Welcome to Courage to Advance, hosted by Kim Bohr and brought to you by SparkEffect, in partnership with The Empathy Edge.
Tune in to our subseries every 3rd Thursday, right here on The Empathy Edge! Or check us out at www.CourageToAdvancePodcast.com.
After overwhelming listener response to our AI and coaching conversation, Kim Bohr and Rod Bacon reconvene to address burning questions about executive coaching misconceptions. This deep dive challenges the outdated view of coaching as “leadership rehab” and reveals its true power as a strategic growth amplifier.
Rod dismantles the “scarlet letter” stigma, sharing how vulnerability creates strength and why interview-based stakeholder feedback provides “X-ray vision” into leadership impact. The conversation explores why executive presence is an inside job, how the forgetting curve undermines training investments, and why coaching transforms information into embodied leadership behaviors.
Whether you’re justifying development budgets or seeking authentic growth, discover why combining training with coaching multiplies ROI and how modeling vulnerability builds cultures of continuous learning.
To access the episode transcript, please scroll down below.
Key Takeaways:
- Executive coaching is a growth amplifier, not leadership rehab – top performers use it proactively
- Interview-based 360 feedback reveals not just what happened, but organizational ripple effects
- Executive presence isn’t about gestures – it’s about embodying confidence and claiming your seat
- Up to 90% of training content is forgotten within a week without coaching reinforcement
- Vulnerability-based leadership creates psychological safety and models continuous growth
- Training fills knowledge gaps; coaching ensures application and integration
- The most powerful transformations focus on one or two needle-moving changes
“We’re going to see it as a growth amplifier… when people get coaching, they’re able to look at their strengths, what’s potentially getting in the way of accelerating those, and really grow.” — Rod Bacon
About Rod Bacon: Rod Bacon serves as Chief Coaching Officer at SparkEffect, developing world-class executive coaches and working with C-suite leaders across healthcare, pharmaceutical, and technology industries. His philosophy that vulnerability enables true strength has guided transformative leadership development worldwide.
About SparkEffect: SparkEffect partners with organizations to unlock the full potential of their greatest asset: their people. Through tailored assessments and expert coaching, SparkEffect helps organizations manage change, sustain growth, and chart a path to a brighter future.
Go to sparkeffect.com/edge now and download your complimentary Professional and Organizational Alignment Review today.
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LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rwbacon/
Website: sparkeffect.com/about/rod-bacon
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FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Welcome to the empathy edge podcast, the show that proves why cash flow, creativity and compassion are not mutually exclusive. I’m your host, Maria Ross, I’m a speaker, author, mom, facilitator and empathy advocate. And here you’ll meet trailblazing leaders and executives, authors and experts who embrace empathy to achieve radical success. We discuss all facets of empathy, from trends and research to the future of work to how to heal societal divisions and collaborate more effectively. Our goal is to redefine success and prove that empathy isn’t just good for society. It’s great for business. Hi everyone, and welcome to our courage to advance sub series with our partner, Spark effect and president and COO Kim Bohr, this month, you’re in for a treat, because she is bringing back her guest rod bacon. They had such a response from all of you about the AI and coaching conversation they had that they’re reconvening to address the burning questions they got about executive coaching misconceptions. They’re going to dismantle this whole scarlet letter stigma around executive coaching and talk about how it’s actually a performance multiplier for your organization. It’s a growth amplifier. And they’re going to be sharing some pretty, pretty startling statistics with you about the waste that occurs in your organization when you don’t provide coaching. So this was a really good one, lots of practical tips. Take a listen.
