The Stress Effect

Since 1992, April has been recognized as Stress Awareness Month. Chronic stress has been shown to negatively impact health in a multitude of ways, and enduring high levels of stress can decrease performance at both an individual and organizational level. Research also indicates that stress can impact historically marginalized communities in more extreme ways. In this podcast episode, we explore ways to recognize and address stress in both yourself and your team, and the importance of understanding how it manifests uniquely for each of us.

Transcript below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:07

Hello, and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. I'm your host, Erica D'Eramo. Today we'll be discussing stress. So we'll explore stress from a personal and physiological standpoint, but also from an organizational standpoint. We'll discuss ways to recognize stress and ways to address it both for yourself and for your team. Thanks for joining us for this next episode of Season 3 of the Two Piers podcast.

For the past 30 years, April has been recognized as Stress Awareness Month. It's a time in which we can raise awareness about the health impacts of stress, and how it affects both ourselves and those around us. So I wanted to start this podcast out with a personal anecdote back from 2016. So at that time, I had just wrapped up a really high stress, high stakes job working offshore, rotating internationally kind of working on a boat. And I just started a sabbatical, I had just started this company Two Piers, I'd also just gotten married, we just had like a little ceremony with friends and family up in Massachusetts kind of signed the paperwork out in a park with a town clerk, you know, nothing exorbitant. But I was also combining households at the time, now that I wasn't working offshore, we decided to renovate my house while we lived in my partner's house. I also decided to apply for some grad schools to start my MBA and explore grad school programs. Meanwhile, I was in parallel organizing the big wedding celebration that we would be holding in Houston, where, you know, our friends would travel from around the country, and it would kind of be the big party. So, I was doing all this while self managing ADHD and thinking to myself, like, oh, this is the low stress part of my life. This is the part where I've left the high stress work environment behind and now I can just focus on some personal things for a little bit. Then, all of a sudden, I started seeing these symptoms of what looked like an allergic reaction, almost like I'd eaten something that I was allergic to. And we could not figure out the source. I talked to doctors, and we tried eliminating pretty much everything from my diet. They put me on some oral steroids, and yet I was still seeing these like big red blotches that would just come out of nowhere and it persisted. I tried antihistamines, I tried Benadryl, which is an antihistamine, but you know, these all have side effects. So the steroids can make you like a little edgy or cranky, they can cause like increased appetite, decreased metabolism, the Benadryl makes you sleepy and groggy. Just a whole cocktail of things that someone who is about to have to get in a little white dress does not, does not want to deal with. And I just felt increasingly helpless and frustrated. And then we like had no answers. So it just happened to be that in those days leading up to the wedding, I offhandedly mentioned to my OBGYN during my annual appointment that I was having these like, allergy symptoms, and we couldn't figure out what it was. I'd like gone to hypoallergenic everything. And I was essentially eating just like bowls of rice at that point. She laughed and was like, "Well, it's the stress silly." And I thought like, I'm not stressed.

There's no stress, like, what I'm not even like doing anything I'm, I'm, I'm not working offshore anymore. So this is like the low stress period. And she kind of like rattled off all the things that I was doing, these major life changes that I was tackling all at once. And I realized, like, oh, right, I am stressed. It's just a different type of stress. I was so just caught up in the sheer number of things I had to get done and just entirely focused on powering through that I really hadn't even considered the magnitude of what I was trying to accomplish. And it just didn't fit in my paradigm either of what I thought stress looked like. So instead of being in an environment where people could die if I made a mistake, or we were always on edge, and the hours were really long, and there were sleep deprivation, it was a different type of stress, but stress that I had gotten used to, in a way. And now I told myself, you know, I'm just like, I'm arranging Airbnb reservations for family members, and travel plans and catering reservations and this is easier stuff. But it wasn't, it wasn't easier stuff, there were lots of interpersonal interactions going on, there was a lot to juggle, there were a lot of disparate work streams happening with pretty high stakes. So, yeah, I finally realized what the source of this reaction was, and it was my own body kind of saying, like, timeout, stop, that's enough, you're not going to acknowledge the stress unless we do something that's unavoidably recognizable here, was like putting up a warning flare to say, like, cut it out, this isn't sustainable. And it did right before the big wedding event in an unavoidable way. So, it was clear, once it was clear what the source of the stress was, or what the source of the this reaction was, I was able to take measures to kind of intervene, and I was able to sort of delegate a lot of stuff and let go of some of the perfectionism around it, and just sit my butt down and do some meditation, which really, really helped. And so in those photos from that day, I managed to get into that little cream colored Diane Von Furstenberg dress after all, and there's no big red blotches in any other photos. But, I still look back on that and think, how unaware I was of my own stress levels, and whenever I start to feel stress kind of reaching those unsustainable levels in my life, I remember like there's a potential allergic reaction around the corner that might kick in, that I'll then have to deal with in parallel, when my body just says, nope.

So what's the point of this story? What's the learning that I want our listeners to take away? Well, there are a couple, one big piece of it is the connection between mind and body, they are in fact, one in the same. So our brain's primary function is actually to maintain what's called allostasis. And you might not have heard that word before. So that's the process in which a state of internal physiological equilibrium is maintained by an organism in response to actual or perceived environmental and psychological stressors. So Lisa Feldman Barrett explains this in actually both of her books that I've read, she might have more than two books, but the two that I've read are, How Emotions Are Made, which goes very much in depth around how our brains function and the connection between emotions and physiology. And then her other book, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain, which is a very engaging and easily approachable book, so I highly recommend it. So she explains that the brain's primary function is not actually thinking, even though that's what we normally think of when we think of the brain. The brain's primary function is to keep you alive. So all of the signals that are transmitted, all of the chemicals that are released, the physiological changes that we then interpret as emotions, for example, my stomach feels queasy, and my blood pressure has gone up and I'm starting to sweat, therefore, this is stress. Those are the result of our brain trying to predict and prepare for whatever will keep us alive. And it does so by budgeting and then deploying the resources that we have. So the energy that we have from eating food, or the water that we have available, the hormones that we have available, but sometimes the perceived threats that we're physically prepared to tackle in that state of elevated stress, that like acute stress, are not the actual deadly threats that we think they are.

Instead, we end up with this chronic enduring stress, which ironically, does not help keep us alive. In fact, it shortens our lifespans. So stress is tied to myriad health conditions that can negatively impact not just our quality of life, but also the length of our life. So in that episode from 2016 that I just discussed, I had a case of acute stress that was layered on top of chronic stress and that manifested into a visible physical reaction. However much of the impact to our bodies and health are just not so easily recognized. But that doesn't mean they're not occurring and enduring. So according to the APA or the American Psychological Association, chronic stress can affect both our physical and psychological well being by causing a variety of problems including anxiety, insomnia, muscle pain, high blood pressure, and a weakened immune system, which you know, during a pandemic is certainly not what we want. So chronic stress, we know is tied to heart disease and even those that do not have heart disease can suffer a heart attack due to an acute bout of stress. So as we approached April this year, and I was thinking about all these amplifying stressors that play layering on top of each other, the incredible amount of stress that most people are managing just day to day already, plus we had a war kicking off in Europe, we had these terrible stories of pain and destruction and talk of nuclear war at play, COVID cases going up and down, surging, but certainly regulations are changing with mass mandates, and people are returning to the office and managing that in a new world of hybrid work or fully returned to work. And oh, April is tax season. So you know, that annual low stress time for everyone where they're getting all their stuff done. And you know, maybe you got your taxes done in January, but I don't know how many people were battling up to the last minute to get taxes done in April. So I'm sure it's just a coincidence that April was chosen as stress Awareness Month, but I certainly saw lots of seasonal stress. And the days are getting longer, which everyone tends to think of as a good thing. And I do think it's a good thing, I think seasonal affective disorder tends to hit people in the winter, when the days are short, we have a lack of sunlight, a lack of vitamin D. But as those days get longer, and our energy increases, sometimes that can lead to higher stress, it can actually lead to increased irritability for some folks and longer days and less sleep. So that light change in the positive direction, we should also be keeping an eye on.

So what can we do? I think we certainly can't change individually, we can't change outcomes of international diplomacy or stop a global pandemic. But one of the most important things we can do is to recognize the stress itself. So that was the other key element from my story from 2016 was this ability to recognize our own kind of tells or identify our own signals from ourselves or our bodies that we are under huge amounts of stress. So we all have different ways that stress will manifest and it could be behavior like biting your nails, or eating sugary foods, or it could be exhibited through poor sleep. Maybe when you're experiencing high stress, you end up doom scrolling on social media for extended periods of time.

