Most Important Skills for an Executive Leadership Coach at HED Space Coaching

I'm in a job that requires me to be in a community of caring. I have to care about people. My coach, a master coach who has trained thousands of people, including those from John Maxwell, Bob Proctor, and many other greats in the industry, would tell you that coaching is 99% who you are and 1% what you do.

This isn't to say we don't do anything, but you've got to have the right mindset and the heart and desire to truly help people in a meaningful and selfless way. That's tough. For me, it came from school, where I was formally trained.

However, my whole life journey has led me to this. From the military, as a Communications Officer working with information systems, satellites, and telephones – all the really cool stuff – to combat operations, losing people, watching births, and dealing with people at executive levels and the media. All the things I've done, all the interactions I've had, the technical and professional stuff, research and development, professional management – all of these things come together.

The books I have read and the skills I've picked up from everywhere have shaped me. My life has been a journey, almost like a video game where you go around picking up power-ups. I've had fortunate interactions with the right people, asked the right questions, and met people who have significantly impacted my life.

One thing I'd tell you need is the ability to think, and not think like everybody else. You have to think differently to be different. Find out what your superpower is and maximize it. I realized my strength was getting dissimilar groups together, whether it was two different countries, organizations, or individuals, and making them work well together. That was my strength.

I've always utilized that. My strength of bringing people together is something I have learned to monetize. I also find people to be intrinsically awesome, just from all the things I've seen people do. I call people "the number," and when I show that to them, they then show up in a way where they exude confidence and power. I get more out of people, and that all comes from the lessons I've learned.

One of the things that got me to coaching was being in the IT world. Back in the day, perhaps not as true today, techies were very tech-oriented. They saw ones and zeros, with no gray area. Management, however, lived in the grays. So, you have one entity working in ones and zeros, a yes or no, on or off, right or wrong.

Then you have others who might say, "Maybe, what about this? But in this case, there's an exception. It might be like this, but not always like that." So, you have people talking in two different conversational types: the very strict on one side and the very loose and flaccid on the other. How do you get those two people to work together? That was my job.

I like to use all the skills and translate technical speak down to executive speak so executives could understand what the technocrats were saying. Also, the technocrats could speak to me, and I could explain that to the executive leadership so they could understand what was going to affect them. Basically, I'm translating both.

In other words, if you have people who speak one language or have one agenda, combine that with people who have a different agenda and make sure what they're saying is being understood, heard, appreciated, and accounted for. A lot of times, people are talking at each other, and nothing is happening. I used to see that all the time, dealing with different countries and organizations, and that's not how things get done.

So, do I have a skill? I'd say it's all the skills: a culmination of everything from college networking, meeting people, the books I've read, the incidents I've had, the accidents I've had, the successes I've had, and especially the failures. I've realized that if I've had a failure and didn't learn from it, I'm going to redo it. If I learned from it, I usually don't have that failure again. It's funny how that works. Just learn how to shape yourself through the mistakes you make and the actions you take.