Coaching for Leadership Development: A Conversation with Michael Seelman

Conversations with a Learning Leader ft. Michael Seelman

0:00
Hey there. Welcome to the e-learning Champion Pod. I'm Shalini, your host for today, and I'm delighted to invite Michael Seelman, CEO of the Leadership Coach Group, a professional certified coach and formal global internal communications chief for the FBI. Michael has over 20 years of experience and is renowned for his expertise in helping leaders communicate effectively and accelerate organizational change. And having worked with CEOs, government executives, and senior leaders globally, Michael has coached over 150 leaders in five continents. This includes clients at the US Department of Homeland Security, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, to name just a few. Michael has a very dynamic approach where he blends his functional expertise his leadership insights and interestingly, improv comedy training. So that makes coaching and engagements and presentations very powerful and fun.

Michael holds a degree from Harvard University and CIO certification from the US Department of Defence, and he's currently pursuing his PhD in Organization Leadership.

1:17
So once again, a very warm welcome to you, Michael. We are just delighted that you could join us today.

1:23
Thank you so much for having me.

1:27
So Michael, you have a very fascinating, interesting career profile and especially the improv comedy bit. So would you like to share something about how did you get into leadership coaching? What shaped your decisions?

1:48
Well, throughout my career and even when I was an early student, like in high school and college, I've been very interested in leadership development. And whether it's my own leadership development or helping others develop their leadership, it's been a passion of mine. In fact, I say my passion in life is helping people and organizations reach their full potential. And so that's been demonstrated in a variety of different ways during my career.

2:17
When I went into supervisory or leadership positions, I'd have my own team and I'd be really excited about helping them grow their leadership. And I'm also a lifelong learner as they say. So I've been working on developing my own study of leadership, whether through my work in my undergraduate or my master's program at Harvard, and now in my PhD in professional development along the way. I'm always trying to improve my own leadership, whether it's through the practice of leadership or the reflection of leadership for my coaching that comes from that passion of helping others develop themselves and reach their full potential. before I even knew the term coaching necessarily, I was helping my own team members do that.

And then I decided to shift it from being part of my job to be my full-time job, to be coaching and now CEO of a coaching company. And I love it. When I did my government work, I'd be able to have a broad impact to the programs that my team and I worked on, but I didn't necessarily hear back from people directly. The impact with coaching right at the end of the coaching session. I'll hear Wow, that was so helpful. Thank you. Or, you know, next. Hey, I did what we discussed, and it had this outcome for our company or for my family. And that's very gratifying to hear that kind of instant results.

3:51
Yeah, it sounds great, Michael. And if I'm not mistaken, you’ve held leadership roles in the White House as well, right, in addition to the FBI? So, yeah, all that is really very exciting.

4:01
At the White House, I had a national gun violence reduction effort where I worked with mayors and police chiefs around the United States, that was very early in my career. So that was the exciting opportunity to grow into that position.

4:21
Terrific. So Michael, you were just sharing a little bit about how through all these years of experience in various capacities doing leadership coaching, you have evolved your own understanding of it. I'm sure you have your own understanding of how it should be done, leadership coaching. So would you like to share something about how it's different from mentoring and counselling and what is the process? And what is unique to leadership coaching that you don't see in management coaching, for instance?

4:58
Yeah. So there's some similarities with other modalities of helping people develop themselves professionally and coaching is one of them. It has some similarities with counseling and mentoring Coaching can be very synergistic with those things as well. Many of my clients will have mentors, many of them might be doing counseling or therapy. So it can be very synergistic with those things.

5:27
What coaching is focused on is to help leaders have a different perspective on some of the challenges they're facing, to help them look at things from a different way and to put insights that they gain into action. And so at the end of a coaching session, we'll ask them, based on the conversation we had today, what commitment will you make to put some things into action? Because that's what we're really focused on. We try to bring reflection on the things they've done in the past, but it's with an emphasis to what to do in the future differently.

6:10
I'm sure it's a challenging area, leadership coaching. So can you share a little bit about some of the challenges you face and how do you overcome them?

6:24
For me, it seems very intuitive, at least once I had some training. One of the core skills of being an effective coach is to be good at listening. And I think people in the past, like my team members, have told me I was good at listening when I asked them for feedback on my supervision or my leadership of the team. So I found that's a very important skill in coaching. We also practice active listening. So we're trying to reflect back on what we heard the person say and paraphrase that and then the things that they didn't directly say. So maybe the emotions that they're feeling and also trying to delve into what's below that surface level, that's very helpful to bring to the surface to help them explore. So that's some of the things that we're trying to do in coaching.

