Leadership Series: Practical Strategies for Bridging Leadership Gaps with Executive Coach Lori Mazan

What does it take to truly redefine leadership in today's fast-paced world? Lori Mazan, co-founder and Chief Coaching Officer at Sounding Board, shares practical and transformative strategies to address this challenge. In her new book, Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders, Lori offers a fresh perspective that rethinks outdated leadership norms. 

In this special podcast episode on leadership, Arun Upneja is joined by Dr. Taylor Peyton, an expert in Leadership and Organizational Behavior who previously taught at BU School of Hospitality, bringing added depth and insight to the conversation. 

The “Distinguished” podcast is produced by Boston University School of Hospitality Administration.

Host: Arun Upneja, Dean
Producer: Mara Littman, Director of Corporate and Public Relations
Sound Engineer and Editor: Andrew Hallock
Graphic Design: Rachel Hamlin, Marketing Manager

Music: “Airport Lounge" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Transcript

Arun: What does it take to truly redefine leadership in today's fast-paced world? Lori Mazan, co-founder and chief coaching officer at Sounding Board, believes she has the answer. In her new book, Leadership Revolution: The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders, Lori challenges outdated leadership norms with a fresh, innovative approach. Join us as we dive into our insights and explore how they can transform the way we lead and inspire. It might just redefine what you thought possible in leadership. Hello everyone, and welcome to The Distinguished Podcast, the show where we explore the frontiers of leadership and personal development. I'm Arun Upneja, Dean of the Boston University School of Hospitality, and today we have a truly special episode lined up for you. Welcome, Lori, to The Distinguished Podcast. 

Lori: Thank you, and happy to be here. 

Arun: In addition, I'm also excited to welcome Dr. Taylor Peyton. Taylor taught leadership and organizational behavior at our school, and is still involved as an advisor on special projects and executive education. Today, she's our resident expert. 

Taylor: Happy to be back in the recording studio with you, Arun. 

Arun: Very happy to have you here. So let's start. Can you share with us what inspired you to start Sounding Board, and how does it aim to transform leadership development? 

Lori: It's a really interesting story because a past coaching client reached out to me and told me like, hey, this executive style coaching leadership coaching is the best professional development I've ever had. And I want to bring it to all leaders in organization. And at the time I was coaching this person, Christine Howe, my co-founder, she was in the executive suite. She had ascended very quickly and needed help kind of navigating how to move into an executive role. And what was interesting is I had been coaching CEOs and C-suite execs for 20 years. And they also told me the same thing. They would say, this is great, but I wish I had this earlier in my career. So Christine and I partnered up to bring that same style of executive coaching leadership development to all leaders in the organization and even future leaders, potential leaders. So that kind of personalized development is available for everybody, not just the people at the top of the house. 

Taylor: And Lori, you are speaking to the best professional development they've ever had, right? For people who are listening to this, who do not have a leadership development background or professional development background, could you just speak a little bit to the different methods people use for professional development, and in particular, what you mean by coaching? 

Lori: So traditionally for the last 50 to 60 years, professional development involves a lot of skill development, and that comes through training approach, either in-person training, online training, that kind of thing, and there's nothing wrong with that, of course. It's required and necessary and foundational development. But what coaching does, it's personalized development. And it goes to the application of those skills. So we start with skills, and then the next level is capabilities, where people are combining skills for particular purposes, something like, say, strategic thinking or conflict management. That requires multiple sets of skills to be successful. So blending skills together, we call those capabilities. And then the next level up is called capacity. You know, what are those traits that you are developing internally to yourself that make you an exceptional leader? And that leap from foundational skills to capacities that moves leaders from good leaders to exceptional leaders. And one reason this whole field of coaching has developed is, you know, 30 years ago, I used to be in training as well. And we would teach the skills and then the participants would always ask the same question, like, wait, how do I apply this in my context, in my environment with this particular person? And a large training approach really just doesn't give you that personalized my own situation answer that lets you transfer the learning to your daily life. And this coaching approach helps you do that. It allows you to, it gives you help, a thinking partner to take the skills that you have and apply them successfully in your specific situation environment.  

