the Coaching Studio – Season 2 | episode 32 Tony Latimer, MCC

Lyssa deHart

Hi, Lyssa deHart here and welcome to The Coaching Studio. Today I have in the studio Tony Latimer. he is an MCC coach for the International Coaching Federation, as well as really being a pioneer in the coaching field. And he, uh, is coming live to us from Singapore, although not live since we’re doing a podcast, but live in this moment. So Tony, thank you so much for being on the, uh, Coaching Studio today.

Tony Latimer

Hey, morning. You’re welcome.

Lyssa deHart

I’m really curious to hear a little bit about what brought you into coaching.

Tony Latimer

I get that a lot because I was a career It person and people go, It coaching. How does that fit? It came about back in the early eighty s, and this was before coaching had really emerged into the business world. Um, I was working for a software company. I was in a sort, uh, of a young manager failing badly, trying to figure out how to manage people. And in those days, IBM was superb. They shared stuff with their business partners and IBM UK were running a leadership course, which was done by, uh, Tim Gallway’s, first in a game team. So Gallway, was the guy who I think first came up with the non-directive in sports, in tennis. Uh, he trains tennis players like Alan Fine, who’s now a top-end executive coach in America. Um, Alan Fine, then got involved in training John Whitmore. Most people will have heard of. Uh, Miles Downey, who started the Coaching Society in the UK. So I have the benefit of being taught the non-directive coaching principles at that time with that group. Um, so we spend a week on a tennis court and I can’t play tennis. I don’t even know the rules. Learning how to coach somebody to enhance their game. And it was awesome. And it just worked. Um, but when at the end of the week, I went to them and said, okay, so tell me, how does this help me managing people? The answer was we have no idea. Insterestingly we should, but we’re sports people, we haven’t figured it out yet. So the interesting part of the journey was being a techie, you kind of go, okay, I’m going to go figure this out. But this in parallel, I think two, um, Miles and John and Alan and the others going off and figuring out their approach to bringing coaching into the corporate world. I just went back to work as a little techie and went, okay, I’m going to figure out how this could happen, how you could do it. So all my stuff comes from that original thinking. And that’s what got us going.

Lyssa deHart

Wow. I mean, I think I knew that you had been a coach for a very long time and had been in this profession for a very long time. But I don’t think that I realized that you went back to the genesis of coaching basically before it was even coaching, uh, was more than just sports and the non-directive, um, coaching that you’re talking about, that’s fascinating. What had you moved from engineering into becoming a full-time executive coach?

Tony Latimer

Well, um, there was a point where I started to realize that I kind of wanted to do my own thing. There was a point where I realized that what was perceived there is what you had to be and what you had to do to rise further up a corporate ladder, um just, um, wasn’t my thing. And I figured out so many ideas about how coaching could be applied inside the organization; I just really wanted the opportunity to experiment with it. Um, it’s now about 22 years ago, um, just when we shifted the family back to Singapore. Um, and then the opportunity came, um, it is an interesting one. I noticed as you go travel around the world and you talk to people who become independent coaches, consultants, and things like that, a lot of them will sort of say, oh, yes, well, I decided to step out of corporate life. And you kind of look and straight in the eyes and go, your company crashed as well, huh? And they got like, well, yes, actually. Because it’s really hard to step out. Um, if you’re the mortgage payer if you’re the breadwinner. Um, you try telling your partner that you’ve got enough money to go and start your own business. And the answer will be here, and what you’re going to do when that runs out? For most of us, there has to be a trigger. Um, for me, it was the company that brought me back out here to this part of the world. Um, started to struggle with a technology delivery. And there was the opportunity. You can kind of go somewhere else and stay in corporate, but there was this little window of opportunity, a little moment, and says, hey, you know what, it’ll take you a few months to get another job in the corporate world. Why don’t you just try this? Um, so I did. And, um, it worked. To see people respond to your ideas, and then you go, oh, hang on a minute, so I can actually sell the stuff I’ve got in my brain. [Yeah] it was fascinating. Well.

Lyssa deHart

And I loved it. I think there’s just such a lot of validity to how many people leave one career to end up as a coach. And I think that it’s probably not just in the corporate world. But anywhere you have a stable, steady income, um, making that decision to go out on your own and try this thing, right, is it going to be you’re going to have to leverage a moment. And it sounds like you took that little window of opportunity and blew it open, um, in a pretty big way.

