1989 – Transforming Leadership Through the Power of Feedback with Lee Povey

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1:06With us right now, it's Lee Povey. Lee, it's great to have you. You are a high-performance leadership coach. You coach founders, startups, and teams to cultivate an Olympic mindset, which has a little something to do with your background. Your website, Lee, is leepovey.com. That's L-E-E-P-O-V-E-Y.com. Lee, it's great to have you. Oh, great to be with you, Josh. Happy to be here. Yes. All right. Well, Lee, give us the 411, what you do and who you serve. Oh, thank you. So I'm a high performance leadership coach. What does that mean? That means I work with very talented, bright individuals that have found a company.

1:48My particular niche is startups where they're probably at 20 to 30 people. They're growing rapidly, fully funded, have a good product or service, and their business is blowing up. And what I help people do is learn to move from that kind of gritty stage of the startup where you're doing a lot to how you understand leadership, how you let go, how you empower other people, how you let go of always needing to be the smartest person in the room and instead allow other people to flourish so that your business can scale rapidly. So I deal with conflict. I do a lot of coaching different people in the same organization and I help them work with each other.

2:28So I help founders understand themselves and then I help their team understand the founder and vice versa. Yeah. Do you mind, Leet, sharing a little bit about your background and particularly your work with Olympic athletes? Yeah. So when I was a young guy, I was on the national team as an athlete myself, track, sprint, cycling. So my event is 45 seconds or less. I'm fabulous for about 30 seconds and I need a donut, a massage and some rest. I realized pretty young 1920 I wasn't gonna I wasn't quite good enough for the Olympics went in the business route went into real estate realized I'm not very good at working for other people I can't work for people that aren't as smart as me so why do we become entrepreneurs yeah so started my own company and but the sport always kept calling back to me I loved sport I was coaching local riders and I coached a kid that won a national championships and some of the coaches in UK and a governing body said, we want you to do more coaching.

3:26I got incredibly lucky. I sold my real estate business December of 2007. The probably crash happened in UK in 2008, in January, my business went from being worth half a million pounds to nothing, literally overnight, and I got out the right side of that. So I was very lucky. So then I moved into elite sports coaching. And it was surprising how many of the things I'd learned as an entrepreneur were very relevant to that and obviously I had the background myself so I trained back myself as a professional athlete won some national championships and everything in life is about kudos isn't it so I won the national championships now everybody wants me to coach them short version of that moved from the UK to California because who wouldn't want better weather than UK became a national team coach here and then COVID came and everything stopped and I had to pivot to what I do now Yeah.

4:20Well, Lee, talk about your background and why the, you know, kind of the experience of working with Olympic athletes at that level where, again, man, I mean, it's just so much psychology that goes on in addition to kind of that physical effort and work that takes place. and why that is a great metaphor for those of us who are in leadership or we're a founder or we're really working hard to grow a company. We're leading a team. We have high demands and expectations of ourselves and perhaps of other people. It sounds like there are a lot of great parallels here. Yeah, the crossover is huge. And there's a lot that you can take from the sporting world.

4:59So one of the things that I take from the sporting world to founders is more rest. so athletes know that you can't perform at your best unless you have recovered enough from the stress that you've put your body under to be able to perform again and for founders and leaders is exactly the same there's a high level of emotional stress and if you don't recover your performance will deteriorate over time so that's one of the great things that you can take from sport and the other thing is just how meticulously sports people prepare you know there's a there's an ethos in business that the person who works the most hours is going to win whereas in sport it's the person who's most optimized is going to win so taking that optimization where are the gain areas that you're missing and you're just thinking you're going to blunt force it rather than hey how can you make this easier how can you outsource to a va instead of doing it yourself how can you you know something i love to to talk about with um entrepreneurs is what is your hourly rate break down what you earn what's your hourly rate if you're doing something that you can pay somebody $15 an hour to do and your hourly rate is$500 an hour why are you doing this thing so yeah there's lots of parallels between how sports people think about things how driven they are how often if they don't have a coach they will drive themselves to destruction and the coach is slowing them down and making them have longer term plans and then also pointing out the things that you can't see so I would do that to my athletes here's the mistakes you keep making here's the choices that you're making aren't helping you and it's the same thing with founders here's how you are presenting yourself to your team here's another way that you could be doing it be more effective you know you're working with Bob or Bob somebody that thrives on praise and you keep giving them critical feedback and now they've run out of the ability to hear the feedback so it's having somebody in your corner that believes in you like a coach both for sporting and for founders who then can give you the feedback that most people either can't see or just don't have the guts to give because it takes quite a lot of courage to say to somebody, hey, you're not doing this as well as you could.

