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Jeff Hunter:Hi, I'm Jeff Hunter, the founder and CEO of Talentism. Today, I'm speaking with Dave Fano, thefounder and CEO of Teal. Dave is an architect by training and a serial entrepreneur bycompulsion. He founded the successful building information and technology consultancy Case.He then sold Case to WeWork and took on the role of chief growth officer there, where he was akey driver of their meteoric growth. I met Dave when he started his latest venture, Teal. Iremember when Dave was first talking about his career experiences and how he wanted tomake things better for the people who actually build companies, the employees, he told me thatit struck him that the way people think about their careers and their jobs was broken, and he feltthat the need to create a company to fix that. That compulsion led Dave to create Teal, anincredible group of people dedicated to providing the education, community and tools to helpprofessionals build successful and fulfilling careers. I'm especially grateful to be talking to Davetoday because Teal is one of Talentisms, first IP partners, and is using our big four frameworkand methodology to help people create their own unique path of professional excellence. Iencourage you to learn more about this amazing company at Tealhq.com. That's Tealhq.com.Dave, thank you so much for being here. Welcome to the conversation.Dave Fano:Thanks Jeff, I'm super honored to be a part of this as you know, someone who I look to as amentor and someone that's really paved the path for some really incredible things. And so I'mreally appreciative to have the time to talk to you and to do this with you.Jeff Hunter:So, Dave the way I understand it, at Teal you provide career coaching. You've worked with me,you've partnered with Talentism. So, you know, our approach and thinking, and of course I knowyou've done a lot of coaching over time as a successful executive. How do you think about thevalue and importance of coaching?Dave Fano:So I think coaching is critical and I think that for anyone to push beyond their understanding oftheir limits, some kind of external force is incredibly valuable, right? I think you know, for theshort time that I had a personal trainer, I was able to push myself, they were able to push mefurther than I was able to push myself, just because I think we kind of you know, we like to playit safe. We don't want to hurt ourselves. We don't like to fail. And so there's something abouthaving someone who you know, has your best interest in mind and helps you push to what theythink your potential is. And also that they've seen it done before, right? I mean, a lot of, I thinklife is quite lonely in the sense that we're doing these things and we're experiencing them for thefirst time and having that broader perspective, because even though that thing we’reexperiencing for the first time, there's a high likelihood someone else has experienced it. And soI think that that is a lot of the value that, that coaches bring. I do think there's an importantdistinction between coaching and advice and you want both, but I think that distinction isimportant. Now all that said, that's not really what we do at Teal. I think that coaching is acomponent of what we do and we're trying to be quite cautious about how we engage with thetheme of coaching. I think one of the things that's inherent in coaching is this one-on-onerelationship with an individual. And I think one of the things that you guys have done great atTalentism is that you're establishing it as more of a platform. But you're still obviously have yourassociation to your coach that is using the platform. We're hoping to take that a step further,mainly because we want to make it accessible to more people. There is an inherent coststructure that comes with, you know, the livelihood of a person being based on, you know,advising and this one-on-one high touch way, that I think is great for those that can afford it. Anda lot of times it's funded by companies, but we really want the consumer or the person thatworks at companies to be able to do this and have agency with their career. And so that putsthe pressure on us to figure out ways to make this cost accessible and really leveragetechnology and develop a platform and a methodology and framework that allow people to do iton their own without the need of the high touch one-on-one coaching. So then that pushes us toinvest in tooling, content and frameworks that people can do in a self-guided way with the abilityto level up into a coach as necessary, but even that we're trying to figure out ways where thatcan happen through chat or other low cost models and mainly so we can make it accessible tomore people, because that was kind of one of my contentions that you brought up earlier on inthe introduction is that these kinds of resources that I've been incredibly lucky to have. I got laterin my career, once I was sort of fiscally eligible. I have very few regrets, but I just think that if Iwould have had access to these kinds of things earlier, I might've made better or differentdecisions, and I really want to help people get access to those things sooner. So that's kind of,so I think there are aspects and essences of coaching in what we do, but in terms of like adelivery model and methodology, we're trying to break some new ground.Jeff Hunter:Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about something that you said at the beginning of what youwere talking about. So I've shared with you that, you know, seven years ago, when I startedTalentism, I really didn't intend to start a coaching organization. I had these theories about thehuman mindand how things work and a way to unleash potential. And it turned out that what Ithought was going to be a consultancy ended up being very much a coaching organization,because as I worked with leaders and brought these frameworks and this way of thinking tothose leaders, they said; Hey, would you coach me? And so then I went out and started trying tofigure out the world of coaching, cause I had never done it before. And I know there's a lot ofincredible coaches out there and I wanted to sort of respect the craft as also learn about myblind spots and ended up really differentiating or at least trying to differentiate what I was tryingto do from what I experienced most coaches trying to do. And I think you brought up a little bit ofwhat I experienced most coaches trying to do, which is be almost like a change agent or anaccountability agent in a person's life. Like there's a, I'm gonna push you or I've got a better wayof doing something. And what we've been trying to do is figure out how to be a good detective inyour life to help you make sense of the evidence that you're producing as you try to achieveyour goals. So it's really not an attempt to provide a place of security or safety. It's not anattempt to say; Hey, listen, you said you were going to go out there and, you know, apologize topeople and he didn't apologize or whatever the thing is that the pushing of the, towards aperson's limits, but more to help them gain a level of self mastering a level of self awareness, alevel of self skepticism and self-acceptance and use experiments along the way to try toproduce more evidence, more data. So you can sort of see who you are. So help me, help meconnect that because I think when I think about the coaching sessions, you and I have, I havefound you to engage with that methodology really well. So can you help me understand what Imay be missing in what your saying, did I misinterpret that or do you see like different coachingin different situations?Dave Fano:So I think the methodology is incredibly powerful and I think it's amazing. I just know what I payfor coaching and a lot of people can't. And so what, and so I think it's that high touch componentof it that I think that's part of what makes it remarkable, but it's also part of what makesinaccessible. And so I want to try to figure out what are the parts of it that can be extracted andmade more accessible via technology and automation, which hopefully then can guide peoplethrough a journey to know when to engage in that at the right times, is because I think that likepoint coaching could be super valuable, but also part of what's built into like the coachingbusiness model is a need to kind of keep it going, right? Like, there's, we're going to be monthly.I'm going to get you to a monthly fee because that's just the nature of business. Recurringrevenue is good going out and reacquiring customers every month is really expensive andcostly. And so they are, and look, this is just, I think, kind of the, one of the tensions ofcommerce, be it employee, employer, you know, a service provider service receiver. And I thinkyou have to be like fiscally eligible enough to get that kind of quality of service. And then whathappens is there's a like non-linear relationship of cost to quality. And I think as you get down tothe low cost coaching, I don't, I think that there is a serious diminishing of quality. And then notto say that there aren't remarkable coaches, but the volume of coaches is also much, muchhigher. And so the chances of someone engaging with a coach and them not being helpful arequite high. And I think that then the scales tip from not helpful to hurtful. And I think that's reallydangerous because I think people, especially when it comes to navigating their career are reallylooking for a safe place to talk, because there's so much judgment and pressure around talkingabout things like how much money you want to make, or that some of the vulnerabilities youhave, because you have to maintain this identity of confidence that people actually quite quicklyintrust a coach. And if these coaches aren't experts like you with the experience that you have,they can very quickly misguide somebody and then you actually give them quite bad advice.And I think it's actually quite easy for people to lean into giving advice and not follow like propercoaching methodologies, which are hard and you have to be practiced at. And so I think that'sthe big concern for me and then kind of what we're trying to tackle at Teal, that it's less driven bylike a human to human interaction, which

Renee DeAngelis:And so I think it's really all about being uncomfortable. And I don't know if balance is achieved. Ithink that balance is achieved by testing things out and potentially falling, but when you breakthrough it's the craziest most awesome feeling in the world.Jeff Hunter:Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to Coaching in the Clear, the podcastcommitted to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and webelieve that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the bestway for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of yourcoaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash theirpotential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is aproduction of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leadersachieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out aweekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issuesaffecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content toenable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. So Renee,thank you so much for joining us today on Coaching in the Clear, my first question for you ishow did you come to use a coach? How did you get to the place where you decided you wantedto use a coach?Renee DeAngelis:Well hi Jeff. Thank you. Coaching came to me through an acquisition and merger involvingprivate equity. And so we were merging with another company that did the same thing as we do.And that's when I met you and your team and we, there are a lot of intricacies to those types ofdeals. And so we met and we decided to, that having a coach would help me navigate throughsome of the challenges with what happens with a transaction like that.Jeff Hunter:Great, and just say for the audience, that was a very successful transaction. So congratulationson that and has helped you build an amazing company. So tell me a little bit about what you'velearned about coaching and how you experience it. You came to it pretty new and I've reallyenjoyed our relationship and the opportunity to coach you. And I've seen you grow a lot throughthat process. So tell me a little bit about how you've experienced it and what you've learnedabout over time.Renee DeAngelis:Oh my gosh. So much. I think the, I mean, overall I think coaching is this opportunity for you tobecome the best version of yourself. And I, one of the biggest takeaways I've had is I had oftenlead a team and managed a team and run a company, grown a company a lot through thisinstinct that was deep inside of me. And I think working with you, I've been able to put aframework together around it and language around it that not only I can use, but also mycolleagues and people I work with can use, so it's been a sort of common, we've created acommon language. We've been able to all learn together through using that framework. I alsothink that throughout my whole life I've always had a coach and I think, I truly believe coachingis not really a one-dimensional thing. You know, as a coach, as a person who leads a team orleads a company I find that I learned just as much from the people I'm working with or coachingas I do, hopefully help them as well. So I feel like it's for me and either seat or