5: Guest Dr Louise Kovacs

Welcome to the business of executive coaching. I'm Ellie Scarfe, an ex lawyer turned executive coach. Over the last 17 years I've coached in house, I've been an associate coach and I've run executive coaching businesses with teams of coaches around the world. My clients have ranged from global brand names to boutiques, startups and organizations doing good in the world. I now run the Impact Coach Collective and a community of executive coaches who want to level up their business skills and take action in a community of like minded peers. I'm a traveller, a reader, a mum, wife and dog parent and I know firsthand that our stories have a huge impact on our businesses. The executive coaching business is tough and I've learned all the lessons through plenty of mistakes and also with some great mentors. This podcast is all about growing a thriving executive coaching business. You can build a coaching business that is profitable, sustainable and that supports your personal goals, whatever they are. I'll be sharing tips and ideas translated for your context as well as stories from the field with brilliant coaches and mentors. If you want to level up your executive coaching business skills, then this is the place for you. We are very fortunate today to have an amazing guest, Dr. Louise Kovacs. And for her, I guess it's her demographics which don't really capture her brilliance. Truly. Louise has been a coach for over 20 years and has an extensive professional background prior to that in hr, sales management, corporate strategy and capability. She's, she's raising her eyebrows at me as I share her brilliance. She holds a Master's in Organizational coaching from Sydney Uni and a doctorate in Executive Coaching from Middlesex. She's an academic and a practitioner and she is extensively published on the practice of coaching and also the practitioners of coaching. And it includes work on navigating complexity, reflective practice as a coach, antifragility coach, self care and many more. And she does have a book in the works which hopefully she will tell us a little bit about. Louise's coaching experience is obviously extensive. She's worked with senior leaders globally in a coaching and a facilitation capacity. She's successfully built coaching businesses that have engaged teams of coaches around the world to deliver coaching and facilitated programs. She's also a qualified supervisor, runs for supervision groups and does individual supervision. And what is most significant to me is that I have been fortunate enough to have had Louise as my mentor and my very good friend for the last 17 years, years or so, and we still work together. So Louise, I've done my best not to make that sound like a Love letter. How did I do?

Pretty good. I felt really weird listening to all that. I was like, wow, it's the first time I've heard someone really summarize it all like that, which was a really interesting experience. And I'm like, well, I have actually done quite a lot.

Quite a lot.

No wonder I'm tired. I felt myself say thank you. Yeah.

Yes, it does, does make a lot of sense. So the first question I want to ask you because obviously I've read out the background, but it doesn't really tell the story. And I wondered if you could share with us your story, your corporate to coach story. So how did Louise obviously from the UK go from professional world to a coach based in Sydney, Australia?

Okay, I'll try and keep it short, otherwise I'll take up the whole hour just on, on that question alone. I was working in sales and sales marketing type roles in the tech industry. So. And I'm talking early tech industry first tech boom. So I'm sharing my showing my age there and I did that quite successfully in some big corporates and a couple of startups. And during that process I moved to Australia because I wanted to change its scene and I was fed up at the cold weather and went back to the tech industry here. But I was dissatisfied with it. It didn't feel particularly meaningful, just chasing sales targets all the time and selling electronic plumbing as I used to call it, as I was in the networking hardware space. And so I was looking for something different to do. I also felt like I wanted to do some more study. And so I had heard about the coaching program at Sydney Uni and decided that I would apply for. And that was early days for that program actually, because it was 2002 that I started. So I think I was like maybe the third cohort going into that program. And so that's how I made that initial transition actually from the corporate sales world to the coaching world. At the same time, we're going to answer another one of your questions here, but at the same time I had been working for a software startup here in Australia and one of our clients was a big industry body. And actually I went from being on the sales side to being a project manager on the client side part time. And that's how I transitioned over from working full time sales to part time doing project management and studying. And so that was my transition plan. I hadn't planned it that way, it was just in my discussions with the client they offered me that role and it seemed like an ideal way of working part Time still earning some money while I studied and decided what I was going to do next. My view was that with that particular master's coaching psychology in HR management was the version that I did would open, you know, various options for me. Either I'd be a coach or I'd work back in the sales management world, but with this whole new skill set of being able to coach people or I could go and do some sort of HR LND role. So I felt like that gave me a lot of options which is why I chose that versus some other specific coach training program. And then when I finished that program, I actually started doing some coaching and development work at the same industry body and in the industry. So they became actually one of my first clients in this new world of coaching and facilitation and training and leadership development. So that provided me with again some work in that, in that space and developed into my biggest client for some time. And I believe I actually brought you into the delights of the particular industry that we were in.

