Episode #30: Executive Coaching Insights with Tanisha Parrish
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It’s time for another African Americans in Gaming (AAG) Black History Month Takeover as guest hosts Jeff Gray and Ashley Kougher interview executive coach Tanisha Parrish. With over 20 years of experience helping leaders and organizations perform at their best, Tanisha shares valuable insights and strategies for high performing professionals looking to lead with confidence, clarity, and authenticity. Tune in for her top three tips on how you can level up your professional mindset and become a strategic leader who truly influences and inspires.
Notes
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Jeff: Hello, I'm Jeff Gray guest host at Wondr Nation's Level Up. And I'm back for a second time in African American month here in the US and we are here to talk about the executive coach and about going from high performer to a strategic leader. And here with my co-host Ashley she's gonna introduce our special guest, Tanisha Parrish. Good morning everyone.
Ashley: I'm really excited for this conversation. Tanisha Parrish is the kind of person who walks into a room and immediately understands what makes people in it tick. As a founder and CEO of life under innovation, she's an executive coach and a catalyst for human transformation.
With more than 20 years helping leaders and organizations perform at their best, her path to this work is anything but conversational. She cut her teeth at Accenture, then took on one of the most complex challenges in hospitality leading the merger of Marriott and Starwood's call center operations after one of the biggest deals in hotel history. That experience taught her strategy only works when people behind it do as well, a belief that now drives everything she does.
She holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business, a BS in Organizational Change from Northwestern University, and a professional certified coach, PCC credential from the International Coaching Federation.
All in service of one relentless commitment, putting people at the center of performance. Tanisha, welcome. We're so glad you're here. I feel like is there anything you don't do?
Tanisha: Well, well, I always say even when I talk to my clients, I say, tell me who you are behind the resume. So there's the resume and then there's the, the person. So I'm happy to share more about who I am, but there is a lot I do not do.
So Ashley gave the, I would say the resume bullets and I'll just share a little bit about who I am behind the resume. So I'm married to my husband of 13 years. We have two children. I have a 10-year-old daughter and a 7-year-old son.
I always say I'm a Midwest girl at heart. Grew up in the Midwest, went to school in the Midwest, then lived on the West coast in the Bay Area. I then lived in DC we now live in College Station, Texas right now. So have seen many parts of the country and have made different decisions based on where we were in life.
So I always introduce myself as I'm Tanisha Parrish and I unlock human potential. I do that because there was a point in time where my identity was so tied to my career that when I did not have a job, I did not know how to introduce myself. So this was an exercise in really getting to the heart of who I am and what I believe I represented outside of roles.
I always say my career journey is a story of two journeys that kind of collided into one one of a professional business background working in large companies. I worked at a startup, worked as a consultant, and then I discovered this thing called coaching along the way about 13 years ago and fell in love with it.
Ashley: I feel like we hear coaching all the time or like, oh, I hired a business coach. I have a, a coach for this, I have a coach for that. What exactly is coaching and is it for anybody? Like can anyone do it or is it for professionals only?
Tanisha: So thank you for asking that. Coaching at its heart, and I'll try and simplify it as much as possible, is a relationship and partnership between client and coach. And the process and experience of coaching is we take you through a thought provoking and creative process that really maximizes and inspires more of your understanding of who you are, but we move you forward.
So coaching and therapy, let's say, let's, let's compare the two. Therapy Oftentimes we'll look back, we'll look deeper into kind of what got you to where you are and who you are while coaching assumes we have a core belief that you are whole and that you have all the insight that you could possibly have, right?
So there's a belief that there's nothing broken about you in coaching. And so the coach is there to partner with you in two ways, and I'll be very specific, this is my style of coaching when working with leaders. So, 'Part Coach', the coaching part of it is inquiry based at its core. So I'm observing your language, I'm observing your body language and I'm asking you questions to go deeper in service of your own understanding.
Then what I found for leaders, especially for senior leaders and executive, is there's this element of partnering. So I can be your business partner where I can say, would it be helpful for me to brainstorm with you? Or Here's a framework or a tool that has worked for other clients, would you be interested in exploring that?
So it's always in service of what we call the client's agenda. You bring a couple core goals that you want to work out in coaching, and then each of the sessions are intentionally designed. And when I say designed, I mean the client says, here's what I wanna focus on, and then the coach supports you in moving towards those goals in that session.
It's all about creating longer term behavior change for you, but moving you closer to the goals that you want to achieve.
