Podcasts

Intro

Hi, and welcome to Decoding AQ, helping you to learn the tools, mindsets, and actions to thrive in an ever-changing world.

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Ross  

Hi, and welcome to the next episode of Decoding AQ, I have with me today a very special guest. I have Marva Sadler, welcome.

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Marva  

Thank you so much. I'm so delighted to be here.

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Ross  

So you describe a personal mission, to have a positive impact on others by helping them reach their full potential. And that just made my heart sing of alignment. So that was great to read.

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Marva  

Well, thank you. Can I tell you a little story about that?

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Ross  

Please. Yeah.

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Marva  

I realized that that was my mission, I spent about 10 years as a strategy consultant in a couple of the big strategy consulting organizations in their heyday. And I found myself during the recession of the 80’s, spending a lot of time downsizing people, our analysis would lead to layoffs of hundreds and thousands of people. And after several years of that, of that the primary thing we were doing as strategist was cost reduction. And the primary thing we were doing for cost reduction was people headcount reduction.

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I just came to the conclusion that there had to be a different way to live my life, that that just didn't feel like it was gonna be fulfilling long term to be able to say, I made shareholders a lot more money by taking the food out of the mouths of families, I just couldn't do it anymore. And I originally thought that I would go back to school and get my PhD and devote myself to teaching. And I found I was much too pragmatic to get a PhD by that point.

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And so I found my way into other professional services and leadership at that level, and realize that there was so much potential to find the way to unlock people's creativity, and help them achieve more than they thought possible, which then created value for the organization, so that I didn't have to do layoffs. And so I really became a specialist in how as an executive do I find the ways to help the team create the overall impact that leads to stability for their employment and growth for the organization so that our performance is based on team and culture and growth and innovation. Instead of cost reduction. And I have spent the rest of my career devoted to that.

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Ross  

It's interesting, isn't it? These moments in our lives that shape our thinking, shape our behaviors and our careers. And I bet just listening to that, that kind of first experience in, Bain and Co. and the consultancies have, ‘Ah let's cut, cut cut,” to then, a phase and chapter in your life of working on turnarounds, doing the opposite, from 120-year-old blanket manufacturing firms to commercial fitness manufacturers, this sort of shift, as you say, to find creativity, innovation, sustainability. And now, you find yourself as a CEO of an incredible organization, the World Business & Executive Coach Summit. So tell us a little bit more about that journey, and perhaps how you got introduced to the World Business & Executive Coach Summit.

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Marva  

Well, the journey, as you've mentioned, looks a little if you put it on paper, it looks a little bit like Career ADD, because I've worked in probably 15 Different very different industries, from heavy manufacturing, to historic woolen mill, to car dealerships. And I've worked in finance and operations and as a CEO. And the consistent theme throughout all of that is I never met a challenge I didn't like, I never met an opportunity to learn that I didn't want to take. And so that's really how I got introduced to WBECS. I was the CEO of a tech strategy consulting firm. We had about a hundred technology consultants around the country, that very high end, who had specialties in architecture and agile and user experience. That we would put onto transformational projects primarily for healthcare companies. Where our consultants would merge with their IT departments, their tech departments to create whole new applications and systems and so forth.

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And I was having a wonderful time we doubled revenue, we significantly increased profit. We were growing at about 40% a year. And I was teaching these engineers essentially how to be consultants, which is very different. And my coach, who happened to be a WBECS certified coach called me one day and she said, “Marva, I have a job description in my hands. That is the job you've been preparing for for 20 years.” And she'd known me for 20 years because she and I had worked together at Franklin ovey. And I said, “No, really, I'm fine, I'm happy where I am, I'm really enjoying it, I have equity, I'm good.” And she said, “Marva, I've known you a long time, you need to look at this job description.” And she was right. And I looked at it and really thought about it and thought, “I'm at a point in my career where I really want to do interesting, the FranklinCovey thing, it's time to leave a legacy, what is the legacy that I want to leave?” and I, the legacy I chose was that I thought there was no more effective thing in the world, that could be done than to find a way to help people have civil discourse with one another. Our political leaders are incapable. Our political leaders are incapable of teaching other civil discourse because they don't do it themselves. Our religious leaders no longer have the influence, to be able to spread that.

