We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive at the place we started and know that place for the first time. — T.S. Eliot

I was reminded of this line from T.S. Eliot’s poem, Little Gidding, upon joining Roy Group. I had wound down a long executive career in the wholesale, retail and finance sectors, and was excited to join this team on what seemed to be an important leadership journey. My immediate impression was that these people were excellent leaders, as evidenced by their attitude, approach, and how they value people and the world.

For my magazine cover on our new Roy Group website, Chiz (Ian Chisholm) coined the headline 10 Things Golf Teaches Me About Leadership. I laughed when I first saw it, but I now realize that I can legitimately list most of leadership’s rules and follies beginning with my experience with my own Mentor. In fact, I believe you can learn almost everything you need to know about a person — their character and leadership style — during the course of a four-hour game of golf: how they approach leadership of self, and deal with integrity through challenge and change.

I can remember the summer days when it first occurred to me that I had a capital-M mentor — and I can still remember the day that I decided on the type of person and leader I wanted to become. That was when my “exploring”, as Eliot calls it, began.

It was my 14th summer — a hot, hazy afternoon — and my dad had dropped me off at the golf course. After introducing me to golf and playing a few rounds with me that year, he had recognized it was time to pass me off to someone who could teach me more than he could.

On my own for the first time on a golf course, I stood near the first tee. That was the day I first met and got to play with an amazing golfer. A champion.

My father’s friend approached. “Would you mind if I played along?” he inquired.

I smiled back and pointed at the first tee. To me, he seemed a very old man, a little stiff in body, but relaxed and light in his physiology and expression. I liked him immediately.

I was stunned when he took the tee and crushed his 4-wood, driving a high shot that seemed to stay in the air forever before finally landing on the back of the first green, a very long par 3.

My turn. I hit a good one with a going draw. I had an insanely strong grip in those days, and the clubface at impact always moved the ball left. Couldn’t hit straight, but I had good distance. My ball landed 25 yards short and left of the green — one of my better efforts.

He parred. I felt pretty good with my bogie 4.

“What if you turn right hand over a half-inch to the left on that grip?” he offered a few holes later. “Let’s see what happens.”

I did what he said, and immediately hit a fade. I watched incredulously as the ball curved from left to right.

He smiled. “You can make the ball do anything,” he said. “And it always starts with the grip.”

This time, he hit his tee shot lower. It moved left to right. Then the old man hit a punch 7-iron approach shot downwind to tap in range on the par-4 sixth hole. It was the first birdie I had ever seen.

I made a par 4, which was a breakthrough for me.

Right then I said to myself: Face it, Shep. You know nothing about this game. But maybe you can learn.

After eight holes he was two under par.

“I like your swing,” he said. “Tempo is not easily taught, but you have it.” He hadn’t said much during the whole round and I didn’t even know his name, but I felt better about myself and more confident about my game.

“I play most days,” he said when the round was done. “My name is Walter…Champion. Maybe see you again sometime.”

That was in 1972. For the next two summers, Walter Champion served as my golf teacher and mentor. During those summers, I visibly honed my game. What was less apparent to me was that Champion’s influence was also honing my leadership mind.

When I met him, Champion was 70 years old and a former provincial senior golf champion. I learned that he grew up near Troon, a famous Scottish seaside links course where they sometimes played the British Open. He had been a caddy there during the First World War, and had moved to Canada in 1927. He called me “laddie”.

Champion had a very smooth, relaxed approach to golf and to life. I never saw him become upset or show even mild concern, no matter what kind of situation he was in. He always looked very interested, whether it was in the shot he had to play or in the conversation he was having. Sometimes, when he had an “impossible” shot, he was downright excited.

Late that first summer on a drizzly afternoon, I learned what a true competitor Champion was. We were facing the seventh hole — a mean hole that featured a tall, broad oak tree smack in the middle of the fairway, maybe 175 yards off the tee.

A good drive could have flown it, but this day, Champion’s drive caught the top of the tree. We waited, listened, looked.

Nothing.

“Where is it?” he demanded.

“I never saw it get spit out,” I said. “It must have flown through.”

I hit a great drive past the tree, leaving just a short iron to the green.

