Adam Larson: 00:21

Welcome to Count Me In. I'm your host, Adam Larson, and today we have an enlightening episode for you. Joining us is season executive coach and mentor, Jeremy Earnshaw. Jeremy brings a rich background as a CFO and now dedicates his expertise to helping individuals and organizations achieve their full potential. We'll be discussing the ongoing nature of coaching, the importance of genuine organizational change, and how effective leadership fosters self awareness and accountability.

Adam Larson: 00:47

Jeremy will share his journey from training recruits in Europe to creating his own successful coaching practice. We'll explore the critical role of aligning coaching with strategic goals and how it can transform both individuals and teams. This episode is packed with valuable insights, so let's dive right in. Well, Jeremy, I just really excited to have you on the podcast, and thank you so much for coming on. And today, we're gonna be talking a lot about coaching, especially coaching the the c level group.

Adam Larson: 01:17

And there's a lot of things we can cover around coaching, but first, I wanna start. How did you what was your journey to becoming a coach, especially a coach for c level folks?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 01:26

Quite a long one. And and thanks for having me on the on the podcast, Adam. It takes me back to 1991, actually, when I delivered some training, I suppose you would call it then, to quite a lot of our new recruits in Europe, and it was quite an extensive period. We did it for 2 to 3 weeks. Really enjoyed it, parked it in the memory bank, went off and did 6 major CFO roles in various kinds of organizations.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 01:53

And what really triggered it back was going on one of these c suite management strategy away days around 10 years ago. And it was one of those events which just sticks in your memory as being not delivering anything that we're trying to do. We're not delivering individual coaching. We're not making the team better. And it just prompted me again to think there is a better way of continuous learning than some of the interventions that we've been doing in the past.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 02:25

So I said to myself, I'm going to do this. I'm going to do it better. I've always enjoyed doing it on an informal basis, being a coach and a mentor. And I took myself back off to university, went to 2 different universities, gained a master's degree here in the UK, set up my own practice at the same time, and became a full time coach and a mentor. Really, really engaged in developing individuals, developing teams, and actually developing systems within which they operate in organizations as well.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 02:55

So quite a long journey, Adam, but triggered by those events and recognizing that I use a phrase that there's this perception in in corporate organization world where there is a perception of perfection all the time that people hire new recruits. You put people into new roles and expect people to be at that 100 out of 100 level, and nobody is. And this and that and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to get people from 6, 7, 8 out of 10 to 10 out of 10 and try to help them on the way. So that's it's been quite a long journey, Adam, but I'm really pleased that I've got there in the end and, really enjoying it.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 03:36

For sure. Yeah.

Adam Larson: 03:36

I remember one job I started at and, my first day, they said, read the website. And I sat there kinda, like, clicking all the links. And, like, after about an hour, I'm like, what do you want me to do next? And I I feel like there's always a big gap a lot of times when you come in or you come into new roles, you know, especially, like, even somebody going from, non management to management. They're okay.

Adam Larson: 03:55

Now you have people under you. You're like, what am I supposed to do now? You raised you raised exactly the point that isn't thought about enough. Lots of,

Jeremy Earnshaw: 04:03

I think, individuals and lots of organizations, they think about what I call the gains of either moving role, moving sector, moving organization, and they think about the great new title, the the fact that they've got team of people around them, they haven't necessarily thought about all the extra pains involved in those roles. So having to make new relationships with your peer group, potentially, as you said, Adam, having a number of people working with you as opposed to maybe just being more of an individual, having to create new relationships with maybe external stakeholders, You might be in a in a sector for the first time. You might be in a boardroom or a c suite room for the first time. You might have external investors, external bankers or lenders for the first time. And yet we're too busy sometimes in corporate world patting ourselves on the back and giving ourselves a round of applause for bringing in a great new person.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 05:03

And they may be great, but they're they're moving into another level. That that ladder has just gone up, And yet I just think coaching and mentoring can really help people cement their place in that particular area. And I don't I'm sure you may have heard this statistic as well, Adam. I think it's something like between 50 70% of people going into C Suite boardroom roles and not in post after 18 months for a whole variety of reasons. There's lots and lots of stats from Harvard Business School, from executive search reviews and surveys.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 05:44

It's a real risk. So for me, coaching and mentoring is derisking that as well as doing all the positives as well.

