Episode 65: Stuck at the Top? Coaching Executives with Ken Jenkins, Part 2

00;00;08;29 – 00;00;57;08
Rick Hoaglund
Walk the talk! It’s a simple phrase, but what does it really mean? And more importantly, does it apply to you or the leadership at your organization? This idea of aligning your actions with your words is one that executive Coach Ken Jenkins was introduced to early in his career, and it’s a principle he’s lived by ever since. Today, we continue our conversation with Ken, diving deeper into what it truly means to be a leader. We explore why it’s so critical to build trust, drive performance, and create a culture where people want to follow not because they have to, but because they believe in the direction. If you’re leading a team, navigating change, or simply striving to be a more authentic and effective leader, this episode is for you. Hi, Ken! Welcome back!

00;00;57;10 – 00;00;59;13
Ken Jenkins
Hi, Rick! Nice to be with you today.

00;00;59;15 – 00;01;19;26
Rick Hoaglund
So do you have any examples? You know, like I said, I understand you have confidentiality with your clients, but an example of somebody that had this huge paradigm shift when they discovered when they’ve been talking to you and they’re they’re working hard and they’re actually doing their homework and they’re- do you have any examples where someone’s come out completely with a new viewpoint?

00;01;19;29 – 00;04;07;05
Ken Jenkins
Sure. I mean, it happens. It happens all the time. And it’s usually I’m not going to be specific because I don’t want to even have anything that could trace back to a particular client. What usually happens is somebody comes in blocked. They can’t see enough to go forward and through, through the questioning and through the discussion. Right. Oftentimes you’ll see a shift in people, and it happens in a couple of ways. And I think I can describe it physically more than I can just by giving an example. It’s usually there’s a tilt of the head down and then like this reflective moment of, oh my God, I can see it clearly now. Or the eyes light up. You know, that proverbial the, the lamp just turned on and it’s like, oh my God, how did I not see this before? It’s right in front of me. And it’s because we often get so mirrored in, in the, the issue, whatever the issue is, Rick- right? That I can’t spin out of it clearly enough to see all of the things that are going on. A way to describe it might be, and this is what I learned in my trauma informed coaching program, is when we feel we’re under threat, social threat or physical threat, right? Our nervous system comes online, and social threat can be something as simple as I wasn’t invited to a meeting that I should have been invited to at work, and I’ve done group coaching before where I’ve asked that question before. How many of you have not? How many of you have experienced a meeting that you were supposed to be in and you weren’t invited to it? And nearly 99% of the time, everybody raises their hand and says, that’s happened to me. How did it make you feel? And then you start to see where the trauma has come into play. What happens is, is you build a conversation around that and then how do you mitigate it? How do you mitigate those feelings? And usually what we find is in organizations, is it that there’s there’s lack of trust in the organization or within the team? It may not even be the organization. It may just be within a subset of the organization, like a team, for example. And then how do you build trust, but how do you rebuild it and move forward? And there are times where if a client is still stuck and they can’t figure out what are some things to disrupt it, then with again, with their permission, I’m happy to share a few ideas and we can talk about those ideas together. I always try to self discover first, and sometimes the client is not ready to self discover and and then I will prompt with a few leading suggestions and then take it from there which they can either run with it or not.

00;04;07;07 – 00;04;18;14
Rick Hoaglund
So it’s this and maybe the answer is both, but is this looking at short term goals or long term goals?

00;04;18;17 – 00;05;05;23
Ken Jenkins
No, that’s a good question too. And, and, and I’m going to be vague in the answer if somewhat and that it depends on the client. There are often times where clients will come in with I need to work on something immediately. Right. It’s an immediate fix. It’s something that needs to be taken care of right away. And then there’s the opportunity for I’m looking at a five year business plan and and what needs to be incorporated into the five year business plan. What’s the vision. And and those are things that, for example, you know, I said at the very beginning of our conversation that sessions lasts about 50 minutes. So if we’re doing a five year business plan, we’re not going to do that in 50 minutes. You know, they’re going to be mini coaching sessions over the weeks and months that we may be working together as a client.

00;05;05;25 – 00;05;19;04
Rick Hoaglund
And actually, that’s a good that’s a good question. Is this is coaching ongoing for your career or do you at some point do you have a- a cut-off, or does it just depend?

