Gregg Ward

Micheal Pacheco 0:00
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast as always, I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, I have Greg ward. Greg has lived more than four different lives, a theatre, a theatre actor, writer and director in New York and London, a specialist trainer in the for the New York City for the New York City Police Department, a freelance correspondent for BBC Radio and other UK media. And when he does now serving as an executive coach, consultant and facilitator to global companies, and governments on respect and respectful leadership. He’s also the author of the award winning, best selling fable, the respected leader, and as delivered has delivered over 2700 Different keynotes talks, seminars and workshops in North America, Europe, and the Middle East over the past 25 years. Greg Ward, welcome to the podcast.

Gregg Ward 0:54
Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure.

Micheal Pacheco 0:57
Thank you. Thank you, I always open the podcast by simply inviting our guests to talk a little bit more about yourself, and maybe a little bit about your why and what got you into coaching?

Gregg Ward 1:08
That is a great question. You know, a lot of my life has been kind of falling into something, it hasn’t necessarily been planned. But I got exposed to something I got excited by it. So I started to flow down that path. Thank you specifically, how I got into coaching is I have a very robust training and consulting firm that, that I founded in the late 90s. And then in 2001, when 911 hit, I got the call from my major client saying stop everything we’re done. And it was shock, a shock to me. And I realized that I needed to broaden what I do and my offerings. So I signed up for an executive coach training program here in San Diego, where I’m based. And it was an 18 month that was incredibly rigorous. It was a very serious program. And at the end of it, I came out of it fully credentialed. And I’ve been doing coaching ever since mostly with leaders in global corporations, as well as teams, and mostly in the areas of leadership, what we all call the soft skills, which are really the hardest skills of all, and managing complex, helping people with relationships, and so on and so forth. So that’s what I do now

Micheal Pacheco 2:39
is who, who are your typical clients?

Gregg Ward 2:43
Well, my typical clients will be the C suite executives for major global companies. These are folks who are very, very successful. They got there because they solve problems, and they move quickly. And on occasion, they would run roughshod over people, and generate some negative blowback on them as leaders. And so they got to that point in their careers where they realized that the negative impacts were undermining their success. And they reached out looking for someone who could help them, or they had other people say to them, you know, you could probably do with some coaching to help you with your leadership skills. So most of my clients come to me by referral, or because they’ve heard about me read my book, and so on and so forth.

Micheal Pacheco 3:34
Okay, and with your focus around respectful leadership, it sounds like maybe some of your your clients or maybe your ideal clients, perhaps have been burned in the past, shall we say? Because? People, right, these are naturally incredibly assertive people. Yes. With charisma and egos to match?

Gregg Ward 3:56
Absolutely, absolutely. And also, they came up through the ranks in a way that many of us are no longer doing. Many of them started at the bottom of their organizations, I was just reading about the CEO of Walmart, who literally started as a part time stocking clerk, wow, years ago and worked his way up to CEO. Wow, that was how it was done. And in some companies, that’s still how it’s done. And when you join a company, he’s fresh out of college, what have you, there is an expectation that you’re going to start at the bottom and work your way up. And you won’t necessarily be treated with the with the utmost of respect. In fact, there’s an assumption Hey, you’re the newbie and this certainly happened to me when I started in the workforce. You’re the newbie, you’re gonna have to put up with all the scut work, and you’re gonna have to work your way up and you’re gonna have to earn our respect. Well, that’s true. changed, that’s changed dramatically. The world of work has changed fundamentally, for example, our workforce will be by 2020 25, dominated by millennials and Gen Z. There’s just no question about it. And they are the most educated generation two ever joined the workforce, they are also the most diverse. And one more thing that I know about them. Because I have three generation millennial children. They survived the great recession of 2008, through 2011. They saw their friend’s parents lose their homes, they saw their parents lose their jobs literally being thrown out of work, because things went bad. So they’re not stupid, these millennials, and they now sit in the driver’s seat, as we all know, we are having all of our companies are having a really hard time finding highly qualified candidates. That wasn’t the case years ago. So I’m not saying we have to kowtow to them. I’m not saying we have to bend over backwards for them, what I am saying is that they have an expectation of being treated with respect. And all the research, all the data that we’ve done here at the Center makes it really clear that if you treat people with respect from the very getgo, when they join your organization, they’re going to be more productive, they’re going to be more loyal, they’re going to go the extra mile when the going gets tough, and they’re more likely to stay resilient. So these are all really, really good reasons to treat newcomers and young people with respect it actually does pay off.

