Coaching for the Greater Good: Interview with Bill Carrier and Alex Petroff

William Bergquist conducts a 30 minutes interview with Bill Carrier, a successful leadership coach, and his exceptional client, Alexander Petroff, who headed a program for many years directed toward lifting people in the Eastern Congo out of poverty. Here is this interview (followed by a written summary of major points made during the interview and an additional written comment by Alex):

 

Some of the key insights offered in this interview were:

1. Bill C: I do nonprofit work with an organization called “Support TED”, which was founded by Renee Friedman (co-editor of this issue of The Future of Coaching). Support TED connects experienced coaches to people who are doing the greater good in the world. She connected me to Alex.
2. Bill C.: It is a great pleasure and honor to coach someone like Alex, for it can be a leverage point, where the work you are doing as a coach can impact so many people beyond just the person you are coaching. Alex has literally supported more than 20,000 people to find their way out of poverty in a sustainable way. It is an amazing thing to do in life to help someone like Alex do their work in an even more effective manner.
3. Alex: I have been doing this work of helping people out of poverty who live in rural areas. I first became interested in this work when I was a child. My mother introduced me to economics and to the issue of poverty. We were ourselves living in poverty, so I knew what it was about—and what poverty isn’t about. I wanted to discover how lives can be changed when people are no longer poor.
4. Alex: I first wanted to do poverty-reduction in Maine (the state where I was living), but became realistic, recognizing that there might be major barriers for me to do poverty-reduction in Maine given that I was a nobody. So, I chose instead to work in another country where I can provide more leverage with the least amount of resources. This was to be the Eastern sector of the Democratic Republic of Congo.
5. Alex: I found in my work that I was “learning as I was walking” (to borrow a Latin phrase). I cam in with the big idea that I was going to transform everybody’s life, but over the years realized just how difficult and disruptive this transformation can be. I learned how to listen and be focused—a much more powerful way to be with other people.
6. Alex: This type of work has to be founded in humility. When you are sure that you are right then you aren’t open to the real learning that occurs. I would like to think I knew this right way, but it came over time.
7. Bill C: Alex is a perfect example of what it means to be a servant leader – a blending of head and heart. And he is adding hands and feet to this. He is out there actually doing the work. My job as a coach is come up alongside someone and see what it is I can provide that helps them see the world in new ways that help them act with greater speed, greater power and fewer errors.
8. Bill C: An example of how Alex and I work together concerns fund raising. Early on, Alex came to be and indicated that he hated fund raising, even though this necessarily had to occupy quite a bit of his time. He hated to approach people in order to ask for their money. Alex felt that people were willing to give him money in order to influence what he was doing; or the fund-raising was making them feel uncomfortable and guilty, so they gave money in order to feel better. Alex dreaded these activities and the big fund-raising events that were needed to help meet the yearly budget. I helped him reframe the request. These are people who have the financial resources and want to help. They can see that you are someone who can actually do something important with their money. They aren’t going to travel to Africa so that they might work on the ground. They don’t know how to be helpful. By asking for their financial support, you are helping to guide them into discovering ways that they can do good in the world. You are doing them a favor. This seems to have made a big difference. You raised more than $200,000 and said this was one of the best experiences you had in doing this work.
9. Alex: Yes, this changed my entire perspective – and I went from spending 98% of my time fund-raising to spending about 2% doing this work. By rephrasing it as giving people an opportunity to do something good with their money makes all the difference. They don’t want to be spending their time working in the war zone of Eastern Congo. They have other things they want to do with their life—but this is a wonderful way in which to leverage their own financial resources to do good in the world.
10. Alex: getting the money is only the first step. You have to be effective in the use of this money. Many people have burned a lot of money in the Eastern Congo and had little impact. Many big organizations have tried to make magic in this war-torn area and failed. The key for me was to work with a small number of individuals in the region and to help them be more impactful in their work. It is about finding the right people to engage in specific pieces of the project. I worked frequently will Bill on personnel management issues.
11. Alex: Eastern Congo is a very messy place. Getting people to work together under conditions of high stress is quite a challenge. This part of the Congo has been in a state of conflict since the early 1990s. It is very difficult to sort everything out and find an effective strategy in our work on behalf of poverty-reduction.
12. Bill B: We need to give Alex credit. Eastern Congo has been known for many years as one of the most dangerous places on Earth. My own work in the US Army helped me to appreciate the single-focus, mission-driven mind-set and attunement to danger that is needed when working in an area such as the Eastern Congo.
13. Alex: Actually, I am one of those weird people who finds that my life becomes very simple and easy under conditions of stress. I feel like my brain functions better and I felt better about myself under conditions where quick decisions must be made. My problem arose when I was no longer in this stressful circumstance. Bill helped me realize that I was not adjusting well to this shift in circumstances. It was taking a toll on me and I was not a good person to be with. Without Bill’s help, I might have only had a year or two in me before I crashed. By 2010 we were helping hundreds of people each year – but I wasn’t helping myself. The 20,000 we eventually helped wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gotten myself in shape and learned from that issue of adjustment.
14. Alex: This capacity to work effectively in this kind of high-stress situation and to replicate our successful practices is critical in an organization such as the one I was running. It is important to note that the money was coming from outside the conflict situation – so I had to work in two different worlds.
15. Alex: Bill reminded me that I was providing an opportunity for people to find dignity and meaning in their lives by getting out of poverty, yet it was also important for me to remember that I too am a person who deserves to find dignity and meaning in my own life. Just being a PTSDed-out wreak is no way to live.
16. Alex: Coaching can’t provide either drive or direction. Drive is very important. What coaching does is that it tempers your drive. While some people might think this is a negative about coaching’ however, I find that this tempering allows me to focus and deepen the drive – tuning out all of the outside distracting noise. When I was starting my project in Congo, I had very little support other than my parents and few people who would throw me $20 after a library talk. Almost everyone was a naysayer and my drive wasn’t really focused. With coaching I am less sure about everything. Bill and I worked on the discernment of work that I was doing—in what ways was I doing good? In what ways was I making life better for the people I was serving? Where do I focus and how do I listen? That makes the determination deep, because it is not based on your willpower.
17. Alex: When I started in the Congo it was based entirely on willpower. I was not listening. What was I going to impose on the world? That is a strength, but it is not as strong as listening.
18. Bill: For people seeking to do this kind of good work, there is always the challenge of having some much to do. In trying to meet these impossible demands, those working in these organizations lose themselves and eventually lose their capacity to have a lasting, sustained impact. Infinity is the enemy of impact. If you narrow the space in which you are applying force, you can have much more work. This is true in physics and in life.
19. Bill: When people are doing good work in their life, they need to include themselves in their mission. For Alex, this recognition made him a much more powerful envoy to help others.
20. Bill: This is wonderful work. In coaching remarkable people like Alex, one gains much greater leverage to help our world. You make wonderful friends with some incredible human being.
21. Alex: I begin my own future work by listening. I am tempered in my willingness to impose my will on any area. I am interested in Energy – particularly in rural areas. A specific domain in which I would like to work concerns draft animals and the role they might play in the future. Most importantly, I am interested in and continue to emphasize listening. This what it is all about for me.