Kim Bohr 01:44
Research shows that 70% of leadership training is forgotten within 24 hours. But there’s one intervention that creates what our guest today calls a leadership interrupt, and it’s the difference between incremental change and true transformation. I’m Kim Bor president and COO of Spark effect and the host of courage to advance podcast. And on this episode, I’m joined again by Rod Bacon, our chief coaching officer at Spark effect. Many of you may have listened to our last episode on why AI can’t call us out on our BS. If you missed it, please check it out. But today we’re diving into the biggest misconceptions about executive coaching, from why it’s seen as leadership rehab instead of growth amplifier, and looking at how 360 based feedback creates this kind of transformative interrupts that separate incremental change from real leadership. Evolution. Rod, welcome back to courage to advance podcast. Thank you. Happy to be here. After our last conversation, we had a lot of people weighing in on the topic and giving feedback and asking questions and having come off of the discussion around this AI and the future of executive coaching, we thought maybe we should continue the conversation and address some of those issues or topics that were raised when we were talking about this afterwards. So that’s what we’re gonna do today. And I think you and I both know executive coaching has so many applications and is so powerful, and yet there’s still some misperception about it out there that we wanna address. Let’s take the first one when we think about executive coaching and how sometimes people see it as, maybe not as much of this superpower strength, and sometimes we hear it more for, oh, that must be when people feel like they really need to fix something. And so I think that’s maybe a good place for us to start and talk about in more depth.
Rod Bacon 03:36
Okay, I see that, but luckily, I’m seeing it less these days, but in some organizations, still, it’s a scarlet letter to have a coach. I know I felt that way when I first had a coach back in 1997 and I was CEO of a technology company, I was like, What is this? And I felt like it was a negative thing, but it was a really powerful experience for me and for those attitudes, see it as like leadership rehab or something like that, I’d say we’re going to see it as a growth amplifier of taking the opportunities through reflection, through creating that we talked about in the last session, that element of safety to create a space which we don’t often get in our life. This is what’s such a value in organizations, I say, is that when people get coaching, they’re able to look at their strengths, what potentially getting in the way of accelerating those and really grow. It’s a growth amplifier, not just leadership rehab, but at the points where it is rehab, and that’s necessary, that can be okay too.
Kim Bohr 04:43
It makes me think about the first executive coach I had, and it was one of those situations where I knew something was broke in my leadership. I was a young leader. Didn’t go through a leadership training, boot camp sort of scenario, and really realized that the. There was something about my approach that was having my team not working right. I affectionately said he was a bit of mutiny that was starting to happen there. One of the things that I did is I proactively sought out support, because inside my organization, it wasn’t available. And when I asked my direct manager about, hey, there’s something off, I’m trying to figure out what it was. He was not helpful at all. When I went to and found my first executive coach, part of it was I said, Look, I know something’s broken, and I need to figure that out, because I really want to lead, and I want to lead and be a leader that people want to follow. And so that put me on my journey of recognizing for myself that there were some gaps. And it was a tough journey, and it was a tremendous growth opportunity as well. And coming out the other end of that, I had gained the followership of my team, but the process is sometimes not so cut and dry, and I think that’s maybe where people get some misconceptions about it, right?
Rod Bacon 05:59
I think that’s a beautiful example that you had the wherewithal to look forward and say, I could use some coaching. I don’t even know what I don’t know, but how can I get better? I think that’s a great example, because one of the things that I hear a lot is some people will say, I talk to individual coaches, and they’ll say, I don’t want, like to do 911, coaching or something like that. And to be honest, I don’t have a problem. And many of our coaches actually embrace they say, give me your toughest individuals, because it’s when we bump up against something, when we stumble, that we become aware, just like you described, or I described that I could be doing better, and coaching helps us get over that gives us the support to hopefully Excel. Bring us your damage. Bring us your 911, bring us your growth. People who want growth accelerators. It’s all a starting
Kim Bohr 06:49
point for coaching. Absolutely, when we think about organizations and how the varying ways that they view coaching, what shifts in organizational culture when leadership really starts viewing coaching as this more strategic tool, like we hope they do, what shifts do we see in this organization’s culture when coaching is embraced in this way that we’re talking about?
Rod Bacon 07:13
Well, I see a number of factors. One of the most powerful things I see is modeling to the other rank and file that the company is committed to the growth, the kind of coaching that we do, the most impactful coaching, kind of stakeholder model, coaching. The tough part about that is that it requires the leader to be transparent and vulnerable and say, I’m not perfect, and I’m leaning into the growth. But there are so many positive outcomes of that, and one of them is this whole piece of modeling, again, that leaning forward, leaning into growth, like I just said a minute ago. It’s that accelerator, that amplifier. And when you want to create a culture where everybody is being modeled like we’re not perfect, become comfortable with your edges, and you just described it great yourself, where I can maybe get better and then lean into the growth. So that’s one of the pieces. I think it’s modeling and setting up an organization for that continual the Jim Collins and Peter sengez, that continual learning edge. There’s no better way than individuals, not posters on the wall, but individuals say, Hey, I’m working on getting better. Would you be willing to help me?
