Kate Waterfall-Hill: The Funny Truth About Serious Leadership

Kate Waterfall-Hill brings a refreshing perspective to leadership that challenges conventional wisdom; boardrooms don't have to be boring. With her viral character "Linda the Bad Manager" amassing over 150 million views, Kate has found a powerful way to highlight poor leadership practices through humor while offering practical alternatives.

The conversation takes us through Kate's fascinating journey from boutique marketing agency managing director to business consultant to leadership coach. Her creation of Linda - the embodiment of everything a manager shouldn't do serves as both comic relief and serious education for leaders everywhere. "The videos have garnered millions of views because the mistakes are so easy to make," Kate explains, "I've made the mistakes Linda makes."

What truly sets Kate apart is her belief in kindness as a leadership superpower. Whilst many view leadership as requiring toughness and authority, Kate shares compelling examples of how empathy produces superior outcomes. One story involves a managing partner at a law firm who, instead of asserting dominance over a dismissive colleague, approached the situation with curiosity and empathy - resulting in a productive working relationship rather than continued conflict.

The podcast delves into the crucial transition from individual contributor to manager to leader. "What got you here won't get you there," Kate emphasises, explaining that great leaders enable others to shine rather than trying to be the smartest person in the room. This shift requires intentional effort and often external support "Top CEOs have coaches for a reason."

Kate's insights on resilience are equally powerful, describing it not merely as "toughing it out" but knowing when to reset, creating space between meetings for reflection, and recognising when to ask for help. Her pre-crastinator approach - taking immediate action rather than waiting for perfection - offers valuable advice for anyone feeling stuck.

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Transcript

Introducing Kate Waterfall-Hill

Keith 0:00

Welcome to the Power Within the podcast, where we explore leadership, personal growth and the dynamics that shape success. I'm Keith Power, and each week, I sit down with inspiring individuals who share insights on leading with impact, building resilience and unlocking potential. On leading with impact, building resilience and unlocking potential. Through their experiences, we'll uncover the mindset and strategies that drive meaningful growth. Whether you're looking to evolve as a leader or gain new perspectives, this podcast is here to guide you. Kate Waterfall-Hill is a seasoned leadership coach with over 30 years experience guiding CEOs, founders and leaders toward achieving their goals with confidence and purpose.

Keith 0:52

As we explore more stories of resilience, growth and the power of determination. Her journey began in the 1990s at a boutique marketing agency. In the 1990s at a boutique marketing agency and, by the age of 29, she became the managing director of a flourishing PR and marketing firm in the UK, securing high profile clients such as Vodafone, virgin and Ford. In 2007, kate launched her own consultancy focusing on business improvement, growth strategies and people management. In 2023, she created the viral character Linda the Bad Manager, using humor to highlight poor leadership practices and encourage self-reflection. The videos have garnered over 150 million views and she has amassed a following of over 200,000 across multiple platforms. So, kate, I've been a follower of Linda the Bad Manager from her creation. It was therefore surreal to see you in a video call as Kate, not Linda. So let's start with the woman behind the disguise. You've led marketing firms, coached CEOs and gone viral as Linda. What's the thread that runs through all of these chapters?

Kate 2:20

I would say, probably a sense of humour. I like to bring that even to the boardroom, because boardrooms don't have to be boring, and actually we spend so much time working.

Kate 2:32

I know it's a pretty well-worn phrase, but it seems a shame to me not to enjoy it. And for me, business particularly. But running any sort of organisation is just fascinating. Sort of organization is just fascinating. It's it to me it's like watching a great netflix box set. You know, I just can't wait to see what happens next. And, of course, with the business, hopefully you don't get to the end you carry on going and it carries on getting better.

Keith 2:54

Well, it depends.

Kate 2:55

It might just be a takeover or a sell-off or whatever as well true, true, but I quite often say to people, when I've coached them for, say, six months, you do keep in touch and tell me what happens next and you can see them, sort of thinking. I bet she says that to everybody and I do, because I actually genuinely mean it. I really, really want to know what happens next. I'm fascinated by it. But having a sense of humour and I don't mean cracking jokes and being slapstick, I just mean seeing the lightness in things, seeing the positive side of things and remembering we're all human, I suppose, is that that's the thread through it all. Yeah.

Keith 3:27

Sometimes forgotten and I think that humour perhaps it's a British thing, but we we use it a lot to relax, to get more serious messages across.

Kate 3:43

Right, Absolutely, and I think that's possibly why Linda has worked is because they'll into the bad manager skits are sort of cringeworthy and make you feel a bit uncomfortable. It may make you laugh a little bit as well, but actually at the same time there's always an underlying message. So either Linda does something so crushingly bad in terms of running a performance appraisal badly or not promoting somebody who's done really well because it doesn't suit her agenda, and you can sort of watch it and think, oh gosh, I wouldn't do that. Oh, actually, did I do that? I think maybe I do do that and then you know, hopefully that's why people then pick up the phone and ask me to coach them to not be like Linda.

Keith 4:14

Having said that, what I recognise in most of your skits is that I've seen versions of that person over the years in different organisations, and it may not be all the time, but it is a little bit more prevalent than we'd perhaps think or hope.

Kate 4:34

And it's often because people are time pressed, so because they're so busy and they've got email after email, meeting after meeting. Then when somebody comes and asks them a question understandably it can your immediate response is well, just work it out for yourself.

Kate 4:48

You know which is what linda would say yeah, um, um, but actually you know if you can take a breath and take a beat which is going to be the title of my next book and work out. You know actually what. What do you want the outcome to be? How do you want that person to leave the room? You know what are they thinking, feeling, saying, doing. Actually, we take a moment to say, well, what would you like to do? Or some other sort of coaching style question. Takes you just as long as biting their head off.

Keith 5:17

Yes, it does.

Kate 5:17

And actually it leaves them going. Actually, yeah, what could I do? Oh, yeah, I could try that Brilliant.

