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In this episode of ‪What Worked, Tyler interviews Mike Lemire, CEO & Lead Coach at Harmonic Leadership, an executive coaching firm focused on supporting CS leaders. Mike talks about using situational leadership as a framework for his coaching and advising work.

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Philip shares his insights about:

• The pitfalls of a one-size-fits-all management style
• What a typical executive coaching session looks like
• How his singing background inspired his business name and ethos

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We'd love for you to connect with us:

• Mike Wu‍
• Tyler Rachal
• Mike Lemire

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Transcript edited for clarity:

Tyler Rachal

Hello, hello, and welcome back to another amazing episode of What worked. I'm Tyler Rachal and I'm joined today by the wonderful, the talented, Mike Lemire. Now I can't stop thinking, Mike told me how to pronounce his last name Lemire as in come here. So I want to say Mike Lemire, come on in here. Welcome to What Worked. Thrilled to have you. How are doing today, sir?

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Mike Lemire

I'm doing great pleasure to be here and you nailed the name you nailed the pronunciation Tyler. It was great

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Tyler Rachal

I better because you've got some French in you and I do too. We were just talking about our French lineage that is scattered at best. So we share that in common.

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Mike Lemire

I didn't want to say the way people usually mispronounce it, which is Lee Meyer. I wanted to get you through it. So Lee Meyer is the alternative. And there were guys who I worked with at Yahoo many years ago who said it wrong for so long. Some guys in the company thought my first name was Lee and my last name was Meyer.

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Tyler Rachal

That is hilarious. Okay, so we're truly kindred spirits rather, because I have the same thing everybody in my life calls me Tyler Rachel. And that is to a point where I only correct people very limitedly, if they say it and they ask me did I say it correctly, I'll correct them. But I just say you're good enough. But I get Rachel,  Recall, Ratchel, it's all the above. So, Tyler Rachal for anybody out there listening. And I tell people, surely you will not find other Rachals unless you go to Louisiana. That's where we're keeping all of them. I somehow escaped. Everybody else is there. So Lee Meyer, I'm joined here by Lee Meyer. Very talented. 

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Mike Lemire

Hey, good to see you.

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Tyler Rachal

Exactly. And your former Yahoo execs are like, Lee, how's he doing? Cool, so let's jump right into it. Mike is the founder of Harmonic Leadership and he's a really talented, super experienced executive in customer experience, customer success. So we'll go more into Mike's full background here in a second. But Mike, would you mind in your own words, telling us, you know, what you do at Harmonic Leadership, who you do it for and why.

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Mike Lemire

What I do is I help leaders get to the next level by giving them an environment to honestly share their concerns and challenges and then providing them with frameworks and thought partnership from someone who's been in their shoes. I know what it is to be an operator and be challenged by reporting up to a CEO or working with a founder who doesn't know your discipline and can't really be helpful any longer to pull you through. So that's what I do. 

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Who I work with is sort of anyone from managers all the way up to founders at tech companies. Most often it's usually that director plus tier at larger companies where they're needing to convert from a fantastic tactician into a strategic leader and making that jump without guidance can be really difficult. I do it because I was lucky enough to have investments made in me at companies like Yahoo and HubSpot and Toast, all the places where I'd been, people took the time to enroll me in leadership training, pair me with executive coaches. And when I saw the impact that that had on me, I got addicted to it. And I wanted to provide that impact back to the rest of the industry.

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Tyler Rachal

That's incredible. And so I want to jump right into that piece. You were lucky enough to have people that took an interest in you and helped you develop in those moments when you were making that leap. So let's jump into your career, you were at Toast, which everybody I think would call one of the elusive unicorn, rocket ship, insert awesome adjective, fast growing, crazy company. But you were inside the four walls, so you're like, I probably knew it as an insane asylum, right? Where everybody was fastly moving and things were breaking probably all the time. But, take me back to whenever it is that you did make that leap. Who were some of those people? Actually, one thing I love to do on What Worked is call them out by name. Because we can tag them on a LinkedIn post and you know, kind of give them a shout out who kind of helped you develop and make this leap and into what you're going to be talking about today, which is situational leadership.

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Mike Lemire

Well, it actually starts when I was at HubSpot. So I had a manager there named Rebecca Gutner. Fast forward to today, she is someone who I partner with as she's moved into executive coaching as well and we sort of run our practices alongside each other and support each other as we build. 

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Tyler Rachal

Amazing.

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Mike Lemire

She took the time to really work through what it is to be a great people leader when I first took that jump from being an individual contributor into a manager and having direct reports for the first time. What's interesting is that her husband is now the chief people officer at Toast and was formerly the VP of Customer Success. So he was the person who brought me over. 

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Tyler Rachal 

Wild.

