← The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
The Journey with Morgan DeBaun
Become a Better Leader with "The Coaching Habit" Author Michael Bungay Stanier
00:52:16
What does it take to become a great leader? In this episode of The Journey, Morgan DeBaun sits down with Michael Bungay Stanier, author of the bestselling book The Coaching Habit, to explore the transformative power of coaching in leadership. In the...
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- [00:00]
A
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Journey podcast. I am here today with Michael Bengay Stanier. I'm really excited today because we are going to talk about all things leadership and how to become the best version of yourself as a people leader. If you guys know my story, you know, I started off as a founder. I was that girl sitting in San Francisco with a whiteboard in my apartment, and I was, you know, making something out of nothing. Okay. I was so excited about building something and building a platform for black millennials, and I didn't totally think through what would be required of me as a founder if this thing was successful, related to managing large groups of people.
- [00:46]
B
Yeah. Well, look, I'm going to interrupt just to say, if you're able to think everything through as a founder, you stop being a founder. Because you're like, it's way too much, it's way too hard, it's way too weird. It's that kind of naive optimism is what keeps founders like you and me going, I think.
- [01:02]
A
Absolutely. And so one of the books that I bought when I first was realizing, oh, shoot, I'm a shitty manager. Like, I'm a terrible people manager, was this book called the Coaching Habit. I didn't know anything about Michael. I had literally never heard of him before. But this book got crazy reviews on Amazon, and I was desperate to figure out how to be more effective. I couldn't afford an executive coach at the time, so I was really diying it. And Michael's book was so helpful for me because it. It really gave me an anchor to say, look, you don't need to micromanage people.
- [01:40]
B
Yeah.
- [01:41]
A
In order to get the outcomes that you want to get, and you need to empower people. People need to come to you with problems, and then you need to figure out how to help them think through their own solutions. And the more that you can get better at that specific skill. Skill and be a coach and not necessarily a supervisor, the better the company is going to be, but also the better my mental was going to be because it's exhausting to try to control everybody around you.
- [02:09]
B
People are so annoying like that. They just don't behave, you know?
- [02:13]
A
So. So. So this has just been a book that has been really helpful for my skills and my own development. And so I wanted to bring Michael onto the show so that he could help all of us get better at being people leaders. Because no matter what you want to do in life, it's going to require that you interact with somebody else. And so, Michael, again, welcome to the show.
- [02:34]
B
Oh, look, you know, I love this story because you are exactly the person I wrote the Coaching Habit for. I wrote it not to turn people into coaches because there's lots of coaches already. It's for people who are leaders and managers and individual contributors who have kind of topped out of what they can do with their own capacity. They like their work, they like their team, but they're like, there's got to be a better way of doing this that doesn't crush me. And I really want to add being coach like, to the way that people show up and lead and manage so that they have a better life for themselves, but also so they unlock some of the potential and the power and the people around them to have more impact in the world. So I mean, honestly, when I wrote this book, I imagined somebody, I imagined a woman, actually a woman mid level leader walking into an airport, picking the book up, going, it doesn't look too scary, it doesn't look too long. I can fit this into my purse and I can probably read most of it on the flight. And I wanted to give them permission to let go of the control but encourage greatness in the people and, and the work that they do.
- [03:44]
A
Yeah. And I think it's effective at doing that. Hey everyone, I'm Morgan DeBont, a passionate entrepreneur and life advisor. With the Journey podcast, you'll discover that success isn't about the destination, it's about the journey. I'm sharing stories of amazing people who've taken control of their lives. Join me on my own journey to discover the secret sauce behind reaching success. With permission from no one else, I personally have bought public 250 copies of your book.
- [04:11]
B
Thank you.
- [04:12]
A
You've sold over a million copies, so drop in the bucket.
- [04:16]
B
I appreciate that. You know, and honestly, the book has flourished like that because people like you go, this is a good book. And boy, I think there are other people who could benefit from this book. So thank you for being part of that movement.
- [04:28]
A
Yeah. And fairly. It's the logic. I'm a cheap founder, so I'm like an executive coach for everybody is a bad investment. So what else could I give them? So I just give people books.
- [04:39]
B
That's great.
- [04:40]
A
So let's get into it a little bit. First of all, tell me from your perspective, what are the different types of management styles and why did you decide on like a coach as one that you think is kind of the foundation that people should be striving towards?
- [04:55]
B
Well, there's a writer called Daniel Goldman and he is best known for Bringing the whole idea of emotional intelligence to the world. He didn't invent it, but he popularized it. And he actually wrote a article for the Harvard Business Review 25 years ago now, year 2000, and it was called Leadership Styles that Get Results. And he did a bunch of research and he said, look, actually there are six different leadership styles, and they all have their moment, they all have prizes and punishments, you know, pros and cons. And the best leaders know how to use all of the leadership styles in the appropriate time. You know, one of them is a directive style, which is like, we are doing this and we need to do it and we need to do it now, and there's a time and a place for that. And another is a democratic style, which is like, what do we all think and what do we all want? And I'm trying to get the vibe. And some of it's a collaborative style, which is like, I want to hear what's going on for you, but I need to make the decision. In the end, that's my, my job. And one of those leadership styles was coaching being more coach like. And Goldman said, look, this is really powerful. This really adds to not just the culture, but adds to the bottom line. So it contributes both the strategy and culture, which is the twin DNA of any successful organization. But he also said of the six leadership styles, it is the least utilized because it feels a bit weird and a bit woo woo. And like, it'll take too much time. And I'd been a manager and I trained as a coach and I just was like, it annoys the heck out of me how coaching is being trained in organizations at the moment because the people are just like, it's like life coaching, but you just do it with people in your organ. And I'm like, that doesn't work at all. But I really saw the power of curiosity in contributing to people getting clear about what the real challenge was, what the real work was that needed to be doing, and curiosity in the other person. So you got to bring out the very best in the other person. So I just found that place where I'm like, I want to unweird coaching for normal people, People who like, I don't want to be a coach because I'm a marketeer or an ops person, or I'm in sales or whatever it is. But boy, I wish I could use some of the skills of coaching to help me increase my focus and bring out the best in the people around me.
