221: Strengths Over Struggle: How Coaching Unlocks Your True Leadership Potential
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Feeling stuck, burned out, or like you’ve hit a ceiling in your career or business? You’re not alone, and more importantly, you don’t have to stay there.
Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today, we are joined by Ryan Crittenden, Ph.D., of XL Coaching to explore the importance of coaching for both entrepreneurs and professionals. With a Ph.D. and years of experience in strengths-based leadership coaching, Ryan explains why going it alone can lead to stagnation, and how expert guidance can help you move forward with clarity and purpose.
In this episode, we're discussing...
Coaching, whether for individuals or teams, offers significant benefits for personal and professional growth.
Understanding your strengths (and weaknesses) is crucial for effective leadership and building well-rounded teams. Tools like the CliftonStrengths assessment and the Six Types of Working Genius can aid in this process.
Entrepreneurs often struggle with the mindset of doing everything themselves, but recognizing and delegating tasks based on strengths leads to greater efficiency and passion.
Burnout can stem from various factors, including company culture. Prioritizing well-being, engaging strengths at work, and maintaining healthy relationships are essential. Sometimes, a change in environment might be necessary.
Team workshops, when intentionally designed to build a common language around strengths and foster interaction, can be powerful tools for team cohesion and understanding individual contributions.
Investing in coaching is not an expense but an investment in oneself and the growth of a business or career.
Resources from Ryan
LinkedIn | XL Coaching | Email
Resources from Mike and Nichole
Gateway Private Equity Group | Nic's guide | Franchise With Bob
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today we have Ryan Crittenden. All of you know that I'm an entrepreneur and I always talked about always having a mentor, having coaching don't do things alone.
So, we're going to talk about the importance of coaching and why you should hire Ryan to be your coach. How are you doing, Ryan?
Ryan Crittenden: I'm doing great. I'm glad to be here with you today.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely. So I should say Dr. Ryan, maybe ladies and gentlemen, does have his PhD. So tell us a little bit about who you are and what made you decide to get into coaching.
Ryan Crittenden: I live in Colorado Springs, Colorado with my wife and twin toddler boys. And I got into coaching nine years ago, because I saw the power of what coaching can do, and it really changed my life. Now, I like taking that experience I had and passing it on to other folks.
So, that's why I got into coaching. Of course, I've had some other business ventures, but it's always coaching, there's just nothing more powerful to coaching to me.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. I enjoy it. Also, it's given back, but I love getting paid to do it instead of, "Mike, tell me how to buy hotels. Can we meet for lunch?" I'm like, " How about hiring me for this?"
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah, exactly.
Mike Stohler: Because all my blood, sweat, and tears of learning, it is worth something, right? What type of coaching do you focus on, and why is that important to you?
Ryan Crittenden: I focus on strengths-based leadership coaching. I tend to work with entry-level leaders or people that are wanting to get their first taste of leadership, up until I've even coached some C-Suite leaders. Everybody up the game. We focus on strengths. So, I initially used the CliftonStrengths assessment.
I have a really intentional coaching program that I call Strengths Foundations, where we really dive into one, who the leader is, but then we're also gonna understand who they're not. Which is equally important, I think.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely.
Ryan Crittenden: In my personal experience when I went through this, it was in a little different context. But it was so freeing when I started to see on paper who I was not. It gave me even more permission to be who I was. And that's really the big thing. So we do that, also take clients and their teams through Strengths Foundations and The 6 Types of Working Genius, which is great for teams, really help identify just the areas that you really just excel in and blend the two.
On an individual basis, then we can, we go through and they have identified what they wanna work on and what their goal is. After we do those things, we set the foundation based on their strengths and how they're growing and their strengths. We move forward through more International Coach Federation standards of coaching, meaning that the coach comes up and says, "All right. I wanna work on my next promotion." We start dialing that and we work through there. But yeah, that's a little bit about how I do it on an individual leadership basis.
Mike Stohler: Is it more people that work for someone else that are maybe wanting to move up in the ranks versus the person that is an entrepreneur that just started their own company?
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah. That's a great question. I have worked with everybody. Now, the unique thing when you are working with an entrepreneur that wants to dive more into their strengths and even The 6 Types of Working Genius, one of the things that they're trying to figure out is, who they're not becomes really important.
Mike Stohler: Yes.
Ryan Crittenden: Because then they need to start finding other people or building their team around who they're not, so that they have a really sharp and developed, but also well-rounded team.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. I remember, ladies and gentlemen, I've always had coaches and mentors, and I remember the first thing I had been doing, what I did for a while.
