As the world keeps changing, the traditional methods are being replaced by new, technologically advanced approaches. The coaching sector is no exception to this change. Several leaders are revolutionizing business coaching with their innovative, out-of-the-box approach.
Susan Hobson is one such outstanding leader challenging conventional coaching strategies and approaches with unconventional neuroscience-backed coaching processes. She is driving her clients’ results to the next level through the development and implementation of several key performance-enhancing skills, strategies, tools, and habits to level up to high-performance leadership 2.0.
Susan is not only the Founder/CEO of Elite High-Performance Inc. but also a Forbes Coaches Council Member, Keynote Speaker, Author, Podcaster, and High-Performance Leadership Coach. Her ultimate mission lies in coaching others to become a ‘High-Performer,’ both personally and professionally. Susan is an icon of excellence and the new face in mindset coaching who is transforming the leadership development world with realistic and action-oriented measures.
About the Elite High-Performance Coaching
Elite High-Performance Coaching is a science-based coaching practice based out of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. With the mission to change the way the game of life, leadership and business is being played forever through leadership 2.0. This is a human and purpose-centric leadership best practice backed by Neuroscience data and research.
The company’s exclusive offering lies in something called mindset strategy architecture, which essentially means that it teaches high-performing leaders how to think strategically so that they can play their biggest impact game when the world needs it more than ever. Through mindset strategy architecture, Elite High-Performance Coaching helps its clients shatter the glass ceiling subconsciously, by hacking into their playbook of beliefs, to unlock and unleash their highest potential.
Laying the Bricks of Foundation
When Susan first started the company 15 years ago, she had just come off playing professional women’s hockey, she played in the National Women’s Hockey League. Before that, she was at Princeton University, the Ivy League, where she first got exposed to the power of mindset, strategy, and architecture. This experience was game-changing, encouraging her to set out on a global mission to disrupt old school leadership development practices that no longer work.
With the knowledge and insights she inherited, Susan wanted to get out of those college gates as soon as possible and scream this stuff from the rooftops. Having seen and experienced how difficult it was for high-performing athletes to get to the top 1% of their sport, she knew that the power lay majorly in the mental strength, with performance being proven to be 90% mental.
Susan was a young woman out of college, eager to live her entrepreneurial dream, and become a solopreneur, and was driven by the vision to impact the way the game of leadership development is being played. Even a degree in high-performance psychology, a master’s in neuro-linguistic programming, and an experiential understanding of what it took to win in high-stakes and high-pressure environments were falling short of giving her the much-needed knowledge to lead her business. Her biggest challenge at first was lacking the experience of running a successful business all on her own.
Sustaining the Success
The reason behind Elite High-Performance Coaching’s long-standing success is its specialty in mindset strategy architecture. This type of coaching teaches a leader how to think strategically, be resilient, access confidence, stay motivated, and be focused in high-pressure, high-stakes environments, and perform optimally and yield highly sustainable results.
Susan has grown her team of Elite mindset coaches and today leads a team of 12, who are on the same mission integrating shared goals, values, and visions. Susan finds herself lucky to have attracted other passionate, intrinsically motivated, and purpose-driven global coaches, helping her live her dream every single day. To summon it up, she adds, “That is how I was able to scale and grow our business to this point where we’re now working across the globe with some of the highest-performing people and teams on the planet.”
Decoding Neuroscience and Mindset Coaching
Mindset is a terminology that comes from neuroscience, it refers to an individual’s perspective. Perspectives inform the way one thinks, the way one views, and the way it relates to themselves and the world at large. Susan learned during her high-performance studies and experiences that 90% of any performance is based on mental strength. And that is why Elite High-Performance Coaching specializes in mindset coaching.
According to a study report by Harvard Business Review last year, from the 365 billion dollars spent on leadership development and training annually, 75% of that training was rated ineffective, and only 25% was rated most effective. The latter were companies that focused on mindset and hence were successful in earning prominent outcomes. Hence, Susan believes that this is what has helped Elite High-Performance Coaching compete with the other approaches to leadership development and training as it specializes in the form of coaching and leadership development that is most effective going to that step of depth known as mindset.
Leadership, after all, being a set of behaviours – our mindset acts as the hard drive that controls our behaviour. That is why leadership mindset coaching is so effective – it leads to effective behaviour modification.
Additionally, as Elite High-Performance Coaching is backed by neuroscience data and research, it is always at the cutting edge in terms of its offerings. This, in turn, helps the company to fulfill and meet its customers’ needs based on the latest and greatest research and best practices all backed up by data.
An Exponential Take-off with Technology
Technology has been the secret sauce in scaling Elite High-Performance Coaching’s business. Since the pandemic, the company has gone completely remote, allowing its team members to work in different time zones, spaces, and countries. Susan adds, “We’ve got a bunch of us up here in Canada. We’ve got some down in the U. S. and the United States. And then we even got some coaches down in Costa Rica now. So, the way we’ve utilized technology is that we have been able to work with anybody across the globe that’s been highly disruptive in terms of our scalability and our ability to be able to work with anybody anywhere at pretty much any time.”
