Episode 116 | Using Leadership Coaching to Prepare the CEO’s Successor with Heather Conklin

Heather Conklin  00:00

I knew going into that interview that there was no way to fully prepare for what I was going to go into. But in the course of that conversation, really very upfront, he asked me, would I ever be interested in being a successor for him as a CEO someday. So I say that because it was just on the table right from the start, like I knew his ideas and intentions around that, and it gave me time to think about it.

Voiceover  00:05

Welcome to the “Lead at the Top of Your Game” podcast, where we equip you to more effectively lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. Each week, we help you sharpen your leadership acumen by cracking open the playbooks of dynamic leaders who are doing big things in their professional endeavors. And now, your host, leadership tactics, and organizational development expert, Karan Ferrell-Rhodes.

Karan Rhodes  00:36

Hello, superstars. This is Karan, and welcome to another episode of the lead at the top of your game podcast. We have a fantastic guest on today’s show, and I’m so so pleased to welcome Miss Heather Conklin. And Heather is the CEO of a company called Torch. And Torch is a very renowned leadership development and coaching platform. And before joining torch, she spent nine years at Salesforce serving as a senior vice president, General Manager of the trailhead business, where she focused on Skilling and enablement and helping individuals develop and grow within the Salesforce ecosystem. Now that was a mouthful, but you all know, we love, love to have seasoned leaders and experts in the leadership development space. And she’s going to share both a little bit about her story and about what great things they are doing at torch. So welcome to the podcast, Heather.

Heather Conklin  01:39

Thank you so much. I am really excited to have this chat today, so thank you for having me. Absolutely.

Karan Rhodes  01:44

We’re excited to have you as well. You have a really, really fun time. And as my listeners know, I’m a chatterbox myself, so I always try to squeeze it as much information about our guests as possible, but very, very curious about your journey and your thoughts on coaching and development today, but before we get started, we always love to learn just a tad about our guests. So for as much as you feel comfortable, can you give us a sneak peek into your life outside of work?

Heather Conklin  02:15

Absolutely. I think the thing that comes to mind quickly is the thing that people get very shocked to hear that in addition to being a CEO, I also at home, I have three little girls. So I have an eight year old, an almost six year old and a one year old. And so I always tell people that I’m not sure which part of my life is crazier, but certainly both are a lot right now, so young girls and obviously a lot going on at work every day, but it’s super fun. I live outside of Boston with my three girls and my husband. I have a crazy dog, and I don’t have a lot of free time because of both of those parts of my life, but it’s very rewarding, and I feel like one of the things that’s really interesting to me is all the parallels between parenting and leadership inside of a company, there are people don’t like to admit it, but there’s a lot of parallels between those two worlds.

Karan Rhodes  03:08

There are a ton and as a recent empty nester, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Let me just tell you that. But enjoy the time you have some great age ranges there, and enjoy because you blink and they’re adults, so just say congratulations on you and the girls and and also congratulations on balancing being a CEO of a very progressive company, because you’re right. Both are extremely tough, and you have to manage your time wisely, yeah, yeah. Well, let’s start out if you can share just a high level of your career before torch, and then we’ll delve into your work now at Torch,

