Executive Coach Linda Bonnar

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 morning. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Linda Bonnar Coaching the lady herself, Linda Bonnar. How are you?

Linda Bonnar: Hi, Stone. What a lovely introduction. I am very, very, very well, thank you. How are you?

Stone Payton: I am doing very well and I’ve really been looking forward to this conversation. I think a good place to start. How about sharing with us? Just general mission. Purpose? What are you really out there trying to do for folks?

Linda Bonnar: Um, my mission is always. It’s always about making things better, stone. And I’ve always been that way, even as a as a child. Right. And so now as an adult, as a coach working with people in this space, it’s about equipping people with the knowledge, the skills and the tools that they need to overcome challenges that they’re facing successfully and then move forward confidently in life. Feeling equipped with those tools, almost like a tool belt for success, right?

Stone Payton: Absolutely. So how did you get started? What’s what’s the backstory?

Linda Bonnar: And anytime I’m asked this, I try and do the long story short, which I don’t do a very good job at because I love chatting and I love people’s stories. And in a, in a previous career, in a previous world, I guess I was a history teacher and I absolutely loved education and I loved everything about it. And I was also quite stressed in my job, and I didn’t have the tools in my own toolkit at the time to manage that stress and then to help the young people that I was working with to to manage their stress as well. And if anything, I was a stressor in their lives, so it just wasn’t working. And whenever we find ourselves in a situation where something isn’t working well, that’s an indication for us to do something different. And I did. So I discovered coaching and I discovered coach training. And I’ve been really lucky. I’ve had excellent trainers and mentors and guides and supervisors as I’ve moved through this process. And I thought to myself one day, you know what? I love this even more than marking 40 history assessments every week. I love these conversations that I get to have with people. I love helping them develop their self-awareness and think and asking themselves even more powerful questions. You know what? What is it that I can be doing differently here? Who do I know that can help me? How can I be showing up differently to this particular situation or challenge?

Stone Payton: Well, let’s do let’s dive into the work a little bit. What does that actually look like? Are you working one on one or are you working with groups? Is it training, speaking, facilitating? Walk us through the work a little.

Linda Bonnar: And it’s all of those and more I okay. That’s which is fantastic and I, I really I get so much enjoyment like so much joy from every aspect of my work. So on some days it looks like working with people in groups. So perhaps as a company and they’ve identified, you know, we’ve got a group of people who are actually quite stressed or we’re navigating this change. There’s a reorg going on, and we’d love someone to facilitate a group coaching process over maybe 4 to 6 weeks. I’m your person. Fantastic. Sometimes then within organizations or even, you know, a personal private clients. You know what, Linda? Something just sits in working well and, you know, and I’m not sure what to do or I feel stuck. How do I move through this? So again I’m your person keynote speaking around topics such as again, navigating change, managing stress, emotional regulation, anything around emotional intelligence. And I’m your person there as well. And then I’m also heavily involved in I’ve got a startup which is a wellbeing system for schools. So again, I’m still playing a key role in education wherever I can as well, and working with young people just to help them thrive rather than just survive on a day to day basis.

Stone Payton: So the keynote speaking, I’m curious, since you were a teacher, was that pretty easy, even in the beginning, to get in front of a big group of people and deliver an address? Or was it a little intimidating at first?

Linda Bonnar: This is this is a wonderful question. Thank you. You know what, Stone? If my dad was here right now on this show with us, he’d say, well, she’s never had a problem with talking. She’s never been short of words as Iolanda and and again, it’s always been. You know, when I was, I was younger and used to go to mass or church. My parents, you know, I was often asked to read. They used to say I had a what was it? You know, just a a voice that carried I remember somebody telling me one day and it’s just grown from there. What’s most important is and I find this really eases any nervousness or intimidation that I feel is the, the message, what’s the value that I’m adding? And once I focus, once I take the focus away from me and anything that I might be experiencing in my own headspace, and I focus on the people and on the message, that makes a huge difference. Because then there’s value, right? And I’m doing it with purpose and creating that difference.

Stone Payton: You know, it’s interesting. I had the pleasure of interviewing a gentleman yesterday, and I’m going to butcher it a little bit, but you’ll get the general idea. But he, he essentially said, when it’s when it’s not about you, the pressure is off of you. It was something like that. I think there’s something to that, isn’t there?