And then I'll, I'll go back to the other question of who is coaching for. So coaching is for anyone who is bringing a specific challenge that they want to work on. It's not defined for the top tier individual contributors, more junior people can very much benefit from coaching and so I tend to work with leaders that are kinda manager and above, but we're seeing a lot of younger people discover coaching, invest in coaching, and it can be very powerful for them as well.
It really just depends on what stage you are and what types of things you're bringing into your coaching relationship.
Jeff: As I hear you, people have to really be open and introspective of who they are, where they wanna go, and be open to share that, that with you. Yeah.
Wow, that's, that's fascinating. I appreciate that, that understanding of, of who this is for and, and how it works. So today we wanna get into the insights from you about going from a high performer to a strategic leader. You know, how, how often are you consulting with, with your clients on those kind of topics?
Tanisha: Yes, very often. So my sweet spot, I categorize it as transitions. And oftentimes people will assume that is a physical transition from role to role, organization to organization and it can be. Oftentimes, what underpins that is the mindset transition that is required in order to step into that new role or that new organization.
So that's the sweet spot. Oftentimes people will come and say, either my goal is to achieve something at the next level, I want to get promoted. Or they will say, I recently got promoted, and I wanna make sure that either I'm equipped to navigate this in a very strong way, or I don't feel equipped to fully navigate it.
This is really where I start to lock in on, I call it the mindset piece of it, because it's not just about the actions. So really focused on the mindset and connection to the transitions.
Ashley: So if they're not comfortable transitioning from like a manager to a higher role, how do you work them through that? 'cause I'm assuming it's like self-doubt, feeling stuck. Like there has to be a lot of different emotions in there.
Tanisha: Right. So if you think about, let's just say when you started your career you were an individual contributor, and you progressed throughout your career because you were a high performer.
And so as an individual contributor, that's a high performer, what are the things that you do? You know how to get stuff done. You probably asked really good questions. You made the job of your manager easier. You were able to connect the dots, right? You were gritty, but all of what you did was dependent on you and your own performance.
For so long in our early careers, high performance has been the way that we have been rewarded. So when we step into a role, whether it's manager or manager of teams, and we can call that a strategic leader, the way that you operate and the way that you think has to shift.
I always say there's this 80 20 concept and there's this really good book called 10 X is Easier Than Two X. It's about scaling an organization, but he also talks about what do you release? So when you're stepping from high performer to strategic leader or any type of change, you wanna think about what are the 80% of things that I do that I need to release, delegate, delete completely. What are the behaviors that I did that served me in the last role that no longer serve me in this role?
Now you can carry forward 20%, and then the goal is that you are redefining the 80% of things that will carry you forward going forward. So just that level of evaluation helps you go from transition to transition, but specifically the change from high performer to now I am leading a team, an organization in a very different way than I was before.
Ashley: Do you ever notice, when changing, I feel like sometimes we get so excited about like the title or what it's gonna be. Internally, what is it that you would tell us as a coach to look out for or make sure that, one, I think that we want this position for the right reasons and then two, maybe we're not being realistic about our lifestyle accompanying this position. Like if it's more hours and I have a family, am I actually worthy of this or am I just having an inflated version of self? How do you work through that?
Tanisha: Kind of like the imposter syndrome. Do I believe that I deserve this role? But then there's also the title, let me start with the title.
I work with a lot of clients that are CEOs or in senior leadership positions and one of my favorite clients that I've been working with for three years. And he was a pretty, kind of like hard charging male. And he was kind of like, what is this coaching thing? And I said, do you know what your role as CEO is? And he paused and he said, no. And then I said, great, that's when our work begins.
We have titles, we throw them around as if everyone just knows what it is, but at the heart of your title is you.
That role at one company could be completely different than the other, so it is paramount that everyone defines their role. Specific to who they are, what the environment is, what the organization requires, what the landscape is, where you are in your stage of growth. There are a lot of different factors. So that's the piece on the role that I just wanna impress upon people. Go into your role and assume you don't know what you are supposed to do.
Jeff: It's a blank canvas. Let's bring this down specifically. It's African American History Month. So specifically in AAG and as professionals, young professionals, black professionals move up from that high performer to the strategic leader.
Do you see specific challenges for those of us in that realm?
Tanisha: Well, there are challenges for people of color, black people in particular in corporate, right? We're seeing it, we're feeling it now. And here's what I will say, the, the challenge that I've seen is how do we bring in our own authenticity and still be bold and powerful, right?
So we've learned how to navigate many different environments and spaces, and it can be exhausting. And yet people will tell you, we wanna see all of who you are, right? But how much do you actually bring? So there's an element of how do you really make sure that your values and who you are, are aligned to the leader that you are showing up as because people are looking at you. And it's a decision that oftentimes you will make as you get more senior and you have more influence and power in the organization.
