Coaching and conversational leadership

Conversational leadership with Tim Hagen

Different coaching strategies for coaches and leaders

I'm excited to have Tim Hagen on the show. Tim is a nationally-known leader and trainer of coaching leadership skills. He is a pioneer in the field of coaching training for the past twenty-plus years. Tim is the President of multiple companies including Progress Coaching, W² Partners, The Sales Difference and regular contributor to Forbes as a member of the Coach's Council. Most importantly, he is a guest on this show. Tim, welcome to the Talent Development Hot Seat.

Andy, how are you doing? Thanks for having me.

Thanks for coming on. This has been a long time coming. You and I have been chatting a little bit off and on. It's great to finally get this together because I know you have been doing a lot of interesting things in the talent development space for the last twenty-plus years and have a big following because of that. Maybe start with a little bit of your background and who you are and how you got to where you are now?

Coaching And Adult Education Background

I started my career at IBM and went into technology training. I started to realize that a lot is still like what we have now. The training model is much about getting bums in seats, filling up online courses or workshops and seminars. I have a strong coaching background and adult education background so I created a solution for technology coaching. As I started to realize that leadership, training, customer service and things like that, a big missing component was that coaching piece. We started teaching coaching to managers many years ago, which was innovative back then and now it seems everybody's doing it. Our biggest claim to fame is we're probably one of the major companies that started a coaching movement in terms of teaching managers how to coach their employees.

It is a big deal because management has been around for decades and generations. People have probably only been talking about coaching and having those coaching conversations for maybe the last, how long would you say?

I'd say consistently, we've heard probably the last few years, but we've always known for the last years that the number one reason somebody quits an organization is because of their manager.

I hear it more not as a manager, but culture but we've always heard the mantra of people that join a company, but they leave because of the manager. Most likely it's because that manager is diminishing them, a micromanager, hard to work with or they're not having coaching conversations and not helping them develop.

We use an analogy all the time and as I've shared with you in the past, I do a lot of uSports coach and I still coach boys volleyball. The number one thing that kids hate about uSports is the drive home with the parents because what do we do? We go into corrective action mode. What happens in the corporate world, “Andy, I need to see you in my office right away.” What's the employee's first response? It's usually, “What did I do wrong? Why is that?” We've created that expectation, so the conversation and the power of our words have an impact. I would even say, as companies are investing more into coaching, we have things like texting and artificial intelligence. People have less and less time or we’re going from meeting to meeting or online all the time but when we sit down with our employees, a lot of times we don't have as much time. At that moment, how are we conversing? Are we listening? I always use the phrase, “Are we listening to respond or listening to understand?” We have a lot of strong initiatives in the workplace. A lot of times, that communication comes at the expense of the employer.

It's interesting that you mentioned time. That's probably one of the biggest challenges, complaints that we hear out there in the working world. There are many distractions and many things going on. We've got to prioritize how to spend our time at work and what I also think of as incentives. People spend their time in areas that match their incentives or their values. Do you think there's a mismatch and a lot of people are incentivized to do certain actions that don't involve coaching their people?

Absolutely, it happens every single day. When we think about coaching in that conversation, one of the big misnomers going back to your point about time as a lot of managers when they hear coaching their immediate knee jerk reaction is, “There's no way I have time with all ten employees for 30 to 45 minutes a week.” When I think about your company, the Advantage Performance Group and our company, we're not also telling everybody to coach every one of your employees for an hour a week. We teach people that thoughtful and targeted conversations are sometimes as little as 8 to 10 minutes. The second thing we also teach is something called supplemental coaching.

How do I facilitate talent development when I'm physically not present, which allows them to open their mind and scale their time? I would tell you that you brought up a great example of the business imperatives and the initiatives. It's typical in sales. How do I have a conversation with someone whose sales are lacking? What we typically do is we tell them to increase their sales as if they didn't know that but what's underneath that? Maybe they don't know how to negotiate, they have a fear of closing or have a fear of asking for the order. All of those encompass different coaching initiatives that need to take place. To not take time is leaving the status quo in place. We're at the forefront of them starting to get that.

