Not sure what you should be doing with your life? Are you where you’re supposed to be? Have you hit a career speedbump and not sure what’s next? In this episode, executive coach and former CHRO and military pilot Jim Reid is in The Legal Department to help you chart your next move. Jim contributed to Jim Collins new bestselling book, “What to Make of a Life.” He advises that to move forward past a career cliff, we should get clear about what we are “genetically encoded to do.” By anchoring to what’s important to you and what you deeply enjoy, you can have the life (and career) you really want.

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Stop Sleepwalking Through Your Career: Find Your Hedgehog Jim Reid, Executive Coach and 3x CHRO

Everyone, I’m Jim Reid. I’m the managing partner of my own business called James Reid Board & Executive Advisory Services. I spend a lot of time coaching new CEOs, top-level executives, and people who just want to take their lives to a better place. I love what I do every day. Fun fact about me. I flew supersonic in a CF-18 fighter jet, broke the sound barrier, and did the whole trip in twenty minutes from takeoff to going vertical to landing in twenty minutes later with the minimum fuel flashing. Not many people have broken the sound barrier in a CF-18 fighter jet, but I did.

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Welcome to episode 100 of the show. I’m so excited to reach this milestone. In three years of podcasting, I’ve explored a lot of topics in professional development. This one is really close to my heart. Jim Reid, one of the contributors to the new book, What to Make of a Life, is here to explore a core question that’s haunted me since I was ten years old. What should I do with my life? Jim shares that we should laser in on what we are genetically encoded to do, what we deeply enjoy. What I’ve learned after 100 episodes of this show’s conversations is that I really enjoy connecting with people. I hope this conversation helps you get clearer on what you enjoy. Jim, thanks for being here.

It’s great to join you, Stacy. Thanks for having me.

We are connected through a mutual friend, and I reached out to her. Every year, we trade the books we’re reading. This summer, I read What to Make of a Life by Jim Collins. She mentioned that you contributed to that. I thought, what an opportunity to pick your brain and really explore some of the topics in that book. Thanks for being here.

It’s great to be here.

I have a lot of coaches on the show, and I wonder if my audience thinks I’m like a coach groupie or something, but if you could give a little bit of your background, what your coaching philosophy is, and what a coach can do.

My background, my experience, I guess, has three phases. I started my career as a military pilot. I flew tactical helicopters, basically 50 feet and below. Ended up spending ten years in the military. Five and a half of those years were in West Germany as part of NATO’s forces. I came back to Canada. I live in Toronto. I came back to Canada, and I was an instructor pilot for a few years before I got out of the military and pursued things. The military was a wonderful foundation for me.

It taught me discipline. It taught me about service to others and service to the country. I always knew I wouldn’t spend my whole career there. I got out, went back to school, did an MBA, and then I moved into operations, eventually running a business. Mid-career, the CEO I was working for moved me out of operations into the chief HR officer role at a time when the company, this life sciences company, which was global, was about to experience a tremendous amount of growth.

I stayed in a Seattle role for a number of years. For the rest of my career, I worked with 6 CEOs, 3 companies, 2 global, one large domestic, and one private equity situation. During that time, you mentioned Jim Collins and What To Make of a Life. I met Jim while attending a program at Stanford on organizational change. He invited me about a year later to participate in his good-to-great research. I ended up working with him, not so much in the early stage of the research, but in the later stage of the research, when the manuscripts were being done.

He was testing the principles out with people like me who are practitioners in the field to see if you understood the principle, could you apply it, and would it get you to a better place? I did Good to Great with him as a critical reader. I did How the Mighty Fall, which was a really interesting smaller project. I did a project with him called Great by Choice, which is on tech startups.

I participated with him at the end of his research, because it was a ten-year program on What To Make of A Life, which is about bringing the Good to Great, build a great organization principles for the individual. He’s been a mentor to me. He’s changed the way that I think about high performance. He’s the best researcher out there, most disciplined, most data-focused. I’ve just learned tremendously from him and feel so fortunate to have had him play even a small role in my life, which has been great for me to play a small role in his research.

The book is hitting at a really interesting time. I always tell people I’m in the North 40. Reading the book and as you’re giving the framing of it, it’s the next individual high performer of Good to Great. My audience is a lot of high performers or aspiring high performers. I’ll just say, for me, a nagging question and why this book got my attention is, like, is this what I’m supposed to be doing? I think all the time, am I working at my highest, best purpose?

