Laura Gates
Executive Coach | CEO Coach | Team Facilitator | Speaker and Author
Leading with Purpose in Chaotic Times
Episode Summary
Laura is an expert coach who explains how we can lead with purpose in chaotic times. We explore the unique framework she created and its application to coaching and team facilitation.
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Bio
Laura Gates is a sought-after executive coach, team facilitator, and advisor to executives at Silicon Valley’s top companies and VC-backed start-up Founders. With over 25 years of coaching experience, Laura’s prestigious client roster includes NASA, LinkedIn, Stanford University, and pioneers in biotech, AI, and cryptocurrency. She’s worked in prisons, homeless organizations, and global women’s initiatives. Her work building high performing teams through navigating conflict have been featured in First Round Capital’s Review. Culture Amp has featured her as a top executive coach. She’s been invited to speak in front of audiences worldwide, including VISA, American Women in Science, The Female Quotient, Consciously Unbiased, and the University of Texas Conference on Work Teams. She’s currently writing a book on harnessing our collective genius and leading with purpose while studying for a Master’s in Organizational Leadership from the University of Redlands. Laura started her career as a Wall Street Banker, has built two companies of her own, and helped found a leadership training company.
Website
https://gatesgroupllc.com/
LinkedIn
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauragates/
Twitter
https://twitter.com/Laurafgates
Leadership Quote
A mentor once asked me why I wasn’t stepping into my leadership.
I said, “I’m afraid it will consume me.”
She said, “don’t worry, it will.”
She was right.
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Transcript
The key to sustainable leadership lies in the ability to thrive during uncertainty, ambiguity, and change. Grand Heron International brings you the Coaching Assistance Program, giving your employees on-demand coaching to manage through a challenging situation and arrive at a solution. Visit GrandHeronInternational.Ca/Podcast to learn more.
This podcast is part of the C Suite Radio Network, turning the volume up on business.
Welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to promoting leadership development and sharing leadership insights. Here’s your host, The Leadership Excelerator®, Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
Hello, everyone! Welcome to the
Keep Leading!® Podcast, the podcast dedicated to leadership development and insights I’m your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. I work with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. I do this primarily through the power of executive and leadership coaching, facilitation, and professional speaking.
We are living in difficult times and this is a time for leaders to step up and to shine as they step up. How can leaders do that? My guest today will explain how leaders can lead with purpose in chaotic times. My guest today is Laura Gates. Laura Gates is a sought-after executive coach, team facilitator, and advisor to executives at Silicon Valley’s top companies and venture capital-backed startup founders. In addition to being recognized as a top coach, Laura has been invited to speak in front of audiences around the world.
Laura, welcome to the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Laura Gates:
Thank you, Eddie. It’s so lovely to be here with you today. I’m really excited about our conversation.
Eddie Turner:
Well, tell us a little bit more about you.
Laura Gates:
Well, right now, as you said, I’m doing leadership coaching, leadership training, facilitation. I get to work with really smart people doing incredible things in terms of breaking through pioneering technology and it’s been an exciting time in the world and I’m someone who believes that in these chaotic times, they can have incredible opportunities coming forward. So, I’m very thrilled to be here and see what the future is holding for all of us in the coming years.
Eddie Turner:
Yes. And it’s as if we had a lens to be able to see and be able to forecast and take appropriate actions. And so, in the absence of that, we’re going to talk about some strategies that you’ve come up with to help us be successful with that. I want to tell people a little bit though about how you and I met.
Eddie Turner:
Well, actually you tell people how we met. I should just let you do that.
Laura Gates:
Well, yeah, we both met in Toronto, Canada, at a training that was for developing our leadership to master level skills and, yeah, it was lovely meeting some incredible people with Marcia Reynolds and Dorothy whose name I will pronounce badly Siminovitch.
Eddie Turner:
You got it, yes.
Laura Gates:
That’s how we met. And what’s your version of the story.
Eddie Turner:
Exactly what you said. You and I met in Toronto, Canada and we studied under the amazing Marcia Reynolds who at the time was ranked the number one female coach in the world and Dorothy Siminovitch, both of them master certified coaches with the International Coaching Federation, both of them some of the earliest credential holders with the ICF. Marcia, uniquely, one of the founders, one of the first MCCs, one of the first presidents, the fifth president and someone who had recently served on the board when she taught us. She had just come off the board. So, we had a chance to study under two true masters.
Laura Gates:
And now, we’ll be working alongside Marcia in her training program.
Eddie Turner:
How about that, huh? She’s taken two of her graduates and we are going to be running an amazing program for her as her faculty and facilitators as a part of the breakthrough coaching program. So, I’m looking forward to partnering with you, again, in a new way.
