IAM1067- Leadership Coach Helps Teams Learn, Adapt, and Transform

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00:23 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Kvon Tucker of Cautiously. Kvon, it's great to have you on the show.

01:00 – Kvon Tucker

Hey. Thank you. Welcome. I'm happy to be here.

01:03 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely. Super excited to have you on. Happy to have you on as well too. Before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit more about Kvon so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. Kvon is the CEO and co and founder of Consciously, a purpose-driven executive and leadership coaching firm. Kvon is also a professionally trained leadership and leadership development expert, and he has spent a third of his life dedicated to leaders, teams, and organizations learn, adapt, and transform.

His favorite tagline is All I know is how to help people grow, and he has helped leaders at Netflix and Amazon adapt to hyper-growth and tremendous scale through experiential learning and coaching. Today, he heads up manager and leadership development for Google's staffing organization, designing experiential learning and coaching leaders as they help Google grow. Kvon also holds a master's in industrial and organizational philosophy and is a certified professional coach. Kvon, great to have you on the show and hear about all the awesome things you're doing. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:01 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. Happy too, man. Let's get into it.

02:03 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you got started, what I call your CEO story.

02:11 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. My CEO story, I like to tell people that I was born out of a very, very difficult time. I was early in my career, maybe five, or six years into my career as a learning and development professional. One day I woke up and I was miserable. I realized that the work that I was doing wasn't all that purposeful. It wasn't really meaningful, and I got away from what I got into this line of work, to do, which is to support people and connect with people. And so I went on my little journey to reconnect with, like, what my purpose is and explore what my purpose is, and I landed on coaching.

And I went into a coaching course, looking for something that would feel a little bit more meaningful and purposeful for me, and I walked out feeling like I had found my life purpose. And so it's at that point, I knew that coaching was gonna be something that I was going to do. And maybe a month later, I had found consciously with my wife and said, hey.

Regardless of what goes on in my day job, I know that I need to coach. And so this is gonna be the channel for me to do that. It's been a whirlwind, and so now coaching is a much larger part of my life and consciously it is growing, I'd say rather rapidly, not tremendously rapidly, but it's growing. And in that whole journey, I've also woven in this manager and leadership development aspect.

So if you think about my background in industrial organizational psychology, the whole goal of us is to help organizations thrive and help people work better together. And when you think about how to do that in organizations, focusing on the manager community has been, I think, the greatest revelation of my career. I think they're one of the most important segments of an organization when you wanna create change, sustainable change. And so helping managers be better managers and be better leaders as well as coaching them to do so is where I've landed. So that's a little bit of my story in a nutshell.

03:58 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I appreciate you for sharing that. And the quote that was kinda coming to my mind when you were talking about sometimes it was a frustrating path that how everything came about was, like, it's always dark sometimes dark is before dawn. And I think so many times when we go through that frustration, frustrating moments, sometimes if we just explore, see what can come at the end of the tunnel, sometimes it's our greatest purpose and the thing that we ultimately should be doing like it was in your case.

04:21 – Kvon Tucker

I look back now at that time as a gift. It was like a message saying, hey. You're not doing what you're here to do, what you're supposed to be here. It's like you're not spending your time how you want. There's more for you out there. So for me, it was a note of like, an opportunity for me to go look. And, unfortunately, I found, coaching, and I found, manager and leadership development. And then I use consciously as the channel to do that work.

04:46 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. So I wanted to drill down a little bit more and hear a little bit more about this channel that you're using. Could you take us through a little bit more on how you work with your clients and how that manifests itself?

04:55 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. The number one way I work with my clients is one-on-one. So I consider myself a leadership and executive development coach. And what that looks like is usually, I meet with them at 01:60 for fifty to sixty minutes biweekly. I do have some one-on-one arrangements that are weekly. That's like if you're a leader and you, like, really wanna grow very rapidly, then we might do a weekly thing. And in that fifty to sixty minutes, we do several things. One, we kind of center on what we're gonna talk about, like, what that leader wants to grow or what their challenge is.

