That’s a question I frequently field from the executives and HR partners I support. I hope you’ve asked that question for yourself as well, because it means developing your team is high on your radar. I’ve shared the key skills of coaching as well as my favorite coaching conversational model GROW. That said, a new question arises, which is when should you coach and when shouldn’t you?

If you get this question wrong, you’re likely to either confuse your team or neglect to use your coaching skills to their maximum effectiveness. But if you get it right, you’ll grow as a coach and so will your employees.

Here are three situations when you should not coach and five situations when you should.

You should NOT coach when…

Explicit directions are necessary – Coaching is the art of helping the employee take ownership of a situation and rise to the occasion. It’s not appropriate when you need to step into “take charge” mode – such as an emergency situation.

Your employee is too new to benefit – When employees are new, their biggest need is often to learn the expectations and specific situations they are walking into. It’s much more efficient to share this information upfront and begin coaching a little further down the road.

You have important information to pass along – Employees aren’t mind-readers. If you are privy to information that will effect the outcome of an action they take, always share it upfront.

You SHOULD coach when…

Brainstorming – If your employee needs an idea, take a minute to brainstorm together. Resist solving the problem on your own.

Planning – If your employee will be leading a project or initiative, coach through the planning process. Start with their ideas first before giving yours.

Giving After-Action Feedback – As your employees perform in new ways, you’ll need to provide feedback on how they’re doing. Start with their own assessment of their performance – what went well and what they’d like to do better next time. Then augment with your own.

Decision-making – Help your employees think through how to make a tough decision rather than simply telling what to do – or even what you would do as your default response.

Development Planning – Unfortunately this area often falls off the radar for many leaders altogether. When they do commit to helping their employees develop, they often simply tell them what they need to work on. Instead, take the time to understand their career and development goals and ask for their development goals first.

Coaching your employees takes extra time… at the beginning. But keep it up and you’ll save the time back as your employees execute without your active involvement.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader. Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or follow him on Twitter.

How do people learn to be leaders?

That’s the question leadership consultant and thought leader Robert J. Thomas answered at a leadership academy event I recently helped organize. Speaking from his book Crucibles of Leadership, Thomas demonstrated that simply taking a course on leadership would do little to transform leadership abilities. In fact, knowledge plays only a small role in a leader’s effectiveness, despite the high price often invested in higher education.

Here is a sample of the elements that transform ordinary people into great leaders.

Experience

The “crucible” of going through challenging experiences (both in life and vocation) has a transforming effect on a person’s leadership ability. I’ve found this to be the case in my own assessment of hundreds of c-suite leaders as well. It’s interesting to note (according to Thomas) that early in life (or career), leaders may find themselves “pushed” into a crucible experience, while later on they tend to “leap.” As they mature, effective leaders learn to recognize, seek and steward the crucial experiences that come their way.

Practice

The half-life of new knowledge is incredibly short. To grow, leaders must form the discipline to transform an “ah-ha” moment into a commitment to practice until they experience a breakthrough. Not only that, leaders are self-aware enough to know the circumstances they need in order to practice sufficiently. To demonstrate this point, the participants in our academy individually identified a skill they practiced to proficiency and compared it to another they gave up. In almost all occasions, talent and knowledge were not the difference. It was the ownership, commitment and supporting circumstances – almost all of which could be recreated in the future.

Purpose

The “why” behind any endeavor usually determines the success of the outcome. But it’s important to note that a specific purpose often changes over time – even for the same goal. What motivates us at age 20 is often different than at age 30. What drives us to achieve initial success may not sustain us to reach the next level. In order to harness the motivation that success (and practice) requires, we need to constantly refresh our sense of purpose.

Coaching

Leadership isn’t “taught” as much as it is “caught.” Teachers, trainers, mentors and supervisors all play a role in developing leaders. But the best leadership “teachers” are the ones who can coach a developing leader to understand the key “moves” that must be made in a given situation. The quality of leadership “teachers” a person has access to varies by the individual. That shouldn’t be an excuse. Thomas posed that “A great student can make a good teacher into a great teacher – and an inarticulate leader into a great teaching leader.”