Micheal Pacheco 6:45
And how do you as you’re working with C suite, the suite C suite executives? What sort of, I guess my question is, what is what does a typical engagement with you look like, when people? And that’s an

Gregg Ward 6:59
excellent question. It’s either it’s one of two things, they’re either reaching out to me, because a colleague, or even they themselves have realized that they’re stuck, that they’re not as effective, as effective as they used to be. They’re having problems. And they’re not quite sure what it’s all about putting their finger on it, they just can’t figure it out. And they want help. Or someone’s saying to them, you had better get coached or else. Now, obviously, I’d much prefer the former somebody who’s really interested in it. But if I do get, and I would say more than 50% of my referrals are people who are being told you need coaching. And that’s a bad place to start. I think you would agree. So what I’ve got, I’m very upfront with them. I say, look, I wish you weren’t coming to me because there’s a sort of Damocles hanging over your head, you’re being told to change or else and you don’t quite understand why you’ve been successful all these years. You’ve done all this great work. And now all of a sudden, you’re pissing people off and you don’t know why. And why aren’t they just getting over it? Why is everybody so sensitive? Why? Why do I have to walk around on eggshells, I get where you’re coming from. And I’m willing to help you if you’re willing to be helped. But if you’re just gonna sit here and whine and complain about how the millennials are a bunch of crybabies, and a bunch of politically correct people who, who just can’t take it in the real world, then I’m not interested because you don’t want to be helped. You don’t want to change you just want to complain about others. And those people if they do start that with me, I’m too old. I’m too old. I’m just like, dude, I’m gonna hit you once with a very hard to buy for covered with velvet. And if you still don’t want to see it from another point of view, then go find somebody else because I cannot help you. I do not have the time or the inclination. Your hand while you grow up. I’m sorry, I’m so rude about it. But I don’t have I don’t have the patience anymore for arrogant senior executives who think their poop doesn’t stink.

Micheal Pacheco 9:10
Yeah, that’s sorry, that’s

Gregg Ward 9:12
kind of plugged in it.

Micheal Pacheco 9:13
That’s great. Since we’re talking about generations here, I got to ask are you a boomer Are you Gen Xers because you sound like?

Gregg Ward 9:21
Yeah, I’m kind of a mix. I’m a mutt. I’m actually on the cusp. I was born in 1960. They say the boomer generation ended in 63. I, you know, I’ve been doing this work for so long and so many ways. I don’t know what generation I’m a part of. I do know this. When I started. I was treated like crap. I was not respected when I started in the workforce. And I assumed that was just the way things were. And eventually I grew to realize that no, it doesn’t have to be that way. And actually organizations where people are treated with respect, actually have long term value Every positive business outcomes,

Micheal Pacheco 10:02
I think I mean, doesn’t this, this must go back, you know, hundreds if not 1000s of years. It’s a very like fraternity. It’s a fraternal thing, right? To haze the newbie. Yeah,

Gregg Ward 10:14
absolutely. Absolutely. And also remember, what were the leadership styles that we grew up with? We were one was command and control. I mean, how many of us had parents who said my dad did? Who said, Do as I say, because I’m your father. Okay, that was it. And so that kind of leadership style gets transferred right into the workplace, and people assume, okay, I’m the boss. So you need to do what I say. But that doesn’t work anymore. It even if it didn’t work, at one time, it was more accepted. But now that really, really doesn’t work unless we’re in an urgent situation or an urgent kind of culture, such as the military, police, firefighting, and so on where command and control culture is what saves lives. But most of us, most of us aren’t doing that in our C suite, corporate executives, right? Yeah, I know, everything’s urgent, and there’s millions of dollars at stake. But at the end of the day, all our research tells us if you try to command and control people and work in your workplace, you’re just gonna piss them off. Better to try to influence them and use respect as the grease that creates the influencing going forward?

Micheal Pacheco 11:19
For sure, yeah, software development at Intel, or quality assurance of Amazon, the stakes are not that high. No, lives are not on the line.

