#44 From Alpine Ski Racing to Leadership Coaching with Erin Treacy

🎙 Episode Summary

In this episode, Mark sits down with leadership coach Erin Treacy to explore how leaders can grow their teams without burning them out. They discuss sustainable leadership, investing in people, and why clarity beats hustle every time.

🔑 Key Topics Discussed

• Erin’s leadership journey (4-H, athletics, business ownership)
• Lessons from competitive skiing: discipline, resilience, and mental toughness
• Why leaders must stop chasing “more” and start developing people
• The hidden cost of burnout in teams and organizations
• Internal growth vs. external solutions (hiring, tech, systems)
• How poor communication creates bottlenecks
• Why training is the best investment (4–7x ROI)
• The importance of staying connected to frontline teams
• Trust vs. productivity: building long-term results
• Nick Saban’s “process over outcome” leadership approach
• Supporting and developing middle managers
• The power of simple, consistent check-ins
• Feedback vs. criticism: shifting the leadership mindset
• Why every leader needs a coach or mentor

💡 Key Takeaways

• Invest in people first—growth starts internally
• Burnout is not a badge of honor
• Clarity and communication solve most problems
• Trust is built through consistency and explanation
• Small check-ins create big impact
• Feedback fuels growth when framed correctly

📚 Resources Mentioned

• Leaders Eat Last – Leaders Eat Last by Simon Sinek

🔗 Connect with Erin Treacy

• Website: coacherintreacy.com
• Social: @CoachErinTreacy

Free Learning To Lead Resources

• Free Book: The Trust Gap
• The Learning To Lead Newsletter
• LeaderNotes

🔎 About LeaderNotes

LeaderNotes is a quick-hit companion to each episode of The Learning to Lead Show. In just 5–10 minutes, Mark Cundiff recaps the top leadership insights, frameworks, and action steps from each interview, designed for busy, growth-minded leaders who want to review and apply the episode’s biggest takeaways on the go. It’s like the highlight reel + playbook—all in one.

Contact Mark at: mark@markjcundiff.com

Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:00

I don't like to say constructive criticism because criticism we take as negative. I don't care how constructive it is. Criticism is negative. That's why they're critics. So we want feedback. I need input, I need data. I need how to tweak it like every step of the way. That's what a teacher, what a coach has done, and how do we go through years of having coaches, teachers, professors at whatever walk of life, and then suddenly we go out into the world and we just are supposed to figure it all out and know how to keep. Growing and getting better. That's where mentors come in.

0:40

Welcome to the Learning the Lead Show. I'm your host, Mark Cundiff I am so excited that you have joined us today. This is a place where we strive to help leaders grow. Their leadership and grow in their influence so that they can take their teams to the next level. Our mission is to encourage, equip, and inspire leaders to take their teams to new heights in just a moment, Erin Treacy will join us for our conversation about leadership and how to grow as a leader. First of all, I want to take a minute and just continue to thank you for following us. For sharing the show, we are now being heard in 37 countries in 289 cities and 39 states here in the United States. Thank you for helping us get the word out and spread the word about what's going on the Learning to Lead show. Today's guest who will be joining us in just a moment is Erin Treacy When we were getting to know each other, we learned that we grew up just about 20 miles from one another across state lines. In the Appalachian Mountains. She has led teams across hospitality, nonprofit media, and small business ownership while raising a blended family of five kids. Life and work have always happened side by side. Her career began in a fast-paced environment where pressure came as a standard and slowing down rarely felt like an option From newsrooms to running her own business, she saw how often capable, caring people ended up exhausted simply because no one. Ever taught them how to lead in a sustainable way. A former competitive alpine ski racer who trained with the Women's National Ski Team. Erin brings a calm, steady presence to a conversation about leadership, resilience, and change. When things feel chaotic, she helps people find their footing and take the next clear step. Erin is a leadership and business coach who helps ambitious women and growing teams lead in ways. Which feels steady instead of overwhelming. Her career started in broadcast news and small business ownership where she learned firsthand how easy it is to carry too much and call it being responsible. After working through her own burnout, she began helping other leaders build healthy ways to communicate, set boundaries and lead without running themselves into the ground. Her approach is practical, honest, and very human, less hustle, more clarity. Working success should support your life, not swallow it. Erin Treacy will now join us for our conversation about leadership.