Taylor: Lori, when we look to the history of executive coaching in terms of when it first took off, leaders were a bit resistant regarding the stigma of asking for a coach or accepting that they might need a coach. Can you speak a little bit to what you do today effectively, or what you've seen coaches do today effectively, to talk leaders into the value of coaching? 

Lori: Great question. So yes, when coaching started, it really was like the first visible coach was someone who had talked about derailed executives. So yes, of course, people didn't want to be pigeonholed into somebody who wasn't being successful. But I would say by the late 90s, early 2000s, it had already shifted so that leadership coaching was a developmental methodology, not a remedial methodology. So that's why organizations use coaching for high potential groups. They're preparing them for their next leadership role. They use it for succession planning. They use it for like, it's, it's even though with technology, we've been able to bring the price point down a lot. It's traditionally very expensive. So organizations are investing their funds in people they think are going to be valuable to their organization in the future. So one of the ways to think about it is, hey, your organization is investing in you because they think you are high potential. They want to develop you to the next leader, to the next level. I think the other thing is, because it's just a great form of professional development, what our coaches do is they help the participant find out what their own personal motivation point is. Like, what do they want to really accomplish as a leader? How do they think they can do that? What's the impact that they're looking for? Because being a leader is not easy. You know, you have to really want to do it. It's, it's challenging. And so without sort of a personal value and goal around your role as a leader, it's hard for people to do the work that's required to get to the higher levels of leadership. 

Taylor: There's a lot in this workplace today that isn't easy. When you look at the way work has changed recently, especially during COVID and after. One of my favorite quotes from Richard Branson is, train people well enough so they can leave, treat them well enough so that they won't want to. And you just mentioned the value of organizations investing in their leaders. But the reality is we live in the kind of work world where people hang out in organizations not for very long before they depart. What do you say to these organizations to convince them that they should invest in their leaders that those leaders will not be running away? 

Lori: We can't guarantee that those leaders won't leave because that is actually one of the big changes in the work environment from the last century to this century. In the last century, you had 20 years to develop senior leaders in the organization. You know, employees were hired right out of their education and stayed all the way until retirement. Now you have three to five years. So, it's an accelerated timeline of leader development. So, I don't think we can say, hey, develop your folks into leaders. They're going to stay for 20 years. But we can say, develop your folks into leaders. They will stay longer because they will feel the value of you investing in them. They will start to see their career trajectory take off, right? In other words, they'll be promoted. They'll be given more responsibility. And why do people leave organizations? Lots of reasons. But one is to move to a higher-level position that they didn't have access to in their current organization. So, instead of organizations letting people leave, why not develop them internally to the next level? It's actually cost-effective because the cost of onboarding a new employee and getting them up to speed is significantly more than the cost of giving somebody a leadership coach. 

Arun: So, a few minutes ago, you were both discussing about, you were, Lori, you were talking about the differences in executives. Now, the longevity at the workplace is not as it was in the previous century. So, I want to, this is a good segue. I wanted to get to your book, Leadership Revolution, The Future of Developing Dynamic Leaders. In your book, you discuss how traditional leadership models, I'm assuming from the previous century, are often based on outdated principles. So, can you expand on what are these old principles that are obsolete, given this new generation, and what modern approaches do you advocate for in their place? 

Lori: Yeah, so many of the leader development models and 360 feedback models were developed in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. At that time, the work environment was primarily white male. Actually, for the first 10 years of my coaching practice, I only coached males because those were the only people that were in the C-suite roles. So, that's changed fairly dramatically. Also, there was a much narrower number of generations in the workforce. You maybe had two, possibly three generations because at that time, people timed out at 60, 65. Now, you have four or five generations in the workplace. Of course, back then, you didn't have nearly as much technology happening, so that information overload is very significant. Then, you also had a much more predictable environment. As Taylor was mentioning, the environment is anything but predictable now. You never know what's going to happen the next day, so the kind of leadership you need is a style that can adapt to the unknown. You no longer can predict what's going to happen tomorrow, as you could back in 1970, let's say. I think one of the biggest changes is the last century, there was a lot of leadership models, like five ways you have to have these five traits to be a good leader, or you have to have these three qualities to be a good leader. What has happened is people have realized, no, that's not true. If there were only three qualities, people needed to be an exceptional leader, everyone would be an exceptional leader. Those qualities were really based on a more male-dominated leadership approach, because nothing wrong with that, but that was what was there at the time. 

