Strategic Agility in Complexity: Leadership Lessons with True Black

Victoria: Hello, everybody, and a very warm welcome to Cultural Communication Confidence with me, Victoria Rennoldson. And I’m really excited to welcome to the show True Black, joining us all the way from Taiwan. So hello, True.

True Black: Hello, Victoria.

Victoria: Great to have you on the show. Now, I found out about True via, a, connection on LinkedIn. one of the previous guests on the show, I think it was Steven Parker, who introduced us originally. And I was really curious about the executive coaching and team coaching that you do because you are working with leaders really sort of everywhere around the globe. And, I want to start off with, I was really kind of interested to hear about what are the typical issues that you see leaders coming up against at the moment.

True Black: At the moment. Okay, at the moment, some of the, sort of macro trends are dealing with, very complex types of challenges. things happen in one part of the globe that, have reverberations that you might, not have predicted, at any level of the company, you know, that you’re going to be affected, but you’re not sure how you’re going to be affected. So being able to do what you can to anticipate what might be coming, and sort of be able to be in the trenches and be very operational and very focused on what, you’re doing day to day. But also being able to, get up on the balcony or, the top of the mountain and have a scan of what’s going on is very critical. And then it’s become more important than ever to be able to marshal, a team around the effort of navigating opportunities. Yes. But also challenge challenges that come. Just being very inclusive about that is pretty critical. It’s, more critical, I think, than it’s ever been.

Victoria: And that is challenging, right? There’s a lot going on, and there’s a lot of change happening, and the changes seems to me becoming more rapid. And yet there is that kind of real balance that goes on around keeping the strategic view leading the way and then sometimes being quite operational and supporting the team in that way. You know, how do you encourage the leaders you work with to really think about this?

True Black: Okay, well, the concept is that we have to be able to zoom in and zoom out, many times a day, really. but also you can look at it from a little bit of a longer term perspective, so let’s say in a given month, I recommend that leaders take time to think about where they’re going to find time in a given month or even a given week to get, the team together, and talk about what’s going on more of a macro or a broad scale, level. So what’s going on, around the globe, how that might be impacting us, what’s going on in the industry, what’s going on in our organization, what’s going on between the different businesses or divisions or functions in the organization? And, how are we navigating that? How are we prepared to deliver value, given what’s going on right now? So, the tendency is, it’s to be very focused on the day to day, operational stuff. And you just have to carve out time for you as a leader to think, to reflect, to, talk to, people that you trust who are very intelligent and caring and willing to offer some advice to you, but also getting your team together to talk about that.

Victoria: Yeah. And I think that’s really, it sounds so simple, but actually it’s not easy. Right. Because I know talking to some of the clients I’m working with right now, even creating that time for conversations is challenging. And yet, on the flip side, we know that personal contact time is so important, in fact, that, those relationships, that human to human conversation is more important than ever, right.

True Black: Absolutely. And there’s just so much overwhelm, and so it’s easy to sort of dig in and be, sort of, narrowly focused on what you’re most concerned about and neglect, the importance of collaboration, across functions, but also, just within the team or the teams that you lead.
Victoria: Absolutely. So what you see is some of the key skills that leaders really need for now, but also really thinking about the future. So being future proof and making sure that they are being the best leader that they can be.

True Black: Okay, well, we can list a bunch of things. We’ve already mentioned some of them, nowadays it’s important to be, not just strategic, but strategically agile. So the strategic planning of old, is really not, relevant anymore in today’s environment. So you’ve got to be able to move very, very quickly, to know where to move to. You’ve got to be willing to move to the wrong place sometimes and then shift back, pivot back. Remind me of the question again?

Victoria: Yeah, no, I was just kind of curious about, like, you talked about some of the strategically agile. I love that, that’s really interesting.
But also just like, what other skills are going to be really important for now and for the future, perhaps skills that are more important than ever that, you know, have come up, that you notice are really important in the training that you’re doing.

