[00:00:00] Michael Pacheco: All right. Hello everybody. Welcome once again to another episode of the remarkable coach podcast. As ever, I’m your host, Michael Pacheco. And today with me, I have Russell Harvey. Russell Harvey is the resilience coach. He’s a dynamic and engaging leadership coach and facilitator, public speaker, managing director.
NED podcaster and radio host with over 20 years of experience in learning leadership and organizational development. Russell has specialized in resilience and VUCA for the past 18 years. He is passionate about positively affecting 100, 000 people by the year 2025 and has already impacted 43, 202 individuals.
Russell, welcome to The Remarkable Coach.
[00:00:46] Russell Harvey: That’s lovely. I like it. So yes, the remarkable coach and the resilience coach. There you go. You know, it works well. It works well. Thank you for that introduction. I’ve listened to that a few times. It’s good. It’s like I keep listening to it and going, Oh yeah, right.
Wow. Okay. All of these things. And I think right now I might be up to 43, 000, about 302 ish right now. So it goes up a little bit. You know,
[00:01:10] Michael Pacheco: you’re keeping very specific track.
[00:01:13] Russell Harvey: Well, so yes, ish, essentially you’ve just so that where it all comes from, one of the dimensions of resilience is having a purpose.
So, you know, that’s mine. I thought about it and it came from things and it started with, Oh, do you know what? I just, I mean, I want to go to do good in the world or, okay, right. Let’s hone it. I want to do positively affect. And then also as well, partly to do with marketing, this lovely idea of make it smart, Russell, S M A R T, you know, so that’s when the numbers came in.
I’m not naturally bothered about coming to numbers, but that’s why I just trying. Keep an eye on it. Some of it is finger in the air. But you know, I just think about what have I done recently? Who’ve I spoke to? You know, where have I gone out to? What’s the likelihood and might have had an impact on some other people.
So I was doing a speech the other day and I think it was 342, 302 was the number essentially. So yes, they go up essentially. Fantastic,
[00:02:16] Michael Pacheco: man. So for the, at the beginning of this show, I always like to just invite my guest to tell us a little bit more about yourself in your own words and why it is you do
[00:02:25] Russell Harvey: what you do.
Thank you. Appreciate that. So I’m aware that I’ve just always from a very early age been fascinated around human behavior. Like how come we do the things we do do and we don’t. do the things we do, like, and potentially a little bit more about myself, like, how come I do more don’t do things or make these decisions or find this difficult or find such and such easy.
And so I knew from a reasonable Age, I think in my twenties 1996, I was teaching in Hong Kong. My wife and I went traveling around the world for a year. Whilst I was teaching in Hong Kong, something magical was happening. I didn’t quite know what it was. And then it’s people learning. So I was like, ah, I don’t want to be a teacher in a school.
My wife’s a teacher. She’s brilliant. But just school. Teacher wasn’t for me. They’re saying, Oh, I think I want to be a trainer. So, you know, came back from traveling and then it was literally starting the career from there to go, actually, what do I need to get qualified in? And that culminated in yes, that intro those, that decades of time about learning leadership, organizational development.
So today I describe myself as a coach and a facilitator. I live in Leeds in North England, God’s Own Country is what it’s described as, so if you’ve never been to the Yorkshire Dales, then you must go there. You must go there.
[00:03:48] Michael Pacheco: I’ve actually been to a Leeds United
[00:03:50] Russell Harvey: game before. Ah, brilliant. They I don’t know when this will go out, but I’ve literally just checked.
I’m not a Leeds United fan. I’m a Liverpool fan. But Leeds won today. So I’ve got, I’ve got a lot, loads of Leeds friends. Oh, that’s
[00:04:04] Michael Pacheco: great. I came home with a, I’ve got a full match kit and a, and a mug.
[00:04:08] Russell Harvey: Oh, fantastic. So when was that then?
[00:04:10] Michael Pacheco: Oh, geez. I was working I was working at McAfee and And I would travel to, to Aylesbury a few times a year.
That’s where I went
[00:04:20] Russell Harvey: to college in
[00:04:21] Michael Pacheco: Aylesbury. Yeah. Cute, cute little town. I like Aylesbury. I like Leeds too. But it must have been, gosh, 2006 maybe? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 2005? It’s been a minute.
[00:04:31] Russell Harvey: Yeah, yeah. It would have been, yes. I went to Aylesbury College. So yes, Buckinghamshire is the county. That’s where I was born and brought up.
