Episode 64: Stuck at the Top? Coaching Executives with Ken Jenkins, Part 1

00;00;09;04 – 00;00;54;26
Rick Hoaglund
Think back on your career. Have you ever worked under a leader who struggled to communicate clearly? Maybe you found it difficult to follow their direction because the direction itself wasn’t clear. Or perhaps you are the leader facing a major organizational change, feeling uncertain about how to guide your team through it. If any of this sounds familiar, it might be time to consider working with an executive coach. Today we’re talking with Ken Jenkins, an in-demand executive and leadership coach. He shares insights on how coaching can help leaders and cover their strengths and weaknesses. It’s not always easy, but for those feeling stuck or looking to boost their effectiveness, coaching can be a game changer. Welcome, Ken. Welcome to our podcast.

00;00;54;28 – 00;00;56;24
Ken Jenkins
Hi Rick! Nice to be with you today.

00;00;56;27 – 00;01;06;08
Rick Hoaglund
Thank you! Hey, my first question is going to be very basic, but basically what is an executive coach? What’s your definition?

00;01;06;10 – 00;02;03;23
Ken Jenkins
So you know there are lots of different definitions for coaching just overall because there are lots of different types of coaching. I think of executive coaching or let’s just say coaching overall, all right, as a partnership between a client and me as the coach and we’re focused on developing leadership skills and effectiveness of individuals. Usually we’re talking about executives, right? Within organizations it’s a confidential relationship. It’s client driven. So a coach is not a consultant. So I’m not there to offer advice or guidelines or steps. Here are seven steps to effectively be happy or, you know, things like that. I’m there to bring out information from the client by asking powerful questions. So I think it’s a focus driven relationship that’s based on trust between the client and the coach.

00;02;03;26 – 00;02;12;28
Rick Hoaglund
It sounds a little bit like it’s therapy. I know that’s probably a bad word to use in this case, because you’re not a therapist. But it sounds a little bit like that. Is it a little bit like that?

00;02;13;00 – 00;02;31;22
Ken Jenkins
Well, no, because therapy really, in many cases deals with things that have happened to someone in the past where coaching is looking at the present and going forward. However, that doesn’t mean that coaching can’t be therapeutic. So, I mean, it’s kind of a small difference between the two.

00;02;31;25 – 00;02;41;24
Rick Hoaglund
So why would someone reach out for your service? Like if I’m an executive and and at what point do I say to myself, I need to look for a coach?

00;02;41;27 – 00;03;07;23
Ken Jenkins
Yeah. And no, that’s a wonderful question, Rick. Oftentimes it’s because clients don’t recognize their own blind spots because I just don’t see what’s holding them back and something’s keeping them from moving forward. And so a good coach can take you from where you are now to where you want to be by asking questions and you self discovering what it is that’s holding you back and keeping you from moving forward.

00;03;07;26 – 00;03;18;27
Rick Hoaglund
So if I were your client, what would it look like? I’m guessing we’re in person. Or is it is it through zoom or obscure teams or something? Well.

00;03;18;29 – 00;04;16;03
Ken Jenkins
There are lots of ways that it works. My- my preference is in person because I just like the one on one relationship and being able to see the body language. And I, you know, eye contact and things like that. However, I do a lot, a lot of my clients are via zoom, and sometimes they’re there via the phone. And where you don’t have that icon or the ability to see, obviously, body language and all of those means can be very effective. It just changes the way you effectively listen. Particularly when you’re on the phone, because you’re really looking for intonation and tone of voice and things like that, right? Most coaching sessions are we have what are called laser coaching sessions, which are probably 20 to 25 minutes. And then a regular coaching session is about 15 minutes long. And so and it’s a guided process. There are different models of coaching. And yet they’re all very similar. There’s a beginning, a middle and an end to the process.

00;04;16;05 – 00;04;26;28
Rick Hoaglund
So in this guided coaching session, are you asking what kind of things are you trying to discover? Or or I mean, even making the executive self discover what kind of stuff are you? Are you looking for?

