Ted Turner With Intelligent Leadership Executive Coach

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for Coach the Coach Radio brought to you by the Business RadioX ambassador program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:34] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today we have with us Ted Turner with ILEC, which is Intelligent Leadership Executive Coaching. Welcome, Ted.

Ted Turner: [00:00:48] Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:49] Well, before we get too far into things, tell us a little bit about ILEC, how you serve in folks.

Ted Turner: [00:00:55] Well, I see is really we work individually with folks and we work with groups. And basically, in a nutshell, what we do is unlock their potential to have an impact on their business or their community or their life. We’re not life coaches were leadership coaches, but leadership spills out into every aspect of someone’s life. So we work with those that are that are in the C suite that have accomplished a lot but don’t want to park it there, aren’t satisfied with what they’ve accomplished. And we work with those that have been identified as potential leaders that have a high potential to be very much impactful in their future career. And we prepare them so that they can avoid the pitfalls of the Peter Principle. And then we do a lot of work with groups, companies, building culture, actually measuring the strength, their culture and helping them to to replace the parts that are not effective or don’t really match their values and their mission. So we build teams, we build individuals, we build leadership across across the board

Lee Kantor: [00:01:56] And primarily the folks who are serving our people in enterprise level or corporate organizations rather than like maybe solo partners or entrepreneurs.

Ted Turner: [00:02:07] Not really. You know, universally you find that leadership is something that’s needed everywhere. So generally speaking, yes, these are corporations, large businesses to midsize and small businesses, but also nonprofits or even kind of mom and pops entrepreneurs that want to understand themselves better, want to understand what kind of drilling tendencies they might have that is blocking their success, blocking them from blossoming, so to speak. So, yeah, really across the gamut, a lot of them nonprofits and even the churches find themselves benefitting from executive coaching, leadership coaching.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:45] Now, the folks that come to you, are they kind of self-aware enough for themselves to say, hey, you know what, maybe I need some help because I’m kind of struggling here? Or is it something that maybe somebody higher up in the organization recommends? Hey, you know what? Maybe you should talk to Ted and his team because they can help you through this.

Ted Turner: [00:03:05] You know, again, it’s both of those things. And and when they come together, that’s when it’s the most effective. When you’ve got a leader that is recognized and they want to improve and they need help improving. And at the same time, their organization is saying, hey, we want to provide some leadership coaching to you, that’s when it comes together. Because if an individual isn’t ready to be coached, if they’re not ready to look at themselves honestly and say, hey, these are my strengths that I can leverage and these are my weaknesses that I need to be aware of and fix, if they’re not ready to do that, if they’re not ready to open up and be honest with themselves, there’s a limited amount of impact that you can have with a person in that situation. So we can come from both ends, both that individual saying I’m ready to take the next step either in my career or my leadership. Can you help me? And an organization saying, hey, we’re ready to promote you either now or in a few years. And here’s an opportunity to prepare for that by working with a coach

Lee Kantor: [00:04:05] Now out of like, say, a hundred business folks out there, how many have that self-awareness and humbleness and maybe are vulnerable enough to kind of say, I need help?

Ted Turner: [00:04:18] That is really a great question, and I don’t know that I have any concrete data on that, I would say from my experience that it’s probably about it’s probably 50 percent or less of the leaders out there that are cognizant. Well, let me let me say this a little while. Many people, probably the majority of people have some doubts about their abilities. But when you talking about someone getting to the point where they really open up to themselves and say, I’ve got some derailing tendencies that I need to pay attention to if I want to be better, I’d say it’s it’s a smaller percentage of people that have really reached the maturity as an individual and in their leadership that will take that honest look at themselves. Of course, when they do, that’s when they can just accomplish amazing things. Vulnerability is such an important thing to progress. You know, it doesn’t make a leader weak. It doesn’t make them seem like they don’t have the knowledge of what they’re doing. It really is a humility thing to be vulnerable and to open up and realize that I can be helped, I can do better. And there are people out there that can help me be better.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:32] Yeah, it’s an interesting dynamic because a lot of especially young people think the leader has all the answers. And they have to be if they want to become a leader, then they have to have all the answers. And, you know, that’s not true. And and what do you think? That you have to have all the answers. Then you’re less likely to show weakness or, you know, to kind of listen to others and have all these negative tendencies. So I think that’s a key attribute of successful leaders, is that ability to tap into the vulnerability and humility that it takes to to really lead people.

