Listen to the Podcast with Executive Coach Thomas Gelmi

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Fred Getty

Hello and welcome to the All Things Leadership podcast, where we bring together accomplished experts to share their diverse perspectives, compelling stories, and insightful lessons on effective leadership and personal growth. Whether you're a seasoned executive navigating the corporate world or an emerging leader on the rise, this podcast is your go-to resource for valuable takeaways to feel your success in your leadership journey.

Join us as we explore the art and science of leadership. We unlock your secrets to elevate your leadership skills and empower you to make a successful impact in your organization and to the beyond, and I'm your host, Fred Getty.

Far too often, the essence of what makes us human, empathy, values, emotions, is still being called soft skills and relegated to the sidelines. Yet, these capacities essentially drive everything, whether it's culture, engagement, leadership, innovation, collaboration. They're not soft skills. They're actually the cornerstone of resilience, thriving, and agile organizations.

Joining me to discuss this is Thomas Gelmi, an executive coach, a fellow member of the Forbes Coaches Council, and inspiring partner. Thomas supports leaders at various levels in their development across cultures and industries. His work focuses on developing essential human aspects that lead to measurably more impact in leadership, teamwork, and customer relations.

Based on his many years of professional experience in working with leaders and holding various management positions, he spent many years with Swissair, the former Swiss National Airline. In the worldwide leadership and training of cabin crew and in contact with international customers at 30,000 feet, he experienced first-hand how important a high level of personal and interpersonal competence is for effective to human interaction.

Thomas is a best-selling author of several books, among them, Breakthrough: What Cabin Crew Can Teach About Leadership, Teamwork and Customer Contact, and The Coaching Code: Practical Tips for Cracking the Code and Building a Successful Coaching Business. Thomas is based in Switzerland. Thomas, thank you for coming on the podcast today. Pleasure to meet you.

Thomas Gelmi

Thank you so much, Fred, for the introduction and for, of course, having me here today for this conversation. Looking forward to it.

Fred Getty

Certainly. The pleasure is all mine. So what's happening in Switzerland these days, Thomas?

Thomas Gelmi

It's raining when it shouldn't be. It's a bit too cold and too wet for the season. But I guess we're getting there. What's happening otherwise? Well, the usual things. We're doing actually pretty well economically, inflation-wise, compared to neighbouring countries. We're really lucky in this regard. And then, well, yes, I use Switzerland as my hub. I work from here. I leave to other countries working there. Tomorrow, I'm going to be flying to Asia for a large German corporation for which I've developed a new leadership development program. I'm going to run a pilot there, but I'm always coming back to Switzerland. To me, personally, of course, I'm born and raised here, but it's one of the best places to live on this planet, and that's why I keep coming back.

Yeah, you told me you've been into Geneva, right?

Fred Getty

A little bit, yeah. I've been to Geneva twice, been to France. Yeah, it's a global world. I'd love to come back and visit there. All right, well, let's dive right into the business, the order of business. Soft skills, right? There's a lot that have been written and said about soft skills. There's one school of thought that thinks soft skills it's an important aspect of leadership, another school of thought thinks it's really not that important. But let's demystify this a little bit. What are soft skills?

Thomas Gelmi

Well, soft skills are generally what people associate with all the skills that do not directly contribute to performance, to the hard facts in the business, to achieving KPIs, like Key Performance Indicators, or now a more timely term is OKRs, Objective Key Results, Objectives, and Key Results. All those that have to do with people, all those things, all the things that have to do with emotions and all that human stuff, that's usually considered soft skills.

The term soft skills in itself, to me, already implies almost that it's less important than all the hard skills. All the hard factors, the measurable, tangible, performance-related stuff. That's also what I observe the opinion of the majority of people in organizations, especially managers, that are often results-driven because they have to. Then soft skills are something we may do a training at the end of the year if we still have budget. You see.

Fred Getty

I'll dare say, thanks for that background, Thomas. I'll dare say that the definition or how they describe it as such, those things that aren't, like you rightly said, under rightly contributable to the hard numbers, the metrics, and all that. Sort of gives it this very vast interpretation. People tend to look down upon it. But why are they so important to [inaudible 00:06:29] and maybe leaders for that matter.

Thomas Gelmi

Well, why are they so important? I'm glad you asked the question because that is the question to ask. Why? Can we not get rid of all that human stuff that only makes it difficult and complicated? Can we not keep emotions out of the equation, please, because they only get in our way?