That was a very interesting industry. Not sure if we should share it. Well, it was the, the meat industry. For the audience it was very interesting work and I was very, very grateful when Louise brought me in because you know, I was building my coaching business but also just got to experience a workforce that I had not come across in previous worlds. And you know, I would say as we know, our coaching skills are industry agnostic but it's often difficult to sell yourself into industries where you don't have the experience. So I think when you do get the chance, it's really valuable. So let me take me back. So you had the part time role as you made the transition which is so valuable. And I do also, I say in the corporate to coach blueprint, one of my tips is the best client you'll get is the one you've just left. So if you can leverage work in your existing industry or organization while you make the transition, it's really valuable. But how did you know when you were ready to let go of the part time work?

When I finished my masters and I started to get a bit of work from, in the industry, sort of more on the training and coaching side. I just stopped doing the project management. I think the project was coming to an end anyway. So it's sort of a natural way of doing it and I felt comfortable that I could earn some money in, in what I was doing with the, with the meat industry. Actually the first couple of years were pretty tough. I do recall, you know, not having a lot of work, finding it very hard to get good coaching clients and ending up doing more and more work in the meat industry. And not all of it being the sort of work I wanted to do necessarily, but as you said, fantastic opportunity to work in an industry that I would never have considered coming from, you know, a tech background and you know, professional background. But I think, you know, to answer your initial question, when do you know, do you feel confident that you can earn some money that's going to support you? And you know, I think we've talked about this before, you have to give yourself a couple of years.

Yeah, I think that is. Do you think that's it? Is that the magical number is, is there a magic number of how long you should expect to take to build your practice up to being self sustaining, however you define that.

I don't have two years is the magical number, but I think it's a, a reasonable number to think about that if you can. You have to be prepared to support yourself or have the financial resources to see yourself through for a couple of years would be my guess. I'm not saying you're not going to get work in that period, but to be able to get a sustainable level of work, I do think it takes at least two years. Even jumping forward in my timeline here. But even coming back from Singapore at the end of 2019, I didn't really start to try and do much until Covid hit in 2020. It's only really last year and this year where I've had a really good flow of work. So even starting again back in Australia, it's taken me a couple of years.

Yes. Just to contextualize for the audience. We will go back into Louisa's story, but she was actively trying not to do quite so much work as part of this, this ramp up and I believe is still trying not to do quite so much work, but. But perhaps not more than successfully.

I'm embracing it. I'm back into embracing the work now. It's fine.

Okay, excellent. So tell us a little bit about your journey then after you started. How did it unfold?

How did it unfold? I was finding it tough to find work outside the meat industry. I'll be honest, it's hard. I'm not well connected in Sydney. I didn't grow up here, you know, it's a pretty parochial market. It's a bit of a blokey market and so, yeah, it was hard. So I saw an advert for a sales coach for Fuji Xerox and well, I could do that job that looks. That looks like an interesting job. It's basically providing coaching for the sales organization. So it really brought together all my background and skills. Was also a development opportunity for me in that I hadn't done that sort of role inside an organization. So it was a useful learning experience for me, but in a space that I was comfortable in. Sales tech, if you can call photocopiers technology.

They certainly did.

They did quite the sophistication of a. Of a networking company. But anyway, it was an interesting experience. So I found that to be really useful because I had a captive audience of sales managers and didn't coach the sales people directly as much. My strategy was to lift the capability in the organization. We had to lift the sales management capability and their ability to coach. So that was the strategy that I rolled out as well as bringing in some new sales training and so on. So that was. That was a couple of years of that before I got a broader role in the organization doing strategy and capability and expanding my reach to broader leadership development. So I stayed there for about three and a bit years, I think in Fuji Xerox before I decided what I really loved was the individual accept coaching. And again I made the switch by going part time, I went part time and then I was able to gradually reduce the amount of time I was working at future Xerox and do more executive coaching. This time though, I did it as an associate. So rather than trying to do it myself, I'd learned the lesson previously that it's very difficult for me personally to get work in the. In the market. So I was introduced to a company called MadsenBlack who were just setting off when I joined them. I was introduced to them by a friend and became one of their key associates in Sydney, which was fantastic. So they just fed me work right from the start, actually of when I started working with really great clients I would never have got into on my own. And that started me on that journey of working as an associate. And then a few years into that journey, they wanted to expand their business to Singapore and struggled to find local partner to work with. And so we decided we'd give it a shot and move to Singapore. When I say we. My husband and I moved up to Singapore to do that and stayed there for seven years or six and a half years. And we came back in 2019. I've already jumped forward to that bit and you know, on the basis of sort of working less. But Covid threw a spanner in the works because I needed to do something while we were not able to do anything else. So work seemed like a good, useful thing to do.

