Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success.
I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you
insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders, and experts who will share not just their expertise
but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements.
So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place. Subscribe now and discover the
milestones that mark the path to success.
Hi everyone, thank you for joining me today on another episode of Milestone Moments in Business
and Leadership. Today, my special guest is Betsy Block, owner of B3 Coach. She serves as a coach
and a catalyst to small and mid-size nonprofits and the leaders and coaches who support them.
She's been a chief coach catalyst for over 13 years in the San Francisco Bay Area and she holds
an MPP, a Master in Public Policy, and she's a certified coach by the International Coaching
Federation. Welcome to the show, Betsy. I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait to hear this
story. So tell us how you got to where you are today. And before the show, we talked about
different roles that you've had and we also talked about what a master in public policy is. So this
is going to be very fascinating. Sure. So I had a brief stint in the nonprofit sector before I
realized that direct service was not the right role for me. And I got picked to come on to a team at
a phone company, of all things, to work in their project management division and spent from working
at the phone company to then working at a software company, oh gosh, seven or 10 years in
telecommunications software development. And at some point realized, you know, making great
phone bills is not what my life is about. I need to do more. I'm meant to do more. I need to give
and be of service. And in conversation with friends, I came to understand what a master's
in public policy did and what one did with those things. And it was a way to be of service while
also using all my analytical skills. And so that was a big milestone in my life was realizing,
gosh, I have these analytical skills, these synthetic skills, these ways of making people
think, and there's a way to use that and be of service. So I worked in government. I worked in
philanthropy. I worked in the nonprofit sector and they took a lot of advantage of my analytical
skills and in the world of something called program evaluation, which is the measurement of effectiveness
of the nonprofit or how it's achieving its mission. And what I became more and more aware of over time
is that as much as nonprofit wanted to use this information, a lot of times what was getting in
their way was culture. And so that next big milestone for me was making the leap from somebody
who worked with data and worked with teams around using data to being somebody who worked with them
on their organizational culture and help them emerge and help them see and be okay with their
challenges. And it wasn't a super fluid and easy transition. I had what I thought was my dream job
at kind of a mediary organization that worked with nonprofits, but was kind of more like
philanthropy. And I had some issues coming out of pregnancy and bringing my son into the world
and started saying, gosh, the best part of my job is when people think I have this fancy title,
I must know something and wanted to talk to me. And I thought, well, this, this career coaching
thing sounds like fun, but it turned out the more I trained in coaching and the more that I showed
up as coach in my other work, cause I was still doing this program evaluation work,
the program evaluation work got more interesting. And it took some time before that transitioned
into being a systems and team coach and retraining and retooling. And once I had those light bulbs go
off and really got into the systemic team coaching part of it, that's it. That's all I do now.
That's, that's where the magic lives and really bringing these teams into the awareness of what
they're doing and what they're saying to each other and how they exist. And, and that's where
my heart's work is. So within the culture is your focus conflict resolution or is it more broad?
It's more broad. I think I talk a lot about emerging management teams. What I come to the,
the reason I talk about conflict is that in working with teams around organizational culture,
it's inevitable that they need to relearn what conflict is and how to conflict effectively,
how to conflict creatively. You know, I think when you get to the point of conflict resolution,
you've probably hit a toxicity or a butting heads point that you need to pull back from.
I want to be more proactive with organizations and with teams and figuring out there's a really
healthy organizational culture that prides itself on being able to be creative in the conflict and
service of innovation. And so I find that no matter what the organizational piece is,
being able to get to that point is a goal. So what are the challenges that they're facing
when they bring you in? Well, some organizations are saying we're great and we're going to be
better. And the parallel I give, I, you know, I am in the Bay area and I talk about the golden
state warriors when they came out of their NBA championship year or any championship team,
really, like if you talk to the Kansas city chiefs right now, after having just won the
Superbowl, they didn't come out and say, just gosh, we're great. We're done. We've done all
we can do. We're just going to be great and sit and be just like we are next year.
