Amy Ruppert Donovan on the War for Talent, the Qualities of Visionary Executives, and the Future of Leadership
In Brief: Amy Ruppert Donovan, co-founder of The Integreship Group (integreship.com) and a pioneer of executive coaching, joins host Dan Freehling to discuss major changes in the business world, including increased volatility, disruptions to traditional business models, and an escalation of the war for talent. Amy describes the qualities of visionary leaders, such as putting people before results, building diverse teams, and facilitating solutions rather than imposing them. Amy emphasizes the importance of self-mastery and personal integrity in leadership, as well as the need for leaders to be humble and unassuming. She also discusses the future of coaching, highlighting the importance of maintaining a focus on disruptive transformation and resisting the temptation to prioritize short-term results. Amy and Dan conclude with Amy’s vision for leadership as a standalone profession and the role of coaching in reshaping paradigms.
Recommend reading: “Rethink X” by Tony Seba and James Arbib, “Leadership BS” by Jeffrey Pfeffer, and “Thinking Body, Dancing Mind” by Chungliang Al Huang.
Transcript
Dan Freehling:
Welcome to Forward-Looking Leadership, a podcast for visionary executives building future ready organizations. I'm your host, Dan Freehling. I'm the founder of Contempus Leadership, a coaching practice that helps organizations develop their leadership pipeline through virtually unlimited coaching for their top rising talent. I'm honored to be joined today by Amy Ruppert Donovan. Amy is the co-founder of The Integreship Group and a pioneer and seasoned leader in professional coaching. She brings over 25 years of coaching experience working [00:00:30] with everyone from emerging leaders to c-suite executives across industries. Amy is recognized as a master certified coach by the International Coaching Federation and is the co-author of “Who's the Boss: Confront the Elephant in the Room,” a book about having cringe moment conversations in the workplace. Amy has been my own mentor coach for two and a half years in counting. She has walked with me through the launch and growth of my coaching practice and has been integral to my development not just as a coach, but as a person. Amy really “gets” leadership at the highest levels and you're in for a real treat with this conversation. [00:01:00] Amy, thanks for joining me on Forward-Looking Leadership.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Hey Dan, it's great to be here. I'm so excited to do this with you today.
Dan Freehling:
Same here. I know it's going to be a fantastic conversation, so I'm excited to get right into it.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Alright, well, you and I have habit of doing that, don't we?
Dan Freehling:
That is true. We've had so many conversations over these years.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
I know. I wish somebody would've been recording half of it, so here that's great.
Dan Freehling:
So starting off [00:01:30] with some sort of future looking, almost fortune telling in some ways, what major changes do you foresee in the business world over the next, say five or 10 years
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Coming out of the shoot hard there, Dan? Yeah, well, first of all, it's almost impossible to keep your finger on the pulse of how quickly things zig and zag in business these days, but from my vantage point, working with leaders day in and day out, [00:02:00] what I think the major changes I see is probably even more volatility in business than we've even experienced up until now with Covid supply chain issues, generational transitions going on now, like my generation, the boomers leaving or not leaving the political climate, all this uncertainty that's going on. I do think what we're looking at is more [00:02:30] what we're calling volatility, and it's kind of a negative spin to put on it because from my generation we'd look at it as volatility or complexity, that sort of thing. Your generation I think looks at it a little bit differently.
I think as we move forward in business over the next five to 10 years, we're going to see a massive amount of disruptions coming to businesses [00:03:00] that are still operating in the status quo. I also think one of the things we're going to see in the business world in the next five to 10 years is a pretty good war for talent. I think that it's going to get even fiercer and it's going to become more difficult for organizations to attract people with real leadership chops because I think a lot of those people are seeing easy pathways into their own businesses. [00:03:30] They're building their own empires, and so you've got that and then you're going to have this war for talent amongst organizations as well. So those are some of the things that I see initially.
Dan Freehling:
I love that reframe of volatility, all the VUCA kind of terms into disruption, which it really is. And that can be a positive if you're the one disrupting or it could be a negative if you're trying to just hang onto the status quo and not get disrupted.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
[00:04:00] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And when I talk about people having leadership chops, I think what we're looking at here up till now, I witness a lot of what I would call performative leadership versus performance-based leadership, and I think that that's going to start to parse itself out in the business world. I don't think it's okay anymore in business [00:04:30] with all this disruption going on for people to spend a lot or a great deal of time in their leadership work, managing optics or managing perceptions of themselves as a leader. This is going to be about really performing as a leader, and you and I have had plenty of conversations about what that really means. Businesses won't survive that are allowing [00:05:00] people to move up into leadership without that performance drive versus the performative piece. Does that make sense? Yeah,
Dan Freehling:
It makes total sense. I think with all this extra volatility and uncertainty and complexity and ambiguity and all of that, it's no longer a luxury to be able to promote the kind of people that are just self-promoters into leadership roles when the whole business can be on the line from not catching a change in the industry fast enough.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, yeah, [00:05:30] and I think those leaders too, if we look ahead into business and with all the things you just mentioned, I think that leaders are going to have to focus on their people skills 100%. And we can get into that a little bit later on, but I think that the ability to get results through people versus from people is going to become the norm. [00:06:00] Without it, you won't survive.
Dan Freehling:
Yeah. What do you think is driving that shift into that need to actually get results through people rather than get results separately from people and the people are kind of an after that,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Your generation is much more savvy than mine, that's why this is terrible. I'm going to be trashing my entire generation here and I'm giving away my age anyhow. No, honestly, [00:06:30] I think that's driving it. I think that in the broadening of opportunity, it is going to be really hard to keep talent that who's going to stick around for command and control when you're gifted, talented, and you can go do your own thing or you can get much more recognition someplace else. That's what I'm seeing.