I was like, "Oh man, this coaching stuff, I don't want to do this." But everyone says in all these books I read, they say get the coach and do it. It was the best thing that ever happened to me. What they said and what they taught me, and I think is what you're getting around is what my unique ability is.
Who am I? What's my personality? What am I good at and why am I doing all the other stuff?
Ryan Crittenden: Right.
Mike Stohler: I hate accountings, but why am I paying the bills? It's finding your strengths, ladies and gentlemen, because all of us have our own strengths. We have our own personalities.
And I found out what mine was, and it was at that point when I said, "Okay, I'm going to concentrate on what I'm good at, and hire those people that are good at doing those things." And then you develop a team, right?
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: And then all of a sudden it was just liberating. I was like, "Oh my God. Now all of a sudden I just started growing as a company."
How important is it, and what do you do to get through to people that may be just with the entrepreneurs, they don't wanna spend the money? You get into this thing and I was there too. It's like I did every job, because for number one, I didn't think anyone could do it better than me.
That's that entrepreneur's downfall. And boy, was I wrong. So, how do you get through the mindset of, " Look guy or gal, you're an analytical person, so why are you doing creative marketing?" How do you get through to people?
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah. I will say I worked with a marketing team at a large Fortune 500 company.
And they all were analytical folks. It was fascinating. They didn't have really great personalities. The team event was pretty dry. But it was fascinating on a psychological aspect to see them and how they were really fantastic marketers and they were great people. So don't get me wrong, but.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Ryan Crittenden: I think I know a better way to answer your question. What's the benefit?
I ask people, " What's the benefit of you doing something that burns you out?" There is no benefit. And I had the same thing with keeping my own books.
I'm like, "I could do it with my undergrad, graduate degrees in economics and finance. I can figure it out, take an hour class or whatever on QuickBooks." But it's like " I could pay an accounting firm quarterly to do it in 15 minutes. My books aren't complicated, fortunately."
But what's the benefit of me taking that hour away from a time from connecting with you or connecting with another client? There is no benefit. That's not what I started my company to do. I started my coaching company because I wanted to connect with people, not because I wanted to sit and do my own QuickBooks.
You have to ask yourself what's the benefit of me doing it? And a lot of times it's, no, there's none. So, I might as well pay a little bit, free up my time and reinvest my own time because I can't, you can always earn money back, but you can't earn time back.
The same thing when I started realizing the power of The 6 Types of Working Genius did for me.
For those that are not familiar with that, it's a really simple, great assessment, helps you identify your areas of genius. And they have an analogy of, we were talking about flying planes and how, amazingly enough, the analogy of flying a plane. And each step of flying, hey we should land the plane.
And then someone figures out where they need to land, and then there's geniuses along the way to landing the plane. Sometimes, you're the entrepreneur, you are a one-man show. There is a season where you're gonna have to fly and land the plane and then fuel it up and take it back off. But as soon as you can start getting rid of those steps, you should, but my geniuses are flying the plane.
The sooner that I can figure out who can land the plane and do these other things for me, the more passionate I'm gonna stay about my work, my company, and the more energy I'm gonna have. So we were talking about it, it takes time, but at the end of the day I am like, I don't have to ask permission, you know, to do things.
But I'm also passionate because, as much as I can, I try to stay flying the plane, and I have other people that are landing the plane I, my bookkeeper.
Mike Stohler: And you're happier, because you're doing what you love. Instead of doing all the other stuff. I'm more of an economics person, so accounting's horrible. They do the debits and credits backwards, and it's just all sorts of.
Ryan Crittenden: Right.
Mike Stohler: How's a negative, a positive and what is this stuff?
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: So, I don't do it.
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: 'Cause I hate it. And why would I do what I hate? Maybe to save $ 10,000 a year, $20,000 a year. It's not worth it. And like you said, it's just the time.
Now, I'll change up a little bit. So I want to know before we move on, a success story where your coaching significantly impacted someone or changed someone's life, probably like Mike did with me.
So give me something, a feel good story. It's like going, "Wow." You're so proud of this person after you first. Yeah.
Ryan Crittenden: There's one story in particular that I do like to share because it was so fun. I was working with a small team of executives, four or five I believe. I just remember two in particular, but during the team, our team coaching event, the CEO and the COO, as we really got looking at everybody's strengths, they both were like, " I suck at this role." And they switched roles. They were small enough to where they could do that.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Ryan Crittenden: But it was neat to see this conversation go on with these young executives just trying to figure out how to grow their company but also know and love their strengths and know and love their team member strengths. And they were able to do that, and it was super neat. And actually, every time I think about it, I'm just like, "Man, that was so great."
