The Look & Sound of Leadership
An ongoing series of Executive Coaching Tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the way you want to be perceived.
Episodes
Before testifying in a high-stakes case, a theorist and his coach swap horror stories about their nerves hijacking them and the lessons they learned.
Tom’s top four idea for conquering nervousness:
- Write happy endings
- Celebrate incremental improvement
- Externalize your nasty voice
- Ignore your nerves
Applying these techniques using our free PDF about mastering nerves.
The clip of Emma Stone battling her anxiety before a global aud...
A leader is getting pressured to stop being so prickly and gain some humility. With her coach, she explores whether it’s even possible for humility to ever be a strength.
Core concepts in this episode:
- Humility is confidence without defensiveness.
- Assess yourself on the humility scale. “How do I respond to challenges?”
- Humble leaders are confident in their authority.
- Ask frequently: “How might I be wrong about this?”
- Humility r...
A chief officer is infuriated by the behavior of his egomaniacal CEO. With his coach, he explores how to be a healthy leader while reporting to a boss he doesn’t respect.
Core concepts in this episode:
- Egomaniacs rattle our sense of self.
- They will not change.
- Worrying does not help.
- Be accountable for how you show up. Manage yourself.
- Don’t take anything personally. They’re just a piece on a chess board.
- Ask yourself: “Am I seeing th...
A senior vice-president worries that attention on his people’s development will get overwhelmed in the volume of work. He asks his coach for tools to make the process effective and efficient.
Download our free tool that maps the Three Conversations Development Plan.
Core Concepts
Prioritizing professional development is hard.
The 3-Conversation model makes development easy for the leader and meaningful for the person.
The th...
After a leader turns around the performance of one of his direct reports, he and his coach explore how it happened. And how to make it stick.
Core ideas in the episode:
- Workplaces improve when positive feedback is present
- Our natural human negative bias is a barrier to giving positive feedback.
- Learn to notice when things go well.
- Tell people how they are helping solve the puzzle that is work.
- Research says the most effective ...
A toxic boss destroys psychological safety on her team. One of her direct reports talks to his coach about how to survive. And how to keep his own team safe.
Core ideas in the episode:
- Don’t take other people’s bad behavior personally.
- You are not a victim. You have choice.
- Document repeated bad behavior.
- Openly discussing mistakes without blame creates safety on a team.
- As the leader, be willing to admit your own mistakes.
- Ask ...
Concerned his introversion makes him less effective, a corporate vice president asks for coaching – from an extrovert! Together, the coach and client explore ways to assure his introversion is a strength.
Myers Briggs Type Indicator assesses four preferences. One is Introversion and Extroversion. Download a free sample of the profile report here.
The six tools unpacked in this episode are:
- Manage your energy
- Monitor ...
A leader with a direct report who is, she says, the most defensive person she’s ever known, devotes an entire coaching session to gathering tools to help her cope.
All the tools and ideas and scripts in this episode are in an easy-to-understand infographic. Download it for free here.
To work on “deserving” dive into The Four Agreements.
Dig into more tools for managing defensive people in our podcast library in these ...
Still traumatized over an angry explosion she’d aimed at an abusive leader years before, a leader asks her coach to help her access healthy assertion to use during moments of conflict.
Where are you on the assertion scale? Our assessments will tell you.
In the episode, ASSERTION got divided into two skills:
AWARENESS and EXPRESSION.
The four-step script to build healthy ASSERTION is:
- Situation
- Feeling
- Want
- Outcome
<...
Convinced that participants need to engage in order to learn, a leader is discouraged after the cheerless rollout of her online learning program. She turns to her coach for help facilitating virtual groups.
Tools in this episode:
Tone-setting at the opening:
- Get people engaged by using the chat to think together;
- Get people engaged by thinking about how they will show up (ground rules);
- Ask: “How engaged do you want to be?” Rank 1 –...
Knowing she’s never been good with people, a leader seeks coaching to her deepen relationships in ways she can tolerate.
Two ways to deepen workplace relationships:
Matching & Curiosity
4 Ways to Match:
- Match Purpose
- Match Energy
- Match Conversations
- Match Vulnerability
Express Curiosity by Asking Deep Questions
- Make sure your questions are open-ended
- Invite reflection
- Keep the other person talking
A leader is losing credibility with her senior leaders. Her boss thinks she can turn it around by learning the sorting tool that transformed him as a communicator, so he brings in the coach who taught him.
Sorting & Labeling! The grandaddy of all communication tools. If you can sort and label you will sound like a leader.
The four steps in Sorting & Labeling:
- Use a headline
- Use a number
- Label each number
- Transition ...
A leader was given one goal for his coaching: improve how he answered questions. Knowing he struggled with this not only at work, but at home, he asked his coach for tools.
Our free PDF shows the two scripts: one for closed-ended questions, one for open-ended. Download it here.
Don’t assume you know why people ask what they ask. You don’t. Ever.
The closed-ended script:
- Answer what’s asked
- Match Length
- Check for understanding
- The...
A leader suddenly hears how harshly she speaks to herself. Wanting help, she turns to her coach who gives her tools to build a practice of self-esteem.
The three self-esteem practices are:
- Self-Acceptance: Practice being FOR yourself
- Self-Worth & Happiness: Practice saying, “I am worthy of being happy”
- Live in Reality: Practice acknowledging what is and what is not.
Download our free Feeling Words Grid.
A coaching client wonders what elements need to be present for someone to appear ‘executive.’ Two executive coaches ponder this question and come up with five elements they deem essential.
Categories in the archive to explore:
Perception – How You’re Perceived
Six episodes to dive into:
189 - Don’t Take Anything Personally
A senior leader, upset about having flubbed her reply to ‘Tell us about yourself’ during a high-stakes interview, talks with her coach about how to prepare for what she considers to be an incredibly stupid question.
Categories in the archive to explore:
Six episodes to dive into:
A chief officer had known for years he was an over talker. His CEO, desperate for improvement, gave him a coach. This episode highlights their first coaching conversation.
Two mindsets from this episode:
- When you speak, have a destination in mind.
Ask yourself: “What is my point exactly?” and “Why is this something they need to know?”
- Pay attention to your listeners. Respond to their interests.
Ask yourself: “Do...
A vice-president gets kudos for likability but knocks for her inability to listen. With her coach, she talks about listening repeatedly. This episode features one of those conversations.
The 3 listening mindsets:
- Listen to learn
- Feelings are natural
- Stay separate
Download the free multi-page learning tool about listening here.
This episode is tagged in three categories in our podcast archive:
Battling perfectionism and anxiety, a leader asks her coach for help and learns a tool that helps her tame her terrors.
This episode dovetails with many ideas in last month’s episode about Coaching versus Therapy.
Tom talks about his own bout with anxiety and a near career-ending attack of nervousness in this episode from April.
https://essentialcomm.com/podcast/mastering-nerves/
Pixar’s Inside Out 2 has a powerful dep...
Tired of feeling like a fraud, a leader searches for help down different paths. She and her coach talk about how coaching is, and is not, like therapy.
The leader in this episode wrestles with feelings of being a fraud. Tom talks about three resources to help manage that feeling:
“The Executive Impostor” Episode #176 of “The Look & Sound of Leadership”
Self-Esteem at Work by Nathaniel Branden & Warren Bennis
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