Speaker 1: I'll get a champce. Welcome to another installments show. It's Jumbo,
Speaker 1: it's Fatty Harps. It's he who hosts the show. But
Speaker 1: then who else would it be. I just made a
Speaker 1: new friend about five minutes ago. We'll see how the
Speaker 1: relationship develops in the next hour or so. So far,
Speaker 1: it's been pretty good. Hi Ian, Hi Craig. How are
Speaker 1: you doing today, mate? I'm good. I'm good, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much. What it's what time is it over there?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 3: I'm in Auckland, So it's three oh five on Saturday afternoon?
Speaker 1: And now am I correct in thinking that you are
Speaker 1: the Auckland? Is it Auckland? That is the most advanced
Speaker 1: time wise in the world of any like you get
Speaker 1: to New Year's Eve, New Year's midnight on New Year's
Speaker 1: Eve before the rest of us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think there are some
Speaker 3: offshore islands that like to claim it, but so do we.
Speaker 3: So we're ahead of the rest of the world by
Speaker 3: a long.
Speaker 1: Way, and not just in terms of times. That give
Speaker 1: me two pros and two cons. Not that you want
Speaker 1: to throw your whole country under, but what are two
Speaker 1: great things about living in New Zealand and what are
Speaker 1: perhaps two limitations or challenges.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's a great country to live in because
Speaker 3: it has a reasonably unspoiled environment, so it's it's pretty
Speaker 3: clean and green, and the seawater is pretty not too bad,
Speaker 3: and the rivers are okay.
Speaker 2: So it's a very very nice place to live.
Speaker 3: It's got fantastic cuisine, nearly as good as Australia, and
Speaker 3: great wines, some of which are bester than Australia. So
Speaker 3: that's so it's a it's a it's a fantastic place
Speaker 3: to live. It's it's very enjoyable and it's very relaxed,
Speaker 3: just like Australia and so on.
Speaker 2: So it's and it's not well, I guess the other
Speaker 2: thing about.
Speaker 3: It, it's not overly hot, so we don't really have
Speaker 3: any desits we get to about, Oh, if it's thirty degrees,
Speaker 3: we're complaining like mad. So it's a very mild, oceanic
Speaker 3: type climate.
Speaker 2: So a good place to be.
Speaker 1: And if you could change one thing or improve one thing,
Speaker 1: if you're boss of the world, that was in your
Speaker 1: power to fix one thing that's a bit broken in
Speaker 1: New Zealand. Is that filled with dread that question.
Speaker 3: No, No, I mean, I think one of the real
Speaker 3: limitations it is the time zones. So I work, for example,
Speaker 3: with someone in Hungary, and I just found out today
Speaker 3: we're changing time zone. So daylight saving ends, so it's fall,
Speaker 3: so we fall back, so we go back an hour.
Speaker 3: And so we used to meet eight o'clock, eight o'clock,
Speaker 3: and now it's eight.
Speaker 2: O'clock seven o'clock for her or whatever it is.
Speaker 3: So it's it's it's it's that's that's a bit of
Speaker 3: a challenge.
Speaker 1: Really, How great is it though? Think about I mean,
Speaker 1: how great is it that you're however far away you are.
Speaker 1: I'm sitting in my bloody office in Melbourne. You're in
Speaker 1: Auckland in your office, and you and I can talk.
Speaker 1: We can see each other, we can talk clearly, there's
Speaker 1: no lag, there's no delay, we don't have to be
Speaker 1: in the same room. You can coach people anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world. You and I can both do a bloody
Speaker 1: keynote address to a group in America if we want.
Speaker 1: I mean, is it's pretty good, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? No, it is absolutely brilliant. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I've got a few things kind of coming up
Speaker 3: they are, probably the nicest of which is doing a
Speaker 3: session for the BBC Book Club.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: So I don't know quite what it's going to be like,
Speaker 3: but yeah, only only thanks to the Internet. So yeah, no,
Speaker 3: it's obviously it's got some challenges and you know, there's
Speaker 3: a lot of issues around gen z and the Internet
Speaker 3: and social media and all that, but it's got wonderful,
Speaker 3: wonderful advantages as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I did a gig. Gee what are we twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five? It would have been two years ago. I
Speaker 1: did a one off gig for Hewlett Packard. They were
Speaker 1: it was I can't even I think they booked me
Speaker 1: out of Germany. Believe it or not. Somebody follows my
Speaker 1: social media and my stuff and anyway, this lady who
Speaker 1: had a resonably senior role there, reached out and said,
Speaker 1: could you do an online workshop around whatever it was
Speaker 1: with our group? And I went sure, And then so
Speaker 1: we organized everything and I probably should have asked, not
Speaker 1: that it made any difference massively to me, because I'm
Speaker 1: still sitting on my bum in my office in Australia. Yes,
Speaker 1: it turns out it was forty two countries and it
Speaker 1: was four and a half thousand people online at once, right,
Speaker 1: And I'm like, oh, all right, well I should probably
Speaker 1: put some thought into this, you know. And then but
Speaker 1: what was even cooler was it went really well. I
Speaker 1: got really nice feedback. They were very happy, which is great.
Speaker 1: And then an hour or two later I got an
Speaker 1: email after the event and I saw the email come
Speaker 1: through and I went, well, this could be terrible or
Speaker 1: this could be good. And they said, that was really
Speaker 1: well received. We've already got lots of positive feedback. Would
Speaker 1: it be possible that we do a twelve month gig
Speaker 1: with you, or a you know, like a contract with
Speaker 1: you where you come once a month and just do
Speaker 1: like a workshop on a different component of you know,
Speaker 1: whatever it is, workplace performance, you know, human behavior, psychology, whatever.
Speaker 1: And I went, yeah, So I did a year with
Speaker 1: and so once a month, I'm just sitting here and
Speaker 1: I was. I went home one weekend my parents live
Speaker 1: in the country, and mum said, what do you do?
Speaker 1: What do you do this week? And I said, I
Speaker 1: spoke to four and a half thousand people in forty
Speaker 1: two countries at the same time. She's like, what do
Speaker 1: you mean, Like, my mum's eighty five, right, I mean
Speaker 1: that was like saying, oh, I just performed magic on
Speaker 1: top of the Sydney Opera House and then I flew
Speaker 1: down into the water under my own steam, like she
Speaker 1: couldn't comprehend. Imagine, imagine you know, thirty years ago. I
Speaker 1: don't know how old you are, but thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, ninety ninety five saying to me, saying to you, hey, mate,
Speaker 1: You're going to talk to a bunch of people in
Speaker 1: real time. You're going to be able to see as
Speaker 1: many of them as you want. There's going to be
Speaker 1: a four and a half, you know whatever. You're be
Speaker 1: able to talk to them. They can ask you questions
Speaker 1: in real time. Are you're not going to leave the house.