So there we go. Isn’t that amazing? Aylesbury. Would come up, you know, in this, so yeah, just always interested in human behavior. And so when I got the coaching bug, that was, that was on top of all of this stuff around learning development is like yeah, there’s something about this coaching, this facilitation piece that just plays to my strengths and works for me.
So It’s essentially who I am. There isn’t, like, a work Russell and a not work Russell. I’m just me as much as I can be all of the time, essentially. That’s my intent. Yeah.
[00:05:09] Michael Pacheco: How did you land on coaching? Presumably you didn’t, you know, come out of university as a coach. How did you, how did you land there?
[00:05:18] Russell Harvey: Yeah, so it was one of the Sort of organization is that. There was a utilities company still is. I think, I can’t remember actually if they’ve gone now, but Empower. The things change in the utility industry an awful lot. Apologies, Empower, if you still exist. And it was just, there was a course, it was a one day workshop on coaching.
And I went to it and just, you know, mind blown about, Oh, okay. So this is an extra layer of light behavior, change things that you can do. There are two ladies that were running it and we had worked at Virgin. Virgin somewhere and you know, talked about Richard Branson and his style was a coaching style.
And I remember my boss at the time, Ian Mason, he deserves a mention. He just saw me come back from this, this day’s course, Uber enthusiastic, you know, bright light in my eyes of like, this is thing is brilliant. It’s amazing. And he just, you know, he sort of nurtured it from there and took it from there.
And I just knew that coaching was the thing for me from there. Really. Very nice.
[00:06:22] Michael Pacheco: Very nice. And, and tell us about your clients. Who, who are your clients? Who do you work with?
[00:06:28] Russell Harvey: Yeah. So I suppose to start with anybody that’s got like the job title of head of, you know, or operations manager, operations director, or, you know, head of staples, head of finance, head of something, you know and.
It’s, you know, the, the ideal client is somebody that’s just starting to think about the fact that, hmm. Is this it, could there be more, or I’m doing some of the similar things and I think I’ve lost my mojo essentially, or I’m doing same old, same old, or my team’s not performing and I’m just not sure if I’ve got the oomph for all of this and I, and I just need to just think and reflect about who I am.
That’s the ideal clients essentially. And also not always on the negative. If there are people also going, I’ve got the job title of head of and it’s going really well. They’re also ideal clients to go, how do we maintain it going really well, but there’s probably more value in those that are just going, I think like I’m, I’m waiting through treacle or it’s just, this is hard to work than it needs to be.
There’s so much change. I used to like it and I think I’m fed up with it now. And, and those then I work well with. On them deciding and really understanding what their strengths are and what really motivates them and what their passions are around this leadership role. And sometimes it leads them Getting promoted or you know, just completely staying in the same role and really getting excited about it.
And sometimes it leads to them going, ah, it’s time to me to pack it all in and go traveling around the world and, you know, become a fisherman or something like that, you know cause you know, there’s, well, there’s one gentleman right now that was senior in it. And right now he’s in Vietnam and sent me a video message the other day.
Because he wanted to travel, he wanted to become a coach himself and never felt that he had the confidence to do so. So actually whilst traveling, he is now also just doing little bits of coaching online. So it can. The outcome of it is fancy word, multitudinous. I don’t know where that came from.
There are multiple outcomes to you know, being a client of mine. So yeah, somebody’s got the job title of head of, and it’s just thinking, ah, I think, I think I’ve had enough, or I’m not sure, or I just feel as though this is too hard now.
[00:08:47] Michael Pacheco: I love it. I think that’s yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s a good, let me put my words together in my head first.
I like that that you work with people, not only, you know, on, on their, you know, perhaps call it career development, but also a little bit on, on personal development, right? If someone feels like maybe they’re, they’ve got burnout or, or what they’ve been doing for the last decade, isn’t right for them. It’s, it can be very difficult.
I’m speaking from experience here. It can be very difficult to say to say goodbye to the cush. Comfy well paying corporate job. I mentioned before I used to work at McAfee. I used to work at Intel. I did that for about a decade and decided finally without a coach at the time that it wasn’t for me.
And I took, you know three years sabbatical and became a professional touring musician.
[00:09:38] Russell Harvey: There you go. I did wonder about the yes, the guitars in the background. I didn’t, I didn’t mention them because I’ve been on other things before and then suddenly, literally, there’s two hours has gone by as the person talks about their guitars.
So yeah, nothing.
