Why Impact And Presence Matter To Leadership Success - With Inga Hebdon

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Inga Hebdon.

Inga Hebdon is a pursuit strategist and professional impact coach and member of the International Coaching Federation as well as the Founder of Medea International. Inga has a track record of strategic and operational leadership on multinational sales opportunities. She has over 15 years’ experience in business development and also extensive expertise in developing win-win solutions for her clients.

Why you've got to check out Inga's episode:

- Discover how Inga supports senior leaders, executives or partners who are newly appointed to their roles.

- Understand the challenges that senior leaders have in their roles and the importance of having the right impact and presence at the top, whilst being able to build strong relationships to curate the right information to enable them to make the right decisions.

- How frustrating it can be for Inga's clients when they are in these senior leadership roles when the correct relationships are not formed early on, and how important it is to avoid micro management.

- Learn Inga's best piece of advice for her clients which is all around seeking feedback so that they have a well-rounded view and can get challenged on their thinking.

- How to get free access to Inga's monthly Executive Roundtables

Resources / Links

https://medeainternational.co.uk/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/inga-hebdon/

Transcript

Tom Bailey: Hello and welcome to Succeed Through Speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results.

I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, I'll be getting to know Inga Hebdon, who is a pursuit to strategist and professional impact coach and a member of the international coaching Federation, as well as the founder of Medallia international. So, you can get hello and a very warm welcome to today's session.

Inga Hebdon: Thanks. So I'm really great to be here now.

Tom Bailey:  I appreciate you coming along and just out of interest. Whereabouts are you in the world right now?

Inga Hebdon: Actually, I'm based in Northwest London. It's a little bit warm today. Fortunately, not as boiling as the other day

Tom Bailey:  Yeah. We're having a little bit of a mini heat wave here in the UK. Incredible. So I just want to share a little bit more about you before we do get started. So, Inga has a track record of strategic and operational leadership on multinational sales opportunities. She has over 15 years experience in business development and also extensive expertise in developing win-win solutions for her clients. The title for today's episode is Why Impact And Presence Matter To Leadership Success. And it's going to explain why in just seven minutes. So, question number one for you today is who are your ideal clients?

Inga Hebdon: Thanks. So, I'm really grateful that you're asking this question. So, my ideal clients are seniors. Leaders, executives or partners new, newly appointed to their role, hence less than six months in a row. And I'm looking at medium size businesses in particular in the professional services industry, as well as in the financial services sector.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. Nice and clear. Thank you so much. And my second question today is what would you say is the biggest challenge that your clients typically face?

Inga Hebdon: So, think about every new role, you know, it's demanding you, you're stepping into an unknown environment, but in particular, the more senior you get the, the thinner the air becomes and the more relevant our skills such as having a strong presence and ability to influence people and make positive impressions, because that will ultimately push the business forward. But on the other hand, because it's relatively lonely, they don't have it that peer to peer connection. And they're confronted with a mountain of information really was a lack of, of clarity in terms of can they trust the information, but also what with whom do I need to connect in order to push certain initiatives and strategic decisions forward?

Tom Bailey: Great. And I guess if they don't have these connections or they don't have that presence at the top, or they're not creating the right impact, what impact can this have on either them or their business?

Inga Hebdon: Besides them being utterly frustrated? They're not gonna get anywhere, but they will not create the right relationships. They would not have the influence and the impact on the businesses. They, they actually envisage and get hired for ultimately that will also lead on a personal level, you know, to self-doubt self-doubt in their own decisions that they're making. So, they may even start to feel out of control. Or have a lack of control, which then ultimately leads in many cases to micromanaging micromanaging at that level. And, you know, even the direct reports that usually doesn't go down very well. So, there's. The entire issue of creating a different kind of company culture and it's creating uncertainty in, in, in the business. So, there's a whole wide range of consequences. Those senior leaders can ultimately face.