At the green, Champion’s ball was nowhere to be found. I grinned to myself. Looks like I got you, old man.

Champion looked around on the edge of the fairway, left and right, considering his situation. Then he walked back to the tree and stood beneath it. The first branch was about seven feet up.

He peered upward through the foliage. “I thought so!” he said. “Give me a boost.”

Give you a boost? I thought. You’re 70 years old! And it’s raining. And that branch is way too high.

Of course, I gave him my knee.

He clambered up onto that first branch and surveyed the situation.

“Nine iron,” he ordered.

I flipped it up and he grabbed it.

He one-handed it like a tennis volley. The ball rattled down and ricocheted clear of the tree. Then he hit a low-iron shot to about 15 feet. Although I had a shorter putt to equal his 4, once he’d jammed it in the back of the hole for an impossible par, I knew that I was not worthy, and missed mine.

I was stunned for the remaining holes we played that day, astounded that a 70-year-old could climb a tree and save a par from a real “bird’s nest” lie. He always liked a challenge. Whenever we played that hole again, he would smile at that tree.

It was the middle of the following golf season when I finally beat him. On the final tee, I was one up on him. I figured I would need a par to hold the thin margin and take the match.

In my desperation to win, my old snap-hook showed up. I watched, heart in my throat, as my tee shot sailed into the trees.

As Champion had shown me how to do in similar tricky situations, I searched around and found an opening. I thought I just might pitch it through and up near the green, and still have a shot at par — and a win.

My shot flew past one, two, three trees and caught the fourth dead centre, sending the ball back toward me on my left.

Champion spoke to me from the fairway. “You’re going to have to hole this one.” His own approach shot sat maybe ten feet from the pin.

“See the shot,” he urged.

I released my frustration at my first failed attempt. Champion would go for it, I said to myself. He would at least give himself a chance.

I pictured the shot in my mind’s eye: through the trees, maybe two bounces through the fringe, then up onto the tilting green, breaking maybe two feet to roll toward the hole.

A feeling of focus spread throughout my body. I drew the club back and accelerated through the vision I had had. I watched, mesmerized, as the ball followed my detailed instructions and curved into the middle of the hole for a 3!

Champion waved, smiled and, not seeming too surprised, walked onto the green, quickly stroking his putt to the back of the hole for his 3.

“Congratulations,” he said. And then: “If you really want to, you can win from anywhere.”

I never forgot it.

My game improved over the rest of the summer. I won only very rarely, but we always talked about that first win.

After my teenage years, I went back to that old course where I had learned the game and so much more, but I never saw Champion again. I never mentioned him to my parents, or even my friends, for many years. Now, all these decades later, I still remember his deliberate accelerating swing, the clarity with which he focused on each moment, for each shot. I can hear his laugh, and see those decisive putts dropping into the hole. And I can see him climbing that tree as clearly today as I did all those years ago.

How you play teaches by example — and that quality of character is a significant part of what Roy Group imparts to our clients. Can you let a bad shot go? Are you making the most of yourself and your opportunities, or do you prefer to wallow in the crashing surf of “bad luck” and “bad bounces?” Are you a risk taker? Can you think with inspiration and even audacity? Can you be decisive and committed? Do you appreciate your fellow fairway travellers and affirm them? Can you win and lose without being particularly attached to either outcome?

Champion was a great leader because he was genuine in everything he did. He was purposeful at all times, yet relaxed while being focused and aware of everything around him. He was also a great role model because he often took the time to appreciate my play, or to mention something seemingly innocuous that inevitably turned out to a superb bit of teaching or redirection. To be affirmed and appreciated made him a hero to me.

During my mid-teens, I had thought I, too, would become a teacher. And although my life later flowed toward business and leadership roles after university, I always kept those special summer days and experiences in my heart. And so, coming to Roy Group as a post-career vehicle did feel a little like déjà vu — like arriving back where I had started all those years ago — but with the awareness and clarity of knowing where I am now.

 

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Chris Shepherd is a Roy Group Special Advisor.

You’ve heard of Fuckup Nights? Of course you have. It’s vulnerable, it’s raw, it’s funny, it’s a gift of learning from someone else’s screw-ups.