7:25
And we see that our clients are whole people that are creative and resourceful. So it's not like in consulting where we have to bring them the answer and say, here's step 1, Step 2, step 3, step 4. You might help them develop a plan like that, but it's not like we're going to give them the answer. We listen deeply to try to help them figure out what would be most useful to them in that coaching session and bring that out and then help them see that they achieved that insight and then encourage them to take some action on that insight. Active listening is such an important skill for us as coaches and leaders that are coaching their subordinate leaders that we spent on several of our recent meetings as a company focusing on that competency, saying what was it like when you felt someone really listened to you? How did that affect you? And then we had a workshop on how do you help others when you practice active listening.

8:26
Well, that's really interesting because that is a such a fundamental skill to any communication. But I guess the higher up you go, the more critical it becomes.

8:38
It's really critical, yes, in the business world, as you mentioned it going up higher. I think that as we go up the ranks from being a first line supervisor, a second line supervisor, and so forth, we then became a leader of leaders. So to help the leaders that we're responsible for guiding, we want them to be able to do most of the things on their own. So what I see is we try to be strategic. We try to identify risk. And then we help coach them by putting a spotlight on some areas that we think they should think about, but not necessarily giving them the answers. Because generally the people on the front lines are going to be better at crafting the direct answer. But as a strategic leader, we can help bring their attention to the things that we think from our experience and from what we've heard that they might want to reflect on some more. And so as we go up ranks in an organization, I think coaching becomes more and more part of our job.

9:42
Which is where I think you've always made it a point to differentiate coaching from training.

9:49
Yes, I think training has an important role in introducing new concepts and helping people get an overview of ways to do new skills, to practice things in the workplace, or other aspects of their life. So it doesn't necessarily have an emphasis on taking action. And also, training generally tends to be one and done, where you might get enthusiastic about what you've learned. It might seem like you understand it. And my experience is that when you go into practice it, wait a minute, it's a little harder than I thought. The theory that I was introduced to, where's my instructor? I want to ask some questions, but where are the other people in my class? And they're not there because that's how most training is delivered.

10:41
It's when you go to a special place, you get introduced the concepts, then you go back to your business and then when you're trying to do the hard work of implementing it, you don't have that knowledgeable instructor there on your side trying to help.

One of the exciting things about coaching is it's iterative. So you meet with your coach, you talk about a plan you might have, and then you try to implement it. Then you go back to your coach in another meeting and reflect on what happened. And then you can work with that coach on how to adapt your approach based on the new information that you have.

11:18
And yeah, I think leadership training, if done correctly, does give those opportunities for reflection and sharing of insights. And the application part, the skill building, which can happen provided it's done well, it's crafted well the entire training. But yes, coaching definitely has an advantage, I think. Is it by virtue of it being one-on-one mainly, how does it typically go, leadership coaching? Is it a one-on-one session or do you do one too many? Because there are diverse requirements, diverse kinds of leaders that you're coaching. So would you share something about that?

12:05
Yeah. If I could also elaborate a little bit about training, like you were saying that training can lead to some behaviour changes. Generally it's very good at introducing those concepts. Ideally, what I would recommend for companies that invest in the training that's beyond just knowledge building, if you really want like leadership's a bit more complex and like you want the leader generally to change behavior. So if you have a team that experiences training together where they use some new terminology, they have a new frame of reference because they've had that training. If you can then bring it back into the company and in your meetings, purposefully use some of that terminology, purposely bring through some of those concepts that can help increase the impact of that training. Whereas if you've done it as a group, then you'll have that common frame of reference and terminology that when you're making a business decision, you can say, as we learned in our training, these are some important steps to go through when we're making our business decision. Then that makes the trainings much more relevant and can have a greater resonance impact throughout the business and more staying power of what we've learned. So that's what I would recommend when people do learning through training. Also if the people that went to the training could make a commitment to say, as I went through this training, here's the three key points that I learned that I'm not doing now, then I'm going to make a commitment to implementing.

13:39
And ideally, as we do in coaching, you make that commitment to your coach and to yourself if they could announce it to other people that went through the training or colleagues at work. It’s human nature that we're much more likely to implement or follow through on commitments if we know someone's made a public commitment or someone's going to hold us accountable.

14:02
As you said, you're likely to be far more accountable when you're talking to one coach vis a vis a group and perhaps an instructor whom you might not see for the next couple of months. So yeah, I guess those are some of the things that make coaching really powerful and effective. So Michael, I'm sure, to make the best use of your coaching time. Is there anything that you encourage your coachees? Is that the term?

