Episode 5 - Vicky Murphy - 2/3 of the Wizard of Oz

🎙️ Episode 4 – Brave Enough to Be Coached
This week, we’re joined by the brilliant Vicky Murphy from STEP Scotland – and we go deep.

We talk courage. We talk vulnerability. We talk about the real bravery it takes not just to coach… but to be coached.

From shifting gears to full throttle, to learning when to pause and actually rest – Vicky helps us unpack how to find rhythm in the chaos and energy in the stillness.

This one’s for anyone navigating change, chasing growth, or just trying to figure out when to hit the brakes and when to floor it.

🚦 Get ready for insight, inspiration, and a few unexpected truths about what it really means to lead and be led.

Transcript

UNKNOWN: 0:01

Bye.

SPEAKER_01: 0:05

Welcome back everybody. We are here with Vicky Murphy. I'm going to let Vicky introduce herself. Nick, how are you at the moment?

SPEAKER_02: 0:14

I'm fantastic, although you promised me you'd send me a packet of chocolate biscuits and you haven't.

SPEAKER_01: 0:18

And after winning at cricket as well last week. So yeah, Vicky, it's awesome to meet you again. Vicky and I have known each other for a couple of years now. She was my rock to get me through my ILM. Brilliant person to bounce ideas around and have some thought just really, really enjoyed going on that journey of ILM Level 7, mainly due to Vicky. But I'll let Vicky introduce herself in a few words.

SPEAKER_00: 0:45

Thank you, Alan. Thanks for having me on. And Nick, also lovely to spend this time with you as well today. And hello to your lovely listeners. So yes, I'm Vicky Murphy. I've been at STEP for nine years in May there. I'm the director of HR and OD, but the reason that I'm here today on the on this podcast is because i'm also an executive coach and i run steps ilm center so that's a center putting delegates through their level five and level seven qualifications apparently i have some words of wisdom to share but we'll see we'll see if that comes to fruition or not

SPEAKER_02: 1:23

thanks vicky great to have you on i'll do a quick teacher's recap and that helps all of us probably to where we are and then i'll move into the first bit for you to really kind of expand on we like our interviewees to tell us a bit about their journey and things that may have inspired them people that may have inspired them and to talk about any models that they lean on or don't lean on and any metaphors that sum up what they do for a job i can already hear that you must be a bit of a rock and a bit of a person for a journey alan said so that might be something that resonates with you take those three things your journey your metaphors your models as a starting point for you to share a bit more about you as a coach

SPEAKER_00: 2:04

so in terms of the The coaching process, I mean, for me, it's very much, it is a coaching process and I try to get people to trust the process. It's, you know, we're all living in a very much fast forward world these days. So coaching is an opportunity to sort of stop that treadmill, to just take a minute, take a breath. I think we all get very lost in the moment sometimes and it's a fantastic chance to stop and reflect. For me, e-coaching is very much about a journey for people who have got courage and a journey for people who can be brave. It can be quite daunting for people. So not only is it a minute to stop, take a breath, but it's also to have the courage to look up and look at the other opportunities that are ahead of you. So, I mean, I suppose that's how I look at it as a general perspective.

SPEAKER_02: 3:02

And are there any models that you've kind of lent on? We've You talked about things like grow and Alan's talked about his T-model where he moves from side to side with the person and then drops down every now and then a bit deeper. Is there anything that kind of resonates with you as a model?