The book, if folks haven’t read it, compares pairs of high achievers in similar ways industries and maps their lives and careers. It’s a really interesting study. We’ll get into some of the different concepts, but I’m very curious. One of the, one of the main topics in the book is this concept of encodings. When I say, what am I supposed to do with encodings I feel like I’m informing that. Can you share with the audience what encodings are and help me answer that question? What do I do?

Discovering Your Genetically Encoded Strengths

Of course. The whole notion of encodings began, in the good to great research where, one of the things that we started to realize was not just organizations, but individuals, leading organizations had this incredible clarity about could be on the organizational side, about what the organization could be the best in the world at, or at the individual side, what is it that is going to create the best path for success for you in your life? What we found in the data, which really comes to life in Jim’s latest research, What to Make About Life, is this concept of, if you think about it this way, on the assembly line of life, we’re given certain capabilities.

You can be good at many things, but you can only be great at a few. Discover your genetically encoded strengths to excel. Share on X

The way I think about it is that you can be good at a lot of things, but you can only be great at a few. It’s a discovery process. In Good to Great, he talked about it as what are your genetically encoded strengths? The inside-out set of capabilities that you are inherently born with. Part of the journey in life is to discover what those encodings or each strength is. A strength is something you’re good at, but an encoding is a much higher test. It’s a deep strength for you. It’s what differentiates you, Stacy. That’s the way to think about it.

How do you know what those things are? It seems really difficult to figure out the true essence of what you’re encoded to do or what you’re doing.

Building Success Around Inner Fire

When I’m coaching top executives or anyone, for that matter, one of the things that I’m trying to do with them is to help them get clarity on a couple of things that become the foundation for their success in life or the foundation for their leadership. One part of that is clarity around their personal values, clarity around their purpose in life. What is it that they want to achieve over their lifetime?

The other part is being crystal clear about what their deep strengths and their passion are, because that’s the foundation that you build your success on. The way to discover what you’re encoded for, or what your genetically encoded strength is, or your deep strength is versus a good strength is to look at your best successes in life.

You have to have a little bit of a track record. To ask yourself, when I was the most successful at whatever it was that defined success for you, what deep strengths or what encodings did I draw on? What work was I doing that I loved? Two of the four big concepts in What to Make of a Life are encodings, which is discovering what your big differentiators in life are, the things that you can excel at, not be good at, and the second part of another concept in the book is what do you deeply enjoy?

What do you deeply love to do? When you put the two of those together, playing to your encodings or playing to your deep strengths and doing what you love to do, speaks to this expression that you’ve heard before, which is that you never have to work a day in your life if you play to your strengths and you love what you do. That’s where the magic is, right? That’s when we say you’re in your wheelhouse.

Actually, you saw me light up a little bit when you said that because I have a concept I call the 80/20 rule, which is like in any job you should love, 80% should be enjoyable and 20% is why you get paid. I’m wondering if you have any examples, like what is an encoding versus what’s just a skill?

I’ll give you an example for myself. When I was a military pilot, they trained you to a standard. It’s a very high standard. A lot of the military pilots end up leaving. If they leave the military, they go on, and they work for the airlines or what have you. Not only are they highly skilled, like encoding, an ability to be excellent in aviation, but most of them, when they get up in the morning, cannot wait to fly. They’re so passionate about aviation and about flying.

There’s nothing they would rather do with the day ahead than to get into the aircraft, go for a spin, take the aircraft up for a flight, fly a mission, whatever it is. For me, if I go back to my life, when I was in the military, I had a deep skill. This is where you play with your encodings and do what you love to do. It’s the combination of them that creates the magic. I was highly skilled at flying, but what I observed was that I wasn’t as passionate about it as some of my colleagues were. When we had a day when we were in the squadron and the weather wasn’t great, and we weren’t flying.

You weren’t bummed out.

I wasn’t bummed out, but everybody else was, and I started to realize, that’s when I really started to realize, “There’s something here.” For me, my passion was more around helping people be the best they can be, helping people succeed. I was deep into trying to understand the difference in leadership.

How did you notice that as a pilot?

I started to realize that while we were trained to the same standard, we all had the skill, like the encodings, to be excellent. I did not have the other side of that, which was passion. It came out in lots of different ways. I could see my colleagues and my friends. They would do anything to get an extra trip in a day. They’d not just fly once. They’d fly two or three times. I’d be happy. I’ll take one trip. I focus more on the leadership side of being an officer.

What I’m really curious about is how you figure out what you do not like, as I almost think it’s easier. How did you figure out that, like, I really enjoy helping people get better and improve?

