Navigating Authenticity and Truth As A Leader

Is it true?

Clark: [00:00:00] There’s a reason why I’m telling you this, although it doesn’t seem related, I had to go down from my office here to my car. Across the road over there is a builder’s yard where there’s blokes working. Slabs and bricks and roof tiles and all that sort of stuff. And they’re mooching around carrying stuff and loading pallets onto lorries and stuff. 

Clark: Every now and again, we’ll have a little bit of banter. Because I’m always smart and I work unusual hours and they’re always telling me to piss off back to Birmingham. 

Clark: Just having a laugh. Never really speak to these people. Except today when I went to get something out of my car, just before my meeting, one of the guys in a forklift truck turned his forklift around and headed towards me, and it was a good 30 yards to where I was. And I thought, oh, he clearly wants to say something, that’s parked wrong or something.

Clark: He pulled up next to me and he just started chatting. It turns out a, after having this conversation with him that his nephew had just died at very young age in his very early [00:01:00] twenties. He was telling me about this and before we knew it, he is explaining the circumstances of this kid passing away and he was crying.

Clark: And I started crying, these two blokes in the middle of the street crying, talking about this thing. But it was, for me, it was a perfectly natural thing to, to do. I was engaged in this conversation. I put my arm around him and we were talking and I had a little bit of a conversation with him.

Clark: I did what I do and I basically can’t say I was coaching him, but I just encouraged him to say, and after 10 minutes, we shook hands and he went off in his forklift truck. 

Clark: I came back up to my office and I just sat and thought why did he come and speak to me? 

Clark: We don’t know each other. He knows what I do. He knows a little bit about me, but clearly something about the interactions that we’ve had were authentic enough for him to think I can have this conversation with him. 

Clark: I’m guessing it’s not a conversation he’s had with anybody, certainly, not even his closest family members because he really poured his heart out.

Clark: And I thought, you don’t have to advertise how authentic you [00:02:00] are. Thanks 

Tony: for sharing that, it’s a powerful story. It describes, I don’t like the word psychological safety, but it describes a place where he felt comfortable enough to just be himself, 

Tony: To grieve publicly with someone who doesn’t really know, may have had a couple of chats with now and again And knows a bit about you than what you do. So it’s amazing feedback in a way and you know for you to be able to be Same applies here that you’re comfortable sharing this with us as well, which was a moment of Pure emotion for you, which is not your go-to place either.

Tony: We’ve had those conversations before, can’t get more authentic than that. So I think that’s quite amazing. 

Clark: How did you know, how did you know? This is a question that I asked myself afterwards, because I don’t think, we spend a lot of time and effort on LinkedIn and other social media outlets trying to show people how authentic we are, but you either are or you aren’t.

Clark: And, I dunno how he knew, but I just don’t think you need to advertise. 

Rob: I’ll respond in a couple of months cause it was but I think that’s the [00:03:00] problem. 

Rob: I was talking before you got on about LinkedIn and about, I haven’t been on there as much. 

Rob: Partly because there’s a cost to it of being on there. Every time you post you get pitched by loads of people and it’s a lack of authenticity. It’s contrived. People are contriving to have conversations so that they can sell you something and people are contriving. I talked about stuff would happen and it would be relevant to something and you’d use something from your own life and talk about that. But I feel that’s become such a meme that I don’t want to put anything that happens in everyday life because it’s like the meme of, I just got married and here’s what it teaches you about corporate sales. 

Rob: When you say that you hate the words psychological safety, I can understand that because I think what we’ve done is we’ve taken something that’s just normal in life and we’ve put a magnifying glass on it, give it a name and it become a concept that’s become detached.

Rob: And so people talk about something in an abstract way [00:04:00] and no one talks about stuff in a more abstract way than me because it’s become abstract. 

Rob: Both of you are far more present and authentic than I am. Like it’ll take me time to process. It’ll take me a while for me to take what’s going on. And process it, whereas both of you respond in the moment. That’s not a lack of 

Tony: authenticity though, Rob, is it? 

Rob: That is your nature. Yeah, maybe it’s my nature is to be more I do my processing alone, probably. It’s harder for me when people are around. There’s too many different things to to take in. 

Rob: We live in a world of Instagram and Facebook and where everyone’s portraying something on every social media, someone’s portraying something other than they are for what they want. And a lot of the genuineness. of interaction has gone.

Rob: I suppose it’s not even social media. It’s also, you have stock responses. How are you? I’m fine, thank you. And it doesn’t really [00:05:00] mean anything because it’s not a real interaction. And I think people crave for that realness. And I think that’s what that guy was responding to with you, Clark.

Clark: Yeah, but Rob, I think Tony’s just hit the nail on the head. And forgive me for saying this, I’m probably going to insult you now, but. You are not the most eloquent of people. You’re not fluid in the way you speak, but I prefer speaking to you to probably 90 percent of the people I interact with, certainly in a business setting. You are not eloquent purely because you take the time to think about what’s being said.

Clark: And to me, that’s an indication. Of your engagement. Actually, this was the question I was asking myself when and it’s a serious question. I wasn’t humble bragging this thing about, how did he know to speak to me? 

Clark: It’s a question because if I can answer it, I think I might be onto something.

Clark: I think the reason we all get on is because we can have a conversation about anything, and whilst it might be contentious at times, it will always be constructive because [00:06:00] all the people involved have got a vested interest in it being constructive and for that reason, we’re all clearly, although different. Certainly authentic, but how do people know that? 

