Empowering Leaders: 6 Insights from Bill Zeeb on Nurturing Leadership Potential

Welcome to beyond you'd why Podcast, where we go beyond just talking about your why and actually help you discover and then live your why. You see, we believe that knowing your why, that driving force behind every decision you make and every action you take, is the essential first step to really knowing yourself. It allows you to move forward faster and have a bigger impact. If you're already a fan of the show, then you know that every week we talk about one of the nine whys and then we introduce you to somebody with that why so you can see how their why has played out in their life. This show will be more powerful for you if you've already discovered your why. If you still need to do that, head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. It'll only take you about five minutes. Now let's meet today's guest.

This week we're going to be talking about the why of better way to find a better way and share it. So if this is your why, then you are the ultimate innovator. You are constantly seeking better ways to do everything. You find yourself wanting to improve virtually anything by finding a way to make it better. You also desire to share your improvements with the world. You constantly ask yourself questions like what if we tried this differently? What if we did this another way? How can we make this better? You contribute to the world with better processes and systems. While operating under the motto I'm often pleased but never satisfied. You are excellent at associating, which means you are adept at taking ideas or systems from one industry or discipline and applying them to another, always with the ultimate goal of improving something. So today I've got a great guest for you. His name is Bill Zieb and Bill is renowned for his skill in challenging and guiding organizations across Europe. With a rich background of working with over 100 organizations ranging from the Global 500 to innovative startups, Bill's expertise is unparalleled. Bill's why is to find and share a better way. This forms the heart of his methodology and is driven by a tireless passion for measurable business outcomes. As a lean Six Sigma Master black Belt, Bill has trained and coached over 2000 leaders following his how of challenging the status quo and along the way unleashing over 1 billion in business value. He firmly believes that leadership is the key to unlocking and overcoming barriers in value creation. What Bill brings is a way to contribute to a collective success by focusing on fostering a shared vision and and structured execution, all while prioritizing human connections. His optimistic perspective is rooted in his conviction that leadership growth is a potent and robust tool, especially in the most difficult circumstances, often surpassing even traditional process improvements. Bill, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you, Gary. It's a pleasure to be here. And your ability to welcome someone to the stage and make them feel great is. Is unparalleled. Great to be here. Thank you. Well, thank you so much.

Now tell everybody where you are right now, where you live.

Excellent. Well, I'm a trailing spouse. When I met my wife in Germany, she took a job in Geneva and we moved just outside of Geneva. So I'm just over the border in France, overlooking the the Alps, where we got dumped with our first snow. So today was ski day number five this winter.

That's awesome. So let's go back. Bill, you were not born in Europe, right. You were born in the United States. Tell us a little bit about your background. Where were you born? What were you like in high school?

Excellent. So I was born in Chicago, and I was, I was always a little bit rushed. I was born before my father's final exams, and my mom couldn't wear the. The dress to his MBA graduation because I arrived too soon. Then grew up in, in Illinois on a big corn farm. And my dad took a job in, in Tennessee, where I grew up from the fourth grade to high school. So I went to a small high school in Knoxville called the Webb School of Knoxville. And I was a quiet.

Person. I. I loved the outdoors, so I would go hiking in the Smoky Mountains, the Appalachian Trail, and taking trips to the Sierra Nevadas and climbing Mount Whitney in California or are the Tetons in Wyoming. So I love the mountains. I love the outdoors. I love biking.

And I spent a lot of time on the school bus when I was growing up, so it was hard. I was spending three hours a day on the school bus because I lived far away from my school. But my mom really valued a great education, and that's why she sent me that.

So from Knoxville, you got on a bus for three hours?

I got on the bus. I got on. I got on a bus for an hour and a half from Loudon, Tennessee, to Knoxville, West Knoxville. So I was on the right side. So, yeah, it was a lot of time on the bus as a child. And when I got out of high school, I, I enjoyed those extra three hours a day, I can tell you.

So what was so special about that school that she would put you on a bus for an hour and a half?

