and, um, they were, they were interviewed on the radio, and they said, you know, how, how come you've stayed in love with the same woman for 70 years? He said, I haven't. So I've been in love with at least 10 different women. I'm just lucky they all had the same name. And, you know, we have to— a quality marriage is, is to do with not what you get from each other, it's to do with what you could do together that you cannot do apart.

Right, right.

It's the purpose that creates the marriage.

Yeah, right.

It's that third entity. It's, it's the purpose that creates the team. It's the purpose that creates the merger. So, so when I was working with a cultural merger of 2 big finance institutions, I said— they said, would I help them with their cultural merger? I said, what are you trying to achieve? They said, we're trying to achieve the best of both. And I went like that. They said, what's the matter? I said, sorry, you know, I've given myself away with my nonverbals. I said, please don't ask that question. They said, why not? I said, you're it will give you 2 years of competition. You'll be arguing about who's got the best investment products, who's got the best investment managers, the best HR processes, the best IT. I said, it's a recipe for 2 years of, of, of, of non-value-adding competition. He said, so what should we ask? And we kind of explored it, we did an inquiry. The question we came up with is, what through this merger can we give birth to that neither of us could have done by ourselves? That the financial world of tomorrow needs. You see, that, that changing of the question is so fundamental.

Yeah, you know, so not only can I see business advice from you, I can also see, as a newlywed, marriage advice. So So when are you coming out with your book on long-term marriage?

And Italian cookery.

Touché.

Peter, I hate for this to end. You and Howard have been— well, Howard was supposed to be hosting. He's turning out to be the guest also. So, uh, I love having both of you on, and I want to thank you both so much for this. This is going to my top interview file, even ahead of my interview with Marshall. So don't tell Marshall. And I'm so sorry we have to end, but We are running like 20 minutes over.

Who cares?

Who cares?

Audience is not questioning you.

Let me say, it's been a pleasure to be with you both. And I feel blessed, Howard, by the gift of your listening and real presence. And CB, by your bringing all of yourself. Yeah, to bring yourself not only as a great coach, a great leader, but, but someone who, who's brought your, your own challenges, and that, and that has been a gift.

Thank you.

Thank you, Peter.

Thank you both.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm supposed to be a kick-ass woman, so I won't get teary-eyed. Okay, so fantastic, fantastic interview. I can't wait to do another one with both of you. Audience, I don't even know how to end this one, so I'm just gonna say this is CB live on Courage, and I look forward to seeing you next week. Write in, talk to us, let us know what you think. And this is available by podcast, don't forget. Bye now.

Bye.

Bye now.