Season 4 Episode 7: The Word on Coaching - Resilience

In this episode we have a lively discussion about resilience with Catherine Barton. Catherine is the owner of Future Thinking Consulting and was selected as one of the top finalists of the Ideagen/UN Empowering Women and Girls Summit in New York. She is a published author, entrepreneur, and a freethinker with a creative mind

In our conversation with Catherine, she shares her perspective on resilience, and its importance in life and the workplace.  She also has a practical approach on how to become resilient and one key aspect you can focus on.

Listen in and discover how you can become more resilient and how you can help others you lead and influence become more resilient.

We hope you enjoy this episode.  Check out our book The Word on Coaching being released on June 14, 2022. Also, please check out quick guide about powerful questions: "Embrace the Power of Questions!"    A Quick Reference Guide to Getting the Answers You Need. 

Show Notes:

Podcast Guest:

Catherine Barton

Business website
https://www.futurethinkingconsulting.com

Leadership development program-
https://future-thinking-consulting.thinkific.com

Suggested books: 

How to Win Friends and Influence People: Updated For the Next Generation of Leaders: Carnegie, Dale: 9781982171452: Amazon.com: Books

Transcript

Debby 0:03

Hi, everybody. Welcome to the word on coaching podcast. I'm Debbie and I'm here with Joanne and Kevin. Hey Joanne. Hey Kevin.

0:12

Hello.

Kevin 0:13

Hello

0:13

everybody.

Debby 0:15

So we are coaches three. We are three friends with years of leadership and coaching experience. You want to share our passion with others? So our podcasts are for leaders, whether you have the formal title or not, it doesn't matter that focus on one word that relates to leadership and coaching. And we, along with our guests, we're going to give you tips. We're going to give you information, our perspective, and always a lot of support because we know leadership is hard. So today we are very excited to have Catherine Barton with us. She's the owner of future thinking consulting. I'll just list some of the phrases, some of the things that I've read about you, I've heard people say about you, Catherine things like a PhD candidate, business scientists, published author, top finalists and United nations challenge. And you know, when I heard this, I was kind of like, person, is this Catherine Barton? Would it be when I actually meet her? Right. And what I have found is. Catherine is so grounded. I love how she makes it fun. Like you cannot walk away from a conversation with Katherine without having laughed and smiled a lot. And she keeps it real and I really, really loved that about Catherine. So, Catherine, welcome. We're so glad to have you here.

Catherine 1:34

I am so excited, Debbie and Joanne and Kevin. Thanks for thanks for having me and thanks for being my buddies today.

Debby 1:46

Katherine, what else should we know about you or future thinking? Consult.

Catherine 1:51

Well, let's say I am a woman that loves business. I mean, I love the nitty gritty of business, the good, bad, the ugly. I love to know about business and I love growth, whatever that looks like to you. I am into that. I'm also a person that likes to save time. I hate things that take too long. So part of the way that I bring something. Is, I am all about science, every single statement I say to a client, everything I write has scientific research to back it up. So if I come to you and I say, say hello to your subordinates, and you asked me why I can come prove to you, why that will make you more than. I talked about leadership development. I have an online program. It's self paced online program that I have had for a couple of years now. And it's doing great, but what it does is it takes 27 traits of leadership. What makes the leaders, and I give it to you all backed by science. I give you. Workbook the whole shebang. And just for the listeners of this program, I just set up today. Cause I was thinking about it. I set up where if you buy the bundle, you will get free coaching. So just for the people that are listening to you guys right now, I set up a big old button on page one, click it, and we can have some free coaching, but that's what I am. I'm happy girl. Happy to be here and excited about talking about coaching and leadership.

Debby 3:32

Awesome. So special deal for the word own coaching podcast audience. Yes. Very cool. So for today's episode you know, we pick a word each time. The word for today is resilient. And Catherine, you work with lots of different types of leaders, all around the globe, entrepreneurs, executives of large and small organizations, sales professionals. And when you and I were talking about, what should your word be? I asked you what topic comes up a lot. In your conversations with leaders. And the first thing you said to me was, you know, they start talking about how they need to be more thick skin. And we probably have, you know, went off of that, of resilience, you know, bouncing back quicker from situation. To make sure we're all on the same page, Catherine, will you tell us what is a resilient leader do differently than

4:23

other leaders?