Keith 5:29

Go ahead and try that, let me know how it goes. And you've had the same 30 second conversation but left that person not feeling wounded Very different, right? You made a similar transition to me from business into coaching and the hardest thing for me initially was to ask questions and let them answer. But it's the most powerful thing, the most powerful tool that we have in our bag, and I wish I'd used that a little more through my career rather than just telling, showing etc it's a key part of going from individual contributor who's excelled well enough to be made a manager to being a manager that becomes a leader yeah, that's, that's the key difference.

The Woman Behind Linda the Bad Manager

Keith 6:07

I think I'd be a better leader if I had my time over again, but it is too late now for that yeah so, on that transition, what was the turning point that led you from the boardroom to coaching leaders? Was there a moment you knew that this was your true calling?

Kate 6:27

Strangely enough, it was when a coach asked me a question that the light bulb went off.

Kate 6:34

So I was doing a group programme and the question was what do you enjoy most and how are you going to do more of it? At the time I'd been the MD of the marketing marketing agency. Then I had another 15 year stint of being a consultant and I've been working alongside ceo founders in lots of different companies, mostly agencies and consultancies. That's my experience and my sweet spot, and you know, helping them run their businesses. But it was more and more hr consultancy because that's where the need was.

Kate 7:02

You know that's where the fires were they needed putting out always so I was doing a lot of HR consultancy and you know I'm quite good at that. You know I'm quite, you know, good, funnily enough, quite good listening, quite good at nurturing talent. But also a lot of the HR consultancy was was restructuring, you know, retention policies, recruitment sadly, you know letting people go and and making sure you know you do that with with dignity. But I found myself thinking, oh gosh, you know letting people go and making sure you know you do that with dignity. But I found myself thinking, oh gosh, you know, it's literally recruitment redundancies, recruitment redundancies was the pattern, and I was getting a little sort of tired of it.

Kate 7:34

Anyway, this person said to me what do you enjoy doing in your job? And I said, well, coaching. And she said, well, how are you going to do more of it? And I said, oh, I suppose I could train to be a coach, rather than just using coaching techniques, which I was doing without really realizing that's what it was. Train to be a coach and then, using my marketing knowledge, tell people I'm a coach Because, funnily enough, you need to tell people, otherwise they don't know, they don't come knocking at your door saying could you coach me?

Keith 8:12

Unless you tell them, then I just started, you know, redid my website absolutely completely from top to bottom, changed it from consulting for small businesses to coaching and then started my attack on social media. I like the attack and, speaking of which, so Linda the bad manager is undoubtedly hilarious but uncomfortably accurate. What inspired you then to create her and what leadership habits were you most determined to call out?

Kate 8:30

I created her really because I wasn't getting enough traction. Just doing straightforward, you know, face to camera art reels on Instagram saying you know your top five ways to be a great manager when you've just been promoted, type of thing, and I was doing quite you know, it was okay, but I wasn't getting the traction I wanted. And I've got young adult kids who at the time were on TikTok, and one of them particularly was doing really well and um, and I thought, well, I'll try TikTok and it doesn't really matter if it goes wrong, because nobody I know is going to be on TikTok, because of course it's all for teenagers, isn't it?

Kate 8:58

I'll just give it a go, and it'll be, it'll be funny. Anyway, I did that, that first one which I I don't know if that was the one you saw, but the first one, and it was. It was, you know, just you know, talking off camera as if there was somebody there, and I did this little skit and it took off and I thought, well, I'll do another one, another one.

Kate 9:13

I did one every day for 18 months not not recording them once a day, but I, you know, recorded them in batches and then released them once a day and, um, that first week, literally, you know, you know, five days in, I had two different people asked me to coach them and you know they were, you know, clients of mine at the beginning. So I realized oh, actually it's not just teenagers watching TikTok, it's actually grownups as well.

When Humor Helps or Harms Leadership

Keith 9:36

In the coaching world. 90% of coaches don't know how to market themselves. They don't know where to start. Even they train. They're good at what they do. They go by word of mouth and then it dries up and they really don't know. Perhaps that's a future business for you and I to get into helping market other coaches Humour we spoke about, but it can be a risky tool in leadership, especially cross-culturally. If it's done wrong, it backfires. How can leaders then use it well, and where have you seen it go badly?

Kate 10:16

I think having humour in business can work as long as you know the person well, so you've got a relationship with them already. You know what's going to work and what isn't going to work, and being mindful of, as you say, cultural sensitivities and also generational sensitivities. There are things that somebody my age might think is funny and somebody a different generation won't. So it's not about cracking jokes and trying to have everyone in hysterics around the boardroom, but at the same time it's still being able to laugh at the double entendre that somebody said that they didn't mean to in the middle of a board meeting.

Keith 10:47

They're the best ones. Yeah, exactly, the unintended are the best ones, right?

Kate 10:52

Yeah, yeah, yeah exactly. And the ones that lighten the mood but aren't at anybody's expense. And I think that's the thing so whilst I use humour all the time and I literally can't help myself, I don't do it at anybody's expense. So I'm mindful that I don't want to make anyone feel smaller, and that's not what it's about. So the reason there's so much material for Linda is because it's so easy to do.

Kate 11:19

It's so easy to do, it's so easy to make these little little mistakes, but to make them that humorous you know, it tells everybody that it's okay that you know that we that like I get it and and we've all been in that boat I've made the mistakes that linda makes. You know you said. You said earlier on in the introduction about my disguise. I don't wear a disguise and so that's why people get confused. Because they think this is Linda and this is Kate, so they get a bit confused when I turn up. So I've just started, more recently, wearing glasses when I'm being Linda and a beard.

Keith 11:50

I've seen your beard as well.

Kate 11:52

You've seen me wearing a beard. That's not me being Linda. That's me being Linda's boss, william, and also I have a ginger hair with a darker beard, who's Linda's sidekick, jason. So those are filters.

Keith 12:04

I just need hair. It doesn't matter what colour. Yeah.

Kate 12:09

You'd just like to borrow some. Well, if you go on TikTok, you can put yourself in a filter.