So we can learn a lot about our current state by just stopping to take a quick inventory of our behaviors of our rhythms and the sensations and experiences that we're having within our bodies. That's something that we call interoception. So a key to this activity of like taking that inventory is at least, to the best of your ability, trying to leave behind the stories about how stressed you should be right now. So just like in my story, where I felt like, I should not be stressed right now, because I'm not doing the normal things that I would think would stress me out. These are fun things to be doing. You know, picking out tile for the kitchen renovation should be a fun activity. I had my own biases and stories around what stress should look like and that got in the way of me being able to recognize what was happening with myself. Even more recently, a few weeks ago, I realized that I was crying intermittently from things that normally wouldn't cause such a reaction. And that's pretty unusual for me. And then it dawned on me that I was managing a massive amount of stress, coming up on the end of one cue, lots of due dates and deadlines and a lot of different responsibilities in different parts of my life that we're all just kind of landing at the same time. In a moment, I remember thinking, but I don't have anything to be stressed about. And just saying the words out loud, like, I think I've reached my full capacity and I'm approaching burnout was hugely impactful for me.

So being able to stop taking inventory, and just recognize what is versus what should be, can be really helpful in at least understanding where we're at on that scale of stress. And when we've moved from sort of peak operating for intermittent stress into the enduring chronic stress that is now reducing our quality of life and reducing our quality of work and having negative impacts. So while you know coming to that realization is not a cure in and of itself, it is the key to be able to make a change. So that's the key empowering information to be able to then make changes in your life and not just continue with the status quo. So you can start to monitor for when those sorts of, I'll call it a tell, those tells arise, even just when your pace quickens or you can feel your blood pressure increase, and I mentioned interoception. So that's when we are aware of the feelings within our body, and a lot of times yoga practitioners will discuss interoception, but it's being able to understand the small changes in your own physiology that normally you're not even thinking about. Once you can pick up on that, then you can make those adjustments and adjustments can take a wide range of forms. So it might be physical, you might notice that you're feeling elevated stress and you wanna go get some fresh air or go take a walk, maybe play fetch with your puppy, that's a great stress reliever. Or you know, play with your cat. Pets are huge stress relievers, when they're not stressed inducers at three o'clock in the morning. But you can also make environmental changes. So you can increase how much full spectrum light that you have in your workspace, you can put your noise cancelling headphones in and add some uplifting music, if you work better with music. Music and rhythm can be huge stress reducers. Maybe dancing is the way that you can reduce stress. It can also be psychological, we can reframe our situations and maybe understand the true likelihood of negative outcomes. So that threat that we're perceiving that's causing that fight or flight mechanism to kick in, what's the real likelihood that something bad will happen? And what does that really look like? That can take some of the weight out of it. Or perhaps, we stopped trying to control an outcome that isn't ours to control so that you know, there's mechanisms in the reframing that we can use. That's something that we do a lot in coaching is we can reframe things and understand what the true root source of the stressor is, and then how we want to understand it going forward.

But we can also make some big changes. If chronic stress is something that has been a battle for months or years, then it could be that you can say no to big projects, you know, no new projects, I'm already at capacity or no to people. And surrounding yourself with people who understand that and are okay with that can really improve our quality of life. And sometimes it's at a point where we understand that it's time to leave a job or a relationship that's no longer serving us and is the source of our chronic stress. And I recognize that's not always possible. That requires resources, privilege, etc. But a first step is even recognizing where the source of our chronic stress is coming from and what the impact is to our longer term lifespan and quality of life. So another thing to keep in mind, as we look at how we react and respond to stress is that our stress patterns can really be shaped by our past experiences, especially when those include trauma. So in their book What Happened to You?, Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey, do a great job of exploring stress patterns and stress response. I listened to that book on Audible and I thought it was wonderful to hear the discussion back and forth. They provide a PDF that has diagrams to walk through it, but I also think the paperback could be another great resource. So they discussed how individuals who have experienced unpredictable, extreme and or prolonged stress, particularly in their developmental years, may also experience sensitized stress responses. So that means that they're fight, flight or freeze reaction is just triggered more quickly. So if we think of like a curve, it looks more like a logarithmic curve that rises fast and then plateaus versus a linear curve, that's like a straight line in a upward direction. So this type of response, one point was the body's way of keeping that individual safe in the face of unpredictable danger. But it's not so easily turned off when it starts kicking in prematurely or causes a stress response that's no longer appropriate or helpful for us. So we see similar impacts with PTSD. And Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, actually explores this extensively in his book, The Body Keeps the Score. And I mentioned this because it can be really helpful to work with a trained certified therapist to address any past trauma that is negatively impacting how we experience and process stress in our day to day lives. That's not for everybody, not everyone is experiencing those sensitized stress responses due to trauma. But if you are, then definitely there is work to be done that a therapist can help with.

So we've talked about this from a personal perspective, but how about from an organizational perspective. Staying tuned into the stress levels of your team and your employees is critical, but we have to remember that each of us will exhibit and manage stress in our own unique way. So, if you as a team manager are an extrovert, and you think that the way for the group to blow off steam after a big deliverable is to have an off site or like a Zoom happy hour, you'll just need to be mindful that any introverts on your team are probably under increased stress due to that activity, and it's adding about a massive stressor instead of alleviating stress. Similarly, for the extroverts on the team, if they've been working from home extensively for enduring periods of time, that could be leading to feelings of isolation, and thus increased stress. So many times the narratives and myths we have around the value of the grind or toughing it out or putting in the elbow grease, they can actually do a disservice to us in recognizing and addressing stress. And yet, we know that chronic stress levels lead to decreased productivity, difficulty concentrating, increased interpersonal conflict and tension. And then, oversights and mistakes. So while we might mythologize and kind of hold up the grind and putting in the long hours as being somehow like, emblematic of a good worker, it can cloud our vision with recognizing stress and performance on the team. So allowing the stress to then continue to the point of burnout just results in more like days away from work cases, more medical leave higher turnover. And none of that is good for the bottom line. None of that is good for team cohesiveness or for furthering the mission of your organization.

And we also know that members of marginalized and underrepresented groups may not just experience additional higher levels of chronic and acute stress, but they also might have less leeway in addressing that stress in the workplace or showing vulnerability because they're facing biases and stereotypes that will limit the ways in which they feel they can talk about that stress or voice those concerns or be vulnerable. So getting to know each member of your team as an individual and establishing psychological safety and understanding how they cope with and manage stress are all critical leadership skills and frankly responsibilities of any leader. That doesn't mean that we need to entirely change the way the team works for each and every individual but, being able to treat everyone in the way that they will operate best will inherently be better for the team.

So if you are looking for support in dealing with a stressful work environment, or if you want to learn more about establishing healthy work practices in your team, you can get in touch with us at twopiersconsulting.com and you can schedule a free consultation and we'll talk about how we can help you. Our coaches and consultants are here to help you on an individual level and on an organizational level to help you thrive. We look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the Two Piers Podcast.

The Pay Gap Bot That Rocked IWD

International Women's Day can be a drag. Each year, we watch as the corporate world floods social media with supportive statements and images of women, while in the real world, we continue to see systemic disparity for women in the workplace, particularly when we look at the intersection of race and gender. This year, however, we were treated to a glorious Twitter bot - one that retweeted companies' IWD posts along with the median gender pay gap within their organizations. We got to speak with Francesca Lawson, freelance copywriter, social media manager, and co-creator of the Pay Gap Bot. Together we discuss corporate gender parity theater and the data that can help us see the current state of things (as well as what's still missing). Don't miss this fantastic episode!

To learn more about Francesca's work, visit www.francescalawson.com.

Transcript below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers Podcast. This is season three, episode two and today we have another great guest on the podcast. Her name is Francesca Lawson, and she's joining us from the UK. She's a freelance copywriter, a social media manager and the co-creator of the Pay Gap Bot, which many of us took notice of on International Women's Day this year, and it caused quite the conversation.

So welcome Francesca, thank you so much for taking the time to join us, especially when it's probably a quite busy time for you.

Francesca Lawson 0:50

But that was not a problem and thank you for having me on. You know, I really, really loves to tell you a bit more about about the Pay Gap Bot, how it all came about. I'm really pleased that you found it useful and interesting and on International Women's Day.

