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Great Coaching Begins Where the Playbook Ends with Cam Lawson · The Ambitious Coach Lab

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Ambitious Coach Lab, powered by Nike.
0:04
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Dr.
0:05
SPEAKER_00: Pam Law.
0:06
SPEAKER_00: Each week we explore the real tactics, tough conversations, and breakthrough moments that drive coaching success.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: Let's jump into today's episode.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Ambitious Coach Lab.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: Today's going to be a little different.
0:20
SPEAKER_00: It's just me.
0:21
SPEAKER_00: And after 40 plus episodes of this podcast, having conversations with some really incredible coaches, consultants, facilitators, fractional leaders, and people who spend their days sitting inside leadership teams helping businesses get better.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: There's been a topic that I just keep coming back to.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: It's something I've heard in different ways from guest after guest.
0:43
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes they've said it directly.
0:45
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes it's been buried inside a story they told.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: Other times it's been something that happened in a session where the lesson wasn't necessarily the thing they were trying to teach.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: But I kept hearing it.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: And I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
0:58
SPEAKER_00: So instead of bringing somebody else on to talk about it, I wanted to sit down and kind of work through it myself.
1:05
SPEAKER_00: And before I jump into the take, if you're newer to the podcast, maybe just a little bit of background on me and why I care about this stuff so much.
1:12
SPEAKER_00: So I'm Cam.
1:14
SPEAKER_00: Professionally, I spend most of my time in the worlds of growth, partnerships, revenue, entrepreneurship, and business coaching.
1:21
SPEAKER_00: I work as a fractional CRO, and I've spent years inside the EOS ecosystem.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: I've worked alongside coaches and consultants, I've helped build partnerships with them, worked with leadership teams, and probably most importantly for this conversation, I've had the opportunity through this podcast to sit across from a lot of really talented people and ask them why they do what they do.
1:46
SPEAKER_00: I also have an MBA and a PhD in strategic communication.
1:50
SPEAKER_00: So I live in this interesting intersection where part of my brain absolutely loves theory.
1:56
SPEAKER_00: I love frameworks, I love models, all of these different things.
2:02
SPEAKER_00: I love research.
2:03
SPEAKER_00: I love understanding why things work.
2:07
SPEAKER_00: But the other part of my career has been spent in the real world, where you very quickly learn that human beings have an incredible ability to screw up a perfectly good framework.
2:18
SPEAKER_00: You can have the perfect process, you can have the perfect agenda, you can have the perfect questions, you can even have the perfect methodology.
2:27
SPEAKER_00: And then you put eight complicated human beings in a conference room together, and suddenly the perfect process isn't quite so perfect anymore.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: And that tension is really what I want to talk about today.
2:40
SPEAKER_00: Because after 40 plus episodes, here's the hot take that's been rattling around in my head.
2:46
SPEAKER_00: I think the coaching industry overvalues knowledge and undervalues judgment.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think great coaching begins where the playbook ends.
2:58
SPEAKER_00: Now, before anybody clips that sentence out of context and sends it to the certification body of their choice, I'm not anti-framework.
3:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm not even anti-process.
3:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm definitely not anti-certification.
3:12
SPEAKER_00: Frameworks matter, methodologies matter.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Training matters.
3:18
SPEAKER_00: In fact, if you're early on in your coaching career, one of the best things you can have is a really good framework.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: It gives you guardrails, it gives you language, it gives you a sequence.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: It stops you from walking into a room with eight executives and thinking, okay, what in the world do I do now?
3:37
SPEAKER_00: Frameworks are incredibly valuable, but I think we sometimes make a mistake.
3:43
SPEAKER_00: We confuse knowing the framework with mastering the craft.
3:47
SPEAKER_00: And those are not the same thing.
3:49
SPEAKER_00: I've started thinking about it this way: the framework is the scaffolding, judgment is the craft.
3:57
SPEAKER_00: Because every eventually every good coach ends up in moments the workbook cannot answer.
4:03
SPEAKER_00: Say the CEO gets defensive.
4:05
SPEAKER_00: Well, do you push harder?
4:07
SPEAKER_00: Do you back off?
4:09
SPEAKER_00: What about if somebody says something that the entire energy in the room changes?
4:14
SPEAKER_00: Do we stop the meeting?
4:15
SPEAKER_00: Do you let it go?
