Becoming a Coach with Pam Ross: From Hospitality to Leadership Development

Pam Ross

The other thing to think about is that when you're speaking you do not want to be selling from the stage. That is a total no no. So instead of just talking about a story, you also say, in our leadership program we did blah, blah, blah. And you're telling the same story. So you're just planting seeds about what you do.

Tobi

Welcome to another episode of the Making of a Coach. I'm Tobi from metaFox, and this is the making of Pam Ross, a Canadian coach, facilitator and speaker. Pam is on a mission to make work awesome. And for her, AWESOME is not only a synonym for great, but also a fully packed acronym. On this episode we unpack what AWESOME actually means to Pam, and also her, I found it quite moving, story of why this is the most meaningful work she could be doing. Pam also shares how she grew this from an in-house training role into a freelance job and finally into Blue Rebel Works, a small business with several freelance coaches that she's running today. I found it fascinating how Pam leaned into her sweet spot and used her passion for one on one coffee meetings to grow her business. So let's get started.

Tobi

Just to get to know you a bit, I was wondering if you could briefly describe who your typical client is, and what challenge you usually help them with.

Pam Ross

Our typical client has changed over the years, but now I would say they are either in a scale up, so they're not at the startup stage anymore, they are certainly scaling, so they're 150 to maybe 2000 employees. Or they're going through a big change, a big cultural change. And usually these are companies that are hiring or promoting a lot of managers, either promoting from within or bringing them in from outside. And they are finding that they have managers who are excellent at the technical parts of the job, but not always thinking like leaders. So we really help to shift them into thinking and choosing leadership every day. So basic foundational leadership skills, and a lot of work on teaching

Tobi

And if I browse your website, your blog, your YouTube, I see a lot about making work awesome.

Tobi

So your mission is to make work awesome. What makes work AWESOME?

Pam Ross

A couple of years ago I actually created an acronym for AWESOME. So it is Accountable, people are able to take personal responsibility for their work, that's the first A. The W is about Whole Self, where people feel like they belong and are valued and can be themselves at work. The E is Empowered, so they feel free to use their personal strengths to do really great work. The S is Safety with team, so this is about being safe to

Tobi

And that basically also constitutes the leadership development journey that you offer.

Pam Ross

Yes. Those are woven through everything that we're teaching.

Tobi

Can you take us into this program from a client perspective? How does that look?

Pam Ross

Our program consists of monthly or bi-weekly live sessions with a facilitator. Pre-work that they have to do, where they get the content, so in our sessions we're not lecturing at all. We're not teaching anything, because they learn the content in the pre-work. When they come to the sessions we're really facilitating discussions and practice of the skills they are learning. At the end of sessions they set a habit in our technology that tracks habits. So they are actually choosing a behavior to change and a new habit to practice, and that gets tracked in between each session. And then we also do peer coaching, where they learn to coach each other. So they're developing that skill of a coach for themselves. And they're also solving real problems and building connection

Tobi

That sounds quite impactful. Starting with that comparison of how do other people see me versus how do I see myself, a cohort that is made up of colleagues, I guess, allows you to work on super concrete, tangible and non-hypothetical problems.

Pam Ross

Yes.

Tobi

And then going out with these habits to stick. It sounds great. I think we'll unpack all of this in a bit more detail. Let's leave the cliffhanger here and dive a bit into how you arrived at this journey.

Tobi

Because I think today you are at quite an impressive point from a coach perspective, having built this organization, Blue Rebel Works, where you actually managed to acquire teams from entire companies to go with you on this journey. And I'm curious to learn, how did you arrive there? To get started with this conversation, let's use our icebreaker.online tool. There you will find 52 pictures to pick from, and my prompt is: which picture describes your journey as a coach?

Pam Ross

There are so many great photos here. I love this tool, we have actually used it in our sessions many times. The first thing that drew me to this was that sort of spiral path coming out from the campfire. Because I would say it definitely hasn't been a straight journey. There have been jinks and jags all over. The next thing that drew me to this was, I am a lover of the sunrise. It's just this reminder that no matter what happened today, there's another day, here's this new day, opportunity rising. So it just speaks to, I feel

Tobi

Super nice, thank you. You mentioned that in your early days you worked in hospitality. You were serving in restaurants. How was that?