7:02And it takes a lot of trust in that relationship for those people to be able to receive that. Yeah. So Lee, talk about maybe some of the organizations or leaders that you've worked with now and what maybe were some of those challenges that they were coming in with? And I I ask that because our friend who's listening may identify with, you know, maybe some of the situations that you've helped resolve or helped, you know, co-create solutions and kind of that mindset to, you know, kind of achieve beyond that. Yeah, I love that. I think one of the biggest things I see, and it doesn't matter the size of organizations, I've worked with organizations that are turning over$4 billion a year to organizations that are turning over$50 million a year.

7:50feedback the ability to give and receive feedback is a complete game changer often in this culture we have two two types of people we have those that give unskilled feedback so it can't be heard what they're saying is often correct but the manner in which they're saying it the technique they're using means that the person receiving it cannot hear it because they get defensive or and i see this even more surprisingly especially in startups with a younger generation that are much more thoughtful about how they approach business, they don't give direct enough feedback. They're worried about upsetting people.

8:24So the feedback is sugar-coated. It's fluffy. It's not direct enough. And as a sports coach, I started off being terrible at giving feedback because my gift is I can see everything. So I would go up to somebody and say, hey, mate, why don't you do it like this? You're not doing it the right way. You could be so much faster. I hadn't asked permission I hadn't built any rapport I was just immediately telling them what they were doing wrong now most people when they receive feedback in that way get defensive so through my own painful journey of wanting to be more effective and a better and a better coach I had to really understand research and practice much better feedback techniques so now when I give feedback the first thing I do is I ask permission are you open to feedback and if now's not a good time when would be a good time and then the next part of giving feedback is hey bob how do you think that situation went is there anything you would do differently what did you learn from doing it so you're understanding that person's point of view and now you're in partnership because they've said yes i want some feedback so they're already emotionally open to it you listen to them you understand their opinion you understand their experience and now when you give your feedback, you're tailoring it to what they've missed, and you're agreeing with what they actually spotted themselves instead of just coming in cold and hard with, here's all the ways that you F this up.

9:49Yeah. Regarding leadership today, have you seen, or what is your observation around trends in particularly people leadership that, you know, maybe I think that leaders should be particularly sensitive to or you know um they may encounter advice that's a little outdated uh for today anything immediately come to mind yeah the days of the authoritarian leader are over yeah so you know just like in sport an athlete now can research how to do things the physiology of it how they should be training so that means the collaboration needs to be different than it was before before the coach would come in in sport and say this is how we do it because the coach had all the knowledge now everybody has so much more knowledge everybody can read books on leadership everybody can listen to podcasts on leadership so they're demanding more from their leaders they want a more evolved leader they want a more thoughtful leader they want a more caring leader and what i also see in this new generation of leaders is they want to be more impactful the gordon gecko days of it's all about money and being as wealthy as possible yes you know some of that still exists but that's actually in the rarity now i see leaders you know i'll give an example i work with a company that make a coffee replacement drink mud water and the reason this coffee the reason this company exists is because the founder wants to improve mental health he spotted that people are drinking too much caffeine which is affecting their sleep which is affecting their mental health so he has alternates to coffee so that you have a ritual You still have a drink that you have in the morning.

