In this thought-provoking episode Dr. Rosie Ward takes us to the unavoidable intersection of our personal and professional lives and gives us the power and path to transform our workplaces for the better.
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, everybody. Hello and welcome. Welcome to our next episode of the secrets of the high demand coach and I’m here with a high demand coach and that is my friend, Dr. Rosie Ward. Dr. Rosie Ward serves as CEO and co founder of Salvio partners. It’s a consulting and professional development firm that focuses specifically on equipping organizations to find success. While putting people back at the forefront of their business, Rosie and her team focus on leveraging what they call the fusion. That’s that inextricable interconnectedness of organizational and employee well being. And they use that to help transform workplaces and support people in integrating their personal and professional lives. Now, I met Rosie, when I had an opportunity to join her on her show, which is show up as a leader her podcast, I’d strongly recommend that you go check it out, if you like it, give her a like, leave a comment. A note means a world tour. And with all that, Rosie, thanks for being here. I’m so glad you’re here. I’d love to just get started with your story. Tell us how you got into coaching and consulting and the why behind all of it.
Dr. Rosie Ward
Well, yeah, great to be here. Nice to see you again, Scott at the Reader’s Digest version, because this is a long story. But the Reader’s Digest version of how I got into this is that I got my undergrad and master’s degrees related to wellness and wellbeing. And I was in the worksite wellness industry. And I had this really disheartening feeling that this stuff or the way we’re approaching, it doesn’t work. And after you’ve spent $80,000 on two degrees, that’s a really sinking feeling to have. And I at the time I had been introduced to, I would say an early precursor of coaching with some self development work. And I thought, well, that’s really interesting. And I was working in public health after I got my master’s in public health. And I found my well being being sucked out of me. And I thought, Well, no wonder what we’re doing doesn’t work. If you can take a person with two degrees and certifications and put them in a toxic workplace that sucks the well being out of them. Like no wonder we have a problem on our hands. So luckily, I was able to find a different position. I went to a university, which was phenomenal. Let me play and I had gone to a conference and I met my first professional coach. And I remember Jackie bridle Dietrich, she has a wonderful coaching business in Wisconsin and I was sitting here a very first session I think it was meant to be. And I learned that there’s this professional role of coaching, I didn’t have to be this free seminar leader in the self development work on what, and I got done talking to her, I called my husband and I said, Honey, I’m going to be a coach. And he’s like, what does that mean? I said, I don’t know. But stay tuned, when I get home. I’ll tell you more. And that was back in like 2004. Like coaching really was not a big thing back then like and so I just started doing all the research I could have what were the different training programs, and I was really fortunate enough to have a supportive employer that I said, Hey, can I forego these two conferences that you agreed to pay for in my employment agreement? And it said, Put me through this coaching and training. And then I was able to happen? Create 20% of my job description of hey, can I coach employees as part of my job, it’s a service. And so I was able to work it into my job and get experience and get exposure. And now it’s just become a staple. It’s not the only thing I do. But it’s a key part. And I will say that whether I’m actually coaching somebody or not, I use a coaching approach and how I consult I use a coaching approach and how I facilitate workshops. I use a coaching approach and kind of how I parent I mean, I really like coaching kind of embeds everything I do whether or not I’m in a formal coaching relationship with a person or not.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, I love that. Excellent. So you’ve you’ve gone through this had the opportunity of kind of living it being at doing it while you’re working for someone else make the leap to I think I said earlier Civale partners. And so tell me a little bit obviously had a chance to see it in the bio here. But tell us about some of the most important work you do with your clients right now.
Dr. Rosie Ward
I will say that at the core, the most important work that we do with our clients is helping to shift their mindset to get out of their own way. I think that, you know, whether you’re trying to be more effective as a leader or trying to be more effective with your business processes are trying to be more effective in your life. What I have come to learn over the course of my work in my experience is if we don’t tend to that inner game stuff, so that’s our mindset, our emotional intelligence, our meaning making systems, our values, the outer game stuff, the skills, the competencies, the behaviors, the practices aren’t going to stick and both are really important. But fundamentally what we help our clients with is yes, we help them with that outer game stuff. So we help them get clarity of purpose, and we help them operationalize their core values and we help them improve their culture. And at the fundamental core of it, if they don’t have the right mindset, in their leadership in their people, that helps nurture that if they have people that are showing up that want to be in self protective mode, if they have people that are showing up being hijacked and run by a lesser version of themselves. They’re not innovate, they’re not going to grow. And so the work that we do today is really a lot of leadership development work, a lot of culture, purpose values work. And really how do you help align people to be future ready, and to do it in a way that doesn’t deplete people that helps them be whole and complete? So my wellness background very much comes into that, but not in the way of, I would say, typical crappy wellness programs. It’s really about are you honoring the uniqueness and the messiness of being human? And are you supporting people to be as whole as possible, both at work and outside of work, so that everyone wins?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. So I love that. And I think one of the things that I know a number of clients I’ve worked with and other business leaders that I’ve talked to, they’re, they’re still this kind of clinging to that work. This is home, I don’t like I don’t know where the line is, even if they want to help folks integrate it. There’s also a sense of like, what’s appropriate, what’s not. So what do you find is some of the most common resistance that leaders have in adopting this approach of, you know, becoming future ready without depleting people with what could be kind of touchy feely, gooey, gooey, but it’s also really hard and practical. What do you think of some of the pushback? And what do you say to someone who, who feels that way?