Yes, coachees or clients.

14:38
OK, let's go with clients. So is there something you encourage them to kind of read up on their own or go through some concepts, some foundational knowledge, as you said, leaving the skill part aside, is there anything that you encourage them to do as some kind of a self-study, in their own time, at their own pace before they come for your coaching sessions?

15:02
Yes, there's some things that we encourage them to reflect on because we want them to get the greatest return on investment on each and every coaching session. So what I like to say to my clients is think about something that you don't know the answer to and you're struggling with or something you know the answer to but aren't doing. Those two can be great topics for coaching. So the first, like if I'm coaching a CEO, as you mentioned, I'm coaching a lot of CEOs in this point in my career. And there's sometimes things that they don't really know the answer to. They have, of course, some ideas of how to approach it. I’m like, OK, bring those challenges to our coaching session and I can be your thought partner in helping you work through what would be some options and evaluating those options. Because it's hard for CEOs, especially if they're trying to have this emphasis with their team members that they've got it and they're holding the emotional weight for their team, for their company, because they're at the top it. It's hard to say I have no idea what to do. And so I think it's good to throw things out to your team and get their input. But they can kind of get warmed up by meeting with me or their coach. And sometimes they have very sensitive issues. We've had a lot of social issues in the United States happening, different kinds of protests and things like that often CEOs have to work through that they've never encountered before.

16:40
And they've been asked to go on record about things by their employees or external groups. And sometimes they've asked me to go through those things with them. When it's a really safe environment, when someone's not going to overreact to something as they're kind of polishing their language or how they're handling that. So that can be very good things that they might bring to a coaching session. So I encourage them to think about those topics ahead of time so they can just really hit the ground running in the coaching session. And then when we have a coaching session, we get through to the end and there might be some things that they made a commitment to and the things they want to work on. And then afterwards, I might send them other references that they can deepen their knowledge about. It could be a training, something that's available online. It could be an article like in Harvard Business Review. It could be a video like of Simon Sinek saying, find your why as a company. So, I'll send them some resources that help deepen their learning or reflection on the topic we covered.

17:46
Hey, thank you. Yeah, there's a whole array of digital assets out there which can complement the leadership coaching that you do.

17:57
So Michael, I was just wondering, do you find it way different to coach leaders from different demographics? You have the younger lot now in leadership positions, many more now as opposed to say a few years in the past. So how does that influence the way you handle leaders in different age groups? Is this something you consciously try to change or is it something very intuitive that you do as a coach?

18:34
Well, in any coaching engagement, we try to adapt to the needs of our client and to their preferences because our goals are their goals. We're trying to help them achieve their goals in a way that'll work best for them. And it's sometimes related to age and experience and sometimes it's not. So it depends on the client.

18:54
What we've encountered sometimes is, in the tech area, you have opportunities for young leaders to rise to leadership positions very quickly because they founded a company, and they often have fantastic ideas. They often have some innate capabilities that are very impressive around leadership and inspiration. And sometimes they just don't have a lot of experience because they're younger and sometimes for some of our clients, it's the first company they've ever been in is the one they're the founder and CEO of. And they also only know that stage of development of their company.

19:40
And if a company is growing very quickly or scaling, as say, in Silicon Valley or things like that, or Teng Xing, it can be very challenging for leaders to adapt, to change their leadership as a company grows so quickly and all these new challenges come. In a start-up company, it's often very fluid. The roles that people have, and their responsibilities often are very broad because there aren't that many people there. But any company has certain functions they need to achieve. So it can be very appropriate in that stage of a company's maturation to have those things. Then when a company's scaling, getting very large, generally you start specializing people's roles, a hierarchy develops. And that may be very different than that founder or some of the founders have experienced because it may be the first company they've ever been in. And they don't necessarily have a mental model of what does a very mature, larger company that is more complex in its structure, what does that look like? What should it look like?

20:46
I like to look at the example of Google. When Larry Page and Sergey Brin first founded Google, they were very young, and the company grew very fast because they had a very innovative product that was in demand, and they were early market leaders. They did a variety of different things to help them scale with their company. They also did some things where they experimented that didn't work out, but they adjusted. So one of the thoughts they had was, gosh, for our engineering team, for a software engineering team, maybe we shouldn't have any hierarchy. We'll just have one engineering leader and the whole bunch of engineers in a group. And after time, what happened is the engineers said, please, we'd like to have a hierarchy because this one poor guy, can't give us all direction and can't help us all with their professional growth. And so they experimented with that, and they found out, Hey, wait, you know, maybe there's a reason why these large companies have supervisory structure and they put that in place.