Speaker 1: You can wear bare feet and a pair of footy
Speaker 1: shirts if you want, And you're going to get paid
Speaker 1: a shitload. And you go, oh, well, how long has
Speaker 1: this been around?
Speaker 2: Exactly?
Speaker 3: Exactly, No, the opportunities are endless.
Speaker 2: Someday. It's an extraordinary time that we live in, very
Speaker 2: very enjoyable.
Speaker 1: It certainly is. Now. Tell my awesome audience who you are,
Speaker 1: Give us the u bio, Give us the informal bio
Speaker 1: of who you are and what you do and where
Speaker 1: you've been yep.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So I was born in Wellington, so about three hundred
Speaker 3: miles south.
Speaker 2: Of Auckland, and grew up there and went to university.
Speaker 3: And my father was a scientist and my brother had
Speaker 3: done physics and so on, and so I foolishly followed
Speaker 3: in their footsteps, and in my second year I failed
Speaker 3: everything outright and decided it was about time I should
Speaker 3: think about what I wanted to do rather than following
Speaker 3: in other people's footsteps.
Speaker 2: So fortunately that year I went to a guest.
Speaker 3: Lecture at the university that was given by a guy
Speaker 3: called Professor Tony Taylor.
Speaker 2: And I was just in capture.
Speaker 3: I just I was enthralled by what he said and
Speaker 3: I thought, hey, look this is really interesting, this is
Speaker 3: this is definitely what I want to do. And so
Speaker 3: in my third year of university I started doing psychology
Speaker 3: and I just loved it. And before that I'd been
Speaker 3: a bit of a failure. I've got dyslexia, and you know,
Speaker 3: I had lots of problems at school and all that
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. But once I started psychology, I was
Speaker 3: kind of off. And I finished my degree and I
Speaker 3: did a year in social work and then I decided
Speaker 3: I wanted to do something else, so I managed to
Speaker 3: inveigle my way into a clinical psychology course. So I
Speaker 3: did that, So that's three years, and worked in prisons,
Speaker 3: most doing therapy and assessment with prisoners. And then in
Speaker 3: about my third or fourth year of doing that, Professor
Speaker 3: Tony Taylor, the man that i'd originally gone to the
Speaker 3: lecture to, came and said to me, Ian, I'm organizing
Speaker 3: an expedition to Antarctica and we're looking for a field psychologist.
Speaker 2: Have you done any ice work?
Speaker 3: And I said at that point, well, I've chipped the
Speaker 3: odd bit out for a Gin and tonic, but apart
Speaker 3: from that, no, And.
Speaker 2: He said, oh, that's not a problem.
Speaker 3: We'll send you on a training course and wheel about it.
Speaker 3: So the next year I went to Antarctica, twelve.
Speaker 2: Of us on the ice.
Speaker 3: Designed to be halfway between a modern expedition, which is
Speaker 3: for pampered souls who live in warm, sheltered vehicles, and
Speaker 3: Scott Na Munston who were pulling their own sledges. So
Speaker 3: we actually had a little open vehicle traveled in those
Speaker 3: and we went a long way into the center of Antartica,
Speaker 3: where its breathtakingly hostile environment.
Speaker 2: It's just staggering.
Speaker 3: I mean, you just get a sense of well, I mean,
Speaker 3: I know Mawson was very famous in Australia for his work,
Speaker 3: and so you know, you just are in awe of
Speaker 3: these people who went in there and trudged over this
Speaker 3: incredible environment.
Speaker 2: So I did that, and I wrote that up as
Speaker 2: my PhD. And then I worked in HR for a little.
Speaker 3: Bit, and then I moved into management consulting and did
Speaker 3: that for some years, and then got thoroughly bored, found
Speaker 3: myself a job in Hong Kong. Was in Hong Kong
Speaker 3: for eight years, built a business and sold it there
Speaker 3: with a mate of mine, and came back to New
Speaker 3: Zealand about at the end of two thousand and established
Speaker 3: the Executive Coaching Center. So I mostly worked with senior execs.
Speaker 3: So I'm kind of blending my organizational psychology, my clinical psychology,
Speaker 3: and my experience internationally together to help CEOs and senior execs.
Speaker 3: And I just love it, and I do that most
Speaker 3: of the time. I train other coaches, I write books,
Speaker 3: et cetera. Wow, you see, how's that is that.
Speaker 2: A bit long?
Speaker 1: No, that's bloody great.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: I've got I was listening with I'm going to say
Speaker 1: fascination and a little bit of envy. So that's that's
Speaker 1: a sin. I'm going to have to repent for that.
Speaker 1: That's my very Catholic upbringing. I'm going to have to
Speaker 1: repent for that and do some of the rosary later.
Speaker 1: But for now, I'll just I'll just feel guilty. Yes, please, okay,
Speaker 1: I want to I want it great. That's a bloody
Speaker 1: great intro. I want to ask a couple of things.
Speaker 1: So you kind of intimated that you what was the
Speaker 1: first thing that you did that you were ship at
Speaker 1: at UNI?
Speaker 4: So physics, space physics, and there wasn't one thing.
Speaker 2: There was about eight I was shipped out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. Isn't it interesting the like the I guess,
Speaker 1: the occurrence that a lot of us do, or the
Speaker 1: real the fact that a lot of us do what
Speaker 1: we think we should do, not the thing we want
Speaker 1: to do. And when it comes to career anyway, like
Speaker 1: we go. Everyone thinks I should be a whatever like
Speaker 1: Dad was a granddad, was a mum, was a grandma,
Speaker 1: was a mom, and Dad would be very proud of
Speaker 1: me if I became a fill in the blank. It's
Speaker 1: not like, yeah, but one, what are you good at?
Speaker 1: What are you passionate about? What do you want to do?
Speaker 1: Because it's a fair chance you're going to do a
Speaker 1: fucking lot of it for a very long time. Yes,
Speaker 1: unless you really want to be a doctor, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, if you do, that's amazing, well done. Don't
Speaker 1: try to become a doctor because mom loves doctors and
Speaker 1: you actually want to be a painter, like or you
Speaker 1: want to build homes, or you want to go to
Speaker 1: Antarctica and be an adventurer. So what is that where
Speaker 1: we feel almost and I'm not I don't think parents
Speaker 1: are necessarily trying burst, but there's definitely an expectation or
Speaker 1: a hope that for us, we probably feel when we're younger,
Speaker 1: compelled to try to keep mom and dad happy and
Speaker 1: to not disappoint them. How do we navigate that and
Speaker 1: how do you work around that with it not even
Speaker 1: as kids, but as older people like I remember when
Speaker 1: I was about twenty I'll shut up after this, mate,
Speaker 1: when I was twenty two or three and I was
Speaker 1: working in gyms, right yep. And my parents it's not
Speaker 1: like they are a bloody impressed that their buff ed's
Speaker 1: son was putting dumbbells back on the rack and vacuuming
Speaker 1: the gym floor and you know, cleaning the bloody JACUZI
Speaker 1: I don't think that. I don't think they're bragging to
Speaker 1: their friends about that career path. But but I got
Speaker 1: to the point where I knew I wanted to build
Speaker 1: a business. And just for your FYI, you know, I
Speaker 1: set up the first personal training centers in Australia, wrote
Speaker 1: the first course all that kind of shit with a
Speaker 1: friend of mine. I wrote the course all of that,
Speaker 1: and so I kind of somewhat pioneered personal training in Australia.