Erica D'Eramo 1:10

Yeah, I was telling a mutual acquaintance of ours before I knew she was a mutual acquaintance, that for me, International Women's Day can just be really tough because like my lived experience, and the lived experience of many of my clients is that we have not made as much ground as we would like to in terms of gender equity, particularly in the workplace. So when you see this kind of bow wave of posts from companies talking about how wonderful the women in their entities are and how much progress we've made, it just sort of rings a bit hollow. And so, International Women's Day can kind of be a downer for me because it's just that dichotomy between what I see in reality and then what I'm seeing on these externally facing brands. Your project was one of the highlights for me of International Women's Day where I actually saw it and thought like, yes, this is the real deal. This is shining the light on real data that exists that's being collected. So, tell me a little bit about how did you guys come to come to think of this idea? Put it in action?

Francesca Lawson 2:29

Yeah, so, I felt a lot of the same things that you did around International Women's Day, and especially because, you know, I'm in the sort of marketing and communications space myself. I have been in that unfortunate position of having to press publish on things which I know not to be true. You know, I've sat in meetings where we've been discussing, you know, what we're going to do for International Women's Day? How are we going to show our support for black lives matter? Shall we change our logo to a pride flag for Pride Month? And I've made myself really quite unpopular by trying to challenge that and ask the questions about like, okay, well, why do we want to communicate that? What are we doing behind the scenes that sort of in's us a place in that conversation? And of course, that's not what people want to hear. They want to hear, like, oh, great idea, you know, let's push out some really lovely messages, let's show our support and then, you know, it just covers up any sort of need to do the real work and behind the scenes to improve the lives of marginalized people within their organization, for example. So yeah, my sort of inspiration for wanting to create something like this was to put the data in the spotlight so that people can kind of see, you know, see the truth, understand that behind the sort of smiling photoshoot, and the kind of lunches and the webinars that there's real work still to be done. We want to sort of keep the focus on that real work that's to be done rather than just these kind of performative gestures.

Erica D'Eramo 4:19

Yeah. I almost am of two minds sometimes when it comes to the aspirational element of some of this that, like I do believe that if you can see it, you can be it and showing photos of people who wouldn't normally picture working in those environments can be an inspiration to that next generation and I think that that's important. And also, I'm not so sure that that's really the intention behind so much of this. And I think that a lot of times companies are trying to gain credit that they haven't quite earned yet. So, my own kind of humorous anecdote to that was when I worked on a facility where there were, I don't know, like, a little over 170 of us at a time. I was generally one of one or two women on the boat at any given time, or on the facility. And whenever the regional photographer would come out with like leadership, it was like I had a tail because they would be trailing me just like taking photos all the time. You know, you're not in your like best, you're in coveralls like, you know, it's, you're working offshore. So I finally had to stop and I actually really enjoyed working with a photographer, he was a great guy. But I had to explain to him like, I am not gonna let you take any more photos of me because these photos end up being used in our sustainability report or in internal or external marketing, that portrays that we have all these women working out here, when really, if you took a picture of the whole crew, including me, it would be quite shocking how few women there are. Yeah, I'm consistently hearing about how I got my position because I was a woman, I got my position because our number one priority was to promote women, because we're seeing all these photos, right and it's giving people the feeling that we've made so much more progress than we actually had. So there was actually a lot of backlash that wasn't even earned backlash. I kind of had to put a stop to it, I was like, I'm really sorry, but you can't take my photo anymore. It's like it doesn't align with what my real actual experiences. So when I see these International Women's Day, kind of posts, I just sort of, I always wonder like, what is the rest of the org look like behind this photo? Like behind this one woman? How many women? Did they leave behind the scenes? Like how many people didn't make it to this photo? So yeah, what are your thoughts?

Francesca Lawson 7:11

Absolutely. It's like, you know it's all about sort of, like accountability and honesty and fall for me. I just wonder sort of how the women that I kind of call for these photo shoots feel like, one day a year, the company wants to take notice of them? And what about all the rest and is my concern? I think fortunately, I've not been in that position myself, where I've been sort of like rolled out to for the cameras and for them to kind of promote themselves on the equality angle. I think that fortunately, there's the sufficient other women at my workplaces that they've ended up with that job. But then as well, you've got to wonder about who were the women that aren't in the photograph? Are we kind of just picking off one women of every major ethnicity to make us look like we're really good? And anti racism as well. Yeah, you just think, where are the rest? How do they feel about how their images are being used? Because, I think what it all comes back to for me is you want to use pictures of women for promotional reasons without actually seeing what challenges that they face, what the barriers are to their success in your organization and working towards removing them.

Erica D'Eramo 8:53

Yeah. So for all the people who have faced barriers along the way that then see these gleaming photos of the success stories, it almost sends a message of look, it's possible, like if you just try hard enough, because the message is always look, this woman, she tried really hard and she was really smart and she overcame racism, and she overcame poverty. And she overcame this and that and look at how successful she's been. So if you are just as tough or if you are just as resilient you also could be here too. It puts that little shine on it instead of taking the onus for some of these systemic inequalities back to the source, which is the entities that continuously perpetuate them.

Francesca Lawson 9:49

Yeah, that's a really interesting point. Because it is often that we talk about inspirational women and it's just like, why do we always have to be inspirational? Why can't we just exist and get on with our lives without sort of fear of like harassment either at work or in the street, and, you know, getting paid fairly for the value that we bring. Those things shouldn't be inspirational, they should be just sort of standard.

Erica D'Eramo 10:26

Right?

Francesca Lawson 10:27

Yeah. It's like, from now, when we talk about sort of these inspirational women it's like you say, it's sort of ignores the issues that they've had to kind of fight through, or potentially things that they've had to give up. Like a lot of women still have to make that choice between sort of career and family. And so, like, for financial reasons, and that's not inspirational to me if you know, okay, yeah, we've got a woman CEO, but you know, she's actually been unable to do something that she really wanted, which is sort of have a family. You know, that's not inspirational to me because it's not the full picture.

Erica D'Eramo 11:17

No, and I think that especially, so coming from engineering for me sometimes I just end up taking this very pragmatic view of like, okay, cool, you found that one person that defied the odds and put a spotlight on them, but, statistically speaking, if we look at the statistics, they are not representative of what you would consider equitable or fair if we look across the spectrum. So, we know that to be true, we know what would look representative. So what are the underlying causes, and then just go try to fix those underlying causes? These are symptoms. If you see your diversity and inclusion numbers or just your diversity numbers, not looking the way you would expect and they don't look representative of the population you're pulling from, or operating in, that would be a symptom. That's like, in and of itself, isn't the goal. Diversity in and of itself, like, sure that would represent if you had diversity, that would mean that people were being treated equitably, that you probably didn't have discrimination in your recruitment or in your promotion systems, but it's still just a symptom in and amongst many other symptoms, right? So, that I think gets really obscured when we just use these talking points and we find a single data point or a single human being that we can kind of shine a spotlight on and say like, but look, she did it, so you can too. Okay, cool, but like 99% of the other people who were in those circumstances did not and is that really what we want? Is that really gonna lead to the outcomes we want?

Francesca Lawson 13:03

Yeah, I think it's a really interesting point that you make about representation, because it's like even if you sort of put more like a wider range of people into those roles in your organization, if you sort of achieve representation, both in terms of like, race, gender, disability, etc. It's no use of just having representation, if the systems that created the inequalities are still in place, you know, there's work to be done on sort of like policy level and to sort of make sure that it's actually a place where people can thrive not just you put people in to makeup your diversity numbers and then wonder why they're leaving on mass or they're not advancing in their careers, and because, you know, under certain themes that are within the control of individual organizations that they can do so like they are in control of what they pay, for instance, and, you know, the, one of the kind of...

Erica D'Eramo 14:09

They would lead you to believe that they're not, by the way.

Francesca Lawson 14:12

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 14:12

Like, oh, but this is market or this is like what she made coming in, right? So like, we're gonna perpetuate that inequality. Yeah. Sorry.

Francesca Lawson 14:19

It's like one of the things that we've heard since we've had the pay gap bot life is like from airlines, for instance, the people like to make the excuse that pilots are predominantly men and they have the highest wages in the organization. Whereas the more service base roles, the cabin crew, the contact centers, they're predominantly female and they're sort of lower wage jobs. But then my question is, well, I'm not disputing that pilots should be paid generously. But why aren't the cabin crew in the contact center teams also paid generously...

Erica D'Eramo 15:02

Why aren't there more female pilots? Like, why?

