278 : Clarity Beats Confidence: How Great Leaders Actually Change with Terez Rijkenberg

What if the fastest way to lead change was to stop trying to feel confident? Executive coach Terez Rijkenberg says clarity beats confidence every time, and she has the frameworks to prove it.

Terez Rijkenberg, executive coach to C-suite leaders and director at Tuitive AI, joins Yanique Grant to share the two frameworks behind her work: the RAFT formula (results, actions, feelings, thoughts) and Radical Adaptability. She unpacks how change really happens, how she coaches leaders through it with a real client story, and how her Claude-based AI system hands executives back 10-plus hours a week. She also shares the grounding quote she uses when stress spikes.

In this episode:

- Terez's journey from the corporate ladder through postpartum depression and identity shift to executive coaching
 - The RAFT formula: why your thoughts drive your feelings, actions, and ultimately your results
 - Radical Adaptability: safety, clarity, belief, experiment, and integrate, the five steps of real change
 - A client story showing why coaching a team is faster than telling them what to do
 - Before and after: building AI workflows that remove manual work and free leaders to think
 - The grounding self-talk Terez uses under pressure: this is not an emergency

Featured resources:

Book: The Success Principles by Jack Canfield
Book: The Freakonomics series by Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner (her gateway into behavioral economics and psychology)
Claude (Anthropic) - where Terez builds her processes, systems, and personalized client dashboards
AI Amplified Exec - her Claude plugin that turns spreadsheets, transcripts, and documents into branded outputs like board packs in minutes
Tuitive AI - where Terez is director and built AI Amplified Exec, helping senior executives use AI safely for real gains in personal productivity.

Connect with the guest:
Website: terezrijkenberg.com
Weekly email / blog: terezrijkenberg.com/blog
LinkedIn: Terez Rijkenberg (most active here)

Follow the show: X @NavigatingCX and join our private Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Community. Hosted by Yanique Grant.

Transcript

Terez Rijkenberg and Yanique Grant - Episode 278 NTCX

Jamar McNeil Intro: [00:00:00] Welcome to Navigating the Customer Experience, the podcast for anyone serious about delivering exceptional customer experiences. Leaders, innovators, and service champions share real strategies and real stories to help you create customers for life. Here's your host, Yanique Grant.

Yanique Grant: Welcome to Navigating the Customer Experience. On today's episode, our guest is Terez Rijkenberg, and Terez is an executive coach to C-suite leaders at organizations around the world. Before she turned 30, she had already been a Chief People Officer, leading customer experience and running teams of more than 80 people.

Yanique Grant: Her work runs on the RAFT formula and the Radical Adaptability Framework, giving leaders practical tools they can put to work in their next board meeting, their next tough conversation, or even their next leap into the unknown. She's also the director at Tuiative [00:01:00] AI, where she built AI Amplified Exec, a system that gives senior executives a simple way to use AI that drives real return on their personal productivity.

Yanique Grant: She helps leaders build workflows around their actual role and the decisions they actually make. Her belief is simple. AI strategy has to be led from the top, and leaders have to use AI themselves to understand and leverage it as a competitive advantage. She makes AI less overwhelming, higher quality, and safe for leaders to use so they get strong results immediately rather than after months of trial and error.

Yanique Grant: It handles the prep, the analysis, and the first drafts, the work that never needed a human brain, and hands leaders back 10-plus hours a week. So without further delay, sit back, plug your earphones in, and let's jump right into this conversation with Terez. Welcome, Terez. 

Terez Rijkenberg: Thank you, Yanique. Thank you so much for having me here.

Terez Rijkenberg: I appreciate it. 

Yanique Grant: [00:02:00] Awesome. Now, I know in your bio you gave us a little bit about your journey, like what you've been doing over the past, couple of years and how you are a people officer, but we always like to give our guests an opportunity to share in their own words a little bit about how you got from where you were to where you are today.

Terez Rijkenberg: Yeah, so it's a really good question, and I've actually just, I've just put a post on it, about that in LinkedIn as well. My journey was... I'll try and keep it as short as possible. But I was working in a corporate organization, working my way up the corporate ladder, doing all the things, doing everything right, and, leading large teams of people, and I always wanted to be the CEO one day.

