Severin: This is Arete Coach Podcast with Severin Sorensen and his guest David Savage. He is a speaker, author, and executive coach. This interview is recorded on June 29, 2023, via zoom video.
You’re listening to Severin Sorensen, executive coach and curator of the Arete Coach Podcast where we explore excellence in the art and science of executive coaching. I am speaking today with Coach David Savage. He is a speaker, author and executive coach.
David Savage is president of Savage Management Limited. Through Savage Management, David offers his clients negotiation and collaboration coaching and consulting, as well as speaking workshops. His services focus on transforming bad communication into great breakthroughs, purpose, turning the great resignation into a great opportunity, curiosity, conflict resolution and collaboration. David has also published nine books, including Better by Design, Your Best Collaboration Guide.
Aside from Savage Management, David is also an advisor for the Canadian Energy & Climate Nexus, director of the Waterton Glacier International Peace Park Association, and chair of the Conservation & Environment Committee Waterton Glacier IPPA.
David is a certified professional co-active coach with the Co-Active Training Institute and certified in co-coaching teams through the ICF Calgary Charter Chapter.
So welcome David, welcome to the podcast.
David: Just delighted to be here, Severin. Thank you for the opportunity.
Severin: Delighted to have you here on the podcast as well. And for those who are watching the video version, I’m looking at your background at the majestic mountains there in Canada and the Rockies and all, it’s just wonderful to look at that. Thank you for that nice inspiring view.
David: I want to share yours too. Because I did mine on purpose because it’s a trail going higher and higher up to Fisher Peak in the Canadian Rockies. And I love the description you gave me of your background picture.
Severin: Yep, two trails, two paths diverged in the woods. And I love the poem from Frost, and I thought it might be good inspiration for a picture, so I’ve got that there. So, let’s start right off.
I always like to find out about people’s journeys. Each of us have pictures of trails. What was the trail, the path that your feet trod in getting you into your 19 years of coaching? Tell me about that.
David: Severin, and guests and viewers, it’s all about the people and all about the relationships and how we work together better. So, I started early in my life forming small groups, teen clubs, dance clubs. Then I was in the Canadian oil and gas industry and the American oil and gas industry, and I found people were all so ignorant of each other and the opportunities by getting together. So, I’d form circles and roundtables and symposiums where people were equals and listened and listened. After creating, building and selling five companies in a ten-year period, largely in the small scale of natural gas in Canada, I realized what I love is the team-building aspect and the challenges and the opportunity for me to learn, Severin. And one, I decided let’s stop creating little entrepreneurial companies and help other entrepreneurial companies’ breakthrough to their yes.
And obviously raising three children and now eight grandchildren, Severin, I realize listening and capitalizing on their purpose and their direction, it gets me further down the trail – to use the metaphor – than to simply speak from a podium and think I know it all, because the more children I raise, the older I get, the more in conflict I get in the middle of, the more I realize I don’t know very much, but together we can learn.
Severin: Isn’t it interesting how the more we learn, we understand and appreciate, we know less at how much more open we are to the curiosity of learning.
David: Yeah, and I want to do a book plug.
Severin: Sure.
David: There’s a great book that somebody on this…
Severin: I recognize that book.
David: You should.
Severin: He sold me the only copy of Next Ten.
David: And it’s just a compendium of lists of ten guides, questions, encouragements, inspirations for entrepreneurs. And I think it’s a fantastic book. I hope the world gets it because part of my purpose and part of my fear is the world is increasingly controlled by so very few and the opportunities for the people listening and watching us and around the world, and especially the youth of this world, it’s so important for us to help them succeed, help them build their own passions, capitalize on their dreams and get away from the commanding control employees and employers, corporations and marketers, just be themselves and create their own businesses. And I know that with your background Severin, you’ve seen this many times and I just love when you see entrepreneurs break away from the large corporate death camps, if I might be so blunt.
Severin: That’s cruel to the word death camp, by the way. But I get what you’re saying.
David: And get into creating their own. And it is very difficult and probably more difficult now than ever to be starting off with a team of one working 14 hours a day and keep wondering why am I spending so much money and not making much money? Those are all coachable moments.
Severin: Yeah. I like to use the phrase I like to help raise curiosity, to release the hounds of imagination so that people can just go be and do what they were meant to do. And sometimes it’s just that nudge.
We commented prior to the opening of the podcast, we commented on the beautiful surroundings here. We have Zion’s Canyon and others. There’s another great place here called Lake Powell. And they have these towering walls. Think of it as the Grand Canyon flooded. And earlier in my youth when I had less wisdom and more guts, we used to do cliff jumping, where you would dive off of these walls. I can remember one instance where we actually took the ski rope up, a tow rope for waterskiing up to measure how high we were and we let the rope dangle on the water where we could see that, and we had 15 feet of rope at the top. So, we were at 85 feet of where we were going to dive off. And I can remember at the top sitting there with all this energy. Looks pretty safe where I am, I want to be down there, but just waiting and waiting and just thinking, and then finally one of my peers jumped off and I’m like, ‘oh gosh, I have to go.’ It’s like the nudge and so on.
And sometimes in life if we need to have somebody help us down that J curve of uncomfortablity to where, yeah we are going to freefall, but it’s really the right thing to do at the time, whether it’s a new career or new business, because once we get comfortable with the falling, then we start to find the bottom, if you will, and start finding our sea legs and then we can get to a much better place. But if we never take that step into uncertainty, it’s very challenging.
David: Yeah, I love it. And I really do believe that the area of greatest learning is the area of greatest uncertainty. And we have great uncertainty. If I might tell a short story.
Severin: Yeah.
