The Importance of Self Awareness and Team Awareness
Who do you serve?
How do you serve them? Why? And what are the boundaries of that service?
The answers to these questions go a long way to clarifying our work.
They help define the contexts of our relationships in coming together. They ensure we fulfil our purpose. And they help us frame the decisions we make.
This starts with understanding who we are and how us and our colleagues work.
Today’s episode was a discussion into self awareness informed by Tony Walmsley’s work on his SCORE Profiling Tool.
Links:
Tony Walmsley’s Linkedin Profile
Transcript
Raising Self Awareness
Clark: [00:00:00] I found that really interesting when you said, your book serves, because I had a conversation about a week ago. So where I’ve been this morning is my main customer. I spend probably half of the week working for this large estate in Norfolk. So I have to deal with contractors and organizing, shooting parties and that sort of thing.
One of the contractors came in and he said, Oh, what a lovely place to work. And it is a beautiful place, acres and acres of land and woodland and park and all that sort of stuff. And cattle and what have you. And he said, it’s a lovely place. He said, but I couldn’t do your job. He said, because I bet you’re at their beck and call 24 hours a day.
And I said, all right, so you’re not at somebody’s beck and call. What are you doing here then? Because, he was there on behalf of an organization who was making the money for sending him to fix this big boiler that has to be serviced regularly. The thing is, mate, it’s interesting you say that because everybody serves somebody.
And if you don’t know who it is, you’re in trouble because even entrepreneurs have an audience that they need to serve. [00:01:00]
And one of the problems that a lot of people find, for instance, as you say, you’ve just taken a step back from doing so much because it’s not serving the people that you set out to serve.
You find then that your energy is dissipating. And one of the things that I found interesting about that conversation, is was that it caused me to think about who we serve, who are our customers, and for instance, each of us are family men. So we serve our families to a great degree.
Everything that we do is in the service of our family. If you’ve lived an entire life without knowing for what and for who you’re in service to, then I think that’s not a particularly well lived life. Certainly if you have no clear idea of who you’re serving. And so the fact that you know who your work does serve, I think is 90 percent of the job done.
You just now have to, as you say, figure out how to articulate it. One of the issues I see around at the moment is. There are a lot of people who balk [00:02:00] at the idea of serving anyone. It’s all about I’m not doing that. I shouldn’t have to do that. It reminds me, for instance many years ago when I was traveling, I was working in a restaurant in Greece just to earn some money for some food and drinks and stuff.
This was years ago and I was very young. And there was a guy in there washing up who said, I shouldn’t have to do this. I’ve got a degree. And the Greek guy says, your degree is not getting the washing up done. This is a big deal. I think that people don’t realize how important it is to be of service to others.
And if the only person you’re serving is yourself, you’re in trouble. So I think you’re in a really good place, mate. Because all you now have to do is to get the product or the thing that you’re giving to your customer together in one place. Like you say just the next few months.
Exactly.
Tony: So it’s exciting. Yeah, you’ve got to just get on with the work. But it’s not hard work, is it, right? Yeah, I love doing it. It’s not hard work. It’s because I love doing it. It’s actually taking the appropriate amount of breaks so I can clear my head and come back to it with a fresh set of eyes and all of that sort of stuff.
[00:03:00] So I’m loving it.
Clark: I’m guessing that having spoken to you that The material that you’ve put together so far will consist predominantly of information, facts, ideas, concepts, how things fit together and you’ve now got to Yeah, initially I did,
Tony: that was all, yeah, now I’ve got to put the narrative around it.
What’s the story? What’s the thread? What’s the, how does it play out? Make it easily digestible as well. And turning what can be complex into something that’s, that, that’s, that can be applied. But have you got that figured
Clark: out now? How are you going to be going about that?
Tony: I wouldn’t say so yet at the moment. So we’ve gone back to, so we’ve looked at, Who I am, we’re now looking at what the origin of the product was, but where did it come from? How did I start? How did I research it to the degree that I have to get it to where it’s got? So just about knocked over that bit.