Catherine 4:24

Well, they're the people that keep coming back and not, not okay. Maybe I should rephrase that because it's not the people that keep coming back that you wish wouldn't come back. Cause we all have those sitting next to us at the office, but the people that come back that are. They have a high spirit there. They're robust. They're basically ready to conquer. Those are resilient. People say they have a bad day. They come back tomorrow with a fresh attitude that is worth billions. If you find that leader, then you need to give them a pay raise to keep them because they are worth their weight in gold to the people that come back. And do what needs to be done because their workers, will be engaged when they have a resilient leader.

Kevin 5:19

I love that definition about how, kind of, what you're looking for and people who bring that spirit into the workplace. Why is it important? But what's the why? Why is it important to be

5:30

resilient? Well, I mean, we're here talking about business and you can not have a sustainable business without that resilient leader. If we look back 25 years ago to fortune 500 companies, they all had leaders. They were all obviously making money, but if they weren't resilient, they're not here anymore. And if he looked, none of them are. That over here. So that's what, that's what makes us so important. Our society. We want everybody to be productive, right? So we won the resilient leaders to lead our people, to grow these businesses, to make them. For a thousand years that's necessary. They're the people that also build the trust. I believe those who the heck is going to trust anybody that can handle one little obstacle. Those people that you see, even though if you see that person and they're like, fail, fail, fail, whatever, but they keep coming back and they keep going for it. There's some kind of trust that's built for that. I don't know. I read a statistic. I feel like it was about six months ago and it was something that on resiliency and it was talking about like, Then half of the people in the world, which I thought that was quite, you know, I don't know how brave or what kind of research they did, but they said less than half, the people are resilient. Well, shoot, that's not good. That means, you know, over half of the people are having issues with their, the strength and their robustness. Again, if you find that leader that's resilient, let's keep them. Smaller large company let's keep them because they're doing good for the world.

JoAnn 7:20

Yeah, I was thinking of a couple of leaders that I coached along the way. And. There's one particular leader that comes to my mind, who I considered very resilient and it really came to my, I noticed during the pandemic when there were so many companies folding and struggling and this leader. Very, you know, honest and truthful and transparent about the difficulties, but every time they got knocked down, he would come back and say what we're going to try something else. We're going to have to do something else. And do you know that all his employees offered to take a 50% paid? To keep the business going because they were so loyal to him because he kept coming back and said, well, let's try this. Let's try that. That didn't work. Let's try something. What's your thoughts. He was just show resilient. And I think that resiliency kind of transferred to some of his employees.

Catherine 8:21

Yeah. I mean, honestly, that will almost give you chills to see that in action because it's beautiful. It's beautiful. I do know, as a small company that the employees did the same thing and it was because that leader did exactly what you just described. I mean, I want to follow that person. Yeah. Well,

JoAnn 8:46

what do you think gets in the way of leaders being resilient? What's the barrier?

Catherine 8:52

I would say low confidence, which is a killer. It's a killer because I wish everyone in the world that's listening right now. Everyone has struggle. It's somewhere. No one has popped out into this world and just everything went smooth and they were like Kings and Queens of the world or whatever. It's low confidence I will ask clients, Hey, everybody, you want to work on confidence. We need to work on. On and on and on. And I have actually collected data that the clients that would work on their confidence may 12% more than the clients that would say no. So those people, they are resilient because they keep, they keep working on themselves and then they become, so self-aware after working on confidence. So I would say that's an issue. And I would say it's a bigger issue than what people. Realize, unless you are a consultant or a coach, you know, we see people on the inside, they tell us certain things that they won't tell the rest of the world. And I think it has to do with, with competence levels.

Debby 10:05

So, Catherine, I know our audience would love some tangible. So when you were talking about those leaders that are resilient and they work on themselves, right. They, they find ways to build that resilience or enhance their confidence that you were talking about. What are some of the tips that you use? Seeing work, for people, or you've had leaders telling you this is what worked

10:27

for them.

