PPB December 2019

There is no finish line in learning. There are always things to learn. I guess I assumed at one time that someday I would know enough. That’s just not true. There is always more to learn, and teachers present themselves in many different ways. When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Remaining teachable is key. Becoming self-aware and coachable doesn’t mean striving for perfection. None of us will ever be perfect. It does mean identifying the worst flaws that hold us back and sincerely working to repair them. It means knowing which tasks to delegate, and when to seek the advice of experts. It means realizing more each day just how much we don’t know. This is a journey that we’ll never finish. Our main job as a leader is to make sure that we’re always headed in the right direction on the path. Quint Studer is the author of nine books, including the Wall Street Journal bestseller The Busy Leader’s Handbook , and is a lifelong businessman, entrepreneur and student of leadership. He not only teaches it; he has done it. He has worked with individuals at all levels and across a variety of industries to help them become better leaders and create high- performing organizations. He is also the founder of Vibrant Community Partners and Pensacola’s Studer Community Institute and currently serves as the Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the University of West Florida. Do You Really Need A Coach? Only If YouWant To Be Great I f you’ve been working in this industry or at your career job for 10, 20, even 30 years, you probably think you are at the top of your game and are fully maximizing your potential. Chances are you are selling yourself short. With the help of a good business coach, you could be capable of much more. Need an example? Take a look at Jo-an Lantz, MAS, president and CEO at Geiger, one of the industry’s largest and oldest distributor companies. Lantz had worked her entire career for Geiger, starting in the accounting department right out of college and taking on roles of increasing responsibility, including that of COO, when she was promoted to president late last year and then named CEO in April. Even before she took on the new role, Lantz had a few requirements to better herself: join a CEO group, get involved in a family business group and work with a business coach to improve her skillset. She interviewed and evaluated several recommended coaches before selecting Rachel Ciporen, a business coach who is also a professor at Columbia University and someone with whom Lantz felt an immediate connection. Lantz was thrilled that Ciporen accepted her as a client as she only coaches CEOs of Fortune 100 companies. The first thing Lantz did was turn over all her testing results (outside testing done during the CEO interview process that included cognitive theory testing and business problem-solving) and Ciporen did some additional testing to uncover how Lantz thinks through problems. They began with weekly coaching calls, moved to calls every other week and now Lantz has a call with Ciporen once or twice a month. “She helps me with my interaction with colleagues and to be more self-aware, to self-regulate and to know when to optimize my skillset and when to sub- optimize,” she says. The latter has been the most difficult, Lantz admits—giving others the desired outcome and then letting them decide how to achieve it. “The ‘how’ can be very different than how I would do it,” she says, describing the situation sometimes as seeing the train, knowing it’s going to be a train wreck but understanding you must let it happen. Lantz says her coach has also helped her learn better ways to make tough decisions. One technique she now practices when one person or group is in favor of a decision and one person or a group is opposed to it, is to ask a person in favor to debate the con side of the argument and a person opposed to debate the pro. “We all own the decision when we leave the room and we all feel good about it,” she says. After her first 12months with her coach, Lantz says she has exceeded all her business goals but plans to continue with her coach for the foreseeable future because she acknowledges, as a business leader, she’s still a work in progress. “People tell me all the time that I’mdifferent and that’s what I wanted,” she says. “I wanted to change—to take that leap from COO to CEO.” Tina Berres Filipski is editor of PPB . Jo-an Lantz, MAS, president and CEO at Geiger. 96 | DECEMBER 2019 | THINK