Adam Larson: 05:52

Yeah. That's huge. You know, when you hear about coaching and mentoring, some people are very open to it, others aren't. What's some of the resistance that you get, when you're trying to say, hey, this is really important, and how do you kinda overcome that?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 06:07

You're right. And that's a resistance that I think we still face. And I think we're to blame to a certain extent in our industry as well. And I'll I'll give you my response to the to the industry and then go back to the question about maybe the individual challenges that we get. As an industry, it's relatively new.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 06:26

So really only from the early 90s have we been thinking coaching and mentoring. And in the last 30, just 30 odd years, it's been largely unregulated as well. So I don't think the sector, the industry has done itself any favors by not regulating itself properly. And even now, despite the fact that there are professional accreditation organizations, it is almost as if if you change your LinkedIn banner, you can become a coach and a mentor. It's not quite as easy as that.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 07:01

And some of the more sensible things to think about are, what about the code of ethics that you sign up to? So I'm a member, for example, of the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and I subscribe to a global code of ethics. So the more regulation that we can have from a relatively low base point, the better. Coming back to some of the individual responses, we get perhaps challenged that it's a bit fluffy. It's a nice.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 07:28

It's a bit one of those things you do in a friendly organization, in a social enterprise, and everybody pats everybody else on the back. And I think there's that challenge which is coming from a leadership style, which is more command and control and show and tell of 30 to 40 years ago when I started. So I think what is very much now a influencing and a distributed leadership model. For the challenge, I think, that we've got as coaches and mentors, and this is why I did the work that I did academically, is to try and at least have some relationship between the objectives of the organization and what you're trying to do for the individual and the organization and the team as well. And actually have a direct link between what you're trying to achieve.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 08:16

And Some of the challenges, and I still have people come to me as potential clients and say, I'm interested in doing either some one to group or one to one coaching. And you asked the question you posed the question, what do you want to achieve? And it's as if it's not been thought about. And I think that's part of the challenge as well to as you would with any other kind of project, any other intervention, work out what you're trying to deliver in the first instance. So make sure your program of coaching and mentoring is absolutely bespoke what the organization and the individual and the teams want to achieve.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 08:57

And I think that can dispel some of that, well, we're not quite sure what it is. Therefore, we're not quite sure what we want out of it. I think that's the challenge to get across. And and if you do it properly, and if you listen to the client, it can be done really, really well and have really tangible results.

Adam Larson: 09:15

I can really see that resistance that you were describing because I'm sure when some when some people hear coaching or mentoring, they think I have to go, like, a Tony Robbins conference, and I have to listen to him yelling at me for an hour, and I'm gonna feel really inspired, and I'm gonna do great things. But I I what you're describing is something more specific, something more targeted, and something that's really that really kinda gets the heart of what somebody's dealing with, like, in and and taking it at a at an organizational level as opposed to individuals going and doing it on their own and finding random people. But as an organization, putting it towards your goals to really raise up the people who you're who you're with. And to me, that sounds like a much better model than what we, a lot of times, think about when we think about those corporate coaches.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 09:56

Yep. And I think you you're absolutely right. Some of the albeit valuable learning and development interventions are aimed perhaps quite generically. You and I probably all been on courses in the past where you sit in a room maybe with 15 or 20 people. You can guarantee that 5 people are listening.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 10:18

You can guarantee that 5 people talk more than anybody else. And then there's the the group of 10 in the middle who are not quite sure whether they're getting anything out of this at all. And I just think, like like anything else, coaching and mentoring let's take coaching, and there's a difference as well. Coaching is usually largely targeted towards helping an individual or a team with a specific issue and a real reason for change. Mentoring is perhaps more about the growth and the maturity of the individual to enable them to grow into their role, into their sector, into their organization.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 10:56

I think it really helps in mentoring if you've if you've gone a mile in their shoes as well. So Yeah. My particular brand of coaching is all aimed at being a combination of academic and real lived experience. If I was to turn around, I've got a lot of scars on my back as many coaches and mentors will have as well. And I think whoever you select as your coach, having somebody who sat round that boardroom table and seen a dysfunctional organization at work, it really, really helps.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 11:29

