Summary

In this episode of Executive Connect, Melissa sits down with Jeff Holmes, an executive coach and leadership consultant. They explore the challenges leaders face in achieving clarity and making impactful decisions. Jeff introduces the concept of ‘friendship leadership’ and underscores the importance of accountability. The discussion covers navigating change through different styles, building psychological capital (hope, confidence, resilience, and optimism), and the transformative power of coaching to elevate leadership effectiveness.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Executive Coaching and Leadership Challenges
03:03 Friendship Leadership vs. Accountability in Leadership
05:48 Navigating Change: Understanding Change Styles
09:04 The Importance of Psychological Capital
12:01 Developing Hope, Confidence, Resilience, and Optimism
14:53 The Role of Coaching in Leadership Development
39:01 Final Thoughts on Leadership and Coaching

Transcript

Melissa (00:01.343)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast. Today we’re going to talk with Jeff Holmes, an executive coach, leadership consultant and change management specialist.

Thank you so much for being here today, Jeff.

Jeff Holmes (00:59.123)
I love that you’re having me. Thanks for having me. I’m honored.

Melissa (01:03.496)
Let’s jump right into your experiences with executive coaching and some of the biggest challenges that leaders face when striving for clarity and decision-making and how they can overcome these challenges.

Jeff Holmes (01:19.839)
It’s such a big question and I’ll start with my failure. You know, as I started in leadership in the, I’m going to age myself, but late eighties, really, think everybody in the system expected that somehow I would absorb good leadership or it was this innate thing. And I just kind of was making it up.

as I went along. And as I observe my biggest failures as I launched several nonprofits and now a for-profit, my biggest failure is something I’ve come to term. It’s not a term you’ll find out there if you Google it, but friendship leadership style. And I realize as I coach my clients,

And a lot of them have done incredibly well. And I’m coaching globally and it’s this is across cultures because I’m coaching people in India and in the Middle East and South America and Europe and the United States. There is this reality that a lot of people bring this idea that their leadership is going to emerge from their likability and being everybody’s friend. But if they’re everybody’s friend, then.

people will respond the way they want them to respond. That was totally me. I just leveraged likability and friendship. I call it friendship management. And it’s important, it’s helpful, but I overemphasized being everybody’s friend and what I realized in the process was it created all sorts of confusion and it created poor decision making in so many ways and undermined clarity.

Melissa (03:01.069)
you

Jeff Holmes (03:13.498)
all over the place because I was operating out of this friendship leadership style.

Melissa (03:20.769)
Yeah, that’s a really good point. I think we all want to be liked, right? I think we all strive to be liked and appreciated and the warm fuzzy, but you know, kind of what you were saying, I know some of my best coaching I’ve ever had were from people that were probably not the nicest to me. They were pretty direct with me, maybe even terrible leaders that had taught me

things about myself or push me out of my comfort zone. So when you really get aligned with that, think a lot of great change happens in your journey, whatever that may be, what your goals are. So I wanna talk a little bit about how you’ve helped organizations and people navigate some of those challenges and maybe what advice would you give leaders that

are going through significant change in high pressure environments. Maybe some of the tools that you share with your coaches or your coachees.

Jeff Holmes (04:22.775)
Yeah, yeah, I love this. think one of the first pieces is as organizations and leaders navigate change to turn down the friendship piece, to turn down trying to be likable. Change is going to create conflict and it’s going to make people not like you. And if your core is desiring that everybody thinks you’re the hero and saving the day, you’re going to get disappointed. so

Part of change is letting go of friendship leadership and moving toward real accountability. There’s all sorts of stuff around real accountability, around real strategic leadership rather than friendship leadership, stepping away from consensus driving. There’s all sorts of pieces that are there. So that’s one piece. But I gotta dive into this question and maybe give too much. When I stepped into the journey of coaching, I enrolled

at Oxford University in HEC Paris. They have this program. It’s an amazing program. I recommend it to everybody. It was called Coaching and Consulting for Change. It’s now called Masters in Change Leadership. And I’m not sure if they’re changed in the name back. So if you Google it, or if anybody wants to email me and find out, they can. Anyway, I went and in the whole 18 months, we gathered together with 26 people from 24 different countries.

every six to eight weeks and we met in either Paris or we were at Oxford and the whole the whole program was about how do you do change well in organizations and then they delivered some tools and I just every time they delivered tools I raised my hand and said why didn’t why didn’t I have this know about this as I was leading change through all of this the the first piece and and I’ve got a bunch of like back

back end stuff that we can share. We can share with your audience once this is done. But the first thing they did was talk about work that was done by two consultants and researchers in Norway. I think it’s Norway, Denmark, Vermont and Kalauea. And they identified the reality that people have a default change style that they operate out of. So when change happens,

Jeff Holmes (06:48.009)
It generates fear and in order to deal with the fear, people move toward their default change style. And they identified five in the research that they did. One change style is to structure it, to just structure, plan, organize, really manage the change through system planning. The next one is more political.