Keith 12:12

Oh super.

Kate 12:14

Put a filter, put a handsome man in, no offence, hey, come on.

Keith 12:20

What do they say? The impossible we can do now. Miracles take a little longer.

Kate 12:25

You would be amazed. I can spend quite some time doing lip syncing to a filter. I don't publish them, but I just do them just for fun.

Keith 12:33

No, you should, that could be a side thing. Anyway, you got and I'm afraid of saying this because every time I speak to you it goes up, but the last time I looked, 150 million views is more than just a viral moment, it's a movement, right? What's the most surprising reaction you've had to linda's videos?

Kate 12:55

well, I quite often get people booking um introductory calls with me and I still can't get used to it. When they pop up on the screen and I say hi, how are you, keith, where are you calling me from today? Which is usually my opening question, because they are literally global. I get people calling me from everywhere. I'm going to guess 20 percent of my calls, the person will go I can't believe I'm talking to you. I can't believe, I can't believe we're actually having a phone call between you and me, and I've seen you on TikTok or on Instagram or wherever YouTube, and I can't quite get over that myself. So I then I'm a bit giggly, because they're a bit giggly and that's always funny. So that's probably the most surprising one, but but a serious one would be how many people Linda's affected?

Kate 13:37

I was going going to say touched, but I didn't mean that.

Keith 13:40

The double entendre is in already. You know what I mean Exactly who.

Kate 13:44

I haven't actually worked with, but they've just seen the videos and it's made them realise that they're working in a toxic environment with a boss like Linda and actually they've maybe tried to take some action. Because we've got a bit of agency, we can hopefully speak up, go and speak to somebody else, have an open and honest conversation with your bad manager boss. You know you don't need to be rude to them and say you're a bad manager, but you could say, hey, do you know what would help me? Uh, you know, be the best I can be. What you could do to help get the best out of me would be if you gave me a really clear brief, for instance.

Kate 14:17

That's, that's a good one to say to a manager. That's not very um, that's over controlling, for instance. So I've had a lot of people who message me saying thank you for doing what you do on linda. Although we haven't worked together, watching your videos has made me realize and open my eyes, and I've actually left that business now, and now I've got a great manager in my new place, or I've left and I've started up my own business, and so it's really amazing the effect that these skits have on people, yeah, yeah, really good, and it sort of brings a tear to your eye.

Kate 14:47

Some of the messages I get are really quite moving but also really so sad the trauma that people go through just because their manager is awful. And we have a huge responsibility as managers and leaders to take that seriously. And if you think about it, the the people we we lead, they are likely to talk about us at home. They're likely to sit around their their dining room table and say to their families oh, I've got this, fill in the gap.

Keith 15:15

Great boss, bad boss they're more likely to talk about the bad boss and the good boss at home, frankly, potentially.

Kate 15:22

Potentially because it's probably having more of an effect unless you're exceptionally good and then yeah that's the best of all yeah, but the middle ones, no one talks about probably not the bosses that have an impact on the individuals. They're talking about them at home and then, if you imagine, your team's kids go to school and say, oh, my daddy or my mummy has got a great boss, or this awful boss called Keith, and they'll know your name, yeah, oh, for sure.

Kate 15:49

And that you know, whereas you know our families probably don't know all of our team members' names. You might have heard of the troublesome ones, yeah, yeah, or the great ones, so that. So that responsibility, um, we know, you know, we need to bear in mind, in my opinion anyway, behind the satire, though, there is this serious insight.

Transitioning from Manager to Leader

Keith 16:12

What do linda's fans and critics misunderstand about what you're really trying to say?

Kate 16:19

occasionally I get a message saying it's all very well you doing these funny skits, um, but you know, manager's life is difficult. Why don't you do something that's helpful, rather than taking the mickey out of us? And then I gently show them the way to. I have a free podcast. I have a linda skit first and then me uh, you know, explaining the situation and and what you could do instead. And you know I have a newsletter. I have a linda skit first and then me uh, you know, explaining the situation and and what you could do instead. And you know I have a newsletter. I have a intentional leadership guide, all three resources and then, obviously, you can upgrade to buy my book. I should show it to you, shouldn't I?

Keith 16:50

yes, you should absolutely here we go. There's my book, and and the podcast is also called how to, and that's the name of your podcast too, right?

Kate 17:00

Yeah, yeah, it's called how to Lead with Kate Waterfall Hill because there's a couple, I think, of how to leads.

Keith 17:04

So for those of our viewers, and listeners how to Lead Kate Waterfall Hill, the book and the podcast. All right, we got that in. I'm glad we did. You've coached leaders across all industries. What's, in your opinion, the number one blind spot that holds back good managers from being great leaders?

Kate 17:30

I would say a lot of good managers have got to being a manager by being a great individual contributor. I alluded to this earlier. You're a good individual contributor. You're the sort of person that takes tasks on, you say yes to things, you do stuff outside your job description. You're you're helpful, you you may be a problem solver. You see things that need doing and get on with them. That's why you're promoted to manager. So you get in your manager position and you think, well, I just better do more of the same, better work harder, better work longer hours.

Kate 17:59

But actually the difference between being a good manager and a great leader is to step into a different way of working, and that way of working isn't to try to be the smartest person in the room and solve all the problems, but actually surround yourself with people and enable the people around you to be the smartest people in the room. So so it um to to, you know, building rooms full of smart people, and I have to say that's how my career got started in the first place. My boss at that marketing agency you talked about. He was brilliantly clever in terms of being able to see the talent in other people and not having an ego enough to say, you know, you know, stopping him from from sharing, sharing some of the work and sharing some of the glory with other people. And he very, very kindly spotted me when I was literally I'd been at the agency six months and he said you're going to be managing director one day.