Audio Only - All Participants 3:31

Hello Erin welcome to the Learning to Lead Show. Hello. Thank you so much for having me. Let's begin learning a little bit about your story, let's go back to when you first saw yourself as a leader. Ooh. First I grew up participating in four 4-H and that kind of thing. Community clubs, volunteer organizations a lot. So you easily and quickly got to see leadership 'cause you were a team leader helping kids, or you were. Working in your community to do different things and networking. So leadership was always kind of part of that growth model. It's you learn something and then you show someone else how to do it, and that's always been built in. From the beginning. So it was always in those moments, if you wanna be a teen leader at camp to be able to have that role, these are the things that you have to do and expectations. Those are always things that were very much laid out as part of the growth model when you're participating in a lot of these different, and there's so many wonderful programs, but I grew up in the four H program. Absolutely loved it. And I like to tell people I was not the agricultural kids. So many people associate it to agriculture, which is great, and there's this an amazing part of four H that does that, but there's a lot of community outreach and volunteer work that's done in it, and now they're really branching into a lot of the STEM work and coding and really trying to follow kids where they are and what they're doing today. Grew up in, in Princeton, our Mercer County roots that brought us together randomly by accident. There was a very strong four H program in Mercer County. That was the community base. It was actually a first grade teacher who was my club leader and got us into it. So stuck with it. It got me to some really cool places I got to go live in Mexico. I got to do all kinds of really cool things that as an exchange student and other volunteer work and meeting people that are still very good friends today. For our listeners, we discovered when we met that we grew up probably 20 miles from one another back in. I lived in the southwest Virginia side and she lived over on the West Virginia side, but where you were right there southern West Virginia and southwest Virginia, right there on the border. So you also mentioned that you did some alpine skiing and what kinda lessons did you learn from that? You got to meet some pretty interesting people. I have skied with some of the best on the planet, which is. Something really cool and I can, I kept up with some of the best on the planet. They could do it a little better than I did, there's always that enjoyment. You get to the bottom of the hill and they're like, I didn't know somebody from West Virginia could do that. Yes, I can. It's also something that's taken me to a lot of places and to meet some really interesting people, but it also teaches, a lot of self-discipline, a lot of. Self-control. You're the only one on those two skis going down that hill, and you are the one who it's your make or break. You make the turn correctly or you don't make the turn correctly that's on you. Sometimes it's not even things that you did or didn't do correctly. Like we saw in the Olympics, if you know recently it wasn't. Anything that Lindsey Vaughn did she hit a gate? Because that's what we do. We try to get as close to that line, as close to the edge as we can, and you can't account for all of the variables that there are in skiing, in life, in leadership, in business there's no way to do that, but it's by showing up and doing the work every day, that gets us to the point where we can make adjustments in a lot of ways. Sometimes, more often than not, we're making the adjustment, but as we saw with her and a lot of other people who fell and got hurt and had things going on at the Olympics or any other competition, the Super Bowl and March Madness, crazy basketball. We're in those times of year where we really see a lot of those things happening right in front of us that make a huge difference. It taught you, you get up, you keep going, you keep practicing. Margins are there, but pushing is also always part of the package. One of the most incredible stories I saw was the lady that had broke her leg nine months earlier. Yeah can you relate to us how much she had to overcome the mental fear? Going down those slopes with having a recent injury like that, especially the speed at which you are going. She's an Italian ski racer going down a mountain at 70 miles an hour, and you also have to remember, this isn't a short hill. This is. Two to two and a half miles of a course that has twists and turns and all the bumps and rolls that a mountain has. It's an extreme steep it's not a baby mountain. You are, at elevations and steepness that you would dread drive down in your car, it is a mental game. But a lot of times, and it goes back to that. She's practiced so much. She knew she could come back. Not because she's I'm an amazing healer, but her body knows what to do at 70 miles an hour on skis. The muscles are trained to do that over and over again. That's why she goes to practice. That's why all of those things are there. So that part of her herself, all