either hat that Iwear, I feel like it's a, there's a lot of growth and opportunity and an opportunity to mastersomething and a lot of opportunity to learn something new.Jeff Hunter:So I'm going to let the audience in on a little thing. So one of the things I love about ourconversations is you are not only an expert and a professional in the world of climbing, you'realso an enthusiast and you’ve spent a lot of your time, free time such as it is, there isn't a lot,climbing and so I'm always trying to impress you by bringing up climbing references. And you'realways very patient with me as I stumble my way through that. And that's been a very cooldynamic in our relationship, but one of the things that I've found when I'm coaching people isthere's usually some area of their life where they pursue excellence. It's not always in their job,but there's some area of their life where they push themselves and they're testing themselves toreally uncover what they're capable of. And I not only have seen you, I mean, we've talkedabout climbing and what that means for you, but also I've seen that in the world of your work, isthere some way you can connect those two things for me? Like what it's like to climb versuswhat it's like to lead?Renee DeAngelis:Oh my gosh, there are, it's all the same. Well, first of all, I want to say, I'm not an expert climber.There are so many people who are way beyond me. I think I'm, I have a deep love and passion.I've been climbing for so long It's almost embarrassing, cause I should be a lot better than I am,but I love it. And that's the wonderful thing about this sport is that at any level you can enjoy it,but there's so many parallels. I often, you know, when you're climbing you are, well actually letme give you a story. Back in 2008, when I was just with planet granite, which is the companythat I was part of and helped grow before we had the private equity merger and acquisition, Iwent to climb El Cap and the actual El Cap in Yosemite. And I remember standing at the bottomof the route and looking up and thinking, oh my gosh, I am, how am I ever going to do this? Itlooks really steep and long. And during that time we were in a really busy growth phase at work.We were opening a new gym. We were hosting a national competition. I had a brand new teamof people that I had just assembled in anticipation of this growth. And so it was really crazy atwork. And I just thought, I looked up at that rock and I thought, well, if I can get through all ofthat, I can get through this climb. And you just kind of tackle it one pitch at a time. And I thinkthat, that's what we did in that moment at our company is that we just slowly crept up the, youknow, indoor climbing version of El Cap to accomplish all the things that we had to do. And so Ithink the, you know, when you're standing on the top of it, or when you're through, you've got allyour gyms open in your past, all the competition and craziness, you feel that same sense ofsuccess. So I think an overall sense that is, there's so much similarity and I've always loved it.And it is, you're constantly pushing yourself. And if you feel like I'm always driving myself toexcellence both at work and in my personal time, and there is no one thing, but I think I'm fairlylucky that it is so similar and there are so many overlaps.Jeff Hunter:One of the things I've experienced in our conversations and it's really helped me sort offormulate this in my mind. So Talentism is constantly talking about goals and unleashing yourpotential. And because people talk about potential in different ways, it's sort of this mystical sortof thing, right? Like it's always out there, it's never achievable, etcetera. And so that can make itsort of squishy for lack of a better term. And so we talk about potential is as potential does, likeyou gotta keep pushing the boundaries of things to figure out where your potential is. And yetthe thing I, the very little I know about climbing, and I appreciate your humility so much indescribing that, but of course, relative to me, you are an expert. So we'll continue to use that asyour rep for now. But one of the things that, the little climbing I had done earlier in my life is thatsense of how much to push yourself because pushing yourself beyond a certain limit actuallycould be dangerous. And yet, if you aren't willing to put yourself in a position where you have tofigure something out, or you have to make a big move you know, then you'll never really know.You won't know what your potential is. How do you think about the balance of those things?Again, both in climbing and with respect to the excellence you're pursuing at work.Renee DeAngelis:I don't think that you really know unless you try and you have to be okay with falling. I mean,that's really what it comes down to. And I think in climbing and in a work scenario, you have tobe okay with being uncomfortable. And I have often told people, I work with that well, whenyou're climbing the first person up the route or the pitch is lead climbing, and that's a little morescary because the higher you go up your place in gear, clipping into a gear as you go up. Andyou fall to that last piece of gear that you have clipped and that's called lead climbing. And it's alittle bit scary cause you fall a little bit farther than if you're following, if you're the second person.And so I think that when I'm, when you're leading a team or helping someone get throughsomething, I think you have to be okay being uncomfortable. You've got to kind of be on leadand push yourself and navigate the unknown. You don't always know where you're going, butyou do know, you know, where you want to end up, but you don't necessarily know how to getthere. And so I think it's really all about being uncomfortable. And I don't know if balance isachieved. I think that balance is achieved by testing things out and potentially falling. But whenyou break through, it's the craziest most awesome feeling in the world. You know, that's whenyou tap into your fierce, when you've tried something, you've been on the edge of, I don't know ifI should go forward or not, and you go forward and you are successful then it is, it's just themost amazing feeling out there and confidence building and everything that goes along withkind of becoming the best version of yourself.Jeff Hunter:One of the things, so you just use the word fierce. And as you know, I've got a sticky on mycomputer that says, find your fierce. I learned so much from the people I have the good fortuneto coach and from you, I've learned a lot about courage. And so I've got this post-it that says,find your fierce because that's something you were talking about with yourself and I've seen youexhibit it. What have you experienced in coaching with regards to

Jeff Hunter:Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you were listening to Coaching in the Clear, the podcastcommitted to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and webelieve that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the bestway for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of yourcoaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash theirpotential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is aproduction of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leadersachieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out aweekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issuesaffecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content toenable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today I'mspeaking with Eric Kinariwala. Eric is the founder and CEO of Capsule, the pharmacy of thefuture. Over the last five years, he and his team have built Capsule into a multi-city, multipharmacy platform across the United States. Eric and I met soon after he started Capsule andI've enjoyed watching him learn, struggle, and grow as a successful entrepreneur and aself-aware leader. We'll talk about talent, being a craftsman, helping others to do the same,contextualizing intuition and much, much more. Eric, thanks very much for joining and welcometo the conversation.Eric Kinariwala:Thanks for having me excited to have the conversation.Jeff Hunter:Yeah, well, let's give this a shot. So Eric, you have envisioned designed and built an incrediblecompany. You've worked with me, you've partnered with Talentism. So, you know, you'refamiliar with our approach and our thinking. And of course I've seen you do a lot of your owncoaching over time as a successful executive and investor. And that leads me to ask you, howdo you think about the value and importance of coaching?Eric Kinariwala:It's been really interesting. I'd never had a coach before you and I started working together ahandful of years ago now. And I think there was sort of initially I had some trepidation aroundcoaching as almost a sense of like, you know, I don't need a coach. I can kind of figure it out.And I think the phrase, the idea of like; Hey, even tiger woods has a coach that kind of alwaysresonated with me which is like, no matter who you are and where you are in your own kind ofjourney. I think everyone needs somebody to bring out the best in them. Then that can mean alot of different things. But for me, it's really been, I think what's been valuable, has been acouple of things. I think one has been to create a safe space to really have somebody be able towork through with you some of the unique challenges that really only, you know, in my case thatonly the CEO has to deal with and to have somebody who can provide and share a frameworkthat I think that not only has helped me, like, think about the specific sort of situation that I'm in,but what are the kind of guiding principles that let me then apply that framework to the same orsimilar situations are gonna happen over time. I think the other thing that's been really helpful issort of a process of self discovery around, you know, my own mental models, my ownassumptions that are bacon decisions. I make that I might not even know their assumptionsbecause they're so deep rooted. So this idea of a mirror and somebody who can bothunderstand who you are, but bring that mirror back and help you kind of work through what theimpact of your words, your decisions, your actions are on those around you all with sort of, Ithink the consistent goal of unleashing the greatness within, you know, that exists in each of us.And so I think for me, it's been two things. One has been sort of a set of tools and a frameworkto approach problems over time. And the second has been a mirror to be able to uncover blindspots or to better understand myself, to be able to be more effective with others over time.Jeff Hunter:That makes a lot of sense and so thank you for saying that and thank you for saying thatbecause of course that's what we're trying to do. So it's good to know that it's working in someway. The thing you said about self discovery is something I wanted to pick up on a little bit. Soas you know, cause you and I have talked about this frequently, the way I think about it as the,you are the only tool that you have to bring to the table when you're a leader or a manager likefundamentally, you've got this mind and the mind has models and capabilities and impressionsand all these things in it. And the most valuable thing you can do is to get to know that toolbetter and become a real craftsmen with that tool, as opposed to trying to acquire new tools,because fundamentally, if the underlying thing that you're working with, the, you know, the brainyou've got is something that's a mystery to you. All the other tools are going to be secondary tothat primary problem of you don't know how to use that thing. So that self discovery is a criticalpart of what we're trying to do. And of course, as you and I have talked about many times, whatmakes that especially difficult is you yourself, can't really interrogate your own mind to figure outwhat's going on underneath. There's this really thin channel between your consciousness andyour unconsciousness, the consciousness of what you're going through and how you think andwhat you believe, etcetera. And then this whole huge mass of intuition and instinct and memoryand emotion and all those things that are really not accessible. So you have to go into battle inessence, you have to like get to work and you've got to do things and then try to take the data orthe evidence that you produce and bring it back to the table and say, okay, how am I going tomake sense of this. How am I going to make sense of what this says about me? Becausefrankly that surprised me or I thought I was better at that or whatever it was. I think the role ofcoach, at least a clarity coach is crucial to try to help you make sense of that. So one of myquestions would be just for you personally, what's been one of the things that, because you andI have worked together so long, what have been the things that you started out and thought, youknow, I'm pretty good at this thing. I think I'm good at it. And then over time through the process,through the work and through just being a successful executive, you've come to maybe a bitmore humility or a perspective of like, wow, I've learned that's much harder than I thought, or I'mnot as good at it as I thought.Eric Kinariwala:A lot of things. Hey, you know, one of the things I spent a lot of time doing is building anamazing team to tackle the mission that we have, which is large and ambitious. And