Summary

In this episode of the Executive Connect podcast, Melissa Aarskaug interviews executive coach Daniel Mueller, who shares his journey into coaching, the evolution of CEO dynamics, and the importance of emotional intelligence and resilience in leadership. They discuss the challenges of onboarding new executives, the need for effective coaching, and the concept of a portfolio life for leaders transitioning out of full-time roles. Daniel emphasizes the significance of relying on others for resilience and the necessity of balancing emotional intelligence with management skills for effective leadership.

Chapters

00:00 The Journey into Executive Coaching
05:19 Shifts in CEO Dynamics
10:06 Onboarding and Assimilation Strategies
18:16 The Role of Emotional Intelligence
26:09 Resilience in Leadership
34:20 Preparing for a Portfolio Life

Transcript

Melissa Aarskaug (00:01.406)
Welcome to the Executive Connect podcast, where we talk about innovation with the industry leaders. Today, I’m honored and so grateful to have my friend and mentor Daniel Mueller to talk with us today. He is a pioneer for high performing CEOs and one of the best executive coaches I know. He’s been teaching and mentoring people since 1987 and he’s developed

and mentored so many of the top executives in Austin, Texas. Beyond his professional achievements, Daniel writes many books, and today we’re going to talk about those books. Welcome, Daniel, and thank you so much for being here today.

Daniel Mueller (00:45.656)
Thanks, Melissa. Good to see you.

Melissa Aarskaug (00:48.734)
So I wanna, Daniel, executive coaching, you’ve been doing it for a very long time with some of the best leaders in the industry. Let’s talk a little bit about how that journey has been and how you got into executive coaching.

Daniel Mueller (01:02.584)
Yeah, sure. So, in the early eighties, I was an organizational development consultant, a management consultant doing change management in the middle market. And I met a guy named John Padgett, who is CEO of Interlogic Trace in San Antonio. And he was running a 2000 employee company. and, John was doing a RIF, a RIF, R-I-F reduction in force.

And he was riffing about 50 % of the employees. were going through a very hard time. My firm was in there, helping with the riff and John put himself in the riff. In other words, he fired himself and he came to me and said, Daniel, I want you to be my coach. And I said, what’s that? And he said, well, this is what coaches do. And I said, well, John, I’m not that I don’t have a PhD in psychology.

And I don’t fix problem children, you know, in the executive suite, cause that’s basically what coaching, was at the time. A industrial psychologist doing psychotherapy for dysfunctional executives in the fortune 500. So that’s where executive coaching came from. And so I said, John, I don’t do that, but I am a writer and you need a resume. So I’ll write your resume for you.

And so I did his resume and then I helped him with networking. ended up working for a company called access, as CEO. And then general electric and Jack Welsh came in and bought the company. ended up being a direct report to Jack. Well, she took me with him to that deal. And then he went to Cinex where he was president, a 6,000, I’m sorry, $6 billion company, in the Valley.

And I helped him there. And so he brought me with him everywhere he went. And he was a big networker, very well connected in the tech space. Introduced me to a lot of other CEOs. And I had this meteoric ride to the top of CEO coaching from 1987 to 1996. And then in 96, I crashed and burned. And there was a big disconnect between

Daniel Mueller (03:24.076)
The outside Daniel that you saw, which is Mr. CEO coach, right? And the inside, the scared little kid from Jersey who doesn’t have a college degree, who doesn’t have a PhD in organizational design and development or psychology and was, making this huge amount of money doing this work. And so I solved the problem of that disconnect by drinking. And I was always.

Melissa Aarskaug (03:50.558)
Okay.

Daniel Mueller (03:53.868)
a buddy alcoholic, but then by that point I was a full blown alcoholic. So March 4th, 1996, my sobriety days, I got sober and I started growing from the inside out. So I actually started taking my own medicine, and working on myself and, a little city called Austin, Texas, right at that time, was the internet boom. So.

Uh, 1996, 97, 98, I have this little office in Austin, Texas, and, the VCs discover me, uh, Austin ventures and all the VCs start sending me their CEOs to coach. And so I, I had, um, 10 sessions a day, five days a week of all these CEOs in Austin, Texas, but then the bubble burst. And that was around.