One of the other things that are common is for managers to jump away into advice mode. They're the expert or they feel that they have to be the expert, “My employee is struggling. Let me come in. I've got to have a little. They're probably struggling with the closing, so let me bring some training or teach them how to close better. It could be a time management issue or a lead generation issue.” It could be all kinds of things. You won’t know more until you ask the right questions.

Make sure that your managers, leaders, and coaches leave every session with a minimum of learning two new things. Click To Tweet

I would tell you that when you think about coaching if you don't define it, and we encourage all of our clients and every company that is reading this to start with a definition of coaching. The number two thing that we always share with people is to make sure that your managers, leaders and coaches leave every session with a minimum of learning new things. The only way you're going to do that is to ask questions and listen. That's a trust and the game-changer. Often, people will go into it. We've talked about sales a little bit and we do a lot of work and I know your company does with non-sales. The fact of the matter is if we are going to gravitate to, “No. Here's the way I used to do it,” and what we do is we discount that person. If you're confident, Andy, and let's say closing, you love to close and you're ready to get that deal, but I have apprehension and nervousness because I don't want to be viewed as the overbearing salesperson. Your advice is not going to resonate with me. You might want to find out by saying, “Tim, how would you describe how you feel when you have to close?” All of a sudden they say, “I'm nervous.” What happens is you have greater clarity of where to coach me.

It’s as simple as asking them questions and even going deeper. Why do you get nervous? Is it because of the pressure, the type of clients or past experience? It’s helping to diagnose that issue so you can go deeper on.

It's as simple as what you said is going from telling to asking questions is a huge transition for a lot of leaders. Going from advising people to understanding your strengths, how do I leverage those strengths and how do we address opportunities for improvement, that's a huge transition for people. We do something for clients where we measure their conversations. One of the greatest guys I've ever met in my life, he was well-intended. If you ever met him, he’s engaging and his employees loved him. We scored one of his coaching conversations, he used the word ‘but’ 29 times in the first nine minutes. Great guy, but when you read the transcript, your first thought was, “It sounds like he’s trying to start an argument.” It wasn’t his intention. He wasn't even aware that he did that. Therefore, there's an opportunity to improve.

We're oftentimes not aware of these things until we get some feedback. You said it yourself that he was a great guy, but he had some things he can improve on.

That's the appropriate ‘but,’ Andy.

I know you do a lot of work on this ability to teach conversational skills that drive talent development. We talked about starting with the definition of coaching and making sure people leave sessions with some clear title takeaways. What are some other tips that you have for managers to have great coaching conversations?

Managers With Great Coaching Conversations

Play on the session, make sure your coaching is targeting 1 or maybe 2 areas over a period of time. One of the biggest mistakes is we tend to spray people with coaching. We coach to what we see and we're triggered by what we need to correct effects. If you're coaching me on confidence in closing, let's say, over time, if we start to have traction and improvement, my association with coaching becomes much more positive. If you're coaching me every other day, and you're coaching me to negotiate into prospecting or whatever it might be, that's tough to assimilate for a person.

Teaching Strengths

Number two, I always go back to a fundamental that few people do. Few salespeople and coaches in the corporate world do it and herein lies a great opportunity. That is active listening, “Andy, here's what I've heard you say, stopping at the moment and I always share with managers, if you don't know where to take things, that's okay. That terrifies some managers. I go back to when you don't know where to take things, take a deep breath, look at your notes and paraphrase back what they said or what you thought they meant. It's a great trust builder.

Number three, be authentic. If you don't know where to take things, that's okay. A coaching conversation isn't a one-time event. It's a series of conversations woven together to drive talent. A lot of managers feel they have to have answers or be at that moment to know what to do. There's nothing wrong with looking at someone and saying, “Andy, you've shared a lot with me now. I'm going to digest this. Let's get back together next week in a regularly scheduled time and I want to assimilate the notes that I've taken.” What employee is going to be upset by that? What they are going to feel is that they were understood.

