Three Pieces of Coaching Advice That Changed How Leaders Lead

Why the Problem Isn't the Problem

What if the challenge in front of you isn't actually what's holding you back?

In this episode of Aspire for More with Erin, Erin pulls back the curtain on what coaching really looks like and shares three powerful lessons from recent coaching conversations with leaders across senior living and beyond.

From navigating state surveys to managing difficult experiences and protecting standards, this episode explores a truth every leader eventually learns:

The obstacle is rarely the situation itself. The obstacle is often our capacity to respond to it.

If you've ever felt overwhelmed, questioned your ability to lead, struggled with difficult conversations, or wondered why the same leadership challenges keep showing up, this episode will give you a new lens to view those problems through.

Because when awareness increases, capacity grows.

And when capacity grows, leadership becomes lighter.

In This Episode

✔ Why anxiety changes decision-making and fear changes communication

✔ The unforgettable "turkey in the warming drawer" survey story

✔ How great leaders stay calm when everyone else is panicking

✔ Why good management of bad experiences creates great growth

✔ The connection between pain, leadership development, and confidence

✔ How to navigate leadership setbacks without running from them

✔ Why psychological safety is often misunderstood

✔ The surprising relationship between standards and trust

✔ Why avoiding hard conversations creates bigger problems

✔ How coaching helps leaders see problems differently

✔ What it really means to be a Capacity Architect

✔ Why awareness creates capacity and capacity changes everything

Connect with Erin

If this episode resonated with you and you're ready to build your capacity, strengthen your leadership confidence, or work through a challenge with a trusted coach, connect with Erin Thompson.

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Remember:

Awareness creates capacity. Capacity creates confidence. Confidence changes leadership.