I think it was. I think it was just the attention to the students and and the people that were in the school just made it a great, rich learning experience. And both my parents were very focused on education, and I'm very grateful for that.

Okay, so during high school, your big thing was hiking and biking. That's kind of what your main focus outside of school was.

Yes. And in junior high I played football. We went undefeated for four years, so I learned to hate losing.

But when I got to high school, I was too small, so then I went more to outdoor sports.

So were you a good student?

Woof. That's a tough one. My graduating class was 60 people. And I have to tell you, more than 1% of our class had perfect SAT scores. 1600. And I was in the bottom half of my class.

I was definitely not the most studious person. And actually it's, it's strange now because I have a huge quest for learning. I probably read between 50 and 100 books a year on leadership. So I love to learn. I didn't always have that. I didn't learn a language in high school. I learned German when I got to university, and now I'm speaking German and French. So most of my high school friends wouldn't. Couldn't imagine that I speak German better than anybody in my high school, probably because I lived in Germany 12 years.

Okay, so graduate from high school, bottom half of your class, off to college or no college.

No, I went. Went up to Northwestern and studied economics. Was there for 4 years.

Loved my time at Northwestern. Wonderful, wonderful memories. On the lake, running the Chicago marathon in a fraternity. A lot of great friends while I was in at Northwestern.

And what was your major? Who said Economics?

It was economics. My major was economics. And I took an exchange summer to go to Germany for an ISEC practicum. So our internship. So in my junior year, I actually went for the first time to Europe and worked at the Berliner Industry bank as an. As an intern. Okay. That kind of hooked me on Europe. And after I graduated, I knew I was probably going to be my. Like my father, he works quite diligently and very hard. So I said, before I start working, I'm going to take some time off. So I took that first year after university off and I bought a used bicycle and went over to Amsterdam with my best friends. And we biked 7,000 km from Amsterdam down to Greece and then up to Finland. And when I got home.

My friends were working because they had graduated. I stayed with my parents for a month in sorted mail at the post office. And the better way was already coming out in me. There Because I was, I was always finding a better way to sort more letters faster than anybody else. Right. I just can't stop it, as you so rightly say. And then I went to Steamboat Springs on New Year's Eve at 10 o' clock and by New Year's morning, at 8 o' clock in the morning, I had a season's pass, a job and a place to live. And that's the first place where I was able to ski 90 days in a winter.

Something is starting to come out of all this. As I'm listening to you, do you do anything like halfway or are you like fully in when you're fully in? I mean, who bikes 7,000 km? Who skis 90 days back then and probably more now? Is that kind of a common theme for you?

It, I, I think it is. And when I, when I latch on to something, whether, and you've seen how I've done this, even with the Y assessment, right. And with stakeholder centered coaching, I've, there's 5,000 coaches certified globally and I'm in the top 30 whoremaster coaches. And I teach. So when I do something, I like to do it right. When I, when I do triathlons, I started with Alcatraz in 84 and I kind of let go for two or three decades and, and I got back in and I, I wanted to do the Swissman and I did that in 2015 and then again in 2016. And I couldn't have done it without my coach, Coach Allen. He would give me monthly plans and daily workouts and, and I learned through him. He's retired Air Force fighter pilot, colonel, very strict, very focused and structured. You know, he would give me a workout and he would know how many strokes I do per pool length and, and he would know my heartbeat and the watts on the bike and the cadence and everything was pre programmed. He got me through the Swissman in 100 days. So from that point on, I'm, I'm a huge fan, Gary, of working with a coach to achieve more than we could ever do alone. And, and I've seen that over and over for myself and I, and I get a lot of juice, a lot of joy from helping other people reach dreams that sometimes they couldn't have even imagined. And that probably comes from my challenge, right. And which is my how and my what, wanting to contribute to someone else. So it's, for me, it's uncanny. I was very skeptical the, the first month I had the Y assessment because I couldn't really digest it. And the more you connect. You, you, you allow the why assessment to help you connect the dots of your past, the more it can help you to create and project the dots of the future in a way that's even more impactful. And I'm grateful for your work to first do all of this manually with thousands of people, right, all the way up to billionaires. Okay. And, and then do it all by hand. And I'm not sure how you did it, but somehow you locked yourself up and coded all of these words from these other people and created this app. It's, it's. For me, it's the most powerful, simple first tool I like to give leaders when we begin a coaching relationship because it doesn't require any outside feedback. It takes, you know, five or 10 minutes. The debrief is relatively simple, and as I've learned with some of my coaching clients, the benefits can be really big. When you find two people whose, as you've determined, nine different wise, when the prioritization of those is radically different, then allowing people to see and feel that and respect and appreciate that diversity unlocks teamwork and lets one plus one plus one plus one plus one not be five, but be ten. And there's a lot of tools we need to make that happen. But the why assessment's a great start.

