PeopleFirst! with Morag Barrett | The IDEA Mindset and Self-Discovery in your Career Journey with Dr. Gary Crotaz

Dr Gary Crotaz shares insights from his book 'The IDEA Mindset' is a self-reflective coaching journey to help the reader figure out what they want from work, and how to get it

Show Notes

Join me and Dr. Gary Crotaz, Chief Engagement Officer of KultraLab, a behavioural science and technology organization that accelerates your strategy by igniting the spark that empowers your workforce.

An executive and mindset coach specialized in strengths-centered leadership and change, my 5* rated book 'The IDEA Mindset' is a self-reflective coaching journey to help the reader figure out what they want from work, and how to get it, in six weeks. I also host 'The Unlock Moment' podcast, in which I interview people who have achieved great things or brought about significant change in their life, and we dig into a flash of remarkable clarity when they figured out the path ahead. Find out more at theunlockmoment.com. And I'm a co-host of The Coacharium, a pocket-sized podcast for leaders who coach. Find out more at coacharium.com.

What is PeopleFirst! with Morag Barrett?

Welcome to SkyeTeam's People First! In this series, we explore the people side of successful business and careers. We all have a story to share, a leadership journey that we are experiencing.

We'll be interviewing authors, business leaders, thought leaders, and people like you to uncover the latest ideas, resources, and tools to help you become more effective at work - and in life. As it turns out, the secret is cultivating winning relationships. Business is personal, and relationships matter!

[Music]