the things except the stuff around her knee that she had to refill, readjust, reconnect to that specific part of her body so that she understood. Stood how to translate that or to say, I need to back off. I can go forward. What can I need do? What can it withstand? So that's as much the mental game and it does get in there. What is it gonna happen again? Is it gonna be there? And you have to get to a point where you just go, I know what I know I can do. And they have those training runs in the downhill that it's, they went down and went, oh, okay, this is manageable. I can do this, my knee's doing what I need it to do, but you also know it's not coming back for another four years is the opportunity there again. Not a lot of women are competing, or men, nobody in, especially in skiing, you're not seeing a lot of competitors into their forties and that's really what she's up against, in four years from now. That's a lot on your body of work between now and then to keep doing that. I mean there's a lot to admire and translate from the Olympics and those athletes go through. Transition over to the workplace a little bit. One of your recent articles, you talked about how so many managers, when they're trying to grow their organization, they look externally first, trying to hire people. Tech solutions. You talked a little bit about the investment, the cost Yeah. Of that versus neglecting developing their own talent. Explain how sometimes. We overlook the gold right in front of us, and we really do because we think growth, and we are taught that growth equals more, right? If we grow, that means more of whatever. So more people, more business, more things, more products, more. And that's where we align growth to. A lot of times that growth can really come from inside. You don't necessarily need to add a ton of people. I was actually just talking to someone this week that a business owner and they said, yeah, we got this system in and the system was supposed to help us. We ordered this platform so that we could communicate and be able to do all of these things and it didn't work. So you spent how much on this platform? And you know it, it was several thousand dollars, but. They just threw it out there and here it is, and we didn't teach it and we didn't understand why. So for the people in the business, that's one more thing in my day to have to learn or keep up with or manage. And they're putting these things in here, but. We didn't explain why and we didn't really ever listen to what the problem was. I find that so often if we start with people, and I really talk a lot about people first, leadership and how do we grow our people to grow a business? 'cause happy people grow a business way faster than any product of whatever's, client management or whatever you're putting in there. If we focus on the people, those other things will build themselves out and we'll figure out where that. Spaces. And so if we talk to the people and they start having those conversations as individuals and as teams and you start to listen to those things, we can start to understand where maybe gaps in training lie. Where gaps in communication lie, are we not understanding why? The thing that I do affects. You doing your work. So you are super frustrated with me and that process and you're super annoyed that, and what you didn't know was 10 other people are also sending me multiple things that they need me to do as part of their work too. So it's not, I didn't wanna help you, it's not that I'm not doing my job, it's you don't know where. I'm sitting, I don't know where you are sitting. Then I'm also managing 10 other people's. Whatever that thing is, I have to check off that comes through me. So it's not, I'm a problem. I'm lazy, I'm not doing the work. It's, we've built bottlenecks and we don't even know where they are. When we start to invest in our people and in those conversations, and sometimes it's easier to have somebody like me or like you and other coaches and other people to look at it from the outside and we can ask some of those questions that don't feel like my boss thinks I'm an idiot. Like I can ask a question that their boss maybe can't and get an answer that they wouldn't feel comfortable giving their boss. That I can find some of those bottlenecks and I can find some of those workflows that make more sense or train people in a certain area, and it's far cheaper to have a coach. Or a consultant or somebody. If you have a friend who has a business, have them come in and look at yours. It's a great way to just share businesses and share connections and have a different viewpoint come in than buying a $10,000 platform and logins for each individual person and how they all do it. Then we have to train it, and they're super frustrated because it didn't actually solve the problem. We have to fix workflow first and then. Add all of the other products and happy people grow business. So if we're happy and we're talking to each other and we have team building and we have trust, then we are able to turn around and then motivate our customers. This is, look at this great thing. We're doing this great new thing and this is how we can organize it and keep it simple for you, for whoever your customer is in your business that you're working with. 