Serve to Lead. Coach to Serve.

Dr. Greg Giuliano is a leadership coach, author, and founder of Ultra Leadership, an organization dedicated to helping leaders engage, empower, and activate people to perform at their best. With decades of experience in leadership development, Greg teaches that true leadership is service creating the conditions for individuals and teams to willingly and repeatedly contribute at a high level. His work focuses on coaching as a core leadership discipline, emotional intelligence, and building cultures of ownership, trust, and accountability. Greg works with leaders in business, nonprofit, and public-sector organizations to strengthen leadership effectiveness and develop high-performing teams. Learn more about his work at www.ultraleadership.com.

Overview of This Episode:

In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, host Hugh Ballou interviews leadership coach and author Greg Guliano about the principles of service-based leadership and enabling positive transformation in organizations.

Greg explains that leadership is not about authority or control but about creating the conditions for people to succeed. He emphasizes that teams do not work for leaders—they work with them. The leader’s responsibility is to care for people, unlock their talent, and help them grow from good to better over time.

The conversation highlights the idea that organizations are transformed when teams are transformed, and teams are transformed when individuals grow in confidence, competence, and self-awareness. Greg stresses that leaders must shift from directing people to coaching them, helping individuals reach their potential rather than simply telling them what to do.

Hugh and Greg also discuss the difference between being authoritative and authoritarian. Effective leaders provide clarity, direction, and standards while still empowering people to contribute their insights, creativity, and initiative.

A key theme of the episode is that leadership is ultimately about service. By focusing on the growth, engagement, and success of others, leaders create cultures where people willingly and repeatedly contribute at a high level. This approach leads to stronger teams, healthier organizations, and more sustainable results.

This episode offers practical insights for nonprofit leaders, board members, and mission-driven professionals who want to build stronger teams, increase engagement, and lead with clarity, purpose, and service.

 

The Interview Transcript

Serve to Lead. Coach to Serve.

In this episode of The Nonprofit Exchange, Hugh Ballou interviews leadership coach and author Greg Guliano. The conversation explores the meaning of leadership as service, enabling positive transformation, and creating the conditions for people and teams to perform at their best.

Transcript

Hugh Ballou: Welcome to the Nonprofit Exchange, where mission-driven leaders learn the tools and strategies to grow stronger organizations, build sustainable revenue, and lead with clarity and confidence. I’m your host, Hugh Ballew. In each episode, we bring you conversations with experienced leaders, consultants, innovators, who share practical ideas that you can put to work As soon as you want to. If you lead a nonprofit, serve on a board, or support a mission-driven organization, this show is designed to help you thrive, not just survive. Let’s dive into today’s episode. My guest is Dr. Greg Giuliano. He’s a Giuliano. I love saying that name. Got a lot of fowls in it. He’s a leadership coach, author, and founder of Ultra Leadership. He works with organizations and leaders to help them engage, empower, and activate people to perform at their best. Greg teaches that true leadership is service, creating the conditions for individuals and teams willingly and repeatedly contribute at their highest level. His approach emphasizes coaching, emotional intelligence, and building cultures where people work with leaders. Not for them. So, the theme today is leadership engages and empowers and activates people. So, Greg, welcome to the show, and let’s talk about the meaning of serving to lead. How do you define leadership as service?

Greg Guliano: It’s great to be with you, Hugh. You said, I mean, you stole what, you know, my line, which is, I love, that, you know… That their team doesn’t work for you, they work with you. That you have a particular role, and it’s to take care of those people, and enable them to be as wildly successful as they possibly can be. Because at the end of the day, a leader’s responsibility, whether it’s for-profit or non-profit, not-for-profit, the leader’s responsibility is to enable those people and those teams to… shape their work and achieve their best. And that means that you are enabling positive transformation. Transformation for the organization. And that happens when you transform the team. You have a group of people, and you help them become a really high-performing team. And you help each individual transform themselves, to move from good to better. Right? Over and over again, you know, as they reach the edge of confidence or competence. So, if our job as leaders is to enable positive transformation, then the best way to do that is… isn’t to tell people what to do. It’s to unlock the talent that they bring to your organization, right? You hired them for a reason. And so… so let them be who you saw they could be.