Kate 18:53

And I said, oh yeah, of course. Of course I am, you know, at however old I was early 20s and then it happened because he, he recognized the, the, the talent and the drive. So I think if you can do that, then you, then you will rise up. You know, the rising tide raises all the boats. That's the thing that I think. Often people hot, hot, you know, get held back because they try and solve all the problems themselves and then the beauty is coaching other people to solve the problems there's a book out there, isn't it?

Keith 19:20

you know, what got you here won't get you there. And it is absolutely true. You have to make a transition mentally, the first one going into any supervisory managerial role, and then it's a complete 180 to become a leader. And it doesn't happen overnight and it it doesn't come naturally. And I'd urge anyone watching or listening to this to reach out to people like yourself to help them on that journey. And I've just put together I'm looking for clients now for the first hundred days and fairly intensive coaching weekly, which usually I advise against. I work on a fortnightly cycle, but in that first 100 days there's so much coming at you that I think it really needs a handhold in over 14 sessions. So anyone, not just me, reach out somewhere. If you've just stepped up into a leadership role for the first time, you don't have to be alone, right?

Kate 20:21

That's exactly it. That's a really nice idea. I like that.

Keith 20:23

100 days good idea so we often talk and hear about um iq and eq, but what about rq resilience quotient? What role does resilience play in modern leadership in your opinion?

Kate 20:45

It's a huge, huge part of being a great leader is having resilience, but I don't mean what some people, I think, interpret resilience as being, which is just toughing it out. I think it's actually a bit more than that. It's a bit more nuanced and it's about knowing when to step back and to say, okay, I need to do a reset here and and in in small ways, tiny little things, like when you're you've got back-to-back meetings, it's stepping up and literally physically shaking it out yeah, you know just having a physical reset, breathing exactly, maybe taking 30 seconds outside, even if you're in a city, knowing that you need to sort of build in some structure.

The Importance of Resilience in Leadership

Kate 21:22

So I was coaching somebody yesterday and he, he, he said, oh, that's exactly what I need to do. I need to, I need to build some time in between the meetings, so I need to make the meetings 45 minutes, not an hour, so that I can have 15 minutes to reflect on what we've just talked about, plan what I'm going to do and then plan what I'm going to say in the next one. And we were talking about communication actually, and he was saying he wanted to be more concise and crisp in his communication. And when I asked him some more questions, it was about his verbal communication, not his written. And I said, well, what skills do you put into your written communication that you could lend to your verbal communication?

Kate 21:55

and he said, well, thinking about it yeah, planning it you know, reviewing it, coming up with the three main messages before I speak Exactly. So, yeah, so, resilience some of it is about knowing when to step back. Also, knowing when to ask for help. You know you alluded to it just a minute ago you know when people are really, really working all hours, they're in some panic zone or overly stretched all the time. That, as you, you know, goes into our nervous system.

Kate 22:22

We get into this, uh, adrenaline filled way of working and it can be quite addictive. It can be quite hard to to stop, but it's not just about, you know, just doing mindset stuff. It's a bit more than that. So, um, so, you know, actually changing tack without losing direction, without losing your humanity, and remembering that you're human and that you need to sometimes pause but also ask for help, whether that's. You know whether you need therapeutic intervention or or support from a coach, or or you know, support in some other way. Really do urge people to do that, and I think sometimes people think, oh, I need to be tough and resilient and I need to be a show. I can do this on my own. But actually, if you look at all the the best people, they're the ones that actually have an advisor or a consultant or a coach or a therapist you know, top CEOs have coaches for a reason.

Keith 23:12

Alongside and as you were talking then, I was thinking back to my very first episode Colonel Eddie Maskell Pedersen, who was the head of the British Defence Staff for Southeast Asia, and I asked him about resilience and I fully expected that tough, brittle, tough it out answer and it wasn't. Nothing could be further from the truth. The armed forces understand that people have breaking points and the best thing to do is to anticipate them, plan for them. As he said, you dial down. You operate at a certain capacity, so you know when you need to dial up, you can, but if you're running on full adrenaline, there's nothing else. The tank's empty. There's nowhere to go right. So I think resilience is more important these days, so rm more important than ever than iq, eq, and that's not just a fashionable thing, I think it's reality. And through covid, everyone had to become resilient or break. Let's be honest, because if you're not resilient, ultimately you break. That sounds negative.

Kate 24:23

I don't mean it to be.

Keith 24:25

We're talking about evolving and fashion and movement. The world of coaching is evolving fast Tech content platforms what trends are you excited by or wary about in the future of leadership development?

Kate 24:43

Well, I do love the technology I'm a real fan and it can help us so much and make things so much more efficient and quicker. And I like the idea of technology helping give a more personalised way of being educated, because I think the education system, you know, it's probably the thing that's still certainly in England. Anyway, in Britain it's modelled on Victorian style teaching, you know, in classrooms with the teacher at the front, and we haven't really modernised it. So technology, you know, can be a great help, I think, with people who struggle with traditional types of education, and I think that's going to be be really, really helpful for for people who who can't sit still in a classroom, for instance, and be told you know, just be given information verbally was that

Kate 25:30

the thing I'm wary about is is um, is people thinking that ai can replace humans completely?

Kate 25:38

Because that human connection and I'm going to say this, aren't I, because I'm a coach but the human connection that you get from somebody like you know, advisors and coaches is completely different from AI.

Kate 25:47

So you can, you can put a question to to AI and it will say oh, that sounds hard, kate, you know, but it's, it's trite, it's reprogrammed into it, whereas when, when you're speaking to a coach and and a coach and the coach asks you a question and then reflects back, keith, when you said that I noticed that your shoulders slumped, or when you said that I noticed you sat up straight and your eyes were shiny, that's something that can't be replaced with AI. And also the idea that with a coach or with a good leader, you feel truly seen and truly heard. You can't capture that any other way other than human connection. So I think that's the thing. So technology, yes, helping people who maybe struggle with traditional education systems, I think that could be a huge advance and I'm excited to see what happens, but, at the same time, it's not going to replace that human connection.

