Setting the Culture Of Your Team

Controlling the Operating Frame

Tony: [00:00:00] Being an optimist I can see what it will be like when it’s finished. It’s a bit painful at the moment, but Hey, it’s going to be great. A little bit laissez faire. It irritates me doesn’t bother me so much.

Tony: It’s okay for me to feel comfortable with the uncertainty, the volatility and all of that. But, there’s a cost to bear if I don’t ground myself in the reality and actually deal with it a little bit more pragmatically. Because my easiness with what the future is going to be is not everybody else’s natural way.

Tony: Of course, to the people around me this is too much, this is too stressful. So it really is about me steeling myself to make those adjustments to say, look, this needs to get sorted out now. 

Rob: I’m a bit, that way, optimistic and when you say like you have to ground yourself, do you think it’s there’s a level of being optimistic because you’re not dealing with it in the here and now? You’re living in a future place? And so the consequences don’t seem so real because it’s like you think you’re living in a future place that the [00:01:00] reality has to catch up with .

Rob: It’s a little 

Tony: bit of that, but that’s delusional, isn’t it? 

Tony: Because the reality is uncomfortable, painful, more costly than it could be. It could be partly that, but there’s also the other part, which is. It’s not that bad.

Tony: I’ve been kicked in the teeth a bit more through life a bit harder than that. So I think there’s a little bit of perspective that I have around it. Doesn’t seem as big a deal to me in the moment when I’m back in there.

Tony: But of course if I go, it’s fine, it’s okay. It’s not for the other person. They’re gonna lose their mind over it. It’s all right for you. However okay I am with it. It’s about empathizing that other people are not quite so okay with it.

Tony: Resonance theory lives here, right? 

Tony: Resonance theory goes what’s it going to feel like when all this is finished and you’re sitting in a really nice house that’s tranquil. It’s just as you wanted it to be, right? 

Tony: You can put yourself there and immediately your whole physiology changes. You’re actually in a different place in your psyche, in your mind, which is fantastic. 

Tony: When you hit a hurdle or a setback, and you can put you, if you’re able to put [00:02:00] yourself there into that future place, that’s better, that’s exactly what you want it with the people that you want to be within this beautiful space.

Tony: It’s that’s pretty cool place to be. And it helps you deal with the present, which is beating you up. So you then go, okay, let’s now focus on what needs to get done. So I’m feeling better about things now. I know it’s going to be great. I feel ready for the fight again.

Tony: It’s a way of building yourself up for the challenge that you’re actually dealing with in the moment. It’s like coming in at halftime, two goals down. You played okay, but you’re suddenly against a team that you should be beating, or you think you should be beating. You’re tilted down, and some people are not dealing particularly well with it.

Tony: Other people are Like me thinking what’s possible here, 45 minutes to go. What’s this going to be like if we turn this around, when we turn it around, what, then what do we need to do it? Who do we need to bring with us support? Blah, blah, blah. It’s the same sort of thing.

Tony: So I suppose the idea of collective resonance would be, is it possible to get a group of people to see this [00:03:00] situation in a more positive light in order that they can reframe it? It’s really difficult to do. Because not everybody can get there, right? Some people just, they’re not wired that way. 

Rob: It comes back to like we were talking about last week about the different profiles, people respond differently and that’s part of it.

Tony: It’s a challenge, but that’s the challenge we’ve got, isn’t it? 

Tony: When you’ve got a group of people who are in the middle of something that they’re trying to achieve and it’s failing. That’s the challenge. That’s a really tough situation to be in because the person that’s dealing well with that, managing themselves through it the clarity of thinking is there.

Tony: Everything’s good. The disposition hasn’t changed. They’re not losing themselves. They’re still calm. For others, they’re having a completely different experience. And it’s really hurting them. 

Clark: What I’m hearing, Tony, is you asking, how do I get other people to see who I’m seeing? That’s 

Tony: definitely a part of that.

Tony: And that’s really difficult, right? 

Clark: It sounds really terrible, actually, because I had a question this morning on my mind. It’s a question that crops up in my work and in my life [00:04:00] over and over again and has done for years and years. 

Clark: I was involved in a conversation. Somebody that I’m still working. I’m still coaching. He’s going through an issue and I can see where they’re coming from. They’ve said something similar to you.

Clark: I see this is how it is, et cetera, et cetera. And Rob may well come across this situation even more than I where two people, In conflict, which by definition means that they both see the same thing differently.

Clark: Otherwise, there’d be an agreement. And that’s causing enormous friction. The question that keeps cropping up and it cropped up with me this morning because I still, after all these years, I’ve not being able to figure out a way to make people ask themselves this question. And the question is, how do I know I’m right?

Clark: How do I know what I’m seeing is actually what’s going on? You’ve said it yourself just now, when Rob was talking to you about your situation and you’re seeing things as you perceive they may well be that you have this vision. 

Tony: I just need to correct that though.

Tony: There’s a big difference between what you think it [00:05:00] might look like or see the theory or the thing that I’m talking about is connecting how it feels to be in that situation if and when it happens. Not actually necessarily seeing it’s one thing, but actually the capacity to ground yourself in what it feels like to be there.

Tony: It’s a completely different thing. Even saying that I can feel my whole. Insides are shifting my whole biology’s changed just by articulating it differently to you. I’m getting a much more full head to toe experience of that idea. 

Clark: That helps you enormously, obviously, because it gets you in the right mindset for a given situation.

Clark: The, but you highlighted I think the problem, not with your way of thinking, but with situations like this when you said that on a certain level, it’s delusional because you are imaging something that will almost certainly not turn out to be the reality as it unfolds.

Clark: And we were talking the last time that we spoke about something that I use regularly, which is this idea of Bayesian thinking. 

Clark: Where you react to the situation or to the plan as it [00:06:00] unfolds. You don’t stand there in steps 1 and 2 and say that by the time we get to step 10 it will be like this.

Clark: You get to step 2 and you say hold on, how are things now looking? 

Clark: And you take step 3 and then you figure out where you’re going to go from step 3. And you look at the situation as it unfolds and that’s about as realistic as we can get. given that all of us see things completely differently. 

Clark: The problem I find with the way a lot of people approach these situations when there’s conflict when other people are not buying in and look at politics, for instance, politicians say I have this vision for the future and lots of people don’t buy into that.

Clark: The problem then becomes the politician, or in your case, you, are saying, how do I get them to see things the way I’m seeing? Because then they’ll start to feel the way I feel, which is much more positive. So there’s nothing nefarious about what you’re doing. You can see something quite clearly.

Clark: You, you’re prepared to be pragmatic and adapt as things unfold. But they’re not seeing anything like what you’re seeing. [00:07:00] And the difficulty you have then is how do I get them to see this? The problem is they may never see it because as far as they’re concerned, your vision, what you’re seeing isn’t correct, and I’m not saying they think that you’re totally way off the mark, but what tends to happen is everybody thinks that their view, their perspective of what’s going on around them is wrong, is the correct one. Which comes back to my question. How do you know you’re right? 

Clark: You guys have spoken to me for quite a while now. And I often ask the question, somebody says he’s a bad person. How do you know he’s a bad person? What is it about what they do and what you’re seeing about what they do that makes you think that they’re bad?

Tony: I honestly think it’s a brilliant question. If I roll that back, let’s say to the point where the group comes together in the first place. I wouldn’t ever assume that my idea is the right one, or that where we’re going is my idea and we should all go there.

Tony: There’s an agreement made about, if you think about the term, what was good look like, and the groups collectively going, okay, this is what the data is telling us. 

Tony: If we can do this, we’re going to be really [00:08:00] successful. So you’ve got this agreement of the vision, if you like, if you want to call it that, and then there’s some sort of collective agreement as to how we’re going to pursue this. 

Tony: Whatever those things are that the team wants to tie their mast to, we’re going to work hard. We’re going to be on time. We’re going to set high standards for each of them, whatever that is.

Tony: So there is a clarity around what we’re trying to do and how we’re going to try and do it. And then the measures are always against and I agree with you, those milestones step by step. 

Tony: The reality is the reality. Let’s deal with it. And what do we have to do now? What actions do we need to take in order to fix this, move it forward or whatever?

Tony: What are we going to do and who’s going to do it is becomes relevant. But I do think that the question Is relevant. Everybody’s having their own experience of the same thing at the same time, aren’t they? 

Tony: We’re all in this mess together But everyone’s perception of it is completely different based on I’m going mad. I don’t care. I’m really angry I can’t be bothered. You got all this mess.

