It is hard to accept our weaknesses and failures, and as a result, our personal growth is hindered and our relationships suffer. By embracing vulnerability within ourselves, we can walk away from our past mistakes and discover our inner strengths that are yet to be showcased. Joining Melanie Parish is a leadership coach and the CEO of Meritage Leadership, Susan Drumm, to discuss how to get rid of imposter syndrome and how unlocking your full potential can open up your heart for better relationships. Susan also shares some advice on hiring coaches and the real reason you should do so and how to avoid unprofessional and uncertified ones.

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Listen to the podcast here

Embracing Vulnerability And Building Connections With Susan Drumm

As I’m thinking about my own leadership, I’m thinking about how the right conversation helps the workflow better. When I run across friction in my work, I’m starting to ask myself, “What’s the conversation that didn’t happen in order to improve the feedback loops that help us have a better quality of work going forward?” It’s so easy to get in our heads and think we’re right and somebody else is wrong but often, it comes down to the quality of conversation. I’m going to keep asking myself this question, and I hope you will, too, “What’s the conversation I didn’t have?”

I’m here with Susan Drumm. She’s a CEO, advisor, and leadership coach focused on helping leaders and their teams to develop the capacity and mindsets to lead in the disruptive environment nowadays. She’s been running a boutique consulting firm, Meritage Leadership since 2006. Susan has graduate degrees from Harvard Law School, Carnegie Mellon University, and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. With deep experience coaching C-Suite executives from a variety and range of industries, she’s the perfect person to speak about topics that are relevant. I can’t wait to get to know Susan Drumm more.

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Susan, I am so excited to have you on my show.

I’m excited to be here with you. Thank you.

I would love to hear what you are up to. As a leader in your work, what’s going on in your world?

These are uncertain times that we’re living in. I would say primarily helping other leaders build resilience, build the capacity to handle change in adversity to discover blind spots, what’s getting in their way, you can’t see what you can’t see and helping illuminate that for them and to have it as a choice on behaviors and triggers. Personally, I’m involved in launching a YouTube channel, which we’re excited about, called The Enlightened Executive and I am finishing writing a book on top of all of this. I’ve got a lot of projects going.

What’s your book going to be about?

The book will be focused on how our childhood wounds impact us in the workplace and how you can use the power of music to be able to heal those wounds. I have a particular way of approaching it and a process to be able to shift it. It was born out of my own experience when I dealt with some significant pain in my life. This is what I found helped me out of the abyss. I started applying it to clients and I started researching the music’s impact on the brain and neural pathways and developed the program from it. That’s what the book’s about.

Embracing Vulnerability: When there’s a lot of protection built up, people can sense some of that.

I’m curious how you are experimenting in your own work now?

I’m definitely experimenting in terms of creating a YouTube channel. I feel all of my work in the past has been through word of mouth and one leader introducing me to another leader. This is a much more public forum to talk about leadership, also to interview guests, as you’re doing with me. The whole marketing end of that is all new. Experimenting how we can provide value without that one-on-one connection, and we talked about before you speaking into the abyss and you’re not sure how it’s landing, that’s going to be different from me. I usually have a lot of feedback on how things are landing, and I adjust at the moment based on what the client needs where it is going to be different.

When you’re starting to think about how you bring that into the marketplace, what are you thinking about in terms of, what’s the true north for you for that?

What do you mean, the true north for me?

It’s like how you orient. There are a million things you could talk about. It could be topical or it could not be topical. What are some of the guiding principles that you might have for that YouTube channel and how do you think about that as a leader in your own organization?

It was getting clear what the intention of it was, which is, how your personal evolution sparks your leadership evolution. My guidance is what I know about and I ask others that have been groundbreaking techniques, strategies, assessments, programs that have helped leaders create the breakthroughs in their own lives. I want to talk to both the founders of the programs as well as the executives who’ve experienced them.

I want to hear their story about, what did this do for you, and what happened? It’s a function of who I am. I’m a curator of all different types of assessments, programs, techniques, and tech as well. Usually, people come to me and they ask, “I’ve heard of this. Is this helpful?” “Tell me, what’s the latest and greatest assessment that you’re using right now?” I had to make a show about that because if enough people are asking me, people must want this.

