Hello, my name is Janice B Gordon and this is Scale Yourselves Podcast.

Welcome to Scale
Your Sales Podcast, listed number 9 of 43 best podcasts for every sales professional. I am
Janice B Gordon, the customer growth expert, recommended by LinkedIn Sales as one of 15
innovating sales influencers to follow.

In today's episode my guest talks about Coaching Leaders. This is the title of his latest book.
Now, he talks about his time as a sales leader and the transition he had to go on and many of
the mistakes he made.

We went on to discuss about why coaching is so important rather than directing your team
and switching off 50% of them.

You're going to love this conversation because my guest shares so much of what he learned
from his own experience.

As an award-winning business leader, with over 25 years' experience in sales and leadership,
my next guest is the founder of Focus4growth, as in number four, Focus4growth, a sales and
leadership training company specializing in B2B markets.

He is the best-selling author of Inspire, Influence, Sell and host of Inspire Sales Podcasts.

Please Welcome to Scale Your Sales Podcast, Justin Leigh.

Thank you, Janice. I'm really delighted to be here.

Thank you for inviting me to join you.

Well, it's lovely seeing you at the Institute of Sales Professional Speaking and sharing your
knowledge and content and you know I've kind of, we're both in the UK.

I mean it's not such a big community so you often know who are the kind of key people and
friends.

So it's really nice to get an opportunity to get to know you better. I know that you are author
of two books and this is one of them inspired influence and sell, but I would love to talk
about coaching because this is really of an important subject and your experience around
Coaching Leaders which is the name of your second book.

That's right. I've just literally got the author copies in the last week.

Brilliant. So you've got the author copies. is it out now or is it launching soon?

It is. It's available now.

Yes.

Right.

So why Coaching Leaders? What is it in particular that you've discovered where the gap was
that you felt needed to be filled?
Yeah, it's a great question. Thanks, Janice. So I had two epiphanies throughout my career.

Only two? Justin, what have you been doing with your life?

I had the two of them, but probably had them multiple times. But the two that really, really
kind of stopped me in my tracks and they relate to coaching as a leadership style and
consultative selling.

And the first was when I was in a sales role and I'd been in a sales role for a couple of years
before I was trained.

I finally went to work for a very large company. first thing they did was train me in sales. the
approach they took was a consultative sales approach.

I actually start to lean into your customer conversations, switch the narrative from you doing
all the pitching to really understanding what does your customer need, ask them questions
about the challenges they're facing, the goals that they're looking to set for their organization,
actually what barriers they face, why don't they have achieved those goals already.

really start to craft that conversation with the customer so that it becomes really customer
centric and gets the customer to start to sell themselves on you.

And that's the important distinction that the customer starts to sell themselves on you. And
when I learned that approach and I've been continually refining it over the last coming up to
30 years, it was a real light bulb moment for me.

And then I was in sales probably for about 10 years for different companies. And then I was
asked or invited to apply for a Sale Management role.

So my first Sale Management role I applied for, I went into the position and realised that I
kind of slipped back into my previous sales habits, which was instead of pitching, I was
directing.

I think it's a trap that very often high-performing sales people fall into, get promoted into
management or leadership positions because they've been a high performer, They think that
the skills that got them there are the same skills that are going make them successful as a
management and they're not.

There's a transition that needs to happen. Instead of running the tasks, doing the sales
activities yourself, driving yourself to be a high performer, if you take that approach with
teams, you're going to tune probably 50% to 60% of the people out.

Some people will love it, but some people will absolutely hate it, especially if they've got a
different style from you.

That's when that transition from directive manager to coaching leader is really important
because that way you can understand what someone else's motivations are, what does high
performance look like to them, how do they start to translate that into improvements and
development for themselves.
You do that through a coaching approach so that the change comes from the person inside out
from the person rather than outside in from you directly them and That is the big shift. As I
said, there are two defining moments for me. There are more, I promise you Janice, they were
the two big light bulb moments for me in my career.

I want to delve into this because I was selling and worked for actual services in the 1990s and
the small company went to a larger company and did a lot more of the kind of light sales
training.

I don't know when you had your sales training, but mine at that point wasn't customer focus.
So mine was in the 1990s and financial services and it was the seven steps sales process and
all of the fact finding and discovery and asking questions and all of that.