It’s who are the stakeholders? Who’s got the power here? How do we navigate the power dynamics to help the change happen? And these people tend to think about win-wins and including all of the important key stakeholders. That’s kind of the kind of talk when that change style is occurring. Then there are the people who generally populate HR, which is how do we make sure everybody who’s affected by the change

Melissa (07:26.283)
you

Jeff Holmes (07:43.395)
has a say in the change. It’s kind of a bottom-up approach. We want everybody to weigh in. Then there’s a group of people that love, they’re all about the learning. Like, what do we need to learn and know better to make the change happen? Well, what are we learning about ourselves, our market, all of that? And then the last one is just innovative change. like change will just evolve and develop, and I’m gonna let go. I’m not gonna try to manage the change. Those change styles,

are so powerful because I realized in every change I led, I expected people to align to my change style. And I got so much conflict in the change because I didn’t acknowledge the fact that there were people with other change styles. And if I had just pulled back and said, this is my style, and as the leader, we’re going to run according to my style, but I’m going to accept, acknowledge and appreciate other people’s styles.

Melissa (08:25.639)
you

Jeff Holmes (08:43.641)
It would have changed everything. But I was too, I just didn’t know. I just thought, well, of course this is how you do change. Of course you do change by structuring the steps and putting the systems like this is the logical way. And I, I, it, took me hearing that to realize, whoa, I could have approached and had much more facilitated change if I factored in these change styles. That’s, that’s one. I got more.

Melissa (09:04.496)
you

Melissa (09:12.234)
Yeah, and you know, I just to kind of jump in real quick, they made me think a long time when I was younger, I had people teaching me how to learn a certain way that what there’s similar to what you were saying, there’s also different ways of learning. So if you’re a visual person, and somebody is just talking to you to teach you, it’s going to be harder for you to learn and on whatever subjects is when you were saying that it made me think back when I was younger, it really took

different ways, I’m a visual person too, and I have to actually do it. And you could talk all day at me, but until I see it and do it, it’s not working for me. And so I love that you mentioned that is really looking at all sides of the coin and all the people that are in the room and what, how are they taking in the information? How are they going to be using it is really important to making sure you have a team that’s working together.

Jeff Holmes (10:05.869)
Yeah, that’s really true. That’s such a great analogy to make because I remember that too. I did a lot of teaching and I did a lot of thinking about this is about my students and how do I help my students learn? And if I’m going to help them learn, I’ve got to adapt my style to theirs. This is the exact same principle. How do I help the people I’m leading deal with and accept and accelerate this change? Then I need to adjust my style. And that was something that I’ve never thought about. I just

It you know business school and most consultancies, it’s you hire McKinsey and boom, here’s the plan. Follow the plan. And but but that’s one of the five change styles and no wonder that that sometimes companies struggle with McKinsey and no throwing no shade. But I think I think that the that structural side really falls by the wayside or really really interrupts.

great change when it doesn’t factor in all the other styles. Really, really great connection. I agree. I agree. And this is the this at the heart of the coaching and consulting that I’ve been doing to I just add. It’s great to hear it and agree with it, but then actually implementing it is so hard. And that’s the part that’s been really fun to do with my clients. Like, okay, you’re holding on to this style. What about the style super important to you? And how might you

begin to incorporate others. And I’ve even done this exercise where, okay, you’re gonna bring this change. I had just the other day with a company that’s doing robotics, they’re doing like a mission shift, a major mission shift. And they have to sell it to the board. And with the CEO, I sat there and said, okay, let’s put the board around the table. What style of change are each of them? And how do you adjust your pitch?

to deal with the style of change you think they’re at. And every leader that I’ve dealt with is intuitive enough to identify the change styles of everybody in the room. Once they know them, it’s like, yeah, duh. And then the shaping of the pitch is so powerful. And I’ve done this with startup leaders who are seeking funding and sales teams, super huge. Every sale you make is about change. You’re changing somebody’s life when you make a change, when you make a sale.