21:51
They also brought in Eric Schmidt, who was a more experienced CEO, and he served as the CEO and then he moved on to be chairman of the board for them. They kept their Co-founder roles, but they realized they wanted some help. I think they brought in some executive coaches as well to help them grow. And that way they were able to stay with the company as it grew to a global powerhouse that it is now.

Other executives that founded companies that don't adapt, that don't bring in assistance with executive coaching or mentors or other things, they might not be able to scale elastically as quickly as the company grows and then they might not be able to stay in leadership of that company. So I encourage when you're on a fast track like that, do the things that helped you in school or in other parts of your life. Learn and adapt and ask for help, right?

22:50
So, yeah, that's really insightful. And so leadership styles change depending on where you are currently and what you are leading. So it's not something fixed, not very static. It's something dynamic and evolving constantly from what I gather it,

There's lots of variables. If you want to think of it as an algorithm or an equation, some of the variables might be how large is the team that you're leading. So if you can be in one physical location in a relatively small team, you can develop strong interpersonal relationships based on being in the same geographic location.

23:37
That got a lot more complicated with the pandemic where we have people that aren't often in the same physical location at least for every meeting. So how do you inspire people that aren't right next to you? How do you make yourself accessible to people that can't just walk by your cubicle or walk by your office because they're on the other end of the country in a video conference? How do you make yourself accessible to them? How do you inspire them, as your company grows and they're in different time zones or in different countries, coming from really different cultures?

24:11
For instance, in the United States, we tend to have what's called a very close power distance relationship where we can challenge our bosses, but if you go to some Asian countries like maybe Japan, you're not expected to challenge people in authority. That's a very different kind of culture and you may have employees from that kind of culture. I'd encourage you to adapt your leadership to help bring those folks out and get the input, making them feel more comfortable.

So there's lots of different variables that show up as a challenge when we're leaders, especially as our companies or organizations grow and become more complex and people come from many different cultures or men and women sometimes come with different perspectives, people have different cultures, people have different life experiences. And I'd encourage my clients to bring out that diversity can be wonderful if you're good at facilitating, bringing out the value of that diversity.

25:13
Wow, that's really a fascinating mix of variables. And I guess that's one of the thing that that makes this always interesting, because you're dealing with individuals, as you said, across cultures, across different leadership systems that they themselves went through. I'm sure it's a very dynamic, constantly evolving field and I'm sure it keeps you on your toes.

25:45
Yeah. And I'm constantly learning from my clients. Like I'll learn from the way they lead, from the perspectives they have, and that'll help enrich the way I can assist other clients. So I am constantly learning. And as you mentioned, I'm working on my PhD in leadership. So something I'll do is the different leadership concepts or frameworks that I'm learning, I bring into my coaching sessions to help them.

Sometimes our thoughts might be out there where they're a bit free flowing. And then we put it in a diagram or framework that helps us settle our understanding of what we're observing, what's happening in our organization. I think for my clients that can be very valuable.

We'll draw some diagrams like, here's what's going on in your C-Suite team, or let's take a look at your board of directors or things like that. That could be really helpful to have some framework to analyze that.

26:47
So your PhD is in the area of Psychological Safety at Work, right?

26:54
So on my PhD programs in organizational leadership in my dissertation that I'm focusing on is how companies bring artificial intelligence into their companies and if psychological safety strategies that leaders would employ could help make those change initiatives more successful. So that's what I'm exploring in my dissertation.

27:18
Wow, that's really a very fascinating topic. I guess that's something that's on everybody's mind. You know, many people are very concerned secretly about AI replacing them and how do you deal with this whole change. It's been a game changer, really AI. So I'm sure this this area is really well appreciated.

27:47
And yeah, looking forward to hearing you maybe talk more about it in our upcoming session in October. So Michael, how do you stay abreast of what's happening in this area of leadership coaching? How do you incorporate this into your work? I'm sure you have your own system which has evolved over time, but how do you also keep abreast of trends and happenings in this domain?