4:17
SPEAKER_00: What about if two executives have clearly been dancing around the same conflict for six months?
4:22
SPEAKER_00: Do you call it out?
4:24
SPEAKER_00: Do you wait until they arrive there themselves?
4:27
SPEAKER_00: You're 10 minutes from lunch and somebody finally says the thing that everybody has been avoiding all morning.
4:33
SPEAKER_00: Do you blow up the agenda or do you put a pin in it and keep moving?
4:38
SPEAKER_00: You know exactly what you think the answer is.
4:40
SPEAKER_00: Do you tell them or do you ask another question?
4:45
SPEAKER_00: There's no page in the workbook titled, Turn here if the CEO crosses his arms.
4:51
SPEAKER_00: The integrator looks like she's about to cry, and everyone else suddenly stops making eye contact.
4:56
SPEAKER_00: At some point, the coach has to make a call.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: That is judgment.
5:02
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is one of the least discussed skills in coaching.
5:07
SPEAKER_00: The danger of becoming a page turner.
5:10
SPEAKER_00: One of the phrases that has come up multiple times on this podcast is this idea of being a page turner coach.
5:17
SPEAKER_00: If you coach inside a methodology, you probably know exactly what I mean.
5:21
SPEAKER_00: All right, folks, we're on page three.
5:25
SPEAKER_00: Now we're on page four.
5:27
SPEAKER_00: Now we're doing this tool.
5:28
SPEAKER_00: Now we're asking this question.
5:30
SPEAKER_00: Now we move into the next section.
5:32
SPEAKER_00: There's comfort in that.
5:34
SPEAKER_00: And again, especially early in your career, that structure can be incredibly helpful.
5:40
SPEAKER_00: The danger is when the structure becomes a hiding place.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a big difference between using a process and hiding behind a process.
5:50
SPEAKER_00: One of the questions I've started asking myself is at what point does fidelity to the framework become avoidance?
5:57
SPEAKER_00: That is uncomfortable.
6:00
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes saying we need to keep moving is exactly the right facilitation decision.
6:07
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes we need to keep moving actually means, hey, I have no clue what to do with what just happened.
6:15
SPEAKER_00: So we need to move to the next page.
6:17
SPEAKER_00: And nobody calls it on us because technically we're following the process.
6:22
SPEAKER_00: That's where judgment matters.
6:25
SPEAKER_00: David Reidenauer talked about something on this podcast that really stuck with me from a recent episode.
6:30
SPEAKER_00: He talked about the idea that people aren't just rational brains walking around making rational decisions.
6:37
SPEAKER_00: Every person in that conference room has desires.
6:41
SPEAKER_00: They have fears.
6:42
SPEAKER_00: There's history, there's relationships, insecurities, a spouse at home, kids, ambitions, resentments, things they want people in the room to know.
6:55
SPEAKER_00: Things they desperately do not want people in the room to know.
6:58
SPEAKER_00: You parachute into a leadership team and they had a life before you arrived.
7:04
SPEAKER_00: There's inside jokes that they know.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: They have arguments that happened six months ago that you have no clue about.
7:11
SPEAKER_00: They have conversations in the parking lot.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: There's Slack messages you're never gonna see.
7:16
SPEAKER_00: There's workarounds built around one another.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: They've learned which subjects aren't safe to bring up.
7:22
SPEAKER_00: They know who gets loud.
7:23
SPEAKER_00: They know who shuts down.
7:26
SPEAKER_00: They know who wins.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: And when we walk into the room with our framework and we say, all right, let's start on page one, the framework doesn't know any of that.
7:38
SPEAKER_00: The page doesn't know what's happening in the room.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: The coach has to know.
7:44
SPEAKER_00: Or at least the coach has to be curious enough to start noticing.
7:48
SPEAKER_00: To me, that's the difference.
7:52
SPEAKER_00: The framework sees categories.
7:54
SPEAKER_00: The coach has to see humans.
7:57
SPEAKER_00: And I think that is part of the transition from being somebody who knows a coaching system to somebody who is actually becoming a masterful coach.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: You become less obsessed with getting through the content and more obsessed with understanding what the people in front of you actually need.
8:16
SPEAKER_00: So there's this thing that I've kind of called this the expertise paradox.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: And so there's another layer to this that I really find interesting.
8:27
SPEAKER_00: As coaches get better, they know more.