Melissa (12:11.152)
So.

Jeff Holmes (12:31.669)
If you can understand their chain style, you can begin to sell to them in a much more effective way because you’re being empathetic, thoughtful, curious, all the great things that make for sales. Anyway, I could go on and on and on on this one and it really is big. It really is.

Melissa (12:50.384)
Yeah, and I think, you know, the other the other to your point, I mean, I think about all the different coaches I’ve had in my life from when I was a child all the way to adulting and the coaches that really got into it and understood where I was at. We worked better together. We had a longer relationship. The ones that showed up and said, how did you do on your goal list? well, I didn’t get to him. no problem. Work on him next week. We didn’t last long as you know.

you know mentor mentee because they were almost too empathetic I feel like they were allowing me to get away from what I wanted rather it was I’d fitness goals then they’re like no big deal don’t worry about it you can get back on the treadmill tomorrow. I think the one that’s you know were in my face with it I got further with my goals and I you know they were helping me become what I wanted to be I think so.

You know, some of those tips and, you know, like, I guess curious some of the pitfalls and coaching that you find that may have worked or not worked with your coaching.

Jeff Holmes (14:02.297)
I mean, I love what you just said, because it’s really true. When my change style aligns with the leader that I’m working with, I’m less effective. So that leader is like, hey, know, whatever you want. You know, that’s a kind of a change style that you’ve got to feel the change to make the change. That’s kind of a phrase that they would say. And so that kind of style, if that’s all you lean on as a coach, then

it becomes less effective. And it’s the same with the coaches that were that you can get frustrated with it that are just process, process, process and don’t go deep. That’s the process change style that I want to help you change. Then there has to be a process. Let’s just bang the boards on the process and not factor in. there might be some key influencers that are actually

that you could recruit to help or that are getting in the way. Or there might be some feelings and some things inside you that are getting in the way. Or there might be some learning that you need. all those, if you can factor in those styles. And I think from a coaching perspective, that’s always in the back of my mind. Sometimes explicitly we’re coaching on this. And you’re leading change. OK, let’s do this change styles assessment. I have the whole team take it so that they’ve got some objective data.

Melissa (15:06.573)
you

So,

Jeff Holmes (15:22.879)
on a change style assessment, but then we get to really talk. But most of the time it sits in the back. Okay, here’s a change. And this person is a process style change person. I’m going to throw him a curve ball and ask him what inside you is resisting the change. You know, that’s like a different style or I’ll align with them on the process. So that part with change styles has been consistently great in coaching. I think

The other piece to this puzzle that you and I talked about before we even got on the podcast is an even deeper concept than the styles of change. It’s a framework called psychological capital. And I stumbled into it. This wasn’t even a part of the curriculum for the Masters of Change Leadership, but I was at Oxford. I went a few days early before class so that I could sit in the libraries, because I love.

the library is there. And there’s a library called the Duke Humphreys in the Bodleian. And it’s like old as can be. You feel like this is what a library should be. It’s the quintessential library. And I was searching the leadership database in the Oxford Library and found this little framework called Psychological Capital. And it blew my mind.

Melissa (16:41.376)
you

Jeff Holmes (16:50.457)
So it was discovered by a guy named Fred Luthens, a leadership guy, University of Nebraska, in the late 2000s. And he kind of had identified, okay, in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution and with Adam Smith and all of that work, this idea of capital emerged, that we have to manage capital in an economic system.

And then it became financial capital and material capital and they can to be subdivided. And then in the sixties, as, a psychological movement started, human capital became a thing. Everybody remembers. mean, the whole, every HR department is founded in this concept of how do you manage human capital? Humans as a resource to help economic movement for your organization. And then in the eighties, a whole nother kind of capital emerged out of university, university of Chicago called.

Melissa (17:19.558)
you

Jeff Holmes (17:45.919)
Social capital so it wasn’t enough to have the human capital managed which is really about education and skill development Then you needed the social capital which was about Relational connections and and we’ve all experienced the lack of social capital you’re on a team and nobody likes anybody And you know, this is miserable and you’re less productive You could be the smartest most skilled most trained most experienced person in the room and you produce less because the social cap

or not, there’s not enough in the bank account is a better way to say it. Then in the 2000s, Fred Lutheran said, yeah, and I’ve seen where there’s plenty of social capital and I’ve seen where there’s plenty of human capital and there’s plenty of financial capital and material capital and productivity is still bad. Why? And the answer to the question was there was a missing piece to the puzzle.

