FULL TRANSCRIPT

Gordon Sheppard: If you are a leader who believes that a good question has the power to transform reality, then you’re going to get a lot out of today’s show on the Meeting Leadership Podcast. That’s because we’re going to be interviewing Natalie Michael, a successful executive coach, and the author of The Duck and Butterfly: Coaching Questions for Leaders at Work.

Are you a professional who wants to become a more effective leader? Then get ready for practical tips from the coach with the experience and inspiration to help you succeed in any leadership situation. You’re listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast with Gordon Sheppard.

Welcome to another episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast. My name is Gordon Sheppard and I just want to say thank you for listening. Thank you for being the type of leader who wants to grow their skills and learn how to run great meetings and you know those two things go hand in hand, because you can’t be a great leader without learning to run a great meeting, and you can’t run a great meeting without being a great leader. You are trusting this podcast to get the tips, the practical strategies and everything you need to learn how to do just that. It is really, really good to have you here.

I also want to let you know that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy. Now, there you’re going to find some terrific online options and live training options as well for you and your team to improve your meetings.

There’s a great half day workshop, it’s been very successful. Coming in to work with your team, of 15, 20, 30 people at a time. Everybody gets on the same page in terms of learning a 10 step system to have better meetings from agendas to facilitation, all the way up to connecting every meeting directly to your organization’s strategy.

You can learn all about that workshop and a whole lot more by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. Now, I am really proud to introduce today’s show. It’s called Powerful Questions That Every Leader Should Ask, and that is with Natalie Michael.

Now, not only is Natalie an experienced executive coach who works with C-suite leaders, she also chairs CEO forums and peer learning groups. Lucky enough for us, well, Natalie is also an author of multiple books and the book that she wrote that inspired today’s episode, it’s called The Duck and the Butterfly: Coaching Questions for Leaders at Work.

I can tell you there are a thousand questions that are in there. Today, we’re going to be pulling out just a few of them to actually stimulate the conversation, and we’re also going to gain Natalie’s insights into how she came about coming up with those 1,000 questions. Beyond that, we’re going to hear how Natalie puts them into practice every day in her work and how so many people are ordering the book, they’re dog earring those pages, taking them into their next meeting so they can make things significantly better by asking the right questions that get the answers that really help people to grow their business.

With that in mind, I’m not going to hold you back any longer, here’s the terrific interview with Natalie Michael. Natalie, welcome to the show.

Natalie. Michael: Thank you, Gordon.

Gordon Sheppard: It is really wonderful to have someone on the show with so much experience in the C suite, at the coaching level. I know we’re going to get a ton out of the leadership advice that we’re going to hear from you throughout the episode. Fortunately for me, you recommended your book, it’s called The Duck and the Butterfly: Coaching Questions for Leaders at Work.

This truly is like the book says, a toolkit for changing lives. I know already I’m going to be incorporating that in my own work. I know that you know you’ve had big influences with this along the way. I don’t mean to get too overly micro-focused on that one aspect, because people are going to want to know a little bit more about you. If you had to introduce yourself, what would you say?

Natalie. Michael: I am a CEO and executive coach and I’ve been doing this for about 20 years. I work with CEOs who are just moving into the role and people who aspire to be in the C-suite.

Gordon Sheppard: This is something that you come by honestly, I can’t even imagine literally the millions, tens of millions of dollars of impact positively that you would have had by the time you’ve dealt with a leader in the way that you’ve described. Whether they’re coming in or they’re in that exit scenario.

The wonderful thing that we’re lucky for here today in terms of how we’re going to structure this interview is we’re going to use some of the questions from your own practice of tried and true and learn about your perspective on them. Maybe what you’re hearing from the CEOs that you’re dealing with in terms of helping them with their leadership or maybe even some of your own experience as we go along the way.

I think I’ll just set this up with one other aspect that I have to pull out of your book because I’m just so excited about it. It says here, a good question has the power to transform reality. When you write that observation, what do you mean?

Natalie. Michael: Well, I think I’ll frame it up and just say that this is a book of a 1,000 coaching questions. They’re divided into personal, team and strategic questions. I created it because I found that when I was going into really important high stakes coaching meetings, I really wanted to make sure I had a few places I could take the coaching engagement.