SPEAKER_00: 3:15

There's probably, I mean, when we teach the course, we teach a plethora of different models, sort of explain it very much like a toolkit and say, you know, sometimes to hit a nail, you're meant to use a hammer. But if you think it's better to use another tool and it gets a different effect and it does the same job, job but with your unique application and that's absolutely fine and actually something that peter hill once said to me and i'll speak about him later but he said to me you need to know the rules to break the rules and that's very much how i look at it i think in terms of the models that i use i think fundamentally things like grow always there there's always a little bit of you know the the diagnosed design and do so your 3d model i'm probably particularly focus around a model called core qualities, which comes from Belbin's two-dimensional model, which is a weakness is an overdone strength. But the core qualities model takes that to another level. I use that quite a lot in terms of demonstrating to people how they can be perceived by others. And it really reflects back to the the best of intentions but sometimes that intention overdone a little bit can come across as something negative so just holding the mirror up and showing them how it can be perceived by other people is a very valuable tool so I really like using that once trust and rapport has been built up to an acceptable level I quite like using cognitive behavioral coaching but in order to do that you've got to have a good relationship got to have a good level of trust Because ultimately you are challenging someone's beliefs and values there, not telling them that they're wrong, but you are trying to sort of unpick a little bit of that to give them another perspective. I mean, there's loads of models, but there's a few that I probably commonly use in application and that I like.

SPEAKER_02: 5:23

And do you think that if you are using things like CBC, that that's part of the reason why the journey for some coachees is requiring bravery and courage? Or do you see generally that the issues they're dealing with and the amount of change required does require that real bravery?

SPEAKER_00: 5:42

I think in general, I think CBC is another level of bravery. Sometimes it's a level of bravery for the coach as well as for the coachee. But in general, I would say you need to be courageous to go into coaching if you really want to get the value out of it and you need to be brave. I mean, my experience is that over the last decade, I think that coaching has become less of a taboo, especially for certain professionals or certain executives at a particular hierarchical level. It used to be very much seen as a sign of weakness. And, you know, you wouldn't tell anyone you had a coach, a little bit like you wouldn't tell anyone you sought a therapist. It was, you know, a little bit private and people might have looked at it negatively. But now I think you still need to be brave because you're opening up the fact that you're talking to somebody about something that you know I might not have the confidence here or I need to develop or I need to grow and I need a confident on learning to chat that through with but at the same time it's not the same sort of courage that you would have maybe needed a decade ago you don't have to sort of be so secretive about it so the courage I'm talking about is the courage that you need to say I don't know this this is an area that I want to grow and develop on and I'm going to be vulnerable and with that vulnerability the coach can really really dive in and explore the different opportunities of growth with you. But in order to do it, you need to be vulnerable. And that for me takes courage.

SPEAKER_01: 7:13

Do you feel that that's because coaching has become more accepted or do you feel that's a little bit more societal and systemic that people are willing to talk about their, yeah, they can explore their feelings more, that they're more in tune with their feelings or they're more in tune with being open and sharing their feelings with others?

SPEAKER_00: 7:34

I think there's a couple of different things that contribute to this I don't think it's one singular reason I think one yes society is more open to sharing feelings and to be more vulnerable I think we've all seen that a lot with mental health people are more open to talk about it than they were again a subject that was really taboo and isn't so much now this probably sounds a bit biased but I think that there's been a lot of positive movement in the HR and training world that a lot of people now see the positivity in proactive development and you know working with an HR department and saying what resources are there available for me to learn and to grow and how can I do this and you've got training and you've got away days and you've got coaching and you've got courses and you've got mentoring and I think there's now a plethora of options people are happy to pick from and they're now starting to see it as a diverse development option. I suppose a little bit from a biased HR point of view, but I've been doing HR for a long, long time. And we were always the department that, you know, you don't talk about, you're an overhead, you're there for the bad stories, you're in the background. And a lot of us have worked really hard to be that strategic business partner to show an organisation how you can push things forward and you can be an asset and you can actually get an organisation to work proactively. And I think some of that is is kind of paying forward in terms of the thoughts that we've got about coaching. And I don't know whether there's also an element that I don't know because I'm probably too focused in it, but I don't know whether is it now become a bit more cool? Is it now become, you know, just more fashionable to have a coach? Is it gone from, I think it almost has gone from one swing to the other from, or don't tell anyone to, or who's your coach?