Terez Rijkenberg: So I was being groomed for that role, and I was really being supported. But I got to a bit of a a crossroads in that job, and I, for some reason I just felt a little bit out of alignment with the culture. But also there was something within me that was saying I needed a change, I needed to do something different.

Terez Rijkenberg: [00:03:00] So I left the organization and I started my own business. I wanted to become an entrepreneur. I started an MBA at the same time, and then very soon after that I also got pregnant. So I thought that I could do all of it, and I, oddly enough I said to my husband, "Well, we'll, we'll just..." 'Cause we were actually, my husband and I were studying the MBA together, and we, between us we said, we'll study when our baby's sleeping," which was a completely big mistake.

Terez Rijkenberg: Never worked out. And, so that, that didn't work out at all. And then after having him, for a while I was in a bit of denial, but I actually was experiencing postpartum depression. I think there was just too much that I was trying to hold and trying to keep in the air without realizing that I needed to change fundamentally, internally, within myself.

Terez Rijkenberg: There was a huge identity shift that I needed to take on board and, I needed to move from being [00:04:00] a high-powered, very, driven woman to someone who was now a mom and somebody who was going to have that role and it was going to be a different experience and a different, frame of mind and attention.

Terez Rijkenberg: So through that whole journey, I actually got a coach, and they really helped me transition in that time. And it was because of that support that I got from my coach that I decided that I wanted to help, others in the same way. Now, I've always loved corporates and I've always loved leadership, so it just made sense that I would become an executive coach, and it was from then that I've been doing exactly that, helping leaders get results faster.

Terez Rijkenberg: But there's a, there's another piece to this, which is I suppose, deep within me I've always wanted to be able to do everything. Health, work, be a great mom, a great parent, a great partner. Have, have it all, be able to do it all. And I do believe that is possible if you're able to [00:05:00] just really, look at how you can make that work for you.

Terez Rijkenberg: So I don't specify, I don't look at, just one angle of executive coaching. I really try and help leaders with how can they build the life that they specifically want, all of the pieces, because it's all connected. And I think that's, that's an important part of my work.

Yanique Grant: All right. Amazing.

Yanique Grant: Thank you so much for sharing. Now, in addition to that, in your bio we read about the RAFT formula and the ra- radical adaptability as your signature frameworks. Can you break down for our audience what does RAFT stand for, and maybe give us some real-life examples of it in action?

Terez Rijkenberg: Yeah, sure. I do like a framework, and I do like mental models, and the reason why I use quite a few frameworks in my coaching is because it's easy for us to remember a framework.

Terez Rijkenberg: It's easy for us to remember an acronym. Part of the problem is we forget stuff. So if we have the acronym, we can bring it, to the front of our mind, and then we can use it, [00:06:00] more readily. So RAFT stands for, the R stands for results, the A stands for actions, the F stands for feelings, and the T stands for thoughts.

Terez Rijkenberg: And RAFT, even though I've, trademarked the acronym, the concept is not something that is made up by me. It actually comes from cognitive behavioral psychology- which says that our thoughts, what we think, actually drives how we feel. Our feelings always drive our actions, and our actions, as we all know, determine our results.

Terez Rijkenberg: If we wanna be able to change our results, we've really gotta work backwards from there and really assess what is it that we're doing or not doing that's creating this result or not creating the result we want, and then what are we feeling that's driving the action in a specific way.

Terez Rijkenberg: And to give an example, if we feel motivated and we have a conversation with someone, it's going to be very different. Even if we say [00:07:00] the exact same words, it's going have very different results than if we come from a place of frustration. If we say those same words from a place of frustration and feeling frustrated, it'll have a very different results.

Terez Rijkenberg: But the feeling is driven by what we're thinking. What is it that we're believing about the situation, about ourselves, about the other person that's driving how it is that we feel? The reason why the RAFT formula is so helpful is it helps us take control of the things that we can control, which are only three things, our thoughts, our feelings, and our actions.