[00:09:53] Michael Pacheco: I won’t, I won’t be too self indulgent, but but yeah, I, I think, I think coaching like that is a, it can be a bit underappreciated. And it’s not as common, I think. But, but certainly there’s, there’s room for that. And again, I just, I, I speak from experience as someone who worked in fortune 100 companies for a decade of my life.
Before I just realized that the cubicle wasn’t for me. No. And
[00:10:18] Russell Harvey: for me, it’s like, so I do find that I feel like I’m saying a lot of business buzzwords the time. And my intention is to really unpick for each individual, what they mean. So for me. Resilience, I always define it as springing forward with learning rather than bouncing back because we can’t go back, you know and so it’s a case of supporting people to be in this lovely word of thrive.
Rather than coping and surviving. So when somebody feels like wading through tree call, there’s gotta be something more to this. Then they’re more likely coping, surviving, or even less than that. So you start to ask these people these questions like, so, you know, imagine you were thriving, what’s going on?
And a lot of the time people can’t answer that they have to think about it a lot. And one of the dimensions of being resilient is your purpose. So sometimes it’s literally, yes, you’re loving your job role. So, and can you clarify for me what your leadership purpose is? And others will turn around and sort of say, well, you’re not loving your job role.
What’s your leadership purpose? And those, their answers to those questions can take them into a variety of ways. And it’s not always the case, but I’ve just remembered another client that I had that they were working a massive sort of engineering project and they were a geologist. From their university days and they sort of said, actually, do you know what I want to stop taking things out of the ground and destroying them from an engineering point of view.
And I actually want to put them back into the ground and grow them. So they shifted from massive, you know, engineering projects to they were working on oyster farm on the coast. Oh, you know, it’s just, you know, that was their shift that may not be where they end up. True. Me asking them all these questions about, you know, what your stresses are, what you want to do, what’s your purpose, you know, what’s thrived to you, and then for them, it was like, you know what, you know what, I don’t think I believe in what I’m doing.
[00:12:18] Michael Pacheco: That’s a hard, that’s a hard, that’s a hard A hard thing to land on.
[00:12:22] Russell Harvey: Yes. Yes. And as you said a few moments ago, it is very, very difficult to then come completely out of your comfort zone because many people are going, well, I’ve got this corporate life. I, the vast majority of the time, marriage, kids, house, mortgage, you know, and absolutely that decision to go, yeah, but me chasing these things or believing I’ve got to do these things, it is making me unhappy.
So, you know, I either have to work on this word resilience for me to be as happy as possible with the circumstances that I’m in and maybe try and just. Add some other factors in to my whole life to make me feel better. Or it’s a case of, do you know what? I think I need to go and have the chat with the partner of, I think I need to make a fundamental change.
You know how can we, you know, as a couple get there? Essentially. So yeah, it’s just, you talk about comfort zone, stretch zone and panic zone a lot. And actually how can you put yourself into the stretch bit as much as possible. Interesting.
[00:13:29] Michael Pacheco: Talk about talk about VUCA a little bit. I think that that’s a, that’s a term that a lot of people are unfamiliar with.
[00:13:36] Russell Harvey: Yeah. So once again, there’s going to be a whole raft of buzzwords now so just be prepared. So it’s not. My model, I, I came across it, I came, the reason I’m the resilience coach is because of my last permanent role was that company called the, the co op group. There were the cooperatives all over the, the world, but the co op group in the UK is quite large.
And a number of years ago, I was working full time and they got themselves into a real pickle and that’s where the word resilience in acronym VUCA started for me. So. Imagine that the world we live in is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, Foucault. And so it is a good way, a better way, once you unpick it, of sort of saying change is constant.
You need the resilience piece because change is constant. So when you unpick behind the scenes of like the definitions of volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous you start to understand more what we mean by change is constant. And then nicely, there’s the same an acronym about how you face into it. So you need vision, understanding, clarity, and agility.
And when you unpick all of those. They’re linked heavily to what resilience means. So the full gamut of what I do is how to lead yourself and others well in a constantly changing and evolving world.
[00:14:59] Michael Pacheco: I love that. What now? Now, so tell me again, what are the, what’s the positive side of that? Cause I went through vision, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.
I didn’t know about the other
[00:15:11] Russell Harvey: side. Yeah, so sometimes it’s called VUCA Prime or VUCA 2. 0, so that’s how you face into it. So vision, and that is, that’s not talking about like a vision statement, that’s actually using your eyes, okay? Situational awareness. Sure. That you are. Open and you are curious and you are looking around to sort of see, literally holding your head up, looking above the parapet.