Melissa (18:43.589)
So,

Jeff Holmes (18:45.387)
And it was the psyche or psychological state of both the teams, the organization, but the individuals themselves and, the leaders and particularly the leaders. And the formula that he came up with was the more psychological capital you have, the stronger your leadership is, the more productive, engaged, and willing to fight for you. Your team will be.

Melissa (19:13.381)
So, thank

Jeff Holmes (19:14.739)
And the more psychological capital your team will have. And the more psychological capital your team has, the more productive they are as individuals. And it was a missing link. I discovered it while I was sitting in the library. It just kind of pushed back from the desk and stared through the window for about 30 minutes, just churning, saying to myself, I wish I had known this. And seeing so many use cases in my current life, but…

in business. was amazing. It’s a remarkable framework.

Melissa (19:50.521)
Yeah, all Now, are there any steps that leaders can take to develop this? Is this something that you can develop? How do you get there? How do you get more psychological capital? Is it something you’re born with? Is it something that you learned? What are your thoughts on psychological capital as far as can you get it?

Jeff Holmes (20:10.841)
You’re making me dance in my chair because that’s the best question ever. That was one of the core core heart of the question for for Lutherans and other researchers has been a ton of ton of research now that that proves it out as a framework. That’s that’s really powerful. But one of their first things was this has to be a state and not a trait a trait.

is something that can’t be affected, grown, changed. It can move a little bit. So when Martin Seligman started the positive psychology movement in the mid-80s, one of the things he studied was happiness and realized that happiness actually is a bit of a state. It can change a little bit, but most people maintain a similar level of happiness through their life, which was really interesting and kind of in some ways depressing.

It was like, that’s a, that’s a trait. What Lutherans went in and researched was are there, are there states that move up and down based on what you do and what’s happening in your environment that would affect your psychological capital? And the answer was yes. And psychological capital is composed of four sub states. It’s how much hope you have, how much confidence you have.

how much resilience you have and how much optimism you have. All four of those have been proved out individually in the research and combined as a psychological capital construct as things that can be directly effective. So if I’m feeling…

Melissa (21:52.116)
I love it. We got to pull those back more, right? Like hope, like how, you know, if you’re in despair, the world’s coming to an end. You don’t see any positivity in any form of your life. Therefore you’re depressed or you identify as being depressed.

How do you get more hope if like you’re at that very bottom stage? Is there a way that people just looking at all four of these, think, you know, I know for me, from my perspective, I grew up with a lot of hope because I had a support system around me. Therefore, when I wasn’t, you know, on my A game, I reached into the tool and those tools were.

my friends, my family, my hobbies and other things that gave me hope and increased my happiness when I was struggling through things in my life. And is there a specific tool that people can use to gain more hope? I’ll call that step one of the four steps.

Jeff Holmes (22:55.713)
Yeah, it’s really interesting. So I’ve got a couple of things to say, but the first thing I’ll say is psychological capital is a resource. It’s not the end all be all of humanity. Right? So there is like, if somebody’s listening to this and really is struggling with depression, yes, do some work with psychological capital, but it is not going to solve all of your problems because there’s a real disease there. There’s real issues there. And so

It’s like bringing several things to play. So it’s not going to be your magic bullet. For leaders and organizations, the same is true, but nobody thinks about psychological capital really. So just to begin to engage it as a construct is going to have a massive impact. So I’ll say that. The second thing I’ll say is my professors at Oxford called my dissertation, because this is what I wrote my dissertation on.

Melissa (23:49.698)
So.

Jeff Holmes (23:51.129)
a basket full of puppies. Like this warm and fuzzy like thing and their criticism was really around when we talk about hope in the culture, it really is a fuzzy kind of concept. And it’s based, a lot of it is connected to spirituality. A lot of it is connected to kind of what’s happening in culture. This version of hope is the actual researched framework on hope and

to answer your question now specifically, there’s three realities that change hope. I like to equate it to going on a mountain climb. So when you park your car in the middle of Yosemite Valley and you’re looking around at all the hikes you could do, the first thing you do is decide on the hike you’re gonna take. It’s a goal. You set a destination and that is the first thing that really actually affects hope is having a goal.