Dan Freehling:
So there's a selling to in for talent that you're seeing, there's also a selling [00:07:00] of what your organization can do for the top talent that's out there. And it's no longer just we're going to take bottom of the barrel people and run them dry, and that's going to be it. It's like to really succeed in this, we're going to need to have people who want to work for us and be able to keep them.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, I'll give you a distinction. It's interesting. I just read an article last night about this. My generation, I got out of college in the early eighties, and so [00:07:30] my generation, we've been through a bunch of recessions, a bunch of downturns. When we were in high school, we had the great recession of 74 where OPEC went crazy, oil prices went crazy. But we've gone through a lot of these. I think what it's created is a paradigm in my generation. I need to keep this job, or I'm lucky to have this job. Your generation and a little bit younger than me, [00:08:00] you guys came in going, yeah, well that's the way things are. They're volatile, right? Disruptions happen and you guys accept that as the norm, whereas my generation is still standing here going, what the hell just happened? We played by the rules, and yet things just kept turning end over end. And I think that as we move forward in business, that is the norm. [00:08:30] If we're progressing in business, if we're progressing as humanity, things move fast. Things are volatile, things are complex and uncertain. But I think that your generation and younger than me are much more equipped for this.
Dan Freehling:
We're coming in toward the end of the Billy Joel song with the We Didn't Start the Fire.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Exactly. And I'm hiding the matches in my pocket right now. [00:09:00] Yeah, yeah. No, that's really true. But the fire is, you guys the fire. Whereas my generation we're like, ouch, that's hot, that burns. You guys are like, yeah, that's kind of warm. Alright, we're just moving on. So you're really chill about the whole thing, and I think that's going to produce a whole new genre of leaders and already is. I mean, damn your case in point. Right?
Dan Freehling:
Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, that's a really interesting [00:09:30] perspective of it not being a negative, but it being a positive, a disruptive force and something that this next generation of leaders can really take the reins on and move things forward with. What about instead of the next five or 10 years, what about the next 50 years? And I know you don't have an exact answer to this and no one could possibly have an exact answer, but I like to kind of push this out a bit and see what people think of the next 50 years.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, well, there's a lot smarter people out there than me on this topic, Dan. The [00:10:00] two I like to keep my eye on are Tony Seba and James Arbib. Those two, they did the paper Rethink X,
Dan Freehling:
Rethink X. It's the Rethink X people. Okay.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah. And these guys, for those of you who don't know that Rethink X is basically a think tank dedicated to rethinking humanity, they kind of zero in on five foundational sector disruptions. And Tony Seba has got an amazing track record of being able [00:10:30] to call the next disruptions out and way before they come. And I think in following these guys and looking at their work and their research, I think it's a lot of what we've been talking about up until now is a lot of disruption, but disruption's going to become the norm because in disruption is innovation. And I think that we're in the next 50 years, I don't even think we can fathom [00:11:00] where we're going to be 50 years from now. The tide is definitely turning in our world. Old ways are starting to fall away, be exposed. This is more what's collective shifting than I've ever seen in my whole lifetime.
And we're shifting, I think for the better. And let me explain that because I think sometimes where a lot of us could look around, just turn [00:11:30] on the news for a few minutes and say, oh my gosh, the world's burning down. But yeah, you got to burn stuff down before you can rebuild it. The forest replenishes itself by burning down and new growth comes. And I think that's where we're at right now. And for all the reasons I mentioned earlier, supply chain, generational issues, climate change, all that stuff is kind of burning the old forest, but [00:12:00] the new growth will come up under it. And so I have a very optimistic outlook for the next 50 years. And there used to be this song when I was growing up in the seventies, the Age of Aquarius, this is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, and it went on to say, harmony and understanding, it's all about peace and harmony and everything. Well, I think what they were missing in that song was, [00:12:30] but everything blows up first. And so I think we're kind of in that place right now, but there's generations that are being born into this, right, into this volatility that is going to equip you to move forward in ways that we can't even imagine right now because we're so mired in our old paradigm still. So yeah, [00:13:00] I don't know. Did I give you a prediction or did I, I dunno.
Dan Freehling:
That's one of those questions I love asking. Obviously no accurate answer at this point. We can't tell until 50 years from now. And I think that's a really great metaphor though of the forest fire coming in and actually being replenishing rather than being something to completely despair about because it could be so easy to fall into despair with all the things that are broken right now, and seeing it as a chance to reset [00:13:30] is really refreshing.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
And if it's my little fantasy, I just don't want anybody disrupting it because I'm just going to hang on to that
Dan Freehling:
Disruption for everyone but us. Yes,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Exactly.
Dan Freehling:
So in thinking of these changes over the next five or 10 years, or even the longer term ones, I know that you've been an executive, you work with a number of really high level executive clients at major companies. What characteristics [00:14:00] do you see in executives who are truly visionary?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Oh gosh. There's so many things. And when you see 'em, right? When you see a leader that is really visionary and really gets it, it's evident. And so let think about this for a second. I think one of the things that I see in leaders who are truly visionary is that they [00:14:30] put people before results because they know the results come from the people. And if you're a leader with a vision, I've seen it go both ways. There's leaders who will impose their vision on the enterprise. Here's my vision, here's how we're going to do it. And then there are leaders who enroll people into their enterprise. Now, with me saying those two things, those are two very, [00:15:00] very different approaches. And I'll give you an example, Dan, you've met Karen, my business partner Karen was the CIO of Miller Coors beer. And before that she was the CIO at Kraft Heinz.