Tony Latimer

You know, for coaches out there, trying to get going. Um, I can share another inside as well. Over the last 22 years, I kind of keep an open door. Because I know what it’s like when you’re setting up on your own. You’ve got nobody to talk to. There’s a number of coaches trying to start up. We’ve come and sat in one of these chairs behind me in my coaching room. Um, and we just talk and just share ideas. And I can tell you at the end of 30 minutes whether they’re going to succeed in building a business or not.

Lyssa deHart

Ahh, and so, uh, what are the indicators, the key indicators for you of a potentially successful coach?

Tony Latimer

Well, it’s more actually one of the indicators of a failure.

Lyssa deHart

Okay, let’s go there then.

Tony Latimer

When you hear them say something like, “Yeah, I kind of like to do this sort of thing, so I think I’ll give you the go. ” Okay. That’s going to fail. It’s a little bit like, um, Troy. Helen of Troy. When they burned the boats, and they went, okay, guys, so here’s the thing. We can’t go home. We either take that for by nightfall or be dead on this beach. Right. That’s the place you got to get to.

Lyssa deHart

Yes.

Tony Latimer

I was actually driving in the first year, um, when you’re kind of sweating a little bit about getting going. I was driving my then, eight-year-old, to school in the morning. And on the news, there was, um, an article about how, uh, a government department had just reorganized and retrenched some people. And this is like, major shock, because, um, government jobs, iron rice bowl. And she turned around and said, daddy, what has retrenched mean? So I explained, and then she thought, she said, “Hmm, that doesn’t sound good. Could you be retrenched? ” And that was when the light bulb came on. I can’t be retrenched. It’s my business. And whether it succeeds or fails is entirely up to me. You’ve already burned the boat. Just look behind you and wake up to the fact. And then just say, what’s the fort I have to take by night fall You know that was just a shift in thinking.

Lyssa deHart

Yeah. And I really love that idea of, uh, the passive language of, uh, yeah, I think this is something I can give a go to. I guess I’ll try it out for a while. It’s almost like it’s a sweater, and you can return it to the store if you don’t like it, if it itches or something. And to your point, if you burned all the boats behind you, you are going forward. There’s no retreat at that moment, um, unless you build another boat. But that takes energy and time also. I’m really curious, too, if you’ve watched, because you were there at the inception, basically, of coaching and what has become this coaching world that we’ve experienced now. What have you seen as some of the biggest shifts in the way people are approaching coaching in general?

Tony Latimer

We’ve had a few evolutions in how coaching is being deployed. Just clarify for me, when you say how people are approaching coaching.

Lyssa deHart

Well, I mean, I just think when people started, nobody knew what coaching was. I think there’s a larger context of people; they’ve at least heard of coaching. Even if they still think it’s consulting, there’s at least a sense that they’ve heard that language before. Um, but then I think also coaching itself has evolved. And, I mean, we started off with everybody sort of coaching, whatever that meant, and then the creation of competencies, and now this creation of the new updated competencies. And I’m just curious, that sort of arc of evolution, what have you seen really be the sort of seismic shifts?

Tony Latimer

Yeah, there have been a few phases. You’re right back in the early days. So even about 15-16 years ago, go and talk to an HR director, you had to explain what coaching meant. Um, in fact, we didn’t do that. We didn’t call it coaching at the beginning. One of my first significant projects, I actually created some IP around coaching principles for, um, high-end relationship selling. So when it’s not about the product, how can you use some coaching style to sort of engage the client? Um, so we were selling that as advanced sales training. And I remember having the conversation with HR, and I said, Tell me, um, when did you last train these people? They said, about six years ago. Okay, six months after the training, what was different? And they went, Nothing much, to be honest. Okay. We had a solution. They went, really? What’s that? Well, the important thing is that once they’ve learned stuff, that they put it into practice. So we’ll put them in batches through the training, and then I recommend that over a six-month period, I have four or five one on one conversations with each of them. It’ll take about an hour or so a time, and we just help them put what they’ve learned into practice. So you get a behavioral shift. Um, think of it as sort of guided implementation of learning. And they went, oh, that sounds like a good idea. The term coaching, we didn’t go there at all. We just talked in the way they understood. And literally, with that project, they gave me an office. And I was in their office four days a week, 14 hours a day. I did so many hours of coaching, you would not believe. I quite literally, um, I never did an ACC. I didn’t have time. I was building a business. Um, when a couple of other people, a couple of friends in Singapore, had already got to their PCC level, and they were going on Tony, you need to get credential. Okay. So I went to my PCC because I had more than enough hours to do my MCC already. Um, there’s no substitute for doing volume, but reflecting on what you’re doing. As a way of learning, I think far too many coaches I see, um, don’t focus on getting the coaching hours and getting the real clients. And you see a lot of people on social media reaching out to other coaches to say, hey, I need to get the hours. You coach me, I’ll coach you. That doesn’t result in much real coaching. Um, uh, the focus should be, go find real people. Uh, and if you’re struggling to sell yourself, don’t try and sell it for a fortune. Look at some creative opportunities and ways to go and get real clients with real problems.

