In this episode we explore how a coaching mindset becomes a practical leadership advantage in volatile times. We hear Paulo Pisano reflect on the meta-competencies — curiosity, presence, active listening and openness — that he cultivates across teams at Booking and beyond. Paulo explains how coaching shifts our focus from fixing tasks to shifting the way we observe situations (first- and second-order learning), and why contracting, boundary-setting and offering help clearly are essential when coaching inside an organization. We share his tips for leaders: prioritize mindset before tools, keep practicing self-awareness, and design team spaces that turn individual expertise into coordinated impact.

Paulo Pisano brings decades of global HR and OD experience across more than 30 countries. An INSEAD MBA and UFRJ alumnus, Paulo blends strategy, M&A integration and executive coaching with somatic and ontological approaches. He has coached senior executives, designed leadership development, and led large transformation efforts in financial services, tech and energy. Currently Chief HR Officer at Galp, Paulo is also a NED/Trustee at Stir Education and an accredited ICF coach. His work models how coaching practices scale culture and improve organizational learning.

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Welcome to lead with a coaching mindset, a podcast where every conversation sparks new ideas on how the best leaders unlock their followers potential. I am Dr Damian Goldvarg, and I am here to inspire you to become the best leader you can be, be sure you subscribe and rate us. Let's jump right in. Today.

We have with us. Paulo Pisano, Paolo. I met him

in 2002 we went together through coaching training with new field network, and he was sharing with me he had lived in many different parts of the world since then. Now, currently, he's in Amsterdam, and he serves as the Chief Human Resources Officer for booking holding Inc, and also as a senior by President and Chief people officer@booking.com so welcome Paulo to our podcast. Great to have you with us, and I would love to hear your experiences as a leader, applying all of the coaching kids we learned together many years ago. So where we like to start? What do you tell us briefly about you and about your work, so we get to know you a little bit,

sure, and thanks, Damian, and it's great to reconnect after so many years. I know we've exchanged emails and contacts our recommendations over the years, but it's nice to see you again. We're just joking how we look exactly the same as we did back in 2002 I don't know if it says something good about today or bad about back then, but we'll leave it to the audience to figure it out. I've been with with booking for the last five years, and I joined through Booking com, and then took on the booking holdings hat as well. Maybe I tell you a little bit about the very high level the journey just to contextualize it, but my background first is in change management or development in HR for viewers. I met as I was training as a coach, and I kept training over the years. I think it's a never ending journey, and although I like to work on the inside of organizations, so I haven't done a full time coaching practice. I've held a coaching practice on the side, and also incorporated and embedded a lot of the coaching disciplines in the way that I do work, but also in the way that we help managers, leaders, HR, professionals, with their work in our team. So that's something we can we can talk about booking was a phenomenal experience, amongst many things, because I joined booking at the very beginning of the pandemic. So it was a curious timing to join, you know, a company of tech and travel at a moment where no one's traveling anymore. So it was a really kind of difficult and challenging experience, but incredibly proud of what we've achieved as an organization, as a series of teams, by not just kind of living or surviving through the crisis, but thriving after it and doing pretty well in an environment that is very dynamic, very volatile. But there's a lot of great things happening, I think, in our space, and we've got a lot of interesting work happening across the organization. We can dive into any of the bits that we do there as well.

Yeah, I would love to hear that, because right now, many companies and organizations are struggling with uncertainty, with gut, with concerns within so I'm curious to see leaders like you, who are managing other people who are under a lot of pressure and stress, and there are many challenges. How do you use your coaching skills in these cases? How were you able to apply some of what we learned together?

First, I would say very high level, the meta competencies that we learn in coaching. So I'm not even talking about the coaching skills as you're coaching people directly, but I call them meta competencies, the things around curiosity, around presence, openness, active listening, unconditional, positive regard, some talk about that, to go back to our days and at new field, the notion of first and second order learning, we can unpack that as well, but all those meta skills are, and have been, for me, incredibly helpful, first and foremost as a leader, I would say, arguably even more than as a leader, as a colleague as well, right? You could argue, if more people around us in the corporate environment or the organizational environment had more of those meta skills on kind of on the surface, you would make working relationships a lot easier, right? And that is part of the work we're trying to do at booking is to develop those mindsets and those competencies so that people across the organization are 5% more coaching like,

