Custom Coaching for Today's Leaders: Ellen Robinson's Innovative Approach

Ellen Robinson on Bespoke Executive Coaching and Closing Stress Cycles to Prevent Burnout

At the B2B Expo, executive coach Ellen Robinson of Robinson Coaching Group describes her 15 years of bespoke leadership and team development work, grounded in adult development theory to assess where clients are and tailor frameworks to their maturity and leadership readiness. She explains that beyond learning skills, leaders must address what holds them back and avoid being limited by strengths. For her 25-minute expo talk, Robinson focuses on burnout, noting common leadership fixes like delegation, prioritization, and clearer communication, but emphasizing the need to close stress cycles to prevent chronic cortisol buildup. She shares using brief moments of creativity without purpose or outcome to express oneself and regain perspective. Robinson recounts her high-stress background at Frito-Lay, Pepsi, managing the Denver Nuggets and Colorado Avalanche business operations, and a SaaS startup that led to burnout, prompting her transition into credentialed coaching.

00:00 Meet Ellen Robinson
00:51 Bespoke Coaching Approach
01:10 Adult Development Framework
02:29 Burnout Talk Preview
03:32 Closing Stress Cycles
05:20 Expo Impressions
06:22 From Pepsi to Sports
07:04 Burnout to Coaching Pivot
07:46 Curator of Growth
10:01 Wrap Up and Thanks

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

I would love for you, Ellen, to introduce yourself, tell us about your organization and what you're doing at the B2B Expo this week. Thanks, Meredith. I'm so happy to be here. I am an executive coach. It's a branded under my own name, Robinson Coaching Group. One of the reasons I have it under my name and not under a framework is because I really curate and customize all of my leadership development, team development work. And so I'm gonna I've been at it for 15 years. That's what I do. I coach leaders and I help them accelerate their maturation as a leader. Really help them move from what I call skill-centric, really good at what they were doing, subject matter expertise, into the abstraction of leadership, which is a whole different function as many experience when they are making that move.

SPEAKER_01 0:50

That's amazing. I love what you were saying about the way that you approach this exact this executive coaching frame, like that it's bespoke essentially. Entirely bespoke. There's so many templates and frameworks in this, and so I could you say could you share a little bit more about that? Because I think it's so important. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 1:10

One of my underlying theory bases is what's called adult development, which is the the adult to childhood development. So we all develop in a linearly, quite frankly, or we don't, or we stop. And so I need people where they are, because I can make an assessment of their development, and then I know why is it that they could their communication isn't what it is. Is it and it a lot has to do with their that's why I use the word maturity, their maturation as a human, which is correlated to their maturation as a leader. So I use a range of frameworks because I meet people at all different points in their own development. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

We hear the language a lot of meet them where they are, but you really have a way to identify the specific thing that's gonna be the best place to start with that.

SPEAKER_00 1:58

You're absolutely right. There's clearly skills that everybody needs if you don't have them. But your ability to step into those, being willing to take the risk with those skills, often has to do with, again, where you are in your own development. Yeah. And and I work a lot on what holds people back. So strengths are important. You want to rely on them, but they will keep you in a strengths box if you really don't develop areas that still need development. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Is that part of what you're sharing in your talk at the expo, or do you have are you sharing a little bit of that approach, or what are you planning to share during your talk at the time?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

25 minutes, you can't get a lot of that. No, I picked something very important. A lot of my clients are coming to me recently with burnout issues. And clearly there are uh things for them to consider as a leader that may alleviate some of the time pressures, like are you delegating well, are you prioritizing well, are you creating action in a way where it comes back as you want it, not as somebody may have not read your mind correctly. So clear versus vague. That's all really important. I could spend a whole half day working on those sorts of things. So given that, let's say you're really good at that, there is still so much stress, low-key stress, that if it's not alleviated, if it's stuck closed out as the stress cycle goes, it will eventually can lead to burnout because you're just all stressed all the time, the cortisol is running. So I've chosen to talk about how to close out stress cycles with using moments of creativity. So I have this book that was hugely impactful for my own burnout a dozen or twenty years ago. And it just it when we close out stress by doing something without purpose, without outcome, a way to express ourselves in our own desires, even though they didn't get heard in a meeting. Yeah. We can just jot them down for ourselves. Simple as that. Oh, it's one thing. It kind of opens up our perspective again. Yes. And if we can open up our perspective, it can really close out a stress cycle so that it doesn't build up over time into burnout. I'm not saying it's a cure-all, but it's definitely worth trying.