Laura Gates:
Yes, that’ll be fun
Eddie Turner:
Yes. So, now, as we think about what we’re doing and we think about this idea of how we help leaders lead with purpose in chaotic times, can you just tell us what it means to lead with purpose?
Laura Gates:
Absolutely. So, for me, leading with purpose means doing what has heart and meaning as well as what is needed from us. So, really, it’s about paying attention to what gives me joy, what gives me energy, where I can match, what Gay Hendricks calls, my zone of genius with my skills and abilities.
Eddie Turner:
Gives you joy. Gives you meaning. How does that lead to purpose?
Laura Gates:
Well, that to me is around how do I have an impact, where can I uniquely serve. If you think about it, we all know that we have a unique fingerprint. We don’t realize that we also have a unique iris color and a unique voice print when our voice is recorded. So, to me, that means that we’re all uniquely here to express something that comes from us that is not like anyone else. And part of our task is to really figure out what that is, how that shows up, what’s the best way of using this instrument that we are to be a part of the symphony that companies need, that organizations need and that our planet frankly needs during this time of change.
Eddie Turner:
Ooh! So, you got to have me geek out now, Laura, with that. I use the illustration of fingerprints all the time but unique iris, I don’t know that I knew that.
Laura Gates:
Color, yeah.
Eddie Turner:
And the color is unique to each person.
Eddie Turner:
And then the voice pattern. I didn’t think about that but now you have me thinking about all the digital work I do when I’m editing. That is so true.
Laura Gates:
So, even if we think we’re saying something that someone else has said before, because it’s coming through not only our unique expression, also our unique experiences, so often people will say “Oh, you know, I can’t write about that or speak about that.” Everybody’s speaking about that but there might be something you uniquely have to say through your own expression, through your own layers of experiences that is going to be heard by someone who actually needs that message differently. So, that’s why, I really encourage people to track and pay attention to what has, as I said, one of my teachers and mentors, Angeles Arrien, used to say, what has heart and meaning for them because what has heart and meaning for you is different than what that might mean for someone else. And that’s a clue to what is my unique purpose, what am I here to offer, how am I here to make an impact.
Eddie Turner:
How can we learn what that is for us as individuals?
Laura Gates:
Yeah, part of what I use in my coaching process, and I have a process that I call the Purpose Initiative which is a three-part process of trying to embrace and live and lead from a more purposeful place, and step one is making the unconscious conscious, understanding what are my patterns of behavior, what are the things that trip me up, where are the ways that I might sabotage myself along the way. So, if we don’t become conscious of those behaviors and patterns or thoughts or beliefs, as Brené Brown talks about, those can get in our own way. So, first step is where am I getting in my own way and how do I remove those obstacles.
The second step is what I call Disruptive Experimentation. And in part of that experimentation, I ask people to track, throughout the day, just note down on a piece of paper what brings you joy, what gives you energy, where do you feel energized. And it’s so fascinating to see what people come back with – “Oh, this meeting was boring but this one-on-one with my employee that I’m guiding them and coaching them on their career, that really gave me energy.” So, we start tracking and doing that homework of where do I lose my energy and where do I gain my energy and that usually gives us clues, kind of like a roadmap of “Oh, these things give me energy. How do I put more of that in my calendar? And the things that drain my energy, how do I delegate more of that and carve that out?” And when we carve that out, what happens is we create more space in our day and in our calendar and in our life. And what I see is as people carve out that time and they create that space, opportunities start to come, synchronicity starts to show up and they start operating more from a place of flow.
So, people often will say to me “Oh, I need to find my purpose” as if it’s something to check off the box on the list as opposed to if you create space and you get quiet and you listen to that small still voice, your purpose is actually stalking you on a daily basis.
Eddie Turner:
What’s the biggest surprise people often come away from having taken this assessment with?
Laura Gates:
The biggest surprise is that they usually do know what they want to do, they’ve had some story in their head as to why it’s not possible or that it’s too basic or “Doesn’t everybody want to do this?” or letting go of the shoulds and also giving themselves permission to really do the thing that they want to do. And it doesn’t mean quitting your job and moving to Tahiti and opening a surf shack. It can simply be some small tweaks and how you spend your time or where you focus yourself that can have really big differences in people’s lives.
Eddie Turner:
And the Purposeful Initiative is your trademark product, am I correct?
Eddie Turner:
Excellent. And you have another trademark product I noticed when I was doing my research about you on the show.