Linda Bonnar: Most definitely. Because, you know, I even find this. I find it with coach trainings that I do as well. So I work with coaches who are moving towards, you know, a new certification or something like that. And they often say to me, how do you listen so actively and like intensely for that period of time during a session? I’m like, we have to make it about the coach or about the client that you’re working with. Because when we make it about ourselves and we’re in our own heads, we’re missing we’re potentially missing those really important nuances or idiosyncrasies that are formulating the passion and the challenge that the person is experiencing. Those things are key.

Stone Payton: You’re an author as well. You’ve written two books that I know about. I’d like to hear a little bit about the books, but also the the experience of writing, publishing a book.

Linda Bonnar: And this was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever experienced. Stone, to be honest, because, I mean, I meet people and they’re like, oh, you know, yes, of course I’ve written a book. We all have a book, you know, inside of us. And it’s like, yes, we do, and that’s great. And writing the book is almost and this is not to mitigate, you know, anybody or minimize anybody’s experience. If they’ve struggled with writing. Sometimes that can be the easy part. It’s like, oh, here, I’ve written a book. The challenge then is everything that comes after it the editing process, those deeper conversations. My I remember my editor saying to me at one stage for my second book, just three things. She said, Linda, do me a favor here, right? I need you to be more raw. And I remember saying to her, tally, like I cannot be any more raw, like I’m so vulnerable in this book. And she said, no, you can be. And so it’s that pushing, but it’s also that I know you can do it. So it’s and I also remember my publishing consultant saying to me, you know, Linda, when your book goes out there, it’s out there and it takes on a life of its own, and you have no control over what or how anybody responds to that book.

Linda Bonnar: The judgment, the criticism, the compliments, it’s all of those things. And I found that hard because I take these things really personally still, and I definitely take them a lot more personally than I do now. But at the start, I remember seeing somebody saying to me, they were like, you know, what gives you the right to write a coaching book for teenagers or for adults? You don’t have children, you know. You don’t. You don’t work in these top organizations. You just kind of come in and out and float around. And I thought, wow, if you think I’d just go in and out of organizations and float around like, that’s interesting. So there’s so much learning in this process about ourselves and about other people as well, and how we can manage ourselves even better in, in these kinds of situations as well. It’s a fascinating process.

Stone Payton: Have you found that going through that process, committing those ideas to paper, putting it out there for the world to see and to respond to, and in that variety of ways, have you found that it has, though, crystallized your your own thinking, solidified some of your own thinking, and made you a better practitioner?

Linda Bonnar: Most definitely. Because one of the things that I focus on is making challenges are these kind of bigger, more complicated things that we might face breaking them down into bite sized pieces. Like, that’s basically the premise for just three things. And with my coaching book for teenagers, press play, it’s all about, again, these challenges. But how do we overcome them step by step? And that’s a it’s literally the foundation for my work because I meet people every day who will say to me, this is huge, Linda. Like, I can’t even see past this. What am I supposed to do here? And so it’s it’s taking something complicated or something that seems insurmountable, and then being able to turn it into something that’s tangible, manageable, and doable. And that’s something that I, I work on every single day. And practice makes progress.

Stone Payton: Absolutely. So at this point in your career, what are you what are you finding the most rewarding? What’s what’s the most fun about it for you these days?

Linda Bonnar: Definitely. There’s so many different pieces I have. I’m smiling to myself here because I’ve got several coaching clients who have just had brilliant wins in the past week. Really, really great wins, and I love that. And wins can look like different things for different people in different moments of time. For example, I’ve got one particular person who’s just scored this promotion that she has been chasing for so long. We’ve worked through self-doubt. We’ve worked through imposter syndrome. We’ve worked through executive presence, showing up for those interviews with just this absolute air of yes, I deserve to be in this seat. And equally then working with other people who’ve got more, you know, personal things going on. So it’s how do I communicate certain things with my spouse or with my children? And so, you know, when I get messages from my clients to say, Linda, you know, turn around to my 14 year old daughter today, didn’t shout at her in the face like we’ve been doing for the past couple of months. But I looked at her and I said, I love you, I care for you. What is it that you need from me right now? And for me, honestly. So like that’s a win right there when somebody is able to apply things that we’ve been talking about and practicing, it’s huge.