well, that sounds great. And I was wondering, like in the ICF International Coach Federation competency framework, this is the one that I have used to. Of train leaders and coaches, and my book, live with a coaching mindset, present all of these competencies and how to apply them. And it's interesting what you're saying, because it not only just about coaching, but it's about a way of being, how we're showing up as leaders. So not only Okay, we are going to just have a coaching conversation, but also how I am going to be curious interested. We're talking about ethical leadership, how we are going to have integrity, which will build credibility and trust, and you're talking about active listening and presence. We also include creating awareness and developing a growth and supporting colleagues to learn and grow. Now, in terms of your experience, for you as a leader, coaching others is anything that come up for you, that can be some tips or some ideas or some suggestions, things that can help other leaders to navigate these challenging times. What's come up for you when IQ is question, yeah.

I mean, there's a few things, right? We could expand on. I'll pick on a couple Danielle, and let me know where you want to go deeper, maybe, or expand. I think one angle would be if I pick up from my personal experience in my career evolution, I think there's something that's pretty applicable to anyone, or pretty universal, which is, the further up you go in your career as a leader, the more seasoned and experts your team members are, right? So there's a notion that your job as a leader switches over time the further up you go, because the way you add value changes, right? So if earlier in my career as a leader or a manager, I was managing work and coordinating the work of people and being almost like a mentor to many of them on the things that they were doing, fast forward to where I've been in the last few years, and I have a number of members of my team who are deeper experts in what they do than I am. So the way I'm going to add value to them is not by being a mentor in their area of expertise, but is by being someone who can be a better coordinator of the work that we do. How do we become a team where the result that we can produce is much stronger, much greater than the individual parts of that team, and part of that of having a highly effective team is having team members who are more aware of themselves and aware of each other that is very much grounded on the work we do and we learn to do as coaches, right? It's how to how to help people become better observers of themselves, and how to create a space where people can become more aware of the impact they have on others and be able to process the impact that other people have on them. And that has been extremely helpful for me as a leader in different spaces, because it has, I'd say, accelerated my ability to land in a new environment or a new team to land with that, you know, curiosity mindset, asking lots of questions, understanding where are the breakdowns and the spaces where that team can become much more than they are, you know, kind of in the at the moment that I join in and then move us in the direction of becoming more effective and more efficient team. So I'd start, I'd say that was an example for me. And if you turn it into into, I guess, a tip, in a way, or piece of advice, is really that notion that it goes back to the beginning of our conversation. It's first, more about the way you show up, how you are, know the being in those relationships, then what you do. It's not about developing a list of powerful questions I'm going to throw to my team, as much as it is first focusing on how I'm showing up as a curious person, a supportive person, someone who's thinking about not the work they're doing today, but how they can grow and develop in their career. I think when you show authentically in those spaces, it creates a shift. It makes a difference. People are more open, more accepting, more interested, engaging with you as a leader.

So I'm hearing a couple of things that I want to reinforce. One is about self awareness, how you as a leader, develop your own self awareness and support your team members to be more aware about how you're showing up, and in that awareness, it's interesting. There are some research that show that great leaders not showing necessarily a specific competencies, but they are aware of what are their strengths, and they leverage them, and they work on whatever they need. To work on. So sometimes that self awareness and self knowledge is even more important than just following some specific competencies. And then the second one is about bringing a more systemic perspective. I have seen that problem many times in organization where leaders are just paying attention to their team and they don't pay attention to the big picture in other teams and collaborating with other teams or collaborating with other leaders. So as you're saying, you go higher in the organization, you need to support leaders to be more aware about how they can collaborate more effectively for the betterment of the whole organization. So sometimes and some leaders who are at the lower level pay more attention to their team, and they missed the importance of coordination with other teams and having more systemic perspective in terms of how to work together?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, you make me think about something Daun, which is on the self awareness bit that something I think sometimes people might miss, is to think of self awareness as a place you reach rather than as a practice you nurture. Right? Because I may be self aware on the basis of the feedback that I've gotten in the past and the experiences I had as I go into a new environment. If all I take with me is that knowledge, that static knowledge of what I've learned, I may miss the opportunity to learn a bunch of new things, because that new environment is going to challenge me in new ways, that new team is going to challenge me or engage with me in new ways. If I don't keep practicing that self awareness, that self curiosity, I may miss a really important trick here.