welcome to skyeteam's people first with

morag barrett

welcome to this week's episode of people

first and i am excited to welcome my

friend and colleague dr gary crotaz to

the show

and gary is somewhat of an expert in

career change

his careers and he has had several

encompass medicine and science strategy

consulting and senior corporate

leadership he's trained as a doctor

well hence the doctor

at the front of his name he's also a

world-class professional ballroom dancer

so standby for conversations that

includes

sequins and sparkles

he's worked as a university tutor and

has even had a short stint as a hospital

radio dj oh i'm looking forward to the

drive time with dr crotes voice

he's a regular winner of the most

eclectic cv contests oh that's funny and

these days he's an executive coach and a

gallup certified strengths coach he has

worked with leaders from more than 15

countries specializing in activating

their talents and strengths to achieve

ambitious personal and professional

goals

settle down get your cup of tea at the

ready because dr gary crotas welcome

thank you so much i'm so excited to be

here and and thank you so much for

inviting me on

well i think we're going to have a great

conversation as i've already alluded to

we have an overlap with ballroom dancing

though i would not put my snakey hips at

a world-class level i remember my

teacher trying to get me to do lumber

and to loosen up a bit and i turned and

looked to them i said i'm british we do

stiff

but you obviously proved me wrong

so what is the secret to a good rumba or

a good latin movement i think the most

important thing in dancing is to

understand why your natural talents and

strengths lie and mine were not in the

latin american division so okay i'm not

sure i would have had different feedback

from you if i'd been shaking my hips i

did latin american dancing when i was

very very little um yeah do i know the

age about 16 18 something like that but

really i was always a ballroom dancer so

the tail suit the elegance and all of

that kind of thing that was much more

mean see every time i get goosebumps and

i can think fred astaire fly me to the

moon oh give me a good foxtrot or a

viennese or well i did a quick step once

but i had a strong lead and it was i sat

down afterwards just like how the heck

did all of that happen however see

there's leadership and followership in

action it's on the ballroom

but i'm getting a lot from dancing in

leadership you do yes and so i'm going

to take you back though you said you did

latin dancing when you were young so my

opening question for people first

invariably starts with your origin story

so when you weren't dancing and maybe

you were dreaming of

the stage etc but when you were a wee

lad

what did you want to be when you grew up

well i think that and this is an

unhelpful answer to that question but

actually it is absolutely the theme of

my career is i had no idea i had really

had no idea so i i started dancing when

i was about four years old so it's

something i always did a long time

alongside school work and when i got to

the age of sort of 16 17 18 i started

having to make choices i just didn't

have any kind of gut feel as to the kind

of thing i wanted to do i was sort of

broad brush good at many different

things not particularly exceptional at

one didn't give me a steer

and i went into medicine um which you go

to straight from school in the uk um

because i thought that it was a good

career path but i didn't have anybody in

my family as a doctor and it took me

eight years of medical school and

suddenly at the end of the journey i

figured out that i didn't love it as

much as i needed to to pursue another

40-year career in doing it

but i never had a moment i'd never been

one of those people that had sort of

grown up with this deep sense of purpose

for a vocation

for a career and what happened after i

left medical school i actually decided

to transition into business and into

consulting precisely because

it was something that had an awful lot

of avenues you could go down so i knew

at that point in my late 20s after

medical school and doing a science phd

that i needed to retrain and give myself

a broader set of options so that i could

figure out what i wanted to do so i was

in my late 20s in that state still of

not really knowing

and i think then through my career

every every few years or so i would hit

this moment of an opportunity in front

of me that felt

just the right thing at that time

and i'd learned and i think it was in my

natural sort of behavior

that i followed my instinct very very

strongly so i don't worry too much about

where's this going to land me in 10

years or 20 years time i go this looks

fun those people feel great i'm enjoying

what i'm doing why not go for it and so

very frequently the time between an

opportunity first rising and me landing

in that role has been extraordinarily

short one time it was coffee on a

thursday in the full-time roll on the

monday because it was just the right

thing at the right time and i didn't

know about it beforehand

it's interesting because i we were

talking in the green room and i shared

i'm on my fifth sixth depends on how you

count it career i was going to be an

engineer ended up in finance moved from

numbers to leadership development ended

up moving internationally that was never

on the cards for little morag i mean i

hadn't pictured it so now being a ceo

entrepreneur

three times author keynote speaker and

who knows and what resonates for me as i

listen to you there was it's the seize

the moments because

often people will say well how did you

get to where you are today and they're

picturing that linear

path

and it isn't it's a swirly mess but it's

having the courage to seize those

opportunities

in spite of whatever may be the

perceived risk so in those moments gary

how does it feel for you like you get to

the end of medical school eight years

peer pressure expectations it's not for

you

how does it feel and what advice do you

have for leaders who may be feeling like

they need a change

but are hesitant to take it

that's a great question

the way i think about it is i

distinguish the decision that what

you're doing is not right

and the decision of what the next step

is there's the two separate things so

when i got to the end of my time at

medical school i was about a year from

the end

i suddenly had a realization that this

wasn't right i had no idea where i was

going to go but i i knew that this

wasn't right years and years and years

later as i started to do more coaching

which has become a much much bigger

thing for me in my career

i i recalled a particular moment in a

different role where i had the same

moment um

and what happened was i had a meeting

with somebody in the company and in that

meeting i just had this realization that

this wasn't my long-term path in this

company to take that to take that path

and i came out of the meeting room and i