SPEAKER_01: 9:30

We're back to that pendular sort of approach that from nothing to everything. Yeah,

SPEAKER_02: 9:36

it

SPEAKER_00: 9:36

feels like

SPEAKER_02: 9:36

that. Well, that's, as an executive coach, that's very encouraging that it's less taboo now. I'm sure that us and many others will be very grateful for that. One thing you said that I'd like to unpick a bit with you is part of your metaphor, I suppose. We've talked before about signal and noise and many people have contacted me to say, how do we quieten the noise down? How do we find that space? And you talk about slowing that treadmill down and taking a breath. Can you explain a little bit about how your coaching tries to do that with people

SPEAKER_00: 10:06

so probably in particular the coaching that i do very aligned to the job and the company i work for to give a little bit of context to that the company that i work for step is an organization that supports businesses from the acorn to the tree so from startup right through to to growing and and exit strategies we work a lot with businesses who are smes it can be a family business it can be a small business of of maybe five or six people right up to the ones of two three hundred but these people that we work with that we're familiar with that are part of the sort of community that we are as business support are so busy in their business they struggle to get time to stop look up and work on their business so you have a mechanic that wants to grow and he wants to open another garage somewhere else or he wants to buy more land and bring in car sales and not just do mechanics But he personally can't get out the workshop because it's busy and he's firefighting and, you know, you need to grow to get more people and, you know, Rob Peter to pay Paul. So coaching gives us the opportunity to take that person out of sort of the rat race and get them to look up and have the opportunity to work on their business. So a thing that we will talk a lot about is working on the business versus working in the business. And that's something we probably do a lot of with the companies that we support. And that ultimately is really working on growth, on forward thinking, on contingency planning, maybe it's succession planning and development.

SPEAKER_02: 11:51

Yeah, thanks, Vicky. That's really good. I really struggle sometimes to support my busiest clients with getting them into a meeting because as much as they love it, the much they see the benefits and enjoy it they're the busiest people they're the hardest ones to find a spot in their diary of course they're the ones who are going to benefit the most from actually finding that time of doing it yeah is that something that resonates with you that the busiest people the ones who need the most are the ones sometimes that struggle to find the space to actually turn that dial down

SPEAKER_00: 12:22

yeah definitely and i think if they're busy in their business then the benefits of you know organization and prioritization and delegation that that might be something they're really going to find And it's a difficult balance because on one hand, you want them to be engaged and ready. We quite often start a session with our coaches for something called a foe factor. So it's focus, openness and energy. And, you know, we'll say sort of where are you at the beginning of the session? And along with that, I'll ask somebody on that particular day and maybe with a particular topic they're talking about. Do you want high or low challenge? And do you want high or low challenge? or low support and that can waver depending on the topic they're talking about or what they were doing 20 minutes before their coaching session it's a challenge and I think what's good is a lot of the people we work with we have built up a good relationship with and because of that we do sometimes get the opportunity to go right enough you're either coming in and you see me on this date and we're going to start this process or if you're going to keep avoiding me we're going to have to look at starting this another time because I need you to be 100% into this and we talk about that in our contracts when we contract with people it's about what is your responsibility as a coachee as well as my responsibility as a coach but you've got to show up not just physically but mentally

SPEAKER_01: 13:49

this seems to be a recurring thought and a recurring process to go back to your it is a process and I know now I'm doing more and more exec coaching I'm starting with my version of foe it's amazing how many people come in and the coaching is the afterthought or that hour is the afterthought even though there's been pre-emptive emails or messaging of what do you want to discuss today what areas but then even people turning up in the right mindset or the right frame of mind is a really interesting one and I've now got to the point of saying well I've turned up like this today this is my phone as a coach how are you and then how do you want me to behave as well? Or who do you want me to be today? Do you want me to be 10 out of 10 challenge? Or do you want me to be the proverbial arm around the shoulder? And it's an amazingly strong initiator of most conversations I have now.