That's awesome. And I love the way you talk about that because it, it is that first step and if you start there makes the rest easier. And that's, I know that's what you're doing with the Y discovery and you, you passed over something really quickly that I want to get back to, and that was the Swiss man. I don't know what that is, and I'm, I'm assuming some of the listeners don't either. Tell us about that. What is the Swiss man?

There's, there's a triathlon in Switzerland that's not affiliated with Ironman, and it's Ironman distance. And it starts at the lowest point in Switzerland in Lake Lugano, and it starts on this beautiful tropical island. And then you swim 3.8 kilometers, which is 2.4 miles point to point. You start at five in the morning and you. And then when you get out of the water, you jump on your bike, and the bike is Ironman distance. So it's 180km or probably 115 miles, something like that. The bike ride, however, goes over three spectacular.

Alps passes in the Alps. So first you go over the Gotard Pass, which has cobblestones that were laid by the Romans a thousand years ago. If you Google Swissman, you can. You can see the videos of the. Of the pass going up the Gothard. And so you ride your bike up the cobbles and then you go down and then you go up the James Bond Pass, which is the Forka the. The first pass is about 50 miles. The second pass is about 10 or 12 miles. And then you go up the third pass and then you drop your bike at this lake in this town called Brienz. You run up a kilometer. It's pretty steep uphill, the first kilometer. And then you go behind a waterfall. It's spectacular. It's called Giesbach Falls. And then you run the next 31km, you go to Grindelwald, which is such a beautiful place in Switzerland. And from Grindelwald you've only got the last 10 kilometers left. And you've been working for like 14, 15 now. For me, 1415 hours, the leaders, they do it and in nine or 10. But for me it was, it was like 14, 15 hours in the last 10 kilometers. Gary, I hope we can do a Y Society meeting over here in Switzerland. I'd love to take you there. You run up 3,300ft or about a thousand meters, and you go right in front of the three of the most majestic mountains in Switzerland, the Jung Frau, the Munch and the Eiger. And then you get to the top. And I've done that twice with the help of my coach when I was 55 and 56. I'm dreaming of doing it when I'm 70. I've still got a few years.

Wow. And so that's not like a small feat. That's how many people have done that? I can't imagine a lot of people have done it.

I think they limit it to about 250 a year. So it's probably been going on, I'm going to guess 15 years, maybe 10. 15 years.

So just a few thousand people have done that. And I mean, that's kind of another. In the scenarios of things that you. How many triathlons have you completed?

Probably my wife's nagging me to work with my daughter to put up a board with all the numbers. It's probably been, I don't know, 30, 40, 50, something like that, if you count in the small ones.

That's pretty amazing. I hope you're enjoying the show. Let's take a quick break.

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Now back to the show. All right, well, let's switch gears now and let's talk a little bit about business. So you.

Were in Steamboat the last what we talked and then where did you go from there and when did you start getting into business?

I went, I got into business pretty much right after Steamboat and I went to. I went to San Francisco and I met an amazing leader. His name's Kevin Davis and Kevin has written multiple books on sales and, and he's a genius. He's trained 100,000 salespeople. These are Kevin's books. The sales manager's guide to Greatness and Slow down, sell faster. So I was his first hire and he took over one of the worst performing offices and I had my territory went down into Fremont where the Tesla factory is. I cold called Mr. Toyota at Fremont to sell him office equipment. I got him. He didn't die. But I got in.