I can relate to this to some extent because very often when we speak about soft skills, emotions, human skills, etc. What people quickly have on their mind are situations that they may have experienced where somebody lost it. Lost their temper or had an emotional breakdown in a meeting or started yelling around. Of course, that's not what we're talking about here. It's the opposite. We're talking about the ability to sense, regulate, and work with emotions. Which are an essential part of us human beings.

Which brings me back to your question, why are they important? Well, because we are humans. We are human beings. And as human beings, to quote Antonio Damasio a very renowned neuroscientist, we are not thinking beings or thinking machines, as he calls it, that also have emotions somewhere in the basement that only come in our way.

It is the other way around. As humans, we are more than anything else, emotional beings. That also developed the capacity to think and developed intellectual intelligence, intellectual capacity, but much, much later in evolution. Emotions were there way before we even started coming up with words to think about and talk. Emotions can be seen as our inner GPS for navigating the social environment to quickly understand, who is this that I'm interacting with? Is it friend or foe? Do I have to be careful, or can I trust?

That's why it's important because we're not machines. We are human beings. And what I refer to as the emotional balance sheet in an interaction or in a relationship is the main denominator for performance, for how well we do. And whether we do what we need to be doing, what needs to be done because we want to do it, or just because somebody told me to do it. That's a big difference.

In today's world, in today's world of complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty, where it's almost impossible to navigate with a plan, we need to empower people. If in the past, we needed people that did what we told them to do, today and in the future, we need people who do what we didn't tell them because they see it, and they want to do it, and they are self-driven. All of that depends on how people feel and the emotional balance sheet. That's why it's important.

Fred Getty

Yeah, very, very aptly put there, Thomas. And I think now more than ever before, we're actually seeing the effects of the lack of these emotions. I think this has sort of morphed into the giant topic of the emotional intelligence, which we're going to be touching on here.

It reminds me of the quote by Daniel Goldman, who popularized this concept, and actually, just yesterday I was writing an article on this. This quote that's attributable to him, and he writes that, and I quote that CEOs or leaders, I might add, are hired for their technical intellect and their experience skills, but they're fired for their lack of intelligence. We can come up with so many case studies that underscore this fact.

One that comes to mind, which I did this article on, is by a former co-founder of Uber, who built this giant conglomerate disrupted the transportation industry. And then somehow neglected to identify and act on some of these toxicity that was happening in the company, and he ended up being ousted by the board. I think that paints a really important picture of why soft skills or emotional intelligence... You can go ahead and... I'll let you respond to that and then maybe touch on how leaders can then vote or develop soft skills.

Thomas Gelmi

Yeah, exactly. Every time you say soft skills, I go like, can we call them differently? I made it a habit. I call them essential skills because based on what I just spoke about a moment ago, it's not a nice to have. It's essential because this is what turns out to be the game changer. It's absolutely fundamentally essential. Or call them people skills, if you like, but not soft skills.

Anyway, yes, you just said that very often CEOs or managers in general are hired based on their competence. Based on their subject, matter, expertise, based on success, in prior positions. Now, if we go way down to the level where somebody is promoted to a leading position for the first time. A person who used to be an individual contributor, very successful, like successful salesperson, for example, whatever they may be, and they are promoted to team lead.

What usually happens is, Okay, as of next month, you'll be leading the team. You got this, good luck. That's about the level of leadership development we see in many organizations. Now, shifting or transitioning into a leading position, in many cases, can almost be seen as a change of profession because it's now not any more about your individual success in what you used to be successful with.

Now it's about being successful through others and leading people, and enabling and empowering people. Leadership skills and all the human aspects of leadership become much, much more relevant and important, yet are not necessarily developed systematically enough. Which leads to frustrated, overwhelmed leaders, frustrated team members who think, my boss is not doing a good job, and in the end, people leave their boss.

Fred Getty

Thomas, this is something that I see on a day-to-day basis. I have worked with leaders who had been promoted into their roles just based on their experience. They were great individual contributors. They thought, Okay, well, since you're an A performer, why don't we promote you and to make you a leader. We don't equip them with the skills that they need to succeed and they get into these roles, and they realize that, to your point, it's an entirely different ball game.

Yes, they're great at what they do. They have the knowledge and skills, but there's no people skills, there's no trust, there's dysfunction amongst the team, and it becomes a disaster. The leaders are scratching their heads, and they're wondering why. Now we put together a half-baked leadership training. We'll put them through A half-day program. We expect them to be experts at leadership forgetting that this is a journey.