Tony: But it doesn’t take away [00:09:00] from the fact that there was an agreement in principle as to how we’re going to pursue this thing. 

Tony: Is this the right thing to go for? 

Tony: I think it is almost an impossible thing. If it’s just my idea and no one’s ever agreed to that. Would 100 percent agree with you and I don’t disagree with that.

Tony: It’s a brilliant question. If those parameters have been set as a collective and as we get into it, we’re making the assumption that all those people that have agreed as part of the collective know what they’re talking about, then they actually know what they’ve agreed to, because that’s not necessarily true either.

Tony: But there’s this rounded perception that we’re all going forward for the same reason to the same place. But none of that’s ever totally accurate. It falls down because individuals at different times want different things. And none of that was ever really maybe perhaps fully disclosed as you’re going through that process.

Tony: I think you’re always dealing with those gaps between where we are versus what people want deep down. Not what the team wants, not what we agreed to do. But right now, this is hurting me personally [00:10:00] because I want something different.

Clark: It’s complicated, isn’t it? 

Clark: Actually, it’s really simple. And I’ll tell you why it’s really simple, Tony. The great thing is put something on my website recently because I’ve been asked by several people to clarify a particular aspect of my job. And it was difficult for me to clarify being.

Clark: Almost completely outside of manufacturing these days. So almost none of my work is in manufacturing. I’ve still got a little bit of coaching work with somebody who is in a leadership position in manufacturing, but really that’s about it. In manufacturing, what I do is very clear. It’s very simple because problem solving is a discrete discipline, that takes place within the manufacturing environment that follows certain processes. However, in real life or in normal life, it’s a little bit more difficult to explain. When I was talking to somebody who recently approached me about work and I said I don’t even know how you would, what you would call that.

Clark: And they called it discretionary services. Which, once I got over the idea that it sounded like I was, it was involved in some, something shady.

Rob: That’s what came to mind for me. We [00:11:00] were talking 

Tony: about, we were talking about that Rob and I, before you jumped on, we looked at your website and said, what are these discretionary services? Oh, have you seen that? 

Clark: It was very difficult to explain, but what this the guy that I was talking to about is has quite a big company and what he explained to me is a strength in my particular work is, I need to see life more.

Clark: It’s not that I’m totally black and white, but I need to boil things down to its essence for me to be able to understand where we are how we’re going to deal with the situation. 

Clark: In manufacturing, if I can use the analogy of manufacturing, when there’s a problem, On an assembly line or in any process because I think I’ve recounted to you before the story of a situation where I was, I’d only just got to this company to work with them and they asked me to sit on a disciplinary with them. 

Clark: Somebody had sent an enormous consignment of goods to the wrong customer. So the people that were expecting it had cranes and all sorts hired ready to unload this stuff that didn’t turn up. It cost thousands and they were going to sack this person because it was [00:12:00] monumental, but because of the way I’ve worked for years and years, it was very simple to me.

Clark: And when we sat down before the discipline, I just asked a simple question and said, what’s the standard that this person is expected to work to? 

Clark: And they said there isn’t one. I said then there’s no case. There’s no disciplinary to be had here. How can you judge somebody for not meeting an expectation that you’ve never clarified to them?

Clark: And in manufacturing, it’s really simple. If there’s a problem anywhere along the process. You stop the process and you look at the situation and you say what’s wrong? And they say whatever, it’s broken. And you say, compared to what, what’s the standard that you’re comparing it to?

Clark: And we’ve had this conversation before, obviously. And then the next question I find really interesting. What were you expecting? 

Clark: Tell me what you were expecting and why this is not what you were expecting. Because at that point, you can say to that person, is what you were expecting what everybody was expecting?

Clark: Is this a generalized expectation that everybody has in place? 

Clark: The great thing about that, when you transfer that into the real world. At any point [00:13:00] you can say to somebody, so for instance to your wife, What are you expecting by now? And she’d say I wanted it done, or I expected it to be not as messy as this or whatever.

Clark: And it’s at that point that you can stop and say the standard that we’re working to, the overall expectation. What does good look like is clearly different for both of us. And the great thing about that is no one vision for how a standard should be is correct.

Clark: Only the standard is correct. So you can say what’s the standard? 

Clark: What are we expecting? 

Clark: We want peace and tranquility and a job well done to a high standard. What’s the process to get in there? Do we know for a fact that this process can achieve that standard? Are we following that process?

Clark: If not, why not? 

Clark: If we are following it and it’s not achieving it, then clearly the process is wrong. For instance, there are other people involved in your situation, like the builder, who may be thinking, I can make a lot more money out of this by dragging this out. For instance, you may not have included that particular builder in your equation for what good looks like.

Clark: But now he’s part of the [00:14:00] equation. You might look at him and think, he’s taking a piss. This guy is causing me work that’s costing me more money and all sorts of issues. He’s not bought into my vision of what good looks like. It becomes so simple. And this is why this discretionary services page on my website is so important for me to have expressed it in a particular way.

Clark: Because when somebody says, I’ve got a problem. My brain goes to a particular place straight away. 

Clark: How do you know it’s a problem? Why is it a problem? 

Clark: Is it a problem just for you? 

Clark: Or is it a problem for everybody? 

Clark: Once they’ve articulated what that problem is, You can say what were you expecting?

Clark: I’ve been in situations where clients have asked me, for instance recently somebody asked me to accompany them to a series of meetings. I don’t know anything about the thing they were meeting, but Their problem was that whilst they had the technical know how to deal with this particular situation, they had a confidence level that was not high enough for them to engage in the way that they wanted.

Clark: So they wanted somebody there as support. It was a simple solution. I said I’ll [00:15:00] come with you. It was a networking event, so it wasn’t as if I was particularly outta place with lots of people there. But it becomes very clear once you start asking the question, what’s the standard?

Clark: What were you expecting? Why is it not reaching that expectation? 

Clark: This is where this Bayesian model can come in because at any point you can stop and say, why is this not going where we thought it was going? 

Clark: My son who watches the football with me regularly laughs at me because I will look at a situation and say, he needs to come off.

Clark: My son will say, give him time. And I’ll say, look, there’s an expectation He should be fulfilling a particular role, which he isn’t fulfilling, he’s not going to start fulfilling it at any particular point, because clearly he has an idea in his head of something completely different to the manager and at that point, you can nip a situation in the bud.

Clark: The great thing about manufacturing, of course, is the more you drag a problem out. The more money it costs. So it needs to be dealt with now. 

Tony: When you talk about the idea of confidence, for example. That’s way less simple. That’s what I would call more complex, but if you’re dealing with lots of [00:16:00] different people’s different confidence levels, that’s way more complex than there’s something wrong with the process.

Tony: We know what the process was. We know what the standard work needed to look like. What’s broken and how do we fix it? That for me is black and white, mainly speaking, but then if you’ve got a group of people who look at Man United they can’t win at home, they’re whatever’s going on in the lots of them are still young kids, right?

Tony: They’re not even fully developed men mentally. And, they don’t even know who they are yet. And yet they are, right? 

Tony: The expectation of the external observer is you’re a Premier League player, they throw lots of money into that conversation as if that makes a difference, so you’re getting paid a hundred grand a week or more, so you should be able to do this stuff.

Tony: They’re getting paid that because at some point they demonstrated a level of competency, let’s say, that met some somebody’s view of that they’ve got that value. But then this thing, this idea that They’ve got to go out again and full filled with all of these things that making them so uncertain about who they [00:17:00] are and how what they’re supposed to be doing and how to appease these people and got 70, 000 people in there and social media is hammering me.

Tony: It’s really difficult. I’d love you guys to talk about that from, football lovers, sports lovers, observations of that situation at Man United, for example, how would you perceive the depth of that challenge where you’ve got a group of players who can go and be Arsenal with 10 men away from home in a cup tie.

Tony: But in simple terms, can’t be Crystal Palace at home. The fifth time out of six where they haven’t been able to, be a team that normally there would be an expectation that they would. How do you weigh that open? And I’d love to get your ideas around.

Tony: What you think of that as a complex challenge you’re the new manager that’s come in, you’ve got Amarim who’s doing it his way, but you’ve got this group of players who even before he turned up, were showing signs of uncertainty about who they were and what to do in, in, in those moments under extraordinary level of scrutiny.

Tony: What please [00:18:00] explain help me to understand it. 

Clark: I don’t know what your thoughts are on it, Rob, but the interesting thing for me, and you’re dead right, Tony, this the difference between looking at complex situations and then viewing situations in a black and white way could appear to be mutually exclusive.

