The Power of Coaching: Transforming Leaders, Culture, and Careers

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

Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here another episode of High Velocity Radio and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show, we have executive coach with Forvis Mazars, John Locke. Welcome.

John A Locke: Hey, Lee, great to be here.

Lee Kantor: Well, I am so excited to learn about your coaching practice. Tell us about Forvis Mazars. How are you serving folks?

John A Locke: Well, first of all, Forvis Mazars is really a relatively new name to the business landscape here in the United States. It’s a organization that’s been around for a long time, but through a variety of mergers, has now grown to being a top ten accounting firm with 75 offices throughout the U.S. and For about 1012 000 folks internationally. So it’s a really large organization that grew out of a small accounting firm in Asheville, North Carolina, and a couple of other small firms here in the southeast. And next thing you know, we’re I think the last I saw, we were around eight largest in the United States.

Lee Kantor: So now how did kind of coaching get integrated into their practice?

John A Locke: Well, it’s really a kind of an interesting story in that coaching was one of those things in an accounting firm that was not necessarily looked at favorably when somebody came to a staff member or a rising leader and said, you need coaching. It wasn’t necessarily a positive encounter. So I had the opportunity to start the coaching practice about 12 years ago. And I had a leader whose name is Mike Crawford, who just recently retired, who was a regional managing partner. And he was always a great leadership visionary. And he wanted to find kind of the what’s the edge that we could have really for developing our leaders. And this was the earlier iteration of the firm. It was called Dixon Hughes Goodman back 12 years ago and headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. And so when we started talking about opportunities to develop leaders, we talked about working with them one on one and finding niches where they could really explore their talents and gifts and take them to the next level of leadership, competency and impact. And so I had the privilege of really being the very first coach, starting the practice. And then over the last 8 to 10 years, we’ve added a couple of more coaches, and now we serve primarily the partners and executive leaders throughout the entire footprint of four of us.

Lee Kantor: Mazars now was your background in accounting and then you kind of transition to coaching? Or are you looking at this kind of through the fresh eyes of a coach?

John A Locke: Yeah, not an accountant. I’m one of those that kind of just sits on the periphery of the day to day accounting and consulting work that we do. My background, Lee, has really been a wide variety of things from sales and marketing, project management, philanthropy, and I’ve just always had in my toolkit and my really my mind that this is a long haul journey of developing myself first and helping then share anything that I can learn as it relates to business success or dealing with people to others that I work with. So I to be very honest with you, I stumbled into coaching, didn’t really know that it was a real thing and a credible part of the leadership toolkit when I first really even got into it. And when I explored it, and I started looking into it because I’d been helping people and doing leadership events and things like that my entire career, but I didn’t really realize the impact that this one on one coaching industry was having in corporate America. And once I really found out what was going on, I thought, this is this is the ticket. This is the way to really differentiate leaders on their career path. And, and firms like Forbes, Mazars, as they’re trying to be distinct in their focus on developing leaders and, and providing, you know, a unique experience to their clients as a result.

Lee Kantor: Now when they, when you started working with them at the beginning, what was this kind of, uh, framed as an experiment? Let’s see how this goes. Or did they have a mission with an objective that they were trying to achieve through this? Because, I mean, I’ve, I’ve been doing this interviewing thing for a while, and I’ve interviewed lots of CPAs and lots of leaders of CPA firms, and it’s a short list of them. Of firms that have coaching integrated in their practices, at least in, you know, from what I’ve seen. So I mean, to establish that, I mean, kudos to them for doing taking that step. But I just want to understand the frame they gave you to work within.

