Peggy Guest guides people on a journey of self discovery | The Vance Crowe Podcast | Episode 39

About this episode

Vance interviews his own former executive coach, Peggy Guest, whose gentle, deeply present style of "thinking partnership" he credits with changing the trajectory of his career at Monsanto. Peggy explains coaching as distinct from therapy or corporate rah-rah motivation: she doesn't arrive with a curriculum, but instead widens the lens on a client's environment, relationships, and struggles, helping them find their own transcendent function (a Jungian concept for the symbol or insight that resolves an internal conflict and allows forward movement). The two revisit Vance's own coaching experience directly — the discomfort of a 360-degree stakeholder feedback report, the realization that leadership development is less about being told the rules and more about being given tools to see one's own blind spots. The conversation broadens into Peggy's career history: cofounding the Women's Counseling Center in the early 1970s as an alternative to the top-down medical model of therapy, running long-running Jungian dream groups, and her 1979 dissertation interviewing "two-career couples" in a still-traditional St. Louis — sorting them into "pioneers," "traditionalists," and a middle group that negotiated whose career would take priority. That research becomes a springboard for a wide-ranging discussion of the gender wage gap, unequal division of household "chore wars," maternity leave mistreatment, and how far workplace norms around collaboration, feedback, and berating employees have shifted since the 1960s-70s. The episode closes on leadership craft as its own discipline: Peggy's ladder from individual subject-matter expertise up through people-management, strategic "balcony" thinking, and finally enterprise-level leadership — and the Peter Principle risk of being promoted past one's developed skill set. Vance closes by crediting Peggy with the insight, delivered after one of his talks, that what he does on stage isn't "surfing" but "waking people up" — a line he says reoriented his entire post-Monsanto career.

“So the first set of focus is about developing subject matter expertise... then it's about influencing people that you're managing... and then the next stage is managing people who manage people. And you're beginning to be required to be strategic.”

“I respect people in the midst of struggles, and I'm expecting that they will find their own answers... I think the quality that mostly shines through is respect.”

“That was such a genius thing at the time... they bonus people for developing their people... they bonus people for collaborating across, and they move people around a lot.”

Key moments

• ~5%: Vance frames the episode as unusually personal — interviewing his own former executive coach, someone who "changed the trajectory of my life" (trust, craft).
• ~10%: Peggy explains coaching-as-"thinking partnership" rather than a curriculum-driven, rah-rah motivational model — she asks clients to "give me a wider lens" instead of prescribing answers (trust, craft).
• ~29%: Peggy's account of how trust forms in the first five minutes of a coaching relationship — "the quality that mostly shines through is respect" (trust).
• ~40%: Jungian concepts — individuation, the "transcendent function," synchronicity — introduced as the theoretical scaffolding behind Peggy's coaching style (craft).
• ~57%: A detour into Monsanto's internal bonus structure explicitly rewarding cross-departmental collaboration and people-development, contrasted with older top-down corporate models (institutions).
• ~63%: Peggy's leadership ladder — subject-matter expertise, then managing people, then managing managers, then strategic "balcony" thinking, then enterprise vision — with the Peter Principle risk of promotion outrunning skill (craft).
• ~68-75%: A wide-ranging detour into Peggy's history cofounding the Women's Counseling Center in the early 1970s, the medical-model-versus-partnership framing of therapy and childbirth, and how far workplace/gender norms have shifted since 1969 (legacy, institutions).
• ~85%: Vance and Peggy discuss how strident, mass-movement-style activism versus one-on-one persuasion changes receptivity to a message — tied to the show's recurring True Believer/mob theme (mob).
• ~97%: Vance closes by crediting Peggy with the line that reoriented his post-Monsanto career — that what he does on stage isn't "surfing" but "waking people up" (craft, legacy).

Notable quotes

“The first set of focus is about developing subject matter expertise... and then the next stage is managing people who manage people.”

“When I hear you describe it, I'm sitting here thinking like, wait a second, I would really wanna know... but I don't want to put myself in a position where somebody can just come along and hit me.”

“That was such a genius thing at the time, which is they bonus people for developing their people.”

“I feel like I learned a great deal about myself while interviewing Peggy.”