Catherine 10:29

I would say if I was starting off with someone and they said, you know what, I, I want to be more resilient and let's say, I would bring up confidence. Keep track of your achievements, quit like a Civi and then sweep it under the rug. Forget about it. Don't celebrate it. No, it's the opposite. Keep track of your resilience or your achievements because your resiliency is going to grow because of it. Because when you start figuring it out, Hey, I might not be great at a presentation, but I'm really great at writing reports. Okay. There I'm good at something I'm starting to feel better. So now when my boss walks in and says something negative where, Hey, you know what Betty, but I'm also writing reports. I'm amazed at that. So keep track of your achievements. I even T I request the people have a journal. Whether, if they were willing to use it or not, if you just write down what you're great at and that journal, it would make me a happy consultant because that is going to grow your resiliency. Another thing I pay attention to is who is your dream team? And do you have. Because if you are counting yourself with a bunch of negative people that are like, we're never going to get this project done, we stink at this. I don't care who your dream team is. I mean, I have a person that just said, you know what, my dream team, I'm going to hire a cleaning lady. And I said, I live in now. You have more time to work. We're going to work together. Well, whoever that dream team is become. Five spectacular people to surround yourself with the warrior, hanging out with those. They don't even have to be winners. They just have to be people who think like winners and think. Like things are going to go swell for yet. That dream team surround yourself. So achievements dream team. And I'm going to tell you, ladies and gentlemen, hire a coach, the coach let's let's plug myself right now like ourselves, because that coach is going to make you absorb things like 50 something percent. There's tons of statistics out there of what hiring a coach does. If you want to train for a marathon, you hire an expert. If you want to learn how to make that souffle, you hire an expert, hire a quality quality coach, you know, give referrals, whatever. Listen to this group. This is a group of experts that have knowledge and expertise and experience. Hire one of us. There you go. That's how you hiring one of us. Four people we'll make you resilient. There's one statement.

Kevin 13:24

Absolutely. I love that. Secret sauce. The ingredients are keeping track of your successes and wins using a journey. Surrounding yourself with the dream team. And then the secret sauce is hire yourself. Coach, get yourself a coach. That's a simple recipe for success. We believe in it even wrote a book about coaching. So we believe in coaching. It's called the word on coaching. You should get a copy of it. It's coming out real soon.

13:54

Absolutely.

Kevin 13:55

Another question I've been thinking about this, Catherine since the pandemic, the last couple years have been different. I never, never thought in all my life that I would be able to say I lived through a pandemic, you know, that that happened. Many things change during the pandemic. And I was just curious about this since the pandemic, how my resilience be perceived differently as we're going through what we're doing.

14:22

Yeah, I think that before, of course we always liked those positive people, but I don't think we cherish them as much as we do now because, and those positive people they're resilient. Well, I was just ready to tell the story of, I had a client that was told really, really, really bad stuff about health and about a family member's health on the same day. And you know what? They smiled at me when they walked in the office. And after I heard their news, I remember thinking this person can handle some stuff. I appreciate those people more than ever. And now when I'm in a work environment, I will on purpose, seek them out. They have so much power, those positive people. And that I think. You know, since going through anything, I think that is valued even more than ever. So now you can, pinpoint now because the positive people sometimes are so rare in a work environment. You can point and say, you know what, Susie Q she is resilient because she is positive. Instead of flooding that department with negativity. That's awesome. Go ahead, Jay.

JoAnn 15:49

I was just thinking of some people that during the pandemic. You know, that I really learned to appreciate their attitude and their can do it spirit. I agree, I think not just as organizations, but as individuals you know, we began to seek out people that like, wow, it's all gloom and doom. I need to be, or I need to be around somebody. Lifts me up or I can lift them up or there can be a positive conversation. And, and until this conversation now, I really hadn't connected that to resiliency, but I see that is the more resilient you are. The happier are the more positive you are, I'm I really get that. So thank you for that. We're all coaches and we coach leaders and we coach leaders to coach that's part. I tell leaders that I work with my job is to coach myself out of a job and that they become so good at it. They can coach themselves and more importantly, they can coach those that they lead. How could a leader coach their team into resilience?