Speaker 1: I say somewhat, of course it would have happened anyway.
Speaker 1: But I was doing personal training in nine and eighty
Speaker 1: five six when no one had heard it, and I
Speaker 1: set up the first facility in nine ninety when there
Speaker 1: wasn't any right. But I realized early that I didn't
Speaker 1: want a job. Like I wanted to work, but I
Speaker 1: didn't want a boss. I didn't want to work in
Speaker 1: someone else's framework or structure. I didn't want to come
Speaker 1: in every day and someone would give me a to
Speaker 1: do list that didn't interest me. Yes, and it's not
Speaker 1: like work's not good or bad? But for me trying
Speaker 1: to figure out, Okay, well you're twenty two or three four,
Speaker 1: you probably have to do this what you do now
Speaker 1: version of it that is worked for the next forty
Speaker 1: years or so, what do you want that to look like, Craig,
Speaker 1: And what do you need to do more of and
Speaker 1: less of? And like what for you? Not for mom
Speaker 1: and dad and not for like what is society or
Speaker 1: what's the bloody group think? But what might blow your
Speaker 1: socks off? And what might be for you the intersection
Speaker 1: of making a few bucks and having fun and developing
Speaker 1: some skills and knowledge and maybe tapping into your passion.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So psychology can tell us a huge amount about why
Speaker 3: we get into this, and it really starts at a
Speaker 3: biological level.
Speaker 2: So the problem that humans have is that we have it.
Speaker 3: We always have a very difficult berth because the birth
Speaker 3: canal is relatively small and our head is relatively big.
Speaker 5: So we when we come out, we're not like a
Speaker 5: deer or a cat or whatever, where we're actually ninety
Speaker 5: a scent formed.
Speaker 3: And you know, I'm sure you've seen all those films
Speaker 3: of the savannahs in Africa where the you know, the
Speaker 3: wilderbeast is born and immediately gets up and trots away.
Speaker 3: You know, we are completely and hutterly helpless for.
Speaker 2: Years and years.
Speaker 3: And what that means is that we have a very
Speaker 3: very strong dependency on other people. And it's not just
Speaker 3: that we want to please other people for much of
Speaker 3: our early life. If we don't get on with this
Speaker 3: other person, we die. It's as simple as that. It's
Speaker 3: life and death. So that starts us that that has
Speaker 3: two two issues. Two issues arise from that that are
Speaker 3: characteristics of humans. So we have we are incredibly social people.
Speaker 3: So we live in cities and we you know, we
Speaker 3: go to work and we interact with other people. We
Speaker 3: are not we don't function generally, we don't function well.
Speaker 2: If we're unless we're with other people.
Speaker 3: So we have this incredibly strong social bond and that's fantastic,
Speaker 3: and that's one of the reasons why we're successful, because
Speaker 3: we can have teams and everybody's got a different skill,
Speaker 3: but we pulled together all that kind of stuff. Probably
Speaker 3: why we're also not doing pleasant things to the planets.
Speaker 3: But anyway, that's another story. So that's the plus side.
Speaker 3: But the minor side is of course that this idea
Speaker 3: that we are dependent on other people and that if
Speaker 3: other people, if other people don't like us, or we
Speaker 3: do something that's terrible, something very very bad will happen
Speaker 3: to us is something that's kind of baked into our brain.
Speaker 1: Wow, and it is. As you were talking about how
Speaker 1: we're social creatures, I was thinking back to what's his name,
Speaker 1: the sociologist Dunbar Dunbar's number. Didn't he come up with
Speaker 1: some idea that which I don't know if it's how
Speaker 1: true it is, but I think his idea was that
Speaker 1: humans best work in groups of one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: give or take. Yes, you know, where we all kind
Speaker 1: of know who each other are and everyone's kind of
Speaker 1: got their own role and yes, yeah, but yeah. And
Speaker 1: it's interesting because in some ways, like in Melbourne where
Speaker 1: I am and I live in Bayside Melbourne, I live
Speaker 1: on the main street. I can walk out the front,
Speaker 1: I say, one hundred people at the front, one hundred right,
Speaker 1: So there's this juxtaposition or this dichotomy that you can
Speaker 1: be in the middle of a million people and completely
Speaker 1: alone at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 1: And that's really something that's like that's more now than ever.
Speaker 3: Yes, Yeah, so we are extraordinarily complex creatures, and you
Speaker 3: can see that because we have this very archaic, old,
Speaker 3: very deep drive to get on and be with people.
Speaker 2: That's kind of where we live.
Speaker 3: But of course life's much more than just those basic instincts,
Speaker 3: and so what happens for a lot of us is
Speaker 3: that either we get into just accepting that we're stuck
Speaker 3: with all of these people who live around us, or
Speaker 3: what we get into, well, I'm just going to separate
Speaker 3: myself off.
Speaker 2: I don't want to be here. I'm going to do
Speaker 2: something entirely.
Speaker 3: We kind of rebel against that fundamental idea that was
Speaker 3: initially baked into our brain.
Speaker 2: And so what you.
Speaker 3: See is, of course this funny kind of mix of
Speaker 3: people who love and hate other people. You know, it's
Speaker 3: that wonderful thing in organizations. You know, this would be
Speaker 3: a brilliant hospital if it wasn't for the staff.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's like church is great except for the people
Speaker 6: exactly exactly, and that really it's because we've got a
Speaker 6: big brain, which makes very difficult birth.
Speaker 2: But we've got a very big brain, and it gets
Speaker 2: bigger and bigger.
Speaker 3: We get into these this kind of questioning and this
Speaker 3: kind of issue very easily. Yeah, because we think and
Speaker 3: we know we think, and that is probably something that
Speaker 3: animals don't do.
Speaker 2: They clearly think, but they don't know they think.
Speaker 3: So this issue of consciousness enables us to reflect in
Speaker 3: a way that is enormously helpful, but it can be
Speaker 3: hugely destructive.