It's an ongoing challenge. It's not something that you are self aware, and that's it. It's like because we are changing all the time. We are here, not only human beings, but human becoming. We are shifting, changing all the time. And if we don't continue asking ourselves who we're being and how we're showing up, we may be missing something. May have some blind spots, no matter how much experience we have. I am curious, probably in your experience coaching people in your organization, what some of the challenges that you found when you were trying to coach people, and sometimes they may have not been open to it or willing to collaborate. Or what have you find? Any challenges? Have you done about it? Yeah.

So I find that as a as an executive or a leader who is inside the organization, the first, the first challenge sometimes around coaching is that you're not necessarily independent, right? So it's not the same thing. I cannot be for my colleagues in the organization, the same thing that I've been as a coach to clients that were part of other organizations and other groups. So I think the first thing that I think is a challenge is to try to understand and then contract with the people you're working with internally. How far can you go, and what can you be for them and not and what, what it cannot be for them. Sometimes you end up engaging in kind of coaching relationships as a leader, without ever really taking a step back to talk about it. You go organically into it. And I find that, at least in my experience, the times that I didn't do that in the past were not as effective as the times when I took some time to do a little bit of contracting and agreement on what are we going to work on this? I'd say that for the instances where you are going deeper on coaching someone within the organization, I would separate that from the skills you may apply from coaching as a manager to just mentor and guide your people, which I wouldn't call necessarily coaching, because then I'm mixing it with advice. I'm bringing my perspective and my agenda openly to that conversation. So then I'm using coaching mindsets. I'm using coaching tools, but I'm not effectively doing what I'd call more like peer coaching, right? I had a recent to use, a very recent example as well, with the team I was working with and the in this team we were, and I'm part of that team too, we were a bit stuck on one of the many challenges that we have, and I offered to facilitate a session with the team to help us, you know, kind of get a bit unstuck and move and move ahead, but in doing that, I recognize also that I was as part of the team, probably part of the problem too. We had a, again, a contracting moment where we've articulated that in the beginning of the meeting and said, Look, I'm going to help facilitate the session, but I realize I am part of the system, and I'm possibly part of the. Problem. So let's just put that on the table. Let's have that present, not as a taboo or as something that we can't it's like, you know, unspeakable thing, and then also recognize that what I can do as a team coach in that moment will be somewhat limited, right? Versus if we had someone completely independent and external, and we ran the session, and it was a lot of fun. And I love doing team coaching and the group dynamics, but it really helped to put it on the table so that we knew that limitation, let's say, was there. So I think it boils down Damian to contracting, I think is an important thing. So you're clear on what is it that you're doing when you are in the space of coaching, anywhere in that range between your advising, your guiding, your mentoring, your coaching, what are you doing? Sometimes it helps to build a little bit of clarity, because then also it has helped me in the past, know at which point that person should work with someone external, with someone who's not me, and you draw that boundary.

I agree with you that clarifying expectations is key to build the relationships, and it seems that you are modeling for your team, openness, humility, to recognize that you've been maybe part of whatever is happening, and also being clear that eventually it's important to have somebody else from outside when necessary, to get some help when it's appropriate. But I believe that you by being transparent, you're modeling that to your team, and that builds trust, credibility and willingness for people to work probably with you, because they recognize that you are willing to go and look at yourself, and you may, in some way, invite them to do the same. So I think that is a great example of being self aware, being transparent. I tell my client, people don't have a crystal ball, so they don't read your mind. So you need to tell them, what are your expectations? What are your goals? What you're trying to accomplish, in this case, is exactly what you have done.

Yeah, the other bit Damian that I think just related to your question, in case it's helpful also, because you asked about the challenges, right with someone, is one thing that I think you get, usually pretty good training on as a coach, is to identify what the breakdown is, or to help someone you're talking to to kind of bottom line and what is, what is the issue that they're really concerned or talking about? I found that more often than not, the times that I managed to help the person I was working with clarify and articulate what's the real issue that led more often than not to a productive coaching like conversation than when we didn't, because sometimes the resistance from people comes from the lack of clarity on what is it that is really bothering them and and therefore, how could you help them on that? So that will end. The second thing is the notion of being more competent in making offers as well. You know, sometimes, as a manager or a leader or even a colleague, you may see someone that has that's going through something where you might be able to help, but you're not as effective in putting the offer, putting the help out there for them. And I think that can make a difference as well in dealing with either resistance or being able to more effectively help people that are not asking for help.