We’ve got the, here I am, who I am. Here’s how the product came to be, why does it exist? So we know who it serves but how did I come to this realization, because it’s easy to go all the way back and go this was always meant to be, you [00:04:00] can easily do that. It’s actually, it’s more intentional than that. It didn’t just happen. It was like, if you’re trying to find an answer to a problem that you’ve seen and you think you, you think there’s a better way to do it. So that’s where it started and I can trace that back maybe 20 years when it started, but probably more intentionally and with more vigor in the last probably four or five years where I’ve really tried to put this thing to really give it the depth of attention that it needed that it’s enabled it to come to life.
The beauty is I’ve been obviously road testing this method and this tool all over the world in the last 12 months. So I’ve got the benefit of lots of use cases and social proof, if you like of its impact. So now it’s about articulating in a way that’s good to read.
People can connect with why it exists and for who, all of that sort of stuff. So I don’t have the answers, but I’m on the way, I’m on the journey.
Clark: We’re talking about the to put it crudely, because I can’t remember exactly how you said it, but this is the [00:05:00] sort of typing indicator that you use in your work.
Correct, the profiling tool.
It’s really interesting for. For us to have that conversation about the situation that we all find ourselves in that situation, where how does the thing that we have invested so much of ourselves into, how does that translate out into the world?
It’s relatability, isn’t it? Yeah.
The reason I ask that is because I’ve seen a few psychologists on on LinkedIn take the idea of profiling into task because it is they say it’s like astrology.
And of course, psychology isn’t, right? And it can be, right? Not like the
Tony: beauty of it.
Clark: psychology takes, right? Because they, they follow a rigorous scientific method in, in, in the work that they do. There’s no guesswork involved there at all. Which is my point. That, all of these heuristics, all of these rules of thumb, are just guides to making meaning of the world that we live in.
And the only real test of whether they’re any good or not is if they work, is if they [00:06:00] do the thing that they say they do. I’ve spoken to people who have spent years in therapy and are no better off now because they’ve got some Freudian psychologist stirring up their water and muddying it, by poking it with a stick.
Does it work?
Maybe that’s what you want. Maybe you just want to spend week after week spending all your money just talking to somebody about, how your dad never looked the way you thought he should. But in your case this idea that a heuristic, a rule of thumb that we can follow will allow us to help the people that we work with is a noble one.
It is only one of many, but it may be one that works well for a lot of people, in which case it’s certainly something that’s worth getting out there. The question is then, Yeah. Why at some point you came to some sort of conclusion that this is a necessary thing? And I think that’s the story, isn’t it?
That’s the origin. Yeah,
Tony: Why do it? Why even bother?
Clark: Yeah, the misunderstandings and the conflict that we see in workplaces and in relationships require us to have a better understanding of each other and how we [00:07:00] work.
Tony: Because all we do otherwise is we respond to What we say, right?
We respond to our behavior. If we don’t have awareness of our own responses, we’re just responding through our own previous experiences and our biology. So we come out… I don’t like that or I do like that. And we’re going to have a conversation about it. Without that lack of self awareness or insight I can’t possibly think that I understand you well. So if I’m your manager and I haven’t done the work on myself to really understand how I’m positioned right now in this space that we’re both in, and we’re both trying to achieve this thing. How can I possibly?
Even think I can get the best out of you unless I know how to have that conversation and where your start point is that’s different to mine and what levers can we pull in order that we both better for, the progress that we’re looking for.
Everything you’ve said is absolutely 100 percent and I think it’s right for the people to be challenging psychometrics and different tools. I don’t like putting people into boxes as a [00:08:00] start point. So one thing that I don’t do is put anyone into a box.
The start position is not a box. You’re already out of the box, but it’s how far out of the box are you in relation to everybody else?
We’re all out of the box. So now what do we do with it?
It’s easy when you told me there was a box that I could fit into. You go in and you run a workshop with a team that puts everyone in a nice colored box and they have a great day of it.
And they go, Oh, wow. That’s why you talk like that. And that’s why you get excited about that.
Fantastic.
Then they go away and with a big bag full of cash, but the people are left behind with a big thick report fitting in a box that they don’t really belong in because there’s way more about them than that.
What do I do with it now?
Nothing, it gets left. They go back to business as usual and it’s big waste of money. The only people that have ticked the box at the HR department, yes, I’ve done training. And the beneficiary is the evangelist that’s gone away and gone to sell it somewhere else, taking the circus on the road.