John A Locke: Well, I think it really boiled down to the vision of that individual, Mike Crawford that I alluded to earlier. Mike was just a fanatic when it came to developing himself as a leader and realized, you know, what it took for folks to really be successful in this industry required a lot of work on the individual. And when he and I first sat down and talked and we thought about concepted really this whole coaching practice. It was really focused on this individualized journey that these leaders were on and how unique and stressful and complex it was, and helping them to then determine really what are going to be the priorities for their efforts to develop into the leader that they want to be. And so to say that this was a prescribed we’re going to build a coaching practice from day one is probably an overstatement. It was really focused on, hey, let’s see what we can do here to have impact and helping individual leaders with one coach who’s attempting really to serve as many people as possible, but realize that that’s going to be limited. And so we had to really focus then on what are the high potential opportunities for impact. And that led us into both the C-suite as well as into some emerging leaders. And finally, over a period of years, we realized it needed to focus on those that the firm had identified as next generation or existing. New leaders. And that’s kind of where we really spring springboarded the the coaching practice and then have focused since then.

Lee Kantor: So when did you know that it was working?

John A Locke: Well, that’s a great question because I will be totally transparent with you. The first couple of years were, uh, full of one step forward, two steps back. And, you know, people who would say, what is it? What are you doing here? What? Why are you why are we talking? I mean, there was a lot of misunderstanding because of that comment that I made earlier about coaching was not a positive term. You know, there were things, and this was to nobody’s fault. But just over time, if you needed a coach, you were in, you had a problem. And so my whole first two years was to help educate people, to help them understand that this was about developing leaders, not a remedial process to fix people. And so once, and it really took about almost three years for people to really understand that. And in combination with having some relatively positive outcomes and experiences from leaders who are going through the coaching, and they were just talking to other leaders about it and saying, hey, you know, this coaching thing is really powerful. It can work. And let me tell you how it helped me. Once we had those stories that started organically spreading through the firm, then I think about three years in, we we realized we had something here that was powerful for people and really a differentiator when it comes to developing leaders in our industry.

Lee Kantor: Now as a coach, were you was the focus kind of did you have to learn, okay, let’s do more of this, less of this? Like this is what’s resonating and this is what’s giving the biggest impact? Or did you kind of have a plan of, okay, we’re going to work on these kind of pillars and we’ll go from there.

John A Locke: Yeah, that’s a really great question. And it kind of speaks to what I think the power is associated with a coaching experience. And that is so individualized. So obviously from a firm standpoint, they’re looking to help our leader be successful in whatever that looks like. But in the end, it’s running their own business because in an accounting firm, in essence, you have hundreds of entrepreneurs who are partners that are running their individual businesses. Well, within that, everybody has a different set of challenges and variables that they’re dealing with. So some would be natural rainmakers and can sell like crazy and just build an amazing business. Other people are highly technical and struggle building their business, and maybe also struggle with the team dynamics and retaining people. And so there was especially early on, and even to this day, it is such a unique set of variables that we walk into in a coaching opportunity that we spend really the first several sessions digging deep and trying to really uncover what it is that’s really going to make the difference, not only in this person being successful in running a business, but the one thing that I like to approach it. And that’s, that’s why I went down the road of becoming a health and wellness coach as well as an executive coach, is that I want these folks, individuals, no matter where they are in their leadership journey, to feel good about themselves as a human being, as a husband, wife, father, son, whatever their key relationships are, and knowing that this is going to be a rewarding journey for them with their mental and physical health, as well as the outcomes that they would have relative to what the business expectations are. So I like to take a very holistic approach to my coaching and let people know from day one is, I’m here to help you achieve your goals relating to both the business and the personal side. Let’s talk about what maybe is not working for you, what’s out of balance. And let’s just start there and see if we can find opportunities to work together to move the needle.

Lee Kantor: Now, it sounds like this type of work can really improve the culture of an organization. Are you seeing any kind of evidence of that happening?

