Patrick Adams  00:04

So many times there are people that get into leadership positions, and they’ve never led people before, and so they’re having to learn a new leadership style, or whatever it may be, it’s important that they’re developing some level of trust and also understanding the importance and the power of delegation as well. I think

Catherine McDonald  00:24

coaching, it becomes really important when you’ve got something to unlearn as well as learn. Coaching gives us that space to understand maybe the habits and behaviors that we have to maybe stop or change, as

Olaf Boettger  00:35

we all know from coaching, understanding the other person includes the realization that they are different unless they made that shift that suddenly it’s no longer about me, me, me, me. It’s about the other person. It’s about your team, about growing.

Patrick Adams  01:02

Hello, and welcome to this episode of the lean solutions podcast led by your host, Catherine McDonald from Ireland and myself. Patrick Adams, how’s it going? Catherine,

Catherine McDonald  01:11

good, good, good. Patrick, how are you? I’m

Patrick Adams  01:13

doing great. I’m doing amazing. Excited for, excited for, for summer. It’s It’s been a long winter, and the the sun is shining and starting to get warm out, and I’m looking forward to it very much. So,

Catherine McDonald  01:27

yeah, yeah, me too. We’re on midterm break here, and just can’t wait for kids to be back in school, to have the long days, you know, all of that. Yeah, yeah, it’s coming. Patrick, don’t worry, we’ll get we’re nearly there,

Patrick Adams  01:40

absolutely well, Catherine, I’m excited about today’s topic. The title for the the show today is coaching for success, and we’re going to be talking talking with our guest, who will introduce here in just a minute, but we’ll be talking about tips for developing and mentoring emerging leaders. I think this is a really important topic today, because so many times there are people that get into leadership positions, and, you know, maybe they’re maybe they’ve been at a company for a long time, and they’ve done really well at whatever job it was that they were doing, but and so they were promoted into a leadership position. But maybe they’ve never had, they’ve never led people before, or maybe they moved into a new company with a different culture that maybe leads differently, and so they’re having to learn a new leadership style, or whatever it may be, wherever they are in the organization, it’s important that they’re developing some level of trust and also understanding the importance and the power of delegation as well. I don’t know your thoughts and on today’s topic. Oh

Catherine McDonald  02:43

yeah, I’m so looking forward to it. You know, coaching is definitely my thing at the moment. Actually, it’s, I think it’s becoming more popular, definitely in Ireland, which I’m very glad to see more investment into it from from businesses of all sizes. And I think as well, the way that I usually explain it to business owners or business leaders is that training is great if you want people to learn something new. You know, probably know what I’m going to say here. You’re nodding there. But I think coaching, it becomes really important when you’ve got something to unlearn as well as learn or learn, because coaching gives us that space to understand maybe the habits and behaviors that we have to maybe stop or change, not just take on or do differently. So I think that’s where, for me, coaching it just it’s just so important to blend it with whatever training we’re giving our leaders. So I’m really looking forward today. I

Patrick Adams  03:34

love it. That’s a such a great point about the unlearn piece, because I can tell you, in my experience as well, there’s so many, so many things that I’ve learned over the years that I probably should have never learned. And I find, I find those things sometimes coming out in, you know, whether it’s, you know, at work or parenting, or whatever it might be. And I’m like, you know, that’s something from my past, or some, something that was a learned behavior that is not supposed to be in this particular conversation, you know? And so I think that’s a really good point, and the best way to help with that is coaching. And so I think that’s a great point. I’m glad you brought that up. Well, I’m excited for our guest today. Do you Catherine? Do you want to tell our listeners a little bit about who we are bringing into the show today?