Gregg Ward 11:27
Exactly. That’s exactly it. And I find that once senior executives, I kind of explained that and actually show them the data, I have a whole bunch of companies that we here have studied, ones that have respectful cultures and ones that don’t, and we show them the metrics metrics will blow you away. And a lot of them, especially from the tech companies, that people who, who, who got their PhDs and computer science or what have you, or engineering, these folks were never introduced to these concepts. I understand that. And they didn’t succeed because they understood all about psychological safety and emotional intelligence that they didn’t cover that stuff. And they were successful during the early years, because they did all this wonderful stuff. With technology and engineering. That’s great. But once you start to lead people, there’s a whole different skill set that’s involved. And you can’t just take what you’ve done in the past and assume that it’s going to work in the future. It just doesn’t work that way.

Micheal Pacheco 12:24
Yeah. I want to I want to circle back to what an engagement with you looks like. What is the actual coaching?

Gregg Ward 12:35
answer your question. Okay.

Micheal Pacheco 12:37
You’re good? No, you’re good. You did answer part of the question. But I’m also curious to know, what does the actual coaching part look like? How do you? How do you take these old school curmudgeons and turn them into

Gregg Ward 12:52
I like that word, curmudgeon

Micheal Pacheco 12:55
into respectful respecting human beings

Gregg Ward 13:01
a leader? That is an excellent question. And so it, it really depends on on their willingness, if they have a willingness to learn, we can work really, really quickly, in as little as three months over the course of maybe six to eight sessions, we can make a lot of progress. And very often what happens is I’ll be engaged for three months, and people will, at the end of three months, they’ll say, Wow, this was great. I learned a lot. I’ve started to change, can you stick with me for another three months? So the very first couple of meetings is really me assessing willingness to learn and willingness to change. And if I get the sense that they’re that they want to do that, we can work really quickly. If they don’t, I’m either going to shut it down, right at the get go and say I can’t help you. Or I’m gonna see if I can tease them and say, Hey, can you hang with me for another session? Would you be willing to, to at least do one more session, see if you can get some value out of this. And I might do a little bit of psychological manipulation, I might say something to the effect, you know, maybe this isn’t for you. But maybe one of your kids might come to you one day and say, Hey, I’m being disrespected at work. I don’t know what to do. And maybe what I teach you here might be useful to you, as the parent that will usually get them that’ll usually get them

Micheal Pacheco 14:27
I think we can all agree that you’re you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. And

Gregg Ward 14:35
it’s really hard to help someone who’s been told by their leadership you’d you change or else again, if they’d been super successful, we see this a lot with heads of sales, for example, bizdev these folks have kind of been the charming, outgoing doing their thing, hey, don’t get in their way, let them do their thing. But then then they go over the line and in some way or another, and people freak out, and then I get the call, Hey, can you fix them? We love them. We value them. They’re the reason we’re so successful. So can you fix them? And I say, No guarantees whatsoever. It’s up to them whether they want to be fixed.

Micheal Pacheco 15:16
Yeah. Do you? Do you get paid? Regardless? What is what is what is that?

Gregg Ward 15:22
Yes, my agreement is you’re gonna give me an upfront deposit. That’s non refundable. Usually, usually that’s 1/3 of the of the overall cost. And then the second third is paid about halfway through in the final third is paid at the end. Yeah, and my contracts are bulletproof. I have a wonderful attorney, that basically no matter what happens, I’m going to get paid up until the end of that whatever period that is, if we get through 1/3, I get all I keep it in, you know, even if I stop it after the second session, just say I can’t help this, I get that third. And then the second third is purely a focus of how many meetings have been had, and so on.

Micheal Pacheco 16:05
I want to go on a little bit of a tangent here, but we don’t we don’t talk we don’t get an opportunity to talk about legal aspects and contract very often on this on this podcast, how important have bulletproof contracts been for you and your business and in your career?

Gregg Ward 16:19
You know, it generally speaking, I like to say, Sure, I could do this on a handshake, but I won’t, simply because most people are decent and honor their contracts. Until I did that fairly early on in my career roughly 20 years ago, and I did a handshake, the whole thing blew up, the person quit filed lawsuits named me in the lawsuit, it was an absolute something show, which I never want to go through. Again, it cost me a lot of money, which I recovered, because at the end of the day, the lawsuit was thrown out. And I recovered all of my expenses. But it was two years of my life and a lot of gray hair that I could have done without losing. So at the end of the day, I now make sure my contracts are 100% bulletproof.