When I was in the military, I started to see and notice that you could have two senior officers of very high rank. Let’s say they’re both generals. They had the same power, the same authority. What I started to realize was that one of the generals had this amazing innate skill to build followership with the people he led. The other one did not have that. I started to ask myself, what’s the difference between these two people? A lot of it had to do with what Jim calls in What to Make of a Life, your inner fire. What is it that you truly love doing and truly have a passion for doing?

Is your work giving you energy or drawing it down? Tracking your energy is the best way to evaluate long-term career fulfillment. Share on X

For me, what I discovered over time was that it wasn’t flying. It was more about the people-leadership side of leading people. I became very interested in trying to understand the difference between good leaders and great leaders. I’ve been playing in this space around. My point of differentiation is the relationship between leadership teams, culture, and performance. You discover it, Stacy. Most people fall into their careers, and it’s not until they get in that they start to realize whether they have what it takes in both encodings, deep strengths, and passion, love this job, in order to really excel. That’s what it takes to excel. It takes both.

I’m thinking, as you’re talking about, you jump into a career, and then you realize what it’s all about. This show is really focused on and geared towards lawyers. There are a lot of professionals, consultants, etc., who are tuning in to the show. I’m thinking of any of those professional services providers. You invest so much to get to the place to do the job and to get into the job that many times you’re not taking that moment to think about, as you were observing as a pilot, what I like and what I do not like. You’re one foot in front of the other. I’m going to just keep doing what I’m supposed to do and then realize, like, “I do not even like this.”

Evaluating What Gives You Energy

By the way, that’s very common for people in their careers. They wake up one day, and part of how they realize it is as they go, as they build their career, what they begin to find, like one of the tests for, “Do you love this, does it give you energy, or does it draw down energy?” When you’re in a job, and I agree with you, like not everything in every job is perfect. Over time, over a week, over a month, over a year, over multiple years as you build this career, is the work that you’re doing giving you energy?

When it’s not giving you energy, then you’re probably doing work that you really do not love, or you haven’t developed a real love for what you’re doing yet. Which is why some people shift careers mid-career. For me, it was going from flying planes in the military to leading, running a business, leading large teams, working with CEOs, and helping build organizations. It was about the leadership, team culture, and relationship to driving high performance. I discovered that’s what I love to do.

I began to deepen my skill set in that space so I could excel in that space too. It’s the same for you. When I’m working with executives, the first thing I do with them is I get, I’m looking for how clear they are on their personal values. We sometimes believe in purpose until later, but what do you deeply believe in? The stronger your commitments and beliefs are in your values, the more consistently and authentically you show up. The second thing I do with them, and it’s usually in the second session, is, “Let’s talk about your genetically encoded strengths or your encodings and your passion.”

I ask them, “Talk to me about your deep strengths. Not what you’re good at, it’s a higher test.” We talk a little bit about if they’re struggling, then we go back to look at their best successes in life and what strengths and what passion did you draw on. Most executives that I work with are, I would say, clear, but not clear enough about what their strengths are. Part of what I’m doing with executives is helping them get even more clarity because that is so foundational to consistency and authenticity and how they show up and how they lead.

How do you drill down? As you said, as you’re talking, I’m thinking, like, throughout my day, throughout my week, like, where are the times where I feel like I shine? That’s what I’m doing, but like, how would I go deeper to really identify those encoded strengths?

The first thing I do is just ask them. By then, I’m coaching executives that are, I would say they’re new CEOs, executives who are being considered for a CEO job or a C-suite job at some stage in their career. They pretty much know they’ve had success. They understand that success. When I ask them what their genetically encoded strengths are, they can usually get 3 out of 5. They can articulate, and the other two are a bit fuzzy. Once we get it down, then what I ask them to do is go validate it with people they trust and people who have their back. That is cheering for them and their success.

You would come to me, Stacy, if you and I had a deep relationship. You could say, “Listen, I’m just working on clarity on deep strengths. Here’s how I see myself. Does this resonate with you? Is this how you see me showing up? Is this how you see me differentiated as a leader?” We talked about it. At the end of the day, they pick 3 to 5 things that tie back to the track record of success that they’ve created. In some cases, they know themselves very well because they’ve been through assessments. They have deeper insight. In some cases, they’ve done a 360. They have insight from that. What I’m looking for is a really clear, tight, succinct list that they could articulate in 30 seconds.