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Transcript

0:00

I am so excited to be back and talking to you again. It's been quite a few weeks since I recorded my- a new episode, and so I'm happy to be here. The big promise on today's episode, because I feel like I just wanna talk to you about some really important things that I've been able to walk leaders through, and I feel like everybody needs to know this, and to give you an insight on what it's like inside of coaching with Erin. it's exciting and it's fun, and the big promise for this episode is that leadership is really about the problem in front of you. people come to me because they have a big problem in front of them. I get paid to help people solve the problem in front of them because it's big, and they think everything's about the problem. But what we find out in six weeks or less is that it's about... less about the problem in front of you, and it's more about the ability to respond to the problem, and that's capacity, and that's why I believe capacity changes everything. I am a woman who ran out of capacity. So I understand what it's like to have zero capacity, to learn how to grow capacity, and to learn how to understand capacity. So most people think coaching is advice, and sure, I give advice, but it... coaching is not just advice. The best coaching doesn't solve your problem, although I do help people solve problems. But what I'm more proud about is the way that coaching changes the way that you see your problems. And I have to say, when I invest in a coach or when I invested in myself, when things changed, it was the way... it was because of the way that I started looking at the problem. 'Cause the way we change, the way that we... when we change the way that we look at our problems, everything around us starts to change too. This week I was thinking about three coaching conversations with three different clients, that I thought, "What is one or two, three things that I can pull from?" These are different leaders, different states, different challenges, but every conversation revealed a similar pattern. The obstacle wasn't the survey, the obstacle wasn't the bad situation, and the obstacle wasn't- them or the person in front of them. The obstacle was their capacity, the way they were thinking about it. And so if you stay with me throughout this episode, I'm going to give you three different pieces of advice, a couple different stories about them, and I bet you, you are going to see yourself in them and feel like this feels very familiar. So let's get started. I had a coaching client call and we were working through a very consistent pattern with different departments. This particular client, is an executive director inside of a community, but not all my clients are. But this particular client was. I get the email, "I can't make it today because we have survey." And I was just like, "Oh, survey." Ugh, I could feel the fear and anxiety rising in me, and I thought to myself, survey, we're all scared of a survey, right? Like the gotcha moments and all these things. And if you've been around long enough, most of what happens in a survey is controllable. How is it controllable? It's controllable if you can control the emotions surrounding a survey. I have had people tell me, different surveyors tell me, that executive directors or administrators would hide into the bathroom and never come out. They would never see them. they would just respond to them in these crazy ways. And so I just told this client of mine that as an executive director, there's a couple things that I want to tell you to focus on during this survey. I want you to be available. I want you to be teachable. I want you to ask clarifying questions with respect, and I want you to understand this: anxiety will change the way that we make decisions, and fear will change the way that we communicate. So as the executive director, be calm, be the reasonable one, and keep everything steady, and allow everybody else to do what they're supposed to do I feel like that's the best advice I can give because I am not an expert in other states' regs. So that is a human psychology I've been there kind of moment. You wanna know where that comes from? That comes from one of my first... I think it comes from the second-- The first survey that I was in, there was a survey at one of my communities when I was on maternity leave, which I was not a part of, but, the first survey that I was there for the entire thing, the associates saw the state was there, and all of a sudden, just pure panic ran through the community. It's like Paul Revere was running through the community say- telling everybody that the survey was here, the survey was here. And, I remember the cook in the kitchen put a turkey that she was defrosting or trying to cook, that she had just pulled out of the freezer, into the warming drawer in the kitchen. And the warming drawer was a new toy that we had in the kitchen, right? We never had one before. It was probably like a week or two old. And so out of panic, she took a perfectly good turkey breast, I may have said chicken, but turkey breast, that she was gonna cook for lunch, and she put it in the warming drawer. And so-- and then forgot about it, started cleaning and doing all the other things. And so when the surveyor came in, she went to the warming drawer, she found the turkey, and she temped it, and it was a hundred degrees, and was wondering if that's how we were cooking the turkey, and that's how we were gonna serve the turkey. And the responses wasn't great from the cook, and our kitchen got completely tore up from the floor up. And what I learned from that moment is that anxiety affected her decision-making. this cook who has been here for years, was never going to cook a turkey breast in the warming drawer, but anxiety caused her to make a bad decision. And in that-- And fear, being caught r- caused her to answer the question horribly. And I realized in that moment, I didn't inservice to my team because I haven't trained them how to answer these questions. I didn't train them like, "We don't have to be scared of the surveyors." And from that moment on, I made sure everybody knew that we're not going to be afraid of surveyors. We're