In Episode XLVII of Obstacle Course, our co-founder and president, Ian Chisholm, gets vulnerable and raw. Tune in for this audio version of Fuckup Nights, as Chiz opens up to show hosts John Close and Andrew Langford about his incredible learning journey, from growing up a Saskatchewan farm kid to working himself to exhaustion running a startup to — the big surrender — realizing leadership is actually about helping others find their light and letting them shine.

Together this hilarious trio crack jokes, discuss Chewbacca suits, talk about the hero’s journey, debunk some pervasive myths about entrepreneurs, and sharpen the edge between leadership and mentorship. Humble, self-reflective and cuttingly honest, Chiz will have you reflecting on your unique ability, what it means to work smarter, and how best to help other people discover their finest selves.

I had a tough wake-up call early in my leadership career. I guess it was about 20 years ago. Back then, in my mind I was bulletproof. I was unstoppable. I was amazing. All you had to do was ask me. I would have told you.

But actually, I was insufferable, arrogant and completely lacking in empathy. Nobody could be five minutes late for one of my meetings. (God forbid they had to get their kids to school — that wasn’t my problem.)

Luckily I had a mentor, a senior vice president, who had this really direct, stern, caring way of holding up the mirror. One day he said, “Todd, this is the way that you portray yourself to the world, and it’s how you’re being perceived by the world. How you’re being perceived by the world and your [work] results aren’t pretty. So figure it out.”

I called it the ‘magic mirror’ moment. He held that mirror up and I thought, “Oh my god, that’s how people see me? That’s how I am?” To me, that was the pivotal moment. Since then, I’ve said a thousand times to people that I wish we could borrow someone else’s eyes for an instant so that we could see how other people perceive us and how our conduct — what we’re doing and saying — actually lands for other people.

I hadn’t been taking responsibility for my conduct.

Leadership is about taking responsibility for yourself before anything else. Sure, it’s important to pick the right KPIs and hit your targets and pay your employees on time, but there’s a deeper responsibility that underlies all able leadership. This is the responsibility of stepping into one’s power and being intentional in every choice you make.

What would happen if a leader possessed a stronger sense of their “self” and was thus better able to harness the superpowers of the team? 

This is one of our key explorations with our clients.

Being present and intentional is a tremendous responsibility. As a day unfolds, we are invited into hundreds of moments of choice. Many people choose to step back from actively engaging with the myriad choices that appear throughout their day, and this choice keeps them in a place of powerlessness and blame. That isn’t very fertile ground; leadership can’t grow in that garden.

When you make your coffee in the morning, the amount of cream and sugar you put in is a choice. When you drive to work, the distance between you and the car ahead of you is a choice. Once you get to the office, the words you choose to communicate with your colleagues are a choice. So is your body language, tone of voice and countenance.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Everything you offer into the world is a choice. The difference between an accomplished leader and the rest of us is that great leaders have learned to be present with every moment, with every person, with every conversation, and to use that clarity to make choices that ultimately add to their experience of work and life. And, by default, these choices add to other people’s experiences. The burden of always and all the time may seem daunting and as such, it’s important to be gentle with yourself. Progress, not perfection.

Leadership at all levels, in all sectors of society, benefits from this kind of true engagement. It is in those moments of presence that we are masters of our own conduct.

What would happen if society and leaders were held accountable for  their conduct? What if there really was a conduct barometer? 

This notion may seem old fashioned, but what if leaders were lauded for being wonderful teachers and stewards of societal values, as well as conscious, caring, trustworthy and selfless? How would we behave if we could all have that Jimmy Stewart moment from It’s a Wonderful Life, and see the impact we’ve had on our world just by being a stand-up person?

How is society impacted by the current climate of divisiveness and cynicism? What is the counterbalance? 

I notice that we can occasionally fall into the trap of  focussing on what’s going wrong rather than what is going right. The current climate of divisiveness and cynicism is shaped by our paying attention to negative outcomes, and by our habit of ruminating on that negativity. Whether it’s on the news, on Twitter, or at the water cooler, there’s a lot of bitching going on. We love to feed that wolf — but it never takes us to a place of strength.

Taking action, yes. Complaining, no. It’s tricky.