- [07:10]
A
Yeah, one of the things that's hard for a lot of small businesses is that we all start off because we wanted to change the world or we wanted to put, make something. We were makers, we're builders. And we said, I'm going to build a. I love video, so I'm going to be a video producer. And then, well, now I have so much work I need to hire someone to come in and help me. And so I now wind up with two or three freelancers and contractors that I'm working with. And now I have so much work where now it makes sense for me to hire a full time person because it doesn't make sense for me to keep having all these people who I'm not training and they're not on my style and then they wind up, all of a sudden they look up five years later and they've got four full time employees and all these responsibilities. And I guess what are in those scenarios where we're not talking about big organizations, I mean we're really talking about a mix of freelancers and full timers. Like how do you recommend that the leader really start to improve these types of skills in terms of leading groups and managing teams?
- [08:12]
B
Yeah, it's a big question, Morgan, but I love how you rolled this out because underneath that, particularly if you're a founder, like you and I are founders, you know that founders are also just like nightmares at this stuff because we're like, we're ambitious but we're controlling. We care about the brand and the brand experience because that, that is us. Like we poured our DNA into our organization. So we're like, my organization's values are just my values. I've just told them that the organization's values. So there's one part of us which is like we've got this dilemma which is I know I need people to scale and have the impact I want. I'm not quite sure anybody can do anything as well as I can do it. So you've got that kind of tension that's going on. So part of what you're learning as a founder, but just as a leader or a manager, if you work in a bigger organization, if you're a career professional, part of what you're learning is how do I set other people up for success so they can be more competent and more confident and more autonomous and more self sufficient. Because if they're doing all of that, then they're doing brilliant stuff and you don't have to hover over them like a nervous, anxious person going, look, I'm going to micromanage you to death here. But you have to do it in a way that gets clear on, you know, you can't. I'm not just letting you do your own thing. I need you to deliver. I need you to perform. I need you to understand the strategy, my vision, the values, all of that good stuff as well. So it's a dance, it's hard, it's complicated.
- [09:50]
A
And let's just, let's talk about a couple scenarios because I'm curious how you would recommend that people approach them. So let's say you've got a team and your team is generally pretty high performing, but you have one person that I would call maybe a C minus or a B. A B person. So they're not all. You've got a team of as and then you've got this B, so the B stands out. But it's not that they're not doing their job. They're. They're technically doing their job. They're doing their job description and they're meeting generally 80% of the expectations. But you're a small organization or it's a small team where there's high expectations on you. As the leader of that group, how do you engage with the B player and how do you, how do you encourage someone to want to be an A if they're potentially absolutely fine being a B?
- [10:36]
B
Yeah, totally. Well, the place I would start on this and you know, hypotheticals are tricky because it, you know, it's like it depends, it depends on you, it depends on the team, it depends on the culture, it depends on a thousand thousand things. But let me give you some generic advice as best I can. The first thing I'd be asking is, what are the prizes and punishments of this person being a B player in an A player team? And because every choice you make has prizes and punishments, pros and cons, you're weighing up the risk and the reward. And as you look at that person and you look at the impact, you may be going, honestly, it's fine. You know what I mean? I'm thrilled to have A players on a team. It's hard to find a whole bunch of A players and have all of them on your team. I mean, everybody says, oh, A players hire A players and B players hire C players. And I'm like, yeah, that's good. But it's really hard to hire A people. I mean, they're hard to find. So the starting point is going, do I need to do anything at all? Because is the cost of an intervention here? Does the cost of that the price I would pay and the price the team would pay and the price the coach pay, would that outweigh the benefit that I might get from that?
- [11:52]
A
Right.