I think there’s no better feeling that a coach can have than they ask a question and someone goes, “Oh, wow.” It opens them up. They think about something in a new way and it really expands their view of their situation. That can be very transformative for people. It’s all very much about how we see things and the level of reflection that we bring.

Gordon Sheppard: What is the feeling for you when the, “Oh, wow.” Occurs?

Natalie. Michael: That’s why I do it. Whether it is for an individual or for a team, I really see many aspects of coaching, but one of the big pieces is really about expanding self-awareness and expanding the way that we make sense of situations so that we then can take more intentional action. For me, the “Oh, wow” is that moment where someone really stops, reflects and is ready to take action in a new and a positive way. Very meaningful for me.

Gordon Sheppard: Wow. It must be easy for you to jump out of bed in the morning and go and do your work. This idea of expanding self-awareness, we can’t get enough of that in terms of leadership and leadership development. On this show, that’s a big focus. What I’m going to do is right now get to some of my favorite questions in the leadership area, right from your book, and maybe we can talk about how you’ve actually put them into use and some of the reactions that you’ve gotten from your clients. The first one is what clues are you getting that your leadership style needs an update? When you’ve asked that question in the past, what happens?

Natalie. Michael: I love that question. Oftentimes when people come to me for coaching, it’s because they’re put in a new context. Due to the level of complexity in the world now, we don’t enter into executive position and have all the answers. We enter into those roles knowing that we’re going to have to learn and we’re going to have to learn fast and we’re going to have to adapt.

Oftentimes, it’s up to the leader to adapt their style versus the old days where people had to fully accommodate the leader and was more top down. I find that often when people are in a new context or in a stretch position, they often find that the old ways don’t work anymore. They have to bring more maturity, they have to bring more sophistication, and they have to behave in ways that are more appropriate at that executive level, which often involves enduring the hot seat more than earlier times in their career.

This question is often a time where people go, “Yeah, I do need an update, and I am getting a sign.” That’s why they come to coaching in the first place.

Gordon Sheppard: Wow. You can just hear it right there. If I was, I’m going to say a CEO sitting in front of you and you’ve asked me this question, I’m going to guess there are maybe some typical clues like my team isn’t doing what I want them to do or I thought I was saying it one way and somebody took it another way. Is that some of the rabbit holes that people start to jump down?

Natalie. Michael: Yeah, absolutely. I think the team is a very good marker of whether or not what’s worked in the past is going to work in the future. I do find that an executive level, one of the thresholds that an executive needs to pass through is that their own team is not necessarily their primary team, their functional team. Now, it’s more about their executive team and their relationship with the board as being also key teams that they need to be really conscious of.

That shift in orientation is a really key part of that C-suite transition. It’s one where style is different because you no longer have the power or authority to influence. It really relies more on those relationship skills, and that ability to hear diverse points of view and incorporate it into your own thinking and challenge others without getting their back up. The indicators are often more at that peer level and influencing up or out into the marketplace than the own team per se.

Gordon Sheppard: We just can’t have our old industrial, 200 year old leadership anymore, where I tell you what to do and you do it because that’s just not going to work. It leads me into the next question, which I thought was a fantastic one, what happens when you ask people, the CEOs this question, which is how do you want people to feel when they engage with you?

Natalie. Michael: I love that question because people don’t usually think about it. They often think about it from the lens of performance. What is the performance and what is the accountability that I want to instill or have happened in the organization? That’s very much an important piece of the puzzle. It’s half of it. But the other piece is what is the quality of interaction that we have with each other and do we walk away feeling positive and inspired?