I would say, I feel like that’s something that you need to have anyway, because when you get interviewed for jobs, or you’re looking for jobs, you should be really clear about, like, “What am I good at? What would I tell somebody about myself?”

Remember, I’m trying to go to get people from good to great. I’m not interested in what they’re good at. I’m more interested in what they can be great at. It’s a higher test. I really push them to get that. On the passion side, it almost always starts. I’m passionate about my family and my friends.  They start talking about the work that they’re excited to do in the day ahead. For some lawyers, it could be concluding this M&A transaction that they’re working on. It could be, if you’re a litigator, “I’m so excited about this trial that I’ve got coming up.” There are all kinds of different things. If you’re a corporate attorney, it’s different. It’s managing risk, but they love it. You can see when they tell me about it that their face lights up. They’ve got energy.

That’s a great concrete way to light you up? Where do you find energy around things? The other concept, and I think a carry-through for Collin’s work, is the idea of a hedgehog. Which I have to say, I struggle a little bit because it feels like, what’s my big project or what’s a career-defining project or purpose, almost. Can you talk about what a hedgehog is and how we find ours? Does everyone have one?

Finding Your Personal Hedgehog

We’re speaking about it now. The hedgehog concept was a strategy concept and could degrade. One of the things that was noticed in the research was that every company has a strategy, but the companies that outperformed had something unique about their strategy. It was clearer. It was more focused. It was simpler. One of the research associates who worked with Jim came up with the site that had a Greek parable called a famous essay written by Isaiah Berlin. It was a Greek parable that basically divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes.

A hedgehog is like a dowdy creature, like a porcupine. Some people know it as a porcupine. The way he described it was that foxes in life look like the sure winners. Hedgehogs look like the losers. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time. They see the world in all its complexity. They’re scattered, they’re diffuse, and they’re unfocused. Hedgehogs, on the other side, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea that unites and guides everything. Every day, the hedgehog and the fox have this battle. It looks like the fox is going to win, but every day the hedgehog wins.

Collins goes on to describe that all of the big thinkers, Newton and all the great thinkers in the world, were hedgehogs. They had this ability to simplify a complex world and to simplify everything down to the basic facts that need to be considered in order to drive success. The framework of the hedgehog concept is three circles. We just spoke about two of them.

Career cliffs happen to everyone. The leaders who thrive anchor back to their core strengths and take the next best step forward. Share on X

The first circle is at an individual level. What are your genetically encoded strengths? In What to Make of a Life, Jim would say, “What are your encodings? What are you encoded to be great at?” The second circle. What do you deeply love to do? What is your passion? What gives you energy in your life? What takes energy? The third circle is what drives your economic engine. At a company level, at an individual level, it’s about making a living.

How can you make a good living so you can live a great life? It ties into your longer-term aspiration. The idea is that if you get to the intersection of those three circles, you’ll have clarity on your genetically encoded strengths, your encodings, your passion, and the economics will work. All three have to work. That is your best path to success in life. It’s where you’re going to be most focused and where your biggest impact in work and life is going to be. That’s the notion of that.

That’s the personal hedgehog when all those things can align.

They line up. You get to the intersection of the three circles, and that is your sweet spot for success.

In reading What to Make of a Life, as we’re looking at these pairings, I’m thinking of Toni Morrison and some of the other people profiled. With Toni Morrison, it’s a little different, but some of the folks, like there were two NFL players, and it almost seemed like a project came around, like, “This is a thing to work on,” but I guess how you’re making it a little more clear, it’s like because they were clear about what they were encoded to do, what they were excited about, and where there was an economically viable opportunity, that becomes the hedgehog.

Anchoring Through Disruption and Career Cliffs

In the study that Jim did, What to Make of a Life, he always did these, what you refer to as paired comparisons. Two astronauts, two musicians, two actors, two scientists. One of the things that he talks about in the book is cliffs. That in our lifetime, we’re going to hit disruption. That disruption could come in many different ways. It could be job loss. For some people in the book, he describes it as a scandal. It could be an illness, a divorce, a retirement, a failure, or a success that ends. You’re sitting there saying to yourself, “Now what? How do I get out of this?”

When he first started the research, what I think was so interesting about it, what he was interested in was that two people with the same degree of success hit a cliff, a disruption in life. Through the research, one grows through it, and one doesn’t. What did the person who grew through it do differently? One of the things, there are many, but one of the things they do differently is that they anchor themselves back to their encodings and to what Jim calls in the book their inner fire, or the things that they deeply love to do.

