I am so privileged as a Coach, that I can choose who I work with, and this week was no exception.  I thoroughly enjoyed interviewing Croft Edwards for my Leadership Channel on Youtube.

Croft is from New Mexico, in the United States, and he is a Leadership Consultant for many large organisations including the coal mining industry as one example.  He has worked in Leadership Consultancy since 2001, and below is a synopsis (with the video time references), of the 10 biggest things I learnt from our conversation, but well worth a watch to get the full information.

Enjoy and have a great weekend!

4 minutes – How your body shows up determines what’s possible

6.26 minutes – Croft believes coaches will be out of a job once senior managers really grasp how to coach employees

12.45 minutes – The old belief is Leaders should get results.  Croft believes a Leader’s job is to tap flow – get person invigorated, excited, find out what makes them tick and then get out of the way

18.35 minutes – Croft says the key is to practice having conversations about how we have conversations – the better we get. But teams often say to Croft, I don’t have time to practice. Croft discussed athletes who practiced 10hours for every hour on the court, most people practice a few minutes for 40 hours a week. If we don’t practice how are we going to get better as a culture?

19.30 minutes – The more you practice having conversations, when the big changes come you might not be prepared but you’ll be so much more adaptable at accepting change.  Also having effective conversations – not just about words but moods and emotions

21.35 minutes – Croft asks for a Commitment from the Team’s about having Homework (get over mindset that work isn’t about homework), he calls it FunWork – its most critical thing about being leader – we are the sum of our practice – if I’m always being overwhelmed then I’m going to get good at being overwhelmed!  Let’s have The Learning Organisation – get more done if you take time to read!

25.35 – I asked how he measured success – he said to find measures, you always need more clarity, and Croft would ask leaders what does success look like for them and mainly they didn’t know. 

27.30 – When I asked what would a successful organisation look like for Croft he said – he’s looking for effective conversations and moods and emotions.

29 minutes – Croft advocates having real conversations about how you might be struggling, because if we can’t talk about someone dying for instance (he’s worked in lots of coal mine organisations), how committed do you think they’d be towards the organisation

31 minutes – his key strength has been versatility ‘going native” so he can blend in with organisations to hear all the conversations going on, where he can hear there may be missing conversations 

You can read more about Croft in his book “Leadership Flow Perfectly Squared” and catch him at @CroftEdwards on Twitter & Linkedin