Kim Bohr 08:26
I think, just to go off that even further, we have often talked about that, in a sense, like a multiplier effect, right? The more that you can invest in the leadership, and your leaders can grow, and then they can model, and then you can start to see, in a sense, more of that starting to spread. That’s a really powerful place to be, and it’s a really important element of trust building inside an organization and with individual leaders as well. And I think that’s commonplace, and yet, in the experiences we have as coaches and working with organizations as we do, it’s not as obvious as we would think it would be, well as commonplace. Maybe, I hope
Rod Bacon 09:06
that changes, and when you’re talking I remember once I was working with this individual responsible for two and a half billion dollars worth of sales, and was coaching him, and then he invited me as a coach to their global kickoff here in San Jose, and he was on stage talking, and he pointed me out, and he said, That guy right over there, raise your hand. He goes, he’s my executive coach. And he made a joke about any problem with my personality, go talk to him. But the fact that he leaned into that then I had two people reporting up to him later, saying, like, I want to know about this, etc, because they’d seen transformation, he was willing to say, I’m resourcing myself. How important is that, as a leader, to say, I am resourcing myself, whether it’s money or through support, to get better for myself and the organization. So that’s the message that I want people to hear and say, whether it’s LeBron. On James, whether it’s race car drivers, everybody at the top of their game has a coach, yes, to help them see things that they’re not seeing, or just to be that reflective nature saying, Oh, my backswing is off. And what’s going on if they are investing, if people at the top of their game are investing in mastery, why wouldn’t we
Kim Bohr 10:22
absolutely that elevating to the next level, challenging yourself, dialing it up just a little bit further. And I think one of the really important factors that we’ve also heard people speak to is this idea of gathering feedback from others, right? So we call it, often stakeholder insights, or something along those lines. I think one of the things that could be important for us to talk about is that concept gets thrown around, and yet there’s tremendous power in having that vulnerability brought in with the insights of others. I think talk a little bit about how you work through that with executives that maybe are a little hesitant to bring in that level of insight.
Rod Bacon 11:03
Well, I know that there’s a world out there, and I’ve done a lot of the 360 feedback systems, and we even have those for some of our programs. But when companies invest in stakeholder feedback for their leaders, it is a game changer, absolutely on multiple levels. The first is, oftentimes the leaders themselves are a little hesitant, because we’re going in and we’re asking open ended questions. And I was sharing with someone the other day, when I’m talking to someone getting 360 feedback, oftentimes they say to me, well, in the shower this morning, here’s what I wanted to say to you. So I can just start by saying, what do you need? What is it you want to tell me about this leader, right? And everybody knows that, as opposed to a 360 where you have a bubble chart like this, competency, how are they doing? Boo, it’s open field, but that’s what you need and want as a leader, if we say that, feedback is the breakfast of champions. Well, interview based feedback is the best of those breakfasts the most protein, but it requires vulnerability, because you don’t know what someone’s going to say. The other piece about it is, when we’re doing these interview based 360s let’s say someone’s talking and in the interview about how the leader is showing up in the meeting, and maybe they’ve cut off somebody, didn’t let people share their other point of view, rather than just getting that data, what we ask is, okay, well, what was the impact of that for the meeting? And maybe someone saying, well, the person walked away kind of demoralized, what was the impact of that? And then talks about that, maybe they’re doing less work, or they’re looking for another job. So we get the impact and we share that with the leader. But the inverse is also true. We say something like, okay, given that situation, how could have that leader done it differently? Like, actually behaviorally? What could they do differently, and what would have been the impact of that? So we gather it. It’s like X ray vision into a leader and how they’re behaving in their environment. And it doesn’t matter when it’s not inside their environment. Everything we do, in that case, is helping the leader understand the impact that they’re having in their organization. For the particular humans which are different, something will land differently for me than it will for you. So getting that detailed information is just incredibly valuable. So it generates vulnerability. It creates deeper level of insights. It creates a systemic change in the organization. I can go on and on about the power of 360 of interview based 360s but I’ll pause and see if you have a question, because I love it. It’s really powerful. I
Kim Bohr 13:42
think what you’re saying is really important. And I think as you start off by saying, we have this point of view of that feedback is really good, that there are two primary ways of gathering it. You primarily described that stakeholder or live 360 and the other side is when we have really specific instruments that are used for online measurement, and they’re measured against cost. Against competencies and different behaviors. I think both have a really strong place, depending on the leader and the situation. What I really like about what you were saying, I think does bring some distinction between the two, again, where they both have a really strong place is there’s nuance that can happen when you’re having those live discussions where you said, the way somebody showed up in a room, for example, how I could try to describe what I’ve experienced. And that is different. I think whereas the online version, we’re bringing in aspects of that, but not the degree of the follow up nuance and the quantitative side is more strongly represented, perhaps, but not exclusive of just that.