Hugh Ballou: And they might need some help getting there. So, Greg, it occurs to me that we’re going to transform our organizations and transform our teams, but the transformation starts with the leader, so how do we look at… there’s a strong belief in being an authoritative leader. Now, how do we switch to the mode you’re teaching?

Greg Guliano: Well, you can be authoritative without being authoritarian. Right? So, authoritative just means I know I have a vision for what we’re trying to achieve. I can say to the team, this is our mission in service of that vision, so you can be authoritative about that. But then it’s… I’ve got all these people here with me wanting to go with me, especially in a non-profit space where people are attracted to be a part of your organization because they believe in the mission. So then to… if they… so they’re willingly showing up and wanting to be a part of the mission of your organization, and to participate in helping your organization be successful, and then to turn around and say, yeah, I only want your hands, I don’t want your head, I don’t want your heart, I just want you to do what you’re told. that causes people to disengage. You know, that they become a little, you know, a little more disillusioned, and they disengage a little bit. And so my job is to, as a leader, is to help people engage with the work, which in a nonprofit space, they already are. They wouldn’t have applied and wanted to join their company if they didn’t believe in your mission, and then empower them To make decisions that are in the best interest of the organization and the communities that you serve. That’s my job as a leader.

Hugh Ballou: Love it, love it. We have the same mindset on that. So, as a musical conductor, if I’m not getting what I expect, I need to look in the mirror, because what I get is what they see. So, you’re sort of talking on that same paradigm. So, if in that… in that… that track, if a leader changes their mindset, changes their approach. What kind of results will manifest in the team?

Greg Guliano: Oh, I mean, so we… I was just working with a, A leader in a large organization who Took this philosophy to heart and began showing up differently. And the… the… because she made the shift, right? She made the shift from… she was very successful, and she was successful, you know, because for a while, she really embraced command and control and telling folks what to do. And she realized she had hit a wall with that, right? The team was as good as it was ever going to get with that approach, and so she made the shift to. My job is to serve these people and help them be successful. And the result for her was that Engagement went up. people began owning things, so if they saw something wrong, they didn’t just say, hey, this is wrong. They began formulating solutions and running those by her, and she would just say, yeah, that’s a great idea, go do that, right? So really empowering them to own the situation and find their solutions. And… and, you know, she and all… a lot of the leaders that we’ve worked with find that when you do that. Cycle times are shorter for making decisions, for getting products and services, out the door to your members, or your customers, or your community. So lots and lots of very practical, tangible results by making this shift as a leader in terms of how you go about Getting people to engage and own things and deliver things on behalf of the team and the organization.

Hugh Ballou: So our… the title that you chose for today’s episode is, Serve to Lead coach to serve. Yeah. So talk for a minute about that, and…

Greg Guliano: coaching in general as a leadership discipline? Yeah, so Serve to Lead is the motto of the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, and some friends of mine went there, and I learned about it a long time ago. because of those friendships. And for me, there’s nothing soft about that. It services, you know, remind… aligning people around the mission, and what success looks like. building capabilities at the team, for the team, and for individuals, and making sure that all action is coordinated, right? That all the plates that this team has to spin are being spun, and they don’t… they don’t fall down. And so… I find that… If we underst… if you agree with me that leadership is about enabling positive transformation. That’s also the definition of coaching. Coaching is not about giving people the answers. It’s enabling the transformation, the positive transformation of the individual or the team that you’re trying to coach. That means that you’re not providing the answer, you’re drawing the answer out of them. And you’re helping them to, see their situation. And then explore their options for resolving their situation, whether it’s a challenge or it’s an opportunity that could be seized. And then choosing the best option for moving forward, and then committing to taking action, right? The thing that I love about coaching as a way of serving people, it’s unlocking their, you know, their talent, and unlocking their creativity. And getting them to a place where they see what the best next step is, and they commit to taking it. And so, if you’re a leader, and you’re using a coach approach, and sometimes leaders that we work with, you know, we’ve developed a program called Be a Great Coach, and it’s based on all the stuff in my last book on coaching, is that Coaching moves from idea to action, and it includes a promise of accountability. That there’s nothing soft or woo-woo about coaching, that it’s about… that… and it’s… it doesn’t take a long time. You can coach somebody in 5 minutes. But what it does is it gets to the person you’re coaching to a place of accountability. here’s my situation, and here’s what I’m going to do about it, and here’s when I’m going to do it by. So that you have confidence as a leader that the person is… has identified a next step, you know when they’re going to take it. And… and you can have trust now between the leader and the team member, because you’ve had that coaching conversation.