It is important. You mentioned the active listening and I'm sitting here trying to make sure I model good behavior and listen back to you, so I can refer back. You talked about the importance of planning a session and staying focused and not getting into too many different categories. You talked about the importance of active listening. You’re not only sitting there waiting to think, “What am I going to say next?” but listening to what the other person is saying and repeating things back to them. I was running a leadership workshop for a group of managers at a professional services firm. We talked about the importance of this getting into coaching and did some roleplay, where people talked about something they're interested in for two minutes. I had the other person repeat back what they heard. They were profound. They were like, “I felt I was heard,” like it's never happened to them before. They’re like, “Nobody listens to me and this person sat there listening to me for the last minute.” That’s active listening. You also talked about the importance of being authentic, which is a critical component of leadership in 2020 and beyond. That's changed a lot. It's not about being the stoic know-it-all manager who has all the answers. It's about being who you truly are and letting everyone else show up that way as well.

There are a couple of things that I always share with my managers in coaching. If you ask questions, you're going to learn of somebody's strength or greatness that they don't even know they have that you certainly didn't know that you had. Number two, a lot of times we teach leverage strengths. The Gallup organization reports that people engage more when you start with strengths eight times more than when you lead with constructive feedback. When we ask the question, you get called into the office. What's the employee's first impression? It's usually, “Uh oh.” Number two, one of my favorite books, The Progress Principle, talks about 76% in their study said that people felt at their most motivated state when they were progressing and getting better at their job.

It's not a reward, money and recognition. It's, “I'm getting better.” If we don't acknowledge that and bring somebody into the office and say, “Julia, I wanted to tell you, your last three marketing reports were crisp, clean, fantastic and detailed. Your manager is sitting in there.” What's going to happen is that employee is going to leave and go out to the cubicles. Everyone's going to ask her what happened, “Tim brought me in and was praising Bob and me, his boss was in there.” What happens to my personal leadership brand is it explodes. We also share with people not to make a mistake. When you're coaching people, don't think you're coaching someone privately one-on-one and it stays there. You're coaching everybody. If people managers use that strategically, it can serve them well.

Conversational Leadership: aching one person in an organization can mean you are coaching everyone because that person will talk to others.

I never thought about that. When you're coaching one person in an organization and there are other people on the team, you're coaching everyone because that person is going to talk whether it's positive, negative, reinforcing or whatever it is. They're probably going to tell their friend, teammates, colleagues, or whatever it is. People can learn from that experience and also know what kind of manager coach you are and what they can expect from their next session.

We had a client on the East Coast. Their customer service metrics and their sales were down a little bit. I got the CEO’s approval, we were not allowed to provide constructive feedback for 30 days. Our numbers went up 7%and 9% in the 30-day time period, not because of us, I don't want to mislead you. Yet, it was framed and managers later said in the survey that was hard to do. Think about that for 30 days. We're asking you to be positive. Stay away from the negative stuff. That was hard to do because we're triggered and conditioned to look for the things we need to correct.

We want to fix problems.

A lot of times we fix problems at the expense of people. The rumor mill in everything happens over at the water cooler. There's never a positive conversation, “Did you hear Andy and Tim and their spouses went out for dinner and had a good time.” You don't hear that at the water cooler. What you hear is rumors, interpretation, employee's emotional spinning of what reality was and it takes on a different life form. That can be neutralized by investing feedback 3 or 4 times. It’s the little things that calm people into the office like going out there and saying in front of other employees, “You're doing a great job here.” In being specific, you're conditioning them to know what to repeat but you're neutralizing that water cooler talk.

You want to head that off in the past and also, there's a lot out there about giving immediate feedback and not waiting too long for the next one-on-one?

