In this episode of the Proteus Leader Show, host Erika Andersen interviews Cyndi Franklin, director of the Proteus coaching practice, about the transformative impact of executive coaching. They discuss two categories of benefits: external, life‑changing outcomes such as career breakthroughs, greater clarity, well‑being, and ripple effects on peers, spouses, and organizations; and internal growth, including vision clarification, realistic self‑assessment through 360 interviews, mindset shifts, and new habits. The conversation then shifts to common client self‑sabotage: (1) not dedicating sufficient, focused time (e.g., treating coaching as a quick fix), (2) staying overly tactical and under‑estimating the scope of possible change, and (3) fearing vulnerability or seeing asking for help as weakness. Practical advice for prospective coachees is offered: allocate dedicated time (e.g., two‑day Catalyst sessions), think big about one’s vision, engage both intellectual and emotional learning, recognize over‑used strengths that become weaknesses, and embrace the discomfort that signals growth. The episode closes with a call to explore Proteus’s coaching resources.
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You're listening to the Proteus Leader Show with Erika Andersen, where you will get practical tools and insights for leading, managing, and staying ready for the future. Erika is the founding partner of Proteus, a firm that focuses uniquely on leader readiness. A nationally known executive coach and bestselling author, you may already know her as one of the most popular leadership bloggers on Forbes.com. Ready for something you can use today? Here's Erika.
Hi everybody, welcome back to the Proteus Leader Show. My guest today is Cyndi Franklin, who's been a part of our Proteus team since 1998. She and I share a passion for helping leaders grow and succeed, and we love working together to do just that. Cyndi's the director of our Proteus coaching practice, and since more and more leaders today are using coaches, I thought she would be the ideal person to talk with about how to get the most out of working with an executive coach. So welcome, Cindy. Thanks for joining me.
Thank you for having me. I'm delighted to be here.
You are most, most welcome. So Cindy, you've been a coach for over 20 years. So what have you seen over that period of time as some of the biggest potential benefits of working with a really skilled coach?
When you talk about benefits, I kind of think of it in 2 categories, one being The kind of big picture outcomes that happen for people, and the other being what's the inner learning and growth that leads to those.
Mm-hmm.
So speaking about the external things, I mean, often it's truly life-changing for people, and it can lead to things like career breakthroughs, big new accomplishments, accolades, a greater sense of clarity and well-being. Both at work and often also at home. Ability to move past stuck spots where people have kind of been in a loop. And very often there are a lot of benefits for the people who work with you, with the person who's being coached.
For the coach?
Well, not just for the coach, but for the coachees, employees.
Oh, the people around that person.
Around them, yes.
Yeah, I see. Yeah.
Their peers, even their spouse is often, oh, he's so much less stressed, he's so much happier. So there are many benefits for the person being coached and also sometimes for the people around them and for their organization.
So I love the way you describe that. I think it's much more holistic in a way than most people think. Okay, I'm going to get better at doing some things at my job, but you're really talking about, in some ways, improving the quality of life.
Absolutely. To me, it improves the quality of life and the whole, you know, what you can accomplish, what you can make happen. And that's very, very often seen. And it's very much fun, even years after working with somebody and hearing from them, oh, that was such a turning point in my life. And all of these things have happened since that could never have happened otherwise.
Hmm.
But then I like to look at, well, so what did the person do in the coaching? What did they gain in it that helped them make all those other things happen as a result of it?
Yeah.
And so to talk a little bit about that, I think there's some key pieces. One is clarifying vision. So for me, for someone who's being coached to start by really opening up to and clarifying what they want to make happen in their work, in their work life, even in their life, is an important place to start.
Mm-hmm.
Also building a realistic picture of what's happening now. And as you know, Erika, we always start with, with good 360 interviews and summaries so that somebody can get a realistic sense of what are my biggest strengths. A lot of times people don't see those things in themselves? And what are the few most important things that if I made shifts would really open things up even further for me?
Yeah.
And then sort of acquiring some key insights and mindset shifts and practical skills during the coaching process and using those to build new habits of thoughts and action. And that's what creates a new future for people. So there's a lot inside each of those nuggets. But those are the things that I think almost always happen to some degree or another for people, and can be huge benefits of coaching.
Well, that's a really clarifying summary. And as I'm listening to you, and I know this from my own work as a coach and being coached, that we can think of the coach as the person doing the work, but really the way you're describing it, and I think it's accurate, is that the person being coached is doing most of the work. So if that's accurate, what are some watch-outs? What cautions would you give to people using coaches? How can they get in the way, get in their own way, in effect? What can they do that makes it hard for the coach to benefit them?
Well, I think there are 3 main things that that people can do to get in their own way. I think the first is simply not dedicating the time to it.
Hmm.
Sometimes people think, oh, I just need a couple of quick pointers on A, B, and C. And so they don't realize that by giving a dedicated, focused period of time, as we do, Erika, when we do our Catalyst sessions, our 2-day sessions where people can really deeply dig into looking at their vision, understanding what's happening, and these kinds of deep explorations that lead to breakthroughs and shifts. I think not dedicating that time is a big mistake. I think that's the one that's the hardest for the coach to help the person overcome.