SPEAKER_00: 14:51

I think just building on what you're saying there, Alan, and that, you know, I do a lot of leadership management training. And one of the things that I speak to managers and leaders about is very similar to what you're describing there in code. coaching to be the best version of a coach or a leader you need to be inconsistent and and I know a lot of us get asked you know what's your coaching style etc and you will have an innate style and that will be there and it will come from your values and behaviors but at the same time we need to be inconsistent because we need to flex and to move to be the best coach that we can be for that person who has invested in that session so if they want us to be an empathetic listener that day then that's what we are if they want us to be a sounding board for new ideas and we go away feeling like we've been hit by a Gatling gun. Sometimes it is like that. We still have that role to challenge, to support, to give them the space to innovate and be creative and to take a look at themselves and the options in front of them before they progress. But yeah, definitely what's important is that inconsistency to be good.

SPEAKER_02: 15:59

I love to hear it articulated in that way, Vicky. It's very empowering. one of the things that i enjoy so much about coaching against teaching is that you can be so bespoke some clients will have a story a journey a narrative right from start to finish for every session they've done all their homework in between they've done extra thinking they've read a book that you might have recommended or a podcast that you haven't recommended and then you jump off from that and you respond to it others they look nick i haven't had any time to think about this in the last week can you just manage me through it and you take on that role as well and i quite see why we need to do heavy lifting sometimes

SPEAKER_00: 16:39

and i think when it comes to being the different kind of coach you need to be it's it's different levels of energy you know that you take into these meetings as well but it's it's funny how you say you know from from being a teacher because obviously my day job is hr which a lot of people get the impression is it's very black and white um i probably work more with businesses about finding a bit of the gray which i won't go into and explain now, but basically it's not about a yes or a no. It's about finding that middle ground. But I think that's why it's the rebel in me that I still have boundaries within HR where it's a yes or it's a no and you still have to work very much to the framework, even if you are getting the business to get the best out of the legalities and the compliances. But with coaching, you have the freedom. You know, if you look at Catalytic Toolkit, you can just follow that free attention. So it's a lot more fun

SPEAKER_02: 17:34

I'd like to just change the conversation slightly into something that we started talking about with other interviewees which is the challenge that we've got it seems internationally with levels of stress etc Gallup have recently published a global workplace report that says that there is a deterioration in mental health and that this is concerning and that a quarter of leaders are feeling burnt out often or always a quarter of leaders we talked about out with Gallup a lot of work around them promoting engagement and it suggests that engagement isn't being promoted enough across the world in all kinds of work settings if we do engage people better recognition making sure they know their role supporting their well-being for example that the benefits are fantastic in terms of return investment and everything else and in the education in the UK retention is a real problem recruitment's a real problem and we know there's a at the last time I heard a 10% vacancy rate in the NHS. So what's your perspective on either national or global concerns around stress and anxiety and all those kind of burnout things from where you stand?

SPEAKER_00: 18:45

I think that the two are intrinsically linked from my experience. The mental health slash burnout crisis and the struggles and challenges that we're having to recruit and a lot of it I feel like we need to stop talking about it and one sense but a lot of it is driven from the pandemic we had a lot of early retirees as a result of the pandemic and a lot of that was due to the fact that employers didn't know how to support people in the best way that they needed to be supported at work so people who were in the older generation left work before they planned on leaving work because employers didn't know how to have conversations about part-time working or flexible working or hybrid working you industries across the world lost masses of experience and masses of skills and knowledge. So that gave a big gap. That then meant that there was more pressure on the next generation in the work. There's more for them to pick up. There's bigger gaps. So that continuation of workflow was interrupted because of that.