True Black: Okay. So, in terms of dealing with complexity, I would call that the ability to continually evolve the way that you think about problems. So problem solving, capability, judgment, critical thinking is more important than ever, just because of the complexity that people are dealing with. So that’s one key area. And again, I always say, I sound like a broken record, but involve the team. Involve the team in that, because if you’ve only got a couple of people who are really, able to solve complex problems, you’re, gonna disempower those, who aren’t, you sort of have to make the effort to bring everybody in. So developing people, developing talent is a critical, related skill to this effort of dealing with complex issues and complex problems. I, would say that, it’s an oldie, but it’s, still a goodie and still very, very critical, which is just that ability to collaborate with, cross functional colleagues, other teams, organizations are so integrated now, and you have to be able to manage the interpersonal aspects of that and also, work together to come up with the right way forward. That’s really very critical. And then I have one more, but I’ll pause for a second and let you say anything you want to.

Victoria: Thank you. Thank you. Well, yes, before we come to the final one, I mean, the collaboration point for me is really critical. And I think when I think about the teams that I work with, ah, the individuals I work with, that collaboration can be quite challenging, particularly when you’re working across different time zones, different functions, often not meeting kind of in person. So what are your sort of ideas and tips for people who are really struggling with that collaboration or meeting resistance to that collaboration?

True Black: it’ll be something that everybody has thought of before, and that is, don’t neglect the relationship aspect of collaboration. So we all, you succeed in an organization because you’re good at solving problems, you’re result oriented, right. You’re focused on hitting targets or surpassing. and so it’s very easy to take, getting support from other people or being able to work with other people effectively. It’s very easy to take that for granted. It’s a given that when the time comes, we’re in sales and when the time comes to work with our marketing colleagues around, what we’re going to be doing next year to generate, more, interest in what we’re doing, that support’s going to be there. But if you haven’t done much to keep in touch with how they’re doing, what they’re focused on, how they’re pivoting or evolving, or just keeping up with the relationships, you’re going to be what you think what you hope will happen will not happen or it won’t happen easily.

Victoria: Yeah. Investing in the relationship is what I’m hearing you say.

True Black: Yeah, yeah. Having the lunches, checking. How’s it going? We haven’t talked in a few months. How are things going? What’s up? What’s up on your end of the business?

Victoria: Yeah. Excellent. I love that. I really love that. And you mentioned you had one other idea. I don’t know if you still have that to mind, that you wanted to share.

True Black: Yeah, I haven’t forgotten it. It’s kind of counterintuitive. We say what, you know, what capabilities do leaders, need to, develop or take to the next level to meet the challenges of the modern era? it’s something that, in coaching, I find that most leaders are not doing enough of, and it’s working on themselves. another way to put it is inner work. Sometimes we might say it’s resilience, but it’s really just having a program in place that you stick to that allows you to, optimize, your own well being, your energy, your mental energy, your physical energy, your emotional energy, all of those things. And I find that leaders with good intentions, will sometimes be so focused on all of the externals that they ignore the importance of that internal stuff that keeps them, keeps them, at peak or close to peak levels of effectiveness as often as they can be there.

Victoria: I love this idea. And actually, this is really interesting because it’s come up a couple of times recently in conversations on the podcast. And the way you’re framing it is slightly different. So you’re thinking about the, the inner work that needs to be done to make a leader resilient. But also this idea of being able to perform at their peak. That is a fascinating idea for me, because I think about athletes and how they invest in themselves to get to peak performance. And there’s a parallel right for leaders, I can imagine.

True Black: Absolutely. world class athletes all have a very, robust inner game that they cultivate, that they protect, that they work on, they invest in. If you watch carefully as a spectator, or if the cameras happen to show, you’ll see that, before, for example, a, sprint race or a longer running race, the world class athletes, they’re talking to themselves. They’re going through routine to sort of prime themselves internally so that they can then explode in the way that they need to, in that race, externally and in leadership, it’s very easy to overlook the importance of doing that.

Victoria: Okay, so what does that look like practically then? So when we say inner work, you know, is this about affirmations, kind of Confidence building, or are there certain tools that you like to recommend?