Then we spend about eighty percent of the time just exploring that topic, going deep, getting in touch with, you know, what parts of themselves they want to develop, what does it look like, what does it feel like, what do they imagine the results would be like. So we'll do some visualization. We do lots of different things within these fifty, and sixty minutes. And then the last twenty twenty percent of the time we spend or ten percent of the time we spend landing on an action.

So it's not it's never just like, hey. We're gonna get together and talk about some fun cool stuff. For me, coaching is a big part of coaching is action. Like, what are we going to do after we've done all this exploration, or what do you want to do? Whatever we come up with, it should be in service of that client's agenda or that client's want for their leadership development or executive development or, just for their life. So, yeah, just a little bit of finding the topic, exploring the topic, and then doing some action to further further development around that topic.

06:17 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to, ask you now for what I call your secret sauce. This could be for yourself or the business or a combination of both. But what do you feel sets you apart and makes you unique?

06:28 – Kvon Tucker

I'd say a couple of things. One is it's kind of my journey. Many other people bring a lot of personal and professional experience into my coaching. So there are a lot of coaches out there and a lot more coaches are getting certified and I have that as well. But what makes me different from someone who just found out about coaching last year and then got certified all of a sudden, is that my whole career has been dedicated to helping people learn and grow. I have two degrees in psychology.

So I understand human behavior. I understand learning. Like, that's been my whole career, and I bring that into my coaching. So I do a little bit of education around learning and development. I do some education around, like, sustainable behavior change that other coaches just can't because they don't have that background. So that's one aspect. It's just like my professional. And then there's my drive to help people find and fulfill their purpose. Consciously is founded and rooted in that.

And I think that personal purpose and leadership purpose are, like, the most important things for people to achieve whatever they want to achieve. And it's our philosophy at consciously that everyone's purpose is somehow tied to helping themselves and helping others do good for the world. And so I center all of my coaching around that. And it's just been my experience that when you start asking questions about it, what's important to you? What is your purpose?

And when you get someone to land on a purpose statement, it almost I mean, say, a hundred percent of the time, it has something to do with helping other people. And so I love to center leaders around that because I think if you can center more and more CEOs around finding and fulfilling the purpose, which ultimately is connected to elevating our species, then we can all do great work together. So, those are a couple of things that make me a little bit different from other coaches.

08:07 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

08:17 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. It's like I knew this question was coming, and I know you're wanting something that might be a little bit different. But I don't and honestly, I've listened to your podcast a little bit, so I know that this isn't all that unique. And it's the truth is, really owning your mornings. I am religious about how I design my mornings and how I adhere to my mornings. And I'm one of those people who, like, serve themselves.

So, it's meditation, it's writing, it's exercise, it's eating good food. Like, for I do all the things that are supremely important to sustaining me and sustaining my energy before I do anything else. A new father. So some of that stuff is not the same as it was before I became a dad. So I'm getting some of that stuff back, but my mornings are I'm religious about them.

So like I said, I do fifteen minutes of writing before I go to the gym, and I always go to the gym. And then I come back, and I shower, and then I do, fifteen minutes of meditation, depending on the day. I make sure I eat a good solid breakfast, and then I start my day. And then something some combination of that has been life-changing for me when it comes to being able to sustain the work that I'm doing.

09:30 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So you might have already touched on this, but this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you hopped into a time machine, you might tell your younger business self.

09:44 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. That's a good one. This might seem a little different, but I would say be easy on yourself. And that might sound odd coming from someone who's, like, started a business has a growing business, and also works full time and is a parent and is a husband. But I have found that self-compassion is probably one of the it's like the secret key to life that that no one told me about until I was, like, in my mid-thirties. Yeah. Be easy on yourself. I mean, if you're an entrepreneur and you have your own business, you're already an ambitious person. Right?

And so you can, like, lean on that. Lean on that ambition. Don't forget it, but also don't forget that beating yourself up to achieve more and grow faster is not going to get you there. And I know it seems a little counterintuitive for folks, and it was counterintuitive for me for years to think that being gentler and kinder to myself would help me achieve more.

But after years of practicing that myself and helping other leaders practice self-compassion, it's been proven that being gentle and kind will help pave the way for you to achieve more and grow faster. So I would say if you want a secret golden key that most people aren't talking about for entrepreneurs or business owners, self-compassion will change your life. And if you ever wanna talk about that, feel free to contact me because I love to talk about self-compassion.