John A Locke: Absolutely. I think the culture piece of this is, again, the long term play. You know, individually, you’re having an impact on people’s lives and careers that can’t help but have an impact on then the relationships that they have within their teams and how they’re then taking what they’re learning about themselves and their approach to leadership and cascading that down through their organizations. So when they find Fine individuals that are struggling in areas that maybe they have struggled in. They use a lot of the coaching techniques that they’ve learned as a part of the process in helping them. And, you know, one of the things that we learn in the coaching world, and I think this has become elevated really in a broader scale, is that the reason that people leave organizations we’ve always heard for years is, well, they leave the manager, right? Well, that’s partially true, but not the total picture. People leave. And this was the Google, you know, Aristotle project from now, almost 20 years ago, where they determined that the reason that people leave organizations is because they don’t feel psychologically safe. And so helping leaders help people feel better in their environments about their ability to contribute and give appropriate feedback and those types of things to give them a picture of their future and support them on that path creates a psychological safety that enriches the team and potentially the experience that they have on their individual leadership journey. So it’s when you think about that from a culture standpoint, it really creates a very connected culture in a very supportive environment for people to grow. And one of the other reasons that people will stay with an organization is they see their future. They see an opportunity to grow. And that’s been painted by the leader because they’ve invested, hopefully in the individuals on the team to help them achieve what’s important to them with their life and career goals.

Lee Kantor: Now, since this has been going on for a few years now, is this something that has kind of permeated the organization where coaching isn’t seen as remediation, but is seen as something that is almost a perk or a benefit for the teams?

John A Locke: Yeah, and I think we’re over that hump. Finally, you know, we we went through the first early stages and had some difficult moments there. And I think, you know, won people over and helped people see the the real value proposition here. And then going through the mergers, though, kind of created another set of interesting conversations around, well, what’s the true value of this? Because in the big merger we had five years ago, we merged with a two, two groups came together, D, H, G and BCD. Very strong, historically credible, wonderful reputation firms from the southeast and the Midwest. But DHG had the coaching culture embedded for several years and BCD did not. And so there was, you know, some initial work to be done there. And I think what’s happened is now the folks who were coming from that side of it, who didn’t have that kind of coaching experience. Growing up or developing have now seen the value and are for the most part, really big supporters of it. So I think that we’ve gotten through that. That’s not to say that there’s not always work to do to continue to elevate the value proposition, the testimonials and and watch some of these leaders flourish as they have experienced coaching. But it’s, it’s the type of a, I think, you know, you can use metrics to, to measure it. Uh, the real power, though, is in the stories. When you have people who say, I’ve never made it through this part of my career, had it not been for the coaching that I received at a critical time, or let me tell you how this impacted my life and my home life at a key moment. And let me tell you how I’m using this now to build my teams. Those stories really kind of create the concrete foundation for building, I think, a culture of coaching and a unique coaching, that culture that emanates around, hey, we care for the people and we’re going to invest in the people that we have here.

Lee Kantor: Now. Um, is there any advice you could give an organization that’s thinking about integrating coaching into their organization? There are some things that, you know now that you would have liked to know when you started.

John A Locke: Yeah, yeah. Well, there’s just not one way to do this, which is really interesting. And I think you alluded to that earlier, Lee, that you haven’t seen a lot of this in the industry. What we’re seeing right now, which is not a bad way to start, is you’re seeing organizations who are now hearing about the value of executive coaches at key leadership moments to integrate that into your talent development, philosophy and execution. And so if I were, um, probably advising maybe a midsize firm as to how would I go about this? I would probably go one of two directions. One is, I would say, let me find a couple of coaches who I can be very transparent with to see if we could contract with them and identify key players here that we could start some coaching with, to see how this is received and see if we can start measuring the value of it. So you kind of start slow with a contract coach or two with some key leaders at at critical moments in their career. The other would would be to do, I think what we did in that, uh, find someone who could come in and initially be kind of the, the go to person for executive coaching and start very small. And that’s what we did. You know, I had probably 5 or 10 coaches when I first started to really get a feel and to get to know the individuals within the firm to talk about coaching, because one of the things is the big, like I said, I spent probably two years educating and it’s hard for people truly to understand that this is a benefit and it truly is a high leverage tool for accelerating someone’s career versus a remedial effort to salvage somebody.

