Exploring the RESPECT Coaching Styles with David Morelli

Ever wondered what it takes to truly transform a coaching culture? Join us for an enlightening conversation with David Morelli, PhD, co-founder and CEO of OwlHub, as he unveils his journey in executive coaching and leadership development.

Inspired by his collaboration with a Harvard doctoral student, David discusses the Respect Coaching Styles framework—a groundbreaking approach designed to unlock potential and cultivate genuine human connections. This episode takes you behind the scenes of our recent experience at the ATD conference in New Orleans, where David's impactful dialogue with Marshall Goldsmith, a legendary executive coach, led to a notable endorsement of OwlHub's coaching styles assessment.

Bill Banham's questions for David include: 

• We met at the ATD Conference in New Orleans. Why exhibit at that event?
• OwlHub's mission is to help create a society where each individual can express their greatest gifts and be celebrated. Tell us more
• Tell us about OwlHub's 7 'RESPECT' Coaching Styles
• You mention that OwlCast (previously Enwaken Radio) has over 1.2 million subscribers and hit #1 on iTunes in two categories, passing Oprah! The show talks about personal and professional growth delivered with humor, authenticity, and insight. Tell us more about the show and audience.

We do our best to ensure editorial objectivity. The views and ideas shared by our guests and sponsors are entirely independent of The HR Gazette, HRchat Podcast and Iceni Media Inc.

Chapters

• 0:03 Transforming Coaching Cultures With Respect
• 7:44 Coaching Styles for Personal Growth

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the HR Chat Show, one of the world's most downloaded and shared podcasts designed for HR pros, talent execs, tech enthusiasts and business leaders. For hundreds more episodes and what's new in the world of work, subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit hrgazettecom and visit HRGazettecom.

Speaker 2: 0:26

Welcome to another episode of the HR Chat Show. Hello listeners, this is your host today, bill Bannam, and joining me in this episode is David Morelli, phd, co-founder and CEO over at OwlHub and the host and founder of the very popular OwlCast. Owlhub helps users ignite and transform coaching cultures with assessments, coaching, training and technology, and they are the innovators behind the award-winning Respect Coaching Styles framework, which we'll be getting into today. Hey, david, welcome to the show today.

Speaker 3: 1:00

Hey, thanks, Bill. Yeah, great to be here.

Speaker 2: 1:03

So, beyond my wee introduction there, why don't you start by taking a couple of minutes and telling our listeners all about yourself, your loves, your passions and a bit more about the business?

Speaker 3: 1:14

Absolutely yeah. So I've been an executive coach and in leadership development for 27 years and somewhere along the way I was working with a doctoral student at Harvard on his dissertation research and it was on engagement, and the research itself was pretty fascinating to me and I thought, gosh, I'd really like to do some of this doctoral work as well. And so I ended up getting really inspired by hey, there's leadership styles, but there's nothing in the coaching literature called styles, and so I decided to investigate and see, are there styles and, if so, what are they? And that was kind of the genesis, if you will, of the Respect Coaching styles.

Speaker 3: 2:05

But along the way I've worked with, you know, bestselling authors and CEOs and executive teams of companies and a whole host of others over the 27 years, I found some really fun truths about people. You know that, I believe you know deep down, everyone has the heart to want to help one another, but oftentimes we just don't know how. Or, you know, sometimes we protect our pain with everything that we've got, and and so we're. We're not necessarily as kind to each other as we might want to, but there's a genuine caring about others that I find is deep down within us, and so I think that really resonates with people when they start learning. Coaching is because it's a fast way to help people with whatever they're struggling with, and so, yeah, it's kind of a little bit of the background on me.

Speaker 2: 3:05

Okay, very good, thank you very much. Now, then, you and I are here today because we met at the ATD conference and expo in beautiful New Orleans just a couple of weeks ago. As we record this, we got chatting, you kindly offered a demo of the product, and then we were talking about maybe exchanging podcasts as well, because you've got a very popular podcast, which we'll chat more about later on. So here we are. Tell us about why you guys decide to exhibit at ATD.

Speaker 3: 3:41

Yeah, we came to ATD because it's where learning and development folks really hang out and go and gather and it's leadership or maybe it's other skills. But people who are there are really in many ways givers. They want to help other people to grow and succeed and become more capable and all that and that really resonates with who we are and what we're about. And the conference itself is, I think, fairly well done. Is, I think, fairly well done? And by the scope of it?