The counterbalance? Conducting yourself like a true leader, by searching first for the things you can honour in yourself, and then for the things you can honour in someone else’s conduct. Can you listen for the shared interests? Can you help them articulate what success would look like for them? Can you position others to perform at incrementally higher standards, to learn from their experiences, and to be increasingly engaged in their endeavours?

Imagine if we had the tools and the ability to engage in constructive dialogue with people who also have good intentions, but a different perspective from ours? 

On the whole, people haven’t been taught how to navigate tricky conversations. It’s not a skill that is taught in school, nor in university, unless it’s a specific class on conflict resolution. Yet it’s a necessary skill for leaders to understand, and to be able to expect from their team. How many of your people’s best ideas never come to fruition because they don’t have the tools to reach agreement, or to find a way forward?

How many of your ideas never do? Are you yourself in need of learning how to deftly handle a range of opinions, needs and desires, while simultaneously keeping the ball rolling toward the goalposts?

What would happen if we were better able to lead ourselves and others through a world where the pace of change continues to accelerate, and where life’s priorities constantly compete with one another? 

This issue of competing desires becomes even more significant when cast in the light of a fast-changing world. Your conduct as a leader — your ability to help others look for shared interests, work collaboratively and bring their own best selves to every interaction — is the skeleton key to managing change.

Navigating change is uncomfortable at the best of times, and can take a wrong turn if your team is not well grounded in methods of communicating and moving things toward the goalposts. The accelerating pace of life and business requires that we remain fluid and optimistic, that we step into our responsibility to be present and choice-aware, and that we coach others to do the same.

When my senior VP held that mirror up 20 years ago, I realized that leadership was about understanding the other person’s agenda and helping them get what they want, as opposed to me trying to push my agenda and using other people as a tool to fulfill my agenda. The key is to align yourself with people whose agendas are aligned.

You Are The Work

Even as leaders, the journey never stops. Leadership takes a lifetime to master — and the work is never truly “done”. What if, as a leader, you had a skilled guide in your corner? A guide whose agenda was to serve your agenda?

You would be that much closer to becoming your finest self, making your finest contribution.

 

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Todd Walsh is CEO of Roy Group.

Because I lost it…

My life would not be the same had it not been for taking on the CEO role at Columba 1400 on Skye. This assignment introduced my brand new family and I to lifelong friends; together we made a huge difference to an entire country; and it gave us the chance to be players in the early days of the social enterprise movement in the UK.

But it did leave a dint. 

Being only 27 when I took the job, I only had one gear: WORK. Grinding it out. No grace. No compassion for self. No discretion or mastery — just pure effort. Leaving it all on the field.

The heroic label I applied to this adventure was entrepreneurial — connected personally at a very deep level to the theme of exhaustion. And therefore, after nearly five years of riding with the throttle wide, I admitted, very privately, that I didn’t ever want to do this to myself or to my family again.

So we decided to practice.

Had a chance on Skye to work with some amazing practitioners. Their skill sets allowed them to engineer a different pattern of work. It wasn’t 9-to-5 — not that my work was. It wasn’t five days a week. It was project-based, as-and-when, leveraging a high degree of choice and using their unique gifts to multiply the impact of key projects.

They were the closest thing to Jedis I had ever experienced. Coaching, mediation, engagement, facilitation. The works.

The mastery.

And so when both Anne-Marie and I had the chance to work a different way — as practitioners — we took it. We launched Roy Group a few days before our kids started school in September 2004.

If we kept things simple, we reasoned, we could create the leanest of start-ups and share our practices to make our living. (Side note: Not all business owners are entrepreneurs by nature. As practitioners, we were tied to our personal involvement in the business — our offering was our time. If we ever stopped practicing, the company would stop, too. The difference between practice and enterprise is a lesson that took me 15 years to take on.)

We didn’t really have a business plan, because we didn’t need one. Instead, we had an equation of 100 client-facing days a year. If we could organize ourselves around that, everything in our life would work.

In any given week of the year, this system allowed us to learn, to earn, to be a part of the volunteer commitments we felt were important, and to do most of our own administration and billing, etc.

It was a good life.

Not without its challenges…  

Moving back to Canada after Skye meant we were starting something new without a network that knew who we were or what we had to offer. There was a lot to learn.