Thought me.

So that's a big accomplishment to get in.

Oh well, we knocked on a lot of doors. We knocked on a lot of doors. And so I was. My first job was in sales and I did Dale sent Carnegie sales training and, and after two years they didn't promote me. So my impatience is my superpower. So I left and, and then I went to Colorado and did some work as a business broker, worked a bit with my dad and ended up getting my mba. Going back to Northwestern to get my MBA at Kellogg. While I was there, I took an exchange semester in Germany again just as the wall was coming down. I was lucky to get into an amazing German university called the Bissenschaftliche Hochschule. It's in Koblenz. Whu. It's a sister university of Northwestern. They've created, they're so entrepreneurial. They've created 11 unicorns and they only have 150 students a year. I mean, amazing place, such smart people there. And so after, after that I, when I came, when I was studying, I said let's try and work in Europe. I went to work for General Motors Opel and now they're been bought by a French automaker. And I worked in finance. I lied to myself for seven years and I really, I don't regret that a bit. I learned so much about process improvement and quality and leadership. That's where I had my first coach was when they promoted me to be department head of the accounts receivable with 42 people. I was 32 years old at the time and there were. The average age in the department was 47. And you know, I found they needed better ways and accounts receivable and, and we had early retirement. So I was able to help the CFO reduce the number of manual workload in the department by 25%. And we retired everyone and decided to instead of replacing and we promoted the people who were there. And I'm really proud of the fact that I was able to open up some really nice careers for a lot of people there and did the same. And accounts receivable where we did another project reducing the manual labor and checking invoices. So we, we saved one and a half million a year in six months. So I got really lucky while I was at, at Opal and I realized I wanted to go into quality, but they didn't want me. And then I went to General Electric for three years where I had three bosses who were all smarter than me. It was unbelievable. I've never been around such intense people. The IT chef is a lady from the Netherlands. She knew all the founders of SAP personally and you know, she would go in and we would clean the old beta in SAP for this business with, you know, 20 locations across Europe. And that's where a lot of my integration work happened, both at Opel, because I was leading teams across Spain, Germany, the UK and, and Belgium. And at General Electric goes working with 22 countries. So I really learned as an American to take the neutral position and help integrate.

Europeans working together. And after three years at General Electric I was learning Six Sigma. But I wanted to take it to another level again. I, I studied six different GE business Six Sigma curriculums, different ones got with some other master black belts and we studied those and I was recruited to Delphi Automotive where I was master black belt in Eastern Europe. So that got me all these new countries. Turkey, Romania, Poland, Czech, Hungary, Slovakia, Austria. And I spent my time there in 11 factories helping 1400 employees to, to be significantly more efficient in producing cable harnesses and After a year of that, my wife was in Geneva at the time. So I said, as long as you fly me home every weekend or three weekends a month, I'll work wherever you want me the rest of the time. And so they did that and I was the only person in the company who had a permanent flight approval. And after I kept asking if they were going to extend it and of course I wasn't very self aware, they wouldn't give me an answer. But I kept living on the hope. And then the final week my boss told me, yeah, we love your work, we want to keep you and we want to offer you a job in Poland or the Czech Republic. And I said, well, you know, my wife speaks German, French, Italian and English at board level. She has her cpa, she's working with executives all around Switzerland and the un. Ask her if she wants to move to Poland or the Czech Republic with me. But I don't think so.

So it, so at that point I moved to, I moved to this company. And this was such a gift to me to be able to know Mike George who actually invented Lean Six Sigma. And so I was listening.

If people are just listening and can't see you, then you. Bill just held up a book of Lean Six Sigma.