11:09 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I appreciate you for sharing that. It's so funny because this past year, I was saying my word after the pandemic and everything was giving yourself grace because I think so many times we can beat ourselves up. But I love that self-compassion word even more because I think that so many times we forget in working and wanting to get to a certain level, we'll beat ourselves up. After all, we're not at that level. And we could take that energy, and put it in a positive more positive way, or we could put that energy towards whatever solution we're trying to solve, but beating ourselves up is not going to necessarily move that needle forward. So we have to understand that and give ourselves that self-compassion.

11:44 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, I think grace is a form of self-compassion. So I would have to a hundred percent agree with you. I think grace is is is a beautiful thing if you can give yourself that, you give yourself space to breathe and space to grow. Right? When you're down on yourself, you're working with limited room. So when you breathe self-compassion in space into your environment, you give yourself room to meet the challenges that you want to meet. And it's also just a more enjoyable experience than being mean to yourself. So there's that too.

12:18 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I think I saw something on I don't know if it was on, Instagram or something, along the lines that a lot of times if we write down what we tell ourselves, we wouldn't want to hang around that person, but, yeah, we tell ourselves that regularly. So to check what we're saying to ourselves and give ourselves that self-compassion is good because it'll make us wanna be around ourselves as well.

12:39 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. And that's what we need, especially if we have businesses that depend on us. Yeah. We need to be kind to ourselves. And then that's like this is a leadership thing too. Like, if you're mean to yourself, like, how do you think you're acting to other people? And if you're a leader who lacks self-compassion, what does that mean for the culture that you're creating in your organization? And that's the conversation that I love to have with leaders.

12:59 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you for, holding space to do that. And so I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Kvon, what does being a CEO mean to you?

13:16 – Kvon Tucker

I think being a CEO is the same as being a change agent in society. I think if you're a CEO, you're leading the way in some meaningful way, some material way. So it doesn't mean making a whole lot of money. It doesn't mean that you have to have a whole bunch of employees. I think being a CEO means you are leading the way, and and you are responsible for the change that you want to create. And then you might have people under. You might have hundreds, tens, thousands, kind of depends on where you're at, but you are leading the way. And you need to own that and then build the team that's gonna support this change that you want to create.

13:57 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I think that's one of the the most beautiful things about entrepreneurship is a lot of times you see, like, an opportunity or something not being done or something not being fulfilled and you wanna create that change. So I love that change agent piece because I think so many times when we take ownership of that and we start to take the actions, of course, create the space so that we are evaluating that and know our purpose as you do so well, it creates that forward momentum that can truly create that change that we hope to see in our organizations, in our businesses, in our lives.

14:24 – Kvon Tucker

Absolutely. That's it. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent.

14:27 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Kvon, truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanna do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find about all the awesome things that you're working on.

14:42 – Kvon Tucker

Yeah. Well, first, thank you very much for this time. I'm happy to share a little bit more about what's important to me and the work that I'm doing at Consciously. If you wanna find me, the best way to find me is to look me up on Kevan Tucker on LinkedIn, or you can find me on Instagram, which is at consciously underscore Kevan. It's another way to find me. You can also go to consciously.com, which is my website. You can find more information here or reach out to reach out to us if you would like to work together.

But, yeah, for me, I just wanna say thank you. And for anyone out there who's listening, if you're thinking about doing something big or becoming a CEO or already CEO or you have an idea for society, I would encourage you to think about what is your purpose. And if you don't have an answer for that, then I'd say start to look for that answer. I just think this is the most important work that we can be doing as CEOs, and, entrepreneurs are figuring out what is our purpose here and then using our businesses as channels to achieve that purpose.

15:41 – Gresham Harkless

That's extremely powerful. I truly appreciate that, Kvon. We will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you. But it is so powerful just to remind ourselves of the power that we have within to be change agents as we talked about and how we can use our businesses as a channel, the conduits to make that happen. But it takes and goes to a different level when we are aligned with our purpose what that looks like and how we can create space for us to evaluate that. So thank you so much for taking some time out. Thank you so much for the work you do, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

16:12 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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