Speaker 1: I'm so interested in that as a I don't want
Speaker 1: to go off at a tangent, but you know, thinking
Speaker 1: about thinking that metacognitive journey right, just like that, and
Speaker 1: then thinking about do dogs think, for example, And I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I guess they, you know, they solve problems, they figure
Speaker 1: shit out. They exactly know that I know which person
Speaker 1: go to and which person to avoids. So there's some
Speaker 1: kind of cognitive function of some shape, Like there's some reasoning,
Speaker 1: some rationale, there's some canine logic and deduction going on,
Speaker 1: so they must think. I'm sure they don't think in
Speaker 1: inverted commas the way that we do, but nonetheless there's
Speaker 1: some kind of data processing and response, you know. Just
Speaker 1: one of the things I like my PhD is in
Speaker 1: a thing called meta accuracy and metapception, which is essentially
Speaker 1: our ability to understand what it's like being around us.
Speaker 1: So the question, like a really fundamental question at the
Speaker 1: core of my research is what's the Craig experience like
Speaker 1: for everyone else? What's the inexperience like, you know, what's
Speaker 1: the inexperience like for Craig who's just met him for
Speaker 1: the first time and they're sitting down they're doing this
Speaker 1: thing right, Or what's the Craig experience like for the
Speaker 1: thousands of people who hear this, the one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy five ladies that I had to chat to not
Speaker 1: yesterday morning but the day before at the bloody Height
Speaker 1: in Chadstone near you know, what's that? And so I'm
Speaker 1: very fascinated with not only understanding myself, but understanding myself
Speaker 1: for others. Not from the point of view of oh
Speaker 1: do they like me? Am I popular? Am I? You know?
Speaker 1: But rather going all right, like for me, trying to
Speaker 1: understand you and to listen to you and watch a
Speaker 1: bit of video with you on it and read some
Speaker 1: stuff about you, but at the same time come in
Speaker 1: being open so I can get to know you a
Speaker 1: little bit and then build a level of rapport and
Speaker 1: connection and in the moment kind of I don't know,
Speaker 1: enjoyment that if I was really unaware and I didn't
Speaker 1: have that lens of curiosity, I might not do and
Speaker 1: I might not be able to do. What My long
Speaker 1: winded kind of door that I'm opening, like is just
Speaker 1: trying to understand that the way that I think is
Speaker 1: only the way that I think. Yes, yes, it's not
Speaker 1: the story. It's just my story about the story. It's
Speaker 1: not the thing. It's just my interpretation of the thing.
Speaker 1: But I feel like a lot of us travel through
Speaker 1: life thinking that our thoughts are the objective reality.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes exactly. It's there's a theory
Speaker 3: called the social construction of reality, which I'm sure you
Speaker 3: are familiar with, and that is exactly that idea that,
Speaker 3: of course we see the world through our own eyes,
Speaker 3: but we can never really know what it is that
Speaker 3: other people see and do. And we know, for example,
Speaker 3: with you know, human conflict and lots and lots of
Speaker 3: human issues, that people see things entirely differently. So you know,
Speaker 3: you give someone a elevender flower and they will tell
Speaker 3: you what the genus of the flower is. You give
Speaker 3: it to a second person and they say that's my
Speaker 3: grandmother's garden.
Speaker 1: Wow. And someone else goes that stinks, and somebody else goes,
Speaker 1: that's so beautiful, that's my soaper home exactly, and someone
Speaker 1: else goes, I've got analogy to that? Shit, can you
Speaker 1: get that out of the room?
Speaker 2: Exactly right? Exactly right?
Speaker 1: Like even the idea of when I do when I
Speaker 1: talk to bosses and leaders and coaches, managers, mentors, all
Speaker 1: of that, I often ask them, one, what do you
Speaker 1: think it's like being around you? Not from a not
Speaker 1: to throw them under their bus, and not from a
Speaker 1: critical perspective, but literally just from an awareness and a
Speaker 1: curiosity perspective, because if you've got no idea, like if
Speaker 1: you're in charge of fifty people and you've got no
Speaker 1: idea how they perceive or experience or process you, Yes,
Speaker 1: then that's that's a problem for a range of reasons,
Speaker 1: perhaps the most important being if you've got no idea
Speaker 1: how you come across or how they see you, then
Speaker 1: how can you build rapport and connection and trust and respect? Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: because you're just talking, you know. And then tacked onto that,
Speaker 1: theory of mind is trying to understand broadly how other
Speaker 1: people think and someone else's experience, not just how they
Speaker 1: think about me, but period how they think so that
Speaker 1: if I understand, because how people think to me, that's
Speaker 1: almost like their language. Yes, and if I can understand,
Speaker 1: not necessarily, not necessarily agree with or endorse or support,
Speaker 1: but just understand or then I can build a bridge
Speaker 1: of communication.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, exactly right, exactly right.
Speaker 3: So I'm an executive coach, and the fundamental principle of
Speaker 3: this kind of coaching is that we are not advisors.
Speaker 3: We're not here to tell people what to do. We're
Speaker 3: here to ask people's ask people questions. And that might
Speaker 3: just sound all a bit wet and hopeless, but actually
Speaker 3: it's hugely powerful because what I know about you, Craig,
Speaker 3: is that I don't really understand what your problem is.
Speaker 3: I don't really understand what the challenges are you're facing.
Speaker 3: So unless I really listen carefully and I test out
Speaker 3: my understanding and I paraphrase and go back, is this
Speaker 3: what you mean, Craig?
Speaker 1: Know?
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, it's this what you mean?
Speaker 3: And then if I work with you so that I'm
Speaker 3: not saying, well, I think you should do this, Craig,
Speaker 3: and then you'll say, well, get lost, Noddy, what will
Speaker 3: what I'm going to say to you is something like, well,
Speaker 3: actually Craig.
Speaker 2: If this problem didn't exist, if you.
Speaker 3: If you were able to float effortlessly through your PhD,
Speaker 3: what would you be doing And you'd say to me, well,
Speaker 3: that's really interesting.
Speaker 2: Well, I'd probably get up.
Speaker 3: In the morning and you know, I'd be energized, and
Speaker 3: I'd get on and write and I would go to
Speaker 3: my supervisor when I had something data. So we get
Speaker 3: you to talk about your future, not focus on the
Speaker 3: past and what's wrong.
Speaker 2: And you know your mother was horrible or your dad
Speaker 2: was horrible, whatever it is.