I see this as a widespread issue. I see it a lot in my experience as a leader I see it, and I continue to see these mistakes being made. How can we change this paradigm or the mindset that... It hurts me, and I'm glad that you're catching on this thing because this is something that I'm really passionate about. I'm sure we could talk about this all day, but how can we change this mindset, this paradigm, revert order of putting the cart before the horse, so to speak?

Thomas Gelmi

Yes. At the beginning of any change process is awareness. That's the first thing that needs to be created in an organization, for example, or among those in an organization that can make these decisions, whether to invest in leadership development or not, make it a priority or not. Awareness, awareness, awareness means talking about it, having podcast conversations like this one so that as many people as possible hear about this and might start thinking about it.

What does it look like in our organization? Do I give leadership development or do we give it enough of a priority? How could we go about it? Now, that's the first thing, awareness. Then I loved how you just described how people are then sent to leadership training. Go take a day there, go take a three-day crash course on leadership there.

Fred Getty

I know that there's anything bad with it, though, right? I know that there's anything bad with leadership development.

Thomas Gelmi

No, no, no. The intention behind it is great. That's exactly what we need. Let's do something about it. Let's develop our leaders. Problem with that is, that you go to a one or three-day training about leadership, you come out with ideas, more awareness with alternatives and options, and a lot of motivation. Wow, that's great. I'm going to do that.

Then you go back to your daily business, and the very next day, your best intentions are washed away like a tsunami. Six months down the road, the only thing you remember is that you participated in that leadership training. That it must have been good because you came out of it very motivated, but you didn't change a single thing. That's the challenge with such trainings.

I personally don't believe in the sustainable lasting effect of trainings. What you can achieve is awareness. Yeah, that's good. You can generate some know-how, yes, but that doesn't mean you also develop the do-how. Doing things differently in daily practice as a leader. The longer I am in this field of leadership development, the more I keep seeing and the more I get confirmation that leadership development is not about skills and competencies. It's about personality.

Fred Getty

Absolutely.

Thomas Gelmi

Leadership Development is in its core, personality development. We don't need to develop leadership skills. We have to develop leader personalities. It all starts with yourself. How self-aware are you? How emotionally intelligent are you? You mentioned it. How do you lead yourself? What's the relationship we have with yourself? And then from there, on that basis, you go outward and start showing more empathy and acting more empathetic with others. That's the way to go.

What does it mean? Well, it means that it's not a light switch that we can just flick or a one-day training, and now we have developed our leaders. No, it's a process. It's an external transformation that people go through, which requires an inner transition. This requires the willingness to embark on such a journey. It requires the willingness to grow and develop, to step out of the comfort zone, to look at who you are and how you function, and really do the work. It might include some courage that's necessary as well. If we look at what you and I do professionally, it also takes support in the form of coaching, leadership coaching, executive coaching.

Somebody who's there by your side, somebody who can act as a sparring partner, who will listen to you and not judge you. Just be there, hold the space for you to come to conclusions, holds you accountable. It's an important aspect of coaching as well. As in, yeah, you come back after four weeks to the next coaching session. You didn't do anything. You didn't try out anything because of the mother of all excuses, no time, right? We might have a different issue there we need to talk about. So, yeah, it's a process. In a nutshell, it's personality development, and this takes time, and it's an ongoing process, lifelong learning. It's a great adventure as well because you learn so much about yourself.

Fred Getty

Yeah, you do. Reading a recent article that says that British businesses are washed with what they call accidental bosses who received no formal training. It goes on to say that there was a survey that was conducted of about 2,000 workers reflecting findings from the Chartered Management Institute. Suggesting that up to 82% of managers were thrust into their roles without any guidance or preparation.

Which goes to talk about what we were just mentioning. This lack of training isn't just a missed opportunity. It is a setup for failure. In the past, manager's role centred on keeping the team motivated and productive. But today, the landscape, you talked about it, the VUCA, Volatile Uncertain, has dramatically shifted.

Managers are now expected to be champions of culture, empathetic listeners, leaders in digital adoption, empathetic listeners, aligned or a team to the team's mental health, which is a big one, are bearers of bad news. How do you connect with them if you're not emotionally intelligent or if you don't have those people skills developed? It goes on to say that these leaders must navigate remote teams for prioritizing... There's a whole gamut of things that today's leaders, 21st-century leader has to wrestle with.