Community

“No one learns alone,” Thomas wrote in his book. For leaders, that means finding, participating and contributing in communities of leaders who are on a learning journey together. Sometimes these communities are created externally (our leadership academy, for instance). In other instances, leaders must create their own.

Becoming a leader doesn’t happen by accident. Effective leaders are diligent and committed. Still, no one is immune from the serendipity of crucible learning experiences. My favorite quote from Thomas’ book sums it up best: “Sometimes events can conspire to make you a leader.” (Tweet)

So what’s your learning strategy when it comes to leadership?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

Over the years, I’ve adopted a simple definition of coaching: “To coach is to develop another person by listening and asking questions to clarify ideas and commit to action.”

If you look closely, you’ll notice five key characteristics. I’ve listed each of them out below:

Developing Others

To coach is to play a development role. It’s focused on growing the competency and capacity of the employee. Consider the difference between a directing approach (“Here is what I need you to do”) and a coaching approach (“Let’s think about how you might address this challenge”). Both are appropriate at times, but the coaching approach is explicitly developmental.

Active Listening

Active listening requires some of the most discipline of any skill there is – but the dividends are enormous. It’s impossible to coach effectively without it. Quite simply, active listening seeks simply to understand the situation and delay the need to formulate a response or craft a solution.

Asking Questions

Asking powerful, open-ended questions goes hand-in-hand with active listening. It’s the perfect antidote to giving unsolicited advice or providing explicit direction. (Those responses are necessary in many management scenarios, but tend to ruin a coaching-rich opportunity). The more input an employee provides, the more he’ll own the solution.

Clarifying Ideas

Clarifying ideas is an extension of both active listening and asking questions. Without this clarity, employees may be unclear about the ultimate desired result – and managers may be unclear about key nuances of the situation. Adept coaches resist the urge to solve the problem until they have understood the situation and taken the opportunity to explore a variety of options together.

Commiting to Action

The last thing coaching leaders do is elicit a commitment to action. Otherwise, the conversation may be positive, but it won’t be productive. Coaching leaders are sure to ask the employee to commit to following through on the agreed upon action.

My favorite conversational “formula” for holding a coaching discussion is the GROW model, which stands for Goal, Reality, Options and Will (or Way Forward). It incorporates each element into a simple framework that can be completed in just a couple minutes.

Coaching employees is hard work – it takes a lot of practice and discipline to develop and use the skills. But the rewards are enormous: a more capable staff, more buy-in, and more capacity for you as the leader, to name a few. Give it a try and keep at it. In the end, everyone wins on this one.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or follow him on Twitter.

Now comes the tricky part: what should you get mentoring for?

One of the difficult parts of entering a new mentoring partnership – especially for first-time mentees – can be deciding what exactly to invest a mentoring relationship toward. On one hand, it’s great to have a partner committed to your development. On the other hand, it’s hard to know where to start.

There is no question that building a new relationship takes time. Here are a few ideas to get you going until you begin to hit your stride:

Present Business Situation

This should be an obvious first choice. How is your functional area performing? What are the problems and opportunities? What excites you? What keeps you up at night? What can you do to improve things? These would all be great topics to discuss with your mentor.

Individual Development Plan

Your IDP should include both short-term and long-term career goals as well as development areas you plan to focus on to achieve those goals. Invite your mentor to evaluate and provide input on your goals, your plan and your progress.

Leadership Capability

Your leadership experience or future potential may have played a key role in being able to participate in a mentoring relationship. Many mentoring programs are built on this premise and designed to facilitate and accelerate future growth. Talk with your mentor about your leadership opportunities. Ask how your mentor got where she is and what adjustments she made along the way.

Assessment Results

If you’ve never completed a leadership assessment, consider inviting your mentor to go through one with you. You might consider a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or DiSC personality assessment. StrengthsFinder is another popular assessment. Take the opportunity to compare your results with your mentor, discuss similarities and differences and consider how to use them to build a strong connection. Also make sure to consider the development ideas that are included with the reports.

