363 - From Military Service to Executive Coaching: A Journey of Leadership and Emotional Awareness with Bobby Humes

Welcome to Listening with Leaders. I'm Doug Noll, lawyer turned peacemaker. I teach executive leaders how to listen to emotions rather than words so that they can become the leaders everyone wants to follow. And I teach those same leaders how to be authentically present, available, and connected to their families despite being insanely busy. I have learned that we are 98% emotional and only 2% rational. Learning how to listen to emotions is, in my The foundational skill of life. Stick around to the end of the show and I'll reveal how you can be our next guest in 15 to 20 minutes. So let's get started. Bobby Hames, welcome to Listening with Leaders. You are an HR— really, your background is in HR going all the way back into the Army, which we'll talk about in a minute.

Yeah.

Today you're a private consultant. And an executive coach out of the Seattle area. Uh, it's bhconsultants.co if I got the website right. So let's start off from the beginning. Tell us about your background.

Yeah, so as you mentioned, I, I did 10 years, uh, service in the United States Army, uh, and that took me all over. I did some, uh, tours in Bosnia, I did a tour in Korea, and I did a tour in Iraq. And all through that time I was I had an HR job, but I did whatever the Army told me. That's kind of how they work. So, you know, I had some really great times really early on in my career, learning to listen to leaders and being sort of— I drove for a colonel sometime, and I would just listen and relay back to him what I was hearing. And he found that very valuable. And I just kind of kept that going throughout my career. When I got out of the Army, Uncle Sam was kind enough to pay for a school degree, and I put that to work in the public sector, working in state government, working in schools, all culminating in a really interesting role as the Chief HR Officer of the City of Seattle. And that took place during COVID You might remember that. Oh, goodness. That was— at the time, you know, it felt like every day something was changing, something was new. When I look back on it now, it was ripe for what I do now in helping leaders and helping teams and organizations really understand what they're up to, like what they want to get out of their thing, what they're up against, you know, what are their barriers, what are the roadblocks, the things that are anchoring them, that are dredging them down away from their goal, and then how they can use what they already have to get to where they want to go. And all of that has a backdrop of really listening to what people are saying and what's in that space and giving them ideas and helping them nuance those ideas into actions that sustain. So that's, that's what I do now. That's, that's the quick story. There you go, Bobby Humes.

Yeah. What does it make— what is it that gets you so excited? I can tell you've got a lot of energy. What is it? Yeah, that gets you so excited about the work that you do?

Um, people. People are interesting. We, we are a myriad, right? We all come, we have different backgrounds and different stories. And, um, you know, a lot of the, the clients I get to help do work that is meaningful to them. And there's a story behind that meaning and really getting to know the client early in the process, whether it's executive coaching or consulting, hearing what they're trying to accomplish. And that really gets me excited. I, I love something new.

So, uh, you don't get bored easily.

Um, I don't get bored easily, but when I get bored, it's a sign that it's time for me to move on.

Okay. So you said you were, you were HR Director for the City of Seattle for 3 years. What caused you to move on?

Yeah. Well, you know, I thought that it was a, a new administration coming in. I thought it'd be best for me to give someone else an opportunity to, to serve that new mayor. And I had enough. I had enough of, of, of the COVID environment in that pace. And honestly, it's what led me to what I do now. During that time frame, I wasn't taking really good care of myself as a leader. You know, I can look back now and say, in some cases, I wasn't a good listener to my staff and to my body and to my family. And what I got an opportunity to do was take a step back. Tie my shoelaces, right? Take care of myself. And, and then really ask myself, where do I want to go? What do I— what, what, what sense do I want to make in the world? And, uh, that, that was sort of, uh, my gathering of clues that it was time for me to move on to something new.

And describe for us what you're doing today.

Yeah, so today, um, I, um, am the CEO and lead consultant of BH Consultancy. It's Better Humans Consultancy.

Yeah, right.

And we are all about leaders, teams, and organizations, um, in helping them find their success. Now, that might be executive coaching, it might be facilitation. We're doing a lot of curriculum development these days, all, um, custom-built. Um, it might be, uh, keynote speaking, but wherever we can come into an organization and, and either be the voice or help lift the voices, uh, of resonant change, that's what we're trying to do.

Wow. Yeah. So, curriculum development— are you being asked to come in and do training or to structure trainings? And, and if so, what kind of areas?