SPEAKER_01: 19:56

I have an analogy of a chessboard. And those who know me will be sick and tired of me using this analogy but if most companies and businesses or nhs or or schools nick as well are trying to deliver 64 squares on a chessboard with the resource for 48 so everybody's doing one point whatever it is else if one person moves or leaves the business or retires early or is off with stress that one square then gets divided up among four people so that 1.2 that you've got now because 1.4. And if it builds up too big, we end up trying to deliver 64 squares with 40 people. So everybody's working at 1.6, 1.8. And I kind of like it as a little simple analogy of finite resource is still trying to deliver 100% outcomes. And I guess that's kind of where that thought process comes into my mind.

SPEAKER_02: 20:57

You've really articulately explained and described an example of this jobs resource demand model, Vicky, where we've got a change in the resources that have come about by a depletion of some of the more senior, experienced, skilled, knowledgeable people that have left a gap for the rest to pick up. And it's a really clear, simple way to describe that. And I'm really grateful that from your HR perspective, you've made that really simple and clear.

SPEAKER_00: 21:25

I think that every business will always talk about trying to work smarter, not harder, because they're trying to work lean you know everything is getting more expensive there's more pressure on every business um there's more pressure on costs that pressure is then passed on to the workers and the employees but if they're already slightly under resourced or they're they're missing a lot of the mentorship or the experience then it just adds to the pressure we are at the point where the expectations are too high i mean the the government is is going to bring in once they're finishing consultation you know the right to turn off it's already the law in France that that expectation of after five I can still message just because I'm still working I'll just and they'll answer that expectation needs to change we need to change the culture and that work-life balance it's a phrase it's banded about it's said but not necessarily meant and we really need to make that a meaningful culture across the UK I personally don't think that that it's a one size fits all and fix it with a four day week. I think that there's the UK and the way that we approach work, the majority of people will just try to put five days work into four days work and we'll end up getting even more burnout. That's my personal opinion. And I'm happy to be debated on it, but that's the way that I see it. I think it's about clever working models in that, not just about chopping off a day. And I think we really need to look at flows rhythms I've spoken to people before about gear sticks and you know you go up and down the gears it's not always at the same rate there needs to be that that transition within your your work and your life to be able to be healthy

SPEAKER_02: 23:18

when you say that Vicky what comes to mind is the Pareto number in my head the 2080 and the leaders are often in the 20 and key people in the organization are in that 20 and they are delivering a huge amount of the outcomes of the business or the organization and those people are working under sometimes a quite broken system where they haven't got the resources they haven't got the time they have to keep juggling too many plates and they really struggle to switch off their phones they're the ones that will carry on with their phones on irrespective i fear because they realize that they are standing between success and failure for that organization

SPEAKER_01: 23:54

it's got high resonance with high performance sport you've talked about flow you've talked about rhythms gear sticks etc in terms of going through the gears and cruising sometimes and putting cruise on, which is I'm now going to use moving forward using cruise mode rather than actually driving the car when you've got a long straight path. But in elite sport and even sub-elite sport, we use that. We use that. We use that annual plan. We use that periodization, which I think we talked about before, Nick, but also within that mesocyclist. And one of the critical areas... becoming better at your performance is to make sure you build in a period of active rest or adaptation so you can go hard for a number of weeks but then you've got to rest after or or take your foot off or go down to gear two however you want to frame it so you can come back better and i think a lot of people will just work it flat out without taking that adaptation that rest Yeah,

SPEAKER_00: 25:06

definitely. I think what you have both described there, you know, Nick, you're talking about it in a business sense and Alan, you know, relating that to high performance sport is the opportunity for these people to seek a coach because that rest that you need before you go again, or whether you're talking about the 80-20, this is the opportunity to go, right, how do I regroup? How do I regroup? How do I regroup? do I take a breath? So things like executive coaching are the opportunity to say, right, I need to take a breath. I need to look at me. I need to look at what other things there are out there. Then just keep going until I fall over. And that's the opportunity in business. I think in sport, you do it slightly different. You have maybe like a two week period where you just have to rest before you pick it up again. But if you put a parallel to that in an executive world, in the world of work, there needs to be that that breath and for me that's what coaching provides um in particular those senior leaders that you were talking about their neck as well

SPEAKER_01: 26:10

so you mentioned first off vicky about courage and bravery and i know slightly off there we talked about the wizard of oz that's two of the three and your journey being the yellow road so maybe if we look after ourselves that's our heart that's our beat of our rhythm how can i make sure my heart works when it needs to work to go up and go down and go forward but also be in a good shape for when I need to bring that courage, bravery and heart into a project or a process or a regeneration or growth of a business or growth of yourself as well.