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And my kind of internal analysis was, the best opportunity we had was through leaders of for-profit organizations, who could be convinced that it was in their self-interest, that civil discourse lead to better outcomes, and that the best people to help those leaders learn that was, was coaches. And so that's how I ended up here. Because if I could get just 10% of the people in the world who have been impacted in the last few years to be so negative, to change their mindset, and become more inclusive, and more thoughtful and intentional about the way they converse with others, I would feel like I had done something valuable.

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Ross  

And it is that opportunity to recognize the network and ripple effect. And, perhaps, a number of decades ago, the focus was on management. And that was the answer to most things. And we're about productivity efficiency, lean maximizing margin, and we're shifting into this era of where we're recognizing the value of coaching, the domain of coaching in business that might have been just very top exact level is now starting to ripple down and starting to realize its effect on everyone to be able to have some form of coach, how they might show up.

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And it was interesting when I was reading a little bit of background, and WBECS was named as the fastest growing education company in the UK a number of years ago. And I thought, that's really interesting because education really is ripe for transformation in all areas, it's “Oh, it's a tick box, we've got to do that thing, CPD, or we got to do this bit.” But shouldn't we enjoy it? As you've said, I have never met a challenge that I didn't want to learn from. Not everyone's built like that, though are they? So how has it shaped you from that moment when you were handed the see, the job description. And now a number of years later? Tell us some of the highlights that have happened during that period?

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Marva  

Well, I would say that my favorite highlight big picture, is that we have come through the majority of the pandemic, let's say 2020, where as an organization, we grew 50% we significantly increased the number of coaches that we were serving. We put on some of our most successful, most meaningful coach education programs ever, to the largest audiences to by the way, the highest satisfaction scores, the highest content evaluation scores and the highest graduation rates. And it's really not just because people have nothing else to do or that they're sitting at home, it's that we really have focused on making sure that the participant experience was very high quality.

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And that whenever there were meaningful, constructive comments, that have things that we could do better that we've figured out a way to do it. And of all of that, my favorite part is that the team is significantly more productive. And we have kept every member of the team and we've managed to protect the entire organization and really not just protect them as workers, we have protected them as people as human beings. So, we're an entirely virtual organization, we have about 80 people in 16 or 17 different countries, everyone works all by themselves.

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And this last year was terribly isolating for people. And so we started some things like, whenever we got word that someone was, had caught COVID, or was ill or was struggling with something, they would get a care package. And the care package was always uniquely targeted specifically to them. I can tell you, we had one epic failure, where one of our team members has a young daughter, and she was trying to work from home and educate her daughter from home and the daughter had been very ill and was just starting to feel well enough to do things, but not really use a lot of energy, we sent an art kit, so that this little girl could have something to do that she would find creative and entertaining, that wouldn't take a huge amount of energy, but would relieve her mother from some of the pressure. And in that art kit, it turned out was glitter.

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And while her mother was not watching, she managed to spread glitter all over the house. So, that was maybe on second thought, not what we should have put in the kit. But the idea that it was an art kit that was really intended, specifically to meet the needs of the individuals so that that individual knew we weren't just sending out a generic kit or gift, we were sending out a very highly targeted and personalized care package to say we see you, we hear you, we're trying to help you. And I think that from a personal point of view, that's probably the thing that I feel best about is the way that we've handled that.

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Ross  

And the opportunity for us to be our best selves often happens in moments of a burning platform of a crisis, that we can show up, to show our true values when it's hard, that's when it counts. It's not showing up when it's easy. When it's inflow. It's showing up when your chips are down when things are tough. And it covers a really interesting point for me that I'd love your thoughts on about the what you just described there, this power of personalization of going I see you, I hear you, I've listened and I'm giving something that I've put some thought and care about to help you be the future version of yourself, the future, the growth, the potential.