That’s so amazing and it’s a great way to answer all those questions that people do have. You’re certainly an expert in the field of coaching as a master certified coach with a long history as well as the rest of your background. The people that have that background often go to them as a resource and I love that you’re turning it into a business asset.

Exactly, so that’s experimental.

What keeps you awake at night, Susan?

To some degree, personally, my family, my parents are in their 80s. We’re going through the COVID crisis now. They live with my brother. Sometimes I feel powerless to protect them. I live in Scottsdale, Arizona. They live in DC. We’ve done as much as we can, yet they still have to go to doctors. My brother has to go to work. What’s keeping me up is their fragility in this pandemic.

It keeps me awake at night as well with my dad. I understand that it’s hard when they’re far away and grappling with this on their own. I’d love to ask you, to talk a little bit, I often ask my guests to talk about imposter syndrome. I find that people have such interesting perspectives on the idea of imposter syndrome and I’m not going to ask you to bare your soul and tell me your deepest darkest secrets. Although if you want to, I’m all in. I am curious about imposter syndrome as someone who’s coached lots of people, as a leader, what you’ve learned and how you think about imposter syndrome in your work with people?

Different leaders have different wounds and to me, imposter syndrome is one of those wounds. It’s where I feel some sense of inadequacy, and therefore, I’m afraid that I’ll be found out about that inadequacy. The way we look at that is where do I feel like I’m faking it until I make it because I know I need to do this but I’m scared to have to pretend that I’m confident but inside I’m worried or scared. To some degree, I’m experiencing that with transitioning from the team coaching work I do, the one-on-one coaching to the retreats to this world of YouTube and being a YouTube influencer. I feel like an imposter doing that because I haven’t done that before and I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m hoping to hire marketers to help me figure out what to do.

I would say, when there’s a lot of protection built up, ultimately, people can send some of that. Where I coach people is being vulnerable about it allows people to build connections with you. If I were to pretend I got it all handled, “I’ve got an acting background, so I’ve got this. It’s fine.” It doesn’t build that sense of trust with the fact that I’m willing to reveal things about myself builds trust between us in that way.

Embracing Vulnerability: If you can turn and love what’s underneath your fears, you don’t need that armor as much as you thought you did.

The work I do around imposter syndrome is helping people understand what the trigger is, understand what the wound is and what would it be like to almost be honest about that and who can you be honest about that with and what does that open up for you when you do. A lot of times with some of the leaders it’s like a big weight has been taken off them. Also, when they realize that a lot of people have this wound, you’re not alone. That’s also incredibly connection building and it allows us to take down the armor.

I love the idea of vulnerability as the way to walk past imposter syndrome. That’s so powerful and so relevant for people. You can’t discover that you’re not the only one unless you do that. You have to open up in order to find out the entire world has the same experience at one time or another, not all the time.

Ultimately, this is a journey of loving yourself so in imposter syndrome, there’s some aspect of yourself you’re not fully embracing and loving. Therefore, we feel like it needs a shell around it and because we built the shell, we’re so afraid somebody peels behind the curtain sees what’s under there. If you can turn and love what’s under there then you don’t need that armor as much as you thought you did.

What do you do for your own self-care?

I meditate first thing every morning. I’ve been doing that for a few years now. I never thought I could meditate a few years ago. I have too much of this busy monkey mind constantly of, “I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that.” I’ve found that I can’t wake up without it. The other thing I do is to exercise almost every morning. My morning is about getting my mind and body right. I eat healthy foods. It’s like having a mantra of being the best I can be in mind, body, and spirit. I need to make sure before I sit down to work that those things are in place to the best of my ability.

Susan, I know you work with other coaches in your organization and I would love to ask you the question. What should people think about when they’re hiring a coach?