Clark: However when I saw, for instance, obviously Aston Villa have just signed Marcus Rashford. I was so wary of that when that started to hit the media because I thought all I’d heard was that he was a troublemaker and there was issues with, in the changing room and it was all a bit toxic. 

Obviously you go online and you start looking around to see what information you can pick up. I saw the recent interview with Ruben Amerin about Rashford. Who said that, Marcus Rashford, as long as he was prepared to do the training that he was supposed to do and he upped his game, then he would be a part of his plans for the future.

Clark: And I thought there was an assumption there on the part of Amorim that, that Marcus wasn’t prepared. Clearly he said as soon as he’s prepared to do X, Y, and Z, which implies he’s not prepared at this moment to do X, Y, and [00:19:00] Z. And I thought that’s really interesting because the reason I stopped taking on contracts with manufacturing organizations was this exact situation, this jump into solutions is this idea that they know the answers.

Clark: And this comes back to my question, how do you know you’re right? 

Clark: I remember being in a situation where the leadership team of this big organization, enormous organization. And we were making some real headway in some of the things that they asked us to do. But they were sitting down and they’d had they’d had HR audit of the entire organization after COVID.

Clark: They’d found doing this audit that the backroom administrative staff, the accounts and all of those guys were really happy.

Clark: All of the metrics that came back showed that these guys were really happy. But the shop floor were very unhappy. It was chalk and cheese and it was clear why after covid. 

Clark: A lot of the backroom staff had been working from home, and the people in the shop floor to work the entire time on the factory floor scared to death that they were going to catch something and die.

Clark: I’m sitting in this meeting, and the HR manager said what we need to [00:20:00] do, is empower the shop floor guys to deal with these situations. And I said, just what are you going to do exactly to empower them? What are you going to give them? Are you going to hand them? What is this thing that you’re going to do for these people who are basically feeling that they’ve been taken for granted? 

Clark: That they’ve put in a, an enormous effort over the period of COVID and you’re not showing them any love in return. And they had made some assumptions, exactly the same as Reuben Amarin, about what they had seen the shop floor staff doing and behaving and saying, and then they had decided that it meant this, and this.

Clark: And again, it goes back to the question, how do you know you’re right? 

Clark: I said to the HR manager, have you spoken to any of them? She said I don’t need to. I’ve got the questionnaires here. The HR audit. So I’ve got their answers, I said, but the answers on a piece of paper are not the same as going and talking to the people.

Clark: I said, I’ve done that. I’ve talked to them. I know exactly why they’re not happy. It’s a really simple solution. And it was because they felt that the organization had taken them for granted. And now [00:21:00] that everything was back to normal and COVID was over that All of the effort that they put in for the last 12 months had just been forgotten, and they’d be given a bacon sandwich on a Friday morning.

Clark: That wasn’t the answer. They wanted somebody to stand up and say, thank you. It was that simple. And it made me realize that Marcus Rashford is sitting in his mansion somewhere, watching Ruben Amirim saying that when Marcus is prepared to train and do X, Y, and Z, then he’ll be part of the team. And Marcus must be thinking, you’ve got it so wrong.

Clark: Because clearly you don’t get to that level of expertise as a footballer by not being prepared to train. And we all know that, people get lazy sometimes and sometimes they go off the ball a little bit or they get distracted. However, it implied an assumption on the part of Ameren that to me is at the heart of so many problems.

Clark: Rob will probably have more to say on this, when two people are in conflict, If you were to say to one of them, what’s wrong with this person? What’s wrong with the other person that’s fallen out with you? And they would say it’s because they don’t like the X, Y, and Z. Or in your case, you’ve [00:22:00] heard your wife talking about the problems in the house and you have now formed a picture of what she’s seeing.

Clark: And it’s not what you’re seeing. It’s a completely different thing. The problem is what we think they’re thinking is always wrong. 

Clark: Ruben Amirim has no idea how prepared or otherwise. Marcus Rashford is to train, because clearly they haven’t sat down and talked about it. He’s just watched the behavior and inferred certain things as a consequence of that.

Clark: These people that I worked with, this enormous American organization that had a shop floor that was almost on the verge of mutiny, had made certain assumptions based on the behavior. 

Clark: Because these people were being truculent and intransigent and being awkward and difficult. And they thought these people are lazy or they’re just troublemakers.

Clark: No, there’s a problem, but you’ve not took the trouble to find out. And this for me, I think is the issue. When I saw Marcus Rashford coming into Villa I immediately thought that somebody like Unai Emery, who I admire enormously, I think we’ll have a [00:23:00] conversation with Marcus.

Clark: And he seems to have that relationship with all his players. where he’ll say, I have an expectation. This is what I expect. What do you expect? Let’s discuss that and what it looks like and how we get there. And then as we go along, we can start comparing where we are to where we think we’re going.

Clark: And to me, that’s something that Man United. He’s not doing it. They’re saying, I can only infer this from what they’re doing, that this is the Man United way, this is the Ruben Amorim way, buy in or ship out. 

Clark: Brian Clough was the epitome of that way of thinking.

Clark: And sometimes you can beat somebody into submission. But other times, when you’ve got somebody as skilled as Marcus Rashford it doesn’t work. The guy is clearly a skilled player. So I think that issue with any team, the only answer is to talk about it. And in actual fact, everything we’ve discussed so far, the situation at your home, the situation I’ve just mentioned in the factory.

Clark: All of these things require people to sit down and openly and [00:24:00] honestly discuss where they think they should be at right now. And why and how they’re supposed to have got there and so on. And when you have that transparency, then a lot of the Very cloudy issues that seem very hard to decipher and get to the bottom of can become a lot clearer when you can actually speak openly and honestly.

Clark: The problem I’m guessing Rob has in relationship issues is that even when people are sitting down and talking, honesty is probably not always top of the agenda.

Rob: I think when you can’t get to the truth. It’s because of a lack of transparency and it’s because someone isn’t willing, doesn’t want to tell the truth. 

Rob: To all that you’ve been talking about, I think going back to the question of how do you know it’s true, I don’t think any of it’s true.

Rob: It’s all a delusion and it’s all true. Going from the big picture, so all of life is, true, there’s like an infinite number of experiences that we can have. And it all depends on where our focus is. Marcus Rashford could be the star at Man United. Or he could [00:25:00] be out or there’s lots of different ways that it could turn out. There’s a number of managers that could come into Man United and they could all have an alternative outcome.

Rob: Alex Ferguson can come in, turn everything around or it could be like a Jurgen Klopp or it could be a Bill Shankly or it could be a Matt Busby or whatever it is, but they would all have a perception. And. I think the distinction is, while objectively none of it is true, and none of it, and all of it is a delusion. 

Rob: What we need is an operating frame.

Rob: And so that operating frame is we need to make operating assumptions. And then we build beliefs on those operating assumptions, and these create the expectations that we have. And what we’ve got, what you’ve got at Manchester United, is there’s a clear mismatch between the operating frame of Marcus Rashford and Ruben.

Rob: I think what Tony’s done is what’s out of his control is he’s now finding a way to regulate his emotions and there’s nothing that he can do. And so you can either want to be in [00:26:00] control and get frustrated, or you can picture what it’s gonna be like.

Rob: And for me, I think that’s a way of regulating emotions is if there’s nothing you can do you might as well focus on you. Focus on what you can control and not what you can’t. 

Tony: Sorry, I’m getting a free therapy session. It’s great.

Tony: Keep going. 

Rob: You get into entrenched roles, don’t you? 

Rob: Like transactional analyst, critical parent, whatever. And I think Rashford has been at United so long, he’s entrenched. It’s difficult for him to change. And I think. Ruben Amorim coming in. Part of it is they haven’t had that conversation.

Rob: Now I would imagine Emery’s already had that conversation with him because otherwise he doesn’t want to take him on. But I think it’s probably difficult when someone comes in with a different operating frame. 

Rob: This is, Often what’s happening when there’s change management. Leadership comes in with one, like you said, and then the front line have a completely different operating frame.

Rob: So it’s about building the trust and the relationships and the connection so that you can communicate that. And that does come down to the truth. Often [00:27:00] someone either isn’t confident in speaking the truth or doesn’t want to because they don’t want to reveal something that they have.

Rob: So I think it is about the transparency, but going back to the Marcus Rashford case, I think it’s also symbolism. 

Rob: When Ferguson came in, he had to get rid of people like McGrath and that because of the drinking culture. When Ten Hag came in, he had to get rid of Ronaldo because it’s a power struggle.

Rob: And I think Rashford, there’s something symbolic in moving someone out, and it’s part of marking his territory.