Arun: I'm assuming that you are working in-depth with what the person currently is and making minor tweaks here and there, or total personal? 

Lori: Sometimes major tweaks. But the reason why we don't try to turn non-charismatic people into charismatic people is because that only works when the environment is easy. Under stress, people tend to revert back to their natural way of being. So, if we can enhance their natural way of being, then even under stress, they can still be successful. And the way we do that is we help them change their thinking, and then we apply behaviors to the, you know, right out of the new thinking. So, when thinking and behavior is aligned, then that tends to stick over time. And just like, if you're a new manager, you're going to think differently than if you're an SVP. There's a different way of thinking for each level of leadership, and to elevate yourself, you have to think differently, and therefore, you have to have new behaviors, behaviors attached to that thinking. 

Arun: So, a quick follow up here. So whenever you are working with people who are moving into new situations, or they have moved into new situations, and the culture is different, do you sort of try to figure out if they are adaptable, if they have an intrinsic desire to adapt? Or is it that you try, and some succeed, and some don't? 

Lori: We try to help them adapt, and here's why. They already chose that job, right? If we were coaching them before they chose that job, we might want to ask the question, is this the right environment for you? Right? But since they already chose that job, we try to help them to adapt. One of the ways of adapting is knowing when you can apply a different approach successfully and not. So if you're more a go-get-them task-oriented style, hey, there's other people in the organization that you can use that approach with, and they'll appreciate it. Right? And there's people in the organization who won't appreciate it, and that's when you need to be flexible or adapt your activities to that other style. And part of that just has to do with knowing it. Like if you only have one approach, you know that old saw about if you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. One of the ways to be successful as the leader is you have a very wide variety of approaches that can be successful in a wide variety of situations. So really, leadership coaching is about expanding your toolkit and then helping you have the wisdom to know which tool to apply in which situation for the highest level of success. 

Arun: I'm very curious to know since you deal with so many CEOs and senior executives, what percentage of executives need to change and how agreeable are they to changing or how many executives you've seen that have totally transformed the way they function, either because there is a new leader on top or they're going to a new organization which has a very different culture. 

Lori: I mean, a basic capacity model suggests that you never reach the end of the journey. So, theoretically, every leader could use coaching because there's always more places to learn and grow and adapt, especially with a very changing, unpredictable environment. How many executives actually want to do that? I would say that that number has been going up and up over time. And it's still pretty high because even 20, 30 years ago, I was coaching those folks. When you are at the top of an organization, you don't have to be the CEO. But let's say you're in the C suite or a VP or even a senior director where you have a lot of people underneath you. You really don't have anybody to talk to that is neutral. Everybody wants something from you. Your employees want something from you. Your peers want something from you. The people above you, even if you're the CEO, the board wants something from you. The street wants something from you. Your family wants something from you. It's so valuable to that leader to have a neutral sounding board, a neutral thinking partner, to help you work through all the complexity that's going on. And that person doesn't want anything from you. They only want to support you towards your success. Like, where else do you get that in your life? You don't get that anywhere, even from a friend or a spouse. They might want to support you, but they're not neutral, right? They have skin in the games. So, they want something. And your coach, especially if it's outside the organization coach, you get this very neutral, non-judgmental ability to just think through what's going on and make the best decision from your own frame of reference. 

Taylor: It's lonely at the top and it's hard to find a neutral party. 

Lori: Very much so. So, that's why people are motivated to have a coach. Like, if you look at there, you see, I think it's about between 80-90% of CEOs have a coach. They may not make that visible, but they have that person. 

Arun: Okay. So, I want to pivot to, since you are doing leadership development at scale, so clearly there has to be, and you use a tech-driven approach to leadership coaching. And I wanted to find out what does that mean and how do you balance the human element of coaching with the technological tools that you have in your platform? 