I do a lot of work running CEO forums with an organization called MacKay CEO Forums and we run peer groups there. We say that a leader will inspire positive action. There’s a feeling that comes with that. If people come away feeling scared and they feel anxious, you’re not going to inspire that level of performance. I often try to turn the executives compass towards how do people feel when they walk away, and are they feeling motivated and inspired and supported? Because all the research shows that the higher the challenge, the more support you need. We want to point executives in that direction.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, this is super valuable. I know that… I was recently in a volunteer setting where I was in a leadership position. If I’ve learned a little bit, I think just slowly every decade goes along, I learn a little bit more. I wish I could live to about 400 years old so I could learn all my lessons in the right amount of time. But I said something to another volunteer, and I have a very direct style that I have to be aware of. That volunteer took it completely the wrong way. I really had to spend a lot of time then unwinding and reminding this person of how much I respected them and really appreciated them. But in my mind it was the fastest way to get from point A to point B, but in fact it wasn’t. It was a hard learning for me because again, my own style was in the way of that moment.

Natalie. Michael: Well, I love that example because A, this is not easy. When we put ourselves out there and we try to make a difference in the world, we come up against all sorts of people and types and differences. That’s what makes it hard. We do have to adapt and grow and change and we can be misunderstood. What I love about your story is the way you recovered from it and really went back and tried to have that person feel cared for and seen in the interaction and took responsibility for maybe it not going in the way that you wanted.

But I’ve had those moments too. I remember before the holidays, I was facilitating a session and I was really tired. My fatigue got in the way of me being fully present. It was just a real reminder that as leaders and executives, as coaches, as change agents, we have to take care of ourselves because it’s really hard to bring this level of emotional intelligence and strategic acumen and all those things that are expected of us and we expect of ourselves if we’re exhausted.

Gordon Sheppard: I completely agree with that in terms of the self-care part and the other piece I’ll add in is it’s actually not faster to be blunt. You will bog your team down so quickly. The fact that you’ve got a question in here about how do you make people feel? If folks from this interview just stopped it right now and just took that one away and actually got a grasp on it, you’ll find that again, the distance between point A and point B is significantly shorter over time and way more rich in terms of a way to live your life, in terms of then not creating that isolated type of leader that so often happens when they don’t deal with this type of thing.

I’m going to jump into another question here that maybe it just pertains to my thing and I just need some help and free coaching right now. But this idea of when you go to CEOs and you ask them, what have your kids taught you about leadership? What are their responses?

Natalie. Michael: Well, I think it’s just such a powerful question. The responses are so many. What I do find is that it’s not only the kids, it’s the younger generation in the workforce. In fact many CEOs are finding that they’re learning more from that younger generation these days because they’re more in touch with some of the values of the new generation coming into the workforce.

I recall one CEO when I asked that question, it really highlighted for them the different orientation towards people really feeling like they didn’t want to have one job for the rest of their life, and they did want to make a big difference, but they didn’t want to give up their lives to do it. It was interesting because one of the CEOs I worked with said, “I’m really sandwiched in my job. I’m getting all this direction from my board, but nobody on my board is young. Everybody on my board is older and maybe I’ll even go so far as using word a bit crusty.”

In this particular situation, she went on a two year influence campaign to bring some millennials onto her board. These people were a little bit older than her children, but the value system is a little bit more closely aligned. Fast forward to today, she’s got two people on her board in their twenties and she finds that that’s really powerful for her because that represents her workforce. Then she doesn’t have to always bridge that gap between the senior execs at the top, the younger workforce on the front line. She’s got some structural elements to help do that.

Gordon Sheppard: Gosh, there’s so much good information about the power of diversity in given situations. Certainly at the board level. I know that Deborah Rosati is coming on the show. Deborah Rosati runs an organization out of Toronto called Women Get On Board. She says, hey, it’s 18% women on boards across North America, let’s make an effort to improve that to at least get to parity even say by population.

Here you’ve just said, wait a second, the diversity in need for younger people to be on the board because this organization serves all kinds of different people or whatever that is. The power of that, and look at where we started from you, simple question. Now, they’ve got a game changing practice basically from this one starting point. Again, the way you set your book up to be so, so powerful.

Gordon Sheppard: I’m just going to lead into another part of this interview, because I know we could just keep asking these questions and getting these great, powerful responses from you. But there’s a piece that we’d like to help leaders with here as well, which is, if you want to be a great leader, you have to know how to run a great meeting. If you want to run a great meeting, you need to be really a great leader.