The other thing that I would encourage people to consider too is there's a shift towards doing the work, then managing people by getting them to do the work, and then managing influence and power and relationships. And so when you are at those senior levels, it becomes even more important to understand who's at the table. What are they attached to? What are their motivations?
I always say 70% of leadership is psychology. If you can understand what people think about what makes them tick, what they're motivated by, that's where you can influence. So your work becomes a lot more focused on influence, power dynamics. It's not just about the logical work that you are doing. And did you do it well?
Ashley: That sounds so layered though. If you're explaining that to somebody, like you're great at your job, you're great at what you're doing, but now you're trying to like give them better advice on how to handle something or do something, is that hard for you?
And how do you deliver that? Because telling somebody yeah, you think you're good at that, or, yeah, you want this, but you don't, how do you deliver that bad news or that redirection?
Tanisha: So from a coaching perspective, we do not give advice. If we do, we will name it. So we'll say, here's an example, or here's something you can use, right?
Think about all the relationships you have your good girlfriends, you may have your best friend at work, you have your manager. Those individuals are wonderful at giving advice, and there are a lot of things that we know how to do, but we just don't do them. In coaching, the goal is to bring in with your understanding of what you need to do and then create the motivation to behaviors and alignment, like align it to action. That's the difference.
If you and I Ashley, were having a coaching conversation, in two minutes, I would not say, Hey Ashley, here's what you need to do. If I did that, that would be the same thing you were hearing, but I would get into understanding what's your belief about this particular thing? And then we would dissect, okay, is it a belief that's serving you? Okay, what's a new belief that you wanna hold? So it is a process that coaches will take you through around the belief, the mindset, the action, to be in alignment.
Ashley: So if there's something that I want, but you as my coach are seeing like, this is not in alignment for her. Like, this is not the route you should go. How do you deliver that blow without just popping my bubble to be like, yeah, no.
Tanisha: I'm keen on language. It's not a blow, I will never deliver a blow and smack you in the face, right? It's all done in love. What I will say is, those seem to be at odds with each other or there seems to be tension there. You tell me, is this in service of your ultimate goal?
I'm there to almost be a reflection or a mirror of what you are saying. And then the person has the opportunity to say, you're right, it's not in alignment or no. And I always say, you can agree, disagree, or provide a counter offer, right? So you can say, actually, here's what I'm thinking about.
So that's really what I'm there to do to move you forward. I don't care if I'm right, but if I give you something to respond to based off of what you shared, and you take that and you say, actually no, it's this. That's leading you to a place of, of greater clarity.
Ashley: That makes sense. It's like a, I don't wanna say like a faster therapy, but you just kind of help me pull it out.
Tanisha: Yes. Here's one thing I wanna share too. 'cause you, mentioned alignment. I often talk about vision, your values, we'll work through what these things are in addition to your goals. And values are often the anchor in which they drive people. So in that situation, if someone has something that seems to be out of alignment with the values they've identified, I'll name it.
I'll say, let's return to your values. How is that in alignment with your values? Are there tension between the three things you named here and your list of values? Is there tension there?
Jeff: As you go through this process, where do egos come in and try to derail where you're trying to head?
Tanisha: But the ego is always there, right? In coaching, I would use the term sage and saboteur. And I won't get into the details there, but the short answer is you have voices in your head and it gives you a way to kind of step back. And the saboteur is there to keep you safe, but it's also kind of that negative heavier voice while the sage is the most kind of powerful, empowering, clearest point of view. Right? So the ego is there. All we do is name it.
No judgment, discernment only. So judgment is, 'Jeff, you are dumb. You did horrible in that presentation. Discernment is Jeff okay? That that presentation didn't go as we would like it to. Let's look at what we could have done differently.
And just the weight of when you do that for yourself can totally change the space in which opportunities open up for you to move forward.
Jeff: Yeah. Yeah. It's Call me the way you just said it. Yeah, yeah. As opposed to aggressive and demeaning. Oh yeah. There's an opportunity for me to get better. Yeah. I like that.
Tanisha: Ego's always there. We just look at it, we name it, we don't judge it. Sometimes we invite it in. And a lot of the work I do is just being playful, right? So much of our life and how we think about ourselves feels heavy and weighty but when we just lighten it up, make it a little bit more playful, it changes the energy.
Ashley: makes sense. Do you get people on the other side that aren't like super high ego, but on paper everything is perfect. I mean, they have the job, they have the title, they have all the accolades, but then when you're doing your coaching, you discover that they don't internalize that? How do you deal with that?