00;05;19;07 – 00;06;20;11
Ken Jenkins
It just depends. So for example, I’m a coach and I have a coach. So I have a coach who has helped me with my business and my business development. And there are times where I, I, I hate to say it, I get stuck, I get mirrored down in the same things that everybody else gets mirrored down into, and I can’t see straight. And I need to talk to somebody about it. Now, I haven’t seen my coach in a year or two at this point. And I still have her on speed dial if I need her so that I can say, hey, I need to set up an appointment. Right. And then some, like the self-development, I have one client that I’ve been seeing for several years now, and and it’s not on a it’s usually a once a month basis. Now. And and it can be more than that if they have something that that’s happening personally or professionally that they want to work through and talk to, they, they like it because they find it. As we said, it’s not therapy, but they find it very therapeutic and validating.

00;06;20;13 – 00;06;40;04
Rick Hoaglund
So is it are you a friendly ear in a way like is there a are you a confidential- I mean, they have confidence in you. They know it’s confidential. So some of it is just- just is the wrong word, but some of it may be just having a friendly ear to talk to, right?

00;06;40;06 – 00;07;44;17
Ken Jenkins
And sometimes they’re just having that neutral, objective sounding board. So to me a coach is very similar to like a facilitator in a class or a program. The facilitator’s supposed to remain neutral, right? The coach remains neutral. I want to help you find the best answer or guidance for you, and I help you do that by the lines of questions that I ask you. And through those opportunities, you start to build trust with the client. And because we do maintain confidences, right. It’s like I’m not going to share with you exact stories about things, because I don’t want to break any confidence with the client and have them listen to a podcast and say, oh, he he told a story that I told in confidence, right? So I don’t I don’t do that. There are times where you could do it and de-identify it. I still don’t even like to take that chance. So, but and yes, it’s building that trusting and, objective caring relationship.

00;07;44;20 – 00;08;00;14
Rick Hoaglund
So is it also about building confident, high performing teams, rather than just an individual? So when you go in, you’re teaching the leadership, right. And is part of leadership running high performance teams.

00;08;00;16 – 00;09;00;11
Ken Jenkins
Yes it is, it is. And so some organizations there are coaches that specialize in team coaching for for example. So and and it’s like a question that we asked earlier, do people come to you only when they need help. Or could it be to help them just be more effective? It can be both a team, a team that is not functioning well together, can go through team coaching to become more effective as a team. Teams that are already effective can go through coaching to become even more effective and efficient going forward. And become high performing teams. So there are specialists and all all aspects of of I think one of the things that we talked about before, if I, if I look back at my notes, is you asked me what were the three things that people are looking at or executive’s looking at. Right. One of those is managing organizational change. Within that organizational change could be a team structure. For example, and how to manage that team.

00;09;00;13 – 00;09;32;29
Rick Hoaglund
So are there issues with generational, differences because we think of executive leadership and I think this is a stereotype and it may not exactly be true, but I always think of executive leadership as being of a generation that can be removed from some of the workforce, meaning they’re older, they’re more experienced. I mean, that’s how you get into these positions. You’ve been there a while. You have experience. Are there certain issues with generational leadership? Is there challenge with that?

00;09;33;01 – 00;09;36;19
Ken Jenkins
(laughs) It can be a problem too, Rick!

00;09;36;21 – 00;09;40;03
Rick Hoaglund
(laughs) I’m trying to be super, super good with this!

00;09;40;05 – 00;11;03;22
Ken Jenkins
You’re trying to be super, very, very objective. And and I and I love that. And the answer to all of those questions is yes to all of those. And the first thing that came to mind, though, when you ask that is even between even with generational differences, I’m a firm believer that at the end of the day, we all have basic needs, right? And two of those basic needs are we all want to be seen, and we all want to be heard. So how do I communicate and how do I lead? Where I see people and I hear them and I can validate them. And so that’s why I like the assessment that I use when as I bring a new client with me, on board with me, to work with is to let’s look at our assessment. And if they want, we can even do a 360 of, of social styles with their immediate team. Right. Or we can talk in generalities. It can be. It just is. It is a, communication style difference between you and I. It could also be due to a generational style between you and I. And we’re coming from the same place. I want to be seen. I want to be heard. I want to feel valued. I want my contributions to matter. So how do I communicate those effectively to that particular generation? It comes back down to our communication style and how we lead.

00;11;03;25 – 00;11;28;02
Rick Hoaglund
So because you’ve worked with executives and you’ve got new groups of people moving into the workforce, younger groups, young, young people moving into the workforce. Me advice for them? I mean, you’re working with senior leadership. Someday these people will be in senior leadership. Some of them may be stepping into it right away, but but a lot of them, it’s many years from now. What advice do you have for them?

