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Are you ready to unlock your potential and bridge the gap between ambition and accomplishment? Dive into the transformative power of coaching, exploring how intentional growth, self-awareness, and a “toward” mindset can combat life’s natural chaos and drive meaningful progress. Discover how asking the right questions fosters self-discovery, why metacognition is a game-changer for leadership, and how external perspectives can inspire new solutions. Uncover the keys to unlocking creativity, resilience, and success in both business and life!

 

In this episode, Steve and Jason discuss:

  • Importance of coaching in bridging ambition and accomplishment
  • Role of entropy and coaching in combating personal and professional disorder
  • Asking insightful questions to promote self-discovery and leadership growth
  • Power of metacognition in overcoming self-limiting patterns
  • Adopting a "toward" mindset to enhance creativity and problem-solving skills

Key Takeaways:

  • Entropy, the natural tendency toward disorder, highlights the need for intentional coaching to promote growth, structure, and continuous improvement.
  • Coaching emerges as a powerful tool to bridge ambition and accomplishment by fostering self-awareness, encouraging intentional growth, and equipping individuals with strategies to combat life's inherent disorder.
  • By asking thought-provoking questions, coaches empower clients to uncover their own insights, a method proven to promote deeper self-discovery and sustained action compared to prescriptive advice.
  • Leaders unlock transformative growth through metacognition and emotional awareness, recognizing that thoughts are neutral and that reactions can be consciously separated for enhanced well-being.
  • A "toward" mindset—focused on growth and solutions rather than problems—unleashes creativity and problem-solving potential, paving the way for personal and professional success.

 

 

“Coaching is about drawing out the insights of others. To us, this is distinctly different from simply pouring our advice into them.”

 - Steve Scanlon

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Listen to the podcast here:

 

 

 

 

 

 


Steve and Jason-The Athlete's Edge

Hello everybody, and welcome to this version of LinkedIn Live, and/or our podcast. Our podcast is called the Insight Interviews, and it is powered by Rewire. This is your host, Steve Scanlon, and your other host, Jason Abell. Jason, say hi.

Hello, everybody. Good to be here again. It's fun to be on this side. You welcomed us in this time, and kind of fun to be on the other side of that.

Yeah, yeah. It is fun to kind of, you know, you got to turn on that voice. I don't usually walk around going, hey, welcome everybody, but then again, we're trying to be good podcast hosts, so that's how we talk.

You need the voice.

We don't have a lot of time today, like we never have a lot of time. And what's ironic is the people listening probably don't have a lot of time. I think the topic that you and I chose for this month to bring to the table is obviously something that's near and dear to our hearts; something we've been passionate about for a long time. But Jason, I gotta tell you, I can't get over the fact that the work that we do, and I just want to state this right out of the gate, it's transformative work, right? We're not just doing this because we wanted to make a bunch of money. It's transformative work and bringing coaching to the table, and in fact, I thought about it, like, we just recently got past the Olympics, and you have 11,000-some-odd athletes from 200 and whatever countries, and I'm going to guess almost all of them had a coach. And that's why we called this the athlete’s edge. These elite athletes’ figure something out that they don't just show up at these games. And I get it, if you're with a team, you probably can't, but even individual athletes, they have coaches.

Oh, yeah.

They have people that that see around them, that help them see differently. And at the highest levels of sport, people figure out they can't do it alone or shouldn't. And so, I don't know. You had something you wanted to share with us in this regard. Bring us into what you thought.