Giving Constructive Feedback

I'm not a big fan of the Sandwich Method only for the reason that when we need to give constructive feedback, I go to two schools of thought: be targeted, be thoughtful and let it sit down on its own. Even though they might be upset or feel defensive, that's okay. That's part of professional development. If you equal that with positive feedback, calling them in for the good stuff, putting a note on their desk, leaving a sticky note at the coffee break, signing it anonymously, “You're doing a great job,” then they become more receptive. If the only thing they hear is the constructive stuff, they start to shut down emotionally. We teach people strategically that if you're going to do it at the moment, be exact. If you're uncomfortable, ask people, “Do you mind, Andy, if I share with you?” Get permission, not that you need it, and they become more receptive. It doesn't mean they love you but there are different ways to give feedback at that moment. The goal of feedback isn't to give it. It's to give it to someone professionally and thoughtfully receives it.

That's how we all improve. We learn from the experience, our successes and our mistakes. We learn when we get feedback from others. I could be conducting this interview with something hanging off of my face and if you didn't tell me that, I’ll never know. I don't know. I’m trying to think of a great example. Right before we got on here, I got an email with the survey results from a workshop that I ran, and it had the score and comments. I do always get a little bit nervous when I open that up. I’m like, “What are they going to say?” I also know that I've seen comments in there that have allowed me to improve before, “I could have done that better.” In this case, it was a 5.0 and all the comments were positive, which is great to hear but we sometimes need that constructive criticism, feedback or whatever you want to call it to help us improve.

I go back to constructive feedback. There's nothing wrong with constructive feedback. I always ask managers, “How confident are you? How do you know that they're receiving it thoughtfully, openly and professionally?” A lot of times when we only give constructive feedback, typically employees do this, they nod and managers will say, “Yes, so what?” Do you know what they're doing? They're waiting for you to finish and they can't wait to get out of your office. They're not absorbing it because it's the only message we hear. I coach high school volleyball and club volleyball. I had a parent complaint a couple of years ago, that I wasn't tough enough on the kids. I looked at the mother and said, “Do you want me to yell at your thirteen-year-old son?” I was too positive and that was weird because they were conditioned that they're not playing well, the coaches got to get on them. I'm not going to yell at thirteen-year-olds learning the sport. That's a whole evolution. Yet, here's a parent coming to me.

It was not what they expected.

That's what they were conditioned. I said, “I'm all in. Do me a favor. Get together with all the parents and take a vote. If it's unanimous, I'd be happy to yell at all your children.” She looks at me and goes, “I don't think I'm going to talk to you the rest of the season.” I'm like, “Great.” She was a great parent but she was conditioned for that. When we're coaching and you invest in the good stuff, people will open their minds to where they need to improve.

I like that. Is that investing in the people or yourself? What do you mean by that?

It's investing in individuals and teams. One of the strategies I love is when you're in a staff meeting, “Bob, Andy shared a great idea about his podcast.” “What did you like about that idea?” Get people talking positively about each other. Give your people what I call whitespace to give them time to sit down and get to know each other. Especially cross-departmentally because a lot of times our relationships in bigger companies are our email correspondence and we tend to throw bombs over the wall. A lot of times, we don't have what I call foundational relationships. You and I have gotten to know each other. Potentially, we'll see you in Florida. You've got two kids, you’re younger, my kids are in college.

A coaching conversation isn't a onetime event. It's a series of conversations woven together to drive talent. Click To Tweet

When you learn stuff about people, not that we have to become best friends but when only the relationship we have is work, organizations can get a little bit of trouble. Invest in the individual, in the team cultivation and constructive feedback. Sometimes when I work with people or work with managers, we’ll ask employees, “What's the best way for you to receive constructive feedback?” People will look at us like, “What are you talking about?” Sometimes when you educate them, “Do you want me to email you and give you some bullet points to help you mentally prepare?” We’ll give them choices but they love it because no one ever asked that question, “What’s the best way to give you constructive feedback?” It authenticates the relationship and it coauthors communication.