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, he's got a really incredible skill set as an operator and a people leader. So he made continued investments in me. So the Gutner family has been so important at so many stages of my career.

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Tyler Rachal

Shout out the Gutner family. Sound like wonderful people.

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Mike Lemire

They are wonderful people. Also, there's a woman at Toast who I was fortunate enough to work with, Emmanuelle Skala, who came up the ranks. 

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Tyler Rachal

Yes.

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, I don't know if you had a chance to meet Emmanuelle.

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Tyler Rachal

We got connected way back in the day. Funny enough, I don't think we ever actually hopped on a call, but someone introduced us because I think it was when I was at TaskUs, or I was in some way still involved in BPO. And I think Toast was just thinking about maybe doing like an RFP for a BPO vendor, that sort of thing. So I got connected with her.

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, she's fantastic. And what I was able to learn from her, she was a really strong people leader, a really strong executor. But she had wonderful operating models for her team. She created space for strategic thinking. She created space for experiments and to be able to see that operating model, which is so important when you're going through scaling really quickly. The people who I think fail at that scaling point are people who are just constantly running through walls and putting out fires. You need the space to be able to think long-term and think strategically and to build planning and experiments into your operating model. She did that better than any leader I worked with. We went through, like I think a lot of companies did during COVID, layoffs because we weren't sure what the future of the restaurant industry was gonna be, even if it would be around any longer. She was an incredibly supportive leader for me as we went through the reduction force that we had to go through. And then she advocated to pair me with an executive coach as well, which gave me further investment. So I can't say enough about my friend, Emmanuel.

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Tyler Rachal

That's so cool. So, got the budget to pair you up with an executive coach and who was that executive coach? I'm always curious, how did you find them? How did you make us a choice in terms of who you were going to work with?

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Mike Lemire

So it was interesting. I think the company actually paired us with an organization. And so we had a few different choices of coach. And so we were able to interview them. And when I was working with my coach, one of the things that struck me about him was that he understood the specific challenges that I was facing at that time. And he had gone through some of them himself. And I remember when I was working with him, I thought, this is a job, like you can be an executive coach. This is like, it's like when you grow up and see someone who's become like a professional ice cream taster, you're like, how is this a thing? 

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So I got the bug then, and then I started sort of investigating what it is to be a coach, what the requirements are, how to actually become excellent at this line of work, because it's not like, you know, going to medical school or something like that. Anyone can sort of put on a coaching hat, but what separates an entry level coach from an excellent coach. So that sort of put me on my path.

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Tyler Rachal

That's so cool. I love that analogy of a professional ice cream taster. When I was at TaskUs at some point, I was working directly underneath one of the co-founders, Jaspar. And he had an executive coach through, I think it was Vistage at the time, I want to say. And he just had these extra hours that he wasn't using. And he's like, do you want to talk to this guy? And I feel terrible because I'd to shout out his name, but I don't recall it. But, yeah, the same thing. He was this older gentleman and he was so experienced. He had had some successful business in probably a very different industry, like an industry probably wouldn't exist very much. It was like a paper company like Dunder Mifflin or something like that.

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But I will say this is that the guy was so cool. It was part therapist because I would tell him here's what I'm working on, usually it was like a deal that was I was stressing about or some sort of dynamic within the organization that I was struggling to figure out or fit in or whatever. And it was like he was part therapist. He would listen to me. But then also there's this added thing of like you said, he had been in my shoes before. And he was able to kind of pull from this encyclopedia of stories that he had where he'd be like, you know what, I was in a tense negotiation one time too. And here's what happened. And it reminded me of what you're talking about. And here's what I learned. I was like, this is this is a job. It's what I thought. So that's so cool.

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, the comparison to therapy is made a lot too. Part of it is, what separates a coach from a consultant is, consultants are going to come in and say like, here's what you should do, Tyler. If you go to a therapist and you're having problems with your marriage, no good therapist would ever say, I think it's time to go get a divorce, right? They might ask you when, when's the last time you were happy in your marriage and sort of let you uncover it. So part of the coaching job is sort of not getting in the way, not putting your thumb on the scale, because you know your business better than I do. But having been in their shoes before, it's really knowing the questions to ask. So it might be great. That's a great plan. How has finance responded to your plan right now? Make sure that there is maybe some perspective on that.

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Tyler Rachal

Without a doubt. And that's so funny. We were, for anyone who's listening some context that you won't hear from this episode, because we were talking about before. We were sort of yucking it up about our dads and how our dads give good advice, but it might not be the best advice always. And it's funny, you made me chuckle when you were talking about that, because I immediately thought of when you mentioned you should go get a divorce. My dad is so kind of scientific and mathematic in the way that he thinks about everything. He's very tactical. So anytime in my life I've come to him with these great life quandaries, I think I love this girl, dad and whatever it is. He's just so very by the numbers that it's not a good fit. So yeah, I don't think my dad would make a very good business coach. I think he kind of go right into, you should get a divorce or you should quit your job. Go find something else. 

