Michele Aikens with ClearSight Coaching & Consulting

Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for High Velocity Radio.

Stone Payton: Welcome to the High Velocity Radio show, where we celebrate top performers producing better results in less time. Stone Payton here with you this afternoon and you guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with ClearSight Coaching and Consulting, Michele Aikens. How are you?

Michele Aikens: I am great. Thanks so much for having me. Stone. I’m looking forward to a great conversation.

Stone Payton: Well, it is a delight to have you on the program. I got a ton of questions, Michele. I’m sure we won’t get to them all, but I think a great place to start is if maybe you could paint a little bit of a picture. Give us a little primer of mission purpose. What? What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Michele Aikens: Oh, wow. Mission and purpose are two of my favorite words. Um. Mission purpose, I think, are interchangeable. They are the reason you exist. Whether you are an individual or a company or a team. Your purpose is why you’re there. And if you drift from that purpose, not only do you not meet those outward goals, but you start having those struggles inside. When a person is disconnected, or when a team is disconnected from who they’re supposed to be.

Stone Payton: Now, how did you find yourself in this line of work? What’s the what’s the Michele backstory?

Michele Aikens: Well, here’s the Michele backstory. Um, my I have a background in advertising. When I was when I had a, quote, real job in the 90s, 80s and 90s. Um, my background was in advertising. And then I started with a company, a magazine, a national women’s magazine, and it did really well on a shoestring budget because this was just a hunch, I guess back then they called them startups. Now there’s a name for it. Um, but after five years, the magazine was too expensive to continue because it had become successful. But the sales hadn’t caught up with them yet. And so, at a the middle of my life, I found myself without a job and never having, quote, failed at anything before I went on a two year journey of self-discovery and redefining and also being a nerd. After some considerable study, I came out on the other end of that as an executive coach. That’s the short the cliff notes.

Stone Payton: So I gotta know what was that transition like going from from that comfort zone, that arena into. Yeah, you’ve got a you’ve got to hone and practice your craft, but you’ve also got to run a business and get clients right. Was that intimidating at first?

Michele Aikens: Yes. It was intimidating and painful. Uh, because I had always even though I’d helped launch a magazine, I always had an employees mindset. And so now when you’re launching your own practice, well, first, it took you two years to figure out that that’s something you could do. Um, but once you launch your own practice, you’ve got to learn some things, like how to sell what you’re good at. And being a child of the 60s, I was raised as a young lady to be nice and not talk too much about myself. Well, that doesn’t help you when you have to sell your business. And so I had to relearn some things. And, um, I am the better for it. And so helping others, other women who might be like me, other corporations or businesses or things that have to shift. Learn to speak a different way about what they do well is it’s a skill. It’s a learned skill.

Stone Payton: So let’s dive into the work a little bit. Everything from the the medium that you use the mechanism to specific groups that you’re trying to to serve. I know you specifically mentioned women just a moment ago. Let’s dive into the work a little bit.

Michele Aikens: Okay. Well, I am an executive coach and I have some specialties, but one of the areas that I really focus on is executive women, senior leadership, C-suite types. Um, because that navigation to the C-suite can be fraught with a whole lot of minefields on the way up that to the naked eye. Other people don’t see them, but there’s always there’s usually a little girl inside that executive saying, uh, that’s not where you belong. And so it’s it’s getting that mindset, like I talked about learning how to talk well, about what I did. It’s the same thing. We have to grow as leaders in stages. And sometimes those stages get accelerated and you feel out of sorts. So I work with, um, executive leaders. I also work with teams, leadership teams, because those conflicts that come within a team can not only shut a fuel down, but if they’re managed right, they can create innovation. So those are my favorite things to do.

Stone Payton: So yeah. What are you finding the most rewarding these days? What’s the most fun about it for you?

Michele Aikens: Right now. Well, this is I’m really having fun doing this right now. When I lost my, uh, job in 2009 and got redirected into coaching, I started tinkering with a program called Rewriting the Script. And initially it was just for people who wanted to redefine themselves after a big loss, maybe a job loss or a significant relationship. And because I’m so fascinated with movies and storytelling, I used script writing procedures to outline this course. Well, that was in 2011. Just recently, I have launched a corporate version of rewriting a script, rewriting the script to help individuals and teams navigate change. And watching these leaders go cut, that’s not the mindset that we want to want to use here is a lot of fun, so I’m having a real fun time with that right now.

Stone Payton: What a marvelous framework. I bet that really does lend itself to individual exchanges, but also with groups. And you’ve got that peer to peer dynamic and people are offering up, you know, they call scene or cut or whatever. What a great framework. That is fascinating.

Michele Aikens: Yeah, it’s a lot of fun. And to watch the the person who cast the vision has to be the, the producer. But the writer can tell him this script doesn’t make sense. And the director says this is not going to work with the actors, and we’re not talking about a story. We’re talking about your team. But because they step out of their normal roles, there’s some safety, there’s some innovation, there’s ways of looking at things that you may not have considered before, because we’re not in the normal roles that we play. It’s a lot of fun.