David: I love nature and being in the wilderness. I love our planet. All of those things. And all my life I’ve been scared of heights while I’m backpacking or hiking, so the last place I want to be is on a ledge. Even worse, a ledge walk that goes on for half a mile or however long. And about six years ago I decided I needed to go there. Because I love the places those trails take me. There’s one of the most beautiful areas in the world is Lake O’Hara in Kootenay National Park in British Columbia just close to me. And in Lake O’Hara there are many ledges where you’ll walk along for 10 or 15 minutes. On the left side of you is a wall and on the right side of you is a 100-foot drop and the trail is about as wide as your shoulders. Then I started to myself, when was the last time I fell over when I was walking down a sidewalk? This isn’t any different, but it’s far more fantastic. I still don’t like heights, but I’ve taught myself to really go to those ledges.
And then my older sister came with me several years ago and she said I don’t think I could do that. We’ll go as far as you want. Here’s how the guides would teach you to walk, the guide step, and here’s where’d you place your eyes. And by day two, I captured Carol on this amazing ledge, a picture of her and on this amazing ledge – and it’s probably my favorite picture of my sister I’ve ever taken out in the sunshine at Lake O’Hara in the wilderness, up high on a ledge, waving back at me.
So, in a couple of days my partner and I are taking our granddaughters to that same area and we’re going to teach them to walk ledges. Thanks for that metaphor of the uncertainty, the challenge and if you just have somebody to save you, you just need to do a guide step. What’s that? Let’s go.
Severin: Yeah, that’s exciting. I like the word Arete. It means excellence, it means seeking one’s highest value. But it has a second meaning, and the second meaning is the Arete is the ridgeline. So as you have a mountain coming up, you often see people walking right along the ridge where they could go to one side or the other, but it’s that ridgeline, it’s another metaphor for path.
Let me ask you a question. You decided after building these businesses that you wanted to be a coach. When you made an intentional decision, okay, now I want to pivot to coaching, what did you do to become a great coach? What was that training?
David: I’m still working on becoming a great coach. And I’ve realized that I wanted some structure, because I’ve also got training in mediation, Severin, and I really push back when people say I coach them, and they have no experience or expertise or certification in coaching. Oh, I mediated that. No you didn’t. You had a conversation. There are strategies and techniques that are really important and scenarios and processes that through certification, through professional coaching, professional mediation dispute resolution, engineering, drafting, whatever, it is important that we learn and offer those to our clients.
My greatest learning out of that if I might give a sample to your viewers, is going down the tubes. It’s not up to me to cheer you up and say it’ll be okay. It’s up to me to say where are you now? Where are you now? What’s this like? What’s coming up? Simply ask powerful questions. Good coaches, good mediators, good leaders are curious and let the other person stand for their purpose.
Severin: That’s great. So, tell me about your certification journey. Let’s take the Co-active Training Institute, they’re a world-class organization. Tell me, was that easy for you to do?
David: It was joyful actually. That’s the word that comes to mind. Joyful.
Severin: Tell me how it was joyful.
David: Just having that opportunity to intimately connect with the others in the cohort. And some of those others in the cohorts I’m still friends with, some of them we’ve done coaching tandems together. Just that joy of finding my people, my tribe, that sense.
I think the other part of it is, it is ongoing, it’s not an organizational culture. It’s not a one and done of I checked that box, now I don’t have to learn anymore. This is constant. People listening to your video casts, it’s an opportunity to learn, it’s an opportunity to learn in the last few months about what you’ve been sharing with us on artificial intelligence. How do we coach from that, that triad, that’s brilliant work that you’re doing and thank you for that.
Severin: Thank you.
David: I resist saying when you got good, what did you do? It’s more this is continuous.
Severin: This is work in progress.
David: That’s right.
Severin: It is a work in progress for sure.
David: We have to be integrity and vulnerable and clear with our clients.
Severin: There’s a question for you. You were an executive of five different companies that you built, and later sold. What did you do as an executive, and maybe your management style that you’ve had to unlearn as a coach so you could be an effective coach.
David: I think as coaches and our community, we have this sense that we’re pushed to profit, profit making. We’re pushed to perform along the regulatory standards. And those are all great things to have as good guiderails. But we need to focus less on the doing and the performing and more on the being.
As I went through my coaching certification, I put together a little pad of paper that I gave to all my clients, and it was a to-be list. Every day we all sit down and say, what are the three most important things I have to do today? I wanted to encourage myself and my clients about how they want to be today. And that’s such a powerful thing. When I realized that I was trying to make too many jokes with people, I realized by throwing out jokes I was creating a barrier in the real conversation that wanted to happen. In a morning meditation I just said I’m going to go back to love. I’m just going to be love. And guess what? All the conversations changed. All the opportunities started to come; all of the love started to come back.
It isn’t an unlearning all the requirements of being an entrepreneur and a businessperson; it is just realizing that how you are, what your purpose is for your community, for your staff, for the planet, is far more creative and a pathway to success than just doing the doing and being busy.
Severin: I like that – the to-be list. Earlier in my career I actually had a license plate, it was to be or not to be. But it was spelled alphanumerically.
David: Of course.
Severin: What is that? What is that they were saying. But I love the Shakespearian, the idea of being. There’s many metaphors for that. So, I like where you’ve gone with that.