2002, 2003, and then all of the top executives left Austin, went around the country and I was back out on the road. Mr. CEO coach again, this time bigger, better, but also from the inside out, I was, I was right with myself and I was right with the world. So, I, that’s how I became an executive coach and, and that’s my story of.

Melissa Aarskaug (05:00.254)
Okay.

Daniel Mueller (05:19.96)
kind of the rise, the fall and the recovery of this coach.

Melissa Aarskaug (05:25.982)
Yeah, thank you for sharing that and thank you for all you do. Now you’ve coached 2000 plus people and 50,000 hours of coaching hours. Like you said, to some of the best CEOs, what from your perspective with all that time, what are some of the significant shifts you’ve seen in CEOs today versus back when you first got started?

Daniel Mueller (05:51.266)
my goodness, Melissa, they’ve gotten more dysfunctional. I just see so much dysfunction in the CEO suite or the C suite in general. And it’s, it’s getting worse, not better. I think there’s a number of reasons for it, but the point is that there’s a lot of dysfunction out there and I have horror story after horror story. I coach the number two person.

at a Fortune 50 company. And, and this person tells me the worst stories about this person’s boss. I’m not going to name names and it is absolute narcissistic personality disorder on steroids. This person is absolutely a raving narcissist.

And is destroying the culture of the company and beating up, the executive team in the worst way, but the numbers are performing on wall street. And so the board is not intervening and life goes on. So I see a lot of, I see a lot of, public companies turning, turning the other way on, on culture. they don’t really care as much. What they care about is bottom line results.

What does Wall Street say? Private equity, the same thing. They’re caring more about the numbers and the performance of the company and less about the people. And in the VC world, it’s the same story. So we’re just not indexing enough on people and culture, and we’re over indexing on performance. And that eventually doesn’t scale.

Melissa Aarskaug (07:43.116)
Yeah, and I, it seems to me that there’s a mass amount of turnover. I feel like in the last few years, the turnover for not just CEOs, but top executives, it’s a year or two years and they’re looking for a new job and then they find a new job and then it’s a year or six months.

I know you wrote a book about this on how to properly get started in your new job. I want to maybe share if you could a little bit about some of the nuggets we could find in that book.

Daniel Mueller (08:13.87)
Sure. Well, the backstory on the book is that I used to have two buckets of work that I did. One bucket was career coaching, which we talked about, right? Helping somebody get a job. And so the other bucket, leadership coaching, helping somebody grow in the job. So I had those two buckets for years. But what I noticed is that when I helped somebody get a job,

They would immediately get consumed with their role and say, Daniel, I don’t have time for coaching anymore. I’ll call you in six months. And then I would be re-engaged in six months. And I would just hear horror story after horror story of what happened during those six months, if they lasted during that time. And so I thought, no, there is a middle ground here. There’s a place for onboarding. So I started researching.

And what I found is that the vast majority of the books out there on onboarding, how to start a new job, they all focus on the first three months. Those first three months are the honeymoon period though. So generally things go really well during those first three months. It’s the second quarter, the third quarter, the fourth quarter where you see a lot of bad things happen. So I wrote this book and it’s called

the art of your start, and it’s coming out to the public in a few months. But basically it’s how to start a new leadership role and it takes you through the first year. So it’s a playbook for three things. Onboarding, that first couple of months, and then assimilation, how to assimilate into the organization effectively, and the third, integration, to be fully integrated.

Melissa Aarskaug (09:39.214)
you

Daniel Mueller (10:06.254)
So the point is that until you’re there for a year, you really haven’t done that complete job of starting your new role. And the message to managers and leaders, executives is this as well, until that person you just hired has not, has been there for a year. You haven’t finished your job and the stats are this 20 to 25 % are fired and quit.

within their first year of the director level and above 20 to 25%. You don’t, you don’t realize how much of a, a difficult time it is starting a new role. It’s not business as usual. It’s counterintuitive. And it’s, it’s not, not something that most people know how to do because you don’t start that many jobs in your, in your lifetime.

Melissa Aarskaug (11:06.7)
Yeah, and why do you think that is? Why do you think, what’s the shift on why these numbers are increasing? Is there a reason or something you could point your finger to?