'cause businesses don't exist without customers. And so it helps your customer service, it helps your people, it helps all of those things, and you start to see, you started with that little small number of people in your group, and then you slowly start to build out from there. It's gonna make the long-term difference. It's not a short-term difference, it's a long-term difference. We're building for 10 years, not for 10 minutes. I love that. One of the things I see a lot is people chasing this shiny new thing, unfortunately. AI could be put in that category, although AI can be a great tool. So how do you help a leader understand the importance of budgeting for that? 'cause in these times when we see some segments of our economy, I know one customer that I used to deal with they just went through laying off some people and a friend of mine got laid off. You see those things going on. One of the first things that gets cut is the training budget. Yeah. And that's the worst place to cut. So there's actually statistics and data that help us understand this better. So for every $1 we invest in a person, and that's how I approach it. You are not paying for me, right? It's not me. You are investing in your people and your people need to understand and know I'm making an investment to make you better. Every $1 in investment training in your people can bring you as much as $7 of ROI. So it sits somewhere between four and $7. So the high end. If $1 of me working with you or you working with somebody or a different coach, you have people that are in your world, you don't have. I'm not saying you have to come to me, but $1 in that coaching and training and investment can bring you in four to $7. You're more likely to also retain an employee because an employee who knows that you are invested in me, I wanna invest back in you. So they're gonna put more into the work because they're like, I wanna make sure they know I value that. They value me. They wanna make sure that they're doing well because they know that. So you've retained an employee, you've bettered your employee, you've built a pipeline and a team. So you've gone far past that four to $7 ROI in those moments. And it didn't have to bring, you didn't have to platform, you didn't have to search for the platform. You didn't spend time. Buying the new system that does the thing that what you know in the magical bells and whistles, and that's time in your life as a leader, a business owner, a head of an organization, or a department, those are all minutes. You don't necessarily have to spend in a $10,000 system upgrade versus a $2,000 training session. I'm gonna go way farther and we're gonna also start to identify people. These are your key people and these are maybe the people who are bought out that we need to start having some different conversations with. And that's really key to that is how you're spending both your time and your budget. So the last thing we wanna do is stop training people. Miserable people make for miserable customer service. I think it's a reactionary thing that a lot of companies do. Can you maybe share a story or two about where you've went in and saw some challenges with the leadership and the team, and they invested in their team and you saw a transformation in what they were doing. I worked with a lot of restaurant owners for a long time. And so I would go into a, an owner's business and they were like, I just don't understand. We used to do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah in sales and money, in revenues, whatever that number. They're focused on an outcome. And so when we got into the store and you started asking just some questions or watching how people communicated, and you started to see people didn't. Communicate or that you couldn't find. So how do you know how to do this part of your job or that part of your job? You started to see that they just assumed that people were having conversations and teaching it down the line. I just assumed that the manager teaches the assistant managers who teaches the, and they, and there's a lot of assumption 'cause they're like, I'm the head. Of the boat. I'm guiding the ship. I can't be teaching how to flip a burger. I can't be teaching how to make sure the noodles are cooked properly. You are right, but if you don't ever spend time in those spaces. If you're never with a cook, if you're never with the prep team, if you're never with your manager and making sure they understand why they order a food truck in certain proportions and ratios, then you don't know what they know and they realize down the pipeline because it had gone through a game of telephone. This manager taught that assistant who became the manager who taught that assistant, and so it went down the pipeline. And now there's six managers in. Yeah, it's great. There's a reason it worked the first two years, but you're at year six and it's not working and it's, you lost all of those systems. You lost all of those flows. You lost all of those standards. You assumed people taught top down and because you're not there. You never saw it, and so you can take that out of a