8:31
SPEAKER_00: Obviously, I mean, you have more reps, you've seen more companies, you've watched more leadership teams with the same problems, you've watched founders make the same mistake, you've watched people issues play out over and over again.
8:45
SPEAKER_00: Eventually, somebody starts explaining their problem, and five minutes into the conversation, you think, hmm, I know exactly what this is.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes you're right, probably more often than you were as a rookie.
8:58
SPEAKER_00: But that creates what I think is an expertise paradox.
9:02
SPEAKER_00: Because the more answers you have, the more disciplined you have to become about deciding when to give them.
9:08
SPEAKER_00: Ren Flickinger told a story on this podcast that I absolutely love.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: He was working with a company that had somewhere around$2 million of stale inventory they needed to figure out what to do with.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: So the team starts brainstorming.
9:22
SPEAKER_00: What do we do with this?
9:23
SPEAKER_00: Ren had some ideas.
9:25
SPEAKER_00: He had experience.
9:27
SPEAKER_00: He had been in that field.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: He could have jumped in, but he kept asking them for more.
9:34
SPEAKER_00: What else?
9:35
SPEAKER_00: What else?
9:36
SPEAKER_00: What else?
9:38
SPEAKER_00: They get somewhere to around 50 ideas on the whiteboard.
9:42
SPEAKER_00: And then they come up with number 51.
9:45
SPEAKER_00: The 51st idea ended up being the idea.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: It solved the problem.
9:50
SPEAKER_00: And from what Ren shared, it ultimately became something that generated recurring value for the company for years.
9:56
SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about that.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: What if Ren had just jumped in at number idea seven?
10:01
SPEAKER_00: What if he had heard enough and thought, well, okay, these guys are struggling.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Time for the coach to save the day.
10:09
SPEAKER_00: He might have given them a good answer.
10:12
SPEAKER_00: He might have even given them an answer that worked, but they never would have gotten to number 51.
10:18
SPEAKER_00: And that story stuck with me because it captures something I think great coaches understand.
10:23
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes expertise tells you the answer.
10:27
SPEAKER_00: Judgment tells you whether anyone needs to hear it.
10:31
SPEAKER_00: Those are two very different things.
10:33
SPEAKER_00: And I think there's a temptation when you coach for a living to feel like you have to constantly prove your value, right?
10:41
SPEAKER_00: The client is paying you.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: You're the expert.
10:46
SPEAKER_00: You were brought into the room.
10:48
SPEAKER_00: You feel pressure to say something smart.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: You want to earn your fee.
10:51
SPEAKER_00: So silence gets a little uncomfortable.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: You start thinking, well, I should probably contribute here.
10:59
SPEAKER_00: And I can think one of the most important questions a coach can learn to ask themselves is Am I solving their problem right now?
11:07
SPEAKER_00: Or am I solving my anxiety about proving my value?
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Because those two things can look very similar.
11:16
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes speaking is leadership.
11:19
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes silence is leadership.
11:22
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes giving the answer is exactly what your client needs.
11:26
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes giving the answer steals the development opportunity from the team.
11:31
SPEAKER_00: And nobody can write a perfect rule for that.
11:34
SPEAKER_00: See, that's judgment.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: So there are a couple calls, judgment calls that great coaches make constantly.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: I think there's five tensions that coaches are navigating all the time.
11:48
SPEAKER_00: And mastery isn't eliminating those tensions.
11:51
SPEAKER_00: Mastery is getting better at navigating them.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: So the first one is do I speak or do I stay silent?
11:59
SPEAKER_00: Wendy Waldron and I talked about this in the most recent episode during her episode.
12:04
SPEAKER_00: She told this incredible story about a leadership team talking about somebody who had been with the organization for a long time.
12:11
SPEAKER_00: The obvious assumption was that as the company grew, this person should step into a larger role.
12:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it made sense on paper.
12:18
SPEAKER_00: He had tenure, he had experience, he was capable.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: And then someone in the room raised a different possibility.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: Maybe he didn't actually want the bigger job.
12:31
SPEAKER_00: Maybe everybody was kind of projecting that definition of success onto him.
12:36
SPEAKER_00: I mean, he had a family.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: He loved being present for his kids.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: He had a life he enjoyed.
12:42
SPEAKER_00: And suddenly the room got quiet.