You’ve got a question here and it says, “What is one thing that would dramatically improve team meetings?” Again, in your experience when you’re pulling that question into the situation, what kind of responses are you getting from these senior leaders?

Natalie. Michael: I’ll say, this is exactly why I wrote the book, because I used to teach coaching courses. Clients would always say to me, “Do you have a library of coaching questions?” Finally, I sat down and created it for them. But, I expanded it from just coaching and I included the whole section on teams and a whole section on strategy, because what I found was that when my clients were going in and facilitating, whether it was a team meeting or it was a strategy session or it was an offsite, the power of the questions that they were putting on the agenda and the power of the questions that they were bringing to facilitate dialogue was half the battle.

You don’t just come up with these questions off the top of your head. The way that I created the book was I would come up with a section and I would really research, what is all the current research on conflict? What are all the bodies of work related to conflict that might inform my questions? What are different perspectives we can bring on this?

Each section, I’ve done that legwork for you so that when you go in and you have a meeting, you just simply have to flip to the section of the book and say, “Oh, I’m going to have a team meeting on values. Awesome. Here’s six questions I can bring and facilitate around.” Off you go to the races, have a better meaning. I use it all the time. I use it all the time.

Gordon Sheppard: I know. Thank you so much. Again, I don’t mean to oversimplify, it’s just I put 1,000 questions together. It’s so nice to hear about the amount of legwork that it takes to get to these very powerful questions. Like you said, you’re actually with these questions, providing a roadmap for people to actually have better meetings.

Natalie. Michael: That’s right. One of the things that I do team coaching. A key part of team coaching is establishing a set of agreements. It’s very easy to say, what are the behaviors that are going to support us to be successful? We can all pretty much come up with that question, but what do we ask next? Where do we go after that? How do we add depth, how do we add breadth, how do we add richness to the conversation? That’s the level of questioning that I’ve put in the book so that if you are a team coach or if you’re a team leader, you can chime in that meeting, that was my intent.

Gordon Sheppard: This is just wonderful. You remind me of another guest that was on the show, a gentleman named Martin Parnell. He has a phrase where he says, how to go beyond smart goals. What you just said was let’s go beyond typically what we’ve been doing and ask then, do that follow-up piece that is substantiated by the research and those aspects that you’ve put in to make it actually successful.

I’m so glad to hear about your description of that. That’s really, really important. I’m going to pick up one other question as we go towards the next part here now, and it’s because so often, I know when I ask this type of question in a coaching scenario, the answers are so thin or almost zero and it’s this one. What does this team want to be celebrating one year from now? When you ask that question, what feedback are you getting?

Natalie. Michael: Well, I just really believe in the power of starting with the end in mind. My whole philosophy around teams is it’s not just about the outcomes, it’s also about the way we work together. That review that I have is very much supported by research, which is when we have a positive experience, and we have productive outcomes, we love our team. It’s the best experience. It’s just such a pleasure to be a part of it.

I asked that question and I often get answers, background stuff we want to do, and that’s a big part, but I really encourage you to ask that question you have in your mind and what are we celebrating about how we interact together? Those moments that we have to move through together to get those kind of results? Because that’s what we show up and experience every day. It’s the relationship in the context of the doing.

Gordon Sheppard: I remember being in one session and someone said… Well, I don’t know if we should say this out loud, but in our office we have a cow bell. They would actually ring the cow bell when they were excited about things. Then other people like a sincere thank you. But I find people have a lot to complain about, but when it comes to actually figuring out how they’re going to celebrate, they seem a bit stuck.

Natalie. Michael: Yeah. That’s a very good point. We often don’t celebrate that often. When I do a lot of leadership assessments, and I find that people who arise to the top of organizations don’t often have a high need for recognition, which is good because when you get to the top you don’t get a lot of it. Everyone’s always telling you about the next thing. But that could set a negative tone in the culture.

Reminding yourself and systematizing that celebration is something that’s worthwhile and an important part of the process is good to be reminded of that. I didn’t even take my own advice on that one too because I’m guilty of what’s the next goal, what’s the next goal?

Gordon Sheppard: What’s the next book? How can I research that one and get it going?

Natalie. Michael: Exactly.