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So you had this great experience. You had some awesome people that sort of went to bat for you and got you these types of resources. And ultimately you have started Harmonic Leadership. We've talked previously because we know each other now for a little bit. We've talked about this concept, this framework that you teach to the clients that you have called situational leadership, which I would love to hear just in your own words, what exactly is situational leadership and, and where do you apply it?

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, it's essentially a framework to make sure that you're shifting your approach to your direct reports to make sure they're able to get stronger in the skills that they need to grow in. So it's a method of management, essentially. It's interesting, when I was hiring directors or managers, anyone who's going to have people report responsibilities under me in the interview process, I would say tell me about your management philosophy. And if they didn't have them, I would be disappointed. But I would get a lot of the time is ‘I don't like to micromanage’. Okay, what I think situational leadership helps with is how and when to apply the right level of support to the right person based on what they're working on. 

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What's been interesting for me is how much it applies both for a brand new person coming out of school, as an individual contributor all the way to a CEO working with a COO reporting up under them. And it can be applicable in any situation.

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Tyler Rachal

I could absolutely see that. And as, as you're, as you're saying this, I'm just immediately thinking, you've mentioned this phrase before, but you've said basically it's like one size does not fit all for management. As you've kind of taught me about situational leadership, what's been really interesting is it's actually made me really think about myself too. Do you ever find that when you're working with your clients, you're helping them learn how to be better managers, but also do they ever reflect on themselves kind of where they're at in terms of these quadrants, which I want you to break down. But do they think about which quadrant maybe they line up in?

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Mike Lemire

Not as much as I'd like them to, Tyler. That's very hip of you to have the self-awareness to sort of think about these frameworks and put them through yourself. Usually it's more the self-realization they have is I was an amazing individual contributor. I've been an amazing leader. The way that I operate is how everyone else should operate is sort of the MO that they have. And when they have a direct report who doesn't operate like them, it's how can I mold this person to be more like me, which tends to not work. What works better is who is this person and what do they need right now so that I can support them in what makes them talented and what makes them special.

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Tyler Rachal

without a doubt. I you tell me if this happens a lot. But as you say that what I commonly think of is not only do they say, I really want people to be more like me, but also, if they are managing, let's say 10 direct reports, there's always going to be at least one who they consider to basically be mini them, junior them. And I think it's almost worse. It's a lot of times less experienced managers find themselves gravitating constantly towards those people that do remind them of themselves. And then worse, telling the rest of the team to be more like this person. Is the idea that you're missing out on some wonderful development with the team, some wonderful opportunity by kind of pigeonholing everybody into the same bucket?

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Mike Lemire

Absolutely. But even that star player that you talked about, you're doing a disservice to as well. So one of the key pieces of situational leadership is it isn't about the person, but it's about a specific skill set that person is trying to develop. So in a nutshell, what situational leadership is it's a four box. And so you use the x axis of the four box. It represents someone's competent competence. So do they have low competence in this skill set versus high competence?

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And then the Y-axis represents their commitment or motivation. So do they have low commitment motivation or high motivation? So the example I like to give to articulate it is as a VP of Customer Success, I had a lot of skillset in running a team, but at a startup, sometimes you have to wear many hats. So if my CEO were to come to me and say, hey, Mike, we need you on some of the real estate development. We need you to go find an office space for us in Boston. Cool, I've never had the opportunity to do that. So my commitment or motivation is high, excited to take on a new challenge. My competence in going and making a real estate deal on behalf of the company is incredibly low. So I would hope that my leader at that point, even though I was viewed as sort of an all-star player or rock star player, would be really directive with me. And this is the point where I would need a degree of micromanagement. Here's what this looks like. Here's who the person who did this for us before worked with. Here’s the context they had. Here's how long it usually takes. Why don't you go fill this out? Come back and check it with me. 

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Whereas if the skillset we were trying to develop was running a team meeting, if she were to be, if my CEO were to be that prescriptive or directive with me on running a team meeting, I would be offended by that. So it's really separating the skill that you're trying to develop from the person.

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Tyler Rachal

That makes sense. So in that example you were mentioning, they're going to be very on the far left side on the X axis and then they're high up on the Y axis. And so that puts them into that bucket of directing versus coaching or supporting or delegating.