Catherine McDonald  04:27

Yes, indeed. So today, we are joined by Olaf Bucha, with 26 years of experience in continuous improvement, Olaf brings a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective shaped by leadership roles at two of the world’s most respected organizations, Procter and Gamble and Danaher, so to be specific, he spent 10 years at Procter and Gamble and 16 years at Danaher. What an achievement. His expertise spans over three core areas, business leadership, continuous improvement and executive coaching, whether. Driving operational excellence, leading transformation or coaching executives. He brings a powerful blend of strategy, systems thinking and people development to the table. So welcome to the show. Olaf,

Olaf Boettger  05:11

Thanks, Catherine, thanks for having me. You’re

Catherine McDonald  05:15

very welcome. I have a question, Olaf, I’m dying to know which do you prefer? What’s your favorite? Do you prefer business leadership or business development, continuous improvement, or do you prefer to coach?

Olaf Boettger  05:26

I really like all three of them. And as you and Patrick have just talked a bit about, unlearning, there’s bits and pieces which come up as more important and others become less important. At the moment, executive coaching is my favorite one, and I’m learning a lot, and it’s all about learning and continuous improvement anyway, isn’t it? Yeah,

Catherine McDonald  05:51

great. Well, great, because that’s what we’re here to talk about, Patrick, isn’t

Patrick Adams  05:54

it? It is. Yes, I’m glad that you said executive coaching, Olaf, I’m interested just to kind of kick us off this morning. There’s always depending on the leader that you’re coaching, there can be some significant challenges at the executive level. When it comes to coaching at that level, can you maybe just kick us off with maybe just a little bit of your experience coaching at the executive level. What are some of the maybe some of the challenges that you’ve experienced, maybe some of the positive things that have come out of some specific coaching at that level?

Olaf Boettger  06:34

Yeah, absolutely. I think first of all, there’s not really that much of a difference between executive coaching and coaching other than executive coaching, sounds much fancier, so that’s I think the main difference is time. And one of the things I learned moving up in my career was that you have a good 60 or 90 minutes with somebody who’s entry career level, and you can really talk and go into detail. When you work with somebody at executive level, you’re lucky if you get 20 or 25 minutes. So the time compression, the focus on the quality of the questions you need to ask and sort of the speed with which you need to act is very much different. So that’s what I learned. And obviously, being in business myself, it sort of helps to get the environment we are probably going into recession again. So that’s a different environment than if everybody’s has good temper, everybody’s happy and picking that up and making sure you get as much value as possible for the client is probably the key thing in executive coaching.

Patrick Adams  07:49

Yeah, no, I think that that’s a really good point about time. Do you adjust your coaching style, or maybe your delivery, or whatever the topic is that you’re working on with that particular leader, do you adjust to fit that you know? Again, if you’re working with an Executive leader who can maybe only meet for, you know, 10 minutes a day, how, what does that look like in comparison to maybe a frontline leader who has maybe a little bit more time, or the ability to be more flexible with that? Yeah,

Olaf Boettger  08:23

usually Patrick the executive, has more of a sense of what they want or what they need. So one of the things I learned from from David Peterson, who was the leader of coaching at Google, was to go write in one of these wonderful questions David taught us was, what would you like to work on today? It’s as simple as that to go right in and then give the executive co chief. You like the opportunity to say, well, I’d like to work on my ri today. Or I would would like to work on engagement. What I would like to talk about the operational problem I had this morning, or I need to fire a person. I’m not sure what is the right thing to do, so you go right in, whereas with others, you might need a bit more small talk to build up trust. You might need a bit more understanding about what what’s the background they are in, you might need a bit more understanding what, what, what they’re looking for, so you have less time to sort of get the context or get the history. And what I learned in that course with David Peterson was, Oh, my God, it works, right? He would, you would do coaching, life coaching in our calls, and people would come with whatever, and he’d literally coach them to a solution within 20 minutes. And we were like, wow. And you know, sometimes we joke about coaches myself included. Oh, well, give me your background and about your childhood and when you grew up and who you played with. And. All the rest of it, he would have none of that 20 minutes. And he said 20 minutes is a lot of time, which in a normal context, it isn’t, but in the executive coaching context it certainly is. So I learned a lot from him.