- [11:53]
B
If you're like, actually, I do need to do this, I they, there's a price that's happening at the moment of maintaining the status quo, which is the B player is irritating the A players. The A players feel ripped off or disappointed or like the B players getting an unfair share of the bonus or whatever it might be. So I would start off by having a conversation directly with that B player, and it's about resetting expectations. So the starting point for this for me is not coaching, it's feedback. And feedback is its own weird thing. Like, lots of people get kind of like, oh, man, feedback is so hard. I don't want to. I don't want tears. I don't want that kind of emotional upheaval. So let me give you the really practical framework I use to help me get clear on the feedback I want to give. It has its roots in something called nonviolent communication, which is a great phrase. A thinker called Marshall Rosenberg came up with that. And he says, look, in any communication exchange, there are four elements present, four things going on. There's the data, there are feelings, there are judgments, and then there are your wants and your needs, data, feeling, judgment, wants and needs. So let me go through those. The data are the facts. It is kind of the evidence. It's the stuff that if it was like a court case, you'd be able to submit and say, milad, here's the evidence. What's always amazing is there's far less data than you think there will be. So when you have this B player, you realize that you've got a few data points that say that they're a B player. But most of the vibe of the B player is a combination of feelings and judgments. So let's go to the feelings next. This is like how you feel about the situation. There's different models for the core feelings, but I use one where there are five. Mad, sad, glad, ashamed, and afraid. So my guess is if you're fretting about this B player, probably the feeling combination you got is a bit of mad, a bit of sad, a bit of ashamed. Oh, man, how did I hire another B player? A bit of afraid. Oh, goodness, is this going to drag my company down? Is it going to disintegrate the team? So you've probably got a swirl of those emotions. And what's paradoxical is the better you're able to recognize how you're feeling the better able you are to think rationally. It feels contradictory, but they did this study with finance professionals in the. In the stock market in New York. And the people who were most attuned to their feelings were then able to make the most rational decisions about how to move forward. So helpful to understand how you're feeling. Then there's the judgments. And the thing is, you've got a bazillion judgments about all of this. You've got a bazillion judgments about that person. They're a B player is your leading judgment. They're B player. They could be an A player. They could never be an A player. They're cruising. You know, they're taking the mickey. They're trying hard, but they're inadequate. You know, there's a whole bunch of things you'll have about them. You'll have judgments about yourself. I'm not a good leader. I'm a terrible papal person. Why do I hire people? Why do I always end up in these situations where there's always a B player in the team? You know, and then there's judgments about the situation at whole. This A team will rebel if I don't sort this out. This A team will all resign if I don't sort this out. This B player is corrupting this A team. Whatever. You have all these sort of judgments, and then you have what you want and what you need, which is like, what's the request you want to make? And the truth is the hardest and most powerful thing to figure out here is, what do you want? Or what do you need? Because you've got some options. You might look at that person and going, what I want is this team to be delivering at this level, and I want them to sort it out themselves. What you might be saying is, I want to fire this person, and I just need to have the courage to do that. What you might be saying is, I want this person to step up from a B to an A or even I just want this person to look like they're trying harder. Like they may never get to being an A. But at the moment, I feel they're just kind of like coasting. And I want to. I want them to look like they're working as hard as the other people. Or you may say, look, I want them to get clearer about what my expectations are for them because I don't think they really know the moment they think they are an A player. So you've got a bunch of different things that you might want here. And once you get clear on what you want, then it helps you figure out what's the data that's useful to share and what are the feelings and judgments that are useful to share. Because most of your feelings and judgments aren't that useful to share, they're not going to move the conversation forward. You are an absolute loser, and I'm frustrated and angry about it. Probably not helpful to share. Right. I'm excited because I can see your potential, which I don't think you're yet living up to. Might be an interesting feeling and judgment combination to share. So that's how I'd be thinking about it. And then when you've given them the feedback, you've then got this option. If the outcome is, all right, I'm going to try and lift my game and become an A player, then you go, right. Let me be more coach like with you. So as you think, Morgan, about how you can lift your game and specifically in this area, doing this thing, what's the real challenge here for you? And that's one of the coaching questions from the Coaching Habit book. I know you'll recognize that right away. And now you're into helping them figure out how they're going to kind of do their very best to achieve the thing that you want to achieve.
- [17:42]
A
Yeah. When I have difficult conversations, I will absolutely pull up the list of questions to ask so that I stay on my own. I completely agree with you. Like, I have to be emotionally regulated oftentimes before I can enter into conversations with employees or partners where I know it's going to be heavily based in emotion and judgment. And frankly, to your point, 75% of the conversation is genuinely a difference of judgment or difference of perspectives. Right. You know, the circumstances of the facts oftentimes are the thing that needs to be discussed. It's like, okay, how did we get here?
- [18:24]
B
Well, let me ask you in what I shared with you there, because there's a lot. What felt most useful or most valuable for you in that?
- [18:32]
A
I think that as people leaders, it's our responsibility to manage ourselves first, because that's 100% in my control. My preparation for the conversation, my emotional state, going into a conversation, making sure that I have different outcomes of how I want to have the conversation. If this conversation goes this way and we get into an emotional where I can see this person is starting to shut down, how am I going to respond? If we get into this situation and I see this person is actually really engaged and maybe they themselves already were aware that there were some challenges and they just didn't know how to bring it up. But they want help. They have aspirations for improvement. Okay, how am I going to approach it there? I really try to scenario out when I'm operating in my best self as a people leader. I try to outline the scenarios of, like, okay, how should I. How can I respond in this. This moment so that I'm helping us get to the intended outcome together? And that intended outcome may be one of three options.
- [19:29]
B
Yeah. Brilliant. And so for folks listening, what just happened there was me being coach like, because the question I asked Morgan was, so from all of that, what was most useful or most valuable? And this is the final question in the Coaching Habit book. The teaching question or the learning question? And the insight behind that question is it's actually hard for people to extract the value of the experience unless you give them space to extract the value from the experience. So by asking Morgan that question, I interrupted the flow. I had to reflect on what just happened. She named it for herself in her own language and in her own words. In her brain, neural connections are being made and strengthened, and she gets stronger and clearer about, look, Michael gave me a whole lot of stuff, but this is what I want to remember, which is around. Keep working on the self regulation, because if I can be my best self in a tough conversation, that serves me and it serves the person, it serves the conversation as well.
- [20:32]
A
Absolutely.
- [20:33]
B
And I'm saying that as a teaching point because it doesn't feel like coaching. It doesn't feel like it's a coach. Oh, Michael's coaching here. He's just being curious. He's just going, so, what was most useful here for you? And how naturally that flowed. But it was a little bit of a coaching moment.
