1951 – Maximizing Time and Business Strategies with CO2 Coaching’s Gary Cohen

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1:06With us right now, Gary Cohen. Gary, you are the managing partner and you're an executive coach with CO2 Coaching. Your website is co2coaching.com. Gary, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh, for having me. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yeah, absolutely. Well, so share with us what you do in the world of executive coaching. I primarily work with CEOs and presidents, all range of sizes of companies from very large to quite small, and help them find their next peak. Wherever they're at, what is the next level that they want to take their career company to? Yeah. Well, what types of positions do these folks hold?

2:01Usually CEO, president, our company works with the whole suite of senior management. So we have about 17 coaches. And we differentiate is we really think that somebody who's been in the role coaching a person is way better than somebody coming out of like a therapeutic background turn coach. Or sometimes you find a lot of people just like they have a gift for coaching. And I agree that they have a gift for coaching. The thing is that we feel that in the business community that somebody who's held that position, like been a CMO and they're coaching a CMO, there's no translation issues. Like they know what they're talking about.

2:49Right. Right. Or finance, two finance people. And the same for CEOs. knows. I sat in the role of president of my own organization with a business partner and been through it the whole cycle of business. And you can really empathize. And it's not just sympathize with what somebody is going through. Explain the kind of the CO2 coaching framework for someone that maybe hasn't done any formal coaching or maybe they had a coach many years ago and maybe it was a little ad hoc. It looks like you've got some structure to how you typically work with your clients. We do. I find that the first thing that happens is people are often overwhelmed.

3:37It's one of the reasons they sign up for coaching. It's not the thing that keeps them there, but it is the reason that they reach out. And so I have found over the years that the first thing that we need to do as coaches is give them their time back. An example, this is from years ago, but it's such a great story. The person says, I need you so much, but I don't have the time. And I said, I'll guarantee you three times the time you spend with me back within three months. OK, so, you know, I spend three hours with a client, right? Right. So three times nine hours. I'll give you nine hours back.

4:17Right. And 43 hours back within two months per month. So you can imagine the leverage there. And so that relationship went on for years and found way more things to spend our time on other than finding time. But if you can't help the person find their time, then when you talk of things that they may want to do, they can't get to them. So what happens is between meetings, nothing really takes place, right? And so by giving them their time back, it's the biggest win to begin with. And then we go into we're very business oriented. So it's like I'm trying to find either cost reductions or revenue gains, because for especially entrepreneurs, if you do that, you're in for life.

5:11And, you know, my clients are used to my saying, and we'll never talk of money again. The idea is that although I find the cost expensive for really good coaching, the value is really high. And so we believe that we have to deliver that value very quickly to the customer so that they really feel the lift. And then you can work on the more nuanced, you know, how do you lead? And how you lead should actually deliver value to the customer, right? It shouldn't be, I just want to be a better leader. Why do you want to be a better leader? What value does that create? It creates better relationships.

5:56People stay longer. You get higher performance from your people. And so that's kind of like the curve. and then we talk about everything. There's probably, it's hard to find a subject that hasn't been covered. Yeah. What, you've been in the coaching world for quite a while or you certainly have been acting in an advisory role for leaders. I would imagine that you've seen some trends over the years. I'm curious what trends you are observing lately over the past six to 12 months. Well, the common trend over the 20 years I've been coaching is accountability and how we get in our way. Oh, right. So so and I have to say I learned this from Mike Harper, who grew Canagra from 500 million, almost mostly losing money to 20 billion in sales.

6:57And what he taught me was that this idea of accountability comes from not giving the answer and not even the nod of approval. So somebody walks into your office, they have an idea, it's their responsibility to take care of this thing. You ask a bunch of questions that helping them think through it, right? And then they'd say, well, this is what I'm going to do. What do you think? the normal response that right the intuition is oh i think it's a great idea right or yeah that's great i you know the the right answer i and i believe there is one is it seems like you really know what you plan on doing and i look forward to seeing the results right no confirmation because the reward should be when the outcome comes, then you praise them if it worked.