Maybe as I’m saying [00:09:00] that, that’s how my book should be reading. You know what I mean?
That’s what’s behind it. So I’d like the idea of challenging those notions. And I think what I’ve produced is way different than that. And for those reasons.
Rob: Tony, how is yours different?
So what I understand is like a suite. What is it about your tool that makes it more usable?
Tony: That’s a good question. I think in its concept initially to start with. It’s derived from the world of high performance. I was in the sporting environment for 30 years. My job was to try and mobilize people to make really challenging, tough game demands, make independent decisions under pressure, suffer the consequences of making mistakes in public.
All of that and myself living through that as well, every decision I made, your feedbacks, incident, the crowd will tell you whether they like it or not, whether they like you or not. It’s born out of the lived experience of high performance. So that’s where it starts.
So the idea was, how do you, and then you start to look at.
I first did a handwritten Myers [00:10:00] Briggs test with a practitioner about 25 years ago. Also, and it was insightful, right?
Oh, that’s cool, right? But it’s put me in a box and I’m already resistant to just that notion, right?
Because I’m way more. School tried to put me in a box years before that, and that didn’t work either. That was a nightmare. So I didn’t fit the way, I think we’ve talked about that before as well.
As I was going through my coaching journey and my instructor’s journey, so I was coaching overseas at 21, right?
I traveled from Manchester to Australia at 21 to coach and play football. So I was exposed to this idea of. leading teams and coaching teams way before I was ready, in terms of life experience had certain limited amounts of technical ability and physical capability and all that.
And my natural ability to engage with people, relate to people, whatever. So I had all that.
I think my my characteristics got me through those early periods of being less competent than I am now, [00:11:00] 40, 50 years later, or 40 years later, so 40 years later, I’m a lot wiser than I was then. I’ve still got the same personality with a few more scars and all of the rest of it.
So it’s born out of, The idea of performance and it’s also born out the idea of rather than just tell me in a static way, what box I fit into, give me some sense of how do I move forward then?
In order to move forward, we need to know where we’re going. So what is the objective that we’re trying to meet?
How am I predisposed to naturally meeting this objective?
Actually I’m not aligned to it at all. When I was working in a tech company, I couldn’t have been any further outside of my comfort zone. If you had to, wedge me in or beat me in with a sledgehammer, it was awful, like my energy was drained before I even started the day.
Let alone by end of the day. So there’s this natural we all know what that flow state is. That happy place where we are, wouldn’t it be great if we could work like that all of the time. Where we could find that ideal environment working with people who I really connect well with [00:12:00] and getting to do the things that I do really well, most of the time that are effortless, they don’t burn my energy, I look forward to it.
So my programs is all about performance navigation.
Where am I?
I’m in charge. Or I’m the manager. Or I’m the coach. Or I’m the teacher or whatever, where am I?
And where are you?
And where are we?
Cause I need to meet you where you’re at.
There’s this idea about authentic leadership.
Again, there’s static descriptions on paper that you’re this type of leader. Under what circumstances are you going to put me that’s going to work? Cause it won’t work. It doesn’t work, the situation changes every day, the people come in with a different mind because something happened yesterday or at home or they’ve got another job opportunity somewhere else.
So the whole dynamics are shifting all the time. A static report doesn’t do it. It won’t help you. So where are you?
Where do you want to go?
What’s the optimum way we can work together to try and get to make it better?
The alternative is I just do nothing. I don’t try and get [00:13:00] visibility of what drives people of what let’s assume a certain degree of accuracy, and in any sort of reporting, there’s a certain amount of accuracy. I’d rather have the information than not. So if I’m trying to take a team forward, I’d rather know that I’m putting you into something that scares you. That inspires you, that doesn’t so I can get some early insights into that and we can start having conversations about it.
The idea for me is if we talk about self awareness as being the bedrock of anything that we do, leadership, personal growth, coaching, whatever. If that’s the start point, then this is one mechanism to give you a sense of grounding in being different than everybody else. It’s actually okay, you’re not in a box, you’re just to varying degrees, like someone or unlike somebody, and it’s going to manifest in different ways.
Different ways and subtle differences can make a big difference. So where am I and where are we going? Where do we want to go? What does good look like?