- [20:49]
A
And it also requires you to slow down. You know, it requires you to be an active listener, which I think for a lot of people is hard because you're moving a mile a minute. You're trying to get through the conversation, you're trying to get to the next thing. We can't. You gotta slow down. You know, you gotta have a genuine conversation, which means you need to listen more than you speak nice.
- [21:06]
B
Yeah.
- [21:06]
A
Which can be very difficult for a lot of people, including myself. So, you know, the objective of this whole podcast and this whole show is to help people understand the tools that are available to them so they can be their best version of themselves.
- [21:18]
B
Right, right.
- [21:19]
A
Let's transition to some of the new work that you've done recently. You know, how to work with anybody.
- [21:25]
B
Yeah, right. How to work with almost Anybody with Almost Anybody, which is like my favorite book title I've ever come up with because everybody knows who there almost is. And I'm like, I couldn't write a book called how to Work with Anybody because I'm like, I don't know how to work with everybody, but I know how to work with almost anybody because some people are terrible and some people I just don't click with. But yes, you know, our working relationships are so integral to our happiness and to our success. And for most people, and I'm going to guess almost everybody listening here, most of us just leave it down to fate. We roll the dice, we go. I hope I get lucky, I cross my fingers and I want to help people more actively shape the quality of those working relationships so they have a better time and the other person has a better time and you do better work and everybody wins.
- [22:11]
A
So what are the fundamentals of working with someone? I mean to your point, like we are all working in collaboration with others. Like we are all, we are social human beings. And so by nature if you in fact are working and even if you're not working, I mean like I look at some of my friends who are stay at home moms and they're negotiating constantly all day with school teachers and after school programs and I mean just all types of stuff. So really it's how to be in relation with, with everyone in some ways. Exactly. What are some of the fundamentals of your book? How do you structure it?
- [22:42]
B
Well, I'll give you the kind of the rapid fire top line and then I'm going to suggest a particular thing which you, you've prompted from our conversation so far. So the key insight is that our working relationships are really, really drive our happiness and our success. If you buy into that, then I'm going to say your aspiration for all of those key people who influence your happiness and success is to build a bpr, a best possible relationship, not best relationship because not every working relationship is, you know, a unicorn tap dancing through a meadow, burping up a rainbow. It's like with you and me, what's the best we can create together? And BPR has three core attributes to it. It is safe, meaning psychological safety. Mean people can talk about what's not working and bring their full self to work. It's vital, meaning you're able to take risks, say the hard things, step into ambiguity, push and challenge each other and it's repairable, meaning when it gets dinged and dented and cracked, because they always do. There's A way that you go, let's fix this so we can get back to where we were or even better than we were. So that's the ambition, a bpr, a best possible relationship that is safe and vital and repairable. And the core tactic is a keystone conversation. And a keystone conversation is let's talk about how we work together before we start working together. And that almost never happens because the work is always urgent and important and a crisis. And that's why we holding the meeting to talk about the work. And that's what the metrics measure, the work. So it's very rare that people go, hey, look, before we plunge into this project or even as we're working on this project together, how do you and I best work to amplify our best, avoid the annoying bits and fix things when things go wrong. Now, five questions in the keystone conversation. I'm going to ask you the first one because you have talked about. I'm trying to prepare myself in tough conversations to be the best version of me, my best self. What that assumes is, you know, the best version of yourself. And so the very first, there are five questions to ask and answer in a keystone conversation. But the first question is, what's your best? When do you shine and when do you flow? It's not asking what are you good at? Because often that's not that interesting and sometimes a bit misleading. It's not asking, you know, what are your values or what are your strengths. It's asking, what's your best? When do you shine and when do you flow? So Morgan, I don't know you at all, so I'm just curious to know as you talk about who you are, what's your best? I mean, when do you shine and when do you flow?
- [25:32]
A
You know, my best is when I have as much information as possible that I have had time to think through and prep. I'm a prepper, so my team knows. Send me the pre read, send me the agenda in advance, send me as much information as you want to send me. I will read it all.
- [25:51]
B
Yeah.
- [25:52]
A
And that is, that is my commitment to you if we're going to have this meeting or if we're going to have this conversation or you want me to sign this contract, I need to have all the information in advance.
- [26:00]
B
Got it.
- [26:02]
A
And then I think the, what it allows me to do is process my own questions. And I, you know, I talk to myself in my head like any other person does, where I say, okay, well how about this? How about this? Okay, well I already know the answer to that. I don't need to ask that question. Right. So I think that's the first thing. And the second thing is having other people enter the conversation with us understanding the outcome that we're both attempting to achieve.
- [26:28]
B
Got it.
- [26:29]
A
Because I think a lot of times in conversations, particularly now in my role as CEO, we're not necessarily all going for the same outcome because I have a longer term vision, I have a longer term outcome that I'm trying to get through. Depending on the level of person in my organization. They're not, they don't care.
- [26:44]
B
No, I'm like, I'm thinking about the next week. You're thinking about the next three to five years. They're different.
- [26:50]
A
That's right. Yeah, that's right. And they're like. And I'm trying to get offline. Like, I'm not even trying to be on this call.
- [26:55]
B
Right.
- [26:55]
A
So. Right.
- [26:57]
B
Yeah.
- [26:57]
A
We're fully remote company. So you got people all over, you know, the country starting the end times. Like, we're very flexible. So some people are like, I gotta get off this car, I gotta pick up my kid. I'm like, what are you talking about? It's 1:30 in the afternoon. So really just understanding. Okay. What is our objective of this conversation?