so I spent alot of my time recruiting and interviewing, and I think there's, I think getting more, in some waysgetting more sophisticated about interviewing, but in some ways actually just becoming muchsimpler and much clearer about what, you know, what is an interview process and what is thepoint of the interview process and what are you actually trying to do in a conversation or aseries of conversations in an interview process. And I think the thing that has resonated themost for me is that it's all about context and that, you know, one of the things that I've learnedthrough coaching is really to start with what is the context that exists at our company? What isthe context that exists of somebody working for me or being on my team? And then how do youuse the interview process to collect evidence, to suggest whether that person or that individualcan be successful in that context as almost the primary driver or predictor of whether thatindividual you know, will be likely more likely or less likely to be successful, you know, in thatenvironment. And so this idea that it's not about finding the world's best marketer, it's aboutfinding the person that can be the world's best marketer at your company, working for you. And Ithink that's a really important distinction that maybe was less clear and less codified when Istarted doing this five years ago. And I think has come in to pretty extreme focus as anindividual and as a company, as a team, we get better and better and better at assessing talentand building out our team. That's been a really powerful way I think to kind of combine what yousaid is like, how are you a craftsman with your own tool and your own set of tools? And thenhow do you bring folks in that are going to enable them to be the best craftsman they can be?And that's all about the context and past evidence of being successful in contexts andenvironments that are successful. So I think that's probably the, one of the biggest things that Ihave. I think a lot of humility for people that are really good for being able to pattern match, youknow, what kinds of people will be successful in the environment that you have, or that you'vecreated, you know, both who else is around the table, but also just what are the values andnorms that exist at your own company. And a lot of that for founder led businesses, the wayCapsule is, you know, stems from the founder, you know, herself or himself. And so being ableto understand your own, the context that you create as a virtue of being you and then being veryupfront, open and transparent about what that is, and this is who we are. But also then seekingto collect evidence, whether that individual can be successful in that context. So, you know, anexample of that is really, I think, you know, communication style and pattern is something thatyou know, that is perhaps not unique at Capsule, but it's certainly consistent at Capsule. Andthat we're a company that prefers to be in rapid sync to be in continuous communication. Andwe, because we're a company that is very focused on learning and iterating and moving quickly,the idea of, you know, we have found that there are individuals on either end of the spectrum.There are individuals who really prefer to take a problem and then go away for a month and putto

Jeff Hunter: Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to coaching in the clear, a podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is a production of talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to enable you to unleash your potential. Learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today I am speaking with George Arison. Talentisms’ been working with George and Shift, the company he co-founded with Toby Russell for over three years. I've come to know him as a hard-driving entrepreneur who has worked with the team at Shift, overcoming incredible obstacles. The results of all that hard work paid off this past October when he and the team at shift went public. I’ve also enjoyed getting to know George as a person over that time and I'm excited to have him share that story with you. It's pretty extraordinary. In our session today, I'm going to ask him about how a kid growing up in the former U.S.S.R. dreams of moving to America and becoming a successful business person. I'm going to ask him about the inspiration for those dreams, his plans for the future, what it takes to become incredibly successful by overcoming even more incredible obstacles. And finally, we're going to talk about how he's tried to stay humble in the face of that success and as he's learned from his many, many mistakes. George, thank you so much for being a guest on Coaching in the Clear just as background for everybody George and I met about three and a half years ago. I've had the great privilege of being able to work with him. His co-founder Toby Russell and the team at Shift over the last three and a half years, and have learned a ton from George. And George, I'm just really grateful to have you on the show and to learn from you and be able to tell your story to the audience, so thank you so much for joining. George Arison: Thanks for having me. And likewise, it's been awesome to be working with you for all these many months now. And you've been really instrumental in helping shift get to where it is. So we are super appreciative of that as well. Jeff Hunter: Thanks, George. I appreciate that. All right, so for the audience that has listened to our last nine, 10 episodes or so they may hear something a little different. I'm always in the process of experimenting and learning. I'm going to try a little bit of a different approach now. And so rather than having a back and forth about coaching, I actually just want to learn about you and I want to learn about your story and where I'd love to start is actually with your professional career. If you could just take the audience through your career, where did you start? What was your first job and take us up to being, you know, founder and Co-CEO of Shift. George Arison: Totally. So I think to answer that I need to just start a little bit, even more back, which is that I'm originally from Georgia, the country. I was born in the Soviet Union when it was still very much the Soviet Union and then grew up while, you know, Soviet Union is going through a lot of transition. I had the, I guess, big fortune of learning English when I was quite young and we can talk later about how that happened, but that allowed me to get out. And I ended up leaving Georgia when I was 14 in 1992 to come to the U.S. to go to high school. I was the first Soviet kid they allowed to leave to go to a private U.S. prep school. And you know, my life kind of took off from there. I, in some ways you know, joke that I was reborn once I came to the U.S. cause a lot of what I probably would become would not have been possible had that not happened. And obviously it was a very fortunate event for me. I always thought that my life would take kind of the shape of; Hey, I'm going to learn, then I'm going to earn some money and eventually go back to Georgia and run for office and be in politics there. That was kind of always my aspiration for a long, long time. And being in business for the long term was never the plan. I thought I would start a company, but I never thought that I would start a company in technology, kind of the things I always thought about had to do with government relations. Cause that's pretty much what I knew. I actually thought I was going to become a lawyer first, because that's the logical kind of path you choose if you want to be in politics most of the time, right? So I got your technology a little bit, a roundabout way, and I'll talk about how that happened. So after college I moved to DC and I took a job at a small consulting firm locally which mostly did consulting without traveling. So that pitch was; Hey, you do the same work that you might do at McKinsey or BCG, but you don't have to be on the road. That sounded intriguing to me. And I liked the idea of living in Washington because it was so close to the types of things I'm really passionate about in politics, but obviously getting a job in politics was not an option because I was not a U.S. citizen. So I had to do it more of a businessy style job. So that's how I started my career. The first job I had was quite frankly, a horrible experience. I really hated it. It seemed super rudimentary and basic, and I really didn't like it, but I started to get to know more and more Georgian politicians and people in DC who were working on Georgia. And I was this kind of really unique animal who knew a lot of what was happening in Georgia and spoke Georgian really well obviously, and understood what was happening there, but also knew a lot about U.S. politics as well because I had always followed U.S. politics so closely, so had an opportunity to switch within about nine months to a job at a think tank with me, myself, having raised the money to fund my presence at that think tank to work on Georgia. And so then I spent the next couple of years writing and presenting a lot of information to you as policymakers on what was happening there and why it was really critical for the U.S. to stay very actively engaged on promoting democratic change. Georgia had a government that needed to be transitioned out. The president was very old and was ready for the new younger folks to take over. And there was later, two backups of people who could take over the country. A set of very socialist and ultimately not very democratic folks, and then a set of more pro-business and more democratic set of folks and the goal was to try to push the ladder, contra the former. So eventually in 2003 that many of the people I was working with asked me to come back to Georgia and help run them, their political campaign for parliament. Obviously I said, I don't really know anything about how to run political campaigns, but perhaps we could hire somebody from the U.S. who knows a lot when it comes to what to do. And that's when I came in contact with a guy named Mike Murphy, he's a political consultant who had run Jeb Bush’s campaigns and Mitt Romney’s campaigns. He's really amazing actually. And so I convinced him to come to Georgia with me and run this political parties’ campaign for parliament which was really an incredible experience for me because I probably learned more from Mike in that time span of like five or six months when we were working together than I ever have in that short of a time period in my life. You know, politics is very different from business, but there's also so much connectivity and so much of what I do in business today inter-relates to what I learned then. It was just this incredible thing of, he came to Georgia for a week, spent a week talking to, you know, politicians, journalists, analysts, and had the clearest articulation of what was happening, what needed to be fixed and how to win than I could have ever imagined anyone being able to do. And that really just kind of gave me a lot of passion of; Hey, you can take a lot of data and then apply it to knowledge and to driving decisions in a way that I didn't really know you could do before. And that was really, really intriguing to me. So we spent about a year on this political campaign. I didn't really run as good of a race as I think we should have. Frankly, our candidate didn't really follow my instructions as well as I wish she had. Oftentimes we'd see the opposition following Mike's directions better than we did in terms of staying on message and repeating the things that we needed to say all the time. And so when you couple that with the fact that being a pro kind of business group in a former Soviet Republic is not easy. We did okay, but we didn't do that great. And so, that was kind of my first, you know, really professional experience and learned a ton from it, but also realized that being in Georgia longterm was not for me. I had just changed too much during the time when I had been in the U.S., excuse me, and needed to kind of be back in the U.S. cause that's what my life was. Being gay in Georgia was not easy and I didn't think it was going to become any easier. And so that was a factor obviously, but not the only one. And the biggest thing was that I ultimately loved America a lot more than I loved Georgia. And this is not to be crude about it, but like if Georgia and America went to war in my mind, there was no question which side I was going to be on, and so it made no sense to be living in a country where you kind of didn't feel like you would be on their side if a war happened and suddenly it made no sense to live in that country and try to be in politics if that's how you felt. So Toby, my