Redefining Leadership with Intuition and Innovation
“I think women have what leadership needs today.”
As a woman leader and entrepreneur, Susan believes women are highly empathic, intuitive, collaborative, and creative. And this is what the world needs more than ever.
The world needs potential leaders, who have the mindset and skillset to be in tune with their people and guide them to keep going and growing sustainably. Intuition helps one to be innovative, innovation can help lead a transformation, and the things that are happening a certain way today can happen better tomorrow. Moreover, diversity of ideas generates the best innovation. This leads to the best creations in business. Women are certainly walking their talk with their highly intuitive and innovative traits.
Breaking the Gender Barriers
Susan states that women are notoriously told that leadership is a male energy and needs masculine qualities. So, as a woman leader, to be heard loud and clear, sometimes one needs to be authoritative and directive at the table in front of the male counterparts. Susan has battled her way up the trajectory and she has had her face-offs with gender biases and inequalities.
There have been instances where, sometimes when she walks into a room, people have ignored her ideas right away. As a woman leader, it takes her a little bit longer to gain that influence than maybe some of the male counterparts, just because of those unconscious biases that people carry.
Susan has experienced many gender-related setbacks in her long career but with her courage and determination, she has kept growing and climbing up the ladder. Currently, with a team of 12, she has been successfully working with some of the biggest tech companies on the planet.
She concludes,
“For me, it’s the unconscious stuff that I usually have to battle my way through before they see my voice as credible and powerful. So overcoming gender barriers has been one of the challenges that I’ve seen throughout my career.”
The Wall of Achievement
Susan’s journey is a true example of leadership and entrepreneurship. Her passion and compassion to serve others and help them become their best version is inspirational in many ways. For her dedicated performance and expertise, she has been awarded many honors and titles in her career.
In 2020, she was rated “The Coach of the Year” by the Canada Coach Foundation. Also, Elite High-Performance Coaching was rated the number three leadership podcast in Canada last year. The company was rated as one of the Top 10 Leadership Development Training and Coaching Companies in Canada by HR Canada.
As a Forbes Council Member and Forbes Contributing Member, Susan has been writing articles for Forbes over the last two years. Additionally, Susan played center for the award-winning Toronto Aeros of The NWHL and won a National Championship and the NWHL Cup (the year the NHL was on strike, so had the Stanley Cup at her final game). The NWHL Cup is on display in the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto.
A Women-Led Team
Currently, the Elite High-Performance Coaching team is mostly women. There are 11 female professionals in the team and only one male. Susan has been intentionally growing a practice of hiring more women talent in her team and encouraging women empowerment through women’s inclusion.
A woman coach is highly sensitive, and some of their innate qualities as a woman are beneficial in the field of coaching. Susan adds, “I am intentionally trying to show, big business, what we women have got by putting a bunch of females on my bench.”
As a woman leader, Susan finds her inspiration from Brene Brown. Her voice, narrative, and ideas have been a big source of motivation for a long time. She is a great example of a role model in her leadership space that Susan looks up to. She’s doing amazingly disruptive things in the world. Susan aims to follow in her footsteps.
The Art of Work-Life Balance
As an Entrepreneur, CEO, Coach, Founder, and Mother, Susan is juggling many roles at once and fulfilling numerous responsibilities. Work and Life are integral but a work-life balance is far out of the picture. Knowing to manage one’s expectations is what Susan believes works the best while managing the whole work-life scenario.
She fondly states, “I’m a single mother, and so the needs of my child always have to come first, because she’s still young, and she’s my dependent. But, I think that I’m lucky because I’m an entrepreneur, and I have a team of 12. So, the way that I achieve work-life integration is by empowering my people.
I delegate the things that don’t necessarily need to be me and my business. And I’m able to prioritize where I need to show up and play my biggest impact game for my people and my clients so that I can make sure that I’m able to prioritize the needs of my young daughter.”
Golden Words for Young Aspiring Women Entrepreneurs
The biggest advice is to start investing in one’s personal development in any way, shape, or form. Susan thinks the best investment young girls can make is in themselves first. Susan continues, “The other piece of advice is just to surround yourself with people who inspire you, role models, and people with whom you see some aspect of your aspirations. Somebody, who’s leading the way in that regard.
Also, another important thing is you just need to learn how to get beyond your imposter syndrome because when we’re young girls this society, you know, the way we’re conditioned. You have it, we all have it when we’re young and up and coming. That’s the best advice I could give is to learn how to see yourself and the value that is inside of you that you uniquely have to contribute to this world.
And then just go out that front door every single day and double down on growing and bringing that into the world and having a maximum impact with it.”