- [27:12]
B
Yeah.
- [27:13]
A
And that really helps, I think all of us and me be specific.
- [27:19]
B
Yeah.
- [27:19]
A
So that we don't go out of scope.
- [27:22]
B
And what's the, what are the type of working relationships where you thrive best? I mean, like I tell you, for me, I love being in a one to many group. Like one of the places I shine is when I'm teaching on a stage, you know, like I've just come back from teaching in front of like a couple of thousand people. And man, I love that. Like, I totally light up for that. But equally, one of the places I love to do is just sit in my own little office by myself and just figure stuff out, create the next. Are trying to figure out how to teach complicated things in a way that feels simple and accessible for people. So like working with no people. Whereas a day of endless meetings slowly crushes my soul. I mean, it's like not my best at all. So I'm curious for you, you know, what's the type of working relationships when you shine and when you flow?
- [28:10]
A
I love a working group. Put me in a war room. Let's get it. Like I'm a fan of. We've got a big hairy problem to solve and we're gonna meet every two weeks. Everybody has their domain expertise. Everybody knows what they're responsible for. And we're gonna be a mix between a collaborative and democratic approach to how we're gonna solve this problem. We've got three months. Let's do it. You know, and those are so fun to me because I love working with people that really know their stuff. And I'm like, I don't aspire to be you at all. Like, I don't aspire to know everything about ad operations and impressions and viewability and all of the things that go into the actual part of, you know, running a digital media company as it relates to display advertising. And I don't aspire to know everything about SEO and how AI is going to impact SEO and how that needs to change how we write the things.
- [29:05]
B
Yeah, that's.
- [29:06]
A
That's lovely. Let's talk about it. But I don't aspire to be the expert.
- [29:10]
B
Right, right. So here's what's so powerful about this. Like, just imagine that you just hired me maybe as a vendor, maybe as somebody in your senior leadership team. I would show up and I would just make up a whole bunch of stuff about you. After about a nanosecond, I'm like, oh, yeah, I think I figured out. I think I get that. It's almost all projection around what I'm thinking about myself and experience of working with people like you in the past.
- [29:36]
A
Right.
- [29:37]
B
And it would be really helpful for me to go, let me tell you when I light up. Let me tell you what I need. Let me tell you what I don't need. Because I'm like, right, okay, so that's Morgan at her best. I like Morgan at her best. So how do I. How do I do all I can to make sure that I'm delivering that so I get the very best of her? And then when I tell you about me and some of the things that light me up or how I. When I'm at my best, you can then go, well, look, I hired Michael because I want him at his best.
- [30:08]
A
That's right.
- [30:08]
B
So how do I. How do I hear what actually is true about him? Because, like, me making up a whole bunch of stuff about you, you have made up a whole bunch of stuff about me. But now we get to see and hear each other more completely in a more nuanced way, and we get clues as to go, look, if this is true about you and this is true about me, well, how do we combine these things to give us the very best chance of all of that and as much of the non good stuff as possible so that we Crush the work that we're doing in the best possible way.
- [30:42]
A
Absolutely. And we feel good about it. You know, we're not annoyed of how we got there. And I think what I love about your books is it's like you're never finished. Right. It's never. It's a constantly evolving thing. Even in this conversation now, I'm thinking of four or five scenarios where we have new employees, new executives, and we haven't had that conversation.
- [31:03]
B
Right.
- [31:03]
A
You know, because we were busy. They came in, I was on mat leave, all these different types of things. So we didn't really have an opportunity to do my best practice of how to work together. And there would be deep. They might be six months, nine months, two years in. Right, Right. So in those scenarios where you have to reset and reestablish some of these best practices, how do you recommend that I have that conversation or engage in those kind of like, oops, I messed up here, let me. Let me come back and try to recoup some credibility.
- [31:36]
B
You know, it's simple, and I'm going to say difficult, but it's not really difficult. It's just awkward. It's simple, but awkward. Where you go, hey, you pretty much say exactly what you just told me, hey, I should have done this six months ago. I should have done this nine months ago. But, you know, life got in the way. But can we just take a beat and actually have a conversation about how we're doing together, how we're working together? I want to actually get a more nuanced understanding about what brings out your best. I'd like you to have that about me as well, because I think that's only going to serve us well for going forward. So it's just having the courage to make that first invitation where you say, hey, let's just have a meeting, you and me, where we talk about how we're working well together. And part of the power of a keystone conversation is the answers you get in the moment. That's certainly helpful, but what's also powerful about it is it keeps giving you permission to keep talking about the health of the relationship. Like the fifth and final question in the keystone questions, how will we fix it when things go wrong? Now, when you start working with somebody, particularly when you're the CEO, nobody wants to go, let's talk about it how when things go wrong, because maybe this is the perfect working relationship where it's all goodness and light the whole time, but guaranteed things will go wrong. You know, somebody shows up at work hangry because they skip breakfast. Somebody misunderstands the communication. Something happens with a commitment and it falls through. You know, if you're a mat, leave your kid kept you awake all night. So you're like, I'm just massively underslept and, you know, a bit cranky because of that. You know, there's all sorts of reasons, a thousand reasons why things go a little bit wrong. But when you go, how will we fix it when things go wrong? The power of that question is probably twofold. One is it says things will go wrong. And that's a great relief, particularly for the people to whom you're senior, because you can say, look, I'm going to screw up, you're going to screw up, it will happen. And that's just part of a working relationship. It's not a failure, it's just part of the process. Secondly, it's how will we fix it? So you're making a shared commitment and a shared responsibility to say, look, I'm going to notice when it's going off the track a bit, off the rails a bit, and I'm going to say, how do we come back and we fix it? And you preemptively figure out how you might repair things. Like, let me ask you, Morgan, how do you like to repair things when things go wrong? What's your typical approach and strategy?
