2205 - Navigating Uncertainty How Coaching Fuels Success with The Preston Associates' Luciana Núñez

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1:05With us right now, it's Luciana Nunes. Luciana, you are an executive coach and head of the Americas and partner with the Preston Associates. Your website is theprestonassociates.com. You are also the author of the book, Coaching Power, leading with coaching to create individual team and organizational outperformance. Well, Luciana, it's great to have you. Great to be here, Josh. Thank you for having me. Yes. So before we get talking about the superpowers that you possess and the work that you do in the world, Luciana, what have you been into lately on the side? Hobbies or music or movies or any of that sort of thing?

1:48well a great great question to break the ice lately i've been binging on something that i always wait for the full season to be out so we just finished the white lotus uh season i don't know if it's three or what so i won't spoil it season three oh yeah it's season three and we it's good tell me why you like white lotus i think it's a little bit you know it kind of does connect with coaching in a weird sense because on one hand you get to live vicariously in these beautiful destinations but then you get to see the the human condition through different lenses and especially in this season there were there was one dialogue that three women had and I was watching this with my husband and it was probably a three four minute dialogue but it was so rich and so deep and so real and I told my husband this is female friendships for you if I had to explain to someone the beauty and the complexity and the warmth and the depth of female relationships that was that so I think that show has that beautiful complicated view of how amazing humans can be plus how strange humans can be so that's that's that's something that I enjoy in it yeah Carrie Coon was part of that that triad I know yes that was amazing yeah no it it is it's it's It feels like such an intimate portrayal of personalities, right?

3:15It's just the dialogue is just like, wow, you know, I can't believe it. It feels very voyeuristic the way that they do the dialogue. Yeah, you're right. You feel like you're peeking behind the curtain. It feels like, yes, that's a really good insight. I didn't think of that. Yeah, I think that that's one reason we've been such a fan. All right. So in your day job, when you're not watching White Lotus like me, Luciana, tell me about the work you do, who you serve. So we essentially work with leaders that want to take themselves and their teams and of course their business to the next level. That really means that we help them through coaching, typically in two ways.

3:56Sometimes we'll coach them one-on-one, founders, leaders, business owners. Sometimes we coach their teams. And this is something that, especially in the last few years, our team coaching practice has grown a ton. So I myself do 70 % of my coaching time is spent on team coaching because what we have discovered is that especially for companies that are in that fast growth mode, it really moves the needle of performance in ways that are even deeper and more transformational than one-on-one coaching. So I geek out on all things coaching. And the crazy thing is that I never get bored of doing it and talking about it and working with a fantastic group of 60 coaches globally from San Francisco to Hong Kong, we get to have the most incredible conversations.

4:41And we often truly tell to each other, it's the best job in the world because getting to help humans, getting to help businesses and finding that magic that sits in between and being able to see the evolution of a team and a business is nothing beats that. So I'm super pumped still to this day to be doing that work. We are approaching the middle of 2025. What are the major things that you are hearing? You know, I think you come from a vantage point. Not only are you a coach of your own clients, but you're part of an organization that likely you may probably have some pretty good objective data around what leaders are concerned with right now.

5:28What are you hearing? Great question. What we are hearing is real-time challenge to be able to lead through VUCA Square, meaning if we thought that volatility and uncertainty were the environment, this is a global environment that puts it to the next level of challenge. So what we hear from leaders is, how do I lead through this? How do I give my team what they need from me? So, for example, things that we hear is people start to get very worried about how can I give certainty? And that's where we start to coach them into realizing certainty is over. In this world, if you think as a leader, you can give anyone certainty, your game is really off.

6:16the best thing that you can do as a leader, the next best thing is to create clarity, because that is something that you can control. So helping people realize what are the different aspects of leading through this environment? How do they check in with themselves in terms of what presence do I bring to this environment of uncertainty? Because again, you're not going to create certainty, but you can really, through the presence that you bring, calibrate your team back to a place of, okay, let's slow down the ball, as we say in Spanish, and slow the tape and cool your jets. And let's think this through together, which is another key component of what we see now in terms of data.

6:56The teams that are coming together to deal with this turbulence, to deal with this turmoil in a way that is collective, in a way that is serene, and in a way that acknowledges the environment, but also has the ability to choose the speed at which you operate. Sometimes you have to go into sixth gear mode and go fast. But sometimes if you really want to go far, especially in this context, you need to slow down to calculate the next move. And then in a way that is aligned with your team, being able to say, okay, the next phase of the adventure, we're going to go in this direction. The other data point that we see in this environment is the importance of allowing people to understand that zigzagging is going to be part of the process.