Terez Rijkenberg: That's it. That's all we can control. We can't control anything outside of us, anybody else, or any of the circumstances, but we can control what we think about it, how we feel about it, and what we're gonna do about it. So that's the RAFT formula. Did you want me to break down the radical adaptability one as well?

Yanique Grant: Yes, that would be lovely.

Terez Rijkenberg: Okay. Yeah, no problem. So the radical adaptability framework [00:08:00] is really about how do we change, and in any instance, we're always changing, we're always trying to change, and people do change. I really believe that people want to change. They love change.

Terez Rijkenberg: However, there are things that keep us stuck And it's about understanding why we are stuck in changing. So we can use the radical adaptability framework when we're looking at changing ourselves to get different results, or when we're trying to coach others, or even influence others through change.

Terez Rijkenberg: So the first step is actually safety. I'll tell you the framework and then I'll break it down very slowly. So it's safety, and then it's clarity, then it's belief, and those are the mindset pieces of radical adaptability. And then the action pieces of radical adaptability is to, experiment and then integrate.

Terez Rijkenberg: So before we change, we [00:09:00] have to feel safe. And most of the time when we're experiencing change or doing something new for the first time, our brain does not feel safe, because anything that is different is unfamiliar, and our brain goes, "Hang on." It's like sends signals, even though it doesn't show up this way, it doesn't have , actual flashing lights.

Terez Rijkenberg: But our brain will basically subconsciously tell us, "This is unsafe. Reverse. Do not go forward. Do not try this, this new thing. Do not try and learn something new. Do not take that step. Do not have the bold conversation." So we have to create internal safety for ourselves first, or if we're coaching someone else, we've gotta help them create that safety for themselves.

Terez Rijkenberg: Then we have to have clarity. And I often say that clarity is underrated and confidence is overrated. People think they want confidence, but that's not what they want, they want clarity. Because if you think about it, as soon as you're clear about something, nothing can stop you. When you have [00:10:00] clarity about what you need to do, how you're gonna do it, nothing will be able to stop you.

Terez Rijkenberg: You will go full force ahead with confidence. So I think clarity is the next step. What is it that you want? Why do you want to do this? Why is this change important to you? And that's really important, when coaching others too. Helping them to understand the vision and the purpose behind that change.

Terez Rijkenberg: And then the next step is belief. Do you believe that you can do it? And the, the frame, the piece that I love to ask here is on a scale of one to 10, because belief is a dial, it's not a yes or a no, a yes, I do believe, or no, I don't believe. It's I believe a little bit, or I believe a lot, or I'm building my belief?

Terez Rijkenberg: So we wanna ask ourselves on a scale of one to 10, what is your belief that you can do this change? That you can move into this role, that you can take this step or have this hard conversation or whatever it is that you wanna do. But what is your belief around it on a scale of one to 10? And then how can we move you [00:11:00] up a notch?

Terez Rijkenberg: How can we shift that dial a bit more? And that's gonna start to get you into that framework, that mindset of, hang on, maybe I can do this. And then the next step is to take action. But I love to say, we need to experiment. Experimenting is much easier than saying, "I'm going to do this, and it has to work."

Terez Rijkenberg: If we say, "I'm gonna do an experiment, I'm gonna test it out and see," then there's less pressure on us to make it work, to make it perfect as well. So experiment first. And the other thing that sometimes we forget to do is always look, and it's the second part, it's the integrate part, is always look at what is currently working.

Terez Rijkenberg: What are you currently doing that's getting the result that you want towards the change, and how can you do more of that? So how can you use, how can you integrate, things that are already working for you? Where do you have some data points and some [00:12:00] evidence of things that you can do more of?

Terez Rijkenberg: Because we've got so many skills already that we can use towards the new change that we want to move towards, if that makes sense. It's quite conceptual, but I'm sure your listeners will be able to apply this to themselves.

Yanique Grant: So could you give us an example of maybe, you don't need to call any names, but just maybe an example- Yes

Yanique Grant: it could be a personal example or even one from a coaching perspective where you've put these practices into place, the raft and the radical adaptability, and the person has been able to manifest change in their life.

Terez Rijkenberg: Yeah, for sure. Sometimes I use them in different contexts.