John A Locke: And that is a hard thing, especially if somebody’s struggling a little bit. They think, oh, I’m getting a coach because I’m failing no matter what, how it’s painted. But after a while, when they start getting to know the coach, they started seeing and talking to other people who have gone through it. They understand that this is a privilege and it is a perk, and it’s something that can be a career accelerator. So I would say if I was advising, I’d say one of two things. If you’re a little bit squeamish about wanting to bring on a full time person to build the executive coaching program, which was what I was privileged to do. I would say, you know, find somebody out there, and there’s an amazing number of great coaches out there who would just be willing to kind of be a consultant with you as you’re designing the initial phases of it. And as a result, they’re getting some coaching work to start with and just see how it goes, see what the results are. And then after, you know, a year or so of that start, you know, talking to leadership about, hey, what’s next for us and what can we do to develop, you know, a more robust, uh, internal coaching program.

Lee Kantor: Now, in the accounting world, obviously they’re dealing with numbers all the time. Um, did was that a challenge like putting numbers on? Is this working? Like, were you charged with, okay, we have to know if this is working. And, you know, we love numbers. So let’s is this an eight or is it a two like yeah. Um, you know, like was that part of the consideration or was this thing, uh, something that okay, we can tell just by feel kind of thing?

John A Locke: Well, you can only imagine working in an accounting firm. The numbers are a big deal and proof of performance is not taken lightly. Fortunately, there was not a lot of pressure early on for us to, uh, populate a lot of ROI data on, on the coaching, which I was very I mean, just honestly, that was a gift to not feel that pressure. But here’s what was really interesting. Lee and, uh, there’s an organization called the International Coaching Federation, their global organization. And I immediately got my certification, got credentialed and, and attended and started attending a lot of their events. And one of them was a global event up in Washington, D.C., which was like in the first year of of my work. And when I went there, I was exposed to the bigger world of executive coaching within major organizations. And Ernst and Young was there. And I learned by going there that they at that time had 23 internal coaches. Pwc was there, and they put on sessions talking about how there are 25 internal coaches work to meet the needs of their leadership teams. I mean, and the stories went on, you know, Allstate, Microsoft, I mean, just all of these blue chip organizations and the investment that they had made in coaching, I just was blown away. I had no idea that it was at that level. And so I thought, hmm, I’m gonna, I’m going to come back and I’m going to start doing some research within, you know, the industry and see what I can find because I know somebody’s going to ask me. And so I was very fortunate. And I met a gentleman who was with Ernst and Young, and he was just such so open with what was going on.

John A Locke: And even though technically you could say they were a competitor, uh, but he, he just said, you know, here’s kind of what we’re doing. You know, we started this thing, I think it was eight years ago at the time I met him. And they talked about, you know, the resources that they were investing in it. And they were just at that point in time, starting to get some ROI data, especially with partners and how their revenues of partners that have been coached were increased after they had been coaching versus, uh, partners that had not gone through the coaching program. So things like that. I started then kind of pushing up to our leadership and I would get some data around that, and I would use other people’s data to, to validate the effort and to also broaden the perspective relative to what’s possible here. Because one thing about going to that global conference, when I came back, I said, boy, this is not just about me anymore. This is about the opportunity for us to differentiate and to really design a program that’s going to have an impact on our leaders for years to come. And I just I’m not going to be able to do this by myself. So kind of a sidebar to that funny story is, uh, his name is Bob Kunkle. Bob, who I met at E. We ended up hiring, uh, three years after I met him and we brought him on to help us kind of scale the practice. And, um, that was so cool to see that happen over a period of time. And Bob is Bob is still with us. And so we have three internal coaches now, Bob being one of them.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there a story you can share that maybe illustrates what it’s like in the impact? Don’t name the individual that you were coaching, but maybe share, um, the challenge that they came to you with and how you were able to help them get to a new level.