It’s imagine that if you’re in your organization, it’s being curious about just, just imagine that you’re in the the company head office and you’re standing in the car park and you’re just going, I wonder what’s going on in that building over there. I wonder what’s going on in that building over there are conversations happening in those buildings, which could be helpful to me.
Or a hindrance to me in my job role in what I’m doing. So situational awareness if you imagine the idea of like whitewater rafting, you know, it’s a case you’re looking around for what’s the thing that we need to be aware of that’s going to happen. The understanding piece is that is linked massively to emotional intelligence, so you need to understand that you have to feel comfortable feeling uncomfortable.
At times, you know, so you have to understand that, that sometimes because change is constant, sometimes in life, in work, you are going to have the feeling of, oh my God, this is, oh my God, you know and you have to go, right, I’ve recognized we’re in an oh my God moment. And I’m, I know how I can feel comfortable with that.
It doesn’t necessarily make it go away, but you’ve got your, your gut you know, might be tightened. However that you can face into it and manage it. And then the clarity piece, there’s a couple of ways that you look at this. Sometimes you just have to understand that you’re not going to get any clarity.
Okay. That’s sometimes is part of it. It’s not about the fact that I’ve got the word clarity is so I can spend loads of time about getting lots and lots and lots of clarity. And you go, no, the point is a lot of the time, you’re either going to have some or not a lot or. You have to be ask a lot of good questions to find out what’s the limited amount of clarity that you’re going to get.
So what’s the boundaries that you’ve got to work within? And then you use your strengths, skills, capabilities, resilience, attitude, mindsets, and behavior to work within whatever clarity that you’ve got. And then agile piece. So this is where it’s really heavily linked to the resilience piece. So if I talk about just quickly talk about another dimension around resilience, which is adaptability.
So I’ve got the resilience wheel that I talk about, which is a build upon research. And one of the dimensions of being resilient is adaptable, which is open to change. However, not necessarily doing the change. You’re just open to it. And it’s nice research that shows that those people that work upon their adaptability, openness, and curiosity to the idea of doing things differently, they get into thrive.
A third of their time working on adaptability, they get into thrive. So how that then links to agility is adaptability. I’m open to change. And the more I work upon that, then I can do the agile piece, which is I can make quick decisions, do a change. So once again, back to the white water rafting analogy, I’m situationally aware and I’m comfortable feeling uncomfortable.
I’ve got clarity around this is as little as I know, and I’m ready and I’m prepared to be agile with how I’m going to steer my raft.
[00:18:49] Michael Pacheco: Right. Yeah. I like it. I like it. Cool. Yeah. I’d never heard the That positive spin on it before, like I said, I was just familiar with volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous.
Absolutely. I like the, I like the flip side of that. That’s great.
[00:19:05] Russell Harvey: I can’t take credit for all. It’s, it’s literally, it’s, it’s things it’s models that have been out there that for me, makes sense to me and all of the work that I do with clients to just, you know, whenever you walk into a room and go how do you feel about change?
You just get so many different responses and then when you talk to an organization and go, how good are you at change? Yeah. You just get, that’s like a can of worms, but that’s when all the gold dust is of where you could go and do some good. Essentially.
[00:19:33] Michael Pacheco: It’s interesting. I’ve been giving a lot of thought.
Lately in my personal and professional life about the, the understanding part, right? Being comfortable, feeling comfortable, being uncomfortable. And, and one of the call it an analogies that I’ve kind of latched onto that I really, that I really like about this is I heard someone said that the size.
The size of the dragon that you have to slay today is going to be your new baseline for what’s easy to do tomorrow. Yeah,
[00:20:09] Russell Harvey: okay.
[00:20:10] Michael Pacheco: So that’s Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, you’re uncomfortable with it today, and that’s the growth. That’s the growth. Because tomorrow it’s not going to be so uncomfortable. The size of the dragon that you have to slay today is going to make you super uncomfortable.
And then tomorrow, that’s when you kind of step up, level up, so to
[00:20:25] Russell Harvey: speak. Absolutely. Absolutely. It is. That does make sense to me. Oh, you’re right if I, you know attribute you, but start saying that to others, essentially. I can’t remember, I can’t remember where you got it from, but I’ll say I was talking to Michael.
Yes, it’s about slaying dragons. It really is.