Gordon Sheppard: You’re right into that self-awareness piece again, which I really appreciate and you’ve just said something super insightful for me anyway, which is the leaders, the CEO leaders, if you want often the world to be a self-reflection of how you are, you’ve just said they don’t have a high need for celebration because they’re just moving forward in their nature. That’s probably really positive in one moment. But what a great opportunity.

Again coming from this simple question for a leader to reflect on that and go, “I know when I’m digging into this.” It’s often saying, how do you authentically celebrate? Because sometimes those staff lunches or whatever aren’t quite the right way to do it. Really, they have to find that real way to do it. When they do, and they get those things to go forward, it gets really, really good.

Well, if this interview was 1,000 questions long, we’d be here all day and I would just be celebrating how much great information the audience is going to get from you and your insights. But I’m going to just get down to the final question, it’s the one that we ask from this podcast all the time and it’s this, what inspires you?

Natalie. Michael: I love that question. I think the ultimate thing for me is… I think that might just sound so boring, but it’s learning. I am so inspired to learn more about myself and to learn more about my daughter and to learn more about my clients. I’m really oriented to that place, that sweet spot for me where psychology and business and social dynamics all come together.

It’s really easy for us to be self-aware and wise when we’re alone on a mountain top, or sitting in front of our computer, it’s when we start interacting with each other and trying to make things happen that things get a little bit messy. That really fascinates me because I see in my work time and time again that we all have the same intent and it doesn’t matter how much money we have or how much status we have in our job, we’re looking for support and we’re looking for a place to belong and we’re looking for a contribution. Sometimes we just lose sight of that, because of all the trappings around us.

That’s what really inspires me to help people make sense of all that and to tap into what really matters to them and to go on a journey of that feels significant for them. Because I do believe when we can make that connection to our hearts and our minds and what the world needs, that’s a pretty special place. That’s what inspires me, no matter how it sounds, that’s what I strive for every day.

Gordon Sheppard: The passion in your voice, I just have to say you’ve just described, I’m going to say the opposite of boring, which is where you got to start of there, but take me to a moment of actual learning, and put some meat on those bones for a second here. You described the name of somebody or maybe one of your own learning moments, can you give us an example of a specific moment of learning that really, again inspired you?

Natalie. Michael: I’ll just talk about what I’m learning now, because it’s different every year. For the last three years I’ve been really focused on adult development. All the body of work around how adults mature, develop and grow. I’ve been really fascinated by the link between how we think and how we experience the world and then the social emotional path of development for adults.

That was my real focus on learning for the last five years and linking that into leadership development. Now my theme for this year, it’s really around conflict. When it gets really messy, your experience with this individual that you spoke of in the beginning where you were directing, you were misconstrued. That’s what I’m really curious about right now. The courses that I’m taking this year, I’m taking one called safe conversations, because the more that I facilitate and the more I get into those moments, I realize it’s when everything goes to hell in a hand basket and we’re all looking at each other and we’re going, “This is hard, right?” We just all want to run.

It’s those moments where I don’t know that there’s really a training that we can do, but if we can just get really curious about that and learn some of the tools and the art of navigating those moments, I think we’ll all be more powerful as leaders and coaches. That’s what I’m diving into right now.

Gordon Sheppard: Wow. Thank you for sharing that. You’ve sparked something for me again that I get super excited about around the body of work that’s around some of these topics. One of them is a Susan Scott’s, Fierce Conversations, wonderful book. One of the core concepts in there is to let the silence do the heavy lifting.

Natalie. Michael: Yeah.

Gordon Sheppard: When I coached that in a setting, I actually take a moment and I then allow the room to be silent.

Natalie. Michael: Well, I really appreciate you saying that and I wanted to go back to your initial comment when you talked about being direct, because that comes up with these questions as well. There’s a quote in the book about how when you deliver a question, no matter what the context, your strategy meeting, your coaching session, your team meeting, it can come across like a sledgehammer, depending on your tone and your directness, your energy and your intent behind it.

I really encourage people when you’re asking questions, just know that a question is simple as why can be like, “Well, why didn’t you do that?” That’s very different than, “Why would didn’t you do that?” And being very conscious of tone and curiosity and that sledgehammer is going to give you the exact opposite effect, it’s going to shut people down. Be conscious of that, if there’s one request I could make.