00;04;27;01 – 00;06;44;22
Ken Jenkins
Yeah. And well and again another good question. And that is is completely client driven wreck. So it usually starts with what brought you to our meeting today. What is it that you would like to discuss. Or what would you like to focus on. And then we take that and we really hone in on it because sometimes the client will be very vague. It’s like, I want to talk about x, and X is this huge thing. So we’ll we’ll talk about that. That might be a lot to unpack. Let’s look at several aspects of it. Which aspect do you want to examine. And then start exploring around that by asking very good questions. Usually open ended questions. Very few closed ended questions. We’re really trying to elicit communication from the client so that they can process in their head what’s going on? The way I look at it is, is kind of like sometimes you’re thinking about things in your head and things are whirling around, and you need to really funnel them down and narrow them down. And I know that you can’t. Your listeners won’t see this. But I have this jar and in this jar it’s full of glitter. It’s like a glitter glue. And you shake it up like a snow globe and it’s just full of glitter. And then you want it to settle down. So some might even say, how do you settle your glitter, right? How do you settle your glitter? What can we do and what can I ask to help focus you on what it looks like. So there’s and part of the process is like looking at the current state of things where you are right now and what’s the desired state where do you want to be? And then through questioning, we move from the current state to some actionable items that you can take to move you to the desired state. All of which are driven by the client and what they come up with. It’s very rare where I am. I won’t even say it’s rare. It’s very seldom that a coach will say, well, let me tell you three things that I think you can do if a client is not able to come up with something and I have an idea what their permission, I may offer an idea and they can look at it and say yes or no to it. And I offered as a suggestion, I really try to limit those times because I’m not in a consultant role. I’m in a coach role, and coaching is all about self-discovery.

00;06;44;24 – 00;06;56;07
Rick Hoaglund
So tell me what what led you to this? I mean, this is a this is a pretty big departure from some of the stuff you’ve done in the past, like, I, I know you from your past life doing, crisis management. It’s very.

00;06;56;07 – 00;08;25;28
Ken Jenkins
Similar. Yes and no. And I’m smiling as you ask this question because I had no inclination to becoming a coach. I mean, the very short story is a colleague of mine that I used to work with in the airline industry, called me one day and said, hey, our local chapter of, of this, international coaching organization is having a meeting. I think you’d be a great coach. I’d like you to come to the meeting. And I went to the meeting, and then I kept going to the meetings on a monthly basis, and he kept saying, you’d be a really good coach. He said, you know, you’ve taught leadership classes in the past. You facilitate well, you asked great questions. You’d be a good coach. And then I started having people outside of that room telling me, you know, have you ever thought about being a coach? And I’m like, what is the universe sending me in terms of a message? Right? So what I decided to do was to go through a coaching, program. But you train to be a coach. And my full intent, honestly, Rick, was simply to hone my facilitation skills to learn a deeper level of questioning. So I already think I listen very well to others. It’s how can I how can I go from just the art of facilitation to a deeper skilled facilitation level? And I learned that facilitation. So as I was learning the techniques and the skills of coaching, I decided to go for my accreditation. Since I’d gone through the program. And you have to perform X number of hours to become an accredited coach. And I found that I really liked it.

00;08;26;00 – 00;08;28;09
Rick Hoaglund
Are all of your clients executives?

00;08;28;11 – 00;08;53;15
Ken Jenkins
No, I practice executive coaching and leadership coaching. So there are lots of different focuses. I’m also a trauma informed coach, which is another skill that’s added on top of coaching. I’ve taught a lot of leadership classes and I was certified in a number of product delivery topics over the years, and so I do a lot of leadership development, and I do a lot of executive coaching, too.

00;08;53;18 – 00;09;16;14
Rick Hoaglund
Looking at your client base and I know, I know, it’s confidential. Like if you were to say, okay, all executive leaders, I’m talking to all of you. Now, the top three things that I see when I’m coaching that I would give you a I’m not going to say advice because you don’t give advice, but what, what what are the three topics you think that they would come up with? What are your top three?

00;09;16;17 – 00;10;40;10
Ken Jenkins
Do you mean like, what are the things that they’re coming to me with? Yeah. That’s easy. I thought about this before we started our interview today. One of the top things that’s emerged, particularly in the last years uncertainty. How do you manage and lead through uncertain times? Because the economy, for example, for many of the executives and the you know, of course, they’re beholden to stakeholders. And there’s, you know, there’s the financial side of the stakeholder side of a business, right, is how do we manage the uncertainty with all of the different things that are going on with the economy and tariffs and things of that nature, and leading an organization? So how do you manage uncertainty? And with immigration being what it is and how an impact and impacts, employee, the employee base, managing uncertainty is certainly one of those things. A second one in which will probably come as no surprise, is managing organizational change. But there’s been a lot happening with organizations in terms, for example, of Dei and LGBTQ initiatives and some falling by the wayside. And employees aren’t liking that. It’s like, how do you manage that organizational change and another employee engagement? We’ve seen a lot of apathy and burnout in organizations. And so how do you keep employees engaged? Are some of the topics that are coming up with my clients.

00;10;40;12 – 00;11;03;18
Rick Hoaglund
And I know that part of what you’re doing, and maybe it’s more than part, maybe it’s a large part, is teaching executives and other leaders about emotional intelligence. And I’m, I you know, I guess my question is, what is your definition of emotional intelligence and how do you use that in in practicing leadership or, or are you yourself practicing leadership skills?