walked past my colleagues desk and i

picked up a post-it note and i wrote on

the note on the post-it note i'm leaving

and i put the note on her desk and kept

walking

and for me that was a moment of

crystallizing the

exit thought i hadn't and she said to me

where are you going when are you going

and i said i don't know i have no idea

i've just decided though that i'm

leaving

and years later i'd refer back to these

moments as post-it note moments for

other people they say oh i've decided

i'm leaving but i don't know when and

i'm like well you've had a post-it note

moment that moment when you write on the

post-it note i'm leaving you put it on

somebody's desk and you keep walking

and i've talked to people since who the

time between figuring out that they will

leave and actually leaving is as many as

five years sometimes it doesn't have to

in that moment

once you've made the decision that at

some point you're going to leave then

you've got a

much fresher way of thinking about what

the future can be because you're not

under pressure necessarily to go

straight away or to go into particular

things so for me

i then spent the next year trying to

figure out what the next step would be

but i was completely clear that it

wasn't the thing that i had up to that

point been pursuing

so i love that the post-it note moment

as i reflected on it i can see those

pivot points those decisions that had i

gone left instead of right

you and i would not be talking here

today

and i know we have a mutual friend and

colleague in dr marshall goldsmith and

that's the premise of the earned life

his latest book which is phenomenal

because he talks about regret and more

often we don't regret the things that we

whether they work or not we regret the

things

and in your example they're the

opportunities that we didn't take

and so

and i don't do regret

and and and i and that is a very

s that's a very conscious choice for me

um it started with when i left medical

school and i think it was advantageous

for me building this kind of resilience

to the idea of regret

if when you're leaving medicine

that's not a thing that you do lightly

and it's not a thing that lands well

with the medical community because of

this sense of this sort of deep vocation

to what you're doing

and if you leave even if you could

physically practically go back

emotionally you can't

and your career

i think would never quite be the same

because you'll always be the person who

wobbled who quit you know

and so actually that helped me to go if

i do make this jump which i feel i want

to do

i have to know

that even if it fails even if i fall out

of my face

my next move still has to be another

forward one

and i think i've carried that on into

other situations where to go back would

be possible

but i've taken that same thinking of

saying well assume it's not

so we assume you know you might fail in

your next move because you don't know

but if you do fail you've got to commit

to yourself one that you back the

judgment that you made to make that move

in the first place whether rightly or

wrongly

and then to figure out a way to move

forward so i say you know if you're

jumping over a fence into a field and

you find the bull in the field then run

across the field and jump over the next

fence into the next field don't jump

over back over the fence that you just

came from there's a reason why you

jumped over that fence in the first

place to get into that field

and that mentality i think helps because

it you know it stops you

spending your life thinking about what

might have been

it's interesting because a similar i

don't do regret either it's always

forward-looking i can't do anything

about the past to your point i can learn

from it and i was keep coaching a senior

leader earlier this year and they were

feeling trapped in their career

and

one of the reasons we were doing the

coaching was to help them to create a

new vision but they were

it turned out in the coaching trying to

angst between do i stay or do i leave

and retire

and the post-it note moment for them was

when they said to me well i can't afford

to retire and i just reflected back and

said well can't you

i mean who knows and that was the story

that this leader was carrying but they

went and talked to their financial

advisor it turns out they could but what

that allowed them to do actually was to

re-engage in their role because they no

longer felt trapped in having to stay in

order to fulfill a future financial

obligation

they were now choosing to stay

and find different ways to re-engage and

add value for the team that they were in

so it was a win-win but it was a post-it

note moment of are you gonna leave or

stay

and whichever you're doing how do we

make that successful experience for you

and those around you i think one of the

most

powerful questions that i find myself

asking people in these career

conversations

well what do you want what do you really

want

imagine none of the choices in front of

you are the ones in front of you because

i see time and time again

whether these are junior people or even

very senior senior leaders people see

the choices that appear to be on the

table in front of them and then they

evaluate between those choices and they

say which one's the best which one's the

worst this was one that i should do

and it's a very helpful thing sometimes

to throw the tablecloth over all of

those choices step back and fold your

arms and say

what what do you want to do

and i remember the most senior person

i've ever coached he's the kind of

person who

could pretty much choose any role

you know sort of that that kind of level

um and was faced with a set of great

choices great options

which were intriguing difficult to

choose between some uncertainty and all

of them for sure

um and we had a conversation over quite

a long period of time

several months

and at some point i asked that question

you know

if you could do anything and none of

these were on the table none of these

would just sort of even ideas in your

brain

what do you want

and they said

oh that's very obvious i know i know the

answer to that question and then they

said something and it was completely

different from any of those options and

i said and why don't you

and they said well i've never considered

and it wasn't that they went on to do

that particular thing but it completely

reframed their thinking to start with

well

where am i going and what do i

love doing and what gives me

value and a sense of purpose

imagine i could do anything and there

will be some things that will be out of

your reach but actually stepping back

and saying what do i want opens up and

it's the simplest question but it opens

avenues of thinking that are just not

accessible to most people in their daily

life because their head is full of

what's going on right now

it's the power of coaching it's the

power of coaching it gives you the space

to think that way

and their heads aren't just full of