Pam Ross

I think you learn so much as a server in a restaurant, because you're basically running your own business. How you serve those guests is going to define their experience, and you can make it as custom, or as by the book, as you want. I loved to really build rapport and get to know my guests and find little ways to make things special for them. And that pays off, as a business person that pays off in my tip at the end of the day as a server. So I got the opportunity when I had just graduated university. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I had my honours BA and I thought, maybe I'll go to law school, maybe I'll go to teachers college, maybe I want to be a journalist, I'm not sure, I'll take a year off. And in that year I got this opportunity to travel around the country and open up restaurants. I studied psychology.

Tobi

And then you considered law school, but then during that trip. You're based in eastern Canada.

Pam Ross

I'm based near Toronto. So I was considering a bunch of much more academic ways to go. And what happened was, I was doing this store opening thing, and then my director of operations left and said, hey, you're going to take over recruitment. And basically gave me a few minutes on how he does interviews. I had never really done an interview for a manager before. I had helped hire waitresses and line cooks, but he handed me a pile of his recruitment files, a bunch of interview things, and said, here are my three favorite interview questions, and then left the role. And all of a sudden I was responsible for all the recruitment. So again, I had to figure things out on my own. I think this drove my ability to solve problems and figure things out, but also my belief that anyone can do this. We do

Tobi

And that sounds like such a great coincidence, someone might call it fate, that you as a psychology student go on the trip, get into restaurant serving, from there get into HR and then into restaurant management. And the parallel I see in our brief conversation now is that earlier you said today you help leaders who are great in their subject matter expertise but actually haven't been trained as leaders, even though that's their job now.

Pam Ross

So true. I actually hadn't made that connection, but absolutely. I feel like that is definitely a theme. Interesting.

Tobi

Are there any other learnings from this time of working the ground in the restaurant? In one of your videos I had seen this nice analogy of how you also learned what feedback can go right or wrong in this world.

Pam Ross

Oh my gosh, I learned so many things about feedback. I'm trying to think of what you might have seen, so that I can link to that, but I'll tell you a bunch of things. As a server, at one point I was actually told, you have a great personality, but you're actually a really bad server. He didn't use those words, he used different words. And my drive to prove that I could overcome that is probably what helped me get onto that training team. I just became so focused on how can I be really great at this, and watching the really great servers and learning from them. So it was actually really bad feedback. That is not the way I would ever give anyone feedback. But for me it touched something in me that drove me. I had been very nice in my feedback. I had not been direct and honest about what the

Tobi

So your feedback was nice in a way that it wasn't clear to the recipient.

Pam Ross

Yes.

Tobi

And so they also couldn't really work with it, couldn't do something with it.

Pam Ross

Right. How are you supposed to change your behavior when you're just getting this really ambiguous feedback? And I think Brené Brown is the one who says clear is kind. I love that. That resonated with me when I heard her, and it reminded me of these instances where I hadn't been clear. And that clarity is the most kind, compassionate thing we can do when someone is struggling.

Tobi

Or, thinking back to your AWESOME acronym, in a way you need this. Safety with the team

Pam Ross

And opportunity. If I'm not giving you feedback to help you grow, you're not going to get that opportunity.

Tobi

So that's the O in your AWESOME: opportunities to learn. Super cool. So this is how you turned from restaurant server to HR to general manager.

Pam Ross

Yes.

Tobi

How did that continue, and what are some other relevant milestones?

Pam Ross

What happened for me was, I was working in this awesome company where I had opened these restaurants, I had done a restaurant manager role, I had taken on the recruitment. This was also a very entrepreneurial company. Two examples of how that would show up at work. One was, we for a while had some cubicles and offices in our head office that weren't being used. And when I was not opening a restaurant I would be working in the office, but I had no place to sit. So I would be sidled up to someone beside them, I'd bring my little laptop and sit beside them at their desk. And one weekend I just moved my stuff into one of these empty cubicles. It had been sitting open and everyone just was like, oh, that's Pam's office now. It was just this very free environment. Another example is, I had taken on this recruitment, we had decided that we needed to do leadership training. I don't remember having to get a lot of approval for this. It was just like, oh, this is absolutely needed. I'm sure I must have talked to my boss about it, but there wasn't some kind of really bureaucratic way to bring this into the organization. I just started doing different work. And then one day I said, you know, I think rather than being a management training coordinator, I'm going to be the training and recruitment manager. People