True Black: Okay, so I look at this as there’s a long game. And there’s a short game. The long game is what you are doing on a daily basis or on a regular basis, to be happy, to be joyful. if you want a methodology, I often will rely on, Martin Seligman’s positive psychology and the PERMA model. The, pillars of maintaining well being and a sense of joy, ‘joie de vivre’, joy in just living. And one of those is having meaningful, connections with people who you care about, who care about you. And it’s very easy. To a lot of executives you say, how often do you meet with your closest friends or your mentors? And they’ll say, well, I haven’t done that for a while. And so they’re not getting the nourishment that comes from, supporting close friends and being supported by those close friends that really keep them, at their best. The long game is things like that. It’s obviously physical, having some sort of regimen to stay energetic, and healthy. There’s a lot of, you know, I don’t recommend it all the time, but for, some leaders, I will introduce mindfulness, practices to them. And I always have to say, it’s not, you know, it’s not sitting there doing, you know, Tibetan Buddhist meditations all day. That could be, you could do, you know, that or, Hindu meditations, those sorts of things. those are Upasana, I should say. those are great. But it’s also just about, finishing a meeting and not having another meeting immediately planned right after that meeting, and then going outside, and taking a 15 minutes walk in some green space with no headphones and just listening to the birds sing and just refreshing your soul, basically, so that you can then come back and be, be ready for the next challenge.

Victoria: I love this. And this is absolutely in line with how I think about the world as well. And at the same time, I can imagine there might be a few people watching or listening and going, well, yes, in theory, this all sounds great, and I get it logically, but what is the actual impact of this? So I don’t know if you’ve got any examples of how you’ve used it yourself with your own clients, with your own people you’ve been working with and the sort of kind of impact it has on people.

True Black: Sure. Well, maybe it’s useful to not think about it as what’s it going to get me, but, to think about it as, absolutely necessary, maintenance work that if you don’t do, will result in you crashing and burning.

Victoria: Okay, got it. So it’s more like you need to keep your car ticking out. You need to get that service regularly, otherwise your car is going to break down, basically, at some point. Okay, got it. So it’s actually that way around interesting.

True Black: Or experience a gradual loss of energy and all the problem solving capability, judgment, emotional, intelligence, you’ll have lots of leaks in the vessel and you may not even realize it, and it’s because you’re not doing those things, to care, for yourself. So you wanted an example from coaching. lots of different stories I could share. So I coached a fellow a couple of years ago who, is a very capable, really charismatic, intelligent leader, but who, because of some personal challenges with his family, his terminally ill father, and some other things happen in his personal life and also just work stress that he wasn’t really processing. Well. he got into this pattern where he would lose his temper, with colleagues. he would lose his temper. His subordinates were scared of him. they didn’t know what sort of, mood he would be in from day to day. and he didn’t want things to be that way. But, he didn’t know how to pull himself out of it. And he was lucky that he had a boss and then a senior, hr function head who saw that he needed some help. So I was able to work with him, on, and he was very, bold and brave, and humble, really, about facing up to his issues. We had some 360 data and it was pretty painful to see how people felt about working with him. And so, long story short, he ended up getting really interested in mindfulness meditation, and he found some, guided meditation teachers that he really enjoyed. and then we did some work with, cognitive behavioral, behavioral therapy, CBT.

Victoria: Okay.

True Black: Yeah. To sort of rewire his, response mechanism to triggering things that happened, you know. So one of the things that would trigger him is when people, were not seeing, what he was talking about, they weren’t understanding what he was talking about. And he would sort of say, are you stupid? You know, this kind of thing. You know, are you dense? You know, I thought you were an intelligent. He would be insulting. And, and so, with CBT, what we want to do is we want to say, okay, what triggers you? And then, how are you responding currently? And then helping the person realize that they are not bound to that particular response, that ineffective response, that damaging response. And then we get into a discussion of how we want to respond. And then we end that with how we’re going to remember to respond the way we want to respond in the moment. So, I often recommend to clients who are doing this kind of response rewiring type of work that they come up with a physical reminder, like a talisman or a symbol that reminds them of how they want to show up. And he ended up, purchasing a ring. yeah, he bought a very nice ring. He wore it every day.

