1701 – Doing What You Do Best Even Better with nextlevel.coach’s Emily Sander

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0:58with us right now it's emily sander emily you are an executive coach uh executive leadership coach you're found on the web at next level dot coach you are also the author of two books chief of staff hacking executive leadership and you are also a podcaster yay so uh your podcast is called Leveraging Leadership. So to our friend that's listening to our conversation right now, if you just want to hit the search function, search for those two words, Leveraging Leadership. It's a podcast by Emily Sander. And we got Emily right here. Hi, Emily. Hi, Josh. Great to be with you. Thank you so much for having me on your show.

1:36Absolutely. Well, share with us a bit about the work that you do, who you work with, and kind of generally your impact in the world. Sure. So I like to say I'm the Yoda to your Luke. So I train leaders to do what they do best, even better. And because I ultimately want everyone to be operating at the top of their potential, when you do that, you win, but everyone around you wins as well. And so just like Yoda, I work behind the scenes. The last role I had in my corporate career was as chief of staff, and that's the right-hand partner and strategic advisor to the CEO. And today I coach, and so that's me at the top of my potential and I get to wake up every day and help others reach theirs.

2:20So that's what I'm doing today. I think that there are two groups of leaders out there. There are the leaders that maybe are investing in themselves by way of just trying to absorb as much content as they can and constantly growing. That's fantastic. And then there's leaders that do that and they also invest in coaching. Can you maybe talk about, you know, kind of that dynamic and the advantage that that leader who also has a Yoda, you know, maybe some of the advantages that they might have that a leader who's just kind of DIYing themselves through life might not have. Absolutely. So, I mean, you can teach yourself a lot of things from books and from YouTube videos and from stuff you hear, but there comes a point, there comes that tipping point where you need someone else to help you.

3:16You need that training, you need that practice arena, and you need the outside perspective. So like, you know, if you were learning how to golf, you could read all about that. You could watch YouTube videos, but you actually have to get out there and swing and maybe have a golf pro adjust you or like put your hips like this or align your shoulders over your feet, look straight down. All of that stuff comes from a hands-on coach. So in my field, one of the biggest things that my clients get out of coaching is I know business, but I'm not in their business, meaning they can talk to me freely. They don't have to pull any punches or be scared that this might get back to someone.

3:52But I get business. I get their role. I understand what's happening. And they have that outlet and free space to talk. Yeah. And why do you think it's incredibly valuable for top-level executive leaders to have that coach, someone that they can confide in, that they can have those conversations with? What's the transformation that you see or maybe what's some of that, I don't know, maybe discoveries that they end up having through that dynamic? So a couple things. So first of all, it's cliche, but it's lonely at the top. And so if you're a CEO, if you're a founder, you got all these people looking at you, depending on you, and you have no one to kind of vent to or outlet to or brainstorm with at a certain level.

4:41And so just having someone, okay, every other week I meet with Emily and I have this time to just think things through. And I have a lot of verbal processors, so people who just think out loud a lot. So that's helpful to them. And I think also, if you're the boss, no one is going to tell you, hey, you're not very good at this. This is a blind spot for you. So you might want to work on this. No one's going to say that to you or very few people are going to say that to you. So having someone who is intentionally looking for things that you do well and things that you can develop in and helping you do that for your success, you know, coaches are for you and they want you to succeed, but they're going to call out like, hey, I've seen this happened a couple of times.

5:24You've told me about this. We need to switch things up here. And so I think that part of it is valuable to leaders, especially in those high authority roles. Yeah. And what does coaching usually look like? Is it just, you know, we chat for 30 minutes every other week on Zoom? And I guess the more important part of that question is, what does the flow usually look like. My suspicion is that, you know, you're probably dealing with a lot of pretty bright folks, right? They're, you know, folks I'm thinking of myself, right? Where I'm personally very driven, you know, I don't have any problems with motivation, you know, certainly have my work cut out for me in most times.

6:08And I'm, you know, a rabid learner. But so I feel like, if I'm asked really good questions, I'm probably going to do about 90 % of the talking if given the opportunity, if that's the structure for, but what do you see? Yeah, so I kind of think of three examples here. So one is something very tangible and finite, like, hey, Emily, I have a panel interview next Thursday at two, can you help me prep for it? Or, hey, Emily, I'm a founder, I've just gotten funding, we're going out and giving pitches to investors, I need to work on my pitch. That's kind of one example. The other is I'm trying to get into a new role or I've just gotten into a new role.