SPEAKER_01 4:19

And it's I think it's such a timely thing to be talking about because burnout is it's pervasive. Oh. With everything that we're facing right now, just around inform just information flying at us so fast and so fiercely, and so much of it. And I can only imagine, I can I can't imagine anyone not benefiting from having some of that conversation. Oh, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

I tend to agree. I mean, you look at this show. Yeah, there's so many things that weren't here two years ago. Yes. And all and these are very small entrepreneurs trying to take it all in and figure out how it fits and what it fits in the money behind it all and the right. So much pressure and stress. Yeah. And that's only at this level, of course. The clients I work with have bigger businesses than the those here typically. And it it's still there's so much change, so much progress, but it's very hard to stay with the progress as opposed to letting it wash over you.

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, absolutely. I love that you mentioned what you've seen or who you've seen in the halls these last couple of days. What's been the thing you've eat that you've maybe been most impressed by or the thing that you were surprised to see just being here?

SPEAKER_00 5:32

What's been the thing that's really stuck with you? It's a little bit of very interesting about the attendees, and I've really enjoyed talking to the other exhibitors. We are all grinding it out. It is tough to be an entrepreneur, and you might do what you love. I love to coach. I am here only so that I can coach more. Because if I can have more clients, then I can coach more, I can help more people, I can have more impact on their dent in the world, which is always from such a passion place. And so it's been as much empathy and stealing everybody else's spirit in this as anything else.

SPEAKER_01 6:09

That's wonderful. You mentioned that you've been doing this particular type of coaching for 15 years, I think is what you shared. What were you doing before? How what was the coaching and right that made you make that switch?

SPEAKER_00 6:22

And I do talk a little bit about that in my presentation. I was a brand manager of Fritole, I was a general manager of PepsiCola company, I ran a 24-7 manufacturing and distribution operation, high, high stress, learned a lot. Great. Uh Pepsi was a really great leadership training ground. From there I went on to run the Denver Nuggets and the Colorado Avalanche. So the Denver base, which is where I'm from, where I live now, NBA and NHL teams. I did all the business operations alongside the general managers who, of course, ran the teams. And then from there I did a SaaS startup before, as just as SaaS was starting to get going, I raised money. I say I went from a PL to a term sheet, and all stress, stress, stress. And I burnt out. I had a young family through that, and I got fried, absolutely fried. I was looking out the window on a Saturday one day, tweaking my business plan and my business model, getting ready to raise some more money, and I'm like, what? You know, I just lost all my energy and all of my interests. So I had to call so a few years later, I had my energy back. I had what I call my mojo, but I didn't want to get back into that sort of cycle. So I needed to find something that I could count on myself for, bet on myself. I had a fantastic network, business network that I had built in Colorado. And I had been coached a long, long time ago at Pepsi. I didn't want to be a consultant, I didn't want to be an expert. I wanted to be uh a curator of growth. Oh, a curator. I love that. I love that word. I love that word. I went to coaching schools, I bona fide creds. It was brand new to me. I went from being at the top of my game to a beginner. I had never sat knee to knee to somebody. I had always sat behind the desk bossing somebody. Sure. And I could have done it a whole lot better had I had re to coach. If only I could go back to be and spend time with past self. Yes. So that's in and now I feel I'm so in flow. I love what I do. I'm not only curated, but I built up my own DNA around all the subjects and topics. And I really feel the bespokenness sets me apart along with my background. You know, from the leadership seat. Well, and I am.

SPEAKER_01 8:32

And you've you've lived the experience that you're helping solve in a very real way. Absolutely. And you have that relatability to what they're going through that in many cases sometimes that's missing is the relatability factor of the problem that a coach might be trying to help you solve. And so I think you have this incredible marriage of you've done it, you've seen it, you've lived it. It was your reality. I messed it up. And you, you, current you wasn't there. Yes, it didn't exist. And now you've been able to create that for. When I went to coaching school, I had no idea what I didn't know.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

And now I do, and it's it amazes me, and I'm fascinated by it. And so I know I'm not burnt out because I love reading more about it. I love curating more. I love every new client that comes to me to learn their, you know, to learn from them. And then back into you.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah, totally. Yes. Yeah, that's amazing. I'm so inspired. Like I just love hearing the like the evolution, right? Because it can be, I think a lot of people live that previous definition of your life and feel that they're stuck in it and that there isn't a way to overcome that. And you are the answer to that. You're their way to get out of those scenarios in a way that I haven't really heard a lot of people talk about. So I just I love it. I think it's wonderful. And I so appreciate you sharing it with us. You gotta put yourself out there. Right? Exactly. Exactly. Well, I hope you enjoy the rest of the expo. I can't wait to hear your talk. I have the privilege of sitting like right there so I get to hear it. And I just hope that you have a great rest of the expo, and I'm glad that you were able to stop by and chat with us. Well, thank you for having me.