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Mike Lemire

Right, so coaching is the next step. And so what comes with that is, let's say three months from now, I've made some traction with the initial deal, but I haven't pulled it across the finish line yet. At this point, my motivation and my excitement for this new task has probably come down quite a bit because the challenges have become more realistic. My skillset, my ability to do this has come up a little bit, but not fully. So I don't need that, here's the template, go fill this out. But I do need a lot of like, hey, this is the thing you should do next. Maybe try this or that. Here's an example of what good looks like, but also a lot of encouragement. Mike, you did such a good job with that first call. I know it didn't work out, but here's some tweaks you make for the next one. Sort of building up my confidence so that I'm able to overcome that enthusiasm gap. 

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Getting into the next phase would then be supporting, right? So at this point, I've maybe closed my first deal. There’s an ability to do the job, but I'm still not really confident in my abilities yet. So it's really building me up, showcasing my excellence, promoting me to the rest of the team. And eventually I get confident, I get good at what I do. That gets fully delegated over to me and it's the leader's job to just shine the spotlight on me and continue to give me more at-bats and opportunities to grow more skills.

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Tyler Rachal

As I'm thinking about this, it's not just situational leadership. When you first told me this concept, I kind of thought more along the lines of thinking of the individual, but it can be situational leadership, truly in, I mean, this is a duh moment, the situation, right? So it can be like, hey, this person generally, I'm going be able to just have them in delegating, but it's delegating really for a specific set of tasks they're very proficient in.  For other things, we might have to start off with S1, go to S2, et cetera, et cetera, and move through the whole phase. Am I understanding that correctly or am I totally off?

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Mike Lemire

100%. Yeah. And one of the things I did as a leader, so it's funny, I went on a real journey with situational leadership. I remember the conference room I was in in HubSpot when we were going through leadership development training and they introduced this framework to us. I couldn't roll my eyes hard enough. I thought, what? T his is just a bunch of Harvard Business School nerds justifying their MBAs and creating stuff that doesn't need to be created. Let's just get back to work and deal with people as people.

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Tyler Rachal

I'd look at it and I would think, man, this looks like lot of work. Versus the classic phrase that I always got as someone who was being managed was someone would say, you need to manage up. So when I became a manager, all I said was, you guys need to manage up, manage up. It's like whatever, which is like a total cop out really, I think.

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Mike Lemire

Totally. I felt the same way. So I didn't buy into it at all. I said, okay, that's nice. What a cool break I had to go through that training. Then I started going through it with Rebecca Gutner. And she was like, great, let's talk about the people on your team. Let's identify the skillsets that they need to develop. Where are they? And all of a sudden, clicks started clicking in my mind. Leadership started to get easier. I started to get better results out of my team. And I really became like an advocate for this way of working.

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And in my last role as VP, I would open up the conversation with the team and I would say, here's one of the ways that I operate. I use situational leadership. I would give them a mini training on it, because I wanted to have an open vocabulary. I'm going to treat you as an S1 here. How do you feel? And we could discuss, or I would give them the opportunity to say, I see that you're treating me as an S4 or you're working on coaching with me. I really need you to move to delegation so we could have that open communication.

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Tyler Rachal

You're dispelling something that I was wondering about, is this a concept where I learned it as a manager, and then I keep that close to the chest? And I'm sitting here and I'm like, I'm dealing with an S one here, and we only talk about it amongst executives, it's our special code words. But no, you're bringing them into the fold, which is probably pretty empowering, I gotta imagine. 

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Mike Lemire

It was, I did that for two reasons. One was because it showed a level of trust I had in them to have sort of a mature conversation about their own development and what they needed from me. Two was everyone who reported to me also had direct reports themselves and I wanted to show them like this is how it looks in action. This is how we use this framework so that they had a higher degree of confidence to go use it with their team, whether or not they were as transparent as I was, they had the chance to see how I was utilizing it and could bring that back to their own practice as a leader.

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Tyler Rachal

Amazing. And so that's actually, think, a wonderful transition point. I would love to hear one example of someone that you worked with on this. And as you assess them, where were they? What were the things they needed to work on? And what was  the broad strokes of bringing them to that S4 point. And then I'd love, you just mentioned it, some of the people that you were working with also had direct reports and they took this concept to them. I'd love to hear about that as well. 

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, I think that the first one that comes to mind in terms of working with someone and having it be successful was so I talked about the layoffs we had to go through at Toast. When we did, I absorbed the customer education team in addition to the customer success management team there. So this was a discipline I've always worked around customer education, I had a great degree of respect for them, but I had not been in a customer facing content creation team before. It's much more in the style of a marketing team almost, with the amount of content you need to produce. 

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, absolutely. Sure.

