Stephanie Abbott on the Human Side of Change (for Coaches and Clients!)

Hello and welcome to The Business of Executive Coaching podcast. I'm your host Ellie Scarf, and I am so pleased today to have the opportunity to speak with Stephanie Abbott. So Steph is a coach, a consultant, a facilitator, a strategist, and actually she and I go back quite a while. So we met when, when Steph was in law firms and I was marketing to law firms, and although we never worked together, I feel like we were kindred spirits Steph has decades of experience in knowledge management, learning and development, legal transformation, change across the legal industry and beyond. And I, the key thing I think about when I think about Steph is how sharp her consulting brain is and how she combines this with her coaching skillset and her human centricity. And I just can't believe how much of an asset this makes her to her clients. And I think we also have a very aligned sense of humor. I think she is just wonderful and an asset to everyone she works with. Scarf. Welcome, it is so lovely to have you here.

Oh, thank you, Ellie. It's so lovely to be here. I'm having a bit of a, you know, fan moment. I've been listening to the podcast for such a long time and, um, obviously following progress. I think you were in Singapore and I was in Hong Kong when we first connected, which is— which takes me back. Gosh, yeah. And such a lot has happened since then, and it's all been good, really.

So yeah, it's been an amazing journey, and I'm, um, yeah, I love this full circle moment of getting to, you know, dive into your story a little bit. To start with, would you be happy to introduce yourself with a bit of a, you know, a high level of your corporate to coach story? How did you get to, to where you are today?

Oh, that's a great question, and I've been reflecting on this a little bit. I started life as a lawyer. Well, I didn't— sorry, I didn't start life as a lawyer. I wasn't literally born a lawyer, but that was my early career and what I thought I was going to do with myself. And it just wasn't what I thought it was going to be. And I turned out— ended up being far more interested in the business of law and in, I guess, the human dynamics in particular, the way in which people develop capability and expertise and how that gets deployed within a business context. And so I gradually sort of eased myself across into working more and more on that area of things. And of course, coaching came up as a really important lever from a capability development standpoint really early on in the piece. And I worked in learning and organizational development and knowledge-related roles, really, from my first time working in— not as a lawyer in legal businesses, or as a non-lawyer, as we like to— or we don't like to say, as we used to be called fee burners. Yeah, the absence of lawyers. Exactly. And I suppose one of the things that I've always thought is just what a powerful tool it is to be able to work with individuals on their particular journey of development and transformation and to sort of create some alignment and a sense of shared direction between those people as we work towards business transformation goals. So if you have a, have a challenge that you're responding to in the business, like people are perhaps, there's a gap opening up between clients and the people who are servicing them. Yes, you can run some really highly effective group-based training interventions. You can do all sorts of things collectively, but it's that individual level that really sort of shifts the process. So that's where my interest and appreciation for coaching as a discipline really sort of peaked. That said, it took me another 2 decades to actually formalize my own coaching pro— training because I was working with a stable of fantastic people, wonderful internal faculty, excellent external faculty, and that sort of bringing together that alchemy, which was lovely. And even though I was myself doing a great deal of coaching through the process of, you know, simply managing people and managing stakeholders, I just didn't quite cross the threshold into working on my own skills in that regard until I, I sort of decided that it was time for me to really make a change in my career. So fast forward, 3 very big roles in law firms, a few stints as a consultant. Later I was managing a global function, global L&D function, absolutely loving it. But things were really changing in my personal life. My parents were approaching the end of their lives and they were quite unwell. And really I didn't have enough attention and bandwidth to go around, so something had to change. I made a change and as part of that, I decided I was going to double down on the coaching skills and yeah, I haven't looked back. It's been fabulous.

Amazing. And you know, I can just see you going from strength to strength. So tell us now a little bit about, about what you do. So if you were, you know, giving your elevator pitch to someone that you cross paths with, what is the work you do now that you're in business? Is it just coaching? Is it more than that?

I do a combination of coaching, consulting, and facilitation. So I guess I, if I like to sort of draw that thread between individual change and collective change, and I see all of those, I guess, types of work as contributing to a, a holistic approach to businesses meeting their goals really. In terms of the coaching work, I, do, it tends to be very much on the executive coach side of things. And I guess if you could summarize, what I'm focusing on is developing grounded leaders that can thrive in complexity and who feel like they've got a solid, some solid pathway for them to follow, a sense of, a clear sense of purpose and integrity. In themselves and an ability to manage just the bear traps and banana peels that exist in the, in the world that we all find ourselves in these days without, you know, falling apart.