Heather Conklin  03:56

Yeah, absolutely. So as you mentioned, I was at Salesforce for nine years prior to joining torch, and my whole career, I’ve been in product management roles, actually, so developing technology products for varieties of end users. And as part of my career at Salesforce, I got this really awesome opportunity at one point to start and lead our Associate Product Manager Program at Salesforce. And basically the idea here was we were going to take people out of undergrad and teach them to be really great product managers at Salesforce. And so I got the opportunity to do that with Brett Taylor, who at the at that point, he had just become our chief product officer. He went on to become the CO CEO at Salesforce, and now he’s, you know, Chairman of open AI, and has a new startup that he’s running. But at the time, I had gone to him and said, I thought there were a lot of ways that we could develop product managers differently at Salesforce. And he said, and so we started this program as a way to really develop new skills amongst product managers across the company. And. And I went into it thinking, I’m just going to teach them how to be product managers, like all the hard skills in the course of that time, I was in my own executive coaching experience at the time and having a really transformative personal experience with my coach just really like seeing and thinking about myself really differently at work. And I started to realize that I could take some of the things that I was learning in my own coaching experience and bring that into these 22 year olds who were just starting their career, teach them the good habits before they learned all the bad ones, right? And just in doing that, I saw the transformative effect it had on them and how much it impacted, of course, their work life, but also had really broad reaches into their personal lives as well, and just helped them show up as a much more kind of confident and grounded person at work and be able to develop more meaningful relationships with the people around them. And at that point, I would say, I got bit by the coaching bug, and just became really fascinated by the kind of shift that coaching can get for people. And so I just was like, I gotta do something with that passion. And I didn’t really know what to do with it. It was thinking about becoming a coach, and again, not really sure, but I ultimately stumbled upon torch one day as I was looking at like things on LinkedIn, and I almost reached out to our founder and said, you know, if you ever have a role for someone like me, let me know. And then I didn’t do it. But about six weeks later, a recruiting firm reached out to me about a confidential coo search. And so I took the call, interested in who this is, a company was, and at the end they said, it’s this company called torch. And I just had this, whoa, wow, that’s the company that you’re asking me about. So I always joke that I manifested this job, but it really was the perfect intersection of all of the product experience that I have had in my career, and then this passion that I feel so strongly about with coaching and great leadership, and so I decided to take the leap and went over to torch. I joined right as the economy was starting to go downhill in 2022 so it wasn’t the best time to join a small startup, but certainly has brought a lot of really interesting learning and challenges along the way, and I’ve learned a ton from that. So I spent a couple of years as the COO running a lot of the operations and product areas of the business, and then I succeeded our founder this summer as the new CEO at Torch.

Karan Rhodes  07:32

Oh, that is amazing. And what I found so interesting about your story, Heather was that your CEO was very intentional about his succession planning and nurturing and mentoring and grooming you to eventually take over the CEO’s spot. And a lot of our listeners don’t get to hear about the good and bad, if there is any bad around that. So I’d love for you to share you know, what you can about. You know, how did he approach you? And then how did that, you know, mentoring and coaching. What was that experience like for the CEO?

Heather Conklin  08:08

Yeah, to work with you. Cameron is his name, and he is a coach and a therapist. His background. And so when I started interviewing with Cameron, I immediately knew that I was interviewing with a very different profile of leader than I had ever worked for, you know, certainly at Salesforce and elsewhere in my career. But one of our very first interviews was a three hour walk outside of San Francisco, and we walked and talked for a long time, and I knew going into that interview that there was no way to fully prepare for what I was going to go into. But in the course of that conversation, really very upfront, he asked me, Would I ever be interested in being a successor for him as a CEO someday? So I say that because it was just on the table right from the start, like I knew his ideas and intentions around that, and it gave me time to think about it. I don’t think I fully knew what I was saying when I said that. Yes, I would consider that, but because it was always there, we we talked about it throughout my time working for him, and I always say sometimes it was at the forefront of our conversation, and other times it was sort of in the back of our minds as something that maybe would happen someday, but him and I have a really, really close relationship and very open and honest with each other, built a lot of trust in each other over the years, and so that, in and of itself, lended to a really, you know, successful navigation of something that is really hard, like this was, this is his baby. He created it and brought it into the world and did an amazing job. And so to have to hand that off and deal with the, you know, just the the transfer of that thing that he means, that means so much to him, was really hard. And then it was a big identity for a shift for him, going from being a CEO to now being, you know, the chairman on our. Forward, but, you know, just a different day to day. So there was a lot to work through, and on my own side as well. I mentioned having little kids. It was really scary to think about taking on the job of being a CEO when I do have three little girls at home, and I was curious if I was going to be able to balance that and what that was going to look like. But again, because he’s the coach and therapist, you know, we got to have a lot of conversations about it. So not everyone you know is succeeding someone with that kind of background, but it did lend itself to a really, a transparent and really honest kind of process that I think led us to a really good place

Karan Rhodes  10:38

That is awesome. That was the first thing that came to my mind, I was thinking, gosh, is it double duty? Or was your bandwidth, which was probably already stretched, did it? Was it tanking at that point? Because I’m sure you when in these conversations, while you’re doing your role, you also had to have an eye out for, you know, the CEO side and responsibilities, and learn and be strategic and think as a CEO before you had to be one, so I was just wondering how that affected your bandwidth. But it sounds like you all managed pretty well.