Stone Payton: So one of the challenges that you mentioned and you shared several there, one of them is imposter syndrome. Say more about that. I’ve run into that phrase before.

Linda Bonnar: Yeah. So it’s and it’s really interesting. It’s been around since the late 70s. The phrase was coined by these two female researchers who were noticing that more so, women, women in high powered positions. And this is not to say that it’s only people who identify as being female will experience imposter syndrome. I think we we more than likely all do at some point in time. But do we label it as that? Not necessarily. So it can be this feeling of feeling like a fraud, this sense of looking around you in a room, going, any minute now, somebody’s going to find out that actually I don’t belong here. Are they going to question me on something? Or it can sound like that story in our heads that we tell ourselves of, I’m here because I’m lucky. You know, I didn’t get here through hard work or, you know, anything. Just being lucky. And and it can be the hard thing about it is it can be so debilitating. So I work with people who will say, well, I can’t go for that job because I don’t have that qualification or I can’t apply for that position because of and again, there’s other parts of this story, and there’s also research done around this stone where if a, you know, a male candidate and a female candidate look at a particular job description and there’s ten things that are required on this job description, and the female candidate can do nine out of ten.

Linda Bonnar: She is more than likely to say to herself, well, I can’t do the 10th. So you know what? I’m not going to waste that person’s time. I won’t apply for that job and I’ll look for something else. And the male candidate is more likely to look at that list of things. And if they can do at least five, they’re like, I’m going to go for this job. And again, that’s not and that’s not a generalization. So I’d hate for anybody to think that I’m painting everybody here with the same piece or the same narrative or story or belief. It’s what research has told us. And again, that awareness is really powerful because then we can do something about it.

Stone Payton: So you mentioned earlier in the conversation being part of a startup. Tell tell us more about that.

Linda Bonnar: So I’m very, very proud of this. And I’m also like it’s wonderful. Upstream is is so many things in my life. And upstream is our wellbeing system for schools. And it came about because when I wrote press play first, one of my very good friends and we had done lots of coach training together, he said to me, you know, Linda, your book is great, but young people don’t read anymore and we need an app. It’s like, I don’t know about you, but I don’t have, you know, quarter of $1 million lying around in a secret bank account somewhere. So help me with this. And he kept the conversation going. And eventually I said to him, you know what? Put your money where your mouth is. If you believe in this idea so much and that we can make it work, Find it. Find me people that I can work with to create this. Because I can write all the content. I can create all these fantastic programs. But I have no idea about how we actually go about creating that. And he he did. And so we we created Double Drive. And we’re so proud of its dome because what we noticed, and this is my own personal experience with schools and education in my professional experience as well. Schools want to they often they more than likely, you know, 99.9% of schools in the world want to see their young people. They want to see their school communities thrive.

Linda Bonnar: They want to be looking after their wellbeing, their mental wellbeing, their emotional and social wellbeing. But not every school has the resources to do that. They don’t all have funding. They don’t all have the tools. They don’t all have the the, the knowledge as such are the people who are trained in these particular areas within their school. And that’s the gap that UPS drive bridges. So it’s really focusing on bridging the critical gap that we see that exists in schools ability to efficiently and effectively monitor and then measure young people’s well-being, understanding their emotional experiences more. And that’s what we do through a mobile application and a desktop version as well. We’re empowering teachers again with the knowledge and the skills so that they can have these, you know, these more open conversations. They can get real time data on how young people in their classrooms are feeling, and that gives them the power to intervene more appropriately and at the right time as well. And I think, you know, with everything that’s going on in the world and everything that has been going on, we really as adults, if we have young people in our lives and we work with young people, we have a duty of care to really support them in their development. At the at the moment, it’s something that’s exceptionally close to my heart, which you can probably hear.

Stone Payton: I can definitely hear it. And I’m getting the distinct impression that what I’m about to ask may have never been a challenge for you, but I’m going to ask anyway, particularly as you were initially making that transition from teaching and going out. And not only, you know, beginning to practice your your craft externally, but you’re running a business. Was it tough at all, at least in the early days, just the whole business side of coaching, the sales and marketing, the getting the clients. Was that a challenge at least early on?