Speaker 4: 4:26

you know the thousands of people who go pretty popular and people who keep coming back year over year. So great conference. Once in a while, an event series is born that shakes things up, it makes you think differently and it leaves you inspired. That event is Disrupt HR. The format is 14 speakers, 5 minutes each and slides rotate every 15 seconds. If you're an HR professional, a CEO, a technologist or a community leader and you've got something to say about talent, culture or technology, disrupt is the place. It's coming soon to a city near you. Learn more at DisruptHRco.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Yeah, it was my second time attending ATD and I was, once again, very impressed. So how was the conference for you? What were some of your highlights? What speakers did you love? What conversations did you have that have changed your life? Tell us more.

Speaker 3: 5:28

Yeah, yeah, you know there were, there were a lot of folks, well, meeting you. Of course. I really appreciated that. And our conversation you were, you were kind of wandering by and you're like, well, you know, I don't necessarily coach people but I do, and I was like, well, we started chatting and so that was. That was really fun. I really enjoyed our conversation because I can tell you're a discerning soul, you can pick people out, you know as far as whether they're they're genuine or not, and so I appreciated that. We had a great conversation.

Speaker 3: 5:59

And another one was with.

Speaker 3: 6:02

You may have heard the name, marshall Goldsmith, who is a bestselling author. Forbes called him the number one executive coach in America and he came up to our booth and ended up taking our full coaching styles assessment. And I've known Marshall, or known about Marshall, for decades, but this is the first time that we met, or known about Marshall for decades, but this was the first time that we met and he came up and he took the full assessment that takes seven or eight minutes and he was like I love this. It totally represents, it's totally accurate, represents how I coach and I recommend it for every coach as well as leader who coaches, and it's going to help you become more adaptable, and he was actually willing to put that onto a video and allow me to send that out to folks. So I got a testimonial from probably the most important person in the space when it comes to coaching executive coaching. So that was a surprise. That was not not a planned interaction, but you know, stuff like that happens, you know, and we were very grateful for that interaction.

Speaker 2: 7:12

Let's talk a little bit about Owl Hub. Now I understand that Owl Hub's mission is to help create a society where each individual can express their greatest gifts and be celebrated. Sounds pretty good, I guess. The question there is why? Why did you guys create this? How are you doing, how are you making a difference to the world of work?

Speaker 3: 7:33

Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that. You know my whole career has been about bringing out the greatest gifts in each person. Right, like there are barriers that I feel or and have seen you know where people they want to aspire to becoming their best selves. And then yet there's barriers in the way, internal and external, there's negative reinforcement that they've got over time or whatnot. And when I step back and look at you know what's the impact that I want to have in the world and why does this all matter? And if I look across that space, there are internal personal barriers that people have, but there's also systemic barriers that exist for underserved or underrepresented communities, and it really matters to me that each person has that opportunity to become their best self.

Speaker 3: 8:32

And then, when I looked at, well, where do people gather best self? And then, when I looked at, well, where do people gather? And so sometimes people gather in different micro communities depending on their job type or things like that, but generally speaking, most people sort of in the 18 to 65-ish range are gathered around work. And so the real thought is, well, if we can transform cultures within organizations to help each person become their best self, well it's good for the company, it's good for, clearly, the individual, but as we think about helping to grow leaders as well, people who influence other people, that's where the ripple effect happens.

Speaker 3: 9:19

So, at every level of the organization, everyone's invested in each person becoming better, and so then that ripple or ripples outside of the organization and hopefully bleeds into or strongly supports a society where each person can become their best self, and part of that is learning how to interact better, and that's where coaching comes in. But it's not limited to coaching. Coaching is an access point to help each person express and be celebrated for who they are really, and that, that again, that's sort of the thread that runs through my entire career. Um, that it's profoundly important to me.

Speaker 5: 10:04

Thanks for listening to this episode of the HR chat podcast. If you enjoy the audio content we produce, you'll love our articles on the HR Gazette. Learn more at hrgazettecom. And now back to the show.

Speaker 2: 10:20

Okay, thank you very much. So you guys have seven coaching styles, I believe. Can you just take a few minutes and run through each of those with our listeners, just so they've got a bit more of an idea about what they are and why they matter?

Speaker 3: 10:39

Yeah, yeah. So this came out of my doctoral dissertation work where I looked at and worked with 16 of the world's best coaches and I asked them hey, when you're coaching, what do you do? And they said things like oh well, I hold people accountable. I said okay, and then I wanted to understand why is it that you do that? Like, what are you trying to have happen? And people started to say, well, I'm trying to get people to accomplish more. So I said okay. So I took over 2,000 quotes from those transcripts and categorized them there were 200 categories and then out of those categories, distilled down that there are seven distinct styles, seven ways in which great coaches, the world's best coaches, went about the coaching interaction, and they ended up spelling the acronym respect, and so the R for respect is the rallier, where you're trying to get people to again accomplish more and maybe help them with their goals and help them with their motivation so that they are moving forward in some measurable way. So that's the rallier.