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Mike Lemire

It was a brand new discipline and it was something that I'd never done before. And so I also knew that I had to get out of the way of the team and let them move and not really slow them down while I was learning. So I opened up situational leadership with them, quickly found out. I sort of bucketed it into two categories because we were moving fast of where are people in their execution abilities and where are people in their strategy development abilities because we were also having to completely rewrite the operating model for that team. The team had gone from 14 down to three. So I was like, who are my people who are just going to run and ship stuff and who are my people who are going to help me design what the future of this program?

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I was really open with them, but I wanted to be able to do this really quickly and show them that even though I'm an outsider, I'm not going to slow you down. I'm going to help be sort of a tailwind here and help support you in strategy development. So one of the women who became one of my primary lieutenants there, she showed a high aptitude, it was very clear her execution skill set was strong and her strategy skillset, had a high desire to do it, a high level of excitement, but she had not had anyone invest with her and show what does it actually mean to develop strategy? 

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You gave the example earlier of sort of giving lazy feedback. One of the most common pieces of lazy feedback I hear from people is, I've been told to be more strategic. What does that mean? What does that look like? How do I do that?

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Tyler Rachal

Totally, yeah, I'm furiously nodding my head, you and I have bonded over this. It's a, I believe that the young kids nowadays, they call this a microaggression. It's like a microaggression. When you tell someone to be more strategic. Oh my god. It's like you're just inserting the tiniest little nuclear bomb that is going to go off in their brain later on. They're like, and my manager said to be more strategic. What does that mean?

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, exactly. I saw in her the opportunity to develop strategy, but no one had taken the time to show her what it looks like to be strategic. So let's break out the templates. Let's work on strategic planning. Let me show you what it looks like when I'm having these conversations at an executive level. And really quick study, was able to move her across the phases incredibly quickly and within a quarter, which was fast for any sort of situational leadership development, 

I felt like I could delegate strategy development down to her. 

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On the flip side, to sort of show some humility here, Tyler, I had had another person who I had worked with for a long time and developed a close friendship with as well. Sending birthday gifts, having dinner together, and it's always nice when you have that degree of familiarity and friendship with someone who you're working with, even if they're a direct report. The challenge I found was that friendship would blind me to what they needed. I allowed them to stay in the directing stage. I allowed them to stay comfortably in a phase where I was providing them with too much guidance and not challenging them or supporting them to move up. 

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Tyler Rachal

Holding them back.

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Mike Lemire

Exactly. So I was doing a disservice to them. But it didn't feel like it because I was like, this is my friend. I'll just protect them, to take care of them. I'm a big fan and advocate of personal operating models. And so for that means what are the rituals and moments within a quarter, year, where you are assessing, planning, executing, experimenting? What does that look like for you and your business? And so I had twice a year sort of force myself to map out situational leadership like skill identification with people on my team. And so, and during one of these times, I realized, wow, I am treating this person as an S1 and so many skills and I'm really not challenging them to the degree that I needed to challenge them. Fortunately, we had this open conversation and open vocabulary. So I was able to say I'm going to change the way that we're working together. Here's why I'm going to change it. Here's how I'm going to adjust the way I'm supporting you. Will that work for you? And it got better, but that was a time when I realized like, you know, the friendship kind of blinded me to that.

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Tyler Rachal

I appreciate the humility and I'm thinking in my mind, different times in my career, when I've probably done something similar, just liked a person so much, personally that. I probably held them back because it's almost like I kind of had blinders on, like a filter for what they really needed, I guess. I'm curious, you've given many examples of people that are high on the commitment part of the axis, right? What about folks that are low commitment? Someone who for whatever reason, they're not really that committed, I guess. Are you trying to bring them to high commitment?  How do you think about that, I guess?

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, so it depends, are they high commitment with low ability or high commitment with high ability. And I think the more challenging one is they've got the ability to do it. I know they can do it, but their excitement around doing it is really low. 

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Tyler Rachal

That's what I mean. Yes.

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Mike Lemire

That's a really tough phase. So that's when you want to really work with them more as supporting. And so oftentimes with moments like that, there can be a disconnect on the impact of their work. It can feel like they're just doing something prescribed. I just got to get this done. I got to make this report. I got to send this update, you know, whatever it is. It feels just operational and day to day. And so it's sort of zooming out and saying, let me show you what you're doing and how it's presented in a board meeting, for instance, and how that board is then taking the impact of your work and making further decisions about the way that we should be running the business. I don't know if you realize the impact you're having on the company.

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Or better understanding what is not exciting you about this. What would be more exciting? That might open up a career development conversation, frankly, maybe they'll never get excited about this because it's reporting as a support lead, but they're really interested in getting into product. Okay, let me help connect the dots of why this skill development can be really powerful for you if you get over to product management eventually. And if there's no connective tissue there, it's like, great, is this something you continue building a skill set on? We need you to operate here, but if you wanna add more tools to your tool belt to build your career in a different way, let's talk about that.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally, those crucial conversations. Have you ever read that book before? Crucial Conversations. 