7:42This idea of going from A to B in a very straight, weak, linear way is over. Sometimes to be able to navigate the turbulence, you're going to have to zigzag a bit, a little bit like the pilots fly around the storms. You're going to have to go the long way to go in the right direction. So helping leaders find that space and also I would say a sense of spaciousness because it's a different dimension to create the space and to make a lot with that space so being able to help them step back slow down recalibrate it's a big part of what we're doing and the more senior the leader is by the way the more effort we have to put as coaches to get them into that zone because I work with a lot of finance clients for example literally last week I was coaching a trader that I cannot even to start to tell you how, like, you know, in eight years she came into the session, the markets were going crazy.

8:45And part of the coaching session was about getting her back to her center because you can only think well when your brain and your heart and your purpose are aligned. So a big part of the coaching work that we're doing now is getting the leaders back into that place of centeredness. Yeah. Yeah. Luciana, I really appreciate your insight on that. And I know that, again, that that kind of comes from a position of you get to work with a lot of great folks. And I want to congratulate you on the launch of your book. As everyone recording, this is not too long ago. It's on Amazon right now. It's called Coaching Power, Leading with Coaching to Create Individual Team and Organizational Outperformance.

9:28Are you talking to the leaders themselves and how they can create a culture of coaching? Is that what you're referring to? That's really the idea behind the book. And it was honestly born from all of the leaders that we have coached through 20 years that we've been doing this. They all eventually, after experiencing the power of coaching themselves, they all said, how can I cascade this to my team? How can I help them learn to coach their teams? So the book came as a need coming from our clients wanting to become better leaders by leading with a coaching style. And the book is really a manual for the how-to.

10:06How do you have a one-on-one coaching conversation? How do you empower someone, not delegate, but how do you truly empower someone? How do you create the conditions to do team coaching with your team? How do you give feedback effectively? How do you help them build their executive presence and their gravitas and their personal brand? So it's almost a step-by-step, if you will, guide for how can you lead with that coaching style. Because something else that we have observed is that if you think of in this moment in time, there are five generations in the workplace. And they all expect very different things from a leader.

10:47But for example, the younger generation, the millennials, the Gen Zers, they don't want to be bossed around in the old school way of management. They want to be coached. They want to be developed. They want to have a leader that believes in them, sets the direction, but also gives them guidance and space to be able to do what they want to do. And that is exactly what coaching is. So a good leader in the future is no longer a leader, for example, that has all the answers. in the world where you can Google or chat GPT anything, having all the answers is no longer a premium. It's going to be all about asking those powerful questions that it's really all about the beauty and the superpower of coaching to your point is asking those questions and the art of asking the right question in the right way, in the right sequence with the right word is what helps people stop and think and start to think strategically, to think practically and then to take ownership of whatever you've agreed in that conversation if you had it in the context of coaching I guarantee you that person is going to run with it and they're going to go to the end of the earth to make it happen in a way that the old style of you know telling you what to do giving you the answer giving you direction and you just go and execute is no longer effective in in the business world and I think that's what leaders have realized that, okay, that old trick of being a good boss that has all the answers and gives direction is no longer good enough.

12:17So the book is really about helping the leaders that have seen this happen, find out and play and practice themselves in terms of how do I do this? So it's been written to be practical, to be very easy to read. You can literally open any chapter, see what speaks to you, and you zoom into that chapter. And by the end of that chapter, you're going to really have not only the good framing of the concept and frameworks that we have, but also self-reflection questions that will help you put all of these things into practice. So that was the hope when we wrote it. And that's what we are hearing now that is out in the book and real that is happening for the leaders that we had in mind when we wrote it.

13:01I love it. I love it. So your website is theprestonassociates.com. To our friend that's listening, who should be engaging? And first off, you have a ton of resources. Let's give people some next steps after they've heard our conversation together. The first next step that we always like, because at the end of the day, we are a human-based business, is just reach out and let's have a chat. All of our coaches have, like I do, a business background. So we always start with the question of what does success look like for you? What are you trying to achieve in terms of business performance? What are you trying to achieve as a leader?

13:42What does success look like? But also what does good look like for you? So we always start in real life with a dialogue. We don't want to sell to anyone. That's the last thing that we ever do. We always start like a good coach. That's by asking a couple of questions and really listening. So the next step is go to the website, send us an email, send me an email. We have it on the details of your recap. And let's have a chat because that's truly how we can uncover how can we be of help. And I also tell you, sometimes we conclude that that person doesn't need coaching at that point in time. We'll also tell them that sometimes they need something else.

14:22Sometimes they need consultancy. Sometimes they need an auditor. Sometimes they need a different kind of intervention. So we'll also be very open and honest to say, it sounds like what you need now is different. And we connect them, of course, with people in our network to give them support. Because the one thing that makes coaching such a wonderful profession is you get into it only if you have a generous spirit. So we're in the business of helping humans. Yeah. Luciana Nunes, Coaching Power is the name of the book. It's on Amazon and everywhere else. It's also an audiobook. Thank you so much for doing that.

15:02And again, your website, theprestonassociates.com. Luciana, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Josh. Thanks for having me.

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