Technology's Role in Leadership Development

Keith 26:40

Sure, and I was just thinking of someone like Richard Branson who's dyslexic. Imagine what he could have achieved if he were living with all the technology around him now, like speech to text, etc. It didn't hold him back much, but imagine what he could have been like. I just think that ai and other technologies are supportive and magnifying of your talent, your ability, etc. And if you see it as that, as supplementing, supporting and helping it to grow, I think that's a healthy relationship. But to rely on it and say that will do it for me probably not the best direction, right? I think we're agreed on that we'll answer.

Kate 27:24

Actually, one of your previous questions is when humor can go wrong. So in in back in the day when we were at the marketing agency, we used to do a lot of events for virgin. So we were opening virgin mega stores and virgin cinemas, which are now no longer, and richard branson occasionally would be booked to come and do the opening, either as himself and sometimes dressed up as Damon Everidge or something crazy. And so because I was the senior person on the account, I would be the person who would greet him at the airport or wherever he was coming in from. And you're quite right, because of his dyslexia he would never take a brief. So normally you would brief the CEO in advance on an email telling them how many screens the cinema had and what the manager was called, and you know what the film was of the day that we were celebrating being launched, but with him, you had to meet him somewhere and then verbally give him the brief in the taxi.

Kate 28:12

So the first time I met him I thought, well, I'll try and say something amusing, because that's me, or rather interesting. I said oh, you know, nice to meet you. My name is kate waterfall. Blah, blah, blah. Um, it turns out that you and I went to the same school and and we, we both went to the school called longacre and he, totally deadpan, said, oh, I don't remember you, or something like that. And I said, oh well, we went there at the same time I think I'm a bit younger than you and he went yes, I know, I was joking. And then and I was I was completely crushed because I'd missed the joke.

Kate 28:46

Oh, you know, because I don't know how much younger I am than him. How old is he? Do you think is he in his 70s?

Keith 28:51

he's got to be in his 70s now. For sure he doesn't look it.

Kate 28:55

No, he doesn't. No, he doesn't. So he's probably about 15, 20 years older than me and I was so, so embarrassed that I didn't get the joke anyway. I spent all day with him and then, and then, uh, later on in the day, I was able to say I'm normally really quick. Honestly, I'm not. I'm so sorry I misunderstood the joke, but I'm.

Kate 29:11

I'm coming up 30 and I'm a bit embarrassed, you know I'm a bit cross. I'm not married yet. I was, I was, I was really so I was really sensitive about my age at the time. And anyway, he was very sweet, very kind, but yeah, it did make me laugh.

Keith 29:26

I met him a few times and mostly by chance. And the one time I met him was coming on a BMI flight from London Heathrow into Palma, mallorca, and he had properties there and on the strength of that I actually started to rumour that he was going to buy BMI, because it was one route that he didn't have and he had properties and business out there. But the funniest part was fast forward and I'm going to say 15 plus years and I bumped into him in the paddock club in the Formula One in Singapore, chatted and I said we met once at Palmer Airport. I had a picture taken with you, oh, I remember well. And I thought chatted and I said we met once at Palmer Airport. I had a picture taken with you, oh, I remember well, and I thought you liar.

Keith 30:06

But damn, he lied so well because I believed him for sure. But he's got that gift, you know, of making you feel important when he's talking to you, right? Even if it's a 15 or 20 second encounter. So three times I've met him. Maybe the fourth time he genuinely will remember me, but I didn't spend all day with him like you. So hilarious. What's something you believe deeply about leadership that others perhaps don't necessarily agree with what's your unpopular opinion, then that's proven for you time and again.

Kate 30:45

I think a lot of leaders think that they need to be tough and they need to tell people how it is and show people the way and make the decisions and solve all the problems, as I said before. But actually my view is that, yes, there is a space and a definite need for authority, you know, for taking responsibility, for showing people the way being, the being, the visionary, but there's also a real need for for kindness and empathy and that human connection, and I think a lot of people think oh, kindness, you know, like people, pleasing is too soft it's you know it'll get, it'll get in the way, but actually kindness can be really helpful.

Kate 31:24

Can I give you an illustration?

Keith 31:27

Of course.

Kate 31:27

So I was coaching a woman who had been appointed as the managing partner of a law firm, so she was new into the, you know, she was being recruited into the firm at that level and on arrival she was introduced to some of the senior leadership team and one particular woman was very offhand with her dismissive and talking to the owner who was still going to be present the founder snubbing the new boss effectively. I'd done some coaching with the woman already before she started and one of the things that I really loved doing is helping people with their values and really understanding their own core personal values, and we'd done some exploratory work and her, some of her core values included kindness, fairness and justice, which you'd sort of expect being a lawyer. You'd hope that justice was one of them, but kindness was, was, you know, was possibly unexpected. Um, for for me, not for her.

Kate 32:22

So when we were talking about this particular individual who'd snubbed her, I said okay, so what? What would you like to do? You know what's your instinctive reaction? And she said well, I'd instinctively want to pull her into a meeting and tell her I'm her boss and she's got to respect me and and I need, I need to, you know, put my foot down and, you know, put her in her place. And I said, ok, so how's that going to work alongside the values of work that we've just done and where kindness, fairness and justice come in? And she said, oh, yes, ok, right, yeah, I got what you said. I might have said it a bit more kindly than that, but that was the gist. And I said so, how might?

Kate 33:02

you look at the situation through the prism of kindness and see it from the other person's perspectives. Anyway, she after I'm summarizing an hour coaching session here she recognized that the other woman was probably feeling prickly because maybe she didn't get offered the chance to go for the managing partner job, maybe it hadn't been announced terribly kindly, it, it had just been, she'd just been told, and she was probably feeling nervous about her own position. What was this going to mean? You know, she was potentially the only woman on the leadership team up until now, and there's a new woman coming in being her boss.