There's been so many examples, not only with our coaching clients, but whether it's the Olympics, you know, the people that were in the Olympics, they bridged that gap. The gap that we talked about in the title of this, bridging the gap between ambition and accomplishment. They were 1000s of people that had ambition, and there's a lot of people that have ambition, but not everybody gets to the Olympics. There's a lot of people that have ambitions to get to the Olympics, that don't make it to the Olympics, and to bridge that gap. And so, not only was the Olympics something that inspired me and us to have this conversation today, and not only our clients, but I got to tell you, some of the podcast guests that we've had recently really inspired us to go, okay, let's, let's lean into this, and let's lean into very specifically what coaching is and how it helps, and how it helps bridge the gap between whatever your ambition is today and the actual accomplishment, if and when it happens. So, for example, I was interviewing this guy, I mean, listen to his title. His name was Richard Safeer. He's the Chief Medical Director of employee health and well-being for Johns Hopkins Medicine, all of Johns Hopkins Medicine. That's over 40,000 employees, and it's his job to help people bridge that gap, and of the organization's or the department's ambition and accomplishing that. And one of the things, and I can't wait for you all to listen to this episode, but one of the things is, really, how are we taking care of ourselves? Like, what are we doing with our mind, with our body? What are we doing with that specifically to help bridge that gap? So here we are today. That was just something that resonated with me. I mean, I just interviewed Richard just a few days ago, and so it's fresh in my mind, but you and I are going to go through some very specific things. I think you've got something on this word entropy that’s pretty interesting, that we want to talk about, but then, we're actually going to get into three tangible items when it comes to bridging that gap, and how coaching can be the bridge.

Can be the edge, sure. And God forbid we don't come up with three things to tell people, right? We better come up with three items.

That's right.

Jason, I don't mean to oversell the work we've been doing for so many years, but you know, what's really interesting is we maintain our passion by maintaining our enthusiasm for it and seeing the results behind it. I'm as passionate today as I am about coaching, if not more so.

It's those results that that keep me going. When we hear the results of what's happening with our clients and from our coaches, it's like this fist pump on a daily basis. So yeah, we're passionate about it, for sure.

I don't mean to oversell it, and I'm just going to go really quickly here, because I don't know that we have a lot of guests that are interested in the second law of thermodynamics. I mean, they might be like, what the heck? But there is a general law, you know, embedded in the law of thermodynamics, called entropy. Many, many people have heard about it, and it basically is this idea that in the universe, all matter moves to a state of disorder, particularly one when unacted upon. So, there have been some people that have looked at that and go look, if you need another reason, like, why would I get a coach? I'll tell you why. Because coaching is one way that you can tangibly and physically say, I'm gonna go get better. And by the way, and I know this sounds extreme, this could be hyperbole, and I'm willing to accept it, entropy, in some ways, could be interpreted to say there's only better or worse. There is no neutrality. If you don't want to get better, you certainly don't want to get worse, but you might go, I think I'll stay the same, but entropy states that trying to stay the same will actually make you worse.

That's the start of the slide, right?

That's right. And so, we must endeavor to get better. And you know, you and I have built this company with some amazing people and coaches that are doing what they do to intentionally help people get into syntropy, which is the word that intentionally works against entropy. And then even Albert Einstein said, look, and I loved his saying, and I think it's germane to the conversation, but Einstein said, you cannot solve problems with the same level of consciousness that created it.

Think about that, right? There are 100 different ways to say that, right? What got you here won't get you there. Having just the ambition and not acting upon it is not going to get you anywhere, right? Yeah.

But if you've got a goal, because we do focus on goals, and we do focus on results, because coaching, I mean, a coach that doesn't focus on results is not going to be at the Olympics. It's actually a wonderful thing to have goals and results, and you might know that. But here's the deal, if you have a goal, it implies that your current reality is not where your future reality wants to be.

Yeah.

And I'm sorry to say this, and it might sound a little negative, but that means there's some sort of problem, if you want to think of it like that. Or obstacle. Some people like to think of it more positively. It's an opportunity, but whatever. There's a distance between where you are and where you want to be.

That's right.

Einstein says if you want to get to that distance, it's very unlikely you're going to do it alone, because that distance exists because of your current level of thinking.

That's right.

That's why you and I get to be mindset coaches. we're not saying, do this, do this. We're actually going, how do we think about this differently? How can we think about this differently? And probably, maybe, just maybe, we can help people, including ourselves, not be subjected to the entropic world. By the way, little side note, we all lose. Death is an inevitability.