Rod Bacon 14:45
The other piece that comes up for me, that I say to people sometimes, is men and women, if you’re leading in an organization, you’re oftentimes kind of a type A personality. You’re a driver. You get things done, you take responsibility and change. Incremental change can be easy, bigger change, transformative change, change that really makes a difference sometimes requires, like in adult learning theory, they call it like an interrupt. You have to have an interrupt to be able to take new information and process it and result in a different change, as opposed to something incremental. Oftentimes, these interview based 360 they’re relatively more expensive, and they’re worth every penny because the reports that come out of them are so detailed, they’re often 1015, pages of people reading the verbatim statements that the coach is then organizing into themes. I’ve worked with very senior individuals who have said, I have never had anything like this in my career. Sometimes they’ll say, I keep it on my bedside table and I refer back to it. I share it with my wife. It becomes an interrupt, because then a good coach helps them digest that and see what the path of change, what can be positive based on that information, the power, like you said, the information is qualitatively different. The power of that for creating the space, the openness for true transformation, is unique. The 360s are great for measuring those incremental changes. Two examples come to mind, one that was harsh, where the feedback you’re getting is someone saying something like, wow, I don’t know how this person is even still in this job, and that’s important information. Yeah. But the other side the executive is working with recently is hearing feedback from very senior people saying, we want more of her. We love what she’s doing, and she was not fully aware of that. It’s just like a completely different kind of thing that is really valuable in so many ways,
Kim Bohr 16:45
absolutely. Let me ask you this, when you have executives resistant to this idea, how do you help them understand the benefits of what we’re talking about here?
Rod Bacon 16:57
Great, I start off and I raise my hand if I’m in a human process, dynamic or group, and I agree with something, or I share the same dynamic, I raise my hand. So when I’m sitting with an executive, I say, Listen, I believe each and every one of us is a work in progress. And my hand goes up as well, and I talk about that. I think it was Gandhi or someone said that there is no true strength without vulnerability, and because you have to be able to guide these executives, oftentimes, to be willing to do this kind of interview based 360 but I’ve always been able to, and I work with them, and honor and respect their sometimes they have, well, let’s not do this group, or let’s not do that Group, or let me make sure I understand the questions you’re going to ask. But it’s by creating that safe container, having them know 100% I’m in their corner, and then helping them see the benefits of when other people see that. Brene Brown talks about it. Everybody talks about it. Patrick Lencioni talks about it. It’s easy to talk about vulnerability. It’s sometimes the hardest thing to do, but the power of it calibrated correctly, I never push for vulnerability. If I think the executive is living in a shark tank, that would malpractice, but the proper level of transparency and vulnerability is real game changer. Once we have that conversation and simultaneously saying, hey, all of us are at a growth edge at some point in our life, we usually can get them to embrace that process. So that’s some of the conversation that we have to move them from some resistance to acceptance
Kim Bohr 18:39
when you get this type of feedback, how do you get leaders, not just to hear it, but actually then to integrate it into their action plan, into seeing the upside of moving forward, into knowing that sometimes there may be some of that feedback isn’t as ideal, right, and you want it, then you have to show back up in that room and try, how do you help people kind of then bridge that
Rod Bacon 19:04
that’s beautiful. I’m sorry I know this conversation and not the last conversation, but this is for me, this is the core of the human element versus even the best of the AIS, which I love, AI, I’m all over it. But to help somebody digest that information, you first have to see them, and they have to see you. You create that psychological safety, help them through it. I’ve had a number of executives that say when they were first receiving that information, it felt like almost too much and or, like all of us, you’ll have a gage where you stop reading it, or you stop digesting it. So then, as a good executive coach, we’re doing this work because we essentially love humans and want to see and help them grow in creating that sense of safety, having them go back and look at it. None of us push past people’s limits, right? I’ve had executives read and only take out certain amount. Of information that they could digest and leave the other on the table. You know what that can be fine, because we’re just looking for the way we do it. If we look for what is the biggest one or two changes that would move the needle for you as a leader and your organization, and then we just focus on that. There may be a lot of other information in these reports that is valuable, but is not necessarily going to be digested at that time. It’s about calibrating. It’s about love and making people safe, making them feel safe, and that we’re all in this together.