11:32Some has low doses of caffeine, some has none. But you have the ritual of very nutrient dense drinks that are healthy. And that way that you can improve your mental health because your sleep quality goes up. And we know that better sleep quality is what results in better performance for athletes and especially for founders and elite business people. You know, the whole sleep when you're dead, four hours of sleep a night, absolute stupidity. Get good sleep and you'll perform a much, much higher level. So what I've seen is that trend of more optimization about people's health, which is why I'm so popular with these founders, because I can speak both.

12:13I can speak the psychology. I can speak the culture. I can speak the techniques on leadership. Plus, how are you looking after yourself? What's your diet like? Are you training? How are you sleeping? Let's make sure that we optimize those too. Yeah. You know, I'm so grateful that you mentioned sleep. You know, obviously, you know, with your background, you know, in athletics, I would imagine, again, sounds like you're an advocate for being active as well and like taking care of this one body you got. Right. And I do believe that that's so foundational to so many other areas of our life. If we are in great health and wellness.

12:52Are there some some typical things that let's say you're working with a client and they're like, Lee, listen, I've been way too busy. I just haven't prioritized my health in the way I should. If you were to start them off on a listen, if you do nothing else, here's what I want you to do so that you can excel in these other areas of life. What kind of prescription might you give them? Let's go for two. One, go to bed earlier. Yes. Just so simple. Right. turn everything off all your computers your email have you know so my phone at 8 45 my phone goes off it's programmed it just everything shuts down I mean I can look at if I want to but it all it all goes into sleep mode so turning your devices off and then switching as many of your phone calls to walk-in phone calls with so much of us working virtually now you can actually take a phone call instead of a zoom call and you can go for a walk and there's two benefits to that one there's some nice low level low impact aerobic activity so it's just good for you get your body moving you will feel better and secondly there's a good correlation between movement and especially low impact movement and processing emotional stress so the way to deal with emotional stress is talk therapy working with a coach like me vent into your friends and then physical activity and especially low cognitive effort physical activity.

14:20Yeah. All right. So, Lee, your website is leepovey.com. And it looks like, by the way, you're a great follow on LinkedIn. I wanted to mention that. But it looks as though you may have some other resources or, you know, how do people engage with you? What would you recommend? Like, if they want to start to get to know you virtually, what would you recommend? Yeah, so I'm just stepping into this social media world. As a sports coach, I never had to advertise to get clients. I was recognized as one of the best in the world. So clients came to me and it's very easy in the sports world because people see your athletes on the podium getting results and they know who's coaching them.

14:57And it's quite a small circle. Now, in this business world, there's a million business coaches. Some are absolutely fantastic. Some not. And it's like, how do you know? So like everybody, I'm stepping into the social media world. One, because I want people to know I exist. And two, because I really want to share things that would be helpful. I'm very motivated by social impact. So we've created something called the Founders Catalyst. It's a group on LinkedIn specifically for founders. Come and spend time with us. You can come and ask us any questions. We have a monthly Zoom call. You can sign up there for the Zoom call.

15:31It's free. Come and ask questions. Join in with us either in the group or on the Zoom call. and I really want to support founders from being lonely. So one of the biggest things I see is founders find it lonely because there's not many people that know what it's like for the buck to entirely stop with you. That's not the experience of most people in society. So being responsible for everything, for your staff, for your team, for the performance of the company, whether the company works or not, that's a huge stress. Come share that with other people. Come share that with me. and we'd love to have you there.

16:07Lee Povey, again, you're a high-performance leadership coach. You coach founders, startups, and teams to cultivate an Olympic mindset, unlocking leadership, brilliance through candor and clarity. Again, your website, leepovey.com, L-E-E-P-O-V-E-Y.com. Lee, it's been a great conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. No, thank you for the opportunity, Josh. I really appreciate it.

16:37Thanks for listening to the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. If you are a thoughtful business owner or professional who would like to be on this daily program, please visit upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. We believe that every person has a message that can positively impact the world. We love our community who listens and shares our program every day. Together, we are empowering one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from.

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