Micheal Pacheco 17:16
I mean, yeah, that’s great. That’s great. And I’ll take I’ll take gray hair over losing the hair. Yeah. Good point. You’ve got you’ve got a process that you’ve developed, as you as you work with your clients on this, would you talk a little bit about that?

Gregg Ward 17:34
Yes, thank you so much for asking, I really appreciate you doing that. It’s called coaching for respect. Now, typically, when two people in an organization, let’s say it’s a Boston, they’re submit subordinate, lose respect for one another, or both lose it for each other. It’s usually because one or the other has behaved in a way that the other finds disrespectful to some degree or more. And there’s kind of a laundry list of behaviors, which fall short of legal policy, you know, crossing over the line, like sexual harassment or something like that. But it’s still like bullying, it’s still problematic. So what, what I say to I usually get the call from HR, hey, we got these two people, they’ve lost respect for each other starting to impact their work. And it’s also impacting the work of the people that they work with. Can you help them? And I say, Well, let me give it a shot. Let me see once again, right from the get go, are they willing to examine their relationship and make a good faith effort at trying to repair it? If they are, I say, Okay, here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to meet with you individually. And I’m going to cover some neuroscience on respect why people lose respect for each other, how it can be repaired, I’m going to take you through the mechanics and help you understand what you’re going to go through. And so I’ll have a number of individual meetings with the parties before I bring them together. I might also do assessments with them. I’m certified in disc of certified and Hogan and a number of other assessments like Myers Briggs. So I’ll do the most appropriate assessment. And then I will get a really good sense of where they stand in their relationship and the negative impacts on on them in the organization. And eventually, it’s a 10 step process. Eventually, I will bring them together once they have a really good idea of well, how they want them to individually, they want this relationship repaired. What are they willing to own in their own behavior? What are they willing to apologize for if it’s needed? And lastly, what are they willing to change and work on going forward? Then I bring them together. It’s like a mediation. I’m trained as a mediator. And I take them through step by step by step recovering everything that went into clarifying everything, whatever apology He’s need to happen. And then we lay out a map and a plan and a strategy for moving forward. They sign it, and then we do some check ins afterwards. I can tell you that 50% of the time this works. And it works well. If people really want to repair the relationship, but 50% of the time, it doesn’t work. And I have to shut it down pretty early on, simply because one or the other believes that the other person has engaged in what we call an unrightable wrong. That person stepped over a line disrespected them in such a way that they feel so aggrieved and so upset and so angry, that they will never want to work with that person again. And if that’s the case, I’ll try to coach them past it. And if I can’t coach the past that I’ll just go back to the company, I’ll say, I’m sorry, I cannot help. In this case, you’re going to have to look to other measures to resolve this.

Micheal Pacheco 20:57
Those cases? I’m guessing, and and please, I mean, this is kind of a question, but I’m gonna pose it as a guess. I’m guessing that the air is actually on the aggrieved persons part, right? It’s their ego kind of getting in the way they don’t want to forgive go through the work of forgiving that person.

Gregg Ward 21:17
Right? Right. It Yes, yes. And it’s also possible that the other person engaged in such disrespectful behavior that any reasonable person and it also there’s a difference between reasonable woman and reasonable man, in many situations, any reasonable person might say, yeah, that was over the line, I wouldn’t want to work with that person either. So it is we often say to them at the beginning, it takes two to tango. And each of you had a role in how this relationship soured. However, it’s entirely possible. One person was the provocateur, one of the two did something that was really egregious. And then it’s up to the other person to be willing to accept their apology, and forgive them. And sometimes some people just cannot do that. Yeah. Yep.

Micheal Pacheco 22:18
Interesting. on a, on a totally different note, where where do you find your clients? How do you market yourself? How do you get more clients?