Mike Lemire

No, no I haven't.

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Tyler Rachal

Okay. That could be a good one to add to your library. I won't go into it right now, but you know, it's so funny as you were saying a lot of that, I know we're both parents and I was connecting so much of what you just said to my day to day parenting. My three and a half year old, a lot of the conversations that we're having, it's about both of those things, right? It's about finding what are her real desires, and kind of helping her understand how we can get those, achieve those if possible, right? It's like, hey, you really want to go to the park, right? Well, to go to the park, we have to be wearing clothes, we have to put on underwear, we have to put on pants. So it's this step, which I know you feel is kind of unnecessary, but it's actually really necessary. And it will get you that next step.

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Or a lot of it is talking to her and you know when they're three and a half they're just very much like it's all about me and and it's helping them understand actually when you kicked over all those things on the table, the bowl fell and it hit your sister in the head and she's got a big owie. So there's a cause and effect here to your actions.  Anyway, I just feel like there's so much connection between obviously parenting is my main job.

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, I know. I'll bring DISC profiles into my parenting life, I'll bring situational leadership, I'll bring a lot of these frameworks in, to varying degrees of success. I don't know that it always translates perfectly from the world of business to family life.

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Tyler Rachal

My wife tells me constantly she goes, I don't know why you talk so much to our daughter. She's like, you just need to stop,, say the first two sentences of whatever you're saying, and then just stop because I'll go into breaking down concepts. And I'm like, see, what we're having right now is a crucial conversation with that. My wife's like, stop.

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Mike Lemire

I think that's a dad trait, man. That's my dad, that's me too. I over explain, I give 16 analogies, like it's too much.

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Tyler Rachal

That's it, that's it. That's it. My wife is always like, No, no, you just say you can't do that. That's it, it's the end of the conversation. That's so amazing, and I could absolutely see how this has been super impactful. You now are partnered with somebody who kind of brought this into your life. And tell me a little bit more, I kind of bring this full circle. What does this look like now as you experienced situational leadership, you learned it initially when you were on the job and now you're teaching it effectively. How does this come into play with Harmonic Leadership, your business? I know you do both things, you're a fractional call it customer experience, customer success executive, but then also your a business coach. Is that the preferred kind of title you would take?

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Mike Lemire

I use executive coach, but yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

Yeah, executive coach, right? And so what does your business look like today and how do you see it evolving over time?

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, it's interesting. So my portfolio of clients is sort of mixed. I do some fractional work for friends who are leading startups and need sort of a trusted customer success leader, but not able to give them sort of full time responsibilities as I'm running the business. So that's part of what I do. With 15 plus years of customer success executive experience, I participate as an adviser for some other startups, building out their customer success team. So that's the chance where I can put my thumb on the scale a little bit more and say, here's the way you need to structure your head count capacity model. If you haven't done it before, I'll do it alongside of you. And then lastly, as an executive coach. So it's anywhere from first time founders who feel over their head and just say, I just need someone who's not part of this company and not on the board to be able to share all of my insecurities with, all of my challenges with and just soundboard out a problem to people who are like, hey, I've just been getting fives on my reviews year over year and I'm stuck in this director level title and I don't know how to break into that VP level. I just need someone to show it because I'm not getting what I need out of my own boss to build me up into that role. 

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And so the company is sort of a mix of those different types of work or services that I provide. And for a coaching call, typically what it looks like, it's funny, most people have heard about working with a coach, but they themselves haven't had the opportunity to do it yet. So I'm happy to sort of break down what happens on a coaching call for the people watching the show. 

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Tyler Rachal

Sure.

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Mike Lemire

So at least the way that I do it, there are some who really focus on sort of, I consider it the woo woo, sort of the spiritual element of coaching. Okay, there's that if people need it. I like to really focus on actions and like plans and executing and moving forward and measuring our success. So I'll start off every call with checking in red, yellow, green, like how are you personally? How are you professionally? Because if they're red on both, it sort of gives me the sense that we probably need to. I need to pull back as a coach and listen a lot more instead of pushing them. If they're green and we have the opportunity to push, I'll push him a little bit more.

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We'll then recap the previous call. We walked away with some action items. Hey, you said you were gonna have this tough conversation with your head of product because they weren't hearing you. And we prepared for it. How did that go? Unpack that. And then from there say, what's gonna be the most important conversation for us to have today? What is the main blocker for you and how can we get around that? A lot of the coaching is being driven by them as opposed to advising where I can kind of say, we're not paying enough attention at risk mitigation and I think that's where you need to focus. It's in coaching, it's up to them to say like, here's where I'm blocked and here's where I need the support, Mike.