Kate 33:34

Perhaps she was behaving badly because of how she, how she felt she'd been treated, and so my client was was like oh yes, I, I can see. Now, actually, I need to go in with a completely different approach. I need to go in curious, listening, asking really good questions and building a relationship with this person who's obviously feeling very threatened by my arrival. So, completely different way of looking at it, um, but, but through that prism of of kindness and empathy, and she was able to build a really good relationship with that woman and they were able to see, you know, meet each other in the middle the outcome was undoubtedly better than if she'd gone in in her first way.

Keith 34:13

I'll steal anything to use. I have to say so. I would steal that in the future.

Kate 34:18

I don't know if you've ever seen.

Keith 34:20

It's called the Last Lecture Randy Pausch, and he was a supremely talented professor. All of the Disney animators were trained by him and he was really at the very top of the tree, but so arrogant, absolutely arrogant, and in his last lecture the last lecture is he knew he was dying and he was delivering what was going to be his last lecture. The last lecture is he knew he was dying and he was delivering what was going to be his last lecture, but that actually swamped around the place and hundreds came to watch hanging on the rafters and he had a good reflection of his life. But one of them was when a professor of his earlier on and I why I say this because I absolutely used it with one of my team who had a little bit of an arrogant streak he put his arm around him as he walked to lunch and he said do you know what?

Keith 35:11

Some people think? That you're arrogant. Instead of the accusation you are arrogant, some people see you, perceive you as arrogant, and the conversation he said was like so different. I didn't feel attacked, I stole that, I lifted it wholesale, took this guy I won't even say his job title in case he recognizes himself took him to lunch, put my arm around him and that mattered as well. The physical touch. And I just said you know, some people in the organization perceive you as arrogant and I and nothing. And I saw his brain going over and over. He had an iq off the richter scale but the eq wasn't quite there and I'm going to put a little bit of a lead in there. He's d Dutch. I work for two Dutch companies and they're a bit direct by nature, they're not soft. I also remember the way British people you haven't seen someone for a while and they put on weight and you say well, you look well. And when a British person tells me I look well, I know I've put on weight.

Kate's Career Pivots and Defining Moments

Keith 36:19

Dutch person you've got fat, but they don't like the reverse to them, they don't like the directness, so I had to find an indirect way around that. So anything I learn, even from these guests like yourself, don't worry, I'll be stealing every piece that you've got. All right, just warning you in advance no, no problem so in. I'm gonna say your long career. That would make you sound much older than you are.

Kate 36:50

But in your long career, what stands out as like defining moments, sliding door moments or whatever you want to call them, points at which you you kind of knew you were transiting through maybe not absolutely, but any reflections on that, and it doesn't have to be just one, it may be more than one well, I've had three careers so I suppose the the first one was landing the job with a marketing agency and getting promoted to MD, and actually probably one of the most pivotal conversations that I had around that time was with a chap called David Legg who was a great friend of my late father and David Legg had been CEO or COO can't remember of part of General Electric and was also at the Burton Group as well, and I actually worked for him before I went to university in the marketing team and I spoke to David when I got offered the managing directorship and to ask his advice and he said, right, he obviously wants you.

Kate 37:55

He spotted you as talent. He thinks you can help him move the agency forwards 's your chance. Ask for share options right and I.

Kate 38:03

I was like what's that? I was in my, I was in my 20s, I didn't know what it was and he said, yeah, yeah, ask for, ask for share options, which I which I did, and I got and, um, and that probably changed the trajectory of my actual whole life actually not just my career because owning 10 or having share options in 10% of the agency when we did, we had venture capital investment that a small VC invest bought 35% of the agency. On that deal, I was able to buy all of my 10% share options and sell 3.5 of them to the investor on the same day, so I didn't have to fork out any cash. So I was left with 6.5 percent of the agency. And then, when we did, we got bought by a bigger agency. I got paper and cash, I think, on that deal. And then, uh, we did an mbo and we got the original vc back in to help us fund the mbo. For the only time they'd ever invested twice in the same people and we.

Kate 38:58

So I've done a fair bit of mna activity with the agency, which was really interesting, and so I can I can still help people with those sorts of questions as well as leadership questions now. All of that, that activity, and then, when I left the agency in 2007, I got my remaining shares bought from me. I've managed to make a bit of capital each time these things have happened and hence I've been able to, you know, afford a nice house now and I have a, you know, second home in the, in the Channel Islands, as I mentioned to you as we were chatting in the intro. So those things have really changed my life, I suppose, but in terms of my career then leaving the agency and starting up on my own.

Keith 39:31

Oh, before you tell me that, did you buy Mr Legg a nice dinner with a?

Kate 39:36

lovely bottle. Yes, I probably owe him one, don't I? Yeah, yeah, we still, we. I'm still really good friends with his daughter, actually, with one of his daughters. We saw each other last week, so yeah so yeah, we're still good family, friends. But you're quite right, I probably do owe him a dinner, don't I? Yeah, or two.

Keith 39:55

Or a holiday. Yeah, now.

Kate 39:58

Yeah, back to my career. So when I or holiday now, yeah, back to my career. So. So when I left the agency, I left largely because I wanted to be um, part-time, because I had kids by then. So I set up on my own as a small business advisor because I recognized that actually, although I have a marketing, you know, creativity in me working with those big global businesses that were our clients was wasn't what I was fascinated by. What I was fascinated by was the running of the of the small businesses. So I ended up being a small business management consultant. But I my first contract was with my pre-existing consultancy. So I had, so I had a great start.

Kate 40:30

You know, I wasn't. I wasn't, you know, sitting at home going who am I going to work for? And I got a little portfolio of clients that I worked for for 10-15 years some of them. And then that pivotal moment when somebody said to me you know what you enjoy doing and how you're going to do more of it. That was the next pivot to coaching. So I've had those, those sort of two pivots in the middle. It does that answer the question? I think I feel like I might have done did you?

Keith 40:54

did you recognize them as pivotal at the time or only on reflection later on?