Speaker 3: 11:47

The E the first E is the educator. So the educator is about building knowledge and skill sets, and so we each are responsible for helping to grow the skills of those around us, especially in the world of work right, and so how skillfully you do. That is the educator. The strategist is about helping people solve problems, and so ideally, we're helping them solve the problems for themselves versus us solving it for them, and that's kind of the power move of the strategist. The P is the provocateur. So the provocateur is all about challenging people and helping them challenge their own assumptions and their own belief systems. Or they say, oh well, you know, it's not my fault, it's somebody else. And you're like, really, you know, I'm pretty sure you have a part to play in, you know, whatever the thing is. And so you're like, really, I'm pretty sure you have a part to play in whatever this thing is. And so you're sort of like helping them reflect on truth, if you will, and helping that truth come out.

Speaker 3: 12:46

The E the second E is explorer. So this is the style where you help people step back and get out of their thought ruts, if you will, and to expand and have greater either discoveries about themselves or about the situation that they're in. So that might be questions like well, what's truly important here, then? The confidant is all about helping people feel like they can be authentically themselves, they can drop their walls and they're accepted just as they are. So it's very empathetic and connecting.

Speaker 3: 13:17

And then the T for the transformer is the style where you're helping somebody discover their best self or their potential and then helping them move towards that, and sometimes there are things like fear of failure or imposter syndrome or whatnot. And so each of these different styles or whatnot, and so each of these different styles, we need to weave in and out of them. So respect the rallier, educator, strategist, provocateur, explorer, confidant, transformer they all play a part in terms of how the dynamic coaching interaction should go let's talk a bit more about your amazing podcast, the the owl cast, previously known as in waken radio.

Speaker 2: 14:01

Um, you mentioned that it has over 1.2 million subscribers and it hit number one on itunes in two different categories. Uh, passing oprah apparently. Yeah, that was very, very impressive stuff. I always get nervous when I'm chatting to other podcasters. The show talks about personal and professional growth, delivered with humor, authenticity and insight. Tell the listeners a bit more about the show and why they should tune in.

Speaker 3: 14:32

Yeah, you know we get to have great interactions on various topics that really matter to people. I mean, there are shows on helping you overcome imposter syndrome, as I mentioned before. There's shows where we get to do great interviews Bill, yours is upcoming, but we have podcasts with Adam Grant, who's a Wharton professor. I have a podcast with Adam Grant, who's a Wharton professor, bestselling, author of a number of books. Different CEOs of various companies have come on.

Speaker 3: 15:16

What we like to do is it's an hour-long conversation because I love the depth that happens. And the people who come on the show say it's a little bit like we're sitting in the living room just having a discussion and people get to be a part of that. And there's like these little moments where you're like, wait a second, you just said this. You know let's go down that, go down that not rabbit hole. But you know, let's go down into that topic a little bit more.

Speaker 3: 15:39

Like you know you talked about trust, but where does the nature of trust really come from? In your experience, you know like what actually makes for a trusting relationship, and that was from Stephen M R Covey. One of the conversations about trust came from that conversation. But it's just, it's a dynamic, fun and alive conversation where it's we actually don't plan what goes on, we just we freeform it and it's a little bit like a coaching session. So it's not about coaching necessarily, but it's a little bit like that organic conversation that just unfolds and you have to be so present in the moment and it's. It's really fun, I think, for our listeners and for us as well.

Speaker 2: 16:19

OK, we are already coming towards the end of this particular conversation, david. Before we wrap things up, how can our listeners connect with you, learn more about owl hub and tune in to the show?

Speaker 3: 16:30

yeah, there um, you can go to owlhubcom o-w-l-h-u-b? Um. On the website there's actually a one question quiz, uh, or uh, uh takes 30 seconds or so um, where you can? Um actually find out your top coaching style. If coaching is of interest to you, you can figure out which your top style is, uh, which is. It was fun. That's actually what we do at the, at the conferences, at our booth as well, so it'll give you a little bit of a debrief on there about what your um, what your top style is, and there's also lots of other information about coaching, coaching cultures, um, and and sort of creating that ripple effect in the world. So if that's of interest to you, um owlhubcom perfect.

Speaker 2: 17:13

Well, that just leaves me to say for today david, thank you very much for being my guest.

Speaker 3: 17:18

Absolutely, Bill. This is an absolute pleasure.

Speaker 2: 17:21

Thank you so much and listeners as always, until next time, happy working.

Speaker 1: 17:29

Thanks for listening to the HR Chat Show. If you enjoyed this episode, why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette? Why not subscribe and listen to some of the hundreds of episodes published by HR Gazette and remember for what's new in the world of work? Subscribe to the show, follow us on social media and visit HRGazettecom.