In this episode of the Courage to Leap & Lead podcast, host CB Bowman continues his conversation with leadership expert Michelle Johnston. Michelle recounts a pivotal shift from a traditional, lecture‑based teaching style to a flipped‑classroom, experiential learning model, and how that insight reshaped her approach to executive coaching. She argues that modern executive coaching is less about dispensing knowledge and more about facilitating reflection, asking powerful questions, and serving as a strategic business partner. Together, CB and Michelle contrast pure coaching (question‑only) with executive advising, describing an 80/20 framework where 80 % of a session is client‑focused listening and 20 % is the coach’s curated insights, market intelligence, and “nuggets” that help leaders stay ahead of AI‑driven disruption. They discuss the responsibilities of a corporate executive coach to bring a portfolio of solutions, challenge client assumptions, and act like in‑house counsel who monitors competition and external trends. The conversation culminates in a promotion of Michelle’s new book, The Seismic Shift in Leadership: How to Thrive in This New Era of Connection, which outlines a three‑step process for building personal, team, and organizational connection, illustrated with stories of both success and stumble. Throughout, the dialogue emphasizes the power of human connection as a competitive advantage in a rapidly changing world.
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You've got courage to leap, courage to lead. Be brave and be bold. Let it roar. Welcome to the Courage to Leap and Lead podcast, where each of our guests share the stories of courage that helped them become powerful leaders. Before we start today's show, please remember to visit courage-consulting. Where you can find all the episodes and other excellent resources, all at courage-consulting.com. Now, here's your host, Leadership Courage Coach CB Bowman.
Hey everybody, if you did not listen to the first half of my interview with Michelle, do me a favor. Go and listen. We are continuing now. Michelle, welcome back.
Thank you so much, CB. This is just such a delightful conversation. You really are one of the best interviewers, and I've been on 75 podcasts. Your questions— I just, I just am loving this, this podcast. So thank you.
Thank you. Thank you for self-revealing and bringing this into your life. So we were talking about lessons we've learned in life, and I interrupted you because I wanted to be sure to get all of it.
Yeah, I remember having the shift that I had been kind of in this model as a professor of directing. I would show up and lecture for hours on end, and I was leaning from a place of power, right? Or operating from a place of power and control and directing and commanding control. And lecturing, and then and and there was a movement probably about about eight years ago called flipping the classroom, and it was when all of a sudden all of our students had iPhones, which made all of the information that we were supposed to be the experts in readily accessible on their in their hands, their phones. So so the academia I don't really remember where it came from, but a bunch of authors I guess wrote about this concept of flipping the classroom so that you tell the students okay you read the material don't just don't just come to class and expect. expect me with a piece of chalk or now a whiteboard just to lecture and deliver the information to you. You read it, and then it's my job to flip the classroom and I create experiences for you. I help you incorporate that information so that you can use it. And I thought that was super cool because I'm all about experiential education since I was trained first as a consultant, as a trainer. Adults learn by doing. Yet for so long, we treated college students not necessarily as adults. We just treated them like, come in, sit down, down and take notes. And so it was a real different way of thinking. And so I was able to use that in my executive coaching to make me realize that, okay, my job as a coach is not to sit here and just impart information. It's quite the opposite. My job is to serve. My job is to facilitate. My job is to ask the questions to allow the leader— most of the leaders already know the answers. They just haven't had a chance to process it out loud. They haven't had a chance to reflect. And so by asking these questions, I was able to bring the best version of themselves out. And, and, and I just thought that was interesting. That was a shift for me, is that I— that's when I became a really good coach, when I realized, first of all, this is so not about me and what I know at all. So it's— I had to get rid of that old paradigm that I had of being a professor, of imparting information. This is about Figuring out how to bring out the very best in others through questioning, through support, through reflection. That was a big shift.
Well, here's the thing. Coaching— I'm trying to think about how to say this delicately. There is a philosophy and a school of thought That with coaching you only ask questions. You just sit there and you don't say anything. You ask questions. When I became an executive coach, I looked at that model and I said, that's so not me. I needed to create a different model. Now I'm going up against the big guys. My husband is about to leave everybody.
Okay.
Bye, dear. Um, and I thought, I, I want to incorporate my background into the coach— coaching world. Not that mine was perfect, but I thought there has to be a different way than sitting on a couch, right? Or having a client sit on the couch. And so I Came up with enterprise-wide business partner with your client. That's our philosophy at the Association of Corporate Executive Coaches, which means that you, in order to get into our association, you have to be experienced enough to have a portfolio of opportunities and solutions that you can offer your client. Because each client is going to be very different. Going with the school of thought of just asking questions is a foundation. It's walking in the door and learning the ABCs of coaching. But once you get up there and you're working in the C-suite, you better come, you better bring it. You have to have an assortment, an arsenal. With you. You have to be able to listen. You have to be able to be yourself. You have to be able to go toe to toe with these men and women and not be afraid of saying, no, I don't believe that this is the right step for you. Let's discuss alternatives. As you did With the CEO. You said this is not your style. Here is another opportunity. Let's try it.
It's so interesting you said that, CB, because I finally, after years of saying, okay, well, coaches, I just really need to ask the right questions. And, and then I realized I'm much more of an executive advisor.
Absolutely.