Clark: Because there are some brilliant salespeople, there’s some brilliant con men around. And they can clearly mimic this authentic behavior, or certainly come across as sincere and earnest in the way that they put themselves across. And it takes a skilled person to detect whether that’s going on or not. 

Clark: One of the things that it’s a little bit like AI is a two edged sword. On the one hand it’s ruining a lot of communication, but at the same time, it’s also bringing the cream to the top and this whole thing about authenticity, whilst people talk about it all the time, and for that reason, we’re all getting a little bit sick to death of hearing about it.

Clark: At the same time, it’s also making us much more discerning of what real authenticity is. When you look, for instance, at the political landscape at the moment. I’ve never been involved in politics. I’ve never voted. It’s a personal thing that I’ve stood by ever since I was in the military for, my own [00:07:00] reasons. But you look at some of the politicians certainly in the British political landscape at the moment, they couldn’t be less authentic if they read it in a book about not being authentic. These are fake people. And I wonder what these people are like when they get home. Because their lack of authenticity projects from the screen when you watch them on television and these are the people that are running a country of 60 odd million people. 

Clark: So how is it so obvious, and yet they’re not able to a spot it and b, do anything about it. And we’re coming to a point in time now where, again, going back to the political situation, there was a massive miscalculation in the United States about how that election was going to go on the part of one half of the country.

Clark: What I found interesting was that one of the political candidates sat on a podcast with a well known podcast person and made himself for all the things that people say about him, and I have no [00:08:00] particular thoughts either way. He sat there and he seemed at least to me anyway to be acting out of real authenticity and certainly the person that was interviewing him, Joe Rogan, I would assume was pretty good at drawing out whether they were authentic or not.

Clark: That’s what people want now. I am convinced that changed the result of the election, maybe not overwhelmingly, but I think it certainly had an effect on it. It’s such an important thing. And yet, so few people are able to do it.

Tony: If we go back to the, why would that guy be drawn to you, for what reason? I think it’s the whole idea of being authentic. We love labels, don’t we? The whole idea of being authentic is the only way That you will draw people towards you just because your values are visible when you’re authentic that they’re playing out through the way that you behave, the way you speak, what you do and people who are wedded to those same values will naturally gravitate towards [00:09:00] them. I know we talked about values a little bit last time. There’s something around that, that would have said this guy’s okay subconsciously okay. He probably hasn’t rationalized it all and gone. I’m going to go and speak to this fellow because of A, B and C, our values are aligned, blah, blah, blah.

Tony: It’s a subconscious thing that’s playing out in real time. The guy’s got a need to express some grief and talk to someone and feels in that moment that I can go here because it’s going to be okay. Like I said earlier that’s a powerful thing. And I think for me, Clark, going back to the, I’ve never labeled myself as a leadership trainer.

Tony: I find myself delivering a lot of leadership training. I’m not defending myself because I’m in many ways agreeing with you that as an antidote to the notion that leadership training and what people think of it is a good thing. My whole reason for being when I’m in those situations is to dispel the myths that [00:10:00] these labels and these models have any relevance.

Tony: If they’re in any way isolated from whatever’s going on in your world. So when you put at the center of the workshop or the training program, a very real challenge, and you contextualize it in a way that, okay, I’m managing this group of people to meet these sorts of challenges, and I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to do.

Tony: How do I do that? And you’ve got this state of what I call public learning, where in order start to start to help the people that you’ve been paid to serve in many ways, then you’ve got to really understand who you are because you bring all of yourself to the table.

Tony: I’ll give an example.

Tony: Like I don’t know if we’ve shared this. Rob, I may have shared it with you very early on. 

Tony: At the beginning of a course, I’ll show a picture of my family and a picture of my kids and all of that sort of stuff. And you wouldn’t know looking at the picture, but Charlie, my son, who turns 20 in January, has never walked and never talked, right?

Tony: So that’s a 20 year journey of at times hell, at [00:11:00] other times difficult, sometimes it’s okay. Charlie. 

Tony: I won’t go into all the detail there, but there’s loads and loads of stories around that journey my wife and I have traveled along together, but also on parallel lines at times dealing with it in our own ways.

Tony: Did you say never walk 

Clark: never talk?

Tony: Yeah, he’s profoundly disabled was only diagnosed at 12, 12 and a half years old with a very rare genetic condition called STXBP1. 

Tony: It’s like a number plate. In fact, I should get a private number plate, which I don’t like, but I’ll get one with that on it. 

Tony: Yeah, so it’s a, it’s an incredibly rare condition. Rare situation. And lots of things around that, as you manage in a new way of life to deal with that and all the rest of it. 

Tony: Point being that when I open up with people that I’ve never met before and share this story. The reason I do so is that it’s a way that helps me to explain that leadership’s about who we [00:12:00] are.

Tony: So we talk about authenticity. I bring everything into that situation. All of the stories, all of the good things, all of the bad things, all of the regrets, all the pain, all the growth, all of the, personality characteristics, everything, all of those things. 

Tony: When you’re asking people to lead it’s impossible to put a model against anything like that and say, this is how you do it. This is the way, situational leadership’s the model and servant leadership’s the way to go. And Clifton StrengthsFinder is the tool to use. These have all got some value, but they’re only a very small means to what is a very complex thing, which is get a grip of yourself to understand who are you grounded in when you’re in front of the people that you’ve been paid to manage or being paid to lead, who are you like?

Tony: So I spend the time dispelling myths and consciously working people through a process of deepening their self awareness. 