restaurant and apply it to any business. Does the CEO need to be on the manufacturing floor monitoring what's happening on a daily basis? I'm gonna argue maybe for a few minutes. If you can't do a few minutes every day, you should do several minutes one day, right? If not, just walking the floor, not just, who's over there, who's over there, but actually stepping in, talking to the person on the line that's doing, whatever the job is, and ask, how is the flow going? Where do you get bottled up in the day? How does this work out? You do this and then you send it to who? Do you know where this piece of equipment comes from that you have to now work on and you start to understand what has trickled down that you thought lived in executive suite or mid-level suite that you realize isn't coming all the way down to that person? That is the key, like we keep going. Executive suite. The key to the business is the people on the ground, feet on the floor, building, creating, selling, whatever the job is. If we aren't in touch with them from up in executive suite or even the middle management, because we start to get the I'm the guy who wears the suits high. I don't need to be down there anymore. That's not my space. I'm the suit and tie guy now, not the doer of the day. And if we start to think of ourselves as separate, and that's where I see that huge connect and really get into those businesses and they start to reconnect with their business and then they start to realize the reason. You know that maybe they were burned out and they disconnected as part of that burnout, or they're just, they were tired and so they realized they have to get back in their business. They have to be with it. They don't have to be standing on the cook line on an everyday basis. But, being back there for an hour on a busy Saturday night for dinner might. Teach you far more about your business and you start to learn waste that you didn't see happening. You start to learn mentality that you didn't see happening. You a waste of time. Are we taking 17 cigarette breaks, in the middle of a dinner rush? That's why you're getting those complaints over there. And that's why sales are down is because we aren't all on our toes because it doesn't matter how good of a leader are the team's gonna play when you're away. I don't care how good you are, they're gonna play. It's just the standard, just like you did with your parents, you're gonna play when your parents aren't there. You're gonna push those boundaries a little bit and ease off on the rules because that's just who we are as. People. So it's all the more reason you have to be at those check-in moments and you're gonna learn far more about what's actually happening in your business than the guy who reports to you in the one-on-one or the girl who reports to you in the one-on-one going, A team's great, everything's awesome, everything's fine. High five, high 5, 5, 5. We're great. You're going, I don't understand. They keep telling us we're great, but revenue's down. It's not in the analysis, it's not in the data, it's not in the analytics, it's in the people. You also talk about how we get really focused on efficiency and productivity and how that can be an operational win. But we sometimes overlook the trust factor and how that can be a growth strategy and how that can lead to long-term results. What are some ways, one, that leaders erode the trust of their team? What are some steps that you help leaders put into place to build trust as a foundation for their leadership? I will use another sports reference and I will go back to my West Virginia roots. So Nick Saban famous football coach, he's won a few national titles, so I think he could probably teach us a few things about leading people. One of the things he talks at Alabama, he didn't chase outcomes. It wasn't about we're gonna win the game. That's understood. We all know the point is to win the game. We don't need to talk about it. We don't need to talk about, you need to have 15 tackles to set a record. We're not talking about those things. We are talking about executing on repeat. Over and over with the intent, with the mindset that this play has to be the perfect play. And if this play is perfect and the next play is perfect and the play after that, we execute at a high level and the play after that. That's how we get into the end zone, and ultimately that's how we win the game. It's not a conversation about outcome, it's how do we make. Each step of the process, the priority, and the thing right in front of us, and that's so important. Do we need goals? We always need goals. Do I understand why we look at KPIs and ROIs? They tell us a lot of things about the business, they didn't tell us how we executed the play. If Alabama is playing Concord College, who did we expect to win? That probably wasn't a really big challenge to Alabama. So if we went and looked at Alabama look at these amazing numbers. We've got, a thousand yards rushing on a single individual player. But that didn't really tell us anything about how good Alabama was. Didn't tell us a thing. It was expected. We knew it would happen. Nick Saban isn't going. You all go out there and coach a football game and he is