UNEXECUTIVE

Unconventional coaching for extraordinary people

The 5 Minute Guide to Choosing a Coach

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Coaches are brilliant at making it seem like anything is possible and challenging your way of thinking, this makes them both highly skilled at helping you but also highly skilled at making promises they may not be able to keep.

Despite that coaching is still one of the most effective and powerful ways to make a change in your life.

Here’s a short guide to choosing a coach:

1) Ignore their website – It’s not that their website doesn’t matter, it’s just that it doesn’t always correlate to reality. Some of the best coaches I know have sort of ok websites. Most of the most over hyped coaches I know have AMAZING websites. A good website will soften you up for your conversation with a coach, and even sell you on the person you may become if you work with them.

Sometimes a website is a reflection of the coaches brilliance, sometimes it’s a beautiful artifice for them to hide behind. Look at it, but don’t decide because of it.

2) Pay attention to how they make you feel about yourself – Spend some time talking to a coach so you can tell what working with them will be like. But be careful not to get caught up in their bright, shiny, charm. You need to pay attention to how you feel around them. Just be careful about putting them on a pedestal. If you notice yourself doing this take them down, if you find you can’t it might be a red flag. If you feel a bit like a fan-boy/girl/being that may be a red flag.

We all project greatness onto people we admire, but if you feel like you’re dying for their attention and approval, that’s an indication that you may not be grounded in your choice.

Instead, look for someone who makes you feel inspired, powerful, and connected to your deepest desires. You should admire them, but you shouldn’t be obsessed with them.

3) What are they all about? – Great coaches are about you, your life, and your desires.. They might have a system or process laid out for you to use, but they will design their coaching to what YOU want and need.

Some coaches are very much about themselves, same as any industry. It can be hard to grow with a coach who’s attention isn’t on you, so look for someone who puts their attention on you, your needs, wants, and desires.

4) Do you actually like them? – You should enjoy talking to them. I mean that’s what you’re going to be doing. If you clash, if they feel pushy, if you don’t enjoy them, don’t hire them. They don’t have to be your best friend, but you should generally enjoy who they are and enjoy spending time with them.

5) A little intimidation is good – The best coaches are the ones that you feel a bit nervous around. If you’re nervous they’ll call you out or that you’re not advanced enough to work with them, that’s a good sign. You want to like your coach but you also want to have a healthy respect for their work.

6) Will they push you? – You can find people to agree with you. Those people are called friends. That’s not what a coach does. A coach should challenge your thinking and how you show up in the world. If they don’t push you, you won’t grow.

7) Seeing your blindspots is key – We tend to surround ourselves with people that think like us, and many people hire coaches who think like them. One value of a coach is their different perspective. There should be JUST enough overlap so you can communicate, but also just enough difference that they notice things you miss and provide a different perspective.

8) Ask your gut and ask your friends – My gut often knows who I need to hire even when I have doubts. My friends can help me break the spell of an alluring coach or give me new ways to think about the choice I’m making. Refer to these two data points often.

9) Are you a little scared to invest? – The last thing to consider with a coach is the investment. Some coaches convince you that investing a large sum of money is the ticket to success. It isn’t. But great coaches also charge a healthy fee for what they do.

There are some bargains out there to be found, but most great coaches know their worth. I usually hire coaches who ask me to stretch financially. But stretch isn’t break. The price should challenge you, maybe even a lot, but you shouldn’t have to give them a credit card on the call just to save you from yourself.

Choosing a coach is a personal process. And while I’ve never made a BIG mistake choosing a coach (except for maybe the first one I hired) if you’re thoughtful and willing to listen to your gut you’ll likely make a good choice. It is really about being grounded and taking a risk. Any good coach will be a risk, but because a great coach can have such a profound impact on your life, that risk is usually worth it.

Love,
Toku

The Many Faces of Burnout

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As a coach, I’ve seen my clients ‘quit’ in a variety of ways.

Some get outright mad and yell at me demanding their money back.
Some just stop showing up with anything to talk about.
Some have great insights in their sessions but then do nothing with them.

All of these are forms of quitting.

Burnout is also a form of quitting.

When a light bulb burns out, it quits working. The integrity of the filament just isn’t enough to carry the current through it anymore.

If you develop a stronger filament you can carry more current, but you can’t do that while the light is burning. It has to be turned off, redesigned, and then turned back on again.

In the start-up world, leaders rarely get a chance to turn off, redesign, and strengthen their capacity to carry the “current” of challenge, uncertainty, internal and external criticism, and a high level of ambition.