I never heard of that. It's a great idea. What's the best way? Everybody has different methods of communication that they prefer and the different ways they like to hear things. Sometimes they need time to digest and the email could be easier. I personally would probably rather have a conversation, but other people might prefer to have that email. You mentioned something in there about getting to know them. You know that I have two young kids, which I appreciate. When about personal relationships at work and managers and their employees becoming more like friends and knowing personal things. In the past, that was rare. It’s supposed to be separate. Do you think that's changed a lot?

It has and it provides some clarity and understanding. I'll make this short. I'll share a story where we did this at a client site. There was a girl that was always to herself. She was quiet, polite, nice and we paired people up in groups of two. What you had to do is stand up and share two things you learned about your partner or maybe one area where you had something in common. You had to ask questions and listen to each other. We made people stand up for two minutes and share. A woman who she was paired with, I would say was not one of the friendliest people I've ever met. She thought the training was dumb and this was ridiculous.

She worked here for everybody she knows people. Through her conversation, she got paired up with a woman. Think about this as financing credit. This woman who was not nice had real angst against this other woman because every time she called, she never picked up her phone. When they started talking, this woman was sharing, “I have a son who's over in Iraq. It’s his second tour of duty.” She said, “I didn't know that.” She said, “I'm sure everybody knows. That's why I prefer email. I want to keep the phone line open.” For three years, this woman harbored a negative feeling and literally got up and introduced her partner and had tears in her eyes.

She said, “I have talked negatively about her. I have been harboring negative feelings towards her. I never understood why she never answered the phone.” As a mom, she wanted to keep the phone line open for heaven forbid that terrible phone call. As a mother, she thought everybody knew it. By talking for 2 to 4 minutes now, the departments started to realize they had been making assumptions and they started to work better together. I don't know if I prescribed everybody to be great friends outside of work but we have to have a foundation of understanding where people are coming from.

Get to know people on who they are, do they have a family or not, what are some of their likes and hobbies and things. It’s the table stakes to get to know people, their motives, how do they prefer to communicate, what are their social styles, personalities, and all that stuff is all going to help you be a better manager and show that you care. One thing I'm thinking with this being a show for talent development professionals that we may be preaching to the choir a little bit to a lot of people that know, “I know the importance of coaching and feedback,” but they're trying to get their managers in their organizations to do a better job at this. How can they get their managers to do better coaching and give more feedback?

Getting Managers Better Coaching

One of the best things that you can do and getting managers to coach is to make it easy. Have some type of conversation model that they can follow. Don't leave the coaching to this nebulous thing where we sit down and give feedback or we have our own definition of what coaching is. Have a definition and I also encourage organizations to use the conversation model. We teach a model. There are a lot of companies that teach models. GROW is a teaching model. The third thing is also to give them choices. When people say we're going into a coaching culture, people feel a little bit restricted. The thing that I love to do is teach supplemental coaching.

Let's say, Andy, you are struggling with confidence and sharing ideas and you want to be much more of a valuable teammate. I might coach you one-on-one for 8 to 10 minutes a week. I might pair you up with John in peer-to-peer coaching, where you interview John because he used to lack confidence. I might prescribe journal-based coaching where I want you to write down a time where you felt you were lacking confidence and maybe one where you felt like confidence was growing. When you write things down, you tend to own them more and now you've got a repository of information sources that accelerates talent development. We have to give managers choices.

The biggest thing that is missing in our industry, and we're at the forefront of addressing it aggressively, is practicing. You and I are conversing. We didn't script this out. We don't have any notes in front of us. Being authentic and fluent in conversation is difficult for people. You’ve got to think on the dime and think on our feet. When we practice, we get a lot better. I had a client once with the director of coaching, we were like Pavlov's dogs. He would say, “Dave, Tim, roleplay it. Show us.” It was never scripted. If we can get people practicing conversations and not being perfect, managers’ relationship with this thing called coaching becomes a lot more plausible to pursue and execute.

