In this episode of High Velocity Radio, host Stone Payton interviews Dorothy Doppstadt, an executive coach from Surge Partners LLC. Dorothy shares her mission to empower leaders with clarity, confidence, and purpose, drawing from her extensive background in communications and leadership development. She discusses the challenges of starting her coaching practice, the importance of assessments, and the distinct approaches men and women take in leadership. Dorothy emphasizes building trust and rapport with clients and highlights the transformative power of effective communication.
Dorothy Doppstadt combines powerful communications credentials and extensive industry experience with a strengths-based approach to coach leaders across matrixed organizations in global Fortune 500 Companies. Understanding the subtleties of savvy relationship building, Dorothy uses direct feedback in powerful ways to help clients find their voice, strengthen their presence, and build stronger cross-functional coalitions for maximum business impact.
Some of the outcomes she’s helped leaders achieve include financial turnarounds of major business units, developing profitable new lines of business, and strategic shifts in employee engagement successfully lowering turnover costs. Her background spans different leadership roles as a national award- winning ABC News editor, faculty member at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, and business trainer for diverse New York City employees.
Thriving on collaboration with leaders taking on increased scope, navigating transitions and organizational restructuring, Dorothy offers one-on-one executive coaching, team coaching to strengthen trust and change behaviors to drive performance, and organizational coaching to enhance the patterns and flow of communications within an organization for increased productivity and employee satisfaction.
Connect with Dorothy on LinkedIn.
Episode Highlights
- Empowering leaders to lead with clarity, confidence, and purpose.
- The transformative power of effective communication in organizations.
- Dorothy’s journey into executive coaching and her background in communications.
- Coaching approach focused on one-on-one sessions with high-level leaders.
- Challenges faced in establishing a coaching practice and building a client base.
- Common misconceptions about coaching and the importance of direct engagement.
- Gender dynamics in leadership and differences in communication styles.
- Building trust and rapport with clients as a key aspect of coaching.
- The coaching process, including initial assessments and goal setting.
- Recognizing signals that indicate the need for coaching among executives.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
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. You guys are in for a real treat. Please join me in welcoming to the broadcast with Surge Partners, LLC, Dorothy Doppstadt. How are you?
Dorothy Doppstadt : Very nice to be here, Stone.
Stone Payton: It’s a delight to have you. So I think a great place to start would be if you could share with us just mission. Purpose? What are you really out there trying to do for folks, Dorothy?
Dorothy Doppstadt : Well, I’ve. I’ve been really kind of blessed in that in all my different ventures of work, I’ve always really believed in what I’m doing. So, you know, I’m a former award winning ABC news editor. So I always knew the power of communications, you know, to drive meaningful change. And as an executive coach, which I’ve been now for about 20 years, I helped leaders sharpen their communications, build relationships, elevate their presence, and cultivate more effective teams, which makes for happier people in the organization. So my mission is to empower leaders to lead with clarity and confidence and purpose in the hopes of transforming organizations and the people within them for lasting positive impact.
Stone Payton: Well, it sounds like noble work If you can get it, I’d love to hear a little bit more about the background in your journey to to get to this point. I bet it wasn’t a straight line, probably some some nips and turns.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Oh my goodness. It certainly was not a straight line. In fact, Stone. I had no idea I would ever be so affiliated with business. I, um, never interested me, right? I was liberal arts all the way. And yet, it turns out business is perhaps one of the most creative occupations there is. Who knew? I didn’t know, and so I never thought I would end up doing what I’m doing now, which is kind of fantastic.
Stone Payton: Well, say more about the work, a little bit about the mechanism. Is it one on one work? Is it group work? A little bit of both.
Dorothy Doppstadt : It. I just was in Utah, um, for some organization development with a wonderful agency called synergy. But usually I tend to do one on one with leaders. That’s where I find I have the most impact. And I also have found that my sweet spot is with high level leaders.
Stone Payton: So at this point in your career, in this point in the development of your practice, what are you finding the most rewarding? What do you what are you enjoying the most these days?
Dorothy Doppstadt : I really enjoy working with leaders who don’t really get their full potential. And by not getting, I mean that they might have some imposter syndrome, or they’re nervous about really being able to do the role to its full capacity and getting them to lean in more of who they are. Right. So I’m going to steal a line from Marshall Goldsmith, who’s a very well-known executive coach. When he says, I work with successful people to make them more successful. And that’s what I like to do. I mean, they’re at a certain place in their career, and they didn’t just get there by happenstance. So I could give you an example if you want it.
Stone Payton: Absolutely. Please.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Okay. Well, I recently finished a coaching engagement, usually there about six months. And, um, I, I coached a fortune 500, you know, pharmaceutical, you know, VP on her communications, how she’s showing up on her leadership presence, which is really very much interior and her storytelling. Um, and the outcome after her hard work was she was promoted to SVP and global clinical operations head leaning 11,000 employees in 50 different countries. So one of the things she was really nervous about was seeing if she could fill her predecessor’s shoes and she could indeed. Or how to speak in town halls with such diverse cultures, with people from different countries showing up. And it turned out that this she was a woman, was so agile and knew so much about the business that once she could get out of her own way and start to understand that really presenting like, say, in town halls or Or in different large scale presentations. It’s about storytelling.