Terez Rijkenberg: When there's a specific, a very specific problem that's, that's happening for someone, then I really, I would look at the RAFT formula. And I'll see, okay, what is it that's happening there for you that's, that you're struggling with? What is it that you're thinking and believing in that situation?

Terez Rijkenberg: So for instance, one of my clients, was really struggling [00:13:00] to get his team to engage with him a, a lot. And one of the thoughts that keep kept popping up in his mind was, "This is taking too long. It's taking too long to, when I'm coaching them." So it's just taking too long. And when he thinks it's taking too long to coach the team and to get them to be more engaged and also more self-directed, when he thinks that thought, he feels a bit frustrated and also, a bit pressured.

Terez Rijkenberg: He puts this pressure on himself, it has to be a rush. And when he feels that way, then his actions show up. So he doesn't coach long enough, he doesn't ask as many questions, he tells people what to do. And then if we think about it, if he does that, the results... And what was happening was his team was just, accepting him telling them what to do, but they would never be able to think for themselves.

Terez Rijkenberg: They would never come back. And actually, it was taking him way longer to do it that way, right? He was telling himself, "It's [00:14:00] taking so long." But actually by him feeling frustrated, and then eventually not coaching them, not getting them to think for themselves, was actually in the long term making everything, the whole process of leadership way longer, because they would never learn how to do anything on their own.

Terez Rijkenberg: Yeah. So we really had to unpick that core belief, figure out that's what was the problem, and to, to really help him see and understand that coaching his team was the faster way. It was the faster way to go. So once he could see that, he had a lot more patience. He felt more patient with his team.

Terez Rijkenberg: He was able to give better questions. Also, he released some of the pressure on them, because they could feel his pressure as well, his rush, his attachment to things moving too quickly. When they could feel that release of pressure, they started to become more creative, came back with more solutions.

Terez Rijkenberg: He started to see a massive shift in their engagement and also their, approach [00:15:00] with coming back with solutions and thinking as well. So that was the RAFT formula in practice. The, the radical adaptability framework is almost like a, it's a zooming out tool. So we can zoom out and see, okay, where is it that we think the problem is?

Terez Rijkenberg: If we're coaching people or if we're, also going through our own change, is it because we don't feel safe? Or is it because we don't have clarity? Is it because we don't have belief? Or are we just not taking action, we're not experimenting and trying things, or we're not integrating and looking at what we're doing?

Terez Rijkenberg: So it's almost like a zoom out piece. Where can we... What is the biggest bottleneck, and how can we then z- zoom in on that? And then we use the RAFT formula within that specific, part of the framework.

Yanique Grant: All right. Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, Terez. Now, you, in your bio it was also mentioned that you have an AI amplified tool, that you utilize with [00:16:00] your leaders that can save them 10 plus hours a week. That's fantastic! Can you walk us through what a leader's week looks like before and after, you're able to work with them with this AI? Give me a practical example of what that looks like.

Terez Rijkenberg: Yeah, for sure. So the tool that we use is actually a plugin that we use within Claude.

Terez Rijkenberg: So Claude is a specific AI. It's the, the AI tool that I think, is one of the best on the market right now, but it's not for everybody, right? So not all leaders are using Claude. They're sometimes using Microsoft Copilot or ChatGPT, and that's absolutely fine. But what we've built works specifically with Claude.

Terez Rijkenberg: And what it does is it comes prepackaged with a range of skills that enables them to input their data, so a spreadsheet or a a transcript, or their corporate documents. And what it would do is it would actually create, as an example, a board pack. You can create a board pack in five minutes, and it's beautifully designed in your [00:17:00] brand and in your brand colors, brand styles, and in your template, and you can just do it over and over again.

Terez Rijkenberg: If we look at the before and after, a lot of people are doing, and a lot of leaders are doing work from scratch every single time. They're... They might have a templates, but it's still, it's very manual to input all of that information over and over again every single month.

Terez Rijkenberg: And what we wanna be able to build is the system that allows you to get that data, get that information, and create that document or that output in very little time. Because we don't wanna have to do any of that manual work anymore. What we want to be able to do is have more time for the thinking, the judgment, the checking, the analysis of that information.