Jess Hunt:Because what you want, you want progress to be the idea of the person you're managing. You want them to drive the bus. And so you want to elicit, you want to pull from them the best ideas and to do so you have to start with understanding.Jeff Hunter:Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you were listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Jess, thank you so much for joining me on Coaching in the Clear. I'm very grateful for your time and for your participation. Thank you so much for joining the conversation. Jess Hunt:Thanks Jeff. Delighted to be here. Jeff Hunter:Okay. So let's start at the beginning. As I love to know how people come to the world of coaching, when you first hear about it, what you think about it, the first coach you have, can be in an athletic or an executive setting or any other setting. And just generally how you think about coaching.Jess Hunt:Well, I remember when I had my first professional coach, my CEO at the time was at a tech enabled startup, New York City, early odds. And my CEO at the time recommended that I get a coach and it was a cohort coaching. And so there were a number of, sort of up and comer managers that I think there were six of us in a group with a coach. And I did the first coaching session with, you know a framework, very thoughtful framework. I now realize, and I went through the first coaching session and we were sharing our challenges, learning more about her framework. And I walked out of the room and I walked down to my CEO, who I was close with, and I said, well, that was a bunch of bullshit. And I really, really wasn't comfortable with what I now know, coaching can ask of you to get a lot out of it, which is vulnerability and self-awareness. And then if you're lucky, self-acceptance and there was a lot of learning involved for me in that first coaching experience, I think, which lasted almost two years and to a coach that I'm still close to.Jeff Hunter:Okay. So I love that. I love that you have that experience and goes, that's a load of bullshit. Two reasons I love that. First of all, because I think in the first minute, the audience just got to know you really well. I've had the good fortune of knowing you for a while, but that was awesome. And then the second thing is I believe a lot of people who are suggested into coaching are recommended like a, should get a coach, sort of have that. Like there are the people who are, I think they sort of fall into three camps. There's the people who say no, I'm not going to do that because I don't need a psychologist and that's bologna. Two is like, sure, I'll do it. But in their mind, like no way. I think it's sorta like Matt Damon and Goodwill hunting. It's like, sure, I'll just go mess with them. Or the third is like, they go and they're like, oh, this sort of surprises me. So tell me about going from, Hey, this is really bullshit to, I remember when you and I first met, you're like, well, how does your coaching work? Cause I'm sort of used to this way. How do you go from one coach to another, because you obviously had a profound experience with that first coach.Jess Hunt:Yeah, well, she was, I think coaching, that was earlier in my career, coaching at that stage became useful quickly because coaching is highly applicable, at least at that stage in my career, coaching that was highly applicable to my work every day, the content of my work and everyday my interpersonal relationships at work became useful very quickly. And I, in retrospect, I believe that was because I was probably within my first five years of any major management responsibilities and becoming a really good manager, which my coach helped me do, I hope, just made me a lot more effective at work. So I think that coaching experience was earlier in my career and it was management coaching. And management’s a skill as I've moved along and certainly most recently with Talentism, I mean, that's, you balance the management, whether you're managing an executive team or managing a board or investors executive management with executive leadership. So certainly the kind of coaching that I think I've probably required has evolved and what that coaching has asked of me, hopefully it's stayed the same, which is I get as much out of it as I put into it. Jeff Hunter:Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. And one of the things we talk about is different forms of coaching, and this is just sort of our language around it, nothing that's, I think, widely accepted in the industry and probably derives from the fact that we came to coaching sort of as outsiders as executives ourselves. So we were, we were executives and then had never, I'd never coached anybody before and people asked me to do it. I thought, well sure, but I wonder if I, what it is and if I could even be good at it. And through that research a lot and try to understand and simplify this incredibly complex world of all these, you know, career coaches and life coaches and executive coaches, business coaches, yada, yada, there's just a ton of them. And so we came with this thing like there's times when you just need a safe space to talk, there are times where you need someone to show you the way, like, you know, help you train in a specific skill or craft. And there are times people actually need to help you get to clarity, which is obviously where we're trying to operate, but just take me through that a little bit in the nature of our engagement and the nature of how you think about coaching. If you were recommending coaching to somebody, how would you help them think through other than just really in their career later in their career, how would you help them think through when they need someone who helps them sort of hone a particular skill and when they need someone who's identifying for them, how they're standing in the way of their overall success, given their cognitive profile and how they're thinking and behaving?Jess Hunt:Yeah, well, you've seen much, much, much more than I have, but I've certainly managed lots of people. And tried to be cognizant and incur, cognizant of when someone needs coaching or could really benefit from coaching and proactive in helping them get coaching or becoming open to coaching. When that is true. The two times I can see coaching being or feel easy to me as a manager, a leader of executives is when someone really does need a space to work through challenges at work that are yes, practical, but may have something to do with their emotions or psychology or their understanding of themselves. But they need a space that more than I can give them. And that often will allow them to really focus on a certain relationship or a certain skill that they need to develop. The other place that I, it’s a sense that you get, is when, especially when someone's in a new environment and a new role, but not always. It's when you can see someone really benefit from self awareness and that's kind of a hard thing to describe, I'm sure you, Jeff, you can describe it much more, but once you've really worked with a coach on self-awareness and self-acceptance, it's something you can appreciate. And it's hard to have that ladder conversation with someone who could benefit from coaching, but I think if you can get someone into coaching, they can begin to understand what that's like. It's really knowing yourself. And so in knowing yourself, you can often become more effective. And in many cases happier, I don't know, what are the other, those are two things that stand out to me as places where I can help when I can see where coaching would really be applicable or help someone unleash their potential.Jeff Hunter:Yeah. I think that makes a lot of sense. The way we talk about it is ultimately, your ultimate competitive advantage, both as a business and as a leader or manager, is your speed of productive learning. The world changes really rapidly, and the people who stay ahead of that and lead that change, then do well. The people who can keep up with it and sort of adapt to it, do okay. And the people who are flummoxed by it or put into threat by it really struggle. So where you try to focus on is the speed of productive learning along the path of every individual, finding their own individual excellence. I mean, you said coaching, sorry, management is a skill. The reality is most people aren't good managers. You're a very good manager. Most people aren't. So your particular path to excellence may be down the route of management, but in order to become good at something truly, truly good at something and to stay ahead of change and to be leading that change, you really need four elements and you've identified two of the most critical you need self-awareness, you need self skepticism, you need self-acceptance and you need the ability and courage to experiment because your mind is always in a constant state of fooling you. That's what our minds do. It’s like they're literally designed to fool you because fooling you helps you survive. Believing that I know you have some background in primatology. You know, I geek out on that. I have loved dark conversations about that, but to have that monkey brain, that mistakes, a moving branch, because of the wind, as a potential predator, you know, millions of years, that's a real benefit. That's a positive

Jim Wagner:I think as a leader and being fortunate and privileged to be in a position to lead an organization, it's incumbent upon that leader to create the space for everyone to thrive and to recognize when and if there are either systems in place, structures in place, that need to be broken down to create opportunity for everyone.Jeff Hunter:Hi, and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market-leading big change businesses. Coaching in the Clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the sense maker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content to enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. So, Jim, thank you so much for being on coaching in the clear today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate your timeJim Wagner:Thank you for having me, looking forward to the conversation.Jeff Hunter:Good. So listen, I'm starting all my conversations the same way, which is, I would just like to know how you decided to enter the world of coaching, how to get a coach when was the first time he got a coach? Just take me through some of that narrative and background about how you approached coaching.Jim Wagner:Absolutely. So I think there's the long version, which is my own history going back as an athlete who was fortunate to have some incredible coaches and really learned about how important a coach is to anyone's individual success as well as team success. I think often times when we get into a business context and certainly as a first time CEO, which I was at, at Roland foods, when I started working with you as a coach you really realize you're in a position by yourself. It's actually a very lonely position where there's lots of decisions you need to make. There's lots of responsibility. And while I have mentors, I have friends, I have confidence. What I knew I needed was somebody who was going to work with me to provide the unvarnished feedback and help me to remove or see some of the blocks that existed in my own leadership style as well as in the business. So I was fortunate that I had great experiences with coaches in a different context and knew that I thrived when having that. So that's how I arrived at that.Jeff Hunter:Wonderful. So tell me, because you were an athlete, a very highly regarded athlete, and in incredible collegiate program as a waterfall polo player, I was a water polo player. Although I would imagine comparing your skill to my skill is a not a fair comparison, but let's just say we were both in the water splashing around. So tell me. Something that's fascinating, I was just talking to somebody this past weekend who was an athlete, and they were talking about the role of coaching and in helping get better. What do you think is a similarity between the sports context and the business context with that role of coach? Because obviously coaches take on different jobs and different contexts, but from what I've heard, people had coaches in their prior lives, in their, you know, sports and those kinds of things really seem to gravitate towards it more in business than people might not have had that experience. Could you help me sort of navigate that?Jim Wagner:Yeah, definitely. So I think that again, the good fortune that I had of having excellent coaches, even in high school and in college and with the under 20 U.S. national team was that great coaching is a constant feedback loop and it's about learning to learn and that every practice and every game is very much an experiment in the sense of improvement as opposed to the idea that winning is in kind of, the aspect of winning a game is about winning the game, which it’s not, it's about all of the preparation and all of the feedback and that, you know, you get that feedback in a game, then you realign, you get the feedback from your coach, and then you go and you try it again. And I think that's very much how I think about business, which is while we have a goal that you cannot just achieve the goal, the goal is about running a series of experiments and getting that feedback and quote-unquote being coachable. So I think a lot of people who haven't had that are challenged with the idea of coaching because they don't understand that feedback mechanism, that it's about a constant practice and it's about constant improvement as well as going into the unknown. There isn't an athlete that's ever played a game or run a race that didn't do something they hadn't done before, which is very much what business is all about. You're trying to achieve something that the company hasn't achieved before. You're trying to develop a product that hasn't been developed before. And so I think having that history and knowing to try to, the ability to figure out what you don't know, you can't do it yourself. You need those feedback mechanism. And I always found a coach to be the