SPEAKER_00: 26:47

Yeah, you need to be healthy, you know, and if we're going to look at the mental health crisis that we've got and the pressures of business, which then obviously impacts society, in order to fight through what is going to become harder and more challenging for businesses and for people we need to be healthy and in body and in mind and and if we if we aren't then we're more susceptible to cracking and from you know if I look at it from an HR point of view prevention is better than cure look after the workforce give them the opportunity to work in a cycle that has ebbs and flows and different gears and you're less likely to have them go off and then trying to get them back is really really difficult because there's that fear of am I going to have to come back in into the same situation. If we can really look at the flow of work, of processes, of organisations and try and keep them healthy and keep the staff healthy, that helps in the longer run. And it might take more investment and more patience from organisations. But I think we've all heard the phrase, isn't it? You know, you need to speculate to accumulate. And if you speculate in your people, in your staff, whether it's, you know, health and wellbeing, employee assistance programmes, training, development, development, coaching, mentoring, you put all that in, then the quality of what comes out the other side is better, healthier people and better, more efficient, productive businesses.

SPEAKER_02: 28:12

And I think that if we go back to some of the findings from Gallup and other people that we won't just find better, but we find functioning because currently some aren't functioning and they're going under and they're highly underperforming. So that resonates with me massively. Vicky, I'd like to thank you as we come to an end for a few things that I'm going to take away now and I hope others will will see this too these are things that you've given me and I'm sure there's more as I go through my notes but trusting the process I love the idea and I do this with my onboarding activities with new coachees but to be able to say particularly to those who are a bit worried that just there's a process and it works just just trust it and then keep reminding of the process I like that that that seems like a nice stable thing to hang on to I always also like the fact that we can have this very varied toolkit but our unique application of it makes the difference so we might use grow or not use grow but if you have a unique way of using grow it could make it really bespoke i like that i like the idea of inconsistency yay permission to be inconsistent thank you very much indeed

SPEAKER_01: 29:23

that was music for both our ears

SPEAKER_02: 29:25

nick and and then the last thing is that in terms of optimism it is less taboo and i don't really care why it's less taboo having a coach but it is and if being less taboo to have a coach also opens people's minds up to the possibilities in personal development of all sorts then I think that would be a great way to move forward so thank you so much for your time I really really enjoyed talking to you it feels very short could have done this for three or four hours but we haven't got enough biscuits to last that long

SPEAKER_00: 29:59

Alan ate them all wasn't sharing thank you both very much for the opportunity I was a bit unsure as to what am I going to share and would there be any nuggets at all of wisdom and I listen to myself and I think oh you know there might be something there and and if if someone listens and takes something small and positive where they can just take that breath and maybe get the opportunity to to get into coaching they maybe don't understand it or learn a little bit more about it then that's a win for me anything that that helps people look after themselves and you know this is the helping profession so everyone in it just wants to help other people that's why we do it if anything like that happens I'd be I'd be really grateful so thank you so much for the opportunity thank you thank

SPEAKER_01: 30:46

you thank you Vicky I knew you'd be amazing all those uh worried emails we got about it and your business didn't come across at all but yeah really really wanted to thank you for that it was amazing

SPEAKER_00: 30:59

no you're very welcome I really enjoyed that actually really enjoyed it

UNKNOWN: 31:02

Thank you.