When she was at Kraft Heinz. One of the things she did when she took that role, I think Kraft Heinz is in 80 different countries around the world, if I'm remember correctly. But one of the things Karen did when she started in [00:15:30] that role was she got in a plane and she flew around to all the locations because she wanted to hear from people what were their challenges, what were their ideas, what's possible within the enterprise? And she got a good feel for it. And by doing that, by listening to people, hearing them out, by being able to hear their ideas and [00:16:00] how they want to innovate within the organization, she was able to form a vision. But now she had relationships behind that vision. And what she wound up doing was enrolling people into her vision, into moving the enterprise in the way that she saw it based on not just her opinion coming from the outside in as the new CIO, but from the place of people who have been there, who have worked there, [00:16:30] who understand the organization, who understand the culture. And so her engagement scores were over the top, and she was able to really enroll people and get something done in that role.
Dan Freehling:
That's a beautiful story, and I love that it's not, we're going to just be good to people and that's the end of the story and just have everyone like me. I think [00:17:00] it's the way to get to those serious business. And she worked in serious businesses that are publicly traded companies and in c-suite roles and everything like that. And the way she got there was by starting with the people,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
And she knew in every role she had, and I can say this now, I'm not breaking confidentiality. She talks about it. I coach Karen through most of her career, on and off, and [00:17:30] she always put people first and her results came because of that. So it's an act of faith on a leader's part to put people first because we're so programmed to just drive for those results. But again, I'm going to go back to getting results through people. You got to start with the people. So that's one thing, Dan, [00:18:00] that I see as a characteristic of a visionary, a really good visionary leader. The other thing is that I see leaders who they will build a team around them that is very diverse and that's not done too often. From my vantage point, I see a lot of leaders building teams of people they know will not give them [00:18:30] headaches.
Really good visionary leaders want some of those mavericks on their team, a few that will give 'em headaches because they're going to bring something that either the leader themselves doesn't have or other people on the team don't have. So they build these diverse teams of people who are not like them knowing that they need those diverse viewpoints and to bring in new ideas [00:19:00] and fresh ideas that wouldn't be thought of if everybody was in group think on the team. And that's not easy for a leader to have broad diverse teams like that because then sometimes it's hard to manage or to lead people who aren't like you. But that's what makes it all worthwhile is you have these teams, these high performing teams, and you'll find just about all high performing teams are very diverse,
Dan Freehling:
And you can't afford [00:19:30] not to at this point because your competitors or other completely separate organizations are bringing in some of these different perspectives. And it can be tempting to want to keep it comfortable and people who don't challenge you and people who don't force you to think differently. But that's not obviously going to result in anything that's different or that's revolutionary. Yeah,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, absolutely. Part of that, too, Dan, is that I remember one leader saying to this to me [00:20:00] one time that I make a habit of hiring people every now and then. That scare me a little.
I said, oh, what does that mean to you? He said, well, it means to me that they could take my job. And I think that's gutsy, right? That's really gutsy leadership is because that's another thing is some of this protectionism protecting of the title of the role, the power that comes with it. Yeah, hire people that scare you a little. Yeah, [00:20:30] they're going to be a little harder than manage. They're going to be a little harder to lead. However, they're also going to bring something that will really move the team forward or the enterprise forward. So I think that's a sidebar to the other thing, to the diverse team.
Dan Freehling:
Yeah, that's such a sign of a good leader in my experience, is the person enough to not worry about, is this person going to make me look bad? So good. It's the opposite. It's look at the team I can assemble, look at [00:21:00] the team I can bring with me. And that being a real status symbol of positive leadership, I think is something I've seen over and over again.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah. Yeah. And another part of that too, I'm just rambling on here,
Dan Freehling:
Dan. Yeah, please. This is great.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
I think that really good visionary leaders, they facilitate solutions versus create 'em, right? Let me explain that a little bit. One of [00:21:30] the things that some leaders do, and as soon as I say this, there's going to be everybody going, yeah,
Dan Freehling:
That person, yes,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
That person, the one who leads by title versus leading with other qualities that we'll talk about in a second, but they lead by title and they have a need to be the smartest person in the room all the time. And that means that they put the onus on themselves [00:22:00] to be the solution maker. And so there's a lot of things that go on in that dynamic. They never give their team the opportunity to shine, to bring in solutions the team doesn't develop because if the leader's always the smartest one in the room, they're just there to serve that. And so a lot of my work with executives has been for them to let go of that. And it's [00:22:30] tough as people move up the ladder into leadership. One of the things that's very difficult about that is that mostly they've been rewarded for doing, for creating solutions, for being the smartest one, having the best ideas, all those things, their whole career, they're rewarded on that.
Well, now when they move into leadership that flips, right? You're no longer the one doing all that. You're there to facilitate that. [00:23:00] And that's really hard for people to give up. A lot of the reasons, and one of the things I'll often say to people moving into senior leadership roles and things is you're no longer a doer. You are a facilitator, and you are here now your job. You're currently in the people business. You may have been a brilliant engineer, you may have been a brilliant finance guy. You [00:23:30] may have been a whiz girl at whatever, but now you are in the people business, and that's a really hard transition for people to make for some.
Dan Freehling:
And I've found that framing of it to be really helpful in working with clients too, who are going into these at my practice director level or VP level positions, is there's almost like [00:24:00] a feeling of not doing their job if they focus on these sticky people issues and on developing people and all of that. And that is your job as a leader is to work through people, and it's not a side thing that you do for a few hours a week. That's your main job, is to be that facilitative leader.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yep, exactly. And it's a tough transition.