And having that link, like like you would have with a with a traditional KPI, you measure your KPIs, you work out whether you're achieving what you want to achieve because you've got some reference points. And then hopefully, you've got some challenges and actions to see whether you're going to achieve your objectives in the future. It's the same with coaching and mentoring. What are you trying to achieve? Is it the growth of a team?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 11:54

Because we all know that we might have some fantastically talented individuals who might not be brilliant team players. So how do you do that? How do you how do you get that team to work? And then there's the team of teams. So you've got your marketing, your sales team, your finance team, your people team.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 12:11

You've got a team of teams, all again, trying to get to the same objective, which is to grow the company, achieve some financial results, achieve, whatever you might want to be doing with sustainable development goals, for example. So just working out and having that bespoke engagement, which determines what you're trying to achieve, can be so valuable, and coaches and mentors should be doing that.

Adam Larson: 12:35

So there's a lot I wanna unpack there, but I think we you should take a quick step back real quick. And just can you define what a coach is and what a mentor is, maybe the difference? Because people might be assuming that they're same thing, and I know they're not the same thing, but let's maybe put a definition out there so we can people can kinda understand what we've been discussing. Yeah.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 12:52

Well, let's think about what what a really good coach needs to have. They they need they need to be compassionate. They need to understand the individual that they're coaching. They need to be curious. They have to have that curiosity to, as you say, to unpack what's in the backpack of the individual or the team that you're coaching.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 13:13

What's in there that you need to try and get out without going round the back and opening up yourself? You you need to get that individual or team to unpack that backpack themselves, and you need to be courageous by asking the questions that maybe haven't been asked before. What what isn't working? Why is it not working? And you need to be a good listener, and you need to be a good questioner as well-to-be a coach.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 13:38

Mostly, it's aimed at an individual or a team struggling, struggling, let's say, struggling positively, they want to change something, and they they're coming to you for coaching to try and get you as a coach to try and help them make their own decisions. So there's the what's the issue, why we got the issue, but the what and that sorry, rather the the how, you really want the coachee to be doing that themselves. This is not a show and tell exercise. I think with a mentor, you're working with more experience as a mentor, probably having worked in the, in the kind of organization, in the kind of environment, and you are bringing more and more to the growth of that individual and the maturity of that individual or team. You have, as I mentioned before, you probably walk quite a few miles in their shoes, and you might be in that position of saying, have you thought about it a different way?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 14:40

But you're still really trying to get the coachee or the mentee to take responsibility for their own actions. Another critical thing that is the umbrella across all of that is coaching and mentoring should be positive. It shouldn't be seen as a substitute for remedial action in an organization. If people come to me and think, I've got a problem. Can we solve it because this guy, this lady's on their way out?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 15:05

That's not for me, and it's not for any other coach guys.

Adam Larson: 15:10

I appreciate that. And and it sounds like people who are coaches can be mentors, but not every coach can be a mentor. Not every mentor can be a coach.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 15:17

I think that's a really good description. I'd really call mentoring, coaching plus.

Adam Larson: 15:22

Okay. Okay. It's like the extra subscription you get. It is. Yep.

Adam Larson: 15:26

Yeah. So going back to what we were saying before we kind of outlined that definition. When you're looking at it from an organizational perspective saying, hey, my team needs something to help up, like, not every boss can be a coach or a mentor, and sometimes you need to bring outside help. How can an organization look at it and say, hey. What are signs that my team needs some coaching or mentoring?

Adam Larson: 15:47

Maybe we can start there. What are some signs? And then how do we demonstrate that this is gonna benefit? And can we measure that? So that's that's like 3 questions all in one, but we can try to go through those.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 15:56

I I think the I think some of the obvious signs, you you you have this dysfunctional team or a dysfunctional individual or a dysfunctional team of teams. And the signs of that, we will all your listeners will have seen before whichever discipline that they're in. You've got people who aren't engaged. You've got people who have become let's go I'll give you a phrase that I use sometimes is that when people in school, they further their education as a first for knowledge and learning. Yeah.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 16:31