Just thinking that, yeah, yeah, give me an hour or 2, I'll fix this all up. Yeah.
And I think that's related to the second one, which is thinking too small about what's possible, staying too tactical. So if the person is thinking, I just need a little help with this and that, then of course they only want to give a little bit of time to it. But they're probably not realizing that they could achieve a lot more through coaching and really clarify and move towards their vision in a far more powerful way if they gave the dedicated focus and attention to it. So they stay tactical. They miss the opportunity. But the truth is, if they dedicate the time, the coach can pretty much always help them overcome that one.
Ah, so they can get in the way by underestimating the potential benefit of coaching.
Exactly.
Yeah, wow.
But if they start by being too to-do list oriented or too tactically oriented, if they give the coach time working with them, the coach can help them pull back the camera, think bigger, and really go for it.
This is really great. So sometimes people come into coaching when it's self-initiated, it sounds like, and I've experienced this too, on a kind of symptomatic level almost. It's like, Can you make me stop coughing? Yes, I can, but I could also cure your tuberculosis.
Exactly. And to say it in another way, I could help you stop coughing, I could cure your tuberculosis, and you could positively have an energized, strong body that feels great to wake up in every day, and you can climb mountains that you didn't know you could climb.
Yeah, that's great. That's great.
And then I think the third thing, Erika, for me is fear of saying, I don't know, and asking for input. Fear that that's a sign of weakness.
Yeah. Yes.
I think, yeah. So not seeing the power of being a lifelong learner, that even if you're extraordinary in some domain, you can still grow even further from there. And it kind of fascinates me that the people who have huge strengths, how they can actually often make even bigger strides than people who have a pretty clear deficit, because there's always the next place you can go.
Oh, that's good. And also, I suspect, because they can use those same strengths in focus and learning and overcoming obstacles to get good at new things that they used to get good at the things they Absolutely.
Absolutely. So learning how to use the strengths you already had in whole new domains and power you to the next level in different ways. Absolutely.
Oh, that's great. Okay. So I always promise our listeners that these podcasts will be both brief and practical. So the last question I want to ask you is just some practical tips. Like if I'm someone who's Thinking about working with an executive coach, what advice would you have for me to make best use of that opportunity?
Well, I think it comes from some of the things I've said before. One is to set aside the time, the real time, knowing that it's going to pay dividends beyond what you might originally have been thinking of coaching for. So you might originally think of coaching because, oh, I'm getting into this little glitch at work, but Are you really fully going for your vision? Because if you're thinking small about what you could get, think bigger. And then having thought bigger, dedicate some time and attention to it. That would be, I guess, the first and the second thing. Another one would be prepare to engage not just in intellectual learning, but also in emotional learning.
Hmm.
Which is a little bit of a different muscle. And we find again and again, as you know, Erika, that a person's greatest weakness is usually a strength that's overused. And when a strength overused in a context in which it isn't ideal, that's when it can start to become a weakness.
Yeah.
So people who have huge strengths in something, it's kind of emotionally tough to shift and try something a little bit different. To notice what's the context when, hey, I have this great bias to action. I really make things happen, but I need to pause and listen, for example. Or I make people feel really appreciated. That's great, but I'm uncomfortable giving tough feedback. And for their growth, sometimes I need to do that. I think people, if there are 2 sets of errors that you could make, Say one being too tough and the other being all hearts and roses. People usually have— where there's an imbalance, usually they're very aware of what can go wrong on one side of that equation, but under-aware on the other side.
So it's both becoming more aware of the downsides of your kind of standard habitual behaviors, but also So just knowing that there will be likely some discomfort, maybe even some fear or some anxiety in behaving in those new ways, and that that's part of the growth.
Exactly. And that was actually going to be my last suggestion. So you went right there. Which is, once you start, once you kind of emotionally get where you've been stopping yourself and you've contemplated deeply enough that the benefit of a new way of doing it Is real to you.
Mm-hmm.
Then not to be stopped by the discomfort in the beginning of taking new kinds of actions. Because when you're expanding your comfort zone, by definition, there's a period of time when, ooh, this feels kind of different, and it's uncomfortable. And then it becomes second nature. It becomes a new habit once you push through that.
Yeah.
But that just the willingness to take that signal of discomfort to mean, oh, I'm doing something new, not, oh, I'm in danger here.
Yeah, that's great. And I completely, I mean, you know, you and I talk about this a lot, but I've often said that if you're not slightly uncomfortable, you're probably not learning anything new.
Absolutely.
Thanks, Erika. Oh, this is so helpful. So, you know, I always love talking to you, have loved talking to you for many years, and I'm sure our listeners will find your insights valuable as well and perhaps help them think about coaching in different ways on different levels. And listeners, if you're interested in finding out more about some of the skills we cover and teach and use with our coaching clients, just go to ProteusLeader.com/topics. And click on any of the topics you'll find there. So thank you so much, Cindy. I really appreciate you coming to talk with me.
My pleasure.
Thank you so much for coming. And everyone who's listening, we'll talk again soon. Until then, here's to creating the life that you most want.
We hope you're feeling better equipped to create the career, the business, and the life you want. For more insights and tools for leadership and management, join us at theproudestleader.com. Have an excellent day, and thanks for listening.