Kate 41:00

No, I did know they were pivotal at the time because I'd been with the marketing agency for 15 years. So leaving there was quite a major thing, you know, and leaving having a salary and a regular income and we had dividends and all that sort of stuff. So that was quite a big leap of faith into working for myself. But I'd always known I wanted to work for myself. I come from a family of entrepreneurs. My dad we used to call him Del Boy, you know, because he always do you know what I mean. But for those who don't know what I mean, del Boy was a character in a BBC sitcom called Only Fools and Horses and he had lots of fingers and lots of pies, didn't he? And he was always doing deals. My dad wasn't as shady as Del Boy, I have to say, but it was a good name for him. So he had lots of different businesses and was very entrepreneurial, very much seeing opportunities and making them happen. And then I've got three siblings and we all have our own businesses.

Kate 41:55

So, yeah, we've all done that. So it was definitely in me and I was finding it frustrating being in the agency and I kept on trying to leave and and the boss would say, oh, could you just stay while we do this deal? And can you just stay? Well, because I was the person who, would you know, would do all the purchase, acquisition stuff, um. So when I finally left, it was definitely very obvious that that was, that that was a pivot. And then this change from from. So so my consulting business. I had these four retainer clients in the consulting business and then I switched to coaching and I was coaching some of the people in those businesses alongside the consultancy and then, over time, my coaching business took off and I, one by one, resigned the consultancy businesses. So now I only have one small one left, and the one small one left is my original boss from the marketing agency. I still work for him. Oh, my goodness.

Keith 42:44

The reason I ask you about do you recognize that? Because I think that's a defining factor for those who are successful versus those who are not quite so successful Recognizing in the moment that this is an opportunity, a transition, instead of it just happens to you. I used to have people in my hometown who would say to me when I come home living overseas, fancy car, all of that oh, you're so lucky and you make your luck and everyone is lucky. It's just a question of will you take the leap, will you turn left or right, stop go? You have to make those decisions and key to that is recognizing that that is a pivotal moment and I think if you have that and then just go for it, success follows as as sure as night follows day.

Keith 43:36

And uh, one of our other guests, riaz Mehta, who's a multiple entrepreneur in TV production mostly, he said no such thing as failure, it's just a learning on the road to success. And if you have that mindset and have that wherewithal to recognize an opportunity and go for it, you will get successful. And I don't accept any arguments about people saying, oh, but not me, because I'm from this background or this. I come from a council estate background, I'm proud of it, but these are, I think, the factors that are key to success, and that's why I wanted to ask you and see what you said and you had in your 20s and your 30s that wherewithal to know this is pivotal. This is changing, and I'm going to do it Because you have to do two things recognize it and do it right.

Kate 44:37

Yes, absolutely, and the self-awareness is quite a major part of being a good leader as well, isn't it Just to be able to say actually, the way I'm showing up today, how's that going to influence the people around me, how's that going to influence how my business goes, and what do I need to do to make sure that the outcome is positive?

Keith 44:58

For sure, and similarly, you've got your own podcast. Make sure that their outcome is positive, for sure, and similarly you go your own podcast. In these podcast interviews it's the interaction of the two, but I'm the one responsible, sitting as the host, to direct this, to try to bring the best out from you. That's my role today. Right, and uh, I think we do that. One other question I haven't given you any briefing about this. Do you practice Linda, the bad manager in the mirror?

Kate 45:27

well, the beauty of recording on TikTok is obviously that you can record it multiple times and you can edit it, but actually some of the best ones are first takes. Some of the best ones aren't scripted either. So some, some I script, some some I just think, oh, I've got an idea and I just, yeah, just go for it. So, yeah, I really do enjoy doing it and I spend probably about a third of my time making content. You know you were saying before about lots of coaches don't know how to market. I spend a lot of time doing it, writing newsletters. I've got a LinkedIn bulletin. I've got a LinkedIn bulletin. I've got the. I'm just about to do a blog as well to improve the SEO on the website. I then make the podcast, which is just me. Excuse me, I don't have guests because it's enough of a handful.

Kate 46:09

Having Linda there, she's fine, but predictable yeah yeah, At least I know what she's going to say, because it's been recorded no-transcript, you know? Know that I'm the right coach for them and that's that's the way to do it, isn't it? People need to. You know, that old, traditional model of marketing I think is probably still valid of no liking and trusting you before they take a step.

Keith 46:42

For coaches out there. Did you hear that One third of the time creating content? It's not all about introductory calls and getting payment. Ok, it's not all about introductory calls and getting payment Okay.

Keith 46:54

And yeah, it's really. I think. Even when I came into coaching, I thought that I would spend 80% of my time on coaching, but I spend less than 20% of my time on actual coaching and the rest on it. You can call it marketing, if you will Podcasting, writing blogs, all the other things I'm not comfortable doing. Tiktok, I'm not as talented as you are, that's for sure. 100%.

Kate 47:19

I'm not going there.

Keith 47:20

We've arrived at a similar destination not the same, but similar, but from very disparate directions and backgrounds. Right, and you still look far better. And I said as we started this off and before we recorded you, you look radiant. You said I've just been on a walk, right, I thought it was fantastic makeup yeah, do we?

Kate 47:45

do we work out? We're the same age.

Keith 47:47

I'm older than you, for sure. I'll be 65 in December. I'm a lot older than you and today.

The Power of Taking Action

Keith 47:56

Actually, I'm glad this is on today. It's usually a difficult day for me would it be my mother's birthday or 91st birthday and I've spent the day focusing on positive things and working. And you know, three, four years after her passing I wouldn't say it's easier, but I know how to cope with it better. But having a conversation like this absolutely makes it. For sure, and I know, with my mother's sense of humor, she would have loved this interview and she'd have loved Linda, the bad manager actually.

Kate 48:32

Yeah, it's a strange old thing, isn it?

Kate 48:33

when you lose your parents, because I've lost both of mine and yeah, it's a strange thing because when you, when something great happens like I got, I got um, uh, a in-person workshop confirmed yesterday, um afternoon that I've been hoping to get and I was so excited about it and and that would definitely be the sort of thing that I would have told um, I would have told my mum because of the subject matter, because it's it's to do with horticulture, and she was a great gardener and I would have told and I and I would have told my dad because of the business element of it and he would have, you know, he was my sort of business person I would speak to about that.