At the end of the day, that's how everything ends.

Well, but a life well live is one that does things that doesn't have decay happen a lot sooner than it should.

Yeah, yeah, right on. So, I think our listeners very typically, and I know I do this when I'm interviewing people, I'm nodding my head because I'm like, yeah Einstein, no entropy. Like, I'm agreeing with you, right? I would love to get to the point where you and I are diving in, by the way, we're going to do that right now, to some specific items of what really good coaching looks like with some tangible examples. We have three, gosh, we could have done 21, right? But we've got three of the top ones that as we interviewed our coaches and as we observe our own coaching of clients. Boy, these three things come up more often than not. And so, we just wanted to describe them today. So, Steve, what's the what's the first one?

You're exactly right. I mean, for us to come up with three, we had to back up and go, okay, not this one, not that one, but there’s so many. We don't even know that these are the top, but we think they're pretty powerful. Number one, we called it the art and science of questions. Jason, generally speaking, I think people might have a little bit of confusion around what coaching is. Coaching is the drawing out of insights of others. To us, that is a distinct difference than pouring in our advice into others. How can we ask great questions? Now, as part of that, I would tell you, how do we practice the art and science of curiosity? And I only say that because there's a lot of books on questions, which I find funny. You can learn the mechanics of asking questions, but what might it take for you to learn curiosity?

In other words, genuinely interested in and curious about the person.

That's exactly right. Like that's one thing that we are as coaches, and that's been kind of a cutesy thing that we picked up on, right? The Dos Equis guy, he's the most interesting man in the world. We're not trying to be that in coaching. We're trying to be the most interested people in the world, not the most interesting people in the world. So, when you get into coaching, envision someone when you're sharing this opportunity, this goal, this thing, they're not just going through this, like, I'm going to ask you a question, no, like, wait a minute, tell me about that, and we're helping guide the thinking around what it's going to take to overcome those obstacles, to look at things differently. And then lastly, I will say, and again, this is a little bit of a- we never want to go negative, because negativity is not a huge part of coaching, but Michael Bungay did a whole TED talk on taming your advice monster.

Yep.

And again, you can look it up on TED, or we'll put it in the show notes. You know, Steph can certainly put that in the show notes for us. TED is a free thing, like, go look at it. It’s actually really, really great. And here's what he points out, is we all have an advice monster.

Oh, it makes us feel good when we give somebody advice. It makes us the coach or the person giving the advice feel good. I don't know that it's received very well, even if the person says, oh my gosh, that's a great idea. Thank you. Sure, that might make us feel good, and they might think it's really good, but science shows, the data shows that's not what's actually effective.

In creating the kind of change, and yet it's pervasive. And so, the art and science of questions is something that you and I have been studying, I would say this is probably a little more anecdotal, really practicing, like, think about advice giving and curiosity. Aren't those sorts of opposed to one another? Like, if I came in like, dude, I gotta tell you what to do, man. I gotta tell you what to do. When that's my mindset, curiosity isn't a part.

That's right, that's right, and it becomes more about you. Even though you were just using that as an example, I didn't like you saying that to me right now, even in the middle of this. Like, there was something inside of me that was like, I am shutting down right now, right? And that's just us illustrating that.

You know what you need to do about that, right? Just kidding. You heard that like, you know what you should do? You were like- 