- [34:16]
A
It's a good question. I think that when things are not turning in the right direction, I first actually go back to some of the things we talked about earlier, Michael, in terms of do I actually need to fix this? Do I have an unfair expectation or do I have something that's telling that I want us to be somewhere that's just not realistic.
- [34:37]
B
Yeah.
- [34:38]
A
And I would say half the time I need to let it go. Actually, I would say like half the time my expectation or my request or my desire is not reasonable or it's not worth the risk. The downfall, the emotional fallout of a conversation potentially going wrong. So that's one thing, actually, that I do. So then in the other 50% of the time where I'm like, no, this is critical because it's impacting other people or it's emotionally impacting me, or there's. There's fear amongst the group or whatever it may be that I say, okay, so let me have a conversation with this person and let me tell them we're going to have a conversation about something great and give them a heads up on what the conversation is going to be about so that they're not surprised. So, you know, I try to make sure, let's call it an employee. It's never during our one on one, you know, I set up a separate time and I say, hey, you know, I've observed these things.
- [35:42]
B
Yeah.
- [35:43]
A
Based off my observations, this is what I'm thinking. Like this is my, this is the outcome from these observations.
- [35:50]
B
So there's a bit of data. There is what I observed. That's a data thing. And here's my observations. That's often a feeling judgments combination coming through there.
- [35:58]
A
So that's exactly like, here's my judgment based off of these observations.
- [36:01]
B
Yeah.
- [36:02]
A
And then, and then I say, what's going on? Like, have you observed these things as well?
- [36:07]
B
Right.
- [36:08]
A
This is my expectation. And we are. There's a disconnect. So I usually start with, how can I help us get to a better place?
- [36:16]
B
So this is so helpful. Imagine I am your employee and hearing this from you, amongst other things, I would tell people I get irritated and half the time I wonder whether that's just my expectations are unreasonable.
- [36:29]
A
Yeah.
- [36:30]
B
So that would be really helpful because it's like, I'm going to call you in to go, can we figure this out together? And sometimes it will be because my expectations are unreasonable. And, and I'm totally fine with you pushing back on me when that's the case and going, that's not the expectation you set. That's not the expectation. That's humanly possible. Founders classically have a terrible understanding of time and space and what's possible.
- [36:54]
A
I'm like, I want this done yesterday.
- [36:57]
B
Yeah, exactly.
- [36:58]
A
It takes six months.
- [36:59]
B
Right? Right. So you teaching me how you work and kind of what winds you up and what you get wrong and where you get triggered is extremely helpful for me going, okay, that helps me manage this relationship like in my, for my team because I have a couple of companies and so I have a couple of teams that I'm part of. What kills me is not things going wrong or going slowly because I'm like, that's just life. What kills me is when there are open loops and I'm like, what's happening with that? Why is it, why is there nothing? Why? That really, that really makes me twitch. It's. It brings out my micromanager. It brings out every suspicion I have about the entire world. It makes me creepy and weird. So I'm like, look, if you, if, when in doubt, tell me what's going on. Even if it's like, I don't know what's going on. But we've lost the track of this somewhat.
- [37:51]
A
Yeah.
- [37:51]
B
That Makes me go great, because we can figure anything out.
- [37:54]
A
Right.
- [37:55]
B
But I can't figure it out if there's open loops and I don't know what's going on.
- [37:58]
A
That's right. Yeah, that's such a good point. Let's talk a little bit about your businesses. One of the things that I was really inspired by when I was kind of reading up on you, and actually I knew this because I believe Brand Builders Group, I don't know if you were ever a part of that.
- [38:10]
B
Yeah, I was. Rory.
- [38:11]
A
Rory.
- [38:11]
B
Bandit Rory.
- [38:12]
A
And so Brand Builders Group, you know, tells your story in terms of you are self published.
- [38:18]
B
I am.
- [38:19]
A
Which is incredible.
- [38:20]
B
You got it is incredible.
- [38:23]
A
I mean, most books fail and most books don't sell, you know, more than like, I think it's like a thousand copies or something. I mean, even less.
- [38:30]
B
Yeah.
- [38:31]
A
And you were able to self publish and have been incredibly successful at building your enterprise. And I just want to talk about a little bit how you've been able to create a perennial bestseller and what that is, you know, for those who maybe not are familiar.