So, and do you mostly work with legal clients, or is there, there a range of clients in the mix?

I tend to work predominantly with legal clients. I've done some work with government, which has some close similarities, funnily enough, but also some very big differences to the legal world. And I've done a little bit of work in large financial service organizations and so forth. Yeah, every time I try and step away from law, there's something that— some gravitational force that brings me back, and I love it. And I do think there are some really interesting dynamics in the legal environment that are useful to be attuned to in other areas as well.

So absolutely, and certainly not exclusive, but Yeah, I believe you also, it's not just working with leaders, right? You sort of work more on a strategic level, on a transformational level with law firms as well.

That's right. Yeah.

How does that work?

Oh gosh. Well, one of the things that I think we can say of any, any business is that change is hard. Yes. And that one of the things we see a lot is businesses, particularly legal businesses, trying to approach change in the same way they always have and expecting a different result. So the work that I do at an organizational level is really about sort of diagnosing what's actually going on. What are the human dynamics that might be getting in the way of the change that you're going for? Because quite often it is comforting and easy to default to some quite technical and mechanical approaches to change. And to the extent that you pay attention to the human dimension, it sort of can boil down to training and comms and be a little bit sort of on autopilot. And then 6 months and however amounts of resources you've burned through later, the actual thing that you wanted to shift still is really resisting shifting. So the work that I do is sort of getting in there with the, with the microscope and understanding what exactly it is that might be holding things back and proposing ways of working through that that reflect the organization's sort of appetite, bandwidth, who they are, you know. Are they really going to— is the solution I'm proposing actually something that this organization can and is willing to embrace?

Yeah.

So I guess it's that last mile problem, or last 5 kilos problem if you like, Yes. How do you actually get through to the, the final bit of change that's going to make all of the difference?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because, because I'm imagining that this, I guess these two hats that you wear, the strategic, the transformational, almost the consultant hat, as well as that really human coach hat and potentially, you know, team and group programs sitting in the middle of that.

Yeah, exactly.

Um, that those things together are really what is the difference between something working and something, you know, maybe not quite hitting the mark. And I think that's not universally the case, that people that are sitting in coaching or in strategy have both of those. So I think that's like a really unique asset that you bring to the table, listeners.

Yes, I hope so. And, and I certainly feel that it's that way, because one of the things that you will discover when you start to get under the hood of transformation is it's sometimes it is the individual and collective leaders' mindsets that are the, that is the thing that needs to shift. And being able to tune into both those organizational signals and those individual human signals and find the right way of surfacing those in that may be not, for example, in a group context with a board or an executive, it might be in more individual conversations with them. That's— there's really an art to that. Feels very, very satisfying when it works, I must say.

Yeah.

And yeah. And the other thing that I think is really interesting is that I'm noticing is how much, if I take the professional services context, those senior business services professionals who are, for example, your heads of marketing or your heads of finance or heads of IT or head of innovation, chief people officer, how much of the organization strategy they personally are carrying. Ah, yeah. And how powerful it can be to work directly with those individuals and the senior people within those teams. And it's often an overlooked area.

I was going to say, yeah, people who historically have not had a lot of attention in law firms.

No. And you know, when you think about the ROI on coaching compared to the expectations and what's at stake in the execution of some of the strategy that these people are tasked with, it's actually a very cost-effective intervention.

Yes.

To, you know, to enable these people to sort of settle ground, work together well, and to get what they need to get done without burning out.

Mm-hmm.

Is a really a comparatively modest investment in— a huge—

Absolutely.

—strategic undertaking that they're carrying a great deal of. And the other thing too is that you've got people in leadership positions quite often in these professional services organisations who are typically doing their leadership role on top of what their, you know, what has their practice role, their fee-earning role, their practice leadership role, which involves still just exactly the same load of client work and business development, etc., that they had before they had the leadership layer put on top. So how do they reconcile that? Again, it's less— it's not so unusual for those people to have some direct support in the form of executive coaching. But yet again, I just think, oh man, it is such a clear and obvious piece of investment, very cost-effective, as I say, when you consider the impact that those people have on the organization and the between them thriving as a leader, stepping into that position. Yeah. Taking some of the friction out of that aspect of their role versus just barely surviving.