Stone Payton: How does the whole sales and marketing thing work for a practice like yours? Do you have a mature enough practice now that maybe it’s not even a challenge, but early on, when you began to transition to doing this work, was it? Was it tough just getting the business?
Dorothy Doppstadt : Oh, very much so. You have to have a lot of patience. Uh, people think when they start their own business and they’ll be an executive coach, and it’s just going to happen right away. One of the first things I did and women tend to over credential themselves, men tend to under credential. In other words, when there’s a job posting, women show up over credentialed and the men under credentialed. So one of the first thing I things I did was I needed to understand business and, uh, different industries and organizational systems. So I got my, um, executive and organizational coaching certification from Columbia University, which was a partnership with Columbia Business School for business Acumen, and then also with, uh, Teacher’s College for how adults learn. We learn differently than children. And that is why consensus and getting buy in from the client or the leader with his or her team is so important. It’s everything. That’s the only way we change if we want to.
Stone Payton: That is so true. So what, if anything, do people often get wrong or misunderstand about the nature of your work? Like are there some myths or preconceived notions when they’re walking into the idea of a coaching relationship? And you have to educate through that before you can really start doing any real work.
Dorothy Doppstadt : No, I really don’t spend time on what coaching is. I, I ask during chemistry meetings, which is how it starts to see if this is a good fit for them or for the coach. I say, do you mind if we dive right in and and we start. And I tend to be quite direct from growing up in a newsroom and asking questions. And also because I work with such high level leaders, I also I do some consulting as well. They want to have support and answers because it’s kind of crazy out there. Stone, have you noticed that?
Stone Payton: I have.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Okay.
Stone Payton: A moment ago, you were talking, uh, speaking to a couple of differences in men and women, men having a tendency to not get to be far less credentialed as you’re working with business owners and high level leaders. Do you find some distinctions in men and women in the way that they just approach the work and approach these conversations?
Dorothy Doppstadt : That’s such a great question. Um, one of the things I’ve noticed is a pattern, uh, with some men who don’t understand the importance of, you know, social equity and how important it is to take the time to get to know people, to have inner personal, positive relationships. They want to get right to the to the bottom line, which is usually money. And I had a wonderful experience with this man who just made CFO of a medical device company. He was terribly shy and introverted. He never felt he had the right background to speak to board members or CEOs and that kind of thing. He came from the military where he got his education paid for. He was this brilliant person, and it was just about starting to slow down and realize that he not only had the skill sets and the ability, but if he wanted to get where he wanted to, which was to move up and get CFO. I’m just so pleased for him. He needed to have better social interactions. People think communications is the soft stuff and there’s nothing soft about it at all.
Stone Payton: Nothing I’m trying to in my shoes. And I’m not a coach or really a consultant, except to a very small group of people within our system. I’m trying to get my arms around the level of trust and confidence that you must have to endear with a prospective client, or certainly a client, to get any real work done. Can you speak to that a little bit?
Dorothy Doppstadt : Sure. Um, you have to build rapport. You have to really have the client understand you’re on their side. And so I often will say, why don’t you see how it goes for you? Why don’t you just try this? Do a yes and mindset and see what feedback you get and how it is. And actually, with this same client I was just talking about, I had him go back to his wife, whom he dearly loved and had known forever and ever asking her had she noticed any difference in his behavior? Because that’s all we have to go on is our behavior. And she said, yeah, it’s a lot better with you. She said, you seem a lot happier, a lot more relaxed, a lot more present. That made me very happy.
Stone Payton: Well, sure. So I know the answer to this question is probably yes, but I’m going to ask it anyway just so we can get on the topic. Have you had the benefit of one or more mentors along the way to help you kind of navigate this terrain of, of coaching and making a real business out of it.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Making a real business out of it? No. You have to keep in there. And, um, I tended to go to executive coaching agencies, uh, where the clients were vetted and the coaches were vetted with certain, um, credentials. And just to give you an example about how different my background was, and this this is just a little side detour, I promise, that is being interviewed for ABC News management. Never had HR get near us because they wanted certain people to be able to get into the newsroom and be reporter editors and to question authority and all of that. Whereas as an executive coach, you have to get ready to partner with the HR business partner of the client or of the organization. So that was so interesting for me. And like all things, some HR people are great. Some HR people are so-so. It just it just depends. So that was the choice that I made was to get on coaching benches so I could start to build a portfolio. Right. Because, you know, people are not going to just find me in my living room.