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One of the challenges we see a lot in organizations that are going through change, which is just about every organization, whether that's been brought about from technology, to desire, to the pandemic, is how do you scale personalization when it comes to coaching? That's one of these big challenges of how do you reach people at that individual soul level, to help them on their journey, without it becoming a vanilla program or a program that's not built for the edges? What's been your experience in that? And perhaps you can share some insights on where it's done well, or it's not or those things. I'm fascinated by that.

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Marva  

Well, I'll start with kind of how do you scale coach education and maintain the personalization because I'm not actually qualified to talk a lot about how to scale coaching. But I can talk to you about what I believe are some of the things that we'll be investing in, in the near future. But in terms of scaling coach education, we try to achieve a mix of the large scale, broadcast, if you will, content where everyone is hearing the same thing. And we mix that up with very personalized small group dyad and triad kinds of things, where individuals are applying it, they're practicing with each other, they're learning from each other. And that experiential piece is a very big part of every program that we run. And we are constantly looking at how do we refine that? How do we grow that piece? There's obviously from the association's point of view that we also include a certain amount of reading and reflection where the individuals are working on themselves. But the experiential piece with other coaches is critical to your long term impact. Because coaching is generally speaking a pretty solitary effort. Even though you've got clients that you're working with, most of your time is spent as a solopreneur. Working on your own, the relationship with clients is a professional relationship. So it's never going to get hugely intimate. We're familiar and coaches are by nature gregarious, they want to get together, they want to share, they want to help each other. So we're constantly looking at how do we fine tune and improve that engagement element.

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And then how do we make it simpler, and frankly, take a lot of the setup element out of it, and make it easier for them to engage. And that's the scale thing that I think really translates into coaching as well. If we think about all the things that coaches do, there's only a small portion of it, that's the actual coaching, there's preparation for coaching, there's a marketing of the coaching, there's running my business, there's keeping track of my expenses, there's all of those things, there's scheduling the noise.

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Ross

All the noise.

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Marva  

All the noise and the noise is frankly, sometimes as much as 80% of the actual work effort. If we can systemize, automate, simplify, streamline all of that noise, to reduce it and make it much easier to do and give coaches more time to truly be more time and energy to truly be present, to truly engage and then find a simple way for them to follow through. So that the coaching notes, all of those things are also really easy to access and really easy to share. Then we can help individual coaches scale, and we can help scale coaching because it can become more cost-effective.

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We also can look at, are there mechanisms, and software systems that help individual coaches, coach kind of one to many, or one to several at least in some kind of streamlined process. So that the core coaching is still very personalized. But the other things that the individual clients also have to do, because maybe 40% of coaching for the client is the actual coaching and the rest of it is, did I prepare, did I follow through, all of that. So can we streamline that, all of that so that it's very easy for the coach to help the client follow through on that. So that the coaching element of it becomes a significantly greater portion, not necessarily more time, but a higher proportion of the effort, and becomes more in-depth and meaningful in the period so that it can be more impactful because I can streamline the way that I then implemented in my life?

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Ross  

Yeah. And I think it's this balance, isn't it? Between the description of taking this noise and how can we streamline, automate, so we optimize, we automate, we might outsource certain things so that we can be as present, as connected to our authentic self, to our unique ability that we can then deliver to the world. And that's one way of scaling and reaching. I think one of the challenges that many might see is that technology then limiting the ability to have relationship to have connection, and it should augment it and increase it. So where, little things like just remembering, “Ah, this person's got a daughter, this one's that this,” all these little things that triggers that technology can help us to show up with that care and love because we can't keep it all in our brains. You know these things. So that's been there for a while of this sort of CRM customer relationship kind of software. But what I really, find challenging is the fact of coaching is very adaptive by nature, because you can have a program and a set process. But it's as much about the listening and the feedback, rather than “Okay, I've got my five questions, right? You've said an answer to number two, I'm going on to number three,” it doesn't work like that, as a human, we'll listen and we'll come up with a new question we might never even asked before, just because of what's gone on and what's happened in that.