Even down to quite mechanical parts, which is a leader who can hit their leverage targets is going to be making a significantly different impact for the organization than one who can't delegate.

Yeah, one who can't keep people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who has a sort of drop-off at the, at the mid-career level in their teams because, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

So obviously working with a lot of, a lot of leaders in that environment, you know, and operating in this world where I guess we're asking different things of leaders now, right? Yes, in terms of the complexity, like what are you noticing or what, what's coming up with the people you're working with?

Oh my goodness. Well, Ellie, of course, what is the impact of AI is huge for all businesses at the moment. AI technology, the levels of geopolitical uncertainty out there and what that's doing to our industries. I mean, leaders are carrying all of these things. And if I can just dive for a second into the AI impact piece for a second, I'm noticing a couple of different dynamics at play and it'd be really It's really interesting to work with these dynamics. I think it's really important to give people a space where they can be honest about these dynamics and, you know, sort of normalize the fact that very few people actually know what's going to happen next, despite whole industries popping up purporting to know. Just even the process of supervising a junior staffer is being turned on its head, right? People had tried and true ways of supervising and delegating and developing their junior staff that have stood, you know, you may argue about how effective they actually were, but, you know, they felt familiar. Yeah. Everyone was kind of good with it. They've stood the test of time. And now suddenly people are asking themselves, how much more do I need to scrutinize this piece of work? How many more questions do I need to ask? What's the level of trust in the process that I can apply to this. And even though, even if practically speaking the answer to all of those things is it's all good, it's just the same, which often it isn't, there's even that questioning and uncertainty about, you know, does my mental template for how I supervise, how I give feedback, how I delegate work still apply, is just hugely disruptive for supervisors. And to your earlier point, some of the temptation is if I take some of this work back and do it myself, then I don't have to deal with any of this sort of uncertainty around.

And not just uncertainty. I imagine that we're also seeing a lot more insecurity in, you know, internal, which is like, well, these young people actually may know more about this than me, right? About these technologies that are emerging. And how do I grapple with this fact that I'm leading people who may have better skills than me, who may know more than me. And like, that's not the, the environment, the tone of law firm leadership, how it's been historically. And so that sort of— yeah, how is that something you're seeing?

Oh, a little. There's a real polarity between the importance of expertise and judgment and just that pattern recognition, and senior people who, or even moderately senior people, who are adopting AI in a skilled way are often the ones that are seeing the biggest payoff because they have both. They are— they've been able to develop some of those skills and they have the sort of framework that lets them judge the output and to either refine it or go, actually, no, that's not going to, you know, I'm going to stop that process there. I think the uncertainty creeps in where people haven't had the bandwidth to even explore, engage with the tools, or the hesitation about the sort of shadow aspects of Yes. All of these things, they have a, you know, a positive and a negative, are perhaps making people hesitate from, you know, getting their hands dirty with some of this technology. So on the one hand, you might have junior people that are very proficient at just using the tech but not terribly proficient at assessing the output. Yep. Meets expertise in the output and a limited understanding of how the tech actually works. And there's sort of this dreadful chasm opening in between that really requires a bit of collaboration and some sort of mutual capability building to work effectively. Yet so much of what is preventing this from happening is to do with identity and to do with, as you say, that, that leadership persona, that accepted position of being the one that knows. Yeah. And so we— I am seeing people sort of really requiring some support in heading in the direction of change that they know they ought to, which is having, you know, a curious, open mindset in a contained space, but also knowing when to flip into, well, this is my expertise, and now I can back myself to articulate how that expertise sort of comes about and how I'm making this judgment. Go all the way back to development, finding that leaders are needing to be much more explicit and intentional about communicating the why of why something is good or bad or indifferent or needs improvement in a way that perhaps has been not as important in the past. You know, it's sort of people were— had the both the leisure and the bandwidth to sort of do things again and to feel their way a little bit more and to be a little bit more vibey around how they might develop a particular skill. Yeah. And I don't know, I just— it feels like all of that is up in the air at the moment, and it's tough on leaders.