00;11;28;04 – 00;13;31;15
Ken Jenkins
You know, there’s a piece of advice that that I received in a, in a program that I used to teach and I use it for I use this and I share this wherever I can because I firmly believe in it. And it’s a quote from Doctor Stephen Covey, who wrote the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And he used this quote, he said it in one of his, videotapes, which I’m dating myself by saying video tapes in the program. Right. I’m sure it’s on DVD now. Or it’s it’s digitized somewhere. And the quote goes something like this. It’s not verbatim. It goes something like this. You can’t talk to yourself out of things. You behave yourself into. And the advice that I give folks is your actions speak louder than words. And so your actions should match your words. There needs to be consistency and congruency between your actions and your words. Don’t say one thing and do another. Right. And so that’s the advice I give everyone, regardless of of their tenure in an organization, starting with an organization, or an executive is, you know, I see a lot of, of, of conversation or I hear a lot of conversations where people are saying the right thing, but they’re not doing the right thing. They’re saying this to appease one group, and their actions go completely against it. Well, there’s a mismatch there. And and people see it. We’re all watching. This is one of the things that that kind of irks me. When I see dysfunctional teams is people see the bad behavior and, and that that’s what leads to mistrust. And so it’s like the easy fixes stop the bad behavior. I mean, you know, this is it’s as simple as that. Stop the bad behavior, start to build trust and trust is immediately actionable. There’s a great book. And I’m going to kind of digress for a minute. There’s a great book called The Thin Book of Trust. And have you heard of that book?

00;13;31;18 – 00;13;32;02
Rick Hoaglund
I have! Yeah!

00;13;32;03 – 00;14;03;02
Ken Jenkins
Yeah, the Thin Book of Trust. What’s great about it is it’s a thin book. It’s a really short book, and it’s full of wonderful sage advice on how to build trust and trust it, and then it’s immediately actionable. And so there are ways to and it’s hard to do that when there’s such high trust. I’m sorry when there’s high distrust in the team. How do you correct that. And of course correct it. And you have to do that incrementally over time.

00;14;03;05 – 00;14;18;11
Rick Hoaglund
So you’ve been in a lot of leadership roles before you started doing your, your work. Now, did any leader influence you or give you advice? Like what? What has led you to be successful in leadership yourself?

00;14;18;13 – 00;14;26;12
Ken Jenkins
You know, well, first of all, I appreciate you thinking that I’ve been successful in leadership, so I know that I’ll take that call.

00;14;26;13 – 00;14;28;09
Rick Hoaglund
Yeah. You know, thank you.

00;14;28;09 – 00;18;28;18
Ken Jenkins
Rick, I appreciate that. I, I have been fortunate enough to have a handful of people that I consider mentors. And, you know, I, I wondered if you would ask a question like that. So I kind of thought about it in advance, and my mentors are people that walk the talk and they’re in alignment. Their actions, in their words, are always consistent. With, with their behavior. And they always had my back. They created a psychologically safe space for me to be able to come in and share what ailed me, if you will. When things weren’t going well, they even had created the space where if I disagreed with them, I could safely disagree with them. I don’t mean it was a kumbaya office, and we all sat down together by the campfire and and and roasted marshmallows together. I’m talking about where I could say, hey, I need to talk to you. Can I come over at 3:00 today, come in the office, shut the door and say, you really pissed me off when you did this. And it felt comfortable to say that I’m seeing less and less of that in organizations today, that ability to have those conversations. Because people are not as trusting of an organization as they used to be. And maybe that was a generational thing. I don’t know. I haven’t I haven’t given that much thought until just now. I just know that I’ve worked for people that have given me that opportunity to be who I am and to be able to lead. The other thing that I’ve learned is through my mistakes. I’ve made a lot of mistakes and I’ve taken that feedback in. So a couple of things that you asked, what would be some advice is one is to be open for feedback, and when you’re open for feedback, that is, don’t be defensive about the feedback you get. Feedback is simply data. So take the data in and if it’s data that you don’t agree with, then the next step to check to to receiving feedback is to check the fit. I’m a huge believer in check to fit rec and check the fit means. For example, I got feedback once about something and the feedback was that I, I interrupted people. I’d come into offices and they’d be having a conversation. I’d interrupt them and I’d say, hey, I have a I have a quick minute. I have a question to ask you. And I’d interrupt. And I got that feedback and I thought, I don’t do that. And so I decided I would check the fit. So I went to 3 or 4 colleagues that that I know that would be honest with me. And I said, hey, I got some feedback and I want to see if you agree with it. Well, and everybody agreed with it, I was like, oh no, I can’t believe I do that. And when 3 or 4 people agree with it, then it’s time I can act on that. I can change my behavior. And then sometimes you’ll find that you’ll get feedback and you go check with 3 or 4 people. And I’m not talking about people that are yes, people. I’m talking about people that yes, you trust to give you the truth and say, I got this feedback. Would you please tell me if I fall? And trust me, you’ll see it in their body language. You know, they’ll be like, oh yeah, you know, the they’ll they’ll look at you a certain way and you’ll be like, oh, damn, it must be true, right? You can see it. Then you can act on that feedback or they’ll tell you, no, I don’t see you that way at all. What I try to do as a leader is emulate those conditions where people can come and provide me feedback when they need to, and tell me how things are going and take that in and be open to it and build that two way communication and build trust in the relationship. It’s where organizations sometimes are lacking is building the trust between the organization and and leadership and leadership to the employees.