Clark: This for me, again, goes back to the problem that I have with leadership as a concept. As you said Ten Hag had to move out Bruneldo and Amarin had to move out Marcus Rashford, sending a message or whatever.

Clark: And I think you’re dead right that idea of the operating framework is all about, as we’ve discussed before, heuristics. 

Clark: What are the parameters of the conversation that you’re having? 

Clark: Or what is the language that you guys are using? And for, as an example, for [00:28:00] me and my wife, we, whilst we know that Myers Briggs is An imperfect and flawed framework for assessing the ability of somebody to deal with a particular situation is something that we both understand because of our backgrounds.

Clark: So when we talk to each other, it’s the language that we use. So she’s an ISTP, she’s very action orientated, she’s not particularly emotional, she’s not very feeling or, what some people would consider not particularly empathetic and so on. Whereas I’m an INTJ, so I’m very much conceptual, abstract thinker. So when we’re having difficulties in certain situations, that comes into play because she will say, look, I know that you as an INTJ don’t see this as a particular important thing because you’re not action orientated, whereas I’m blah blah blah, and we can talk in a particular language.

Clark: I think you’re dead right, Rob, this idea of transparency. It can make it very difficult for people to speak the truth because there are no frameworks for the truth. There are no heuristics or rules of thumb. [00:29:00] It just is what it is. So if a person says, look, I got angry because I saw you talking to that person and I felt jealous and, I became insecure because of that jealousy. 

Clark: I can’t say that. 

Clark: That makes me look awful. Or, to me, it makes me look awful. It makes me look all the things that I pretend that I’m not. So we can’t talk very often openly about some of the things that are genuinely true about our situation.

Clark: We have to speak in a particular language. And as you said, the operating framework of an organization or a football club leads to a particular culture. You talked about McGrath. McGrath is an absolute legend of Aston Villa. He was got rid of at Man United because of one thing, and that very same thing made him a legend.

Clark: Anybody that can play football and still drink 15 pints on a Saturday night is an absolute legend in Birmingham. He has godlike status. And yet, he was considered surplus to requirement at one club and became an absolute hero because they spoke [00:30:00] completely different languages, which led to a completely different culture.

Clark: The culture I think with Aston Villa at the moment is that they’re a work in progress. They’re all learning together. But as, as he often says, there are no excuses. And what happens when you walk into an environment, whether it be an organization, a family, a football team, You don’t just listen to the boss telling you what the culture is that they have a completely different view of the culture to what it actually is.

Clark: You talk to everybody else and you’ll say what’s it like to work here? Or what’s it like to play here? And, you’ve just seen Ollie Watkins get offered the opportunity to play it is or apparently anyway, that’s what the news says. The opportunity to play it is boyhood football team.

Clark: And yet it’s turned that down because it seems that he can accomplish more at Aston Villa than he might at Arsenal. That seems to be the case. But when you talk to somebody like Olly Watkins or any of the other players, because people like John McGinn, for instance, were going nowhere before Emery turned up. They will say, yes, this is a hard place to work because there [00:31:00] are high expectations.

Clark: But we talk about how we’re going to get there and we help each other. And clearly Emery puts an awful lot of confidence in the ability of each player to reach their potential. And I think when there’s a culture of using the operating framework that you’ve mentioned, Rob, where you use a particular language, for instance, Aston Villa, it’s a no excuses culture.

Clark: Ruben Amerim seems to not quite yet have put that in place. And by getting rid of Marcus Rashford, he’s possibly showing people what his culture is. Thank you. I’m not gonna put up with X, Y, and Z. He basically gave the message out in that interview where he said, when he is prepared to train, he’ll be a part of the team.

Clark: So he is saying to the rest of the team, you guys have also gotta be prepared to train, otherwise you will be surplus to requirements. So he’s establishing his framework is operating framework is, he is speaking in the language that he wants his organization to operate in. But when you talk about having to get rid of McGrath, or having to get rid of Ronaldo or Marcus Rushford.

Clark: That’s never the case. You don’t [00:32:00] have to do anything. 

Clark: You don’t have to do anything as drastic as that, but it serves the purpose of that leader. The problem I find with that sometimes is these decisions will come back and bite you in the arse. I’m sure that they looked at Paul McGrath, the way he played and thought, damn we’ve lost something here, certainly with the likes of Ronaldo.

Clark: And I’m hoping that Marcus Rashford will score goals against Man United and show them that there’s different operating frameworks can end up in different results. 

Tony: I’m sure he will. It’s really interesting, right? The sequence of events. I suppose before we heard Amarim speaking so openly as he did about Rashford, Rashford had come out and said it’s time for a move, I think I need a change, blah, blah, blah.

Tony: So he’s been under that, he’s been there since he was a kid, the last post I saw was a note that he’d written to himself about, I think he was a 10 year old academy player, what are his aspirations, I just want to make my family proud, right? So that was what he wrote when he was a child and he’s still that child living out his dreams as an adult footballer under extraordinary circumstances.

Tony: Pressure and [00:33:00] scrutiny, and he’s obviously been very successful to date but hadn’t been performing particularly well. So you got that on the one hand, whatever’s going on in his world, where he hasn’t been at his best, you got under Ten hag, which then flowed into Amrim coming in. So you’ve got this change of cultures and so on.

Tony: You’ve also got the the hierarchy of the club. making extraordinary cuts at every possible level of the club, getting rid of local people who’ve been there for years, basically doing work for peanuts. So there’s a massive financial call. And of course he’s probably the top earner or close to in the club. 

Tony: So there’s maybe some weight and pressure around, around that. So there’s a sort of a perfect storm of this, but then going back to what and I’m agreeing with everything you’ve said so far. I’m just trying to put some context around it from my perspective. If we then think about this idea of a good enough conversation with somebody. 

Tony: In this case, a new manager and a player that’s been struggling that in an ideal world, Rashford with these perfect boss in perfect sync, they’ve created a [00:34:00] space where Rashford can come in and say, look, boss, this is what’s really going on in my world. And this is what I’m struggling with. 

Tony: So they could have that conversation. Now we’ve got a different relationship cooking here. Now there’s real empathy. Now there’s a real, I wasn’t aware that this was going on. Because if that’s not unsaid he’s carrying and potentially he’s carrying something that he’s taken with him to Villa that he hasn’t been able to talk to anyone about yet.

Tony: Maybe he’s surrounded by people who don’t allow him to, say what’s up what’s on his mind not so long ago he was a kid saying i just want to make my family proud. Now he’s left his boyhood club of his dreams to a club that wasn’t his first choice. 

Tony: We’ll see, but all of this, the external demands of the club to reduce costs, new manager coming in, a player that’s not performing, probably not developed a relationship of trust enough to really have a conversation about what’s going on.

Tony: It’s not surprising that we can’t afford to keep paying someone that’s not performing. Let’s just get rid. Let’s cut our losses, and there’s so much pain attached to that for everyone. 

Tony: [00:35:00] Nobody’s winning. Villa maybe, which is good, if Villa wins and he does find his feet and start to blossom again, I couldn’t be happier for the kid. But it’s a really painful situation. It’s costing everybody. It’s costing Amarim some reputation. It’s costing Rashford. It has done over a period of time lots of things. It’s costing the fans, everybody’s impacted who’s, in some way attached to it. And I find the whole thing fascinating.

Tony: But that ability to have that conversation where you the player can really express themselves is a really powerful thing. Clark that those people needed just to be thanked for all the effort that they’ve done is a massive difference. And so simple compared to the other people that just thought, let’s put on some extra food on a Friday afternoon and the problem’s solved.

Tony: It’s like complete misunderstanding of the situation. 

Clark: That speaks to what all three of us do for a living. Considering we’re so different. We all have a vocation in life that, that [00:36:00] converges, I think on something very similar. And it speaks to this. 

Clark: I do, another little weird thing that I don’t always do this out loud because it really upsets people, but when I’m talking to people, so for instance I have Ruben Amarin in front of me.

Clark: My question to him would be what’s the point of you? Why do you exist? What’s your flipping job? You’re getting paid all this money. It’s not to go on television and slag people off, surely. You’re a flipping coach. You’re a coach. So what you’re saying with Marcus Rashford is you can’t coach him.

Clark: That means you’re a failure at that particular job in with that particular person. 

Clark: That doesn’t speak very well of your abilities as a coach. In one form or another coaches. 

Clark: I have coaching clients. Like to think that I make some difference in their life and you guys do the same with leaders and relationships and so on.