It talks about how the leadership development industry is like a multibillion-dollar industry. Organizations are spending hundreds of thousands or maybe millions in some cases annually on these leadership development programs, but they're not sticking. Because like you rightly said, we go, we have a highly come-back. We're excited. We get a nice certificate showing that, Oh, congratulations, you've attended and you come back and the real world hits, and you have no clue how to handle it.

Thomas Gelmi

There is another dilemma in there besides what we just spoke about. Let's say somebody really embarks on a leadership development journey in the sense of what I just described, right? If the systems, structures, processes, and the culture in the organization are not in favour of this new quality of leadership, it will not work, right?

Because you see, many of the things, actually, most of the things we are talking about here, and most of the things that can be summarized under this title of soft... Oh, no, excuse me, essential skills could be considered common sense, right? You should listen to someone empathetically when they're trying to explain something to you. Duh, common sense. However, much of this common sense is not so common in organizations.

Common sense does not mean common practice. And why is that the case? Well, because of what I said in the very beginning of our conversation, because managers are under such pressure to achieve goals, to meet the KPIs and the OKRs and everything, and meet the numbers, achieve the numbers. That they feel like they don't have any time or other resources available for having conversations with people and listen to their worries and ask how they are. No time for that.

That is one of the biggest dilemmas. You send someone to leadership development program, they come back with great insights, great intentions, and they're actually ready to start making a difference, but then you don't let them. It takes both. It takes the development of the leaders, and it takes the development of the organization so that both go hand in hand. It is okay, and not just okay, but actually necessary that a leader takes time or makes time to sit down with people and ask them, how are you doing?

Fred Getty

I think the anecdote of common sense not being so common is a perfect illustration, right? Because we'll do this, we'll set up a budget, let's check the box. We spend all this money on these leaders, and we send them off to training, and they come back, and we don't provide them the platform for them to thrive. It's like we send them, they come back, and we handcuff them. What do we think we're accomplishing? I think that's what makes this so complex. What do you see, Thomas, in your work in leadership development and executive coaching? What are some of the practical things you're seeing on the front lines with these organizations, with these leaders, and how they're handling this? This challenge?

Thomas Gelmi

Well, it is more than anything. The courage to stand up for something that's different, that's new, that might be different from how we used to do things in the organization. Really having the courage to do things differently, and being an example for other leaders as well. It takes courage. It takes courage, and at the same time also doing baby steps with consistency.

You go to the gym, you spend a whole day at the gym, you come back home, you see no difference. Nothing. You go to the gym an hour a week, over several months, you start seeing a difference. It's the same. It's not a light switch, as I already mentioned. Small things here and there, small changes here and there. And one of the key success factors, believe it or not, is to remember to do things differently, to remember what my intentions are.

As I said, when I go back out of a coaching session with great insights and intentions. I go back into my daily work, and then all the pressure kicks in immediately. It takes some clear intention to keep that alive, to keep the light burning. A very pragmatic way of doing that is to set an anchor in your daily practice. Which means some sort of reminder that stands for the difference you want to make, the new intention, the new habit you want to build and it's always there. It's always visible for you.

I have clients that put a little red sticker on their laptop. For one of my clients, it's the reminder to stay present in meetings and listen and not wander off in your mind while you're physically there, but you're actually not there. Stay present, be there, here and now. Another client printed a little stop sign and put it in the corner of her screen. For her, this is the anchor that reminds her to stop before she reacts to anything. Hold, hold, hold, wait, before you then respond. Small things like that. It can be an object you put on your desktop. It can be a reminder you set on your smartphone. One of my clients put his reminder that popped up every morning at 8:00 saying, talk less, listen more. Small things like that. These are, as trivial as it may sound, the real success factors, because if you don't remember, you're not going to change.

Fred Getty

I so agree with you, Thomas. I was leading an off-site with a group of senior leaders. These off-sites, like the leadership development, you have all the C-suite executives who have tons and tons of things to do. They come into this off-site and they're wondering, where are we here? I have more important things to do at meetings, but I had to set that foundation by providing the context and they use a very powerful case study to get them to be present. It was really great.

During one of the sessions, one of the leaders was sharing how they had been trying to create that culture of inclusivity. He had this opened up policy, and he had schedule time on his calendar for people to come into his office and people weren't coming. It's funny that it's not... Having time on my calendar is great, but if you're not building the bridge or that ramp where people can feel comfortable walking on to come to you, it's good intentions, but it's not going to yield anything.