Ted Turner: [00:06:11] Yeah, and you made a really good point there is that leaders themselves often think I have to know everything. And you see that with younger leaders more than you do with older leaders, although it exists there to you know, they get that idea that their boss is the no, I’ll be all and all and that they have to be the same way. And as as more and more people retire, leave the workforce, you know, there’s studies that say that between 40 and 70 percent of the executive leadership in the US and Canada and even Mexico will retire in the next five years. So we’ve got a lot of folks that have not had as much time in the saddle, maybe in leadership positions as they would like to have before they’re thrust into great responsibility. And so sometimes they build up that wall thinking, oh, my gosh, I’m in this position. I can’t let anybody know that I’m not quite ready. I can’t show my vulnerability. I can’t ask a question. I’ve got to know everything at all times. And that is just a huge amount of pressure to put on oneself. And it’s really not accurate. You’re as you pointed out, I’m a firm believer in the old adage that none of us is as smart as all of us. And so as those folks in those situations realize that they can take a deep breath, there is help out there. There’s no shame in saying I need help, I need advice. And really, that doesn’t mean it’s a weakness. Sometimes the advice and help they need is is recognizing that they already have some real strengths. OK, great. How do we develop them? Even more so a vulnerability just opens you up to support from your people. It opens you up to being human. It helps you connect with them better. It helps you build a culture of teamwork. You know, it just you don’t have to know it all. You just simply don’t.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:00] Now, you mentioned an important kind of, I guess, trend that’s happening where you said that so many, 40 to 70 percent of the leaders now are probably going to exit sooner than later. And how would an organization build that culture that encourages an orderly succession and maybe a good exit for the entrepreneurs out there, but they have to be able to transfer some of their knowledge, some of their leadership skills, you know, to somebody else on the team. So how do you kind of build a culture that just instills this kind of lifelong learning and this ability to transfer kind of the DNA of the organization to the next the next group?

Ted Turner: [00:08:53] You know, it comes down to some basic fundamentals that have been fundamentally true forever, and that is you’ve got to value your people. Now, that connection might not be apparent right on the surface, but your folks need to feel and it needs to be sincere, not just something that you think they need to feel that their input is valued, that their ideas are valued, that their communication is valued, and they need to have good, clear and constant communication back from leadership. So when you do that, people naturally will communicate with each other, they will collaborate, they will help each other. The older folks that maybe are are moving out will be more likely to teach some of those things that they’ve just learned through the years. The hidden gems of leadership or just the technical things of how to operate in. What are that company is you also build longevity and loyalty there, which is which is vital. You’ve got to have a pipeline of leadership. You can’t just wait till all your leaders retire and then go, oh, my gosh, what are we going to do now? None of these people below them are ready to step into that role. So it’s relationships of trust. It’s relationships of value. It’s keeping lines of communication open so that people so that they will share the knowledge that they’ve gained. So they’re not jobs scared, so to speak. Right. They realize that they can that they can succeed by helping others succeed. And that synergy feeds on itself. So that’s one of the key things. Now, there’s certainly some specific mechanical things that can be done to capture lessons learned and to capture that knowledge and those type of things. But from a cultural foundational platform, it’s that value your people give them a platform to open up, give them a platform to share and to learn and to do so in a comfortable, rewarding atmosphere.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:44] There’s something I tell people about company culture, especially on emerging firms. Culture is something that’s going to happen whether you are proactive about it or not. So I would recommend putting some things in place that help you kind of orchestrate some of this or else it’s going to form without you. So, yeah, it’s one of those things that it’s like, same with branding your business. People are going to have opinions. No matter why you do so, you might as well be mindful about it.

Ted Turner: [00:11:15] Yeah, your company your organization has a culture, whether you realize it or not.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:20] Now, can you talk a little bit about how you helped your clients manage through the chaos of covid? And, you know, it’s still going on, but hopefully it’s waning in a lot of places. But to be able to lead through a chaotic or ever changing environment is not something that comes easy for folks. Can you talk about how your were helping your guide your clients through those rough times?