That's right. We come in and we really listen to what the client is up against. And as we listen, that helps us determine where we can be most successful, or if we're even the right partner for, for the season that the client might, might be in. Um, and if they ask for some training, maybe there are some gaps they want to get from one place to, to another, uh, we might, uh offer them, you know, our skill set in building out, you know, focused learning objectives that really help get to their goals and bringing in, you know, books and podcasts and other resources that help that adult learning process so that people can take some transfer into their role, right? Not just— we spend lots of money, billions of dollars in learning and development and And rarely do we get to measure the actual transfer, how it impacts the, the organization. We're not into that. We want to build something that's, that's custom, that's bespoke, that really helps the client measure change that's happening in their organization. And we oftentimes supplement that adult learning, that, that curriculum development with executive coaching to help that change management process along.

So what kind of clients do you typically work with?

We work with all manner of clients. Today, when, if I think about our docket of, of opportunity where, and it's really cool, over the last few years we've been working with large regional and national nonprofits who are in the conservation space, right? In water, in air, in clean energy. And that's really been fascinating. Even in light of all the changes that are coming from the current administration, you know, we can get a sense that people are resilient in the missions of their organization. They want to be successful. Long term. And that's been— that, that's been fun.

That's pretty cool.

It is, it is super cool. And we're also seeing a lot of startup organizations, uh, giving us phone calls. And, uh, you know, new founders are saying, hey, I, I'm doing this thing, it's my passion, but I don't know if I'm doing all of it the, the way it should be. I need somebody to walk alongside me. And that's, that's been cool. So that's kind of— those are the two tiers of folks that we're working with right, right, right now.

So Bobby, we're talking about soft skills, and my experience has been that there's a lot of resistance to soft skills. I'm curious what's your take on that and why do you think that resistance exists?

Yeah, my, my assumption, Doug, is that there's a belief that these soft skills are not compatible with the work of the organization or with the industry or with the leader's timetable. Like, it's seen as a, as a nice to have for those who can do that, that that woo stuff, like it sort of lives on this, this shelf that's attainable for folks who aren't doing work as important as we're doing. And if we were to slow down enough to realize that connecting to people at the human level is actually the stuff that's going to help propel them into all the success that comes in this chapter and the next, I think folks would change their minds. I think there's a growing body of evidence to support that. And I'm hopeful for the day where folks can, can prioritize that over some of the technical things that we're seeing?

Yeah, I think there are, I think there are a couple of layers to this. The, the first layer is that I think since most people are emotionally incompetent, the idea of working with emotions and learning how to master them is very scary and makes people feel more vulnerable than they're comfortable with. And so I think that's problem number one. Number two, I think that 98% of the people out there teaching soft skills really don't know what they're doing and they teach crap.

Mm-hmm.

Um, there, I have not seen yet an emotional intelligence course either offered online or virtually or in person that teaches true emotional intelligence. So I define emotional intelligence as, first of all, you can't learn emotional intelligence. That's the first mistake. If somebody's saying, I'll teach you emotional intelligence, disregard them. Because emotional intelligence is a measurement of a social intelligence. The term was coined by Mayer and Salovey, Jack Mayer and John Salovey back in 1989 when they were studying social intelligences. And it got picked up by Daniel Goleman and that was the title of his first book that kind of commercialized all this called "Why EI is More Important Than EQ." And so Goleman has made hundreds of millions of dollars on the idea that you can increase your emotional intelligence, but you can't. What emotional intelligence measures are 3 competencies: emotional self-awareness, emotional self-regulation, and cognitive empathy. And so if you can work on developing those 3 competencies, you'll automatically raise your emotional Intelligence. Now here's the thing that I learned is that the way that you develop emotional self-awareness and emotional self-regulation is by developing cognitive empathy through a skill called affect labeling, which is just this foundational skill that transforms everything. And I have observed in many diverse environments from maximum security prisons to the Congressional Budget Office, that when people learn how to listen to and name emotions out loud, which is what affect labeling is, that they reprogram their brains. Mm-hmm. And we see this massive increase in these emotional competencies, and people literally change everything. So the— but the problem is that there are just hundreds of thousands of consultants and HR people. You, you run across it more than I do, that that really don't know what they're talking about. They don't understand the science. They haven't taken the time to study the science, and all they're doing is teaching what they were taught, which is this old, outdated 20th century stuff like active listening and nonviolent communication and other things like that that don't work and never have worked. And everybody knows that it doesn't work, but they still teach it because they didn't have anything else, right? And they all pretend, wink wink, wink wink, Nah, Dad, let's teach this because that's all we got and we won't tell people that it really doesn't work.