One of the things that I do is just a simple process of walking amongst my teams and going to talk to people and this is something that I do. I call it anecdotally, my doctor runs. It's just a two-minute, one-minute conversation. How are you doing? I build rapport and it works.

Thomas Gelmi

Of course.

Fred Getty

I mean, it's the trust level. It's genuine. They can trust you. When I was leaving this department that I had led for about three years, they were devastated. Not so much because I was leaving, but because there were worried that whoever comes into that role may not have that ability to connect and that's what people want. They were sharing with me a couple of [inaudible 00:31:53] that they were having threat withdrawal symptoms because it was just so difficult for them to come to terms the fact I wasn't there any more. I'd spot them. I use that spot and quote that. Simple things like that, connecting people, realizing that they're human. That person there has issues, has family, it's really just common sense.

Thomas Gelmi

It's often the small things that make it different. Coming back to this example of the leader who opens the door as opposed to having it closed and then wonders why nobody's coming. Well, One of the other success factors in my work that I keep seeing is that it also takes some courage to get feedback from people, gather feedback to reduce blind spots.

And many, especially successful leaders, quote on quote, are convinced, of course, that they have become successful because the way they do things. The way they lead and the way they manage. Of course, I can relate to that. However, many are not aware that they're also successful despite some of the things they do or say or how they show up, etc. That turn people off or that demotivate people, right? How much more effective they could be if they would just stop a thing or two that annoys people. But how can I change something if nobody tells me?

I often work with 360-degrees feedback processes where we gather unsolicited anonymous feedback from the main stakeholders. Something which I would then go through with that leader, with that executive, say, okay, hey, what do we do with this, right? That's very often a game changer, too.

Fred Getty

Yeah. This is a good time. Let me let you talk about the work that you do. I know you have a couple of books, a few books that you've written, in fact. But you want to share with the listeners the work that you do with leaders and perhaps how they can maybe get into contact. I know you're very busy travelling the world, but I think it's important to share with the listeners what you do here.

Thomas Gelmi

Sure. Actually, I'm not as busy traveling as before the pandemic, compared to before the pandemic, and I'm glad it's different now. The pandemic has made me virtualize basically all of my work, which worked very, very well. Now we're back to, let's say, 50/50. It's a good balance now.

I do work a lot in one-on-one settings, one-on-one, individual leadership coaching. Very often over a period of 6–12 months, for example, for lasting change. I work with teams in their development, and I do have my own leadership development program, which is really a curriculum on two levels. There's a leadership essential program, and there is a leadership excellence program.

Everything or all these aspects are backed by an e-learning resource I am running with content, with bite-size video lessons that I have produced. It's a very timely or modern way of learning and developing. I don't consider myself a trainer. I'm more of a facilitator and a coach, and the resources are there, can be used. There's also self-learning courses that you can find on my website. There's something for everyone who wants to look into developing their own leader personality, as we said.

Fred Getty

And you want to share your website with our listeners?

Thomas Gelmi

Yes, absolutely. That's www.gelmi.coach. You'll find me on LinkedIn, other social media channels like TikTok, for example. Look me up, you'll find me.

Fred Getty

Make sure we have that in our show notes as well. Anything else, Thomas, that we've not asked that you feel like it's essential as we wrap up here? Any nuggets that you want to leave with your listeners?

Thomas Gelmi

Well, maybe just one thing. Start with where you are and what you have now. Get the ball rolling with the very first little step towards becoming a more effective leader personality. You don't have to climb the whole mountain in one day, right? But start doing it. Don't postpone it. Whether you're a leader of an organization, whether you're the leader of a team. Whether you're already experienced in your role, whether you are absolutely new to the role, whether you're the leader of a sports team or a parent of teenagers, start doing this. Start growing into a leader personality more consciously and systematically. That would be my main recommendation. Make it a priority.

Fred Getty

Yeah, absolutely. I think for me, this is one thing that I've gotten away. We need to stop calling it soft skills and change that part. It's people's skills are essential skills, right? Calling it, who knows? Perhaps changing that might start causing people to see things differently. But thank you so much for coming on the podcast it's been great. It's been great chatting about this and just learning about some of the challenges and how we can handle them. That's really why we do the work we do.

Thanks for your time and to you, our listeners, really, that's why we do what we do. If you found this very valuable, you want to get in touch with Thomas. It's www.gelmi.coach. It's his website, he's on LinkedIn, and feel free to reach out to him as well. Until next time when we come your way again with another episode of the All Thanks Leadership podcast. This is again, your host, Fred and thank you again for listening.