Heather Conklin  11:10

 Yeah, I think because, again, it was always on the table right from the start, and we got to enact it over a much longer period of time. I think often the mistake I think I see people make is that you’re, you only talk about succession when it’s like it’s time for me to leave now, or, you know, like I’m going to step down now. And that just doesn’t give you a lot of time to do a successful transition and to build up that trust that things are going to be okay if you step away, you know. And so with him, and I, we got to work on it over two years. And so he was very, you know, thoughtful and careful about, okay, I’m going to give you this piece, and now I’m going to add, you know, this other thing, or I’m going to transfer, like, the decision making power to you on this, you know, this aspect of the business. And so it was just done with a lot of intention, and not, like just the it’s not a light switch. It was more of like a gradual change over time. So it didn’t, it didn’t feel overwhelming in that way, but, but yeah, it definitely was interesting to watch him in the role, up to the point where I take it over. Because again, I said at the start I was, I had said, Yeah, like that sounds great, like your successor someday, but watching it all over time, you know, it’s a really hard job, and it is a lonely and difficult job, and so I think to have the up close view of what it really could look like, it did make it a harder decision at the end, when it was like, Okay, we are going to make this change. Now, I did have to think really long and hard about it, and it wasn’t just like a slam dunk, like, Yes, I’m definitely going to do it now, but I felt really supported through the process of even just exploring those kinds of questions and doubts and fears and all that kind of stuff.

Karan Rhodes  12:56

 Interesting. I would love to take a step back, because I don’t know if we really went in depth about yet what torch really does. I know it’s a coaching platform, but I would love for you to kind of give inform our listeners about torch and who’s your target audience, and then so can you compare? Or can you tell us how you differentiate yourselves from? Say, like, I mean, there’s a lot of coaching platforms out there, but say, like a better up out there?

Heather Conklin  13:23

Yeah, totally. So torch is a leadership coaching platform, and what we do is we work with companies to bring professional coaches into their teams and match their employees with one of our awesome coaches. And so from that standpoint, it sounds a lot like all the other coaching platforms. But what makes torch different is a few specific things. So one is we only hired coaches who were formerly leaders themselves, so they have both a coaching certification as well as a professional career of their own, which means that they have walked in your shoes, and they do understand what it is like to work in the kind of environment that you’re working in, and that that’s really important, because it creates a more, you know, nuanced way of being able to coach someone, and there’s a lot relatability and just trust in that because of the caliber of the careers and the coaching that these coaches are bringing to the table. So that’s a big one. The other one is that we do what we call context coaching, so we coach people in the context of what’s going on inside of the organization. And that means that we want to make sure that we’re a really strong partner to our customers and saying what is going on inside of your organization, and what do you need from your leaders as you go forward. And then we’re putting all of that in front of the coaches and having them work with the participants in coaching in very, again, clear ways that are going to help them be a successful leader at that organization. So it’s not, you know, traditional coaching in a sort of more isolated sense of, we’re going to go and have a you know, you’re going to have an amazing experience with a coach, and it’s going to make you feel better, you know, as an individual. Like that is certainly something I believe to be true. But because this is coaching within an organization, we do want to make sure that, you know, the organization is also benefiting from it, and that we are creating great leaders at that at that organization, and delivering impact and outcomes for the business as well. So we really do anchor our coaching around the business, and then, because our coaches have been leaders themselves in their own careers, they can be more of like an active guide for the leader as they go through the coaching experience.