And in your time in Singapore, tell us about the business that you grew there.

So we started off as an offshoot of Madstone Black in Australia or Madison Black Singapore, and basically there was nothing there. And what's really interesting about this story is that it was easier to do business development there than it was in Sydney, which seems really weird that you go to a completely foreign country where you know, literally maybe one person and build a business from scratch. Now, again, I think it took us a good couple of years to really stand it up and get it producing good amounts of revenue. But we did that with a little bit of a partnership with Deloitte. We didn't do any work through them, but they helped us by running some joint breakfasts together. So we got a brand boost, I guess, by being associated with their people, leadership, people and culture, practice. Because Madison Black Australia had a relationship with Deloitte at the time and, and so that helped us a bit. But the rest of it was just going out there, meeting people, talking to people who knew people. I had a couple of very key relationships with people that I met early on, such as one of my. A person who became my friend who got us into a big mining and resources company in Singapore. So, you know, we had a few lucky breaks early on and we used some of the Madsen Black Australia contacts to build that business and we ended up doing work for a big professional services firm across the region. So we just had some good key clients that kept us a foundational business that enabled us to grow and provide work to the coaching pool that we developed. I think we had an advantage at the time that Singapore was a less mature market than Australia was. And so my background and profile probably gave us an advantage in that coaching was still relatively immature. They certainly didn't have the level of training. There were a few coaches with the sort of level of training and experience that I brought to the party and that enabled us, I think, to win some good clients and certainly some big multinational clients. It's much harder to get into the local market, into the Singaporean government market, but we did win a few deals in that space as well.

Wow. So Madsen Black obviously went on to be, you know, a pretty successful business employing a number of coaches over those seven years. How did you decide it was time to. To leave?

Yeah, well, I think we just got to the point where was it we had to get. We had some check in points, Stephen and I, about when we Might consider what we were going to do next because, you know, we had work visas to renew and a residential lease to renew. So whenever one of those came up, we'd do a check in and say, are we going to extend the work visa for another four years? We could have carried on for another couple of years, but actually I was really tired at that point, and I just decided I had had enough and I needed a break because, you know, during that seven years, we'd grown the business. I'd finished my doctorate, we'd obviously moved, done a lot of traveling, which was fantastic, and certainly not complaining about any of it, but I was pretty tired. And I just decided, actually, I just need to step back from it all before I start becoming resentful of it.

Yeah.

And resentful of the work and resentful of the clients and not wanting to do the work. So it just got to that point where I was done. And I think running a business of that size, you do have a lot of responsibilities. You want to keep the coaches busy. You take work that perhaps you wouldn't take if you didn't need to or wouldn't that we needed to, but you felt like you should. So there was work that we were doing that I probably wasn't. My favorite type of work in terms of some of the training, design and delivery. I mean, learned so much through that whole process, but I think I was just tired and I needed to step back. And we did. It was just time. I could have taken a year off and gone back to it, but I think that just got complicated with visas and so on.

Yeah. And so Covid obviously brought you back to Australia and you're a bit grounded. What does your practice look like now?

So now I've gone completely to another model, so I've tried them all. So now mostly I work as an associate for other organizations. I don't do any of my own business development, really. I say that, but obviously I consider the work that I do, business development and that that gives me referrals and. And so on. So I think that's. That's one aspect. It's not BD in the classical sense, but it still is how I get work, mainly through referrals. So I've got some clients of my own, and I've got two or three companies that provide me with work. And out of that, I've built, you know, a nice little business. Not. Not huge, but it's enough for me. I'm now really trying to be strictly. Only working Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and then the rest of the time I can do other things.

So a lot of coaches that I come across are really interested in associate work. And you, you've mentioned that you're doing quite a lot of associate work now. How, how have you gotten that work? So how is that? Because there's obviously the big coaching companies that, that work through the volume and then there's. It seems like you might be in a slightly different space. Can you tell us a bit about.

Yeah, so my work is a little bit more boutique, I think in that it's mainly through contacts that I've met over the years. So some people who might have been coaches in the past working for themselves have now got little coaching companies and they win work and they need a couple of extra coaches, so they might. One of the companies I've done work with is one of the ex Madsen Black partners. So my association with her has led me to lots of other little bits of work. So again, it's very much a network based BD type operation. I've just joined another big coaching company or bigger coaching company who wanted another associate in Sydney, again referred through a friend. So it's been a bit of a patchwork of people I know introductions. None of them are the huge big coaching platforms. They're all boutique coaching companies who need. Sometimes they're in Sydney and some of it's in Asia and some of it's my own through my own network and contacts.

And what would you recommend to someone who would like to do more associate work? Like what would be your tips of how to, how to go about doing that?