If I can understand what I want and what you want, we can start to find a shared purpose within that. If we can’t, [00:14:00] the gap’s too big.
We ain’t going to make it as a team. We’re going to break down. There’s going to be a fracture. And I’ve been there, I’ve been in dressing rooms that have pulled together to win extraordinary things together. And I’ve been in toxic environments where people who’ve agreed in public to go down a certain path in private have torn the whole thing to shreds and I felt the pain of that. One of my drivers is to help people avoid those pitfalls. You can do it by bringing these things to the surface and start to have really good conversations about. about it with people, helping them to navigate their own performance through predicting that if they do certain things, they’re going to get a better outcome.
I don’t know if that answered the question, Rob.
Rob: For me, that makes perfect sense because although I’ve come from a completely different place, my whole thing is a series of maps of what to have conversations about. So it’s about what’s the quality of the relationship?
Does someone feel safe? Do they feel seen? Do they [00:15:00] feel safe, seen, supported? Do they feel satisfied? What’s the climate of the relationship? And then it’s about conflict. It’s about what’s really The issue. And it’s about there’s the issue. There’s the hidden issue. And then there’s the deep core, which we talked about, like the 12 currencies that people have.
And then in joining together, it’s about what currency am I going for personally? What’s the group’s goal? What’s the collective? And all of that is about this is a map of this is where you need to look. This is what you need to have a conversation about to guide it. So it seems that we’ve done the same thing, but yours is from a psychometric thing.
Mine is more from the universal dynamics of how the relationships work and how this conflict unfolds. So I think we’ve done something very similar. So for me, I think the value for me is understanding. It gives people understanding because I think that’s what people need. People have different ways of trying to control things. And mine has always been to try and understand if I can understand something, I don’t need to control it.
Do you have a title?
Yeah, it’s called SCORE. Oh, nice. I [00:16:00] like that.
Tony: It’s an acronym. The SCORE dimensions are stability, so emotional stability, connection, originality. Responsibility and engagement.
So for example, if you are low in connection and high in engagement, chances are you’re pretty self interested and there’s a bit of work to do to get you thinking about the team’s purpose as well as your own, as an example.
All of these things play out in different, in very dynamic ways, and they predispose people to behave in certain ways. So it becomes a predictive device. As a consequence, you can start to mitigate problems, or you can start to orchestrate conflict in the right way because you know what buttons to press.
That’s not to say it’s about manipulation, but about if we’re trying to get a team, we know that somebody’s wired that way. Then let’s create the affordances that allow them to express themselves in a way that they’re going to get the best out of it without destroying the fabric of the team itself.
Cause you get those self interested [00:17:00] players that will just give a toss about anybody else. And unless that’s managed effectively, you’ve got a big problem. But if that person’s your key player, Do you cut your nose off to spite your face and get rid of them, or do you try and manage it? What we’re trying to do is help people to navigate.
I would call it a performance navigation device. It’s like, it’s the difference between having a report that gives you the map that says this is where you are. You’re in the red box, firmly in the red box. That’s the map. Now what? Where do I, yeah, but I’m, I’ve just got here you are on the map.
I don’t know how do I get where I want to go?
It’s like someone helped me. Whereas what I’m trying to do is say here’s the GPS put the destination in and let’s learn what levers to pull to collectively to get us there, which is making what is a very complex ever moving feast of like human interaction and dynamics and conflict and desires and need, people wanting to have their needs met unknown to them in this pursuit of validation or whatever it might be.
Let’s make it a bit more simple to, for the manager, that [00:18:00] story of the manager who was really good at their job, a good subject matter expert gets pushed into this management situation. Let’s help them a little bit to understand how to pull some levers differently.
That’s not what they were doing before that they were really good at. So they don’t just die on the hill.
Clark: Isn’t the goal of any descriptive measure of personality to help a person to understand better themselves?
And by extension then their relationships with other people, because What I find interesting about any any method of categorizing personality is that one type of person, let’s say an astrologer, for instance, a person may say I don’t believe all of that MBTI nonsense, it’s rubbish.
And the reason I don’t believe it is because I’m a Scorpio.