Francesca Lawson 15:05

Oh totally, yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 15:06

Like what's happening in the recruitment system? Or what's happening in the development system? Like? I think so often, if we just take a snapshot at a certain period of time we can alleviate ourselves of the guilt about what we inherited, but then not do anything to actually try to change that. Is it right that pilots are generally mostly male? Just like engineers, you hear the same thing from the energy industry, right? Often they'll see the pay gap and explain it away that universities are graduating mostly men in these engineering programs and they tend to make more money than HR or like some of the support staff or the fields that tend to be more highly populated with women. Okay, well, we could probably ask why we're devaluing certain professions, which we know, as soon as those professions become more populated with women, they get devalued, like we've seen this time and again, so it's kind of chicken and egg. But also, what are we doing to make sure that women are accessing opportunities in engineering? Are you going into the universities and doing programs to show that these can be wonderful and successful careers for women? Or are you going into the middle schools and showing young girls that they can have a career in engineering? And why is all your support staff women? Why are there no male admins? Like, I just don't understand some of this. So I agree, you get that initial pushback against the data and it almost feels a motive sometimes when it's like, well, yeah, but okay, and then what? Like, and now what are we saying that we're just happy for this pay gap to persist for eternity? Or are we actually going to go and look at the root causes?

Francesca Lawson 17:11

Yeah, that's it, it's like, it's got to be sort of like a holistic solution, if you will. How can we create the conditions in the workplace where, so that, you know, women can thrive? Likewise, how do we create the circumstances in the education system, which mean this sort of, I guess, the science engineering kind of pathways are more appealing to girls. And then also in the home as well, what sort of influences are going on in the home, which may be reinforced stereotypes? And likewise, when we get to like domestic labor as well, how is that being split? Because, often, if there's sort of a better gender balance, in terms of the tasks in the home, then that kind of gives a better gender balance in sort of work as well.

Erica D'Eramo 18:13

Yep. Yeah, that's one of the reasons that we saw when COVID hit, that we lost like 30 years worth of progress towards equality in the workplace in terms of gender roles, because the responsibilities within the home just became so much more onerous when there wasn't access to childcare outside the home when there wasn't access to school. We did see that still, that is falling to the women even, I think the data showed that even regardless of if the woman in the household, and this is in like a household with a heterosexual, like male, female couple, that even in where the women was making more money, they still would be the one to have to make sacrifices in terms of career during COVID to help out with home responsibilities. So yeah, in that light, I think that there's probably some limitations on what a company can do. But also, I think it doesn't let it doesn't let companies off the hook, right?

Francesca Lawson 19:27

I mean, yeah, definitely no, I think...

Erica D'Eramo 19:29

All of the above.

Francesca Lawson 19:31

Yeah, that's it. It's like it's quite a knotty issue with several different contributing factors and so I think companies need to take responsibility for their part. They can't wait for the other parts that they're not responsible for to fix it for them. They can't wait for or they shouldn't wait for, say like governments to tell them what to do. They should be taking steps to improve the lives of all marginalized people within their organization now, and so that, over time, we are making genuine steps towards parity, rather than just sort of one post a year for like, kind of celebrating and empowering women while actually, life on the ground is much more difficult.

Erica D'Eramo 20:30

Yeah. So the piece around the government involvement is an interesting one, because we, I don't think, would be able to do the same pay gap bot necessarily, if it weren't, you know, like, here in the US, we don't collect the same pay gap data that the UK does. Do you have any other history on that? I was working a UK job at the time that that happened, I just remember a lot of noise around it and companies being like this data is not gonna be representative, this is going to be really onerous. But I'm interested, like, from your perspective, how has that gone? What's the history?

Francesca Lawson 21:11

Soyeah, first year that it launched was 2017 and so this year, we're now on the fifth year of data. The purpose of it was the increased transparency will kind of be the instigator of some change. Unfortunately, I don't think that that's quite works out the case, we do have five years worth of data. While some individual companies have shown an improvement, there's also a fair few that have got worse. I think in the latest data set for the UK, 77% of companies reported that women's average earnings were less than men's. So like five years into this requirement, I would have expected it to be a lot less than three quarters of companies that have a gender pay gap. So yeah, I think that the reporting requirement is a good thing to be able to quantify the problem and be able to kind of get an idea of kind of where it lies. But I don't think that it's done enough to force companies to actually take responsibility for their paths in creating this gap. Their data gets published on the government site, but they don't have to publish any sort of action plan along with that. So they're not held accountable for, say if they said, right, well, we've got a gender pay gap of 15% so therefore, we're going to raise salaries across the board and we're going to introduce better pay parental leave policies. There's no sort of, they don't have to declare that and then follow up next year with oh, yeah, we did this and this was the effect. So I think that the limitation of the data is that it is literally just sort of that one data point, the gap between the median women's earnings and the medium men's earnings. It's a good indicator of sort of where the problems might lie. But then it's not pushing them towards actually fixing them enough.

Erica D'Eramo 23:54

Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, because a median pay gap is again, like a symptom, right?

Francesca Lawson 24:00

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 24:01

And the underlying root cause of that pay gap could exist in a variety of places.

Francesca Lawson 24:06

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 24:07

And so it's just like a little blinking light that says you need to go look here. Something isn't operating the way it should be.

Francesca Lawson 24:16

Check engine.

Erica D'Eramo 24:17

Yeah, check engine like, oh, well, this could be a big problem or it could be a little problem. Yeah, I often draw a comparison between diversity metrics or demographic metrics and the world of safety because that's kind of where I came up through. And if you see safety numbers going south, if your safety numbers don't look the way you would expect them to or want them to look, it's not like you can just snap your fingers and say like, okay, people stop slamming your hands in doors. Stop having loss of primary containment. Stop doing those things you have to go digging to find out what's happening in the system. But generally, if you see safety numbers that are off the mark, that means that there's a larger, operational issue that's underlying it. You are then wondering, well, what are we losing in terms of efficiency, right? If we're not operating with operational discipline, if we don't have the fundamentals to keep people safe, we don't have the fundamentals to operate efficiently either. I feel like my head goes to the same place when we talk about diversity metrics or pay gap metrics, that this is a blinking indicator to us that something isn't operating the way it should, that perhaps we're not accessing talent as efficiently as we could be, we're not developing talent as efficiently as we could be. We're not gaining the full perspective of some of the brightest minds in the organization and then compensating them fairly. So those are all like fundamental things that influence the performance of a business. As a leader in that organization or as an investor in that organization, I would want to see that, at least understood and then addressed. That's my...

Francesca Lawson 26:16

Yeah, yeah, it's totally, I think there's like an old saying, that springs to mind about like, an, like a happy employee being a productive employee. And so it's like, if you're not sort of nurturing your talent and trying to make their lives at your organization, as sort of valuable and as kind of smooth as possible, then, you lose people, you limit their progression and they check out, that's just what happens. I've been in that situation before, where you just start to get frustrated when you get continually kicked back at work and then you're not productive, you're not happy, you kind of drag down the morale of the entire team. So yeah, I think that it's such an obvious thing that there is a connection between efficiency, productivity, and ultimately, kind of profit and the wellbeing and safety of your employees.

Erica D'Eramo 27:30

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. I think that's wherever that underlying issue is, I remember asking, seeing some pay gap data for the organization I was working in that showed that people within the same band, there was not a differential in pay based on gender, or like a substantial differential, based on gender if you looked at it across the seniority band. I thought like, okay, that's cool. But like, I'm not an idiot. How fast does the average man take to get like, how long does it take the average man in this company to get to that seniority abandoned? How long does it take the average woman in this company to look to get to that seniority? Like, let's cut the data a different way, then. Because you still have an overall pay gap. So maybe this is about promotion, right? Maybe this is about like developing your talent and it's not about actually just giving people within the band disparate pay for the same job, but it's about like opportunity. I think it almost becomes a shell game where you can cut the data however you want to support your effort. But if the fundamental goal here is that you want an equitable workplace that's performing towards its mission, who are you serving by playing the shell game? I don't understand.

Francesca Lawson 29:02

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 29:02

What's the point?

Francesca Lawson 29:03

You know, it's really interesting that you've brought that up, because, so the UK Data Records the median pay gap and the mean pay gap. We use the bot to display the median pay gap and just to sort of rule out any kind of extremes skewing the data, which it could be like...

Erica D'Eramo 29:27

Like the CEO, right?