Speaker 3: We're really focused on what it is you want if
Speaker 3: you didn't have this impediment in place, And then once
Speaker 3: we can explore that, we can think about, well, okay,
Speaker 3: now we know what it is you want, what would
Speaker 3: it take for you to move just one step from
Speaker 3: where you are now to that goal? And so again
Speaker 3: we're not telling you what to do. We're trying to
Speaker 3: understand your world and exactly what motivates you. We're trying
Speaker 3: to see how you want to paint your the picture
Speaker 3: of your own future, and we're asking you to come
Speaker 3: up with the idea. Now, if you're completely stuck, I'll
Speaker 3: give you some ideas, that's fine, But my first efforts
Speaker 3: are always to see if I can find out what
Speaker 3: you think would work. And the reason for that, Craig,
Speaker 3: is that if I tell you something, you're going to
Speaker 3: say get lost. If I suggest a whole.
Speaker 2: Lot of things, they might or might not be wrong.
Speaker 3: If you come up with a solution, you're going to
Speaker 3: be motivated to do it. It fits with your lifestyle,
Speaker 3: with your understanding with everything. So the chances of you
Speaker 3: succeeding with your own solution are huge. The chances of
Speaker 3: you succeeding with my advice is very small.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it, and I also love the awareness
Speaker 1: and the humility that you have with that, right because
Speaker 1: you're not saying to anyone, Hey, everyone, I've got a PhD.
Speaker 1: I've got a master's degree, I'm an undergrad on this.
Speaker 1: I'm that I've done this, and so fucking hell, I'm great.
Speaker 1: Get on board. You're saying all I am is a resource.
Speaker 1: And I say that to people all the time, even
Speaker 1: when people say to me, you change my life, which
Speaker 1: I get every now and then, which is very lovely
Speaker 1: but inaccurate, And I say, I really appreciate that, but
Speaker 1: I didn't because I didn't do any of the work.
Speaker 1: I didn't get up early, I didn't deal with the discomfort,
Speaker 1: I didn't make the decisions. I wasn't courageous. You did
Speaker 1: all of that. I'm just by the way. I've done
Speaker 1: the same thing for lots of people that got fucking
Speaker 1: no results or not the same quality of results. And
Speaker 1: neither was that my fault, right, And so I'm not
Speaker 1: the answer and I'm not the problem. I'm a resource
Speaker 1: and at times I'm just a conduit towards advice and
Speaker 1: wisdom and insight and knowledge that none of it is
Speaker 1: mine anyway. I'm just I'm just like the pathway. I'm
Speaker 1: just pulling back on the curtain shit that's already there.
Speaker 1: And I think that that that idea of, or that
Speaker 1: approach of. And this is what I've always tried to
Speaker 1: do with this show and with the people that I
Speaker 1: work with, is to go, hey, you're fucking amazing. Let's
Speaker 1: just see if we can find the key. Let's see
Speaker 1: if we can just figure out what you're doing. It's working,
Speaker 1: and it's not working. There's no self loathing in that,
Speaker 1: there's just self awareness and acknowledgment. But we can't fix
Speaker 1: the thing that we can't see or we can't you know,
Speaker 1: we can't get better at what we're not doing, so
Speaker 1: what we need to do more of and less of.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that's that's another fundamental principle of coaching that
Speaker 3: the client at any moment is just.
Speaker 2: A few steps away from success.
Speaker 3: And so when when they develop an action plan and
Speaker 3: they okay, we'll meet in the months and see how
Speaker 3: it goes, and they come back and they say, well,
Speaker 3: I completely failed.
Speaker 2: You know, my reaction immediately is Wow, we're going to
Speaker 2: learn a lot today.
Speaker 3: That's fantastic because now we know what doesn't work. So
Speaker 3: we're chipping away at what actually is unproductive and that
Speaker 3: will help us a great deal to work and to
Speaker 3: identify and to work and to find things that do
Speaker 3: actually work for you. Let's talk about why it failed,
Speaker 3: not exactly as you say, not in terms of whether
Speaker 3: you're a naughty boy and you should have.
Speaker 2: Done your homework, but much more in the.
Speaker 3: Sense of, you know, was the goal unrealistic or did
Speaker 3: you have other priorities? Is this not that important, or
Speaker 3: is this something that maybe you need some support from
Speaker 3: other people to get through, or are there some skills
Speaker 3: here that I could teach you which would really help
Speaker 3: you move forward, or can I suggest some reading whatever
Speaker 3: it is?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love it. And also I guess the fact
Speaker 1: in that, you know, even if five people turn up
Speaker 1: to you and they've got what seems to be the
Speaker 1: same or very similar challenge, right, You've got five different people,
Speaker 1: five different backgrounds, five different personalities, psychology, physiology, emotion, belief systems, experiences,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, personal beliefs and values and whatever. Right then,
Speaker 1: And it's not like, oh, you're all grieving, okay, you're
Speaker 1: all going through grief. Oh that's no good. Let me
Speaker 1: just I'll just I've got my filing cabital. I'll just
Speaker 1: grab the four Steps to Grief. It's an a four
Speaker 1: handout to recovering from grief or navigating grief. There's only
Speaker 1: four steps. It's one hundred and fifty bucks, by the way,
Speaker 1: and I'll just do a photocopy for each of you.
Speaker 1: And now you're you know, obviously that's fucking ridiculous. And
Speaker 1: as ridiculous as that is, it's also kind of happening
Speaker 1: where people are selling almost like a generic solution to
Speaker 1: what seems to be the same issue you but it
Speaker 1: isn't really because every person It's like I was talking
Speaker 1: to somebody yesterday about career, right, and I said, look, well, look,
Speaker 1: the ideal career for me was to stop working for
Speaker 1: other people when I was twenty four. So I don't
Speaker 1: have a holiday pay or sick pay. I haven't had
Speaker 1: a job or a boss for over thirty years, thirty
Speaker 1: five years. And it's very vulnerable. And some months I
Speaker 1: make great dough, and some months I make not much dough,
Speaker 1: And there's the I guess, there's risk, and there's discomfort,
Speaker 1: and there's uncertainty, and there's unpredictability. I love all that shit,
Speaker 1: but most people fucking hate it. So for me it's
Speaker 1: the perfect paradigm, and for others it would keep them
Speaker 1: awake every night. So it's trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: it is for that individual.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, yes, that's exactly the essence of it. And
Speaker 3: what we know about coaching is that. And there are
Speaker 3: lots and lots of different schools of coaching and approaches coaching,
Speaker 3: and some you know, emphasize this, and some emphasize that
Speaker 3: and so on.
Speaker 2: But what we know is that.
Speaker 3: The single biggest success factor, by far is the quality
Speaker 3: of the relationship between you and the client. So what
Speaker 3: does that mean. That means the client feels heard. That
Speaker 3: means the client feels like you understand them. It feels
Speaker 3: like there's a degree of warmth and empathy and understanding
Speaker 3: and support, and that the agenda for the session is
Speaker 3: not you and you're a four piece of paper, it's
Speaker 3: me and what I'm struggling with.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, I love that, And I mean and I
Speaker 1: always say this to people, you know, because as I
Speaker 1: told you earlier, you know, my background started in gym's right.