6:51And I looked around and I'm like, what have I done? Like, what do I do? I keep trying to do the same things that I did before to be successful and they're not working now. So help me, help me do what I need to do now. And then the third kind of example I'll give is mindset and headspace. So a lot of stuff, as you know, happens in between our ears and everything we do and everything we see is by the contact lens we have in. And so taking inventory of that lens and of that belief set to figure out, hey, you know, I can manage my time. I can manage my energy. Am I managing my emotional quotient as well?

7:30Because that's a huge time suck, energy suck. A lot of leaders are just getting in their own way. And so helping people unpack that and say, okay, let me go like full throttle, green light go and be firing on all cylinders and not trying to run a race or win a race by pushing on the gas and the brake at the same time. Yeah. You know, just out of curiosity, I mean, because I was obviously looking at your credentials and you're an ICF certified coach. I know you've got other designations as well. Um, you know, it, I think, you know, well, currently in the United States, right? Like anyone can say for any reason, I'm a coach, um, but there's probably, I'm just wondering if maybe you can kind of give us a little bit of a shopper's guide to hiring a coach and why maybe those designations may be important.

8:20Yes. Great question. So you're right. Anyone can wake up and be a coach tomorrow. Um, ICF, it means you put, you put in the work to actually build the craft of being a coach. So you're trained. We have a code of ethics that's really important. So we have all of that. We've gone through a rigorous process, like a very rigorous process of training and mentor coaching. So someone has listened to our coaching sessions and given feedback. And so ICF is really the gold standard of the credential of what you want to look for. Within ICF, there's three designations. So there's ACC, PCC, and MCC. And those are different levels you can look at as well.

8:58But I would at least ask your coach or look on their website if they have any sort of designation. Sometimes they might have come through a different path in ICF, but it's still valid. But if you see that ICF certified, they'll have that badge on there. You know that you've got a legitimate coach. You are the author of a couple of books. Your newest one is called An insider's perspective on the chief of staff, why you need one and how to be a great one. So speaking specifically to founders, they might be at the level because maybe they're a little bit newer in business where they're filling a lot of roles.

9:39And one of them may be kind of that chief of staff role. As I mentioned from time to time on this podcast, it's kind of like the last episode I just recorded. I just said the same thing. I got very, very, very lucky that I paired up with the woman who is now our COO, and she is a brilliant chief of staff, and I consider myself to be very lucky. But talk about that role and at what point as a founder, we might say, okay, okay, it's time to start delineating this workout. I can't do all these things well. And I don't know, maybe just kind of the, maybe the evolution based on the stage of business and where the founder may be.

10:24If you're an early stage founder, these key hires can make or break you. So I think chief of staff is a great one to add when appropriate. So if you've got, you know, two or three people right now, you know, I'd be hard pressed to make a strong argument for chief of staff. But once you get to the point where there's so many people that you need to coordinate big strategic cross-functional initiatives, that is a time to get a chief of staff. The other big one for founders is gap filling. So you mentioned like, hey, I'm wearing so many hats. Okay, let me get a chief of staff that suits what I need and suits what the company needs at this stage and have them fill some roles.

11:03So for instance, I had a CEO who came from a technical background. So programmer could code, built the product that he was now selling, but he didn't have the people, operations, HR type of outlook. And so he got a chief of staff who kind of filled all of those spots for him. When you have key hires, other key hires coming in, so a chief of staff can help you get a COO or a CRO or a CFO and help fill some of those seats and really have an eye toward that. We've talked about this before, but, you know, when you need someone to say, hey, you know, I'm going to call you on your BS here. Like you just said this last week and now you're saying something else and you're throttling the team.