Francesca Lawson 29:28

Yeah, it could be just like one well paid female CEO makes the company look like they're doing really well as a whole, when that doesn't paint the right picture for those sort of on the other rungs. So, whenever we got a lot of questions through about like, oh why you use the median rather than the mean. And a surprising number from companies who are like, well, our mean pay gap is only 2%. So, we don't really see it as a problem. They might have a medium gap of maybe like 10, 15%, but they're choosing the lower figure on purpose to make themselves look better. In my mind, it's like, you can't just cut the data the way that you want it to escape scrutiny. A gap is a gap. It's better to just face up to it. Maybe use it as an opportunity to reflect and go like, oh, hey, yeah, we didn't realize it was quite as serious as it is. These are the action points that we're going to look into to fix it. So yeah, it's really disappointing just to see that being the defense that a lot of companies have looked to, and when we've been able to highlight their data.

Erica D'Eramo 30:51

Yeah. It is fascinating, right? I think it's actually quite psychological, where that comes from that, that immediate move to sort of defensiveness or defend the status quo or your role in it or not want to make changes, I suppose. But, I don't really know who that's serving. I mean, clearly serving the patriarchy, I guess. But, it's like using your engine light analogy, right? Like, okay, the engine lights on and the brake light is on. But we're gonna ignore the fault because we fix the engine light and it looks okay now.

Francesca Lawson 31:30

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 31:32

It's telling you there's something going on here that means your company isn't running the way you would want it to run. So you can go fix it or you can create excuses but, in the end, I truly believe that the companies that can successfully remove arbitrary limitations, like discrimination and bias, are going to achieve their missions. I say companies, but really just entities, any organization that can remove that, those biases in the system, whether they're cognitive biases or biases in how those systems work, if they can remove those so that they can better accomplish their mission that just seems like a no brainer to me.

Francesca Lawson 32:25

Yeah, absolutely. That's the way to do it and in my opinion, those that aren't doing this work now, I think that they will continue to sort of lose relevance as time goes on. I think it's going to become increasingly important. What I hope that we've shown with the pay gap bot is that once this data is actually in the hands of the public, then it equips them with the tools to hold their employers to account and challenge inequality where they find it. That is something that I think any employer is going to have to be ready for, if they're going to kind of continue to be successful in the coming years.

Erica D'Eramo 33:18

Yeah, yeah, I don't see any real argument towards a lack of transparency. Right? That's a pretty hard stance to take that we don't want transparency, because we don't want people to know what they're getting into as either an investor or an employee, like a potential employee. I think there has been a big shift in the power dynamics between employees and employers, with COVID. Definitely, in the US, are you using the same thing in the UK?

Francesca Lawson 33:54

Oh, it's a bit hard to say, because I'm self employed now. And so, I'm a little bit out of the corporate leaf. But, I went self employed because of the pandemic, because, you know, I realized what I truly valued was kind of flexible working, ability to have lots of time at home and with my partner, the dog, with friends and family, and my previous workplace wasn't really serving that. They were very much we want our employees to be coming back to the office. And...

Erica D'Eramo 34:33

Yeah.

Francesca Lawson 34:34

Because I'd been able to use the pandemic to save the money that we're spending on transport to commute to an office, then that kind of gave me a little bit of a confidence that I can take the leap into self employment. Yes, it's a risk but I survived two years of a pandemic. I'm a lot more risk averse than then so a lot less risk averse than I used to be. So I think that that was a bit of a kind of, it served as a learning curve for me to understand what I wanted and if my existing employer wasn't going to satisfy that, then there were other options. I could have a go at doing it on my own.

Erica D'Eramo 35:24

Yeah, I mean, I guess it was the same for me. So we're like two data points, but the great resignation in the US really, the conversation around it is very much similar to what you just recounted that people are realizing that there is no low risk option. Even people who are somewhat risk averse, I'm actually a quite risk averse person. So when I said, I'm going to go out on my own, people were like, oh, that's such a risky option, why would you do that? I'm like, there is no low risk option. It's all about what you're measuring is in terms of risk, right? Financially, financial stability, I might be in like increasing my risk exposure, but likelihood of living a fulfilled life where I reach my potential, I'm probably decreasing my risk exposure here. So, I think with that a lot of people went through that same realization and it's really shifted what employers need to show to potential employees. Employers are having to compete for talent, they're having to compete with other employers who are in the same space of losing people and needing to scramble and they're having to compete with the opportunity to work for yourself or work for another small entity, or a startup or something that fits your ethos more. This data, this transparency, I think, becomes even more powerful when potential applicants are looking at a company to see what am I getting myself into? Do I want to work for this company and when talent is so highly sought after right now.

Francesca Lawson 37:17

Yeah, totally. A question that I tend to ask when I've been to job interviews before is like, I've looked up and looked at their data on the government side and ask them, this is the data kind of what's your kind of understanding of it and what are you doing to fix it? The what are you doing to fix it answer tells you loads and loads and loads about the company that you're getting into, it tells you about their culture, because if it is met with quite a defensive reaction or like they reel out the, oh, it's because we have more men in leadership positions, and...

Erica D'Eramo 37:59

That one. Okay, why?

Francesca Lawson 38:04

Yeah, then you know, that like, okay, this potentially isn't going to be, this potentially isn't a company where I'm going to be able to realize my potential and I'm going to be supported in my progression. So yeah, I think it's a really important kind of question to ask and totally understand that potentially, there will be people that don't have the luxury of choice of being able to sort of step away from a potential employer and job application because of that, but, at least asking the question in the first place, it shows the employer that it's an important issue and it's something that they need to be prepared for, they need to be aware of, because chances are, it's going to come up again.

Erica D'Eramo 38:53

Yeah. Yeah and for those of us that can ask the question and do have the luxury, I feel like it's even more important that we use that privilege to do it, because if this is a case where a rising tide will lift all boats. Especially when it comes to more competitive wages, a fuller package, fuller benefits package, even if there are pay gap issues, like what are they doing on the other side of things? I mean in the UK you won't have health care as being as large of a part of a package, in the US like that's a really important part. Leave childcare on site, like all of these things that make that up that speak to where the intentions of the company are and how holistic of a picture they're seeing when they look at this. So yeah, thank you so much for lending your insight here. Is there anything that we didn't talk about today that you think is worth highlighting for our listeners?

Francesca Lawson 40:00

I think one thing that I'm just gonna add is that the data that we have on the gender pay gap in the UK is still really quite limited. We currently only cover gender. As we kind of touched on in our conversation today, there are so many other different inequalities that intersect.

Erica D'Eramo 40:22

Yeah.

Francesca Lawson 40:23

Withi society and within work. So, yeah, I think that there's a little bit of a caveat is like we still don't have a true picture of, say, how people of color are affected by pay gaps at UK companies. That's something that I really, really want to be able to fix. I really want the government and the UK to extend to cover things like ethnicity as well. So when we have events like Black History Month and we'll have the same thing, we'll have companies will put some symbols in their logos, they'll maybe put out a couple of posts about like inspirational black people from history and it's all looking backwards. We need to start looking forwards rather than just sort of looking at how far, we've come far. Let's not undo that. We can sort of acknowledge that. But we still got further to go and any sort of awareness event and to do with social issues, it should be a chance to reflect on why we still have issues with inequality and what we're doing to fix it.

Erica D'Eramo 41:40

Yeah. Yeah, it's an excellent reminder, every time we do see pay gap numbers in the US, it's almost always more indicative of what white women experience here. As we start to look at ethnicity and race, it becomes a much starker issue and that inequality and intersectionality becomes really important part of the conversation. So yeah, I think that data is really important. I hope we start to get more transparency in the United States, because I feel like the conversation that it has at least started in the UK has been a valuable one. I would love to see something similar here. So yes, improvements all across the board, that we can continue to work towards and strive for. Thank you so much, not just for coming to talk to us today. But thank you so much for the ingenuity and putting in the effort and the hours that I'm sure it took to get that started and prompting a lot of really good conversations on International Women's Day for me and for a lot of folks I talk to.

Francesca Lawson 42:50

Yes, thank you so much for having me and for all your support of what we've been doing. Still absolutely amazes me that we've enabled some of these conversations to happen. So, yeah, really appreciate the support.

Erica D'Eramo 43:04

Yeah. Awesome. So if folks are interested in engaging with you for freelance work, is there any site that they should look to? Or?

Francesca Lawson 43:16

Yes, so when, for kind of any copywriting or social media projects, and my website is francescalawson.com. I'm on Twitter @franwritescopy and yeah, happy to have any conversations about my work or the bot or anything.