Gregg Ward 22:27
That’s a great question. We do attend mostly HR conferences, and learning and development conferences, we have a whole suite of programs that on respect that we can deliver either in person or virtually, we also have an E Learning suite. And we also have a number of clients. We’ve been doing this for a long time, people know who we are, they reach out to us or they’ll do a Google search on on respected disrespectful leadership, we come up and they reach out to us. So generally speaking, we get a lot of our clients by referrals, our coaching clients come by referrals. And I also am a part of many different coaching networks, like the Association for corporate executive coaches, and ICF. And you name it, I’ve kind of been involved in doing this work for a long time.

Micheal Pacheco 23:19
Nice. Are you good? What about can you talk about some, some big wins that you guys have had more?

Gregg Ward 23:25
Oh, yeah. Okay. Thank you for asking. These are great questions. These are great question. Okay. I appreciate it. So I’m gonna go back a few years, to a senior manager and their direct report. He was a man, she was a woman, both very good people, decent people. And he was lacking in emotional intelligence, highly trained, highly educated, a real go getter. And he just was a kind of a bull in the china shop. And his direct report, a woman who was younger than he was, was okay with that for a long, long time. But then, she felt humiliated in front of her colleagues by him. He didn’t even know he’d done it. He just and this is very often the case that some folks are just completely unaware that just go their unconscious normal behaviors. They do their thing. And because he was in senior leadership, no one ever called him on his behavior while she called him on it. And she did it. She did it in a very formal way through HR, so it blew up immediately. And fortunately, I knew the head of HR, and she called me and she said, here’s what we got. And I said, I get it. Let me talk to them. And I ran this process the coaching for respect process with them. And I’ll be honest with you, not only did she was she crying, because she was so uncomfortable with having to basically confront this guy with his behavior that he kind of gotten away with for a long time. But he felt so ashamed once he understood what he done, he broke down. He was so sorry. He, as you could tell, he wasn’t faking it. He has this rocked his world. It changed his whole life. And he went home, he started to repair the relationship with his wife, with his kids. His direct reports, he went on a campaign throughout his organization apologizing for treating people the way he had treated them, which is basically he bullied people for most of his career. And she and he thanked her 1000 times. They are still working together every now and then I hear from them. And they’ve referred me additional work. They’re still working together, they have a fantastic relationship. And I consider that my best win of all, I’m very, very proud of that one.

Micheal Pacheco 26:13
That’s great. That’s amazing. So he just never had never had no one had to call them out on the shit.

Gregg Ward 26:17
No, no, that’s the problem. When you reach a certain level in an organization, no one has the courage to call you on your shit. Unless it’s unless it’s a colleague or a buddy.

Micheal Pacheco 26:26
Yeah, it’s gotta be a peer or a superior or someone, a friend outside of the company all together.

Gregg Ward 26:32
Yes. Yes. It’s so true. Interesting. Now I can. Can I tell you about a big failure I had?

Micheal Pacheco 26:39
That’s my next question. All right. Tell me when you’ve really screwed something up. And you’ve learned from it.

Gregg Ward 26:45
I yeah, I screwed something up really badly. I got a call. It was a healthcare. And it was the the head of a hospital. All physicians, the head of the physicians group, who said to me, I’ve got folks in the in the, in one of the departments, I won’t name it. These physicians are at each other’s throats. And can you help? And I said, Yeah, I’m pretty sure I can help. Let me let me try. Well, what I the mistake I made is I took the head physicians word for it. When she said it’s not that big of a deal. It was a huge deal. It was much bigger than she was letting on. And I only found out after the fact she was minimizing it a because she didn’t understand about interpersonal dynamics. She was a surgeon. Interpersonal relationships, communication, that was not her scope of skills. She’s a cutter. Yeah, a very good and very successful surgeon. But she didn’t know from interpersonal communications at all.

Micheal Pacheco 27:59
Clearly need that bedside manner kind of thing? No,

Gregg Ward 28:03
not at all. Not at all. Although I think it surgeons can always benefit from it. But the point is, I took her word on it, she she kind of minimized the whole thing. She said a couple of sessions with these guys together, I’m sure you’ll fix it. And I thought, Oh, okay. It doesn’t sound like it’s, it’s, well, it was so much worse. So much worse. The mistake I made was only listening to that person, I should have said, Look, I am not going to get engaged. And of course, they said we don’t have much money. And that was stupid. I, I needed the work at that time. This is a while ago. And so I of course, I said, Yeah, I think I can help. And I kind of waded into it with I did not give the usual cosmic caveats that I now give, where I say there’s no way I’m making any guarantees that I can fix anything until I talk to the parties privately. And I didn’t do that. In this case, I just took her word for it. And it blew up. It was very, very bad. And it didn’t end well for me or for them. So never again. No, never again.