David: Lastly, in my Rotary Club at Cranbrook Sunrise, one of the biggest things we do for our community for healthy families and participation is every September we host a Gran Fondo, Kootenay Rockies Gran Fondo. Last night we were having a meeting of the organizing committee and the chair, Jason, just stopped us all and he said, ‘we can focus on budgets and to-dos and all that stuff; I really want to focus back on the rider experience.’ What is the best experience we can give these riders, these long-distance riders up to 152 kilometers in one day in the heat? What’s the best experience we can give them so that they continue to do more, encourage their families to do more and then through that, then they’re more aligned with our rotary club and all the good work we do for young healthy families. And I just really loved Jason’s reset for us to say okay, we can have all those lists and all those things that have to be accomplished, but what’s number one? It’s the experience we provide for the riders.
Severin: I like that. When you think about experience – I’ll move this over to customer. One of the things that profoundly interests me is this notion of customer delight. It’s not customer service; that’s the do. It’s customer delight. What would delight look like? Because if you can reach that higher level of, I’m delighting my customers, that’s an order of magnitude better than just filling out a checkbox. Because that’s the experience. And that gets into the feeling or even to use your words – the love that you have for them – that whatever it is that can have them be delighted that you can lawfully provide could be awesome in terms of taking customer experience to another level. It’s about customer delight.
David: Yeah. In my business career, whether it’s oil and gas, renewable energy transition, healthcare, all of those areas that I’ve been involved in or coached or mediated, over time you get to know who you trust. You get to know those people that if I’m in a bind or if I need a product or a service or a sale or an alignment, what’s the short list of people I could just contact and say, ‘hey Severin, here’s what needs to be done. Let’s collaborate and figure this out.’ And you know that Severin and I will do that for our joint gain. And then there’s another short list of people that you’ve had the experience with that you would never deal with ever again because of lack of faith, a lack of integrity, the drive to whatever goal that they have singular focused.
I want to really stress that from the coaching angle and from the business success angle who you are, how you are in relationship and the delight that you provide and the spotlight you provide for others and the opportunities you provide for others makes us all more wealthy, healthy and in love with the world. Less win/lose, less power struggles and more ease. So that in that group of a dozen companies, or individuals that I can say ‘hey Severin, I’ve got this challenge, can you help us work together?’ And you know that very quickly it will happen because you’ve got the templates, you’ve got the relationship, you’ve got the knowledge of values of each other. It works, it makes life so much simpler. And those that are challenging, difficult, hard to connect with, just provides you an opportunity to cut them out of your life.
Severin: Yeah, I like to edit that out of my life.
David: Yeah.
Severin: Raising hell. We get to a point where we just learn what we want and what we don’t want. And sometimes we learn that powerfully. I learned that powerfully from a client of mine.
Years ago, I lost a contract, and I lost a contract with a person who was what I call a business friend. But the friend contacted me later and he said, ‘I just wanted you to know we’re friends, but I wanted you to know why you lost this contract.’ I was very anxious, and I say, ‘is there any way to get it back?’ He goes ‘no.’ He goes, ‘but I want you to know because I care for you.’ He just said ‘it was so hard to deal with your company in this issue. It was so, not litigious, but it was so cumbersome, so non-simple, if you will.’ He said “I’ve just decided to edit out of my life all of that and I put this in that category. But I wanted you to know so you knew for the next time.”
And it was such powerful. That was a very expensive lesson. It caused me to go back and say, how are we making things so complex? How are we hard to work with? What would it be like to be easy to work with? What would customers find valuable, not what is my structured officious process, but how could we streamline? It was a very valuable lesson for me.
David: At the end of the day, it is only about our culture, our values and how we show up for others.
Severin: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. In preparation for our call here, you sent me a deck. I’d love to go to that deck. It’s titled Culture – the Hidden Energy for Breakthrough Collaborations. Tell me about your thoughts on this.
David: The main thing, Severin, when I woke up this morning and I always get the best ideas in the middle of the night when my brain is clear and my heart is clear, I realized what’s the one thing that I see in my clients and in organizations and communities that are really high performing, high impact positive? And it’s their culture. They focus on culture.
What’s the opposite of that? So many organizations will bring in a coach or do a workshop or do a retreat, and it’s like ticking a box. Okay, hallelujah, we did that, now let’s get back to being busy.
So that’s what was on my mind first thing this morning. As we talked about our learning journey being continuous, our curiosity, I just really want to underscore for everybody, it’s your culture. It’s how you are together, and that’s what I’ve dedicated all my nine books on collaboration, that’s what I dedicate my coaching and facilitation on.
Just to use one example. I was approached about four months ago by three different organizations that have hundreds of millions of dollars in value in this partnership. They couldn’t talk to each other. It took them six months to organize two days for a workshop. They were just too busy to do their work. We had the time, we went far – we completed a team charter for two different groups in one day each. So, entry in the morning at 8:00 a.m., they didn’t trust each other. They’d often not even met. And by the end of each of those two days, we developed a full team charter. What are our norms? What are our values? How do we resolve conflict? What really is our purpose? And it just felt so good. In the closing circle they took away their gratitude for the group for doing what they accomplished in those days. They rated the days very highly.
And then when I checked back a month later to say okay, how’s it going? What do you need now? What have you done on the action plan you set out? They were too busy. Nope, we don’t have time for that. You might have done more harm in creating that opportunity, that possibility and then just going back to the silos. Going back to the busy-ness and the lack of collaborative culture building. And so, I want to be a change agent on supporting culture as opposed to doing.
Severin: I’m going to show you a picture. I want you to tell me what your thoughts are, where your thoughts go to with this picture.
David: That’s a picture actually at Lake O’Hara that we talked about in Kootenay National Park. And the reason I love that picture and put it in that slide deck as you can see there’s a reasonably common wilderness path leading up to those block steps. And I think this is a metaphor, I hope that your viewers will understand that you have got to keep climbing. And it doesn’t get easier, but when you know who are, what your purpose is, how you resolve conflicts, you can go up those steps much faster. Or you can get to the steps and the base and say I don’t want to do that, that’s too hard, and then retreat.