[00:20:42] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. And yeah, the size of the dragon that you have to slay today is, is, is going to be your new baseline for tomorrow. It
[00:20:48] Russell Harvey: is. It reminds me of Well, the words that I say an awful lot as well is optimism or thinking about optimism is your route to feeling positive.
So they’re heavily intertwined. If you look up the dictionary definition of optimism, it uses the word positive. Okay. So some people might think I’m splitting hairs. However, what I’m wanting my clients or people listening now to do is avoid the let’s just be positive mantra. Cause that doesn’t work a lot at the time, you know, so optimism starts with grounded in reality.
So actually what’s the size of the dragon? How scary is the dragon? How fiery is the dragon? Let’s be real about how difficult and challenging this situation is. This project is or what I’m working on. And you’re going to have that in a way that doesn’t necessarily depress you. Or upset you, you know, you have to accept it with good grace of like, this is the size of the challenge.
Then it’s thinking about, okay, so what’s my levels of resilience I’ve got? What’s my strengths? What’s my skills? What’s my experiences? What are my behaviors? What’s my attitude? What’s my mindset? You know, what’s my adaptability to go? Oh, okay. I starting to feel hopeful that I can. In meet the size of the challenge, you know, and also looking at the people around you and asking the same questions.
What have they got, you know, strength, skills, capabilities, and, you know, I’m generally hopeful that we can face into the challenge. And then when you get that feeling of hope, you get feelings of positivity. So. That’s just something that I say a lot to a lot of clients around. Okay, so you’re in a VUCA world.
It’s mad bonkers crazy. There’s a lot going on. And I say, how optimistic do you feel? And wait to see what their answer is, you know, and sometimes they go on a good question. I actually, do you know, yeah, it is enormous, the challenge, but I, yeah, okay, I’m feeling optimistic. And they go, no, you’re okay, no, literally no optimism at all.
And that’s, that’s the, do you see where the direction of the conversation then goes next to go, right, then we either need to build your optimism or we now even need to create some optimism for you.
[00:23:11] Michael Pacheco: Yeah, I like that. I think, you know, there’s something I’m, I’m a very positive guy. I, I believe in, I have an abundance mindset.
I think that, that, you know, business 99 times out of 100 is not a zero sum game. It can, it can always be a win win for everybody. And. I see, I know exactly what you’re talking about. And I’ve seen this kind of blind optimism, optimism for the sake of being optimistic. It’s almost, you know, if you’ll, if you’ll pardon the expression, it’s almost, it can be a bit masturbatory.
Yes.
[00:23:48] Russell Harvey: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:23:49] Michael Pacheco: Yeah.
[00:23:53] Russell Harvey: So I, I’m, I’m sure you meant this, but I’m, I’m hearing blind positivity. If you’re doing optimism, you won’t be doing that. Because you’ve, you haven’t got your head in the sand essentially. So it’s like, and it’s also, it can be toxic positivity as well. It can be some pretty horrible, you know gas lighting that goes on.
It’s like somebody might go into a room and say, can we just talk about actually just how difficult the challenge is? And then if you suddenly get piled up on it, like, ah, just shut up and be positive. You know, that’s not good. Yeah.
[00:24:25] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. I think a solid grounding in reality is, is nothing but healthy.
[00:24:31] Russell Harvey: Indeed. Indeed.
[00:24:32] Michael Pacheco: Russell, what does it, what is a typical engagement with you look like when you work with, with clients?
[00:24:37] Russell Harvey: Yeah. So individual wise it’s, it’s seeing where they are on this, like, you know, wading through treacle or coping, surviving, thriving. It’s, it’s, it’s looking at that and the vast majority of the time we will do a psychometric around their strengths.
So there’s lots out there and there’s one I use strength scope. It’s overseen by the British psychological society because I do find a lot of time with clients that they’ve. They haven’t understood genuinely what their strengths are, what naturally energizes them. And in the UK sort of educationally, not sure what it’s like in the States.
And also in sort of person in, in one to ones and supervision that people have with their line managers, it’s literally the conversation is all about you’re good at that. So forget that. And actually these are your weaknesses, work upon those. But a strengths based approach, it sort of flips that. It goes, what do you naturally love and enjoy doing?
And do more of that. And it builds natural resilience and natural confidence. And confidence is one of the other dimensions of being resilient. So a lot of my clients have never had that thought about. Do I really know what my, what naturally energizes me and I naturally enjoy doing? So there are 24 strengths.