Dr. Rosie Ward
I think the biggest pushback, which is lessening, by the way, I think all this stuff used to be called soft skills. And people recognize, you know, their deal breaker. And these are now power skills, essential self skills, they’re a key part of emotional intelligence. So I think that’s less than less, the biggest resistance that I see are literally people’s own humanity, that they are afraid and unwilling to be vulnerable, but don’t want to speak. Right, they view it as a weakness or whatever, and they don’t want to admit their own discomfort with vulnerability. That being said, I think that, you know, whether, whether we’re doing workshops, whether we’re doing consulting, whether I’m doing coaching, when people start to recognize that we’re one person, it’s not work life balance, it’s not work life, like those lines have been blurred. And when I’m working with clients, even if it starts off, they just want to keep it very work focused. I’m like, these things that get in your way at work are not an accident. And I guarantee you, they show up elsewhere in your life. And sometimes, when I’ve had to coach, a resistant leader, they’re not my favorite. But sometimes our clients will say, hey, this leader is really struggling, can you coach them? And I always say, I’m not a magic wand, like I provide the tools and the resources, but they have to show up and partner. And they’re like, yep, yep, yep. And even with that, you’ll still have someone that shows up says they’re willing, but let’s be honest, they’re kind of resisted. They feel like they’re in trouble. And so my job is to make them feel safe. And sometimes what I find is that when they really are resistant from the work standpoint, and they’re just like, they’re digging their heels in, I find a window by like, what this shows up in your marriage, doesn’t it? This shows up in your parenting, and suddenly, oh, and they realize that this is an opportunity for them to become a better version of themselves, period. And then that resistance starts to go away. So I think it’s finding that window that speaks to somewhere where they feel safe, or it feels important enough to them, is what I’ve learned is critical.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s great. Now, one of the things you mentioned is, you know, we don’t tend to really work on our inner game, we tend to focus on our outer game, especially when we’re calling in a coach or consultant, right? How, how is it that folks achieve a level of success without dealing with that inner game? And what’s kind of the trigger point that you’d say like, Hey, it’s time to focus here, otherwise, you fill in the blank.
Dr. Rosie Ward
What’s interesting is, I think a lot work crafty people as human beings, and we find ways to survive and be successful. I will say that the majority of my coaching clients are extremely successful in their careers, their leaders, their executives, their world renowned surgeons, they’re, you know, they’re well known in their respective industries. They get there by you know, being a slacker or whatever. But the problem is, is a lot of times people who, and it’s not every time, but a lot of times, there’s this common theme that people who are really successful in their careers, there’s part of them, that that striving that focus on productivity is a coping mechanism for a little kid inside of them, that feels like they’re still trying to prove themselves, that feels like they’re not quite enough. And they hit a point where they’re getting burnt out, or they’re doing more and more and more, and they’re still not feeling fulfilled, or they’re like, why can I be successful in all these other areas of my life, but my personal life is in shambles. And so, so we can be however you define success. There’s a lot of different definitions of success, but we can move forward in our careers in our lives and find success. However, we define that and don’t have to do a ton on the inner game, but we’re gonna hit a point where not doing that no longer serves us and it gets in our way of truly having a life we want to have having the impact we want to have. And so really, it’s recognizing, wow, like, yeah, it’s not discounting like you’re not a slacker. And in order for you to get to where you want to go, now you’re gonna have to go there. You’re gonna have to look at this inner game stuff, because there’s no way around it. I talk about like upgrading that inner operating system, like if you were still trying to run Windows 365, or I mean, office 365 on a computer that was still running Windows XP or DOS operating, it’s not going to work, you have to upgrade that inner operating system for that other stuff to stick. And so that’s really the work that’s before. Before us all, it’s just a question of when it comes into our lives. And when we’re ready to do the work. And it’s an ongoing journey as well.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. What are some outer signs that the inner game isn’t working? And the second part of that is, what do people try to do to solve those before they come to you?