best way to do that. Jeff Hunter:Yeah. One of the things I know you and I have talked a little bit about in the past and I speak with my clients frequently about is the difference between goals and measures. And I think a key point of confusion since, as we have talked about many times, confusion is sort of our shtick, it's the thing we're taking a look at, we're reviewing performance and cognition through that lens. One of the things I think is very common is that people confuse goals and measures. And so in a sports sort of context, as an athlete, of course, as I said, honestly, not as accomplished as you, but as an athlete, what I figured out was if excellence is the goal, the win is the measure, but if the win is the goal then it gets pretty confusing because it creates a certain fragility and identification with the win, as opposed to the practice and the process of constantly pushing ourselves to find that outer limit of potential in the moment and outer potential in the game and find our own potential in that game. And I think that's something that I've always found very similar in a lot of different things, whether it's world working with world class performers on the stage or in film, or it's in business or sports or whatever it is, there's this thing of not confusing the goal of excellence with the measure of the win, the win is a nice sort of point in time. They can tell you things are probably on the right path, but you never know you could have gotten lucky etcetera. And I've always experienced in working with you that you kept those two things very clear in your mind. And I think that's what you're talking about.Jim Wagner:Yeah, absolutely. I think that the phrase that I use consistently is “if you run the system, the goals will come” sort of in, in the athletic context. And I think it's in the business context as well, which is if you're not running a system, which again is a certain set of experiments is you run it and if, and if you're running a system, then when you evaluate, if you achieved your goal or not, you then can tweak the system as opposed to what happens a lot of times is if again, taking this athletic metaphor a little further, if the goals are the objective, you actually don't know if it was luck, if it was skill if it was the quality of the other team, did you actually do what you set out to do? And I think that happens a lot in business as well, which is if revenue is a goal unto itself, there can be, you know, random revenue events. There can be one client who happens to grow faster, but underneath the system is not healthy. And so I think consistently focusing on running the system and tweaking the system, knowing that the goals are, as you mentioned, measurements along the way, and they're derivative of the effort and the experiments I think that's what keeps a company healthy and thriving as opposed to what I've often seen typically with investors and others is they're so focused on the metrics as being the goals that they lose sight of what a healthy business is and where what changes need to be made. And I think, again, this goes back to why that for me, that scenario of being a CEO who led and operated in the fashion, I just described but had investors who very much confused goals and metrics, also as what led me to reaching out, to working with a coach to try to understand my own confusion about that.Jeff Hunter:I want to come back to that point, cause I think there's something really important there, but you mentioned the word, you mentioned the phrase healthy business, and I just want to give a perspective on that because what I find in clarity coaching and in our methodology, that it can be very, it can be very confusing for clients who are seeking to gain a short term sort of outcome that are, you know, looking to flip their company or juice their valuation before the next big financial event, or make a big hire, whatever it is. There's just some, you know, some shiny object at the next level. And what we're trying to do is much more, as you say, systematic, right? What we say is systematically unleashing human potential, but it really is about the system by which people continue to find and unleash their potential. And our perspective is that every business is going to have luck and it's going to be unlucky. It'll be lucky and it'll be unlucky. If you're around long enough, you'll have your highs, you'll have your lows. If you take a snapshot at any particular time, you're going to either feel too good or too bad, but what's happening underneath all of that is that you've got an organization that is either fragile or is resilient, or is antifragile it's when an orga

Jeff:Today, we're speaking with Kerry Van Voris. For over 15 years, Kerry has been completely focused on the world of talent, attracting, placing, and growing people across the technology, financial and healthcare industries. Kerry is currently Chief People Officer at Oscar Health after leadership positions at Amazon, Microsoft, and Bridgewater. We'll talk about inspiring individuals and finding their loyalty to the purpose of an organization using that inspiration as a common thread for different styles of coaching, and the way that focusing on blind spots can be the best approach to increasing effectiveness. Kerry and I have known each other for almost a decade, and I am thrilled to have her join our conversation and share her wisdom. So Kerry, thank you so much for being a part of Coaching in the Clear and welcome to our podcast.Kerry:Thanks for having me, Jeff. I'm really happy to be here and having the opportunity to chat with you.Jeff:Fantastic. Okay. So let's just start at the beginning. What was your first experience with a coach?Kerry:When I think about coaching, I mean, for me it really comes down to sixth grade. You know, I was just a kid growing up and, and somebody, a friend of mine in school who happened to be in seventh grade, said, Hey, you should try out for the basketball team. And I'd never touched a basketball in my life and, you know, I didn't know anything and, and thought it was just kind of a, it would be like one night after school, a week and found myself found myself kind of playing basketball for two and a half hours a day after school. All due to the, the gentleman who was coaching the team and his name was it's, his name is Dave Margraf. And so that was really my first experience with a coach and outside of it being, you know, apparent or anything like that.And, and so much of what he taught me and how he coached still rings true, actually in my personal and professional life. I mean, one of the, one of the biggest things that I, I realized about him is that he coached each one of us on the team very differently. And he was adept at recognizing what would motivate each one of us and how there were some of us that really responded to encouragement and positive reinforcement. And there were others on the team. Particularly one, one girl who was just an incredible athlete that that responded more to with the coaching. That was, that was really hard and actually was much more negative and much more about everything that she was doing wrong instead of pumping her up and motivating her too with encouragement. And I found that both super interesting and and also really effective.Jeff:So you bring up a great topic and what I've experienced over the course of doing these podcasts is typically this will come up later, but you just gave a great intro segue into it. So two things, one I want to explore what makes somebody coachable and you have a, you have a great perspective on that because as a leader at Oscar, you're a person who thinks about coaching and how coaching will work with leaders, et cetera. And so I want to talk about that. And then the other thing is in our coaching, at least we're sort of going in and we check for this when we're matching people, but we go in with a very clear goal. What we're trying to do is unleash your potential. And that means we're going to be focusing on trying to get you to find your individual point of excellence or greatness and drive you towards it, which means, you know, to do that, it's really hard.And you've got to have a certain motivation to want to go down that path. And not everybody does want to go down that path. So we try to sort it out, but a lot of people don't want to go to coaching for that. A lot of people want to go to coaching for something else, for a safe space to explore issues, et cetera. And it sounded like this coach was figuring out, Dave was figuring out how to put together an incredible team where there were different motivations on the team, but ultimately he wanted the team to win and function well together. Am I, am I getting that right? Yeah.Kerry:That's exactly right. And he had to kind of handle each individual differently in order to get there.Jeff:So now let's take that to your, to your current life, to your professional life. When you're working with leadership teams and you're trying to put together this fantastic team, that's gonna achieve incredibly difficult goals. Oscar has done amazing things. You've worked at very distinguished, amazing organizations like Bridgewater and others. So you've actually been a part of teams that have, that have striven for excellence and know that they're going to have to work incredibly well together in order to get there, but are very different people and have different motivations to try to function well together as a team and achieve that goal. How do you, in that thinking like Dave, how do you take a look at each person around that table and think about what they need and what their motivations are.Kerry:Yeah. And, and it's, it kind of, there are just certain themes that I look for Jeff and, and the first one, the first one really is across the team. I look to ensure that each individual is aligned to the larger goal. I mean, that's one of the first things and just make sure that each individual believes in the vision of the company, or team or whatever it is, and truly wants to be part of it. I think that's, that's one, one the main thing. And then for each individual, when I think about coaching and what makes sense, and that could be, that could be hiring an external coach that could be individual one-off, you know, sidebar coaching from me, et cetera. The, the first, the, the first thing that individual has to have is just a hunger for improvement. They have to actually want it, like you mentioned, and want to evolve and want to improve.And then secondly, I think, I think they have to have this raw openness to feedback, because like you mentioned, it's not, it's not, coaching isn't pretty things are gonna come up as you're being coached. Even as you're coaching others where just, just ugliness is going to come up or you're going to hear things that are really hard to hear. You don't want to hear. So someone having the openness to feedback is going to be a really important thing. And then, and then third for an individual, I think there's gotta be an awareness that, that each person has blind spots and they don't have to necessarily know what those blind spots are, because I think that's part of the, the excellent part of coaching is that you get to unearth those blind spots and then figure out what to do about them. But you have to at least have the awareness that we're not, none of us are perfect. And, and that each one of us has blind spots and, and, and coaching is part of the process to really identify those. And then, and then, then figure out what to do about them.Jeff:Awesome. So I've asked that question now, I think six, six different people, and the answers are similar and you're, I think you're answer encapsulates it particularly well. There's elements of the hunger, the drive for improvement, the desire to get better. And there's the humility of entering that arena and being open to what you're going to discover about yourself. It's more than curiosity. There's a humility to, like, I do have blind spots. I do have problems. I don't have it all the, all the answers and I have to enter that arena sort of understanding that and, and being okay with that.Kerry:Yeah, absolutely. Jeff and I think, you know, one of the, one of the things I always go back to is just, you know, the, that whole aspect of the growth mindset, right. That someone I think to, to enter the arena, it's really important for them to have, to know that they're going to grow by identifying the blind spots and working with someone to figure out what to do with them. That there's an opportunity to actually change direction and truly, truly get better. Okay, great. So I love the concept of the growth mindset. Have you ever experienced someone who you didn't think had the growth mindset? Like they seem to be not open, not hungry, not humble. And it was really about them, the context they were in or the place they were in more than like this innate sort of set of beliefs about themselves. Cause I think one of the things about Dr. Dwecks work and, and with growth mindset is there's almost this, at least as far as I understand it, and I could be completely wrong here just to be clear. But but I always sort of said it as like, there's a set of beliefs, right. And beliefs, or at least the way I understand what beliefs are, they're very deeply held. They're not really super accessible to a reflection they're sort of driving your behaviors, but doesn't mean that you actually even know they're there.Jeff:So there's this set of beliefs about like the potential and opportunity for growth and, and through those beliefs, then you come to the place of being hungry and humble. I, so that, that may be right, or that may be wrong. I don't know, but the thing I've experienced and I'd love to get your perspective on this, is that those beliefs aren't actually poured in concrete, inside a person. And they're very context dependent that when you get an excellent leader, an excellent manager, an excellent coach, like you were speaking about with Dave, who can create safety so that you feel like you could try to be your best, or you could try something new, then the hunger and humility can evolve out of that safety, as opposed to sort of being a set of beliefs that you're walking into, regardless of what situation you're in. What do you, what have you experienced?Kerry:No, and it's so interesting, Jeff. I mean, I, I'm sitting here just, you know, jotting a few things down as they come to me and I literally just wrote down, I was like environment. It has to be safe. And I, I mean, to me, I think you nailed it because the environment does shift and there are some environments for individuals that just aren't, aren't a fit. And either you know, the environment for the individual isn't safe, the individual for some reason has a difficult time just kind of letti