As with your significant other, chemistry is so important. Do you feel a sense of trust? I would say, “What types of questions did the coach ask, and how engaged were you with those questions?” There are the obvious things. The sad part about our profession is anyone can call themselves a coach. I do encourage people to look at, are you a credential coach? What credential? ACC, PCC, MCC, which is part of the International Coaching Federation.

Can you say what those stand for?

The first level of coaching certification is ACC, which stands for Associate. What does that stand for?

You’re right that it’s Associate Certified Coach.

That’s awesome because you’ve at least had to go through a rigorous program that you’ve had to keep a log of about 100 coaching calls. You’ve taken an exam and I believe you’ve had your coaching, also shadowed, recorded, and evaluated for at least a couple of sessions. Moving beyond that. There’s PCC, which stands for Professional Certified Coach, which is basically more hours of coaching, more steady accreditation, and work there. The highest level is MCC, so you have to have at least 2,500 hours of coaching, at least last when I was certified in that, as well as working with a mentor or coach. At each level, there are certain competencies they are watching for a coach to have.

If you’re going to go for an MCC, first of all, you have to have the number of hours, which can take years and you also have to display the expertise that level would warrant. It’s quite rigorous, and that’s a good thing because it enables people to separate out who is truly trained as a coach, and can do coaching as it was intended versus, “I’m a coach on this and I’m a coach on that.” There are so many pseudo coaches out there. I can imagine for most people it must be hard to sift through it.

Embracing Vulnerability: Just like human beings are unique, coaches are unique.

I’ll mention that MCC stands for Master Certified Coach and both of us are Master Certified Coaches but I agree wholeheartedly. Even maintaining the credential takes continuing education and that’s important to having someone who’s investing in their craft and acting in a professional way around coaching. I love that. For chemistry, you want to look for a credentialed coach. What else should people think about when they’re looking for a coach?

I mentioned being curious to know the questions that they ask and sometimes I like to ask them what are the types of clients that the coach likes to work with? What are the types of challenges that a coach likes to help with? What’s their philosophy? I always like to ask, “Why are you coaching?” “What is your personal mission in this work?” That helps you see if there’s some alignment there, if that speaks to you, as well.

Those are amazing things to consider. Research shows that most people hire the first coach, they meet and I often recommend that people have sessions with multiple people so that they can understand the industry a little deeper. It’s a good opportunity to understand more by having some conversations with multiple people.

Why not see what there is in the different approaches? Just like human beings are unique, coaches are unique. They’re going to come with a different style and there might be a chance for a different type of chemistry that gets created.

Where can people find you, Susan?

The name of my firm is Meritage Leadership. That’s MeritageLeadership.com We also put together a little download on resilience, since that’s such a hot topic. If you’re interested in that, you can get that at SusanDrumm.com/ExperimentalLeader.

Thank you so much for being here. It’s been such a pleasure to get to meet you and spend some time together. I’ve loved chatting with you.

It’s been great. Thank you so much. I love your questions, as well, as any good coach would do.

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This is Melanie Parrish and I’ve been talking with Susan Drumm. I love how she talks about how to choose an executive coach. She’s got years of experience, and she’s so bright. Talking about the quality of the questions that they ask, this is such a powerful orientation to choosing someone who’s going to walk with you as a coach. The world of executive coaching is full and diverse and thinking about the product of coaching being the questions is so powerful. Go experiment.

Important Links:

• Susan Drumm
• International Coaching Federation
• SusanDrumm.com/ExperimentalLeader

About Susan Drumm

Susan is a CEO Advisor and Leadership Coach focused on helping leaders and their teams to develop the capacity and mindsets to lead in today’s disruptive environment.

She has been running a boutique consulting firm, Meritage Leadership http://www.meritageleadership.com/, with a cadre of 15 coaches and consultants, since 2006. We’ve worked with Private Equity firms and their emerging portfolio companies, as well as large corporations such as Oracle, Viacom, KPMG, A&E Networks, Genentech and others.

Susan has graduate degrees from Harvard Law School, Carnegie Mellon University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. With deep experience coaching C-suite executives from a wide range of industries, she is the perfect person to speak about several topics that are especially relevant right now.

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