Catherine McDonald  10:16

I think you make a really good point in all of that, all of that coaching, it’s very hard to put a definition on coaching, because coaching actually looks different for everybody, for every role, for every organization. It does look different, and I’ve seen the same. Sometimes people know what they want out of coaching, more often they don’t, in my experience, and it’s up to us to try and put some sort of semi structure on that, let’s say, as coaches to help people, prompt people to think about what they want, but all the time trying to step back and let them guide it. So it’s it’s not easy, right?

Olaf Boettger  10:49

Indeed, indeed. And then the German speaking context, coaching is a pretty bad word. So people know that you have a coach. It’s like a few weeks before the HR department comes and talks to you. So in Germany, you always need to dance around the world of coaching, because you don’t really want to talk about coaching. You want to talk about people development. You want to talk about training, even if it’s a bad analogy. But that’s, that’s sort of the German speaking baggage we have, but thank God, I work in English speaking, but it

Catherine McDonald  11:31

adds another layer of complexity then, which you don’t need.

Olaf Boettger  11:35

It does. Once people get into it, it’s a bit easier, but it’s this, oh my god, Catherine, you have a coach. What’s wrong with you? Yeah, that’s, that’s sort

Catherine McDonald  11:47

of, I do see that in Ireland as well, everywhere. I mean, in plenty of organized, probably most organizations, there’s still this. Why am I being put forward for this? It’s not seen as actually a support in a lot of places, it’s not seen as something to celebrate or to be thankful for. It’s something to be questioned. It’s something to worry about. And I really think that needs to change big time. So

Patrick Adams  12:11

true, it’s like, it’s like a mindset shift that has to happen for for everyone that in the organization to to understand the value that it brings to to individuals. And in speaking of mindset, I think about emerging leaders, obviously we have, we have leaders that are at every level of organizations, that are listening in from all over the world, different industries. But you know, many people are, you know, I would consider, in this space of emerging leaders that are, you know, currently be, have just been promoted, or are working towards a promotion, or, you know, whatever it may be. And I wonder, I am curious to know if you could tell us or walk us through maybe one key mindset shift that you’ve seen emerging leaders that they need to make, and maybe how you coach them through it?

Olaf Boettger  13:06

Yeah, absolutely. I, when I prepared for the session, I took down this, this, this one quote from Jack Welch, which, which, I really like he said before you’re a leader. Success is all about growing yourself. Once you’re a leader, success is all about growing others. And I think a lot of people, myself included, underestimate that shift, that suddenly it’s no longer about me, me, me, me, me, it’s about the other person. It’s about your team. It’s about growing your people. So that’s what, what I always have in mind is sort of the key mindset shift. And then what, what that includes, obviously, is getting rid of your ego, or at least quieten your ego a bit. Because again, it’s no longer about you, it’s about understanding the other person. And as we all know from coaching, understanding the other person includes the realization that they are different. Not everybody is like the Germans, right? You have you talk on a technical level, and that’s it, stereotyping a bit. Other people are different, and that’s the same when you have somebody reporting to you? I thought myself. I made the mistake for many years that I worked on my credibility only right. So you always need to be better than the person you have in your team. I didn’t work that much on trust, and in a German environment, that’s okay to a certain extent, at least okay, but in an international environment, especially if you work with Southern Europeans, with people from Italy or Spain or turkey, that doesn’t work at all. And those were learning moments for me where I had to pull myself back and say, well, it’s about the other person. It’s not about me. Yes, I might feel uncomfortable, but hey, that’s part and parcel of being a manager. It’s about serving them. And this idea of servant leadership, I think, is an important one, which I think could be and should be a bit stronger. And I think Catherine, as you said, that’s where coaching comes in and helping young leaders sort of find their own way. I can give some advice, but hey, if I get new people leaders in the team, they are, what, 30 years, 25 years younger than I am, I’m not sure whether they would want to take my advice. So it’s more about helping them find their own way. I would say, Sure.