Clearing the Fog With Simple Stepping

We talked about this earlier in our call together as a passion. That is an anchor point for you. One of the things that I think we found, that Jim found in the research, was that cliffs are normal. Everybody hits cliffs. The question is, how do you best navigate it when it comes? One of the ways you navigate it is that you have clarity around your encodings and your inner fire. The other way that he discovered in the research was that when you hit a cliff, you typically go into a period where it feels foggy. You’re in the fog, and you’re not sure where this whole thing’s going to go, and what do I do?

He talks about the people who navigated the fog after a cliff event in their life, a disruption in their life. One of the ways they did it was that they had clarity on their coatings and their inner fire, but they also focused not so much on making the perfect solution, but focused on what the next best step. He calls that simple stepping in the book, but it’s really about it, and I coach this a lot of times when people are just stuck. We go back to basics, deep strengths, passion, and coding’s inner fire.

We say, “Forget about trying to get out of it completely in the next year. What’s the next best step for you? What are your options? What feels like the next best step?” They talk about it, they get committed to it, and they make it. Over time, when you string together a few of those next best steps, you burn off the fog, and you come out on the other side. One of the great things about the research, and I’ll throw it back to you, is that one of the things Jim did is that there’s this perception that, for success in life, you’ve got to get going.

You’ve got to get clear early because you’ve only got the first half of your life to make a real difference. That’s not what he found in the research. He found that the second half of people’s lives was the most impactful. I always say when I’m coaching for people who feel stuck, I’m saying, “Listen, there’s so much goodness ahead of you. Let’s work on it together, and let’s get you to a point where you’re feeling even better about your contribution in life than you might’ve been looking back.”

As you’re describing cliffs, and I’ve certainly had some, and when I, the concept of a cliff to me is like, that’s life. Everybody, it can look shiny and smooth from a distance from other people that you know or see, but everybody has a sick parent, a struggle with a child. Everybody has a bump at work. An illness, like life, is just not full of cliffs. In terms of the fog, when it happened to me, it was very disorienting to have something that I was very good at and felt very good about.

To have that disrupted, the word that keeps coming to me is feeling unmoored. I was able to get out of it, but I will say, and this is not really in the book, I’ve heard this from other folks. Tim Story is somebody who comes to mind when you cannot get out of that loop, you’re replaying your life or that part of your life over and over again. You cannot get that soundtrack to stop playing. Tim Story calls it. We rehearse and curse what’s happened to us in the past. Do you encounter that with the folks you work with?

A hundred percent. Fogs are very disorienting. One of the things that I try to coach around is to let people know that cliff events happen, and disruption happens in life. Let’s talk a little bit about how you prepare for it. One of the ways you prepare for it is that you have clarity about all the things that we were just talking about, but you also have to think of a cliff event as an opportunity for refocusing or reinvention. The way that you work your way out of it is one next best step at a time. Do not try to boil the ocean, because the mind is a very powerful thing.

Stacy, you said it beautifully. You get this track replaying in your mind, which chips away at your confidence. We’re always trying to anchor people back to how they could, I’ll say, reinvent themselves and, in a sense, get back on the right path for them. Discover other encodings that they may have and passions that they may have that they could pursue. Some people build on what they’ve done, and other people, and you see this in the book when he talks about the pair comparisons, some people make a hard right turn or a hard left turn and are still, are still able to put it together and to create some momentum back in their lives.

Even the most successful leaders don't reach the C-suite alone. Surround yourself with trusted advisors who push you to excel. Share on X

It’s very disruptive and makes you feel unmoored. The word is a good word that you use. That captures this feeling when you’re in the fog, and Jim did a great podcast with Oprah. I do not know if you’ve listened to it, but she talked, she talked about what it was like for her after she walked away from her show, and she was in a fog for a couple of years. She described until she re-centered and got back to what gave her a purpose in life.

That’s interesting. Again, those tapes just keep playing over and over again. The anchoring concept is a good one because if you think about that tape and rehearsing everything from the past, you are anchoring to the past and not anchoring to yourself, your encodings, what you’re excited about, etc. I like that concept because it focuses more on you than what your circumstance was.

It gives you a feeling of more control through the choices you make. Which is what you really want to do. You want to be driving, not being driven. That’s a really good one, too. Cliffs are part of life.