Micheal Pacheco 29:05
Do you do 360 degree assessment or stuff like that? Now? I

Gregg Ward 29:10
do. Yes,

Micheal Pacheco 29:11
I do. Get about a bigger, fuller picture of it

Gregg Ward 29:15
always depends on the situation, if I’m running the coaching for respect process, and both parties agree. And the organization is in agreement, and I strongly urge them to do so not only do they do assessments, like the Hogan or the disc or what have you, but I also make sure I do a 360 as well. I want to find out from all the different parties involved. What’s going on here, not just from the two individuals, but it does take that’s that’s not cheap. It’s not cheap. It’s a process. And when they balk at the price, I say look, we could do this and we can give it a good faith try and it’s gonna take some effort and time and expense or we could not do that. See this ad it could, they could fall out. And you’re looking at legal getting involved in lawsuits and all that kind of stuff. And that’s going to cost a heck of a lot more than if you give me a shot at the get go. And that usually gets them to say, Okay, interesting. But I will turn work down. If I get my spidey sense goes off, I don’t care what they want to pay me. And I did. I did that. Just last month, I got a call. Big, big, very successful company. And as soon as I heard what was going on, I said now Now, if you’d call me a year ago, when this started, maybe I could have helped. But you waited too long? Well, we thought it would work itself out. No, it never does. It always grows from a molehill to a big mountain. So call me earlier next time, but I don’t want anything to do with this. I can’t help.

Micheal Pacheco 30:50
Interesting. Yeah, we’ve talked about kind of, you know, personalities and egos and this sort of thing a couple of different times in our short chat so far. But I want to pose maybe the same question or a similar question in a different way. Because I think it’s a complex topic. And, and asking different questions in different ways. I think we can get come to different different different answers, I guess. But I wonder how humility is, and the openness to being wrong. I feel like it’s got to be very, very, has to has to be central to allow you to do what you do.

Gregg Ward 31:34
That is a brilliant observation. All right, for the people that you work with, right? Yes, yes, they have to be willing to own their shit, right? You don’t mind me saying that. And usually, when I come at them from a place of look, I’m not here to shame you. I’m not here to humiliate you, and I’m not here to fix you, I can help you if you want to be helped. So let’s take a look at the what happened from a factual point of view, and then try to look at the different perspectives here. And if you’re willing to see how this incident was perceived by others, and how you might be playing a role in it, then by golly, maybe we can work something out here and you can go forward and your own your own your shit. And, and move on from there, and you’ll be a better person for it.

Micheal Pacheco 32:30
But I mean, that’s that’s kind of the was was the question that I’m trying to get that was trying to get to is, do you when you first come in and you sense a gigantic ego? Yeah. Yeah. What sort of, if any, what sort of steps, tactics? Do you use coaching? Methodologies do you go through in order to help this person help themselves? Now, obviously, like we said before, you can’t help someone who doesn’t want to help themselves. But when you first meet with someone, I think there’s there’s probably some opportunity for you to expose them to another realm of possibility. There may be another reality beyond yours.

Gregg Ward 33:16
Yes, absolutely. And so, here’s what I do, usually, especially when I deal with a senior executive who says to Me, I don’t know why I’m here. I don’t understand why you’re here. I don’t know why I’m in this room with you. That’s gotta be hard. It’s really hard. And I’ll just say, Hey, I got a call. I got a call, something happened. It seemed to upset some people. Now, I’ve been doing this work for 20 plus years. If you’ll give me a little bit of time to explain how that might be a problem. I think maybe you’ll see why you’re here. But if you’re just gonna sit there with your arms folded and say, This is a bunch of politically correct snowflake BS, then let’s not waste each other’s time. And I often say this look, I’m gonna get paid. I have already got my deposit. That’s non refundable. I’m getting paid. So I can either walk out of here now, or I can try to help my best to help you which I will. I’m gonna say to them, I’m on your side. I’m on the other person’s side, too. I’m just trying to help if you’ll let me but if you don’t want to be helped, that’s fine. Let’s not waste each other time. It’s been nice knowing you. And I’ve sometimes had to do the old stand up from the table and reach out my hand before they’ll say okay, all right. All right. Sit down. Let you know tell me what you need to tell the egos the egos?