And he had something carved on the inside. He never told me what it was. It was just private and that was fine. But, whenever he felt that temper rising, he would turn the ring.

Victoria: Wow. Okay, that’s fascinating. Wow, that’s really fascinating because that’s a very subtle thing. Like, nobody else had to know what that meant to him, but it was a very clear physical symbol to him about how to change in the moment. Is that right?

True Black: That’s correct, yes. And so he would meditate on, his long game. I mentioned long game, short game. His long game was to meditate basically every day. Hm. And then to have some time to sort of think through how he wanted to show up during the day. That was part of the morning meditation. Sort of stop and then think about, okay, you know, what do I want to bring? Which version of me do I want to bring? Sort of calibrating, getting ready, put the ring on. and then the ring was the sort of short game, you know, in the moment. if he was triggered, that he would go to. And then he ended up, adding a meditation in the evening before bed so that he could sleep well and be rested. And. Yeah, he ended up, changing the way he interacted with people. I went in for a follow up about three months. We worked together for about a year, and then I went in for a follow up later and did some, we do stakeholder interviews, see what everybody’s saying. They said, he hasn’t lost his temper and, you know, nine months, you know, he’s a nice guy.

Victoria: So this really works. And I think this, this is fascinating as well, because I, you said something very, something that really kind of piqued my attention, which was actually, sometimes people get very wedded to the idea that this is just the way I am. This is just, you know, it’s really hard for me to change. Like, I can’t imagine responding in another way. But I think what you’re saying with that, methodology, is you really get to choose how you want to respond.

True Black: Yeah, yeah, yeah. He made a conscious choice to do that, and his motivation was fascinating. He initially said, I got to be honest. I know you’re kind of a humanist, because you told me you are. I’m not. I’m interested in getting work done, but, and I realized that if I was interested, if I was more interested in, you know, caring for the feelings and well being of other people, that would be a good thing. I’m just not there yet, which I thought was great. It was very honest. So what he ended up doing is he said, but I realized that, what I want to get done can’t get done if people are unhappy to see me. So I’m going to go with that motivation. And then at the very end, he shared with me, I know it’s a long story, but at the very end, he shared with me something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. He said, I started out with the intention of not of making things better for other people, but just being more effective in my work as a leader, he said, but ultimately, almost against my will, I became more caring. He said that he had a neighbor. He’s got a neighbor who, has, two young boys. And he said, I’ve never really liked children. And I found myself, over these months of doing this work, I found myself gradually enjoying seeing those kids to the point where I actually will go over and play with them a couple of times a week.

Victoria: Wow, so the impact of it wasn’t just about work, but it was about the broader impact to him in his life and how he was rethinking things.

True Black: It really helped him experience a kind of personal, revolution in his life. Yes.

Victoria: I love that. That’s a brilliant story, and thank you for sharing that and also the sort of process that you went through with him, because I think there is that sense that, people sometimes feel like this is just me. This is difficult for me to change. So is it work, this inner work? Is this something you can do by yourself, or do you always need somebody, like a guide or a coach to help you through that?

True Black: Okay, well, a lot of it needs to be done alone, but then it depends kind of on your personality. you know, we have people, who are, maybe, a little more towards the introverted side of the introvert extrovert scale. and you hear people say, I’m an extrovert. I’m an introvert. And I say, well, where are you on the scale? It’s not so extreme. But, for people who are more introverted, the definition of. Sorry, extroverted. The definition of being an extrovert is that, you gain energy, and joy by interaction. So if you’re more of an extroverted person, you want to have more time, in dialogue and conversation with people who inspire you and who you care about and who care about you. And then if you’re more of an introvert, you might want to have a bit more of a quieter, inner game, and that will be more energizing for you.