12:45
SPEAKER_00: He got emotional.
12:47
SPEAKER_00: And Wendy didn't rush to fill the silence.
12:51
SPEAKER_00: She let the moment happen.
12:53
SPEAKER_00: That matters.
12:55
SPEAKER_00: Most of us hate silence, myself included.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: Three seconds feels like three minutes.
13:01
SPEAKER_00: Especially if we're responsible for facilitating the meeting.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: Our instinct is to jump in and rescue the room.
13:10
SPEAKER_00: Ask another question, though.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Make a joke.
13:14
SPEAKER_00: Transition.
13:16
SPEAKER_00: Summarize.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Anything to make the awkwardness stop.
13:22
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes the silence is doing the work.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: Great coaches learn the difference between a dead room and a room that is processing something important.
13:31
SPEAKER_00: That's judgment.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Second one.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Do I ask or do I tell?
13:39
SPEAKER_00: I don't buy the idea that coaches should never tell.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: There are moments when you have expertise your client is paying you to provide.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: If you watch somebody walk toward a cliff and think, well, I'm committed to Socratic questioning, you're probably taking the philosophy a little too far, right?
13:55
SPEAKER_00: There are moments to say, man, I've seen this movie and I think you need to know how it ends.
14:01
SPEAKER_00: But there are also moments when the answer matters less than the team's ability to arrive at it.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: Ren's story is a great example.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the best thing you can do is keep asking, what else?
14:14
SPEAKER_00: Tell me more.
14:16
SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that?
14:20
SPEAKER_00: What aren't we talking about?
14:22
SPEAKER_00: What would happen if we didn't do that?
14:25
SPEAKER_00: The skill is knowing when a question is better than an answer.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: Third thing.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: Do I push or do I protect?
14:35
SPEAKER_00: I think every experienced coach has probably had a moment where they pushed a little too hard.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: And there's probably another where they didn't push hard enough.
14:43
SPEAKER_00: Pete Serdowski talked on his podcast about learning through moments where the process looked perfect until actual humans entered the room.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: There are times a client needs a challenge, a real challenge, not performative toughness, not being a jerk because you think that's what a strong coach does, but the willingness to say the thing nobody else in the room is willing to say.
15:06
SPEAKER_00: Wren had a phrase that I love.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: Say what needs to be said regardless of risk.
15:12
SPEAKER_00: That's part of the job.
15:13
SPEAKER_00: But the question is, how?
15:15
SPEAKER_00: Do you have enough trust built to make that challenge productive?
15:19
SPEAKER_00: Is the person defensive because you're touching the real issue?
15:23
SPEAKER_00: Or are they defensive because you just embarrass them in front of six people?
15:27
SPEAKER_00: Those are not the same thing.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Great coaches don't avoid tension, but they also don't manufacture tension so they can feel powerful.
15:38
SPEAKER_00: Judgment determines how hard to push and win.
15:42
SPEAKER_00: Fourth thing.
15:44
SPEAKER_00: Do I follow the agenda or do I follow the energy?
15:48
SPEAKER_00: I think about this one a lot.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: You've got your agenda, you've got your objectives, you've got your timeline, and then the room changes.
15:58
SPEAKER_00: Someone says something, someone reacts.
16:01
SPEAKER_00: There's that weird pause.
16:03
SPEAKER_00: A side comment lands harder than it should have.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: And in that moment, you have a choice.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: And do I stay on the agenda or do I follow that?
16:12
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes the answer is to stay on the agenda.
16:15
SPEAKER_00: Not every eyebrow deserves a 45-minute detour.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: But sometimes what just happened is the meeting.
16:22
SPEAKER_00: Everything else can wait.
16:24
SPEAKER_00: This is why I think reading the room is one of the most important parts of mastery.
16:29
SPEAKER_00: You're paying attention to what is being said, but you're also paying attention to what isn't.
16:35
SPEAKER_00: Who stopped talking?
16:37
SPEAKER_00: Who suddenly started talking?
16:40
SPEAKER_00: Who keeps making jokes every time a certain subject comes up?
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Who's looking at the table?
16:48
SPEAKER_00: Who's immediately answers for somebody else?
16:52
SPEAKER_00: What topic creates energy?
16:54
SPEAKER_00: What topic drains it?
16:56
SPEAKER_00: The agenda tells you where you plan to go.
