[00:00:00] Michael Pacheco: Boom. All right. Hello, everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of the Remarkable Coach Podcast. As ever, I am your host, Michael Pacheco. Today, joining me, I have Robin Eitelson. Robin, as an executive and leadership coach, Robin is on a mission to help women in management roles lead more boldly by finding their confidence and owning their voice to have the impact.
They dream of she’s a certified coach who brings her training, her MBA from UC Berkeley and years of experience to every call. Robin, welcome to the rockable coach.
[00:00:37] Robyn Eidelson: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here.
[00:00:39] Michael Pacheco: Yeah, I appreciate you making time to, uh, to, to chat with me today. Um, as, as always, I like to open this podcast by simply inviting, um, our guests to just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your own words and why it is you do what you do.
[00:00:53] Robyn Eidelson: Sure. Well, um, you heard my name, Robin Idleson. Um, let’s see. What can I share about me? Well, I am a coach by day, um, by night and all other times of the day. I am a working entrepreneur mom, a partner to my husband. I’m a cooking enthusiast. I am also just an avid nerd, so if you wanna talk Star Trek or sci-fi or fantasy novels, we could have our own separate podcast episode about that.
But I’m,
[00:01:21] Michael Pacheco: I’m tabling, I’m tabling a Star Trek conversation for sure.
[00:01:25] Robyn Eidelson: I enjoy that. But, um, I bring that up because one of my big tenets as a coach is that we have to bring our whole selves as leaders. And I share this part of me because for so many years, I, I hid that part, you know, we don’t often go into corporate settings or are told, Hey, let everything You know, that you care about be shown because we fear that.
And I have worked really hard to share that part of me, um, and let it be part of who I am as a coach. And so when I work with leaders, I’m very conscientious of, yeah, but who are you beside the person in charge? Like, who are you? And so that got me started on a whole. Path around holistic leadership and how we can be authentic leaders and also why I care about women being more bold, because I find often that women tend to hold themselves back because we are very empathetic and sensitive, but we hold so many roles that are often welcomed in the workplace that we don’t always know what to bring forward.
And so when I ask a client to be more bold, it sometimes can be as simple as sharing more of themselves. And sometimes it’s. Go big with a project or go big with a communication, or maybe it’s a smaller thing, like be bold with a thought you have or an idea. So all that to say, um, I am very proud of who I am.
I love what I do as a coach. You can feel my enthusiasm, I think. And I really believe that there’s so much potential out there for people to be a little bit more who they are, a little bolder with their leadership and have amazing impact with that kind of
[00:02:54] Michael Pacheco: change. I love it. I love it. I love it. That’s fantastic.
I wanna, I have to ask, right out of the gate, who’s the best, who’s the best leader of all the Star Trek series? Is it Janeway? Or
[00:03:09] Robyn Eidelson: is it the best one? She’s fabulous. Um, from an actual leadership perspective, I’m going to vote for Janeway. Because I think she has the best blend of decisiveness and action orientation and being able to see a really big picture without having to rely on the conditions being set.
Perfect. I think, I think Picard is amazing, but he often has really ideal conditions to work with. And I don’t think that’s always realistic of leaders. So I actually think from a relative to today’s leader, I think Janeway has to deal with a heck a lot more stuff than Picard does that is more relevant to what you might find in a workbook.
I
[00:03:52] Michael Pacheco: love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it.
[00:03:57] Robyn Eidelson: Yeah, yeah, that’s fair. I’m, I’m bold by that. Yeah.
[00:04:01] Michael Pacheco: So, all right, let’s take off the nerd hat and put the coaching hat back on. Your, your website on your homepage, it says your personal guide to career advancement and inner growth. And as you were telling us a little bit more about yourself, you were saying like, To your clients.
Who are you, who are you as a leader? So tell us a little bit more about who, who are your clients? Who are, who are these women that you work with? What, uh, you know, what roles do they play in business? Are they, are they founders? Are they entrepreneurs? Are they, uh, executives? What, who, who are your clients?
[00:04:35] Robyn Eidelson: Well, so the role that they play is wide ranging. I find that they tend to be someone who’s mid career. Maybe they’re in a director, senior director role, they’re aiming for something higher, VP, C suite. They know that they have what it takes to go all the way, but they’re sort of hitting a bit of a Plateau, if you will, where they’re having harder and harder time to really make themselves stand out.
Maybe they’re having a harder time getting consensus or, you know, maybe they’re having a harder time getting people on board and they’re finding that it’s hard to navigate the complexity of those situations because you can’t just go and google, how do I get all the other people as a VP level to get on board with my idea?