Dan Freehling:
It is. And you're so right about that switch of [00:24:30] you almost always get promoted by being a great individual contributor in any industry, and all of a sudden, nope, that's not what you need to do from this point forward. You really need to bring up and bring along a team. And what I've often seen is that the leader, that is the one who is the lone genius, who creates all these ideas themselves, that can work to a point, but it's capped at the limit of that leader's ideas. [00:25:00] And it just gets to a point where that can't win against someone who can bring in so many other ideas and do it well and do it on a sustained basis.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah. Yeah. I think I look at leaders like Elon Musk,
Dan Freehling:
It's coming to mind for me too.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Him or hate doesn't matter, but he is starting to really appear like a leader who's working in an echo chamber. Everybody's just [00:25:30] giving him his own reflection back that you're the smartest guy in the room. You make calls, and he's not listening outside of his own head. So we're witnessing, I think a pretty big example of that in public right now with Elon Musk. So he's going to become a poster child for leadership programs to come for many years, I think.
Dan Freehling:
And Steve Jobs went in the opposite way [00:26:00] a lot where he started off, as you very well know, much like that of being the lone genius. And then it took him getting fired and going sort of into the wilderness and then coming back to start really working with people and doing his best
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Work, which is a great example too, because one of the other things that I think a good visionary leader brings is an element of self-mastery. If they're not growing as a human being, they're [00:26:30] going to get stagnant and they're going to make the enterprise stagnant as well. So what do I mean by that? It comes down to our emotional needs. Do you have a need to be the smartest guy in the room or smartest girl in the room? Do you project your fear in dysfunctional ways? That sets off, and I'm going to use another term here that's being widely used [00:27:00] but not well understood as psychological safety.
When the leader is invested in their own development as a human being, when they're able to manage and regulate their own emotions and understand themselves and have a high degree of self-awareness, I think that makes a huge difference for how it impacts the culture of the organization. Like it or not, when you are leading an organization, number one, you don't get to have [00:27:30] a bad day. Every good leader, I know that's their philosophy. You don't get to have a bad day because you are modeling behavior for the entire enterprise. And it certainly does trickle out through the whole culture. And so working on yourself as an individual, and I do people think, when I say executive coach, they sit there thinking, I'm working on them putting together great strategies and budgets [00:28:00] and blah, blah, all that stuff. No, a lot of times it's around this stuff and how do I gain more awareness for myself so I can bring more of myself to this role as a leader and make the organization better because of it? I think that is one of the hallmarks of a great leader.
Dan Freehling:
Wow. Yeah, I think that's spot on. And you're then enabling people to bring their best [00:28:30] and bring their contradictory or contrarian opinions to the fore and to bring their energy and their commitment to the fore. And it's less about how am I going to manage or work around this leader having an off day? And it's much more of how can I be fully enabled and freed up to do my job and work in the best way possible?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, and that's on top of what I just said. There's an element to that of the leader being able to bring an [00:29:00] element of vulnerability of themselves as a human being. And I'll give you an example. I worked with ACEO years ago who pulled his whole organization together. They had an annual, it was a multinational organization, but they had an annual gathering at their corporate headquarters and brought a lot of people throughout the whole organization there each year. And one of the things he decided to do one year was to [00:29:30] put a very personal message on everything, and the company had been growing in leaps and bounds. I think they were up by about 35%. Everybody's hair was on fire, but everybody was working. But things were good. The organization was doing really well, and one of the things he noticed was that this uptick in productivity and everything was [00:30:00] starting to result in people not having much of a life.
They were working constantly. They were there weekends, long days. And so he decided that was going to be the central theme of his message, and one of the things he did was get up in front of the whole organization and they were live streaming out to other locations. So this really did get in front of everybody. He talked about being on his fourth marriage, and he talked about being estranged from his kids and how [00:30:30] much he had to work to get back to those kids and bring them back into his life. He talked about his battle with alcoholism, and he talked about how nothing in this world is worth giving those things up and that he's not asking that of anyone at all in the organization, that we can get the job done, but not at the expense of what's most important to us, because what's most important to us is why we're here working. [00:31:00] And he told his whole personal story in front of the whole organization, and I thought, wow, that is leadership. That is leadership. And the whole organization, actually, he's long retired, but I still do work in this organization, the whole organization. It's one of the few companies I work with that I can say they truly kind of behave like a family. And I think that's because this CEO [00:31:30] years ago set that tone into the organization.
Dan Freehling:
What an example that the genuine vulnerability, and not for just that CEO offloading it to people, but as a way to demonstrate and inspire everyone working in that organization to do things differently. So Amy, in addition to working with lots of executives, you also work with [00:32:00] a lot of rising leaders and a lot of rising talent. What are some unusual qualities? So I like to say besides they work hard and they go above and beyond and that kind of stuff. What are some unusual qualities you look for in super high potential talent?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
So one of the things I think first and foremost that I see in [00:32:30] this young rising talent is a hunger for learning. That it is just part of their DNA. They're hungry to learn and not for the sake of just acquiring information, but it's really this desire to know more and to be better, to just be better themselves as a person who has an expanded knowledge base [00:33:00] and sometimes for no other reason except just for the sheer joy of learning. I think that's one thing. I also think that the ability to fail forward, to take risks, not careless risks, but maybe calculated risks, [00:33:30] but to take 'em, especially when they're young, take those risks and be willing to fail. Yeah, it hurts. Yeah. You got to suck it up. Yeah, it can be embarrassing sometimes, but I think anybody who gets to be my age will tell you the best stuff, and the most growth comes from those failures.
We learn more about ourselves in failure than we do in triumph, and I think that's what kind of, [00:34:00] what's that word I'm looking for? How you harden metal. It's like forging it in fire that you harden yourself as a leader, not meaning you harden your heart, but you harden yourself that, yeah, I can take risks and I can fail, and I can survive that. I think that's such an important thing to know. When I see young people who are willing to take some calculated risks, I think, wow, [00:34:30] they're going to be a great leader someday.