And the folks who are paying them to teach that are checking the box saying, hey, you brought in the person to come in and teach them how to do that, so.

That's right. And so they're not only checking the box, they're perpetrating the crap. So you get all these people taking these courses saying, this is what soft skills is? This is all bullshit. This doesn't work. Why am I wasting my time? So don't bring this soft skills crap to me anymore 'cause I know it doesn't work. We've done it we've done this empathy training, none of it worked. And it's because what they were taught was crap. Yeah. And non-science-based stuff. You can tell I get a little excited about this.

Well, I like it.

Hardly do I get. My fifth book's coming out in September called Empathy Leadership. Nice. And I trace the history of all of this and I say this is why soft skills is a pejorative and why people are so resistant to these ideas is because they've been taught crap for 80 years. And none of it's based on science.

Yeah. In our, in our coaching practice, what we focus on is the discovery of self. Like, how are you slowing down and realizing where, where are you? Like, what, what, what emotions are, what emotions are you keyed into? Like, let's, let's give you your own range of language that you can—

I like that because most people are alexithemic, right? They can't name their own emotions. And so by giving them an emotional vocabulary to describe their own inner experience. Yeah. That's the emotional self-awareness piece. And they're starting to develop the competencies that lead to increased emotional intelligence because once you can see it in yourself, you can see it in everybody else because we all share the same experiences. And as I tell people, my students, I say, "It's all pattern recognition." Yeah. Once you begin to see, once you understand there's no such thing as rationality, human beings are not rational beings, we're emotional beings, humans don't have an ounce of rationality in them. If you wanna be precise, we have the capacity for deliberative thinking.

Mm-hmm.

What Kahneman called System 2 thinking. We have that capacity, but we only engage it on very rare occasions. And so if you're a leader, you don't wanna lead the 5% of the brain that engages in deliberative thinking. You wanna lead the 95% of the brain that engages in everything else, decision-making behavior and everything else. And yet, if you persist in this notion that why aren't my people being rational? I just wanna go with logic. I mean, just, get the thought in mind, why do I have to be the kindergarten cop? Why are they acting like children? You've got the wrong mindset.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah.

And one of my most exciting and rewarding coaching engagements is mindset change, right? Getting a person to recognize their behaviors, to decide if those behaviors are serving them, and then to like, let's, let's choose something else. Like, since we can now recognize it when we start going down that path, how do we want to pause it and choose something different, right? Like, we can, we can rewire our brains and tune our hearts differently if we just pause, go a little bit slower.

Tell me, tell me a transformation. I, I bet you have a bunch of them. Tell me a transformational story around that. You can change the names, protect the innocent.

Yeah, let me, let me think of one. Oh, had a leader, just a dynamo at what she did, an engineer, just brilliant, really great at getting results, but leaving a wake of bodies in, in the, uh, the journey, right? And, and really frustrated with why nobody, you know, wants to talk to her, wants to, like, you know, why it's hard for her and her team to, like, get things done. She has to be the only one to get things done. And so we started working. Her goal was to be a more effective leader. So we started working on what does effective mean to you?

And we—

and she learned, and I noticed early on, that her focus of effectiveness was singular. Like, as long as I'm getting my thing I'm effective. Yeah, I'm effective. Wow. And then just helping her see, well, where does everyone else play a role in that? And she came to the point of, well, I'm going to retire soon and I want to, I want to leave a legacy. I said, okay, there you go, this is great. You want to leave a legacy. What does legacy building take? Like, right, like, what does it really mean for us to do that? He says, well, I'm gonna have to teach somebody what I said, how's that feel? Like, how you feeling about doing that? Well, I don't know how to do that.

Okay.

Can you tell me what you do? Like, we just started talking about what she did and how she thinks about things. She got herself a little mini curriculum, right? That she could then codify. And then as she started to take the, you know, I wanted to, I like to stay in the client space. I don't want to come in and try to make them who I am, right? It's not going to work, right? They are resilient. They are the experts. In their thing. And but once she had language that she could observe in real time, then she started having fun getting to know people. She started having fun getting to see, okay, well, this person is way beyond where I thought they would be as far as them coming along. They're going to take a lot more time. But this person is a bright light, and I can really pour into them, and I think this is really going to work. And she just started to become like this, this— I want to say she's, she's going to be leading any, any parties anytime soon, But someone who was willing to sit with someone and slow down long enough to let them see how she does what she does and answer some critical questions about how she thinks about things. And that was really rewarding for her and very rewarding for me to see. You know, when we're doing coaching, we're not, we're not trying to change, we're not trying to transform people, we're trying to help them make little steps into, right, into that they can then monitor and sustain on their own. I love it when a client says, hey Bobby, I'm good, I think, I think I've met my goals. That's terrific.