Program Materials

If you are taking part in a formal mentoring program, don’t neglect to read through any program materials you receive, especially at the outset of the partnership. They will probably include helpful tips about structure, focus and scheduling interactions. And don’t be afraid to reach out to the program coordinator for more resources.

Follow a Peer’s Example

One of the big mistakes of mentoring is doing it alone. Many of the best ideas come from the experiences of others. So take the opportunity to reach out to other mentors and mentees – either from your program or elsewhere – and ask how they schedule their interactions, what they talk about and what they’re learning.

Your Own Intuition

Don’t ignore your own intuition in spite of the structure your program may provide. If there is something you’d like to discuss, brainstorm or explore, make sure to add the item to your agenda. Don’t be afraid of “getting it wrong.” Sometimes, you just need to put the program aside and go with the thing on your mind right now.

Mentoring is a terrific investment in future talent. Don’t treat a mentoring opportunity lightly! Remember, successful leaders don’t arrive on their own – and neither will you. If you keep it up, pretty soon you will be the one sharing your wisdom with tomorrow’s top talent.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

My first thought was that Coach K must have really messed up his black suit hugging a really sweaty guy (probably a sign that I’d make a terrible basketball coach). The second was how evident the bond between the leader and the followers was that day. It wasn’t an expression of victory, but one of commitment.

In case you didn’t know, “Coach K” is the winningest coach in Division 1 college basketball with over 1,000 wins. He played and coached under Bob Knight at West Point. He’s won four national championships at Duke University. And he’s coached several Team USA men’s basketball teams to Olympic gold.

But Coach K will be the first to tell you that winning it all is too shallow of a goal to play for. Instead, the focus should be on building teams that can consistently be in a position to perform at their very best. Coach K knows how to build winning teams. Here are just a few of his teamwork strategies.

Inclusive Language

According to Coach K, something sacred happens when our language changes from “I” to “we,” from “my” to “our,” and from “me” to “us.” All of a sudden, there’s no longer such a thing as “my” team; only “our” team. And if it’s “our” team, that means every part of the team is equal in value, regardless of the individual roles. The bottom line is this: teams win or lose together.

Collective Goals and Responsibility

At Leadercast 2013, Coach K shared his famous fist analogy which goes like this: any one fist can defeat any one finger. In other words, the best team can always defeat the best individual. That’s why individual goals only work in the context of overall team goals. Only a group mentality can create a team identity. When leaders take responsibility for their own actions and mistakes, it sets a powerful precedent for the team. But leaders need to take responsibility for the performance of the team as a whole – and own it collectively. At that point, commitment takes on a whole new meaning. “When you love your team and are committed to them, you can’t let them down. You might let yourself down, but you won’t let your team down.” The result? A shared confidence – one that is better than a confidence only in yourself.

Trust

We hear a lot about trust from most teamwork or relationship experts. According to Coach K, a team commitment has to be be based on trust, which in turn is based on telling the truth. The quicker teammates tell the truth to each other, the faster they can get and stay on track. When teams trust one another, confrontation is a constructive, not destructive, experience because it is based on the team’s commitment to their collective performance. True friends tell each other the truth, so why shouldn’t true teammates? Confrontation can’t break a relationship that is bonded by trust. Without trust, a team is defeated by within instead of by the competition.

Building Relationships

What stood out to me about the court-side hug between player and coach was that it was simply an expression of a relationship that had been established long ago. Coach K shared in his book Leading with the Heart that “the only way to lead people is to understand them. And the only way to understand them is to get to know them personally. That’s why you need to invest time with each person.” Why? Because people don’t follow a leader who has his own agenda or doesn’t ever show his “real” side. Too many leaders are afraid to show their real side, which is exactly what they need to show to connect with their teams.

Even though I don’t root for Duke, I root for what Coach K stands for. I want to be on a team like the ones he creates. I’d like to create those kinds of teams as well. Here’s the good news: it’s possible. What’s the next step for your team?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website or   follow him on Twitter.

You don’t have to be special to be a leader and you don’t have to be an expert to help other leaders succeed. You can start right now, right where you are.

Trusted Leadership Advisor is a compilation of some of my previous posts on this topic. In the ebook, I show you how to think about your role as a trusted leadership advisor, what to say and how to get started. Take a look – and if you find it helpful, please share it.