Lori: So, that's a big question, especially with the popularity of AI right now. So, the technology is really great at automating repetitive tasks. It's very good at tracking activity, even development. We have a little model called leadership roadmap, where we track insight actions and results. It's great for tracking goal and goal accomplishment. It's great for summaries. It's even good for prompting thinking sometimes, like based on what you said last time, here's some topics, something like that. But we think that the human element is really the key element to development. It's the human that can see the patterns of operation, the patterns of thinking and figure out what's keeping those patterns in place, so that those patterns can be shifted. So far, artificial intelligence or any of the automated tools of technology have not been able to touch that. I also think technology doesn't touch the relationship. Like, part of the basis of a coaching relationship is deep trust, right? Because if you're a CEO or any leader in an organization, you have to trust that this person has your best interest at heart, that they are helping you be more successful, you know, that what they're saying is useful. And so, technology is more generalized while that human relationship is very personalized and specific to those two individuals. 

Taylor: Absolutely. And from a leadership lens, you must change and adapt to this high-tech world, otherwise, you won't be able to keep up. And so, that's part of what I appreciate very much about your book, is that you are helping leaders ask the right questions about what they value, what they believe, to help them get unstuck and realize where there might be points of resistance for their own change. 

Lori: I mean, at this point, we can't stop technology. You know, you're not going to be able to stop the river. So unless you adapt to it and find ways to use it, and you know, in human ways, in technological ways that blend together, it's going to be hard to be successful down the road. 

Arun: So I'm assuming you're not yet scared of ChatGPT releasing a leadership development bot? 

Lori: No. In fact, I asked ChatGPT for like, what's the difference between a coaching bot and a human coach? And it actually knows the difference. It knows it can't do the same thing as a human. But we at Sounding Board, we use ALFI also. We use it for our matching algorithm, where we match a coach and the participant on relationship traits first, and then more functional traits like their area, where they live, that kind of thing, their level of leadership. So we use it there. We also use it to create summaries from the coaching conversation so that it's tracked, and it can then event, we're in the process right now of having it automatically populate this leadership roadmap. So then the participant only has to go in there and edit. It doesn't have to start from scratch. So we're using in a way it's kind of like to enhance the tracking and the engagement, but not in any way to replace it. 

Taylor: Hey, even though this technology is good at synthesizing and helping us do our work faster, I am still nervous about spilling my guts to a coach and having my data privacy invaded. And I don't have any control over that as the coachee. I'm worried. 

Lori: Oh, yeah. I mean, we have lots of process in place so that there's a firewall between the content that is being talked about and the development that is being talked about. So those content pieces are not visible anywhere. We have collaboration tools. So like a participant can include their manager, but they don't have to. They can mark their goals and their development private, or they can make it public. So it's all up to the individual being coached. But one reason we try to help them determine what is public information is because if the company is investing and me as a leader, and I don't in exchange, let them know how I'm developing, it goes into a black hole. So it creates a perception of no development. So we work with the person being coached to create a perception of development, and that does mean revealing some information. But that information is the choice of the person being coached to reveal. Not the coach, not the manager, not anyone in the organization. The organizations we work with understand that completely. They never ask us for that information. 

Arun: So we are at the university at the School of Hospitality at Boston University, and we are trying to educate our students so that they turbocharge their careers and become accomplished leaders. So those students and young professionals, those students who are still in college or young professionals, just starting out their careers, what advice would you give them? What should they focus their leadership development skills on? What are the growth areas that they should focus them so that they can prepare for future leadership roles? 

Lori: I would suggest first just once you feel like you have your foundational skills under your belt, start working on your leadership capacities. In the book, there's a list of the one that generalize list of the ones we use. But we got that list from what MBA schools, the top 10 MBA schools teach in terms of the leadership capabilities needed from a business perspective. That's a very good list to look at. I would say developing your skills and capabilities would get you about halfway there. But to move from being a good leader to an exceptional leader, you need capacity and one of the primary capacities is your own internal compass. So, especially for younger students, but even older students, to be an exceptional leader, you have to be able to develop this way that you ultimately are making your own decision that matches well internally with what's true for you. Sometimes this is called central equilibrium. I always talk about this as being the eye of the storm. So, if you see like the big hurricane and it's swirling around with all those 100-mile winds, but in the center of that is this little place where it's calm and the sun is shining. And if you see those, like the plane can sometimes fly through those, and right in there, it's like perfect. So, as a leader, you have to cultivate this eye of the storm place that you can stand in so that when all the pressures and the forces are coming at you from all directions, you don't lose your balance, you don't lose your internal compass, you don't lose your equilibrium and end up making choices that aren't the best for you or your team or your organization or your industry. So, that's a long-term development process that I think people can start really young. I think they get even started in childhood depending on the kind of parenting you get, but it's certainly a lifelong development opportunity around that capacity. 