Laura Gates:
Yeah, that’s the Purpose Culture. So, one of the things that I do is I work with teams. And often I’m brought in when a team is in conflict or they’re having challenges communicating or collaborating. And what I have found is when you go into a team like that and you start working with them, what I’ve realized is that the people issues are often not the root cause. So, we do a root cause analysis and what we find is often the cause of the people conflicts or miscommunications or lack of collaboration stem from process or structural problems such as a lack of clarity of roles and responsibilities or a lack of understanding of what someone’s title even means or it’s a lack of understanding of the strategy and the goals to achieve them. So, I go in through the people door and when I get in through the people door, we start looking at the structural process door and the strategy vision door to see are there areas there that can be resolved to create better people relationships.
Eddie Turner:
It sounds like one assessment is for individuals and the other is for organizations, am I correct?
Laura Gates:
Yeah, these are not assessments. I mean, I do assessments prior to going in to facilitate. These are more frameworks that people can look at to say “Oh, where do we fit in in this spectrum? As a culture, what are the pieces that are missing and what are the pieces that we have in place in terms of what we’re trying to create as a team or as an organization?”
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. So, frameworks for how we figure out what’s getting in our way as an individual or as a team. And once we discover the answer to that, we can then begin to lead with purpose.
Eddie Turner:
Well I’m talking to Laura Gates. She’s an executive coach and speaker and we’re talking about leading with purpose in chaotic times. We’ll have more with Laura right after this.
This podcast is sponsored by Eddie Turner LLC. Organizations who need to accelerate the development of their leaders call Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®. Eddie works with leaders to accelerate performance and drive impact. Call Eddie Turner to help your leaders one on one as their coach or to inspire them as a group through the power of facilitation or a keynote address. Visit EddieTurnerLLC.com to learn more.
Hi. This is Dr. Steven Stein, psychologist and founder of MHS Assessments and you are listening to the Keep Leading!® Podcast with Eddie Turner.
Eddie Turner:
We’re back everyone. I’m talking to Laura Gates. Laura is a sought-after executive coach, facilitator, and speaker. We’re talking about leading with purpose in chaotic times.
Laura, you were explaining the framework you use with clients both at an individual level and an organizational level before our break. I’m curious, based off what you said about the Purpose Culture framework that you use and how it unearths different components of the team and their levels of genius, I believe, you used the phrase, tell me how you harness the collective genius of a team.
Laura Gates:
Yeah, that’s a great question. What I have found is that when I’m working with individual clients, coaching executives, we might make great strides in their leadership development and how they lead others, how they communicate, how they collaborate but then we bring them back into this team setting and if the whole team has not been involved in this developmental process, we don’t often see the kind of change we would like to in terms of how that evolves over time. So, what I’ve seen in the work with teams, what we’re trying to do is harness that collective genius which is not really how our society is built. If you think about it, we start out young, being told to get the A grade, competing in sports, told to get ahead, we get ahead to get into the best schools and then we get ahead to get into the best organizations and then we’re told to collaborate. Well, after spending a lifetime of competing against our neighbor, now we’re supposed to share and play nicely together. So, what I have found is that it’s not so much can we be of the best high-performing team which to me just feeds that sense of being better than in competition but how can we really be of service and support those who hire us or those who work with us in the organization. And part of that collective genius is understanding “What is my personal genius? What is my purpose? Where are my gifts and talents? What is it that I’m unique at?” And that way it takes away from “I’m competing with you to be the best at XYZ” to “How do we build on our strengths and shore up our weaknesses.”
Eddie Turner:
That is such a good point that you make. And I just interviewed a guest recently that talked about going from me to we. And I like how you explained that from a different level that, yeah, we have gone our entire life academically and earlier in the corporate careers with just that singular focus and now being told to collaborate which is a buzzword in corporate America these days, it’s really difficult for people. So, tell us how we do that, please, in light of the chaotic times we’re experiencing. We have different organizations under immense pressure due to the fallout from COVID. We have individuals who are experiencing pressure from the fallout of COVID. How do we lead with purpose?
Laura Gates:
This is going to sound strange, Eddie, but I really feel that coming from a place of not necessarily having the answers or having figured this out, none of us could have anticipated what’s been happening to our country in the past year. No amount of strategic planning could have predicted this kind of experience, this giant experiment that we’re all going through called pandemic, work-from-home. The workplace has changed dramatically and, in particular, for people who are caring for children and trying to educate them during this time, it’s changed our education system. There’s going to be many ripple effects from this experience across all industries and organizations and countries and cultures. What I find is that willingness to not have to figure it all out, to not be in control, to not try to go back to the way things were, I often hear people say “If we can only just go back to normal” or “when we go back to normal,” there is no normal. The only way through is to really be looking ahead at what’s emerging. And that has to come from a place of not knowing. That has to come from a place of curiosity.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, yes, very nice. And as you are experiencing this at the individual level and with organizations, do you have a success story that stands out to you the most?