Speaker 1: My original degree was exercise science, and I started, you know,
Speaker 1: just doing all the shit that I did, and I
Speaker 1: ended up employing five hundred personal training as myself and
Speaker 1: had multiple gyms and all of that stuff. But I
Speaker 1: used to say to my trainers, Yeah, we need to
Speaker 1: understand anatomy and physiology and biomechanics and energy systems and
Speaker 1: nutrition and fucking periodization and all these things. Right, but
Speaker 1: also at the same time, care about your clients, and
Speaker 1: don't pretend to care, because it's good pr actually care
Speaker 1: like that you being a good human and having compassion
Speaker 1: and empathy and awareness and kindness and over delivering and underpromising, right,
Speaker 1: you can still have a great career and make great
Speaker 1: dough and be an awesome human being. It doesn't need
Speaker 1: to be one or the other.
Speaker 3: You know, yes, yes, yeah, yeah, no, exactly right. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think the thing that happens in coaching is that
Speaker 3: because people are finding their own solutions, they will only
Speaker 3: do that. They will only be prepared to look and
Speaker 3: to explore things one if they feel safe. So you're
Speaker 3: not going to laugh at them, You're not going to
Speaker 3: tell them what to do, you're not going to belittle them.
Speaker 2: You're going to support them in this. But on the
Speaker 2: other hand, you're going to be you're going to challenge.
Speaker 4: Them as well. So there's something called empathetic challenge.
Speaker 3: So you know, I hear you are understand you, but look,
Speaker 3: I hear that what you're saying is you never have
Speaker 3: time to improve.
Speaker 2: Is that right? Maybe maybe you don't want to improve.
Speaker 2: I don't know, tell me.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: So, So it's not just all Mandy Pandy, you know,
Speaker 3: supportive kind of stuff, how great you are. It is
Speaker 3: understanding what the person wants and what they've come for
Speaker 3: and what they're paying for, and at times pushing them
Speaker 3: quite hard. But you can only do that from a
Speaker 3: position of trust. And support and understanding and empathy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one hundred percent. Yeah, because that's right. You might
Speaker 1: say to me, who I think is reasonably mentally and
Speaker 1: emotionally robust. You might go, hey, Craig, you know I
Speaker 1: reckon your ace, but you're kind of bullshitting yourself. You're
Speaker 1: bullshitting yourself, mate, because we've had this discussion thirteen times
Speaker 1: and here's the evidence. You go, so, and I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right, You're right, I've
Speaker 1: got I could come up with bullshit, but it's bullshit.
Speaker 1: But you couldn't say that to someone else, perhaps depending
Speaker 1: on the person of the day, the personality, the relationship.
Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of See, this is the thing, right,
Speaker 1: how do we get more of you? Though I don't
Speaker 1: mean this to sound I was thinking about it before,
Speaker 1: Like I was reading your bio I was written about you.
Speaker 1: I'm like, this fuck is the most qualified coach in
Speaker 1: the world. I'm like, there ain't too many coaches that
Speaker 1: have got an undergrad of Masters and a PhD and
Speaker 1: the vast There are others, of course, of course, but
Speaker 1: you're a little bit of a unicorn. I mean, you
Speaker 1: would be one in a thousand. If there's a thousand coaches,
Speaker 1: there's probably one in a thousand that have got similar
Speaker 1: qulls to you. Maybe it's one in a hundred, I
Speaker 1: don't know, so when and this is quite a maybe
Speaker 1: a bland kind of cheese sandwich question, but shout out
Speaker 1: to the cheese sandwichis if somebody wants a coach other
Speaker 1: than you, we're going to plug all your stuff later
Speaker 1: so people can access you. But in general terms, it's
Speaker 1: like when people say to me, how do I find
Speaker 1: a good trainer, I'm like, I've got a bit of
Speaker 1: a list, right, which and it doesn't doesn't necessarily mean
Speaker 1: they've got to be super duper qualified, by the way,
Speaker 1: But if somebody says, ian I would love to work
Speaker 1: with someone, what are the things that I should look
Speaker 1: for in a coach? Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So that's a great question.
Speaker 3: And my answer to that is always, well, how did
Speaker 3: you find your dentist? Because the important thing about the
Speaker 3: dentist is you wouldn't want to go on to the internet.
Speaker 3: You wouldn't want to look for the cheapest dentist in
Speaker 3: the city. You wouldn't want to look for the best
Speaker 3: looking dentist or et cetera, et cetera. What you'd wanted
Speaker 3: to do is go and talk to a few people
Speaker 3: and say probably two things, how are your teeth and
Speaker 3: what are you thinking a dentist?
Speaker 2: So what?
Speaker 3: And that's exactly the same process for a coach. What
Speaker 3: you need to do is talk to a few people
Speaker 3: and ask them one what are they like? And how
Speaker 3: are you like them? Have you got challenges like them?
Speaker 3: And if they have had a coach and they've got
Speaker 3: challenges like you and it's being useful, then that's the
Speaker 3: place to start.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I also think like I used to say to people,
Speaker 1: even people who came to my facilities, right because we
Speaker 1: didn't have members or memberships. Everything was appointment based, and
Speaker 1: I would say, look, don't sign up for anything. In fact,
Speaker 1: you can't sign up, so don't worry about it. And
Speaker 1: they'd be like, I go, no, there's no memberships, there's
Speaker 1: no contracts. If you do one session with me or
Speaker 1: one of my trainers and you don't like it, not
Speaker 1: only do you not have to come back, I'll give
Speaker 1: you all your money back, right, And people are like,
Speaker 1: I go there, so I don't want you to be
Speaker 1: here unless it works for you. I don't want to
Speaker 1: twist your arm. I don't want to leave you or
Speaker 1: manipulate you into a contract or some kind of financial
Speaker 1: obligation that you're unhappy with. And that works for me.
Speaker 1: So how about we do this. How about you do
Speaker 1: a session and if you like it, or if you
Speaker 1: think it's worthwhile, or you think it's a good investment,
Speaker 1: then do another one. And if you don't, don't. And
Speaker 1: then if you end up doing five hundred or five
Speaker 1: or none, and people are like really, I go, yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, like we did the opposite of hard selling,
Speaker 1: Like there was nothing manipulative. And there were times when,
Speaker 1: if I'm being honest, people will do a session and
Speaker 1: not because it was bad. They're just like, I get it,
Speaker 1: but I think, I think I would rather just join
Speaker 1: a gym and do my own thing. And more than
Speaker 1: a few times I said, great, where do you live?
Speaker 1: And then I would point them towards a gym where
Speaker 1: they could go and get a regular gym membership and
Speaker 1: do their own thing. And also more than a few
Speaker 1: times those people came back and went, I actually hated it.