Lyssa deHart

Yeah, you just said some things that have my mind kind of going all over the place. Um, but I want to just capture this piece which I think is really important, which is, what do you think it is or what are you seeing it is that has coaches reaching out to other coaches versus actually going to get their real, quote unquote, clients.

Tony Latimer

I suspect it’s self limiting beliefs. I suspect it’s fear mhm, because, I mean, I worked in it through all sorts of technical jobs. Um, I did a few years in, uh, business development and sales towards the end. So I kind of knew how to sell. Um, but the hurdle once you’re then selling yourself, that’s a tough one.

Lyssa deHart

It really is.

Tony Latimer

You’ve got to overcome some barriers. And people also have this feeling of, uh, I hear a lot of people going, if I’ve got an ACC or I haven’t got my ACC yet, I’ve got to get that 100 hours. Um, how can I persuade people to pay me if I haven’t got the hours? Um, it requires a little shift in thinking. So to go back to your previous question about what were the phases and stages. Now everybody knows what coaching is and then it kind of became fashionable, and yes, I would agree. Remember the stage, early 2000s, we started teaching coaching skills to managers. And this was back in the day when even ICF was kind of going, no, managers can’t be coaches. And even now they use the careful language of a manager using coaching skills because we can’t call a manager a coach. Um, the logic I’ve heard is about conflict of interest. But guess what? If you’re an executive coach and you get hired by a company to help one of their senior leaders, do you think you’re going to get hired again if they don’t get a result? An external coach has exactly that same conflict of interest as a manager. Coaching that people does you’re only as good as the last result your last client got. I don’t think it’s real in terms of any conflict. However, that was one shift we’ve seen of people using the last few years. We’ve seen the growth of the idea of mostly part-time but somewhat fulltime internal coaches. So not coaching people on their performance in the current job, but on other issues. Um, and now we’re hearing the buzzword is democratization of coaching, which in pure theory, means, how can we make coaching available to everybody? Um, some will meant that the implementation of that means let’s take less experienced coaches and sell them cheap.

Lyssa deHart

What are your thoughts?

Tony Latimer

What are my thoughts? Um, I think there’s a couple of issues there. Um. One is that so I’ve got friends who do that. They go on the coaching platforms and they spend, um, 5 hours a day, three days a week, and make a decent living. The reason they make a decent living is because they’re in a low-cost economy. And what’s a good hourly rate, if you’re doing a regular amount of coaching in one country is you can’t live on it in another one. So if that model persists, you will possibly see a churn of coaches going through. So the end client company is going to see that the coaches are changing and maybe that’s okay. Um, I think you will see an orientation towards, um, coaches from low-cost countries being the bulk providers. So that creates some limitations if you’re an international company who actually wants people from your own economy. Um, and then it raises the interesting question. There was, um, uh, Joel, the research director from ICF, and his name escapes me, but somebody from South Africa, from one of the Universities, did a session back end of last year or early this year about the emergence of AI. M? And they’ve got AI coaching tools and they have already proved that at the basic levels, I need a coach, I’ve got a problem, I need to figure it out. The AI tools can already coach as well as a human being. Now, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the volume democratization of coaching is not going to rely on humans for very long.

Lyssa deHart

Right, right.

Tony Latimer

Because they become profitable the minute they switch on an AI tool and get a human out of the equation. Because you don’t have to pay an hourly fee to the AI tool.