Daniel Mueller (11:15.778)
Yeah, there’s, there’s a couple of reasons. Number one is that the baby boomer phenomenon, we have a tremendous number of, of, executives, leaders, managers, retire. 10,000 a day is what I’ve heard. 10,000 people leaving the workforce today, but anyway, whatever the numbers are, it’s a huge number of baby boomers stepping out. And we have.

this next generation of leaders coming up through the ranks, they’re moving faster. They’re, they’re more aggressive with their career plan. They want to move faster and they want higher level roles in shorter periods of time, or they’re going to check out and they’re going to go someplace else. So there’s that phenomenon. The company knows they’ve got to promote them. They want to be promoted.

And they’re being promoted to their highest level of incompetence. We call it the Peter principle. And so they’re not ready for that next level up leadership role. And, they’re getting it and they’re, they’re not, they’re not being as successful as they need to be. So that’s one reason.

Melissa Aarskaug (12:31.66)
So is your advice that they should kind of sit in that role?

get a year under the belt, know, bump their knees up a little bit and learn and then kind of take the next step or lean into the role, but get mentors in a support system around them that can help them navigate, you know, the twists and turns in the role.

Daniel Mueller (12:53.58)
Yeah. So, so I’ve been saying for years, literally 38 years of doing this, that executive coaching is about to explode and it’s going to be everywhere. And soon it’s not who is, do you have a coach, but who is your coach? Right. So everyone is going to have a coach, right? Wrong. The vast majority of my clients still to this day have never had an executive coach.

So yes, I believe in executive coaching. It works. I believe it’s the best way to develop the director to senior director, the senior director to VP, VP to SVP, SVP to C-suite, C-suite to CEO. The very, very best way for numerous reasons. But most people haven’t had, most people haven’t ever had one.

Melissa Aarskaug (13:46.681)
Yeah, and I, yeah, sorry.

Melissa Aarskaug (13:52.551)
And that’s just baffling to me. I’m so shocked. mean, if I’m gonna, you know, get in shape or make a very important decision in my life, I want someone that has the knowledge and the experience to coach me to get there. So for me, I’ve been blessed and privileged with great mentors like yourself to get me places where I need to get. And I’ve always, it’s been second nature to me to get coaching, but it also seems to me that everybody’s in the coaching business now. Everybody’s coaching and I-

always say like free information is not always great information. And so I want to talk a little bit about, you know, finding the right coach because the one thing I love about coaching Daniel is that somebody is holding you accountable. So a lot of times, you know, if you’re setting out in January to go to the gym and get in shape and by February you quit, if you don’t have a coach, nobody’s asking you, why didn’t you show up and, and, and going and working with you on your goals.

Right?

Daniel Mueller (14:52.894)
yeah. And it’s a hot topic for me. so executive coaching is way different than coaching. So coaching, everybody is, coming out with there are life coach, there are fitness coach, there this or that coach, right? An executive coach is a very unique animal. And to be an executive coach, I really believe you have needed to have been an executive.

be effective to really understand that executive mindset. Now for me, I wasn’t, it’s too late. I’m kind of grandfathered in, right? But the best executives today, best executive coaches today are really former executives. However, that’s not good enough either. So you need behavioral science methodology to help with cognitive, reframing.

behavioral modifications. So there’s psychology involved, right? And then there’s executive functionality involved. And then there’s other things that really make the best executive coach. So the vast majority of executive coaches out there don’t fit that criteria. And then 99 % of all the coaches out there are not executive coaches. So you really have to make a distinction. Number one,

It’s not about having a coach. It’s about having an executive coach. Number two, it’s, your coach meeting a certain set of criteria? Are they trained in the behavioral sciences? Are they, are they, a former executive? And then do they have the certifications and the, the knowledge of coaching methodology? All that said, I don’t believe that that is sufficient because

My clientele will not stand for just me being an executive coach. They want more. They want an executive advisor. An executive advisor is one who gives advice. So give me some advice. Don’t use coaching methodology and Socratic method when you have the answer and I don’t. Right. I’ve never fired anyone before. What should I do?