Yeah, I shut down. And those of you that are listening, I think you know what we're talking about, right? Like, there's a couple of examples that I'd like to give when it comes to this topic. One is another podcast guest that I interviewed recently, Anthony Taylor. I mean, this guy is a global consultant. He is consulting big, huge organizations around the globe, and he went emphatic on me for about five minutes of, I don't give advice. I am a consultant. He's not a coach. There was a difference. And you would think the consultant, well, that's exactly what they do. They write up a report and tell you what to do. And he's like, not one bit, and he went off on the science behind it. He's like, I can tell my clients what to do, but when they take ownership, is when I'm asking questions, and they come up with their own ideas. And this is strategic type of things. The name of his company is SME, a strategy, so he is helping big global organizations with strategy, not by telling them what to do, but by asking amazing questions and going through a lot of exercises and drawing out what they think they should do. And so anyways, you know, it's pounded into us as coaches to really be genuinely curious and ask questions and draw out the client's insight, the coachees insight, again, to get from that ambition to the actual results that people are looking for. So, that that kind of just struck a chord with me. I'm like, gosh, even this guy that's a consultant is saying it's just better to be curious.

Well, the neuroscience behind it, you know, and again, we got to move on, because we got two other things we got to get to, and we know there's a time frame here. But just briefly, the neuroscience behind it is, when you give somebody advice, it could be good advice, and I'm not saying there's never a time for that, because there probably is from time to time, but when you give someone advice, number one, you get a dopamine hit, like you said. It makes you feel better, but number two, we can actually now see through brain scans, the neural pathway that gets ignited, and the difference between one that you pour into someone and one that they create for themselves. The ability to take action goes way up when they create their own thing, and the longevity, the lastingness of the neural pathway, it just lasts in your brain a lot longer when you create it. So, this isn't people just coming up with some cutesy way to avoid giving advice, and I'm sure your guy went into it better.

No, that's exactly right. This is such an important topic. You and I just covered it in five minutes, but it's an entire module of our leadership program, right? Like, we spend an entire module on just this topic, because it's that important. And the feedback that we get when we do our surveys, on our intensives that we do is, yeah, that one was a difference maker. That module was a difference maker. But okay, what's the next one?

Number two is metacognition, which, just for the sake of our audience and people listening, I know a lot of our clients have probably heard about this, and they practice it, and so they know about it. Metacognition is literally, like, if you translate, if you looked up that word, it's literally thinking about how you're thinking. And so, you know, that's the quick definition, but you're reading a book lately that you told me, I think you sent it to me on audio tape, didn't you?

Have you started listening yet?

Oh, not yet. You're gonna give me advice and tell me to do that?

So, this is a book where just the title alone caught my attention. I heard an interview like you and I are doing right now, and somebody mentioned this book, and I'm like, yep, Audible. Boop. Download. And the book is called, “Don't believe everything you think”. And this is interesting when it comes to the topic of metacognition, because your definition was thinking about the way that you think. And this, it's a quick read, by the way. It's think listening to it is only like an hour and a half, maybe two hours. So, it's a pretty quick read. One of the big ideas of the book is the thing that you're thinking about, in and of itself, is not good, bad or otherwise, it just is. We're the ones that put judgment on it and thoughts around it, or worry upon it, or happiness around it. We're the ones that do that. So, we control the thing. The thing is just the thing. It's not good, it's not bad, it's not happy, it's not sad. It just is the way that we think about it is what, again, makes the definition of good or bad or angry, or whatever it is. And so, the book is, man, I got to read it again, because it's big time, like it's a game changer, type of a thing. And with coaching, we dive into this topic with people of metacognition and thinking about the way that you're thinking or what you do with that.

I was working with a client as early as this week, and one of the things that they had come in with, this was a leader in an organization, and they were supposed to do something, and they weren't doing some of the stuff that they were supposed to do.

No, all my clients do everything they're supposed to do. I don't even know what that is like.

Rather than coming in and going, here's why and how, and I got busy, and you know, when you do what we do, like, I always laugh at myself when I come up with excuses. Like, I'm so good at it, and here's why. I hear it all the time. I got some of the best ones down. But anyway, this individual came in was like, you know what? I wasn't doing it, but, like, I had this time set, and then stuff happened, but right when that thing happened and I wasn't gonna do it, I paused, and I was like, look at me about to not go do that activity.

Hey, win, win right there.

That's metacognition.

Yes.