Micheal Pacheco 34:49
Yeah. You know, you know that’s what you’re getting when you walk into that room. Right? Because you’re working with C suite executives and fortune 500 companies. Yeah, globally.

Gregg Ward 35:00
And unfortunately, I just turned 62. And I may not look at, and I’m glad I don’t. But I can say, Look, I just turned 62. I don’t have time for this bullshit. You want to talk about this? Great. I’ll give it my all. But if you’re if you’ve take this as a waste of your time, forget it. Forget it. And I used to be so solicitous. And say, give me a chat. And I don’t have time for that anymore.

Micheal Pacheco 35:27
Do you think this is a waste of your time? It is definitely a waste of my time. Exactly. Like I respect the hell out of that. And I like that a lot.

Gregg Ward 35:36
Thank you. Well, the other thing I also say, I say, don’t say anything. But let me take you down the road of how this is gonna go. Yeah, you tell me you don’t want to deal with this. You’re not interested. This is a bunch of politically correct bullshit. Okay, got it. I go back. And I tell HR and legal that that’s what you said, because that’s exactly what I’m going to say. And I’m going to say this guy’s uncoachable. So you HR and legal need to decide what you’re going to do next. Because I’m telling you with somebody like this, this probably isn’t the first time and it’s definitely not going to be the last time. So sooner or later, this is gonna get a lot bigger. And I tell them that I’ll tell them that I said, this is gonna get a lot bigger. And you’re gonna wish that you had sat here with me and done a little bit of coaching, and maybe heard a different perspective, rather than the shitshow. That’s going to come down the pike later on. Now. It’s the ones who say, they can’t touch me. Nothing’s gonna happen to me. I’m like, great. I’m out of here. By the way, I’m gonna say exactly what I just said to you. I’m going to tell HR that, and I’m going to tell them You said that as well. And then see how that works for you. And you know, some people do get away with it. Some people get away with it. Interesting. Yeah, it’s it’s unfortunate.

Micheal Pacheco 36:55
So untouchable, like Eliot Ness? Yeah.

Gregg Ward 36:58
Like that. Yeah. But you know, are there is certain something freeing with being able to sit there with a C suite executives who’s earning 100 times more a year than I do? Yeah. And being able to just look at them and just say, you want to do this work? Great. Let’s go to work. You don’t? I’m out of here. Goodbye. There’s something really free about doing that. Oh, that’s funny. I’m in a position to do that. By the way. Yeah. Now, if I were not a straight white guy, that would be a different conversation. Because it very often it’s, I don’t know how else to put it. Statistically speaking, it’s your straight white guys that I’m dealing with. And they have a certain listening for me. But if it’s a woman of color, so sitting opposite of them trying to do this coaching, it’s a whole different kettle of fish. Because the way they see that person is completely different, regardless of how open and honest they are, and all that kind of stuff. It’s a different listening. Now, the that other person, that other coach might say exactly the same thing that I say. But the way it’s heard, trying to be different. Now, I know I have colleagues sit on my advisory council, they are far better coaches than me, women and people of color are far better coaches than me. And they are able to get through to these guys in a way that I can’t. So isn’t that interesting?

Micheal Pacheco 38:40
Yeah, I mean, there’s certain things that are attached to the way that you perceive the world around you, I guess.

Gregg Ward 38:49
Yes. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And there’s one other thing I want to mention is, I will sometimes bring up, I’ll ask them a question fairly early on. I’ll say Do you believe in a higher power? And they’ll either say yes, no, or why are you asking me that question? And if they do, I will use a very ancient kind of positioning on this, I’ll say, look, sometimes our Higher Power puts us in a situation where we need to learn to become humble, and learn. And maybe this is one of those situations. And that will often crack the ice with someone who believes in a higher power. If they don’t, then I’m going to appeal to their sense of decency, to their, to their civility to what they want to do in the world. As sometimes I go to a place do you want to be known around here as a total asshole? Do you really do you really want people not wanting to work with you

Micheal Pacheco 39:57
is is that what you want? Is that is that the legacy that you want to leave?