Daniel Mueller (17:18.2)
Well, I can ask you 10 questions about it, or I could just give you the right answer of put them on a PIP, put them on a performance improvement plan. Right. There are very distinct things that you do that are answers to the problems that you have as a, as a leader or an executive. Right. And this goes for any level leader manager, senior manager, director level, know, second line managers, third line managers. Right. So.

not just Socratic method, not just coaching per se, but also advising and then mentoring. So I mentor my clients as well. So I think that there’s this holistic approach. So it’s not just the executive functionality of performance in the business, but also that person’s life. Cause you can gain great executive performance.

and lose your spouse, lose your family, lose your soul, become an alcoholic and, and disintegrate. So I think it’s a holistic, need out there for the person, not just the, the, the executive or the leader to get further in, their career, but also further in their life. So mentoring.

and advising and coaching. And there’s a few other things like cheerleading, like, you know, is this coach somebody that you trust and is going to be positive and encouraging for you? So I believe in a couple of things. Number one, I believe that you should have some complimentary sessions with a coach. So as you’re seeing, well, is this a good fit for me?

I believe that every executive coach should give three complimentary coaching sessions. The vast majority do not. I always do. I always encourage people that are referred to me, try me out for a couple of sessions and we’ll try each other out actually and see if there’s a good chemistry fit because you have to be able to trust the person you’re working with. secondly, you all should ask some questions. How many clients have you had?

Daniel Mueller (19:46.028)
Why? Because coaching is, or just this whole serving the leader in growth, let’s call it that, right? Serving the leader in growing as a person, as a, as a business leader. Well, it involves pattern recognition. So if you’ve been doing this for two years, you have limited pattern recognition. For me.

38 years, I have extreme pattern recognition. So as soon as somebody starts talking, it’s like, okay, I’ve seen that movie. I’ve seen that movie. Boy, that there’s a playbook for that. Just like in football, right? There’s the called the three step button hook, right? Three steps out, fake to the right, turn to the left. The ball’s right there. It’s a pattern. You run a pattern and it’s a proven pattern. Well, there are many, many proven patterns for leaders to, to take.

for performance management, for inspiring others, for influencing outcomes, et cetera, et and having somebody that has seen a lot of patterns. So I think it’s how much experience working with a specific population, and then also industry, right? Industry helps. So industry knowledge helps.

Functional knowledge also helps. So if you’re a salesperson, it might be better to have a coach that has background in sales. If you’re a finance person, it might be better to have a coach that has a background in finance to be a bit of an advisor. So functional areas of expertise you’re looking for, you’re looking for

pattern recognition, the number of reps. And then you’re also looking for a quantity of clients and how many clients does somebody carry per year? Because people could talk a really good story about all the work that they do and you find out, well, yeah, they carry five clients a year. And that’s not giving you the pattern recognition, right? So I do anywhere from 40 to

Melissa Aarskaug (21:59.294)
I was gonna take you down that road AI.

Daniel Mueller (22:07.682)
to 60 clients a year. And I’ve done that for 38 years. And so after a while, you really see the same exact patterns, which brings me to AI, because you were really curious about AI, weren’t you?

Daniel Mueller (22:28.814)
Yeah. So it’s very interesting. AI is absolutely totally amazing. And I hate to say this, but I really could be replaced in some parts, significant part by chat GPT. It’s, it’s a terrible to say, but really, uh, I had been saying the same exact things over and over for 38 years and

You could easily have chat GPT say those things to you. So, so, for your audience, try this. Go into chat GPT chat GPT. want you to be an expert executive coach. I want you to have all of the skills and abilities of a top executive in the ABC G E F H I J really specify its space. And then.

Tell Chach-GPT to remember certain things. Remember, I’m currently a director of sales at a $50 million late stage VC backed company. Or I’m the CFO of a $150 million private equity owned.

healthcare company, whatever. So inform chat GPT and tell chat to remember things about you and then start coaching. Well, I’m, I’ve got this employee that’s dysfunctional. They’re, they’re refusing to do what I’m giving them to do. And they’re giving me a really hard time. What should I do?

Melissa Aarskaug (23:52.062)
you

Daniel Mueller (24:19.468)
Watch the answers. It’s really amazing. You’ll get incredible wisdom. you know, try that, but AI, yes, is absolutely, totally amazing. And it’s going to revolutionize our industry.