And then all of a sudden, it stops. So instead of being the sponge, you become the rock. And I think the signs of needing coaching and mentoring are people taking this massive step back and become a rock. They're not interested in doing things differently. They're interested, through potentially no fault of their own, doing the same as you did before.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 16:53

So I think the signs of that are you've got a disconnect between the objectives of the organization and the outputs. One of the most obvious ones that organizations see, I think, are the fact that if if they do if they do performance reviews on a regular basis, you might have a series of performance reviews, which if you did the bell curve, everyone's in that satisfactory exceeding expectations line. You then look at the actual outputs in KPIs against the targets, and the bell curve is below the median, and there's a disconnect there. So I think that's another way. Everyone thinks we're doing well, but actually the results say that we're not, so there's a disconnect there.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 17:35

So I think that's a real obvious sign of needing to do coaching and mentoring. And remind you remind me what the second part

Adam Larson: 17:43

of the question was, Adam. So now that we've outlined, you know, how to identify, hey. My team could use some help. How does one go about saying, hey, senior leadership or, hey, board. This is what my team needs, and this is how I can justify that cost.

Adam Larson: 18:00

Because, obviously, there's a cost involved.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 18:02

There is, and that that's another challenge that you'll face. I think you raised a good point in your introduction to this question as well about it being independent. Yeah. I I'm a huge fan of it all being independent because there's that conflict of interest at whatever level with your line manager, even if it's a line manager in another area or another discipline. There's a connection there, and it's not independent, and it might not be confidential either.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 18:31

But I think doing that, so to to gain the coaching, I think it has to come from the top. I think Yeah. Segments of coaching, unless it's a segment of coaching within an overall framework of an organization that really, really wants, let's call it what I call a coaching foundation factor, trying to do it on its own as a discrete piece of work, you're you're a function of the system that's around you. If your team isn't working, it's probably got quite a lot to do with the fact that the system, the organization is quite dysfunctional as well. How do we do that?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 19:09

I think it comes from the top. I think it stems from a leadership team that is committed to distributed distributed leadership, coaching foundation factor that cascades down through the organization. I think critical one is that you're allowed to ask for help. So there's an element of psychological safety within there as well and accepting the fact that you're not the 10 out of 10. So I think a really critical thing is being able to say, expressing a weakness is not the same as being weak.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 19:42

And I think it's important to have that structure whereby also everybody can be touched by coaching as well. So it's not just aimed at the elite. So is it because if you if you're aiming coaching at the top 15 people in the organization, I think you have to ask, what does number 16 think? What does number 17 think? So I think at whatever level, coaching and mentoring can add value to the behaviors of people within an organization as well.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 20:12

And everybody can demonstrate this is what I found in my research. Everybody can be a leader if they demonstrate the values and the behaviors of the organization, but it stems from the top Adam.

Adam Larson: 20:24

I like that approach because you like you said, let's say, I'm gonna I'm only gonna put provide coaching for the first 15 people. What about that 16 person, 17th person? They're probably not too far away from the 15th person. You know, how do you how do you, you have to make sure it's equitable and make sure you're gonna help the whole organization.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 20:41

Absolutely. And your and your your what you're really wanting to happen is that your coachees become the biggest supporters of further coaching and mentoring. So they become maybe internal coaches or internal mentors, and you get that cascading function down. Otherwise, as you quite rightly say, Adam, you you end up with disenfranchised colleague. Yeah.

Adam Larson: 21:06

Well, it sounds like too you have to kinda overcome certain mindsets. Obviously, if people have preconceived notions, you have to break those down. And also there's a certain level of humility accepting, hey. I can improve. And I I think that sometimes when we're especially in the corporate world and especially in fast paced environments, you have to have this, like, I'm gonna do everything and nothing can stop me kind of feel, and that can sometimes be to your detriment.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 21:31

I absolutely agree. We're in violent agreement, I think, as they say over here in the UK. You're absolutely right. At some point, even a high performing individual will reach the limit of what they can do. Yeah.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 21:43

And in getting there, they may have created and finance people in particular, such as me, will will recognize this. That single point of failure is something that you do not want to have in any kind of finance structure. And it can happen in any discipline as well. So the challenge is making sure that that team is seen to be critical in the output. And we don't have the situation where we're so focused upon just individual targets because ultimately, it's bad for the organization.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 22:17

So, yeah, the challenge you mentioned cost as well before. That there needs to be that return. There needs to be that investment and delivery. And and you need to be able to understand how we're going to measure it as well.