It's really tough. Yeah. And actually, what I'm taking is that, you know, our roles as coaches, as facilitators, it's not necessarily to help people figure out, oh, how am I going to work with AI? How am I going to, you know, train people in my team? And I mean, that's absolutely part of it, but also How do I just sit with this fact that it's possible that for the rest of my career I'm— there's not going to be any sort of grounded answer, right? We're not going to have an answer. Things are going to continue to change. Yeah.

How do I manage? How do I groom them and develop the next generation so that, you know, my legacy in the work that I'm doing is, you know, carried forward? And how do I actually survive this period myself without just sort of doing all the work and worrying about everything and being being the sort of load-bearing bolt that— yeah, yeah. So it's an interesting time. There's some genuine help needed for leaders, I think, in this position, and it really does make a difference when applied judiciously because these are incredibly smart people. Absolutely. Who are very capable of finding a way through all of this, but you just sort of need to be able to help manage that, I guess, that nervous system static and just the white noise and the everything everywhere all at once that's coming at people and saying, let's find this one little oasis of quiet and certain and, you know, find the certainty that you need to take one step forward in this and solve this particular aspect of this problem today. So it's a, it's a really interesting process.

And so for an organization, grappling with these, wanting to do the right thing, support their people, support their leaders, be strategic. Like, what would the gold standard look like for an intervention? Like, how would they engage you to come in?

What would you do? Well, I think it comes down to giving teams space to think collectively about these things in a way that doesn't feel like, you know, navel-gazing or admiring the problem, but that makes it sort of acceptable and okay to say, look, we don't have all the answers yet. We're going to try a few things. Yeah. To pool their collective wisdom.

So that would be like a leadership team or an executive team? Oh, leadership team.

I've done some work that's been very effective across practice teams with different roles represented in the room, really almost a process design kind of workshop, but a little bit more, you know, strategic than that. So thinking about what are the dynamics out there for this particular team, what are the potential sources of competition? What are we worried about? What do we think are our strengths and how do we build on those strengths? And what are, you know, 5 things we can try differently together over a time-bound period? And it is more challenging than you might expect to get people to carve out that collective.

Oh no, it does not surprise me in any way, but it may— yeah, it is maybe one of the the biggest challenges?

Oh yeah, well, absolutely. Just literally getting the diaries to align and to not take too much time. Yeah. And to make it feel and actually be practical, but without sort of rushing to solutions and creating artificial certainty where really none exists. And just making it an experiment that feels both manageable And safe enough, like it shouldn't feel safe, frankly, to experiment. That's sort of almost the point. If it's safe, it's not necessarily— I love that. So interesting.

Yeah, because actually the process itself is an example of the challenges we're grappling with. And so the experience of working through it is almost like it's like Project Zero and now Project One, and the experiments are going to come up, will emerge. I love that. And so then I'm assuming from that type of work, then we look at various experiments, various interventions that might include things like different applications of coaching, different, different skills development, different ways of working. Yeah.

And from there you can sort of follow the bouncing ball, if you like, into things like peer coaching or targeted coaching intervention with the people who are, you know, and there will be someone who ends up carrying a lot of the work of this internally. So they're the ones that probably need a bit more support and a bit more attention as they add this to their already heaving to-do list, no doubt. Yes. And similarly, the leaders, the people that need to have that person's back, it can be challenging for them to adopt a different lens to what does good look like than the one that is typically unconsciously recognized and rewarded within their practices. So sort of just directing people back to remember we were— we had some sort of ground rules about how we're going to decide what good looks like in this space. And Ellie, you're 100% right, that facilitation and the experience of working together is itself part of the change, right? Because people get a taste, a lived experience of what it's like to work together in this different way. And for some practices, just honestly spending that time together outside the context of like a morning tea or an end of year lunch or some sort of retreat that happens once a year is really unusual. Yeah, it's like, well, we can get a lot of things done in half an hour or 1 hour if we, if we set aside the time and use it well.

So yeah, yeah. And investing in those relationships will change the way we work together, just absolutely. Yeah.