Exactly. And Mike George, he, he worked with ITT Industries and their CEO Lou Giuliano to, to create a blend of Lean, which is Toyota production system and Six Sigma which was developed by Michael Harry. And Michael Harry also came to Northwestern. That's how I got turned on to this. He the better ways come to me and I just kind of discover them and follow them. So kind of been a follower of Nicole Harry of Mike George. And I was really blessed to work first at Delphi and then for George Group, working for a number of different clients. And then after George Group, I decided to start my own business. And I went from being an employee on payroll to having my own business. And we've, we built a team. And I'm so proud of the work our team did in the lean six sigma space. I've been blessed to train 2000 leaders to improve processes. And I know my better way and challenge caused me to know and contribute all together. They play together. So I was in the right, I was in the zone with this job because I know that every process in the world is 80% waste and I know that if we focus a bit, we can reduce a lot of waste. So I've been blessed to coach so many projects where I go to a factory and help them save a quarter or half a million. I had one project that saved tens of millions of euros a year and I was working as a dishwasher.

Because the dishwasher was holding up the production step. So, so I, I, I became very process and improvement focused and after, after seven, eight years of that I got a little tired and that's when I took a sabbatical and did these two Swiss man triathlons. So I actually took some time off and when I was done I, I wanted to go back to work and I wasn't sure what. And that's when I met Marshall. Marshall Goldsmith, who wrote what got you here won't get you there. He's the preeminent, one of the preeminent executive coaches in the world. He's coached 200 CEOs. He's also, he's in his early 70s now. He's one of the most generous, kind hearted and pay it forward thinking people I've ever known. He's created the 100 coaches which is a group now. It, it started as 15 and then went to 25 and then 100 and now it's 400. And the 100 coaches is now an infinity sign. So it, it looks a bit different like, like the infinity sign on becoming coachable. It's two zeros next to each other. Right? And so, so when I learned Marshall's coaching process which is measurable and data driven, then I, I, I went again. I went all in. And that's where I'm working as a master coach today. And the stakeholder centered coaching process is extremely simple. Basically you talk with a leader and you agree that they're going to do the process. Yes or no? You have to come with courage to try new things and to know you're often wrong and to make mistakes and do experiments which fail. You need humility to know that no matter what you know, half of it's wrong. And this leadership thing is not about you. It's about do you leave more powerful leaders behind you? Okay. And then it's about discipline, doing the work. And so stakeholder centered coaching, once you validate that a leader has sufficient courage, humility and discipline, that's the hardest part of being a coach. A lot of coaches will take leaders that don't, that aren't ready for that yet. And that's what this book Becoming Coachable is all about. Okay. This book is really about helping people understand when are they ready in their life for a coach. And then the, the leader will have a 360 assessment, either behavioral interviews or an Online assessment or both. Leader gets the feedback, the good that makes them. You should see how their chests puff up when you show them the good stuff. And then you do the, the final three pages of the report with the improvement areas and it's, it's a little more bitter. Some leaders call it precious. And then the leader picks one or two things that is going to help them reach what they want to reach the best. They announce it to public and then they pick six or eight stakeholders and each month they ask them for a feed forward suggestion. How can I get better at this? And then the coach, as a coach you sit with the leader, you distill those feed forwards into a half page email and the leader in a couple hours a month is able to not only measurably change their behavior. Gary. The leaders able to have their leadership improvement recognized and acknowledged in a mini survey by the people on the receiving end of leadership. And this is the model of coaching that Marshall has built. Of course there's a better way guy. I want to make it better. So as a, as a trainer for that I'm always listening and picking up on all the other coaches do it. And one other person or a couple of people I'm really grateful for are the people who created the leadership circle profile which is the Most comprehensive online 360 degree assessment that not only uncovers our behaviors and some of our behaviors bring more energy into the room and some of our behaviors suck out energy and we all have both. And there are different contexts where our energy is useful or less useful. And this leadership circle makes all of that totally naked. It's totally transparent. You get a 1 to 100 percentile rating. Can see in this on the back here. That's my leadership circle profile behind me. You, you can see how I rate one to a hundred on 37 different behaviors and they're all statistically correlated. So when I do less of one, more of the other happens. This is, this is taking stakeholder centered coaching to a whole new level when we can adjust those leadership growth areas to get maximum benefit for the individual and the collective. So that's where I am today. I coach highly successful leaders and teams in stakeholder centered coaching. I do that both in individuals and teams and it's a, it's a highly time effective, time efficient process that helps leaders reprogram their neural pathways.