John A Locke: Wow. Yeah. There’s, there are, there are many. Um, I’m trying to think of the one that might be the, the most impactful, but I would say early on is probably one of my favorite stories. Um, I was, uh, I had the opportunity to coach the chief operating officer of our, um, legacy firm, Dixon Hughes Goodman. And she had been with the firm for many, many years. And she, uh, little did I know her, when her boss came to me and asked me to coach, she had not even been informed that she was going to be going through a fairly significant transition in less than a year. So I didn’t know that. He didn’t tell me all the details right at the beginning, but he knew that he had to prepare her for that. And so she was a traditional accountant, um, and had really a lot of the, the mindsets of, of someone who had grown up in a very technical environment, although she was very pleasant and had good people skills, she was just very matter of fact. Matter of fact and tactical in her approach. And so we worked together for several months, and then all of a sudden her boss said to her, okay, we are now going to position you for a brand new role. And here’s what this is going to be required. And so we kind of dialed back and said, okay, now of all the things we’ve been talking about, what are the things that you need to really focus on to make sure that you’re going to be successful in this new role? And part of this new role was actually hiring kind of her replacement.

John A Locke: And so there was a big, you know, someone who had been with the firm for 30 some years. She now was not being moved to the side, but it was this restructuring was really going to have a huge impact on her ego because now this person, she’s going to have to almost hire somebody to take her place. And so she had to kind of process all of that. And she had to prepare for them this new role, which was very different than her COO role. And she came through that with flying colors. And she just said, you know, after all the dust had settled and boy, it got hairy there for a while with having to hire somebody and who heard going to a new role and being a senior leader in the firm and what all that meant. And she afterwards she said, you know, I will tell you that was one of the most at the time was one of the most stressful times of my entire career. And having you as a coach and working through that and all those different steps made such a difference. And she’s still with the firm today. And and probably her third new role since I’ve actually worked with her. But and she’s getting ready to retire here probably a year or two. But she, she was actually one of the biggest cheerleaders for coaching early on because she said, this is. It made such a difference in my ability to make make it through that transition.

Lee Kantor: Yeah. I mean, the impact is real not only to the individual and the firm, but also it trickles out to the family. The community. Like this is one of those things where the gift keeps on giving when you can help somebody in this manner.

John A Locke: Yeah, definitely. It’s incredibly rewarding profession. I, I had no idea that you could actually get paid to help people like this. You know, I’ve been helping people my entire life, never thinking about wanting to get paid for it. And it’s like, you know, to be able to do this and to earn a living is, is such a blessing. It really is. It’s, it’s phenomenal. And not every coaching experience is, you know, a huge home run, but almost every experience is something that I would say an individual, when they reflect on it, will say there was some serious value in that for me, whether it was something that that had a huge impact or more of it’s a long term perspective that they’ve gained, etc.. But very few people, and I’ve coached hundreds now over the years have said, you know, that was a waste of time. Or when we do our surveys at the end rate, it very low. I mean, most of the surveys come back with really high marks and comments that are just incredibly heartwarming and enriching and make you want to get up every day and do this work.

Lee Kantor: Now, in your work, you mentioned, uh, delivering the, the coaching one on one. Do you do, um, group training? Do you do speaking? Um, like how, what are other ways you deliver, um, coaching?

John A Locke: Yeah. Now in our practice, we do do some group coaching. Uh, I’m not doing a lot of that right now. Uh, my kind of area of focus and passion and enthusiasm is around, uh, speaking to the, speaking to groups and doing some workshops. And I’ve been privileged to have the opportunity to do a lot of trainings for our, uh, up and coming leaders. A lot of the programed events that we have, we have a big conference every year in June. It’s called the Vision Conference, and we bring all of our leaders from the high level all the way down through senior managers together. And I will, um, do some speaking at those events and some individual core trainings that we do throughout the year. So that’s been kind of my area of, um, passion and, and enthusiasm is to take things that I’m learning and tee it up for, you know, groups of 50 to 100 or whatever to experience. So, uh, I would say speaking workshops, doing trainings in addition to my one on one coaching is primarily my, uh, emphasis.

Lee Kantor: Now, is there, um, some of the speaking, is there a keynote that you deliver? Or is this just kind of you adapt to whatever the group needs?