00;18;28;21 – 00;18;35;20
Rick Hoaglund
What does an executive or a leader do if they have a coach that they just don’t agree with?

00;18;35;22 – 00;18;36;26
Ken Jenkins
You get a new-

00;18;36;29 – 00;18;57;11
Rick Hoaglund
And you’re talking I mean, the kind of questions you’re asking are pretty, are sort of personal. Even if they’re about business, they’re sort of your personal stake in business. So I could see where you could have someone that’s like, that’s too close to home sort of thing. I don’t like this person anymore. I don’t like the way they ask the question, what do you do if that’s the case, if you’re the executive?

00;18;57;14 – 00;19;18;28
Ken Jenkins
I think you know the short answer to the question. And people are probably listening, saying, fired the coach, fired the coach, get another coach. Finding a coach, in my opinion, is like finding a good doctor or a therapist. Sometimes you have to go through one, two, or three before you find the one that is the right fit for you.

00;19;19;00 – 00;19;27;23
Rick Hoaglund
Do you think that they have to question themselves before they do that, to make sure that it’s they’re not just instinctively reaction because it was a touchy thing for them?

00;19;27;26 – 00;21;44;12
Ken Jenkins
I think. I think that is a very valid question. Yeah. So it’s like, why why am I not resonating with this person? What is what is the issue? For example, we were talking I was talking to somebody over the weekend. My doctor just retired after 47 years, and I’ve been seeing that doctor for 43 of his 47 years of practice. And you know what a great relationship we had over the years. And so I’m interviewing and I and I went and saw a new doctor and said, I’m interviewing you. (laughs) Just because I’m here doesn’t mean you’re my new doctor. I want to see what you’re like and how you operate, pardon the pun, how you work. Right. What’s your organization like? And I have some questions for you. And we spent 45 minutes having that kind of conversation. It was really quite good. And I was quite pleased that he allowed me to have the opportunity to ask those questions right. And, and sometimes hopefully many coaches have what’s called a discovery call that’s usually 30 minutes and sometimes my discovery calls go to 60 minutes, even though they’re scheduled for 30. And usually if it goes from 30 to 60, it’s a good fit because we’re enjoying the conversation. It gives you the opportunity to do that, to find out if you’re a good fit. I also have a specialist doctor that I went to that on the very first visit. I stopped him halfway through our in our discussion and said, I’m sorry, but this is already not working for me. You do not get to talk to me. The way that you’re talking to me was such condescension. Condescension. And he apologized. And we’ve been on the straight and narrow in terms of our conversations ever since. He’s not a touchy feely kind of doctor. His bedside manner is lacking, and I respect the knowledge that he brings to this specialty that I can continue to work with him because he’s talking to me in a whole different, tone of voice than it was before. So I executives, not all executives. I mean, I’ve had executives that I’ve, I’ve had discovery calls with that didn’t become clients, and I’ve had executives that did become clients. And so, you know, it just depends. You’ve got to find the one that’s the right fit for you.

00;21;44;14 – 00;21;56;07
Rick Hoaglund
And I would think some of that is just figuring out where people are coming from, their language style, their communication style. Does it match with you? Does it, it’s got to be both ways as well, I would think. Right.