Dr. Rosie Ward
Yeah, I would say if you have a, like a problem in your life that continues to persist, or like willpower is not getting you through, there’s a sign that there’s a need to upgrade that inner operating system, because really, what you’re dealing with is what’s called an adaptive challenge, not a technical challenge, learning more skills, gaining more knowledge is not going to help you there’s something that gets in your way, when you find that you have a visceral reaction to something, crisis mode, things that just keep persisting. That’s usually a sign that there’s some inner game work that needs that needs to be done. And I would say a lot of times, I want to be really clear. It’s like people get to a crisis mode. Sometimes people are just like, gosh, I feel like there’s more or you know, what, like, I really am committed to my own growth and development. And this is the next step. For me. Sometimes it is, you know, what, there’s been an issue, there’s been a clash, I came to leadership crisis at work where I’m burning out or I feel stuck. So that can be too but sometimes it’s people just they want more, but usually, it’s a sense of I know, there’s something more for me, and I know, I can’t get there on my own. So I’m willing to look at what this journey might offer me.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, that’s fantastic. Now us a couple of phrases that I want to tease out a little bit, because it’s actually the second time that this conversation came up today. So this is fun. There’s something on it. So you mentioned the difference between the technical challenge and an adaptive challenge. And I’d love to hear from you. Just explain those for anyone who hasn’t heard those terms before just a quick snapshot on the two differences. And maybe an example or two of each.
Dr. Rosie Ward
Yeah, I think that this is the critical to change at any level. And I would say a lot of why we get stuck as individuals and organizations is we don’t understand the difference between the two. So you want to learn more about it hypericin Lenski out of Harvard. It’s their it’s their jam. But a technical challenge is one where there is a known solution, where we can use our existing thinking knowledge and skill skills to solve it, or we can fairly easily obtain it. So if I need to get a new smartphone, I know that there’s websites that I can go to that give me the reviews, tell me what to do if I want to get better at PowerPoint or zoom. There is you know, courses that tell you do this do that. It’s very straightforward. You’ve done it before you can use standard operating procedures, checklists, yep, you’re off and running. adaptive challenges, there is not a known solution. And the only way that we can work through them as we actually have to let go of what’s familiar. So they elicit a sense of loss, they elicit a sense of discomfort, which our brains are hardwired to avoid, at any cost.
And in this VUCA, volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous world we live in. Like it’s been one adaptive challenge after another for the last couple of years. And I mean, this was a problem long before a pandemic, and everything else has happened. And so how you know, you’re dealing with an adaptive challenge is you maybe almost have that visceral reaction, or it keeps persisting. And so this is the example that I give all the time. Let’s say, you brought me in and you said, you know, I want you to help our team have difficult conversations. Well, there’s a lot of different wonderful training. So let’s just take a popular one crucial conversations from Vital Smarts well known, they’ve got great structured tools, conversation starters framework. If for your team, that was a technical challenge, they would take the conversation starters, the checklist to get oh, this is awesome. And they’d be often having difficult critical, important conversations, like moving forward and problem solved. But if in spite of having the training, having the tools, the thought of having to use them makes you want to throw up in a garbage can.
That is not a technical challenge for you. And a lot of the challenges we face individually and collectively, in this day and age, have a little bit of both. Yes, there’s skills we can gain. Yes, there’s knowledge that will help us. But the overwhelming is our mindset and our heart. And it’s the adaptive part. And if we don’t address the adaptive part, the technical parts not going to stick. And so if it’s in Linsky, one of my favorite quotes from them is they say the single biggest failure of leadership is treating adaptive challenges like their technical problems. Yeah. It’s like you play a bad game of Whack a Mole. And so if we don’t fundamentally know what type of challenge we’re dealing with, I was just working with a client this morning, and they are doing all these orange design changes. Everything in their strategy is about process and I suppose so where’s the human element? Where’s the human behavior element? What are you doing to care for the mindsets that need to change and they looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language and I say well good luck with that. Good luck with that. Right? You have to tend to that human part.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s fascinating. And for our listeners, many of them are familiar with the model that we use. We have different stages. So there’s early struggle trying to get the thing off the ground. Fun, whitewater predictable success, treadmill, big death rattle, right, the whole arc? Well, if you kind of zoom in on that four of those stages are really rough times in the organization’s history, the two endpoints right early struggle, death rattle, those make sense. But the two were, where I find we systemically run into adaptive challenges are that whitewater period, we’re struggling under the weight of our own growth, right? Can we really scale this thing up? You mean, stop saying no to things? What are you talking about? Right, and, and on the other side of what you’re just describing here, this treadmill side of it’s all system, it’s all process. It’s all refinement. And we actually take what we learned in Whitewater, and we take it too far. And now in between that is this period of predictable success, which we love. And that’s where you want to lead an organization. And even before Whitewater, there’s this fun period. So lots of different stages. But suffice it to say,a good number of the challenges in predictable success and fun, right, these are relatively smooth sailing periods are technical challenges, right? You’ve got a ship that’s built for the sea, it’s in, right and so you can tack on a new mast, you can whatever these small little bits and pieces are. But then when you reach these kinds of, you know, systemic times these whitewater treadmill, I find folks a time and time again to exactly what you’re saying is like technical challenge technical, you know, and I call it the myth of the silver bullet, right, is we’re going after this one thing that if I could fix that one thing, everything else would go away. It’s like, well, maybe that’s true. But that one thing is you.