17:05

Oh, I would say, make sure you share with them how they add to the company, because that's all that's going to do is give them more value, more purpose, I think that we forget to do that. In leadership a lot. We, yes, we have our positions. We all work hard. We do our jobs, but we forget to say, oh, you know what? I forgot to tell you, you know, that that data you gave me, oh, that made a sale happen. Oh, you know what? I forgot to tell you what you're doing over here makes this happen over here. So if I were to give it a expert advice, that's what I would say. Those leaders make sure you share with everybody. The big and the little what they're doing. I had a group a lot of times when I go into organizations and they'll say I work with production managers and we will talk all about their production numbers. I will always request to talk to the custodial team. And it's always, I always have a reaction of like, why would you want to talk to custodial? And I will let them know. Thank you. Because if you didn't do your job, they would not be able to increase their numbers because now you've cleaned the area, whatever the heck goes on. But what that does is it grows so much respect. It's like interlocking. Now, like now we are the baseball team and we're going to go all the way, you know, we're a team. So that's what I would, if you can do anything as the leader, let the people under over on the side of you, let them know that what they do there makes a difference here. It grows a company and makes money too. So I'll just add that part.

Kevin 19:04

Catherine, as you were saying that I thought about a leader that I worked for in how she created resilience on our team. When our team first formed, she told us a couple of things, One of the things she told us is that we're going to make mistakes and people are going to get mad at us, but, but that's okay. We'll fix that. And then she said, we are going to get in trouble. Yeah, but don't worry. I'll get us out. And so whenever we would make mistakes, we would just come and say, Hey, this happen once. Let you know, we're going to have to fix that. And she set the conditions up front that we are going to fail. We're going to do things wrong. We're going to get out there too far, but don't worry about it. We can fix it together. And if we get in trouble, I'll get us out and it just cleared up so much space for us to do the things that we do. And so when we did those things that happen, we felt we didn't have to hide it from her. We just came and told her what happened. And he was like, Ooh. And then we just, we just kept going forward. And it created a lot of resilience on our team to do the things that we need to do.

20:10

And Kevin, I can imagine the free thinking you guys were allowed to do too, because you didn't have to even worry about being embarrassed. I would love to be that right. That would slogan.

Debby 20:24

I think what's important to you when you're building a resilient team is using your coaching skills, right. And some of the questions and things that you ask, and I think this goes to when you were talking to Catherine about. Low self-confidence and building people's confidence. That is we tend to always focus on the negative, what we're not doing well or what we think we're not good at. And one of the coaching questions I started asking just in the last couple of days, actually that every time I ask it, I have to say that people, I get the blank stare and they'll say, I, I don't know. And the question is, what do you know? You're good at? They'll just look at me and they're like, you know, a couple of them, I've given that as homework I can. The next time I talk to you, I want you to answer it, that question, but I think that's part of building the resilient team and of being a leader is helping people acknowledge what they're good at and say it out loud.

21:15

Right. And you guys have probably noticed too. Have you ever had clients that they need to write a bio? And they can't. And I think what you just said, Debbie, that's the whole thing, they'll contact me and they'll, we'll be talking to the phone and then I'll say, oh, check your email. I just sent you your bio. I can tell you what you're good at in about three and a half. You know, and and I'll say, if you promise not to change any of it, you can use that. But that, oh, that's a, that's a phenomenal question. Yeah. Yeah.

Debby 21:53

So, Catherine, all good things must come to an end. We, we appreciate you sharing your expertise. You were saying before you had, what was it? 27.

22:03

Leadership traits and it's all online and it's a lot of fun and it works. The ROI is between the average ROI is between seven times and 35 times what people are making. And afterwards within a year they make more so, wow. Well, we though.

Debby 22:24

Your thoughts around just this one trait of resilience since we focus on one word, but before we let you go, Catherine, we have to put you through our questions that we like to ask all of our guests. They're not hard. I actually think we're kind of um, see here's our first one. What is a book that you think a leader coach should read?