Patrick Adams  15:43

Can I just want to ask a follow up question on that? Because I think about an organization that I once worked in where the culture was very heavy in that if you wanted to be promoted at the that particular company, then you had to, you had to think about yourself, and you had to be doing things specifically to make yourself known and to make other leaders see you as as a as an emerging leader, and it was very much about yourself versus about what you could do for other people. And obviously a very difficult culture to work in. I’m sure that there are people listening that are in a culture like that, or maybe a hybrid of like, well, how do I how do I show myself so that I can, you know, work towards promotion, but also be a good leader in in on the side of servant leadership and putting others, others needs, ahead of my own. How do you balance that in your experience or or do you just go one way and forget the other? What are your thoughts?

Olaf Boettger  16:48

Yeah, that’s a good question, Patrick, because it’s never black and white, right, right? We had an example recently where one member of my team who works as the continuous improvement leader in the leadership team of one of our operating companies. And there was the question of, well, we want to have the people in the room for the CEO review small, and as I’m not directly presenting, I feel I’m wasting time, so I’m not going to go to the CEO review, which for me, was a case where I did coach him, because I said, Look, this isn’t the culture where continuous improvement ever is a waste of time, or where even if you are, if you don’t have a PowerPoint presentation or contribution yourself, you just need to be there for this, for the sake of it, right, for being there to continue this improvement leader, and that’s an example, Patrick, where, yes, he was thinking about the team. He was thinking about his direct reports, and he stepped back a bit, and I said, No, for your own career, for your own visibility, for your own success, you have to go. And I literally said it that way. So he changed his mind. He went, and he got a lot of good learnings, and actually came back to me afterwards and said, Hey, what’s good that we talked about it before? So that’s an example where he maybe stepped back a bit too much, which, even in our culture, was probably wouldn’t have been the right thing. And by talking about it or by coaching, you can always sort of get it into the right level, so that you don’t go overboard in one extreme, or you don’t go overboard on the other extreme. So maybe just from real life, actually, just what three weeks ago, or something, so that that’s pretty fresh in my in my mind.

Catherine McDonald  18:57

And Olaf, can you give us a sense of what coaching looks like in these bigger organizations that you’ve worked in. I know you’ve mentioned, time wise, you get more time with maybe frontline leaders or mid level leaders, and maybe less time with more senior leaders or CEOs. But what does coaching look like, typically, for if you are signed up to coaching, or if you volunteer to get coaching, what does it look like in your experience?

Olaf Boettger  19:24

Yeah, you get you get all sorts of Catherine. So it’s very difficult to say, this is the coaching, right? There’s kind of open space sessions with my fellow executives, and in the in biotechnology groups, or one of the Dana groups. I fellow peers in the in the leadership team of that group. And when we have one on one meetings, it’s a bit like coaching, hey, what would you like to work on today? And we get a whole bunch of things. Then. In my team, we have more formal coaching sessions in Marshall, Goldsmith, stakeholder center coaching, for example, where we work on a specific behavior, and then most of the time after the initial 360 we talked about the most recent feedback they got, or feed forward, we often call it sort of ideas for improvement, and then how they are putting that into practice. I get young people, early career people, call me and say, hey, you’ve been in this for so long. Can we talk a bit about my career? Sure, happy. I’ve got about two or three calls of those calls on the typical day when I’m not traveling. So you get a whole bunch of different ways of coaching. And that’s a bit of challenge for me that I very quickly. I need to get back into the picture. I use my my notes, which are right here below the camera. The one note, oh, okay, it’s Catherine. Her topic is this, and then oh, it’s Patrick. Patrick asked me last time about this DBS thing, which I should have gotten him and should have sent him, I’ve forgotten that. Okay, so let’s talk about that. So it’s getting very quickly into the frame and have and be able to add value quickly. I think that’s that’s the main challenge in this environment, which