And you can’t really find that solution out there. And so they’re coming to me. Coming in with this idea of, Hey, I, I need the three step process. I need the quick solution, but through our work realizing, Oh, it’s actually a much bigger mindset shift. It’s actually about taking practice and building in a very personalized approach because you’re getting into such nuanced problems.
Uh, people are very nuanced that you have to come up with a very nuanced solution. So we’re working through things like, okay, it turns out. I’m incredible at coming up with the ideas. I’m not that great at convincing people or sharing them or getting them on board because I’m not actually doing the due diligence of seeing what they care about and being curious.
And having them buy into it. And it turns out I’m, I’m coming at this all one sided. I’m not getting everyone in. So I have to do a very different thing than usual and show up very differently than I’m used to in order to, to make change, right? As Marshall Goldsmith’s book, which if you haven’t read it, highly recommend is what got you here.
Won’t get you there. It’s a similar concept of sometimes it has to be that inflection point of I’ve done everything great up until now, but something has to be different and I’m here to explore it with Robin. I
[00:06:37] Michael Pacheco: dig it. I dig it. Where do you, uh, where do you find your clients? How do you, how do you market yourself and how do you market your services?
Yeah.
[00:06:46] Robyn Eidelson: I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn. Yep. Um. But I also do a lot of work with startups. So I’ve been doing a lot of work with Berkeley Skydeck accelerator program. I have actually been integrating myself more into the startup community here in San Diego. Um, and really thinking about how there is a lot of great leadership potential, even if the company is just four people or 10 people.
And so when I market myself, I’m really trying to get hands on grassroots and find the right leaders, the people who are not trying to just do things the way they’ve always been done, but really think holistically about leadership. Um, and that’s been so fruitful and so exciting because you actually get to see such incredible innovation and leadership come out of that rather than I’m in a system that.
While I would love to change requires a certain type of leadership and I can’t actually be the kind of leader I want to be, so I’m hitting a block anyway.
[00:07:44] Michael Pacheco: So that’s, that strikes me as interesting. Have you, where, where are you trying to figure out what my question is here? Where, where have you, where have you seen that?
I have, I’m not, I haven’t seen personally a lot of situations where the leadership style is. Kind of required to be a certain way. So I’m curious to know how, like, where, where are you seeing that? And what kind of, I mean, are you able to coach within those, within those boundaries, within those confinements?
Like, what does that, what does that look like and why I’m curious to know why specifically in those situations, um, would other leadership styles not be, I guess, allowed or not be. Able to be used. Does that make sense? Yeah.
[00:08:33] Robyn Eidelson: Yeah. A whole great question. So I won’t say it’s every case, but there do happen to be certain companies where the priority might be, um, I’ll, you know, share a high level example.
The priority is speed. Mm-Hmm. speed is great for a lot of things, but it’s not always great for certain complex situations like. Taking the time to really develop your team. Right. Um, sometimes there are odds. And so a leader who really cares about developing their team, but it’s fighting against the company culture around, well, we don’t have time for that.
Just get it done. Um, finds themselves sort of at a crossroads where they have to put a line in the sand and decide, okay, am I in get it done? Or am I going to actually do this that Everyone else is saying, we don’t have time for, the resources aren’t there, the, uh, meetings don’t provide it, uh, there’s too much work, so now our team’s not hitting OKRs, that’s a hard place for a leader to be, and so when I coach them, we actually spend time talking about it, and addressing it, and acknowledging it, as an elephant in the room, because it is part of how they’re showing up, and something they have to be doing.
Be able to be with if they’re going to stay there. Um, and then recognize like it may not be a solution now, but at some point, they’re going to maybe have the opportunity to do it the way they want. How do we prepare for that? Or how do they have a conversation with a higher up about what that feedback looks like?
Hey, I got it done. I met the need of speed. But I think there’s something missing here. This is what I’m asking for. This is what I see as an opportunity. These are the things I want to put in place. Yeah. Where is the opportunity here? Cause again, we’re not speaking black and whites ever in leadership.
It’s always about now versus later versus a year from now. You have to have that kind of dynamic entertainment with it. Um, but I do see sometimes where, yeah, an authentic leadership style for someone is at odds with the company culture and we have to work through that in order for them to still be able to get their stuff done, not burn out.
not ruin their team dynamic and culture, not force someone on their team out because they can’t show up the way they want for someone. There’s a lot there to it. Um, but we do have to work through that sometimes.
[00:10:49] Michael Pacheco: So in those situations, it, it almost sounds, and maybe I’m misunderstanding, but it almost sounds like you’re talking about organizational constraints versus leadership constraints.
[00:11:01] Robyn Eidelson: I think they are very closely related. And I often think that leadership sets the tone for organizational constraints. For sure. And so, if the people at the very top, right? Again, I’m speaking as clients who are at, let’s say, director level or VP level. But if they’re getting messages from above, that, yes, is organizationally instituted.