22:45

Well, I'm going to go old school. And first of all, there's tons of books. There's tons of books and everybody's not going to be in love with every book. I mean, I know there's a couple of. I'm going to call them women's books out there that I haven't been a fan of. You know, I want to be in the cool girl club and talk all about the books, but I love and appreciate Dale Carnegie. Who's what, 19, whatever. I don't know. Anyway, influencing people. That's what the leader does. Whether people think that's the right thing or. Leaders have to influence a team or department, whatever or business to go over here. And so I love the meat and potatoes of Del Carnegie. There's no fluff. People have asked me that and I've answered Dell Carnegie, the book, and. People said, oh, but that's so old fashion and he doesn't talk about women and I'm like, just put yourself in there. We're all smart enough to figure that out. But it's meat and potatoes and I, I like it. It works.

Debby 23:54

I have to go old school to Dale Carnegie, Zig Ziglar, like give me the old school guys. Right.

24:01

Love, love, love the next

Debby 24:04

question, which is what question have you been asked that gave you pause or made you think a

24:09

little deeper? Well, let's see here. Okay. So. The first question that pops into my head was probably why I went deeper in thought was because I was shocked, which I've had a lot of those, but I was shocked. I work more with men. I, I don't know why that works out, but I worked with both men and women, my very first. Female that hired me. She was like a big wig. She was a senior director. I was so excited and I go and I sit down in her office and I have my notes. I'm just going to save the world, you know, with this lady so excited and she within. I don't know, five minutes asks me. So she was in a different state than I was, so she knew I traveled and she asked me, so your head has been, gave you permission to travel alone and I caused. With my mouth. I felt my mouth open. I, you know, I didn't know. I, I needed to ask my husband for permission. I was pretty much on my own and you know, whatever. Anyway, I remember leaving there feeling, oh, this is still, this is out there. And I thought, I wasn't going to experience that, you know, holding me down or whatever. By this brilliant executive female executive. So it gave me pause and it made me think differently where I wasn't going to assume as much how about that. I was going to pay attention to whatever people were saying to me, and then take that and work from there. So it, it, what it made me do, it made me stop assuming. That this person, she was going to be so much on my side and I was wrong. So, you know, it made me pause in a way that made me coach a little differently. Let's just say that. So that's a great story.

Debby 26:34

So, Katherine, what is your word on.

26:37

Oh my gosh. Let me tell you. I have a very hard time picking because what I want is to make, I want to make paragraphs. That's all I want to do. I think that's why I'm so excited to see you guys as book, because I think that's what you do, right? Like you have. Single words. I'm not even the person that could pick out my word of the year. You know, everybody gets those fancy bracelets and stuff. I stink at that because I would need 25 bracelets. I came up with, I'm going to cheat on this answer. And I came up with eat E a T because I use it a lot with my clients. And what it is is it's educating. Aware, I tell them to be self-aware and then transform transform coaches, transform people. I mean, we could spend the next two hours giving examples of probably how we've watched transformation. I'm going to cheat and say eat, and then I like eating. It's just like absorb, absorb everything. Take it in when you are blessed with a coach that works for you and is obsessed with your winning and all that. Just eat it up, just go for it. So there you go. I cheated, but that's as good as I could think. So eat, educate,

Debby 28:05

awareness and transform.

28:07

We're

Debby 28:07

all about the acronyms, right guys,

Kevin 28:11

I'm all in. If it's coming to eating, I'm in

28:14

absolutely. Well, you know, I'm down here in the south and we do not hesitate on our eating, so we got good food down here. I work with engineers and so I don't work in acronyms. I will know what anybody's talking about. So,

Debby 28:34

well, Katherine, it has been an absolute pleasure. Joanna, Kevin is always great to have you guys sharing your thoughts and your stories and thank you to our audience for listening. Check out more of our word on coaching podcast. We're looking to hit a thousand downloads. You can help us with that. And we've lots of good words. Out there connect with us on our coaches three Facebook page, and we are thrilled to announce that our book, the word on coaching, which we've mentioned a couple of times here tonight is going to be released on Tuesday, June 14th. So mark your calendars right now to get your copy of that.

29:11

And until next

Debby 29:12

time, this is your word on Kate Jean.