- [38:46]
B
Yeah. So I mean, the story is that I had published books before. I self published some books before, and then I had a self published book get picked up by a New York publisher and they kind of rebooted it and redid it and it did pretty well. It sold, you know, now it sold about 100,000 copies, which is pretty good for a book because as you said, most books sell less than 5,000 copies in their lifetime. Most books sell less than a thousand copies in their lifetime. Now, whether you call that failure or not, that depends what your objective is with the book. Because sometimes having a book that only sells a thousand copies but has driven $1 million to your bottom line as your business, because you got your book into the right people's hands. So it depends what you're measuring as success. But in terms of book sales, it's really hard to sell books. So I had this idea for the Coaching Habit book and honestly, I pitched it to this New York publisher six or seven times. And they kept going, wow, isn't it? No, go back and do it again. So I go, and so I rewrote this book six or seven times and it crushed me. And finally I went, okay, look, I've thought about it and I think I've. I think I'm really clear what this book is and who it serves and how it could be helpful. So I went back and I pitched them and this time I said, it's a yes or a no. And if it's a no, I'm going to go off and do something else. This is your last chance. And I was pretty sure they're going to say yes because, you know, I'd had success with them before and you bet on the person and their ability to sell and all that stuff. Anyway, they said no. So I was like, ah. And I was pretty disappointed. And you know, after kind of licking my wounds and feeling sorry for myself for a little bit, I was like, you know what, I think there's something in this book and I'm going to self publish it. But my commitment was to do it as a professional because it's really easy to publish a book and do it in a perfectly okay way. But it always feels a bit kind of slapped together, amateurish. I was like, I'm going to hire a really good editor, I'm going to get a really good copy editor, I'm going to get a brilliant designer. I'm going to make this book as close to a officially published book as possible. And I did that, found a designer and actually the designer connected me to a hybrid publisher. The publisher is called page two. So in the world of publishing, there's actually kind of three ways of doing it. One is self publishing, which is like if you can create a PDF, you can basically upload it through the Amazon ecosystem and you'll have a book there. And they do print on demand, super cheap, super fast to do extremely profitable, like the most profitable way of doing this. But you probably have a slightly subpar, sub optimal book and also it probably won't sell that many copies. The other version is the traditional publisher, which is, you know, it's time travel because you suddenly discover what it's like working in the 18th century, because that's what, that's what most publishers are like. They're terrible. They don't know how to market a book. Very old school. They're just trying to pump books out in the world. They're terrible at marketing. They're playing a numbers game. So you often don't get that much editorial support or marketing support, but you do get somebody who's given you a tiny bit of money, perhaps in advance and is publishing a book for you. So if you can get that, that could be fine as a first way of doing it. But I'm almost, I've never really heard anybody go, I've just been amazed at how good my experience with my traditional publisher has been. Almost always just like, that was so disappointing.
- [42:09]
A
Yeah.
- [42:10]
B
In hybrid, which is what I champion Is particularly good if you're a person who is writing a book that has an ecosystem connected to it, a business behind it. You know, it's more than the book. You're like, I'm a book, but I'm a thought leader, or I'm a speaker, or I'm a trainer, or I'm a consultant, or I'm selling services as a way of building profile and building a brand and encouraging people to move through your book into the rest of your world. And with that, the basic business model is you pay money up front, somewhere between 30 and $50,000. Typically, you have a beautifully produced book by professionals, you know, brilliant editors, designers, and the like. You get all the distribution that a traditional book would have. You get three or four times more royalties or payments for the books being sold. And it's down to you to do all the selling and the marketing, pretty much just like it is with every other other book.
- [43:06]
A
So they support you getting into bookstores.
- [43:09]
B
So they help you with all the distribution. Certainly page two have they have a partnership with the second biggest distribution network in the world. So really powerful like that. So from people like me who create books, but I'm also a keynote speaker, I have a training companies that connected to it, I have membership sites, I have a back end to all of the books that I create. It just makes a ton of sense. And then I have this one book, the Coaching Habit, which has now sold 1.3, maybe 1.4 million. I don't know, some ridiculously high number. And because I get three times the value of the payment per book, it's literally generated millions of dollars for me because of betting on myself. Now selling a million copies of a book is impossible. Like, I've done it and I don't know how to do it because like I've written books since then and none of them have sold close to a million a copy. So you have to have a little strike of lightning and a sprinkle of magic fairy dust to pull that off.
- [44:12]
A
I mean, the COVID strong, the title strong. It's great SEO, you know, it's just. It really is the dream.
- [44:19]
B
I think it is a dream. But you know what, what makes that book succeed? And this takes us right back to the start of our conversation as people like you who bought 250 copies for the people you work with, for clients, for coaches, who buy copies for all that. I mean, once a week somebody goes, I'm probably the person who's bought the most copies of the Coaching Habit in the world because I Bought X number. Oh, no, I don't know. There's like. And that's. That word of mouth has turned out to be the true magic of why this book is really thriving.
- [44:52]
A
Yeah, I think that's, that's really helpful. My book is coming out in April and pre orders are launching really soon. Publisher route.
- [45:00]
B
Yeah.
- [45:01]
A
And it's been challenging for me. I love my publisher because I do think as a first time author, I've been able to learn a lot faster. You know, the learning curve as someone who has a full time job and I do all the things, the podcast and all this other stuff I did not have time to dedicate to.
- [45:16]
B
Yeah, it can be perfect. That's a perfect solution. Yeah.
- [45:19]
A
But you know, it's already like, oh, what's your second book gonna be? And I'm like, wait a minute, wait a minute. I don't know if we're gonna go down this route again.
- [45:28]
B
Yeah. Frankly, because it's a lot of work.
- [45:30]
A
It's a lot of work.
- [45:32]
B
It's a really brilliant idea in general to develop your thoughts, to develop your ip, to develop your reputation. But you know how much harder it is to write a book than to say, have a podcast. Like, this has been an hour of your life, plus preparation, plus the cost of producing it and launching it and the like. And a podcast, you know, if your pod. I don't know how many people listen to an episode, but if like it's a lot.
- [45:58]
A
Yeah, 40,000 plus.
- [46:00]
B
Exactly. So 40,000 people listening to this podcast. It's, you know, the odds of you selling 40,000 copies of your book, pretty low. I'm fingers crossed for you. I hope you crush it and you sell and you blow past that number. But you know, you'll be in a minority of 1% of people who sell more than 40,000 copies. What's your book called?