So Bill, what is leadership? How do you define leadership?

Leadership. To be a leader you need to have followers. So there's a saying if you want to go fast, go alone. And that's what Marshall's what Got yout Here is all about the beginning of our careers. We all go fast. If you want to go far, go together. Now, if you ask me, what's the difference between a good leader and a great leader? A good leader is someone who's able to energize and motivate a team around a common goal and purpose and have the team really work hard and deliver great collaboration and performance. And at the end, the team said it was our idea and we did it. That's a good leader. Okay. The world needs more good leaders. A great leader is everything that a good leader brings. And on top, a good leader is continuously developing a team of other great leaders. So a great leader leaves behind them a wake or a trail of other great leaders that they're continually helping to develop. And never before have we known so much about leadership. Never before has it been so straightforward how to. How to help leaders measurably improve.

And never before has the world needed more leadership. And I feel with my why of better way and challenge the world and contribute, I feel right at home with what I do. And I want to thank you because you've helped me get your how is clarity, Gary. I know that because when we spend time together, we get to know each other's whys and hows and what's. And we share. We share. The better way is our why. And I want to thank you because your ability to get clarity.

It'S like an energy field. It's flowed into me and I'm grateful for that, my friend.

Thank you. Well, thank you very much.

Yeah.

Why do you think, Bill, that there is so much lack of leadership or is there lack of leadership? You said never have we needed more leadership than we do now. Is there a lack or is it just we're learning more about it so we're seeing how we can do it even better.

If I look back on my experience working in 100 companies, inner 400 companies, I've been blessed to see some extraordinary examples of great leadership and good leadership. And I've also suffered a lot from difficult leadership. And when.

Businesses are driven.

Too strongly for financial results. And don't get me wrong, I'm a capitalist. I know that prosperity is essential. And yet what I've learned from my coaching work is that.

Great leadership is.

More profitable than good leadership. And good leadership is more profitable than leadership that's less good. And leadership is a muscle that needs and wants to be trained continuously. So just like our bodies go through sarcopenia, when we start to be 40 if we don't really watch what we eat, how we work out, how we stretch, how we sleep, if we don't watch out, our bodies are declining rapidly. And exactly the same thing happens with leadership. And what's so. What's so interesting is, you know, my hundred coaches, colleagues, Jacqueline and Scott, and with the help of Marshall, they came up with a framework of when leaders are coachable, then they need to be open to four things. And the fourth thing has been missing, in my view. The first thing is you're open to change. The second thing is you're open to feedback. The third thing is you are open to action, to taking action. And the fourth point is the hardest one, and it's the one we all forget. And that is open to accountability. And lots of people do coaching for a year, but if you look at the very finest in the business and Gary, I'm singing to the choir because I know you have a speaking coach, I know you work with a coach. Right. And I work with two. Two coaches right now. Okay. And so the accountability part is the hardest one. And someone like a Roger Federer would never have played at his highest level without a coach or multiple coaches. And you look at pro sports players, these people have multiple coaches, and that's to win a football game. Business leadership are impacting the families, the thinking, the mental health of millions and millions of Americans. And yet we're not taking the time to provide them with what they need to strengthen that leadership muscle. And that's what I want to do the next 20, 30, 40 years.

How do you train.

The leadership muscle?