Neil Parikh:Truthfully, it's a little bit hard to accept because as a perfectionist, I want to be right or successful a hundred percent of the time, but you know, you're, it's an interesting point to think about you have, if you don't engage in the values, you never learn. You never get better. And so you can never realize your vision unless you're continuously doing that. Jeff Hunter:   Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in-depth, personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market-leading big change businesses.Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the sense-maker, where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content and enable you to unleash your potential. Learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today we're talking with Neil Peric, the co-founder, and chief strategy officer of Casper. Casper has been an amazing story of growth and success, but it's also had its struggles along the way. Neil has been there leading since day one. He and I met about three and a half years ago, and it's been a true honor to watch him and his co-founders and the team of Casper take the dream of a better-rested world and make it a reality. Through our time together Neil has consistently demonstrated a huge vision and a desire to make a big impact on the world. We're going to talk about accepting shortcomings and leaning into strengths, catching frustrations at the root of the logical fallacy, the way safety plays into acceptance, and discovering capabilities that the perfectionist in us wants to hide. Neil, thank you so much for joining and welcome to the conversation.Neil Parikh:Thanks for having me, Jeff. It's an honor to be here and an honor to work with you. Jeff Hunter:   Well, thank you, sir. So, Neil, you have helped build and grow one of the preeminent sleep brands. You've worked with me and partnered with Talentism. So, you know our approach and thinking, and of course, you've done your own coaching over time as a successful executive and investor. You and I have often spoken about how I think you have a significant talent for coaching in your own right, and so that all leads me to ask, how do you think about the value and importance of coaching?Neil Parikh:Thanks for the introduction, Jeff. So coaching is a, it's a kind of a funny thing because to your point earlier, it can be so many different things, right? From giving advice to helping people understand something. What I've always loved about the model that we've been working on and that you've brought us into is that to me traditionally, coaching was about behavior change. And in my life before this, it was you're doing something wrong. You need to get better at it and work on this. And the problem is that when you're in a fast-paced environment, you know, you're reordering every six months, you have new problems every three months. I used to joke when people said, hey what's, you know, what's our year-long plan. I said I don't even know what's going to happen next month, let alone six months or twelve months from now.And so when you actually apply a different lens to it and think about, how do we get people to be unconfused? And secondly, how do we think about, how do we design systems to enable success rather than just people? Because people are kind of hard to change. It takes a really long time, a lot of effort, and maybe, I've always believed, maybe you can get five or 10 degrees off of center, but you know, it's very hard to radically change people in a short amount of time. And so it kind of goes back down to, for me, coaching has been a space first and foremost for self-reflection and understanding to have somebody to bounce ideas off of, or to be that person for people to help them work through a framework, to get unconfused, to take something that seems like it's creating chaos in their world and to try to make sense in order of it through a systematic process. So that's a repeatable thing. And so that both for me, so that I could, you know, be successful in whatever it is that I wanted to do. And for the people that I've worked with as an investor mentor do the same. Jeff Hunter:   Yeah, so, I'm glad you brought up the concept of behavior change. First of all, just using one of our principles and starting with me, I have to be open and honest with the audience that I have a huge, what we call autonomy trigger and that leads me to be a contrarian about most things. So if everybody's saying, Hey, it's all about behavior change. My mind habitually really goes to, it must not be, it must be about something else, but even within the context of that self-awareness, the thing that sort of struck me about growing up and, you know, being a founder of fast-growth companies, venture-backed companies, working with very fast-growth companies. I started my career at a place called Connor peripherals, which at that time was the fastest-growing company in history. And you know, in my formative years being 21, 22 being a manager inside an organization that was achieving billion-dollar $2 billion marks year after year, just growing at an exponential rate and listening to the CEO say the most important thing about a five-year plan is how you rewrite it every three months.And so really growing up inside of that and realizing that human beings, as you were saying are just so difficult to change, right? And not, I think this is an important distinction and I think it's consistent with what you were saying, actually change isn't that hard. Attention is really hard. And so like I, if I say I want to change my diet, I can change my diet. I just have to put all of my attention on it in a fast-growth environment. You don't have that attention. The attention is going through to the context shifts, rapid changes in the environment, and trying to make rapid decisions with limited data, stay one step ahead of the competition or funding, or whatever it is. And you just don't have the attention to allocate to behavior change. So the question is going to be, how are you going to get successful?How are you going to unleash your potential and achieve your goals when you just don't have that attention available? Then I think it really is through the concept of self-awareness, knowing yourself, and then designing for that, you know, and I've seen you, who've been especially good at the South awareness piece of that, which is, I think is incredibly difficult for people. We, human beings are not wired for self- awareness, it's a habit that has to be developed. Some people are lucky they developed very early in life. Some people have to develop it through struggle over long periods of time, but it doesn't come naturally. The mechanics of our consciousness is very much about trying to make sense of the world by blaming others and believing we've got the answer and nobody else, you know, anybody who doesn't see it is a dummy and all those kinds of things.So to put ourselves at the center of any confusion narrative and say, wow, this is probably about me. It's probably about the insufficiency about something in my mental model. What I don't understand and have that self-awareness to work through and say, I need to design right now for success. And I also need to get better over time within the container of the safety that success will create. Then I think it gives you the opportunity of behavior changes, an outcome of good design. Not as the goal of coaching itself. And I've seen you engage really well in that. So I think it's an excellent point.Neil Parikh:Yeah. I appreciate that. I think it's a good point and also, traditional coaching never really thinks about the system design, right? I know we've talked about this before. To me, it's a blend of maybe not management consulting, but really the point of view of you have to have the container along with the capacity if you want to change. So agreed. And I think that that's an important part to be aware of as you think about going down the journey, is that it's not just about the singular idea that I'm going to change. You have to really set up the circumstances for that as well. Jeff Hunter:   Yeah. Well, I think one of the interesting, again, when you're in the midst of not having your goal be behavior change, but the goal being, building a great company or being great at your work or finding your individual path excellence, whatever that may be, then change is a result of doing things the right way. It's not the goal. It's sort of a measure. It's not a goal. And I think this is one of the things that I struggled with. You know, I didn't, I was an entrepreneur by practice. I wasn't a coach by practice and over the last seven years spending my life coaching or a good portion of my life coaching, I've had to learn a lot cause I was blind to a lot of things.I didn't know a lot of things, but one thing that always struck me was a sort of internal contradiction in the classic coaching models I understood to the degree. I do understand them. I'm sure there's a lot I'm missing, but the contradiction was sort of like the goal is behavior change. But in order to go through that, you really at the very beginning are failing to engage on one of the most fundamental things about a deep, fundamental behavior change, which is self-acceptance. In other words, like I think psychologically what happens is that we set this stuff up in our mind where we're like, oh, I'm really bad at this. Or you know, there's a negative impression of this thing. Or I don't like this about mysel

Chloe Drew:That grounding in your values and principles again and again, every day can be the, okay, my feet are planted solidly on something and it allows me to make better decisions. And what I always say to leaders, when it comes to diversity inclusion, to bring it back to that is, it's a lens you apply to every single thing you do.Jeff Hunter:Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. Coaching is more popular than ever, and we believe that sharing in depth, personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity. We send out a weekly newsletter called the SenseMaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content and enable you to unleash your potential.Learn more and sign up@talentism.com. Today I'm speaking with Chloe drew. Chloe can spent the past 20 years achieving significant impact in both the corporate and political worlds in the areas of social justice, philanthropy, diversity, and inclusion. We'll discuss her first experience with a transformational coach and how it helped her find direction and purpose. You'll also review ways to make ourselves more coachable. Then we'll shift our reflections on empathy and creating safe spaces in the world of business and how critical this is in our current business environment. Finally, we'll explore how business leaders must challenge their blind spots around social, gender and racial inclusion by starting with more self skepticism. So Chloe, thank you so much. Joining me today on coaching in the clear I am so grateful that you've made time for us and just really appreciative of you making the space to have this conversation. So thank you.Chloe Drew: I'm really delighted to be part of this. Thank you for asking me Jeff.Jeff Hunter:Of course. So let's just start out with how you found coaching, everybody comes to be a part of a coaching experience in their own way. Some people have been athletes and got to know it that way, other people have just through being successful executives, but everybody sort of comes to it in their own way. And I'd love to hear your story. Chloe Drew:Yeah, no. And I have experienced coaching, frankly, in both of those parts of my life and being. I ran cross country and track in high school and I was thinking, and sort of preparing to talk to you today. I was thinking about coach Cody, who was my cross country coach and track coach when I was 14 years old. And he sort of had a bunch of qualities that I think are good professional coaching qualities, good managerial qualities. And one thing