Kim Bohr 20:32
I think that’s really powerful, and I don’t think that it’s often framed that way, or when people are from the outside, looking in thinking about this, or being asked to engage in coaching, I think sometimes it’s not the way you’ve described it. It’s not always presented that way, and that’s a really important mindset shift for people to have and think about we often are also face this idea of people thinking, Well, I don’t need coaching. What I actually need is just help me just get better at my executive presence, or help me get better at presenting to my board. And we find that’s actually perfect examples of coaching opportunities. You and I have talked about before this idea of executive presence, right? We hear that come up a lot, and people think about help me to be a better presenter, or things like that, right? And what we really know it’s not about your wardrobe or how you hold your hands. Let’s dive into that one a little bit more, because that’s one that comes up a lot, yeah.
Rod Bacon 21:29
And I like that one because in my prior career, I was a college teacher in presentations and communications, organizational communications, etc, and I worked overseas in working with executives about how to do presentation, organize their slides. And it’s funny, because in that iteration of my own life, the executive presence was often about tone of voice. You’re too monotonous, keep your hands by your side, use gestures, or whatever the pieces were. There’s a place for that. There’s a place for dress and gesture, but in working with leadership, executive presence is more about embodying the confidence, the openness, uncertainty, transfer all of that, embodying leadership in a way that is grounded. We were on a call earlier today with one of our senior coaches who had a long, 20 year career in HR, and he says he primarily works with leaders, yes. And what’s interesting is that sometimes these behavioral characteristics can help somebody like that fake it until you make it kind of thing, because if they are in leadership groups or talking to teams, slowing down, making space for other comments are important pieces, but at the end of the day, it’s about the leader knowing that they have a seat at the table. I worked with a woman executive a couple years ago, responsible for so much at a very large company, and that was the work for her. Her work was essentially, I used an analogy of, who is it? I forget the guy who, in the fables, takes the sword out of the stone. Oh, yes, but everybody comes to try to take the sword out of the stone, right? And it was for her. And that metaphor came up in our conversation about, what does she have to shift internally for her, where she could take that sword and claim that seat, because that’s what the organization wanted for her. So for executive presence for her was an internal job until she could kind of own that. And so that’s the work that we did together, and she got there, and it was beautiful. And
Kim Bohr 23:44
I think that’s a great example of how sometimes the context we hold around how we think a term represents for us is really not anything like the experience of it. And that’s a really great example of thinking about what it means to show up with the executive presence in a way that is so powerful, and where this executive coaching can take us. When I think about some of the examples that I’ve had too, I think about some of this communication and styles with leaders. And I worked with a leader at one point that said I just need to be more the feedback was around communication. I write all the emails. I try to make sure everything’s really clear. And what was missing in that was really this understanding that, in the sense of communication with the team, it was more around working through. Are you all on the same page? Have you all agreed to the different things that are most important? Do you have the really clear points that you’re trying to communicate so that it’s showing alignment and unity, and in that way, the transparency, and that was something that there was this sense of it was just a tactical thing, more of a bigger philosophical understanding with you and your team and how you go about being united as a team. And that was just one little aspect of that kind of lens that is. Come up for me, as you were saying, speaking of that executive presence example as well,
Rod Bacon 25:04
yeah, I think that one’s great, because both can be true. There’s an element, and I run into this quite often as well, where you’re helping a leader get clarity on that communication, or getting those feedback loops, because if the leader can become aware that the message, the culture they’re trying to build, or the strategic initiative is not being embraced by their stakeholders. Again, how valuable is that information? Because we’ve all had enough, enough of where in the meetings, people nod their heads and you think you have a commitment or alignment, only to find out, wait, that sounded like it came from a place of direct experience,
Kim Bohr 25:43
of course,
Rod Bacon 25:45