But leadership is helping to create or to focus or prioritize. So I would argue that it is still a leadership constraint because they’re asking their people to most likely be the kind of leader that those people want to be without giving them the organizational setting to do it.
[00:11:43] Michael Pacheco: Gotcha. Okay. So it sounds like I’m going to guess that you typically are getting hired by the individual and not by the organization.
[00:11:54] Robyn Eidelson: Mostly it’s individuals. I have been hired by a couple of great organizations. Yeah. Um, who have thought about a holistic view. They bring me into coach leaders to actually provide workshops to reinforce learnings and trends, and then actually consult with me. To talk about leadership overall and where the gaps are.
And I find that those are incredible leaps and bounds because they’re thinking holistically rather than, you know, okay, we need a stopgap. We need you to just make this guy a better communicator, make this woman, a, you know, more organized prioritizer. When I see leaders come and bring me in on an organizational level, it is just night and day.
Yeah. But yes, most of the time I do work one on one because. Although it’s growing, it’s not nearly as common as I wish.
[00:12:42] Michael Pacheco: I think, I think that, yeah, okay, so that makes, that makes more sense to me now. So, like, if you’re getting hired by an individual at, say, a director level, they’ve got FEPs above them and C suite above them that are putting pressure on them to They’re putting organizational constraints on them and how they lead their team, right?
Is kind of what, essentially what you’re saying. So you’ve got to like, lead your team within these, within these constraints to get things done fast, for example, as you were talking about. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. You, you mentioned earlier, you mentioned Berkeley Skydeck. Is that, is that an accelerator?
What, what is, what is Berkeley Skydeck? Yeah,
[00:13:20] Robyn Eidelson: they’re an incredible program out of Berkeley that helps startups go from, you know, idea to potentially launch. They’ll help with funding. They have incredible advisors and resources to help these incredible founders from all over the world get started and launch.
At a better rate than if they were trying to do it themselves. People apply for the program. Um, and it’s a very selective process. And they go through several cohorts a year. I believe it’s two. Um, but the idea being that they’re really trying to focus in on helping incredible founders and innovators get a better start.
And, um, I got started with them right in the beginning of pandemic, basically following my intuition that startup founders have incredible things to offer, but are often, um, Really amazing. I see don’t have a lot of people leadership experience and could use that kind of support. And so since then have worked with many of them still, even as they’ve grown and scaled, then work with their entire teams, their entire companies really see them grow as leaders.
But the idea being that they really thought about who they want to be as leaders, even when they were just For people in a garage somewhere. Um, because they knew that at some point they were going to be facing incredible people problems and they wanted to set their culture and their company up from the beginning just as much as they wanted to set their product up.
Um, and so Skydeck has been such an avid supporter has brought us on and really made coaching an integral part of what it means to. Lead and start a company and I really just appreciate their their mentality around. I
[00:15:00] Michael Pacheco: love that I love that for a few reasons number one. You’re you’re helping startup founders get you know get launched number two I think I think putting that mentality that putting the coaching mentality Into new young and new businesses, I think is a positive trend all the way around Right.
So, so as, as more and more businesses, you know, mature and grow up and have successful products and services, and they become, you know, if they go move from startup to fortune 500, they’ve already got, you know, they’re already kind of been indoctrinated into, into the coaching world. And I say that. You know, I say that this is good, not, not for any selfish reasons.
Obviously I’m in the coaching space as well. So it’s like me, but, but honestly, I think, I mean, you know, at Boxer, what we, what we say at all of our meetings, every, every morning when I wake up, we help the helpers and, and coaches, you guys are out there like doing pretty amazing things, helping people, you know, helping leaders become better leaders.
And there’s a huge trickle down effect for that. Right. You know, that doesn’t stop at the office that, that goes home with, you know, the, the, the husband and the wife and the children like that, you’re making better people. Yes.
[00:16:25] Robyn Eidelson: I mean, I, I, I still get chills. I got an email from a founder who, even though we weren’t working together anymore, almost a year later, emails me saying, I just want to thank you for helping me rethink how I build trust relationships with everyone.
Outside of work, inside of work, it has been life changing, and I’m not doing this to my horn so much as point out that sometimes we’re not even aware of what we don’t know, but the impact can be so far reaching, and I know he, as a leader of this company, is revered. He is one of the favorite leaders at this company because he has built a system of trust and respect, but also he really asks great questions.
He comes in and empowers his team day in day out because he could make this kind of mindset shift early on as opposed to, and I don’t know if this would have been the case, but I could tell myself a story of him going down a path of, I have to tell everyone how to do everything. I have to figure it all out myself.