The funny thing is I was introduced last year to a type of a personality thing? It’s a little bit of a typing indicator that’s. I found quite interesting because as soon as I saw it, I poo pooed it. I thought this is nonsense. It’s rubbish. [00:19:00] And, but I did it, and I was surprised at how accurate certain aspects of it was.
What that made me think was, when I looked into how this thing had been put together, it was an amalgam of several other indicator type things. And I just couldn’t understand how so many disparate methods of measuring a person’s personality could be mashed together to come up with something that would work.
And what I realized was, it’s like the blind men feeling the elephant, isn’t it? We’re all touching it from different angles. And just because one person’s feeling their leg and another person’s feeling the tail and another person’s feeling the trunk, doesn’t mean that they’re not all talking about the same thing.
And in actual fact, I’ve just had a little bit of a dig at psychology which doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that I don’t value the efforts that it puts into helping people understand themselves and their environment, because of course, psychology over the last hundred years has been an enormous challenge.
Help to society in many ways. The [00:20:00] thing is, neither one nor the other is the answer to understanding ourselves. My mum was a psychoanalyst, and I have sat and watched her ask herself, Why do I keep doing this thing? You’re the psychologist. Physician, heal thyself.
Because
Clark: we, none of us, are able to understand ourselves, especially the things that we do, that we wish we didn’t do.
And once we get a little bit of an an idea of, how we function in whatever capacity that might be. Because as you’ve said, you’ve already mentioned things like how we engage with people and all the other different aspects of our relationships with other people. They’re all different aspects of the elephant, aren’t they?
They all feel different under different circumstances. But once we know that measure of ourselves, we then have to ask, What does this mean?
What does this mean for the people around me? . Does the fact, for instance, that I will ride rough shot over everybody else’s ideas have an impact on my relationships with these people?
Of course it does. Would my life be better if I were to better understand this? And I think [00:21:00] anything that adds to this conversation, whatever it might be, even if it’s astrology if it adds to the conversation, all of these type indicators, MBTI, is it. It’s a brilliant one because people come down very firmly on what you can and can’t do if you’re a particular type, as an ISTP, you shouldn’t be an emotional feeling person.
I am. What does that mean? And that’s where the conversation needs to go. Exactly. And the more people do that because what will happen eventually is that, I’d love to think that one day that we will eventually arrive at some universal theory of how we understand each other.
I’m massively optimistic about all of that sort of thing. We will eventually start to realize by helping each other understand each other, we will all benefit. And so this tool because you will get criticism because, whatever it is you’re putting together.
What are your certifications and what is your background and what is your field of study and how rigorous is the scientific research and is it peer reviewed and all this stuff [00:22:00] because everybody wants to pull everything to pieces. But the great thing is it’s adding to the conversation and as in all of these things, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Does it work? If it works, It doesn’t matter what anybody else thinks about it. Exactly. You need to try and help people understand how you arrived at that point. The fact that you’re writing this book, I think, is brilliant.
Rob: I’m just going back to what Clark was saying right at the beginning is about who do you serve? Because you are always going to get people complaining, the article’s going to get people criticizing, but it’s not for them, it’s for and when you try and do something that pleases everyone, it pleases no one it is about who is it serving and what does it do.
I think a lot of people in business aren’t necessarily that scientific and they want to cover their backs. But I think a lot of them also are quite open to stuff. You can, look. Everybody’s on
Tony: that spectrum, right?
Somebody will be. Thinking it’s the best product they’ve seen and somebody will be going, what a load of rubbish, right? That you got both ends of those spectrum and everybody sits [00:23:00] somewhere on that continuum between one end and the other.
My job is not to try and convince everyone. My, my job is to say you know what I’ve been in a, performance environment for 30 odd years, first in football, then in business, where people are under pressure to get results.
It’s complicated. It’s not easy to manage people to meet challenges, to meet objectives. It’s tough.
People are complicated. You only have to look, if you do any sort of deep self reflection to realize how complex we are as individuals, you put any two of us together in a room and it exponentially gets more complicated.
So we fake it most of the time. We just try and try to get through the day, as best we can. What I’m trying to try to say is that there is a better way to at least ease the pain. We can predict to a large degree in a way that can prevent us from making really fatal mistakes early in our tenure or the beginning of a project.