So leaders burn out in 3 pretty common ways:

1. They flame out – these are the obvious ones. Walls are punched, things are yelled, people may be fired, relationships might be ruined. This is often followed by a sabbatical or ‘time off’. Rarely enough to make a difference. But enough to return to the previous state of dysfunction.

2. They suffer brownouts – These are periods of time where they sort of check out, mentally or emotionally. Their performance drops, they become engaged in unhealthy behaviors like drinking, playing excessive video games, and maybe even online shopping.

3. They suffer displacement burnout – This is when the burnout doesn’t happen at work but happens in their personal lives. Their relationships fail, they suffer health crises, or something else explodes. I can’t even list all the personal mishaps leaders I work with find themselves in.

No matter how it happens, it happens because a leader is simply running too much current through their system.

So what’s the solution?

It’s two-fold:

1. Turn off the light – Step out of leadership, take time off, be in nature, pray, meditate. Find a place away from leadership that you can go to. The big challenge here is that most leaders don’t do this. They dim the lights and somewhat step away, but this isn’t the same. The bulb is still warm, the current is still flowing, and so you can’t repair or strengthen it.

2. Upgrade your capacity – This ISN’T the same as upgrading your knowledge or being more efficient. To upgrade your capacity you have to upgrade a few things at once. You need to upgrade the load your nervous system can take. You can do this by using meditation and exercise. Next you need to upgrade your humility and ability to learn. You can do this by hiring a coach and listening to feedback with an open mind. Finally, you need to upgrade your capacity for love. So often leaders are driven by fear, but most great things aren’t created by fear, they are created by love.

If you can align with your commitment to love, you are less likely to burn out. You are also more likely to love what you do.

People who run for love, run forever. Because when something comes from love, it creates its own reason to keep going.

If you don’t want to quit, if you want to thrive, and function better. Stop running from your fears. Stop trying to run faster from them. Take a break. And then come back from love. You may be surprised by how easy and joyful your work becomes.

If you are ready to come from love, contact me to schedule a call.

You Don’t Have to Listen to Your Coach

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I’m an executive coach. That means people pay me an incredible amount of money just to talk with them. So much so that I once explained to a stranger that my business model was actually most similar to a phone sex operator.

Why do they do this?

Well I could give you a long list of the changes I’ve helped my clients create, the single conversations that changed relationships, saved business ventures, and led to more joy and satisfaction. This is probably what should be on my website.

I could say people pay me to tell them the truth in a way they can actually hear. Or more simply I could say people pay me because coaching works. Not just coaching with me but coaching in general.

If you work with a skilled coach you will improve, enjoy, and thrive more than you thought possible.

But sometimes coaching doesn’t work, and when that happens it totally sucks, but the reasons are actually pretty predictable. This is true whether your coach is someone you’ve hired or just someone who’s trying to offer you feedback in the moment.

This is why coaching doesn’t work and how you can fix it –

1. You’re not listening –

We have an incredible ability to ignore other people’s feedback even when it’s obvious. When you get new information that challenges the way you see yourself it’s easier to ignore the feedback then face reality. The feeling of being exposed, even to yourself is painful and humbling. So you avoid seeing these things or you explain them away.

Coaches are very good at pointing out what you don’t want to see. We practice looking for the blindspots other people miss. Your coach is likely telling you again and again what’s missing, but you’re not listening to them. Instead, you are justifying why what you’re doing is right, understandable, or situational. Which is fine, if you want to stay the same.

However, if you want to change, try to listen to your coach and take on what they have to offer. If it doesn’t work you can put it aside, but start by listening.

2. You don’t actually think change is possible –

If I came along and told you to jump over a ten-foot fence, you’d look at me like I was an alien. When people ask us to do the impossible we respond with confusion and incredulity. Regularly I see something my clients can do that they don’t think is possible. Sometimes they doubt their abilities because of limiting beliefs, sometimes they simply don’t understand that pathway from here to there. They don’t listen because they have doubts. There’s nothing wrong with setting realistic goals and working to achieve them, but often their realism is just pessimism in disguise.

A good coach will see more options than you do, they’ll see things you aren’t aware of, they’ll believe in a version of you that you’re becoming rather than who you are right now. But if you don’t think change is possible then you’ll end up stuck where you are. The way to change this is to notice where you shut down and start to argue for your own limitations. When this happens try coming from the point of view that it IS possible and then asking yourself IF it was possible, how would I get there? This is also a great place to get your coach to help you.

