You are listening to Severin Sonson, executive coach and curator of the Artie Coach podcast where we explore excellence on the art and science of executive coaching.

I am speaking today with guest coach Jay Curry, PCC, CPCC.

Jay is an executive coach, a professional certified coach, a former Vista chair and master chair, with some 14 years in coaching.

He is also the founder of Texas Business Live and co-founder of Texas Business Radio and a former partner at Deloitte and PWC.

Like myself, he came into the coaching profession through management consulting and we will explore how this has impacted his career and what he has had to unlearn to be a coach and a successful coach later on in his coaching time.

As we begin, I want to share that Jay is passionate about the art and science of coaching and he has contributed many years of his life to the profession.

On disclosure, I first learned that Jay when he invited me to be a guest on his radio show back in 2017.

Early this year, we reconnected on chair voice community for current and former Vista's chairs to continue their caring, sharing and support of the art and craft of coaching.

I esteemed Jay highly and I thought speaking with him today would be a great addition to the Articote podcast that seeks to explore excellence in the art and science of executive coaching today.

In each podcast, I seek to pull to the front a conversation that seemed to be engaging and provide high value for the conversation.

And I'd ask a lot of questions but it wasn't until the very last question that we got into what I thought was the most important lesson of all that Jay shared in this coaching session and we drop in here with the question.

What's the question I'm not asked you that would tell us more about you?

I get back to what I was calling a character builder that I respect and that's overcoming adversity and there's an interesting story.

I went to a small school. I was 68, my graduating class in high school went to college and I never learned how to write.

I hated it and I struggled with it. I got hired in by Arthur Young very successful as a consultant.

My clients love me. I go into fires and put them out. Everything was great. And then I'd write a report.

And after three years or four years, you're supposed to get promoted from consultant to manager. I was expected to be promoted and they called me into the partner's office or three of them.

And they said, Jay, you're not going to get promoted. And in fact, we don't think you're ever going to get promoted.

Well, it blew me away. And I asked why. And they said, well, because you're reporting and you're writing. And they said, what's wrong with it?

What do you ever look at it? Of course, I look at it. I write it, right? What's terrible? We have to rewrite everything you do. And as a manager, that becomes one of your most important things that you've got to do.

You're good at managing people. You've already proven that, but you can't write. It's terrible.

So we're going to help you become a CIO of one of our companies. And I went home that weekend and sat down with Nancy. And I love this job of helping business leaders in the consultant.

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