17:00
SPEAKER_00: The room tells you where you actually are.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: Great coaching requires both.
17:06
SPEAKER_00: And the fifth thing: solve the problem or return ownership.
17:12
SPEAKER_00: I think this one is the hardest, at least for me, because solving problems feels good.
17:17
SPEAKER_00: It makes this useful.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: And if you're wired like me, there's something deeply satisfying about somebody explaining a mess and your brain immediately starting to connect the dots.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: You can see the path.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: You know who they should call.
17:31
SPEAKER_00: You know what they should change.
17:33
SPEAKER_00: You have an idea.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: Come on, let's go.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: But if the leadership team leaves every session thinking, oh thank God Cam was there to figure it out.
17:42
SPEAKER_00: Have I actually helped them?
17:44
SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe.
17:46
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe I've slowly trained them to outsource their thinking to me.
17:51
SPEAKER_00: There's a difference between helping people solve problems and becoming the person required to solve all their problems.
17:58
SPEAKER_00: One creates capability, the other creates dependency.
18:02
SPEAKER_00: I think the best coaches are constantly asking, how do I help this team become better at doing without me?
18:10
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't diminish your value.
18:13
SPEAKER_00: I think that is your value.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is where AI starts to become very important.
18:22
SPEAKER_00: This gets super interesting because we can't talk about the future of coaching without talking about AI.
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Many conversations on this podcast have brought up AI of how we're going to utilize it.
18:36
SPEAKER_00: And I'm extremely bullish on AI.
18:38
SPEAKER_00: I use it constantly.
18:40
SPEAKER_00: I've built things with it.
18:43
SPEAKER_00: I love being able to go in and think through and have it as a thought partner.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is going to dramatically improve the way coaches prepare for sessions, synthesize information, identify patterns, even document meetings, follow up, build tools, create content, and even run their own practices.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: Christine Watts and I had a great conversation about this.
19:07
SPEAKER_00: She described AI as a thought partner.
19:10
SPEAKER_00: And I love that framing.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: AI can help the coach think, but the coach still has to lead.
19:16
SPEAKER_00: Because here's what's happening knowledge is getting cheaper.
19:20
SPEAKER_00: Information is getting cheaper.
19:22
SPEAKER_00: Summarization is getting cheaper.
19:25
SPEAKER_00: Even framework generation is getting cheaper.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: You can go into Chat GPT right now and say, hey, give me 25 powerful questions to ask a leadership team experiencing accountability problems.
19:37
SPEAKER_00: And let's be honest, you'll probably get a pretty good list.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: That's not scarce anymore.
19:42
SPEAKER_00: Knowing questions isn't the differentiator.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: Knowing which questions to ask this person at this moment is.
19:50
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the right decision is not asking any of those 25 questions.
19:55
SPEAKER_00: It's actually just shutting up.
19:57
SPEAKER_00: AI can analyze the transcript.
20:00
SPEAKER_00: It could tell you somebody used the word frustrated six times.
20:05
SPEAKER_00: But you're sitting three feet away from that person.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: You saw the pause.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: You saw them glance at their business partner.
20:13
SPEAKER_00: You heard their voice change.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: You know that this is the third session where the subject has appeared.
20:19
SPEAKER_00: And that context matters.
20:21
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think AI makes great coaching less valuable.
20:25
SPEAKER_00: I actually think AI makes great judgment more valuable.
20:31
SPEAKER_00: The more knowledge gets commoditized, the more valuable judgment becomes.
20:38
SPEAKER_00: Because the human part of coaching moves to the center.
20:41
SPEAKER_00: Can you build trust?
20:43
SPEAKER_00: Can you create safety?
20:45
SPEAKER_00: Can you challenge somebody without humiliating them?
20:49
SPEAKER_00: Can you recognize when the stated problem isn't the real problem?
20:54
SPEAKER_00: Can you hold tension in a room?
20:58
SPEAKER_00: Can you let people struggle?
21:01
SPEAKER_00: Can you tell the difference between productive conflict and destructive conflict?
21:06
SPEAKER_00: Can you recognize when your own ego is affecting the room?
21:11
SPEAKER_00: AI can help you become better at the work.
21:15
SPEAKER_00: But if we're not careful, it can also make it very easy to confuse having more information with having more wisdom.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: Those aren't the same thing either.