11:48That can be super helpful to keep people focused and prioritize and energized and not scatterbrained. We get, you know, shiny object syndrome. we get pulled down rabbit holes, we get, you know, squirrel over here. So someone to keep us, keep us on point. And there was one more thing that I wanted to, I wanted to say, let me see if I can remember it. But yeah, chief of staff is great at all those stages. Oh, when you're scaling. So when you get to the point of, hey, proof of concept, market share, we have all the toeholds, the initial toeholds of traction, we're going to have to scale exponentially get a chief of staff they can help bring these key hires in they can help build processes they can help with change management across your organization so you're going to go through a bunch of change with your role and what you have to do to be successful your leadership team is going to go through a whole bunch of changes so if they were you know employee two three or four and now you know doing everything under the sun and jumping into things is not what they need to do anymore to be successful, they need to be more focused and prioritized and aligned, a chief of staff can help just the company move in that direction at a rapid clip.

13:00Yeah. You mentioned a COO. And is there kind of a delineation between typically what a COO, and I realize that this is going to change based on the size of the company, number of the team size, that sort of thing. But generally, when we think about a chief of staff versus a COO, COO, any delineations there that you could help with? So in a mature company, the COO, the biggest distinction is the COO has a functional group under them. So they have all of operations, which could include a number of sub departments given the company. The chief of staff would not have a dedicated team, but would see across the organization.

13:41So they see across operations, across finance, across sales, across legal. And so they can connect all those dots and they help the CEO to see the big picture. So that would be the most simple way to explain it at a mature company. For a founder, though, for early stage, I have a lot of chiefs of staff who also serve in the COO role in real life, right? So they're the chief of staff in title. And I have one that's chief of staff in business operations. And basically, that's a catchall for like, hey, you're going to be doing a whole bunch of operation work and getting these teams ready to go and up and stood up and ready to expand.

14:22And so a lot of chiefs of staff early on will bleed over into that operational leader role. And again, they're gap filling in a huge way. And when you get to that step function where you need to get a larger operations team and you need someone to come into a formal operations leader role, the chief of staff can help you with that hire because they have done the role and they also can see what the team and the company needs at that point. Yeah. Who should be reading your, by the way, I just downloaded it, an insider's perspective on the chief of staff while you need one and how to be a great one.

14:55Who should be reading this book? I think your title kind of explains it. But most importantly, the transformation that you would expect by the time someone completes the book and then puts into action a lot of the principles that you cover. Sure. So the three people, it's for our current chiefs of staff, prospective chiefs of staff, and then any leader who either has a chief of staff on their team and wants to get the most out of it, or a leader who's just curious about the role. Maybe, you know, I've heard about that, maybe in politics, in the military, kind of in business, but like, what is this thing?

15:30Those would be the three people who should read the book. And then by the end, you'll know what it is. You'll know what makes a great one. If you're a CEO or a founder, you'll have some ideas about how to use them. and what initiatives or projects or things they could do in your company. And the feedback I've gotten is I like the tactical and practical chapter towards the end where you give some questions and you give some kind of graphs and matrix for how to do some of the things with the chief of staff. So you've got the concept, yes, but also a lot of tactical pieces where like, oh, I can go use this tomorrow or I can use this with my team.

16:09Yeah. All right. So your website, Emily, is nextlevel.coach. Obviously, we've talked about the books. Anything else for a friend that's been listening to our conversation and say, all right, now that you've listened to me, here's what you should do next. What would you recommend? Oh, that's a big one. I would say prioritize. So I know that's key, but a lot of founders can't articulate what their top two priorities are. So if I'm meeting with someone for the first time, I often say, you know, what does success look like for you? And, you know, what are your top two priorities? And they'll either say like 12 different things, which is they don't have priorities, or they'll like say one thing and not know how to get there.

16:53And so I think for any leader, they've got to have the vision for it, but also be able to reverse engineer into the execution and break that up into, you know, in three years, I want this. So in this year, I need to do this. And in this quarter, this month, this week, this is my most important thing and keep those priorities in front of them and keep someone focused to them. So if you're doing that on your own, like go do that on your own, get reminders, get accountability, whatever you need. But make sure you can articulate to yourself and to others what your top two priorities are. Emily Sander, you're the author of the book's Chief of Staff and, oh, sorry, An Insider's Perspective on the Chief of Staff, also Hacking Executive Leadership, and you're the host of the podcast, Leveraging Leadership, and you're found on the web at nextlevel.coach.

17:41Emily, it's been wonderful having you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you so much, Josh.

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