Melissa Aarskaug (24:36.418)
Yeah, I agree. think AI is going to change. It changes all of our lives. And I know I always tell people, you know, whether you like AI or you don’t like AI, you need to

understand how to use the tools and practice using them because there’s a lot of benefits like you just mentioned to using them. want to, you know, kind of pivoting off AI. know, you know, maybe I’m wrong here, but I feel like we’re losing our emotional side of humans. You kind of touched on it a little bit at the beginning where corporate is transactional. You need to do this. I need this by this date. you’re

hit an employee for six months, why aren’t you selling millions of dollars in sales in six months? And so I’ve seen kind of this lack of emotional intelligence and self-awareness in the corporate world. I hear a lot about it, kind of some of the scary stories you were sharing. I’ve heard and I’m like, no way this is happening. You know, I want to talk a little bit about, you know, emotional intelligence and self-awareness and understanding what that

is to make you the best possible leader. think a lot of times, like you were saying, those new employees go from director and they move up the chain, but they’ve never managed people, right? They may be a good delivery person, but are they a good leader? And so I want to talk about some of the strategies that you help your leaders develop as they go up from director to VP to senior VP and maybe how they become more self-aware.

Daniel Mueller (26:09.144)
Sure, sure. Well, I think it’s a great misnomer to think that if you’re super smart, you’re going to be a very effective leader. So smarts are twofold, intellectual smarts and emotional smarts. And oftentimes the smarter somebody is intellectually, the weaker they are emotionally.

So we have very, very smart people because typically smart people, figure out, well, gee, I’ll make more money if I’m a manager than an individual contributor. Right. And I’m not content just being an individual, but I want to be a manager. So they get promoted because they’re smart. And then they get into that role and they say, well, that’s.

That’s okay, but there’s more money at a second line manager role. Let me get promoted and they do, but they haven’t worked on their emotional intelligence. So they get themselves into trouble in that higher leadership roles where more and more emotional intelligence is required. So I think it is critical to,

for leaders to be balanced. But I’ll say this, that everyone is on a continuum of these four areas I’ve identified. So emotional intelligence is just one component. So you could be very, very emotionally intelligent and be terrible as a leader. So there’s some very, very emotionally intelligent

say therapist, right? They’re great listeners. They’re empathetic, whatever, but you’d never put them into a managerial role because they would crater. They don’t have these other things. So execution, a drive, a passion for getting results. But just because you have a drive and a passion for getting results and you’re emotionally intelligent doesn’t mean you’re going to be successful in

Daniel Mueller (28:30.516)
in the leadership world because you need this other major category of competency management. So management means performance management. It means controlling people and projects and directing and just that whole body of work that you would learn in an MBA program. Right?

But that still does not get you to being a great leader because you need influencing skills. And there’s a whole slew of those types of skills. So you really need to be a balanced person that has a strong execution skills, strong relational skills, emotional intelligence, strong managerial abilities and strong leadership.

and influencing skills. So if I left you with this idea that there’s one phrase I’ve said more than any other phrase in 38 years of doing this, and this is profound, let me give it to you. A strength overused becomes a weakness.

So we tend to overuse our strengths. tend to overplay our strengths. So that person who is very emotionally intelligent, well overdoing it, they become, it becomes a real problem for them in the workplace. So even though it’s very important, it’s one component, I guess the message to you, it’s one component of these four pillars, right? It, somebody that’s extremely good at execution and they over execute meaning

They’re just so driven to produce results, but they’re, have dead people in their way. And then there’s some that are great at management and they over index on managing their people and they’re great managers, but they’re not influential to their boss and their boss’s boss. And they have limited impact because of it. So a strength overuse becomes a weakness and you just have to figure out.

Daniel Mueller (30:53.41)
where your strengths and weaknesses are. And there’s a great book I’d suggest for your audience and it’s Strengths Finders and Strengths Finders by Gallup. And if you get the full version, you pay $80 online, get the full version. It’s 32 competencies and it’ll give you a very detailed report and read your first 10.

because that’s where they give you a real thick paragraph of the explanation, your top strength, your second top strength. But then the last paragraph is overused. This tends to become X, Y, Z. So then look at your top strengths and realize where you’re overusing because again, we tend to overplay our strengths.