Dan Freehling:
Those sound very connected to that hunger for learning and that calculated risk taking. I think you learn so much from actually being in the arena actually doing it, rather than just being pulled back and watching others do it or reading about it in a book or something. It's that actually being in there and doing it is so critical.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah. Yeah. I think to that point, Dan, there's also a piece of this too where [00:35:00] when I see young rising leaders, they don't take on or accept roles or pursue roles that they think will be the next rung on the ladder to get 'em up the ladder. They take 'em to learn what don't I know about what would be completely new? What would stretch me and challenge me? They take roles and they pursue roles based on that, not what's going to get me ahead. And I think that's really important [00:35:30] because let me tell you, the ones that keep taking roles and pursuing roles because they think they're going to get to the next rung of the ladder, it never ends well, and especially from a leadership place, people who were able to move up the ladder into leadership roles but never took a risk and it was all calculated to move up that ladder, they don't make really good leaders because they stay [00:36:00] safe. They stick to the status quo. They do what they think they should do versus what really needs to be done. Does that make sense?
Dan Freehling:
It makes total sense. And it's something I've seen over and over again too, and it's countercultural in some ways where there's this idea that the best and brightest are the ones who are going from easy if prestigious thing to the next. And it's just not [00:36:30] the case for the really game changing leaders that they've done that really safe route. And I've never seen someone who I really admire who's just done that and tried to look good on paper,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
And it never ends Well, as I said, and I think what has to go along with that, Dan, some of these things we're talking about too, is I think it's got to almost be in a person's DNA [00:37:00] to be humble and unassuming. Yeah, we've all got egos and they can get wounded and damaged, but I think our willingness to be vulnerable, which we talked about a minute ago, has to be underpinned by this unassuming humbleness and that whereas we're confident in who we are and what we can bring to [00:37:30] things, there's also that's balanced with this. Well, I don't know everything. There's a lot to learn. I'm going to make mistakes. So there's got to be this balance between this confidence and this ability to be unassuming and humble, and it's a tightrope walk because if you're not confident, it's really hard to lead people if you don't have some element of confidence. But there's [00:38:00] also, the needle can go too far on that.
Dan Freehling:
And it's not that overconfidence of people can smell that from a mile away too. When they have that real insecurity that's just permeating out and they're acting much more brave or confident or dominant than would be expected in that situation. It's just like, I don't want to work for this person. I think most people, I've never met someone who's like, that's great. I really would've for that person. And it does remind, we've talked about this before, it reminds me a lot of that Jim Collins level [00:38:30] five leadership of that paradoxical combination of extreme humility and extreme drive for the organizational results. And that going hand in hand, but it's a strange one to describe. It's not something that I think people outside of studying the leadership space or people who really pay attention to this can get right away.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
And I am still on the fence if that can ever be developed. [00:39:00] If it can, the only way I feel it can is through the individual pursuing their own self-development, right? That's where it's at. Because if you look at, I talked a few minutes ago about emotional needs. We all have emotional needs, but where they get out of hand is usually, well, somewhere along the line in our lives, we didn't get some of those needs met. [00:39:30] And so we're acting out on 'em through the rest of our lives in various and unhealthy ways. So let's just give an example.
I used to have, early on in my early leadership days, I had a need to be recognized and acknowledged. And so how that translated was for me to keep just saying yes to everything, even [00:40:00] the absurd, the impossible. And it was like, give me the most impossible. I will make it happen. Well, yeah, I did. And let me tell you what the cost of that was. It was enormous. Enormous. You can only get away with that for so long. I started paying for it in my health, in my relationships, in my own self-image, how I saw myself in the world. [00:40:30] I always felt like I wasn't measuring up because the truth is that particular need to be acknowledged, and that had to come from within me, but constantly trying to get it from the outside, it would never have been enough no matter how much I accomplished, no matter how much, even the praise, the accolades, oh, you're amazing, all that. It just rang hollow because [00:41:00] I hadn't satisfied that need within myself, with myself. So I think that's important to look at is for young leaders is what am I maybe running around trying to get met? What emotional needs or whatever? What am I trying to get met through my work, through my job, through the people around me that I need to take care of myself? Because it will get in the way. [00:41:30] It will get in the way of what you're wanting accomplish.
Dan Freehling:
Thanks for sharing that so freely, Amy and I do think you see a lot of people, as you said, where they're paying the price for it at that point, but there'll be a lot of really senior seasoned leaders who have just very clear on emotional needs and they're not addressing them in any productive way. And it always comes out, it's always evident.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yep. We've all seen it. Their needs are bleeding [00:42:00] out all over the place, and everybody's sitting there with their hands folded on the table, just not saying a word. So we've all been witness to that. So I think people younger than me, your generation, Dan, I think you guys are a lot more savvy to this, and you're a lot more comfortable with addressing those things and diving into those things than my generation and older ever were.
Dan Freehling:
Yeah, I think there's something to that. I've mentioned this before [00:42:30] that I think most of my clients are freely open about concurrently working with a therapist or mental health professional too. So I think there is this tide shifting of that being rightly seen as equivalent to physical health or anything else that shouldn't be a source of shame or embarrassment that you're seeking that out. So I think there was a shift there.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
That's fantastic. I love to hear that. And I think this is one of the things that's going to [00:43:00] impact our ability to innovate and to move forward and disrupt right in the future too, is that the younger rising generations are bringing that to it. It's so important. It's so important.
Dan Freehling:
Yeah. Amy, what's a big leadership or management question that you've been giving the most thought to lately?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
[00:43:30] It's interesting, Dan. I think that the biggest one I've been thinking about, and I've been holding this one for years. In fact, my business partner, Karen and I, we toss this around quite a bit. What if leadership was a standalone profession? I often wonder about that and say, is leadership good leadership transferable anywhere [00:44:00] across from one industry to the next? Yes, people move around all the time from industries and bring leadership qualities or technical qualities or whatever it is. But what if we looked at it as a standalone profession? What would that look like? I sit with that question quite a bit because I really feel we might be heading in that direction.
