Javier Cuesta, Bedford and Bailey: Executive coaching, leadership development, and navigating CEO career transitions

there you go we're live coaching wisdom podcast with Javier Cuesta we had a nice uh pre-conversation me and Javier uh are both into coaching Javier is also into BC he's uh founder of a couple of companies as well and he's an exec at uh Bedford and Bailey uh management consulting company we're going to talk about that we're going to talk about startups we're going to talk uh

career and salaries everything in between Javier welcome to the bot honor to have you on can you tell us a bit more about yourself well thank thanks for the nice introduction uh Charles because you you said I I am the money in partner for Bethany there is an executive Search and also we do Executive coaching for a lot of professionals around the world um myself personally I

I started my adventure in the United States back in 2014 I'm originally from Spain and at that point I was kind of opening up a new office from multinational that I was working with and since then um I'd be in operating in the US market um uh or from the U.S market the rest of the world but mostly the U.S market um yeah um I'm an executive coach for one of the top business school worldwide called USA um there's a there's a partner business school called Italian but it's also in in Mexico and there's a lot of Mexican people that they would know iPad as well so that's a little bit about myself I'm definitely looking forward to discussing with you anything related to um you know opening up new businesses as well as the

international careers negotiation whatever you feel that's going to be more convenient for for the audience right um well first thank you so much for for being here today yeah um did anyone ever told you that you looked like Ryan Reynolds on your LinkedIn thank you yeah you look really close to him and AI would say the same um hopefully uh and he's been really success successful entrepreneur

like really surprising the success that this guy has got in the last couple of years um I really look up to him although I don't uh enjoy his acting skills um for what you're doing nowadays um exacts you know sometimes they're they can be tough to coach because by Nature they are they always want to do things differently and in their own ways they are there mostly

because they didn't listen to what the crowds would tell them so how do you go with coaching an exec that can sometimes not listen fully to what you have to advice to him well I think that the secret about coaching is that the coaching needs to be open to coaching if someone is not open to coaching this is not he or she is not going to be coachable right obviously um you could be open to coaching and then um you may not be the best listener right so active listening is actually one of the skill set that is uh critical to to work when it comes to to be a good leader right um and active listening could actually be um worked uh with your coach um once you are aware that you need to

work on the active listening and that will give you so much value with your people and also with your clients then you know if the person really have uh if the professional really wants to to improve in something and improve their career whatever personal uh life then they will be more aware of um how they could be um more uh or better listeners right you know they

everything starts with the listening which is tricky also one of the best uh CEO listeners that I've seen and she's a crazy accomplisher Ginny rometti DX uh CEO of IBM I suggest the listeners to go listen to interviews with her she's such a good listener she paraphrases uh what people just told her and so forth she was CEO up until 2020 and led IBM to Crazy growth

on the other side of the spectrum I think um yeah Genie level is like 0.0001 percent and then there's Elon level which is zero about 13-0 until you get the one percent which is pretty much alien level type of CEO ship although he's not um CEOs of most of his company but I think it's fair to say that Elon doesn't listen uh to too much people what you have to say to that and he arguably he's the most successful man in the world from a business perspective made tons of money um while not listening much to what others had to say well they are um as you have better better say there are a lot of people um but they are not like well right Elon Musk I think it is you know a Visionary

and I have to say that you're not Freedom everyone wants to speak with him so he might do the very selective on the things he wants to discuss uh or he wants to be um he wants to listen you know things that he doesn't want to listen but um when you get to that level of success you should be one way or the other advice and at some point you should be open to to listen the thing is that you have we may have selective listening um I would say it's not that he's not a good lease in it I would say that he's very selective to the people that he wants to listen um but at least you know that's only my opinion sometimes you deal with um CEOs and you know like really

high performance people that are in job transitions they're there's they're really much in demand just that it's not a good fit with their current companies how do you help them find the next big job at this uh public company let's say you're the middleman arguably between that company that's potentially looking for Co and this company that might Transit out that CEO how do you deal with that

well first of all I need to understand why he or she would be open to move right well the reasons what uh exercise team or her you know there's so many times that the executive that we reach out to um here she's happy where work is at but they have the openness to actually uh listen to the market to see what the market could offer is actually better than what they did that right and at the end of the day it's it's all about listening to what they they have or what they would like to have and uh comparable scenarios um I think you need to be you know it is said in the industry that sometimes uh executive search people tend to sell uh positions but anyway it's not about selling um it's about