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And that kind of ability that is currently a very human domain. As you mentioned, you iterate, countless, you've got great feedback loops, you constantly work with the programs to improve them, you listen and you roll out the next. Coaching is very similar, you’ll start the conversation, you'll have a goal. But the how and the paths meander, that's part of the beauty of life of being human. And it's interesting, because we're working on an AI coach, so digitizing some of that knowledge to augment coaches.

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So where they're stuck in this challenge of from the next gig to next hours, how do I build recurring income, rather than just “Okay, I've got longer-term gigs, but it's still my time and my knowledge that I'm spending,” how can I support them that they've almost got a virtual me, if I can give some of my information to it. And some people are working on this, Tony Robbins, or Peter or various people, even Deepak Chopra has digitized themselves to a AI version, it's not going to be the same. But it might be better than just, here's a video of them, or here's their e-course. And so I'm interested in if you've had any experience in that area that seems to be quite pioneering and converging where the technology makes this possible?

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Marva  

Well, we have a very strong and loving relationship with Marshall Goldsmith, and the MG100. And Marshall is actually going through that process of creating an AI version of himself, I believe that we are all going to need to embrace AI. And also recognize its value, its purpose, and its limitations. I believe that it would be easy for us to accept that AI will just take over and substitute or replace. But the human connection, the eye-to-eye connection that we make, where we feel the other person's intent, I don't believe is going to be replaced by AI.

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I do believe back, oh goodness back, many more years ago than I would like to admit, I was working as an executive in the training industry as an executive of a chief global and then later, FranklinCovey both of which are considered global training industry giants. And even then, we were talking about the fact that just in time, just for me the ability to cut up our training into tiny little bite-sized pieces where you could search for it. And that that was going to be the future of training, which is essentially kind of early stages of AI. And so, yes, I think that there's a great deal that can be done. And I believe that AI will help us scale. But I also believe that their human element of it, the ability to then hold a person accountable because of the relationship.

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And because of the understanding, not just the algorithm, and the leaps that I truly believe only a human brain can make because they can see something from over here and over there that's not yet been programmed into the algorithm, and can see that there's potential for that. I believe that that's where the coach will add value. And so I hope that what we'll see will be a combination of the use of AI and life coaching, where maybe the life coaching sessions are 15 minutes long, and they're focused on the absolutely most essential issues once the AI has helped sort those out. We're actually in conversations with some coaching, new coach education institutions, talking about can we find a way to introduce new coach education that would from the beginning, introduce AI into the curriculum so that those coaches are educated in a way that's very different than is being done today. So we're not bolting on the AI, but instead we're integrating the AI into the process.

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Ross  

I think it's interesting, from my opinion, all technology is inert, until we give it a purpose, and this decisions and relationship that we have with it is one of mindset and perspective. Now, is it to come and eat us and take over? Or is it there to augment and improve? In certain areas I could foresee a future where it will be malpractice in certain health care areas, not to have AI involved in decisions, because it's not going to have suffered poor sleep, overwork, stress, bad day, miss something. So in certain areas, it is absolutely imperative, and almost a huge mistake not to use, and in other areas, it's the reverse and opposite.

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And so it's making these choices is still humans of where do we use it, and we're going to get a lot wrong along the way. And for me, one of the challenges of this is that it's not a computer game where you can go, start over. And we have this effect of trauma that shapes ourselves and our work. We started off our conversation where you realize your purpose and your passion from some trauma, from cutting people's jobs and food on their table. And that has helped shaped who you are and how you think and the beautiful energy you bring to a care package to one of your team.

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Now, for all of us that are facing at the moment, this challenge of our roles are changing, work is changing, careers are shifting, and this movement of reskilling of innovation for some is exciting for some is incredibly fearful. And the immune system comes up and wants to protect what they currently have. Have you seen any areas or things that have worked really well that help people deal with those difficult, moments, those changes that they might not want to have, but need to go through? What sort of skills or what sort of things have been implemented, that you've seen that have helped people go through change well?