We can avoid that. We can also give ourselves a better chance of [00:24:00] success. Because I’ve been in situations where I didn’t have access to these insights. Now that I’ve got access to the insights and I can play them back through historical scenarios that I’ve been in I know that would have helped, I know what I could have said differently that would have pushed somebody in a different direction or to ease their anxiety when there was a threat of something to lose.
When I was thinking everyone would be excited that we’re in the lead at halftime. I just wish I’d known that some of them were, actually terrified about making a mistake that might allow the team back into the game. You know what I mean?
It’s that kind of thing. It’s just to know those little nuggets gives me the chance to address them in different ways that appeals to their sense of, or the need for security or need for belonging, and everybody’s different.
Some people don’t care if you want to give them a cuddle, but for the ones that do give them a cuddle. If you’re the manager and hate giving people cuddles, it’s so far out of my comfort zone, I don’t like to do it. You might have to every now and again, just [00:25:00] give someone a cuddle.
Because as uncomfortable as it is for you for that split second or momentary adaptation that you’re making, it means the world to the people that you’re trying to bring with you. Those things make a huge difference. Let’s use that scenario, you’re the manager of a team, but you don’t have that warmth. You don’t have that natural human connection. You don’t have that feeling thing where you really want to embrace, but not everyone likes it. So for the ones that don’t like it, you’re really cool for them.
But for the ones that do think this guy’s aloof, doesn’t care about me, blah, blah, blah.
So I’m not in an optimal state. What the score report. is to say, how hard is that adaptation for you to make? So let’s say you’ve got three people in your team that need a cuddle and you hate giving them a cuddle, right?
And you know that you’re why you’re so far away from giving people a cuddle. That’s bloody intolerable to even think about doing it. What this will do is say, here’s the cost of you. Here’s the personal cost of it. It’s not measured to degrees, but if you call them standard deviations, if you like, if you step two standard [00:26:00] deviations away from your normal self, in order to deal with somebody in the way that they want to be dealt with.
It comes at some sort of cost to you. Just be aware of it, go and do it, be uncomfortable.
Give them what they need because we’re in service to them. They’re our team. That’s my players. It’s my group of people. I want them to excell. I want them to succeed because when they succeed, I succeed. And when I succeed, my boss succeeds.
It matters. So I can make that thing. I can understand the cost of it. I can prepare myself to go and do it. It’s like me leaving players out every week. I used to hate giving people bad news, even though I know that it’s important and you’ve got to have an honest conversation with them. I never liked it.
I had to adjust. I had to prepare myself to have those not difficult conversations, but I’m wearing the difficulty of the conversation. Conversation’s easy. The discomfort is sitting in with me. As long as I know that’s there and that when I pull that lever, I need to prepare for it.
I need to maybe construct a process for having those [00:27:00] conversations. I certainly need to know the person who I’m talking to. Some people just want it straight between the eyes. Some people want it with a bit of love, all of that kind of stuff. So it gives me insights that I can act on. It’s an application.
It doesn’t just tell me where I am. It’s not your point on the map. You are here. You’re in a foreign city, you’ve just landed, you are here, you turn your GPS on, now know where you want to go and it will tell you the best route to get there. And everybody’s getting to the end point, but they’re all going at it in different ways.
It’s looking at everybody’s best way of getting somewhere and trying to gain a little bit more visibility of it. We can start to control it a little bit better. It’ll make the navigation of the team dynamic easier. That’s the idea.
So it’s born out of performance.
It’s geared towards performance and it’s giving us visibility of things that we can’t see and giving us the chance to act on those things. Then there’s a bit of training, obviously.
All of it, ultimately, is then about how do you relate? How do you communicate?
That’s the whole of the ballgame. But that’s where it came from,
Clark: that’s its idea. Tony, [00:28:00] an interesting corollary of what you’ve just been saying to me is that you’ve just been talking about how it helps a coach, a trainer, a leader, help his or her team. There’s an interesting side point to that.
And I think it’s probably, it may even be a more important side point. And that is, I just finished watching the TV series, billions. And in it, there is, there’s a performance coach and it was one of the reasons I was interested in watching because this lady is has a background in psychiatry.