I think you have to research the market you're in to see where the coaching work is going. So that's a, you know, I think Australia, if you're. Any of your listeners are in Australia, it's a tough market, it's very fragmented. The big coaching companies are here, but there's a lot of small coaching companies. So I think networking with other coaches, finding out who they're working with, asking for introductions, I think that's a good way of doing it. Well, regardless of where you are, I'm sure that's a good way of doing it. And having a few. You need more than one, probably, unless you're in one of the big coaching companies. I have coaches that I supervise who only work for one of the big coaching companies. They're super busy. It doesn't pay brilliantly, but it's consistent work and they don't have to worry about bd.

Yeah, I have noticed though, that it's getting harder and harder to get on the panels with those big coaching companies and their requirements are climbing and perhaps disproportionately to what they're paying. So what really you get through that sort of work is that consistent flow of work. But don't think it's easy to get in the door. And.

No, I don't think so.

And it's a bit of a paradox that sometimes those boutique firms that are going to bring you in as an associate will have, you know, it might be easier actually to get in the door if you have a good relationship and, you know, they see you as a professional coach and they're likely to pay better.

Yes, that's true. I mean, they do pay pretty well because they're charging. If they've got good clients, you know, they're charging good rates and you get paid a reasonable amount. I mean, you still don't get paid as much as you do if you contract yourself to a big, to an organization, but you don't have the hassle of managing the client.

So this is a, this is a good segue. I want to talk to you about pricing. Your approach to pricing has probably changed over the work that you've done, but just broadly, how have you thought about it or what have you found difficult about pricing? That's two questions. Let me ask one question. How do you think about pricing?

How do I think about pricing? Well, you're right, it has changed. And I was thinking about this before we, before we met, about how it has changed and now, because I'm in the position now really of doing the work because I love it, not because I'm trying to make a big living doing it. So now I really look at who's the client, what's their ability to pay. I need to get a good balance of getting paid pretty well through corporate clients and doing some pro bono or low bono work. So I've got a good range there of people who pay me themselves and, you know, I assess their capability to pay based on their seniority or whatever. And then some corporate clients, I'm getting paid pretty well. So that's how I do it. Now, previously, when I was running Madison Black in Singapore, we would charge as much as we could get away with. That was basically how we did it, based on what we thought the market could stand, what the clients were used to paying. You know, we would put in a rate that we thought was reasonable and go from there. It's hard when you're doing it for yourself. I think Madison Black was easier because we were sort of a brand and I'm not particularly good at charging as much as I should. And so Stephen was very good at saying, no, that's not enough. Put the price up.

Do you think it's a pretty good rule of thumb that most people underprice themselves?

I think so, yeah. I think so. I think it's really tough when you're selling yourself.

Yes. Yes. Because all sorts of stories come up, don't they? And, you know, I mean, I. I even now say, you know, I can't possibly be worth that amount that I'm charging this company on an hourly basis. That's ridiculous.

Yeah.

How did you get over that?

I don't think I have. I still have to go to Stephen and say, how much should I be charging for this? And he'll say, it's not enough. So I probably undercharge all the time, even now. Yeah, I don't think I've got over it. I don't think it's that easy to do. I'm much better than I used to be. But there's still times when I. I could charge more. Definitely.

Yeah. But I think it's a really good point that everyone needs a Steven in their life. Whether that's like a professional context or your. Your husband or wife or partner or friend, someone who can say, oh, hang on, just have a think about, you know, you're maybe not seeing this objectively. And, you know, I mean, my recommendation always is to. To push the. Push your comfort level.

Right.

If you feel very comfortable with it. It's probably too low.

Absolutely. I think that's a great rule of thumb. And I will take your advice.

Yes, please. And in my experience, and I don't know about yours, if the price is too high, people aren't going to say, no, I'm not working with you ever. They're going to come back and say, it's a bit high. Could we adapt the scope? Could we make it reasonable? And if it's so wildly out of the world of possibility, then they're probably not the client for you anyway.

Exactly.

So, yeah, that's not a. Not a bad. A bad way to think about it. Yeah. Okay. And what have you found most challenging about running a coaching business?

Obviously, the BD side is tough when you start, so I think when you're starting out, you've got to be prepared for that. Being hard, that rejection's just normal. You've just got to get used to it. And it's not a judgment on you it's just the market or they're not ready. There's so much being in the right place at the right time that's involved in this kind of bd. So I think that's, that's a tough, the rest of it, I think once you're up and once you've stood up your business and it's running okay, then it becomes all about how you manage your paperwork and your admin and procurement processes with big organizations. And that's got more and more difficult, which is also partly why I choose the associate route because I don't have to worry about any of that.