Catherine McDonald  21:20

it is. And just another question on that then, and I think this could be possibly a barrier, from what I see anyway, for business leaders and owners to say, invest in coaching. Because you say is a business leader says, let’s say to you, or to me or to Patrick, okay, I’m thinking about coaching. Tell me, you know what that looks like. What can you provide? And if you say to a business leader, I’ll provide some space, you know, for people to ask me questions, I think sometimes they don’t, they don’t get that, you know. And whereas we can see sometimes that’s what’s needed, right? It is just space, time to let the other person speak for us, to listen and to work things out that way. But I find organizations are looking now for a little bit more structure to their coaching programs. They’re looking to bring in role based competencies to work on specific competencies and behaviors that are aligned to meeting the goals of the organization. And it’s sort of going that way, um, from what I can see. So I just love to get your thoughts on that. Is that that okay? Do you think that that’s sometimes necessary? What do you think

Olaf Boettger  22:26

it’s a good question, and we could even argue whether those, one on one with my peers are coaching or not, right? And we can have a whole discussion about that. But I’m with you, Catherine, if, if, if we talk about coaching in the narrow sense, it should be a package. It should be something which adds value, and it should be something which has a clear goal. And that’s what I like about stakeholder center coaching, that you have a clear definition at the beginning about what the behavior is you want to improve. You have a key idea for your six to 12 stakeholders out who help you get better, and then we do mini surveys, typically after six months and 12 months, where these stakeholders actually tell you whether you’ve improved or not, on a minus three to plus three scale, which then makes it measurable. And it’s not if I, as the coach, think you’ve improved, it’s your stakeholders who work with you on a daily basis, who can give you input on what they like, what they don’t like, and that’s been really powerful for the for the people who’ve done it and they see value in it, and they so with with some of these coachings, I got the feedback like, Well, this has literally changed my life, which is like, whoops, but hey, it’s been really useful. And then sometimes, in some areas, it’s helped people who’ve been struggling with this behavior and their career for a while. I mean, executive presence is one of these classics, right? You need to improve your executive presence, yeah, but what does that mean? And it means different things for different people in different organizations or different cultures. So I think back to the question, yes, structured coaching program is a good thing because you’re clear about what you want to do, what you want to achieve, and you also clear on whether you have achieved it or not, and that’s what we then can sell it on, or can can base the value on

Patrick Adams  24:30

Olaf, I heard you say daily. So for these structured coaching programs, are you meeting every day? And it sounds like maybe that the amount of time is different. But what’s the time frame like? Is this a is this a two week thing? Is it a four month thing? Does it depend? What are the what’s the timeline look like?

Olaf Boettger  24:52

Um, for stakeholder center coaching, it’s typically a year, because it takes a while until. Your stakeholders see the change and perceive the change and acknowledge the change. Right? We all know that when we, when we go home to most significant others say, I had this wonderful discussion today, as of now, I’m going to change, they start laughing right away, because they won’t believe us. And stakeholders are the same. So for these, let me call it Big behavior change programs. It’s, it should probably be six months or a year, and in we typically meet either on a monthly or bi weekly cadence, for those in in other areas, like if, if there’s an important presentation to be prepared, and we use this as a coaching opportunity. It might literally be daily coaching, or if I do Kaizen coaching for somebody who’s facilitating a Kaizen event, a weekly kaizen event, yeah, that’s also daily, because we spend time every every evening, looking at how the day is gone and what they might want to change in the way they facilitate so again, it’s very flexible according to what what the person needs.

Catherine McDonald  26:05

Sure, I’m sure I like your I like your approach in not jumping in with the feedback too quickly, because I do believe people need time to just work on themselves, to understand themselves better, understand their strengths, their areas for development before they ask somebody else, almost, because if you ask somebody else, you get a shock if you haven’t worked on yourself, right? So a coach can help you work on yourself, so that the feedback is not as much of a shock. Because I’ve worked in organizations where the feedback was too fast from other people and it led to a lot of upset because people weren’t ready for it. So like your long term approach, I think that’s that’s great, Olaf,

Olaf Boettger  26:45

it’s a good point, Catherine, and that’s why, like Marshall Goldsmith, I like to talk about feed forward more. Hey, Catherine, can you help me become a better listener that is a lot more future orientated and gets met with less resistance than Hey, you’re a lousy listener. You will need coaching now. Well, that’s a different reaction, right? So, true.