where we think the people in the room lead us to believe that we have alignment, getting that information by itself, the fact that there’s a gap is tremendously valuable understanding to the leader. The two sides of that are the reinforcing behaviors in place, because those are behaviors that need to happen? Are you seeking confirmation that feedback? And then there’s the presence side. I’m working with a leader right now in the medical space, and this is part of his issue, is he’s trying to drive a culture change, and on his behalf, on these interview based 360s again, doesn’t happen in a computer one. We’re asking that question, how well did the people around him understand his initiatives and the drive? And it was not 100% we looked at both behavior and also his own presence. About was he modeling the fact of this was a critical thing for the organization. There was level of urgency and neededness to see this change. Or was he putting out the message, let’s all do this. But then kind of falling back on the like I’ve said, it is the person in the relationship and says, sweetheart, you don’t tell me you love me. Hey, I told you I love you the day we got married. Do you want to hear it again. I mean, you need to hear I need to hear that all the time,
Kim Bohr 27:05
the reinforcement of action to support the behavior. As we start to wrap up some of this conversation, one other topic I think is really important that we do continue to hear people asking for some of the clarifying communication or differentiators of is when we think about what’s the difference between executive coaching and training, or maybe the better question is, from an application standpoint, when is it that training is perhaps what’s needed versus no? Is this really an executive coaching opportunity? And we tend to see sometimes there’s a sense that everything could be fixed with training. I think it’s important that we really dig into that, because that’s not how it really plays out, especially when we’ve come in to do executive coaching and maybe people have had training in certain areas, I think really talking about, what can training accomplish that coaching can’t, and vice versa. Where do they fit?
Rod Bacon 27:55
They both are critically important, as we know for all of us, training is essentially the skills and the gap analysis. Do I have the information I need? Coaching? Maybe is more about, am I putting it into practices? And if I’m not, can I be reflective or through help understand why I’m not? If I have the resources, if I have the skills and the knowledge, and I’m not putting it into practice, that’s a coaching opportunity, right? If we go into an organization and find out that someone does have a skill gap in so many areas, sometimes in coaching, we can provide that as coaches and as spark effect, we have a lot of resources as we bring to the table. So closing a skills gap is one piece, and training is all about that, but training alone leaves people without the embodied being able to follow it through necessarily. We know from just training, there’s a study called the forgetting curve. I don’t know if you know the stats on that, but it’s the widely cited research paper that shows that up to 70% of training information is forgotten within 24 hours, up to 90% of it is forgotten within a week, if it’s not reinforced. And the key thing there is if it’s not reinforced when you map coaching, because coaching is essentially a one on one experience, and it’s designed for reflectivity and increasing awareness of what I’m doing. When you combine that with training content, you incredibly, greatly enhance the memorability of whatever the training content is and the application of it. You go through some sort of training, you get coaching following that training, saying, How are you putting into this practice? And very importantly, what are the barriers, or where are you not? Because, again, sometimes people will have information but not put it into practice. And if you dig deeper, it’s because of an identity piece, or I’m not comfortable with or I have a fear. So I don’t know if I answered your question, but training is hugely valuable. Coaching on time. Of training extends and gets a lot more ROI from whatever training you’ve done, even when it’s these team building trainings. I work a lot with the Lencioni group, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, and they started to bring in coaching after some of their work to really reinforce the behaviors, keep them active, not just I’ve learned them. So that’s one element, and then real quickly the other. I just wanted people to remember that coaching, essentially, is a one on one, reflective practice that builds its richness through the safety in the relationship with the other coach. And that’s where you’re looking at, hey, this is the pattern that keeps coming up, or it’s identity based work,
Kim Bohr 30:43
a lot of the times, so much accountability is built into that dynamic, too, more so than what training alone can provide, which is really the stats you just quoted were incredible. It makes sense in many ways when we think about just some of our own experiences of things throughout the years, of like this was a really good thing I learned, and yet I don’t necessarily always bring it into the flow of work until I have some other types of reinforcement and accountability to do. I think it should have us all pause and think about when we have the investments we have to make in training, how do we ensure those investments are going to pay off? And really thinking about it in the way we’re talking about here is