But really it was very much, and I found this even into like 2005 or so, really about asking
questions to lead people to your solution as opposed to asking questions to understand more
about their business, imperatives and goals at that time. It's a subtle but it's an important
switch. I'm interested as to when you got all of that customer-focused training on the kind of
discovery that you had, because I wasn't on that track for a while.

And actually there's a lot of salespeople that are still not on that track. So how did that
happen?

That's true. Yeah, and you're absolutely right. And as I think back, the first time I went
through, it was actually professional selling the skills.

I think it was three, professional selling skills three. And it was customer-focused, but it was
leading the customer to the right outcome so that there was a fit between what you were
offering and what they were looking for.

It was actually the iteration of that when I joined 3M in 1999. And that's when there was a
big transformation for me.

it was 99, kind of end of the 90s as we went into the year 2000s onwards. That's when the
shift happened for me and there were lots of different programs I went on that started to talk
about, think about the buying journey of the customer, think about the sales process for
yourself in line with the customers buying process and really start to look at kind of chunking
up, so not thinking tactically about what you're trying to sell but think about what, as you said
Janice, those customers goals aspirations are for the future and then try and join up the dots
from what they're trying to achieve to what you could provide an offer and actually you'll
find that you create much more relevance for a customer.

You're much more likely to have a customer that will be with you for longer term and they'll
start to recommend you to their people in their network.

So that strategic view of a sales conversation with a customer, it does take some kind of
reconditioning because they tend to be longer, it's slightly longer sales cycle but you get
much higher reward as a result for you and for the customer.

My epiphany was when I moved out of sales and worked in customer experience and I did all
of these customer experience journeys and I realised that customers are best innovators and
creators and they really know what they want and so put that into sales. They know what they
want. They don't always know how to achieve it and that's where you, us as salespeople come
in and I thought, oh my god, all of this experience, all of this knowledge I gained in sales,
we've got it twisted. We think we know everything and we're telling the customer, actually
the customer has everything and it's more about collaboration and that very much kind of fed
into my journey.

That's why I love what you have to say in your experience because we're kind of coming at it
from different paths but into the same thing and it really was about let's start with a customer
and work back from there and that's how you know Scale Your Sales came about.

So now if we move... Back the second wrong to what you were talking about with coaching.
So it was really great you sharing your experience and your epiphany there and why coaching
rather than directing is really important in terms of not switching off 50% of your team.

So you made that epiphany. Many other sales leaders. It's very difficult for them to see that
when they've been very successful salespeople.

It's like I've done it so you've got to do it in the way that I've done it. So I'm going to direct
you. How do you get those leaders to make that switch to see that there is another way and
you still get success because that must- that's quite a mind shift into the unknown.

Something they've never done or wasn't actually done to them when they were successful
salespeople.

Yeah I think it starts certainly with the process we go through. It starts with that leader
actually having an experience where it's probably not optimal.

So they've been in a leadership position for a while. They probably are jumping in and
micromanaging their teams. And what they will be finding, as I found in my career, and I'd
love to say I only made the mistake once, but I'd be completely lying.

I made the mistake multiple times and actually had to reset myself. But what they'll be
finding is that they are having to solve all the problems in their business and in their team.

They'll be jumping into rescue deals. They'll be giving really, really clear and frequent
direction. They'll be asked questions and they'll be thinking to themselves, I'm sure I've
answered this a million times before.

And that dependence that you create within your team is completely unintentional and very
often people aren't even aware it's happening.

And it's not until they make that kind of shift in their awareness where they start to think,
actually, I am continually having to solve the same problems.

I am having to give more direction than I should. I've got people that are highly capable. I see
them performing sometimes in a way that's highly capable and then they drift back off track.

That question to themselves, how does this keep recurring? It's not until they get that sense
that there must be something else I could be doing that the change is possible because if
somebody says, well, actually what I'm doing is working, why do I need to change the
coaching?

Then they probably need a little bit more experience of a style that doesn't work. Once
someone actually says, I need to make a change, that is the kind of catalyst really for wanting
to make a shift in the way that they manage.

What I found having gone through this process many times myself and with clients of course
is that there's this mindset shift that has to change first.