It makes sense. Giving managers getting them to start coaching, not so much pressure that has to be a certain way, giving them choices when you're teaching, coaching, and also give them an opportunity to practice, which most people don't get. I talk about this a lot in my business as well. We've talked about sports already. When you think about sports and the military, it is always practice before you get out in the game but in business, we're expected to show up and have a conversation.

It’s the number one inhibitor. You and I are in the same business and to a certain extent, people evaluate our training. We don't work there. That application and that practice, there's an opportunity. It's not what companies are doing wrong. It's that opportunity to continue to facilitate improvement. It's always been the bugaboo in our industry. It has always been reinforcement and how do we continue to apply it? We as outsiders can't do that. That's why I love what I do. We can embed a coaching system and often we will have a director of coaching. We will create a job for them but helping people internally practice that is huge. I did a keynote years ago in front of one of my clients, a large agricultural firm and there were about 4,000 to 5,000 people there.

I had a guy come up to me, we all had headsets, it's serious and he said, “That's a lot of people out there. Be confident.” I looked at him and I'm like, “I forgot that part.” I took off my headset, I was pretending to leave. He goes, “What are you doing?” I was making a little bit of a joke because I knew the guy. Confidence comes from two things, practice and positive reinforcement. It doesn't come from constructive feedback. When I coach volleyball, I tell my kids every practice that I will give feedback, probably a 7:1 to 8:1 to everyone that's constructive. We live by a notion of helping people feel good about getting better and they'll keep going. If they only hear rhetorical things like, “Don't be nervous, be confident,” if we could push that button on people's bodies, you and I might not be in business. It takes time through conversation and thoughtful practice.

Conversational Leadership: Progress coaching is teaching people to progress and feel good about getting better.

I've studied this as well. It's fascinating. People say, “Be confident.” It’s that ‘fake it until you make it’ but confidence comes from experience. Confidence means you know you can do it, which comes from doing it in the past, which comes from practice and getting those opportunities. You're getting these kids opportunities to practice and feedback. Coaching gives you an opportunity to get better. You mentioned about fulfillment, I believe coming from getting better from improvement as well. It's something I strongly believe in. I learned from Tony Robbins many years ago that almost all fulfillment comes from growth. If you are not growing, you're probably not happy. You want people to grow in their careers. It's more motivating than even compensation or affirmations. People want to know that they're growing.

Progress Coaching

What you're alluding to is from that book that I read, The Progress Principle. I love it. What we teach is progress coaching. You're coaching people to progress. I always go back to help people feel good about getting better. Here's the funny thing about employees. A lot of times, they don't even know they're progressing until we bring it up or we ask them. We'll teach managers to call people into the office and say, “Bob, I've noticed a big pickup in your stuff. Walk me through why you feel and look different.” “What do you mean?” “You seem like you've got a lot more energy.” “The jobs are becoming a little bit easier.” “How come?” “I'm starting to understand the XYZ system.” “How did you do that?” “Dave, over in accounting was helping me.” “Have you thanked him because I'd love to thank him?” A lot of times, people don't even affirm where they're getting better until we ask questions and get them to own their own progress now. If I ignored and didn't do that and I called him in and said, “Your timesheets are late. I’m getting frustrated,” I lost a huge opportunity there.

It’s the same thing with parenting. I'm affirming my kids all the time in the things where they're getting better. Tim, is there a trend in talent development that your following that we haven't talked about so far?

We talked about it. You're starting to hear the term, and we're using the term more as conversational leadership. Practicing that, being in the moment and conversing. You mentioned your kids. Sitting down, there is study after study and research after research, when a kid’s self-esteem is high, it's usually come from parenting, where they feel understood and listened to. I'll teach my managers and clients, “Call your kids into your bedroom and only give them positive feedback.” “Why would I do that?” I say, “Because most parents don't do it.” When I coach thirteen-year-old boys in volleyball, people go, “Why would you coach the young kids? They can't run half the plays.” I said, “I'm coaching self-esteem as much as I'm coaching volleyball.” If I can help a kid stay in the sport more, feel good about being a good teammate and all that corny stuff, that kid will benefit because most of their careers are going to end when they're eighteen. It can parlay itself and we tend to lose sight of that. A big trend in movement is our ability to practice. How do we practice leadership? How do we practice the conversation? How do we practice having conversations that conflict thoughtfully and professionally and do it where people benefit? We don't practice enough.