Lyssa deHart

And it never needs a holiday, it never takes sick leave, and it never does a lot of things that human beings do.

Tony Latimer

Yeah. It doesn’t want a salary.

Lyssa deHart

And it won’t unionize.

Tony Latimer

They might.

Lyssa deHart

Well, maybe if they get that.

Tony Latimer

Yes. I think one of the important things here is that coaches starting out have got to up their game very quickly. Because when you do the research, current AI tools and, uh, AI technology cannot coach at the higher levels. The best thing a new coach can do is go like, okay, just coaching to acceptable level, not good enough. The AI tool can do that. I need to get beyond that as quickly as possible.

Lyssa deHart

Right.

Tony Latimer

So upping the game. Now, there is also a phenomenal opportunity because these coaching platforms are doing a fantastic job of raising the awareness across organizations of the benefit of coaching interactions. And not necessarily long term arrangements, but more sort of, hey, guess what? I’ve been okay for three months. But today I have a question. Who do I talk to? What is already happening? Um, I’m talking to HR directors who are hiring. Now, a year ago, the burning question in every interview was, what’s your approach to flexible working? That’s gone away. Now, that’s just a given. The new question that’s coming up is people coming from maybe a, um, tier one multinational, a slightly smaller company are now saying, what’s your strategy for deploying coaching? But companies who’ve never used coaching and going like, uh, okay, we’ll get back to that one. Mhm, and it’s going to grow. So, um, you and the listeners can do the math globally. Let me give you a tiny example. So Singapore is small, very small. Um, if we have working age adults, a couple of million or something, tops, maybe less. And yet, um, bulk of the economy, we’ve got all the multinationals, but we’ve also got SMEs. Now, a Small Medium Enterprise can be up to, um, a couple of thousand people, um, a few million revenue. So, not a small organization, but traditionally, they do not use things like coaching. And if you narrowed it down to just the top end, so ones where you’ve got maybe 100 plus employees, there are, uh, still 25, 000 of them in this little country.

Lyssa deHart

Right, yeah.

Tony Latimer

Imagine if they start you’re, the guy who runs 100 and company. Would you benefit once you hear about it from working with a coach? Maybe with your handful of managers that help you run this 100-man company? Once they wake up to that, and that’s the awareness that the coaching platforms are creating. We suddenly need tens of thousands of coaches just in this little country alone. So parallel that go to go to America or Canada and say, like, how big is that, right?

Lyssa deHart

Exponential at that point. This is a really interesting point, because this conversation around AI and the democratization of coaching has sort of been, people are kind of wrestling with it. And so I really love that you brought it forward, um, because I think it’s a real thing. And just to really highlight a couple of things that you said that I think are super important for people to hear. One, it doesn’t matter what the company is that does it? It could be a Better Up. It could have been any of those kinds of programs that hire coaches, um, and don’t pay them that much, but they’re doing a lot of coaching. And the need to move past ACC-level skills is imperative. Because if an AI can coach the basic seven questions or whatever it is that a coaching conversation maybe needs, you kind of go from the kind of Coaching Habit idea, what is your challenge? What do you want to do about it? What’s your goal? And you have these sort of simple questions. You don’t need a person. It’s kind of like, I don’t know, I sort of feel like the same thing around giving clients resources. If they can Google it, I don’t need to tell it to them. Right. That’s not the point of me. And I think what you’re speaking to is this idea of. Uh. If you really want to be a coach. And you really want to be successful as a coach. Continue getting your training and learn how to have the more important conversations that you’re not in any kind of competition with artificial intelligence. Because it’s not there yet. It’s not going to hear nuance. It’s not going to be curious in ways that a human being could be curious. Because it doesn’t know how to do that. That’s a lot of programming to do that. And then that idea also of, um, may not be everybody in the organization, but if you take the top 25 people and they’re getting coaching, even in a small country like Singapore, now, there’s a ton of jobs available for people who are willing to ask a more important question. If I’m hearing you correctly? Yeah.