Dan Freehling:
What do you mean by the standalone profession? I have a decent sense of it, [00:44:30] but can you expand upon that a little bit
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
More? So as you know dad, and I'll tell your listeners, I was on the ground floor of bringing coaching up as a profession starting about 30 years ago. Coaching is only 30 years old. For those of you who don't know that. And I actually worked with Thomas Leonard, who was the founder, professional coaching, and was taught by him. [00:45:00] And so I have firsthand experience of a profession emerging from nothing, and what does that look like? What that looks like is one of the first things we had to do is say, what's different about this profession than all the others? What makes coaching different than teaching or consulting or psychotherapy and all that? You have to look at what are the distinctions? So what makes leadership, if it was a profession, [00:45:30] what distinguishes it from other professions? You start there, then you start to look at, okay, what are the core competencies of this emerging profession?
As you know Dan, that's one of the things I helped do. I sat on the committee and where we developed the core competencies for the coaching industry, which is now the foundation of all coach training. And so if we were to look at, if you type in Google, [00:46:00] what are the competencies of leadership, you're going to get a million pages of a million different things. One of the things about moving something into a profession means that you have an agreed upon set of core competencies that is across the board, that is how it's defined. And then not only do you have those competencies, then you have ways to measure the efficacy [00:46:30] of those competencies and how they're executed. So you have to set up criteria about how do you assess it, how do you grow from one level to the next? So there's a lot of components into creating something as a standalone profession. There's so much out there about leadership, and some people might say, well, it already is, right? Not really. Not really. [00:47:00] There's a great book that, oh gosh, and now I have to remember his name. I had a great conversation with this guy. The book is “Leadership BS.’” Do you remember Dan? Because I told you about the book.
Dan Freehling:
I don’t remember the author name. I've read that book after you recommended it though.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, it's a great book because it really does call BS on a lot of things. We think about leaders, a lot of these practices, but it's because anywhere you go going to get a different definition [00:47:30] of it. What if we standardized it? What if we standardized it in a way like we did in the coaching industry where it's global? How do the core competencies of it? How does it transfer culturally? What if we had a global definition of leadership? That would be kind of interesting. Don't you think?
Dan Freehling:
That's really interesting. Do you see this [00:48:00] as sort of branching out from what used to be the realm of an MBA Yes. Cohort or something?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yes. Yes. Now I know MBA programs are getting a lot better. They're a lot more real world application, but my God, when I was in school, it was all theory, and then people get on the job and all of a sudden those theories start blowing up like 4th of July fireworks and theory's great. [00:48:30] In an academic world, we need theory, but we also need to be able to understand how to transfer theory into real world applications. And I know that there's a lot more alliances going on now with MBA programs working within organizations, solving organizational problems, that sort of thing. But yes, I do think this goes above and beyond MBA, because one of the things, and I know a million people with MBAs, and they'll be the first ones to tell you, [00:49:00] when I start teaching people people skills like coaching skills, emotional intelligence skills, those sort of things, the first thing I hear from them is, well, I didn't get any of this education in my MBA and everything is great in the MBA, but boy, it comes to a screeching halt when you get into messy people dynamics. And so there's components of leadership like that, messy people, dynamics, groupthink, [00:49:30] moving teams in ways that we have to look at and construct or deconstruct certain situations so that we have a full understanding of how to move teams through really complex areas. So there's so much more that isn't taught in MBA programs that are part of leadership, the everyday application of it that I think could really apply here.
Dan Freehling:
[00:50:00] I love this. And I kind of backed my own way into this educationally as with doing the MBA, and that was great. It was a good sort of drive by view of a little bit of each department of a major enterprise and enough about strategy and enough about what legal has to do. You know enough about what HR has to do, enough about what operations has to do. And then I added on that other [00:50:30] master separately, it was, what about the people side? What about these organizational dynamics? What about that? And then the coaching education too of, okay, that's all great at the theoretical level and let's bring it down to one-on-one relationships or team relationships and what does that look like? So I think there's really something here about doing that in a way that doesn't have to be pieced together and involves the real world's application of it. That's fascinating to think about.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah. [00:51:00] Yeah. I get all animated when I start talking about this because it is a big what if question. But I think it's worth considering as we look forward into this fast moving business environment where people are going to need to be adaptable, they're going to need to be able to be understood too from a leadership perspective. People want to know that they're understood and that they matter [00:51:30] and that their contribution is valued. If the leader can't support that throughout the enterprise, they're not leading.
Dan Freehling:
So right. And as you said earlier, the top talent who has choices and options is going to walk. They're going to go to another organization, they're going to start their own company, but they're not going to stick around, and you're only going to get the kind of scared sycophant type employees who are [00:52:00] willing to stick around for these places.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah. Can I just say something for a second? Absolutely. Someone scared. One of the things I wanted to talk about a minute ago, and it slipped my mind, is about courage. It's one of the things that's why we wrote the book we did. It's about being able to be integrity based. And what do I mean by that? When I talk about integrity, it's not about morals. [00:52:30] Everybody knows the morals, the moralistic platform we bring into business. When I talk about integrity, this is about personal integrity, meaning you're walking your talk, you're aligned, everything you do, everything you say, and the way you behave is aligned with what you say is important. And when you're in leadership, you're in a fishbowl, people are watching this, and the minute you step outside of it, you're no longer [00:53:00] credible as a leader. And so that's one of the components that I would put as part of a leadership profession is how do you as an individual align yourself with what you say is most important, and how do you have the courage to live that day in and day out regardless of what happens?