Gregg Ward 40:01
Exactly? Yeah, I go to that legacy conversation. That’s, that’s a good, good way to put it. And nine times out of 10, they say no, no, of course not. But everybody’s too sensitive. Say, hang on, hang on. And here’s where 20 plus years of doing this work, I say, look, give me five minutes, I’ll find out something in you, you think you’re so tough? I will find out something about you. And I will push that button and you will explode, you will lose it. Oh, no, no, no, you can’t do that to me. And the only people I haven’t been able to do that do that I have Navy SEALs. I live in San Diego, I have Navy SEALs as buddies. I could, I could say the most offensive things to them. And they just laugh and chuckle because they’re trained. They are trained to deal with the most with abuse that most of us can’t even imagine. So, and they give it to each other.

Micheal Pacheco 41:05
That’s awesome. Greg, what? What advice would you give to a new coach who’s just starting out?

Gregg Ward 41:12
Find your niche? What are you excited about? Some people are really good at helping people change careers. For example, are you a career coach? or developmental coach? Some people are like me, you’re all about developing the interpersonal skills, interpersonal communication, solving complex, emotional challenges. Are you good at that? Are you are you good at coaching people on the nuts and bolts of business? Are you a numbers person? Do you? Do you? Can you help? You know, what’s your niche? Find your niche, what really excites you and coach in that niche? Because when I started coaching 20 years ago, there weren’t that many executive coaches out there. Now, there’s tons of them. So what makes you different? Are you are you an expert in your in your industry? Now I have happened to coach in every industry, from pharmaceuticals, to construction, to law, to corrections, you name it, I’ve coached in it. But some folks are coming out of a company, as experts in like, say human resources. So what industry? Are they HR expert in wanting to become a coach? And and so you can build your niche inside of an industry that you’re mostly familiar with? Technology, what have you.

Micheal Pacheco 42:38
Thanks, a lot. Greg, is there anything else that you would like to chat about that we haven’t touched on yet?

Gregg Ward 42:45
Well, I think at the end of the day, I always like to remember what Maya Angelou said, at the end of her career when she was being interviewed by a journalist who said to her, Maya, you have done so much in your life, you’ve met so many people, you’ve, you’ve accomplished so much, what have you learned about human beings and the course of your life? And she said, I have learned that people will forget what you did. And people will forget what you said. But people will never forget how you made them feel. And I think that’s a lesson that we all should take to heart. People will never forget how you made them feel life is too short. To have people going through life thinking that you’re a jerk. That you’re disrespectful life is way too short. You don’t have to be Mr. Nice Guy. But being respectful actually does make a powerful difference in their lives. And in yours. That’s brilliant. Man.

Micheal Pacheco 43:48
I have I have heard that quote before, and did not know who it was attributed to that. I mean, that’s hard to beat.

Gregg Ward 43:57
Yeah. Yeah. Especially my all that she went through. Absolutely.

Micheal Pacheco 44:02
Good stuff. Greg, you have a complimentary consultation around coaching for respect. Yes, are the first two listeners who join your community at CRL? Tell us a little bit about that.

Gregg Ward 44:13
Correct. All they have to do is go to respectful leadership.org dot o RG and click on the tab Mark community and sign up for that and we see them come in. And the first two listeners will get a complimentary no selling just coaching session with me.

Micheal Pacheco 44:33
Awesome, and is there so they’ll have to let you know that they heard from the markable coach podcast, something like that.

Gregg Ward 44:40
Okay. Yep, there’s a little form they fill out and it asked for that information,

Micheal Pacheco 44:44
beauty. We’ll make sure to get that link up on the show notes as well. Greg, where else can our listeners and viewers connect with you online?

Gregg Ward 44:53
They can collect they just do a Google search on respectful leadership and CRL will pop up my name gra G G Ward will pop up. And you can reach me through the Center’s website very easily.

Micheal Pacheco 45:08
Awesome. Greg Ward, thank you so much for your time. This has been a great conversation. I appreciate you.

Gregg Ward 45:12
My pleasure. I really appreciate it.

Micheal Pacheco 45:15
Yeah, thank you, man. And thank you to our viewers and listeners as well. We’ll see you guys next time. Cheers.