Leadership Espresso with Stefan Götz
In a world of constant change and complexity, true leadership isn’t about control— it’s about curiosity, clarity, and courage. Join Executive Coach Stefan Götz - www.stefan-goetz.com, as he helps accomplished leaders unlock their authentic leadership compass, inspire peak team performance, and achieve sustainable success—without sacrificing life beyond work. Whether you’re a seasoned executive or an emerging leader, this podcast will equip you with the mindset, strategies, and tools to lead with confidence, purpose, and impact.
Leadership Espresso with Stefan Götz
Competing Together: How Female Leadership Changes the Business Game ⎪ feat TEDx speaker Elizabeth McCourt
What happens when you combine curiosity with courage? Leadership coach and author Elizabeth McCourt brings this powerful dynamic to our conversation about the future of leadership. From her base in New York, Elizabeth shares her philosophy that has guided her through multiple careers and athletic pursuits: "If I can do it, you can do it too."
The magic in Elizabeth's approach lies in her relationship with discomfort. Rather than avoiding challenging situations, she embraces them as opportunities for growth and connection. "I love that energy of discomfort," she explains, describing how pushing boundaries has shaped her global perspective and leadership style. This refreshing take on personal development offers listeners a roadmap for their own growth journeys.
Our discussion evolves into exploring the false dichotomy between competition and collaboration. Elizabeth brilliantly reframes competitive relationships: "I want you to do great, because there's room for both of us." This perspective mirrors what top athletes understand—that worthy competitors don't diminish your success but inspire greater achievement. We examine how this collaborative mindset applies to business challenges too complex for siloed approaches, and Elizabeth offers practical insights about generosity with knowledge and strategic relationship-building.
The conversation culminates in recognizing that effective leadership isn't about gender but about balancing complementary energies. Elizabeth demonstrates this naturally through her ability to both connect deeply and push strategically. Her capacity to "see the whole room"—noticing multiple dynamics simultaneously—exemplifies the integrated leadership our complex world needs. Join us for this thought-provoking episode that will transform how you think about leadership, competition, and your own potential to make an impact.
Listen to the Leadership Espresso Podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/show/4OT3BYzDHMafETOMgFEor3
View the Leadership Espresso Podcast:
https://www.youtube.com/@Stefangoetz_Global_Leadership/videos
Connect with Stefan Götz on LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefangoetz/
Check out Stefan's Executive and Team Coaching
https://www.stefan-goetz.com/
Welcome to the Leadership Espresso. Another episode today with Elizabeth McCourt. She's an author, she's a novelist, a writer, a leadership coach, an athlete. Actually, she's an all-in-one. So thank you, elizabeth, for this show being present. Thank you, you live in New York.
Speaker 2:I do, yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I'm thrilled and very grateful that you take your time and that we can share your wisdom around female leadership. Now we jump right in there. Elizabeth, my first question is a really easy one.
Speaker 2:The question would be what do you bring to this world Easy or big, or it is a big question? I would say that I'm always wanting to push the envelope. I'm always a little bit scared, but I do believe that if I try and I can do it, then you can do it too. It's really as simple as that. That. I really enjoy that getting uncomfortable. I think that's why I lived in Germany, as we discussed, and why I work globally and do what I do, because it is not always comfortable, but I love that energy of discomfort and I try and use that to really connect and be the best that I can be. But it's, it's not easy, it's, it's can be scary. But if I always say, but, but if I can do it, like I'm not, I'm not that special. If I can do it, you can do it, and that's why I do a lot of things. I just have a lot of interest because I go. If you say I can't do it, that might be my biggest motivation to do something.
Speaker 1:That sounds pretty much like a sports person.
Speaker 2:Kind of.
Speaker 1:Kind of. It's all about motivation. You know what I sense. There is some strong curiosity behind there, and I can also relate to the discomfort and to the being scared, you know. So what would make it a little bit easier for a woman to handle that kind of situation, that discomfort? Is there anything, any qualities in women that makes it more easy for them? Or is it similar?
Speaker 2:You know, if we think about it in gender, I think one of my biggest strengths is that I do have that curiosity and I'm truly interested in connection with people, naturally, and maybe I think there can be aggressive personalities or not aggressive.