I was still pretty tired. Most of the initial calls I made to people to build our network and launch Roy Group originated from a lawn chair on our back porch, me sitting with a blanket over my knees. I was in entrepreneurial convalescence and had big questions every day about whether this was going to work or not. There was pressure, but there was also the genuine enjoyment of connecting with people who were trying to do important things.

We had borrowed some money to get things started. Wasn’t enough. I went to my dad (who many of you know is a finance whiz) and explained that I needed to have a meeting with him to talk about cash flow. For any of you that know Mike Chisholm, you’ll appreciate the dry wit of his response: “I assume that this meeting is not because you have too much cash flow?”

But it started to work.

The balance in our bank account siphoned down to a sphincter-clenching few hundred dollars — but then our equation started to work.

For 15 years, we have loved Roy Group as a vehicle to do the things we want to do, and to become the people in the world that we want to be. It was as if a tight-knit group of us was powering along in a handcrafted rowboat. Life was pretty good. Growth came in the form of deepening our own capacity to learn from, respond to and gain credibility through our clients’ challenges. Our practices became more and more potent toward mastery.

We felt like samurais — loyal and self-disciplined warriors for leadership who could be sought out for special assignments. We met other extraordinary samurais along the way. It allowed us to focus on what we could supply, and to make it unlike anything else in the market. It allowed us the flexibility to spend time with our family and to enjoy our life. I don’t believe in static life balance; it was a dynamic equilibrium of everything that was important to us.

Until it wasn’t.

After 15 years in business, working each and every time to deliver the best offering for your clients that you possibly can, a LOT of people find out about what you do. And they call you up. That was our only strategy: do great work every time, and have the message spread by word-of-mouth between people who trust each other.

Things got a little hairy. We were practitioners trying to manage big growth but without a foundation for the enterprise we were evolving toward. Getting back to people, preparing for courses and travelling started to pinch into every evening and every weekend. Vitality started to ebb. Life on the road was dishing up the wear and tear. Creativity suffered too: it was easier to run the same plays that had worked before. I lost my focus on important professional relationships. Quality in our work was a compromise I would never consciously make, but even it started to dip. The rowboat was taking on water. And we needed to take stock.

Start by protecting the spark…  

A lot of people talk about the importance of choosing your values. But true conviction feels more like choicelessness to me. You either live it or you don’t. Along the journey so far, we have uncovered what means the most to us. They were the things that began to be compromised — quality, vitality, creativity, focus — and we knew it felt wrong. Everything we do now is grounded by our exploration of these core values. We have no choice but to live by them: it’s who we are.

In January of 2019, Anne-Marie and I hired Todd Walsh to serve as CEO of our business. Todd’s unique gift is his ability to create, align and advance an elite team toward a desired future state. In a relatively short amount of time, he has brought together a cadre of extraordinary characters. He positions each of us to use our unique gifts more often — and more powerfully. He believes in our values. He builds them into our operational processes, and brings us back to them when we’re not in line.

We will still be a small giant — a company that chooses every day to be great before we are big. We’ve shifted our metaphor from rowboat to zodiac: quick, tight, agile, adaptable. We will work with clients, colleagues and suppliers that we love. We will always aim at delivering client and team member experiences that are high-impact and indelible. We will create new offerings and build our supply. And together, we are going to meet a demand that we are humbled by, positioning a corps of extraordinary leaders as Mentors in their communities.

And tend the fire… 

When we left Skye in 2004, the team at the Centre gave Anne-Marie and I a silver quaich engraved with the Gaelic Bheothaich sradag bheag teine mor: From a single spark has come a raging fire. Entrepreneurship comes with some incredible potentials: to use our unique gifts alongside others, to innovate, to create value together that we believe deeply in. To work with who we want to work with. And to be as zealous about quality and improvement as we like: arriving is the enemy of thriving.

I am really happy to be thriving again.