Pam Ross

I think some of the turning points for me, there's a turning point that involves three stories that are related. It starts with when I was opening restaurants and I was traveling around Canada. I would go for six weeks at a time. My uncle had brain cancer. He's my favorite uncle. So I would come home from a store opening and have the weekend off and think, oh, I have to go and visit Uncle George. And I didn't, a couple of times. And then when I got home finally I was like, okay, tomorrow for sure. So I got up that morning getting ready to go visit Uncle George in the hospital, and he passed away before I could get there. So I had this realization, oh my gosh, I have to prioritize family. I have to explore other ways of working. One of the things that happened, because I loved work so much, is that I had a friend at work who also loved work. So we would finish work and then be talking on the phone at nine o'clock at night about what happened that day at work and what we were working on and what was going on. He contracted brain

Tobi

It really helps to understand your why. And I think there are two strings that I see here. On the one hand this contrast of having at first this workplace where you created this accountability and empowerment for yourself, it sounds like, and then also experiencing that this is not a given, that's not how every company works. So experiencing that contrast. And then on the other hand the experience of what happens if work and life, even though I don't like this dichotomy,

Pam Ross

We're all going to spend a lot of time at work. So if we can make that time awesome, that only helps us. I just remember in that role I was coming home from work exhausted every day. I was so entrenched in work, and it wasn't even positive.

Tobi

And to get a bit more practical now and get to your journey as a coach. You had the psychology background from your studies. You had made yourself a training manager at the awesome job, so you knew how it is to design a training program. How did that translate then into this point of starting facilitation and coaching?

Pam Ross

So first was when I was in one of the roles where I was having a lot of challenges with my boss and with some of the things that were happening within the culture of the team. My CHRO was a certified coach, and she said, would you be interested in coaching with me, in me being your coach? And I said, sure, I'm open to it. I didn't really know what that meant. I was like, we'll see. It was so helpful to me. Years later I went back to the same company that had been the awesome company and had been bought by another company and now was a different company. And I actually came back to that company. None of the people I used to work with were there anymore. The last few of them got fired after I got hired, within the first month of me being there. And they were changing everything. And I think I was taking it a little bit personally, because I had helped build this company way back when. And I would go to my coach, this CHRO, and I would say, I can't believe they're doing this. Why would they do this? And I was totally in judgment all the time. And I remember one conversation, I can't remember exactly what she asked me, but it was something like,

Tobi

So you started out as this sort of edutainer type of trainer

Pam Ross

This was when I was freelancing. When I was in the organization it was a lot more content driven. In that organization I think I also got my first taste of public speaking. So if we had a conference, I would often be explaining the new concept or whatever. I would be a big part of that. So I found a skill in actual public speaking. But as a trainer, or as a facilitator, that's not what you want to be. To me it is a different skill. You shouldn't be the one on stage. It really is about them. And when I saw how impactful thinking about it that way was, it really changed the way I thought about it. But yes, that was after I started my business.

Tobi

Let's go a bit into this point in the timeline when you started your business. You said you had this frustrating turning point in your workplace, when you were too absorbed in your work and you saw you needed to make a change. That's when you started freelancing.

Pam Ross

So it was after the hearing loss. I started going, okay, I really need to change the way I'm working. I tried to do it within the organization I was at, and the system was so powerful, it was impossible for me to break myself out of it. I had done some consulting on the side a couple of times in my past roles, especially in those ones where I was like, when's five o'clock hitting? I wasn't that busy. I had a ton of energy to do great work and I wasn't making an impact. So I had done a few of these side gigs, and I loved getting in and learning that company and what they needed from their employees and what their culture was like. So I always thought this would be great to do full time, to learn about other companies and then help them. In five years I'll do that, in five years I'll do that. And 10 years go by. And so when I lost the hearing I was like, okay, this is the time. This is

Tobi

And what I also hear is that you seem to be very much focused on making the business successful, focusing on how is their customer experience, how can we integrate technology to make things more efficient. So going way beyond your actual delivery in the training room, and thinking about how can we make this organization successful.