Yeah.

Wow.

Uh, yeah, incremental— check coaching for incremental improvement. Yep, that's where it's at.

That's it.

Uh, it's interesting to me that I've worked with a lot of engineers in the past, and they go into engineering because they don't like the uncertainty, what they feel is the uncertainty and the squishiness of human relationships. And engineering is all about math and, you know, formulas, right?

Uncertainty. Yeah.

And so they, they hate it. But, but I teach them the emotions are data. Yeah, that's like numbers on a spreadsheet. And the only problem is it's unstructured data that you've never learned how to organize.

That's right.

And you haven't learned how to recognize it. And but once you start seeing the emotional data, it, it begins to make perfect sense. And then you, then you can learn the skill sets that allow you to manipulate this data just like in a spreadsheet. And all of a sudden, humans aren't confusing anymore. They're very, very predictable in their behaviors and how they act. And you can intervene in ways that are positive to get the kind of behaviors out of people that benefit them and also benefit the organization.

Yeah, yeah. Like, what are you observing? What's— what you want to change, you have to observe.

That's right.

And then we have to gather the data, and then we have to say, what does this data mean? The same way we would do as engineers in building a bridge, or—

that's right—

researching, uh, a, a—

why are these people, why are these people in burnout? Why are they disengaged? What are they feeling? They're feeling anger, frustration. They feel disrespected. They don't— they feel invisible, not heard, not appreciated, not supported. That's right. And they're worried and concerned because they don't know, you know, whether they're going to get laid off or not.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, a lot of uncertainty out there. Yeah.

And so you need to start naming all of this and showing people how to name it, and all of a sudden the veil is lifted and human behavior becomes transparent and predictable. Yeah, it's no longer chaos.

Yeah, I love in, in the naming practice the formulation of options that come from that. When someone is appearing stuck, tell me about stuck.

Yeah. And I like the formulation you use is, "Ted, tell me, explain to me, describe for me." Yeah, right. So they're very open-ended questions. We're not cross-examining. We're not trying to make an argument through our questioning. We're trying to get people to think about what they're thinking about and feeling.

That's right.

And in the beginning, a lot of times they struggle. So you label their emotions. It's frustrating to think about this. You're frustrated thinking about this. You're really pissed off, you know?

Yeah. And I try to get them to think, what, what's, what's life gonna be like when, when this is working?

There you go, Pleasure Island, of course, right?

Yeah.

Like, yeah, imagine, imagine a year from now.

Yeah.

And you've, you've got this all dialed in and everything's working for you. Describe for what a day would be like for you.

Oh my gosh, it's gonna be— and then in my listening, I'm, I'm taking things and saying, okay, is this possible for us? Is it possible for you? They go, yeah, I think it is. Yeah, let's make it happen.

And then you just help them put a roadmap together.

That's it.

That's it. Let's talk about—

it's easy. Coaching is easy. No, it's not.

It's not always easy.

It's not always easy. No. Yeah, yeah, it's hard work.

It's hard work with the client, and sometimes it's hard work for the coach too.

Absolutely. Yeah.

I saw you have affiliates. You have other coaches and consultants that work with you?

That's right. Yeah, I have a— you know, I am a limited capacity person, just like all of us, right? And so I have friends that I've worked with or worked for or who have worked with me in the past, and I just think that they're brilliant individuals. And they, they, you know, I can call them up and they come alongside and they lend their expertise to what the client needs. And that's been a rich blessing to work with people who are really cool. And it's just like we just, we just feast from the joy of being together and solving problems. We're all whiteboard people, right? We'd like to sit in front of a whiteboard and pontificate and strategize and say— and then offer, offer this back to the client and say, here, here's our best thinking around what you have, but at the end of the day, it's up to you what you want to do. And having the joy of seeing the client go, yeah, I want to work with, with y'all, it's great.

Yeah, that's really good. Are your clients based— are you basically based in Pacific Northwest, or are they all over the place?