Victoria: Yeah, they’re very wise words. So thank you for sharing that. And I also wanted to go back to something you touched on very briefly earlier. You talked about positive psychology, which I’m sure people can understand the concept of. But you talked about the Perma model. That’s right. And I kind of was quite curious about what that is and so that you can share that also with the people here.

True Black: Okay. the Perma model, the p is positive emotions. So it’s about, and this is part of inner work. It’s taking time to experience joy and to do the things that allow you to experience joy. so for me, I will, on Tuesday nights, I go and I have a boxing session. I’m a gentle, humanistic person, but I love to hit the heavy bag.

Victoria: Love it.

True Black: So that just makes me happy. I go in and I might be tired and I leave, and I’m just feeling physically great. And it’s wonderful stress release. And then I’ve learned a couple of new moves with my trainer. my daughter Savannah is, a hip hop dancer, family professional. She’s 18 and so for- we call her Savvy. For Savvy, positive. emotion comes from many times from either being with friends, of course, but also, getting, you know, doing something, challenging around dance or just getting up on stage. So that’s the piece. and then, engagement is engagement with what – Sorry, the e is engagement. And that’s, just engaging in activities, that you feel are meaningful, that also bring you joy. So if you like community service, you would want to go and engage with people, in a community service type of situation. some people have hobbies. They like to build things, tinker with things. They like to just do things that they find very, very meaningful or writing things like that. the r in the Perma model is relationships, which I’ve already kind of mentioned. I say it’s got to be with people who you care about, who care about you, and preferably they’re very loving and smart folks. and then meaning is just looking at. We, ah, went back to engagement. I mentioned meaning. engagement is more about actively getting involved with stuff that you find meaningful. Meaning overall could be, having. For example, I like to read philosophy. and I find it very applicable to the work that I do. So, I find great joy in reading a lot of things, including philosophy or fiction, stuff like that. Just doing things that you feel are meaningful. That’s the m. And then a is achievement. So we all tend to thrive, more if we feel a sense of progress, forward movement. That’s why, the productivity experts will say, don’t come in in the morning and answer all your emails. come in in the morning and make something move a project forward m and answer your emails.

Victoria: Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. I have to say, for me, mornings are my creativity time. When I’m writing, when I’m making things, recording podcasts, having good conversations. definitely the emails and the admin come later in the day. That’s a really great explanation. Thank you so much, True. It’s really helpful to understand what that looks like and that feels like. It’s very in line with everything we’ve been talking about here, about resilience, inner work, really cultivating your relationships with yourself. Actually inner work, but also with others as well. So I think there’s been some real richness here today.

I’m really curious what’s coming up for you next personally in your work? I know you kind of work with teams who work with individuals, but what’s coming up for you in the next few months?

True Black: Okay, so, yeah, my practice has kind of evolved. I started as a, you know, a sort of, journeyman, journey person, corporate trainer. And because I’m fluent in Mandarin Chinese, so to go all over Chinese speaking world, basically, mainly, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the greater China region. But, let’s see, I’ve gradually, gotten more and more into working globally. So I’ve got some interesting global projects coming up. I have my first project in Dubai, coaching a senior leader and working with a lot of different stakeholders. And that’s pretty exciting. let’s see, yeah, lots of coaching. and then, I’m delighted that I just had a team coaching project that wrapped up. It was all done. And I like to always have at least a few, two, or three team coaching projects. These are more, ah, long term engagements where I’m working with a, usually a management team, a leadership team over six months or nine months. And you know, they’re, I’m asked to get involved because there’s some dysfunction going on, either interpersonally. it’s usually interpersonal and also in terms of how they’re, how they’re working together on decision making and you know, and taking the business forward. So I just, got confirmed a couple of, new team coaching projects that I’m really excited to get started on.
Victoria: Yeah. And that’s really powerful work.

True Black: Right.

Victoria: You know, when you can help a whole team work better together, particularly if there are sort of issues which are present and help them give them that space and time to work through them, then that must be incredibly m well, it must give a good sense of achievement. When you can get the results and actually see the team performing better together.