John A Locke: Yeah, I developed a couple of years ago, I actually was challenged to find something that would, we could kind of take out and present to our partners and leaders. That would be more of a kind of a thought provoking, uh, developmental type of, uh, presentation that is non-technical and not specific, you know, to the accounting industry. And so I, uh, I worked and worked on it and finally came up with a presentation. And in the title of it is, uh, three gifts that transform lives. And, uh, it’s about exploring these innate gifts that each of us have relating to our, our, it works around kind of identifying our purpose as kind of the umbrella and then looking at how, um, our passion, our, our, our passion for developing our energy, our, um, ability then to focus on, uh, unselfish giving and how all, how all this kind of comes together to truly not only elevate ourselves on this journey of life in our career, but it has the ability then to impact others. So when you think about, you know, waking up every day, when you think about, you know, the energy that we bring, we think about then our, the presence that we have with people and the opportunity to give unselfishly when almost every day we’re going to have that opportunity to do one of those three things.

John A Locke: And when we do that and we focus on people and doing that, it really makes our life, um, much, much richer and it potentially can have the ability. And I use a few stories. I had one particular story with, uh, personal experience I had with James Earl Jones, the actor, and which changed me forever, watching him interact with people. And I just, I, I want people to know that you don’t have to be an actor. You don’t have to be a celebrity. You can just be a normal person. And if you focus and you be present with people, that you can literally change their lives because you don’t know where people are at. And so, um, yeah, I’ve been able to, uh, present that on several different occasions here within the firm and actually to some clients over the years.

Lee Kantor: Now that sounds like almost a book too. Is there a book in your future?

John A Locke: Uh, yeah. Well, it’s so interesting that you would say that because, um, I initially thought that it might be a book. And then what I came to start thinking is that, uh, you know, there’s, there’s much more to it than just those three things relative to a book that I might want to write. So I, um, a year ago, I had a pretty serious accident and I’ve had some downtime. And in literally in between in doctor’s offices, I have this, uh, journal that I take with me to kind of keep track of everything that’s going on in my rehabilitation. I started writing one day and a doctor’s office, and the next thing I know, I’ve got 4 or 5 pages of a book. And, um, yeah, I don’t know exactly what the title is going to be. The working title is Serve Your Way to Success, but it includes basically the tenets of that book, as well as several other events and interviews with, uh, other people who’ve subscribed to that same philosophy of, of really wanting to help others first, and then knowing that at some point in time that those investments that we make are going to come in in a timely manner to help us at a strategic time in our life journey. So yeah, I’m pretty excited about that and trying to get that off the ground. It’s, uh, hasn’t gone as quickly as I’d hoped because, I’m my rehab is still kind of, uh, taking a little bit more, more time than I had thought. But I’m, um, I’m excited about the potential to have that as well.

Lee Kantor: So what do you need more of? How can we help you?

John A Locke: Well, I just, uh, you know, I wake up every day thinking that, you know, this today is a gift. Um, and the reason that I have not that I always didn’t know it, but, um, you know, I broke my neck a year ago almost to this day. And so the fact that I’m able to walk and talk and even do this interview with you is such an incredible blessing. And so to have the opportunity that you’ve provided here today to just share a little bit of who I am and the story, uh, that I’ve had here as a coach is, is phenomenal. Um, and I truly wake up every day looking for opportunities to find ways to take what I’ve been through, what I’ve learned. Um, any gifts or experiences that are valuable to other people to help them to get to this next level. And so just you providing this platform to do this is, is a real gift to me. And I hope that it ends up being a gift to those that are listening as well.

Lee Kantor: I’m sure that it will, um, if somebody wants to connect with you or learn more about the firm, is there a website? Is there a best way to connect?

John A Locke: Really probably, you know, we have a massive website, so going to the website is not usually the best, most efficient way, but truly just to, you know, to shoot me an email. I’m on LinkedIn as well. Um, either way, uh, john.locke@us.forvismazars.com is an easy way or just, you know, go on LinkedIn And I’m John A. Locke on LinkedIn and reach out. And I would be happy to dialog and respond to anybody who has any questions about coaching, starting a coaching practice, or things that I could do to potentially help them on their journey to where they want to take their life journey.

Lee Kantor: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.

John A Locke: Thank you Lee. I appreciate the opportunity and wish you the best with your radio podcast program.

Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you all next time on High Velocity Radio.