A lot of people think that that goal has to be big. It has to be perfect. That goal might just be your quarter one quarterly KPI or OKR or quarterly rock. It might just be one thing and that’s that’s that’s the thing. The second thing and their two parts is having multiple ways to get to the goal. So having multiple ways, not just one way, because if you only have one way and the way is blocked. No hope.

And the other is having the resource. So I’ll take the illustration to an actual story. My son and I drove to Yosemite Valley. We’re just a couple of hours away, so we can go when we want. So we went just for the day. And we parked right by Bridal Veil Falls. And there’s two hiking paths, one to Bridal Veil Falls, which was not great because it was fall, so there wasn’t a lot of water. And we wanted to go all the way up to Glacier Point. And Glacier Point’s like a 2,500-

vertical feet climbs, switchbacks, all of that kind of stuff, but incredible views. And I just wanted the view. We got out and my son’s like, let’s do that, dad. And so we go, he’s like running like a mountain goat ahead of me and I’m like old man trying to keep up. it was miserable. And I started to lose hope on the hike because my legs were hurting and we weren’t even halfway. It was like, this is not good.

Jeff Holmes (26:19.531)
I would the resource I needed to make the hike wasn’t there and I started to lose hope. And I also realized I’m not sure we have enough water. You know, we brought a lot of water, but so all of a sudden the lack of the resource to get to the goal generated a loss of hope. I was starting to feel a little despair on my hike. It was really if I’m just honest and I bet everybody’s been there, you know, you’re when do I get to the top? I thought the top was here and

Melissa (26:30.016)
Jeff Holmes (26:49.133)
So all that stuff was at play. And then we got halfway up and the entire trail was blocked with eight feet of snow. And there was no way to go any further. The way was totally blocked. And we both just plopped down. We’d done all of this work. And it was like the way was blocked. There was only one way we thought. And we were like, my legs were tired. was actually thankful that the way was blocked at that point. But in terms of hope, it was gone. And then my son looked at me and was, why don’t we go back down and get in the car and drive?

Melissa (27:19.168)
Thank you.

Jeff Holmes (27:20.619)
And it was like, I had forgotten there was another way. You can drive to Glacier Point. You don’t have to hike. And it was like, my gosh. And light went off. And so hope, when we find ourselves with our teams, with ourselves individually, it’s what is the goal? What are the ways? And what are the resources I need to get there?

Melissa (27:26.844)
Okay. Bing! Light went off.

Jeff Holmes (27:46.293)
And do I have, it’s called way power and way resource. Do I have the way power and the way resource to achieve the goal? that, and it’s just straight research is there that says if you begin to expand the ways and think about other resources around the goal you’re trying to achieve, your hope will increase.

Melissa (27:56.672)
you

Melissa (28:13.232)
Okay, so the second one, so hope, and then the second one was impact, confidence.

Jeff Holmes (28:19.107)
Hope, confidence. Hope, If you want an acronym, Lutheran’s called it the hero within. So hope, but E is a tough one. It’s self-efficacy, but it’s essentially confidence. So the second one’s confidence. Yeah, and the second one’s, by the way, can say that I’m not connected. Go ahead.

Melissa (28:30.686)
Okay.

Melissa (28:36.468)
Yeah, and I think the confidence part of it’s, yeah. I think the confidence one is really interesting too. think for me, when we first talked about it, I think back to when I was young, a lot of the confidence I had young came through my parents and giving me the belief and confidence to do things that I otherwise didn’t think I could do.

And so I really believe confidence ties back into support systems, right? And if you don’t have a good support system, finding somebody that can help you really push you out of your comfort zones, therefore a coach, a life coach or a mentor or a peer or somebody that’s going to kind of weaving all of this together, right? Change, think everybody needs to be comfortable with change and we know that.

through the pandemic and through our world changing so quickly, finding that confidence in the change that you’re going through. And if you can’t find it internally reaching out to somebody who has it or is experienced in the area that you’re looking to go to.

Jeff Holmes (29:51.415)
Yeah, a hundred percent. There’s two core factors to confidence. And I bet you if we press in on how your parents parented you and how you’re probably parenting your kids right now is there’s little opportunities that you give your kids to try and fail. They can try and succeed. And when they succeed, you celebrate them. And when they fail, you’re with them in the failure. And that’s the thing that really drives.