Then there is a skill change that has to happen. People have to start to create a bit more
spacing conversations.

have to put themselves on pause a bit and stop jumping in and just offering answers. They
have to step back and start to see the potential in their teams and start to cultivate some of
those more coaching based conversations which don't occur naturally to us because when we
highly experience we do want to provide the solution.

There's a short sharp dopamine hit that happens when we give someone an answer, we feel
good. I've just rescued that situation.

But long term what that does for our teams is it creates dependent on us. It just means that
over time we find ourselves unable to then create the space and time for strategy and the most
important activities within our leadership role. So once we start to make that shift in
awareness then it's about putting into practice the skills and the changing skills that we need
to move from directive to coaching leadership.

There's lots of models in the market. There's lots of great books. Obviously there's my new
book, Coaching Leaders. Where I started was with the John Whitmore book, Coaching for
Performance.

And in that book he lays out what is affecting the gold standard grow model. So if people are
new to coaching or they haven't had experience with the grow model, definitely worth
looking at doing internet search for the grow coaching model.

That will really help you. And as part of the work we do, we integrate the grow model as part
of the leadership cycle.

So as we think about what does it take to effectively coach people, having a simple model
that you know you can go back to time and time again that as you ask the questions in
sequence, you're going to guide your team members or even peers, sometimes even your line
manager, start to guide them through that structured coaching model, starts to give you
confidence that in any situation, regardless of what comes up, if you can follow a structure
that you know will give you the outcome or give the other person you're talking to the
outcome they're looking for, that can be really effective.

So there's a number of things in there. It's you know, awareness to change in the first
instance, having a reason to move and then having a structure that you can follow that gives
you confidence that you can do that reproducibly time and time. That's the challenge.
And I would imagine, you know, the sales industry, you look very much like a sales leader.

Thank you.

That is, you know, and it's true, but if we look at the demographic of what is a sales leader,
you've come out of that environment.

But, you know, that environment is, there's only what, 17% in that or less than that, or female
sales leaders in the industry globally, which is pretty tragic. And I wonder if you've found
that when you're working with female sales leaders, whether there's a difference in the
approach that they naturally use and how much adaption between, and I think it's quite
general, obviously, not all men and women at the same.

I'm keen to hear from your experience. What you see that there are subtle differences as to
what people naturally do.

That's a great question, Janice. I didn't know that stat, the way. didn't realize it was only 17%.
It's interesting, as I think about my own clients, I've probably got a 50-50 split between male
and female.

I work with quite a few female sales leaders. And for me, what I have noticed is it's more
about personality style.

So what are their preferences? How do they like to operate? One of the things that I think
does come more naturally to female leaders that I've worked with is being empathetic.

I think natural empathy. And I guess there's a piece around ego, I think, from my experience,
there's no hard data in here, but my experience is that female leaders tend to be more
empathetic and tend to be able to connect with their teams more effectively.

I think it doesn't get in the way of them being able to make tough decisions, have difficult
conversations, they're just able to manage that blend, I think, more effectively.

I have to say, early in my sales leadership career, that's something I struggled with. I've
almost felt like I had to fit the mold.

You said you looked like a sales leader. I felt like I had to act like a sales leader. And
actually, there's definite benefit in taking that more professional approach.

But we are dealing with human beings, salespeople, sales teams, our colleagues, our peers,
they're human first. So we have to empathise, we have to appreciate that they'll have things
going on for them, sometimes they'll need some nurturing they might need, a more
empathetic conversation, somebody that might be struggling a bit, will need a different
conversation to someone who's absolutely flying and high performing.

And our ability to flex ourselves is a bit like, I often think, that sales leadership and in fact
leadership more generally is very much like sales,

To be effective in a sales position, we have to be chameleons, we have to be able to flex to

the person in front of us, we have to handle some of those awkward moments.
And it's exactly the same in leadership, we have to be able to meet the needs of each member
of our team and be able to meet the collective needs of the team.

We have to be able to do that in a way that gives us both connection with the person and
optimal performance and results.

That's not always an easy balance to strike, nobody will get it right 100% of the time, but
recognising two things are kind of a priority at the same time is really important.

Yeah, yeah. I wondered then with female leaders, because I don't, you know, being more
empathetic, I'm sure that's across the board in leadership.