She works for an organization that’s all about making money. And it’s her job to keep these people on the right track so that they keep making money for the business. However, it’s very well written because they show that in having these conversations, she has to talk to these people about not what they do, but who they are.
Are you the sort of person that’s comfortable with doing these things in a certain way? What I found fascinating about that was that clearly it helps the organization continue to keep these people’s performance. But the longer she helps people, she’s [00:29:00] giving them tools that eventually will negate the need for them to go and see her.
She is giving them information that will help them become self sufficient. They can then control their emotions themselves and orientate themselves correctly in the world so they can function at their best ability. And that to me is the most interesting part of that because I had a conversation last week. Somebody was sent to come and see me.
I was put in touch with somebody and they said talk to Clark. He’ll be able to coach you. As it happened, I declined to work with this particular person. Lovely guy. I’m busy and I just didn’t think he was a good fit. But in our conversation, one of the interesting things I found was that he was talking about how he is receiving medication for depression, and he suffers from a certain level of uncertainty about the world, like so many people.
And one of the conversations I had with him was how comfortable are you with this uncertainty that you’re feeling about the world? You have a sense of [00:30:00] trepidation about the way things are going. How comfortable are you with that? And he said I’m not at all.
I’m not at all comfortable with it. I suffer from anxiety, I don’t sleep well, I worry, I’m nervous all the time. And I said if I could persuade you that actually you’re safe and you’re always going to be safe, would you feel better? And he said yeah. I said, but what if I was lying? He said, I wouldn’t care as long as I felt safe, because to him, the safety is the most important thing.
The usefulness of this tool that you’re presenting to the world and and the usefulness of all of these things In as much as they, they actually do something, is that they help people understand themselves and the way they function within the world. So for instance, somebody like this guy if he could be helped to see security is a phantom.
It’s a dream. It’s an idea. It’s not a real thing. There is no such thing as security. Anything could happen at any time. If he could then start to understand where these feelings of anxiety relating to uncertainty come [00:31:00] from, then he would better be able to navigate them.
This is my point. It’s all about understanding ourselves, isn’t it? Because if we don’t understand ourselves, we are much easier led by those that do understand us.
Everybody understands us to a degree. The best con men are the people that can figure you out quickly. Find your buttons, press them, and get what they want from you.
Unfortunately, this is the world we live in. Politicians, conmen, snake oil salesmen. The whole pharmaceutical industry, the whole political industry, the whole banking industry is designed to basically milk us of our resources and just leave us dried out. Not that I’m feeling negative about the world, I’m happy.
But this is the point, the better you can understand yourselves, the better you can protect yourselves against other people that might try to manipulate or control you. And that to me is a key thing with regard to what you’re doing, because whilst you can help leaders help their employees, eventually, It [00:32:00] seems to me anyway, the employees are going to get to know themselves better, and that can 100 percent never be a bad
Tony: thing.
So go back to your guy on the stability measure. He’d have a low stability marker on my report, right?
So that would immediately tell us that he and others like him, and that’s without knowing what any psychosis or any, historical events that have made him like that. This predisposition for anxiety or, whatever this uncertainty shakes him up.
It’s obviously it’s this fight, flight thing kicking in. Is something that’s the threat of the unknown is like terrifying right for some people so actually you can harness that in, as long as it’s not an extreme. But in his case it may be an extreme and it needs some sort of help but in the context of let’s say a working environment or a sports team or something where you’ve got people that are lower on that scale, naturally more nervous and anxious in uncertain environments.
The world is uncertain, right?
You’re going into a game, you don’t know what’s going to happen. You’re going into a new project, which could go wrong.
All of these things people are getting [00:33:00] nervous and uncomfortable with it. They also bring with them a lot of positive things that those characteristics can add to the situation. This attunement to the slightest deviation of something might be a warning for everyone else to take a bit more heed.
Guys, pay attention to this. This is a problem brewing here. That’s the thing, rather than label, it goes right, here’s a few people that may need a little bit more support to get through this. They may need a little more space to do some reflection or meditation or mindfulness to like to get them in a state of readiness or post exposure to uncertain environment, let’s say.
So when we know it about ourselves and about our people, we can help them. And like you said, most importantly, they can start to help themselves. And be okay with it. The first thing is acceptance. This is just the start thing. I can actually incrementally start turning these dials with your guy.