And I think the other thing that's really powerful is to give people a taste of noticing dynamics in a group setting. So, you know, this rather than just thinking, oh, something feels off, but I'm going to sort of censor, censor what I say because I can't accurately identify it. To be able to give people the skills to almost use those coaching skills with each other, such as, you know, are we— it feels like there's something else that we should— that we're not saying here. What is it? I wonder, does anyone else feel like that? Or it feels like we've decided what to do quite quickly. Is there another way we can look at this problem? And just sort of asking those open questions rather than either sort of allowing imposter syndrome to say, I'm feeling this, but everyone else seems fine, so I must be wrong. Or just waiting to have the answer and heading to that comfort zone of expertise.

And yeah, well, and that's where, you know, working with someone like yourself, Steph, who you don't just have credibility as a facilitator and coach, you have this credibility of actually knowing that you've walked alongside them. And they can trust that you get it, I think it's really, it's really powerful.

And look, I know what this world is like, and I sort of know what the pressures are. So it's a real privilege to be able to both sort of walk with people but stand outside the dynamics a little bit, and to be the one that can name things when at first perhaps it's not quite so easy for people who are within the group dynamic and within the system to do that. So absolutely, to make it a bit more accessible.

Yes. So in terms of how organizations can work with you, you know, the sort of the, the suite of services that you have, like, what do you do? Obviously, I'm taking from this conversation that it's pretty bespoke, right? That there is a creation process, but I'm sure that there are some foundations.

There are some foundations. So the work that I do with teams you know, it has a familiar pattern. So I would typically either work with a set of leaders to understand what it is that they're trying to achieve and propose like a couple of different interventions. Usually it might be a series of sessions with a cross-section of teams to work with that, and that might be attached to a broader consultation program, in which case I'd be tapping into some of the colleagues and networks that I work with as a consultant. It's so— I just— it's important for me to stress that I'm not always, and in fact I'm often not, just completely solo on some of these really big organisational change pieces of work. If the work is more around either one or two leaders trying to get to the heart of what it is that— what is the work, for them, then that's usually perhaps better approached as a coaching consultation, one-on-one work with them to help formulate that. And at that point, that might actually turn into something that's a little bit more defined, but really it's helping them to solve the problem. So, yeah, does that answer the question?

It does. Yeah. So I guess I was kind of— the services you offer really are this more of a team-based intervention, but the composition of that team will depend on the need of the organization. And then there's the coaching that then emerges out the back of it, which may be individual, may be team.

Yeah, yeah. And there's a dementia— there's a service where the coaching is actually the starting point. Yes. To help those people who are trying to move towards what are we doing here, what's the problem to solve. We think we might know, but we're not sure. To actually sit with them and get under the hood of what it is that they actually are trying to solve in the first place. Yeah. So that's usually, that could be a one-off deep dive session for those leaders to just get some clarity about what it is that they, that's the work for them. Yeah. Or it could be a more sustained series, usually 6 sessions, 4 to 6 sessions is a good number there.

Yeah. And I'm going to, we'll talk about this at the end of the episode, but if an organization is listening in and it's like, oh my God, we absolutely need Steph, like, what is their best way to get in touch with you?

Oh, look, they can get in touch with me on LinkedIn or directly via my website, which is—

Yeah, we'll include that in the show notes for sure, just to make sure, because I'm imagining a lot of people listening in are in that sort of HR learning function and might be listening to this bit going, oh yes, absolutely, this is what we need. So I'd want to make sure that they can get in touch with you.

And look, there's a lot that can be done working with those people teams to say, look, what's the problem we're being asked to solve here? Where is our sphere of influence and where do we need to actually tap into a broader cross-section of people? Where is it a collaboration and what is it that we can do on our own to push things ahead and to evolve things? Really getting clear about that is often an extremely powerful exercise in itself. Yeah. No, I— I've sat in those people teams. Yes. Myself. So I know what it's like and I know what's often being asked of these people. Yeah. So it's a very useful exercise to just get together and get clear in that space.

Absolutely. Really encourage anyone to reach out to Steph if they're in that position. So obviously your, your, the experience that makes you so well suited to do this work is partly your coaching training experience, the work you've done, but it's also, you know, the, the whole of your professional career really, right from those days as a lawyer. What was it like to actually say, I'm gonna set up a business doing this?