Yeah.

So I think those are the tough, the tough pieces about how you keep a constant flow once you've got the business up. You can't, even after the first couple of years, we had some big holes in the pipeline from time to time and you'd look and go, oh, okay, I've been so busy working that now I don't have any work in the pipeline. So how you keep the pipeline full when you're doing the work and trying to do the bd, that certainly becomes, that's certainly a challenge, an ongoing challenge that you have to think about managing your cash flow. Because even though you're busy now, because you're busy now, you probably won't be busy in three months time.

Yes. And what about managing cash flow? I think one of the interesting questions when we think about our coaching businesses as businesses rather than sort of a, you know, a salary is how do you decide what to pay yourself?

Well, I think you've, you've got two ways of doing this. I think you either if you're standalone associ, standalone sole trader type business, you probably do have to plan what you're going to, what you need from a financial perspective and pay yourself not too much in the start because you don't know what's, what's going to happen. You have to set a very clear understanding of what your financial needs are and don't pay yourself too much in the short term, I think would be my advice. Because you want to smooth it out because you are going to have dips. So if you're taking it all and spending it all as it comes in, that's a recipe for having a big hole in your finances at some stage or other. Once you've got a successful business up and you know roughly what you can do in a year in terms of, of business development and revenue, then you can sit back and say, okay, well I'm going to start paying Myself X amount as a salary and then pay myself bonuses or you know, however you want to structure it financially for the rest of it. So when we were running Madston Blatt I had to have a certain amount of salary for my work visa. So that kept us paying me quite a good salary. But that was also roughly what I would have earned had I been working in a company in an HR team or something. So that was a good way of thinking about it. And then we just went out and made sure we made enough money.

Yeah.

To pay that. I think in the early days we might have had to put some extra loans into the company to support it. You have to think about how you structure it in terms of your company set up so that if you need to, you can put a loan into the company and pay yourself back later.

Yeah.

So if someone separate as a separate company.

Yes. And if someone was operating as a sole trader, I guess the equivalent of that might be having a buffer that have saved before you make the leap or having that part time hedge so that you can even out the, the, the ups and downs which, which will come. And, and you know, I think the ups and downs are the norm as you build a coaching business. It's certainly not the norm to have a consistent revenue flow perhaps ever. And that's a really, really. Sometimes some people can find that quite confronting.

Yes. I mean I think if you're used to having a regular salary coming in every month at the same amount, that's much easier to budget and manage your cash flow at an individual or business level. When you're working for yourself, you really have to just think about what do I need? How am I going to get that money? What's the minimum that I need and how are you going to make that money minimum? Is it going to be through a part time hedge? How else will you get that cash flow in and at what point? You know, if it's two years, you need to have a buffer that you've, you've put aside. I mean that applies to anyone starting a business unless you're going to fund it through a bank loan or some other form of investment into, into the business. But yeah, those coaches don't do that because they're setting up as a sole trader.

Yeah. And you know, I mean it's, it's absolutely not sensible financially to do the, you know, the deep end. Jump in the deep end. But it certainly gives you a different level of motivation.

Yeah.

To and hustle. So I don't recommend it. But, but you know I know that some people I've spoken to have found that to be, you know, their preferred strategy. So, you know, I don't want to, I don't want to make out like there's only one way of doing it. There's a lot. But I think, you know, what Louise has suggested is probably, you know, the most, the most sensible and sustainable way of doing it.

Well, I think it depends what your, what your commitments are financially because yes, sure, you can jump in at the deep end and go for it and. Absolutely, it's a huge motivator in my risk appetite. Isn't that high?

No, no.

To do it that way and if you don't have a lot of commitments, maybe, you know, when I, when I was younger and I was working in the tech industry and I went and worked for a startup. Yes, sure, that was a bit risky because you never knew what was going to happen in that environment. But I had no commitments at all. So if I had no commitments financially, then sure, I would go that way. But my, my risk appetite isn't that high. But certainly Steven's isn't.

No, no. Again, we all need a Steven in many ways. So did you ever hire help along the way?

Limited I had a virtual assistant for quite a while. We've had bookkeepers and accountants. I've still got an accountant of course. Again, I'm very lucky in that Stephen did all of the back end stuff for me. So when you say hired help, I had a hired husband who did all of the back end when we were in Madsen Black. He did all the legals, bookkeeping, chasing invoices, all the sort of interface with the big companies, procurement processes, all of that. So I think when you're at that level, you definitely can't do it all yourself. If you're a small scale coach doing associate work, you could probably do most of it yourself. I mean, I still don't do any of my admin. Steven still does all of that, but it takes him a couple of hours a week maximum.