Speaker 1: I think I want to work out with a trainer,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's like I think if you have to
Speaker 1: leverage people or coerce people or manipulate people, you must
Speaker 1: be fucking terrible at your job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I have exactly the same in my terms
Speaker 3: and conditions. It basically says, if you're not satisfied with
Speaker 3: the surface with the service, I'll refund your money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and exactly this.
Speaker 3: I do have some work, mostly with senior leaders, where
Speaker 3: we do an assessment and they plan out this kind
Speaker 3: of things they want to work on, and then we
Speaker 3: have a contract for a year where we work on
Speaker 3: those things. But obviously they can still withdraw at any time.
Speaker 3: So I totally agree with you this. You know, learning
Speaker 3: is about feeling comfortable, is about knowing that you're addressing
Speaker 3: your issues you're not.
Speaker 2: It's kind of going back to the beginning of the conversation.
Speaker 3: You know, I think at then, the beginning of my life,
Speaker 3: I was living out my father's ideal and not that
Speaker 3: you said it at all, and I don't really even
Speaker 3: know whether it was his ideal, but it was what
Speaker 3: I thought is I considered to be his ideal.
Speaker 2: So you know, it's exactly that issue.
Speaker 3: It has to be about you and what you want,
Speaker 3: and of course what you want isn't necessarily such a
Speaker 3: simple thing.
Speaker 2: Because you know, we're all.
Speaker 4: There's lots of forces on us, and there's lots of expectations,
Speaker 4: and there's different drives and we can have conflicting motives
Speaker 4: and so on.
Speaker 2: So but absolutely it's about your agenda and.
Speaker 3: If you're not comfortable, and if we're not making progress,
Speaker 3: then we're wasting both about time.
Speaker 1: How often somebody that you work with, or even somebody
Speaker 1: you just talk with like they want a certain thing.
Speaker 1: This happened many times with me with clients but also myself,
Speaker 1: where I thought I wanted a thing and then I
Speaker 1: got to the top of that mountain and I went, ah,
Speaker 1: I'm on the wrong mountain. I think it's that one
Speaker 1: over there, and it's not that where I got was bad.
Speaker 1: And by the when I say mountain, I'm not being grandiose.
Speaker 1: I just mean I did the thing that I wanted
Speaker 1: to do, or I got the thing I wanted, or
Speaker 1: I achieved it, or I ticked that box, or i'd
Speaker 1: lost that weight, or I built that muscle, or I
Speaker 1: built that brand, or I earned that whatever it was.
Speaker 1: And I think there's this kind of human thing that
Speaker 1: we think when we get this external result that there
Speaker 1: will be this internal reality or shift or response that's
Speaker 1: going to be somewhere in the ballpark of Nirvana and
Speaker 1: we're like, ah, that wasn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, So a couple of comments is one of
Speaker 3: the things I don't like about the coaching profession is
Speaker 3: this idea that everybody should have three or four coaches
Speaker 3: and they should talk to them for fifteen minutes, and
Speaker 3: they should on the basis of that, they should pick. Now,
Speaker 3: I really hate that kind of thing. It's kind of
Speaker 3: I see it as almost sort of forced selling, and
Speaker 3: that's not me. I don't feel comfortable. Come and see me.
Speaker 3: I'm happy if you don't like it. I won't charge
Speaker 3: you anything for the session. But I hate being in
Speaker 3: some kind of competitive sort of process with other people.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I mean that's just kind of me. And fortunately,
Speaker 3: you know, ninety nine percent of my clients are you know,
Speaker 3: they come as a direct referral and so they want
Speaker 3: to they want to be here. So of those people,
Speaker 3: so I do very badly in the sales pitch. I'm
Speaker 3: deeply hopeless. I did five pitches for an accounting firm
Speaker 3: a little bit last year, and I didn't get a
Speaker 3: single client.
Speaker 1: Well, that kind of makes me happy and sad or
Speaker 1: I'm sad that you didn't get it, but I'm kind
Speaker 1: of happy that you shit at that, because I'm the
Speaker 1: same like I have on my Instagram. In the last
Speaker 1: thirty days, I've had three million people, three million views, right,
Speaker 1: so I have a lot of traffic. Yes, yes, But
Speaker 1: I hate it when I've got to put up a
Speaker 1: post Melissa who runs my life, and we'll probably edit
Speaker 1: this shout out to Melissa, I fucking hate it. I'm
Speaker 1: going to call you, doc because you deserve it, because
Speaker 1: you're a PhD doc. I hate it when I've got
Speaker 1: to go, hey, everyone, I've got a new mentoring program
Speaker 1: because it starts on April twenty eighth, bah blah blah.
Speaker 1: And I'm like, and I'm not doing anything wrong or bad,
Speaker 1: but I'd rather I'd definitely rather just say something silly
Speaker 1: or fun or something interesting, like I'm not but I
Speaker 1: think that you know, and like, I don't know. This
Speaker 1: is probably a dumb perspective, but the fact that I'm
Speaker 1: still insecure at times, the fact that i still feel
Speaker 1: like an imposter sometimes I don't mind that because it
Speaker 1: keeps me grounded. I feel like the moment that I
Speaker 1: think I'm ace, I'm in trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And that's a really important part of coaching, which is
Speaker 3: really this idea that we often come to to a
Speaker 3: coach or a therapist or a counselor or whatever, and
Speaker 3: we kind of have this idea that we hate this
Speaker 3: emotion and we just want to get rid of it.
Speaker 2: And very often that is just completely impossible. You know.
Speaker 2: It's a bit like.
Speaker 3: Making a you know what's sometimes called a dead person's goal.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll go to the gym every day, i
Speaker 3: won't eat chocolate again, I'll never have another drink, all
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff, and they're really really difficult, and
Speaker 3: that actually if we are in a very different mindset
Speaker 3: where we actually say, well, this impostor syndrome actually has
Speaker 3: some advantages. You know, it's not not an all bad thing. Actually,
Speaker 3: it keeps me on my toes.
Speaker 4: And when it happens, I'm going to start talking to
Speaker 4: it and I'm going to say, hey, mister, mister big doubt,
Speaker 4: I want to listen to you for a while.
Speaker 2: But let me tell you now, I'm not going to
Speaker 2: listen to you for two hours. You're going to have
Speaker 2: you say.
Speaker 3: You can remind me about things, you can caution me
Speaker 3: about the risks. You can warn me that I better
Speaker 3: be prepared and that I better know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 3: But after that, I want you to go away. So
Speaker 3: this whole idea that emotions are not something that are
Speaker 3: good and bad to be accepted or rejected. Emotions are
Speaker 3: just the carpet we walk on. This is the fundamental
Speaker 3: aspect of being human.
Speaker 4: But the thing about them is that they are because
Speaker 4: they're neither good or bad.