Wow. Well, I, I mean, I suppose I'll just say two things. First of all, I've been through stints of my, in my career working as a consultant, working for myself. So I do have a sense of what that's like, but really backing myself as an individual contributor, cuz typically I've worked with others exclusively in those consulting spaces, and that's still a part of what I do. But there's a dimension that is just, you know, it rests on my own expertise. That has been surprisingly challenging to really sort of be clear about what is the value that I bring, to not fall into the trap of being too self-effacing, and to, I guess, balance what is a real growth mindset that's been sort of a lifelong value for me. So I always feel like I can learn so much more from other people. Than they can learn from me. But, you know, that's not what the evidence suggests as well. You know, plenty of people come to me for my expertise and so forth. So just reminding myself that there is a unique contribution here that I can make and that doesn't water down the joy and the need to continuously learn and develop.

And yeah, I love that so much because I'm pretty sure that coaches listening to this episode have probably listened to the last, I don't know, 20 minutes of our conversation and been like, wow, she knows what she's talking about, right? And then to hear that you have that same experience, uh, that most coaches do of going, oh, you know, there is something in there that is hard about putting my expertise out there in the world in a way that, you know, is sort of uncompromising and just saying, hey, this is what I can do and this is how I can help. I think it is So important that we share that this is such a universal experience. And like you said, it doesn't detract from the fact that we, you know, the humility, there's a desire to learn in all these, all these places, but also we do get to sit and own that expertise as well.

Yeah. It's a really interesting balance, Ellie, and you and I have spoken about this before. I just, I think purely from a coaching ethics perspective is, you know, in my own case, balancing this experience and expertise that people find, you know, people come to me for. With the process of coaching with an open mind, with curiosity, without necessarily pushing answers towards— pushing clients towards answers, to a joint exercise in exploration. There's a real art to knowing which hat you're wearing at what time. And that's quite— that, as it turns out, is quite a deep process for individual coaches as well, to sort of balance that core coaching skill of curiosity and openness and co-creation with a solid grounding of your own expertise and experience, knowing when one needs to come forward and when you're sort of leaving that coaching zone and when you actually need to be in pure coach mode. It's very, very interesting and at times challenging but enjoyable balance to strike. Yeah. Yeah.

And I might make a parallel, I guess, or an analogy of that to our marketing, right? Which is there are times when We need to stay very in our expertise and our authority and really back ourselves and be willing to put that out there. And there are times when it is actually more, more powerful for our marketing to, you know, show that side that is more, you know, open to learning and humble and, and, you know, self-effacing to a degree insofar as it, it is relatable, right? That actually people want to work with us because we grapple with the same human experiences that they do. Yeah, because we're human.

We're not perfect. We're not some sort of polished, you know, infomercial level magazine. Yeah. It's a very real human experience. And that's what people, I think, need from their coaches is a, is a sense with the right amount of objectivity. And yeah.

Yeah. So when growing your business, like, what have you found the biggest challenges to be?

Visibility has been. A challenge for me. I am a natural networker and I love connecting with people and hearing about their story and their world and what they're up to. And then, so that's less of an issue, but then combining that with, here am I, here I am, this is how I can work with you, this is what I do, this is what I'm good at, that's been quite challenging. And Ellie, I think you said something a while back that really resonated for me through the Accelerator, which was if if there's stuff that you haven't worked on in your own identity, it's all going to come out when you try and run a business. It's all going to be right there in glorious technicolor for you to deal with. Now's the time. Yeah. And so, and boy, is that true. That's really been, yeah.

I do think we underestimate how much business is a therapeutic tool as well. It's like, here's this learning journey that we get to go on. And absolutely.

And I think for those of us, it will— I think it's true of anyone, but when you've been sort of baked in the oven of law firms and where perfection, perfectionism is such a virtue, yes, such an unmixed virtue, when in fact in reality it has a very long shadow at times, the sitting comfortably with 75, 80% or as being enough to get yourself out there because the perfect outreach email that's never sent is no good to you at all compared to the 75% not overthought email that actually hits the person that needs you at the moment that they need you. Huge difference there. I love that.

That's such a good reflection.