that really struck me as I thought about him is he used to tell us running tips and sort of coach us real time in races, but he also ran with us and there was this feeling of hanging with the team, solidarity, literally sort of sweating in the hot summer with us. And then on race day, we were kind of on our own except he was there and, you know, every lap I would do or every sort of, you know, break in the trees or he'd pop out and yell something he was there.And, you know, I think the important through line for me from sports coaching to professional coaching is the best of coaching wires in your very sort of cellular makeup and musculature, the better way of doing things. Because you're hearing feedback real time, you're then practicing it. You're screwing it up. You're getting more feedback, you're trying it again. And that's sort of the definition of sports coaching, at least in my life. And then the best kind of professional coaching had those qualities too. So that was sort of my high school years. And he's one of the most memorable coaches I had. And then I had three different sets of professional coaches. One was when I was a very young executive director of a nonprofit and I had a very young untested coach and she was, I would say sort of friend-like and her approach.It was a weekly session for me to download, vent, get some tips on managing. I did not know how to manage at all. I manage this team and all these volunteers and this board, and she had some sort of valuable frameworks for me, but then I had this truly, truly transformational experience of spending time with a coach and Carol Morley who had the right approach for me at the time that I came to her because I was probably about 32 and needed to move on from the nonprofit that I was running, but didn't know who I was or what my skills were or sort of how to think about the change I wanted to make in the world. And it was this very rigorous, I mean curriculum is probably the best way to put it, of sort of soul searching, strength searching.And we never talked about the job I wanted to have until one day it came to me as if it was sort of the hand of god, and I was brushing my teeth one morning and I realized, Oh, that's exactly what I want to do. And for the first time in my life, I had the idea of what I wanted to do and I went out and got the job and it was, and I really credit it to that, that coaching experience. And of course I've had my most recent, incredibly, incredibly valuable, critical lifeline experience with Doug at Talentism, which was very different, very important and suited what I needed at that moment, because I was in, I would frankly just call it a professional crisis. And he was my life raft, kind of got me to calmer shores. And then as sort of now, even helping me think about what the next phase looks like.Jeff Hunter:So that's wonderful. So let's pick up on something there. So you're talking about what coaching is both in different sorts of forms and also at coaching at different parts of your career or life. One of the things I've been talking to people about is what are the essential sort of elements of a coachable person? What is it that makes you want to be coached and what makes you successful in coaching? Because you've had what sounds like four successful coaching sort of engagements in your life, very different, very different approaches, different people, different times of your life. And yet the sort of through line of all of that is you. So what do you think makes a coachable person?Chloe Drew:It's funny, I love this question and I've started  coaching just as a pro bono offering to the world, two women, one who works for a startup for-profit enterprise and one who works for a nonprofit. And I've been thinking about that a lot, cause one is a more difficult engagement than the other. I think that coming to coaching with an, you know, such a cliche, but sort of openness and vulnerability, which means different things to different people, but a real willingness to be bare and introspective and absorb and think to really look squarely in the mirror at things that you're not doing particularly well. I think those are some really important sort of foundational elements. I think eagerness to, I would say curiosity about the world and curiosity about yourself, curiosity about other people. And, you know, I don't think that I'm particularly good at this, but I think someone who, I'm not sure if this makes you more or less coachable, but someone who I think does well in coaching someone who's forgiving to themselves, kind to themselves, because, you know, at some point you want to sort of absorb lessons, absorb mistakes, and then call that solid foundation of things learned and then kind of move on and say, well, that's solid.I, you know, good scar tissue gained and now we're gonna move on to the next lesson, the next challenge. So I think those are some qualities and I'm observing those in these two women I'm coaching, one who has a tougher skin for lots and lots of reasons that I really understand. And the other who is much more vulnerable and feels really open. She feels to me like she's at an inflection point.Jeff Hunter:One of the things we talk about a lot at Talentism is that there's in essence, every one of us has our own unique path to our own individual form of excellence and excellence has certain components to it and as you've heard us talk about, but that being on that path to finding what you're truly great at what your greatness is and uncovering that is a difficult journey. There are some people who are there who are cheering you along, but a lot of people who are doubting you, including often yourself, and you're trying to make sense of everything that's happening around you. And because we all have these brains that are pretty confusion oriented, they tell us we're good at things we're not really good at, they tell us we're bad at things we're not really bad at, you know, et cetera.And we're always sort of feeling both under threat and trying to realize the opportunity of our greatness. It's just such a confusing sort of thing. And for some, what my experience has been for somebody to engage with coaching well, at least in clarity coaching, our particular form of coaching, there's been these elements I've been talking about in the podcasts about hunger and humility, that there's this sort of inner drive somewhere that can at least be tapped into. It doesn't have to be evident on the face or when the person comes to the coaching engagement. But there has to be this drive in there somewhere to want to learn about oneself about the world and about the connection between those two things. And there has to be a basic fundamental humility in that action, because as you just said, which I thought was beautiful, there's a humility, there’s a vulnerability to it.There's a sort of curiosity to it. And I think humility, this sort of belief, the skepticism of like, well, maybe I don't know all the answers and maybe you know, maybe I am the thing that's

Christina Sass:Yes, coaching is hard, but if you're coming to coaching with real shit, it's already hard. You know, like you're already not loving the situation and so you can do it feeling like you're developing new tools with which to do it. Or you can, you know, give up or decide that those are the only tools you want to use.Jeff Hunter:Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. We're going to help you better understand the value and application of coaching by having in-depth conversations with the people who use coaches to unleash their potential; The founders, leaders and managers who are shaping our world. Coaching is more popular than ever. And we believe that sharing in-depth personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market-leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity.We send out a weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content, to enable you to unleash your potential, learn more and sign up at Talentism.com. Today I'm speaking with Christina Sass. I think Christina stands as a shining example of someone turning their compulsion into a lifelong career, into someone finding their calling. She held high ranks at some of the largest global nonprofits and worked closely with Hillary Clinton's office as an advisor, helping build solutions to some of the most pressing challenges in international relations. After amassing nearly 15 years of experience in those fields, she co founded in Andela, a company dedicated to the proposition that brilliance is equally distributed, but opportunity is not. And Andela has trained and placed thousands of software engineers from Nigeria, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Egypt, and Ghana. We're going to talk about her personal experiences with coaching on both sides of the equation, seeking out inherent blind spots in the corporate world and relating lessons she's taken from her experiences as a founder and activist and how we should be investing in people and handling growth both personally and as a nation.Christina, thank you so very much for being a part of this experiment, not just the whole experiment, but also this more free flowing dynamic that we're going to try today. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you being here.Christina Sass:Well, thank you. It's an honor to be here and I'm delighted to try it this way. It's what our conversations have always felt like and have yielded so much, so I'm looking forward to it.Jeff Hunter:Well, thank you. So Christina, you are the co founder of Andela and I’ve had the great good fortune, Talentisms had the great good fortune over the last four years of working with Andela, a company that I've been truly inspired by across the board, not only your mission, but also the benefit you're bringing to the world and just what you're putting into practice. I thought that just before we get into the coaching conversation, if you'd be willing to reflect a little bit on Andela a little bit on how you started Andela and also a little bit about how we met I'd really appreciate it.Christina Sass:Absolutely. Well, we started Andela in 2014 looking at how to get talent globally, to recognize brilliance, in particular brilliance among software engineers, which are so desperately needed by startups all over the world. At the time I'd been working across the African continent for about the last five years and knew the incredible depth of the talent pool and really the excitement and energy around tech careers. And so my co founder Jeremy, and another group of entrepreneurs, and I got together to kind of put this experiment out, to see if we could attract really extraordinary tech talent and then match it with the needs of employers everywhere that needed great software developers. The world was getting accustomed to remote and distributed teams at the time. And so we were kind of part of this wave to really bring that about and what an incredible six-year journey the company has now taken kind of many different shifts and turns and pivots as, as startups do.For the first, probably three to four years, we were really focused on finding raw talent that had all the indicators of a great engineer and then honing them and really placing them in environments where they could succeed. Today Andela is more focused on big pockets of mid level and senior level developers and being an on demand marketplace for what other companies need. And so that entire journey I think, has been... I really can't, it's hard to, it's hard to state the value that you, Jeff, have brought to me and my co founder and the senior team, and Andela on our self awareness and big changes that we needed to make to move the business forward. So, how did we meet? I think this is a great story. So I worked with one of your colleagues at Talentism on a smaller project.And one where candidly, I wasn't thrilled about the end. I think the gentleman I was working with was like on his way to I forgot what the circumstances were, but anyway, he was transitioning from Talentism to a full time role elsewhere and wasn't able to make a trip where he was supposed to facilitate a big conversation. And so in Talentisms IP had added a ton of value and then kind of the end of this thing, didn't go well. And so I got the final bill and I wrote you all and said, I will pay this. I'm happy to pay it, but can we get on the phone and can we talk and can I give you some feedback? And to my surprise the CEO of the company, you Jeff undertook the call and listened very carefully.And you explained that you kind of knew that this younger employee who had a lot of promise, but that you're going to have to entrust them with some things, and they may not always go right. That you had been also experimenting and that you took full responsibility for that, that I indeed would not be paying that bill. And could you have dinner with our entire senior team and give feedback on what you thought, what your learnings were from the scope of work that Talentism had done. And so suffice to say I was blown away by that. And that was certainly the kind of leader that I hoped to be. That had the courage and strength to give my team members, my leaders rope to do an experiment. And then when it didn't go well to really take responsibility and make that relationship right.And that's what I witnessed that you did. We had a phenomenal dinner with the C suite of the company at the time, and everyone was very impressed. And then I think I called you the next day. It'd be like you’ve got to coach us. You have to coach us. We know we have gaps in our self awareness and our knowledge and where we want to take the company. And to our great surprise and delight, you said yes. And that's been the beginning of a many year, very fruitful, painful at times, but overall incredibly rewarding relationship.Jeff Hunter:Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I like any human being enjoys caring how great I am, but I can assure you that in the mountain of my mistakes, that was a small nugget of success. So I appreciate you saying all those nice things. I can imagine a lot of people know me, listening to this and going aha. So, but pretty much Christine, and I appreciate that. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about coaching. That's why we're here. You, as you just said, you know, you and I have worked together for awhile, I've worked with other members of your team, Talentism has coached a number of people at Andela, we've done off-sites with you, etcetera. So you have a real exposure to how we think about things and how we try to coach.In addition, as you know, I've told you multiple times, I think that you have a real talent for coaching yourself, at least the kind of coaching that we think about, clarity coaching. I think you've seen it from every side. You've seen it as an executive. You've seen it as a person who receives it as a person who offers coaching as an investor etcetera. Tell me a little bit about how you think about coaching and how you think about the value of coaching importance. And in that, if you could tell me a little bit, what did you think was going to happen when we started coaching and what did you actually experience and how has that thinking about coaching evolved over time?Christina Sass:So when we first started out, I think I knew that we had some, you know, pretty typical barriers to success in the company and that, you know, some outside counsel would help. We had tried a couple of things before, but I definitely didn't have a set definition of, Oh, this is the exact kind of coaching that I wanted. I did know that I wanted a coach that had a strong opinion about working with founders and that had been in a high growth, you know, kind of tech startup world. And this is an interesting comment to make with all that you know, of me, but I did, I wanted a male coach that had immediate gravitas because that was sort of the C suite that I was operating in and I needed to understand and be more well versed in that in a safe space and environment.And so I don't think I had that in mind when we went to that team dinner, but after listening to you and being around you, it was like, I feel like, you know, this person is immediately adding value and can, you know, push back on kind of the heaviest hitter at the table and also feels very safe. And so I kind of just opened up to whatever your type of coaching was. It definitely wasn't seeking out or didn't know or have any idea what clarity coaching was at the time. Now, looking back on clarity coaching, the analogy that I would give is like, it's like being in the matrix where Neo is offered, like the red

Jeff Hunter:Hi and welcome. I'm Jeff Hunter, and you are listening to coaching in the clear, the podcast committed to help you learn about coaching. We're going to help you better understand the value and the application of coaching by having in depth conversations with the people who use coaches to unleash their potential; the founders, leaders and managers who are shaping our world. Coaching is more popular than ever and we believe that sharing in depth, personal conversations about coaching experiences is the best way for you to learn whether coaching is for you and how you can get the most out of your coaching practice. We are especially interested in how people use coaching to unleash their potential while creating market leading big change businesses. Coaching in the clear is a production of Talentism, a business dedicated to helping the world's most ambitious leaders achieve their ultimate goals by systematically turning confusion into clarity.We send out a weekly newsletter called the Sensemaker, where we offer our latest thinking about issues affecting big change companies and their leaders, as well as provide other helpful content, and enable you to unleash your potential. Learn more and sign up@talentism.com. We are launching coaching in the clear with Jameel Spencer. Jameel has been a force in the world of fashion and brand management for over 20 years. He has worked with some of the biggest icons in pop and hip hop culture, helping them build successful businesses before co-founding his current venture, Rightful Place. Rightful Place scripts narratives for brands and personalities so that they can achieve their full potential. We have a very powerful episode ahead, where we will talk about his introduction to coaching the lessons learned from some of his favorite peers and role models. We will then turn to our current climate of racial inequality and the ways we can keep intention at the forefront of our business practices and daily lives.Jameel, thank you so much for being with me today on coaching in the clear, I really appreciate your time. I know you're incredibly busy and I very much appreciate you making the time to speak with me.Jameel Spencer:Nope, no worries. I appreciate the opportunity. I always love to speak to you.Jeff Hunter:Thank you, sir. All right, so let's just start at the beginning. How did you decide to start working with a coach? Just take me in the audience up to that point.Jameel Spencer:So the reality is that I didn't decide, it was actually something that was decided for me and interestingly enough, like most things in life, had I been given the choice I probably would have chose not to, because I'm probably more about what I didn't know and what I thought that coaching meant. But what I experienced was amazing.Jameel Spencer: So at the time I was, running the fashion division at an IP holding company and we were going through some changes in terms of, you know, growing from a really small company to a much bigger company. And what it took from a culture standpoint to effectively run a larger organization was significantly different than what our experiences had been. And so our chairman had the idea to go out and seek coaching and because I was part of the management team I, you know, was a part of that. And so, it wasn't something that I chose to do.I will say that once I did it, I really embraced it and found that it was really an extension of how, you know, we continue to get better in life. And so, you know, I'm an athlete. I was an athlete in college. I continued to work out every day to work on my body, you know, I try to work on my spirituality and so why wouldn't you work out your career and your ability as both a manager and an employee or an entrepreneur or whatever it is. And so what I experienced was something that I did not expect quite honestly.Jeff Hunter:So I've been talking to a bunch of different people and one of the things I talk about is I say, in order for somebody to be great in the coaching experience, they probably need two attributes. At least this has been my experience to date, which is that they need to be hungry and they need to be humble that they want, they are curious and they want to learn about themselves and they want to learn about the world. And they also show up with a bit of humility about it. They understand, they don't know everything, they understand they're missing things, and they use the coach effectively to help them get to clarity. And I have to say, of all the people I've worked with, you demonstrated both of those characteristics as much as anybody I've ever worked with. What is it you think, that makes a person have those attributes; want to be hungry to get better, hungry to improve, but also have a level of humility about themselves and what they do and don't know, and an openness, therefore, to want to get better and improve.Jameel Spencer:Ah man, I would say it's just living life. I think the more you experience, I think, you know, when you're younger your focus is on maybe going out and you know, accumulating things and, you know, it was all about you and making your mark in the world. I think that as you get older and you've had more experiences and you, you realize that, as much as you think you know, you don't really know anything at all. And that, you know, being open-minded is probably the most valuable trait that you can have if you're trying to be successful in life. So I think that, you know, humility and hunger come with experience. And so you know, I think that when, like I said we tend to be really full of ourselves when we're younger.You know, if you can see that right now in the COVID area, that era that we're living in, you know, young folks are out at the beach and they feel like they're invincible. You know when they have someone in their family, they get sick, then they become open to the fact that, hey this thing is serious. And I think that's like everything else in life. So I think that it's more about just experiencing things, you know, seeing what doesn't work and realizing that you never have all the answers even when you think you do.Jeff Hunter: Yeah. So I know a big part of your identity, a big part of the way you think about things is you're a father and you're very proud of being a father. And I know that your children are very active in sports themselves, very accomplished. How do you coach them? And I'm sort of fascinated about how parents coach their children in the midst of so much change and so much confusion. How do you coach your kids?Jameel Spencer:So, the irony of how I coach my kids is that it has nothing to do with, or maybe it's more of a reaction to how I was raised. And so I was raised, my mom was, you know, 18 years old and the freshmen in college when she had me and so I grew up without a dad in my household until I got older. When she got remarried, I had a stepfather who actually really, really showed up for me. And I don't think I even really appreciated it as much until I got older and had my own kids. But the reality is that the way I show up and coach my kids is more of a reaction of what I didn't have growing up. And the good news, and this is one of the things that actually was an unlock from the work that I did with Talentism, quite honestly, is that I do it unapologetically because I realized that, it's not about them liking me, right?It's about me helping them become the best versions of themselves and whatever it takes to do that, I'm willing to do it with no remorse. Like I don't feel a kind of way telling them things. And I wasn't really applying that to my life as an executive. I was, you know, I was still trying to spare people's feelings, or I was concerned about people liking me, and realized that I should take the same approach that I was taking with my children, with people who worked with me, because if I really cared about them then you know, I would give them the unadulterated version of the truth. And so you know, that's kinda how I approach it. It was really just more like, whatever it takes for them to be the best versions of themselves. Being really honest about the fact that they're all different, and being okay with giving them, you know, things that are different.One of the things that you know culturally, with people, have been consuming during this pandemic is a lot of people watch the ESPN, I think it was a seven or 10 part thing, the last dance on the bulls. And one thing that was really interesting to me was that Phil Jackson decided to let Dennis Rodman go to Vegas for like four days right before the playoffs, so maybe during the playoffs. And that to me was like, wow. That's crazy. But the reality is that you know, what it took for Dennis Rodman to be the best version of himself was significantly different than what it took for Michael Jordan, and was significantly different than what it took for Scotty Pippin. And you know, I look at my kids like that as a team and having a real sense of what it will take for them to reach the best versions of themselves and being unapologetic about giving it to them, whether they like it or not.And so that has been you know, that's one of the things that I actually uncovered during the coaching was that you know, I really needed to look at the people around me the same way and be open minded and really be unapologetic. And that's not an easy thing. I mean, if you think about, you know, the crossing guard when you were in high school, right, like the kid or the hall monitor, right. Like, you know, most kids in high school want to be liked. So it takes a real personality for someone to really make everyone follow the rules. Right? You have to be unapologetic. You have to be okay with people and maybe not liking you. I admire that even in conflict or moments where I don't agree with folks that I work with. I admire the fact that they have the guts to stand up for their position, which makes me open minded and gives me the opportunity to maybe see it from their vantage point. I think that's something, you know, that has been really, really valuable for me in all aspects of my life quite honestly.Jeff Hunter:I think you're describing someth