Catherine McDonald  27:12

So, so then, how do you spot potential in somebody who is saying to you, I really, I’m terrible at this. I really don’t know if I can change. I don’t know why I’m even here. So how do you how do you see potential and work with people and do all of that and get them out the other side in a better state?

Olaf Boettger  27:33

What I typically do, and you might call it, career conversations, but they’re sort of structured career conversations. First of all, I like to ask people about their destination job. So if they fast forward their career for the next 1015, 20, maybe 30 years, what would they like to end up with in in the company? And for us, it’s obviously or for me, it’s mostly in within Danielle Proctor and Gamble before, but you can do this with anyone right. Where do you want to end up? Do you want to become president of something? Do you want to do a really good job in what you’re doing? Do you want to specialize yourself? Do you want to start teaching? Do you want to go to university, whatever? But playing the long game helps me to understand where people want to go if they want to go somewhere, and that’s usually a good start of the conversation, because about 60% of the people I talk to tell me, Well, I’ve never really thought about it. That’s an interesting question. And I think if people are not really sure where they want to go, at least direction wise, it’s difficult to help them in coaching or training, because it’s a bit like going on on vacation and going on holidays. If I don’t know where I’m going, talking about the mode of transport might not be good idea, right? If I want to visit Patrick in the US, taking the train from Germany is not going to get me very far. So that’s why the destination job is very important, and that can be discussions which go over 369, months, because people are sort of evaluating and can I be as aggressive as saying as I want to get to the VP level? Why not other reasonably intelligent people have made it look at myself. I’m not better than you, so why wouldn’t you? Well, I’m not sure whether I can. I can say that. Well, why not? What’s what’s blocking you, what’s in the way? And once we were clear on the destination job, or at least sort of a direction, then it’s much easier to say, how, how do we, how do we get you there? What will be a skill or change or training you could do in the next three to six months in order to get you there, which would add value for you to become a vice president or to become an engineering leader, an operations leader on the line? Um? And usually that gives me a structure of, sort of the long term, what’s the long term destination, and then what’s sort of the mode of transport to get there? I found that very helpful in helping people realize their own potential, if you like, and then also help add a bit of value in getting them closer to their dream job or destination. Very

Patrick Adams  30:20

nice in regards to those kind of, those modes of transportation, maybe we can go a little bit deeper on that and talk like, you know, practical tools or practical approach. In specifically, I think about frontline leaders, maybe who are new, new in leadership, and maybe haven’t gained the confidence yet or or maybe are looking to try to build some trust between them and their team members. Can you give us some, some more kind of tactical tools on what you might use, or what you might say to someone that you’re coaching who’s in that position?

Olaf Boettger  30:54

Yeah, absolutely. One of the the things which is very important in Danah, as we used the Toyota Production System, sort of legacy, like many others, is going to GEMBA, going to the real place, as you both know, and most of the listeners will probably know as well. So that helps me to see a young leader in action at the men on the manufacturing floor, on the operations floor, and that helps me get real time inside of what he or she might be doing better. It also gives a level of trust that the person might then reach out to me, or have a coffee with me, and be open to asking for advice, because when Vice President XYZ comes to town, there’s usually quite a bit of distance, so people are not asking questions. But then, if I go somewhere, if I go to their environment, rather than have them come to my environment, if I use their language, especially in Germany or Austria, in our locations, where usually there’s this language barrier. When the some person from the US comes to town, for me as a as a German, it’s much easier to speak in German. And what I also do, which sounds kind of stupid, but that’s part of it, is I look at the way I dress. So if I, if I go on a on a gamble walk, if I go on a safety walk, I don’t come in a suit. Obviously, not that we wear many suits and then anyway, but I bring my safety shoes, I bring my jeans, I bring my safety glasses, just again, to show them that it’s their environment. I’m here to help. I’m here to listen. I’m here to bust any barriers which you have. And I’m also here to talk a bit about your career, if you like to. And I had an example in Germany, one of the locations in the middle of nowhere in Germany, where not only did the plan manager, the site leader, spend three hours with me at GEMBA and be really open and sort of ask questions and get discussions, we also talked about his career a bit because he had a few questions and he wasn’t sure whether he could trust other people in the organization, so he used me for it. Why? Because we, he or I built a trust, or he’d build a trust with me through that GEMBA walk and through me being, being open, listening, not trying to sort of pontificate all the time, right? Listen to me. I’m the big executive. No, I try to serve people in the good old Toyota tradition, right? You’re serving the operators. You make their lives easier. You make sure the manufacturing flow works in a good way. And if you embody that, if you really focus on on behaving that way, people start to talk to you in a different way. So that’s my sort of standard work, if you like, for doing it. And it might might sound sort of trivial to many, but let’s not forget that for somebody who’s on the line, somebody who works in manufacturing, there’s a big hierarchy distance to somebody who comes from headquarters, from another location or from a higher level of hierarchy, and sort of getting that closing that distance so that people start talking to you is very important for me.