Erica D'Eramo 43:37

Cool, awesome. Well, yeah, hopefully, we can work together in the future as well. This has been great to have you on. For the website, we'll include that in the show notes and the transcript as well. And for the Two Piers consulting, as always, you can find us at twopiersconsulting.com. We are on all the social media platforms. So LinkedIn, I shouldn't say all of them. But we're on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at Two Piers Consult and you can find us there or on our website. So, thanks again for joining us for this episode. It was a great one. We really appreciate our guests coming on and sharing your knowledge and we'll see you next episode.

Selecting the Right Coach

In our first episode of Season 3, we're joined by fellow Two Piers coach Dr. Anthony Luevanos. In this episode, we explore how to go about selecting a coach - what to look for, what matters, and what might matter less than you'd think! We answer some of the common questions we encounter and share our own insights and lived experiences. This is also a great opportunity to get to know Anthony a bit better and understand his coaching style and who he works with as clients.

Transcription Below:

Erica D'Eramo 0:05

Hello and welcome to the Two Piers podcast, season three. We'll be kicking off this season today with an exploration of what to look for in a coach. So we get this question a lot and figured it was worth a discussion. In order to help kind of explore this, we have a special guest joining us today. So, fellow coach Anthony Luévanos who also coaches with Two Piers Consulting.

Welcome, Anthony.

Anthony Luévanos 0:45

Thank you. I appreciate it. It's good to be here. So glad I get to join you on the season three podcast this so much fun.

Erica D'Eramo 0:55

Yeah, I always love having good guests on it really makes podcasting a whole lot of fun. So, Anthony and I have kind of talked about this in the past about what we like in a coach, what we see as valuable in a coach, but with the amount of times that we've fielded this question, we thought, you know, why not have a discussion? He and I might have kind of different points of view on this. So yeah, Anthony, what are your thoughts just to kind of kick off?

Anthony Luévanos 1:28

Sure. Well, I think one of the very first things that you always think about is whether or not to do the research, or whether or not to do, just get one under your belt. So, there are definitely those two different ways and maybe even more, but you could do the all the research you want on a particular coach and then get to that coaching experience, and then realize, oh gosh, this isn't working, or never have done the research, get one under your belt and realize that this is the one you just don't want to stick with the rest of your life. So there's nothing like getting that experience in there firsthand to establish that coaching relationship. But also, you could do a hybrid and do a little bit of research and get one under your belt, and then move on from there.

Erica D'Eramo 2:25

Yeah, I think a lot of coaches offer kind of either a free consultation or get to know me session in advance. So that would definitely be something that I would recommend taking them up on that offer. I know at Two Piers, we offer a free 45 minute consultation first. That really is for people to get a feel for our vibe, our style for us to explain what they should expect out of coaching and how we coach and for them to make a decision at that point, if it sounds like a match or if it doesn't sound like a match. That happens on both sides too. So, I certainly want a client to use that time to decide if they feel like I'm a good match for them as a coach. And similarly, if I sense that, you know, I'm not the right coach for that client, I'll let them know. It might be, you know, that actually, Anthony might be a better match for them as a coach based on style or background. So...

Anthony Luévanos 3:30

And you know, sometimes you just run into these coaches that are just amazing. I mean, they can switch from coaching style to coaching style and they are great adapters at whatever you throw at them. So, that's why I say you can do the research or all the research you want, but getting that first under your belt and getting familiar with the coaching process and the experience is, I think, essential for all clients. You may run into that coach in that rare occasion that can adapt to you and adapt to what you need, and really have a great positive experience and get some really great stuff. So don't sell a coat short if you've done all your research and you're thinking well, this particular coach may not really fit my style, who I am, my personality but I would say cut the coach a little bit of slack, experience the coaching firsthand and see how it goes. Sometimes there's the off chance that you can go on a blog or read a profile on one of these coaching certification agencies or associations and kind of get a little bit of background. But that experience really doesn't do justice to what that coach can bring. Let's be honest, all coaches on their profiles, depending on how often they check those profiles and then how often they update their description online. Coaches change over time and some coaches, they constantly are in that space of learning and evolving as coaches. So just remember that when you're shopping around for a coach.

Erica D'Eramo 5:45

Yeah, I completely agree, I think there's no, there's no guarantee from doing any of the background research that it's going to be a match as far as style goes. Just like for those of us that have experienced the online dating world, you could find a perfect profile that looks like it's going to be an exact match. But, there's something about chemistry that really makes a big difference. I don't think I know of too many coach, I don't think I know of any coaches that don't have something in place to kind of accommodate for a mismatch in chemistry. So, I would certainly recommend if you don't get a complimentary session or kind of a get to know you session, if you're going straight into a paid coaching engagement, make sure that the coaching agreement has something in there to accommodate for if it's not a match. If you get through that first session, do they have a refund policy? Will they allow you to cancel the engagement. You don't need to have something go wrong in a coaching session for it to just not feel like a match, because it's very, it's very unique and very personal. So yeah, I agree, getting one under your belt is kind of critical to making sure that it's the right coach for you.

Anthony Luévanos 7:16

Oh, for sure.

Erica D'Eramo 7:17

What are some other...Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

Anthony Luévanos 7:19

No, I was just thinking, you know, you don't want to get into a coyote ugly situation and you're just trying to chew your arm out of that bear trap, you're like out of the bear trap, like, oh, my gosh, I just committed six sessions or bought six sessions with this person. So yeah, that's a good point, Erica. But yeah, like you were asking some other aspects is, you know, what do you want to get out of the coaching experience? Yeah, what do you envision for your experience? Some of the things that you can think about, or do you want to set goals for yourself? Are you looking for a partner in a visioning process? Do you want to challenge yourself in some aspect of life? Are you trying to solve a problem, think through a situation? Even as basic as overcoming intergroup conflict and trying to get some ideas and having that coach just help you dig deeper, to get just a different perspective on life experiences and how to think through these things. So, those are those are important points when you start considering what coach or a type of coach you want to work with so that you can have an opportunity really to move throughout these different situations. I mentioned before, a coach can really, great coaches can really adapt to different scenarios and they can really help you move through these spaces. So often, you're in a situation and there are lots of coaches and some coaches specialize with particular clients that have a particular outcome, or they're thinking about something that they want to get done through the coaching experience. So just remember that when you're reading a profile and when you're interacting with somebody, make sure that that is a good fit for the expected outcomes that you have.

Erica D'Eramo 9:36

Yeah, yeah, I think that, especially as coaching is becoming more well understood and people are understanding that, you know, coaches partner with their clients, we're seeing a bit less of this, but oftentimes, there's just a really basic misunderstanding of what coaching provides and people are expecting that they'll meet a coach and get a lot of advice. Sometimes that's what they want and sometimes we know advice can not be as helpful as we expect it to be. So that's another thing to get clear with your coach on at the beginning, what is it that you're looking for? Because I know that if I made a client or potential client who says like, I just want you to give me career advice, I'll usually take that opportunity to take a pause and understand what are you hoping to seek by getting my advice? Because in a coaching context, we generally don't give advice, right? That's one of the things that people are often surprised about that we tend to avoid giving advice because we deeply believe that our clients know best, their own situation and know best what is right for the and so we help them uncover that. But being clear about what your outcomes are and what your goals are, will be really helpful in that coach understanding A if they're a right fit for you, and B, what that engagement might look like, what the arc of the engagement might look like and how they can be helping you to measure milestones, measure progress against that. So yeah, those are definitely important as you're starting on your coach discovery adventure.

Anthony Luévanos 11:27

For sure and I keep thinking about this, there's an image in my head that I keep going back to every time I have a coaching session and that image is the difference between someone with a flash, between following someone with the flashlight, the coach, being the one with the flashlight, and kind of leading and lighting the way versus the coach being behind the client and kind of lighting the way for the client wherever the client wants to go.

Erica D'Eramo 12:00

Yeah.

Anthony Luévanos 12:00

So, you know, it's a subtle difference but it's very important in terms of how you treat the how you treat the client or coachee, how you treat them and how the experience for the client goes. Because as a coach, you always want to be that person that says, where do you want to go with this conversation? What do we want? What do you want to accomplish at the end of this, so that the client can have some autonomy on or over where they'd like to take the conversation and how to move through X, Y, and Z?