I don’t want any of our clients or any of our viewers to retreat. I want them to be able to have their coaching, do their team charter, take their ten essential steps to powerful collaboration and just keep on climbing and climbing because we do not know what’s possible. And I’ve got many examples in my business career where I didn’t even dream of an outcome.
We got into some conflicts, we worked through it, built a relationship, checked who we were and what our ultimate interests were, and ended up making, in one case one of my small public companies, we tripled our share price through these methods and techniques by simply not trying to force our weight onto others or force our product or force our rights, but be curious, create the foundation and tripling the share price not only to my shareholders, who were very happy, but the people we were dealing with in the other organization in the community, they kept saying “come back, we want to do more business with a company like yours.”
Severin: That’s awesome. You’ve written nine books. That’s a lot of books. Tell me your authoring experience and your journey. We have many listeners that have thought of writing a book. Let’s have a little dialogue on that.
David: Two things come to mind, Severin. Thank you. One is six. I became involved with a group of world-class teachers in negotiation conflict resolution from Harvard. And Stone and Ury wrote the infamous Getting to Yes and they’ve sold about 50 million copies of Getting to Yes. It took Bill Ury probably about ten years before he said actually it’s not about getting to yes; it’s the power of a positive no. So, getting back to those boundaries to say unless I know clearly where I say no, then the pathway is just not clear. I need to have that positive no and then negotiate what works for both of us.
When I was with the authors of Difficult Conversations, Getting to Yes, Leading from Within, I was bold enough to say hey, you guys are really smart. I love you; the world loves you. But I’m not sure that you’ve actually been an entrepreneur in business. So, I’m going to start writing books from the business, from the small company approach. They said, “Go for it.”
The second thing I want to say about my writing journey, is I don’t know. I am curious. So in 2015, I decided what I’m all about and what I think is the magic is collaboration. And collaboration is rarely done, it’s usually a manipulation or an overused term. So, I looked around and said okay, show me some books on collaboration. And I could only find a few and every one of them were written by one or two people. I thought well that’s not right. If you believe in collaboration, it better be a collaborative book. So I started interviewing people across the world and asking for their quotes and asking them to provide their insight and wisdom.
In that first book, Breakthrough to Yes, Unlocking the Possible Within a Culture of Collaboration, I have over a hundred experts from eight countries giving their wisdom. So it’s a blend of my stories of my career, what I’ve learned, what I’ve failed at, what I’ve excelled at and the wisdom of a hundred others. And I think that’s really important that whether you’re an organizational president, a not-for-profit leader or a 16-year-old in grade 10, just knowing that you can unlock the possible within a culture of collaboration, that’s been my journey.
When I was looking for a publisher, one of the publishers at the time said what we really need to know is you’ve been a huge success, you’ve got a secret sauce, and you’re bringing it to the world. And I said “bullshit, I’m not going to do that. That’s not what collaboration is about.” I’m constantly learning, so I will bring this methodology and these multiple sources of wisdom and through those processes, like the ten essential steps to collaboration, we can provide a guide. The last non-fiction leadership book I published was Better by Design, just a very clear book on processes, collaborative leadership assessments, creating a better container to create that positive outcome and to provide me greater learning.
Severin: I’m online looking at your various books. I like your Everybody has Steps. I like your ten-step process here in terms of collaboration. And we can crosswalk that through a little bit just to have a discussion for people that are not seeing it. It’s something that is available in multiple of the books you’ve got there.
David: So, the reason I put this together is because I think it is a mindful purposeful approach. And one of the things we don’t notice very quickly is the ten steps, most people start at six. ‘Call a meeting. We’re going to get together and talk about stuff.’ I really want to encourage people to set their intentions. What really is your honest purpose? Are you calling me there just to manipulate me into thinking that this is part of mine when it’s not? Be aware, there are others around that table, around that collaborative team that will want you to fail. Be aware of those roadblocks and differing interests and just sometimes differing interests can teach me, teach the group. When somebody stands up against me, they’re a great teacher, that’s embrace conflict.
Seek diversity. In society and business, we have spent a lot of time in the last few years seeking diversity. But it’s so important. It’s so often we get people that look like you and I tell people that don’t look like you and I our great wisdom. I find some of the most amazing creative people I know are high school students right now doing amazing powerful work. And they speak a different language, and they have a different dream. They have different attachments than I do. I can learn so much. And by being with them and opening their opportunity, at times young people have said, “this is the first time I’ve actually been seen. You’re the first person that I’ve been able to share who I am, and you’ll listen to me because you find this valuable.” Of course.
So, design the collaboration, come together, listen deeply. This will really resonate with you, Severin, because this was a really important part of our coaching certification. What’s not being said but wants to be heard? What’s not spoken but really is underneath all of this?
In conflict resolution, what the conflict is about is never what people think it’s about. It’s underneath there. So, let’s go there. Be brave, be visionary. What is possible?
In my work with the Canadian Energy & Climate Nexus, and in energy transition I work with clients in oil and gas and renewables, etc., there’s just so much ignorance out there. There’s so much ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ and ‘climate change is wrong.’ Or ‘the world will be saved if we all buy electric cars and don’t worry about the power grids. Let’s just keep keeping taxpayer money on this dream.’ Let’s actually have a critical thinking opportunity to say what’s true. Let’s really do a deep dive and investigate.
And the best way, whether it’s from coaching or dispute resolution, when people are just like this at each other, the best tool we have is to take them to their shared future. Okay, five years from now what do you want to be together? What does that look that? What are the attributes of that?