00;11;03;20 – 00;12;25;07
Ken Jenkins
Sure. Yeah. There- there are different ways that you can do that. I don’t teach emotional intelligence as I really more listen for it and then try to guide around it and through it with, with whatever level of leadership. There are a lot of different assessments that are out there that clients can take so that you can get a baseline, at least of where clients coming from. I have a particular, assessment that I use from a company called Tracom, and it’s on social styles and it’s what your social style. To me it’s a, it’s a really good indicator of how you communicate. And so I give all my new clients that as a baseline so I know where they’re coming from. And then we have a discussion to explain. This is your baseline of communication. What you need to remember is that your employees come across all of their four baselines, if you will, or four types of social styles, and then then we can have a conversation around before we even coach. This is just an educational this is my educational piece. So the client is to discuss what those four social styles are. And that it’s important that you communicate to all needs of all four social styles. You’re not just communicating yours, because the way you communicate may not be reaching a different style. If you’re not utilizing that style of communication, does that make sense?

00;12;25;10 – 00;12;40;19
Rick Hoaglund
It does. It does. So understanding the style, in this case, understanding the style of their communication, informs the way that they they lead, of course. And you’re basically saying you have to broaden your style of communication to.

00;12;40;21 – 00;13;05;23
Ken Jenkins
Yeah, to be more effective, to be more effective and to be a better communicator, you need to broaden your style to meet the needs of all styles that are out there. Now, selfishly, from a coaching perspective, it helps me in understanding how to coach my client better because I understand what their needs are and how they communicate, and so I can try to better meet their needs and to their style.

00;13;05;25 – 00;13;23;08
Rick Hoaglund
So how do you teach compassion? Because leaders can can sometimes come across as being not compassionate. And and I think most leaders that I know at least are compassionate people. They just don’t communicate it. Well.

00;13;23;11 – 00;14;25;10
Ken Jenkins
They don’t. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the I think you have a very good assessment of that. Well, and you’re not going to like my answer because it’s we’ve used this answer a few times now. I don’t teach compassion. However, if, if an executive or a leader or any leader came to me and said I need to be more compassionate, then I would tailor my questions and their action plans to what would that look like for them? So I would ask them, what does compassion look like to you? How have you experienced compassion in the past? What does it mean to be compassionate? What could you do now and then as we have that discussion, then we build an action plan around their answers and what they come up with. All things that are self discoverable for themselves, and then they can attain those, those skills based on the answers that they give. They come up with an action plan that that that they feel that they can complete themselves.

00;14;25;13 – 00;14;41;03
Rick Hoaglund
So it sounds like it’s a lot of coaching is about self-awareness, like getting someone to be aware of, of their strengths, their weaknesses, and all the other pieces that go go with that. It’s am I am I catching this correctly?

00;14;41;03 – 00;15;06;29
Ken Jenkins
Yeah, sure. Now you’re you’re exactly right. And usually what happens is there is there’s usually a high degree of self-awareness. We’ve just hit a roadblock and, and and then we start spinning and or we’re in an endless loop, and I can’t get out of the loop, and I need somebody to help me get out of the loop. And so coaching helps us narrow down and focus on a specific topic so that you can move forward.

00;15;07;02 – 00;15;31;01
Rick Hoaglund
So if I were someone that say I was either seeking a job or I was stuck in a what I would call a dead end job, I’m just going to put that in quotes, because I don’t necessarily believe there are such things as dead end jobs, but if you’re at a point where you’re just not able to move to where you’d like to go, is this the time when you would say, okay, I probably need to reach out to someone that has some, some specialty with this, and is that a coach?

00;15;31;04 – 00;16;02;09
Ken Jenkins
Sure. A coaching could help immensely. And there are as I said, the coaching industry is a huge industry today. And there are specialized, you know, so I said, I’m an executive coach and a leadership coach. There are career coaches out there to and their specialty focuses primarily on what you just said. And so if I wasn’t able to meet the need for a client based on what they brought me, it’s the topic I could refer them to a career coach, for example, that focuses specifically on career development.

00;16;02;12 – 00;16;13;17
Rick Hoaglund
Do you ever get a referral from, say, a board? Does a board ever say, hey, we’d like you to work with our executive? Or is that unheard of?

00;16;13;20 – 00;17;27;21
Ken Jenkins
No, it is not unheard of. I have not had that happen myself. I work with individuals that come to me specifically. However, there are boards that will and they’ll use coaching as a development tool. Not not as somebody, you know, there’s somebody that we’re grooming to become an executive and we would like them to be have a coach and assign coach. Sometimes it’s like I think of coaching, for example, you go back 30 years, Rick, when I worked in the airline industry and I was in leadership development and human resources, we had a program on coaching and coaching meant you’ve done something wrong and we need to coach you to better performance. Right now, some of the skills that we use in coaching are similar. However, our coaching program had a punitive connotation to it and means you’re in a coaching session. You’ve been bad and we need you to be better most of the time. Many organizations are now using coaching as a way to develop employees, not punitively, but to say, Hey Rick, we see potential, more potential than you even see in yourself. We’d like to assign you a coach because we have aspirations for you to move up in the organization.