You do a self assessment. Your own self assessment tells you what your significant seven are, and you pick your top three. So my top three are collaboration, working with others, developing others. Coaching
and strategic mindedness. So big picture end point, you know, out of the 24. So at the 24, there’s detail. The thing that I’m energized by the least Michael is detail. So if you ask me to go in a room with loads of detail, it’s just like you’ve, it’s like you’ve burst my bubble and, you know, I wither and die inside, you know, you have strategies in place for those things that you’re not energized by, but the trick of being resilient.
And being at your best and facing into life challenges is generally to understand what your strengths are. So on a one on one basis, that’s the strengths based approach on the pins. Then we look at each individual’s resilience wheel as well. Cause he’s got seven bits to it. And we sort of say, let’s work on your wheel.
And the, and the wheel is, is it’s on the website. It’s, it’s for free. It’s a build upon free works, free research was put out by Robertson Cooper. And I just sort of say, have the wheel as a. self assessment tool for the rest of your life about actually how you’re just going to keep and maintain and build your resilience wheel because then you build your levels of resilience and actually what you used to believe was a big scary dragon one day now becomes, oh, it looks a bit like a, you know what’s the smaller version of a dragon?
I don’t know. I’m not a specialist on dragons, you know. Yes. There’s a Komodo dragon, but they’re quite poisonous. So I don’t know. Yes. So the size of the challenge when you’ve increased your levels of resilience, you won’t see it as such a large one next time around. Yeah.
[00:27:43] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. Cool. Resilience coach. co.
uk.
[00:27:47] Russell Harvey: It is. Yes, it is.
[00:27:48] Michael Pacheco: It is. Those, those listening. Cool. So where, where are you, where do you get your clients, Russell? And how do you, how do you market yourself? How do you market your services?
[00:27:58] Russell Harvey: So being a guest on some podcasts. Thank you. I appreciate that. Absolutely. Of course, of course. And so, and it, so you, you have a website you know, LinkedIn, other social media.
I, luckily I’m part of a radio station. Okay. So I have Russell’s resilience radio show that goes out weekly. That’s how you know other people hear about us. An awful lot of word of mouth. And you know, blogging and YouTubing and I also have my own podcast as well. So you just have to do stuff, Michael, and there is a strategy behind it and, you know it leads to people visiting the website and getting in touch to go, I saw this, I heard that, you know, doing speeches at conferences.
It’s just all of that stuff that you have to do.
[00:28:49] Michael Pacheco: Love it. Love it. I want to I’m going to circle back to, we were talking before about engagements, what engagement looks like with your clients and looking at the way that you do things and you figure out people’s strengths. So once you’ve, once you’ve figured out, you know, what someone’s strengths are and, and They have that kind of insight into what they’re good at and, and, and what maybe they’re not so good at, do you have specific tactics or exercises that you run through with clients to help them implement some of this new knowledge?
Right. Because knowledge in, in and of itself is not, is not the end of the coaching game.
[00:29:34] Russell Harvey: Yeah, no, no, no. It isn’t. It isn’t. It isn’t. So. Not necessarily like a worksheet that they go through, not that, but it is, it’s connecting the resilience wheel and their strength scope profile with actually their own personal direction of travel.
So it’s the purpose piece that comes in as well, because not a lot of people have talked about their purpose. So huge amounts of time, well, clients, the vast majority of time, they’re at a stage of life, you know, some of my other ideal clients are slightly younger than the job title of the head of, they’re earlier in their careers and other ideal clients, it’s like they’ve been in some big consultancy firms and they might’ve been sucked up by the graduate program.
And they’re either loving it. Or they think they’re not loving it, you know, so it’s decision points. So it is a case of, what they work upon is them clarifying what does a resilient them look like, sound like, and feel like, you know, create that picture, paint that picture, motivate themselves to do it, align it to a purpose.
And it’s like, well, where are you now in relation to that? Blueprint, and you know, how would you like to get there? And then that’s when they either start to do things differently in their job role, how they lead their teams, how they take their leadership role, because they might actually go come with, I want to be a much better leader.
So I’ll say, okay, what’s your leadership purpose then? You might have a life purpose, a leadership purpose. So what they work upon in between each conversation is those types of things. To go actually what’s your direction of travel. And if he, you know, if it works in the best way possible of like somebody’s come with, I was waiting through treacle and then, you know, a number of conversations with me, I’ve gone, ah, I have rediscovered my manager.