Now, when you don't practice that, you just don't do the activity, and then later on, you go back, go, well, here's why. Because we all have to live with ourselves and go to sleep, and so we explain why, but no judgment. Just like, wow, I notice that what I'm about to do, like my thinking around that, which, by the way, was way easier, probably more normal, natural, blah, blah, blah, and by noticing it, it allowed him to not just go down the road of not doing it. And he actually did the action. He's like, but I gotta tell you, it was about to not happen until I thought about it. That's the power of metacognition.


Yeah, it's amazing. Oh, man, I'm so psyched for that person in that situation. Like, that's a breakthrough. There's awareness there. And sometimes people can hear maybe the conversation that we're having, Steve, and thinking, it's very ethereal. I can't put my finger on it, but that example, right there, was that thought process actually had a real, tangible effect on the action that he ultimately took.

I didn't even have to draw it out for him. He was telling me, and I'm just sitting there, and he even goes, that's metacognition.


Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

Last thing, and then we'll get to the third one, Jason. I do want to say when we went through 2020 and 2021 and, you know, the pandemic and all of that, apart from all the isolation stuff that happened to people, which had some horrifically nefarious effects on the world, one of the things that I observed, even with the guy in the mirror, maybe especially the guy in the mirror, is when you're not around a bunch of people, it becomes increasingly easy to believe everything you think.

Oh, for sure.

That's one of the big detriments, apart from the physical touch and being with people and whatever. You could be thinking stuff, and next thing you know, because you're not talking to anybody you know, if I say, hey dude, I got to tell you I think, you know, whatever, I think mice are actually fish, well, I need you in the world to look at me like, are you okay, man?

Right.

That interaction doesn't allow me to believe everything that I think. And so, from a metacognition perspective, good coaches also are reflections and not only help people practice metacognition, but we're asking the kind of questions that aren't just presumptions that everything, if you just believe everything you think, how are you ever going to get
different results?

That's so true. Yeah, back to what we said earlier, if what got you here won't get you there, and if you're stuck in your own thinking loop, but wanting different results?

Even at the athletes level, like, it's so cool to watch coaches be working on things and they're helping those athletes see it differently and perhaps think about it different.

Before you get to the last one, I heard Tom Brady just interviewed the other day, and he was talking about the NFL Draft and all of the NFL draft is about the person can run this far, jump this high and had this many catches, whatever. He's like, to me, this is Tom Brady talking., that's like a third of what ends up happening with the results on the field. The other two thirds are all up here. What's the character like? What's the person's thinking thought process? How good of a teammate are they? How forward thinking are they? Which is a segue to our last thing, but in other words, the best of the best is thinking two thirds are what's happening up here in the brain, and the attitude and personality and all those things, and only 1/3 is actually the physical attributes of the athletic endeavor.

And you wonder why we're mindset coaches. Imagine that. All right, very cool. Let's get to the last one. The last one is, it's a term that we'll call toward versus away, which I want to honor and credit the Neuroleadership Institute, and this is Dr David Rock's organization. They've got a lot of research scientists in there, and they coined this term. I don't know that they coined the concept, because the positive emotional attractor and the negative emotional attractor, that's the work of Richard Boyatzis and I could go on and on about all the people that have worked on this. The default mode network, blah, blah, blah. Look, the human brain works better when it's moving in a toward state. Period.

Right on.

You want to, you want to get to your results, and you want to have a coach come in, if a coach comes in and you say, hey, I want to get a certain thing done, and let's say you either do or don't do and I go, dude, why didn't you do that? Like that question, why didn't you do that? I just want people to know this.

I’m defensive right now.