They started an awareness of themselves, and then it grew an awareness of others. And then it turned into personal and professional growth for everybody once they realized what seat in the plane they needed to be on.
Mike Stohler: There you go. And ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Crittenden at xlcoaching.net. Now I work for a tech company that's making me go into the office. The return of the office thing, and I'm working all these hours, and I'm burning out. For me, it was important to take at least an hour a day of my time but what advice would you give people that are just, "Man, I'm not happy."
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah. First thing, you were kinda like you just alluded to, take a nap. When you can start to initially refresh and reset, you can think a lot more clearly.
So, there's a few things about burnout. Sometimes it's not necessarily that you are working too much. I think that is an aspect, but burnout leads to something a little bit deeper. It's a cultural aspect of the company, and you may or may not be able to influence that, but let's just say, you can't influence that.
So I always say, take a nap, refresh when you're in the right mind to be able to engage people, positively and keep your relationship with your boss or someone more important than any problem you can handle issues a lot better. Then if you go in, you're tired, and you just feel pegged out.
Let's bring the tension down, see what you can do to engage your strengths in your job more. And hopefully, if you're coming out at this being, trying to keep a good relationship with your boss, your manager or supervisor, they're able to engage with that.
But if they're just, and I even had this a while back where I was feeling burnt out and I was trying to engage. I just had to leave the company because it was something deeper than I was working a lot of hours. It was a cultural aspect of the company that was broken, and nobody wanted to address it.
And I was the one calling it out, saying, " This stuff is broken. Can we have a conversation about this?" And they just didn't want to. And it got to a point where I was like, it's better for me and my health and my sanity. I need to go. So that's an option. if you can't engage with your employer or if they don't want to engage back with you and the status quo is fine. Either you gotta be okay with it, or maybe you might need to look somewhere else. But try to stay fresh, levelheaded, keeping relationships more important than problems.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, and I know it's hard with the burnout, because of the culture in America with working most employers, they don't care. It's the bottom line: get your ass to work. And now you see companies that are saying not only do you have to work 80 hours a day, but now you have to commute. It is the return to the office. So that's gonna be another layer of, I know someone that has to go into work. It took 'em an hour and a half to go seven miles.
Ryan Crittenden: Oh man.
Mike Stohler: And in the Pacific Northwest. Now there's this other mental thing a part of that. And that's both ways, I think the coaching, not only the business side of coaching, but just the mental side of coaching is extremely important.
And just defragging your brain a little bit, and a lot of people are like, "Oh man, I get up at 6:00 AM, I get home at 8:00 PM, I eat dinner, play with the kids for an hour, then I'm in bed." So it's very hard. With someone like that, how do you sit there and say, "Hey, look, it's easy enough to say, go work out in the middle of the day, or go take a break, cold plunge, do whatever you think."
A lot of people just can't do it, and if you have to commute, listen to a good podcast, listen to different music. What do you tell those people that, " I don't have time. I can't take a nap in the middle of the day?"
Ryan Crittenden: That's a great point. It does come up. So there's other things, you'd have to, we just have to get creative. Find what initially was light in the fire for that person. For me, in that role that I was leading to, I was one of the top performers in our region at least.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Ryan Crittenden: And I had to sit back and I was like, "Hey, I have twin toddlers." At the time they weren't toddlers. And I was like, "What's more important?" I was like, "I'm replaceable at work." As a matter of fact, I'm sure I've been replaced two or three times already.
I'm long forgotten, but I am not replaceable at home. And it's not that I'm the sole income earner, it's not even that. It's the fact that my boys know who I am, and my wife and I still love each other. And hopefully that continues on, right? And I know my voice.
When you get the, what's the most important thing to figure out, and maybe you don't have a family and maybe it really is just your career and that's what you have and that's what you love. And we can start, can figure it out. But the first thing is what's lightening the fire? Why do you even want to do this? Remember, at work you're replaceable. At home, you're not. It's a reality. I think I saw on LinkedIn a while back, and the same thing. In 72 hours, if you pass away and you're employed, the job posting's up.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Ryan Crittenden: It's the nature of the beast. But you can't just throw out a yard sign for a family member. I think what's really important is figuring out what's lightening the fire. Then you can figure it out. And I wouldn't want to drive an hour and a half to work one direction.