Adam Larson: 22:28

Yeah. So let's let's just dig into that. How how can one measure the return of this coaching programs that they would implement in an organization?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 22:37

What what I found in researching this whole area was that there was no consensus. And the reason I took took upon the challenge of trying to understand it a bit further was because whether it be have been done by academics or practitioners, there was no consensus. And I thought it was a rich subject to try and understand. So I did some research and I it came down to 2 distinct areas. And there won't be any surprises in this that there was no magic bullets in there really, but it set out and it gave me exactly what I wanted to do in researching it from senior leaders in an organization.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 23:14

Area number 1, relatively internal. So individual KPIs, how can you see the increase in performance from an individual? Number 2, what are we challenging ourselves with in terms of an organization improving performance? What are we hoping to achieve? Number 3, customer service.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 23:34

And all of those 3 still have the challenge about is it exclusively as a result of coaching and mentoring? And I think I have to say, the answer is probably no. But you can crack and you can you can set your objectives between the strategic objectives of the organization and have a coaching program so that aimed at delivering improvements in each of the those areas. Some of the more clear examples would be net promoter scores. You would have improvement in customer service metrics, you would have improvements in retentions, you would have less resignations within the organization.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 24:11

So there are the metrics there, but I think it's important again in any engagement to work out, I have a little model called progress against strategic success measures. Work out what you're trying to achieve. The internal measures. My research also demonstrated that quite a lot of people in the leadership positions wanted to have an impact beyond the organization as well, and and some of them crossed the boundary. So these leaders wanted a distributed leadership structure.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 24:43

They wanted to be able to delegate. They wanted to go from a command and control to an influencing leadership model. They wanted a coaching foundation factor. They wanted to create culture that could be measured by, for example, you know, colleague surveys. The the very extreme was why am I here?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 25:05

I I am I here to promote gender equality? Am I here to save the planet? Am I here to, have equitable homes for everybody? So this was a real this was a little bit of a surprise in that people associated themselves with coaching and mentoring for the greater good, gave me 6 areas. And working with the leaders at the start of a coaching program to work out on a fairly regular basis whether we were seeing any improvements in the metrics that were closest to those areas of improvement that they wanted to make and setting it out right at the start.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 25:42

And that what that's was a real real takeaway. Coaching programs for coaching sake. People coming to you and saying, I've heard about coaching and mentoring. Let's do it because it sounds good. I will actually know what you really want to do with everything else.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 25:58

Set out the goals, set out the objectives, and be ready for the challenge from the finance people in particular that says, show me the money, show me the results. It's still a challenge, but it like everything else, you can actually set out what you're trying to achieve.

Adam Larson: 26:14

I think that's a that's a much better approach because a lot of times you go to leadership programs and you you throw your team into that program. They read a book. They do a bunch of things, but you can never really measure it. And with anything with any organization, you have to set out goals. You have to set you know, and make sure they're measurable.

Adam Larson: 26:30

You know, there's always the make sure they're measurable smart goals. Make sure they're measurable. Make sure you can attain like, all that. I can't remember what smart stands for right now, but, you know, if you if you have all those things in place, you can easily see if this is you know, if your goal has been attained. And so taking coaching out of the ethereal, fluffy, weak, remedial thing that people think it is and saying, no.

Adam Larson: 26:51

This is an actual business goal that we can attain it. It kinda breaks down all those myths that people have about it. It absolutely does. And I think the it's fine to

Jeremy Earnshaw: 27:00

have the smart metrics. It's fine to do that. But what you're really trying to do as well is you you're trying to mature the level of thinking in a coaching and mentoring. It it's not just about the results. You're you're trying to get the coachees and the mentees themselves.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 27:16

You raised the point earlier, which was absolutely right. It actually starts with self awareness and the desire to do something differently in a positive way. So having people come to you and saying, I want to be coached, they need to have looked in the mirror to begin with, like we all would all have to do and say we're never the finished article, and we want to change positively. And we'd like to do things better than we did yesterday. Can you help us do that?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 27:46

And a coach and a mentor can do that. And it might not be just hitting the metrics because we all know that hitting some metrics in year 1 might have been achieved to the detriment of year 2 year 3. In finance, we all know that that can happen. You could have a stellar performance year. But what about the costs of that for the long term value of the organization?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 28:10

So it starts with the coaching, the mentee accepting element of self awareness. And as a coach and a mentor as well, that start that was a big challenge for anybody in studying, coaching, and mentoring to actually recognize that that's where we need to start as well to be able to do this properly.