Tony Latimer

I think, um, the opportunity is emerging, and it will emerge very rapidly for the education of the companies who don’t use coaching yet. And again, if we think about it, if you’re a multinational and you want to give cost-effective, on-demand coaching to hundreds or thousands of managers around the world, um, the coaching platforms are a great start. That’s the way to go. If you’re the CEO or one of the leadership team of a 100, 200-man company that’s trying to expand or grow or change direction. That’s not the kind of coaching that you need an AI tool or an ACC-level coaching. You need somebody who can sit down and be the thinking partner and really trigger your brain and your awareness and take you fast and deep.

Lyssa deHart

Mhm absolutely. Which really sort of lends to another question. There are so many people, because coaching is so unregulated, that call themselves coaches, but really have no training, really, beyond maybe a very quick certification. I came from a therapeutic background, and there’s a bias with therapists where they’re like, I’m a therapist. Why would I need to take a coaching training? Because I already know all this stuff. What is your thoughts about that? I mean, I was a therapist, and now I’m an MCC coach. So clearly not all therapists feel this way. But, uh, what is your thought on the need for professional development and professional training for coaches?

Tony Latimer

Okay, so there’s two bits there. Um, let’s go for that one rather than the therapist’s coach one. We can come back to that if you like. Um, I think the people who go out and say, I’m a coach, um, won’t thrive. No, I’ll take that back. They might, but they’re going to if they don’t have the depth of knowledge and the skills. Um, and remember, the purpose of credentials is not to put a badge on the wall. The purpose of credentials to give you a process. It’s like working with a personal trainer. If you’re going to go in there and lift the same weight every week for ten years, you’re not going to gain. Every few weeks as that one becomes easy. You got to put a little bit more weight on, right? And that’s the whole point of it. The credentialing path is about adding to the weights that you lift every week. Um, if you don’t do that, you just cruise along at the same level, you get stuck. Um, so in the same way that untrained coaches who are not on a proper credentialing path, they’ll operate at a level, and there’ll be some people who pay them, but I don’t think ultimately they’ll survive because even the people who pay them, um, when Siri or Alexa can actually be an AI coaching do that, then people are going to go, well, I got my phone. Why do I need you? Um, I think the same principle will apply, and if you’re not on that growth path, you’re stagnating. And that’s one of the big debates we’ve been having recently about, um, the new level one, level two, level three training. I’ve talked to so many PCCs who have fallen into the trap of you get the hours, you work hard, you spend money on the training, you get your PCC credential, and then you spend six or seven years cruising at the same level. Not realizing you’re doing it, because more big, expensive training is the last thing you need. [Mhm] and if you’ve got to go that huge jump of coaching hours before you can even consider applying for an MCC, then you’re just going to get on with building the hours. And the common track then is, you go for three years, you go like, oh, last minute, I need 40 hours to get my recertification done. Okay, so you just go grab whatever’s there. Here’s some CCE courses which mostly exist at PCC level, so you’re learning something new, but not something higher. And then finally it’s like, okay, I have the hours for my MCC. So you go and get 10 hours Mentor Coaching and hope that will be sufficient to take your skills. This huge jump as well. I think we’re seeing people leaving the acceleration of their skills too late, which is why people get a little frustrated because they take the exam, they fail. They have to retake. They have to retake. [Mhm] you’ve got to make sure you’re on a path. Yeah.

Lyssa deHart

I think there’s also the point too, which is MCC doesn’t mean, “I made it, I’m done. ” It’s just a moment in time that you continue to your point. This is a continual growth opportunity as you develop your skill set, even as an MCC, because the beginning MCC and an MCC who’s been really coaching and developing themselves are going to be very different coaches in a few years also. Um, so that trajectory continues. Yeah.

Tony Latimer

It’s the martial arts black belt thing.

Lyssa deHart

Yeah, well, I was actually thinking of that a few minutes ago when you were talking about the movement, but the weights. Right, but it’s the black belt you started white, yellow, green?

Tony Latimer

Yeah, almost multiple. So that happened to me kind of like ten plus years ago. I was at the one belt below the black belt, brown, black. And then suddenly they said, okay, so your test is next month. You can now come to the black belt class. And I went, what’s that? And you then show up at a class where with a black belt, you are the most junior person in the room. And they go like, no, there’s eight more levels to go to. Getting a black belt doesn’t mean you’re a master practitioner. It means you’ve just got over the bar. Now you know what you’re doing. Now we can start getting good at this. I thought, okay, right. This is just carries on. It’s very similar to that, for sure.