21:25
SPEAKER_00: Judgment has to be earned.
21:28
SPEAKER_00: Now I want to make one distinction here.
21:31
SPEAKER_00: When I say coaches need judgment, I am not saying forget the framework, just trust your gut.
21:36
SPEAKER_00: That's dangerous too.
21:39
SPEAKER_00: Because your gut can often be wrong.
21:43
SPEAKER_00: Many times my gut is an ego.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: Many times my gut can be insecurity.
21:49
SPEAKER_00: Can also be bias.
21:52
SPEAKER_00: My gut can be one experience you had seven years ago that now I've decided applies to everybody.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: Judgment has to be Developed.
22:01
SPEAKER_00: And the simplest formula I've come up with this is reps plus reflection plus community.
22:07
SPEAKER_00: You need reps.
22:09
SPEAKER_00: You need to be in the rooms.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: But there are things that you cannot learn from reading.
22:14
SPEAKER_00: You need the uncomfortable session.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: You need the client who pushes back.
22:19
SPEAKER_00: You need the question that completely bombs.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: You need the moment you realize 20 minutes too late what was actually happening.
22:27
SPEAKER_00: Those days that you think you leave thinking, man, I absolutely crushed that.
22:33
SPEAKER_00: And you need the day where you sit in your car afterwards and think, man, I have no idea what I was doing in there.
22:41
SPEAKER_00: That's part of becoming good.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: But reps alone aren't enough.
22:47
SPEAKER_00: Because you can do something badly 500 times.
22:51
SPEAKER_00: So you need reflection.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: Ren talked about this too.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: After sessions, he's evaluating himself.
22:57
SPEAKER_00: What could I have done better?
22:59
SPEAKER_00: What happened?
23:00
SPEAKER_00: What did I miss?
23:02
SPEAKER_00: That's mastery.
23:03
SPEAKER_00: I think every coach would benefit from taking five minutes after a session and asking, where did I speak too soon?
23:10
SPEAKER_00: Where did I wait too long?
23:13
SPEAKER_00: What happened today that I didn't expect?
23:16
SPEAKER_00: What did I notice but choose not to pursue?
23:20
SPEAKER_00: Why?
23:21
SPEAKER_00: Was there an emotion in the room that I avoided?
23:24
SPEAKER_00: Where I was trying to prove my value?
23:27
SPEAKER_00: Where did I make an assumption?
23:30
SPEAKER_00: What would I do differently if that exact moment happened tomorrow?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Because reps don't automatically create wisdom.
23:37
SPEAKER_00: Reflected reps do.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: And then the third piece is community.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: I think this is one of the biggest reasons I've become so passionate about this podcast.
23:47
SPEAKER_00: Coaching can be weirdly isolating.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: You go into a room, you facilitate, you leave, and nobody else was there.
24:01
SPEAKER_00: So when something difficult happens, you have to have your own perspective on it.
24:05
SPEAKER_00: That's it.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: But what if you could borrow someone else's reps?
24:09
SPEAKER_00: What if you could sit with another coach and say, here's what happened?
24:13
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I did.
24:14
SPEAKER_00: What would you have done?
24:16
SPEAKER_00: That's gold.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Watch other coaches.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: Get mentored.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: Call the people who have been doing it longer than you.
24:25
SPEAKER_00: Talk about those ugly sessions, not just the incredible success stories.
24:30
SPEAKER_00: Ask people about the time they got it wrong.
24:33
SPEAKER_00: Keep a notebook of phrases you hear other coaches use.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: Listen for how they challenge.
24:39
SPEAKER_00: Listen for how they transition.
24:42
SPEAKER_00: Listen for what they do when somebody gets emotional.
24:46
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the ideas underneath this entire season of the Ambitious Coach Lab.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: Stories from the session room.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Because stories accelerate judgment.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: You get to borrow somebody else's rep.
24:59
SPEAKER_00: You get to hear Pete's mistake without making Pete's mistake.
25:02
SPEAKER_00: You get to hear Ren's 51st idea story, and maybe next time you're at idea 12, you wait.
25:09
SPEAKER_00: You hear Wendy talk about silence, and next time a room gets quiet, maybe you don't immediately rescue it.
25:16
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's incredibly powerful.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's how the craft gets passed down.
25:22
SPEAKER_00: Not just through curriculum, it's through stories.