going to work in preparation for the surveyors. We're gonna do the right thing all the time, so when the surveyors walks in, we're doing the right thing That's leadership wisdom. Everybody else running through the community caused a lot of anxiety and fear. And when anxiety and fear enter into the chat, people stop listening, people become defensive, people do things that they never should have done. We assume intent, and we react instead of responding. We react by putting a turkey breast into the warming drawer. That is a reaction of getting caught of doing something wrong when you weren't doing anything wrong anyways, right? The survey wasn't the test. It was the way the cook responded to the survey is why we failed. Now, obviously, there was a lot of dishwasher temps that weren't up to date. the disaster food menu, our stock and supply wasn't there. people were taking from it. We weren't paying attention to it. there were other reasons why the kitchen didn't do so good, but the turkey in the warming drawer was the trigger. Okay? So it was the cook's response, and it was my response. I couldn't get mad at the cook because she was just anxious. And I said to her, You know we don't put cold turkey in a warming drawer." And she said, "I know." And, We learned from that incident, So the capacity lesson here is high-capacity leaders, high-capacity associates have to regulate themselves first. Okay? So we have to learn to regulate ourselves. We have to learn that in these moments of great stress, which could be a survey, we have to regulate our teams because anxiety and fear will take the wheel if we allow it to. what also will take the wheel? Creativity and innovation. Because fear and anxiety and creativeness cannot exist at the same time. That was something I learned that was very powerful for me. I don't want fear and anxiety to steer my ship, my car. I want creativity and hope and possibility to. So that became one of my goals: make my team calm, confident during surveys because I don't want fear to affect their communication, and I don't want anxiety to affect their decision-making anymore. I want them to feel confident, I want them to know what to say, and I want them to say, "I don't know, but I know where to go to find out." Lesson learned. Okay? So as a recap, if you have a survey, you're the executive director, you're the director of nursing, you are somebody that is a leader inside of your community, I want you to be available, to be teachable, to ask clarifying questions, and to understand that fear will change the way that we communicate and anxiety will affect our decision-making. So stay calm, stay reasonable, and trust that you know what to do. That conversation, that story, that coaching client realizes that the conversation is not really about survey readiness. What they understand now is that it's about emotional capacity, and the leader can be responsible for that. The leader can help people get ready for those situations because if fear and anxiety are running the ship, then we are thinking about all the worst-case scenarios. But all those worst-case scenarios are available and also so is the best-case scenarios, which is important to recognize. And obviously, that survey for me wasn't great, and so I had a choice to make I had a choice to be mad at the kitchen, to be really mad at myself for not looking at the, disaster menu, or the dishwasher temps the way that I should have been. all those things could fall on me, the culinary director of the team, all those things. I had to create the plan of correction. And I innately knew something that I didn't have the words for then, but I have the words for now. Good management of bad experiences leads to great growth. And this is another client who's not inside senior living but does work on the outskirts of senior living. I'm helping walk them through this idea of good management of bad experiences leads to great growth. And I feel like this is where I want you to really lean into the vulnerability of failing forward, the vulnerability of "Oh my God, I really messed up." or when we're at that crossroads of, am I good enough? Can I do this? Do I wanna do this? when we feel the need to run, to want to quit, and want to escape, this is what I want you to remember. Good management of bad experiences leads to great growth. That survey, that experience, that embarrassment of the kitchen led to great growth for my culinary director, for myself, for that cook. making it through that survey was a great experience for me of managing a bad experience, and it led me to greater confidence for the next survey. sometimes we just have to go through some tough stuff in order to get better. growth really is Only possible through the discomfort of learning how to do new things. And isn't that what pain teaches us? every part of my career, every opportunity I had to fail forward, and believe me, I had a lot because I had to learn what I needed to learn, and my God, I'm so stubborn sometimes, it took me a long time. So the pain, the law of pain, right? Every painful part of life introduced me to a version of myself that I would not, could not have met any other way Isn't that like becoming a mother? That type of pain is gonna introduce your, you to a, to the new version of yourself. having tough conversations. To me, one of the biggest opportunities of managing bad experiences is understanding transitions inside of a community. Having to tell somebody we can no longer meet their loved one's needs, having to tell somebody that their loved one passed away, learning, how to fire somebody that helps them keep their dignity intact and not feel so horrible about themselves. All these things require us to be very, very uncomfortable in order to learn how to master it. And a very simple truth is it's going to take 10 times to feel more confident. It's going to take 100 times to feel really confident, right? we're not gonna hopefully not have 100 opportunities to fire somebody. That's not the goal. But how many opportunities are we going to have to get better? And if we keep avoiding them, there are no gonna be... There are not going to be any opportunities to grow because we're avoiding them, and then it's just gonna blow up in our face, right? So