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Marva  

Well, there's a lot of coaches who focus really heavily on neuroscience, and on, all of the elements that are going on in your body and how to rethink them. Generally speaking, I think coaching is one of those defense mechanisms we can use to help us see change in a different light, because it's very, very difficult. Most of us are not very self-aware, and we get stuck in our own, tapes or loops. And it's very difficult to change the narrative ourselves. But having a trusted colleague, or coach or mentor, who can help us and who is actually educated in being able to help us reframe, and adjust, I believe is one of the keys to coaching. But I also think that there are things that we can do ourselves. I read a lot about that I told you earlier before we turn on the tape that I was in a car accident a couple of years ago, and ended up with a concussion, and that can really change your ability to be adaptive. And you've got to get that all back. And then just as I was recovering from the concussion, I came down with COVID.

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And so I got the combination of COVID and concussion, and it really messes with my brain. And so I've spent a lot of time personally, really trying to understand what does that journey look like, how my natural tendency at that point with what was essentially a broken brain that had been then infested with a virus. My natural tendency was to avoid all change and see everything as frightening. And it's been an interesting journey, one that I very much, think is relevant to other people around.

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Learning to relax, learning to be much more intentional, learning to meditate. It probably wouldn't surprise you to think to hear that I am a person who is incredibly determined and persistent and put my head down and work very hard. And I had to completely change my approach, that working harder, working more, working faster or longer is not the answer to adapting to change. In fact, the best answer that I can come up with is that you need to back off, take a deep breath and just relax, and just watch it flow past you and decide how do I want to get into that flow?

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Ross  

Yeah, it's perspective is an interesting thing, isn't it? And sometimes, something that happens to us is actually for us, it's a gift that you mentioned, Marshall Goldsmith’s “What got us here won't get us there,” that ability to be able to reflect and say, “Thank you, I appreciate the way I was. But I'm now going to be this,” I'm going to approach things in this way, and try it out, experiment with those new things. And when we're in high-pressure roles, and the high-pressure role is contextual to that individual, because they believe they're accountable to themselves to their future, to their family, it's not just whether it starts with a C at the title or these various things is that a high pressure is contextual to the person. So we can all suffer from that stress or pressure or overwhelm.

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And I thank you for bringing this up. Because it's such an important factor of change as this human element of the stress it takes, the energy it takes to do it. And if we're changing on a basis that isn't every single day, or every week, if it's maybe over a few years, or maybe even generations that something really shifts, we've got time to rejuvenate. I think what we're faced with now is just this relentlessness of pace of shift, just as soon as you think you're stable, and take a step somewhere else, you step onto a running travelator that's going at level 10 already.

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Marva  

In a different direction, a different direction. And you now find yourself with one foot on one thing and one foot in the other. And it's pulling you in different directions.

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Ross  

In terms of you then shifting from this mindset of reward applause and result comes from hard work and persistence, to I need to rejuvenate, stand back, reflect and be deliberate, is now your new playbook. And how's that affected your thinking across your team? Your wake has that shifted team, or do you think this is more about you and your journey? How do you think that's affected?

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Marva  

It has absolutely shift the team. And one of the things that we're focusing on is giving the team members permission to say, “I'm having a bad day.” Because we now have been going through this for a year. And it's almost impossible not to have a bad day, once in a while. And so we have in our team meetings, different department meetings, we take a few minutes. And we let every team member to just say, here's what's going on with me. And whatever it is that's going on with them, it's not cheerleader time, it's not accountability time.

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Ross

It’s not judgement, it’s just listen.