Do you feel that that is a skill that is needed more now post pandemic? And so that because
of that, there's lot potential for them to be more effective at leaders going forward.

I absolutely think it is a skill that's required. I think yes, post-pandemic is one of the reasons.
The other reason I think is because of the differences in the generations.

We heard a speech last week and we Janice about the differences in the generations in the
workforce. And as we think about the next generation, my children are 26 and 23.

And the way they operate in the workplace compared to how I operate in the workplace and
what they need from their leaders, mentors, coaches is different from what I needed so we
have to recognize the importance of that transition in the needs of our team members. And
does that make women potentially more suited for leadership in the future?

I'd have to see some evidence to say something controversial. I think the odds are probably
yes, but it doesn't mean that men don't have empathy.

I think it does take more for men to cultivate it. And certainly for me, it wasn't until I got
more confidence in myself to be myself that I was able to demonstrate and display that
empathy.

Earlier on in my career, I felt, I think I felt I needed to fit a mold that actually was just
something I created in my mind rather than something that was required.

And actually working with a mentor or a peer group, if you're in an organisation where there
are other leaders, having these conversations about leadership, I think that's one of the big
gaps.

People talk about sales and functional effectiveness, whatever your position in an
organisation, if you are a sales person, tend to talk about what are the skills that make that
sales person successful.

There hasn't been up until recently that same focus on leadership and developing leadership. I
think that's a really important

Consideration as people start to think about what does it take for them to be effective leaders
in the future, start to have those conversations and you will learn from other people that are
successful in leadership.
Had also learn, as I've done in my career, you'll learn as much from the bad leaders or
managers you work for, as you do for the good leaders.

Well, probably even more. I've certainly left the sales industry because of bad managers and
leaders. when I ran a restaurant and had 20 employees, that helped me to become a better
leader because I didn't want to be like that. So often it's the worst experiences where you
learn the greatest lessons, isn't it?

Absolutely. Yeah, moments of growth. I think Steve Wagner talked about them recently.

Let’s stop talking about imposter syndrome or challenges where we think we're out of our
depth and start talking about them as moments of growth.

It's a really important distinction because that helps us to lean into those moments rather than.
Step back.

I mean, I thought the point you made about empathy and the generation, multi-generation is
great one, there's another one as well, bit of an aha moment because I think it's interesting.

There's so much talk about, I was out last night and the imposter syndrome, as if it's
something negative. particularly imposter syndrome in women.

It's like, It’s like men don't have it. We all have it.

It's quite natural. That's part of the learning, isn't it?

I know I just think sometimes we over-eck these things and label it and then someone's going
to create a business out of it.

I think that's great way of bursting the bubble. I think I'm going to be borrowing that one
from you via, you know, Steve.

You're very welcome to it, Janice.

I completely agree because you're right about the labeling. Once you label something, know,
like that term impostor syndrome. We all experienced it at different points in our career.

I think when I first went into a sales position, I said I had two years where I wasn't trained in
how to sell.

So I spent two years feeling uncomfortable in every conversation trying to figure out how do
I make this work?

What am I doing wrong? What do I need to change to improve and get these customers on
board? That went on for quite a while.

Then I learned how to follow a more rigid but more structured sales approach. And that That
helped me. Same happened in my leadership career.
But even in sales, I went through, I was in three different companies, five or six different
positions in sales.

Every time I switched, met a new customer, start to manage different accounts. I went
through all of that transition again and again.

We have to transform ourselves. That's the key, isn't it? The development of ourselves and
improving our own performance and future potential.

That only happens as you go through those moments of growth. So you have to feel that. It's
kind of being out of your depth and that's the way I think about it.

I'm out of my depth for a while. I'll have to kick a little bit harder to spare float and make sure
that I'm able to succeed.

But it's that conversation that you have with yourself and managing your mindset throughout
those moments that's really most impactful, I think.

You know, I really appreciate you sharing and being really honest about your experience and
I would imagine that's why you're such a great coach to other people because you'll lay
everything bare.

But where did that come from? that's quite difficult to do to be vulnerable and honest about
the mistakes you've made in the lessons and you know, just lay everything bare.

Where did that come from in you?

Well, I think it came from 2017 when I left the corporate world. I had a bit of a very difficult
couple of years.