Tony: [00:13:00] Understanding their ability to verbalize vulnerability that actually not knowing everything is when people ask you. It’s not about needing to have the answer. It’s about maybe sometimes working out together what the solution might be. For example but I’ll use models to say, okay, here’s a model. This is a great model in certain situations. Now, how can we apply it against your particular challenge. And what do you think about your natural propensity to actually work in this way?

Tony: Does it suit you or not? 

Tony: If it doesn’t forget it, it’s irrelevant. The model doesn’t exist for you. Rub it out, cross it off. Doesn’t make any difference to anybody. Nobody cares. So it becomes a really powerful exchange of, I leave these courses more enriched than I go in every single time. Because I’m not there to teach.

Tony: I’m not there to tell people how to lead. I’m not telling people how to do it. I’m trying to help them to uncover for themselves [00:14:00] and share stories and experiences that help them leave the course with a deeper understanding of who they are and a deeper respect for, the challenges of leadership.

Tony: The courage of actually trying to take people into places they don’t even know they’re supposed to be going or why they’re even doing it. 

Clark: When we were talking a minute ago about authenticity, the thing that occurred to me, Tony, was this idea of congruence, being congruent in our actions with the things that we’re saying.

Clark: I think people are hardwired from birth to recognize, does what they say match what they do? 

Clark: And if not, why not? 

Clark: Am I safe around this person? One of the traps that many people fall into from a coaching training perspective is that, as you’ve just said, the very fact that they’re there to teach something lends itself to the idea that they must know everything, which can’t be true.

Clark: If a person goes in trying to act as if [00:15:00] they whether they’re leaders or trainers or whatever, if they’re trying to push this image that they know everything, automatically, people are seeing this lack of congruence. And they’re then watching out for slips. Whereas, if you’re obviously quite clear about why you’re there, you’re not there to change them as individuals, you’re there to point the way to how they might change themselves.

Clark: I’m making that up, but in doing that or in appearing with that premise in mind, you then have to walk the walk and not just talk the talk, but you, because you have to say, look, I don’t know everything, but I know in this case this, and this will work and I can help you with X, Y, and Z. 

Clark: It lends itself to you being authentic and congruent so people are more likely to listen to you. 

Rob: I think it’s about engaging with life as it is. Often people don’t want to engage with life. I’m interested in what you were saying, Tony, because I have a completely different approach in that for me, I look at lots of patterns. So pretty much everything I do now [00:16:00] is based off seeing lots of people and I was seeing the same problems. I’ve always been quite good at recognizing patterns because whatever happens, I forget the story, but I remember the principle. So I abstract the principles from the story and then I build a model. I build the model that is universal to all the stories. So the situations are very different, but the model is a working model.

Rob: I think the key is whether the model is descriptive or prescriptive. 

Tony: I don’t think we’re in any disagreement, Rob, at all. I’m 100 percent agree with you. So what you’re doing is you’re capturing the absolute essence of authenticity and building. Like you say, when you use the term universal truth, I’ve used that term probably in the last three or four classes that I’ve made that this and these are the types of things that I try to do is go right. 

Tony: Here’s all the million leadership programs that you can buy in the world. Here’s all the million different possibilities of complex challenges you may be facing [00:17:00] as you’re a project manager or a football manager or a bank manager. They’re all different. And you’ve got one group of people who behave this way, another group that behave, so the dynamics of it are frighteningly complex and impossible to navigate if we were trying to break it down to its end degree. 

Tony: When you can find, as you’re doing these things that you can wrap around any situation, you can actually help people significantly to navigate the world that they’re existing in, to solve the biggest problem that they might be facing. 

Tony: Half the challenge is getting them to identify and articulate the problem that they’ve got and especially my world at the moment, the world that I keep getting thrown into to get them to articulate that publicly, where there’s a need to be vulnerable with a group of people they’ve never met before.

Tony: So I agree 100%. I did a little session this morning in London, an impromptu one. I was helping a guy out. And one of the models I was doing a [00:18:00] football story, a game that was involved in a few years ago where my team goes, it takes a 3 0 lead against all the odds, goes in at halftime.

Tony: And the exercise that they’re doing is they have to prepare a halftime team talk. One of the groups of preparing the away team, the opponent who was three nil down and had a high expectation of winning the game comfortably. The other team, managing my team. They’re going to go into an imaginary dressing room and create a halftime team talk to manage that.

Tony: It’s all about rhetoric. It’s all about appealing to emotion, appealing to logic, appealing to principles and ethics and time and all of that sort of great stuff. They set about doing this thing, but beyond all of that. So that’s a situation and a set of tasks. And that’s playing the game, but I’m able to share with them where it went wrong for me, where, when it was no longer working.

Tony: What was it? 

Tony: So I’m using one of these models of universal truth, if you like, where did we [00:19:00] have a shared sense of purpose? Yes. 

Tony: Did I operate out of a state of genuine empathy? Yes. 

Tony: So those two things I had nailed down and they’re like two cornerstones for me. 

Tony: And then the third one is the frequency of high quality interactions. 

Tony: This is where I fell down. 

Tony: At this point in time where things were slipping away from me, an example, and use this a lot now, it’s a great thing for me to have landed on for myself. But me running around, belief in people that they don’t have in themselves is absolute rubbish, right?

Tony: It sounds on the one hand, Oh, what a great guy, he really believes in these people and is trying to lift them up. Yes, this is true. But when I asked you to come and do this great thing that I think is a fantastic idea and you don’t feel ready to do it, then you’re trust in me as diminished for however much, maybe a small degree, maybe a lot. But if I keep doing it. Those things keep accumulating. There comes a point [00:20:00] where I’m still trying to take them and they’re nodding in agreement. We’re coming with you, got a shared center. But the reality, these things that you’re saying this things being left unsaid. It’s with me to uncover that.