Stone Payton: Yeah. So going back to actually writing the book, committing the ideas to paper, I’m interested to know what that process was like for you. Did some of it come together really pretty easily? In other parts more difficult, or was it a pretty smooth road? What was that experience like?

Michele Aikens: Well, if we’re talking about rewriting the script, um, part of my depressed phase after losing my job was I watched movies over and over stone. But after I got started to feel better, I started asking myself questions like, I wonder what happened to that character. And consequently, I wrote a couple of screenplays. So sequels. And so this whole idea of telling your story, crafting it and whatnot is what what created the idea of Consider the Possibilities, which is the latest book that I wrote that talks about how to pursue what it is that you really want to pursue, even though you may have been stuck in a way of being for a long time. And I wrote it for people over 50, because a lot of times that’s when we get stuck.

Stone Payton: So do you find in some of your work that you are trying to serve people who are, who maybe have fairly recently really hit a roadblock or or had a major disappointment, or there’s a big shift. So they’re just they’re really looking for some direction and are maybe a little bit rudderless. Is that part of the do you find that sometimes?

Michele Aikens: Yes, I’m finding it a lot. And particularly with older executives, they may not have hit a rough patch, but they see the rough patch coming. Mhm. And what do I do. What am I going to do. And if I may offer, this is one exercise that I do with them. I say look at the worst possible outcome that all of these fears that you’re magnifying look as straight in the eye and ask yourself then what? Because by the time we’ve asked ourselves. Then what? A few times what happens is you realize the same resilience that made you successful in the last thing is still there. You might have to tweak it a little bit, take the glasses off, clean them out and see in a different direction. But you are still the same person who was successful in the last ventures. You can make it through this. Yeah.

Stone Payton: So how does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practitioner like you? Do you have to get out there and shake the trees a little bit? Or is it the kind of practice where it’s largely based on someone’s had a success and success and they refer a colleague or a or a peer like the business side of the business, especially the front end of that pipeline. We sales guys call it sometimes. What’s that like?

Michele Aikens: Yes. Tell me about it. Well, I am I coach for a national executive leadership organization, and I have five groups of executives that I meet with every month. But then after that, because I’m this creative tinkerer nerd type, I started playing around with other things and I’ll introduce them to somebody that I’ve coached in the past because I never I’m very aware of conflicts. And if if I’m tinkering with something, I said, hey, what do you think about this? And, um, sometimes there’s a bite. And in case of rewriting the scripts, there’s a few bites. And so that kind of sends me in the direction when I was training, uh, in coaching, and I trained with Doctor Chant. Who’s in Georgia? Where you are, I think. Yeah. And my, one of my team leaders said use everything that you have in your coaching. That’s not normally what you hear. And so I got permission early on to play. I got in trouble in kindergarten for coloring outside the line. I thought, there’s all of this nice space. Why can’t I color that? Well, in my book, I say we need people who know how to color inside the lines. They build the train tracks, they make sure the train stays on the tracks. But we need people who color outside the lines because they build the cities that the train tracks run on. And so being free to play allows me to present something to clients and potential clients. That’s unusual, that’s creative, in ClearSight. Our mission is to help leaders and their teams embrace change with courage, compassion, clarity, and creativity. So I like to play, and that’s part of how I sell.

Stone Payton: Well, I can tell that you do. I mean, I can hear it in your voice. So if I’m an executive in A and I and I have a even a high performing team, or maybe they’re not, how do I begin to know what are some signs that, hey, maybe me and my team, we need a need a coach? What should I be looking for?

Michele Aikens: Well, I would look for conflict that doesn’t get resolved in a healthy way. I have a workshop that I do. It’s an introductory workshop. It’s called Why is Your Team Fighting? And yes, we look at six possible reasons. Because I’m a I’m a credentialed team coach too. We look at six possible reasons that your team could be fighting, and those things range from not being clear on why we’re a team to problems with the leadership. And there are things in between. And so we look at why your team is fighting. And if it is not something because it’s there’s a saying teams the process to a team is forming storming norming and performing. And so storming is a part of the team building process. But if those storms don’t get resolved in a way that is healthy for the team members and productive for the goals, then we need to look at how the team is learning and how we’re dealing with conflict.

Stone Payton: Now, when you may back to kind of making this transition too early, going in this in this coaching consulting career, did you have the benefit of of one or more mentors that sort of helped you navigate this, this new terrain?

Michele Aikens: Oh, here’s a funny story. Yes, I had one mentor, and, um, his name was Ken Cheatham. He’s he’s passed away a couple of years ago, but we had an online radio program. I used to have a blog talk network on the talk radio show. And so Ken and I had a program about sales because I needed to learn about it, and I assumed other new business owners needed to learn about it. And so in the meantime, I’m running this digital magazine, and there’s a man who wants to come into our market. But he was locked out and he was in the health and beauty business. So I start calling all of these hair salons and beauty houses and all of this to try to get his products in there so that he would take out an ad in my magazine, and Ken watched me do that for about two weeks, and he said, you know, you are selling advertising space and giving away something that’s much more valuable. That is what set me on the path of looking differently at how I managed what was in my hands. So no, it was not easy. But I had a great mentor who walked with me, um, all the way.