It’s important. I love that. Conversational leadership and practice, you can do it with your kids, your direct reports and anyone around you. You mentioned the book, The Progress Principle. Are there any other books that you highly recommend in this subject that have maybe made a big impact on you or you recommend a lot?

Coaching Book Recommendations

The book I'm reading and I've read it four times is The Expertise Economy by Kelly Palmer. It talks about, I'm going to put words in her mouth, peer-to-peer coaching. Workplace coaching is getting big and we have many internal experts inside our organizations. We're in the midst of the movement that we tend to think that the managers, the leader has to be the coach. We're doing two projects now with insurance companies. We're teaching agile coaches, people who don't have direct reports, how to coach other people. What we're finding is they're accelerating the development of people because the people feel more comfortable because they're not being coached by their boss. That's not germane to every single organization so the expertise economy talks about how to leverage pockets of internal expertise. It is by far one of the best books I've ever read.

That is a ringing endorsement for The Expertise Economy. It’s awesome and I've had Kelly Palmer on this show.

I did not know that.

She's wonderful and I am all about this topic. I agree. This is where it's going and she's definitely one to follow and watch on this future work concept. Last question for you, Tim. For anybody reading especially who is in talent development, looking for a way to accelerate their career and be more successful in talent development, what's one more piece of advice you would give?

I would say join an organization, whether it's ICF or ATD. The second thing would be to go to conferences, learn from peers. I remember our first conversation. Our demographics are different but our companies are similar somewhat, you guys are bigger. I don't practice that preaching as much as I should. Coming down to Florida for that conference where you and I might meet up. We don't do enough of that you're hosting your own conference. Professionals need to do more and more of that. What you're doing with your conference, those are the things when you have Josh Pearson speaking. We need to immerse ourselves in practicing what we preach. Sometimes we can be immersed in figuring out what we're trying to deliver and we almost forget our own personal development.

Thank you for the plug there too because I'm a big fan of networking and joining organizations. It's one of the most, if not the most powerful thing you can do for your career because you learn from people, you're going to have people that can help you along the way when you run into challenges. That's why I invest a lot of my money going to other conferences and I decided to host my own conference, The Talent Development Think Tank. It will be in the rearview mirror but there will be another one on the horizon. You can always check our website, TalentDevelopmentThinkTank.com to find out what's going on there. Tim, this has been fantastic. For anybody reading who wants to get in touch with you, connect with you or follow you, where's the best place when they go?

They can go to our website, ProgressCoachingLeader.com. They can certainly email me at Tim@ProgressCoachingLeader.com, but I do a ton of publishing on LinkedIn. If people want to connect, we don't put on the big sales pitch. We do a lot of thought leadership blogging, articles, podcasts, things like that.

We learn from the experience, successes, and mistakes and we learn when we get feedback from others. Click To Tweet

You and I are both active on LinkedIn, so as I always give the plug, LinkedIn should be a sponsor for this show because I'm on there every week. If you're not connected with us on LinkedIn, please do. I love LinkedIn. Shout out to them and shout out to you, Tim, for coming on and sharing such great tips and examples on conversational leadership and coaching. It's been great for me. I hope it has been for our readers as well. Thanks for coming on the show.

Thanks, Andy. I appreciate it.

Take care.

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• The Progress Principle
• The Expertise Economy
• Kelly Palmer – Previous Episode
• TalentDevelopmentThinkTank.com
• ProgressCoachingLeader.com
• Tim@ProgressCoachingLeader.com
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• iTunes – The Talent Develop Hot Seat Podcast
• AdvantagePerformance.com/trends