Taylor: Lori, that takes experience and maturity and sometimes when I ask students to get a leadership coach or to consider getting one, they come back to me and say, I don't have the money for that. What words of wisdom would you give to those early career leaders? 

Lori: One, coaching has become so inexpensive these days that I would suggest they might just check. Is it that they don't have the money or that that's not a priority for them and something else might be a priority? So if you really are on the leadership track, you might want to invest in yourself pretty early on that track. But there's lots of other ways to develop that are not coaching. So mentoring is a really great way, and the mentoring can happen in the organization. You can find your own external mentors. I think most of the successful folks had very good mentors. I'm guessing you have mentors available right inside your program as well as ways to help students find mentors outside of your program. So that's a generally free opportunity. And an up-and-coming leader can have multiple mentors. So they see and hear multiple points of view. And all of that information goes into them creating their own internal compass. 

Arun: You know, one of the things I think when people think of mentors is people who are ahead of them in age and longevity and seniority in the company or some other company. I think people should be looking at mentors regardless of where they are in whatever situations. Younger people, even younger executives, to some extent can be your mentors. 

Lori: 100 percent, they actually named them, they called it reverse mentoring, which is people who are older in their age and their career path, get mentored by younger people who are more immersed in technology or generational thinking that's not familiar to that particular leader. So 100 percent mentoring can go all directions. 

Arun: Yep, I know I have one such mentor right here in this room. Taylor has been a great, great mentor to me as well. Before I have a couple of fun questions for you, Lori, but before I start on those fun questions, what should, why should people contact Sounding Board? 

Lori: So Sounding Board offers very high-quality coaching from early leaders or pre-leaders all the way up through the C-suite, and that was our goal, provide that access for any leaders in an organization, because we're a B2B organization, but the truth is coaching can be for any leaders anywhere. You can be a leader in your family, in your community, in your university, with your peers, however. We also offer the technology to deploy, manage, and measure all of the coaching and mentoring. Really, all of the human-to-human leadership development that you're doing. Small group experiences, one-on-one experiences, whether that's coaching, mentoring, small group training or development in some other ways. The software is what lets it scale to larger organizations, where traditionally there hasn't been a lot of measurement around leader development. 

Arun: Some fun questions to end the podcast. If you could have a superpower that would enhance your coaching abilities, what would it be and why? 

Lori: Oh my gosh, if I could just read people's minds, that would make things so much easier. And one reason is part of coaching is naming things that the individual isn't really seeing themselves. That can be emotions that they're feeling, that can be patterns they're kind of stuck in that they don't see. It can be ways of thinking that are blocking them. It can be a lot of things that the coach kind of shines the light on for that individual to see more clearly. That would all be so much easier if I could just read their minds. 

Arun: Lori, we know you're a busy leader, but when you do get a break, what is your go-to activity? 

Lori: Oh, I have a long practice of the martial art called Tai Chi Chuan. It's the non-martial form is that thing you see older people doing in the park where they're moving really slow. Okay, Tai Chi. And I've done the martial version of that for 30 years. So that includes a slow-moving form, a meditation, as well as the martial forms, which is called push hands. It's more like sparring interactive. And we say, not only does it bring you some of that internal equilibrium and peace, but it also lets you see how you interact with others in the sparring format. So it's a very useful tool for observing yourself. 

Arun: Fantastic. Lori, it has been an enlightening conversation, and your insights are truly valuable. Thank you for joining and sharing your vision. To our listeners, we hope you found today's discussion as transformative as I did. Remember, leadership isn't just a role, it's a revolution. If you enjoyed today's episode, please rate us so others can find us, and they can benefit from your insights. If you want to join the conversation and share your thoughts and suggestions, email me at shadean@bu.edu. Special thanks to the team that produced this podcast, producer Mara Littman, editor and sound engineer Andy Hallock, and the editor of our leadership series, Dr. Taylor Peyton, and the entire team at Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. To keep up with Distinguished Podcasts, be sure to subscribe.  Wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, you can also learn more about BU School of Hospitality by visiting bu.edu/hospitality. Have a wonderful day.