Tony: It’s with me to have revealed what that was. So that when I’m asking you to go there, actually now is not the time. They’re not ready for this. Let me take a step back and help them just take the first step maybe, because this brilliant, fantastic idea that I’ve got, that’s all about them and how good they are, my belief in them. 

Tony: It’s bollocks if they’re not ready to go there themselves, and I wasn’t close enough to each of them to know that, when it was going wrong. 

Tony: That story is fresh, hot off the press that I ran it as part of a workshop this morning. The reason I shared it was around if I can get a three pillar model for something that, that I can put around any situation, like intrinsic motivation, autonomy, competence related, it’s Those things just work.

Tony: You can apply it to a personal relationship. You can apply it to a business [00:21:00] relationship. Love sharing those things. And then a model on what constitutes a high quality interaction and how do you measure it? 

Tony: Not easy to do, but to land on these things and share them. The rest of the content can be forever burnt on a bonfire, because these other things actually matter, they make a huge difference. I’m with you on that, whenever you’ve got one of those universal truth models that you’ve mapped because you’ve seen a pattern, 

Tony: Rob, I’d love to, for you to share that with us. Because of them, I can only imagine that being an enormous amount of value that people can gain from being able to apply a simple set of principles to, multiple difficult situations. 

Rob: Yeah. Happy to share it. 

Clark: Yeah, that’s the idea of universal truth. I had that conversation that although I didn’t use those words because I was talking to somebody about an approach that they were taking to towards dealing with something. And I said, the thing is, when you look at a situation that you think you’ve got to solve or an issue that you need to deal with, you’re going to [00:22:00] do that based upon the beliefs that you have, the beliefs that you hold around that, that particular situation.

Clark: And you may say that your beliefs are true because, your truth is different to my truth and, we all got our own truth and so on. I said, but it’s important for you, certainly as somebody that holds other people’s faith in their hands. For you to recognize that there are some truths that aren’t relative, and I think that speaks to what Rob’s saying, there are certain patterns that occur again and again with enough regularity to suggest that these things are undeniable.

Clark: So you couldn’t walk off the top of a building and expect anything other than to meet the ground again pretty sharpish. 

Clark: It’s a universal truth, and it’s absolute. And there’s nothing that you can do about it. It doesn’t matter how much you argue against it. 

Clark: One of the things I was saying to this person was, it’s great for you to have this belief in the things that you hold to be true, but you need to check those against [00:23:00] something. And there are certain things that, and I don’t know what they are. I can’t say which 5 or 15 or 25 things out of all the facts in the universe, but are absolutely true. I can’t say for sure, but there are some things that you have to ask yourself. Is this just something that I believe to be true or is it something that is evidence based? So I work or I try to work as much as I can. According to the Bayesian model, which basically says whenever you do a thing, you’ve now changed the thing. So you have to keep assessing at every step whether the thing is still the same as it was and you adapt as you progress. And so as I was saying to her, you need to be constantly asking yourself, is this thing still true?

Clark: And, when we talk about authenticity and as I just mentioned there, this idea of congruence, I think people are always talking about this idea of being present. You’ve always got to be present [00:24:00] and mindful and engaged with people. But the thing that’s at the core of all that, I think, is honesty. And it’s not just a matter of being honest with the people that you’re talking to, but being honest with yourself. 

Clark: Do I just want this to be true, or is it clearly true based on the evidence that I see in front of me? 

Clark: When you’re talking to somebody and, I go to a place for a coffee, and I won’t say too much about these people, but there’s a group of people that go in there that are of a particular ideological persuasion, let’s say. They belong, they all belong to the same group. I can see the way they engage with me over the last sort of year or so that I’ve been going there that whenever we have a little bit of a chitchat, small talk, they’re trying to sell me this idea of their ideology. And one of the things, one of the, one of them said to me recently, Oh, you should come to our place, this place that we go to do our thing.

Clark: I’m not going to say what it is. But you should come to our place. 

Clark: And I said why? 

Clark: They said it would be interesting. I said, yeah, the zoo’s interesting, and the art galleries are all interesting and the park’s interesting. I [00:25:00] can’t go to all the places, why would I go to your place? 

Clark: It’s an easy conversation for me to have because I know that they’re not being honest with themselves about the reasons why I should go there. They think that they know the answer to everything and they’re holding their relative truth to be absolute. 

Clark: I know that they’re not. So we could go around in a circle having that conversation for days and days.

Clark: But they just have one version of reality amongst the many versions. I think authenticity is all about how honest with yourself and with other people are you. How honest are you able to be? 

Clark: So that when somebody says, No, I don’t think that’s the thing. 

Clark: You have to then say, Oh okay, it might not be. That to me is authenticity. When we stand there, as you said at the beginning, Tony, and act like we know everything, you’re on a hide in to nothing, aren’t you? 

Clark: I think Rob’s nailed it there with the, with this idea of universal or absolute truths. We can’t know what they are, but we can [00:26:00] certainly spot them when they’re, when they’re landing on us from a height.

Rob: I think actually you’ve hit the nail on the head really when you were talking about the group, I’m thinking about religion. And, I’m relating that to the whole thing that we were talking about branding and being inauthentic and all that stuff is there’s a scale of someone’s lying.

Rob: Someone’s honest and the truth. 

Rob: The truth is if you imagine like a flowing river what we get of it is like a little container that we can put the water in. 