what's happening now

what i heard in that story or that

example not a story because it's a lived

experience

is the pressure the peer pressure the

expectations of others

often inform the assumed like my

coaching client that i can't because

and until we take a step back and remove

that

static and distraction and get to well

what do you really want

and how much of that can you actually

realize now that you've recognized it

that's the power

of coaching and perspective

it's interesting this this idea that

if i follow my career through

it's it's gone down all sorts of weird

and wonderful and interesting avenues in

in medicine in consulting i ended up in

a retail business so i worked for

six seven years in retail in in

specialist retail um i was a

professional boring dancer for a time um

and then became a full-time coach and

i'm now working in a tech startup

when i look back there's a thread

and the first time i really recognize

what that thread was

was when i was in a conversation with

another

shared colleague of ours dr mark gulstan

who came on my podcast

and he said

what's the thread that links your career

together and i said well looking back i

can see that it's making a difference to

people

but it was nev that was never something

i was intentionally pursuing i wasn't

choosing to turn left or right in the

intentional

pursuit of making a difference to people

but in the end the instinctive choice

that i made at each point

turned out to be the one that was

something about making a difference

whether it was

in medicine in a very direct way to

patients

in consulting it wasn't the actual

consulting it was the fact that i

enjoyed having conversations with people

who are figuring out their careers which

i later

understood looking back was the

beginnings of a coaching mindset

in medicine

so in in the retail environment it

wasn't so much

the optimizing the performance of

retailer it was helping 4 000 people not

to lose their jobs because we were we

were keeping the retailer afloat and

making it successful over time

um and and then in coaching it it's it's

not to optimize performance to maximize

productivity is to see the person in

front of you achieve something

extraordinary that they never believed

that they were they were capable of

and and and

it's in all different environments but

ultimately it's the same thread but i

was in my mid-40s probably when i first

really recognized that that was a thing

and i think sometimes for people that is

the thing that you can see it when you

look back

but that's different from the thing that

intentionally drives your choices as you

move forward and see that's the power of

dr mark gulstan he's worked that mojo

magic on me too in terms of thinking

about who and what i am and how am i

showing up

so in getting you to identify the thread

that weaves through your careers to date

to what extent does that thread

exist

as a tangible thing as you look forward

in the future direction of your career

i think much more strongly than ever

before now that i recognize it so an

example is

three weeks ago i started in a tech

startup which is an exciting thing to do

regardless of their making a difference

to people perspective but what this

particular startup is doing is actually

it's related to the coaching space

and it's creating a digital platform

that makes the coaching experience or

the coaching journey accessible to

everybody in an organization think you

know

departmental managers or literally shop

floor till staff in a retailer can have

access to

the basic kind of coaching mindset the

coaching journey because it's not

expensive because there's not a human

coach in that journey which makes it

otherwise inaccessible to people

and so that's the thing that made me

really excited about joining this firm

whilst all there's lots of other things

about it that i'm really excited by i

think if there wasn't that sense of

purpose you're making a difference to

people in this case

back to my retail mindset of you know i

used to lead i had a role where i was

leading all the store teams in in a in a

uk multi-channel retailer so i had about

4 000 people and we were absolutely

trying to make sure that as many of them

could keep their jobs that was the thing

that got me out of bed in the morning

that's the thing that made me you know

go the extra mile and do the best i

could

um there were other things in the role

that i found interesting but without

that core purpose of people

i don't think i'd have that so it really

helped me this time

to understand that this wasn't just a

sort of

it's a pretty exciting things that come

across my desk but in a week or two time

i might find it

you know not as exciting as that

to really translating it to

wow if you could do this you're making a

difference to thousands or tens of

thousands or potentially even hundreds

of thousands of people

with something that otherwise they can't

access so i do think it comes through

much much more for me uh you know

thinking forward now that i can see that

clarity of path that i couldn't see

before

and that thread reinforces i know you

talk about this in your book the idea

mindset

that every career path is personal to

you so this new platform that's coming

is going to help expand that reach and

possibilities for people

um so the idea the mindset i know you

talk about four elements that go into

creating and crafting

both self-discovery and career plan tell

us about those four elements

so idea is an acronym that stands for

identity direction engagement and

authenticity so what that means in

practice is

to find your fulfilling future working

life you have to answer for yourself and

your answer will be different from other

people

who you are so that's the identity who

you are what you stand for what your

strengths are how people perceive you

what your direction is something about

the long term but i'm a great example of

a lot of people are not that clear about

the long term and that's okay

but actually you do need to find some

clarity about the short term because

when you're faced with the choice do i

turn left or right do i stay in this

role or do i pursue that opportunity

you've got to make a call and you've got

to make a call

in the absence of perfect information so

how do you decide the direction you want

to take

the way you get there is driven by two

factors engagement and authenticity so

what is it that you really love

and this very often connects back to

what are you naturally talented at what

are your strengths how can you see that

shining through the different stories in

your career

up to date and your whole life

and then authenticity so what are your

values what is your sense of purpose and

in your values which are the values that

make you really change your behavior so

a lot of people say for example you know

i really care about the environment and

you say to them

what do you do differently because you

care about the environment and that's a