Lyssa deHart

Yeah. I really like that metaphor and analogy of, uh, it there’s eight more levels after you make it to black. Um, what was something that you maybe discovered about yourself through this process of becoming a coach and through all the development that you’ve done? What have you discovered about yourself?

Tony Latimer

Big question, huh?

Lyssa deHart

Mhm, look at that face.

Tony Latimer

Yeah. Um, what have I discovered about me connection? Um, everything is connected to everything. And when I was trying to get up to the MCC level, the breakthrough that I got was being fortunate. Lucky, um, synchronicity kicked in, met somebody who was doing the work at the energy level and, um, that was for me. What sort of tripped it? Um, as I’m constantly in the business, trying to go in new areas and do new things, I’m reinventing the same problems with that me and all the other coaches had when we were trying to start our business. Every morning you get up and go like, I want to do this new thing and is it going to work? How am I going to find the right clients for it? Every time I bring myself back and go, no, it’s connected. Reach out, connect. It works. I’m an It guy. This is not the fluffy woo woo that people talk about. This is basic physics.

Lyssa deHart

Mhm.

Tony Latimer

If you drop a pebble into water, the ripples are not the water moving, it is the energy wave moving through the water. Water is a solid medium, therefore you can see it. [Mhm. ] And everything in the universe is made up of energy. There were some famous science guys who said this. I’m energy in one form, your energy in another form. The space between us is not empty space. It’s energy in another form. [Mhm] and equals MC squared. The energy potential of a body is if mass times the speed of light square. Big number. If you cannot just. Move the energy within the body, but release a little, it must eventually get there. One of the secrets to really flipping up, uh, the belts to get towards the 8th down is to get my is to really get a learning and understanding of the energy. First step, uh, is learning to read it. Second step is learning to move it. Because your so coaching is the process of making people think.

Lyssa deHart

Yes.

Tony Latimer

Problem solving, creativity, uh, innovation, it’s all just connecting previously unconnected data in the brain. And your thoughts are physical. They are electrochemical signals on the neural pathways in your brain, therefore made of energy. So anything that can move those and make that movement allows the neuroplasticity to happen and for things to move and things to change. Um, a lot of people talk about energy stuff, and they make it sound a little woolly, fluffy, and, um, Glastonbury talk kind of thing. But it’s real, it’s basic science.

Lyssa deHart

And it really links back to something that you said earlier when you first started coaching, but you weren’t calling it that, you were teaching relationship sales. Right. And as I’m hearing you talk, I’m really also seeing everything’s a relationship. It’s our relationship with each other, with the energy that we put out, the energy we take in. I mean, there’s relationships everywhere. Um, and that’s at least what’s showing up for me, as you’re talking, thinking back to where you even began with coaching, um, that’s fascinating. And I really do think that there’s a kind of, um, I don’t know, woo woo factor when people hear energy, but I think that’s even really dissipating quite a bit, because coming out of the 60s, it seems very psychedelic, but coming into the 2022. People recognize the scientific qualities of it now in a different way. Not so much, um, like pshaw. They’re much more, yeah, I notice energy, I feel energy, and we’re connected to everything. Your point is so well taken. And really, that’s the piece also, when you think about coaching at a different level is your ability to attune to that and then be curious about it. Right? If I’m hearing you correctly.

Tony Latimer

That’S one of the things that helps you when you’re coaching somebody. Um, no matter what type of internal coach, external coach, manager, using coaching skills, that’s the thing you go for, because, um, it gives you a thing to listen to beyond just the words, the facial expressions, the body language, et cetera, et cetera. You will hear and feel it someday. Goes like yeah. So the face and the words may say, yeah, no big thing, but the energy reading just goes like, oh, that’s it. That’s the spot.

Lyssa deHart

I love that. Yeah, no that’s brilliant. I think that’s such a good piece of wisdom for coaches to hear also, because I think sometimes people are… Let me throw this out there to you, because one of the things that I see is that people use energy and they notice their own, um, and they assume it’s correct for the client. How do you use the awareness of energy that still leaves it to the client to make meaning?