Kate 49:06

You know the highs and lows of business, and he was so, so interested and and would have good advice. And you know, I suppose he was a bit of a coach, without knowing um and so yeah, so without them to tell it's, it's, it's. You know, I sort of think, oh, yeah, and they would have loved to have seen, you know, my, our grown-up children I say grown-up, young adult children one of them, you know, going to university and graduating last summer and getting a job and living independently and all those sort of milestones that you don't get to share with them. But then I get to share them with my friends and with my husband and with my siblings as well.

Keith 49:37

So that's different, yeah, my sister said to me yesterday that with the success of the power within that, walking around our town, 60 000 people x mining town, everyone knows everyone. She said it would have taken me five hours to walk around the town with my mother telling everybody about my success. You miss that, all right, and it's not the same. Yeah, yeah, and unlike you, I might be much older than you, but I have children much younger than you. My youngest is seven and my oldest turns 44 tomorrow.

Kate 50:14

Wow, that'll keep you on your toes. For sure, probably enough for our eldest's birthdays tomorrow as well.

Keith 50:20

No way how old.

Kate 50:24

Yeah, they're gonna be 22.

Keith 50:27

22, and so double for my son. He's 44 tomorrow. So any last snippets of advice that you'd give. Let's tap on what's become your specialty now on TikTok for coaches or anyone else who is afraid of creating Any advice that you might give them about TikTok.

Kate 50:51

I really love that question, actually, because it reminds me of something you said earlier that I was going to jump in on and I didn't. Which is a lot of people I meet, because I'm in a coach's mastermind with five other coaches and a lot of what they say that holds them back is perfectionism. So they are waiting to do something because it's not quite the right time, or it's not quite perfect yet, or they need to refine it a little bit more, and they're spending hours and hours and hours on editing things and making things perfect and having a whole load of content ready before they launch their new podcast or whatever it is. And I'm a pre-crastinator. Basically, it just means that you do stuff as soon as you think of it, which is great because it means you take action, and I'm very, very action orient. Do you have you ever done a disc profiling?

Keith 51:35

yes, it's of course you know what I mean.

Kate 51:37

Better, okay, so so on. On the disc profile there's a circle and if, uh, the top.

Kate 51:42

If you're at the top, then you're a very fast-paced action taker if you're at the bottom, then you're more steady and more detailed and more, more methodical. And if you're on the right, then you're more people orientated, and if you're on the left, you're more task orientated. Well, I'm right at the top, in the middle, so I'm people and task, action, action, action, decisive, decisive, decisive. Get on with things. You know, uh, yeah, to take, take loads of action, which is great, but I quite often make mistakes. But, as you said earlier, to my mind, that's how you're learning. You know, you're learning what works and what doesn't work. So I just think I'm going to just do it, and if it doesn't work like that, I'll tweak it, and if it doesn't work like that, then I'll change it.

Keith 52:20

And if it doesn't work like that, then yeah, but if it does work, hey great fantastic beauty of tiktok is instant feedback right pretty instant if it's if you flopped, you know quickly right and adjust yourself.

Kate 52:34

But I suppose my background, being originally in PR, was that, yes, you know you were so excited if you were going to get a headline on the front page of the Sunday Times, for instance. You know that would be the sort of pinnacle in those days. It would soon be forgotten, you know.

Keith 52:49

By Monday morning, everyone would be like Today's news, tomorrow's chip paper right Chip. By monday morning, everyone will be like tomorrow's chip paper right chip paper. Most people outside the uk won't know that and, uh, I'm old enough to remember having chips in newspaper and the black hands that came with it, and I loved it, yeah it's become a sterile world.

Kate 53:04

Yeah, actually it's all polystyrene now, and so tiktok's very, very much that. Um, you know, you, you, you? Sometimes I put something out there and I think, oh, you know to know, to be honest, sometimes it's a tiny bit, I wouldn't say fillers, but they are just little silly, little snips. They're not giving you a leadership message as such, it's more of a comedy thing, and I'll put it out there and I won't think anything of it and I'll come back to it later. And it's had, you know, 275,000 views, views, okay, so that one went down. Well then, and you can't tell, you can't necessarily know, and sometimes the way tiktok works, once you've been on tiktok for a while, is that every day it will show you what you posted this time last year and give you the opportunity to repost it, oh, okay sometimes I repost them.

Kate 53:47

You know the ones that that I think you know, uh, messages that I'd like to get out there again and I'm aware that I've got lots of new followers. Each month I get so many thousands of new followers so they won't have seen the old ones necessarily, because there literally are I don't know 3,000 videos. Even if you're a fan, you're not going to go back through the back catalogue and watch them all.

Keith 54:06

So it's worth reposting Once. I'm into it, I like to look at seven, eight, nine or ten of them at one go, at one sitting, because they're short enough right. Yes, kate, it's been fascinating, fun, really insightful today chatting with you.

Keith 54:23

Our British sense of humour comes through all the time I wish you every success in reaching up to the billion views, because I think you will get there sooner than you think, actually, and thank you for taking the time out today and coming in after your walk. Appreciate it. Speak to you again soon, kate linda.

Kate 54:44

Goodbye we both say thank you very much for having us yes, thank you very much for having us both no, no, I meant we. I know what you meant, I know what you were.

Keith 54:55

Okay. There was the subtle british human. There's two of me. I just don't show them in public. Take care, kate, have a great day ahead thank you very much.

Kate 55:06

Thanks for having me, keith bye bye.

Keith 55:08

thanks for listening to the power within. I hope today's episode inspired you to grow, lead and create the success you deserve. If you enjoyed the podcast, share it with someone who might find it valuable, and don't forget to subscribe and leave a review. Join us next time as we explore more stories of leadership and personal growth, and remember that setbacks are just stepping stones to something greater. Until then, stay strong, stay positive and keep believing in the power within.