Alex also wanted to add the following comments about his work with Bill Carrier:

One thing I would like to add on a personal note, is what a great fit Bill Carrier has been for me.  He understands my value structure and has been effective in rewiring my brain because by understanding my values he can chart a logical path to support them, that, in the fog of war, I don’t see.  That has been the special sauce of our relationship.  In 10 years, no matter the trouble, I haven’t had a single conversation that I have gone away without an “ah ha!” moment.  I know that not everyone works the same way, however, for Bill and I it has been extremely productive.

In addition, we have provided a statement that Alex submitted to TEDfellows–which provided the coaching services provided by Bill Carrier:

Dear TEDFellows Program,

I am writing to you after the completion of at least the first stage, of the coaching program; that you, together with the Harnisch Foundation, and my coach Bill Carier, have very generously made available to me.  While assessing the impact of anything is difficult, as life is never a controlled test, I thought I would share with you what I feel the impact of the coaching program has been on me.  My life and work have changed substantially for the better over the past year since I began the program, and while other factors clearly play a part such as, gigantic and stable funding, finding new ways to analyze my model, and coming up with an elevator pitch, I would like to try and isolate what the effect of the program has been on me, to the best of my ability, so that it might better inform you of the impact of your efforts.

First I should mention that I came into the coaching program without a clue as to what it was and how a coach could help me.  To be honest I joined because of the social pressure of being asked by Ruth Ann and Logan if I had signed up yet, every time I saw them.  When it was explained to me, I was very skeptical as to its real impact as it was not something I could touch, nor seemed to based on measurable results that I could see.  However, I decided to go forward with it as it was only 10 hours and people I respected seemed to think it was a good idea.