Karan Rhodes  15:29

I love that, and I’m not sure if you’ve, you know, done these kind of analyzes, but I’m just curious if your coaches have reported any trends that they’re seeing right now as far as goals or struggles that leaders in general are really feeling these days?

Heather Conklin  15:47

Yeah, totally. I actually just put out an article, I think, last week on LinkedIn about this, but think that the thing we’re observing across the board is just that work is really hard for people right now, and it’s kind of depressing honestly. You know, just thinking about how much time we spend at work and how hard it is on everyone, and it seems to be all levels, all industries, and this level of of just overwhelm and and fear and reactivity to all of the things going on in the world today creates kind of what I’ve been calling a pressure cooker of all of that, and it doesn’t put people in very good behavior when you’re in that place of fear and reactivity. And so, you know, I hear all these stories about leaders behaving badly, or, like, toxic cultures, and, you know, just too much to do too little time. Like, I can’t even, like, think about a different way of of showing up because I’m so overwhelmed that I can’t even make the space, you know, to deal with all of that. And so I think that’s putting leaders into a place where I’m seeing them kind of continually make this false choice between, am I here to drive results for the business, or am I here to take care of the people and and people put those two things opposite ends of a spectrum, and then they’re kind of feeling like they have to choose one or the other. You know, I’m either going to really take care of my people at the expensive results, or I’m going to really drive results. And that means I can’t be, you know, nice and supportive of the team, because I need them to deliver the results. And one of the things that I’m really passionate about trying to change about all of that is just that leaders see that not as two opposing binary choices that they have to make, but actually that this is a spectrum, and that if you get the balance right, it can really feed into each other, like the you know, the taking care of people drives more results, and that it’s not they’re not at odds with one another. And I think by achieving a better balance between those, then we can create a more sustainable way of working that will really benefit everyone, both individually and at the organizational level.

Karan Rhodes  17:46

Yeah, I love that, and you know, that’s what we’re seeing too. Now we’re more on the strategic HR side of things like change management realignments and things like that. But you know, a lot of leaders are really feeling the struggle they were feeling it before, but then, in this even more complex world of work, in business, it’s like doubling down on them, and we’re seeing a lot of frustration and overwhelm, sometimes confusion when they’re not understanding how to best navigate certain situations. And to your point, it doesn’t put them in a very good mental or physical state when they’re struggling like that. And you know, you’re kind of preaching to the choir. To me about the value coaching, because I do know, but I just want to put a double emphasis. And you know, high five around you know what you all at torture are doing, because it’s very, very important work, and it does help bolster the leaders within an organization when they have that space and time and air cover to kind of figure out some things with a very trusted partner, and to your point, ones that have walked in their shoes that can make a world of difference. And so I just want to commend what you all are doing at their Torch.

Heather Conklin  19:01

I mean, it makes a huge difference. That’s why I feel so passionately about coaching, is I say nothing has changed my leadership the way that coaching has, because it gave me that space and the step back and like a shift in my perspective, and, you know, help me question assumptions or address the fears and underlying like emotions of what it means to be a leader every day and and that makes you just be a lot more intentional as absolutely person, and how you show up with other people and how you engage with them from a kind of, like a more grounded place, makes a huge

Karan Rhodes  19:34

Well, you know, I can’t let you leave here without, you know, at least mention the buzz word of the current times, AI. And I’m just curious how AI is or is not impacting, though, the world of leadership coaching,

Heather Conklin  19:49

It is having an enormous impact, I would say, on everybody. And again, like all jobs, all companies, you know, we’re all dealing with, how do we incorporate AI into our work? How do we. Think completely differently about how people work, and that certainly touches how we develop leaders as well. And I think one of the big things there is that we have to rethink how we equip leaders to lead today, because we can’t teach them the skills fast enough and old playbooks like command and control, and you know, the leader has all the answers and they’re just going to tell everybody what to do, like none of that works anymore. Now, everything is just changing so quickly, you know, just in AI alone, the pace of that change is so rapid that we have to shift into a more empowered place of helping our teams be a part of figuring out the future. And how do we bring out the collective genius of our teams and and really support them on helping us to navigate these things, because the companies who wait for, you know, the leader to have all the answers or to figure it all out,

Karan Rhodes  20:54

Don’t wanna get left behind.