Erica D'Eramo 12:43

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that kind of brings us on to topics of like, style and structure, actually. So, we've touched on style a little bit in chemistry, but I think coaching style to me is a really, maybe one of the most important factors for me when I'm seeking coaches, because, believe it or not, like most coaches have a coach, I think it's really good as a coach for me to also have a coach because I get to sit in the client's seat quite a bit, it keeps my skills honed, it keeps me empathetic towards my clients. So yeah, what I look for in a coach is really style above all else. That blends a bit into structure, how do they like to structure things, but I think what works for me won't necessarily work for other people and vice versa. So there's no right or wrong style, necessarily. I guess there are some styles that don't really adhere to what the ICF would consider coaching. But it's not a bad thing if you meet a coach and their style doesn't match yours, their style will match someone else's needs. So, just to be real with that, because I think so often in this world, we're taught to adapt to the hierarchy, adapt to the people that we're working with. In this case, I don't know that that's quite as important. It's important for the coach to be able to adapt, but for the client to be able to adapt to a coach's style is less important, actually, I think finding a style that works naturally is the most important. There's a lot of styles out there and some of the coaching databases like ICF will often ask how do you describe your style as a coach? And if they're looking to match people, they'll say, what style of coaching do you prefer? So what do we mean by style, I guess. So, Anthony, what do you think of when I talk about coaching style?

Anthony Luévanos 15:05

Well, I mean, honestly, just think of your attitude and your approach, kind of meeting the client where they are and just kind of getting a general feeling for how hard to press in, when to pull back, going at the pace of the client. That's important whenever you're thinking about, okay, well, this client seems the need to be challenged, they need a more direct approach. When you're coaching it does seem that coaches often find themselves moving from one place to another, depending on the particular topic or maybe even the general clients disposition. And so, attitude is really important when you're coaching a client. So when you're selecting a coach, understanding, you kind of have at the outset to have an understanding of what that coaches style is, whether they're more direct and firm or just non direct and gentle, unstructured versus structured. So oftentimes, we always hear coaches say that they have just a solid set of questions and those are the questions that they ask. I mean, that works, for some situations, but an unstructured approach is just as effective with clients.

For me, yeah, I would definitely advise clients or potential clients to look for those little things in terms of style. Because depending on what you need, whether you need some motivation or you need some inspiration, or you need someone that just practical, you need someone to guide you through that again, that process of thinking through a more practical situation, then, yeah, definitely. I would say, look at that coaches client comments, perhaps the coach has some quotes that clients have given them to kind of get a sense of what that coach is like. While one client may say one thing about this particular coach's style, another client might experience the same coach in a different way. And again, that will definitely show you, give you a deeper understanding of how that coach can adapt to different clients.

Erica D'Eramo 17:57

I think that's one of the other reasons it's important to like you said, get one under your belt, because while you might meet a coach, and like getting to know you meeting, and they might say that they have a quite gentle style, you'll really just be able to tell in the session itself. We're all a bit subjective about our styles. So even for me, understanding my style sometimes comes through seeing client testimonials, where they'll say things like, very supportive or created a very open safe space for me. And I think like, oh, that's great. Okay. I'm glad that that's how my style is coming. But it's easier to see it from the outside than the inside, necessarily. But yeah, I think, you mentioned supportive versus challenging, some clients really like to be challenged. They like that tension that directness, and other clients, especially if they're getting a lot of that challenge from their current work environment, they need something a bit warmer and more supportive and understanding like where you're at right now, how you like to be challenged, how you like to be held accountable. Whether you want your coach to do more of the same of what you're used to or whether you want them to provide like a breath of fresh air and maybe a different style than what you're used to encountering at work or in your life, understanding that can be really, really helpful.

You mentioned structured versus unstructured and I think that there will usually be some level of cadence, some level of arc to the conversation in a client session or in a coaching session, but how structured that is and how much it varies from one session to another is quite dependent on the coach I think. So, for clients who really want to, they want to just land in the day and talk about whatever is top of mind that day and just kind of fly by the seat of our pants like stream of consciousness. I'm cool with that, if that's what they need in the moment, and if that's what works for them. But I know some coaches will really work to make sure that they stick to a structure. So if you're someone who likes that, who likes to structure who needs that, it's to kind of be brought back to home base and stick to it. Knowing that is really good because if you're not like that and you want to just sort of do stream of consciousness and the coach is bringing you back consistently, that kind of friction can really be challenging in a coach client relationship, I think.

Anthony Luévanos 20:52

Oh, gosh, yeah. I mean, I enjoy structure just as much as you know, I guess the next person. But I also like where more of the Tai Chi of coaching experience, you know, you go with the flow, and you do again, you reach that arc, and you come to a conclusion eventually. But it's important to know, again, I go back to what I said before, what are your expected outcomes? What do you want out of this coaching experience and that in hand, or that in mind, shop for a coach, if you want to do the research shop for a coach, but, definitely just get one on your belt. And I'm telling you, it's better if you don't overthink it and just get one in, because then you'll know, okay, well, that didn't go so great or maybe I just, I wasn't sure really what I wanted to get out of this experience, but at least you got one or you know what to expect in that coaching space. So, just get one under your belt, that's all I have to say.

Erica D'Eramo 22:09

Yeah, and I don't think you need many coaching sessions to understand if the coach is the right coach. You'll know the first coaching session, whether you have chemistry and whether their level of structure works for you. So you know, it really is like one session, you'll have a good feeling of whether it's a match. I do think over time I've probably moved towards more structure with my clients because I find that it's tended to lead to better outcomes for them. But it really is dependent on the goal. So kind of to circle back to what you said about what do you want to get out of the coaching, if my client really just needs a space to unpack, to understand their own thought process, to feel heard, to verbalize things that they hadn't verbalized before, that might look less structured. If they want to come out of the session with a prioritized list of five things to do, then that session might have more structure and we'll have a halfway checkpoint and we'll revisit, are we still on track? I do that in all my sessions anyways, but, I think that the type of goal will lend itself to more or less structure. So yeah, so probably finding a coach that can be flexible within that is is going to be important.

Anthony Luévanos 23:49

I wanted to ask you how important is background?

Erica D'Eramo 23:55

Well, I would say that background, like a coaches background as in what their career path was, or them having shared lived experiences with us, it certainly plays a role in that. I think it can allow us to become comfortable more quickly, it can help to increase psychological safety if we feel like that person has a similar journey or similar challenges to what we've experienced. I would say that it can be a bit of a red herring sometimes as well. So if we feel like we need a coach who has lived that same experience to us, that could really narrow our field quite a bit, especially if they're very unique experiences. Like me, for me, having worked overseas, worked on offshore facilities, if I had been looking for a coach who had had exactly that experience, I might have been looking for a long time. The reality is that while I certainly would feel like that person knew what I was talking about, if I use some of the jargon or the lingo, I have had coaches who have none of those shared experiences that have coached me extremely well. So often, we unnecessarily kind of limit that scope of potential coach, if we're looking for that. That's my thought on background.

Anthony Luévanos 25:40

Yeah, no, that's a good point, it really is a good point, because, I go at it from two different, I guess, ends and similarly to you, I mean, background matters to me, dependent upon my outcomes, my expected outcomes. If I need to think through a situation, I might lean towards someone more with some similar experiences, maybe not the same. But I don't totally kick out and someone that doesn't have the same background only because, again, it depends on what I'd like out of the coaching session. I tend to think that sometimes get taking yourself out of the element, out of that space, where, okay, this person is in the field of, you know, marketing and they have so much experience there. But I'm in science and while that may come into play at some point, I don't totally think that a coach with a different background than the client is going to get less quality from that particular coach. They may actually help that client to think through some issues in a different way.

Erica D'Eramo 27:16

Exactly. Yeah, I think the similar background piece is very much a double edged sword to me. So sure it can help to accelerate that psychological safety piece, you're using the same language, often, you're kind of used to thinking of things, you can make references, and know that that person will understand it. Yet, it can be really challenging when your coaches had, as a coach, maybe speaking as a coach, it can be really challenging when your client has had a lot of the same experiences that you've had to not get in the box with them, like we say, in coaching, right? To not try to fix the problem. There can sometimes be a higher risk of a client deferring to the coach and asking for advice. Because there is that potential differential of seniority or differential of experience in that field. So we end up kind of being pulled towards that consultant mindset instead of the coach mindset, just because it's very easy to say, well, what did you do, if that person's lived it? I find that as I'm doing coaching for longer, I'm getting more used to that, and it's okay if somebody says, well, what did you do? And I understand how to answer that question without giving them advice. But I do think that it can, yeah, I can have its upsides and its downsides. Because if you want to consultant then that person and if that person is going to act as a consultant in that moment, then it should be really clear, right? I'm taking my coach hat off, now. I'm gonna put my consultant hat on. That starts to muddy the waters a little.