not going. You all go out there and have a practice. He's standing in practice. He's having the conversation. Why did you make this choice? Hey, if you do this, I know you do this really well, but if you adjust here and if you pivot there, and this is why. We made this play this way, and he's making those adjustments with the player. He's making a point to say why this play is designed this way, and we build trust when we explain our thought process. I know the next person up understands my thoughts, how I decision make, how the play was designed, and maybe you have a voice and go, that's really great if Bob's doing that play because Bob's really great at whatever that task is in this specific scenario. Then I've built the team as a team, not as a group of individuals on a field. That's what Nick Saban was amazing at. This is a team. There's not an eye. It's a team. That's what we do. And we can take that and translate that sports analogy back into the business, and you create those moments. You talk about how a lot of the pressure ends up on the middle. Middle managers and a lot of the middle managers are the ones that get burnt out. Build the weight of the organization. How are you helping senior leaders temper that burnout and take care of their people in a better way? That's really where it comes back to that training. What middle managers are facing right now. They've got four different generations that they're managing who all show up completely different at work for work with a conversation and how they approach work. So they don't know how to have those conversations with people outside their own generations. It's often then those millennials, 'cause that's who's in that middle management sphere right now. Especially our millennials aren't conversational. They feel like it's confrontational to have those conversations that are needed. It is not confrontational. But you need to learn how to have that conversation and not be like, I'm disappointed in what you did today. But instead, approach those conversations as learning points and teach them how to do those things so that they don't feel terrified because they'll just avoid it. I'll just, and that's, then they start in the, I'll just do it myself 'cause it's easier and I don't have to argue with myself. It's so much easier. I'll just take it on. And so they take on all of these things instead of teach these things. And then the management team is only looking at those KPIs and ROIs and revenue ups, and you've done this and you've saved this money. And so they're looking at all of these numbers and so they're not teaching them to actually manage. People, we aren't having that conversation through the whole process. So that's where you start to say, this is why it's important for you to even take five minutes and sit beside them. Where are you struggling? That goes back to that two minute check-in. Hey, I wanted to check in on you. I know that you've just finished your first month in this new department head role as the new team lead, or whatever that title is. So what have you learned? Where are you struggling? I need to know how I can help you in that moment, right? By approaching them in those ways and being the listener, I'm not the manager. I'm your boss, but I wanna learn. By sitting back, they start to feel that it's even in that body language. Standing over them in the, I am your boss, how are you doing? That's not what we wanna do. We wanna really sit back. But that's where those key moments that check-in. Very simple check-ins, but it has to be intentional and saying, okay, so it's your first month. You're getting your sea legs about you. You've gotten to see where you are, what you're doing, lay out a couple of things, check in with me, maybe in a couple of weeks we'll do the same thing again, not in a schedule, but in a two minute what? What's happening with you? Where can I help you? What are your roadblocks? Where are you finding success? Because you wanna hear those stories too, because they're gonna start to give you where on the bus they should be. Did you put this person on the bus correctly? This was a great nurse, and you made her the head nurse, the charge nurse. She's doing great at teaching new nurses, training nurses, nursing students how to be nurses. But you find out she's terrible at making the schedule. Yeah, maybe. But you know why? Because she's a nurse. She didn't learn how to do that. No one. He taught her how to manage a schedule and how that affects labor costs and what that means, and the people that call out sick and all of these things that go into a nursing schedule that is entirely too complex to. Kinda learn and just, there's the schedule. Here you go. Go do it. By having those moments where you're teaching them and leading them up, they start to lead the people that are behind them up. So they start to go, you know what? This was really hard to have to learn how to do a schedule. Never having touched it before. I'm gonna teach a couple of my people on my team to see different parts of it. Maybe not all of it, but see different parts of it so they start to become familiar. They start to see the why I have to schedule the switch like this, or why I