Pam Ross

Yes, totally, and that is important to me. I think this is from that ops background, I had P&Ls to look at. The impact on the business to me has always been important. Seeing that what we're doing actually changes things. I remember when I was working corporately we didn't have an enterprise system or anything, and I would take the restaurant P&Ls, all the individual restaurant P&Ls. I would also take all of our learning program spreadsheets of who had attended what workshops. I would take the guest experience scores, and I was trying to do my own correlation analysis of, if we had restaurant managers who attended our learning, did that impact their guest scores? I was doing all of this analysis with all these different spreadsheets. That was my way of knowing we were having an impact by doing these training workshops. And usually there was definitely a correlation. So, having the impact and knowing we were impacting the business has always

Tobi

And I think that's also not super typical for the coaches I talk to. If we were to abstract it to make it useful for everyone, I guess what you did is you took that skill you were very good at from your previous career, and you took that into your career as a trainer and coach. And to get out some hacks and things that worked and did not work: you said your very first clients were previous employers. How did you get your other first clients?

Pam Ross

I truly think it's my overserving and overdelivering.

Tobi

Thanks for sharing. And one thing I also hear, and for you it doesn't seem like a big deal, but I think the hack zero that you mentioned is knowing yourself. And then working with that.

Tobi

So saying, okay, I don't love these networking events, but I have this tech Twitter, social media bubble that I'm very engaged in and that I enjoy. And I enjoy these one on one conversations, so let me actually set up these coffee meetings. I think arriving at that conclusion is already great, because it enables you to be in it for the marathon, and to run a marathon that you can sustain, because you work in your sweet spot. You set the challenge in a way that works for you.

Pam Ross

Right.

Pam Ross

And it was a coach that helped me figure that out. I wasn't thinking about doing that. I just thought you had to do all these things. And it was her who helped me figure out where my niche should be. So I credit her, Michèle Soregaroli. She is a great coach.

Tobi

Great.

Tobi

So that also means that for not such a long time you were a freelancer. You actually started hiring your first coach to partner with you quite early on. Was that a freelance relationship, or do you actually employ them? How did you arrive at this switch from freelancing to entrepreneurship?

Pam Ross

So the first coach I hired, she has her own business and I just hired her to be my coach. Do you mean bringing in coaches to do coaching for our clients?

Pam Ross

I realized the value in coaching because I've had great coaches. When I worked corporately, Anna Philipopoulos was a wonderful coach. When I started my business, Michèle Soregaroli, who has a business called Transformation Catalyst. I've also had a wonderful coach in Grace Churchill. I've worked with her multiple times over the years. She was a coach who helped me even know that there was something called team coaching, which is what I love to do, because I love to look at the system that is causing behaviors. And that's what I learned in ORSC, which is Organization and

Tobi

That means that for a long time you were working without subcontractors and really focused on your, as I coined it earlier, edutainer trainer sort of role. In this period you were basically getting coaches for yourself that helped you bring your business forward. And that also helped you to realize the value of coaching as something you can bring into your own business.

Tobi

You say a lot of clients come through your speaking gigs. You also said that with those speaking gigs you just do one and then through word of mouth you get another one. So it's again being good at what you do, generally. But if we want to steal that practice from you, what kind of events is it that you speak at?

Pam Ross

A lot of the ones that I would get clients from would be things like HR association events. In Canada, or in Ontario where I am, we have the HRPA, which is the Ontario HR association, and HR professionals go through that organization. Over the years I've spoken at the area conferences multiple times. There are regional HR meetings, and I would speak at those, and those would sometimes range from just having a group of 15 or 20 people to 150 people, depending on how big that region was. They also have the large annual HR summit. So I started speaking at those, and I would say those were often an opportunity for potential clients, especially because people are choosing to go to the sessions that resonate with them.

Tobi

So there are three things that I hear. Not selling in people's face directly, number one. Number two is be useful, deliver value, deliver free value by sharing actual real world hacks and practices. And number three, pack those points in a story where you can show people, look, this is what I do. This is on the one hand a valuable story, but it's also a sort of customer testimonial from my work. And you can also work with me. Not saying that, but that is what people also learn in the subtext.