And I do, I travel here and there, for coaching and working with teams and stuff, but it's not an everyday thing. So you can make those exceptions. There's things about that. But yeah, I would encourage someone if you're in that kind of spot, being like, "Man, what? I burn out. I just can't take a nap." But figure out what lights the fire in you. Why are you doing what you're doing? And then you can start going from there.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. And very wise words about the work and home life balance. That is extremely important because, and I think as you get into the younger generations, they're seeing that more.
My parents, there was no work-home life balance. They just worked.
Ryan Crittenden: Right.
Mike Stohler: Then you have my generation, and then we're like the last generation of "Yeah, yes sir. No ma'am." You're there and working and as these generations, the millennials and the Gen Z, they're like " Wait a minute. Time out, you don't care about me."
Ryan Crittenden: Right.
Mike Stohler: And this is the way it is. So there's something about mental health type of a thing that I didn't have. You just sucked it up and you did the work.
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: The feelings didn't matter. One thing that I, God I've always hated, is the team workshops. Why are they important? Because here's the thing: I'm not gonna go fall backwards and have someone catch me.
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: Maybe it's my mindset. What role do they have? The importance of it was like, "Okay, just suck it up and go to this team workshop, get to know each other and sing Kumbaya and make fun of it, but I know they're very important." What role do they play?
Ryan Crittenden: That's great. Sometimes I call them workshops and I've heard some people be like, "You should call them experiences, team experiences."
And maybe that's a better name. I don't know. I am pretty straightforward.
Mike Stohler: It's an experience.
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah. I don't try to use fancy words or anything. It just is what it is. One, there has to be an intentionality behind a team, because usually it's a huge expense for an over organization.
To have a team take a Friday off and go. Now, on the flip side, there's great ROI on it . But the way that I approach it, when I first initially work with a team, everybody goes through the Strengths Foundations coaching.
When we start talking about the strengths and who the team is and who the team isn't as a collective whole. They have that common language, they have a common knowledge and they can actually start identifying things in each other.
I like to leave a lot of white space in there so that the team can interact with these principles of being strengths-based in leadership and in their employment. And what does that mean? What can they really contribute to their team in a unique way? And so it could be really powerful. It's simple, but it's powerful.
Mike Stohler: I kinda like that more instead of just doing stuff. You're putting in some t ime and learning some things, instead of the trust.
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: Trust your teammates. And I'm like, "I don't trust them. I know those three guys and they'll let me fall.
Ryan Crittenden: Now, trust actually does almost naturally develop. But we do some you know, not like the trust fall exercise, but we do some things that are engaging and stuff, but there's a lot of white space to really Yeah. Engage with each other.
Mike Stohler: If you know your team well enough, it's like going, "I'm not falling back with that guy."
Ryan Crittenden: Right. This guy would probably fall forward and blame it on me.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, exactly. Ryan, before we let you go, people are gonna be visiting xlcoaching.net.
How do they get a hold of you? What kind of information? What's on the website?
Ryan Crittenden: Yeah, pretty straightforward. At xlcoaching.net I'll say XL stands for my son's Xander and Lucas. So if you have something creative, I always love hearing them.
Some of it is that my extreme leadership coaching was one of my favorite ones. But it stands for Xander and Lucas because I love my boys. But you're gonna see some leadership stats. First off, some ROI of coaching, more of what coaching is and you'll see a simple process for individual leadership coaching and development. I have three different coaching packages. And you can connect with me there. You can schedule right on my calendar from xlcoaching.net There's a big button on the side or an up top on the side. Or you can just email me also at ryan@xlcoaching.net.
Mike Stohler: There you go. Now, ladies and gentlemen, Ryan Crittenden XL Coaching. It changed my life. I think everyone needs coaching. It allowed me to grow because what it did, some of the coaching smacked me upside the head.
Some of what I fought to the teeth, because I didn't want to change. But in the end, trust the coaches, trust the mentors because they'll make you a better person and a better entrepreneur. Ryan, thank you so much for coming on The Richer Geek Podcast.
I hope you have a blessed and wonderful day.
Ryan Crittenden: Thank you very much for having me.
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ABOUT RYAN CRITTENDEN
XL Coaching and Development, founded by Ryan Crittenden, Ph.D., offers strengths-based coaching for leaders and aspiring leaders. Through personalized coaching, team workshops, and online courses, Ryan helps clients unlock their unique strengths, build emotional intelligence, and lead with confidence—avoiding burnout and creating fulfilling, successful careers.