Dr. Rosie Ward
Yeah, that’s because it’s in our it’s in our human DNA to cling tightly to what’s familiar and what’s comfortable. Yeah. And so I think part of it is normalizing that, hey, so welcome to being human. Now. How can you acknowledge and recognize that and then equip yourself to be able to not get hijacked by your instinct, self protective behavior?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And the more effective your instinct is, early on, the harder it is to change later. Yep. Stunning. Fascinating. Okay, so this is great. I love it. Now, if we were to kind of zoom out, let’s say out, if you will, but the kind of one biggest thing, this is the moment that I’m most excited about, I love this on every episode, but I get the opportunity to ask this question. And that is, what is the biggest secret that you’d want to share with those listening today, again, founders leaders that are trying to take their organizations and their own personal development to greater heights, what would be the one thing you’d share?
Dr. Rosie Ward
The one thing I would share is that what is fundamentally getting in your way of getting to where you want to go, is a childhood version of yourself that maybe you thought that you reconciled and dealt with, but they’re still showing up. And and this is from the work of Bob Keegan, and Lisa Leakey. And I’ve been so honored to train with them. One of my coaching certifications is Immunity to Change. But this was a game changer for me of all my certifications, adding this into the mix. Because no matter how much therapy someone has done, no matter how much self awareness work they’ve done, you know, there’s so many of you said that our brains actually have a lot of neuroplasticity up until our 70s. And what we know from neuroscience research is we are on autopilot, a good 90 95% of the time, it’s by design, right? So that our prefrontal cortex, our cognition doesn’t have to be going, which is why like, you can hop back on a bike years later and not have to think about it. And so what we don’t realize is a lot of our behaviors today, a lot of our reactions to stuff are literally a script that formed in the first 1516 years of our life. And if you think about those early stages of our life, they’re all about love, belonging, acceptance, and even if we had a happy childhood, we make sense within what you have kids, you make sense of your experiences, through this filter that isn’t wise and develop like we have as an adult. So yeah, oh my gosh, you know, someone looks at you funny in school, and suddenly you go, Oh, my gosh, I don’t fit in or I don’t belong, or you, you know, get yelled at because you get in trouble, like, Oh, I better be perfect from now on. Or maybe you had some kind of crisis going on in your household that you weren’t even in trouble. You were just observing it and trying to make sense of it. You’re like, oh, I should just be quiet and be the good kids so that I don’t make waves. And so we start to create rules for ourselves of how the world works. And then what we don’t realize is because that’s been laid down and laid down and laid down, then it’s like a filter. It’s like a pair of glasses. We run the rest of our lives through that. And so in the coaching work that I do, we bring people through the Immunity to Change coaching to identify that those assumptions that are getting in their way that really fundamentally at the core of the adaptive challenge and then understanding where they came from. And then the thought of the rewriting that script and so that you know what I say to my clients and they start, it starts to make sense what they’ve done this work is, would you let your 10 year old self make this business decision? Would you let your 10 year old self drive your car, but that’s what’s happening right now. And so I think if we can start to recognize, oh my gosh, that’s the 10 year old or five year old version of me, and 10 is just an easy number. But that’s the 10 year old version of me. Like, if you really get to it, what’s getting in your way of relationships, or business success, or whatever? Is there some script of 10 year old you that feels like, I have to be in control, or I have to be perfect, or I’m not good enough. Like there’s like 10 Common scripts that we have one or more of them, that starts to hijack us. And until you reconcile that script and rewrite it, it will keep getting in your way. That’s the adaptive work. That’s the adaptive opportunity that people have when they do it. It’s so transformative. And they’re just like, whoa, so
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s fascinating that you say, 10, there’s a gentleman named Bob Biel who does a lot of executive coaching, and he’s from Texas. And he, he’s interviewing all these folks and tell me, you just tell me a story tell me and, and with almost without fail, they would say, well, in the fourth grade this without or when I was, you know, 10 years old, this or that. And, and he’s like, what’s going on and realize that if you’d look at someone, the year of their 10th, year of life, right as their as a 10 year old, you look at them, and, and you look at them as a 40 year old, right? That 10 year old is more indicative of who that person will be at 40 than either at five or at 15. There’s something about that year and the educational world, they say it’s the year that they become little adults. It’s where where we start, you know, entering into this, but we’re still in a child’s brain. So it’s fascinating that you say that, and I think you’re you’re so on to something with that. I love the way that you approach it. That’s excellent. All right, so now I’ve worked with enough coaches to know that we spend our best energy, helping our clients and seeing them succeed, and it’s wonderful. But we can do that at the risk of leaving time for ourselves and our own development and developing our own organization. So I’m going to have you take your advisor, hat off for a sec, I’m gonna have you put your CEO hat on with the rest of us. There it is. And I’d love for you to share, what are you doing to grow salvo partners? And what does that look like?