I’d also appreciate your feedback. This is my first ebook and I want to know if the format, structure and ideas prove to be helpful for you. You can leave me a comment below or contact me directly.

There’s so much work to do – let’s work together!

The interesting thing about coaching is how dynamic of a leadership role it is. Supervisors can coach. Mentors can coach. Peers can coach. Executive coaches can coach (obviously). Just about anyone can coach at one time or another.

Whether you have the opportunity to be coached or to be a coach, let’s take a look at six things coaching leaders do that set them apart.

Coaches Don’t Set the Agenda

Leaders must be proactive, which means taking responsibility to set the agenda in leadership situations. But coaching leaders are most concerned with the developmental process of the leader he or she is supporting. That means allowing the the other person to take responsibility for determining the desired outcomes – and then working together to create a strategy to reach them.

Coaches Focus on the Future

Counselors often focus on understanding or interpreting the past. Coaches, on the other hand, focus on helping to create the future. The past is over and done with – it can’t change. Coaching leaders don’t get sidetracked wading through past experiences of others. They help them focus on the future they want to create.

Coaches Listen

Listening is hard work. If you don’t think so, practice active listening the next time someone walks into your office. In most conversations, we either don’t pay attention, listen with preconceived biases or simultaneously try to come up with solutions while the other person is talking. Coaching leaders have mastered the art of listening for the sake of understanding so in order to maximize the quality of their dialogue.

Coaches Ask Questions

Questions are the anecdote to unsolicited (or in some case, solicited) advice. It’s not that advice is bad, it’s just that advice often short-circuits the development process in others. Following someone else’s advice is a lot easier than exercising critical thinking. It’s also easier to avoid taking responsibility if the advice doesn’t work. Even when they have great advice, coaching leaders start by asking powerful, open-ended questions to give the other person the chance to come up with their own best solution.

Coaches are Action-Oriented

Nice conversations are nice, but ultimately fruitless. Action-oriented conversations drives change. Coaching leaders demonstrate value to others by helping them take their ideas and translate them into action items. They do this by helping them make a decision or choose a direction among multiple options. Another way is by helping to craft SMART goals and clarify next steps.

Coaches Give Responsibility

Taking responsibility is Leadership 101. Giving responsibility is Leadership 102. Think about the difference. When we take responsibility, we develop ourselves. When we help someone else take responsibility, we develop them. It’s often easier to take responsibility for outcomes by providing quick direction and then moving on to the next thing. Giving responsibility – and supporting the other person along the way – takes more time and more effort, but that’s where true leadership growth happens.

If you want to help others succeed, you’ve chosen a noble pursuit. But that’s not enough. You’ve got to work at it – and it’s hard work! But the reward is always worth it – especially when you find that the leaders you’ve coached start coaching others.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Why Ask Questions?

Many leaders hesitate to ask questions because they fear it will make them appear weak. Leaders are suppose to have the all the answers, right? Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the world we live in has become so complex that it is simply not possible for anyone to have all the answers, no matter how tenured he or she is. But there are all kinds of benefits to asking questions, regardless of how much you know. Here are a few:

Great questions lead to great discoveries. Author and consultant Bobb Biehl likes to say, “If you ask profound questions, you get profound answers. If you ask shallow questions, you get shallow answers. If you ask no questions, you get no answers at all.”

Great questions are the antidote to advice. Our own advice can be intelligent and fitting sometimes, but lousy or misinformed other times. Giving advice is easy and costs little, at least on the surface. In organizational settings however, a leader’s advice can quickly gets translated into a “direct order” with no room for further discussion.

Great questions develop the critical thinking skills of others. If you’re a leader, the critical thinking skills of your team will likely determine how far you go. When you give answers, you get followers. When you give questions (and coach through the process of determining the best answer), you develop leaders.

Great questions delegates responsibility. At the end of the day, if you’re the person everyone comes to with every problem, your leadership bar will remain low. Leaders need followers who can solve problems on their own. And keep in mind that a person is always more motivated to act on and own a solution he’s come up with himself than to follow the guidance of someone else.