Rob: We can look at the water and we say that’s truth, but that is true through our perceptual filter and I think that the issue of truth is, it’s too big for any of us to know. 

Rob: All we can do is we can build a working model, which is the best of what we know. We just look for, can we disprove it? 

Rob: If it’s disproved, then the model is broken. And so all models are the best working. We need certain truths to operate [00:27:00] on, but that doesn’t mean that they’re truth.

Rob: And even if we think they’re truth, we can be honest, but not know the truth. I find religions fascinating in the fact that Buddha, Jesus, both of them said they did the exact opposite of starting a religion. And everyone in their name took everything they said don’t do, made it into a religion, they put, it’s like they put a container into the river, got this cup, got this bowl of water and said this is truth and this is the bible, that’s it.

Rob: That is the ultimate in not wanting to engage with life. Because life is updating constantly because every instance is unique. So we have to respond to it as it is.

Clark: Rob I have a client who is of a religious background and there are certain values that they adhere to that I may not necessarily agree with, but they’re important to that particular person. They’ve mentioned to me on several occasions that because of the way the world is and because of, the fact that the [00:28:00] world seems to be on fire, clearly this is evidence that everything they believe is wrong and they may as well give up. 

Clark: There are so many assumptions in that conversation this is as I always say I don’t engage in therapy or counseling. We were there to get something done. So when we have these conversations For me, it’s more a matter of trying to help them to examine how they are they’re thinking about the thing so that we can get on with doing the thing that we’re there for. 

Clark: One of the things I asked them is that if what you say you believe in is true, the fact that they have a belief in a particular being who is all loving, all knowing, understanding and so on, then might there not be a reason why a, the world’s on fire and b, You may feel you don’t measure up.

Clark: Why would it mean that you need to give up? 

Clark: The reason I asked this question is because the idea of them giving up on something is to suggest that they know [00:29:00] the standards by which they’re being judged and I can’t see how anybody can. 

Clark: You were just talking about universal or absolute truths.

Clark: And this person has decided on behalf of the person that they apparently believe in, whether they measure up to their standards or not. And I said, surely that’s not your job to make that decision. Surely your job is to just do your best, right? 

Clark: And you’re doing that, aren’t you? And yet, if you give up, you’ve basically said, I can’t do this. I’m not good enough. You’re not understanding enough to accept me for whatever my best is. 

Clark: The reason I mention that conversation is because we often hear people talk about self limiting beliefs as if, it’s the thing that’s holding us back from being successful.

Clark: But actually, In many cases, self limiting beliefs are the things that are just stopping us from living our best life or what would enable us to be authentic. 

Clark: In pretending to be something else, you’re basically saying the thing that I am isn’t good enough. There are assumptions behind the activity that you’re engaging. For instance, pretending you know everything. Because to say, I [00:30:00] don’t know everything, is to diminish yourself. 

Clark: But that’s an incorrect assumption. Nobody can know everything. And then in fact, knowing that you don’t know everything to me is the height of wisdom. 

Clark: So I’m often interested in the assumptions behind the things people do and the way they address their behavior, whether it’s religious, political or whatever. If you’re having a conversation with a person or a group of people, the first thing you need to know is where is this person coming from? What are their beliefs? 

Clark: Because our conversation must depend on what those set of beliefs are. For instance, if a person believes that everything’s pointless, then why even have a conversation?

Clark: Because if everything’s pointless, they’re not even interested in having an upbuilding or constructive conversation. Every, a nihilist is probably the worst person you could ever have a conversation with. But anybody else that you speak to, whatever their belief is, must be leading towards something positive. And so it’s your job as a coach or somebody that’s trying to help them to help them refer to those beliefs and pick out what they consider to be the [00:31:00] absolute or universal truth that they can adhere to. 

Clark: It’s a common thing is that people say, Oh, I’m done. I’ve had enough. I’m not good enough. I’m not worth it. I’m not worth the effort, whatever. All of these self deprecating beliefs. 

Clark: If you examine what they say, they believe they tend to contradict themselves. It’s important, especially with religion, when you talk to a religious person and these people that I speak to in the cafe, I look at a lot of what they say and I think, but you are not even speaking in line with the things that you profess to believe.

Clark: Going back to the authenticity, there’s no congruence there. So it’s probably the most important thing when it comes to authenticity and congruence is who, what does that person believe or what do I believe? And what am I prepared to accept about another person? Does that make any sense? 

Tony: A hundred percent. 

Tony: This is the essence of leadership for me. So let’s take that and say, this aspirational thing that they’re aiming for is not in line with the reality. So even their own reality, there’s an aspiration that doesn’t [00:32:00] match the reality.

Tony: So there’s a gap to be bridged. 

Tony: I think as a coach or a leader with leading groups of people towards an objective, let’s say a challenge. And many of them are having these they’re existing in their own minds with all these thoughts and feelings and needs and aspirations and so forth, and haven’t necessarily calibrated whether, They’re accurate or the right thing to do.

Tony: And, especially working in groups, but even in a one way, where if I’m talking about high quality interaction, what do we actually want here? 

Tony: How far apart are we in what we want? 

Tony: Have we even identified what we both want and what do we both think about this same thing? 

Tony: How big is that gap? 

Tony: The progress for me is bridging, between this reality that we are in let’s get crystal clear on what that reality is. 

Tony: Let’s get then crystal clear on what we want and identify as best we can, the gap that needs to be bridged and the gap will be bridged by thoughts, beliefs, [00:33:00] values, feelings, emotions and you might feel that this type of approach is incredibly frustrating and I might think it’s really worthwhile and gives me a lot of nourishment.