Linda Bonnar: Yes, most definitely. And you know what the biggest challenge that I recognized. And here’s where, you know, we all coaches need coaches as well, right. We we all have something that that we’re going through. And whether it’s a coach or, you know, a different form of support that you get. Because one of the main blockers for me at that time was my money story, and I had this limiting belief or this really unhelpful story around money and about asking people for from money. And that’s that’s challenging. And the reason that I had that was because it was almost like, well, that’s greedy Linda. Don’t ask people for money. Don’t put your prices up like that. Gosh, that’s so greedy. Hear that word? It’s almost like. Like it was like a dirty word or something. And I had to change that mentality and learn to put a price on the value. Not necessarily my time. Right. That’s a part of it as well, but the value that I bring. And I sat down with the business coach and I said, help me with this. And it was incredible like that reframing, changing my money story again, believing that I have a right to ask people for money, that I add value to people’s lives.

Linda Bonnar: And that’s the conversation that I that I focus on now. It’s not about, you know, how can I get clients here? How can I make more money? It’s how can I add value to this person right now? How can I add a difference even in a really simple conversation. So it’s not about what’s in it for me. It’s what can I do for you? And that changes things. And that’s not to say that everybody that I engage with is going to invest in my coaching at all, but it’s a very different mindset. And I often meet coaches who are starting off setting their business. And I see a lot of this on social media. It’s like, work with me and make six figures in six weeks. And I’m like, well, that’s not right. And I know there’s lots of different pieces to it as well with algorithms and how you set yourself up for business and and everything like that. Being part of a startup as well has also taught me so much about relationships. I’ve always known that relationships were important as a teacher, right? But then moving into setting up a coaching business and being part of upstart, it’s those relationships. Without that, it’s nothing so important.

Stone Payton: So I’m going to switch gears on you for a minute, if I might. I’m interested to know about hobbies, interests, pursuits, passions outside the scope of your coaching work. Anything you nerd out about that’s not coaching.

Linda Bonnar: Yeah, I think, well, when I’m not coaching and, you know, trying to help people thrive every day in their lives, then I’m seeking to thrive myself. And running plays a huge role in that. Um, I find it even hard to, you know, for a person who’s rarely short of words, I sometimes find it hard to describe or explain the impact that running has on my life. I’ve always, you know, been a keen equestrian, so I’ve always ridden horses from a very young age. Loved that as well. And then I, you know, I got to the stage in my life where I worked for some incredible people along the way, and I thought, this is a very hard way to make money. And because, you know, maybe it’s more of a passion for me rather than, you know, my, my day to day graft as such. Right. So I’ve gone through all these different kind of ways of thinking about it and all that to say, uh, I discovered running. Oh, gosh, it’s been about ten years ago. I used to smoke and I didn’t live a very healthy lifestyle. I had my own mental health challenges. And so as part of giving up smoking, I told myself this story, right. Well, if I give up smoking, I’ve got to have something else that replaces that. And I was going through this phase of, you know, trying to look after myself better, trying to get mentally stronger, physically stronger. So I thought, you know what, I’ll give this running thing a go and I’ll see how it pans out.

Linda Bonnar: And it was really interesting because maybe, gosh, I don’t know, 5 or 6 years ago, I remember saying to one of my friends, I’m going to run a marathon. And they laughed at me and they said, you know, Linda, where are you running to? Is there a sale on? And, you know, blue eyeliner or something like that? I was like, oh God, this is terrible. So it’s there’s so many deeper levels here. It’s not just the running, it’s the change in identity and how I’ve grown through this as well. Because when one of my friends said that to me, I was like, no, like, I want to be better. I want to be a better person. I want to be stronger. I want to have a stronger mind, stronger body. And this is actually a pathway to help me get there. So fast forward years later, I have run so proud to say that I have run 18 marathons around the world. I’ve qualified for the Boston Marathon twice, which for anybody listening who might not be familiar with Boston Marathon, it is the unicorn of marathons. You you have to qualify. And for a woman of my youth, I don’t I’ve done very well to qualify twice for it. It just gets harder the older that you that you get as well. So I love that. I love the places that running takes me mentally and physically. And I’m, you know, I, I’m grateful. I’m so, so grateful to be able to run every day in the way that I can. Yeah, well.