7:57And if it didn't, then it's a learning experience. But everybody goes to these like checklists of like how to hold somebody accountable or let's use the technology to hold somebody accountable. The accountability comes from putting the responsibility on the person and then it coming back to them. They know that they're going to have to report to you or a board or a committee what has occurred. So if you say that you agree, what's going to happen? What's going to happen is they're going to say, hey, you said this was a good idea. So now I'm held accountable because I affirmed it in some way. Right.

8:46And when it's a win, they don't fill the full credit because you thought it was a good idea. So they lose on both ends of this. And it's really hard for the leader because they go, I want to add value. Right. And it's that urge to add value that really takes away from full accountability of this person going, oh, my God, it's up to me. I'm spending this money for the organization and I have to deliver. And I don't have my boss's approval. I only have their confirmation that they understand what I'm doing. So what would be, yeah, what would be the steps that we, maybe something actionable that if someone says, yep, I see that within our organization and I don't mean for it to be that way.

9:38Certainly, I want people to feel, you know, successful in their successes and, you know, and then I don't want them to be afraid of failure. I mean, we don't want to fail all the time, but certainly we want to learn and we want to grow. You know, I was just listening to Neil deGrasse Tyson and Adam Savage talking about, you know, even when rockets explode and it's incredibly expensive, you know, it's like we just gained a lot of data points, you know, when those things happen. And that's good. That wisdom is just so critical and so key. If we have a culture where maybe there's a little bit of fear of failure, what can we do to instill a little bit more of, you know, we want to have more experiments happening?

10:21yeah well it's this idea of encouragement right and notice what i said when i was talking about accountability before which is um it's not about the idea that you punish when it didn't work you should say what is the learning that we had here because if there was no learning then there's a problem yeah that's really where the problem is likely for many of your guests they don't remember jack welsh who you know grew ge to be huge and there's a old story don't know if it's true but it's a good one um which is somebody had lost like 10 million dollars for the business they go into jack's office and they think they're going to be fired right and jack says, like, why do you think you're going to be fired?

11:12We just spent$10 million for you to learn this lesson, right? That's invaluable. I just want to know that you learned it, right? And I think that's the encouragement that we do every day with somebody and not go to blame. Because as soon as we go to blame, this would be the little tip, I would say, is that blaming is usually, it's usually not a person's fault, it's the system's fault. So whatever the system is, deliver the perfect outcome. Okay. And that perfect outcome wasn't what you expected. So the system is not working. And so we work on the system rather than the person. So if you have a tendency as a leader to go to blame, which many do.

12:06I sure. Oh, boy, that's too bad. What were you going to say? Well, I'm just that's that's unfortunate. Right. I mean, I know we obviously we want to look for accountability. We want to look for problems in the system and address those. And if that comes down to a person, yes, you know, it's an opportunity for correction or, you know, awareness, certainly. But, yeah, blame where, you know, at least as a leader myself, I don't want someone to feel badly. I just want to quickly learn, adapt, and let's maybe not make that mistake next time. Yeah. So this is what happens. Have you heard the metaphor of the elephant and the rider?

12:52Maybe. Okay. So the elephant is like your intuition. Yeah. It's your feelings, right? And that's 90 % of your decision-making, okay? You get a perception and then you have a feeling. And then the rider is your cognitive. But most people think that it's the other way around, that they have a thought and then they have a feeling, right? It doesn't work that way. And so, and the rider, the cognitive isn't there to like battle out with the elephant, right? It's to confirm what the feeling is. So what happens is we get a twitch like this person's at fault. And then we tell ourselves a story about why they're at fault.

13:37And now we're convinced, right and so the nudges go to a higher purpose and that's why i say go to the system because if you train yourself to have a belief that it's the system is most likely at fault that's where your twitch will go that's where your elephant's going to go but as long as you write out the idea that there's somebody to be at fault that elephant takes over your brain just finds data to support And we can always find that data. Like it's so easy, right? As opposed to going, this problem is three people away, and there's no way this human being could have known. Right? I would imagine, too, if you're working with a lot of high achievers, that sometimes, too, when things are not ideal, there's accountability, and then there is certainly potentially self-blame.