28:21
So it's the same way that I would encourage other leaders to do it. There's these formal trainings that I can attend that help me with that. There's also things that I read that help me grow. Then there's interactions with my colleagues, for instance, my colleagues in the leadership coach group, they're also very experienced coaches and they're also learning and evolving. So we have workshops as part of our team meetings where we share what we've learned with one another. We challenge one another. And that's a very important aspect of my own professional development, to hear those perspectives. And then of course, in having putting things into action, I try different things with my clients, and after each one of our coaching sessions, we send our clients a feedback form and say, hey, how did it go? Is there anything we could do differently in the future? And seeing what their feedback is, what's very valuable to them, that also helps me grow and develop and be in touch with what they need. And being part of a professional association, these are all the things I encourage my clients to do too.

Like for us, we have the International Coaching Federation, that’s our largest association to support coaching. So that's another great resource in our growth.

29:41
Yeah. I think these communities of practice really help in keeping abreast of what's happening out there and what you can add to your tool kit, so to speak.

29:58
Michael, I was just wondering, since we have a couple of minutes more, would you like to share any interesting war story or some particularly innovative story of coaching success during your vast years of experience?

30:18
Yeah, I'll share it. You mentioned my improv comedy background.

30:21
Oh, yes, I was hoping you were touching that.

30:25
So sometimes I get to use that in my coaching. I try to have a variety of different tools that when I see what my clients would benefit from, I'm like, OK, I think this tool might be really helpful. And I had this one client I was coaching, and she was a vice president of her company, and I knew she had a sense of humor and she appreciated bringing that into her coaching engagement. I’d been coaching her for a while. So we had high level of trust, kind of like a friendship. So I thought she would be ready for me bringing some improv comedy in. We were starting our coaching session, and she was in her corporate headquarters building and then the fire alarm went off in her building and she said, oh, Michael, I'm so sorry. I have to interrupt the coaching session cause the fire alarms going off. And so she excused herself and she's like, it shouldn't take long. So I stayed on the Zoom session, and I waited for her to come back. I knew she was such a considerate person and so warm and friendly. I anticipated that when she came back, she might be very apologetic and start with that. And I thought, OK, that's kind of like an audience suggestion. It's like any audience would be an improv comedy. You get an audience suggestion, and you'd ask for a scene. And the kind of the scene in my head was like, oh, it's a fire alarm. So this is what happened when she came back on the Zoom session with me.

32:02
She came back on, and I said, oh, hello. She was apologetic as I expected, I was like, oh no, don't worry, don't worry. This is when Zoom was new, and you could change backgrounds and things like that. So she's apologetic. I said, I know that if something similar happened to me where I had a fire alarm on my end, you'd be so understanding. So don't worry about it.

32:29
And I said, wait, what is that? And I had prepared certain things while she was out in her fire alarm. So I had this image going behind me where there was flames behind me as if there was a fire behind me. And then like, there's alarm going off. Oh, in fact, there's a fire alarm right now. I'm sure you'd be very understanding about me having to leave because of this fire right behind me that's raging. And she just cracked up laughing and so I brought my improv comedy into that coaching engagement. And then it also, I wanted to reset her to let go of feeling bad about the fire alarm being interrupting and helping her refocus on her coaching. So that allowed her to just get over and feel really present and then be able to dive into our coaching.

33:23
Thanks, Michael. That's really a fun story. Sometimes when you hear the word leadership coaching, one tends to associate it as a very humorless kind of coaching. And especially since you said sometimes emotions can run high, you're touching on sensitive topics, you're encouraging people to be more self-aware, which is not always a pleasant discovery for many people. And in the middle of all this, if you can weave in humour, I'm sure that that's what makes your coaching sessions stick and effective.

33:58
Yes. You know, I found that in times when I've been really stressed. I’m thinking about one initiative we're working on at the FBI with our Joint Terrorism Task Force. I wasn't responsible for a program related to that. And in our preparation for it, something wasn't going exactly right that I was worried about. And my boss had me in with our team, he was assistant director of the FBI. He made a joke, and it just brought the tension down. And then we were able to problem solve this thing that was really worrying me. And we came up with an alternate solution. When I was so tight and so worried about it, I wasn't going to be in that creative mood. And his humor allowed us to really problem solve it and work it out. And the initiative turned out very well to help protect the country better. But it was his humor just at right point that unlocked us and then helped us come up with a good solution. He continues to be a mentor of mine today.

35:03
Oh, wonderful. I think used correctly, it can really transform the entire experience. I guess the only thing one has to be cautious about is when you're dealing with a cross-cultural setting, because humour can always be a double-edged sword. You don't know what might be offensive in some of the contexts. But yeah, I think it's a great idea to use improv comedy in leadership coaching. It makes the whole thing seem so much more inclusive, engaging, and it lowers people's defences enough for them to really focus on what they need to be doing in that session. So I think that's wonderful.