25:27
SPEAKER_00: So what is mastery?
25:30
SPEAKER_00: If I had to boil all of this down into one progression, it would be framework, reps, judgment, mastery.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: The framework tells you what usually works.
25:44
SPEAKER_00: Reps teach you what actually happens.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Judgment helps you decide what this moment needs.
25:51
SPEAKER_00: And mastery is making those calls more consistently.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: Not perfectly, consistently.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: Because I don't think mastery means getting over, never getting it wrong.
26:03
SPEAKER_00: I think masterful coaches probably have an even greater awareness of how often they could get it wrong.
26:09
SPEAKER_00: They just built enough pattern recognition, humility, reflection, and judgment to navigate those moments better.
26:17
SPEAKER_00: So here's the simplest way that I can say it.
26:20
SPEAKER_00: Mastery is not knowing what to do.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: Mastery is knowing what to do, when to do it, how hard to do it, and when not to do it at all.
26:32
SPEAKER_00: That's a very different standard.
26:35
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's where I want to challenge ambitious coaches.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: By all means, learn the framework.
26:42
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Know it cold, become excellent at it.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: But don't let your mastery of the framework stop you from mastering the humans you're there to serve.
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Stay curious.
26:56
SPEAKER_00: Pay attention.
26:58
SPEAKER_00: Listen.
26:59
SPEAKER_00: And maybe ask yourself this question.
27:02
SPEAKER_00: If your methodology disappeared tomorrow, what would still make you worth hiring if the workbook vanished?
27:10
SPEAKER_00: If the certification didn't exist?
27:13
SPEAKER_00: If the tool went away?
27:15
SPEAKER_00: What would be left?
27:16
SPEAKER_00: Can you listen?
27:18
SPEAKER_00: Can you build trust?
27:20
SPEAKER_00: Can you notice what others miss?
27:23
SPEAKER_00: Can you challenge without humiliating?
27:26
SPEAKER_00: Can you sit in silence?
27:28
SPEAKER_00: Can you recognize when the problem underneath the problem finally enters the room?
27:34
SPEAKER_00: Can you change direction?
27:36
SPEAKER_00: Can you admit you were wrong?
27:39
SPEAKER_00: Can you help people discover an answer instead of constantly needing to be the one who provides it?
27:45
SPEAKER_00: Because those things are hard to put on a certification exam.
27:50
SPEAKER_00: But I think they're right where the craft really lives.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: Great coaches don't abandon the playbook.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: They become so fluent in it that they stop hiding behind it.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: The framework gives you the road.
28:04
SPEAKER_00: Experience gives you the pattern recognition, but judgment tells you when this particular group of humans needs from you in this particular moment.
28:14
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what great coaching begins.
28:18
SPEAKER_00: So there's two questions.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: If you've listened to this show before, you know that I always close every episode with the same two questions.
28:25
SPEAKER_00: And since there's nobody else here today, I guess I have to turn them back on myself.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: So here's question one.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: If you could go back to rookie cam with all of the knowledge and experience you have today, what advice would you give yourself?
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I think I would tell Rookie Cam, stop trying so hard to prove that you belong in the room.
28:47
SPEAKER_00: You do not have to have the smartest answer.
28:51
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to fill every silence.
28:54
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to show everybody everything you know.
28:58
SPEAKER_00: And this goes far beyond coaching for me.
29:03
SPEAKER_00: This is leadership.
29:05
SPEAKER_00: It's sales, it's partnerships, it's consulting.
29:11
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's all of it.
29:13
SPEAKER_00: There were definitely points early on in my career where I thought I was adding value by just adding more, more ideas, more energy, more talking, more solutions, more proof that I deserve to be sitting there.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: And I've learned something that sometimes the most valuable thing you can bring into a room is just not another answer.
29:36
SPEAKER_00: It's presence, it's curiosity, making another person feel genuinely heard.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: So noticing the thing everyone else moved past.
29:48
SPEAKER_00: So to rookie camp, relax a little bit.
29:52
SPEAKER_00: You don't have to perform your value.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Just be useful, be curious, listen, and trust that those things compound.
30:05
SPEAKER_00: And then question number two: what's a lesson you're in the middle of learning right now?
30:10
SPEAKER_00: This one connects almost perfectly to this episode.
30:14
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning restraint.