True Black: Okay, so if I’m working with a group, of leaders who are experiencing this kind of interpersonal strife and, dysfunction, it’s about they’re in pain, okay, they’re suffering. So I see this as. I don’t think I’m a savior or anything. In fact, very often I feel challenged as to how I’m going to help these people. Sometimes I regularly reach out, for ideas and feedback from friends in the field. I get supervision, from time to time, just to be at my best. But, it’s really about helping them. everybody who’s in that situation wants things to be better, but they’re stuck and they don’t know how to make it better. And having it be a collective problem complicates it. So you have two or three people say, I’m tired of how inefficient our meetings are and all of these, unresolved conflicts among us. I’m sick of it, and let’s do something about it. But then they don’t really have the authority to drive that process. And sometimes, often there’s a GM or a country head and they may be, they know that there’s a problem, but they’re not sure exactly how to resolve that. So, what my opportunity is, is to go in and say, shall we fix things? And they always say yes. And then I’ll say, we’ll do a lot of things around talking about how they want to be together, both in the sessions and outside of the sessions. sometimes I will say, now we all have the angel on this shoulder and, the devil on this one. not to be religious, but it’s just a metaphor people are familiar with. can we commit as a group that we’re going to focus on that angel, we’re going to try to bring that angel to these situations. And then, one of the things I find is that, interpersonal issues do need to be addressed, but you don’t do it by getting them to sit in a room and talk about why they don’t like each other. That doesn’t work. That’s very counterproductive.

Victoria: I can imagine. Yes. So how does it work? How do you get the moving through these issues?

True Black: I should say, I have great respect for psychologists and as a coach, you have to be careful that you don’t try to play psychologists. Right. So maybe there are psychologists who have ways of doing that, but I don’t find it helpful. I take a lesson from appreciative inquiry methodology. And that begins with ‘what’s good? What’s going on here?’ That’s good. And then I combine it with a future focus. It sort of echoes, Uncle Marshall. Marshall Goldsmith, Feedforward is the technique that he recommends. it’s kind of along those lines. and so I get them focused. I try to get them out of the person to person strife kind of thinking, or the focus on the self. And I get them focused on what they want to do together. Sort of getting out of themselves and focused on what they want to envisioning, you could call it. and they all go for it. So far so good. And you know, in terms of the interpersonal addressing interpersonal stuff, things that work for that, are to get them to understand each other in ways that they have never understood each other before. And so I have some exercises that I do that are very non threatening. And they don’t dig up trauma, and they’re not weird or uncomfortable. It’s just some very nice conversations. They have to allow them to realize that the person that they don’t like kind of has a good side too, recognize that part of them, and to connect around things that they have in common instead of remaining, so divided, around things that they disagree on. So I do that and then we work on the processes and process can actually really help with the interpersonal strife.

Victoria: Very interesting. I was going to just jump in because I think you said something really interesting, which was just having a conversation actually can really, really help that idea of you’re not suddenly saying, you know, often we create almost this image of the other person and we hold them at a distance, so we kind of reinforce that image. But actually just talking to them, having the conversation can sort of free up their perceptions and free up the assumptions that others are having. so I love that. I think that’s very, very powerful. and so, yes, I really love that idea as well. It’s not just about interpersonal kind of working on that, those dynamics. It isn’t just about the relationships, but it’s also processes as well.
True Black: Yeah, absolutely. I do start with, interpersonal stuff, and again, contracting around how we want to be together and sort of what we want to see when we’re together or when we’re collaborating, what we don’t want to see. Sort of those, sort of get that out there. you know, I make everything visual. Lots of artifacts, posters, things like that, that they can see and be reminded of. And I facilitate them to create that, together. It’s a group effort. yeah. And then I sort of check in with them and say, okay, are we ready to rebuild, some processes that are causing, you know, that are causing some issues for you in the business in the way that you work together and. Yeah, let’s work on those processes.

And for this I will, I mean, there’s a lot of, I can give you a list of common problems with how they collaborate.