Dan Freehling:
Yeah. I mean, so much of that is part and parcel of [00:53:30] coach training, and it's just not really out there in a lot of other places in the world of personal foundation that you all coach you, and it's not really out there, and it's not part of a lot of this stuff. And if it is, it's one class on ethics or it's some sort of, again, like a drive by little snippet of that, but it's so integral, and having that integrity is something that people can really [00:54:00] see and sense and feel from you.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yep. And they're watching, right? They're watching. Yep. Yeah.
Dan Freehling:
What's a popular leadership or management concepts that you disagree with or think is kind of overhyped? I know there's a lot of fads and buzzwords and all of that out there,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Too many to choose from.
Dan Freehling:
I know this one's an easy one. Fish in a barrel. I
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Know [00:54:30] I got to look at all of, here's the deal. I look at all of 'em and I go, sometimes I just think we make everything too damn complex. I mean, out of a think tank comes some massive leadership or management concept, and it comes in a way that comes from theory a lot of times and sometimes from real world application. And I don't [00:55:00] think I can pick any one, Dan, honestly, I don't because they all have merit too. It's kind of like religion. Okay, this is a good analogy. It's kind of like religion. We're all religions have great nuggets and morsels of truth in them, all religions, and then some or all, depending on who you are or whatever, you look at it, you go, I don't know about that. I don't know [00:55:30] that we get to struggle with these big concepts. It's the same for me in leadership concepts and management concepts is that there's good morsels of truth that are applicable, useful day in and day out. And then there's a bunch of garbage too. Sometimes, a lot of times, I'll call it serial filler so that somebody could get published. They did 9 billion pages on this, [00:56:00] and there's a lot of serial filler in there versus taking just the nuggets out of 'em. I'm not really answering your question with any one in particular, but that's kind of my approach to all of 'em.
Dan Freehling:
I think that's a fantastic answer. Yeah, there's sort of a core truth to a lot of these religions and leadership management theories and concepts that is pretty indisputable, and there's a lot of that extra kind of fluff, and then there's a lot [00:56:30] of room to kind of bring in nuances that are great. It's nice that certain religions go into something in way more depth than others, and there's a lot of wisdom in that too.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, yeah.
Dan Freehling:
I've thought about it much less in the holy realm, but in the sort of a great restaurant kind of a realm. And we've talked about this a lot in my master's class with the group that I was really close with in that, but these sort of ideas of it, it'd be talking to someone about [00:57:00] all the restaurants out there and you're like, oh, what makes a great restaurant? And we all want to come to this really well-rounded sort of like, it has a nice atmosphere and it has high quality food, and it has friendly service and dah, dah, dah. And then you start parsing that apart. And there's places that are really filthy, but they have amazing food and you love it. It's a great restaurant. You would never go to the bathroom there.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
I'll risk food poisoning for this place.
Dan Freehling:
Exactly. [00:57:30] And then there's places that are beautiful and have friendly staff, and the food is terrible, and it's like, this is not a great restaurant. So I think there's that element too, where you can be a kind of lopsided leader. You don't have to be this perfectly well-rounded person in every single regard to be a leader. And I think that's kind of refreshing to hear for some people too, who might not be that every single box is checked, kind of a leader, but you have something going on. It goes into the strength-based [00:58:00] stuff a lot, but you have something going on that's so good that it supersedes anything else.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, I think it's when you get dogmatic about any one particular approach, that's when you run into trouble, right?
Dan Freehling:
Because blind spots come out.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Dan Freehling:
That's a really great answer to that one. I will think about that a lot more I think after this, but I love that. What's a book or other resource in the leadership realm [00:58:30] that you find yourself coming back to the most often?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
There's one, I've actually had to buy the book three times now because Fallen Apart.
Dan Freehling:
That's a good sign.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Taping it together, all that. I finally have it electronically now, but this is a book I've had around since probably the early nineties. It's a book called Thinking Body Dancing Mind, and it's a Taoist approach. [00:59:00] For those of you not familiar with Taoism, I'm sure you've all seen the Yin Yang symbol, right? It's a ancient Chinese philosophy, Dan, this, I studied and practiced and taught martial arts for over 30 years, and Taoism is a philosophy that it's the underpinning of a lot of Chinese martial arts. So I spent a lot of time studying it, and I stumbled upon this book back in the early nineties, and [00:59:30] I'll have to get you the author's names. I'm hoping it's still in print, actually. But this book takes, and it's written for sports, business and life, it tells you. So these guys that wrote the book, they worked with a lot of professional athletes, so it has a heavy emphasis on sports, but they write a perspective about business for each concept they put out.
And what they'll do is they'll take, let's say something [01:00:00] about confidence. Okay, let's just take that. And maybe you're struggling with confidence or you've moved into a new role and you're finding yourself not as confident as you have been. You're out of your comfort zone, that sort of thing. It's quick read chapters, but you can flip right to that chapter. And what it talks about is the Taoist approach to that, to confidence and how to perceive it. Now, Taoism is really about balance, [01:00:30] and that's what the Yin Yan symbol is all about, is balance. So for example, one of the things that, as an example would be if you don't know hardship, how can a fulfilling life? You have to have both. You have to have that contrast in order to experience the richness and wholeness of all of it. And so to take that kind of [01:01:00] a thought process or that kind of thinking and apply it to everyday business challenges and things you will encounter, this book has been an invaluable resource for me because it gives me perspective. If I'm struggling, it gives me, okay, right now I'm struggling, but so that I can move into the other side, into the balance side. How do I move myself across [01:01:30] into the balance? And it always gives me that perspective. So it's one of my all time favorites. Again, it's thinking body dancing mind.