I need to do it all because no one else knows how to do it the way I want any of those could have happened and ruin that culture. But because he was able to have that thought early on, his team is flourishing. His company is flourishing. And I want to credit his ability to step out of that early through coaching.
[00:17:48] Michael Pacheco: It’s that’s a great point that and that is something that in my experience I’ve seen it time and time again is a very very hard thing for founders to do because when you’re talking about Marshall Goldsmith what got you here won’t get you there founders are rewarded for hardcore hard driving DIY Bye Until they hit a certain point and they have to scale and then they need to start relying on their team and you have to bury all of that, all of that, all of that DIY attitude.
You got to bury that. And, and, and now it’s about the team and it’s about leadership and it’s about getting everybody to, to row. Together in the same direction and it’s in it’s completely different skill set. And it’s very, very difficult to do without something like coaching, because it’s not something that you’re going to learn at, you know, when at UC Berkeley getting an MBA, for example, right.
They don’t, they don’t do that in business
[00:18:50] Robyn Eidelson: school. Yeah, absolutely. And I love the metaphor you use, right. Getting everyone to row in the same direction because you were rowing. Up until that moment, you were on the bench, and now you’re at the front of the boat. You have no row, no oar. You actually have the microphone.
You don’t even have to lift things, but you have a very radically different role to play that’s maybe possibly more important because How does everyone know where the boat goes now? Right? So that shift is mind blowing for some founders and oftentimes can have a bit of an identity crisis, not to say it’s guaranteed, but for someone who has always been an engineer, if you’re no longer an engineer, and you are now a people leader, which requires you to not engineer, but to in fact, do something radically different.
Who are you? Right? And that’s a question we work through. So I just think it’s so important for that level of introspection to be happening early on. Even if you aren’t at that stage, if you start thinking about and saying, okay, my goal is to get to prepare yourself, thousands of employees, right? Long before we get to thousands of employees, I’m going to have to think about this.
How do I think about this? How do I prepare myself? What do I need? What do I need to let go of? What do I need to start? Right? Those kinds of questions.
[00:20:09] Michael Pacheco: I love it. Yeah, I think, um, and I think if you want to, if you want to borrow that, that analogy or that metaphor, you’re more than welcome to. I think the guy, the guy at the front of the boat, I believe is called the Coxswain.
I think.
[00:20:20] Robyn Eidelson: Yes. Yeah. Coxswain. Yeah. Excellent.
[00:20:23] Michael Pacheco: I don’t know if I’m pronouncing it wrong. Um, Robin, what is, what is a typical engagement with you look like?
[00:20:29] Robyn Eidelson: Yes. Well, um, I actually don’t know that there’s a typical engagement with me. Believe it or not, because I’ve had some who come in for just a few months, they get everything they need.
And it’s great. I have some clients I’ve been working with for years, because the growth is still needed. But I like to start by saying we meet for a minimum of six months, we meet every two weeks. And this is when I work one on one, I’m in a group setting, mind you, and we go Deep. We explore your goals, what’s getting in the way.
And we go deep into the leadership practices that you need to build the ones you’re already doing. And the ones you maybe need to stop because they’re not serving. And we spend each session going into them and building up a practice for the end of it. Right? So coaching isn’t coaching. In my opinion, unless there’s some kind of homework at the end, because it’s not enough to just say, Oh, cool.
I know this about myself. You have to go and practice it. Even if it’s something that’s scary or hard, you have to practice it for it to be sustainable and you have to do it over time. So I work with clients on making sure that they walk away with something that they’re actually going to go and do or practice or believe, because I want the learning to stick.
And then when they come to me and say, okay, I feel good. I don’t think I need coaching anymore. We celebrate because that’s actually what I want. And then I check in with them afterwards, just in a social context to see how they’re doing and how they’re feeling about things. But when I meet with startups or companies on a, on a more company scale, I like to set it in six month containers because I know startups don’t speak long term.
So we come in, we start immediately with goal setting and with setting the container. And then I get right to work with. What are the leadership need? What is the workshops we’re going to build after the fact, and then how do we know at the end of six months that we have hit our goals, that we feel good, that even when I’m not there, the culture will survive, that learning will still live on.
Um, that’s a little bit more time box because I, I think of it more in terms of the system rather than the individual. And I know that there’s a Sort of a work that needs to be done by the company that can go on even when I’m not there.
[00:22:48] Michael Pacheco: Nice. Yeah. Nice. What um, Gosh, what sort of, what sort of things did you struggle with when you first, when you first started coaching?