Rod Bacon 31:24
a good one. Yes, that’s 100% correct. And then to what you said earlier about when you as a leader were realizing that you had more opportunity. That’s the part where, again, coaching is so valuable, because a leader oftentimes doesn’t have time for a lot of this training content, right? They’ve got that earlier in their career. So, yes, absolutely. Coaching accentuates the value of the training and then bringing an executive coach, as we’ve talked about with that 360 or the interview based 360 to any leader, again, I’d ask myself, everybody in this audience who amongst us is not a work in progress, if we know that we have growth edges and we lean into those, this is where, again, coaching is that growth amplifier,
Kim Bohr 32:08
absolutely. As we start to wrap up again, here, we think about this AI conversation. We think about executive coaching we had before. So where do you see the biggest opportunity for organizations to really expand their thinking about executive coaching in the age of AI, and all the other demands that are being faced? That’s
Rod Bacon 32:28
a great question, and it’s one that we don’t have time to attend a lot of time on, but it’s a really great question. I was working with a leader just last week, and now that AI is amongst us all, she was having some great challenges around communicating with a very acerbic individual, at least that was her side of the story. And so we started talking about how she might use chat, GTP or other tools to run through how she might respond and get suggestions and ideas. I thought that’s beautiful, and I think that AI is going to be helpful in that way for a lot of people, a lot of us, myself and people using it to help craft emails, coaching is not going to go away, because, again, coaching is this more reflective piece around looking at the patterns and our identity and what needs to change, and how do we get The support to change, to really transform, as opposed to AI, is going to be a great tool for helping that incremental change. How might I say something better? And you could learn from that, but it’s not going to give you that leadership, interrupt and see the opportunity and then the one on one support to help kind of grow into that opportunity.
Kim Bohr 33:42
That’s a really nice way to think about it, especially with AI around us every single day. Here’s the final question, if you had to leave our listeners with just one question to ask themselves about how they’re currently thinking about executive coaching in their organizations in this face of AI in this new world, what would it
Rod Bacon 34:02
be? What I love about all organizations is, when are people coming together to achieve results and goals? And when I work with organizations and you really ask about their goals, they have their goals, and I say, Well, what are your aspirations? And the aspirations are even above the goals. What we really want to be in the world. The question I would leave this group with for yourself or your organization, just ask yourself, what could really change? What changed would need to happen within your organization to have your organization really reach its goals and its aspirations, and you might find some knowledge or training that we need, better market knowledge, better this better pricing information. But I would also challenge you to take a look at transformative growth. It’s that growth in the individuals that help them in this process of becoming a learning machine to learn quickly. From the feedback level. If we create learning individuals through coaching, that model, that learning within the organization, I would say, take a look at that. Is it knowledge, or is it really kind of like transformed individual leaders? That is what you need to reach your own goal? I
Kim Bohr 35:18
think that’s a great question to end on rod, thank you so much for coming back and continuing this conversation, and I think it’s been very valuable for everybody.
Rod Bacon 35:28
I’ve enjoyed it. I love this conversation, as you can tell, and I like having the conversation with you. Kim, so thank you for inviting
Kim Bohr 35:34
me in. Thank you for our listeners. We have free resources relevant to our conversation today that you can download by visiting courage to advance podcast.com which will take you to our spark effect podcast page. And if you’re interested in exploring how human centered coaching can transform your leadership team, visit sparkeffect.com to learn more about our executive coaching and organizational development solutions. I want to thank rod again for this very insightful conversation, and thank you to the empathy edge for hosting our podcast sub series and to our listeners for tuning in to this episode of courage to advance where Transformative Leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about having the courage to find them. Thank you
Maria Ross 36:19
for more on how to achieve radical success through empathy. Visit the empathy edge.com there you can listen to past episodes, access show notes and free resources. Book me for a Keynote or workshop and sign up for our email list to get new episodes, insights, news and events. Please follow me on Instagram at Red slice. Maria, never forget, empathy is your superpower. Use it to make your work and the world a better place.