Yeah, yeah.

To do that. I do all of my appointment setting and.

But you did. So, so if we think of, of Steve as, as a resource. Yeah, you, you would have had someone in there doing sort of, maybe it's not quite EA work. It's actually, I know Steve was doing quite strategic work as well.

Oh yeah, I didn't, I still did all my appointment setting and I had a virtual assistant and Stephen. So Stephen was doing all of the, the project management, the ops management, managing all the coaches, doing all the Procurement, processing, doing all the financials, all the regulatory stuff we had to do at Singapore, so. And some of the bd. So if he was, he would start conversations with people and I would only get involved when we had to show them what we could do.

If you hadn't had Stephen at that time, what do you think you would have done yourself versus gotten support with.

I think I would have got support for all the stuff that Steve did. I don't think I would have done any other, any of it myself. It's not my forte. I don't like paperwork, so I wouldn't, I wouldn't have done anything any different. I would just have. Would have to have employed someone to do what he did. He was obviously employed by the Madison Black Organization to do that, and he was a shareholder, so he used to get the benefit of that in terms of dividends and things. So I think, you know, that's. I would have done it exactly the same way, except I would have had to pay someone, which would have been another cost to the business. You know, that would have made it a tougher start.

Yeah, absolutely. And that is the tension, I know, for a lot of coaching businesses, which is, you know, how do I free up my time to do the things that are likely to, you know, have a significant impact. And in that I include not just coaching delivery, but really the bd, the business development, the sales and marketing. But I don't necessarily need to be doing, you know, the, the paperwork and I don't, certainly don't need to be doing bookkeeping. And you know, I prefer to have someone else manage my calendar. But, but that is an interesting tension, particularly when you aren't bringing a lot of revenue in. So when you're planning, it is worth thinking about, how are you going to make sure you have enough time to do the things that really matter.

Exactly.

And, and also, you know, I don't, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast I was going to say not pushing shit uphill by spending all your time on things that you're not naturally inclined to do or good at. That really makes you dread the business aspects. So, you know, I mean, I recommend outsourcing, but I do recognize that there's a tension with revenue to sit between.

Early, early days, you might have to do a bit more. And also I think it's good to understand anyway way what needs to be done. So perhaps in the early days you do have to do a bit more of it because you need to understand how the business runs at that level as well. But you can outsource a lot of the admin type things. Your diary management, bookkeeping that you could do right from day one.

Yeah, yeah. And you can do that in a really flexible way as well. So a lot of VAs have got very flexible packages that you can, you can use. So yeah, that's. I highly recommend it, in fact. So I have an EA who is virtual, so perhaps she's. I think of her more as my absolute queen of operations because she saves me. Thank you, Jillian. But I have also just engaged a virtual assistant to help me with more marketing tasks. Just the volume of marketing. So yeah, watch this space. I will report back on how that goes.

I think these. There's so many virtual options these days that you don't have to think about employing someone to do.

Yes, all of that work.

But you can, it helps you control your spend a bit more too. If you can say I only want to use, you know, 10 hours a month of this person so you can take control a bit more of the.

Yeah. And you can be quite specific as well. So you can have someone for admin, you could have someone else to do social media if that's a focus for you. You could have a copywriter if you wanted someone to do that. Yeah, so that's a very good point. Louise, I want to ask you a little bit about your research. So you've done a lot of research and much of it applies to our practice as coaches. So if you could condense, and this is a big question, you know, what is one big thing that you would want to share with an audience of executive coaches based on your research?

One big thing. Okay, I'll allow two. I think that's. I do one on the client side and one on the coaching side. So my topic is all about managing complexity or leading through complexity. So I think on the client side, when people ask me, I say the key thing is versatility. It's underrated. It got a lot of attention for a while. Everyone was talking about leadership agility and leadership versatility. And it seems to have dropped off the agenda somewhat in terms of what people talk about when they're developing leaders. But it's absolutely key. And by that I mean can the leader flex their style from what is their natural, well practiced style to something different, an opposing but complementary behavior that enables them to read a situation and be able to say, okay, what I need here is a more empowering style. I'm going to delegate, I'm going to facilitate conversation, I'm going To get the team to solve things but also be able to switch back to. This is a fairly straightforward issue. We've seen it before, we know what the answers are. We're just going to go this direction and they can become more directive leader. So that's one sort of poll and the other one is how strategic they are versus their operational. So that versatility model has proven time and time again to lead to effectiveness. I've got a great tool that I use. You asked me favorite assessments I think at some point. So I love the Leadership Versatility Index. It's a 360. It measures people's versatility, it's got good face value. It also asks about effectiveness and you know, the research is clear. Higher versatility equals higher effectiveness. And Rob Kaiser, who actually is the lead researcher and he owns all of that ip did some really great research during the pandemic and he showed that the people with the highest versus did better during the pandemic. Wow.