[00:23:01] Robyn Eidelson: Gosh, so many things. I will own that. Um, you know, I actually personally struggled really hard with not doing the work for my clients. Okay. And what I mean by that is I felt so excited to help them and so excited for their growth. I was practically trying to get them to grow, you know, higher way or nay, like I was almost trying to force a moment of growth and trying to get them to see what was there and realized painfully over time, like how important it was that I not assume anything about their experience or what they needed.
And actually the coaching got so much better after that. Yeah. And it was a great leadership lesson too, because I then turned it around as an example of what are the assumptions you’re making as a leader? And where do you need to stop doing the work for your people? And what do you need to maybe hold back from in order to allow the growth to happen on their own terms?
So that was hard for me. And I will acknowledge that, but going through that was really important, so I don’t begrudge
[00:24:08] Michael Pacheco: it. Yeah, no, I get that. I get that. I spent a few years of, in my career, as a consultant. Um, and I think one of the, one of the distinctions between a coach and a consultant is that a consultant is almost allowed Um, and it’s less, obviously it’s less about personal growth, but you’re, you’re more as a consultant, you’re able to come in and kind of tell the client what to do.
Whereas as a coach, really, I feel like your job is to ask a lot of questions and, and, and restrain yourself from doing all the work.
[00:24:44] Robyn Eidelson: Absolutely. And I’ve had clients not necessarily get mad, but. Express frustration that I wasn’t telling them what to do, which was another challenge early on because it was about really setting that container and actually helping them sit with that frustration and examine it and say, what is that frustration maybe actually telling you about you?
And that was even helpful, right? Because sometimes, um, an amazing, incredible and achieving leader is blind to the fact that their emotions, their feelings are telling them very important things. Um, that was another challenge early on was I have no problem being with emotion, but getting emotion to be a critical part of the coaching process was such a huge transformation because again, we were taught in workplaces like Don’t show emotion unless it’s a good one.
Right. Good in quotes. Um, you can’t express your frustration. You can’t get angry. Their tears aren’t allowed. And I’ve worked so hard to retrain my clients to say, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Emotions are great. All of them. There are no good or bad because Even frustration or anger or tears will tell you something really important.
And it’s up to you to tell, tell yourself what that means, but you can’t ignore it. You’ve got to listen. So all that to say, those are all really important lessons. I learned early on that I carry with me now and. And they’re the first things I’ll tell a leader, like, what are you doing about emotions? Like, what are you doing about assumptions?
Where, where are you maybe sitting in a place that you have to stop doing the work for them?
[00:26:22] Michael Pacheco: That’s interesting. I like that a lot. I don’t talk to, you know, I talk to, you know, Dozens of coaches every month. And I don’t talk to a lot of them that have that outlook on emotions. And I think that’s a, that’s an interesting, it’s an interesting way to approach it and a very, I can see how useful that would be because an emotion is really.
Like a diagnostic indicator, right? It’s, it’s a symptom of a problem. And if you feel whatever it is you feel, that’s totally going to point you like, why do you feel that way? It’s going to point you in a direction and help you solve
[00:27:03] Robyn Eidelson: something. And I’m not saying you have to act out like, you know, yell at everyone.
Hey, my coach said I could yell at everyone now. That’s not what I’m saying. Um, but I agree with you that there’s. So much even in a world of data, that’s data you get in
[00:27:21] Michael Pacheco: color. Totally.
[00:27:24] Robyn Eidelson: I
[00:27:25] Michael Pacheco: ignore it. It’s I can, I can also see how that would be. Incredibly tricky as well, right? Because as you’re, I mean, uh, being emotional and being logical are, are almost mutually exclusive in, in, in one single moment, in one single moment, right?
You get, you got, you kind of get one or the other. So what you have to do is when you feel that emotion, you know, you, I feel like I’d be interested to know how, how you coach your, your clients in doing this, but I feel like you would have to, you know, disengage. And, and then look back on that from a more logical perspective and be like, okay, I just got, I just got really angry right there.
I just got really sad right there. What just happened?
[00:28:10] Robyn Eidelson: Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the process looks very different for each person. I have some clients who, um, when they feel intense emotion like that, they freeze. Yeah. Like that fight or flight and then freezes in the third response. So for them, it can be really hard for them to act on it in the moment.
They do need that, that time and space away to process and through practice, they actually get better and better at recognizing in the moment, because more often than not, our workplaces are repetitive. So we kind of see patterns. Um, I have some clients who they know, they get worked up and they will show up in a poor.
Place because of how intensely that shows up. So we work on how do you turn around? Is it you have to jot something down first? Is it you have to, um, excuse yourself to the bathroom, right? You have to, you have to go get a snack. You have to do a stretch where no one can see you. Or maybe you’re at home.