Championship teams come out and say, we want to improve. We want to be better. There's still
things that we're going to continue to work on. It's what champions do. And this is the parallel
that I give to teams that I work with is it's not just about working with teams that are
struggling or have challenges to overcome. It's also about great teams that want to be greater
because that's what they do. They sit there and focus on continuous improvement. So if I'm
talking about teams that are struggling, I tend to position it more as emerging. Every team is
always emerging from something. And sometimes you're emerging from a change that's really
rattled the organization. So in the nonprofit sector, a lot of times it's that a founder left
or there's a new strategic plan, or they've had some big financial change or they've had to make a
programmatic shift. So there's a lot of reasons that those things come in. And yes, there are
times where there's been a conflict. So maybe there was a lawsuit or maybe there was somebody
who left and left some really tough feelings with the team. So there are sometimes where they're
emerging from some kind of a challenge or difficulty. Well, I like the idea that
you're a leader. Well, I like all the different perspectives, right? It could just be for
continuous improvement or it could be because they're facing a challenge. So it sounds like
there's many different opportunities to bring you in as a coach. Oh yeah. So one of the questions
I have here for you is you're a very successful leader. Which three character traits do you think
are the most instrumental to your success? I think one that has really followed me through my career
is my ability to do what I call synthesis. So a lot of my clients think that I have some crazy
magical intuition. And I think, no, it's just that I can listen and hear the pieces that go together
and help you hear what you're saying that goes together. So that magic of listening for the
synthesis of being able to kind of help people in teams weave things together. I think another thing
that I bring is bravery. I am a little bit fearless about what I will say, what I will observe,
what I'll bring into a room. I know those elephants. I don't worry about myself when
I'm with a team. I don't worry about saying the things. And it's come from a place of knowing
what it is to bring that in and knowing the power that it gives back to the team. If I show up as
my bravest self, it's such permission and it helps people be unafraid of saying things like,
I didn't know I could say that. Like the first time I ever said to a team is like, wow, this
coaching really sucks right now. We're not getting anywhere. What do you think about that? I thought,
did she just say this sucks right now? Wow. And I think the third thing is my willingness to just
make sure that we're being catalytic, make sure that we're driving into the point where people
suck the air in between their teeth. Oh God, room there. And that excitement that comes with it and
knowing how to see and follow the energy with the teams that gets them into that space where
they're like, oh yeah, we're going to, we're going to go there. That that's a little exciting. Yeah,
let's go there. So I think those are three of my, of my skills. I love them. So the first one's not
as easy, right? It's listening and you have to practice listening skills. Do you have like a
specific actionable step our listeners can take to maybe become a better listener or brave, be a
little bit more brave? Yeah. I mean, some of the greatest tools in team coaching, not surprisingly
come out of things that people hear about in marriage counseling. Because at the end of the day,
you know, you're in a relationship and, and you're in a familial type thing. It just, it works out
that way. We pick up roles. And so one of the tools is something you talk about a lot in marriage
counseling, which is repeating what the other person says. What I'm hearing you say is,
and a lot of times if you just listen, and then you try to say your next thing, you haven't totally
processed what the other person is saying. And so if you want to listen, listen and repeat back,
what I heard you say is, and then if it's something that you think is wrong, you're not okay with,
try to find the 2% of that, that you're willing to accept. Say, well, if there's a piece of this
that I want to hang on to, if I buy the 2% of that is good, what's the 2% that I want to hear?
So that's one. And another tool I'll say is always get back to your values. Always get back to what
you share. When you're on a team, when you're working together, you come together, especially
in the social sector, we're purpose driven, right? We're mission aligned. And when you come back to
purpose and when you come back to mission, the how is just a how, but how are we standing shoulder
to shoulder? And if I'm in the room with people, I'll have them stand shoulder to shoulder or
imagine standing shoulder to shoulder, face the future together, face the mission together.
And what's it like to be in that space of facing together what we're trying to solve, the mission,
the values we're trying to uphold, and then come back to how does my idea, how does the piece that
I care about serve that? How do we look for those pieces that go together? So that's a second tool
that I often bring in with teams. I've enjoyed listening to these tips. So you've done software,
you've done policy, and you're a coach. What is your next milestone? I think my next milestone
is really becoming somebody who makes people love conflict and the great creative, let's have our
ideas merge and come together and innovate. And so I want to become a champion of that in the social
sector. I think I'll still be a coach. That's part of that milestone. I know I'll still be a coach,
but being a champion for stepping into creative conflict is a big milestone for me in the future.
I'm processing that.
Are you one of my conflict diverse friends that I have to bring into what's amazing about?
Here's what I'm watching you for those that are listening. She was clutching her chest and like
her breath has stopped. And she's like, oh, not conflict. We have too often mistaken the definition
of conflict, which is letting seemingly different ideas surface with what happens when conflict goes
south, the arguing, the fighting, the yelling, the standoffishness. That's destructive. That's
toxicity, but conflict just letting seemingly incompatible ideas surface between us and live
and be in conversation and in fluidity with those. That's what I'm watching you for.
Dissonance. There's a blog on my Medium page that's about consonants and dissonance. And I use
the metaphor of music, which is if we all agreed on everything all the time, imagine like 10 straight
minutes of 10 violins playing the same note together at the same time and just that monotonous
extended tone, which for maybe a minute or two is really beautiful, but I don't know that 10 minutes
of it brings emotion and excitement and all that stuff. But if you think about Bohemian Rhapsody
with Queen and the range of what that song goes through, there is a ton of musical dissonance
in that. And it makes for incredible music. And that's absolutely the point. And I'm going to
end that. And it makes for incredible music. And that's innovation and that's creativity.
And there's some classical musical examples too, but I'm an 80s rock kid. So, you know,
It really resonated with me because now the way that I'm processing it is perspectives
were one of my favorite sayings, right? Let's just agree to disagree. So I understand it now.
I just didn't understand it at first. What? Like positive conflict. So yeah, you just managed to
turn conflict into diversity, right? Like different opinions makes life more interesting. So.
Exactly. Now you're breathing.
Well, you've inspired. Thanks. I'm reminded I'm repeating, you see, I'm processing and I'm
repeating the conflict resolution could be positive. Love it. Well, how can my audience
continue to follow your journey and learn more contact you? Well, I'm Betsy block on LinkedIn.
So I'm pretty easy to find on LinkedIn. And then I have a medium page as well. And I'll make sure
to share those links with your listeners. And my website is b3coach.com. And I look forward to
meeting your listeners. Well, thank you so much. And now do you play I see a violin in the background?
Oh, that's a guitar. Really funny. I only play a handful of chords. But yeah, I do. I play a little
bit and I keep it back there to keep myself accountable. So people will say, when are you
going to play the guitar for me? Next podcast, you're going to play the guitar for us. Maybe
that's my next miles to know if you want to, you could do like the little jingle at the beginning
of the of the podcast. There we go. There we go. Thank you so much. This has been a tree. Thank
you so much. Bye bye.