Thanks for asking that. And there, there are different ways to train, Gary. So stakeholder centered coaching is an outside in training. So in stakeholder centered coaching, let's say, or let's take the Swiss entrepreneur of the year, who I was blessed to coach. Okay. After his assessment, he decided he wanted to listen better, to respect even more his team. So he's a founder, he wanted to respect those people and he wanted to become a better coach to strengthen his team. Those were his two leadership growth areas where. And he's a competitive guy. Okay. He plays masters volleyball for the 60 year olds and you know, they're playing and they're world champions. Right. They're traveling all around the world. So he's a competitive guy. Many leaders are. And he picked those two goals. And outside in coaching means. He asked eight people around him each month. I'm trying to get better at this. Do you have a suggestion for me? And then people gave him the suggestion and the coach is way overrated. There's a lot of horse whisperer coaches where coaching happens behind closed doors. Stakeholder centered coaching is out there in public. So the way it's working is this leader declares in public his leadership growth goals. I mean we're going to write a case study on it next week, right. And share it with the world. And then his, then his employees or his team members, his colleagues give him feed forwards and when he went first, then his, the new CEO went second and other leaders go third and fourth and fifth and and so this is an example for me of a company that's using leadership to drive innovation. The company happens to make the world's best photon X ray detectors. So these are, they're like cameras but they don't use light and they take thousands of images a second and they capture images of individual atoms. They were used in Covid research, they're in all of the accelerators around the world. So you know, great leadership drives outrageously good innovation. And we the world also so much needs if we're going to make our way through with the global warming situation we have and all of the conflicts in the world we need, the world needs great leadership more than ever before. And so that's outside in coaching. Let me do inside out coaching is a bit different. The why assessment is a bit, has a bit of the flavor of inside out coaching. So it's about helping you or helping a leader learn to reflect, create a different daily meditative practice. My coach has got me journaling every day now. It's quite hard but, and at the same time when I journal I learn a lot about myself. So there's, and there's, there are many different levels of coaching. The more you get into coaching, the more you realize how many levels I've, I've invested over a hundred thousand dollars in 86 man days in 45 different coaching trainings the last eight years. Right. I take it, I take it really serious. That's not even counting all the books and, and you know, there's so many books. Here's a book that just came out this year by Amy Edmondson, the Right Kind of Wrong, the Science of Failing. Well, and she talks about elite failure practitioners and I have to say I would classify myself as an elite failure practitioner. That's something I aspire to be.

I love that. Well, you know what, what I love about what you're doing Bill, is that you not only lived it as being in business, many businesses for many years, you also study it at an incredibly high level. You live it, study it, and you teach it.

Yes.

And that's a pretty amazing combination because, you know, often the teacher is the one who couldn't actually do it. And you, you've lived and study it, done it at a very high level and teach it, so it carries a lot of weight.

And that's so kind, Gary, that you say that. And I, I, again, I, I wasn't aware of that. You do these podcasts in a very coach like way. It's really beautiful to listen to. If you haven't listened to Gary's other podcasts, he's got I don't know how many you have. 150 of these or something like that, right?

Yeah.

You've been doing these with a lot of fascinating people. And I have to say, for me, the biggest benefit for my leadership work has been.

To help me become a better father, husband and son in my family. And when I say that, another coach asked me the question, said, bill, you're so passionate about your clients. You, you'll do whatever it takes to help them grow. I can feel how much of your energy you put in there. I said, that's, yeah, I think that's a fair observation. And then this coach, her name's Karina Shriner. She's in Johannesburg, South Africa. I didn't go visit her yet, but she, she must be just amazing to see in person. We've talked on the phone a lot and she, she said, can I ask you a question, Bill? I said, sure. She said, bill, do you care each day as much about helping your son, your daughters and your wife discover and become their best selves as you do your clients? And I call that an impact question.

Because that question haunts me every day. As Marshall says, we create these daily questions and I, I try and ask myself that question every day, and the answer isn't always pretty. And, and yet I get a lot of satisfaction out of trying to just be a little bit better myself. That's my better way. So it's embedded in me.

Bill, what's the best piece of advice that you've ever been given or the best piece of advice you've ever given?

Don't try to do it alone. Get help. And help can come in many forms. It can. My daughter is an amazing coach for me. Both of our daughters are amazing coaches. For me, okay, get a mentor, get multiple mentors, or get a coach. When you want to strengthen your leadership muscle, don't try and do it alone. Get an assessment, get some other people to Help. Wow. I don't know where that answer came from, Gary, but.

Felt like it came from my heart. Thank you so much.

Yeah, well, you are proof of it and you've seen it with.

How many people have you coached now?