Tom Bailey: And I guess if, if they're unsuccessful in the role, it can ultimately lead to reputational damage as well for them in the longterm. Absolutely. So, if anyone is listening to this and they are starting a new role in that senior position, what is one valuable piece of advice that you might give to them to really help them solve this problem?

Inga Hebdon: Think the single best advice or the single best thing they can do is seek out feedback and that feedback. And in many forms, either from. Peers. They, they know through our previous careers, networking events, other external sources like me, for example, but in, in general, it's that seek out the feedback. So, yeah, so they have a well-rounded view and they get challenged even on, on their thing.

Tom Bailey: Fantastic. Thank you. And if somebody does want some help from an external source, what's the one valuable resource that you can share with them to really help them get started.

Inga Hebdon: Yeah. So, piggybacking on that feedback bubble and that's creating that kind of safe space, right? So, I run executive round table. It's a free every month particular for those new exec senior leaders and partners. So, in that I create that safe space for them, where we would be talking about the, kind of the challenges they're facing, any kind of hot topics. Which is similar to everybody, I would encourage a, an exchange of insight and best practice.

So, it's think about it like a moderated and facilitated conversation, which I'll be Having with the different people. Cause it's a very exclusive round table. We were talking a maximum of five people attending. So, it's really also everything is going to be confidential obviously in that case. And you know, if anybody is actually interested in that. It's probably best to get in touch with me through LinkedIn. I am on LinkedIn. So, if somebody just searches for my name and I have done and then drops me a private message through LinkedIn with the heading executive round table, I can then send the details through everybody. Yeah.

Tom Bailey: Perfect. Thank you so much. And what I'll do as well as I'll put a link to your LinkedIn page in the show notes. And obviously if someone can just send you a quick message on there with that title in the message, you'll be able to get them onto that programme.

Inga Hebdon: That's great. I appreciate that.

Tom Bailey: Yeah. Excellent. So next question from me is more aimed at yourself, and that is what would you say is one of the greatest either mistakes or failures you've either made either in life or business and what did you learn from it?

Inga Hebdon: I said that's a really good one because a lot, not what I'm talking about. It kind of comes from personal personal experience in particular, the, you know, building up the right network, being confident enough being out there, basically. And one of the biggest changes in, in me was, was a situation when I was going for promotion. And I didn't really get the promotion because somebody else who actually had the ability of building those better relationships who have the influence or who therefore have the insight or more and better insight, then I had that person got, got the job, which ultimately. It wasn't a pleasant experience, but I did learn from it and I realized, well, if I'm not really influencing, if I'm not true to myself, if I'm not brave enough, if I'm not authentic in how I show up in work. And that includes asking for, for help and includes asking for feedback. How will I actually expect that I'm getting to what, where I want to be getting. And so, I've really had to push those boundaries and yeah, that specific situation really made me think about

Tom Bailey: it. Yeah. Fantastic lessons to learn. And ultimately it is surround yourself with great people and ask for help when you need it. And that will ultimately help you in the long run. The last question for me today is what is the one question that I should have asked you that will also bring some great value to an audience today?

Inga Hebdon: I think there's a question around why am I'm focusing on those six, six or 18 months? Why is that so important? And I alluded to that in the, in the beginning. Of our conversation in a way those six months are really where one sets themselves up for success. Yeah. And if I just throw in a couple of statistics and it's going to sound really, really scary, but I'm not just grasping this out of thin, thin air, right? So, Harvard business review or McKinsey. Both of those institutions have stated that 30 to 50% of senior execs, they actually fail in their first 18 months. And that only three or five newly appointed CEOs live up to the expectations. So that is a really crucial and quite a high, high number. If I would know that in stepping into a role like that, that would really scare, scare me. But in order to avoid all that, it is again about having the right support in place, getting the feedback, getting challenged, but also having a safe space to gain your perspective. So, basically, so that they can swim and they're not drowning.

Tom Bailey: Yeah, exactly. Fantastic. Lots and lots of great advice today. And thank you so much again for coming along to this podcast. And I really appreciate you spending the time here today.

Inga Hebdon: All right. Thank you. Really great.