Stone Payton: So going back to your whole process, I’d like to dive in a little deeper if you’re up for it. So there’s that. I believe you you referred to it as as a chemistry meeting, a chemistry conversation. Can you walk us through some of the next steps in your process so we can get a picture of what an an engagement or a relationship with you might look like over time.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Sure. So the client has to choose the coach. That’s the way it works. I’m not famous enough to. I choose the client. No. And so, you know, we speak anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes. I have found longer is not useful. And seeing if it’s a fit and seeing if, um, what I’m saying makes sense to the person. I just got a new engagement from a top leader in in retail that he was finding what I was saying very helpful. So once they pick you, then there’s usually this engagement where it starts with, you know, the first session going over roles and logistics and outcomes and what they want to work on then seeing if there are assessments offered with the coaching engagement. I love the Hogan. It’s I call it the white male corporate assessment because it’s it’s really tough and it certainly changed me. And assessments are so great because you can it just starts to objectify language. This is what this is saying. I’ll say to a client, what do you think? And then hopefully I can get a 360, which really builds on my reporting skills, where the client and their manager pick 6 to 8 people all around them, you know, peers above direct reports and other stakeholders where I asked them all the same four questions.
Dorothy Doppstadt : And then I write up a report and what starts to happen is that clear patterns emerge. So let’s take the the recent, um, CFO client who just got that role, which is what he wanted. There was a pattern that he needed to a soften his edges. Right. You know. Hello, Stone. How are you? Didn’t that kind of thing. And then also not just read the data, but start to take a more leadership role in starting to help change the data? So a whole different way of thinking. And then we, after we’ve gone through all the very robust feedback of assessments and three 60s and unpacking stuff, we we just start meeting one on one to speak about what matters to the client, what’s important. Do you have a presentation coming up? Would you like to work on that? Do you have a is there a kind of a communications glitch with the stakeholder you Do you want to work on that? That kind of thing.
Stone Payton: I love the way that you talk about utilizing an assessment, because I’m getting the idea that, um, maybe assessments aren’t necessarily designed to be prescriptive. Maybe they shouldn’t be prescriptive, but what a marvelous catalog. Uh, catalyst for genuine conversation.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Exactly.
Stone Payton: You’re asking them, what do you think? And then you’re opening up the conversation. Yeah.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Yeah. I mean, I didn’t even know what an assessment was. So I got, uh, certified, I think in two years in, like, 5 or 6 of them. And out of them all, except for the, um, emotional quotient to the EQ. I liked the Hogan the best for higher leaders because it’s divided into different reports of your values. You always want to go over the leader’s values and North Star. And then it’s how the leader is showing up every day, how people see him and then potential leadership. Derailers. So but between all those reports, there’s a lot of info and data to get.
Stone Payton: So I’m going to switch gears on you for a minute, if I might. Before we wrap, I’m interested to know, uh, what are you into when you’re not doing coaching and consulting? Uh, pursuits, hobbies. What do you like to do outside the scope of this work?
Dorothy Doppstadt : Well, I’m. I love where I live, um, I live in Manhattan on the Upper West Side, and so I love to go to museum and art shows. I love to go to screenings with films because I got my MFA in film. I was a screenwriter for a little bit. I loved just to walk around the city and in the parks, and I love to go up to Maine, so I have kind of a lot I do. I think I always yeah, there’s a lot I really, really like. There’s some really great shows going on now in New York.
Stone Payton: So Yeah. Sounds like you stay busy. So what are some signals? If I’m an executive, um, what are some signals that I ought to at least be entertaining? The idea of having a conversation. Having a chemistry conversation with with someone. What’s happening in my world? That.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Oh. Great question. I mean, what I have found, and I do a lot of fortune 500 companies, so they’re global and all different industries, from tech to aerospace to telecommunications to retail to pharma. I have found that you need to get along. You need to be able to play in the sandbox. And what starts to happen is they tend to run into more conflict than need it, because it’s a really hard role to be a leader, because you have to bring people along and things are changing so quickly out there. Um, it said that there’s new technology every 11 minutes. Wow. And yeah, it’s it’s it’s so crazy. And this is where the social energy and having cross-functional relationships throughout the organization is so important. Leaders who can pick up a phone and get somebody on the other end are able to solve problems and find solutions quicker.
Stone Payton: All right. So what’s the best way for our listeners to reach out, maybe have a more substantive conversation with you? Tap into your work. What’s the best way for them to connect?
Dorothy Doppstadt : Um, well, I have a website that I need to update, and I think this interview is going to make me do it. And that’s my name, Dorothy Obstat. Uh, d o double P, as in Peter s t as in Tom, A as in apple, D as in dog, t as in Tom dorothy.stat.com. It’s my website and on it you will see a way to contact me. That would be the best way.
Stone Payton: Well Dorothy, it has been an absolute delight having you on the show this afternoon. Thank you for your insight, your perspective, and your vigor for the work.
Dorothy Doppstadt : Thank you so much, Stone. It was a pleasure talking with you.
Stone Payton: All right, until next time. This is Stone Payton for our guest today, Dorothy Dobbs STAT with Surge Partners, LLC and everyone at the Business RadioX family saying, we’ll see you in the fast lane.
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