Laura Gates:
I worked with an organization starting about a year ago that was having some collaboration and communication challenges. And this was an organization that offered leadership development in countries around the world, in particular for women’s leadership. And when I went in originally, it was to help them have more effective communication, more effective collaboration. We looked at how the organization was run and how it was structured and we made some structural changes with that working with the senior executive team. And the result was that when COVID hit, they could no longer travel to these locations and deliver this training, they had to decide if they were going to pivot to become a virtual deliverer of this technology, which involved many factors because some of the recipients were not necessarily in locations or able to have technological solutions on their end. So, it both involved the company pivoting but helping their organizations that they served to pivot as well. And I do believe that the result of all the hard work that they did to improve the communication and the collaboration allowed them to make that shift very quickly when many of their constituencies and other organizations around them were not able to make that shift. It really helped them not disrupt the offerings and to maintain the programs that were really impactful powerful programs and were able to keep going despite the changes in the world.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you for sharing that story with us, Laura. That really says a lot about the work that you’re doing with clients and helping people in a very real way lead with purpose in chaotic times.
What’s the most rewarding part of your work as a coach?
Laura Gates:
Such a rewarding job, I have to say. And you know this. You do similar work. Just seeing people evolve and grow and seeing them free themselves from self-limiting thoughts or beliefs that they might have about who they are or what’s possible, that for me is the most exciting is to see people really embrace their purpose, lead from that place, work from that place and watch as the opportunities show up for them as a result.
Eddie Turner:
Yes, yes, I can definitely relate.
I have thoroughly enjoyed talking to you, Laura. What’s the main message you would like to leave our listeners with today?
Laura Gates:
I would say now is the time. Don’t wait for someone else’s permission to do what you came here to do. Don’t wait to have all of the right training to do what you came here to do. Don’t wait for all the right conditions to be perfect. Now is the time. We need you. It’s all hands on deck.
Eddie Turner:
Beautiful. And I always ask on the Keep Leading!® Podcast for quotes, stories, illustrations, whatever you use to help you keep leading, can you share with our audience the best leadership story you’ve ever heard or a great illustration or a quote you have?
Laura Gates:
So, several years ago I was in a training with Angeles Arrien who was a workshop facilitator and she said to me “Laura, why aren’t you stepping into your leadership?” and I said “I’m afraid it will consume me.” And she looked me dead in the eyes and she said “Don’t worry. It will.” And I have to say that after that workshop, I decided, like I just said earlier, to not be afraid, to not wait for permission, to really just embrace what I came here to do. And I must say she was right. It has consumed me but I couldn’t have asked for a better path forward.
Eddie Turner:
Your leadership will consume you. All right. Well, thank you for sharing that with us.
Laura, where can my listeners learn more about you?
Laura Gates:
So, my website is GatesGroupLLC.com. I have a free leadership toolkit on there that I curate personally with all my favorite articles and books and TED Talks. That’s free to access to anyone. I’m also on LinkedIn and I’m on twitter @LauraFG.
Eddie Turner:
Wonderful. We will put all of that in the show notes so people can connect with you and follow you. And you do have a wonderful website with great resources. And so, I’m going to encourage my listeners to definitely stay connected to you, Laura.
Thank you for being a guest here today explaining how we can lead with purpose in chaotic times on the Keep Leading!® Podcast.
Laura Gates:
Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure to be here with you today, Eddie.
Eddie Turner:
Thank you, Laura.
And thank you for listening. That concludes this episode, everyone. I’m Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator®, reminding you that leadership is not about our title or our position. Leadership is an activity. Leadership is action. It’s not the case of once a leader, always a leader. It’s not a garment we put on and take off. We must be a leader at our core and allow it to emanate in all we do. So, whatever you’re doing, always keep leading.
Thank you for listening to your host Eddie Turner on the Keep Leading!® Podcast. Please remember to subscribe to the Keep Leading!® Podcast on iTunes or wherever you listen. For more information about Eddie Turner’s work, please visit EddieTurnerLLC.com.
Thank you for listening to C Suite Radio, turning the volume up on business.
The Keep Leading!® podcast is for people passionate about leadership. It is dedicated to leadership development and insights. Join your host Eddie Turner, The Leadership Excelerator® as he speaks with accomplished leaders and people of influence across the globe as they share their journey to leadership excellence. Listen as they share leadership strategies, techniques and insights. For more information visit eddieturnerllc.com or follow Eddie Turner on Twitter and Instagram at @eddieturnerjr. Like Eddie Turner LLC on Facebook. Connect with Eddie Turner on LinkedIn.
