On our podcast this week we have Dick Hannasch, IFC Professional Coach. Dick not only is known for his humor, but he is also known for getting down to the true problems that your company may face. Dick talks about his style of teaching by focusing on each individual and their needs but also gives good examples of what investing in each party, manager and employee, looks like and how to do it well. ADD LINK

Find Dick on his website!

Full transcription below (may contain typos...):
[00:00:00] Dick: [00:00:00] What got you here? Won't get you there. You need to recognize that every time that you're making a shift, a step up in level, that there are probably some things that you need to do a little bit differently. 

Keerstyn: [00:00:10] welcome to the podcast stick. I am so excited that you're here today with us. Do you want to give us a brief background of how you got involved in your work and then what you do now? 

Dick: [00:00:19] Sure. I've been with principal financial group in Des Moines, financial services for fortune 500 firm.

I've done training and development my entire career. And back in the late 1990s, I got asked to facilitate a coaching training class to teach coaching skills to other people. And then fast forward, about six or seven years, our company decided that we will offer internal coaching to people who are considered targeted talent.

And a few people got to start in on that coaching work and they decided the program was going so well that they said we should expand this and invite some more people to be coaches. And one of the people said we should invite Dick to do it because he's great at teaching these coaching skills.

And so a person came to me and [00:01:00] said, do you want to help with this? And I said, sure. And then after about two years of doing that, they decided they would send seven or eight of us to coaching training. And we've been doing coaching for individual leaders and also some individual contributors inside the company.

I think for, I think it's 14 years now, all in all. So it's just gotten farther along, more involved since that time. 

Keerstyn: [00:01:24] Awesome. So that's quite a different way of doing it. We've often had just business coaches that have been external and then they walk into a company, but you are internal, although you do some external as well.

Correct? That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. So that's really interesting. So what made the company just like start realizing that they did need coaching 

Dick: [00:01:42] within. What it really stemmed from was we knew that it's important to grow talent, talented leadership in the organization. And it had been proven for quite some time that men during help people quite a bit, but then also more recent research at that time.

It said, Hey, [00:02:00] coaching is getting to be more involved. It's a lot of people hiring executive coaches, leadership coaches. And so the company said, should we start on an investment in that way? And let's try it out and see how it goes. And so the first group of people that they invited to participate, I think it was only something like eight people all in all and people responded well to that.

And so they said we should probably offer this to more. So it's just become something that's been part of our leadership pipeline or there's I think at our peak, we had eight people doing internal coaching. Each of us taking between six and eight clients per year for an engagement of a three to six to nine months, depending on the individual and their need.

So that's kinda how it came to be. The company just realized this is a good investment. We can do it at a low cost, as long as we get the right people in here. And w if we can identify people who are willing to work with a coach. 

Keerstyn: [00:02:50] Absolutely. Absolutely. So what was that first? That it's really interesting when they first initially started that.

What was the first. Group of people where [00:03:00] they like the top leaders in the industry where they, the middle managers, 

Dick: [00:03:03] this was middle-management people really. So in a lot of companies that might be like assistant director or department director type role. So below a vice president or assistant vice president level, but everybody in a leadership position, we figured these are people who are still trying to emerge as leadership talent, trying to find their way along.

And so helping them get their feet under them a little bit more round out their leadership skills would be a helpful way to ensure that they're growing and being successful as they're doing it. And so gradually grow them into a larger leadership position. 

Keerstyn: [00:03:37] Yeah, absolutely. And what were some of those skills that you were teaching?

Obviously there's so many skills that coaches can teach you today. 

Dick: [00:03:44] That's an interesting part about our approach there too. There is some that all of us who were asked to come and do this training, where people who were had a training and development background in some ways. The performance and all of us had been in a leadership role in some way as well.

So starting with that training and [00:04:00] development background, I think we went into it with a mindset that we're going to try to problem solve and help fix a little bit, which is really the antithesis of coaching. We're going to be instructing But over time we figured out, it's really great to ask the questions and get them to discover their own answers.

And if we find out that they have a knowledge gap, a skill gap with our training and development background, we could offer ideas or we could offer to say, let's take off our coaching hat right now. Let's put our training hat or let's introduce a tool or a technique that you can try out with your people, with your team.

And so we wound up going that way. And the types of things that people would want help with might be how can I develop the talent that reports to me? How can I be a more strategic thinker? I got paid to be an executer. I got to my leadership role because I was good at completing projects and you're having an impact, but now I've got to lead people.

And how do I do that differently than what I've done? We've helped people with building their professional presence, helped them even figure out how do I deal with my. Boss or how do I prioritize my [00:05:00] work? So those are some of the problems, but all in all, what we really shifted to is how can we help you grow?

How can we help you become more effective as a leader in and build it based on your values, what you want to accomplish, fit with your personality type. So recognize where does your personality play as a strength for you and where does some aspect of your personality or your values possibly work against you?

So it's going to take you more. More mental energy more time, or you're going to have to be more deliberate about being disciplined and getting yourself to do it. For example, if I'm a, if I'm an executer, I love to execute. I want to get right down to the task right down to the project, but I've moved into a leadership role and now I've got to set and drive strategy for my team.

Then maybe I've got to figure out how do I make sure that I carve out that time? And do the necessary strategic planning. How do I carve out the time so that I tie people or get people connected to that connected to that strategy and then let them execute it s...