Tony Latimer

The first thing you have to learn to do is when you’re coaching is to create a subconscious to subconscious connection. So you have to have a clear mind if you’ve ever done meditation, that uh, empty space where your conscious awareness is completely empty. Because when you listen from your subconscious, you pick up more signals. And you’re not going into a conversation with, here’s my favorite question, or here’s what I’m going to do next. You learn to then allow your subconscious to dictate what’s going to happen next. It’s the same as athletes getting in the zone. They’re not thinking about how to do the steps. That was what the practice builds up, you just go there. And the more you learn, the more tools you’ve got, the more your subconscious has got to access. So I’ll find, for example, that, um, ah, a particular ontological technique that I haven’t used for five years. I will be in a coaching session, and my subconscious goes, just say this [mhm. ] And that’s how you just let it emerge. You don’t have to know anything, do anything. You just connect and allow what comes up to come up. And that’ll be in response to whatever’s happening and coming from the client.

Lyssa deHart

I love that sense of emergence, letting it emerge. It’s not a pushing, it’s not a forcing, it’s an allowing.

Tony Latimer

Absolutely. And depending on what coaching you’re doing and for what purpose, you may have a framework if we’re working on this person’s promotion to the next level or how they get their leadership team. But those are just the frameworks for the initiate the conversation and then as you get into it, you just got to see what comes up.

Lyssa deHart

Yeah. Beautiful. What are you involved in right now that you’re excited about?

Tony Latimer

Sharing the knowledge, sharing the knowledge. Um, um, until the end of last year, uh, I have only ever taught my stuff to the corporates, the managers, the internal coaches. Um, a few friends have been nagging me. Gail Moore from Moore Master Coaching.

Lyssa deHart

I love her.

Tony Latimer

She’s been nagging years five years. Five years she’s chased me. Um, Fran Fisher as well.

Lyssa deHart

I love Fran Fisher as well.

Tony Latimer

Has been nagging me. So we ended up, did something, I eventually gave in last year and um, one of Fran’s points was the growth in the number of top end coaches of MCC level coaches. People getting over the bar to then go further is not quick enough. We need to do something about this. So she and I just came to a pact and said, okay, we’re going to contribute to creating 1000 more MCCs in the next three years. That’s our goal. Um, doesn’t mean we have to do everything for them, but we want to trigger something that allows that to emerge. Because that will then trickle down the pyramid and bring a lot more coaches up the skill base. So, um, what I got involved in was starting to pass on what I know to coaches. That’s emerging. I see. I’ve been doing some live demo stuff, um, analysis of what we do. Um, I’m going to pilot, end of this year, I’m going to pilot a level three MCC course. Um, one of the realizations is that there aren’t that many of us who know it to that extent. And the interesting thing I discovered, um, that I brought into my corporate work was the day I got my MCC, I sort of went, wow. And then suddenly my little techie brain went, you know what this means? Uh, no. It means you can do it. Oh okay. So here’s the thing. If you can do something and you can correctly analyze it to as simple as components, you can codify it. And if you can codify it, you can teach it. One of the challenges I had in the early years was that the teaching of coaching always seems so complicated. Complex models and multiple steps. How do I keep all that in my head? Um, so I’m going there, but I’m coming at it from a, um, the overarching level three course. And all the bits that come underneath it is going to be called the Simplicity of Mastery. So it’s about saying, okay, guys, relax. Simple doesn’t mean easy, but it’s simple. If you want to actually coach to this level, here’s how you do that. Here’s what you actually do. This is an emerging body of work for me this year. Um, but very exciting.

Lyssa deHart

It’s super exciting. I think we could probably talk for a while about that, and yet we are sort of coming up on time. Um, I will definitely be having links to everything for you. I also found the two books that you’ve written chapters in, and those links will be below also for people to check out some of the work that you’ve done. I thought the, um, Coaching Book, I actually see it on the back of, um, your bookshelf up there at the top, that looks like the Coaching Book that you were a part of. Um, I do have a final question for you, though. If you were writing your autobiography today, um, without an explanation, just sort of just off the cuff, what would you title your autobiography today?

Tony Latimer

You’re really good with these tough questions. What would I title my autobiography? Oh, got it. I would title it, I Made a Difference to Someone.

Lyssa deHart

Yeah, I think you’ve probably made a difference to many someone. Tony, thank you so much for being on the Coaching Studio today. I can tell you how appreciative I am to have had you as my guest today.

Tony Latimer

Absolute pleasure Lyssa. I really enjoy. Thank you.