What enthusiasm excites me and I know how I’m going to get there and the steps that I’m going to take to do it. And then it’s a bit more of an accountability conversation. With something like self and some take longer than others, but it can be slight different. I was really privileged recently.
There was a technical James. It was his first year as a CEO. So I was supporting him for a full year as in his first CEO role all the way from, you know, you know, the whole first year of everything that he needed to do and taking on this new role and creating things that a CEO has to do. So there were all sorts of challenges along the way with that one, you know, there was an awful lot of like, ah, so yeah, things have changed again.
Right. Okay.
[00:32:07] Michael Pacheco: When you, when you find people with different leadership purposes versus a life purpose, do you often, do you, do you often find those? Already in alignment, or do you find them out of alignment and you try to coach them to get those things in alignment? What is, what does that look like?
I asked this specifically because I feel like, I don’t know, I feel like part of. Part of purpose, right? Like, purpose is, is. Living that, you know, kind of living in authenticity, right? And, and, and, and I feel like it would be in your best interest. And maybe I’m wrong. Call me out if I’m wrong on this, but I feel like it would be in your best interest.
If, if you’re, you know, if you had two different purposes, one for leadership and professional life, and one for your personal life, if those things were in alignment, it would make, it would just make more sense.
[00:33:00] Russell Harvey: Totally. It absolutely would make more sense. And when they’re out of alignment. It is difficult for the individual because then we get into the space of like, well, you, you, if you are trying to be a different person at home as in the workplace, then get in yourself into a pickle.
Now, I’m saying if you’re,
[00:33:23] Michael Pacheco: if you’re, if your leadership, right, if your leadership purpose is to become the CEO and lead everybody to this great, big, successful business and your life purpose is to. Be there for your kids and go to every single baseball game. Probably can’t do both, right? Because there’s, there’s time commitments, and you have to, you have to make a commitment somewhere, and you have to make sacrifices somewhere.
[00:33:46] Russell Harvey: Well, so, and They could do both, so it’s not, so it’s, I absolutely hear what you’re saying. And it’s incredibly difficult for an individual to sort of say, right, I’m going to be CEO because they’re going to be sacrifices. And that’s, then though the conversation around actually, do you know what, we need more leaders.
Who are on, who want to go on the senior trajectory, who also want to live a, you know an overall values life of home life is important. So I do think we are getting, we need to be getting far more to the place of working up through the chain through business and shouldn’t be at the sacrifice of home life.
No. And there, there are people that are doing that. So if they’re out of alignment It’s more difficult to achieve and the conversation normally goes into actually, do you know what this is breaking my head trying to do these due to these two ways, I think I need to align them and then that’s when yeah,
[00:34:46] Michael Pacheco: that’s kind of what I’m saying.
And, and, you know, to circle back to what we were talking about a little bit at the beginning of the podcast about just being grounded in reality, you can’t, you can’t lead a, you know, a fortune 500 company and be a stay at home mom. Right. He’s just as, as much as, as that sounds like it would be nice. Do
[00:35:05] Russell Harvey: I, yeah, well, I know I immediately went, no, I suppose, but that’s that immediate like, well, no, you can’t is informed by too much of what has gone before.
Now I’m of the view of let’s challenge that assumption is, you know I’m of the view of, cause I do by accident or design, a lot of my clients are women. You know did a piece of work many years ago about women in business, just by a coincidence. And I think as a consequence of that, just how I present myself sometimes do have a lot of female clients.
So it’s how it it’s wrong. I think you keep. Accepting that you know, phrase of like, you can’t have a, you know, you can’t be a stay at home mom. Well, you can’t actually be a stay at home mom and a CEO, although you might have an online business and do it. But yeah, I’m just splitting hairs here.
It’s like, you can be a CEO and actually be a family person.
[00:36:07] Michael Pacheco: I mean, yeah, I run, I run my company and I’m essentially a stay at home dad. I watch, I watch my daughter about halftime and my wife works, works halftime outside of the house. And so I can speak with great clarity on the difficulty of making that work.
So I don’t know, man, I don’t know. It’s just, it’s interesting. It’s an interesting, you know line of questioning. I think maybe, maybe the right question is, you know, just how, how can we get close to that? How can we do better? How
[00:36:37] Russell Harvey: can we do that? Absolutely. How can we get close to that? You know? Well, I think the vast majority of the time, why people feel as though they are struggling is they don’t believe they have options and choices.