You turn your zoom camera off. There’s little things that would help give you that moment away. Overall, I really want to make it about what are the smallest incremental ways for you to you. Bridge that gap between where you are now and where you want to be in terms of handling emotion, showing up in emotion.
Um, and then how do you build that progress towards it? All the while collecting information and informing yourself about what it means, what that tells you in terms of your leadership and what your team needs from you, or maybe what others are showing you that they might need, right? Just building a practice throughout it all rather than saying, emotion, bad, angry itself.
Must beat self up later about it, or whatever that story might be. Sure. Yeah.
[00:29:51] Michael Pacheco: Yeah, don’t talk to yourself like a caveman. Or a caveman.
[00:29:57] Robyn Eidelson: My inner voice sometimes gets very curt with me and I have to be like, Oh, be kind, be kind. So
[00:30:05] Michael Pacheco: they say, uh, they say you would, you know, a lot of people with that negative self talk, you would never talk to other people the way that people talk to themselves.
[00:30:13] Robyn Eidelson: No. Yeah, and for many in this be for various reasons. I don’t pretend to be a therapist, but sometimes we get into it and coaching. It could be a family traditional upbringing piece. It could be cultural could be that one incident with You know, a teacher, or maybe it was a classroom setting thing, um, something at some point shaped your perception and created what I would call a saboteur, right?
Some call it inner critic, some call it gremlin or lizard voice, but that little negative Nancy in your ear. And we build it up over millennia. The best example or explanation for this I’ve heard, and I truly believe this is, you know, thousands of years ago we were out on the plains avoiding getting eaten by a lion.
And so when we saw a cave, we needed that voice to say, that looks dangerous, don’t go in that cave. But we don’t worry so much about lions and caves anymore. Our brain looks for other ways we might be hurt. So it builds up more emotional or intellectual or social fears that often are not real. But are so vivid and so loud in our own brains and the echo chamber of emotion turned into thought turned into emotion turned into thought.
And so decoupling those and deconstructing them is a lot of what I do. Because once you can get control of the narrative again, you can finally say, Oh, wow, I’ve been way harder on myself or I’ve been seeing it only in this color and I need to see it in all these other colors or whatever the right metaphor is to help me be a different version of myself.
[00:31:47] Michael Pacheco: Nice. Thanks. I dig it. Um, Robin, tell us about some big wins that you’ve had. Oh,
[00:31:57] Robyn Eidelson: gosh. Well, I already mentioned that incredible founder sharing how life changing trust was for him. I still I just I get a little teary and emotional about that one. Um, i’m most proud of honestly Clients who come to me in the beginning and say I can barely say no I can barely push back and after a couple of months they’re like I just flat out said no to someone without thinking about it and did not doubt myself once and you see this big grin on their face and they’re practically bouncing with energy because you know this was a huge triumph for them.
That kind of growth as a leader, as someone in the workplace is essential. Um, I’ve had A lot of clients come to me where, um, you know, they’ve come direct of motivation. They are unable to get through the day. They don’t feel like they have enough to offer. And they come back to me after a couple months claiming like, Oh my God, like I went out of my way.
To help someone today, I went out of my way to take on a new project. I got really excited when someone offered me this, that kind of emotional change is huge. Um, I’ve worked with companies where they started with just two people and then gotten up to 40, 50 people and scale through all those leadership problems without a hitch.
I’ve had people go through several levels of promotion through coaching because they were able to show up differently. I just. really believe that there’s so much potential that’s lost when people don’t take that time for themselves and don’t examine what they really want and how they can get there.
It’s amazing to see that show up in so many different ways. But I think of any, any win being where they started in a place of, I can’t, and they’re now in a place of, I did.
[00:33:47] Michael Pacheco: That’s awesome. That’s great. Um, Robin, I want to be respectful of your time, but before we go, if, if you don’t mind, I’d like to chat about something perhaps a little bit personal.
Okay. I, uh, am a stay at home dad. Um, I’ve got a 19 month old baby girl. We were talking about this before we hit record. You also have a little, a little babe, um, around the same age. How do you, how do you, how do you do that balance between your, your work and raising, and raising a child? I know for me it can be a struggle sometimes, um, and I have to, you know, meetings, podcasts like this, meetings I tend to schedule later in the afternoon after my wife, uh, is home and can take, uh, our kiddo.
How do you, how do you, how do you strike a, a balance there? Um.
[00:34:43] Robyn Eidelson: What a fabulous question. When I am working every day. Yes, my beautiful, beautiful daughter is almost 21 months and love my life. Um, it’s hard. It really is. And I’m not going to sugarcoat it. There are many days when it does not seem possible.
But what I really try and cling to as a coach is What am I really working for? What’s my greater purpose with all of this and really sticking to my own values and using that as a reminder when I hear a negative story building from a saboteur that’s trying to get me out of a good place, I try to remind myself of what it’s all about.