As luck would have it I had my first real session right before I went to give a presentation to a foundation later be my organization’s largest donor.  While there is no way of knowing what the result would have been if I had not had that coaching session beforehand, I believe that session played an important part in changing my whole approach to fundraising.

The problem I presented my coach Bill was that I had a hard time fundraising because I didn’t like asking for money.  We talked it through and he isolated the idea that it was probably my Yankee upbringing that made me feel uncomfortable with the idea of asking for something that I hadn’t earned.  It may seem like common sense now but for years I didn’t see it as such; the fact was that I had an amazing organization that was doing really impressive things.  So he turned the whole thing around for me, and put it to me that I wasn’t asking for money that I hadn’t earned, but was in fact making a transaction.

Foundations exist to give money to amazing organizations that are having impact in the fields of their interests, and I had an exceptionally cool organization that was doing just that.  I was not asking for money but was offering them an opportunity to get involved in something that was changing the lives of thousands of people.  If the NGO world was likened to that of the food industry, I was thinking of my organization as a lemonade stand, when in reality I had a fabulous restaurant with a world class master chef.

So much of fundraising is reading body language and tone of voice, so presenting your organization as a world class eatery, instead of a lemonade stand, really changes everything.  It must have seemed really odd to people who I spoke to before I changed how I personally perceived my organization.  After my attitude changed the money quickly followed.  I will leave the direct connection to your interpretation; however, one thing is certain it certainly has made fundraising psychologically easier for me, and something I am proud of instead of ashamed of.

After that Bill worked with me on how to plan my time to get things done which I knew were important but not pressing.  I was able to do a huge amount of background research that I would have certainly put off, and that research actually formed the foundation for the changes in my model that I have put in place this year with great effect and profit for my company.

We started working together on some other issues that I had, particularly around staffing problems that were going on at the time, and then our conversations took a turn that I did not expect.  It became clear to Bill that while I was doing great work, like so many people in my profession, I was heading for a fall.  Five years of hard work in a warzone with no pay, had been taking its toll on me, and a couple more years of that and I would find myself in some sort of trouble.  I seemed to be suffering from classic symptoms of PTSD without realizing it.

The bad news was that my position was not sustainable, and I would probably find that out the hard way before too long.  When Bill tactfully put this to me, I didn’t take it too seriously at first.  It seemed selfish to be thinking about my own personal well being when working in a place where people have nothing.  Also sometimes you need to sacrifice your own personal comforts in order to see that your project succeeds.  However, he presented his case in a language I could understand.

He said that I was the most critical part of my organization, and if I wasn’t in fit shape all the time then the organization would suffer, and if I didn’t think about my physical and psychological needs then I would collapse and be of no use to anyone.  Furthermore, not getting paid when the organization is hand to mouthing it and is a week from collapse, and not getting paid as the most critical person in the organization when the organization was sitting on tens of thousands of dollars in the bank that it couldn’t deploy were two very different things.

I began not only to accept a salary, but also to plan how to make my work and life richer.  Originally Bill offered guidance as to how I could do that; however, I quickly could see the impact on my quality of life.  What is more important I could see the impact in my work.   I feel that I have become more personable and less grouchy, don’t dread everything that is not a British Television, and feel proud and valued from the work I do and the life I am leading.

The last thing I will share with you is what I have done with the coaching that does not relate to me.  This summer it became clear to me that just as I was heading for a burnout from hard living and not taking care of myself, my right hand man and project manager XXXX was going in the same direction, and perhaps was even a little further along than I was before Bill’s intervention.  He was becoming tyrannical, paranoid and ill tempered to say the least.  Five years of hard work and no pay in a warzone was affecting him as well.

Taking what I learned from Bill I developed a strategy to take him from the edge.  I forced wages on him to start with, and explained to him what Bill explained to me, we started having real heart to hearts, and seeing how we could lighten his burden.  Most importantly I let him know very clearly that he was the most important person to me, and my number one concern was his well being.  I think the effect has been very productive, instead of getting worse he seems to have been getting much better.  I never received a phone call from him while I was away from Congo in 5 years, and in the month and a half since we last saw each other I have receive four.  So you should know that my coaching has extended beyond me.

In summary, I belief coaching has positively impacted my work in terms of fundraising and time management; however, I know for certain that it has made me a stronger individual and enriched my life, and I am very grateful that the program was made available to me.

Hop Hop Hazah,

Alex Petroff