Hugh Ballou: In my background in coaching, I studied with some of the top conductors in the world, and their work empowered everybody under their baton to function higher, so that was a good pattern for me to start. I do find that many, many leaders I work with don’t really understand coaching. There’s managing, there’s a mentorship, there’s coaching, they’re very different. So, why don’t you elaborate on what is coaching and why is it powerful?

Greg Guliano: Yeah, so, I mean, and all of them are… well, managing’s probably the least powerful, right? Managers, you know. run… keep things going the way that they’re going, right? And so it’s like, hey, do what you… let’s do what we did yesterday, and today let’s do it a little bit more efficiently. Leadership is… is… is… inviting people to… let’s create something new. Let’s evolve something. And so… coaching is, I think, better suited for that, so there’s managing, there’s… and then… so coaching is really the person owns their situation. So, I’ve ne- I am not… I’ve, I, I’ve… a CFO, right? So I have people who help me with finances because I’ve just never been good at it. I don’t like it, and I want to do the bare minimum of it as the leader of my organization, and I have a fantastic, you know. CFO, I have a great bookkeeper and controller, and they just… and I empower them, what do we have to do? I can coach a CFO, I can coach a controller, I can coach software engineers, I can coach anybody in any any field or industry, because I know about coaching. So, and the coaching is about, how do I get you… help you find your answer? So that… so there’s a… that’s a distinction I make. And mentoring… I couldn’t mentor a CFO, because I’ve never been a CFO. So mentoring is where I’m a couple of steps ahead of you on this… on a journey, and we’re on the same journey. And I’m just a couple of steps ahead of you. So mentors are reaching back. And helping people who are following in their footsteps. And so there’s an element of teaching and sharing of experience that doesn’t come into coaching. So that’s how I make the differentiation between mentoring and coaching. Mentors, you have to be in the same field. Coaching, you don’t have to be. You just have to be able to Engage with that person in a conversation where you help Bring their best creative thinking to bear, and help them find their own answers.

Hugh Ballou: I like that answer. So there’s a… as a musician, I recognize, and I would even if I wasn’t, that one of the most underutilized leadership skills is listening. Which is probably 90% of coaching. So connect the dots between what you just said and how coaching takes us to engaging, empowering, and activating people. So connect the dots with that.

Greg Guliano: Yeah, so listening is a great demonstration of empathy and curiosity. that, you know, the actor Alan Alda, one of my heroes, said that, If I’m not willing to be changed by the other person, I’m not really listening to them.

Hugh Ballou: Hmm.

Greg Guliano: And so even when I’m coaching somebody, I have to be willing to be changed, and that means that I… I mean, I can show up with some set questions, right? We have all of our leaders’ cheat sheets, and we have a coaching framework, the great coaching framework of 8 questions that we know work. They get… move somebody from, here’s the… what’s going on, what’s the idea, to what are you going to do? But in the… in those conversations, if you’re really listening, you’re willing to be changed and… and… And by listening really deeply and fully to the other person. you’re informed by listening to them, and the next question will come out of you being really present to that person. That I’m not just asking set questions, you know, all the time, that if I’m really listening to you, you might say something, and I… It touches me, and it shifts me, and oh, now here’s my next question, right? So it depends on what I’m hearing, if I’m really present to the person. And I think that’s how we… model empathy and curiosity with people, and live that. And by really listening to them, help them to… Get to where they want to get to.

Hugh Ballou: Yeah, I want to tell our audience, you’ve got a lot of good information, just… everything he’s telling you is really great. This last little bit is a paradigm shifter. And if you didn’t get it down, don’t worry. At the Nonprofit Exchange. dot org, you’re going to find a transcript, so you can go back and get those power… power bytes, those sound bites, those power statements that, so the listening piece is so essential, Greg. So, When we’re coaching people, They come in with… They’ve learned things wrong, they’ve learned leadership wrong, they’ve come in with some barriers. So how do you address when you can see that somebody’s got a barrier to their own success?