Ted Turner: [00:11:48] Yeah, you know, there will always be upheaval now. It doesn’t always necessarily mean a worldwide pandemic. That’s a little unique, but there’s always upheaval in business and in life. And so good leaders have to be able to be. I know it’s a bit of a paradox, but I kind of refer to it as being flexibly constant. They need to be flexible enough to not just be holding to old ideas. In other words, we’ve done this for 30 years, so we’re going to keep doing it for 30 years. That’s not a good reason to keep doing something. So they need to be flexible enough to see the needs of their people, the needs of their markets. They need to be flexible enough to know that what they thought was true today may not be true tomorrow. And in some cases, that’s literally the facts. You get change from day to day. So to be able to to listen to new ideas, to try new things, to adjust on the fly is hugely vital. The other piece of that, the constancy, and this is something they’ve had to put in place before the emergency hit, your people have to know that no matter what the situation is, you’re still going to have the same values. You’re still going to operate on the same principles. They need to know that they can trust you to be there in the trenches with them to give honest and competent leadership to them. So they need that touchstone. They need that benchmark, something that they can count on no matter what’s going on around them. But then the leaders got to be flexible enough to say, OK, my world just changed from what it was five minutes ago. How is this going to affect me, my organization, my customers, my clients and what are our options? Let’s think outside of the box. Let’s not stifle any thought or communication here. Let’s find the best course for now, realizing that a day from now, a week from now, two weeks from now, we may need to course correct yet again. Now, flexible constancy is a key to much of this

Lee Kantor: [00:13:44] Now can you talk a little bit about your back story? What got you so enamored with coaching to make it your work nowadays? And why why was coaching so important to you in your career?

Ted Turner: [00:14:00] I spent most of my career, I spent 40 years in engineering and construction running large, you know, large, complex projects, megaprojects all over the world, three, four billion dollars worth of work a year. And so when you’re doing those projects all over the world, you’re building teams of people from different backgrounds, different cultures, different countries, different religions, different levels of education, even different languages, and bringing them together as a cohesive team and then often dropping them into yet another country that none of them have ever been in before. So being able to talk to people, communicate with people, build those teams where they’re forgiving of each other’s weaknesses, they they leverage each other’s strengths. That’s something that is always, always appealed to me. I enjoy doing that. I enjoy working with individuals and seeing the light go on in their eyes when they realize what they can accomplish. So throughout my career, I’ve noticed a lot of leadership development, training and programs. I’ve been the recipient of that early in my career when a company was paying to train me, then had more influence over that as I climbed the corporate ladder. And even with really good training, I’ve often seen what I consider to be just millions of dollars of ROIC that was never collected because there are some missing pieces and we don’t have time to go into the real depth of missing pieces.

Ted Turner: [00:15:25] But I just saw where most leadership development programs that I’d seen, even the good ones, were not really leadership development. They were teaching leadership skills, which are vital. We do that, too, but they’re not really developing that individual leader. And the follow up seems to be missing until an epiphany. I had probably a good 18, 20 years ago. My company had sent me to lose on Switzerland to go to IMT, which is one of the world’s top business colleges, and one week there cost twenty thousand dollars. And that doesn’t include my travel mills, the work I’m not doing while I’m there. And they sent 50 of us from different offices around the world. And so it didn’t take long for me to figure out. For that one week of training, the company was spending one million dollars and I came home excited. I learned some great things. I know my boss had been through it six months before I get home. I want to implement these things. I want to go. I want to run. This is fantastic. And I got home and there was no follow up. There was no mechanism to implement anything that I had learned. Now, it wasn’t a waste of time or money.

Ted Turner: [00:16:31] I did learn things there that made me better my job. But I thought, my goodness, what a waste of our life. And so as I again had more influence over those things, my career, I started implementing things that I thought were missing and I found them to be successful. So after 40 years in construction, I thought, what do I want to do for the rest of my life? This is enough. And I thought about again, OK, leaving people, helping them reach their potential. That’s what turns me on the most. I’m going to go ahead and do that. And so I took some time to research some different programs, to get some training, to get some certification. And ILEC really appealed to me. The founder of ILEC is John Moton. If you’re looking up, you’ll find very quickly he is considered to be the world’s top executive coach, really an elite set of systems and tools. And in a program where I could apply my knowledge and my art to the science that existed there. And so that’s my path to where I am today. And I find that marriage between my my history, my background and the systems and processes and tools with ILEC to be a really good and impactful match for my clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:47] Well, if somebody wanted to learn more about your practice and get a hold of you or somebody on your team, what’s the website?

Ted Turner: [00:17:54] The website is Ted Turner DOT Intelligent Leadership, e, c dot com. So Ted Turner, Intelligent Leadership. E, c, dot com.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:07] Well, Ted, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

Ted Turner: [00:18:13] Thank you. Appreciate you having me on. You know, I’ve seen some of the other folks you’ve got on this show, and I’m humbled to be among that number. So thank you so much.

Lee Kantor: [00:18:20] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on Coach the Coach radio.