when we think about family complaints or leadership disappointments or survey failures, survey opportunities to learn, these transitions that these families go through in senior living, all of these are opportunities for us to practice of the good management of bad experiences leads to great growth. So if I am at the crossroads, like at the beginning, obviously we're talking about the f- the four emotional cycles, which was our last podcast episode. If you didn't listen, go back and listen to that because it's a really good one. There are emotional cycles to me at, in every opportunity to grow. Hopeful enthusiasm, I can do this. the reality check of the overwhelm, oh my God, this is harder than I thought it was going to be. And then the crossroads of, can I do this? Do I wanna do this? Should I quit? Should I stay? Which is always going through my mind every chance I found. And then being able to walk through it and find that confident ownership. It all starts with you and your ability to regulate and your ability to say that this pain, this discomfort is going to lead, if I manage it right, to great growth. Pain is going to introduce me to my next level-upped version of myself. And this thought, when I repeat go into bad thoughts about hard situations, I realize, Erin, you have a positive life stance now. You no longer have a negative life stance. So every situation that is in front of me is meant to make me grow and to get better. I'm no longer gonna worry about a bridge that's no longer... that's not in my viewpoint. I'm not gonna worry about all these worst-case scenarios. I'm gonna figure out what's possible because of this experience We all want to grow. We all want to get better. We all want to make more money. We all want more time. We all want things that we don't have, and we all need some things that we don't have. But very few of us want the experience that will create the growth, the money, the experiences that we want And the people who are consistent, the people who will stay committed to the outcome, no matter what it is, to the growth, they will get it. They will get it. And I will reference Seth Godin's book, The Dip, because The Dip is a visual of what it growth looks like. All of a sudden, you're wa- you're walking, everything's good, then all of a sudden you fall into a dip, and that steep decline into the bottom of the dip is very uncomfortable. And then you learn to embrace the suck, and you start climbing up out of the dip to get back on a level playing field. Is the pain worth the growth? And the only way you can answer that is by getting through it, getting on the other side, and asking yourself, "Do I want to stay in this?" Don't quit in the middle of it. Quit when you're out of the dip. That's important. And when you can make rational decisions. That is an important thing to understand. Good management of bad experiences creates great leaders. Not the experience itself, the management of it. That is a huge difference. Your capacity will grow when you stay present long enough to learn. The key is to stay present, not in the fear of what could happen, and not in the history of what did happen, but what is possible in this moment if I can manage this bad experience well. And when you manage it well, you focus on communication, you focus on clarification, and you focus on doing what needs to be done. That is good management of bad experiences. And it's also realizing these patterns in my life that keep coming up may be because I need to take this time and grow through this so it will not keep happening again. That's the key point. Don't fight or flight your way through life. Stick your toes down, stand firm, and grow from it, and decide, "Do I want to keep doing this?" With good decision-making and an experience to back and support it up. Then there's the third coaching conversation, and honestly, this one shows up a lot, and it doesn't matter what position you're in, what industry you're in. It matters if you're a leader and you're leading people or managing people The term psychological safety is such a buzzword right now, and it is something that I believe senior living struggles with. I know I felt like I didn't have psychological safety in some ways, and some of that was my own fault, and some of it was the corporate structure I was in. But I think it was just a combination of a lot of things. But psychological safety is not found when we're trying to keep everybody happy. I have an excellent, client who has so much passion for the work that they do, and this person's world was rocked, and they were really struggling with what safety meant because they thought that safety was everyone feeling confident in their role, that they were gonna stay, that the loyalty was there. And I was able to explain to him that safety is not keeping everybody happy, not keeping everybody employed. Safety comes from standards, the predictability of protecting those standards, of knowing what the standards are, the consistency of protecting the standards, and the boundaries that they know they can or cannot cross. The professionalism of the leader and the communication, the consistent communication of the leader, that is where safety is found. Knowing that they can come to you, knowing that you're gonna be consistent with what your standards are, what the company's standards are, what the residents' standards are, what the standards are for everybody, that the rules apply to everybody. It's not that everybody belongs here, because the truth is not everybody belongs there. Not everybody belongs in your community. And if we think that making everybody happy is what keeps everybody feeling psychologically safe, then no one's gonna be happy because there is no standard to protect. Cause it doesn't matter what I do, I'm gonna get to be here forever. So why does it matter if I come in ten, fifteen minutes late on the morning shift whenever the night shift has to pick up or get their kid to the bus? When we avoid the hard conversations, we are not protecting standards. We are not making everybody feel comfortable. We are just avoiding hard conversations and creating new problems for us to solve. And typically, the good ones, the ones who want the standards, the ones