Confidence you can say and and we’ve done this as leaders, right? You’re great. You’re awesome You know, I believe in you all of those words that parents say and that we say if they actually aren’t connected to a movement toward Trying and either succeeding and failing If they aren’t relationally connected, they actually don’t generate confidence

Melissa (30:50.214)
Yeah, now what about so the are sorry, am I moving you? I’m moving you to the next letters.

Jeff Holmes (30:50.485)
And that’s what did. I can go for hours on each of these. Yeah, I will go for hours. There’s a book coming.

Melissa (31:03.172)
Yeah, I can’t wait. So the next one, the third, the third kind of are so we’re going H. R. is.

Jeff Holmes (31:12.702)
If

Jeff Holmes (31:16.243)
R is resilience. And I was with a client the other day and he said, whoa, you’re blowing my mind. He was in a debate with a friend and he was convinced that resilience is something you’re born with. You were raised with, you’re either resilient or you’re not. And he’s seen his staff people and they’re either resilient or they’re not. But the research that’s been done

Melissa (31:30.942)
Okay.

Jeff Holmes (31:44.193)
indicates really clearly that resilience is actually something you can grow. this part is really well developed. There’s a researcher in Europe. She’s the guru of positive psychology in Europe. Her name is Alona Bonnewell. And she developed a framework and looked at resilience. And the model is called Spark. And it’s built on what Viktor Frankl said. Viktor Frankl said that

There’s a space between my experience and my reaction. And that space is barely a moment, barely a glimmer or a blink of an eye, but there’s still a space there. And if I look and see what’s in that space, I actually can begin to develop my resilience. And so the model she developed is called Spark. And so it’s the stimulus.

Melissa (32:17.31)
Okay.

Jeff Holmes (32:43.449)
And then the rest of it looks at the space in between. How did I perceive that thing that happened? How did I feel about the thing that happened? How did I react or respond to the thing that happened? And what do I now know? What did I teach myself or learn? And some of these become, you know, negative enforcing cycles. Like my boss yelled at me, I feel inferior. I’m

insecure and sad and doubting myself, I responded with yes, whatever. And I learned that the only way for me to respond to this dictatorial boss is to just be submissive. Like that’s a really negative cycle, but that’s a cycle a lot of people can relate to. But you can build resilience if you pause and say, my boss just yelled at me. What is the story I can tell there? He thinks I’m no good or

He’s a real jerk. I can tell two different stories.

Melissa (33:41.95)
Or, or he’s having a bad day. I think a lot of times, Yep.

Jeff Holmes (33:48.537)
Or he’s having a good time. Like there’s billions of Yeah, there’s a ton of stories you can tell. And then when you tell a different story, your feelings are different and then your response is different. And then what you know and learn is different. I ride a bike. I was a wannabe tour de France cyclist and I wear spandex and I’m out on the road and every now and then somebody will yell at me as I’m on the road.

they’ll drive by with their car and I’ll hear somebody yell. All I hear is,

overprivileged entitled drivers, I got angry and I responded by pedaling harder to try to catch them at a stoplight so I could yell at them. That’s my cycle. But what if they drove by and said, you look really hot in spandex?

Melissa (35:03.709)
It’s reframing the way you think of things, think it’s reframing, glass is half full or it’s half empty. How are you looking at the, and you your boss may be a jerk and he may be difficult, but how you decide to move through that conversation is completely and totally up to you. You can either take on that negativity or you can just feel like, hey, he’s having a bad day. I need to get the thing done. I’m gonna get the thing done and I wanna move on.

Jeff Holmes (35:06.87)
Exactly.

Melissa (35:31.898)
my day and not let it affect me. And so I love kind of that thinking about it in spaces because you’re right, it’s like a snap and we have to make a decision. You know, I’m a terrible cyclist or, you know, I’m a good looking cyclist and it’s really up to us to make those decisions. it, you know, I think a lot of it does go back to hope and confidence. And so I’m anxious to get your insights on. and

Kind of the fourth method.