Catherine McDonald  34:35

So the tools and approaches that you’re using Olaf almost, I suppose, are designed to build trust in the first place. It’s not your typical we think sometimes of Lean tools. We think of something visual that you put on paper, or that like a formula you use. But actually, coaching is very different. It’s about your interaction, and it’s about your approach with people. Which is just so, so important. I think I liked your points there on how you spend time doing that, how you just go to where people are get to where the level they’re at understand them. Even step back ask questions. I wonder, because I’ve seen this in some organizations, how do we get around the not filling the manager position, if you if you know what I mean when it comes to trust. So what I’ve seen happen is sometimes people, frontline workers, will start to maybe trust their coach and open up to their coach, but then they don’t open up as much to their manager. They start to maybe confide in their coach, but not in their manager. And I always try to prevent that from happening, because I think the manager employee relationship is a really important one too. How do you think the coach can navigate that well in your experience?

Olaf Boettger  35:54

And that’s a that’s a very good question, and I I’m very sensitive to that, because some people use a coach as sort of a complaining bucket, right? And, oh, Catherine, my boss is a real idiot. La, la, la, la, la. But I think what’s, what’s very important in coaching, as well as in Lean, is to give the ownership back to the people, right? So then after thank you for sharing those, those elements with me, what are you going to do about it? I always have this old 1973 article, who’s got the monkey on the shoulder? Is it me because I need to do the follow up, or is it the associate because he or she needs to do the follow up? So as a coach, I always want to have the monkey back on their shoulder. You, it’s your problem. It’s not my problem. I can help. I can coach you through it. We can simulate, if you like, the discussion with your manager. We will not go around the manager. So if you feel that your manager is not listening, then have a discussion with your manager about his or her listening. Let’s simulate how you could do that, how we could ask for it. So that’s important for me to keep the ownership where it belongs, because we have 15,000 people in the biotechnology group. I cannot be the coach for all 14,999 of those, and I will only act and sort of go to the manager directly if I see patterns across, right? If five people come to me to say, safety isn’t really important, then manager will hear it from me, because that’s a topic which the manager and I discuss. So there are sort of structural elements, but for individual associates, for individual employees, it’s important that they own it, because exactly as you said, Catherine, did the associate manager relationship is an important one, and I wouldn’t want it either. If somebody talks to my manager without me talking to my manager, that would be an overstepping of the role of the coach. I would think

Catherine McDonald  38:17

these are just all things to work out at the start, really, aren’t they? These are just, these are just things we need to discuss early on so that there’s, you know, clarity across the board. That’s great. All of Yeah,

Patrick Adams  38:28

just a follow up on that. When, if, what if you lay out the expectations up front and you have these, these conversations ahead of time, and I’m assuming that you have assigned tasks that you know, you leave them with, like you said, go talk with your manager about this, or whatever it may be, and then you come back on the next coaching session and haven’t done what they said they were going to do. What’s your response to that? How do you how do you deal with that?