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Marva

It's just and so I was part of a team meeting this morning, where one of the team members said, “I'm feeling a little down. And when I feel down, I don't really want to communicate.” And so the answer was, “Okay, we're here if you need us,” because for many of these people, we're really their only outside connection right now. And so, we work to try to celebrate the positive, but we also try to acknowledge when someone's just having a hard time or something didn't succeed. It's okay. And what that does, again, it's like flipped a switch and unlocked additional creativity that comes from it's safe to tell someone that I didn't have a success. Let's take a look at it and see what we can do about it. Which is so much easier to admit that you didn't have a success if you know that you're not going to get screamed out about it.

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Ross  

Yeah. Well, you're describing an environmental factor that accelerates adaptability, this psychological safety to do that, without judgment, allows for adaption. And that is wonderful to hear and to foster that isn't easy, but it is something that accumulates and becomes a snowball, because as soon as you sort of foster that acceptability that someone can do that. It gives them permission to others to be able to do it. And it's equally a practice that we have AQ.ai is every single meeting and session that we start as a team is we have a positive focus. So we look for and try and find those positive things. So that we're training our brains to find the positive.

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And it's something Dan Sullivan, my coach talks about the gap and the gain. So when we look at and do a reflection, and look at our list of 10 things, we focus on the five that we didn't do, and we leave it in the gap, or we were focused on the five that we did do, and we live in the gain, ie, there was five things that, when I started the day aren't done that are now done. Because most of us and my experience, look at the five that I haven't done and give ourselves a hard time, and just rewiring those. So it's not about sticking our heads in the sand in either side, it is about balance. But for me that programming our neural net, our mindset, our decision making, that sharing a bad day is okay, that programs our mindset. Sharing a celebration that this happened here, or that we killed that idea quickly, that's the type of celebration.

I want to just in the final bits narrow in on a couple of things. So you must see a lot of things in this world of work, and coaching of new ideas, new programs, new phases of what the next important area to focus on is and fill in the blank. Of course, with our focus about adaptability, yes our lane at the moment is work and that's where we're absolutely focused on. It can apply from recovering from an accident in health, from our lives of was married now divorced, didn't have a family now got family, all of these things, we require our adaptability skills, but let's keep it in the lane of work. From your experience, because you kindly took our AQ.ai Assessment. What was your experience of that? And what sort of insights did you have and what stood out for you?

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Marva  

As I took the test, I had a couple of thoughts that kept recurring. One was, this is a really excellent way of identifying my particular adaptability skills. And I could see the structure of the assessment itself. I'm obviously familiar with a lot of assessments. And I found myself really pondering some of the questions. Because I looked at them and thought, there are some of these that if I answered in a work context, I'm going to answer this, if I answered in a family context, I might answer this. And so that was really interesting. Generally speaking, I found the results to be incredibly accurate. And the report to be very helpful in identifying where were the elements that I could change. I'm a big fan of Carol Dweck and the growth mindset.

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And so the idea that I could identify specific things that I could do differently that would help make me more adaptable, really struck a chord with me. And I was very impressed that adaptability is obviously it's a very hot topic right now. But there's a reason that it's a very hot topic right now. And as I think about working with millennials, where my primary work up until this last job has been really with baby boomers, and being in very senior positions for the last 25 or 30 years, I've been in many ways very sheltered from any generation beyond baby boomers, and now suddenly find myself surrounded by millennials. And that is a form of adaptation, how do I deal with that group differently. And so I found the assessment to be really instructive.

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Ross  

And for us our purpose with it, like many assessments, that's the beginning, that gives awareness, and it gives an opportunity for conversation to say, what is serving me and what isn't serving me and a permission to change it. One of the frustrations I've had in many times is this desire to box people and categorize people and, say that we're fixed. I fundamentally disagree with that thought that we can't reimagine ourselves, that we can't shift, and there's countless scientific studies to say how we can shift our conscientiousness in just two weeks following this example or, this thought of what's my future yourself, and how do I now start to behave, think, what habits do I need? What skills do I need to acquire? Who do I need to be around that will help me think differently, shift differently and behave differently? And for me, that's the beauty of AQ, that it's a bit like our weight, we stand on the weighing scales, the needle tells us where it is. And that's neither good or bad till we know what the context is, what's your goal? What do you want to do? How old are you? And then you learn about nutrition and exercise. And you can shift it similar with AQ, you can learn about your mindset or mental flexibility or the impact that your team has.