Terez Rijkenberg: The before and after is having to do all of the manual work, and after that, it's about building the systems and the workflows that stop you from doing any of that manual work.

Yanique Grant: That makes sense. All right. Perfect. [00:18:00] Thank you so much for sharing, Terez in addition to kind of supporting some of the things that we've been talking about there are some key things that we tend to ask our guests, on Navigating the Customer Experience. One of them is, could you share with us, and it might dovetail back into what you're speaking about just now, but let's see. What's the one online resource, tool, website, or application that you absolutely cannot live without in your own business?

Terez Rijkenberg: Yes. So it definitely does speak back to Claude. Right I love Claude. It is the place where I've set up all of my processes, all of my systems. It's also enabled me as a coach to be able to deliver better results for my clients. I can give them now personalized dashboards that really help them with their goals that they're working on, and it's personalized to them.

Terez Rijkenberg: So for instance, one of my clients, I built him a dashboard the other day that helps him to prepare for going into Zoom conversations. He wants [00:19:00] to be more confident, so we've built this dashboard that allows him five minutes before any conversation, any online call, he just does a quick preparation.

Terez Rijkenberg: He resets himself. He does some breathing if he wants to breathe. He has some mindset tools that enable him to get into the right frame of mind and the right feeling and energy before- going in and having that conversation. So that's o- one example. So definitely Claude is the one application.

Yanique Grant: I figured. All right. Could you also share with our listeners, do you have any books that you've read? It could be a book that you read a very long time ago, or even-... one that you've read recently, but it has had a very profound impact on you, whether personally... or professionally.

Terez Rijkenberg: Yeah. Can I share two?

Terez Rijkenberg: Because-

Yanique Grant: Definitely ...

Terez Rijkenberg: there are two that I would reread over and over again. So the first one is Success Principles by Jack Canfield. It's a massive book, and I've got it, I've got it here. I can even share it with you. [00:20:00] So it's on my, on my shelf.

Yanique Grant: Your bookshelf.

Terez Rijkenberg: Yes. Really easily accessible.

Terez Rijkenberg: And then I think the other one is back there, which is, I've got so many actually. There's quite a few more. But the other one is the Freakonomics, series of books. That really got me into behavioral economics and behavioral psychology, really feeling fascinated with how humans actually work.

Terez Rijkenberg: I love all of their books.

Yanique Grant: Nice. So we will have the links to those books in the show notes of this episode for our listeners to tap into those amazing resources that Terez has shared with us. Now, Terez, can you also share with us, what's the one thing that's going on in your life that you're really excited about?

Yanique Grant: Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your people.

Terez Rijkenberg: That's a really good one, and I think I'm gonna try and not say Claude because it's such a, it's such a big one right now for me. Ask me your question again. You said, 

Yanique Grant: Sure. What's the one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about?

Yanique Grant: Either something you're working on to develop yourself or your [00:21:00] people.

Terez Rijkenberg: Okay, so I won't talk about Claude. It probably would be that, that piece because I think there's so much that we can learn about using AI and using it for personal productivity. But I think one of the things that's happening in my life at the moment is, We're, as a family, we're doing more, my son's 10 years old, so we've always wanted to, as a family, do more hikes. So we're actually going, this weekend we're going to climb our first mountain together. We're climbing Mount Snowdon in Wales. Which I hope will be a first of many. But I think that is the exciting thing in my life. My son is really, he's just at an age where he's more interested in doing some of these, like, tougher, you know, tougher hikes and going for longer walks, and I think that's something that we're going to just maybe spend a bit more time doing together as a family.

Yanique Grant: Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing.

Terez Rijkenberg: Thank you.

Yanique Grant: Now, our listeners will have tapped into this episode, and they're quite intrigued with you and your journey, Terez. [00:22:00] Where's the best place that they can find you online?

Terez Rijkenberg: So the best place is either my website, terezrijkenberg.com, which is really hard to spell, but I'm sure it'll be on the show notes.

Terez Rijkenberg: And then, and then, on LinkedIn. I'm mostly active on LinkedIn. And then on my website there's a weekly emailer that I send to a list. So if they just go to terezrijkenberg.com/blog they can get a free weekly emailer on all the tools and frameworks that I share with my clients as well.