Melissa Aarskaug (31:49.756)
Yeah, well said. love that. I want to talk a little bit about resilience. I think one thing I’ve learned in executive with executives is a resilience and the ability to get back up on that horse when life happens is really key in the workplace. And so, you you’ve openly shared a little bit about your personal journey and some of your challenges. You address them. You got back on that horse. I want to talk a little bit about resilience and executive leadership.

as a CEO, we’re all gonna go through some difficult stuff in our life. I often find Daniel, it’s a mindset and it’s an attitude. I wanna get kinda your perspective on resilience and how it plays into the workforce today.

Daniel Mueller (32:34.754)
Yeah. Well, I would say, I would say this that, resilience is, is totally dependent on what you’re relying on. So resilience depends upon reliance to be resilient. You have to rely, you have to rely on something or someone.

If you’re only relying on yourself, that is a failed model.

And so you have to rely on others and you have to, we’re in community. We’re in community with, each other. We’re in community with some type of higher power. So I believe in a higher power. I believe that true resilience is relying on that higher power. And I call that higher power God. And I just think that.

Melissa Aarskaug (33:33.918)
Thank

Daniel Mueller (33:42.03)
Resilience is dependent upon who you’re relying on. So I think that those that are just, I’m going to pull myself up off my bootstraps and I’m just going to be resilient. I’m going to give up and it’s all me is a failed model and it just doesn’t scale.

Melissa Aarskaug (34:04.023)
That’s great. do think, I think people are key importance in having resilience in the lessons we learn along the way. I want to get kind of any final thoughts or anything that you want to share with our listeners that we didn’t touch on.

Daniel Mueller (34:20.204)
Yeah, thanks. Well, I would say this. I do have a book that I’m promoting right now. It’s called the Executive Portfolio Life. It’s on Amazon. It’s the shortest book I’ve ever written. It’s only 50 pages. It’s an hour read, but it’s the most profound little book for understanding where you’re going when you’re not going to work a full-time job anymore.

So eventually we’ll all get there. So I don’t care if you’re 30 years old listening to this podcast or 40 or 50, but eventually you’re going to be in a place where you’re not working a full-time gig anymore. And you’re going to say, okay, now what do I do? So a couple of things. One, the book will help you to do that planning and it’ll give you a vision for your future. Cause the future for most

Leaders is not retirement. It’s a bad idea. Why? Because most leaders are people that love performing, love getting things done, love accomplishing results. They just can’t sit at home and watch Netflix or make a career out of putting a little tiny ball in a little tiny hole, 450 yards away.

Right? So we’ve got to give back also because that’s the natural tendency. When we get to a place of seniority, the natural desire is to give back. So how do you do that? Well, I’ve identified 10 areas of give back, and I’ll just give you one. The most common one for leaders who are stepping out of full-time gigs is sitting on boards.

However, the most common question you’re going to be asked once you look for a board seat is how much board experience do you have? And so the time to get on boards is say in your late forties and your fifties, not waiting to your sixties or seventies and saying, okay, I’m ready to sit on boards because you don’t have the board experience. Same thing with writing. Some people have this fantasy in their thirties and forties. Well, someday I’m to write a book.

Daniel Mueller (36:47.096)
Well, you don’t wait till you’re 60 years old and you’re no longer working a full-time gig to start writing. You should be writing for decades before that. So there’s things to do to get ready for this, this portfolio life and portfolio life is, semi retirement, if you will. So you’re doing a number of different things to put together a rich, rich life after.

full-time work. And I have more and more people today than ever before are stepping out of the full-time role earlier in their late 40s, mid 50s, for whatever reasons, and going into this portfolio life of a diversified set of activities. So I do recommend the Executive Portfolio Life. It’s on Amazon.

And it just gives people vision, Melissa, for where they’re going at some point in their future.

Melissa Aarskaug (37:53.234)
That’s great. Definitely get that book. Follow Daniel on LinkedIn. I want to thank you so much for being here, sharing your time, your energy and your passion for all things coaching. That is the Executive Connect podcast. Make sure you subscribe and follow us. Thank you so much, Daniel, for being here.

Daniel Mueller (38:15.63)
Thank you, Melissa.