Dan Freehling:
That's a beautiful concept. I'll definitely check that out. What do you see as the future for coaching? Loaded question.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, it's 30 years ago, boy. We were just all walking around going, isn't this cool? And here we are now. It's a global phenomena. And so [01:02:00] I think Dan, right now, and you and I have chatted about this, I think we're at a crossroads in coaching right now. One of the things that most people don't know, like when I started this, I'd say, I'm a coach, and people go, oh, what sport? Nobody had any idea what we were up to now know what it is, right? And more and more people are coming into it, and there's money in it now, right? Because organizations are starting to embrace it. So we're seeing [01:02:30] coaches are not struggling to make a living or constantly explaining what coaching is. It's starting to become accepted as the norm. Here's where my concern comes in, Dan, is that being on the ground floor of all this, I can tell you one of the things about coaching is that it was intended to be a disruptive industry. We were here, we came on the scene to disrupt how people [01:03:00] interact and communicate, and in such a way that it would create transformation. Now, my concern about the industry right now is where the money is, is within the organizations, organizations are interested in one thing. One thing only results.
But if we're coaching people for results only, it becomes extremely transactional and watered down from [01:03:30] what its true power is. In other words, organizations are trying to, it's the tail wagging the dog instead of the dog wagging the tail where coaching would go, well, let me tell you how to get the best bang for your bup. It's not that popular when you tell him that because it's like, yeah, I understand. You want results. You want this guy, send me a sales guy. You want his sales up 30% by the end of the year. That's great. Got it. Okay. But [01:04:00] me working with this person to help them understand who they are, what motivates 'em, what shuts 'em down, what they want to aspire to, and how that fits with the goal the organization has for their performance, that's much more powerful. One of the things I'm a bit concerned now and why I say we're at a crossroads is that we can't sell out. We can't sell out. We've got to keep educating and driving [01:04:30] for this transformational experience. And so for the future coaching, if we can get past this hump, I think if we keep dry, and there's plenty of us out there that really understand it and are doing it in a way, I've turned down a lot of work because organizations want something different. That's great, but just don't call it coaching because really not.
But I think [01:05:00] if we can make it through this, I think we have a real good shot at coaching, growing to be something that is just becomes the norm of what organizations and people do to get better, to do better, and to reach their highest potential. I also see the future of coaching to move more in the realm. And Dan, you and I have talked about this, plenty [01:05:30] of helping people to reshape their paradigms. We can look throughout all of our communities, our countries, our worlds, our cultures, and we see people that, and for a perfect example, maybe grow up in poverty. They're stuck in a paradigm of poverty. They don't have a paradigm of something different. And I think where coaching's going [01:06:00] is to help people pierce those paradigms and to open a window to a broader possibility by helping people to experience things versus just imagining them to experience them in a way that the walls of their paradigm start to fall down. And I think that as we move forward in this industry, we're going to be looking a lot more at paradigms. I'll give you a great example. I have in my office, hanging on the wall [01:06:30] is a picture of Barack Obama with his head down and a little African-American boy touching his hair.
Dan Freehling:
That's a
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Great one. And that to me is how we shift paradigms, right? Because in that moment, that little boy in his paradigm became the little boy that could become president next. And so that's what I think our work is going to start to really focus in on and be known [01:07:00] for.
Dan Freehling:
Yes, it sounds like that transformation being front and center in coaching and then that broader education of, and I think once you see it, and once you see other failed transformation efforts over and over again, you can't help but see that something deeper is needed to really move an organization in a future direction that's better for the results. But [01:07:30] it's so easy to get the kind of quick hit next quarter will look better if I, and back to your optics points at the beginning, it will look better if I do this rather than it will be better. And yeah, coaching is the number one thing I've seen to be able to make that leap. And I think you're starting to see it from some really sharp business. People are starting to see that coaching really works and it's become less of this kind of fluffy, [01:08:00] new age kind of a thing. And the real transformational coaching is serving a really core leadership and business purpose too.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think we have really exciting times ahead, Dan and I am so happy to be able as I age more and more to pass the torch to people like yourself because I think we're just scratching the surface right now of [01:08:30] what the difference coaching can make in the world.
Dan Freehling:
I really appreciate that, Amy, and I know you've done so much to do that for me and for a number of other people, and it really means a lot. So I think that's a good place to leave our conversation. This has been really fantastic. Where can listeners learn more about you, what you're up to, and get in touch if they'd like to connect?
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Well, they can go to our website, Karen, and mine is called The Integreship Group. And I think Dan, you're going to put [01:09:00] a link.
Dan Freehling:
Yeah, I'll throw links to that in there. Yep.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
I won't bother to spell it like I normally have to, but I'm also involved in a new venture with another business partner, Elias Scultori, who Dan
Dan Freehling:
Elias is fantastic. Just for everyone listening, he's a real coaches' coach and really understands the art and the science of it,
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
And that's exactly what we're focusing in on. Elias and I in 2024, we'll be launching what we call the Craft Community, [01:09:30] where it's for coaches and people interested in coaching to really come and learn the blend of the art and science of coaching. And the way we like to talk about it is we're going to start to teach and facilitate coaching 2.0, the next generation of what this can look like. So we're really excited about it.
Dan Freehling:
That is so exciting. I definitely encourage any aspiring [01:10:00] coaches to check that out and get in touch with Amy and Elias on that. I'm personally just very excited to see where that goes, and I think it's something that's very much needed. So thanks again for joining me, Amy. So we'll definitely put all those links in the show notes. And listeners, thanks for joining us. Once again, if you've got something out of the show, please share it with a colleague and leave a quick review on whatever podcast app you're using right now that'll help us to spread the word so others can find us. And Amy, thanks again for taking the time.
Amy Ruppert Donovan:
Thanks, Dan. It's been a pleasure and [01:10:30] a joy.