who show up five minutes early, the ones who come all the time and fill in the extra shifts will leave because the environment doesn't feel safe to them So we don't avoid accountability, we don't avoid difficult discussions, we don't avoid upsetting someone because that's not where safety's found. Safety is found in consistent, predictable, protected standards. And on that same note, another client st- we were talking about standards and they were trying to understand how to communicate something to the team about why this is... needs to happen this way, or why this is important, or why this is disappointing. And they were trying to create some type of reference point for this and I said to this client, "If it's your standard, it's enough. You don't have to find it in a leadership book." You're the executive director. If this is the way that you want things to happen inside of your community, and this is the way you want your residents to feel, and it's supported by policy and procedure and rules and regs, and it's the way you want your community run, it's your standard. Communicate it. you don't need anybody's permission. You're the leader. You create the culture, and the only way the culture is going to be consistently what you want is when you start talking about what you want, and you start protecting it, and expecting it, and inspecting it, right? So standards are important. Standards equal safety. Standards consistently protected equals psychological safety. Your team should know, "Ooh, Erin's not gonna like that. Erin's gonna say something to you about that." And when you do, you're protecting your standard. You're protecting the standard. Standards are important because families trust standards. Associates will learn to trust standards. Residents will learn to trust standards. Your surveyors will be shocked and respect your standards, and your team will learn to work with those standards. Your standard as the leader is enough Isn't that... Doesn't that feel good? You don't need 20 explanations. You don't need a John Maxwell book to tell that to you. You just have to be consistent with knowing what you want. Knowing what you want, regulating yourself, managing bad experience, all of this is capacity. All of this is awareness that creates capacity. And it will actually create capacity in your team too, because they know what to expect. So when I tell you that I'm a leadership and development coach, what I really mean to you is that I am a capacity architect. I like that term, but most people don't know what that term is. So it's not really coaching. It's not like consulting, although I do coach and I do consult. It's not exactly like mentoring. I like to combine all those and really into this car- capacity architect, design because I help people see differently, think differently, respond differently, and to build that internal capacity needed to handle all of the complexity inside senior living. 'Cause don't let anybody fool you, this is probably one of the most complex industries you could ever work in. And those three pieces of advice I give to a lot of people in many different forms. The survey story is really the emotional capacity of you and your team. That pain story, the good management of bad experiences will lead to great growth, is a growth capacity because pain really does introduce us to the next version of ourselves, that leveled-up version. And the standards is our leadership capacity Let's grow, lead, and rise, baby. This is how we aspire for more, So My clients, I feel like, already know a lot and aren't necessarily coming to me because they need to know more things. Okay? They're not They come to me To learn... The leaders, I will say that based on my experience and the books that I've read and the leaders that I speak to and get to c- coach, and the people who just hire me to help them solve a problem or listen to them only one time, right? 'Cause that's available, too. They're not the ones... The people who grow the fastest aren't always the smartest, most experienced, people who've been in the industry for years. Because let me tell you something, just because you have the experience doesn't mean you have the capacity, doesn't mean you have the success, right? I have found when the leaders become more aware of what the real problem is, that's when they grow the fastest. Because it's not the survey, it's not the hard conversations, it's the way that we look at it, and we are in control of that. And once you see the problem differently and you learn how to lead differently inside that problem, everything becomes easier, and you start seeing the patterns of your life and you start realizing, oh, I can handle these problems better now because I understand that anxiety will affect my decision-making and fear is going to affect my communication. I just wanna take a deep breath and trust that I have this, that understand that my standard is enough and that safety comes from me knowing who I am and me protecting what's important to everything. That's it. That's what I do. I love it and my clients do aspire for more and they do grow, lead, and rise and I love the experience I get with each and every single one of them. And now you know what it's like to be inside a reflective coaching environment with me. I hope one of those three lessons, inspired something in you. And if you are feeling stuck and if your leadership is feeling slow and heavy and you want some relief- Give me a call, right? Find me on LinkedIn. Respond on the website to this episode. I would love to help you learn how to lessen your load. That's exactly why I started this company. This is exactly why the 100% Leader Program is available, and it's one of the main goals I have for being the executive director at the Assisted Living Association of Alabama. We're gonna grow the capacity of our leaders, 'cause it's not about knowing more. It's more about learning how to manage bad experiences It's about learning how good management and bad experiences creates great growth. These are the moments where awareness created capacity. So look for that for you. Thank you for your time today. I'm glad to be back. Follow me on LinkedIn, and as always, aspire for more for you, knowing you're already enough