I was doing some work in Southern California around the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Reactor a number of years ago. There was deep conflict, deep fear and environmental economic, etc. And when we were able to say, okay, what is the world we want to create in San Luis Obispo and Diablo Canyon and energy for Californians in ten years, then we’ll work back from that. So that’s the collaborate with vision part is, if you can’t see the forest for the trees – to use our background – let’s just go to the end of the trail and figure out how we are going to get there together.
Severin: I want to hit on this one point here and then we’ll continue. One of the things that’s so interesting in coaching research is that in coaching if we dive down the rabbit hole of let’s explore all of our problems, frequently we’ll get so mired in problems we can’t get back to the point of construction. But if we’ll focus on the growth edge, where do we want to go grow together, what do we want to accomplish, where can we go? Just like you did saying where do we want to be in ten years with energy? And then achieve that common ground and then build back often, and then the research will confirm this, by focusing on the future and how we can go, we get much better results, much better coaching efficacy. So this is a really big point you bring out. So, I wanted to thank you for bringing that up.
Definitely visioning the future together, your point, collaborate with vision is really important to getting us to those next steps in completing a process of change.
David: Thank you. And it is the way to say we all want our children, our nieces and nephews to have a brilliant and positive and better world. Coming from that, what do we need to do with respect to energy transition, with respect to education, with respect to healthcare, with respect to community. Probably the last point I want to highlight on these ten essential steps is now lead with purpose and accountability.
Oftentimes people, leaders who are endorsing and using and employing collaborative techniques fail to lead is they fail to understand that it’s still their job to make the choice and hold people accountable and get it done. Align compensation systems, align resources, align continuous learning. This is not a love-in. This is okay, we’ve been together through these eight steps, we’ve come up with a powerful vision, we’ve come up with some action plan and resource, a mix that really works for us and the accountabilities, positive and negative, hold that space for them. Because if you fail to hold that space, if you let bad behavior continue, if you let good behavior be unnoticed, you are the problem. You will destroy that possibility, that vision. You will destroy the trust they have in you.
At one time when the price of our product; in fact, it was light oil, plummeted by two-thirds, I had to make the tough decision as to whether we can’t go on with the 110 people that we have in our company. We need to pare that back to 50. And notwithstanding, the heartache for everybody, including sleepless nights for me, I had to look at okay, where is our company going to? What are the people and the resources and the skills that we need coming the next five years? So that meant some very excellent performers but didn’t fit into that picture had to go. And guess what? In my career, I’m actually proud to say I let go 84 people, and that’s not an easy thing, but sometimes you just have to do it. Treat them fairly, give them a good package, support them in any way you can. Or if they’re adversaries and bad performers, then get them the heck out of there and don’t let them spread their poison.
And I would say out of the 84, almost every one, whether it was a month later or five years later came back to me and said ‘Thank you. I got it, you treated me with respect, you didn’t lie to me, and you didn’t keep me in an organization I no longer fit. Thank you.’
Severin: That’s great. In that book you held up earlier, Next Ten, I have a chapter in there on if you have to have a layoff, how do you do it empathically. Because keeping the individual whole and trying to do it in such a way that it helps them. So there are ten questions there to help you walk through the path of what to consider to. ke sure you do it with heart and mind and that it just doesn’t come off as a brutal attack that could leave somebody devastated. I’ve had the same experience as you’ve had where people come back and say, thank you.
I recall it was a tough day in San Francisco. I was called in and I knew when I was going in there that my job was to collect all the information for the executive and then terminate it. I got there and I recall going in and I talked to the individual and he said, “You’re going to fire me, aren’t you?” And I said, “That’ll be the end of the conversation but that doesn’t mean that we can’t have a great conversation.” I said to him, “I see you have a golf club there. Do you like to golf?” He goes “I love to golf.” I said, “Then let’s go golfing. Because I have to learn a bunch from you and if I can have you in the right environment, I can learn all I need to learn.” So, I go “What’s the best golf course we could get on?” He goes “There’s one over at Half Moon Bay.” I said, “Let’s go.”
So we went, we played 18 and I just talked to him and talked to him and talked to him. And I said, “it’s still early, you want to play another 18?” And he goes “Yeah.” So, we played another 18. I said “I’m just getting so much information from you. This is so valuable. I find you so interesting. Do you have time for dinner?” He goes “I do.” I go “What’s the best restaurant you could conceive of eating?” He goes “I’d like to go Scoma’s on the wharf.” I said, “Let me treat.” And we went there, and we talked more and more.
At the end of the day, he said to me, he goes “I was so nervous for today and you have just put me not only at ease, but I feel really good about where we are. I feel good about this, and I know I’m going to get terminated,” but he goes “but thank you for how you did this.” Of course, I sent the entire bill to my client right after.
I treated this person with respect. We got everything… they were dumbfounded. They’re like “you got all the keys; you got all the information?” I go “Yeah.” When you treat people like human beings and you care for them and you understand what they must be going through and you try to create ease in a situation where you have to be deliberate, it really worked out to be masterful. But I just created a friend in the process. Even though the end of the conversation would be the same, we were able to do it with least harm, without a lawsuit and everything else that was so essential in this process.
David: Wonderful. And that huge word respect just came to mind. Beautifully done. You’ve actually helped him start to transition to maybe he wants to play some golf before he jumps into his next position.
Severin: Yeah.
David: A couple of years ago I sent out a survey to my network and I had a similar scenario to say okay, for various reasons that you have to terminate ten staff, how would you do that? And the polarity was you do a Severin. Maybe I’ve got a brand-new verb here – you do a Severin.