have to do that. It's all goes back to how you build. Trust is how you build the business in whatever kind of road you go down. And it's that you will be shocked, what, five minutes? With the people we'll teach you good and bad. So we really have to be able to make a point to do those and connect all of those things back to be able to really be effective. I really like that you're really talking about some great examples there about coaching, and you wrote in one of your articles, you said, people don't coach you because you lack talent. They coach you because they see what you're capable of becoming. So it's all about the perspective. When did that become real for you personally? How should someone that's being mentored or coached, how should they approach that? I think I've always been an athlete, so I always had a coach. There was always somebody outside looking in, right? There was from every, we all grew up and you can be a kid that was a band kid, a theater kid, a an athlete. It doesn't really matter what. Your role was in whatever. There was always, there's, there's the director, there's the supervisors, the production people. There's always somebody that's giving you feedback to get there. So all of that was very normal to me. Having that feedback, having that constant, you have a different perspective from outside. Think about you're doing something silly or fun. You're trying something new and you're like, oh, I got this. I've got. You try a new dance routine. I've got the perfect angle. I look so awesome. Don't I look so fast? And then somebody shows you a video and you're like, oh my gosh, I look so awkward and weird. And that's just so odd, and it's because there's a different vantage point. You feel great, and you may be pretty darn close to exactly where you need to be, but there's this tiny little tweak that we need to make over here. Then there's this tiny little thing over here. If Tom Brady needs a coach, I think the rest of us. Like you can't say the greatest of all time. Michael Jordan still had a coach. That's how they got there, because it's that representing and understanding. I see it from inside, from, with my blinders on the horse in the race. I can only see. This much and somebody who's standing outside of those things can see those things. A mentor can see what's in you and that's why it is that, a coach isn't there or a boss isn't there to nitpick and take you out. 'cause they don't like you. They're not spending time with you because they wanna like fire you tomorrow. If they wanted to fire you they're not spending time with you. They're not investing in you. They want. To move on. And that may not be the case in every situation, but that's that lens because they do see it, because they've been through it. They know what it is to move up the chain of success and get to where that position is. So they know what it takes. They can see you have the creativity to do it or the organizational skills to do it. Or the fundamental understanding of whatever that job is that you can continue to grow and by putting that time with you is a huge difference and it's a great kind of overlay into, you can relate that back to sports if Michael Jordan isn't too good to need. Phil Jackson. Or Scotty Pippin, or you can name the rest of that team. If none of them are too good to need Phil Jackson, then I'm probably not too good in whatever I do to need. You're Phil Jackson, you're Nick Saban, your whoever that person is. And that's what's so critical is being able to understand that as it's not feedback in a negative. That's why I don't like to say constructive criticism because criticism we take as negative. I don't care how constructive it is. Criticism is negative. That's why they're critics. So we want feedback. I need input, I need data. I need how to tweak it like every step of the way. That's what a teacher, what a coach has done, and how do we go through years of having coaches, teachers, professors at whatever walk of life, and then suddenly we go out into the world and we just are supposed to figure it all out and know how to keep. Growing and getting better. That's where mentors come in. That's where coaching comes in. So it's always about growth and that mindset of growth and to be able to accept feedback, you have to accept, I don't know everything. I don't have all of the answers. And it's, I think, especially hard. I have kids in this age window, 20 to 27. They struggle the most sometimes with, but no, I know everything. If you know you have a parent that if you've parented it all, in any way, shape or form, whether that's direct parenting or aunts or uncles or whatever, and you, all of those things, you start to go, you hear a lot I know this and I know that and that won't work because I already know. How do you already know in your 16 years of life wisdom? How do you already know? I'm 47 and I don't already know. I have to be open to go if I'm gonna get better at this. If anything, if. I have to be open to somebody going, this is how I perceive you. This is how I feel like you come up. And then if 10 different people tell you that, you start to go, maybe it is me. Maybe that's the thing I need to work on. That's why I'm