Yes, we need to underline that for people, because again, everyone’s putting filters on their photos. Everything looks perfect. For everybody, there are stumbles and clips. We all need to move forward and get through them. One of the things, again, I talked to a lot of coaches, and maybe it’s because I like helping people as much as you all do, and really admire the work. Tell me more about you and, from leading people at large companies, why is this one-on-one work, why is it rewarding to you? What do you like about it?

Leveraging Advisors for Accelerated Growth

I experienced it myself, years ago, when I was in pilot training in the military. Of course, they would never use the term that your instructor pilot, who’s teaching you how to fly, would never be called a coach. It’s just not part of the language or the culture of the military. When I reflect back, getting your wings as a pilot for me was one of the most challenging and rewarding things I ever did in my life because the standard is so high. The failure rate in the programs is super high, like 70%. I remember meeting when I went to fly tactical helicopters from the jet course.

I remember meeting my instructor pilot, and he said to me, “I’m going to be your instructor. I already have my wings now.” They were very tough on you until you got your wings. Once you got your wings, everything changed. I remember this was my first experience. He said, “I’m going to be your instructor, and we’re having a barbecue at our house today. Come on over. I was a single young guy. Come on over and meet my family.” He said, “I am here for you to make you the best pilot you can be, and that’s what I’m going to do. If you apply yourself and work hard, you’re going to be amazing.”

That was my first experience. What I learned was that someone was committing to me that I could trust, and that could help me get to a better place. What I found in my career since then is that a lot of these successful people never get there on their own. They have a very small group of trusted advisors. Some would say coaches, whatever, doesn’t matter what you call it, but are committed to them and their success and are helping them excel, helping them show up to be the best person that they can be.

If you can find someone who’s that open and is a little bit vulnerable at times when they trip or they hit a cliff event, and is willing to reflect and learn from it, then you can really accelerate someone’s impact in life by helping them. I coach a lot of different people, CEOs in different industries. I know more about some industries than others, but I know a lot about human behavior. My goal as a coach is to help you commit to a path that you are committed to. It may not be the exact path I might choose. It doesn’t matter. I’m there to help you assess your options and to pick a path that you can be 100% committed to, and if you are, chances are, it’s probably going to get you to a better place.

I really enjoyed going deep on some of these topics. As I was reading the book, I was making a lot of notes and things that I wanted to learn more about, so I appreciate you going deep with me. On a lighter note, I always end every episode with the same question. I am really excited about music. I use it every day to figure out what’s going to be, what we’re going to be set up for. What are we going to get excited about? I ask all guests, what is your pump-up song?

If I’m really honest, my pump-up song may not be a pump-up song in the sense, but my favorite song that gives me a lot of inspiration is a song by Louis Armstrong. What a beautiful world. My kids drive me crazy because whenever the song comes on, they start singing it like Louis Armstrong. I’m going, “Stop. You’re destroying my favorite song.” I just find that song to be very grounding for me. It keeps me grounded and keeps me appreciating the things that really matter in life, which sometimes, when we’re on the treadmill, we lose sight of.

Great way to end the conversation. Thanks so much, Jim.

My pleasure. Great to be here with you, Stacy. Thanks.

 

Important Links

• Jim Reid on LinkedIn
• What to Make of a Life
• How the Mighty Fall
• Great by Choice
• Good to Great
• Certified Corporate Governance Professional
• The New Rules of Executive Presence

 

About Jim Reid

Reid is a seasoned executive and trusted advisor who knows what it takes to build high-performing teams and lead organizations through transformational growth. Throughout his career, he has guided six CEOs, led through significant change, and helped thousands of leaders unlock their full potential.

Originally trained as a military pilot, Jim developed his leadership expertise alongside some of the world’s foremost thinkers, including Jim Collins, Jeffrey Pfeffer, John Kotter, and Dave Ulrich. He spent a decade in operations before leading HR, Real Estate, and Internal Communications at three Canadian growth companies: MDS International, Husky Injection Molding, and Rogers Communications. Today, Jim serves as an executive coach, working with top executives and CEOs across North America to strengthen leadership, build high-performing teams, and lead through change. He also chairs the North American Advisory Board for EZRA Coaching, a global leader in digital coaching. In 2021, he was named one of Canada’s 50 Best Executives by ROB Magazine. In 2022, he joined the Forbes Coaches Council and received the OC Tanner Award for Lifetime Achievement in Human Resources.

Jim is a certified coach and the author of Leading to Greatness, a leadership book grounded in five timeless principles to help individuals thrive in work and in life. He splits his time between Toronto and the Kawarthas with his wife Pattie, their children, and a growing group of grandchildren.