Severin: It wasn’t all that way. I could be Darth Vader too.
David: Or you lie to them until it’s obvious what you’re doing. And I was sad to hear most people felt that they had to lie. One of the things that I was told many decades ago is, never lie. If you are in a situation where you know that you’re about to lay somebody off or fire somebody, obviously you’re not going to say, ‘oh by the way, today you die.’ But if they ask me, of course I tell them the truth. As soon as I lied to them, I’ve just broken that promise, that relationship, and given the lawyers more clients.
Severin: Yeah. That’s interesting. Right now, it looks like the economy may be able to avoid going into recession, so we’ll hope for the good things. But in terms of the data, some of the data indicates we could have a recession this fall or early this next year. And when that comes, you typically see layoffs. So this is an issue that people have to deal with from time to time is how to be truthful. And so many lawsuits start by lying, by not treating people with dignity and so on and caring and understanding where they’re coming from. The fact that you’re the one who is laying them off and you feel uncomfortable, imagine how it is on the other side? And I think it’s the imagining what they must feel and understanding how to do it more empathically. Cut once as opposed to tear might be another empathic thing to help the process along.
David: And to help them to learn the guide step to walk those ledges. Yes, there’s a deep fall possible, but you can get over there where you want to be.
I think it’s very concerning to me the amount of debt, the wars, the energy transition errors that we’re making, the huge debt of individuals. So, we are way overdue for a recession. So, I’m a believer that it is more likely than not. And to recession proof myself as in my career, when times get tough that’s when I need to step up even more. That’s when I find out what’s needed most of me and I fill those needs so that I’m even more valuable.
In the past when my companies had tough times, I’ve told people okay, it’s a choice now; you can leave, or you can pretend to coast. But those that aren’t getting a nickel more, we might even have to cut back our compensation, but step up and continue to learn and evolve and succeed. You’ve just built your whole career reputation, not only with me but everybody that knows you. So, this is an investment. It could be tough for a few months or a few years, but this is also an opportunity, these challenging times, for business leaders and entrepreneurs. It’s just getting back to that.
Remember we talked about those dozen people that I really trust. I’ll buy from them. I will be their source of revenue. And the ones that have just treated me like a number or are not people focused, or relationship or service delight focused, I won’t be spending my scarcer resources at those businesses.
Severin: Yeah. I’m curious. Did you have any mentors growing up?
David: Yeah. We all have informal mentors and I’ve had coaches and mentors professionally. Growing up and even now I have my 16-year-old grandson is a mentor. My elementary school teacher was a mentor. My principal actually. I turned into a bit of a not a nice person in grade 6 doing rebellious things and being a little jerk. And he just called me in, and he didn’t give me the strap or anything like that. He just sat me down and we talked about what’s possible for you, David? Witnessing that possibility away from yes, there are times where we just have to be harsh and clear and direct, but those examples to me of people that don’t react immediately, that don’t do the anticipated, that actually bring me into curiosity and possibility, I learned from them. So, it’s ongoing.
And I think to your point, I was just reading an article that talked about the neuroscience of curiosity and labeling one of the things as coaches and as negotiators and mediators, we really want to stop the stimulus and response from being engaged, now I’m going to react before my smarter brain gets a chance to figure out a better response. If we go to curiosity and even labeling my own feelings, that actually neurologically reduces the activity in the amygdala and takes us very much more quickly to the prefrontal cortex where I can say huh, first it’s important for me to understand what I’m feeling, being able to express that.
So, in the language and the methodology of Marshall Rosenberg, Nonviolent Communication, which is just a powerful tool for me all my life, my response could be I’m observing, I feel, this is what I value about this, and this is my request of you. Just those four simple steps – I observe and declare my feelings. Here’s what’s important to me about this. And here’s my request. It just takes me to that space of non-reactivity and positive outcomes where somebody can be yelling and screaming at me and if I respond skillfully to that, whether it’s recession, whether it’s termination, whether it’s I’ve cut somebody off on a biking trail or whatever it is, it takes them out of that stage of my bully factor didn’t work here this guy’s different; I guess I have to respond differently.
Severin: I like that. That’s helpful. And I particularly like that you bring in the neuroscience in of curiosity. I think it’s a wonderful thing what the research is telling us, helps us slow down, ponder, think and choose our response.
I’m taken back to one of my favorite quotes by Viktor Frankl. “Between stimulus and response, there is a space, and, in that space, we can choose who it is and what we want to be.” And that’s just creating that opportunity for change, which is such a wonderful thing.
David: Yeah, and it creates our life.
Severin: It does. And it certainly indicates your options after that response. Sometimes a hot response is the end. You get no second chance. But a cool response, a thoughtful response, a measured response creates more opportunity.
David: And just getting back to our boundaries part, sometimes with some people, very few people, a harsh response is exactly what’s needed because it speaks their language. Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl is one of the great books of psychology and coaching. And that quote is just one of my favorite guides, my inukshuk. Because if Viktor Frankl can go through the death camps that he went through and survive with looking at his future, what he really wanted, he would do whatever it took to be with his wife again, that’s powerful. And thankfully almost none of us will ever have the experience that Viktor Frankl went through.
Severin: Yeah, it’s a masterful journey and a gift to the world the lessons that he was able to pull through from that hard experience. Definitely harsh life curriculum.
David: Yeah.
Severin: Pivoting from that, do you have a personal mantra or rule that guides you today?
David: My checkpoint, my inukshuk is all my life I used to say, “what would my parents think about what I’m about to do?” Sort of check in with integrity and values and my learning. And more and more recently, it’s been the last 30 years, is what’s the shared future I want to help create? Going to that with vision. So a lot of the work that I do now as a volunteer is based on wilderness and environmental experiences. Supporting entrepreneurs and building a purpose for organizations and leaders like where are we going. Where do we want to be?