clearly position um a job and telling them the truth you know it's not going to be easy just sell them if if the situation is uh you know we're made a turnaround situation where the company is losing tons of money um there's a high risk that even though you join them this would not work you know you need to tell them they need to be an expert on what they are supposed to be and they need to be the ones they need to assess if what they have in hands is actually something interesting for them and it might be impossible for a lot of people but it might be attractive to them and but you know it's it has to be there gets them right and their previous experience life experience should tell them if

they would be if this would be a good job for them or not I don't think that they are great jobs or bad jobs I think it's just a matter of a job that beats someone's profile and when you have that big even though the situation might be impossible and there might be a lot of risk for everyone else in the world this person might feel that the role you know it's interesting for them so at the end of the race it's you know understanding what they're looking for sometimes if they are in transition they are unemployed then they might be more less selective in uh in looking for other uh for other roles but again you know if you are in credit transition I always recommend not to get the first job but to

get the best project for your career because sometimes Executives at that level they just take one job and then the other and then the other and they are kind of in a rap race they're always continuing to to getting new jobs but not being really successful when I mean Successful there's another results but it's also about uh the personal satisfaction um if we are spending eight hours

a day or ten hours a day doing the work that we love to better work on something that we really love um and we are really passionate about if not you know life might be meaningless that's why folks come to you obviously they cannot break their contracts but you know first my brain was like okay maybe they should take more time I but second they don't want

to be laid off they don't want to have that on their CV so that's why they're not taking their time and they're hopping from job to job but instead they could just hire an agency like yours and that agency would shoot them a bunch of options to what could be potentially a very good fit for them so let's say that I had a passion for health on my side you know and sports well if you could place me as a CEO in that snacks big biotech company it's going to be worth 5 to 10 billion in a couple years hopefully if I reach my goals um I can make great money possibly at least a million per year uh plus I can do what I love I so like that's a two in one and

I can have a home run from that when I have a home run from that I guess the challenge is knowing when to retire or when to move from this company to the next is it like a five-year cycle is it like oh I reached this next big ambitious goals and I feel that I'm about to reach burnout if I reach for more is it kind of mental fatigue like when should I leave this company as a CEO to find my next big thing well I I don't think there's an extra time I think it's it's more about how motivated what the the things that are coming next right um when someone has been very very successful I think one question is um what can I do in my career that could be more successful

than what I did before right some people some people they don't they don't find that motivation and that's okay they could do some other things that may feel that they are satisfied for but what makes you happy it's uh it could be a lot of things and when you reach um a milestone that could you know you don't need to work one more day in your life at least for money then the question you need to do is what do I want to do with my life um what time uh should I invest in my professional career or in in uh executive position like the one that I I was executing and they are CEOs or they go from one company to the others and they are CEOs that they want from you know an

executive position to a more advisor or professional or just Consulting this type of role um while they expand in other activities that they were not able to do when they were well Sega before that company so it could definitely vary last question for you because uh we're almost done on time Javier so you mentioned on your LinkedIn you you have uh children's you enjoy watching movies uh

you love sports as a CEO how do you stay hlibrated how do you stay balanced so that you can scale and grow one percent on a daily basis so at the end of these setting the goals right um what goals do I want to set for this year um once we get into that then you decide how are you able to to make those goals okay because for the same goal there are people that they need to work 100 percent of the time they need to travel 75 or 80 percent of the time and the same you know someone else for the same objective could actually have a dividend work-life balance to me um spending time with my family traveling uh the more responsible to to be successful with my friends but there is the

possible to to miss based on my little one so I had a five or three and a four months old and I want to miss the childhood for me it's just very very important so um and those are my values and they might be completely different than someone else um so at the end of the days is Once you said your goals for the year is how you want to do it and I think you need to be aggressive with your goals but also if you want to to make sure that you don't commit what uh what is important for you um in your life if planning is important for you then what will be the strategy to prescribe so I think it's just a matter of um you know integrating personal um uh and

into your professional decisions right uh um if your personal motivation is making a practice in a sport you want to you know make sure that you have at least I don't know three four weeks during the year they want to practice a scoreboard that should be fine but it's at the end of this when you said that Milestone that goal that will make you happy if family

makes you happy then spend time with family if the score makes you happy and it's spontaneously then you know whatever your pleasure are make sure they integrated in your in the professional book Javier thank you for the time you spent with us today where can people find out more about you um so I also have my YouTube channel and I have my hinting um profile so anyone

that uh wants to understand what their professional goals are or they want to look for a professional in the in a market you know you can reach out to me through my LinkedIn profile or on YouTube or whatever you know you feel it's more convenient you have my website respect for bailey.com so there's a there's also