Clark: I’m actually seeing somebody today who, when I started coaching this person, and I think I’ve mentioned this again to you before, where he had been in therapy for two years and he said, I got more out of our first hour of conversation than in all those two [00:37:00] years of therapy. Not because I’m amazing, because everybody that speaks to me for more than a few minutes realizes pretty quickly that I’m not amazing. 

It’s purely because of what we’ve been talking about this idea of total transparency, looking at the situation as it is and being honest with each other and having that conversation. 

Clark: When you view your role as a coach, as the person that is supposed to make other people do whatever it is they’re trying to do better.

Clark: It brings things in perspective and, when you look at a coach that says, I can’t coach this person, why are you there then, what is the point of you even existing as a coach? 

Clark: in an organizational setting, clearly you have lots of people and you have to deal with them all.

Clark: You have to meet them all where they’re at. Clearly he hasn’t met marcus Rashford, where he’s at. I look at, for instance, John Duran, who’s just gone to Saudi for an enormous sum of money. But last season, it was that close to John Duran going to West Ham for about half the amount that he’s now gone to Saudi [00:38:00] for.

Clark: And yet he didn’t go. Almost immediately, and he was on Instagram showing how he considered himself a West Ham fan. Then the next thing, he scores a goal at Villa and he’s pointing to the badge and kissing it and all, I’m staying here. Clearly, there was a conversation that took place, I would like to assume, that made him see that actually he was better off for now where he already was. 

Clark: That to me is good coaching. To make somebody feel that they can accomplish the thing that they’re setting out to do. Maybe Ruben Amorim’s amazing, who knows, but he’s certainly not amazing for Marcus Rashford.

Clark: To me, as a coach, that’s a little bit of a a black mark, I’ve 

Tony: been really impressed with him for most of what I’ve seen of him in the press, obviously without knowing him personally, but I think that everything that we’ve boiled down to that, this framework, Rob, that you’re talking about is obviously essential. Going right back to the beginning of this conversation where we talked about co creating what good looks like we’re going to work. We’re going to agree what this looks like. And then we’re going to agree how we’re going to pursue it together.

Tony: [00:39:00] You got a coach that comes in midseason. It goes. This is how we’re going to play, regardless of what you guys think and regardless of what you’ve done before, regardless of where you’re at in the season we’re doing it my way. This is the only way that I’m going to do it. And if you don’t fit, you’re gone.

Tony: Of course, there’s lots of players in that system that are struggling to play. It’s easy to say, oh, they’re professional players, they should be able to adapt. It’s not that easy. If it was that easy, everyone would be competing with each other at the top. But according to our conversation this morning, made his early part of his tenure really challenging for himself, because he’s trying to fit square pegs into round holes, and at the same time hasn’t considered all of their levels of comfort motivation towards doing that.

Tony: Yes, they’ll all want to play. Yes, they’ll all want to try and fit into the system. They don’t understand it. They don’t have the attributes that naturally suit the role. You’ve got someone like Dalot who’s a right footer playing on the left wing back, which is, extraordinary challenging to do.

Tony: You’re well outside your comfort zone, unless you’re truly ambidextrous. [00:40:00] So you’ve got these sort of mismatches as well, which contradicts a lot of what we’ve talked about, other than to say he’s got a clear framework and setting some clear expectations, which he’s been very consistent around. 

Tony: I suppose Rashford is the first big one of note to form. Out of that loop in, in terms of not meeting those expectations in some way. I just find it very fascinating and full of contradictions, which is what makes it interesting, right? But I agree with you, Clark that in that scenario, the idea that had he been coached differently, the outcome could have been different, that who knows that, there’s definitely possibilities there, 

Clark: isn’t there?

Clark: You know that it could have turned out differently because otherwise, and Rob again will be able to speak to this better, there are situations in which a couple will split, and when you speak to them they will both say, yes, we’re still on very good terms, we’ve agreed amicably to arrange things in a certain way, etc.

Clark: They’ve had the conversation and agreed that, it’s probably better for them both not to continue together going [00:41:00] forward. However, that’s not happened with Amorim and Marcus Rashford. So clearly, they haven’t had that conversation. There has not been a coaching situation in which they’ve agreed to part ways.

Clark: This is just what it is. When a lion kills another lion and takes over the pride, what’s the first thing it does? It eats all the babies. Kills all the babies because it doesn’t want any usurper coming in to take the throne. And again, this is one of my beefs with leadership. One of many beefs with flipping leadership, because I remember going into a factory.

Clark: That’s the term. It’s just 

Tony: the term, Glenn. Let it go, mate. 

Clark: I’m 

Tony: not angry. 

Clark: I went into a factory a couple of years ago and I remember looking at a process and I could see quite clearly that the process had originally been devised in such a way that the product followed a particular route through the factory, but it wasn’t following that route anymore.

Clark: I looked at it a bit more closely and realized there’s something that changed about halfway down. To one of the guys, why is this being done this way now? 

Clark: And they said, I don’t know whether the MD changed it. Do you know [00:42:00] why? 

Clark: No. Is it working better? 

Clark: No. So I went and saw the MD. Why did you make that change?

Clark: I didn’t like the old way. So have you now made it better? We are yet to see. The results are not all in yet. 

Clark: It was clear to me that it made a change for the sake of making a change, he was eating the lion cubs. He was setting his stamp on the club. 

Clark: The problem is with that a previous leader of a group of people will have set a culture in place one way or another. 

Clark: Some people will have left, some people will have argued, other people will have just gone along with it, but you will have set a culture in place that everybody now buys into by virtue of the fact that they’re still there functioning.

Clark: They all bought into that culture. So you’re now walking into that environment and saying, My way is right. This way is all completely wrong. And by virtue of the fact, by definition, changing things is saying that the old way is wrong. And your Marcus Rashford’s will look at that and say if it’s so wrong, why did it work?

Clark: We just bought it. We, and think about religion. People have a belief [00:43:00] system. that they truly buy into to the point where they’re prepared to die for their faith. So when somebody believes that a particular way of doing something is correct, God help the person that says, that’s totally wrong.

Clark: We’re now going to do it this way. You’re always going to come across people like Marcus Rashford. The thing is, all that needed to happen was a conversation where you, where they say, look, why do we do it this way? And they’ll explain, the language according to the operating framework, as Rob says, the culture that’s been in place.

Clark: And you then say what about if we tried this? Because I’ve done this before and it really worked and the other guys tried it. And, I know you guys have already got this way that you’d like to do things, but what about if we try this? It’s a collaboration, right? All coaching is a collaborative effort.

Clark: Leadership. by definition is command and control my way or the highway. This is why I’ve got such a problem with it because it’s not collaborative. By definition, the word lead implies an absence of collaboration. The issue with people like Ruben Amerin. I watch Unai Emery on the sidelines in a football [00:44:00] game and he gets very passionate, he gets furious, he’s been banned from the touchline and so on.

Clark: And yet, when you he’s being asked in the media, what was the problem? 

Clark: Why did so and so get taken off? Or what was the problem with that player? He will never criticize a player, not in public. And to me, that’s a mark of a good collaborative effort. coach, somebody that this is not a conversation for you.

Clark: This is a conversation between us. 

Clark: I think Ruben Amirim has broken that trust. And basically what he’s told the rest of the team is we’re not going to be collaborating here. And if you step out of line, I’ll be telling the world about it. That’s not an environment that I think is healthy for future growth.

Clark: But maybe I’m wrong, he’s on the big bucks, so he should know it. 

Rob: I think that’s the perfect example of that. 

Rob: So a leader creates the frame creates the culture. The culture creates the performance. 

Rob: There’s a perfect example of that in Clough when he took over like the Damn United, when he took over from Revie. Revie had a certain way of operating.

Rob: It was very [00:45:00] successful. It led to titles and then Clough came in and said, you lot are just a bunch of thugs. All you’re only good at is kicking people and what was it 33 days he lasted or 40 days or something? And this was another title winning manager a great manager proven.

Rob: Potentially the best and yet, made a complete hash of it. While you were talking I was making a note and thinking of who are great managers Like if you were going to say Football managers, I’d say Guardiola, I’d say Slott, I’d say Klopp Mourinho, Clough. But if you look at them, there’s a distinction that Klopp came in and built a frame that included everyone.

Rob: The only one he got rid of was Sakho, was Like, wouldn’t tow the line. And they loved him Rob? They loved him for it. Yeah, because what he did was he went into a group of players, like the Man United players, who were at a club that they didn’t feel they were worthy of, who didn’t feel they were good enough.