3. You’ve already quit –

My clients want to quit all the time. This may seem like an odd thing to say, but to me, wanting to quit is a sign of growth.

Think about a really tough workout you’ve done. At some point, you likely wanted to quit. I remember when I ran marathons and triathlons there was often a place during the race where I just wanted to stop. My legs were tired, my feet hurt, I didn’t care about getting a stupid t-shirt.. But each time I managed to push through and find more energy on the other side. When you’re developing yourself as a leader or working to change your life you’re going to run into places where you want to quit. When this happens you have three options – quit, keep going, or pretend like you’re going to keep going while you’re actually quitting.

For coaching clients, qutting looks like going through the motions, showing up coaching calls without anything to work on, not applying any of the insights you gain, getting stuck in the same cycle of complaints, or focusing on what isn’t working about your life or coaching. This is a way to quit without actually admitting that you’re quitting.

Coaching almost never works when this happens because if you’re not engaged and committed to change, you won’t change.

The good news is you can bring this to your coach. You can simply tell them that you are losing faith, not really giving this your all, or just going through the motions. A good coach will know how to with with people when they falter on the path to a new life, so they should be able to help you get back on the right track.

Final Thoughts

Look, you don’t have to listen to your coach. Whether it is someone you hired to help you change or someone in your life that’s just trying to help you out or mentor you. But the cost of not listening can be high.

You have the chance to listen or to ignore. Most people ignore, they hide, and they avoid. But life isn’t meant to be survived — it literally ends with death — it’s meant to be lived. You’re meant to grow and develop as long as you’re alive.

And this simple act of listening and being open to the coaching around you can have an incredible impact on who you are. If you’re open to it.

What Do White People Owe BIPOC?

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It’s a question I ask myself a lot.

What do I owe? What can I do?

I mean I’m just one white dude. I don’t run a huge company. I have so much on my plate, with clients, and deadlines, and deliverables, and culture. It’s too much already.

So what do I owe BIPOC people?

I know I owe more, but this is what I came up with…

1. I owe them remembering – Being white means I have the privilege of forgetting. About slavery, discrimination, hate speech, micro-aggressions, and all the trappings of systemic racism.

It’s so easy for me to forget, to let it fade in my mind, to let it be someone else’s problem, and to pay it “lip service” and nothing else.

At the very least I owe remembering that the system I live in, make money in, pay taxes in, and maybe someday raise children in is a system that benefits few and harms others. I didn’t choose or design this system, but I have benefitted from it and it has harmed good people.

I can start by simply remembering that truth instead of letting it fade away.

2. I owe them anti-racism – I grew up in the era of being color blind, race not mattering and being a taboo subject, and for a long time I thought simply not burning a cross or using the N-word when I recite rap lyrics was enough.

But it wasn’t, it isn’t, and it never will be. I owe them more than merely avoiding racism or being overtly racist. I owe them being actively anti-racist, which starts with learning and listening and continues with a commitment to acting and growing.

I owe them by acting in a way to actually COUNTERACT racism. Hiring more people of color, voting my conscience, donating money, and learning to speak and think in an anti-racist way.

3. I owe them leadership – If I claim I am a leader does that mean I only owe my leadership to other people of privilege? With a gentle nod or the inclusion of some token people of color in my life?

Leadership isn’t about being in charge, it’s about being ON THE HOOK for the world we create. Leadership is about being inside our social circle, companies, and communities.

I don’t need to ‘save’ BIPOC people with my leadership. I need to LEAD non-BIPOC people to join me in the movement. I do this by being responsible for that which I didn’t create. A racist system, inherent bias, unfair pay advantages, and more. I can hire trainers to help create an anti-racist company, I can be on guard and out front, leading others to say, “let’s have this hard conversation, let’s risk making mistakes and looking foolish, let’s risk being leaders”.

As an entrepreneur, I am good at building a company and inspiring others to follow, but if the end result of that is simply to fill my own pockets or the pockets of others with privilege then what good is my leadership? .

I don’t need to stop what I’m doing and change the world. I need to take what I’ve learned as a leader, as a founder, as a risk taker and be willing to put my heart where my mouth is.

This, at least, is what I owe BIPOC people as a white leader.

Love, Toku

4 Things to Remember When You Have to Adapt

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A couple months ago I got a call from my assistant. She wanted to quit. I sat there heart beating on the phone unsure of what to do. Within two weeks my entire team was gone, and in the end it was for the best.