Heather Conklin  20:56

Yeah, exactly. So it really is this, like the impetus for change every level is so high right now, and we’re seeing people, you know, going in the direction of like, okay, you know, in coaching, for example, we see people bringing out AI coaches and, you know, saying, like, maybe people will talk to AI as their coach, you know, going forward. But at torch, I always say we’re Team human here so much in the fact that one of the reasons that coaching is so powerful is because of the connection that you have with another human being and AI can certainly support us a ton from just being a good augment to coaching being something that you know helps to make the most of the time that you do have with coaching, certainly things around insights and

Karan Rhodes  21:42

Tools and resources you can point them to. Yeah, but can’t … the humans, yeah, I’m old school, so I love the human touch and interaction.

Heather Conklin  21:52

I always say I’m like a world where everybody just talks to a bunch of AI bots, not humans. Is not a world that I want to experience

Karan Rhodes  22:00

Me either. But I do appreciate the power of AI. I do appreciate how companies and leaders are thinking through to your point, trying to be very strategic on how and where it makes sense to and included into their business models. But there is something to be said about keeping the human touch and the human perspective there, you can use it to augment versus replace. And everybody has talked to we did last year a series where we feature chief technology officers from a lot of companies. And the red thread that everyone mentioned was that they didn’t see, especially in the short term AI replacing humans. It was more in an augmented approach. But they said the tension around it was going to be, where do you draw the line, you know? And that is not there’s no guidebook for this, so they’re all having to figure it out to see what makes sense. And they think it’s always going to be something they have to think about as well. So,

Heather Conklin  23:00

Yeah, absolutely, what we think about it today will be very different. It’s like, we need people to learn the technology itself. We need to think about job displacement and things like that. And then we also, I think organizations, need to think about the mindset shift that has to happen, you know, an individual level. In order for people to do this like it takes being able to be comfortable in a lot of uncertainty and navigate a lot of complexity. It takes, you know, being willing to take risks, being able to let go of control and let other people, you know, be a part of creating the answer. And that’s a lot of a lot of things that leaders have to unlearn from a lot of the behaviors that I think we’ve been taught that those are the right behaviors for a leader. So it’s going to take a lot of unlearning and shifting of mindset, and just like the capacity for people to deal with all

Karan Rhodes  23:54

That sounds great without giving away any IP or anything like that. Can you share maybe one thing that you’re excited about that’s coming up with torch maybe in the next, I don’t know, one to two years. I mean, where do you all see your best next steps being?

Heather Conklin  24:11

Yeah, the thing that I get most excited about is we’ve been calling this kind of a continuous learning loop, or like a two way feedback loop from an organization and its leaders. And with that, organizations are asking a lot of their leaders and their people every single day, and it’s easy to kind of push those things down on our employees and say, you know, we need you to drive these results or show up in this way. You know, the expectations that we have for people. And then, you know, at torch, we’re in the center of that trying to coach people to show up in those ways. But I always say that I could give you the best coaching in the entire world, but if the system that this leader is a part of is not conducive to them doing the kinds of things that you’re asking them to do, then they’re never going to be successful, and it certainly isn’t because of coaching or them like the system. Around a leader matter so much, so what we’re really working on is creating a feedback loop back from the leaders to say, okay, you know, I hear what you are asking me to do and the way you’re asking me to show up, but like, hey, here are the challenges that I’m dealing with on the ground every day that are standing in the way of our like, collective success as the organization and and that, I think, can be really, really powerful to helping the organization understand how to evolve, and how do they help support the evolution, not just of one leader at a time, but an evolution of the org itself in the system. Because that’s the only way for, I think, us to really see, you know, meaningful change is for the organization to to understand how it also needs to evolve, to create the kind of environment and results that it’s really trying to create.