14:38And I wonder, too, if that blame sometimes in your experience could be a little harsh, right? And so we take it personally. This happened. We lost a key customer. We did this. That was not optimal. Or something didn't go as planned. And again, we emotionally feel bad about that. And then, but we, you know, we, I think ideally, I think logically we all said, listen, we need to get it back up on the, learn from this, get back up on the horse. Sometimes I feel like that may be easier said than done. Well, it is because, especially for entrepreneurs. So if you think about it, the entrepreneur is so attached to the business.

15:22There is like, it's, it's enmeshed and they don't see the enmeshedness. So when something happens, it's as if it's happening to them. We lost a customer, your example, right? You lost the customer for me, right? It's like they own it. It's in their fiber. And as we grow the business, if we don't get past that, we don't grow the business, right? Because as long as the entrepreneur is that interwoven to the business, they will not give up control. They will not give authority to others. They will not create autonomy. They won't create the belonging that's needed other than familiar. And people won't feel competent because they're feeling blamed if anything goes wrong.

16:18Yeah. So, Gary, to our friend that's listening, I want to give them maybe one action item. And I want to talk about your book really quick. And then obviously we're going to talk about folks that could potentially benefit from a coach relationship. But, you know, if there was one task you could say leaders, especially business owners and entrepreneurs, listen up. Here's one thing I want you to do this week. What's something that maybe comes to mind that you'd love to see more folks doing in the world? Ask, don't tell. it's it's so hard and leaders stumble on it um in the book just ask leadership why great managers always ask the right questions is what i discovered in a hundred interviews with really really fascinating i mean amazing leaders is all but two had to stumble into asking and not asking for themselves to be smarter, but asking to move other people.

17:27And I found that fascinating. Like you have to get a certain place in your career for that to happen. And so if you imagine that you're not there yet, and you started today to ask more questions and tell a lot less, You will engage your folks at such a higher level than you're engaging them today. Because as soon as you tell somebody, there's all sorts of things that go through their heads. And I always say the quickest way between two points is not a straight line, right? It's the other person's way, right? So if there were five ways to do something and you had a way that would work, it doesn't matter whether I agree or disagree.

18:15As long as it works and it's your idea, you're going to perform better. You're going to be engaged in it. You're going to be thrilled with the outcome. And if you were simply fulfilling my idea, really? Like, that's fun? So I think ask, don't tell. Yeah. You know, in fact, that's the subtitle of your book. Your book is Just Ask Leadership, Why Great Managers Always Ask the Right Questions. It's available on Amazon and it's available at your website, co2coaching.com. Who should be reading the book and who should be reaching out for personal coaching? Well, I wrote the book. So one is that you could fly from California to New York and have it finished.

19:05So that's the first thing. I also wrote the book so that every page would have value because I've read a lot of business books where it's just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And we did all sorts of studies on it and it works. The who, if you're leading or managing or raising a family. I use this with my kids and, you know, they tease me now, but it's like, dad, enough with the questions, right? Tell me the answer. And I'm like, you know, that's not going to happen here, right? So it's really anybody working with other people who really want to get the best out of them is I'd say the reader.

19:46The people who would benefit from the coaching are people who feel like their business is growing faster than they can keep up. It's plateaued and they don't quite understand what's going on or it's in decline, right? And each of those, there's a moment of inflection in which the leader knows there's something going on and there's a secret, right? So they think there's a secret. and two parts there is a secret but it's not the one you think right and likely the thing has to do with your leadership and you want to see it as an external factor and there's certainly lots of external factors but it's how do you lead given the complexity especially with the increased complexity for all of us in managing our life our business it's just it's kind of overwhelming me.

20:47And people just find the work helps them unbiased. They tend to have a bias when one of those three things is happening that they can't see through. And the coach will help them see through it, communicate it in a way that they can hear it differently for themselves, right? And then power through to a new way of being and thinking about the world. Yeah. Your website, co2coaching.com on the website. If you're looking to reach your next peak, you're going to find all the resources, certainly the book that we talked about. And there's a button if you click on it says get in touch. And looks like that will go directly to your team and explore coaching.

21:33You've got offices all over the country, but I would imagine a lot of your work is virtual. It is. It was the blessing. I know a lot of people had a lot of suffering through COVID, but the blessing for me is that it has gone virtual and it seems to work just as well. Gary Cohen, managing partner and executive coach with CO2 Coaching, the website CO2Coaching.com. Gary, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Josh.

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