00;21;56;11 – 00;23;18;15
Ken Jenkins
Well, yes it does. And and part of that discovery call is overcoming the myth of coaching many people. I mean, I had a client once said to me, Rick, could you just stop asking me questions and just tell me what to do? And I said, no. I said, I appreciate the question. My role is not to tell you what to do. It’s to help you discover what you need to do that work within your values, your beliefs, and what’s right for your organization. If you want me to tell you what to do, then we can terminate our agreement as a coach and you can hire me as a consultant. And I will come in and I will share. Here’s my advice based on what you shared with me, because there are two completely different skill sets, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have an opinion of what I think you should do, but my role isn’t that I should offer that to you. I want you to come up with it on your own, because you’re going to have greater buy into it. If it’s your suggestion and your idea. And you’ll come up with what works for your organization better than I can. I’m not part of your organization. I might be missing key aspects that could influence the decision. And my decision doesn’t take those things into into account. And that’s not fair to you.

00;23;18;18 – 00;23;35;02
Rick Hoaglund
So you just talked about a myth of coaching. Is there a myth in leadership as well? Something that maybe you have discovered is like that is not true, but a lot of people believe it, or even I used to believe that. Is there a myth out there of leadership?

00;23;35;05 – 00;24;00;24
Ken Jenkins
The answer to that is yes. And I fell into it myself when I became a leader, in an organization. And the thing that I find the most in when I say this, you’re, I’m going to go on a bet here that you’re going to shake your head in agreement. Is that the myth is that leaders have to have all the answers. It’s a huge myth. Leaders don’t have to have all the answers. Leaders need to lead.

00;24;00;26 – 00;24;06;01
Rick Hoaglund
And I would guess a lot of the answers come from their team. If they’re- if…

00;24;06;04 – 00;24;54;19
Ken Jenkins
I- no, you’re exactly right, they curate the wisdom from the group. I think what’s most important is I don’t need to have all the answers. I might need to know where to go to get the answers, which might be my team, might be a specialist, it might be a consultant. I need to be able to think globally in terms of what are the resources available to me, to figure out what I need to do to go forward. Right? Yep. And and that’s what a coach does. Let me help you discover the resources that you probably already have, that you forgot you had access to, so that you can come up with the answer to solve the problem. It’s not if if we if the leader had all the answers to the questions, you wouldn’t need employees.

00;24;54;21 – 00;24;57;02
Rick Hoaglund
That is a good point. There’s a very good point.

00;24;57;05 – 00;24;59;27
Ken Jenkins
It’s just a thought. It’s just my thought.

00;24;59;29 – 00;25;05;23
Rick Hoaglund
Is there anything that we have not discussed that you’d like to bring up?

00;25;05;26 – 00;25;55;28
Ken Jenkins
No, I don’t think so. And. Well, I think I’d like to revisit the the whole therapy is is it coaching is therapy because I really believe that it is not just based on the distinction that I made. And, I would really want to drive home. I think the point I’d really want to drive home, Rick, is that there’s such a vast difference between coaching and consulting. So if if you’re really looking for self-awareness, increasing your self-awareness, and learning more about you and your styles and your values and your beliefs, coaching is an effective way to increase not only your self-awareness, but also help you in being a better leader. Consulting can do that. And I think it it doesn’t do it in a way that coaching does.

00;25;56;00 – 00;26;00;05
Rick Hoaglund
A consultant provides the answers, am I right? Sometimes!

00;26;00;12 – 00;26;59;16
Ken Jenkins
Well, I would say a consultant provides answers. They may not and they may not be the correct answers. And for me, the big difference is even when you have a an outside consultant firm come in to ask your organization, you know, or organizationally, companies will bring in a consulting firm to come in and say, we need you to fix this in our organization. And they’ll spend months in the organization. They’ll get a glimmer of what the organization is like, and it’s not enough. They’re not there long enough to get the full absorption of what the company does and how it operates, and all the different dynamics and the teams in the organization, which is why I like coaching better, because you’re in the middle of it and you can pull all those resources in yourself. They’ll help you with the right questions, find the decisions, and the answers that you’re looking for.

00;26;59;18 – 00;27;02;17
Rick Hoaglund
I love it. Well, thank you Ken! Thanks for being on our podcast.

00;27;02;19 – 00;27;06;12
Ken Jenkins
You’re welcome, Rick! Nice to talk with you as always. Thanks for the for the laughter!

00;27;06;14 – 00;27;42;11
Rick Hoaglund
Yeah, it was fun. I had a good time! Thanks for joining us for today’s conversation with executive coach Ken Jenkins. Walk the talk isn’t just a leadership cliche, it’s a mindset and a daily practice. And as Ken reminded us, the most effective leaders don’t just set expectations, they live them. To hear other episodes of OnTopic with Empathia, visit our website, www.Empathia.com. Follow us on social media @Empathia, and subscribe to OnTopic with Empathia to hear new episodes as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund – thanks for listening to OnTopic with Empathia!