Karan Rhodes  25:48

You know what I love about that? So yes, and… it gives great I see it could give great context and data points and talking points to the C suite of what they need when they have to report to their boards of what kind of support do they need, and able to create the type of environment that the leaders need to thrive, and I think that it can generate some very rich conversations at, I would say, leaders at all levels, but specifically at the C suite and board levels, it could really ignite a lot of great change that will positive change that will help facilitate people doing their best work. I love that.

Heather Conklin  26:33

Yep. I agree with you, yes and completely.

Karan Rhodes  26:37

All right. Miss Heather, well, you know, we can’t let you leave here without asking you our signature question. My loyal listeners know about it, but we always ask our guests which of the seven buckets that we write about that came out of our research on leadership execution really resonated with you, and you are so kind to share that executive presence really struck a chord with you. And for my newer listeners, the way we define executive presence, it’s all about your ability to influence and lead others based on making very clear and convincing, either oral or written, written presentations. It’s all about having that grit, along with data, facts and things to compel others to follow your lead. So curious minds on to nemas Heather, why does executive presence really resonate with you?

Heather Conklin  27:28

Yeah, I think about this in kind of the way we’ve always been told executive presence should look versus the way I think that it needs to continue to evolve and look going forward. So, you know, I think we’ve been taught it’s all about confidence and having all the answers and going in, you know, that’s fairly strong point of view that you’re con, you know, like convincing everybody about versus where I see the most successful, you know, leaders showing up. It’s more from a more humble place, more like, I’m willing to admit what I don’t know. I’m here to find the right answer with the group, and unless that, I personally have to have all the answers, like it takes being a great listener, a great observer of the situation, and being able to really read the room, and a lot of that comes down to the more like emotional intelligence kind of skills. But I mostly want people to know that it doesn’t need to look a very specific way, like coming at it from your own authentic place, being grounded in who you are and what you do and don’t know is actually like a much stronger way to show up with leaders and in exact situations. So that was why that one resonates a lot with me.

Karan Rhodes  28:38

With you awesome. Well, thank you so much for sharing that, and we truly, truly fortunate we run out of time, and we really appreciate your time on the episode today. But before I let you go, you know we’ll have your bio and links to torch and everything in our show notes. But I always love to give our guests a little bit of air time to share where people can find you in the company. So if you wouldn’t mind doing that, that would be great.

Heather Conklin  29:02

Yeah, absolutely. Emily, you can find me on LinkedIn. Of course, that’s an easy one. And then for Torch, our website is just torch.io so easy to find, and you can read all about us there. You can get in touch if you’d want to talk more about how we could help. You know, really transform leadership inside of your organization,.

Karan Rhodes  29:22

sSounds fantastic. Well, thank you again, Heather for the gift of your time. We appreciate you, and know you’re going to stay busy with those three little girls, but we do. Thank you for spending time with us today.

Heather Conklin  29:36

Well, thank you so much for having me. It was great to talk with you.

Karan Rhodes  29:39

Yeah, same here, and thank you to listeners for the gift of your time, because, as you know, there are literally millions of other podcasts that you could be listening to out there, and we do not take your patronage lightly. All that we ask is that you like it to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform of choice and be sure to share a podcast with just one friend, because by doing so. We can all learn how to better lead at the top of our game. Thanks so much. And see you next week.And that’s our show for today. Thank you for listening to the lead at the top of your game podcast, where we help you lead your seat at any employer, business, or industry in which you choose to play. You can check out the show notes, additional episodes, and bonus resources, and also submit guest recommendations on our website at leadyourgamepodcast.com. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn by searching for the name Karan Rhodes with Karan being spelled K a r a n. And if you like the show, the greatest gift you can give would be to subscribe and leave a rating on your podcast platform of choice. This podcast has been a production of Shockingly Different Leadership, a global consultancy which helps organizations execute their people, talent development, and organizational effectiveness initiatives on an on-demand, project, or contract basis. Huge thanks to our production and editing team for a job well done. Goodbye for now.