So, in terms of going forward for companies to thrive in this exponential world, where change is accelerating at such pace, alongside adaptability, what are some of maybe the other skills that you think are really important, whether that's creativity or communication or various things? What are you seeing either inside WBECS or inside other organizations that the skills perhaps our listeners should be thinking about and considering to navigate change well?

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Marva  

I think the most important of all of those skills in addition to adaptability well, and resilience, which is part of adaptability is quite frankly, selectivity. We have a particularly in the West, a culture that says more is better, harder is better. Just, I'll just work faster, I'll work longer, I'll try to shove more into the envelope. And I really believe that the key, even the key to successful adaptability is selectivity. It's, as I said, a while ago, step back and watch the stream go past you for a while. Not every change is one you have to accept or work with, or embrace and then move with, you can choose which ones to get involved with at what level to get involved.

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And there are some where you can say, “Yeah, I don't, I don't really choose to be on that, on whatever that flow is. But I do choose to spend my energy on this flow.” From a personal standpoint, I still am not on Facebook, because that's a flow I just choose not to be a part of. And that actually has an impact on how I spend my time and my day. And I think that all of us have that ability to be selective, we do not need to be passive acceptors of the changes that are taking place, we can be active selectors of which changes, we choose to be a part of which ones we embrace, how we embrace them, how we use them. And I think that that selectivity is probably because as the pace of change continues to increase, more and more things will be asked of us. And we truly do have some finite capacity to do that. So we're going to need to make decisions about which ones we participate in.

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Ross  

In a room of these exercise treadmills everywhere, all in different directions all on level 10, we have to select carefully where we move from what we do, right?

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Marva  

Absolutely. And in any given time period, we're not going to just triple our exercise and say, “I'll spend time on every single piece of equipment, doing it at the max for the max amount of time,” that would burn us out, I actually saw an article about Gerard Butler saying that he nearly killed himself a few years ago trying to get his body ripped for doing the 300 because he was exercising six hours a day. Well, if we think about our mental and emotional well being that's exactly what we're talking about, we can burn ourselves out, trying to do too much.

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Ross  

Yeah, I think that's a lovely place to sort of leave us on is this burnout is a very real thing, especially when it's something that we're passionate about, when we have these skills of perseverance and all of these bits is that we are at risk of burnout, and being able to appreciate and give space. So leaders need to give the space for the rejuvenation, for the pauses, even in those exponential times. And that is being conscious about it selective and making intentional choice, not by naivety because you were just looking at your feet and not looking at the horizon. 

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So I think it's been just a wonderful conversation and I look forward to a number with you because there's such alignment of thought of how can we affect the world and our purpose is to leave no one behind. So in this pace of change and where everyone is needing to adapt or choosing to adapt, making it possible that their tomorrow is better than yesterday through their own eyes. That, for me is a gift that we can, as you said, the legacy that's being left of those things. So I want to say thank you. And if you've got any other comments and pieces, and if people want to get in touch or learn more about WBECS or pieces, where would they need to go, Marva?

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Marva  

Pretty simply they go to WBECS.com And they can actually message me at Marva@wbecs.com

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Ross  

Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. And I'm sure there'll be some that want to do it because we have quite a few coaches in our community. Not as many coaches in yours, but we're working on it. So thank you again. It's been a real pleasure.

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Marva  

Thank you, Ross. It was lovely. And I really love that you said that everything that we do is a choice. That is something that I live by. It's a choice. It's a choice to be grateful to be happy. It's a choice to be anxious and unhappy. And I  have a mantra that I tell people I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday.

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Ross  

I like that. I reserve the right to be smarter today than I was yesterday. Beautiful. Thanks, Marva.

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Marva  

Thank you. Alright, thanks so much.

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Voiceover  

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Outro

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