Tony: Let’s say ever this thing might be as long as we know that we know the gaps that we are both bridging in order to come together to meet this objective that we both might be pursuing. I think the closer we get to the individual and, especially to dispel those.

Tony: I don’t know what the right word is, but those ideals that don’t have a great deal of meaning and help people really get closer to reality than an unrealistic aspiration. I think those bridging those gaps is where people start to grow through how difficult it might be to accept that. But when they do, it’s like, Oh, glad I got that.

Tony: I’m glad I’ve shut that thing off because they’re carrying unknown burdens around with them. I’m not saying what I want to [00:34:00] say. So I’m carrying it with me and I’m getting resentful, getting angry about it and getting despondent about it. In the moment, I avoided something by not speaking up the way I wanted to speak or I wanted to be cool so I didn’t say what I felt should be said and then I leave that situation with just an incremental additional bit of weight on my own shoulders because I didn’t get be authentic.

Clark: Tony that’s the whole reason why what we’re doing today, I think, in this conversation is we’re acting as a collective 10th man. When you look at the gap between people’s actions and their beliefs in an organization, for instance, in a business, where there’s a discrepancy between what the organization says it values.

Clark: Then the action that the leadership team are taking it’s the role of the 10th man to ask those questions. 

Clark: Why did you not do that? 

Clark: Or why did you not speak your mind? 

Clark: What assumptions are you basing your beliefs on? 

Clark: For instance, do you think that you’re going to be chastised or punished for saying such and such in this particular forward? If you [00:35:00] do believe that, where’s that belief come from? Is something being done or do people habitually act in a certain way that has made you realize? 

Clark: Or maybe it’s even the consensus that you mustn’t speak up in these situations because you’ll end up having to pay for it later. That’s where the 10th man and we can even be our own 10th man, by asking ourselves those questions. 

Clark: Why did I behave in that way? All they were saying was X, and yet I behaved X. As if they were insulting me, what beliefs driving that assumption. The 10th man is the person that has to ask those questions. This book is starting to become it’s taken some real form now and it’s making me articulate some of the ideas that I’ve never really given voice to.

Clark: In the times that we’re living in today, where so many people are selling so many messages and whether it be shampoo and toothpaste to a political party or a religious ideology or a political ideology or whatever it might be in the face of all of these so called truths, somebody has to be able to ask. What is really true. 

Clark: Even if out of the [00:36:00] 10 things we’ve just mentioned, only one thing is true, then we can nail that particular flag to our mast and build everything from that. But somebody has to say, hold on a minute, we’re basing some assumption on this thing that you’ve said and we don’t even know if that’s a real thing.

Clark: Maybe that’s just your truth. But I’ve found that it’s true, so important, not just at an organizational level, but at a societal level for people to say, because what we find ourselves in, certainly in the political sphere, but also in the religious world as well, is that if you’re not one, then you must clearly be the other. This idea of people selling the truth, this is the truth. I’m telling you this thing, because this washing powder, this toothpaste, this religion is the right one. Automatically, it makes other people say no, it’s not the right one. This is the right one. And so we’re all going to the fringes.

Clark: We’re all going to the extremes. And somebody has to say, no, you’re not, neither of you are right. [00:37:00] And in fact, to some degree, both of you are right. But we need to the meaningful stuff, the absolute stuff. from your relative truths that you’re trying to shove down our throats as if they were real.

Tony: So the way I do that is to say that there’s no truth if it can’t be captured on camera, right? If it can be captured on camera, if it’s data, if it’s factual, if it’s evidence. Then we can agree on that’s the bit we can definitely agree on we can watch the video back We can hear the audio. This is what somebody said.

Tony: This is what they look like. This is how they behave This is who hit who first. All of that sort of stuff. If it can’t be nailed down to that degree of accuracy, then it is Conjecture it is Differing beliefs, different mindsets . And of course, we’re going to be dealing with that in, in groups.

Tony: That complexity grows, exponentially when you add one more person to a team, the number of touch points grows massively and all the rest of it. So that ability to define what it is specifically that we’re talking about [00:38:00] here, because if it’s this thing that, that we can’t even agree on at the beginning, then I’m not wasting my time having that discussion.

Tony: Okay. We can have maybe an interesting conversation and explore each other’s beliefs about something. I’m not necessarily talking about religion, I’m talking about anything. I think in terms of having a productive interaction with somebody where you come out of the conversation, you feel like progress was made, even if you didn’t agree, you’ve actually recognized the differences and appreciate them.

Tony: You’ve recognized that we both want different things. But to what degree? Maybe there’s a gap that we can bridge, maybe there isn’t, and we’ve agreed that. But it all starts with clarity about what are the facts that we’re actually differing our thinking on, because we might not be talking about the same thing. 

Clark: Yeah, I was going to say, even the language we use, because I most often have this conversation when groups of leaders talk about empowering people. And I’ve had the conversation so many times now that I automatically now go right to the beginning and say, what do we mean when we [00:39:00] talk about empowering somebody, do the people that you want to empower want to be empowered and does being empowered mean the same to them as it does to you.

Clark: In saying you want to empower somebody, are you suggesting that you have the power to transfer across to somebody else and isn’t that a little bit of an arrogance assumption, it’s a conversation about so many times now that you do often have to get very clear on the language that you use because it’s nearly always said in a way that’s benevolent, but it can come exactly. 