It even feels good now to be making the inevitable sacrifices required of entrepreneurs. I feel the pressure that comes from holding a vision that is bold enough for us all to move toward. I am doing things that I don’t know how to do, masterfully. I am making a lot of key choices, and getting some of them wrong. I am holding all the inherent doubts and facing the natural fears that come with risk and growth. I am waking up early thinking about all the things that our business needs to be whole. I am working on myself more rigorously, and playing harder — knowing that I am playing for my teammates and that they are playing for me. I am holding myself to a higher standard of communication and of follow-up. I am protecting my energy and treating myself more gracefully when it comes to diet and rest and exercise.

And it all feels great this time.

 

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Ian Chisholm is a founding partner of Roy Group.

By Vanessa Braun

To be a coach for children is to see the individual potential and to create the space for them to rise to it.

In February I attended The Leader’s Discipline™, a two-day training presented by Roy Group in Victoria, BC. One of the many things I took away from the training was how applicable it was not only to leading my teaching team but also to my work in the classroom with the kids. Though I hadn’t thought about it this way before, a vast majority of our time is dedicated to “coaching” or empowering children to be the best they can be.

As the founder of Storyoga, I can proudly say we believe in asking children the right kinds of questions so that they may draw their own conclusions. Rather than giving them answers, we believe that their ideas and understanding of the world is of equal value and that their voices are meant to be heard. We believe in giving children the tools to problem-solve and the skills to stand up for themselves. Rather than stepping in to fix something, we see conflict in the classroom an opportunity for growth. Essentially, we believe in supporting children to be their own advocates and to know their place in the world.

How incredible it is to be gifted this kind of an opportunity at such a young age. To be valued, to be supported, and to be heard.

What I also realized after taking this training is that we hold our children to a high standard. We expect a lot of them, and in return, we see them grow by leaps and bounds. To be a coach for children is to see the individual potential and to create the space for them to rise to it.

To be a coach for children is to ask questions that encourage reflection and may even challenge their thinking.

Often children will ask why things are the way they are in the world. Rather than simply giving them an answer, keep the conversation alive. Put the question back to them and ask why they think it is so. Not only does this create a shared dialogue rich in learning, but it also opens the doors to possibility while fostering creativity and imagination in the process of doing so.

To be a coach for children is to hold each child accountable to being their best self.

To foster the dispositions of kindness, compassion, truthfulness, and to see the good in one another. Recently we had a child speak negatively of another child in the class. One child commented on another child as always being mean. Seeing that the child who had made this comment had the qualities of being a leader herself, I asked, “Is this always true? Is this child always mean?” I then followed with, “Is it true today?” She stopped to consider my question and after some back and forth, answered by saying no. It was a powerful moment for both of us, which changed the course of her thinking and action in the class.

To be a coach for children is to help them trust their own wisdom — what they already know.

On another occasion during journal writing, one of our students asked me to draw him a heart. I put it back to him and said, “What do you think a heart looks like?” He smiled and asked again for me to draw it. I was honest with him in my response, “I’m not going to draw it for you. I think you know how.” I asked him to close his eyes and imagine a heart in his mind. Then to open his eyes and draw what he saw. He couldn’t bring himself to do it. He was stuck on wanting it done right and for me to do it for him. While it would have been very easy for me to draw the heart, I simply wasn’t going to. By not drawing it for him, what I was really saying was, I believe in you and your abilities. I was rooting for him to trust in his own wisdom.

Too often we look outside ourselves for validation and for answers. This starts at a young age. It makes me wonder, where would I have been in life if someone taught me at an early age to trust myself? If someone created the space for my own knowing to come through? This doesn’t just apply to drawing hearts. It applies to knowing how to stand up for what you believe in, to be brave, and to have the courage to be who you really are.

Whether it’s learning how to draw a heart or how to walk across a balance beam, we must give children the space to rise to the occasion. We must challenge their thinking and their comfort level, and present opportunities for them to reach new heights. When we do this, not only does their confidence increase but their level of self-efficacy and overall belief in their abilities starts to permeate.

Ask questions that provoke a sense of wonder; keep the conversation alive. Encourage reflective thinking, and foster the dispositions of kindness, compassion, truthfulness, and a loving heart. We all need a chance to shine. Be the spark that ignites the light in children and allow them to shine bright.

 

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Vanessa Braun is the founder of Storyoga.

For upcoming sessions of The Leader’s Discipline, see Open Courses.