Yeah. And I think one of the beauties of working, and I might just shout out at this point to the Coaching Accelerator group and to your work in pulling that particular gosh, that amazing resource, that amazing experience together is just to that camaraderie that allows you to encourage one another and to call out when people are, you know, when I, when others are perhaps holding back a bit and trying to protect yourself from, mm-hmm, yes, visibility, from exposure, all of those sorts of things, from taking the risk that maybe someone won't Maybe everyone won't want to work with you today. Yes. Yeah. That sort of encouragement and also a reminder that, you know, it's not, it's not just all about you.

You know, that's helpful actually to think about that.

What you're doing is you're sort of making yourself known to prospective clients who may, and some of those clients will absolutely need to work with you right now. Yeah. Others might just want to file you away for later and others, you just, it's, it's not personal. It's just, just not, not a good match. So yeah. Yeah.

And I think we kind of get okay with that with coaching, right? We learn that we're not the right coach for every coachee, right? There's this quality of connection that's there. And I think when we think of that in terms of organizations as well, sometimes that's a little bit liberating is Just have to find, find the right fit, find the right people.

Yeah, liberating is the word. Yeah, it is. And it is just not necessarily, it's not all down to things that are about us as business owners that are about, you know, it is about just finding your right niche within the big world out there.

And so if you were going to give some tips to a new coach starting a business, what suggestions, ideas do you have for them? Oh, golly.

Well, I think one of the number one suggestions that's really resonated for me is to make time to work on the business, not just in the business, and to push through the ick if you've got a bit of a sales ick, a sales ick. Yeah. And that, that's not necessarily about suddenly becoming a sort of used car salesperson persona, but. About finding the way in which you can communicate with people who might need your services, if you think of it that way, in a way that actually reflects who you are and it's authentic. And if that's not for them, it's okay. Yeah. So that would be the first time is to— first one is to carve out some time, have a structure, and have a plan. And it's been invaluable to have a lot of that sort of thinking and second-guessing done for me through my involvement with the accelerator. The next thing is to have some friends, to have a community, people who are working in the same or an adjacent space that you can collaborate with, that you can share ideas with, that you can bounce off, commiserate with, offer— yeah, commiserate with, normalize the setbacks, ride the roller coaster with them, basically. Yeah. And, you know, someone else might be at the top with their hands in the air and whooping, and someone else is heading down the slope. And yeah, it sort of makes it all this, that much easier to deal with.

And yeah, because I think having other people on that roller coaster but at different points does make you go, when you're at the bottom, go, it will come up again.

It will come up again. It will. Absolutely.

Yeah. Um, and that's hard to hold on to when you're sometimes in the deep, especially if you're on your own, if you're sitting there in isolation. I think that's a really good, a good reflection.

Yeah, the community is just so powerful because you just see people finding their own authentic way through what are common problems, common challenges, and finding those opportunities that are unique to them. And you think, oh, yes, you go, and that is very encouraging. Yeah, it's inspiring.

I think it's inspiring so long as we don't only look at the wins, right? I think we have to have the wins coupled with actually, let's share the downs as well. And I think that it's that combination that is inspiring and reassuring and allows us to just, you know, be with the experience.

Absolutely. Totally agree. Those, I think, are the really big ones for me. I can't stop myself from learning continuously. I have a reading list that's frightening that I actually need to get a match and just go, you know what? Yes. The future Steph that was going to read all that, she's not coming anytime soon. So let's just deal with that.

Oh, Steph, I feel like AI, you could just give that list to the AI and say, give me the 10 nuggets from this extensive list that would take me a year to write.

I'm actually, I do have some slight hoarding tendencies when it comes to useful readings and— You're not on your own. I think you're already getting— I'm actually about to embark on an experience of getting AI to really nicely index it for me and to, yeah, so we'll see how that goes.

Beautiful. Yes, I did get Claude to clean up my desktop recently and it did a very good job.

So good. Well, there you go. That's a, that's a great call. I'm gonna hopefully going to let one of them loose in my file of stuff to read and let's see what happens. I love it. I love it. I'm hoping to have some nice folders and sort of a priority list, but let's see how that goes.

Just, just to, you know, as I'm conscious of it, we're getting close to our time. Yep. What are you most proud of since you started? Oh, wow.