That'll be people in an away state. It will increase cortisol, decrease the prefrontal contextual capacity, and this is why all this culture of accountability hammering people, I just got to tell you, there's no neuroscience to suggest that over time, hammering people and screaming and yelling and telling people blah blah, that puts people in the away state. It's not that it's not kind, probably it isn't. You and I are operating under the premise that this has been neuro scientifically proven, and by the way, as coaches, forget the proof. It's anecdotally true. I've been doing this a long time. When people are in a towards state, because as coaches, we come in and we're asking positive questions, and we're asking forward thinking questions, and we're putting people's gaze towards what can be and will be. That is not just being pollyannaish, we do that because when we get there, we are creative, we are generative, and we solve problems, we overcome obstacles, we do so much better when in a toward state. It's just really amazing how often we're in an away state, and how sometimes as leaders, we inadvertently put people in away state, so being incredibly mindful about staying in a toward state is something that we do in coaching and something that we believe in deeply. But that's like saying we believe in math, like, we believe in it because it's worked for us. That's anecdotal, but there's some incredible scientific evidence that talks about toward versus away states.

And an example of what you just said, coming into a coaching session where a client hasn't been able to do what they committed to themselves to doing, and you going, why didn't you do that? Just an example of, like, the very first tip that we gave about questions in the art and science of good questioning, another way to say that would be, hey, tell me more about that. Very different. Now what happens is, the person starts talking, and when they start talking, there's things that are happening there. And then more questions happen as a result of it. And then guess what? The client ends up solving their own problem. I mean, kind of like you're saying, like a math problem, like I just watch it, and all I did was ask one question. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't an away state, it was just, hey, let's keep on walking down this path together, because you're okay, I'm okay, I believe in you, so tell me more about that. And so, towards versus away. Another thing that I would say, and I've done this in workshops, is another way to look at this, if you're just thinking of your physical being, is your actual stance. If you look at, and we'll kind of bring this full circle with athletes, think about this in the Olympics, and I observed the Olympics. I was like, you know, I do this in workshop. Let me see what I actually see during the Olympics, and it held true. So, I'll do this thing in a workshop where I'll ask if there's anybody in the room who's a former or current professional athlete, and every now and again, we'll get somebody in the room, if not collegiate athlete. Okay, come to the front of the room. I won't give them any other instruction except to get in an athletic ready stance. Every single time I've done this, Steve, people get down and they get on the balls of their feet, and they're leaning forward, towards, and they're ready to go, right? Like if you're in the beginning of a foot race or football, basketball, golf is the same thing. You spread your feet out, right? You are leaning forward. You're ready to go. Metaphorically, when you engage the world, whether it's your relationships or whether it's the business thing that you're working on, if you're intentional about your towards forward facing stance, what you're not, is like most people operating from their heels and in a defensive mode and in a way that, like, I don't know what's happening. I'm using the word a way to describe that, where those people typically in business and in life, they're losing because they're just on their heels the entire time, where the people that are winning and getting the results and bridging the gap from ambition to actually accomplishment and getting to where they want to go, they're having intentional towards stance on the balls of their feet.

Dude, I love it. I love that stance talk that you do, and it’s such a great image for what we're doing. Look, the art and science of questions, metacognition and a toward versus aaway sate, we could bring three things to the table. We are absolutely not hard to find, right? So here you go.

So those of you that are listening to us right now, what Steve is putting up is a way to get in contact with us, which is pretty easy. I mean, you can go to our website, Rewireinc.com or you can email grow@rewireeinc.com. If you are head of an organization, if you're an HR Director, President, CEO, anybody in a leadership position in your organization, and you want your people to benefit from really great questions, from people thinking about their thinking in order to achieve better results and operate from a towards stance, if any of that sounded interesting to you and you want to find out more about it, please get a hold of us, Grow@ReWireInc.com.

I love that. Thank you guys very much. It's always an honor, Jason, thank you. This is our passion project and what we're doing, and we would love to be helpful. So, you know, look, if we can help in any way, we'd love to. Thanks for all your time, Jason, thanks for being a great partner, and we'll look forward to seeing you next time here on The Insight interviews. And never forget, it doesn't matter what we think, it doesn't matter what our insights are, it matters what yours are. So, see you next time.

Thanks so much, Steve. Thanks everybody.

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