Uh, the majority of our clients are in the Pacific Northwest, but we work with folks all over the world. Um, early on in the firm's creation, we had a startup company in Boston that actually had suppliers in South America. And that was really cool because these two, two founders from South America living in Boston, that was them learning like how to move in Boston, like how to move and build a business and build partners and with the South American culture, with the South American culture, like, right? And then go home. And like, that was fascinating. But, um, we are— I used to say back in the day that you have clients from Seattle to, to Sri Lanka because we were working with a, a telehealth organization in Sri Lanka in their startup phase. And so, um, I love this work, uh, because it's, it's— no day is ever the same. Every problem is launched and different, and that makes it fun.

Absolutely. Yeah. Well, one more question and I'll let you go.

Please.

Bobby, what's one thing about yourself that we would never know about unless you disclose it to us?

One thing about me you would never know about unless— I am a triple threat theater actor.

What?

I act. What does that mean? Sing and dance? And act, yeah. And I've been doing that since I was about 12. Wow.

So do you get to do that kind of work now?

I don't anymore. Now my artistic time, if you will, is spent writing Substack. And I'm a bivocational preacher, so I teach about month. So that's when I get my time in front of people.

There you go. I'm a jazz violinist.

No, a jazz violinist?

Yeah.

Oh, that's hip.

I like that.

Yeah. So are you gigging in the PNW anytime soon?

No, I'm not up in that. I don't get up that way too often anymore.

Okay.

I live down in Central California. I live in the exact center of the state of California. I live on 10 acres at the base of the Sierra Nevada.

Oh wow.

Um, but yeah, I've been, I've been playing. I self-taught fiddle player, and then about 15 years ago started taking up jazz and blues.

What do you love most about it?

You know, I just, I just, the music is so fun, especially the older stuff. That's, uh, the dance music when it was back in the days before, during World War II and just after the big band era, and even before that. It was music that was designed to get people up off their feet. I can— I, I don't mind playing more mellow jazz now, but, but like, I'm learning a tune now called Four Brothers, which is a Woody Herman— the Woody Herman Band played. And I mean, it is in A-flat. It is not— it is violin unfriendly, right?

But it is the coolest tune, and it's the kind of—

it's the kind of music that just makes you want to get up and go. Yeah, pretty interesting. Just as— just on that note, the reason the big band— most people don't know this, but the reason the big band era ended was not because people got tired of big band music. It was changing the tax code. The Congress changed the tax code to start taxing these ballrooms that had sprung up over the '20s, '30s, and '40s, and said if you have a— if you have a ballroom for dancing and you have a band of more than 5 members, you've got to pay an excise tax. To the federal government. They were looking for ways to raise money, and they saw all these big band people making buckets of money and said, okay, let's do that. Within one year, every big band had quit.

Wow.

And all the— and then, then you started seeing these small— that's when we started seeing in the early '50s, I think it was '52 when that law was passed, you started seeing all these smaller bands like Miles Davis and— yeah, Dave Brubeck and all these people. They were all parts of these big bands. They all broke up into quintets, trios, and quartets.. And then the jazz club scene started formulating in New York City and Atlanta and Chicago. You could go into a jazz club, which is basically a bar. Nobody danced. Since there was no dancing, there was no excise tax. And it was a place for all these musicians to gather and play. And of course, New York City became a central focus of all that. And then out of that evolved, you know, many, many different types of jazz that from the '50s forward.

Wow. So thanks for that, that, uh, education. I'm sitting here listening, I'm thinking, um, the federal government created hip-hop because you wouldn't have hip-hop without jazz music, and you wouldn't have jazz music without, without having an Internal Revenue Code.

So they said we're taxing ballrooms.

That's awesome. Well, I knew you, you were cool. You just told me that you're from California. I too am from California. I'm from Long Beach.

Oh, there you go. Okay.

Yeah, so that's why you're so Awesome, Doug. Thank you so much for the time.

It was really a great conversation. Thank you.

Thank you. Absolutely.

Doug Noll here. Thank you so much for listening to Listening with Leaders. If you are a successful executive leader who would like to be on this program, please visit podcast.dougnull.com/podcast. If you got something out of this interview, would you please share this episode on social media? Just do a quick screenshot with your phone and text it to a friend or post it on the socials. If you know someone that would be a great guest, tag them on the social media to let them know about the show and include the hashtag #ListeningWithLeaders. I love seeing your posts and guest suggestions. We are regularly putting out new episodes and content. To make sure you don't miss any episodes, go ahead and subscribe. Your thumbs up ratings and reviews go a long way to help promote the show and mean a lot to me and my team.

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