00;17;27;23 – 00;17;40;20
Rick Hoaglund
I can definitely see where it would have the negative connotation, because if you’re an employee and your boss comes in and says, we need to coach you, the first thing you think of is not I’m being looked at as a potential thing.

00;17;40;22 – 00;18;19;27
Ken Jenkins
I know, I know, and the good thing about this now is that we’re starting to see that shift some to a more positive aspect of it. And I think organizations are learning, even if it’s somebody that is not performing well, and you need a coach to help them increase performance or improve them and not increase it, well, it could be increase or improve performance. Organizations are finding that the cost of firing and re and hiring somebody new is is high. And if you can have a coach accomplish the same thing at a lesser price, then why not give that a shot.

00;18;19;29 – 00;18;25;14
Rick Hoaglund
Yeah. So there’s an economic benefit to using coaching over the punitive. Yes.

00;18;25;14 – 00;18;28;14
Ken Jenkins
That goes there can be most assuredly.

00;18;28;16 – 00;18;40;12
Rick Hoaglund
So tell me a little bit about you talked about trauma informed coaching and and just for our listeners, tell me, what does the term trauma informed even even mean?

00;18;40;12 – 00;21;22;05
Ken Jenkins
Like we’re trauma informed is, is more for the coach and and it can help a client as well. It teaches us how to be, well, it’s going to say it teaches me how to be trauma informed. And what that means are looking for signs of trauma. And those signs are things like, burnout, for example, apathy, aggression, anger. But in terms of how people approach other people, it doesn’t mean that somebody has had trauma landing on them. It gives me an indication that that may have happened. And then how can I approach that person in my communication and the way that I communicate? So trauma informed is simply being aware of all of the different signs and signals and symptoms, so that when I coach, I’m looking for those things, and then I can adapt my questioning and my communication styles to meet the needs of my client that are making an assumption that they could have been impacted by some kind of trauma. And when we talk about trauma, most people think about, we call them big T traumas. You know, like murder or rape, incest, things like that. We’re not talking about things like that. We’re all for some part the walking wounded today, but things that are going on in our country and around the world, the amount of social injustice, for example, the uncertainty in the political climate, the things that are going on with immigration, whether in the moral injury of the world today in terms of what’s going on that may go against our values and beliefs, all can land as strong. We look at stress on a continuum, and there’s the normal stress that you and I live through every day, right, of work and home and sick pets that we were talking about, each having a sick pet, that’s normal stress. And our bodies usually can’t handle that stress because we’re well resourced. We have people on scaffolding and support around to help us. When that stress continues and we start to lose that support and our systems and processes or our scaffolding goes away, it becomes toxic. Stress. And as that becomes more and more and it continues and it doesn’t go away, it’s unrelenting. Our body stays activated, if you will, to that heightened sense of stress. It can become trauma real for us. So how do we navigate the world today when many of us have had something traumatic happen to us, whether it’s a big T trauma or a little T trauma?

00;21;22;08 – 00;21;51;25
Rick Hoaglund
So as part of your coaching, are you teaching people how to. I’m not going to this is not going to sound right, but how to handle trauma are knowing themselves that they are they have had trauma and therefore it helps them. Because a lot of this is communication and leadership style. It almost all is right. It is so them understanding this trauma piece. I know you talked about yourself understanding it, but them understanding this as well. Does that have an effect on their leadership.

00;21;51;28 – 00;22;37;18
Ken Jenkins
You’re going to have this the same kind of conversation without even introducing the word trauma. And so what we might talk about is and there are as a trauma informed coach, one of the things that we’re taught is here’s what can exacerbate trauma and here’s what mitigates trauma. Here are some of the tools. I mean, and there are hundreds of tools that can mitigate trauma. And, and we might focus on, say, 7 or 8 of them. I try to have the client self discover what those things are. So if somebody is is feeling burned out, if somebody is feeling, apathetic towards their job, it’s what can we come up with to mitigate that. And start to right the ship?

00;22;37;20 – 00;22;45;25
Rick Hoaglund
Is it ever – and I know that you may not be able to even answer this – is the answer ever you need to make a change in your job?

00;22;45;27 – 00;22;48;11
Ken Jenkins
Only if that’s what the client discovers.

00;22;48;11 – 00;23;24;18
Rick Hoaglund
Decides. Thanks for listening! In our next episode, Ken shares one of the most valuable pieces of leadership advice he’s ever received. It’s simple, memorable, and something he continues to pass along to leaders he coaches today. It might just be the clarity that leaders like you are searching for. Don’t miss it! 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 as soon as they go live. I’m Rick Hoaglund – thanks for listening to OnTopic with Empathia!