Greg Guliano: Yeah, and, you know, I had one of my coaches earlier in my career said, Greg, why are you self-sabotaging? Right? How are you… right? You’re getting… you have a behavior that might have worked at one point, and this was when I was a therapist, too, like, you know, that behavior worked for you at some point, that’s why you did it for… that’s why you still do… but it doesn’t work anymore. And… and… We have to be able to, and this is part of serving people, is we have to be able to give them feedback when we see that there’s a behavior or a mindset that they might be getting in their own way. And, you know, because we all need someone who, cares about us enough to tell us when we have spinach in our teeth.

Hugh Ballou: That’s right.

Greg Guliano: Right? I can go all day long, and then I’ll look in the mirror, I get back… I’m out of… I’m out of meeting, I’m out of town, I get back to my hotel room, and I smile in the mirror, and there’s a big ol’ chunk of spinach in there. Nobody cared about me enough to tell me that I had spinach in my teeth. My wife will tell me, my kids will tell me, a couple of other people will tell me. So, we all need people who care about us enough and want to serve us. To help… to tell us, hey, you got, Greg, you got spinach in your teeth. And I… so, we have to give feedback. I think feedback happens best in the context of a coaching conversation. What are you trying to achieve? Oh, you’re trying to achieve that. wow, can I give you some feedback, you know, of how that’s going? Right? Here’s something that you’re doing that you’re really great at, keep doing this, but here’s something that you’re doing that… I don’t know if you know it, but it might… you might not be… it might be having a different impact. It’s landing with people in a way that you don’t want. And those kinds of… those are what I call illuminations, that we have to illuminate for people sometimes, you know. that… here’s how you have spinach in your teeth right now, and what do you want to do about that? Maybe they’ll say, that’s just the way I am. It’s like, okay, well, then that’s just the way you are, and you’re going to keep getting what you’re getting, because… you’re not willing to make that shift. But most people would go, wow, I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling me. And then we can explore ways of, okay, so what are some… what are some… new habits that you could layer on top of that to help you break out of that pattern. So in the coaching conversation, you can have those kinds of feedback moments where you can say, hey. This is kind of a spinach-in-your-teeth kind of thing.

Hugh Ballou: So you… I didn’t know you were a psychologist, you’re a therapist, so the coaching is not therapy.

Greg Guliano: No.

Hugh Ballou: And there are coaches that cross the line. I work on projects with.

Greg Guliano: Yes.

Hugh Ballou: with psychologists, and I’m very careful, so any word of caution for people, you know, where’s the line, and where you don’t… don’t go as a coach?

Greg Guliano: Yeah, so I remember I was at a coaching conference many years ago, it’s like. 2001 or 2002, a long, long time ago, long, long time ago. And I said to a group of coaches, I said, most coaching is, bad therapy done by people without a license. And we need to… we need to draw a line. And so, I’m very clear that, you know, when it starts to get into, well, you know, things about, you know, family life, personal life. I bring it back to why people… what I’m trying to coach someone on. And, you know, so as a coach, I can say, this feels like therapy, and I think that What I can do as your coach is help you find a therapist. So that you can talk with your therapist about some of these things, and then you and I can stay focused on what you came to coaching for. When you’re a team leader, and something comes up, you have to be even more careful about boundaries, that… that there are things that… I just want to help you to be really successful in your career, in this role, and to help you be really successful in this role, and help you accelerate your path to whatever the next role is that you want. And so, if something comes up that feels like, oh, I don’t know if I should know that, that’s when you say, you know, have, you know. That sounds… you just call it out. That sounds like something that you might want to talk with a therapist or a counselor about. Have you ever done that? Would you consider doing that? How can I help with that? But you and I are here to talk about this, and that feels like it’s… I don’t have this skill… To be… to be in this kind of a conversation with you, and just call it out.

Hugh Ballou: And that’s just being direct and setting some good boundaries around our roles. So, underneath leadership, underneath communications, underneath a lot of things is relationship. So, what… A good, important component of everything you’re talking about is how we build trust with the people that we’re working with. So, speak a minute about how does trust influence this engagement and people’s performance.