35:56
And the skill sets of improv comedy match coaching really well, because when you step out on stage with your scene partners, you don't know ahead of time what the script is. There is no script. And so you have to be really present with the scene. And that's the same thing as you want to be really present between the coach and the client, really aware of the energy that people bring. And in in improv comedy, when someone proposes something and says, hey, we're on the moon and let's make some pizzas, OK, you say, great. like that. My scene partner just came with an idea of where we are and what we're doing and in coaching, same thing as whatever people bring, you want to see that as a gift. And also for leaders. when their people bring feedback to them, I say that's a gift. Like just like an improv comedy. He's like, oh, now I know what to work on, right? They gave me this gift.

36:53
I know we're on the moon and we're going to make pizzas. And so there's a lot of things about improv comedy that are similar to the skill sets that are important in coaching, being present, really connecting with your collaborator.

37:10
You're between the coach and the client, or the coach and the coachee, as you said, and being open to going wherever is necessary, not having a fixed idea of where the coaching session should be going but wherever would be helpful to that client as you co create. We call it co create with your client. Just like improv comedy, folks co create a scene together for some wonderful outcome. Improv comedy is to entertain and draw in your audience. And coaching is to help leaders not feel alone if they have a partner and they tackle some of these really important challenges that they're facing.

37:49
Wow, that's really an interesting parallel. And yes, leadership most times a very lonely role to take on. So I'm sure these kind of opportunities really help empower leaders to really reach up to their full potential.

38:12
Yes, yes, yeah.

38:15
Please go ahead, Michael.

38:18
I'm really compassionate towards leaders. All the different roles in an organization can be hard at times, and it's important to understand that as a leader, and who do the leaders turn to is that they can have these confidential thought partners and cheerleaders are cheering them on as they continue to grow. And you think about if an organization's functioning well, the challenges that are less complex or less impactful, the leaders should be empowering the people at other levels of organization to handle those. It's the most impactful, most complex, difficult strategic problem should be going up to the top. And so how do you help the leaders tackle those?

39:06
Because the ripple effects are felt all over the organization.

So including the lives of the people in the organization. I encourage my clients that are the heads of their organizations is you have so much influence over the culture, the climate of your organization about work life balance, the quality of their experience in that day. It's such a responsibility. And also sometimes you see your employees or team members at some of the hardest times in their lives, when they might be struggling with death in a family, or someone that's sick or challenged with their child. So being present in those moments when you might not expect it, to be really compassionate, to live according to your values. That's why I try to help leaders to be really responsive. Not only are their lives better, their organization more successful, but all the people, the ripple effect you talk, all the people that they touch can have happier, more fulfilling lives. So that's what we see when we help those leaders. We can be a force for good and change in the world.

40:22
Yeah, I'm sure it's highly satisfying and meaningful. So thank you so much, Michael. I wish you all the very best as you continue to influence and touch lives. And Michael, before we wind up, I was just wondering is there, this is for our dear listeners.

40:46
We are very excited to have Michael join us for our Community of Practice event called Learn Flux in October. Michael, is there anything you'd like to share about your topic for this upcoming L&D virtual event?

Well, I'm really looking forward to interacting with the audience and learning from them and sharing with them. Community practice is something that I have a lot of expertise in my earlier career, and I love that style of learning because it's not like one designated teacher and one designated student. In a community practice there’s so much they have to share with one another. So I'm really excited about that format and all the people I haven't met yet, to meeting you, interacting with you, I hope you come so we can have that chance.

41:36
Yes, definitely. I'm really looking forward, Michael. And it's very interesting because we get to hear perspectives from leaders in different domains, and there's a lot of rich cross learning happening. And we really look forward to having leaders like you come in and share your insights and your actionable next steps, which you can share on various areas. So once again, thank you, Michael. It was a pleasure having you. And I'm sure learners have a lot to think about, a lot of food for thought and deed for those of them inclined to go into this very fascinating, super challenging, yet very fulfilling area of leadership coaching. And yeah, I think since it's not just a ‘one size fits all’ approach, it's highly customized, highly individualized. And yet there are also some things which are common. The foundation perhaps is something common and that's where we believe that something like a blended solution where some of it can be left to the learners to study on their own coupled with these powerful coaching sessions would really make a great impact.

And looking forward, Michael, once again to having you. And thank you, dear listeners, for joining us. And thank you, Michael.

43:11
Thank you.