Speaker 2:I think I'm, I was, I was in an industry before I became a coach that was very aggressive and I always said I can't do it like that, I have to do it my way, which was very I was a recruiter and very, very personal. So I, I listen and I observe and and I, I I sense things like I'm, I'm intellectual, but I also I sense connection in myself and I think that is amount of being able to trust yourself that if something feels, if something feels bad, maybe it is bad, but if something feels possible, it probably is possible and to use that as energetic motivation. And I think it's that understanding of yourself. Maybe it's being curious about yourself. You started with curiosity, so it's curious about what am I, what am I sensing, what am I feeling, and and using that not as a negative but using that as motivation.
Speaker 1:Now coming from a more male perspective. You know we kind of we like challenges. You know I have the biggest, the small or the highest, the fastest or whatever. This is what we enjoy, you know, being the first and this has brought us very far on this planet. But yeah, I sense for the next stage in business, you know we need a lot more around cooperating rather than competing. You know, because the challenges are too big and we cannot allow to solve the global challenges on a local level, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So what could men learn? And I'm not saying it's better and worse, you know yeah. So what? What could men learn? Uh, and I'm not saying it's, it's a better and worse, you know women and men, but it's more about the feminine energy versus a male energy. So what could uh man learn from that energy around connecting, about caring, about cooperating, what, what? What is it? Is it something that you can learn, or is it just a gift? Or are you born with that? Or how how do, how can we embrace it together?
Speaker 2:I think you know it's interesting as I was just reading about this and I wish I had the quote with me that you would think that if you collaborate you lose, right, like I want to win the race and if I collaborate with you, then we both win.
Speaker 2:So that dilutes it business. And we have to think of it more in terms of like, contribution and innovation that can. Can I have an idea and can you? Can I work with you and have you be curious to a make my idea better or be in the best way, collaboratively, blow up my idea as problematic and then come forge ahead in a new idea? I think this is really I think you can't think of it as you know my idea best idea, because you know, if we think about it in the realm of COVID, then that would be a fail. But if you and I collaborate and you say, gosh, that didn't work, let's try this, that we actually, we actually both win together, and I think that's it's not the participation prize, if you will, but it is actually making it better together and I think that is. I mean, I'm actually very competitive, so, but I'm not, I rest my case.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm very competitive, but I'm also but I'm also and it's the reason why I do certain sports. I'm not competitive as in I want to beat you up and have you fail, I actually, and believe this in business. I want, I want to beat you up and have you fail, I actually, and believe this in business. I want, I want you to do great, because there's room for both of us. So if you do great, maybe you inspire me to be better. So I think it's sort of changing that mindset of competition that I I believe that in my old job too, that there was absolutely a high amount of competition and, like I said, I'm competitive but I thought of my competitors as inspiration, not as people who would quash me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. By the way, I interviewed 12 years ago. I interviewed some extreme climbers German, but very extreme climbers, you know. They hang off the cliffs with one arm, without safety and stuff. I talked to them and they're brothers and they're competing and they're collaborating at the same time and they gave me the exact same idea. It's not that I compete against my brother, it is that I pull the best version of myself that may inspire my brother to give his best of his version exactly so it's, it's, it's not.
Speaker 1:You know, it's not that I lose or something. It is that we are all different. We have different gifts with different talents. You know, we don't need two versions of Stefan or two versions of Elizabeth exactly we need the original.
Speaker 1:You know there's a copy is second best. So I really like this idea and I see it shared globally in top athletes. If you talk to tennis players, right, or whoever at the top level, they don't see is a fight against someone. It's, it's a fight with someone. Yes, to become a better version. So I like this idea shared and it's. I think it can be easily transferred into business.
Speaker 2:You know absolutely, and I would say you learn it really creative. You flex that other side of your brain like how do you learn from that that you can apply to to business?
Speaker 1:and you do learn a lot, you do learn what else would make it easier for us men to collaborate, from your perspective, from female leadership.
Speaker 2:Easier to collaborate. I think number one you have to be open to it. That's a good thought. Number one you've got to be open to it first of all. And also, there's like a threat people often see is is it a threat just because there might be? Um, like we were talking about having more women on boards and you know there should there just be the quota system, and that doesn't feel, that doesn't feel great.