not finding success because maybe my bosses see it that way too. You've given us some great insights today. If our audience wanted to work with you what are some things that you offer. And where could they find you? So I through my website, I offer a, what I call a clarity conversation. And it's really just to get insight into people. I listen a lot more there than like here. Podcasting is fun because you get to talk about a lot of the things that you see as a coach, but in that conversation it's really a lot more of me turning that conversation around and listening so that you may only need a tweak. And you go on and start your path. And some people need a little bit more path to start or are ready to jump into a whole other kind of conversation. So I do offer those, they're through my website. You can find me at coacherintreacy.com. Same across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok at Coach Erin Tracy on all of those to keep it nice and simple and easy. We'll put those links in the show notes. One of the things I always like to pick our leaders' brains with is, what are some ways that you sharpen your saw, that you get coached through books or podcasts or mentors that you really like? Yeah, I, sitting and doing podcasts with other coaches and business leaders is a great way because it'll trigger my brain into a thought that I hadn't. Oh, that'd be a great example. Those are great ways to do it. I actually have a coach somebody I worked with when I owned my own businesses. I have a business coach that I talk to and even, 'cause I wanna grow my business, we all have. Those growth pans. So I have a business coach that I work with and he oftentimes shakes his head and laughs at me and goes Erin And, we have a great time together and sometimes we look down and it's three hours later. But that's 'cause we've been together for so long that we can bounce off a ton of conversations and then, it's being open to learning. From wherever you are. I learned stuff from my kids. They make great examples when you're coaching. I mean they really do. 'cause they're all in these different age groups, but, my kids can teach me things and you have to be open to constantly learning and going, okay, i'm gonna use that. I'm gonna grow from there, or I'm gonna go dive into that topic. I having that journalism background, my husband laughs we'll see something like on TV or reading an article and I'm like, that doesn't even make sense. He goes you're gonna go dive in. I'm like, you're right. I'm going to dive in. I'm going like in, off I go. And to my deep dive Google search. 'cause I have to know the answer and the background and the story and the history that goes with it. And he laughs. He's it's crazy to me how much. You can just we will be somewhere. I'm like, oh yeah, that's the, and ramble off the history. And he's like, how do you do that? I was like, it's because I have to know the answer like it just drives me nuts not to know. And then it sticks and here we are. Do you have a favorite book that's had an impact on you? Ooh. Favorite. I think it's all over the place because there's so many different, I really enjoy the leaders eat last. It's very much about it's about your people. So that's a probably more business leadership style book that I very much enjoy. I love reading history books, so I actually read one and I wish I could come up with the name at this very moment 'cause it's gonna drive me nuts. It's a great story about women who worked as spies during World War II because they could move around a little bit. 'cause nobody suspected women in Europe acting as spies. Wonderful book. And now the title has completely alluded me and I just finished Henry Lewis Gates' book. Henry Lewis Gates does show on PBS. Called Finding Your Roots. He's actually from West Virginia, so I always like to enjoy West Virginia authors especially to see what they're doing and what they're talking about. He's a historian and talks has a great story. The Road Ahead is a, the title of that one, but especially when you're history booking. Henry Lewis Gates is a great one. So that one I just finished recently. It's awesome. That's great. We really appreciate you being on the learning the Lead show today. Thank you, Erin. Thank you so much for having me, mark. I appreciate it.

40:38

It was so great to have Erin join us on the Learning to Lead Show today. Make sure you go to the show notes and download LeaderNotes This will give you an outline of the key topics discussed, books referenced, and other key information about the show today. Thank you again for listening to the Learning to Lead Show today for being our guest. Make sure you go and subscribe so that you get this in your podcast app as soon as we release a new episode. Also, if you got value out of today's show, do me two favors, one, share it with a friend. Number two, please go give us a rating on your favorite podcast app. This helps us get the ratings up and let people know that we're here doing good work, interviewing great leaders, and sharing great leadership content. Thank you for being here today. Now go out and learn, grow and lead, and take your leadership and your organization to the next level.