Jeff Holmes (36:03.457)
Yeah, and you’re picking up exactly the truth that each of these plays off of each other. If I’m feeling super hopeless, my ability to be resilient is less. If I’m feeling lack of confidence, my ability to find ways and resource ways is less. Like they all interact with one another in really powerful ways. So it’s not just, you know, one each, you know, discreetly. O is probably the easiest to understand, but the hardest to

to effect positively. So O is optimism, and optimism is an explanatory style. You you said earlier, glass half full, glass half empty, and it kind of hits at the R space in Dr. Bonniewell’s work of that response. It’s what is my default explanatory style? And how do I begin to adjust how I explain what’s happening?

in me and around me. That’s super easy to say and really incredibly hard to do because most of us got our explanatory styles baked into us before we were really rational adults. So pre puberty. In our childhood, our explanatory styles get locked in as loops. And so, I you know, people who have a have a victim explanatory style, that’s just the style that they’re going to take. pour me in.

I’m the victim here and you know people who are going to be hyper rational. Like I’ll just think my way through it. I’m going to think my way through it. And all of those are kind of explanatory styles. And building a positive explanatory style is the work of optimism.

Melissa (37:55.204)
Yeah, and I kind of in tying this all together is all of it’s, you know, easy to talk about, sometimes difficult to do depending on what’s around us and in front of us. And so I want to tie it back to coaching, mentorship, leading people.

Because I really do think all those, you know, four modules, four pieces, four methods, you know, with good coaching and collaboration, I believe personally that you can change hope, you can change your confidence, you can become a more resilient person. And I think it just takes practice with somebody that you trust and is gonna work with you. And so I wanna kind of get your…

final thoughts on coaching and how it could help you get through the psychological capital and managing change and maybe how people can develop better outcomes in their life based on that.

Jeff Holmes (39:01.495)
Yeah, I wish I leveraged coaching more. I’m just the honest confession. I was arrogant for a long time. I really thought I was all good. I’m good. You other people need coaching. I don’t need coaching. And I didn’t really understand coaching. mean, coaching is this powerful space that gets created in your life where you have a thought partner and an accountability partner.

with a specific focus and that space isn’t for weak people. That’s for the high performers. Like if you’re high performing, you really need that. And I just didn’t get that. I was like, I’ve got it. I’ll just read another leadership book. And the truth was I would read a new thing or I would listen to a new podcast or I’d hear something and I never really honestly put it into practice.

I’d walk in and go, Hey everybody, I read a new book and I’d share it with the team and we all read it together and it was a part of a retreat and then we’d all forget it. You know, it was just, it didn’t get in me. And as I’ve discovered this, you know, we started at friendship leadership and then change styles and then psychological capital. All of these frameworks are so much better with, with coaching. I just to speak to coaching, just,

did a 360 instrument with a bank in the Middle East with all of their executive leaders and their N minus ones. And we did coaching on the back end of this 360 instrument. And they’d done it a couple of times before without the coaching. The scored results of satisfaction employee engagement, they used net promoter score as well. So they used employee engagement and net promoter score for all these people who had the coaching at the back end went

Like the numbers were off the chart compared to the first time they did the 360. They did their 360 18 months ago. Meh, was the result. Did it have any impact on how excited they were to be at work and how engaged they were at work? Nope. But when you added the coaching, it like dramatically changed it. And I think that’s because they got space to think about it, try stuff, and have somebody ask, how did the trial go? How did it go?

Melissa (40:52.826)
you

Jeff Holmes (41:21.849)
How did it go when you tried it? And I mean, I have a coach. I had a coach for four years. I’m going to keep him for the rest of my life because I want that space where I get to do that work. of course, I do coaching. So of course, I’m going to say everybody should have a coach, but everybody should.

Melissa (41:40.588)
Yeah, no, and I do think there is something to be said about that. think, you know, things that I’m not strong at, I look to other people to help me who are probably world class at, right? I look at different buckets in my life, whether it be

you know, health and wellness, finances, leadership. I look to all the really stellar people that are doing really great work and ask for help, because we all can improve just, you know, a little bit more, a little bit more to really hit those, you know, key goals in our life. And so I want to just in closing get your final thoughts or anything else you want to leave with our listeners before we close up.

Jeff Holmes (42:24.545)
I would say if you’ve got any questions or you want to explore any of this, my passion is just helping people. reach out. I am happy to have a dialogue at any level around any of this to help you. And I’m just incredibly grateful for being able to have this time with you, Melissa, you and your audience. What a gift.

Melissa (42:49.172)
Yeah, thank you so much for being here, Jeff. I really appreciate your time and all that you do to build leaders, build communities. That’s the Executive Connect podcast.