Rob: The fans had been telling them that they’re not good enough. And they were like, oh, he’s going to get rid of us. 

Rob: And he’s no, I want you. He said, you can be good enough. I think Guardiola probably cleared out a [00:46:00] few. He has such a strong, he’s got such a strong track record.

Rob: He’s got such a clear philosophy. And I think everyone just recognizes him as a genius that they bought into or knew that they weren’t good enough. 

Rob: But Mourinho is the type that would make that. I’m bigger than you. I know better than you. And I think he’s had ever since Real Madrid, he’s never really had the same success.

Rob: And he’s been found out now that he’s nowhere near the level that he used to be at Porto, Chelsea clough again was another one. 

Rob: Ferguson, I think is another combative manager. 

Rob: Everyone has a different frame. It’s not actually true. It operates and it works in some scenarios, not in others. So I think. What I’m trying to say is the ability of the leader to sell people on his vision, on his frame and to bring people in is part of the key. And obviously they have to have the empathy and awareness to recognize that people have been functioning before they got there and there’s a whole [00:47:00] Backstory to them, which is comes about with having the conversations.

Clark: Jurgen Klopp is a perfect example, I think, of what I consider to be a collaborative coaching environment. The proof of the puddin is in the eating right when he left. There’s genuine love there from the fans and from the players and even begrudgingly other fan bases look at Jurgen Klopp and think what guy, and that’s the thing that, going back to this question at the beginning, how do you know you are right? 

Clark: You don’t. And that’s the answer. Nobody knows. You said it, Tony. It’s a delusion. You said it, Rob. It’s, nothing’s right.

Clark: Or we can’t know for sure that anything’s right or that anything is wrong. 

Clark: It’s easy to be a leader. Stalin was a leader and he killed 20 million of his people. But, he was a solid leader. There was no way anybody was rooting him out of that position. He was in charge, like it or lump it. But did anybody love him?

Clark: I don’t know. Maybe some true believers, but that’s not a collaborative environment. That’s not an environment where the betterment of [00:48:00] everybody is the thing that everybody’s striving for. It was basically the betterment of an ideal that one person had. And, you mentioned Brian Clough and Jose Mourinho, and there are lots of leaders in positions who all say, I’m right.

Clark: This is the way we’re going to do it. And the reason I ask, I always ask this question, how do you know you’re right? Is because there’s a person that I’ve. followed for years. A person that I’ve read a lot of is a guy called Thomas Sowell, S O W E L L. He’s he works for the Hoover Institute in the U. S. He’s a a professor very accomplished intellectual. A black American grew up in Harlem, became an advisor to various governments. He’s a conservative in the old sense of the word, inasmuch as he’s cautious and likes to keep what you’ve already accomplished whilst still trying to make improvements.

Clark: But, not throwing the baby out of the bath water and so on. Interestingly, I saw an interview with him recently where he said for the first 10 years of his intellectual career, he was a [00:49:00] Marxist, a proper Marxist, he believed wholeheartedly in the value of communism for 10 years. And like he said, I was wrong for 10 years.

Clark: Because eventually you start to get some experience of life, you start to speak to people who, whose views differ, and he discussed and debated with them the pros and cons of the various ideologies and he realized eventually that it was wrong. What I find most interesting about that is somebody that I admire enormously as a balanced credible intellectual who has real insights into the way humans function was wrong for a long time.

Clark: And during those 10 years, He probably persuaded a lot of other people into his viewpoint, which was, it turns out according to him anyway, wrong. And as you’ve said, Rob, nobody knows whether you’re right or wrong. So it’s impossible. And really it’s the sort of the height of stupidity to go into any situation and say this is the way to do it.

Clark: My way is the right way. This is what we’re going to do. Because the answer is well, [00:50:00] you’re not right. You don’t know whether you’re right. It’s impossible to know. 

Clark: The only solution then is to have a collaborative environment where we each discuss. As the politician Colin Powell always said, when we’re in the room deciding on a course of action, you can disagree with me as much as you’d like. But once we’ve agreed, and we walk out that door, we’re all going to act in unison. And that really, to me, is the key. 

Clark: Seems to be the right way to go about things. And when you’re walking into an environment that already has a culture set in place, the worst thing you can do is say, this is wrong, we’re going to do it this way from now on.

Clark: You may think that, but have the conversation first, and find out why people are doing things in a particular way, and what they’re happy with and what they’re not happy with, and so on. And try and find out what language are they speaking, and let’s try and find a common language where we can come to a conclusion that benefits all of us.

Clark: Going back to your problem, Tony, clearly you’re, you’re an intelligent man who has compassion and empathy. And obviously, you have only the best [00:51:00] in mind for your family. So you’ll come to Obviously, a reasonable and balanced conclusion of course you will.

Clark: However, in an organizational setting, that is very rarely the case. And we, for instance, we live in a country now where there’s a lot of people that are unhappy. And this to me is the reason why this question how do you know you’re right was on my mind this morning. Because we live in a world now where everybody’s got an opinion and everybody can find proof for the correctness of that opinion by going online and finding other like minded people that also believe that they’re right on this particular issue. The problem that causes is that when you’re talking to somebody, I don’t know if you guys have ever spoken to a Mormon or an evangelical Christian, they’re not particularly interested in reaching a collaborative truth.

Clark: They want you to believe what they believe, because they’re convinced that they’re right. And the problem that we find nowadays is that when you’re talking to people about the way forward in any particular [00:52:00] situation, they’ve got enough evidence for their rightness. That there’s no way they’re going to listen to you.

Clark: It’s literally like talking to flipping Mormons. All day long. Not that there’s anything wrong with Mormons, obviously. But they are particularly intransigent when it comes to their belief system. And the problem, as Rob’s said many times now, is nobody’s right. Nobody’s right. It’s all a delusion. You can believe what you like, because all things, given the current environment that we all live in, all things can be true if you want them to be.

Clark: The problem is, does that move us forward? No, we’re, we’re living in a country where everybody’s unhappy, it seems at the moment, and in America, Mr. Trump’s just turned up and made half the population extraordinarily happy. Whether that’s continues in that way, I don’t know, but the issue is that so many people these days, and this comes down to the whole Dunning Kruger thing, doesn’t it?

Clark: The less you know, the more convinced you are that you’re right. And the more you realize, nothing. We live in an environment nowadays where people have very limited information about the rightness of their [00:53:00] opinions. And yet they’re totally convinced. They’re the right ones.

Clark: When was the last time you heard anybody say, I don’t really know. 

Tony: That whole premise is based on the idea that what we are so convinced about is in some way predicting how the future is going to turn out. And none of us are, we’re not fortune tellers. You know what I mean?

Tony: We can’t say that this is my way, therefore this is what will happen. 

Tony: Of course we can convince ourselves that our beliefs are right, i. e. the Mormons or whoever, and they can then convince others down the same path with conviction. But they’re of the opinion, or even the belief, that by following this certain path, this certain approach, that the future is Predictable.

Tony: Come on. We know that’s not true. Like we live in a chaotic world. We work in a chaotic environment. You’re managing a football team. But I think that’s the point. Yeah, you think your tactical approach is going to be the one that gets you the result, but it’s never that straightforward.

Rob: But for the Mormons, for example, I think they want it to be true, but they don’t believe [00:54:00] it. So they’re trying to convince themselves. And in the same way while we know it’s not actually true, we have to operate on a principle that we have conviction in. Otherwise, we don’t actually do it. 

Tony: That’s my point though. In all of these sort of worlds and environments that are So dynamic or that’s lots of moving parts. Lots of people involved, lots of different levels of hierarchy and leaders at the top and managers in the middle and all of that sort of stuff. This idea that the decisions that we make we want predictability. We want to know that the things that we’re going to do are going to give us the outcome that we’re looking for, which is fine with the process. If you’re in a lean environment and if we just take one of these processes out and we can still do the job quicker, fantastic.

Tony: That’s brilliant. Let’s do that. But the supply chain fails. And suddenly all the parts that you need to do those other bits it becomes no longer possible. So all of that good intention and ideation around we’re in charge of what the future looks like, it’s all [00:55:00] bollocks really, because we’re guessing.

Clark: Actually Rob hit the nail on the head there, and I think you’ve just articulated it perfectly, Tony, that a lot of people have a belief And it’s not that they know that belief is particularly correct. They want it to be correct. There’s a school of thought at the moment and it’s become very prevalent recently. This idea that you can manifest a reality out there by thinking in a certain way.