And do you tend to use that assessment in a lot of your coaching engagements?

How do you where someone wants some sort of assessment? I've got my two, the Hogan and the Leadership Versatility Index is my two. Plus the Leadership Maturity Framework and the Leadership Maturity Framework. The adult developmental, ego developmental perspective is linked to versatility because whilst I haven't done the research, I suspect and the theory would tell you later stage would be more versatile.

Yes, yeah, that makes sense because at that point we've integrated more, more ways of thinking about the world and ourselves and so we, we in theory would have more flexibility to adapt our style.

And when we're more connected to environment, we can read perhaps more what other people need. So you're seeing a more systemic level. So again that should help you shift to, you know, what's, what's needed. So that's on the client side. On the coach side, then you're also facing a lot of complexity. So how do you make sense of that? And so the approach that I chose to develop and use through my research and that I now write about and talk about one day we'll write a course about, and that's what the book is about, is the application of an approach that's common in applied psychology and more therapeutic settings, but is not common in coaching, which is called formulation. And by that we talk about how do you bring to bear all of your knowledge and experience as a coach and apply it to the needs of the client who's sitting in front of you. So how do you integrate all of the information they're bringing the story they have, the narrative they have with your knowledge and all the theories and approaches that you've acquired as a coach to come up with a personalized coaching approach for them. So the way that we do that is through formulation, which is all about understanding what the goal, what the purpose of the coaching is, and then what sort of perspectives you want to bring to bear and being very explicit about that. We all do it anyway. As soon as the client starts talking to us, we start coming up with ideas and hypotheses about what the client's going, the situation they're in, what might be causing some of the behaviors that they're displaying or that come out. In certain situations, you're already doing it. So what formulation does is help you make that explicit to yourself, to the client, and you can then say, this is why I'm recommending we do this approach to the coaching.

Yeah. And. And so you also do a lot of work as a supervisor. Does that. Does your approach and your research sort of inform your approach to supervision, or do you see those as quite separate?

No, no, definitely. I would. In some cases, I will teach the supervisee about formulation and help them then present their cases to me in a more structured way and help them structure their thinking. So it runs a little bit counter to some of the traditional coach training, which is you work with what the client brings, you set goals, performance coaching, set goals, help them, action plan, etc. And I'm not saying that that's not. Not a good way of operating. What I think, though, is that there are limits to that. And when do you know that the limits have been reached, if you're not really sitting back and reflecting on the client and their situation and. And all the things that you might be noticing, all the things that you're noticing about yourself in the interaction with that particular client, which is also useful information. So I absolutely do bring it into my supervision. So to try and help people think about their clients in a more complex and nuanced. Nuanced way.

Yeah. I think, you know, a lot of coaches tell me that the best part of their coach training is what they learn about themselves in the. In the early phases particularly. And I think this is another example of how we can even go deeper on that when we start to think about ourselves in the context of the way we think about our clients. So I think that's fabulous. And I will get you shortly to share with people how they can get in touch with you to talk about your book or your supervision or your research. But I want to just ask a few rapid fire questions, if that's okay.

Of course.

If you could coach anyone in the public eye, whether it's a celebrity politician, who would you want to coach?

Right now I think I'd like to have a go at Mr. Albanese, our prime Minister. Think he could be doing a little bit better. I think he's doing a great job in general. He's not selling it particularly well.

Yeah.

So I like to have quite a. A good him. It's not a very interesting answer.

No, it's fascinating.

I think it would make a big difference to, you know.

Absolutely. And so if anyone out there knows elbow, get in touch. Louise is offered. She's bloody brilliant and she could help. Okay, what is your. Do you have a favorite business book or podcast?

I really like the work that Cara Swisher does. I don't know if you're familiar with that. She's got two podcasts. One she does with Scott Galloway, who's also got his own podcast. He is a marketing expert. Cara is a technology journalist and she's been in the tech industry for decades. And I like theirs because they talk about what's going on in the tech industry, so I've still got that interest. And they also talk more generally about business and marketing and so on. And she's also got her own podcast called on with Kara Swisher. So Pivot is the one. Pivot is the one that she does with Scott Galloway and then on is the next one that she does on her own and she interviews some really interesting people.

Fantastic. No, I have not heard of either of those, so I will be looking those up. Thank you.

Yes.

What's the best coach training you have, you've ever done?