Tanisha: Absolutely. So that is the profile of a lot of clients that will come to coaching. They will say, yes, on paper I'm this but I don't feel confident or I don't feel clear. And so one of the frameworks that I use is this concept of shifting your framing of success.
Oftentimes as people climb the ladder, they've defined themselves through external means. So money, title, career promotion degrees, et cetera. And once those things are either removed or challenged, then it requires you actually to create another definition. And so one of the ways that I help people to think about things, especially as they're moving up into this more strategic leader category is significance.
So let's redefine success for you with these internal measures of significance. And you've heard me speak about some of these values what is actually fulfilling for you? What impact do you wanna have on the world? Right? What does your health look like and how do you align your mental, physical, spiritual health in alignment with the work that you're doing?
So there are a lot of indicators under this significant bucket that I will help people navigate and work through. I call it success is a well achieved life, and significance is a well lived life.
life.
Jeff: Another question here, so what does it take from leading at scale? What does that require from high performers as they move through this. Leading at scale, what does that actually mean?
Tanisha: Yes. Good question. So when I talk about at scale, I often work with a lot of high-paced companies. So if you think about like startups that go from 20 people one year to 50 people to 200 to 2000. Or a lot of companies are receiving some type of funding, so private equity backed companies, where growth is an important part of those early stages or even the growing stages of the company. And I found that as thinking about the type of organization that you're a part of, even if it's mature, there's still a growth component of it. And so when we think about scale from an organization standpoint, I started to bring it down to the leadership component.
Again, when you're growing from kind of high achiever, individual contributor, now I'm managing a small team, your team is scaling, your impact is scaling, and so you have to think differently and move differently. Oftentimes with scale comes pace. We know how to move quickly, but the question becomes, are we moving in the right direction?
Jeff: Right.
Ashley: Do you find when people are growing in their organization, like if they hit that V level or that C-suite level too fast, do you ever see any issues with that? Because I can't imagine, it's amazing to get the promotion, but if you're not ready for it, if you're leaving friends behind, how do you help people navigate that?
Because it's like, who wants to complain? Oh, I have this promotion and now it's just so hard for me. Like nobody's gonna feel bad.
Tanisha: Okay, the readiness part is layered because certain individuals will think they're ready no matter what. And others, no matter how many credentials and how much experience they have, will never think that , they are ready. So readiness is an interesting one. Usually if you have been put into a seat, and I say usually ,especially as a black person in corporate, it is because you have done the work.
That belief and that mindset around I belong here is work that we can do. Right? And so that is around again, values, confidence building. I always say, let's build your repository of big wins, your treasure chest, let's look back at all the gold that you have discovered. Right?
So the readiness piece is one that again, often comes with mindset, identity, and then oftentimes people will want to feel confident or prepared. So if you are stepping into a new role, you should feel some uncertainty because again, you have to redefine what is required of that role? And then people will say, I wanna feel confident that I can deliver on the role. And so one reframe that I bring in is let's not expect confidence upfront. Let's talk about clarity first, courage second, and then confidence.
Let's use the example of giving a presentation. A lot of people hate public speaking, but the way you get confident is by actually delivering on the presentation. Then you can look back and say, I actually have some data points to show, oh, I did this. The confidence often comes last. So it's just again, a reframing.
The readiness piece, you're ready. It's just a matter of let's sit down and figure out how we can assess what's in front of you and then bring in those skills, those experiences, those ways of thinking that served you in the past, and how do we apply that in in your current situation and role.
Ashley: And what about that isolation side? Like if you feel like there's nobody for you to talk to, or as you're navigating that?
Tanisha: So it does get lonelier and lonelier as you move up, right? That is actually one of the powers of coaching. And many of my clients will say, this is the only space I have where I can talk about these things because one, there's greater risk, right? There's more at stake when you're at a leadership level.
You may have had a friend that you confided in at work, but now, like you said, Ashley, maybe you're promoted at a level above the friend and you can no longer share those things. Or, the words that you say and your behavior matters more because people are looking at you. And then of course, like when you get to really the C-suite and that CEO level, becomes even lonelier because you don't have anyone.
So coaching, it's a powerful leadership tool and that's how I encourage people to look at it. Look at it as an asset in your peer group as someone that you can confide in, you can release to, you can get support from, they can partner with you. And so it's really important to have that level of support when you are moving up into those senior roles.
Jeff: That's a tricky thing. You just made me think about years ago when I was promoted. Everybody was my friend, we were all the same level. On Friday, I get promoted, monday I come in as the new manager and the whole dynamics changed, you know? And so I had to deal with that because these were my friends and now I'm their boss and it just was a mess.