Stone Payton: You clearly have what one of my daughters would call street cred. And obviously something to offer when it comes to this idea of creating change that that sticks. I bet you bring that to your work too. Yeah.

Linda Bonnar: Yeah. It’s so like this is again, it’s the foundation of what I do because it’s about walking my talk and leading from that place, modeling particular behaviors that I want to see in the world that I would like to see others. And what’s interesting about this stone is, and I don’t know if you’ve had this experience, people sometimes meet us where we are, and they make the assumption that’s how we’ve always been, whether for good, bad or indifferent. So people might say to me, they’re like, oh, well, it’s easy for you, Linda, because you’re a runner. It’s easy for you because you’ve got your own business. And it’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Let’s press pause here for a second.

Linda Bonnar: That’s interesting, because who says it’s easy? Like, who defines easy here? And also like, keep in mind everybody has a story. Everybody’s got a book. And in that book everybody’s got a chapter that they don’t read aloud. Everybody has got something that they’ve been through that has shaped who they are today. And so if I had started running at maybe the age of, I don’t know, 13 instead of 30, would things have been different for me? Maybe. Who knows? But it’s one of the things that I do tell people is if I can do it, anyone can. And yes, I can run marathons now. But there’s days where I go out for my run and I find three miles difficult. And that’s not to say that’s, you know, just mean that I’m a terrible runner. It’s just an indication to press pause and think, right, what’s going on for me right now? What’s going on with my day? Have I set myself up for success in terms of my marathon training and maybe I haven’t. So I think this is, you know, all of these things to say that the self-awareness and owning our story, being proud of who we are and what we’ve gone through and what we continue to grow through is, is, is paramount in all of this.

Stone Payton: Before we wrap up, I wonder if you could share with us and our listeners a pro tip for producing better results in In less Time and look, gang. The number one pro tip is reach out and have a conversation with Linda. But between now and then, let’s let’s leave them with a little something to chew on.

Linda Bonnar: I love that. Well, look, when it comes to being productive and getting better results in less time, one of the things that I always encourage people to do, myself included, is to ask yourself that question of what’s my purpose in doing this right? Like, so when I sit down, because we we only have so much, so many hours in the day, so much time, and a lot of it gets wasted. So if we want to be more productive, being really, really clear about what it is that we’re looking to create, and that can be sparked by the question of what’s my purpose in doing this? So if I sit down and I turn my laptop on, or I go to pick up my phone or I, you know, go to whatever it is, what’s my purpose in doing this? Oh, I need to write that email because I want to connect with Stone about this particular thing. And the more focus that we can be, then the more that helps with our productivity as well. Ask yourself better questions and you get better answers.

Stone Payton: Amen. All right. What’s the best way for our listeners to continue to tap into your work, connect with you, maybe have that conversation with you.

Linda Bonnar: I always welcome any kinds of questions, any invite to have, you know, deep conversations as well. And you can do that by emailing me. Is definitely the best way to get in touch with me. And you can email me. I’m at Linda at Linda Bonner Coaching.com so that’s my first and last name and the word coaching.com. And and again, one of the things that I will say about coaching as well, stone is one of my mentors, you know, from an early part in my coaching career, she always said to me about offering a free space, right? A free consultation, even if that’s five minutes, but giving people a space where they can come and they can meet you. And that’s important because when you work with a coach, you want to be working with someone that you trust. 110% that fit in terms of the relationship is so important, because that will help you to be open and honest with your coach, to identify those limiting beliefs and to create a pathway forward for yourself. And I’m always happy to create space and time for for these really important coaching conversations.

Stone Payton: What a delight to have this conversation with you. I certainly got the benefit of far more than that, and our listeners did too. Linda, thank you for your insight, your knowledge, your your enthusiasm and your vigor and genuine interest in serving people. You are clearly doing important work. Keep up the good work and thank you so much for visiting with us today.

Linda Bonnar: Oh my gosh, thank you so much for having me here, Stone, and again for creating the space for this conversation. I’m truly, truly grateful. Thank you.

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