One of the roles I have found as a coach is to enable the person in front of me to understand and believe and realize that they have options and choices. Wow. Yeah. And, and that immediately, the fact that they have options and choices quite often feels enlightening or, you know, lifting of spirit. Yeah, so don’t close yourself down to options and choices.
Yeah.
[00:37:16] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. I think to, to a degree. You, you are able to create your own future, right? And, and kind of design your own reality. Again, feet grounded in reality.
[00:37:29] Russell Harvey: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally, totally. So and, and it is, it’s a, it’s a, I’ve often been accused, wrong word, or the feedback of like, you live in, you live in cloud cuckoo land, Russell.
And I’m like, well, no, I do, I do live in the real world. I understand totally. The, all of these challenges that you’re facing and. What I’m trying to do is support you to understand that it doesn’t have to be this way.
[00:37:59] Michael Pacheco: Yeah. Back to that kind of abundance mindset.
[00:38:03] Russell Harvey: Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Cause we just get stuck.
We just get stuck in a rut so much of the time. That’s why there’s just so much opportunity. I find working with clients to have these types of conversations and, you know, it’s incredible that, that A fairly common piece of feedback that I get is you know, I don’t have the conversations I have with you, Russell, I don’t have with anybody else.
And it’s like, okay, that sounds good. And I sort of go, is that a good thing? They go, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. Absolutely. It’s definitely, it’s definitely a good thing, you know? So it’s often, it’s always coaching is thought provoking.
So yeah, but that’s where it’s just so enjoyable and why I love doing it and why I never stop learning and I am looking forward to, for the rest of my career, discovering all sorts of new things about myself and others and things I thought and the things that I will change and the things that I will adapt, you know?
[00:39:01] Michael Pacheco: Very good. Very good, man. This is great. Russell, I do want to be respectful of your time. Is there anything that you would like to chat about that we have not had an opportunity to touch upon yet? Anything I’ve
[00:39:13] Russell Harvey: missed? I don’t. No, not, not in my opinion, no. Just please everybody remember this idea of resilience is springing forward with learning.
And, that’s the only additional beyond that, to be able to spring forward with learning, the other thing I always say is it needs to be able to get into the habit from all of life’s experiences, whether good or not so good, to pause. And reflect where you can do your learnings, but you’ve got to recuperate and re energize.
So there’s a lot of words beginning with the letter R, as in resilience, reflect, recuperate, re energize, but they’re there on purpose. And amazingly, I designed it from birth, because I’m called Russell as well, so it was meant to be this way, actually. Remarkable as well. Yes, exactly! Remarkable indeed. So yeah, And ask yourself too, each in your reflections, I get one of my clients to ask themselves two questions.
And so from your recent experiences, what do you want to keep doing because it’s worked build on your strengths? And what do you want to leave behind? Cause it didn’t work. You know, that’s just another thing to just try and leave listeners with of like, get into the habit of, you know, you’ve got to pause.
Even if you had a great time and worked on brilliant projects and you played to your strengths, you’ll be nice tired. So you need to pause and recuperate and reflect from that. And, but if you worked on something that which didn’t play to your strengths and was a real challenge, you absolutely must recuperate and re energize and reflect from that as well.
So spring forward with learning is the sentence that I always say. I love
[00:40:50] Michael Pacheco: it. Russell, where can our viewers and listeners connect with you online
[00:40:55] Russell Harvey: yet? So LinkedIn, the resilience coach, Russell Harvey, and website, which you did allude to before. So the resilience coach. co. uk, you know but it’d be in the resilience coach anywhere and I’ll crop up essentially.
That’s how they connect with us. And that’s how you can get in touch and details and emails and submission forms on websites. So it’s all there. Beauty.
[00:41:18] Michael Pacheco: I love it. Russell Harvey, thank you so much for making time to chat with me today, man. I appreciate it. This has been a great conversation.
[00:41:25] Russell Harvey: Thank you.
My absolute pleasure, Michael. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
[00:41:28] Michael Pacheco: And as always, thank you to our viewers and listeners. You guys are fantastic. This podcast is of course, nothing without you guys. If you got any value out of this number one, be sure to check out Russell. Online, shoot him an email, go to his website, look him up on LinkedIn.
Give this a like subscribe, do all the things that you’re supposed to do. And if you know somebody that you think might get some value out of this from Russell’s gold nuggets of wisdom, please share this with them as well. We appreciate it. We appreciate you. Thank you so much. We will see you guys next time.
Take care.