I think probably the Leadership Maturity Framework with Maya Stanubrevich Andre, here at the in Australia. She's done a fantastic job of bringing that theory to life and teaching the assessment. But not only teaching the assessment, but the way in which she does it is very experiential and, you know, you get a lot from it for yourself as a coach as well as learning the theory, which is extremely helpful. Theory of adult development and development.

Yeah, absolutely. I will put a link to Maya's work in the show notes because I would agree that one of the best trainings I've ever done was the accreditation on the Leadership Maturity Framework with Maya, which was absolutely fabulous. Finally, what do you know now that you wish you knew when you were starting out as a coach about the business of coaching?

I'll go back to something I mentioned earlier, which is about rejection. I think perhaps I was a little bit conditioned to it because I'd been in sales for so long that dealing with rejection wasn't so hard for me. But I think even so, when you're up in a beauty parade against two or three other coaches, you're not going to win them all. Yeah, it's not about you, just as it's not about you when you're selling something. It's not about you when it's coaching. It's hard to come to terms with that. Sometimes you think, well, they did reject me as a coach. And I always say, well, actually, I'm not sure they rejected you as much as they chose somebody else for whatever reason. And they're usually not very sound reasons. Sorry. To all my clients who've ever rejected me, that's particularly sound reasoning. Often it's because they wanted a man and I'm a woman. Well, I can't do anything about that. They wanted someone with a specific experience in their industry, and I don't have that. Or because they think somehow that's going to give them something which we know actually doesn't make much difference to the coaching outcomes. But people go into selecting their coaches with a particular story about what they need and what they want. And so I think just being okay with that and working out how you're going to deal with it when you. When it happens is an essential part of being successful.

That is such a good point. I once lost a chemistry check because the feedback I got was that I was too helpful in the chemistry check, and they thought that might have been all they could learn from me. Right. That was very interesting. I was slightly offended, but, yeah, you're right. Just, you know, if we genuinely believe that coaching fit is important, then we have to accept that we're not going to be the right fit for everyone. And that's not a personal judgment. That's just a matter of how it will be.

And I think one of the things I would say about working as an associate is you do get put into beauty parades. If it's my choice, and we used to do this at Madison Black, we'd say, we'll assign you a coach. If you don't like them, we'll offer you somebody else.

Yes.

It never. It. I think I had to swap a coach out once in the time that we were doing that because I don't really like putting the coaches through it. We do know that chemistry checks aren't particularly effective way of matching, and I Used to get quite good at matching the coach to the client because I look at what the client needed and think about my coaches and match them on that basis. I think my matching would have been more effective than the client picking one at random.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Definitely my preference too. Although I find that it's basically the norm that most organizations now will require at least two options for each coachee. Really, I think it's so that, that they can say to their coaches, you have a part in this decision making process to minimize that pushback, I assume is what it's coming from. But yeah, if we go back to that, that theme rejection is part of the business.

Exactly.

It is going to happen. And it can help to have a supervisor or a peer or a community where you can talk that through because everyone will have a story or, you know, 100 stories about when they haven't been chosen. And it does, it takes us back to childhood. Right. All of this stuff comes back to our own stories. It's like, what does it mean not to be picked?

Yes.

And so, you know. Yeah, we all have our triggers and I count myself among those people.

Yes. So I think it's a, it's a good one to think about how you're going to manage it and what support you need.

Yes. Yeah. Well, Louise, I, I think I could talk to you forever and most likely we will continue this conversation. We definitely will have to have round two. And I'm going to go back and take some notes from this recording as well because I suspect that some of the audience are going to have some more questions about some of these specifics that we might dive into. I'm very grateful to you for joining us. So thank you very much. How can people best contact you about your supervision, your coaching offerings or about the book that is coming?

Yes, they can look me up on LinkedIn one day. I'll build a website. If you go there now, it just says website coming on louisecovacs.com or you can contact me via email. Louisecovacs gmail.com. no dots apart from the dot com.

Yes. Okay. And I will put your LinkedIn link in the show notes as well. I won't put your email there because I'm sure there are bots that are going to scrape that.

I'm sure. Yeah.

For something and send you many spam.

I think tin is probably the best bet at this, at this stage.

Yes. Okay. Well, thanks again, Louise, and look forward to speaking to you again soon.

You're welcome.

Thanks for listening to this episode. Of the business of Executive coaching. If you found it helpful, please share it with a colleague or friend on LinkedIn. And don't forget to tag me so I can say thanks. I would be tremendously grateful also if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. More reviews means more people can find us. This episode was brought to you by the Impact Coach Collective, where executive coaches grow their businesses in a community of peers with business education, mentoring, deal clinics and more. If you'd like to contact me or work with me further, all my free resources, courses and more info on the Impact Coach Collective can be found@elliscarf.com have a brilliant week and I look forward to talking to you again soon.