Greg Guliano: I mean, trust is table stakes. I work with leaders and teams to… create, agreements between… amongst… within a team of, you know, how are they going to treat one another and communicate with one another, and they’re always, you know, they always want to say, well, we’re going to trust one another. And I don’t let them put that down, because that’s table stakes. If you… if you’re not… showing up to create a trusting environment, and showing up in a way that people see you as trustworthy, you don’t have any business leading other people. And so I think trust is really foundational, and it really boils down to, what do I… what how do I need to show up for people to trust me? I need… I need people to trust that I’m open to working with them, that I’m open to engaging and collaborating with them. I need people to trust that I’m sincere, that I will tell them my truth, right? And truth is with a small t, not a capital T, right? I don’t have THE truth, I have my truth. And I want people to trust that I’m reliable, that if they ask me to do something by Tuesday, I will have it done by Tuesday, at the latest. I need people to trust that I’m competent, that whatever I promise to give them on Tuesday, it’s always gonna be great, my best work. And then people need to trust that I have their backs, that I’m not just interested in my success, I’m interested in everyone’s success. And so, those are elements, for me, of, you know, I need to be thinking about that all the time as a leader. You know, can people trust that I’m open, that I’m sincere, that I’m reliable, that I’m competent, and that I’m concerned? for them.

Hugh Ballou: That is powerful. So, you got a book behind you. I want to go to your website and talk about that, but then I want to come back and you tell us, you know, which of these themes… themes are in your book. So, how do people find your website? What is your link?

Greg Guliano: Our… it is Ultraladership.com. There it is. Yeah. And there’s all kinds of stuff on… I mean, so it tells you about our services on there, it… it… and all of our… my books are all on there, and links are all on there, some white papers that we’ve got. And then, resources, we have a bunch of free stuff on the website that you can get. You know, so some of the tools that we use with… in… in coaching and… and with teams, there’s… there’s all kinds of free stuff on there. I’ve come to a point in… in life, that, you know, I have a take on leadership, and we have a take on leadership that we want people to break out of business as usual. And that’s what Ultra is about, right? Ultra, the descriptor, is beyond usual and ordinary, and I want leaders to move beyond usual and ordinary leadership in order to create, you know, awesome stuff with their folks. And so I realize that, you know, this is my take on it, but… it’s all shareware for me. You know, it’s like, so we started to go as how… we want to give away as much as possible. I mean, there’s no state secrets, it’s all in my… everything that we do with leaders and teams is in the books that I’ve written. The next normal, we put it… it’s like a cookbook. And Coaching for a Change, the most recent book. You can read it, and… here’s how you coach. I mean, it’s… it’s… you know, I… it’s not rocket science, it’s coaching, right? I can do it, you can do it.

Hugh Ballou: You got the book handy?

Greg Guliano: Yeah, yeah, so this is the book, Coaching for a Change, and I put change… I put A in parentheses because I want… it’s two things. Coaching drives change. But also, I want leaders to try coaching for a change, instead of telling people what to do.

Hugh Ballou: It’s a simple shift in language, but it’s powerful. Greg, you’ve enlightened me, inspired me, and for our audience, so what’s an important message for those people in the trenches leading a local charity, a non-profit. We do have some barriers of low funding and people not understanding, so what are some words of encouragement for those leaders in the trenches that can make a more powerful difference as they listen to this?

Greg Guliano: Yeah, so thank you for that. You know. the poet David White, one of my favorite poems is a poem of his called Sweet Darkness, and I won’t do the whole thing, but the last line of it is, anything or anyone that doesn’t bring you alive is too small for you. And I see leaders having a responsibility, to bring people alive. To bring their organization alive, to bring the team alive, to bring each person alive, and creating the conditions for them to be their best and do their best. And so, if you only remembered one thing, just remember that in every interaction with folks. And we all spend a lot of our day on autopilot. And keep ourselves awake and conscious, and remember, when I’m with this person, and I’ve just, you know, come from, you know, I’m in back-to-back meetings, perhaps, to take a moment and take a breath, and remember that I have… there’s only now, and I have this now with this other person. And my job as the leader is to be… Someone, and create the conditions for someone to be as alive as they can be.

Hugh Ballou: It doesn’t get any better than that, so if you’ve listened to this point, you got the gem right there. It’s all helpful. Greg, Juliana, you’ve brought us really good content. We’re gonna direct people to your website, and blessings to you and your work. Thank you for being our guest today on the Nonprofit Exchange.

Greg Guliano: Thank you, Hugh.