# Coaching the high-HDS leader

- **Episode:** [14](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/14.md) (2022-11-29)
- **Type:** interview
- **Tags:** coaching, hds, leadership
- **Time:** 53:46–58:01 (start 3226s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/14?t=3226](https://truthliesandwork.com/14?t=3226)

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[53:46] Sandy McKenzie: I think the coaching aspect would be about helping him to gain perspective on situations in order to be able to recognize what the triggers are, and then to be able to try and learn behavior to mitigate those. And I would say, you know, one of the key things for somebody like that is before you decide to tweet, run that past your lawyer. And that's why he'll continue to derail. I mean, I think, you know, the question is, what would the advice be? And you can give advice, but the willingness of the individual to take that on board is another thing. Um, but, you know, I think if it was in a development situation, you know, with somebody who was presenting with those scores, not an Elon Musk, But they happen to have those scores. I think it would be about developing that individual's EQ, working with an executive coach in order to help bring perspective and bring light to situations in a very calm and stable environment that understands the language that that individual prefers to speak in so that they can interpret where you're trying to get to in terms of setting the goals, being relatively interventionalist, I think, and Transformative in terms of the style of the individual, perhaps also working with some of their team members as well, in order to help others recognize, you know, well, what are the triggers? That could be through other, you know, it might not just be that individual, it could be the team, it could be the environment, and what could be done to look at the wider context of that situation to make that individual more comfortable. But yeah, through the coaching mechanism particularly, there's lots of tools, as you and I both know, Uh, from, from where we met that can be used to help, you know, develop that individual. That's probably the first step. It's just the acceptance that says, actually, I could benefit from an independent, neutral third party and, and listen to what they've got to say to, to help me
[55:48] Leanne Elliott: As a psychologist, as a leadership coach myself, I really love behavior-based tools because of exactly what Sandy said there. In terms of professional development, sometimes if we use personality-based tools, they can be a bit restrictive because someone might say, oh, I'm an INTP, what do you want me to do about it? I'm a blue. Whereas if we look at it through the lens of behavior, personality might not change much over time, but behaviors can be modified, they can be changed, and they can be chosen. That's the amazing power of coaching, helping people to, to explore, understand their behaviors, and also modify and change their behaviors
[56:30] Al Elliott: So this goes back to— we looked at Myers-Briggs, Leanne's just alluded to with her IJBN, whatever it is
[56:40] Sandy McKenzie: ABCD
[56:41] Al Elliott: And we looked at that a few episodes ago. And the— it's all about whether it's brilliant or bullshit. And the whole point that Leanne was saying about Myers-Briggs, if I remember, was that a personality-based inventory. In other words, it's the same as saying, I am a Taurus, and therefore I'm going to do this. Whereas what we're talking about here is actually measuring the behavior and using that as an indicator
[57:04] Leanne Elliott: Well, it's measuring both. It's measuring personality, it's measuring the dark side of personality, but through the lens of how does this translate into behaviors, and how did we— how can we modify these so we don't derail. It's connecting personality with behavior. And yeah, behaviors are a much more effective tool in terms of leadership development than personality can hope to be. So with all that in mind, what did Sandy conclude about Elon Musk, and what does he predict for his future given his suspected HDS scores?
[57:40] Sandy McKenzie: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, the future is You know, where the power and the actions of the man, which still has a lot of support, a lot of following, you know, there's still lots of positives in what he's doing around electric vehicles and so on and so forth. But what happens when that turns to fear?