Speaker 2:If you're a quota, you want to be appreciated for, for what you bring and, and I think that you know, sharing expertise and sharing experience and sharing knowledge is, once again, it doesn't giving it. Giving someone, being generous with your knowledge doesn't actually cheapen your value. It makes you even more valuable. So can we have a culture of not sort of I'm not going to tell you this because this is mine and if I tell you this, that it's going to you know it's going to cheapen my value, it's actually going to make you more valuable. So it's, it's a cultural change. It's not just talk, it's an awareness of that. What are you? What are you doing to be collaborative? What are you doing to be generous? What are you doing to coach and teach others and bring them and advocate and bring them along, or are you?
Speaker 1:are you a one-man, one man or one woman show, because there is that too, there's, you know, the one person, the one person show when I that's like you said that's not working yeah, exactly, and when I asked you that question when we started off, about what you bring to the table to this world, uh, I understood that you said it's for you it's a lot about connecting. Yes, so is connecting a female quality or is it? Is this a general quality, and what makes connecting so interesting?
Speaker 2:I think that's a good question. I don't know if it's I can't say it's only a female quality to connect, because of course you and I are connecting, but I think I mean for me I was talking, I'm very interested in strategy and I've been sort of thinking about how do I become more strategic. It's not a natural quality for me to be quite strategic, and so I'm really been. I've been researching that. I believe in self-education, so I've been researching strategy, strategy, and I determined when that building relationships is actually part of my. It's an essential part of my strategy, because I am hyper aware of what I can learn from others, and sometimes it makes me feel I might be deficient in some way, and so I'm going to try and learn, might be deficient in some way, and so I'm going to try and learn. But other times I try and, as we were talking about, make it inspire me to do better or inspire me to learn something, or inspire me to take a risk, or push me to do something that I didn't think I could do and get uncomfortable and take a risk. So I think this for me, this curiosity and this interest in others, I think also makes me aware of my surroundings and I work with a few clients in hospitality and I've worked in hospitality myself and I say, if you're good at your job in hospitality, you see all angles of the room, you see the guest, you see what's not folded, you see this, you see that, you see that.
Speaker 2:And I think we forget that not everyone sees the world like that. Some people just see one thing. But if you're very aware, when you walk in you sense that something's wrong over here. You see that something's going on over there. So I think for some it's not natural and I would tell you the people I work with, I have to remind them that most people don't see the world like that. You're different, so you have to have more patience with others. They are not seeing the 50 things that are going wrong. They're only seeing one thing that they need to do.
Speaker 1:So maybe it is just and this is male and female, so this is just a different way of looking at things- I, you know, I just listened carefully the last one or two minutes and I got the senses I just received a master class on balancing the male and the female energy, or the male and the feminine energy. If you listen carefully to the audience that we talked to, to Elizabeth, the last two minutes, you would figure out she said kind of inspire me, but push me also to be inspired. So pushing is more a male quality. It's a quality that kind of get things done, you focus on one element, you focus on the target, you go for it. You know you put all the obstacles, you get them away. Inspiration is a feminine quality of opening up, of not wanting to be right because you can't be right and be curious at the same time.
Speaker 1:So, uh, elizabeth, that was a master class, teaching the last, and I guess I, I have, and many more, had to re-listen those two or three minutes carefully because there's so many details in that picture that balances out those qualities. So we don't need female leaders who become male, you don't need male leaders who become female. We need them to balance out what's missing. Missing, yeah, bring it to the table as a package, as a more advanced version, and this is, I guess, the female and male leadership of the future. This is what we need. We need both qualities. So I really appreciate, uh, and this, you know we haven't designed for that as we spoke before. It just happened and I guess we brought it to the table the two of us, you know because we're curious.
Speaker 1:Collaborate Right.
Speaker 2:And.
Speaker 1:I really enjoy that because it's not scripted. It just happened because we set the intention for that. So a little bit, I want to do a lot more episodes.
Speaker 2:I love it.
Speaker 1:It's been really fun, but for now, I thank you so much and again, be inspired. What else comments below and Elizabeth will talk again.
Speaker 2:Cheers cheers have a good one.