Thank you for that question. I love numbers. You too. I've probably coached about 150 people. Around 40 or 42 of them. I've coached full time over six or 12 months to get measurable results. And I've got their different certifications. So I'm a master coach in the Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered coaching community. The International Coaching Federation has different levels. Their master coach level requires 2,500 hours of coaching. I think I'm at about 2,300. So I'll, I'll achieve that level next year. So not my coach. Yeah. 150 people. Sometimes, sometimes my enthusiasm runs away with me. One of my clients, I see four ladies sitting at a table and I care about these ladies so much. And one of the ladies was kind enough when I walked up and asked her a few coaching questions to look back at me and say, bill.

You'Re gorilla coaching me. Please stop.

So the no shortage of energy.

There's no, there seems to be no shortage of energy. We'll see. I really want to work to manage it even more focused in the future. That's one of the things I'm working on with my coach now is to be even more focused.

So, Bill, if there are people that are listening, and I'm sure there are, that are saying, man, I'd love to get a hold of Bill. I'd love to talk to them about coaching. I'd love to work with them or at least learn more about how they can work with you. What's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Great question, Gary. Thanks for sharing that for the moment. And we're talking now, end of November 2023. The best way to reach me is through LinkedIn and you can find my email there and you can catch messages and you can connect with me and that's wonderful. We're going to put up a website in Q1. I've got that all in my focus now, so. So that's coming up. But the best way is probably LinkedIn if you're curious and you'd like to see more. My friend and president of Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching. And you know him, he's a friend of yours as well because we know each other thanks to him and Frank Wagner, don't we? Brandon James Margart and so, yep, Brandon James Margart has a wonderful series called Conversations with Coaches, and I was on the premiere episode of that with him for about an hour and a half. And I also was blessed to have a second episode that should be coming out in the next weeks. So that's another one you can find out. And I'm happy to connect with people and I allocate a certain amount of my time to helping others. So I'll give you an example. Today I had a phone call with Scott Combs. Hello to you, Scott Combs. I know you're listening. Scott Combs lives in West Tennessee and he's a schoolteacher and he's got young kids, so he wants to.

Continue being a schoolteacher, but he's curious about the profession of coaching. And I don't know, Scott, he just follows me and comments on a few of my LinkedIn posts and messaged me once and I just blocked some time for him and he and I had a wonderful conversation. So I allocate a certain percentage of my time just to helping people and paying it forward. And that's part of what I guess I learned from Marshall Goldsmith, who's, who's the master at that.

That's awesome. Well, Bill, thank you so much for being here today. I don't even know what time it is. What time is it where you are?

It's about 9:30 at night, but I'm lucky because I've got a call in the morning, so I'm going skiing in the afternoon tomorrow.

Well, that's awesome. Thank you so much for being here, Bill. I, I really appreciate you spending the time with us and, and I look forward. Of course, you and I are going to be staying in touch for many years. So thanks again for being here.

It's my pleasure, Gary. And thank you for your work, which is helping to elevate the world of leadership growth in your own way by being an extremely simple approach. And I don't know if I told you this story. I was working with two leaders and their whys were like polar opposites. Right.

And as soon as, and, and by the way, innovative teams need diversity. So these two needed each other. They're one and one is five. Until they understood their whys and their full wise. Not just their top three, their full nine. Until they knew that number one for one was number eight for the other. After that they loved each other and they became one and one is five. So your work is making a difference. I just want to know, let you know that I'm feeling that and I'M looking forward to many more examples.

Oh, awesome. Thanks so much, Bill. Have a great evening over there, and good luck reaching your ski goal.

All right. Thank you. Gary. Hey, great to see you. Wish you success. Hope to see you again soon. Maybe over here.

Sounds great.

I really hope you enjoyed today's episode and that through today's guest, you heard how important it is to know your why and how impactful it can be in your life and the lives of those around you. Be sure to head over to whyinstitute.com and discover your why today. Remember, the more you know about yourself, the more you'll know about others. I'm Dr. Gary Sanchez, and I'll see you on the next episode.