Olaf Boettger  39:02

Yeah, that’s, that’s a very good question, because it happens more than I like, frankly, and we like as coaches in general. I kind of make it visual in the good or lean sense. Okay, well, we, let’s quickly do the red, green on, on the follow up items which we had agreed and if they turn red too much, and I don’t really hear good reason why there was a specific element which was in the way this time, all having outside of work, which can get in the way. But if it becomes a pattern, I will stop the coaching, because it’s a bit like people going to the gym if they hire me as a sports instructor, but they don’t go to the gym. There’s not much I can do again, it’s their ownership and their behavior tells me it’s not a priority for them. Wonderful. I’ve got other ways I can spend my time. I’ve also coached other. Coaches on that. And I worked with somebody great colleague in Danaher, who’s offered coaching for others, and one of his coaches always had sort of the wiggle out option. So I literally confronted the coach with, what else do you need to see that that person isn’t interested? What? Are you waiting for? And after that specific meeting, he called me the next day and he said, Okay, I’ve canceled the coaching because you’re right. There wasn’t anything more I could wait for. The coach. He had demonstrated again and again and again, a third time that he was not prepared to do anything in coaching, well, then it’s a waste of time, isn’t

Patrick Adams  40:44

it so true? I think that’s such an important point. First, for those that are listening, that are coaches or in a coaching role, that you have to, you cannot allow that to just keep going on and on and on. You have to address it directly, because it’s, it’s disrespect towards you as the coach. It’s disrespect towards the company because the you’re on company time. It’s something that has to be addressed in not just that, but the person who’s being coached, whether they’ve been asked to be there or they’ve themselves volunteered to be there, it’s they’re not going to improve that coaching will not have an a positive impact on them or whatever they’re trying to do, whatever their manager wants them to do, if that’s how they’re approaching the coaching session. So I appreciate that you said that, and I think that it’s, it’s an important point that we have to address that right away. So I think this is, this has been a great, a great conversation, Olaf, we’ve, we’ve kind of come to the to the end of our time here, but I, I wanted to maybe just ask one last question, and just kind of, as we wrap up here, from A reflection perspective, how do you encourage your the people that you’re coaching to take time to reflect on things they’ve learned, and use that reflection or that learning to to continue to improve.

Olaf Boettger  42:17

Another another good question, Patrick, and I’m not sure whether I’ve got a really good answer for that. I think for me, coaching is the office the opportunity to pause. We all have very busy lives. Just pause and reflect. Is a wonderful opportunity, a wonderful benefit, but if people don’t spend the time on it, I can’t help them, so I can only offer them. But if they don’t see inherent value, there’s, there’s no magic trick, which, which, which, I have. Unfortunately, I’m, I’m, I’m in a fortunate environment that most people I work with in Danner continuous improvement, geeks, obviously, nerds, so everybody’s like improving, but I’ve also seen in other communities that some people are not, and that’s fine. If they don’t find value in coaching, don’t do it. If you do find value in coaching, find a good coach who can help you sort of with that reflection, and I’ve seen it’s powerful with many people,

Patrick Adams  43:28

sure, sure. Well, we so much appreciate having you on the show, Olaf and all of your your guidance and direction from a coaching perspective. If anyone has questions, further questions outside of the the episode today, how, what’s the best way for them to get a hold of you or to reach out?

Olaf Boettger  43:47

I’m on LinkedIn, so it’s probably best to send me in direct message on LinkedIn, and then, usually within 2024, hours or 48 hours, I do reply. So that’s, that’s what’s the easiest to find me

Patrick Adams  44:04

perfect. And we’ll include your link to your LinkedIn the show notes. So if anyone’s interested to reach out to Olaf with any questions, you can go right to the show notes and find a link to to his LinkedIn there. So again, thank you so much for being on we’d love to have you back, obviously, so much to talk about based on your background and where you’ve been. So you know, maybe next time, we’ll pick up a topic and dive in on something else.

Olaf Boettger  44:33

Excellent. Thank you for having me.