In the wilderness and backpacking and snowshoeing, whatever, that’s such a gift because when I take younger people on backpacking trips and show them glaciers and show them 9,000-foot peaks, all of a sudden, their eyes open. And I say “now you know why protecting this is so important and now you know why all you need is a vehicle, a bottle of water and a sandwich and all of this is available to you. You don’t have to go to concerts, you don’t have to buy toys and stuff. The earth and the planet and the forest are right here.” It frees them up.
Getting people into that design and the collaboration and the setting, you’ve talked about the brilliant coaching and connection that you made with respect to golf and then the favorite dinner place. Oftentimes a colleague of mine, Jeff Cohen in Upstate New York, will at times take divorcing couples for a backpacking trip and sit around the fire, don’t talk much about all the problems. But he said within two nights, they’ve realized what is most important to them. Most often rekindle their marriage. Sometimes confirm that it’s done but rekindle what’s really most important to them. So, getting away from the tensions and all the pressures that we see in the modern world and the concrete world and getting them to be in a place that’s in both of our backgrounds and change their hearts.
Severin: I never heard of that approach. I love that approach for conflict resolution. I think that you could have more peace and more joy that way. That’s wonderful. I have a question I often ask people. What was the earliest job you had in your youth? And it could be farming or mowing lawns or anything. What was it when you were a youngster?
David: I’ll jump on that. The earliest job I had was watering lawns and cutting lawns for the Calgary School Board. So it was fantastic. I could play my 8-track Smoky Robinson tape and drive the Jeep around with my shirt off and just feel like I was on the top of the world at 17 years old. And oftentimes the young people in my life, there’s a lot of pressure starting from middle school when you got to decide what you want to be when you grow up. And what I say to them is I hope you have a really awful job early. Because when I had a really awful job, which was tarring roofs in the middle of the summer heat or sanding desks, just sanding furniture for 8 hours a day where everybody around me hated their work, by 8:05 they were hoping it was 5:00 and wanted to go to the bar. That was the time where I said if I’m going to have a 40-year career, I really want to love what I’m doing so I’m going to go there and stop fooling around.
Severin: I’ve never heard anyone express it that way. I love that. “I hope you have a really awful job early.” I think back, you know what, those are very defining.
David: Can you remember one, Severin?
Severin: Oh absolutely. I had a job where I was just looking for something and somebody said, “I’ve got a job for you.” And the job was working for a bank note company where they were still using hot lead for the print. My job was the lead carrier and the smelter. And so for two months I would take these five gallon buckets around to each of the different print machines, pick up all the lead pieces, take them back to the smelter, smelt the lead, put it into new ingots and then bring it back. It was the most environmentally toxic worse possible position ever. I’m like, ‘oh my gosh, am I going to do this?’ And the opportunity came for another job, and I went I definitely want this job in my past.
David: What were you telling yourself when you said no, not this?
Severin: Oh, I definitely said I needed education. I need to use my mind, not just my body, my physical labor for this. I want to use my education for a job. It’s time to get back to school.
David: Yeah, and it’s time to dream. Time to have hope and find out those that are hopeful and can hope together.
Severin: If you could solve one human problem, what would it be?
David: The inability to successfully hear each other, to listen to one another, to see each other.
Severin: How are you manifesting the solution to that problem in your work?
David: I’ve told you when I tried to be a joker, I was creating barriers and realizing that. And shifting my intention to love, just being in love with the world and open to whoever shows up in front of me, those are big shifts. Doesn’t seem like much. But as coaches we’re taught to set our hearts before we start that coaching meeting or a call or a Zoom. And I provide that opportunity and challenge for our listeners to say before you start that meeting, before you have that consulting call or you have that conflict with a family member, just spend five minutes setting your intention. It does change everything. It changes who I am and therefore, it has the possibility of inviting you into that.
Severin: I like that. Simon Sinek has a why. Do you have a why?
David: Business on purpose. That’s my focus and the why for that is so much of what we’ve talked about, Severin, is this planet, our communities, our economy are at risk and every one of us can be part of reducing that risk and improving our shared future.
I know stuff, I’ve had a lot of experience in many different careers, many different industries, many different locales. And through my experience and more so inviting that conversation and listening and opening possibilities, especially to young people, I can be part of that better future. I don’t want the negative. To use the analogy whether it’s race car driving or hockey or football, you look for the back of the net. You look for the way past the crash. You don’t look at the goalie, you don’t look at the crash. You focus on where you want to be, what you want to score and gather the people that will help you get there.
We’re in very complex times and you’re an author, wisdom leader of artificial intelligence. Now in the last six months, all of us have been trying to learn more and more. Instead of focusing on the fear, and I have some real fear about algorithms and powerbrokers and artificial intelligence that I think that’s a very real concern. But through community, through coaching and through listening, through creating possibilities together, we can score, we can hit the back of that net. We’ve got to lead from love, not fear. We’ve got to create hope.
Severin: We have to create the world we want, not the world we get if we sit back and don’t participate.
David: Yeah. I guess one more comment. Sheryl and I were in South of Spain, the Algar region, last fall. We were in a laundromat, needed to clean our clothes after a couple of weeks of living simply. We met a fellow in this laundromat, and he turned out to be a best-selling author that had gone into retreat for the last ten years. He just said “David, the world is an awful place…” I won’t use his language but “it’s an awful place. I just need to disappear. I can’t change a thing.” And I said “I can’t do that. I have family, I have community, I have grandchildren. It is our job to stand up for them. That’s my why.”