Stone Payton: Now, you made the decision pretty early on. I’m under the impression to to become formally credentialed, like you went through a certification process with a with some type of organization, didn’t you?

Michele Aikens: Absolutely. The International Coaching Federation and I took that approach because first of all, when I first was approached with the idea of being a coach stone. I’m sorry. This is my profession now. But back then, everybody was calling themselves a coach, and I was like, this is a hustle. I did not want to be a hustler, so I did, I did, and so I did the due diligence I researched. And then when I decided I was going to pursue it, I studied coaching for two years before becoming credentialed. I know you can get there, people. You can get credential, you can get certified as a coach in some programs over the weekend. I did not want that. I wanted to if I was going to do this, I wanted to give my clients the best benefit of my experience and training that I could, which means, um, x number of years later, I am still studying, um, in credentialing programs a few times a year. Oh, wow.

Stone Payton: So yeah. Well, and I guess, or my observation has been in my career that competency can be a moving target. Right.

Michele Aikens: Tell me about it.

Stone Payton: So it’s important to continue to sharpen that saw and learn new things and be exposed to new techniques for achieving maybe some of the same purposes, but, uh, no, that’s absolutely to be commended. So, uh, passions, interests, pursuits outside the scope of the the work. A lot of my listeners know that I like to hunt, fish and travel. Anything you have a tendency to nerd out about that’s outside the scope of this work.

Michele Aikens: Oh, nerd out about. Boy, did you use the right word there? Uh, my husband calls me a collection of useless facts. I enjoy learning new things, but what I am, in fact, one of the ways I spend my downtime. I am currently working on a futuristic dystopian novel. Uh, because it gives my brain another place to play? Of course I like comedy and love dancing, but the nerd part of me likes science fiction.

Stone Payton: I am so glad that I. You just don’t ever know, right?

Michele Aikens: You just don’t know.

Stone Payton: Well, before we wrap, I would love to leave our listeners with a couple of, um. I call them pro tips. Just a little something to be thinking about noodling on and look, gang. The number one pro tip is, uh, reach out and have a conversation with with Michele. But, um, maybe if you’re up for it, maybe a tip on what I’ll call both sides of the work. Right. The practitioner side of the work. A tip, because some of our listeners are practitioners as well. Uh, you know, a tip on actually executing the work, but maybe also a tip or something you feel like you’ve learned or do or don’t on the business side of running the business, that would. If you’re up for it, I’d love to leave them with a couple of things to chew on.

Michele Aikens: Okay. And and they’re actually related. Well, here’s something that’s kind of unrelated, but from the nerd portion of the brain, there is a book called Brain Rules. And the author lists rules that talk about how our brain functions when we are stressed or in, in anxiety. Our brains don’t learn. Well, that’s rule number eight. I believe in the book, stressed brains don’t learn the same. And so if you are forcing yourself to do something that is hard and it’s creating stress, um, I’m going to encourage you to back away from that now from the business side, which and I’m learning, I never considered myself stone. It’s funny, I didn’t consider myself a real business person for a long time. I was just a coach. Here’s the business. Um. Business. Inside I’d give. Find what makes you spark. Because it is the thing that sets you apart. There are a lot of coaches, probably hundreds of thousands. In fact, I read a couple of years ago that it’s the fastest growing profession. So whatever you’re doing in business, you’ve got to find a way to distinguish yourself from the competition, from the non compete people. You’ve got to find a way to stand out and work that spark.

Stone Payton: Well you’ve clearly done that haven’t you.

Michele Aikens: I’m trying but. But I’m having fun, which I didn’t before, but I am. I am blessed enough to have fun doing what I do for a living.

Stone Payton: Well, I can tell. And this conversation has certainly been fun and enlightening. What’s the best way for our listeners to tap into your work? Learn more. Maybe have that conversation with you. Let’s leave them some coordinates. Whatever is the you feel is most appropriate for so that you can connect with them.

Michele Aikens: Well, that would be wonderful. Um, our website is clearsight-coach.com, and there’s methods for contacting me in there. Um, or if you want to just bypass the website and get in contact with me, you can reach me at lead coach at Clearsight. Coach.com. Um, I’d love to have those conversations with you, um, or with any of your listeners, because I believe that helping people find out what makes them spark benefits the rest of us in the world.

Stone Payton: Amen. Well, Michele, it has been an absolute delight having you on the broadcast. Thank you for your insight, your perspective. Thank you for your enthusiasm and your encouragement. It’s been a very inspiring exchange. You are clearly having a great deal of impact on so many and we sure appreciate you.

Michele Aikens: Well, I appreciate being here, Stone. Thanks for having this conversation with me.

Stone Payton: My pleasure. All right. Until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Michele Aikens with Clearsight Coaching and Consulting and everyone here at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.