Yanique Grant: All right. Perfect. Thank you so much for sharing.

Yanique Grant: Thanks.

Yanique Grant: So we'll have all of that information so you can connect with Terez so easily. Now, Terez, we always like to ask our guests before we wrap up, do you have a quote or a saying that during times of adversity or challenge you'll tend to reverse to this quote?

Yanique Grant: If for any reason you get derailed or you get off track, the quote kind of helps to get you back on track. Do you have one of those?

Terez Rijkenberg: Yes, I do, but I don't think you're gonna like it very [00:23:00] much. It's a really funny one. So, I tell myself I'm not going to die. I just, I know it sounds a bit harsh, but I just tell myself, "This is not an emergency and I'm not going to die."

Terez Rijkenberg: It does seem like, sometimes when we're in these situations and it's, high emotions and it's very stressful or it's really hard or it's very uncomfortable or, even going on stage, I know you and I, we both know- going on stage is never an easy thing to do. But going on stage sometimes it can feel like it's life or death.

Terez Rijkenberg: Our bodies feel like it, it resists, it doesn't wanna do these things. So I just remind myself, in this moment I'm not going to die. This is not an emergency, and what I'm feeling right now are just chemicals in my body, and I will be okay, and I can handle anything no matter what happens.

Terez Rijkenberg: So- Perfect ... those are the words that, yeah, keep me- you tell yourself ... keep- Keep, keeps you- I tell myself ... keeps you grounded- Exactly ... when, when you have a challenge.

Yanique Grant: Perfect. Yeah. [00:24:00] Perfect. I just want to extend my deepest gratitude to you, Terez, for accepting our invitation to coming on our podcast- Yeah

Yanique Grant: and sharing about your RAFT framework and radical adaptability, as well as the tool that you have that you use with AI for cloud with your team and with your clients. The information that you shared here today I think is applicable to anyone who is in a business, whether they're the business owner or they're, leaders in the business, or even if they're just customer-facing persons working in the business.

Yanique Grant: There are different things that you shared with us today that I think at least everyone can get one nugget that they can take away and start using in their day-to-day activities. So I just want to share my deepest gratitude again for you taking time to share all of this wonderful information with us.

Terez Rijkenberg: Thank you, Yanique. It's been, Yanique, it's been, Yeah ... such a pleasure to be on this podcast. And I'm curious, what is your, what are the words that you say to yourself when you're, struggling or needing to be resilient?

Yanique Grant: It's funny, you say that, 'cause mine is, "This too shall pass," which is similar to yours.

Yanique Grant: Yes. It's just that mine sounds a little bit less harsh. Yes. I'm not gonna [00:25:00] die. A little less, I know. And I want to- But yeah, I do. I tell myself, "This too shall pass." Like I said to myself, " Is this gonna matter 10 minutes from now, 10 months from now... 10 years from now?" I like that. And usually when I kinda put it into that perspective, I say to myself, "I think I can get through it," ?

Yanique Grant: Yes. Yeah. And trust me, I have moments like that all the time. Even last week, I I wasn't feeling so well physically, and I was in, my... I was having some stomach pains, and... I just had to keep telling myself in those 10, 15 minutes that I was in so much discomfort that this too shall pass, and it really did.

Yanique Grant: When I look back on it now, in that moment, I really felt overwhelmed? I just, you know, I felt like my blood pressure was rising and my hands were getting clammy. I was feeling you know, just stressed overall, and it really did pass. So it's, we really do need to tell ourselves some, some words of comfort to help us get through some of

Yanique Grant: the challenging times that we face, whether it's emotional or physical.

Terez Rijkenberg: Absolutely. Yeah. We need to be our own internal coach. Yes. Whenever we need it, we can call on those words. [00:26:00] I'm telling you.

Yanique Grant: Well, just want to remind our listeners that you can follow us on Navigating CX, on the platform X, which was formerly Twitter, or join our private Facebook group, Navigating the Customer Experience Community.

Yanique Grant: Until next time, I'm your host, Yanique Grant.