30:15
SPEAKER_00: I'm learning that just because I can contribute doesn't always mean I should.
30:21
SPEAKER_00: Not every silence needs to be filled.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: Not every opportunity needs to be chased.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: Not every problem needs me to immediately jump in and fix it.
30:31
SPEAKER_00: Not every idea needs to become a project.
30:35
SPEAKER_00: And that's hard for me.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: My natural instinct is movement.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: Let's go, let's build.
30:42
SPEAKER_00: I am an eight quick start on the Colby.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: I want to connect the data.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: I want to connect the dots.
30:48
SPEAKER_00: Let's solve it.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
30:49
SPEAKER_00: Let's make something happen.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: And there's absolutely a place for that.
30:54
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the things that I love about how I'm wired.
30:57
SPEAKER_00: But I'm learning that maturity sometimes looks less like adding something and more like knowing what to add.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: Giving people room, letting the answer emerge, trusting other people, trusting the process, trusting the silence.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: I haven't mastered that.
31:20
SPEAKER_00: That's why the question is what's a lesson you're in the middle of learning?
31:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm very much in the middle of it, but I'm paying attention to it for really probably the first time in my life.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's the work.
31:34
SPEAKER_00: So that's what's been on my mind.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: The coaching industry overvalues knowledge and undervalues judgment.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: By all means, frameworks matter, tools matter, methodologies matter.
31:48
SPEAKER_00: But eventually the playbook runs out of pages and you're sitting across some real people dealing with real problems.
31:55
SPEAKER_00: And that's where the craft begins.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: I would genuinely love to hear where you agree with this, maybe where you disagree, and what you would add, especially if you're a coach who has spent years in the room.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: What judgment call took you the longest to learn?
32:12
SPEAKER_00: What's something you do today that rookie you would have handled completely different?
32:17
SPEAKER_00: Those are the conversations I want the ambitious coach lab to create.
32:21
SPEAKER_00: Because I am incredibly passionate about helping ambitious coaches thrive.
32:27
SPEAKER_00: Not just helping you find another client or growing revenue.
32:31
SPEAKER_00: I mean, those things matter, but I want to help coaches build great practices to become better at the craft, better at building the business around the craft, better at serving your clients, and ultimately building something that allows you to do meaningful work and build a life that you actually want.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: That's why I keep doing this show.
32:54
SPEAKER_00: If you're a coach, consultant, fractional leader, or somebody building a practice around helping businesses and leaders get better, I would love to connect with you.
33:03
SPEAKER_00: Easiest place to find me is probably on LinkedIn.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: I'm all over LinkedIn.
33:07
SPEAKER_00: Just search Cam Lawson.
33:08
SPEAKER_00: You can send me a connection if we're not already connected.
33:11
SPEAKER_00: Shoot me a message and tell me you listen to the Ambitious Coach Lab.
33:14
SPEAKER_00: I really do love hearing from people who are building in this space.
33:18
SPEAKER_00: And if this episode made you think of another coach, send it to them.
33:22
SPEAKER_00: Then have the conversation.
33:25
SPEAKER_00: Ask each other, where are we following the framework because it's right?
33:28
SPEAKER_00: And where are we following it because it's safe?
33:31
SPEAKER_00: That's probably a conversation worth having.
33:34
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for spending the time with me and listening to me ramble.
33:38
SPEAKER_00: Keep learning, keep getting your reps.
33:42
SPEAKER_00: Keep reflecting.
33:43
SPEAKER_00: And keep being the kind of coach that people trust when the playbook runs out.
33:48
SPEAKER_00: I'll see you next time on the Ambitious Coach Lab.
33:50
SPEAKER_00: Stay tuned for more.
33:53
SPEAKER_00: That's it for today's episode of the Ambitious Coach Lab.
33:56
SPEAKER_00: My hope is that something here helps you sharpen your craft and keep building a coaching practice you're proud of.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: Before we wrap, a quick thank you to our sponsor, Nine.
34:04
SPEAKER_00: If you're coaching leadership teams, having your clients run their entire world in Nine truly elevates your work.
34:10
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34:15
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34:21
SPEAKER_00: I've used NineD with over 500 leadership teams, and I can tell you it makes great companies better and great coaches even more effective.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for hanging out with me today on Ken.
34:39
SPEAKER_00: Journey on and to grow your own business coaching profits.