At the time I was scared, sad, and frustrated to have things change on me so fast. But in the end it taught me a lot and I ended up feeling grounded and complete.

The nature of the world is change and there’s little we can do to shift that.

And so we must learn to adapt.

Here’s what I’ve found to be the most valuable when things change suddenly:

Acceptance-

Denial is the first enemy of adaptation. It’s so easy to pretend that things haven’t changed, to keep seeing what you hope was happening instead of what is happening. I’m not suggesting that you be pessimistic, optimism is fine, but you must see reality for what it is.

For me, when I get that sinking feeling in my belly that something is changing, I do my best to look at it straight on and accept what I’m seeing. When someone tells me what they want or shows me who they are and it seems in alignment, I do my best to accept it.

When my assistant told me she was miserable it was hard to hear but I accepted it. I could have dismissed it or tried to talk her out of it, but it felt true, she was being honest to me, so I looked at it head on.

By accepting what is, you can then choose where to go next.

Feeling –

Our habitual response to pain is to move away from it. When change brings pain or fear with it, we tend to avoid thinking about it or we numb our pain in the face of it.

You notice yourself reaching for the ice cream, the bottle of whiskey, another episode of 90 day fiance, whatever it is that will take your mind and heart off of the change.

And some of these things can actually be helpful in moderation, but we tend to numb more than we need, and stifle our ability to adapt as a result.

I won’t lie, the evening that my assistant quit I spent the whole night working (work is often where I go to numb) I ate more ice cream than normal, and I had a whiskey before bed.

But by the next day, I let myself really feel what was going on underneath. I let myself feel the anger, the sadness, the disappointment, and the fear. I was mad that she was leaving. I had asked her so many times how she was doing, if we could shift her work at all. I was sad because she had been the person I leaned on as I was going through my transition with my ex. I was disappointed in myself for not seeing the signs sooner. And I was afraid that it would all fall apart, that I was a horrible leader, and that I’d just sink into failure and oblivion.

By letting myself feel my feelings I was able to process my emotions and come to a more stable place. Instead of resisting change I became willing to look at what was next and to make the best choices for her as well as for myself.

Forgive / Get Complete –

Often when we think of forgiveness we think about the apologies we gave as children. You said you were sorry but you didn’t mean it.

And it’s easy to think of forgiveness like an obligation, but forgiveness is actually an act of liberation. It liberates you from the weight of other’s mistakes and it frees them from the toxic judgment most of us hold onto when someone hurts us. Whether they hurt us on purpose or simply by accident.

In my practice I teach a kind of forgiveness called completion, which means you don’t just ‘say’, you forgive, you really move through everything you need to get back to a place of responsibility for your life.

You express your feelings, you look at how you’ve contributed to what happened, and finally, you appreciate the person for who they are.

These three simple steps, which I do by writing letters (a process I got from my coach Hans Phillips) helps me move forward. They help me forgive. When I do this process I get back to a place where I can own what happened and be responsible for how I’m going to respond and decide what to do next.

Get Clear and Act –

Finally, you get clear on what’s next and begin to move into action.

Of course most likely you tend to get into action before getting clear. You just want to react, to do something, to respond and the result is that you respond from fear, anger, or anxiety.

Which is why slowing down and getting clear happens first.

For me, part of getting clarity is getting clear about what I’m committed to. For example, I have a commitment that every person who works for me will benefit from being part of my team. They will grow, deepen, and expand who they are. And I know if I’m living up to that commitment it means that people will leave me from time to time. My job is to accept that they want to leave and support them to move onto a job that’s better for them.

After you get clear, then you can get into action.

Sometimes that action is literally doing things that need to be done, like reviewing all the tasks your assistant does. And sometimes it means adjusting your beliefs and the way you think about the change itself.

What’s important to remember is that action that comes from acceptance, clarity, and forgiveness is the action of a true leader.

For me and my time the whole thing was a big wake up call that I needed to start from scratch. I needed to let my assistant go and I actually needed to let my whole team go.

I had built my team with my ex and it was great for our business, but it wasn’t right for the business I wanted to build.

So I let them go, they all went on to better jobs and better things, which is exactly what I want for everyone who works for me.

Adapting isn’t easy and of course, change is hard to predict, but if you follow these steps and slow down enough so you can move with purpose and clarity, you may find that on the other side of change you didn’t ask for, is growth you didn’t expect.