What do Great Questions Look Like?

It’s true that most leaders don’t become great at asking questions until they become great at listening (something that should cause each of us to pause and consider). There’s a learning process for everything. But in the meantime, let’s consider some examples of what great, powerful questions look like.

Leading vs. Non-Leading Questions: A leading question proposes a solution in the form of a question. A non-leading question opens up the possibility for multiple solutions. Consider the differences between these two examples.

• Leading: “What would happen if you tried having training meetings on Tuesdays?”
• Non-Leading: “What are some different options for conducting training?”

Closed vs. Open-ended Questions: Closed questions require a “yes” or “no” answer while open-ended questions can have many outcomes.

• Closed: “Have you thought about creating a new task force?”
• Open-ended: “What are some ways you could approach this challenge?”

Advice vs. Possibility Questions: An advice question is basically just implied advice in the form of a question.

• Advice: “Couldn’t you address that situation with the sales rep directly?”
• Possibility: “How could you address that situation?”

Why vs. “Tell Me More” Questions: Why questions can feel abrasive and accusatory, regardless of intent. No one likes being interrogated. Using a “tell me more” approach opens up the dialogue.

• Why: “Why did you decide to ship only seven orders?”
• Tell me more: “Can you tell me more about the thought process for this shipment?”

Learning to ask great questions instead of giving advice is probably one of the hardest disciplines leaders encounter. (It’s right up there with active listening!) I know by personal experience and from conducting training with seasoned leaders. The first step is to stop yourself from giving unsolicited advice. The next step is to respond with a question. The final step is to make that question a powerful one. My encouragement is to give it a try and stick with it. Ask someone to give you feedback on your question-asking ability. It’ll be slow at first, but eventually start becoming natural. And the leaders you serve will develop right along with you.

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

So how do you get clarity when it comes to goal-setting?

You’ve probably heard about SMART goals before. If you haven’t, this little model could change your life. If you have, it’ll be a good refresher. Here are the steps to transforming regular, ordinary goals into SMART goals.

Specific

The first step to make any new goal SMART is to make it specific. The more specific the better. “I want to live a healthier lifestyle” is a noble and wonderful goal. But it doesn’t have any backbone until it becomes more specific. Do you want to eat better or exercise more? “I want to become a better leader” is excellent as well. But what do you mean by that? Better planning? Better execution? Better relationship-building? More personal development?

Check out these examples:

Unspecific: I want to buy a new house.

Specific: I want to save enough money to make a down payment on a home in the Pleasant View neighborhood.

Measurable

Whether it’s a professional goal or a personal one, we usually start by wanting “more” or “less” or to become “better” at something. That’s great, but it’s simply a good intention until it’s measurable. How much more? How much better?

In other words, how will you know when you’ve reached your goal? Without a finish line, everyone lets up when difficulty or distractions come. Without a performance target, no one knows how to adequately prepare.

To make a goal measurable, try to add numbers. How much weight do you want to lose? How many widgets do you want to sell? How many dollars do you want to make?

Immeasurable: I want to compete in a race.

Measurable: I want to run a 5K race in 24 minutes.

Attainable

Whereas the first two elements of SMART goal-setting have to do with clarity, the next two have to do with congruence and scale. They depend on the situation. When it comes to attainability, your goal may be as specific and measurable as it can be, but is it even possible? Do you have the resources you need to complete it? Are the factors within your control?

If you’ve just had open heart surgery, setting a goal to run a marathon in 3 1/2 hours by the end of next month is probably not going to be attainable, no matter how specific and measurable it is. Walking up to a half mile at a time by the end of next month is probably much more likely.

For organizational leaders, are these goals attainable for the people they will be assigned to? Selling 100 new cars off the lot this month may be attainable for a seasoned veteran but not for the new representative.

Relevant

Considering relevance can seem like a quick validation check, but it’s enormously important. It’s probably just as well to address this first in the process. But if it doesn’t get addressed at all, there could be a real problem. The key question to ask is: does this goal help us accomplish what is most important?