You're absolutely right. At this level, I only coach executives on the E-team, and they don't— I mean, they do need an opportunity to show up and just reflect on their wins and their challenges and process how some difficult times were handled, continuous improvement. And at the very end, they want to know, what do you think?
Absolutely. Absolutely. You turn that around and say, Well, what do you think? You're going to be shown the door.
Yep, I agree. I agree. I've now come to that term.
I love, I love what you're saying. But sadly, there's so many people that are not at that level that call themselves executive coaches. And so they really don't understand the concept of a corporate executive coach.
Yeah.
And that puts the rest of us in danger.
Yeah. As you're talking out loud, I'm realizing that I follow, as an executive advisor, an executive coach, I follow that 80/20 model that Pete November and I figured out is on the coaching call. I want to ask all about them for the 80% of the time, all about them. Tell me about wins. Tell me about some challenges. Give me some updates. How are you doing? What's working? What's not working? And then at the 20% at the end, I will share nuggets that I think that they would find valuable and beneficial. Like, I just got back from Thinkers50. Let me tell you what the best thinkers in the world are saying about the world of work. We must humanize.
Yes.
We must be people that people want to work with and work for in order to compete against robots and artificial intelligence. And I think that's how we differentiate ourselves and add value is here, the last 20%, I'm going to share with you some real cool information that will help you be the best you can be.
And give them the opportunity to debate it with you.
Yeah, what do you think?
That takes strength.
Yeah.
And walk in knowing their competition. And walk in knowing their employees' mindset. That's a corporate executive coach. It's not how you doing and what do you think. That's a very small part of it. The responsibility of success of your client is on you, not on them. Of course, they have to want to be coached. But then you have to bring, as you said, those nuggets, you have to bring opportunities to for them to hear. Look, when I was with General Foods and Philip Morris bought us, they came to us with like 2 attorneys, 2 in-house attorneys. We had a roster of attorneys. And I said to somebody in the E-suite, What are they, crazy? Smokers? How could they work with just 2 in-house attorneys? And he said to me, CB, in-house attorneys focus on what's going on inside. They hire external attorneys because they need to know what their competition is. What's going on in the world? What's going on in government? These people are more attuned to what's happening. You as a coach have to take on that role. You have to be attuned. You have to bring information in because being the CEO, you have a large vision of what's happening, but you don't have a global vision.
Correct.
In terms of how are you running your organization? I'm not talking about product or service. I'm talking about how you're running your organization. So I love that. Hey, we need to wrap this up. And I hate to say it because you've brought us such incredible nuggets, as you— using your term, of information about how we can relate to each other and how we can see the world differently and how we can face challenges. But before we go, you have to show us your book.
Oh yeah, The Seismic Shift in Leadership: How to Thrive in This New Era of Connection. So it is all about good nuggets of how to meaningfully connect with yourself, So that you can meaningfully connect with your teams, so that you can meaningfully connect with the organization. So it's a 3-step process. And I interviewed really cool leaders from all across the globe that they give their examples of connection and disconnection. I wanted to show people like you do that a lot of times in order to really become good at connection, you've got to stumble first. So there are stories of lots of stumbles as well. So yeah, thank you. I've really enjoyed— I feel like I'm on a mission now to help leaders build cultures of connection to drive results. And, and it's just so satisfying to have this purpose and this passion in life. So thank you so much for allowing me to talk about my purpose and passion with your listeners.
Absolutely. And I want to say, everybody, that this book is not just for leaders.
No, correct.
Leaders on the title, but it's about our personal growth and journey. And it also is about an organization's growth and journey. So read it through both lenses.
I'm so glad you said that. My girlfriend who I play pickleball with, she is— she read the book and she said, you know, I only read it for you because I'm not a leader, but I wanted to read it because you wrote it. And she goes, Michelle, this should have been called The Seismic Shift Just not even for leaders, because every human, every person is experiencing seismic shifts. And how can we best connect with others? So maybe my next book is just The Seismic Shift.
Or as Taylor Swift does, you change the COVID and release the book again. Yep.
Didn't realize T-Swift did that. But if she did it, I'll do it.
Got into trouble for doing that with an album she dropped. She had a certain cover. She said, everybody go get it. It's only available for X period of time at X cost. Everybody ran and got it. Then a couple of weeks later, she did the same thing and she only changed the COVID There's a lot of great material out there.
I really think that I'm on the cusp of something pretty big in this world right now, which is connection. So many of us are isolated still and feeling disconnected and a little lonely, and people are struggling with trying to find true happiness. And, and all the research that I've learned, CB, it really lies in your ability to connect. And, and so I just want to help as many people as I can, um, because I had to learn how to do it. And guess what? It pays off. Life is so much richer when you have true meaningful connection with yourself and with others. So thank you so much.
Thank you, my friend. We will have to do this again with your new book.
Would love that.
Maybe writing.
Yes, I will. Would love that. Thank you so much, y'all, for tuning in. CB is just an amazing host. I can understand why you follow her. Um, and, and I can't wait to listen to this conversation. Thank you.
Thank you. All right, everybody, stay tuned for next week. And I'm not sure who it's gonna be, but you know, it'll be somebody great. Have a great day and define success in a way that's meaningful for you. Bye now.