Tony: That’s what I mean. So we can agree on, let’s say some somebody’s using the term empowerment and meaning it to be an ethical entrusting enablement approach, let’s say. But it’s misinterpreted by other people who consider it something different. That’s the bit we have to get clarity on. Let’s be absolutely clear what we mean by empowerment. Do you think it’s possible we could change the language? 

Tony: Or, because I’m not comfortable with I think It [00:40:00] can come across as being a bit arrogant or something like that. The other person goes, Oh, no, I see it. Okay. This is where we differ. It’s not a massive thing to overcome this. Let’s agree on the terms of reference.

Tony: Let’s agree on absolute clarity on what it is that we’re talking about. What do we mean by empowerment?

Clark: I’ve listened to you talk about the work that you do for a while now and if somebody were to ask me, what does Tony do it? I know how you describe your business. But I wouldn’t see you as a coach. Or as a trainer, and in many ways, we’re talking about the same thing.

Clark: Rob’s slightly different because of the relationship angle which is very much part to some degree, not necessarily mediation, but it’s a sort of a liaison type go between situation. But in your case you’re what I would call you a 10th man in, in many aspects of what you do, you are highlighting the the spaces between what people [00:41:00] think they understand and looking at all the gaps and saying what does this bit mean?

Clark: And so how does this fit with that then? And you’re asking the questions. that cause a group of people, as well as the individuals within that group, to question their own, their identity, the way they function as a group of people. I 

Tony: appreciate that. I appreciate you articulating it that way, because that is what I, that is what I do.

Tony: The term performance specialist is the phrase that was coined to, to capture that. It was, how do you help a person perform better or a group of people perform better? And perhaps even they thought was possible is that sort of my what gets me up in the morning, what I’m excited about, how do I do it?

Tony: I do it by applying these sorts of approaching it. I do see myself in that 10th man role. I do exec coaching. I do leadership training. When called upon optimally, I go and inject myself into a situation and help people who are facing real challenges. Work out how are we going to overcome this using some of these types of frameworks, Rob, that you’re talking [00:42:00] about, which simplify all this noise and complexity because everyone’s operating in that world where things are changing so rapidly and there’s all the rhetoric around, around the speed of business and the speed of change and all of that.

Tony: And for some people that’s utopian for many it’s really difficult. So I’ve just got a management job. I’m supposed to be leading a group of people. I don’t even know what leadership means. I don’t even know what. So you’ve got this this functional suboptimal way of working that I’m just there to try and help make it a little bit better.

Tony: If I’m coming in the next day feeling a little bit better about myself and a little bit more ready to take on the day and take on the challenge, then we’re starting to get people into the right place. 

Clark: I think you’ve undersold yourself there and it’s not an easy role to take on. Just thinking when I mentioned Rob there, Rob does exactly the same thing, but it tends to be, I’m assuming anyway in groups of just two maybe more when it comes to families and stuff, but it’s exactly the same role.

Clark: And I’ve been taken to task in the past [00:43:00] because obviously the name 10th man can be a bit contentious for some people. And I have been asked on several occasions, whether it would be worth me thinking about changing the name. And I said I would, it’s not because I’m not sticking to that name just because I have some loyalty to the masculine aspects of it.

Clark: It’s irrelevant to me. That’s just the historical name of it. But I can’t think of, whether it be mediator, facilitator, coach, or whatever it might be, none of them come close to what that role actually does. And you said, I just trying to help people do things a little bit better.

Clark: I genuinely think you’re underselling yourself there because it’s not an easy role. I’ve often said that, when you talk about this 10th man role when a group of people agree on a stupid course of action, disaster can happen. And let’s face it, if one person has a set of beliefs, some of them will be right.

Clark: Some of them will be wrong. If another person that they speak to has another set of beliefs and they happen to coincide to a degree that [00:44:00] to my wrong belief matches your wrong belief. And we meet Dave and Bill and Joe, and they all agree with Aaron belief, just trouble brewing, and this is, 1933 Germany is a perfect example of what happens when a load of people all agree on something really bad.

Clark: The 10th man is the person that says how do you know? How do you know? That’s just a guess. You know what? Where’s the proof? Show me. What is it that makes, and very often you’ll hear people say, and I worryingly, I’ve had people say to me I’m doing it anyway, and that terrifies me because that indicates that they know they’re doing something dubious or a little bit off.

Clark: And yet they’re still prepared to do it for whatever other reason. I don’t know. But the 10th man is the person that says. Hold on a minute. You’re all saying, as a group of people, for instance, that you want your entire organization to live happier lives. Why are those people working 12 hour shifts and you’re sitting here drinking [00:45:00] lattes in your leather chair and your electric car’s outside charging on the company’s dime?

Clark: There seems to be a little bit of an inequality there, considering that you’re pushing this idea that you value the workforce. When you challenge these ideas, that’s where we can start to get to a much more sensible way of working together as groups of people. And, you work, with leaders predominantly, and Rob works with couples predominantly.

Clark: And, I work with anybody who will listen to me. But by and large it’s, you’re trying to help groups of people get clear on what they really want, why they want it, how they’re going to go about doing it in a way that doesn’t. End up in something really bad. And the fact that companies and governments fall continuously and the fact that countries invade other countries and, one half of a country can alienate a, alienate the entire other half of a country, proves that we can all be sold on a wrong idea. And it’s the job of that person, the 10th man, to say no, [00:46:00] you’re wrong.

Clark: That sort of person is a sort of person, as we were saying at the beginning, who asks the awkward questions, what was it like the first time you went out with your boyfriend, that those, that curiosity to know what’s the real underlying truth behind the situation is what makes that sort of person, and whatever you want to call him, I’ve always called him the 10th man.