I've been working for a really difficult line manager who was, I was managing a very large
business, kind of 50 plus million, team of 40 plus people.

And it was, I've been working in this organisation for 18 years, but in that role for a couple of
years, an absolutely very difficult situations to manage.

we were selling into a well-established market. There was a lot of price competition. And I
went through a really difficult period where actually it kind of ended with me exiting the
corporate world.

And then I retrained as a coach, set my own business up and thought, I'm going to do things
differently from here on in.

And from that point, I think I know I made a decision that actually I'm just going to be more
open, more authentic, more who I really am inside.

And it does take a bit of courage. But once you start doing that, once you start laying yourself
open, I think the more you do it, the easier it gets.
It's like anything. It's another moment of growth, right? And that, I think for me, has been
really beneficial because I don't then, I don't have to hide who I am, I don't have to pretend to
be somebody I'm not. And it's really liberating actually and talking about our failures or
talking about the moments where it didn't go according to plan and then, okay, this is how I
got it back on track.

That's really useful for somebody else because they can start to see, I can see that I might be
heading down that road and actually what Justin's experienced, if I can adopt just part of what
he's telling me, it's going to help me avoid that trap.

Now, people are still going to have to make their own mistakes and learn their own lessons
because I think that they are some of the most important moments of growth for any of us.

But if there are simple principles that you can start to adopt that help you avoid making those
mistakes, it's really useful.

And for me, it's really rewarding to see people make that transition adopt some of those key
pieces of advice and see the results very early on.

So I think it's one having made that decision. then it's when you start to see people picking
that up appreciating it and it’s working for them, that kind of further reinforces the
importance of being open, having that conversation.

It's been a bit of a journey over the last five or six years, but one that I continue to go on, just
to be able to share that openness.

I appreciate that. I can see that's made you a better person, a better leader as well, you're
influencing other leaders to do the same.

It's great when you're sharing it from your own experience, you know the pain yourself. I do
appreciate that.

This has just been such a fantastic conversation that we're coming out of time, and I'm really
sad about that.

We'll have to get you on it again.

Let me ask you, who is your hero or shero?

So, about the year, I think it was like late 90s, maybe it might have been 2000s actually. I was
at my mother-in-law's house and we were talking about professional development.

She was quite senior manager in the NHS and she asked me, she said, you must have heard of
this guy, Tony Robbins.

And at that point, I hadn't. She said, let me give you this book. So she gave me his first book,
think he'd written, unlimited power.

And she said, oh, just have a quick look. Let me show you a couple of videos. And she
showed me a couple of Tony Robbins videos.
I was kind of blown away by just the approach he was taking to professional development,
personal development and helping people to kind of start to think about unlocking higher
levels of potential and performance.

And it started me on a bit of a journey. then went, so I bought a number of his books.

I bought his kind of CD set, which was kind of get the edge in personal power. I used to listen
to those in my car on the way to either sales calls or the office or whatever I was going.

And I went on a bit of a journey with Tony Robbins. And he really did spark my interest and
passion for personal development and growth.

So when I think back, that immediately answered that question is Tony Robbins. And if
anybody hasn't had the experience of Tony Robbins, he's definitely worth looking up.

He's got a podcast called the Tony Robbins podcast. He has multiple resources, courses,
programs, you can see him in person, you can watch his content on YouTube.

He's very inspirational. like made this transition from personal power coaching into the
business setting as well. I've been quite impressed with him.

So that's the answer. Tony Robbins, because he really did kind of was the catalyst for my
own personal and professional growth and development.

Fantastic, fantastic.

how can listeners get hold of you, Justin? I'm on all the usual platform, but LinkedIn is
probably my go-to.

just look up Justin Leigh, L-E-I-G-H, and you can find me there. I'm also on LinkTree. So
there's LinkTree, Justin Leigh.

There's a number of different links and resources if anybody wants to make contact.

I'd be very happy to have a conversation. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for being so
such a great guest, you know, sharing all of your experience and knowledge.

It's been an absolute pleasure having you on Scale Your Sales Podcast. Thank you, Justin.

My pleasure. Thanks for inviting me, Janice. Great conversation.

Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Scale Your Sales podcast. If you like this
discussion, feel free to listen to other episodes or watch the caption show on YouTube and
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