Tanisha: I think that's a great example, Jeff, because it sounds like it happened quickly, but you weren't prepared. For taking a step back to say, oh, what dynamics will change as a result of this promotion? And then your team or your friends weren't prepared either.
What often happens is for the first three or six months, you're just navigating all of these weird dynamics. And so one way is set clear boundaries. People are often like, what should I do? I say, you wanna name it. As a manager, you wanna give clear feedback. You wanna name the situation.
In that situation, you could talk to your friends and say, look, I got promoted. I'm now your boss, or Dynamics now have shift, so that may impact how we communicate. I may show up differently because I have a greater level of responsibility.
Jeff: Yeah. And that's kind of how it transitioned.
I know we're getting close to our time limit, but I do have one other question. This has been very insightful. This is fantastic, great conversation. I love it.
I can talk to you for another two hours but we're running outta time. So specifically in the African American gaming environment, what are three top things you would suggest for gaming professionals who want to level up and go from a high performer to a strategic leader?
Tanisha: I'm gonna bring in kind of a couple things that we've talked about.
So one, regardless of if it's a new role or an old role, whatever role you're in, I want you to pause and give yourself the opportunity to reassess. To say, what is the role requiring of me right now? The role, the team, the organization, and then what type of leader do I need to be as I'm showing up?
And it's not just at the key transition points. You should build in, whether it's every quarter, every six months, definitely every year, this intentional question of what should I be doing in this particular role? What's my role and what, what is required of me?
So that's number one. Number two, you said as African Americans in the gaming industry, this may sound hokey, but you must protect your piece.
Jeff: Yeah.
Tanisha: You have to protect your peace.
There's a whole lot that fits into that, but the more that you can focus on the things that are energizing for you, the more that you can focus on what's refueling for you, the better you'll be able to show up in whatever environment you are in.
And then the third thing is, I mentioned this briefly, I wanna introduce this concept of zone of genius. It's a expanded version of aligning your work to your strengths. When you get to higher levels, it's four areas, zone of genius, zone of excellence, zone of competence, and zone of incompetence. We'll throw out the lower two 'cause most people know where they're incompetent or just simply competent. But one of the biggest unlocks for leaders, I'll say maybe if you've had 10 plus years leadership experience, is separating the zone of genius from the excellence.
The excellence bucket is where you have typically been trained to do something and you can do it well and you've been rewarded for it. But, if you had the opportunity to delegate it or get rid of it, you would. Zone of genius is really when you are excelling in something and it brings you fulfillment, it brings you energy, doesn't matter how many hours. You can work eight hours a day doing this thing, and then you leave and you said, wow, that was a good day.
The more that you can align your work to your zone of genius, the more fulfillment you'll have, usually, the more recognition and success you will have in growth in that industry because you are fulfilled versus kind of playing this role of, oh, I've been trained to do something, so therefore I will keep doing it because it's what I think people want.
So those, those are the three things I would suggest.
Jeff: Very nice. Thank you. Thank you. One last question. Are there resources or things people should do if they're thinking about needing coaching, what should they be doing to get ready?
Tanisha: What should they be doing? So, one, you can always reach out to me. My organization, it's a leadership development, executive coaching firm, and I have a team of coaches and facilitators. You can always reach out to us and if you're interested in coaching, find the right coach for you. There is no big process for readiness, so that's the first thing. If you are interested in coaching too, I will say I highly encourage people to get sponsorship from their companies.
And then I would suggest reading, so there are a couple books that I mentioned in passing. One is, 10X is Easier Than 2X, there is another one called a Zone of Genius by Gay Hendricks. There are a lot of books that you can use for kind of personal development, self-help. And, I try not to say, but. And, there is nothing better than having a human on your side to make that stuff real.
One of the things that I do for my clients, I read a ton, and then I become the Cliff Notes version of, okay, in this book, these are the five things you need to know. Let's talk about how this might apply to what you are doing so I'm bringing that in.
I'm a firm believer in coaching. If you're interested in coaching, find a coach that, one, is certified. Two, you have a conversation with and you have a connection so you can establish that trust and then lean in, right? Show up fully, do the work, put your ego aside, and really be willing to reflect because it can be an amazing process.
Jeff: Sounds like it. Thank you. Wow. Thank you very much for joining us today. This has been a great topic.
Tanisha Parrish, thank you for joining us. And Ashley, thank you for co-hosting with me today. And I want to thank Wondr Nation for allowing those of us from the AAG to take over this podcast. I wanna thank everyone for joining us today.
Thank you.