Clark: I know that quantum physics suggests that to a certain degree that may be the case. To a certain degree, but I remember seeing a YouTube clip a couple of years ago of somebody running into the Harry Potter, is it Platform? Nine and three quarters. Nine and three quarters or so you can get to Hogwarts.

Clark: And I remember seeing people running into this wall. Clearly that’s just a comical portrayal of the way a lot of people think, but they will literally act as if, it’s this idea of faking it till you make it, right? They will act as if this thing is real. But some things are patently not real.

Clark: They are patently not true. I had a conversation with somebody a little while back [00:56:00] about the riots in Southport and how, these stupid Peasants who have a very limited world view going around smashing the place up because of their weird views on immigration and so on, and they called them far right activists.

Clark: I wanted to get some clarity around that. So what is a far right person? What does that mean that there’s also a far left? What does far left look like? What are the things that we’re talking about here? How do you know that all of these people are this thing that you say they are?

Clark: And the interesting thing was, it was almost impossible to ask those questions of this particular person. They weren’t having it as far as I was concerned, the things that they believed were true because they wanted it to be true and very often these things can end in absolute disaster. We often talk about Nazi Germany.

Clark: Being built on a belief system that turned out to be incorrect and it ended in disaster for the entire country. But on a smaller scale, this is happening all the time, that people are looking at [00:57:00] things and believing that they’re something when actually they’re something completely different.

Clark: How many relationships, Rob, do you have where one person says he’s a narcissist? Or she’s a lunatic, or whatever. They’re not. They’re not. Narcissism is a particular form of psychological illness that is nowhere near as common as people think it is. But the fact that you believe it, and the fact that all your friends who you talk to about it believe it, Helps you to demonize this person and then allow you to walk off with half of the house and half the money and the divorce and the kids and all that stuff.

Clark: So you’re trying to make this thing real, even though as Rob said, maybe you don’t even believe that it’s real, but you’re trying to manifest this reality out there. Not knowing that because you 

Tony: want something because you want something so much that you prepared to bend in order to get what you want.

Rob: But what is the thing that they want? And I think it’s that they want to feel good about themselves. If the other person is an arsehole and it’s all their fault, then I can still [00:58:00] feel good about myself. 

Clark: Yeah, which is fine, in a relationship where the other person can walk away and pick up the pieces of life and get back on with leading a normal life to a certain degree. But when you’re in charge of a massive organization of thousands of people or a country, and we’re all having to put up with the stupid decisions that you’re making. 

Clark: When old people can’t even turn their flipping heating on because they, they can’t afford their gas bill or whatever. 

Clark: Then the problem with that type of thinking is that whilst leader X may want something to be true. The problem is that you can have all of these bureaucrats and politicians around you that also pretend to believe that it’s true because it’s lying in their pockets. So whilst we all need to adopt this particular viewpoint, the reality is that in the real world, a lot of these politicians and leaders that say we should all be doing X, Y, and Z.

Clark: Aren’t doing X, Y, and Z? 

Clark: I saw a perfect example of this, of the priest, bishop, I don’t know what she was, who was berating Mr. Trump who I personally [00:59:00] neither agree with nor disagree with, I couldn’t care less what his policies are on anything. But she was telling him to be kind and to think about immigration and all the other things and berating him.

Clark: It transpired later that her organization had received 53 million in aid from the previous government to further her ideas on how the world should be run. And that’s the interesting thing for me, regardless of their beliefs or ideologies. When a person espouses a particular viewpoint, and are getting paid to have that viewpoint, then I doubt the veracity of their claims, that it’s what they really believe.

Clark: But that’s, that’s me being a cynic. 

Rob: In order to get anything done, we have to have conviction in our belief. I think part of the key to leadership is what you’re talking about is the leader has to have an awareness of what the truth is. While we can’t know what exactly what the truth is, we can know what it isn’t because we can realize when things aren’t true.

Rob: We’re trying to impose them because we have feedback of what works and what doesn’t work. But the [01:00:00] truth is Very confronting. There’s no hiding from the truth and most of us through operate through social mask. So we want to hide from the truth.

Rob: We don’t want to feel like we’re a bad person. We don’t want other people to think we’re a bad person. So a lot of what we do is create this cloudiness so that we can’t have transparency because we’re afraid of being seen as we are because we don’t feel that we’re good enough. 

Rob: In order to have great leadership, You have to have someone who has that willingness to deal with the truth, let people see how they are and that, going back to when you were talking about Klopp, this is what immediately what I thought was, he was that leader because he was strong enough to be able to deal with whatever happened. he would talk quite openly about the club joining the European Super League and all of these things, and I think that is the key of leadership is that they have to be at a different level of character in order to be willing to confront the truth.

Rob: Why is he willing to confront the truth? Because if they don’t want to confront the truth, then they’re going to hide it. But why was [01:01:00] Klopp happy to 

Clark: confront the truth? Because to me Because he was confident in himself. Yes, he’s a humble man. A humble man is aware of his own limitations, is aware that he is no better than anybody else.

Clark: We’ve all got a say in how we live our lives. And the interesting thing, you’re quite right. I believe that this idea that there’s this fear of being seen as we really are, because all the leaders I’ve ever met, bar one or two, maybe were weak people. going back to my thing about leaders, leadership this idea that a leader has to have the the obedience, the respect of the people they work with is unnecessary.

Clark: It’s not necessary. It happens. Jurgen Klopp had the admiration and respect of, Hundreds of thousands of people. But it was not something he demanded. The interesting thing is that it’s a paradox, really. That those that demand it, tend to lose it very quickly. Those that don’t need it, because they’re confident in themselves tend to get it.

Clark: It’s informal 

Tony: authority is building trust through being [01:02:00] the person that he is, the humility, asking the right questions, being open and transparent, all of those things he’s able to build. It’s a byproduct of who he is, how he behaves, isn’t it? I looked, interestingly, just on Klopp just before I pick up on a point you made, Rob, on Klopp. I saw footage of him this week in his new role as this head of, sport or football for for Red Bull and he looks so much healthier, so much more relaxed than he did coming towards the end and he was again, open and transparent about it’s time for me to quit now because it’s starting to take its toll on me, right?

Tony: You can see in, in how he’s showing up, which is again, fantastic self awareness from him, but from the outside, looking at him, Today you compared to what he was 12 months ago. Wow. He looks like a different guy. He looks 10 years younger Basically, 

Tony: For me just going back to this idea of truth Rob if we instead of truth for the sake of this little bit, just think about the reality of the situation that we’re in.

Tony: So here’s the reality is the data, the facts. This is not as true as we can get it. Okay, then the different [01:03:00] people’s response to those facts where all of these things start, this lack of confidence, this lack of self esteem, they all start to play out in this space, right? So here’s the fact, here’s the reality of the situation.

Tony: There’s three things going on. Is what people think about those facts. our opinions, we might differ in our opinion about this situation, how we feel about them, I think it’s great, you think it’s crap, I think we should do it I feel frustrated, you feel happy, whatever it might be, so we think, so we’ve got opinions about it, I need to find out what yours are and how they align with mine.

Tony: If I’m the manager and you’re one of my people, I want to know, what do you think about this? Here’s what I think. What do you think? I might ask you first. But there’s an exchange. We get clarity on our sort of rational experience of this data that we’ve now dealing with this situation that we’re now dealing with, how do you feel it?

Tony: I can see you looking, it makes you a bit uncomfortable. I feel like we’re on the right track, tell me what’s going on in your world. We get this sense of this other part of us, this emotional thing, what’s going on for you. And the key then is what do you want? What do you want to happen here?

Tony: Here’s what I want [01:04:00] from it. What do you want? Are we on the same? Because for each of those things, how we think, how we feel, what do we want? There’s a gap to be bridged. 

Tony: The skilled operator like Klopp is able person by person to bridge those gaps really elegantly with humility to say, I’m not better than you. We are in this together. Here’s the situation. How do you think about it? What are you feeling right now? What do you want here? What shall we do? What shall we do? Here’s what I think we could do. What do you want to do? 

Tony: So you’re bridging these gaps between and if we’re not too far aligned in what we want, bridging the gap’s, not too difficult.

Tony: If we’re miles apart and I’m Amorin, I want you, you to do this and train like this, and you are Rashford and you’re thinking you haven’t even taken the time to understand who I am. The gap’s too big. This terminal, we’re just part company and it’s painful. But when you’re in those nuanced conversations with all your people on a day to day basis, which people don’t do by the way.

Tony: In a workplace, they’re not close enough to each other. They avoid it because they don’t even know who they are themselves. They haven’t found that strength of [01:05:00] belief or conviction because they don’t actually know, they’re not grounded in that reality. So they’re dealing with the situation from their own insecure position.