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Tyler Rachal

Totally. And I'm just smiling because a couple of reasons. One is I'm a part of an entrepreneurship membership group called Hampton. Hampton, I think I told you about, we have these things called core groups, which is myself and I think my group has another six or so or seven/ I feel terrible. I don't know the number but I know all their names. I have fellow entrepreneurs that are in our group and then our group has a facilitator, someone like yourself who is an executive coach. So one funny thing is now that I'm on the other side and I'm a business owner, I will say this, I think most employees, I'll speak for myself when I, my experience, I just don't know if most employees realize how much business owners one, think that they suck all the time. We think that we suck.

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So it's like you're sitting here and you're like, man, they just don't get it. They're very painfully aware of all of our shortcomings. I got news for you. We too are very aware of our shortcomings and we're actually talking to people about it. I'm not saying every business owner does this, but, we're in these meetings. So as you just broke that down, that is essentially the exact structure of our meeting. So we're doing the same thing. You might be meeting with directors and VPs. Well, somewhere out there, there's the owner of the business basically doing the same thing. So we're all just trying to get better. 

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I was going to ask you to do this. If you humor me, this is something I ask every What Worked  guest to do. I'm giving you a chance here, cause we'll clip this, but if you were to shoot an infomercial for your business. And maybe if you want to just focus on the coaching side, which by the way, the way you just broke down to me, that's the most compelling part. But if you want to kind of give a, hey, you really point out someone out there, the challenge that you mentioned a great example, you said someone who might be stuck in a director role and they can't get beyond it. Maybe this is your opportunity to kind of give a quick infomercial for you, your business, you can start whenever you want.

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Mike Lemire

All right. Do I have to do it like Billy Mays? Was that the infomercial guy?

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Tyler Rachal

You can do the Billy Mays voice or not. I do ‘Billy Mays here’.

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Mike Lemire

All right. All right. I'll do a little bit of a hybrid. I will go give it a little bit of camp but not full camp.

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Tyler Rachal

Do whatever is most comfortable exactly

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Mike Lemire

Do you feel over your head? Do you feel that you're not sure who you can honestly share your work challenges with? Do you have a sense of imposter syndrome? Are you someone who's getting great reviews without a clear path for growth? Are you getting feedback like it's time to be more strategic or we need to see more from you as a leader? Well then have I got the product for you. Work with Harmonic Leadership.

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And if you've never heard of an executive coach before, here's what it looks like. First, step one, we meet and decide, do we jive? Do we click? Does this work for us or do we not connect at all? Part two is we set our goals. What does it mean to be successful in your career? What does growth look like? Most importantly, how are we gonna measure it? How do we know if we're making progress or not? Step three, we meet twice a month for an hour and we work towards achieving those goals. So if you're interested in that, head on down to harmonicleadership.com to learn more today. How's that?

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Tyler Rachal

That was incredible. And I was about to go, blah, blah, blah, this is special one time offer, blah, blah, you know, harmonic leadership is not responsible for the well being of your dog. That was so good.

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Mike Lemire

Results may vary.

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Tyler Rachal

Results made vary. I was grinning ear to ear. So you just nailed that. I put you on the spot, you crushed it. Yeah, anybody who is listening to this, I'll just add my two cents is that I was definitely that person that was before I became a business owner, I actually was stuck. I was at a company and I was consistently getting the fives, but I also got, we did these core value winners of the year awards, and I would win those. But every time an executive role came up, it was actually quite frustrating. A lot of the other people at the company that knew me really well, my colleagues would come up and they'd be like, why don't they consider you for these roles? They never talked to you about it. And I'm like, no, they don't. 

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And so I would have been the perfect client for you. And I would definitely say there's a lot of people I think very similar to myself that are out there that would benefit. So advocate to your company. I tell you what, if anybody came to me at Hireframe and really said I need a coach and here's why, I would absolutely hear them out because I do see a ton of value in it. Mike, this has been such a pleasure, I greatly appreciate it. I feel like you gave all the What Worked listeners really some incredible free consulting today, talking about situational leadership. I will ask you as our last and final question is, where can people find you? Like where do you prefer to be contacted? And I think you kind of broke it down, but what do you want to be contacted about?

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, so you can contact me on LinkedIn. I'm Mike Lemire on LinkedIn. You can find me there or you can go right to harmonicleadership.com. Find me there or just email me. I'm mike at harmonicleadership.com. Happy to do that. Reach out to me. The name is harmonic. I'm actually, I truly am a musician. All this other stuff is just what I do professionally, but to my heart I’m a musician, 

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Tyler Rachal

Okay, what do you play?

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Mike Lemire

I'm a singer. And yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

What? That's so cool.

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Mike Lemire

I'm a classical choral singer.