Severin: Yes. To be a bridge builder.
David: Yeah.
Severin: To help them to the future. Clayton Christensen wrote a powerful book called How Will You Measure Your Life. How will you measure your life?
David: By the love I get. By the love I allow. I’ve been so fortunate. I’ve had some real tough times and I’ve had some really amazing times. And at the end of the day, at one time owning four homes or cabins, at the end of the day renting or backpacking or spending six months in a 20-foot trailer, none of that really matters; it’s just part of my journey. It’s part of my learning, my resilience, my opportunity. It’s not what I’m seeing that allows others to love me. Whether that’s my two-year-old granddaughter in California or whether it’s a leader in a multinational organization. Whether it’s my partner Sheryl. Who am I to them? What do I represent? What do I attract?
Severin: Last question. What’s the question I’ve not asked you to tell us more about you?
David: How do Severin and I help others become leaders in creating collaborative positive energy coaches? And that is a loaded question because one of the things I’m delighted about is this opportunity, I’m delighted for any feedback, I can offer some free offers to your viewers, your listeners. And in the thinking of that this morning at 3:00 in the morning, Severin, I thought wouldn’t be beautiful if we had 100 people send an email to me or you to say, ‘here’s something that’s important to me about collaborative organizations and cultures.’ And we compiled all that and turned it into a collaborative book with those 100 authors. Wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?
Severin: That’d be a great thing. So we’ll open up the challenge and I’ll give the email and it would be fun to work on that together.
David: Yeah.
Severin: I want to thank you for your time. It’s been a rich time. I never know where these conversations are going to other than if I come prepared to listen and to appreciate the wonderful person in front of me that we can have a great dialogue. And I thought we had a wonderful dialogue. Can I share with you some things that I heard I want to remember?
David: Yes, thank you, Severin.
Severin: I loved hearing about your background and that from an early age you were forming small groups, small clubs, organizing people together in circles, roundtables, symposiums for listening. It was fun to hear that you had your builder phase, building five companies and then selling them. As well as your present intention to shift and to become a coach. And that when you decided to become a coach, you wanted to be a great coach and you got certifications and training in both coaching as well as mediation.
I appreciated your comments and metaphors about the ridgeline and walking on the shelf, if you will. And leaning into the things that one could be fearful of, but that one could safely navigate if they understand where they are in their position. We talked about that ridgeline.
There was a point where you talked about having a to-be list. It’s not just a to-do list, it’s a to-be list, who am I and the metaphor. And this idea about how focusing on love and the love that you can bring helped bring a presence to what you’re doing.
Of course, we talked about your books, the process of collaboration and those were certainly all wonderful. I loved your comment when we got into talking about empathy and hiring, about never lying, telling the truth and how to be present in what you’re doing. I thought that was a wonderful part of our conversation.
We got into a little neuroscience, we talked about some of these mantras. It’s interesting, two mantras, a mantra early in life – what would my parents think about what I’m doing. And then now later in life, moving to intention – what’s the shared future I want to help create. We can choose new mantras, new steps, new pathways to help us reach a higher state of actualization to bring us peace and to help other people as well.
I love this part. What I’d like to say to young people, “I hope you have a really awful job early.” I love that. I thought it was great. Then I thought back, ‘oh my gosh, I’ve had some bad jobs.’ But I recall what has been motivating to others is sometimes when they have a really hard experience, it could be defining. It can help them leave a place of ease or of lack of resistance and say oh, I intentionally want to do something. And I love what your comment was, “the reason you want young people to have that really awful job early is it can give them time to open up to dream and to hope, which could be such a wonderful place.”
When I asked you about the human problem you’d like to solve, you said “the inability to hear and listen to one another.” And your intention there of listening with a heart and being active in our listening and setting time as we should do in coaches to clear our mind, to shift to our heart, to create the present intention to be present in these coaching sessions, which is so important.
On the why, I thought was interesting. In life, we need to look past the crash, look past the net. You need to shoot to where you’re headed and then gather the people around you to help you get there. I thought all of that was so wonderful, as well as the challenge at the end, let’s collaborate on that book. Let’s talk about what collaboration means and celebrate what many great coaches and leaders and others might think about in a volume in the future.
I accept your challenge and the opportunity to collaborate, so this won’t be our last conversation. We’ll come back together when we have something that we prepared for many others.
So, on that, I’d like to thank you for being here today. Our guest today is David Savage. He’s a speaker, author and executive coach. And as you’ve heard, a serial entrepreneur as well.
Earlier in the podcast he mentioned that he’d like to collect 100 comments from coaches or others on what does collaboration means to you. You can send those to david@davidbsavage.com. And you can find him also at David Savage on our line and his website davidbsavage.com. I look forward to also seeing those comments and collaborating on this on there will be a topic here on the Arete Coach Podcast in the future.
Now with each session of the podcast, I would like to end with a few quotes for you to ponder. And our quotes today come from the following individuals.
First from Thomas Crum. “The quality of our lives depends on what on whether or not we have conflicts, but on how we respond to them.”
From Nat Turner. “Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity.”
From Richard Branson. “The brands that will thrive in the coming years are the ones that have a purpose beyond profit.”
From Howard Schultz. “Success is best when it’s shared.”
And I’ll end one from Sara Blakely. “Don’t be intimidated by what you don’t know. That could be your greatest strength and ensure that you do things differently from everyone else.” So, ask good questions.
So, until next time, be your best self. Seek to uplift others. Be good and do good. You have been listening to Severin Sorensen and the Arete Coach Podcast where we explore excellence in the art and science of executive coaching today.