Tony: How can we then expect them to be able to navigate everybody else’s world? It’s bonkers, and there’s fractures everywhere that just get wider as a consequence. If we can help people to recognize how to have those conversations with people, how to explore your own experience through what you think, how do you feel, what is it that you want?

Tony: It’s not always easy what do I actually want from this? What do I want the next step to look like? 

Tony: So it’s not that easy to do sometimes. Especially if you haven’t thought about it, or you don’t have a mechanism or a framework to operate from, you’re just living through your experience and reacting to it and bouncing off people everywhere you go, causing trouble.

Tony: There’s so much in that truth being it. Okay, in this situation, here’s what we know to be true. It’s what we can capture on a camera. It’s not what we thought somebody meant by what they said. It’s what did [01:06:00] they actually say and how did they say it. If we haven’t captured it on camera or recorded it, then it’s just hearsay.

Tony: So that’s not fact, that’s not data, that’s just noise. 

Tony: Let’s see if we’ve got a more accurate version of the truth that we’re dealing with. Then we can decide, okay, are we close enough to each other that this will be an easy transition or are we a fair way apart and we’re going to need to work really hard to bridge these gaps.

Tony: I think that’s the world that we live in. Either me and you as individuals coming together to decide to agree on an idea, let’s say. Or if it’s me and a group of people where it gets more complicated, ’cause there’s more conversations to be had and more, more vari variables at play.

Tony: Fascinating though, isn’t it? 

Rob: I think I have the relational skills, the conflict skills and that to be able to have those conversations. I wouldn’t wanna be a leader. I think what exhausted Klopp is for, what was it, nine years, he held the pressure of holding together the fans, the media, the backroom stuff, the players.

Rob: I think whoever you [01:07:00] are, there’s an incredible toll. 

Rob: That’s where I think you have to really have a vocation for it. The problem in a lot of organizations is managers all they’re responsible for is their bit. If their performance looks good, they get a promotion, they’re fine, their job’s safe.

Rob: They have to make decisions and they’re detached from the rationale of the decision. It comes down from the board that we’ve got to make people redundant. We go, I don’t want to deal with this. Okay HR can talk. And then, someone can say, Okay. What is it now we’re going to go through HR because I’m going to protect myself.

Rob: I don’t want to have that conflict. I should be giving someone feedback, but their performance is okay. I’m looking at a promotion next year or we’ll get rid of them next year. I don’t have to have that conversation. So I think a lot of managers protect themselves from the discomfort. And I think someone like Klopp has worn that because he’s dealt with everything as it is, he’s confronted it, and I think there is a toll on living in that reality and in [01:08:00] bringing people together.

Rob: I think Steve Jobs was a a great leader from what examples I’ve seen of him of the way he talked about, he said, it’s not me making the team, it’s the best idea has to win and all of these kind of things. He would have those kind of conversations, but he had a passion and it was his business. And I think for most managers, it’s not their whole career.

Rob: Their career is on managing the politics and often is avoiding those situations until they have to confront them. 

Clark: We, we spoke last week about the Moses coming down from the mountain and all the hebrews dancing around the golden cow. 

Clark: That reminds me a little bit of you, because if you’re aware of the tension involved in trying to maintain some sort of equilibrium and forward momentum with a group of people that are making demands of you.

Clark: A person that realizes that leadership is a scam is it’s not a thing it’s not a natural thing for a person to do something like Jurgen Klopp, who is a humble man would realize all I’m trying to do, as you’ve just said, is hold things together where the people are demanding of him [01:09:00] leadership.

Clark: There’s an enormous tension there and the people that don’t feel that tension are psychopaths and quite clearly the people that can last for a long time in leadership positions are those that don’t feel that tension. Because they don’t have the compassion or the empathy to understand that this is an untenable position.

Clark: Jürgen Klopp did the right thing by getting out because he realized that I’m just a flawed human trying to help a whole load of other flawed humans accomplish something. But the demands that they were making of him, like the Hebrews around the golden cow saying to Moses, we want our cake and we want to eat it and you’ve got to cut it up for us and you’ve not got to complain when we make a mess.

Rob: It’s impossible. Nobody can do that. Nobody can fulfill all of those roles and anybody that can. Is a psychopath. I rest my case. 

The example of the person who had the ability to do that. And I don’t think he’s a psychopath, even though he was Man United manager, [01:10:00] Alex Ferguson, 24 years.

Rob: But he had such a like combative nature. And there’s not many people that would have that. strength and fight to, to keep going for 

Clark: so long. Yeah that’s the thing, isn’t it, Rob? That’s, somebody like Jurgen Klopp, for instance, had he been prepared to continue fighting the way Alex Ferguson did, would have probably had too much of a toll on him.

Clark: And you can start to see it in all good coaches. All good managers, all good leaders. The toll There’s 

Tony: a massive skill to be in a situation like that where you are letting half of your people down every week and yet you’ve still got to maintain their trust in you. You’re not playing this week again, but I still need you to trust me. You’re not obviously telling them you need to trust it, but that’s the reality is you need those people to continue to buy in so that when you are called. I watched the podcast the other day, Dennis Irwin was on the overlap with Gary Neville.

Tony: He was talking about a time when he got left out and he said, Fergie was brilliant. He’d say that you [01:11:00] were not playing this game. And obviously you’re frustratingly disappointed. He said, but you’re going to be playing against Bolton in four weeks time. I think he set these absolutely clear expectations.

Tony: You hated the decision, but you just went along with it. But my point is, there’s a part of that, not wanting to call it leadership, but when you’re in those roles where you are constantly navigating relationships to be optimized to meet the challenge, let’s say, that a big part of that is to what degree can you disappoint people on a regular basis by giving them some bad news. 

Tony: Giving them something to do that they don’t want to do, and yet maintain the level of, the level of tension that’s effective to work. It’s obviously a very nuanced challenge. It’s not an easy challenge, and it takes its toll if you care about it. If you’re more of the totally objective, less feeling person. So you’re heading towards the psychopathic scale, then it just doesn’t, probably doesn’t phase you at [01:12:00] all. 

Clark: The problem we have is the paradigm that you’re functioning within. So for instance, we live in a world now where The prevalent paradigm is one of capitalism built around an oil based economy.

Clark: Given that oil appears to be running out and causing us all sorts of problems, this is creating tension because the paradigm seems to be untenable. It’s not workable anymore. How do we shift from one paradigm to another? I believe this concept of leadership is again, an untenable paradigm or 100 years ago, it wasn’t, if you were the owner of a mill, or if you were a dictator, or if you the chief of a village or a tribe or whatever, it worked. You’re the leader of us will do what you say, because we’re all in service to the group.

Clark: However, it’s becoming an untenable paradigm because nobody wants to be led. We all want to have individual sovereignty. So how do you then create a situation where people are willing to [01:13:00] work together to accomplish something without giving up their own individual sovereignty? And this is purely a collaborative coaching situation.

Clark: I would like to suggest that when you said something a minute ago, Tony, when you were saying with a problem, a group of people would look at the situation and for instance, somebody said something and it caused a problem and you asked, so what was meant by what was said?

Clark: I latched onto that because that to me is, Probably the most interesting thing when you were talking about all of the problems that come from dealing with problematic situations, you get data, the facts are the facts, and then you react to those facts according to a certain set of processes and principles.

Clark: The question I would according to what you’ve just said is. What do the facts mean? And I think this is key, because we attach meaning to things based upon our belief systems. And for instance, Rob will see situations where two people are disagreeing with each other. And one person might say they ignored me.

Clark: And you might then ask what’s the problem with that? That means that they don’t love me. [01:14:00] Hold on. You’ve just attached something onto this. This act that may or may not be true. And this goes back to our question. How do you know you’re right? Because of the meaning we attach to particular situations, we act in a certain way, and when you see problems unfolding, and this is probably why my black and white viewpoint of the world serves me so well in, in my current work situation, because I cannot look at something and say, somebody will say, I’ve got a problem because X, Y, and Z is happening, and I will always ask myself what does that mean to you?

Clark: Because then I can start to understand the language, the belief system, the operating framework that they’re working under. When I know what they think it means, it may or may not mean that. It may mean that and other things. But once I understand that, I can start to get a feel for how they are viewing the situation, and it’s the meaning we put on stuff that I’m really interested in. 

Tony: By the way, Clark, it’s not lost on me that you have zebras behind you as you talk about black and white thinking. I think there’s something subliminal that you’re trying to It’s the universe. I manifested