And I promised myself when I started this that I wanted freedom and flexibility and autonomy and I wanted to do the work I wanted to do, but I also wanted to role model for my daughter. That you can build a life, a business, a, a ecosystem that is what you want. You don’t have to sacrifice yourself and your goals just because there are other important things like my daughter in my life.
I will hold space for both. It may not be ideal at times. I may not have as many hours to business build. Or meet with clients as I would like, but I, I feel as long as I’m meeting that personal goal of, I spend time with my daughter. It is quality time. I am able to step away from the work to be with her and I still get work done in a way that feels powerful and productive.
And it’s getting me closer and closer to that end state. I feel like I’m doing the best I can. And that’s, that keeps me happy. Um, I will also acknowledge the importance of community. As you mentioned, a spouse, a partner. I am lucky enough to live near a very loving and doting, um, sister who love, love, loves dying with her niece.
There’s pieces to it that I want to give full credit that it’s not just me. But, you know, it’s the whole, whole
[00:36:46] Michael Pacheco: picture. That’s awesome. I want to, I want to follow up on that with, so you, you know, I think it sounds like you and I share a lot of the same values. Definitely, you know, I want to, I want to raise my baby girl with, you know, the idea that you don’t have to work a thousand hours a week.
Um, I have no intention or desire to be like Elon Musk and work 120 hours a week. Um, my family is far too important for me, uh, for that. And not everyone feels that way, and that’s fine. Um, what do you So maybe a multi part question. Do you ever take your daughter? Do you, do you ever do calls with her? Do you ever do podcasts with her?
Do you, I don’t know if you do content marketing, but do you ever do content with her? And if so, how do you feel about that kind of fractured attention? Let’s call it right where you’ve got your daughter and she’s in your space and you’re working at the same time. This is something that I’ve struggled with a little bit.
And I’ve also found that. You know, sometimes I get to just embrace the life that I’ve got and she will hop on a call with me and it’s okay. It’s not the end of the world.
[00:38:12] Robyn Eidelson: Yeah. Oh, I love that flexibility you build in that, that grace and self compassion around it. I think that’s so important. I don’t often bring her into calls because I can’t be my best coach self for my clients when she’s around.
She’s too cute. She’s too engaging. Um, she wants me to go and play puzzles with her. And that’s wonderful, but that means I can’t be fully present for a client. Um, similarly for a podcast, I have tried to have, uh, copy chats and conversations. I can’t do both. I’m not the multitasker that would require. But I do recognize that there is a wide spectrum on which we all play, so do I sometimes answer an email while she’s playing?
Sure, if it’s really, really important. Okay, I can build that flexibility in. Um, do I maybe, like, have a conversation with someone on a walk while she’s in the stroller and I’ve got my AirPods in? Yeah, I’ve done that. Um, sort of just build it in the moment. And as you know, toddlers are rapidly changing.
What I could do when she was a three month old is so different than what I could do as a 21 month old. It gets
[00:39:22] Michael Pacheco: harder because they want more attention and they want more, they become more engaging and interactive as, as, as they’re getting older.
[00:39:28] Robyn Eidelson: And I don’t want to miss that too. Yeah, this is my first, and I completely agree with that.
I love the conversations that we now get to have because she’s talking so much. But, um, imagine, you know, you’re trying to have a conversation with me here, but there is constant, without stop, talk in the background, um, from a beautiful, but Slightly incoherent toddler. Um, how would you manage that? Right.
So I think there’s a lot of flexibility that has to be built in. That being said, um, yeah, sometimes I do have to make that switch off and ask like, Hey, do you mind if my daughter’s here? Hey, can we reschedule because she’s homesick? I can’t make this work the way I hope you and I have done that a couple times.
So yeah,
[00:40:14] Michael Pacheco: it’s part of it. Awesome. Awesome. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I was just, I was just curious. Um, I know like for me, uh, you know, she doesn’t make it onto a lot of client calls, but she’s definitely made it onto a lot of, of team meetings. Um, everyone at Boxer is auntie or uncle for her, which is pretty great.
We’re pretty tight. And, um, and yeah, and I’ve definitely had to, you know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve rescheduled a meeting or two and, um, I remember one time I told a client, I was like, listen, my wife just got home and apparently there’s story time at the library in town. So can we reschedule so I can go and do this with my family?
And they’re like, you know, of course, no problem. Um, so people usually will, you know, give grace and have no problem with, with that kind of thing. If you’re just, I guess, transparent and honest about it. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:41:06] Robyn Eidelson: And what a beautiful example to something I’ve struggled with. I know a lot of my clients who are working parents have struggled with.