Pam Ross

Yes. I have had some wins in providing something for free at the end. I remember one time I did an HR tech talk. I was talking about all kinds of technologies for HR, and I had a list of 40 HR tech platforms and what they did, kind of like a comparison, and, just drop your business card and we'll send you that. So there are ways to bring people into your email list by giving them something of extra value at the end of your talk.

Tobi

How do you get people to attend your online events?

Pam Ross

One of the things that I do every time I'm doing speaking is I send a video to the producer of the event, of myself welcoming people and inviting them to attend my talk. It's just an extra personal touch, for people to already feel like they have a sense of who I am and what I'm going to be talking about and why they would choose that. I think that is super helpful. Most of the speaking I have been doing lately has been internal to companies though. I haven't been doing a lot of public conferences. I've been doing more, you know, when they're doing their internal

Tobi

summits.

Pam Ross

We don't have to sell tickets to it or anything. But I still always do the video welcoming people. It's just an added value for that conference producer. When I speak online, I very much engage people in the chat. In a normal room, when you're live, I will do some interactions with the audience, whether it's something

Tobi

So connecting with the audience on the one hand before the event, by being comfortable enough to record a phone video, I guess.

Pam Ross

Yes, really simple. I do add captions to it, but that's all. It's nothing fancy. Just a phone video. Hey, I'm really excited to be a part of your upcoming conference. I'll sometimes talk about my mission to improve people's lives by making work awesome. And I'll be talking about XYZ, can't wait to see you there, make sure you're in room whatever at 11 o'clock. So I'll give a few details about the talk and about who I am. It just gives them a sense of my energy and what they can expect from coming to my session or to that conference.

Tobi

How do you choose what to talk about?

Pam Ross

I do a discovery with my clients. Over the last few years I've been talking about a couple of things. One is neuroscience hacks to making work awesome, bringing some of the things I've learned about the brain, both through neuroscience and positive psychology, into how anybody can make work awesome. And then the second one is something I call Leading Above the Line, which is aimed directly at leaders. It is about a bunch of mind shifts to help you stay in that curious, nonjudgmental zone as a leader. This is making me realize this is very similar to that workshop I told you about at the beginning of our talk, where we had about 15 different activities we could do but we could only do five. I have probably 20 different neuroscience talks that I could give. And I have about a dozen Leading Above the Line shifts that I could talk about. And I have an interview with the event producer, or certain stakeholders, before I do any talk, to find out what do you really want people to get out of this talk? What would make it successful? What's been successful in the

Tobi

So again, trying to abstract it, you have that shelf with components that are useful to your target group, in your case leaders of medium sized businesses. And then you have this exploration conversation with the client, finding out what the most pressing issues are, where you can deliver the most value. And based on that you pick your different puzzle pieces from your shelf and build that.

Pam Ross

Exactly.

Tobi

Very nice. And maybe one last question on the whole client acquisition, business development journey.

Tobi

I saw that you also have quite some video content online, on YouTube, on LinkedIn. How is that going for you? What have you tried? What seems to work? What works less? Where are you still experimenting these days?

Pam Ross

I am experimenting with all of that. I enjoy video. I find it easy. That's probably why you're seeing a lot of video content. It's interesting, because over time this has shifted. I used to write a lot. When I worked corporately I had a blog that I would write on a couple of times a week. And over time video has just become easier. I wonder if it's because I am on Zoom so much, so I'm just so used to being live on video. So what has been successful? I would say LinkedIn is my number one platform that I focus on. You might see, I think I still have it, I am what LinkedIn calls a top voice on LinkedIn, and those are selected by LinkedIn, people who continuously share content of value on LinkedIn. And as a member of that top voice community I have access to a lot of LinkedIn training.

Tobi

That's a nice formula. Showing up, adding value, being yourself. Thank you.

Tobi

If you could give the younger Pam, starting out as a trainer, advice from today's perspective, what would it be?

Pam Ross

It goes back to, it's not about you, it's about the people in the room. Be more curious, always ask, don't tell, more often. I think that comes with confidence. Starting out as a trainer I felt like I had to have all the answers. It's the same with managers, I feel like I have to have all the answers, I have to be the expert. And it turns out people have all the answers inside of them. It's about pulling the answers out of them. I don't have to have all the answers. It's not the Pam show. Help them solve. Facilitate, don't teach.

Tobi

Be curious, ask, don't tell, and trust in the capability of people to solve their own problems.