Gordon Sheppard: Totally. I’m so learning from this moment along the way. I think where it goes is what I realized for myself and then the folks again, that I help as well is around your conflict piece that you were digging into around your inspiration is you’ve got to practice this. Whether it’s practicing silence or practicing the tone of your question and this kind of thing, that’s a really important aspect for people to actually… So they can get the feeling of how that’s going to be, and maybe not any different from, I don’t know, learning piano or learning karate. They’re just belt levels you want to go through when it comes to the conflict piece and the physiological feelings that you need to have to go with that.

Natalie. Michael: Totally. It comes from screwing up. I remember early in my career, 20 years ago, I would have qualified, it was 20 years ago, and [inaudible] said to me, “I felt judged.” I was shocked. It was like your thing with this person and you’re like, how can this person feel judged? But it’s those moments where you go, what could I have said, or done or how might have I been received there? That [inaudible] if we go through that period of reflection and really think through what was going on. Sometimes it’s how we’re received and sometimes it’s how we’re delivered, but I think, stopping to really reflect and grow from that is where the juice happens.

Gordon Sheppard: Holy moly. Again, we could keep talking, The Duck and the Butterfly: Coaching Questions for Leaders at Work by Natalie Michael. Natalie, where can people get this book if they want to find it?

Natalie. Michael: They can get it on Amazon. That’s the absolute best place. What I will say is I’m a Kindle user. I love my Kindle instant download. This is a hard copy book. All of my clients say I have it on my desk and I flipped through it, so when I’m going into a meeting I can just whip it open. They’ve got tabs on it, they’ve got highlights. It’s just easier in hard copy. Do what you want, but I’m warning you now, you might have to get two copies if you get it in Kindle.

Gordon Sheppard: It sounds like the best practice here is to get a hard copy book. Of course, you can hear the level of acumen that you have. If CEOs, or the people that help them want to get in touch with you directly, what’s the best way to do that?

Natalie. Michael: The best way is through Waterfront Partners, waterfront-partners.com, and we’ll just… All the information’s there about who we are and what we do and how to get ahold of us.

Gordon Sheppard: Well, thank you so much for being on the show and sharing so graciously, all your great insights.

Natalie. Michael: I appreciate the opportunity and thanks for doing what you do. I’m a huge podcast lover and I love your work and I share your conviction, that meetings are where the magic happens. Thank you for doing it.

Gordon Sheppard: Wasn’t that just a blockbuster episode? There were so many insights. Can you imagine as a leader having the right question in the right moment to ask, to know that you’re going to move things forward in so many different areas? That is absolutely powerful. I have to say it one more time, this is a quote from Natalie’s book, a good question has the power to transform reality.

Because we referred to Episode 56 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast with Martin Parnell, I wanted to make sure you got that information. Now, that episode, well it was titled, How Leaders Can Go Beyond Smart Goals. You can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/ 56. In terms of getting even more questions that you can add into your toolkit, check out Episode 59 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast, it’s called, Nine People Questions to Answer Before You Book a Meeting Room. You can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/59.

As all leaders know, after you ask a great question, you have to be a terrific listener. If you want to spark up your listening skills, then check out Episode 14 on the Meeting Leadership Podcast. It’s called, Three Listening Skills Exercises For Leaders. You can get that episode by going to meetingleadershipinc.com/14. I also want to remind you that this episode of the Meeting Leadership Podcast is brought to you by the Meeting Leadership Academy.

If you’re looking for terrific online and live training options for you and your team, check out meetingleadershipinc.com/academy. For everyone who is already a subscriber, thank you so much. If you haven’t done it yet, make sure you take a moment to hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app so you don’t miss another episode. As always, thank you so much for listening and we’ll see you next time on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.

Thanks for listening to the Meeting Leadership Podcast. Be sure to subscribe for more strategies that help you become an outstanding leader, and don’t forget to rate and review so we can bring you even more great content. We’ll see you next time, right here on the Meeting Leadership Podcast.