Adam Larson: 28:33

Well, as with any true thing that helps you grow, it has to be cyclical. You have to come back around to it. And if you're in an organization and you have those first people maybe that were part of the program, they're gonna be your proponents to say, hey. Get in this program because this is the things that help and you kinda you keep it going within an organization. Is that is that the same with coaching?

Adam Larson: 28:52

It seems like that would be the that would be the to keep the wheels turning. Because otherwise, you'll do it one time and then 5 years later, you're like, didn't we have a coaching program a few years ago?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 29:01

Yeah. And and I unfortunately do see that with with individuals as well, is that they see it as a start and a finish line, and it's not. Yeah. And there might well be a shelf life to individual coaches and mentors where you think and and I I have an arrangement with everybody as I'm sure lots of other coaches do as well, which says, you know what? After a period of time, let's review the situation, and and I have a no fault engagement.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 29:31

So if people just say, I think I've just reached the end of the road. I want to try something else. That's great. And my biggest positives as a coach have been people I coached 6, 7 years ago who are still in contact with me, who've gone on to fantastic careers because they're spreading the message with their own people that coaching and mentoring can really work. And what what was the real success of those people?

Jeremy Earnshaw: 29:56

They did it all themselves. Yeah. They took the decisions. They are proponents of coaching and mentoring, and they recognize that they wanted to do the change in themselves. But as a discrete element and somebody like, one of the authors I read a lot is someone called Professor David Putterbuck, and I've plenty of books around me in my office here.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 30:19

And he would say, you absolutely need to think about the system, the organization in which people operate because you might be banging your head against a brick wall if you just focus on 1 team or 1 individually. It's the whole team it's the whole organizational system that may need to be influenced as well.

Adam Larson: 30:41

Well and I think that that just shows how, you know, systematically we have to make changes. You can't just change a couple people here and there and just leave all policies the same, leave everything we've been doing the same. You actually have to everybody has to kinda buy into it. And so it starts with the individual. So you have to kinda start at an individual level and then make sure that it reaches everyone.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 31:02

Yeah. And and we need to promote the successes. You you quite rightly say that it really does start at the top. It can't be seen to be remedial. And going back to one of your very first questions, what was one of the triggers to say, I think we can really, really promote coaching and mentoring within any organization was being it was attending one of those 2 day away sessions where you all go away to to, in your in your case, Gwendolyn of a National Park.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 31:30

You do some karaoke in the evening. You spend a little bit of time together, spend 2 days, then you come back and everything's gonna be alright. And you've achieved absolutely nothing. Yep. And so that kind of targeted intervention, probably it's a very elitist level as well at the senior people, unless it's cascaded down.

Jeremy Earnshaw: 31:51

It really just needs to be a waterfall. And it starts with that leadership style, I think, that promotes self awareness, positive change, and accountability and responsibility for people to do it better tomorrow.

Adam Larson: 32:06

I I think that's great. And, Jeremy, this has been a wonderful conversation. I'm sure we could keep talking about coaching. I'm sure you could talk about it for hours. But I I really appreciate you coming on, sharing all your knowledge, and just your connections with, with our audience, and I encourage everybody to connect with Jeremy online.

Adam Larson: 32:22

And, can let's continue the conversations. Thanks so much, Jeremy. Adam, a pleasure to be here. Thank you very much for the invitation.

Announcer: 32:30

This has been Count Me In, IMA's podcast providing you with the latest perspectives of thought leaders from the accounting and finance profession. If you like what you heard and you'd like to be counted in for more relevant accounting and finance education, visit IMA's website at www.ima net.org.