Isn't it in the underlying issues, many times, there are other situations or belief that we are not aware so I like to tell people that many times, when you see challenges or resistance or whatever behavior that you're surprised by, pay attention, that maybe the top of the iceberg, if you start exploring what is underlying, what may be limiting beliefs or what may be in fears or emotions that are in their way. By clarifying that you may realize that the issues are something else in that way, you can be more effective in terms of exploring the issues that really are underlying the resistance or the behavior that may be challenging or different. But before we finish, I think will be interesting to talk for a couple of minutes about what you mentioned before, first and second loop learning. For people who are not familiar about that, I thought that that may be interesting for to talk for a couple of minutes about that, since you mentioned that before, and many people may not know, what is it? So how will you explain that to one of your colleagues?

Yeah, it's funny, right? It came up as I was reconnecting with you, because it's something that's very much in the foundations of Ontological Coaching. And I think it's this notion that, you know, I think actually it's in the basis of any coaching, right, when you are as an individual dealing with some kind of challenge. Change what you normally do. The instinctive thing to do is you look at the actions that you're performing to address that challenge. And if the results are not the ones you like, you change the action. And even that famous saying, right? The thing attributed to Einstein, maybe. Or if you know, the crazy thing is for you to keep doing the same thing, expecting different results, points to the importance of that notion of first order learning. There's nothing wrong with first order learning, it's just how you go back to your actions. The interesting thing is, many of us in coaching engage with clients when they have been trying to go through that cycle, and they still cannot get the results that they want. They're stuck, and they have considered all the actions they think are possible. And that's then when we come with our role, which is to help them take a step further back, which is why we call it second order, and stop looking just at the actions, and look at the individuals or the observers they are to better understand themselves and see how they are generating the possibility of the actions that they have been using. And what usually happens with that is you broaden their perspective of what actions are possible, and they start contemplating actions that they did not see as possible before, and now they might be new actions that can help them move beyond where they got stuck. And I found that to be an incredibly powerful model, very simple one, not just for individuals. It works for teams. It works for organizations as well, very much linked to strategy. Anyone in organizations that is dealing with strategic planning processes and things like that, it's the same mindset. You know, is it not just about doing what we do as a company, but how are we thinking as an organization? But how would we think more broadly on that? So that's how it summarized first and second order learning.

That's great. And you know, for people who are listening to us, the idea that when you are having conversations with your colleagues, instead of focusing on what to do differently, you go back and you look at how you are looking at the situation. You use the word observer, how you're looking at the reality. And there is a possibility to look from a different place and maybe new insights and your awareness as a result of that. So Paulo, we need to finish. I really appreciate your time. Has been great to reconnect with you. I appreciate your time. Anything else you want to say before you go

now look first amazing to reconnect with you. Damian, and I think what I pick up just thinking about our conversation is in the coaching space, the skills are super important. But I love that how you're talking about your book is a coaching mindset. Because I'd say before skills, you have mindsets. It's a way of thinking. It's a way of being at booking. This is probably one of the things we've done that has had the most impact with the most people is we've been working on our culture, and we started that work on the basis of mindsets. Mindsets of how to become better, learners, how to become more you know, protagonists in what we do, how to work more effectively as one team. Those were not necessarily skill sets. They were mindsets, and there was a lot of work we did on that before we even started talking about skills and behaviors. So same thing true for us, right, as leaders who are kind of applying coaching before, you know, kind of investing too much in just the skill sets, make sure you have a strong foundation on the mindsets for you and for your teams.

Thank you, Paul again. Was great seeing you, working with you today and looking forward to continue our conversation. And that's a wrap up for today's LEAD with a coaching mindset. I am Damian Goldwater, thrilled to have shared this time with you. Don't forget to subscribe and give us a rating. Stay excited for more episodes. Take care and keep living with a coaching mindset. You.