- [46:21]
A
It's called rewrite your rules.
- [46:23]
B
Nice. And who's it written for?
- [46:25]
A
It's written for ambitious people who have followed all of the societal advice and yet feel like their life is good, but could be better. They feel off balanced, you know, whether they put all of their time and energy in their career, but then they don't have the personal life or the health and wellness that they want, or they've put all their life in having fun, great experiences, but they don't have the career, the impact that they want with the work that they do every single day. So it's just helping people be able to redefine for themselves what success actually is. It's not Necessarily about how much money you have in your bank account, but it's about how you feel every day. And I had to learn that the hard way as an entrepreneur, where I spent my entire 20s, like, working my ass off. I slept with my laptop. Like, I was like, very. Just blavity was me. I was blavity. You could say, hey, blavity. As I was walking down the street, and I would turn around, you know, and I reached a level of success that everyone would say, you know, top 1% of 1% of raised venture funding, all the things. And I was like, y'all can have this. I do not want this anymore.
- [47:31]
B
I'm good.
- [47:33]
A
So I had to redefine for myself what success really was. I moved. I left, you know, the coast. I moved to Nashville. I bought a house, had a baby, did all types of different things. Yeah.
- [47:45]
B
And so on one level, this could appeal to people from almost any age from like 21 to 101. But I'm curious to know, do you have a more specific demographic in mind?
- [47:57]
A
Yeah, I think it's for people in their early 30s. You know, I think it's for people, I would say, like late 20s, early mid-30s, people who have been out in the world a little bit already and maybe went with the momentum of whatever they had originally chosen as their life.
- [48:12]
B
Yeah.
- [48:13]
A
And then realize, I want more.
- [48:16]
B
Yeah. That's that classic. Because I think there are these crossroad moments. I think there probably three crossroad moments in people's lives. The first is early 20s, where you're like, a lot of people are coming out of school. Your adult brain is finally developing, so you're actually adulting, and you're like, okay, what am I doing with my life?
- [48:32]
A
Yes.
- [48:33]
B
Then there's another crossroads, I think kind of mid-30s, typically, which is going, all right, I spent the last 10 years climbing this mountain, and I'm not sure this was the right mountain. I'm not sure I'm even a climber. What do I do? How do I. What's happened? Because I've ticked off a bunch of the goals I set myself, and it still hasn't proven to be enough. And then I think there's another crossroad moment, kind of mid-50s, where you're coming to the end of a kind of traditional career. If you have kids, your kids have left the house, so you're an empty nester. And now you're going, well, what am I doing? What am I doing with my. My life now? Because all the 30 year olds look at Me, like, I'm an old person, but I feel pretty young. I'm like, 55. I've got another 25 years of goodness in my life, I hope, ahead of me. And it feels like what you're saying is it's that. That middle crossroad, the 30, 35 crossroad might be that.
- [49:23]
A
I think that's definitely my core. I think what I've been surprised by is I've. One of the beautiful things about a podcast is you get to go know a lot more people. Social is a weird place because there's no, you know, it's just. It's a lot of voyeuristic energy. I think with the podcast, I've been able to get to know people a little bit better, and also they've been able to get to know me better. And what I found is actually have quite a few people in the 40 plus range who are listeners and followers and inspired because they are at the crossroads where they've. They're very successful, they've got great careers, and they are like, I want to be an entrepreneur. And I'm like, okay, let's talk about it. You know, so it's been interesting who I thought my original audience is versus who shows up most consistently.
- [50:08]
B
Yeah, that's exciting. Well, I'm cheering you on. It sounds like an important book.
- [50:12]
A
Thank you. I'm excited. Well, Michael, this has been so fun. I could talk to you forever because, again, I've literally read your book. Read your book and share it with everybody I know.
- [50:21]
B
Thank you.
- [50:22]
A
How can people connect with you? How can they stay connected to your world, your flow, and your future publication?
- [50:28]
B
Yeah. So the best place to go is MBS Works. That's the website, and that's a hub. You can find your way to any of the books I've written. And they all have free resources, so you can download videos and worksheets and the like. If you do socials, my social handles are there as well. So, yeah, just go to MBS Works and pillage it for all the free stuff. That would be my suggestion.
- [50:47]
A
Yeah. The first chapter of your book is available. That's it, I think, right on the. Right on your homepage. So you all. You heard it here first. Make sure you go check out those downloads and get connected to Michael's World. And, Michael, thank you so much for all that you've done for me, whether you knew it or not, and all of the work that you've produced.
- [51:04]
B
It's been a real pleasure. Thanks, Morgan.
- [51:06]
A
Thanks. All right, y'all I have a couple of requests for you this week. Number one, go to my YouTube channel and subscribe. I've been releasing my monthly vlogs. They're very cinematic, if I do say so myself. So make sure you check those out. Let me know if you're curious about the behind the scenes of how Josh and I have been navigating, you know, our first year of parenthood, traveling, running a business, and just the slowness of actually what it takes to build these types of companies. Go ahead and subscribe there and then make sure you also are joining our Work Smart community. We do monthly calls every single month, live Q and A with any question that you have. So if you want coaching, advice, mentorship, or if you want to just pitch me your startup, whatever it may be, the time and floor is yours. So I hope to see you guys. You can check that out on my website. All right, see you next week. Bye. Thanks for listening to the Journey podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, make sure you leave a review and head to our Instagram and YouTube to leave a comment. And look forward to hearing how this podcast has made an impact on your own Journey.