There’s such simplicity in an ask like that that we completely, you know, talk ourselves out of saying, oh, this would be rude, they would never go for it, this will ruin our relationship, whatever the story might be. But sometimes we forget that it’s just an ask, and they could easily say no, and we’re just asking, um, and we have to give ourselves the chance to ask.
For what we need and want,
[00:41:38] Michael Pacheco: I think it’s also super, super important to know your values and, and, and let your values drive your actions. And for me, right. I mean, I know I’ve got, if I, I, at that, so using that as an example, I knew I had this client meeting coming up and, or I could go into town and do story time at the library with my daughter.
Well, I mean, my, I let my values drive my actions. So I sent an email and I was just like, listen. I’ve got this. Can we do tomorrow at the same time? And it was, it was, it was, it was easy. It was a no brainer. And I think, um, yeah, I mean, rather than worry about being judged as unprofessional or worry about, you know, what they might say, if they would think it’s rude, like you said, it’s just an ask.
It’s just an ask.
[00:42:31] Robyn Eidelson: Nothing wrong with that. And that’s a beautiful mindset. Not one many people feel comfortable embracing. I still work through it all the time. But I just admire it because I think the more we can be in alignment with our values and let that guide us in these moments. The less energy and mind we have to put towards it, we can save that for other things.
And that’s a lot of leadership. That’s a lot of parenthood. Um, the amount of LinkedIn posts I have made about parenting a toddler and how it relates to leadership has just Skyrocket. There’s so many parallels, but again, leadership does not exist only at work. We can’t leave our ourselves at work when we go home or vice versa.
So we incorporate those strengths and our values to help us and guide us in all those moments.
[00:43:16] Michael Pacheco: And there’s one other thing. There’s this, this buzzword that’s been going around for the last five or 10 years called authenticity. Yeah. Right. And the fact of the matter is if you’re just transparent with.
With your people, whether that’s your team, whether that’s your clients, whether that’s your prospects, they respect the shit out of that. Pardon my French. Yeah.
[00:43:36] Robyn Eidelson: I love the French.
[00:43:37] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. They respect the hell out of it, right? I mean, it’s just, this is, this is who I am. I want to go do this with my daughter.
Let’s, let’s reschedule. It’s fine. Yeah. Anyways, that’s all. Oh,
[00:43:48] Robyn Eidelson: love that. Love it. Good stuff.
[00:43:52] Michael Pacheco: Um, Robin, this has been a pleasure. Um, is there anything that you would like to chat about that we didn’t have an opportunity to touch upon yet?
[00:43:59] Robyn Eidelson: Um, I mean, we covered so much. I guess my only thought is if you’re a leader or you’re aspiring leader, you know, you’re stuck.
Even if you don’t talk to a coach, reach out, talk to someone, a trusted friend, a mentor, a former professor, whomever. Um, don’t feel you have to go through that problem that roadblock that. In her story alone. I think that there is a lot of, um, a culture, if you will, of I have to figure it out. I can’t burden someone else.
And I just want to make a plug that especially if you are, um, maybe someone who is telling yourself that story, you can’t get help or you don’t know where to go help for like, find someone you can trust, even talk it out once and let it off your shoulders and not carry it yourself. Because There is so much potential out there.
I don’t want you to get stuck in that chaotic echo chamber, um, and not act on it and be able to get past it. So that’s just my little plug. Love
[00:45:00] Michael Pacheco: it. Love it. And where can our listeners and viewers connect with you online?
[00:45:04] Robyn Eidelson: Yeah, well, like I said, I spent a lot of time on LinkedIn, so you should connect with me.
Let’s chat. I would love to just. Here about what you do and what you love about leadership or your role, or even if there’s a favorite Star Trek captain, you want to argue with me about, um, I also do have a website. It is, um, Robin Idelson coaching. com. Um, you can check me out there and contact me through that.
And of course you can always email me at Robin Idelson coaching at gmail. com.
[00:45:35] Michael Pacheco: Lovely. That’s Idelson. E I D E L S O N. Robin is R O B Y and Y as in you. Why isn’t you,
[00:45:45] Robyn Eidelson: why isn’t yellow,
[00:45:47] Michael Pacheco: yellow. There you go. Thank you. I got to get my, my alphabet here. Um, Robin. Awesome. This has been fantastic. Thank you so much for, for making the time.
I appreciate it. Um, my pleasure. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you as always to our viewers and listeners. Um, guys, if you thought this was valuable, please give it a like, subscribe, do all the things. If you know someone, um, that you think might get some value from Robin’s golden nuggets of wisdom, please share this with them.
And, uh, thank you so much. We’ll see y’all next time. Cheers.