Speaker 2: If we can start to just say, well, okay, yes
Speaker 2: that's me, I'm like that, I get angry or I
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Once we've started to be aware of it and accept it,
Speaker 4: then we're.
Speaker 3: On the road to change. If we hate it, we
Speaker 3: tend to make it worse.
Speaker 4: You can't punish yourself out of anxiety.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so interesting. And also I guess like I
Speaker 1: can simultaneously feel not good enough while knowing intellectually I
Speaker 1: am yeah. Yeah, So those things can coexist. You know.
Speaker 1: It's like I can I've said this before on the show,
Speaker 1: but I can get up and I'm about to do
Speaker 1: a presentation and part of me is like, well, this
Speaker 1: is the day that you're going to fuck up and
Speaker 1: everyone's going to realize that you've just been really lucky,
Speaker 1: so far good at this, and today you'll be exposed
Speaker 1: for the dud that you are. Right, there's that, and
Speaker 1: then there's my prefrontal cortex that's going, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you've this a lot, and you get paid pretty well
Speaker 1: and people ask you to come back, so you're not
Speaker 1: fucking terrible, so shut up, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's right.
Speaker 3: And a lot of coaching is helping people to bring
Speaker 3: that dialogue out in the open because whilst that whilst
Speaker 3: you know, mister big failure is there chirping away in
Speaker 3: the background, it's very difficult to do anything about it.
Speaker 3: So there are lots of really interesting things. One a
Speaker 3: very simple technique is called the talking back diary, and
Speaker 3: it's worth anybody doing it. And you just get a
Speaker 3: bit of paper a screen, draw a line down the middle,
Speaker 3: and you put in a critic on one side and
Speaker 3: in a coach on the other. So what's my inner
Speaker 3: critic saying, well, you're lucky and they're going to find
Speaker 3: you out today? What is it? So you actually make
Speaker 3: it explicit and clear and direct, and when we do that,
Speaker 3: we transform our lives because we are no longer driven
Speaker 3: by these unconscious or semi conscious feelings and things.
Speaker 2: We can be deliberate, we can be explicit, we can choose.
Speaker 2: We're free from all of that stuff that holds us back.
Speaker 2: And you know, but of.
Speaker 3: Course I'm just as neurotic as you mate, so and
Speaker 3: I'm still working on it.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying that I'm there by any means.
Speaker 1: You know, we're all worksome, but you'll work.
Speaker 3: Talk about my book soon, and you can you'll be
Speaker 3: able to see that I'm a neurotic over a jeeva.
Speaker 1: That's all good, bro, that's all good. And that's why.
Speaker 1: You know, the person that I get on the show
Speaker 1: that pretends they've got all their shit together and they
Speaker 1: don't have any flaws or faults, well, firstly, that person's
Speaker 1: never getting on the show. Hey, you're great, you're great.
Speaker 1: We've got to wind up, but you're great. I'm going
Speaker 1: to get you back if you'd like to come back.
Speaker 1: There's so much, so much we could talk about. Tell
Speaker 1: people about your books, if you've got a website where
Speaker 1: they can connect with you, and yeah, let's let's do
Speaker 1: the let's do the blurb because you definitely are worth
Speaker 1: connecting with.
Speaker 2: So my website is Ian McCormick dot net.
Speaker 3: So I'm a little bit hard to find in so
Speaker 3: far as Ian is the GAELICAI N and McCormick is
Speaker 3: mc c O R M I C gabe and I'm
Speaker 3: sure you'll.
Speaker 2: Let people know.
Speaker 3: And currently I've got three books out so one so
Speaker 3: they're all about coaching. So the first book is really
Speaker 3: about how coaches can improve by spending time after sessions
Speaker 3: reflecting on them what happened, what went well, what didn't
Speaker 3: go well, and how do I want to improve and
Speaker 3: doing that explicitly and systematically. So that book is called
Speaker 3: Reflective Practice for Coaches. The second book is called Schemer
Speaker 3: Coaching Overcoming Deep Seated.
Speaker 2: Challenges, and it's really about.
Speaker 3: So we were talking before about this idea that humans
Speaker 3: have these deep seated messages like we have to get
Speaker 3: on with, we have to please other people, et cetera.
Speaker 3: And it's about dealing with those kinds of challenges.
Speaker 2: So, for example, I.
Speaker 3: Work with a lot of people who are accountants and
Speaker 3: lawyers and so on, and they work in an environment
Speaker 3: of huge pressure where the demands are vasked, and so
Speaker 3: many of them suffer from what we call unrelenting striving.
Speaker 3: Nothing is good enough next year. You know, a lawyer
Speaker 3: recently said, you know, the end of the year is
Speaker 3: a little bit like the rock rolling down to the
Speaker 3: bottom of the hill, and it's it's you know, I'm
Speaker 3: back where I started. I've got to start rolling it up,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So that kind of syndeme. And the third
Speaker 3: book is about the idea that most professionals spend a
Speaker 3: huge amount of time and effort in money every year
Speaker 3: developing themselves their skills and abilities.
Speaker 2: But actually, and if we just take psychotherapist, there's been
Speaker 2: a lot of research done.
Speaker 3: Then if we take a a look at client outcome,
Speaker 3: So how well do your clients do, and we look
Speaker 3: at how many years of experience you've had and how.
Speaker 4: Much profession therefore how much professional development you've had, et cetera.
Speaker 4: The correlation between those two is zero zip.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: You but your therapist is just as likely to be
Speaker 3: effective three years out of clinical psychology school as thirty years.
Speaker 1: Wow. That's super interesting.
Speaker 3: But of course that's on average, and not everybody's like that.
Speaker 3: So how do you actually.
Speaker 4: Progress in a profession, how do you actually really learn.
Speaker 2: And get better and better?
Speaker 3: And I look at some examples and history and some
Speaker 3: so I look at, for example, at the Top Gun
Speaker 3: so the you know the movie, and top.
Speaker 1: One percent of all naval aviators. So I love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But the interesting thing about what they did there
Speaker 3: was they had a school that actually practiced the principles and.
Speaker 2: Not they didn't know that this is what they were.
Speaker 3: Doing, but they actually practiced the principles of something called
Speaker 3: deliberate practice.
Speaker 2: And that's what the book's about.
Speaker 1: Love it. Well, Doc, it's been great. We're going to
Speaker 1: get you back. Thank you so much for being part
Speaker 1: of the You project. Enjoy the rest of your Saturday.
Speaker 1: Well say goodbye our fair but for the minute, thanks
Speaker 1: for your time, thanks for your brain, and thanks for
Speaker 1: your energy.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you. You're an easy man to talk to.
Speaker 3: Just delightful. Greg, Thank you, thanks for the opportunity, pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks Doc,