The best example I can think of for relevance came when I was in the Army. One of my soldiers was overweight and too slow on his running time, so he created a SMART goals to run x amount of miles each week. When we met the next month, he told me he had changed his goal to lift more weights instead of run. Now he was even slower and heavier! There was nothing wrong with lifting weights, but it was the wrong goal at the wrong time.

Organizationally, this speaks to the importance of strategy. Each SMART goal should help accomplish the strategy, not go off in a different direction.

Time-Bound

Time bound is exactly what it sounds like. It’s the end date when your goal will be finished. Every budget has one. Every goal should have one as well.

Not Time-Bound: To earn a promotion.

Time-Bound: To earn a promotion by the end of 2013.

And there you have it: specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. It’s not rocket science – anyone can do it. And once you complete your goals, don’t forget to do two things: evaluate and celebrate. Then set some more.

Good luck!

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.

Who is Dick Burton?

You probably don’t know Dick Burton. The highest level of competition he ever faced as a football player was NCAA D-II at William Jewell College in Liberty, MO. To my knowledge, he’s never been featured on any televised games either as a player or coach. Instead of sticking with one school for life, he’s coached several different programs over his 40 year football career. In fact, Coach has never been on a full-time coaching staff. He’s worked as a full-time businessman to support his family of a wife and ten children (including eight football playing sons) and squeezed in his head coaching duties on the side.

What Can We Learn From Dick Burton

It’s been well over a decade since I played my last football game. But the lessons I learned from Coach continue to this day. Here is a small sample that I’d like to share with you.

There is a Right Way to Do Business. One of the first things all my teammates learned from Coach is there is a right way to do things and a wrong way. There was a right way to play the game, face an opponent, run on and off the football field, and even put your uniform on. I still remember the day Coach sent a car full of our best players home from practice because they didn’t show up on Lombardi time (15 minutes early) as a way to instill discipline for the rest of us. Ultimately, our actions either honor or dishonor ourselves, teammates, families, God, profession, sport, and even the field itself.

Life is a Collision Sport. Finally getting to play tackle football for the first time in high school was a pretty jarring experience to say the least. But Coach reminded us early on that our greatest competition wasn’t the fellow on the other side of the ball. It was our own mothers, who didn’t want their sons engaged in such a rough activity. “Dancing is a contact sport,” Coach used to say. “Football is a collision sport.” Because of that, Coach knew making things easy on the practice field would leave us unprepared, both for Friday nights and for real life.

Fear is Your Greatest Enemy. If there was one thing my teammates and I heard more than anything else, it was that “God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-discipline.” For Coach, football was the perfect venue to learn to overcome fear. On the occasional Friday nights we let intimidation get the better of us (even when playing an over-matched opponent), Coach wouldn’t be able to sleep over the weekend. At Monday’s practice, he’d voice his disappointment not at our lack of victory but for not giving it our best like we’d been taught. Coach knew that fear wouldn’t disappear after high school so the training we received on the field was crucial to leading successful adult lives where many of my teammates now work as military officers, businessmen, musicians, teachers, and coaches themselves.

The Little Things Matter. I’ll never forget one practice my senior year. I was absentmindedly running through a routine drill, somehow oblivious to the fact that Coach had been harping on discipline all practice. Apparently my lack of effort was the straw that broke Coach’s back and he let me know it immediately. The public dressing down was even worse considering my status as a senior team captain. For Coach, it didn’t matter who you were or what your record said, you never became too big for the little things.

Coaching Never Ends. I don’t keep in touch with all of my coaches from my younger years. But I do keep in touch with a few. Just recently Coach Burton let me know he was coming to town so we got together for dinner. We talked about business, family, plans, etc. Not only had coach been further down the road in football when I was a player, he was still further along in life and provided some timely pointers and encouragement. I realized then that even though players eventually graduate from the team, true coaching never ends.

I know not everyone had the benefits of a great coach like I did. But most people can point to a single coach, teacher, or mentor who made a significant difference in their life.

Who inspired you?

Nathan Magnuson is a leadership consultant, coach, trainer and thought leader.  Receive his new ebook Trusted Leadership Advisor by subscribing to his website  or follow him on Twitter.