Across my, well, I'm very proud of the business I'm building. I'm excited about that and I'm extremely, I'm extremely proud of that and I love that some really clear areas of focus and that are really falling into place. I'm very proud of that. Looking back over my career, I think one of the things that I'm most proud of is, and this was in my role as a, I guess, coach leader, the teams that I've built at the organizations that I've worked in, and I include in that the, some of the consulting work that I've done, it's just been so extraordinary to see some of the sort of younger people that I've mentored and the team members who are coming up through the ranks, sort of my leadership team, really just go on to some amazing bigger and better things and that we're still connected. It's just so satisfying to see that sort of next generation, those next generations come through. So it's that, and to be fair, most of that's them. Yeah. But of this being spoken like a true coach, part of their— it's been a real privilege to be part of their journey and to give opportunities and to give, you know, sometimes feedback at the right time or encouragement at the right time that let people step forward in a way that perhaps they wouldn't have before. So that's, that's, I think, one of the things I'm most proud of in my career. Amazing.

Oh, I love that. Thank you so much. Now, to wrap up, and this has been an extraordinary conversation, I'm going to ask you some rapid-fire questions, if that's okay. Yeah. If you could coach anyone in the world, who would it be?

Oh, wow. Well, I, I need to sort of preface this by saying my earlier comment about I, I'd almost love to be coached by these. Do I have to pick one? I've got 3. Ellie Scarf. Give us 3. All right. Grace Jones. Amazing. Yes. I'd be happy to just get on the disco floor with Grace, to be honest. But I'd so love to sit down with her and, yes, really unpack some of the expertise and the incredible approach she's brought. Banksy. Same comment. I don't know about the dance floor. I've got no idea how— what sort of a dancer Banksy is. But the other one And again, it's that space of coaching where you learn as much from the coaching. In fact, in this case, infinitely more. David Attenborough, just, he's just been in the news with his 100th birthday. Yeah. Oh, and just, just the love and joy and awe that he's sort of rippled out through the world around just appreciation and, and valuing of the natural world.

Yeah, just so striking.

Such a force for good.

Oh, I love all of those. I think that— I think what a combo.

Imagine the dinner party. That'd be probably good fun.

And you know, I have a suspicion that all three of those people are actually excellent business people as well, but really purpose-led. Hugely purpose.

Yeah, I think. Yeah, interesting. Absolutely. Yeah.

Okay, could you share a podcast or a book recommendation?

I can share— well, I'll share a book recommendation. So many podcasts. Ellie's podcast, of course, is awesome and has such fabulous guests. Thank you. But, uh, a book that's really struck me recently, and it's not a new book, but it's this one. It's called On Looking by Andrea Horowitz, and it's, again, it's a great sort of coaching mindset book because it's effectively a cognitive scientist who specializes in Animals and Dogs, Ellie Scarf, had been going for a walk with her toddler and with her dog and just around the same city block of New York and just seeing how differently they saw the world. And so she began to do these walks with people from different disciplines. So a geologist, a typographer, a specialist in human fluid dynamics, if you like. So crowd control and that sort of thing, and an artist. And just really listening and asking how they— what they see and what they perceive. So it's about that curiosity and also the really powerful reframing and, you know, just fabulous little trivial insights. A naturalist was one of them. Oh, yes.

Excellent. Yes. Not to be confused with a naturist.

No. Well, that would certainly perhaps not— maybe that wouldn't stand out in New York. I don't know. Maybe not. Oh, well, okay, great.

So that's On Looking by Andrea It's, yeah, it's called Onlooking.

Yeah. Brilliant. I think people will love that.

Um, what is one, uh, tool or piece of software that makes your business life better?

Oh, look, it's a tool. It's my silver Zebra pen. Zebra pens come from Japan. It's not like a fabulous Montblanc or anything too fancy. It's just got the most gorgeous weight to it. Yes. Beautiful flow. I feel like I'm writing wise things when I use it. And it's actually, to be fair, it's one reason why I haven't migrated to a digital note taker, notebooks, because I just love the feel of this thing in my hand and I doubt I can find a stylus that does it for me in the same way. So that's the big one for me. I love it. Very old school. I love it so much, Stephanie.

Look, thank you so much for being being here with us today. I've learned a lot. I think that everyone listening in will have learned a lot, and just your experience is extraordinary. So thank you so much for being here with us today.

Well, thank you for having me, Ellie, and I look forward to seeing you in the accelerator in the next couple of weeks.

Indeed. Okay, yeah, and I'll be back next week.