Dr. Rosie Ward
Yeah, that’s a great question. So what I think it’s we double down on our purpose and our values and really look at how can we serve clients. And we, we added a new full time position earlier this year with our chief experience officer, which has been super helpful. And I think you hit a point where you realize you can’t do everything yourself. And we have independent contractors and whatnot, but you start to really look at where are my gifts and talents best spent? And where are the various members of my team’s gifts and talents best spent? And are we leveraging those as well as we can and so, so really what we’re doing, we’re adding consulting clients, which is great. We’ve added some programs to help bring out to people we are really just constantly looking at how can we better serve our purpose? And that’s really it’s what’s the impact we can have? It’s not about the money and the growth happens. But it’s really about the impact. And does this serve us? And what do we say no to and what do we say yes to and so we’ve been focusing this year on kind of getting our house in order, we’re redoing our website, we’re repositioning our value statements to really be clear about if you go to our website now, maybe by the time this airs, our new website will be up. But if you went through it right now, today, as we’re recording this, it looks like we’re a training company. And we offer a lot of these programs, which we do, but what keeps us alive and how we grow is the consulting work that we do. And so we’re just how do you better tell your story? How do you align it so we’re just doing a lot of work to better solidify who we are investing in social media strategies, just to just to be clear about who we are in the impact and put our messages out in the world, which is a little scary, because it’s kind of easy to hide back, but it’s like, okay, here we go. Right. So really investing in our, in our future has been the focus this year.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love that. I love that. That’s excellent. Alright, so I know that some folks listening today are saying, Yes, actually, this is absolutely something I need, you know, whether it be focusing on the inner world to sort out their outer world or you just something resonated when they heard you talking. If that’s the case, how can folks connect with you and learn more?
Dr. Rosie Ward
There’s several ways they connect with me and I would love to the my personal professional website is drrosieward.com. And on that, I will do a plug that we have a courageous leadership program which is two days where we actually bring people through an immunity to change map. I’m a certified dare to lead facilitator train with Brene Brown we do some of that work. We just all kinds of great stuff to help you attend to that inner game. My company website is Salveopartners.com You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at Dr. Rosie Ward, Twitter is Dr. Rosie and LinkedIn as well. So happy to connect in any of those places.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Oh, Rosie, thank you so much for being on today. fascinating conversation. I absolutely loved it. I know it was great for our listeners as well. For those of you out there you heard it. I would strongly encourage you to check out it’s coming up soon the courageous leadership program. I believe it’s on the second and third of November. Is that correct? Yep. Excellent. And so I strongly encourage you to check that out. And again, if you liked this episode, you’re gonna like Rosie’s even better so go check out the I’ve just forgotten the name of it…Show up as a leader. And and check it out. You’ll absolutely love it. You get to hear from Rosie and her guests. It’s fantastic. And with that, Rosie again, thank you to everyone listening. Thank you so much. We know that your time and attention are some of your most precious assets and we’re honored that you chose to be with us here today. Until next time to your success. Take care
Contact Dr. Rosie Ward
Dr. Rosie Ward serves as CEO and co-founder of Salveo Partners, LLC, a consulting and professional development firm focused on equipping organizations to find success while putting people back at the forefront of their business. Rosie and her team focus on leveraging The Fusion (which is the inextricable interconnectedness of organizational and employee wellbeing) to help transform workplaces and support people in integrating their personal and professional lives.
To find out more about Dr. Rosie Ward, visit https://www.drrosieward.com, and https://www.salveopartners.com to learn more about her work.