Victoria: Maybe though, you can give us an example of like one or two of the kind of the process problems that you see?

True Black: Oh, sure. Okay, so let’s do maybe a, let’s do a top two. Most common. So, one of them is the way that they make decisions together. And that could be anything from, it’s usually a litany of problems. So, they come to meetings, they come to discussions not knowing, not being really clear about what needs to be decided, purpose, the agenda’s not clear. And then sometimes I even wonder why they are there. there’s also issues around, ah, making sure people, know what’s going to be discussed so that they can, the necessary data, to inform the decisions that they’re making. And then, what very often happens is the intention around decision making. basically blocks them from making a good decision that everyone can buy into the basic, the underlying assumptions about what, you know, how we decide the rules of the game basically stop them from being efficient in their decision making.
Victoria: I love that. And I think that’s something so simple, but actually really powerful that there is a blocker that hasn’t been acknowledged. So you said decision making, and was there another one that you think is also a big process that gets perhaps not right at the moment?

True Black: Yeah. And you can actually link these together. the second one, I would say is just, conflict resolution, the approach they use to resolve conflicts between them. And it’s kind of symbiotic. so because of this broken decision making process, people, you know, it causes conflict, unnecessary conflict. And then because they don’t have a way of working through conflict in a healthy way. their decisions, you know, are not they don’t make decisions efficiently. They can’t come to a decision. Politics get it, you know, the politics sort of pollute the process. You know, personal interest gets in the way and those sorts of things because they’re the, they’re upset about these unresolved conflicts.

Victoria: Fantastic. So the decision making process, the conflict resolution not being in place, that’s brilliant. True Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate it. I’m really conscious of time and making sure that we kind of wrap up at this point, probably because we had an amazing time to have this conversation and you’ve shared so generously your insights, insights here today. I wanted to invite you if people want to find out more about your team coaching approach, individual coaching, the development executive, coaching that you do and development training that you do. What is the best way for people sort of to find out more about you?

True Black: Oh, sure. Thanks for asking. So a few ways to do that. LinkedIn, I do check fairly regularly, not a power user, but I’m on there frequently enough that they can certainly reach out. And I guess we’ll share my LinkedIn, profile with people, if they want. I do some writing, around leadership for ah, our subscriber list. We have about 2000 people who read.

Victoria: Oh, wow.

True Black: And it’s not as regular as I’d like it to be. So you won’t be getting bombarded. hopefully you’ll get a thoughtful, inspiring, piece of writing with some useful resources if you join the mailing list. So they can certainly I’ll provide a link for them to join the mailing list. And we do that, in English and in Chinese. I have a designer that sort of makes it look nice. it’s short. I try to keep it to about 800 words. And then there’s a related, YouTube channel. So I’ll share, for example, tips, for managers who want to use coaching methodologies in their work. and then there’ll be a video that sort of shares an anecdote around how that works. So there’s that. And then I do, I also write a Substack blog for people, who are in facilitation and training. It’s called Training Zen.

Victoria: Wow, great. Well, listen, that sounds fantastic. And we will certainly share all those, links in the show notes so people can kind of go follow, but that is just amazing. I’m saying, wow, because there is so much that you’re doing there in terms of videos and blogs and, sharing kind of with the world, really what you’re doing. And the fact you can do it also in Chinese as well as in English, is amazing as well.
True Black: Thank you. Thank you. Well, part of my inner work is to express myself in writing. It brings me joy. So m if I’m able to help somebody with it, it makes me even happier.

Victoria: Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time today, particularly as I know it’s later in your, early evening now in Taiwan. But thank you so much for being here today, for sharing your insights with the listeners, the people watching this, and, yeah, look forward to catching up with you very soon True.

True Black: Thank you very much for the opportunity and to anyone who listened all the way to the end. Bravo. And, you know, please, if I can help you with anything, if you’d like a thinking partner, you need some help with something, just feel free to reach out. Happy to do that.

Victoria: Brilliant. Thank you so much True, and look forward to seeing everyone next time on Cultural Communication Confidence.