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Tyler Rachal

No you are not. What are you a tenor? T2 tenor?

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Mike Lemire

Ooh, I'm a tenor, I'm a T2, in fact. Yeah, good for you.

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Tyler Rachal

You're a T2, rock and roll. Okay, cool. That's amazing. And then the first thing that popped into my head, my three and a half year old is really into Sabrina Carpenter, which I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. But she constantly goes around the house saying I'm working late because I'm a singer. Anyway, so you're working late because you have several roles that you take, a business owner, dad, singer. Do you sing in a chorus right now?

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Mike Lemire

Yeah. So the painting behind me here is of an outdoor music venue in the Berkshires called Tanglewood. So for about 10 years, I sang with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and they're the chorus in residence for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Pops. So I sang out there, I had the chance to sing with them in Carnegie Hall and Boston Symphony Hall. And it was a true pleasure. It's a high commitment and as a dad of three kids and a business owner, I've since pulled back. There are a couple choruses in town, the New World Chorale here in Boston that I sing with today, sort of the retirement center for members of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

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Tyler Rachal

Sure. Yeah, yeah, I get it. You're on the, you're on the senior PGA, senior golfers tour. You're like, yeah, you're still out there playing, but it's not as intense. Yeah.

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Mike Lemire

Yeah, but it's great, it's really fun. We sort of get a piece of music. We know it, we learn it, we show up and do like one rehearsal and then we're able to perform it. So it's a lot of fun.

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Tyler Rachal

That's so cool. I will say that, my high school was super into a cappella and we'd have these a cappella groups come from different colleges and all that sort of stuff. And so I got super into it. Funny enough, I got into a cappella for the dumbest reason. I saw whoever it was in every song that was doing the percussion. I was like, I wanted to learn how

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Mike Lemire

Beatboxing, yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

I want to learn how to beatbox. So I went to the auditions for our high school a cappella group and they were like, what are you here to audition for? And I was like, I’m here to audition for like the beatboxer and they're like, that is not a singular person. Like you have to sing and then we'll share those duties, whatever. So long story short, as I ended up getting into it, I never learned, I was late to the game on music. 

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What I will say is this is something that I just think the average person who doesn't sing or hasn't sang in that capacity, something that is just an incredible experience that is like a wonder of the world is to sit inside of a circle or whatever it might be when you're in there. When you feel people singing and making harmony, it's like godly in my opinion, it's like the closest thing you can get to being in the heavens. It's just a crazy, unbelievable feeling and sound. I, for people that haven't experienced that, I'm like, I wish you could, or you should, you should just go sit inside of a circle. It's in amazing.

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Mike Lemire

I couldn't agree with you more. I couldn't agree with you more. And that's, that's honestly why I named the company Harmonic Leadership. As a soloist, you can't experience that sense of harmony. You can't make harmony by yourself. You can only make harmony with other voices. And the way that you blend as a singer and creating that sense of harmony matters a ton. You have to change your own voice to create that harmony and that resonance with the other group. You can't just come out there, super loud and doing your own thing. So much of working inside of a company and growing a company and being a good leader is listening to those around you and adjusting the way that you speak. So that's where I landed on the name.

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Tyler Rachal

That's so cool. The first song we did in the a cappella group was the jazz song Satin Doll, if you know that song. 

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Mike Lemire

Duke Ellington, Yeah.

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Tyler Rachal

I'm trying to remember the exact thing, the moment in time it's burned in my brain. It's like that satin doll. It's this really jazzy chord. And we're sitting there and it was simultaneously one of the worst experiences I had in music and one of the best. Cause I was sitting there and I got singled out. And you know this, when you're singled out in a chorus or whatever in a group, it just feels like you're sweating and they make you sing in front of everybody. And he was just the, the, 

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Mike Lemire

Conductor.

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Tyler Rachal

Conductor. Thank you. I kept on saying composer, the conductor, uh, shout out, Mr. Pandolfi, was just singling me out and he was like, no, and he was like, do it again, do it again, do it again. And I was like I hate you right now. And then at some point I hit it and then I felt that chord and it was like, what is this? This is so cool. So it was like you said, I needed to fit in. I was kind of fitting out and I needed to fit into the chord and it was so, so cool.

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I can't think of a better way to end this. So I feel like we have to do it on that note. Pun intended. But Mike, this has been so great. Anyone out there who is looking for Mike's help, there's several different things he can help you with, but I encourage you to reach out to him. He's as nice as he's coming across in this wonderful episode. He’s not a totally different person off camera. And yeah, reach out to Mike and see if you can work with him on something, I guarantee you'll be better for it. Thanks everybody for listening to what worked. I'm Tyler, we got Mike, and we'll see you on the next one.

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