Anthony Luévanos 29:11

Yeah and I want to go back to what you had said earlier. I mean, providing that safe space, sometimes this is an essential piece of how you want to experience your coaching session. There's so often times where clients can come to us with some with some traumatic experiences, and the only way that they feel safe sharing or thinking through this situation is by having someone with some similar experiences and being able to identify in a coach is professional. Erica, I mean, I know that when they would come to that place of hey, what did you do? Well, let's get what you want out of this experience. And good coaches adapt to that situation, they'll know, okay, wait, hold on, I'm not here to really provide mentoring or go into a consulting role here during this coaching session. But, sometimes you need someone that you that you feel safe with, and safe with sharing, because there's some commonalities there in terms of experiences on the job and personal experiences. I don't know, what do you think? I mean, is that a legitimate thing to think about when you're shopping around for a coach?

Erica D'Eramo 30:56

Yeah, I think. I think it's kind of like I'm an experienced client now as well, too, in a way, right? We've sat in the clients seat so much that if I encounter a coach who is like... I'm not going to ask a coach for advice, right? So in that regard, I don't end up encountering that. But I do think I've encountered coaches very early. In fact, I had kind of a negative experience when I first looked for a coach just because I couldn't find anyone that seemed to specialize in my area of what I was looking for, which was support for sort of first level leaders, for women working offshore. Again, very niche, very narrow, but I just found like an executive coach. So, I just remember, describe, and the person was a really good coach, and I enjoyed working with them. And also, when I explained kind of like, what life was like working offshore, just like normal life, that was not something they'd encountered before. And I remember them sort of saying, like, well, that just sounds like you should probably quit and find something else. And I thought, like, oh, you just don't get it. I mean, as a coach, they probably shouldn't have said that. But that part was like, right, okay, I probably need to find somebody who's at least not going to be like, whoa, that's so foreign to me that I think you should change careers. So, so yeah. That's my feelings on background, it can be helpful to have like a framework to understand that you share with your client to understand what their career looks like, and what their lived experiences are. I sometimes love getting fresh perspective from somebody who has never been there as long as it's maybe delivered in the right way.

Anthony Luévanos 33:13

Yeah, and you bring up a good point, you know, kind of our next point is experience level. How important is experience level?

Erica D'Eramo 33:22

So yeah, I think that for experience level, I've met some really just life changing coaches that are at the beginning of their coaching journey that I'm really glad to have had an opportunity to work with and be coached by. So I don't think that experience level is necessarily a must have, I think you can find a good match. Often, coaches who are at the beginning of their journey might be more accessible in terms of their availability, in terms of their fee structure, even. Oftentimes with more experience comes the ability to charge higher rates. I mean we should all be compensated for the value in the experience that we bring. So I don't have any issue with that. I think it's an art and a science. I've seen that some coaches that have more experience under their belt, while it's not a guarantee that they'll have fine tuned that in fact, sometimes they kind of fall back on like... I've met coaches who have so much experience but maybe have never gone through ICF accredited training or certification to sort of fall back on their experiences. Like, well I don't need to do any more learning, I've already done it. I have 20 years under my belt. I mean, I find that those haven't been a match for me. So that's something to keep an eye out for. But certainly, like my mentor coach has a great deal of experience and she, her coaching is an art form, like, she's an artist, and she is very inspired in what she does and inspiring and what she does. She really has it tuned in, and that she has that gut instinct at this point. So, so yeah.

Anthony Luévanos 35:25

I was just gonna mention for our viewers or listeners, ICF is the International Coaching Federation. It's a certifying body for professional coaches. So, you can have different levels of certification, ACC, PCC and MCC. But yeah, that's a really good point, more experience doesn't guarantee a great coaching session, less experience may provide you with the fresh perspective. It's sometimes, again, a good thing to get a good session in with someone that doesn't have quite as much experience, not spend a pretty penny. But yeah, be sure that you're aware of the cost involved in hiring someone that looks like they have lots of experience and will cost you a lot of money.

Erica D'Eramo 36:25

Yeah, again, I think like having a first session, you'll know. And that's why it's good to understand your coaching agreement and understand, if you are signing on with a very experienced coach who has many hours and high profile clients under their belt, but it's not a match, what does that look like in terms of being able to cancelling engagement? Or get a refund? Or what is the commitment there? So, so yeah, I'm kind of a complicated, complicated one. So, the other thing we get asked about a lot is niche. What kind of coach are you? I often get asked are you at a life coach? Are you a career coach? What kind of coach are you? So I mean, what are your thoughts on niche?

Anthony Luévanos 37:20

Me, I would say that I'm a universal guide. Yeah, that goes into anywhere from starting up a new venture in life, to learning how to deal with the situation and being flexible in that space is really important to me as a coach, but then also as someone looking for a coach, I would say, finding someone that has diverse experience, or a variety of experience, would be a great thing to consider when you're shopping around for a coach, because you just never know, again, life happens during any one of the coaches that you run into, and they may carry with them a great variety of perspective. My niche again is anywhere from executive level leaders to a parent just trying to think through a situation. I hold them both at the same level of esteem. I think maybe, I may not be thinking through this as much as I should, but I may not be a good coach for someone that is maybe a astronaut. You never know, I mean, but, depending on the topic, depending on the situation, depending on the expected outcomes. I mean, I could be, it just really depends, but, niches is kind of one of those things where, as you mentioned earlier, how important is background? While it might play some a role in the coaching session, it's not the thing that should that usually drives clients towards particular coaches, or that coaches typically think, well, I only specialize in these types of clients. A good coach is adaptable. But, some coaches take clients that have particular needs and that's okay.

Erica D'Eramo 40:13

Yeah, I think for me it's interesting, because I think there's a lot of pressure on coaches to choose a niche, and to "niche down". But that's more about having a message that is accessible and palatable to clients. In my opinion.

Anthony Luévanos 40:34

Yeah.

Erica D'Eramo 40:35

Because we don't know how, if you just say I'm a coach, okay, what kind of coach and what do you coach, right? Because we have various definitions of coaches in this world. I'm not a soccer coach, or a football coach. But I don't like differentiating between being a life coach or career coach, I mean, because I find that those two are never really separable. If somebody wants to work on their career goals with me, their life will become a part of that conversation and vice versa. So I think that the framing is often for clients, that being said, career transition coaches who specialize in a certain period of time, they might have a network that is helpful for you, they might have skills in reviewing your resume and updating it, they might have these other elements of almost consulting that they can thread into their practice. A health coach probably would also have certain elements of that, so they might have tools that they use to help their clients achieve their goals. So I can see those types of niches being important, but oftentimes, the coach will be whatever type of coach you need on that day. So even if they're a career coach, show up and you just say, my cat died today, they're not going to be like, well, let's talk about your career anyways, right? You're going to need to process what's going on in your life at that moment. So with that? Yeah. Thank you for helping to explore some of these elements of how to find, select, keep a coach. I know that it's been a journey for me to understand what my preferences are, and in what I like and value from my coaches, so I thought this would be a good one for us to talk about.

Anthony Luévanos 42:44

Yeah, yeah, really. I mean, I honestly, I just, I keep thinking, you know, being kind of the the adapter, like the coaching ninja, so to speak. I think that term is played out, but the Navy Seal of coaching, if you will. But, yeah, it's important to consider all these aspects that we just talked about today, because they do play a major part. Once you get a coach, it's a way to get to where you want to go a lot faster.

Erica D'Eramo 43:19

Yeah, I agree. I think, for me, having a coach in my life has been really important in achieving my goals. It's been transformational for me and I really want to offer that to my clients as well. I do offer that to my clients. So certainly, I look forward to working with more clients that feel like I'm a good match for them. That's always important to me that my client feels like I'm a good match for them and that I help them achieve those goals. Yeah. So for Two Piers Consulting, we appreciate you joining us for this podcast episode. If you want to learn more about our services or keep up with us on social media, you can find us at twopiersconsulting.com and you can book a get to know you session or a free consultation with either Anthony or myself if you feel like we might be a match for you for coaching. You can also follow us on the social media channels. So we're on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn at Two Piers Consult. So we look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Thanks