Clark: But they are few and far between, and I think it’s about time, I’ve started preaching a little bit, I can hear myself. Think it’s about time that people started asking those sort of questions.

Rob: If we go back to the religion the idea of religion is that the book, like the Bible, has the truth. And I think a lot of people believe in that because it’s a comfort blanket. I don’t think they necessarily believe in that. It gives them comfort to know that there’s a theory. Life is a great mystery. And when there’s a great mystery, we can feel out of control. What religion does, and I think what Trump does, and a lot of politicians do, is they simplify so basic that it reaches [00:47:00] a huge demographic and it gives them comfort. 

Rob: Part of that is not wanting to engage. And so the core of my work when you boil it down, it’s dealing with conflict. Because what breaks relationships is conflict and leadership is about managing relationships. When conflict happens, the crux of it is one or both of us, what we believe can’t be true. And it fractures the model that we have of the world. And the way that we resolve that conflict is by, like Einstein said you can’t solve a problem with the same level of thinking. So we have to raise up a level in order to find what the conflict is. And in order to raise up the level is like you were talking about, Tony, you have to dig down to what is the root? What is the assumption, what is the belief, and what is the expectation? 

Rob: When we understand that from both parties, and often it is a [00:48:00] matter of semantics. Tony talked about his, and I think we have a very similar approach, but we do it in a completely different way.

Rob: And we describe it in very different way because we’re two different people with two different understandings of the world. And I think we share a lot of, and I think that the core is probably a lot of similarities, more similarities than not, but we describe it in a different way. 

Rob: In the same way, people are going through, like they have a different interpretation and I think sometimes lack of safety a feeling that they’ll be punished and it’s so much easier to conform than not. 

Rob: Conflict is the opportunity of when we break that. And for me, teaching people how to deal with conflict is about being able to co exist. Because the reason we can’t join together is because as soon as we have a difference. That’s when everything falls out and we dislike the person and disconnect from the person.

Clark: That idea of conflict, Rob whilst I agree with [00:49:00] you I personally don’t mind conflict. In fact I like it. Sometimes it can positively change the situation for the better. But actually most conflict that I’ve seen is about something that doesn’t need to be a conflict.

Clark: I’ll give you an example and I’ll go back to that conversation I had with that guy this morning, and I’m going to have to clear off at seven. But when I was talking to that guy this morning, obviously, it’s an upsetting time when somebody that we love passes away. And being the sort of person I am, I wanted to know how he felt about it. And I said, look, silly question, mate where do you think he is now? This young lad that’s died, and obviously it’s an upsetting question.

Clark: It upset him. And seeing him, was that upset me? Obviously he said I don’t know. And I, and it was obvious that not knowing was part of the thing that was upsetting him. He said, I don’t know. He said, and the problem is everybody’s got their ideas, they’ve got their beliefs, this, which is what we’ve been talking about, about where he is now.

Clark: I don’t get any comfort from any of them he said, so I dunno what to believe. And I said of all the things that people [00:50:00] have told you, that God needs another angel and all that utter bollocks that people come out with. 

Clark: Of all of those things, which one of them is right? 

Clark: Of all the people that have told you that they think they know where he is and what’s happened to him, he’s in heaven or whatever. Which one of them is right? 

Clark: He says I don’t know. I said, yes, because nobody knows. I said, so here’s the thing to think about. Where would you like him to be? 

Clark: We had a little bit of a conversation about a lovely place where, they would meet again and all that sort of stuff. And I said believe that, mate. 

Clark: That could be just as true as anything else that other people say. And there’s no reason why you shouldn’t believe that. And just because somebody else doesn’t believe that, it doesn’t matter. You don’t need to argue about it because whoever wins the argument, he’s not going to end up in that place, is he?

Clark: He is wherever he is. So you may as well believe what works best for you. I said, and then that puts you in a brilliant situation because you can comfort the rest of your family. You can tell them that, look, he’s here, he’s fine, we’re going to see him again.

Clark: A lot of the conflict that we have It’s complete [00:51:00] bollocks and people create this nonsense to to polarize people. And again, going back to the 10th man, sometimes you need somebody to come in and say no, you’re wrong. Or at least you’re not right. 

Rob: There is a level of we have conflict when we think something different and then we have outright conflict. The problem is that most people don’t know how to deal with conflict and so they leave things fester until it’s a big rift, but if the moment we’re in a conflict, like we’ve had lots of differences, but when we talk them through, there isn’t that much difference, we’re not afraid to do that. 

Rob: So we get to a deeper level of understanding or I find I do. And that’s the key. If you learn how to communicate so that the moment there is a difference, you know where to look and you know how to have that conversation so that you can get to a better level of truth. You don’t need to have a big blow up conflict.

Rob: And that’s how we can challenge. And when there’s, when we feel like trusting and safe, we [00:52:00] can have that conversation without the moment we feel it. That’s how we grow, connect, stay connected. 

Clark: Yeah, dogma, mate. Most of our problems come from dogma. If you can shift people from their dogmatic views, even to just admit that I don’t know that I’m right, or that it’s true, or that, Buddha, or flipping, Hare Krishna or whoever is in charge.

Clark: I don’t know. I can’t prove it. People like Richard Dawkins who vehemently say that there’s no God. He doesn’t know. Nobody knows. It’s flipping idiocy to even have these conversations. And when you can, and it’s all dogma, whether it’s ideological or related to gender, sexual orientation, politics, whatever.

Clark: It’s dogma. And the minute I smell dogma I’m wading in.