To get one step away from the low point that he’s at [00:34:00] towards feeling a little bit more stable when things are going, when the fear of the unknown is bothering him would be a massive step and a big help. It does do that and it works for the relationship measure and the originality measure, creativity, innovation operational excellence.
So people that, all of the precision based off and the need for, the high achievers that must do this and the Gary Neville’s of the world that are just on the go all the time that have to keep doing it, if he’d been aware all his life that this is if he’d use score, right?
I could tell you what Gary Neville’s score profile would look like because it’s right in front of our eyes.
His awareness of that, and he is quite self aware, he does know that he has these characteristics, but it would help him know, why, and how he could have maybe helped himself a little better, because it hurts him, it, it burns him out, he and it hurts the people around him as well, that he’s like that all the time.
This awareness can have massive repercussions, Within the people who are closest to you go home [00:35:00] feeling a bit better about yourself because incrementally your work day got a bit better, so I feel a bit better. And you’re going back a little more refreshed than you were the day before.
None of this is about a quick fix where it’s a quicker fix than some of the other models that you can immediately start to apply it to great effect. So it’s not going to be locked in the drawer. I’m going into a meeting Let me just remind myself on a few things.
It’s pretty cool. It’s exciting. It’s people that have done it with who’ve been blown away by it. Obviously the advocates of it you know, give me a lot of encouragement. And these are serious commercial business people who’ve already gained insight into its capability.
So I’m excited about it. Gotta
Clark: get the book going.
The the fact that you have a really good idea of who it helps, I think is, as we’ve said, All the way through this conversation, probably the most important thing is if you don’t do it, if you don’t finish the book, all of those customers, all of those [00:36:00] people that you purport to serve, don’t get helped.
And so you have to, and I feel the same about and which was one of the reasons why I was a little bit disappointed with getting sidetracked from my writing, but it was important for me to understand. Because let’s face it, people need as much help as they can get at the moment. One of the problems that most people have to deal with is that they’re constantly offered help.
Which turns out to be anything but help, or how many people get phone calls where you pick up the phone and somebody says, Hi, how are you today? Why are you asking me that for? I can help you with this, particularly your insurance or whatever, these people and it’s their job to just get stuff from us, mostly money.
If we’re constantly being offered help and advice that turns out not to be that anything that can help us have more agency and that’s the most important thing, isn’t it? So people so few people today have agency in their own lives, you know this and this is where all of this helplessness an uncertainty and anxiety comes from because people feel that everything is [00:37:00] beyond their control.
I, I personally think that’s by design. We, I think we’re all as individuals fighting this battle for our own agency. The, there are organizations and bodies of people at work at the moment who are trying their very best and to a certain degree in making us feel like We need to turn to them for the answers governments and people like that.
And if we can have a certain level of agency and say no, I’m fine. I’m fine. Thanks. Don’t need your help. Then all the better for the world, not just for us, but for the world and the people that we were involved. So good. I look forward to it. Good. So
Tony: I have to clear off for 11. Yeah, me too. I’ve got a train to catch.
Clark: Wait, are you going home?
Are we going to be doing this next week? Every week?
Rob: What? Sure. Evenings or mornings? Are we going to go back to evenings, mornings? The thing is, it
Clark: seems I prefer
Tony: mornings, but I don’t have a day job like you, Clive.
Clark: That’s the thing though, isn’t it? Since we said evenings, it’s become a little bit more [00:38:00] hit and miss.
Because obviously we, got lives and we want to have our tea and, put our feet up and that sort of thing. So maybe the mornings are better. I know that sort of Tuesdays to Thursdays are my best mornings because I can move things around. So I’m much more likely to be able to do Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday mornings.
Rob: I’m good with those,
Clark: Rob. You,
Rob: so you, you choose and if you send a Yeah, should we do Tuesday then? That’d be a week, next week.
Tony: That would be nice, yeah. In your book club, I’ll get your book club to review my book at some stage, Rob, as well.
Rob: Yeah. No, I was thinking maybe what we should do is have a, we talked about going through our own stuff, and maybe like we go through your book and you explain your book and maybe we have different ideas that may or may not be useful and we could do, or all do that for each other.
The only thing I would say about that
Clark: is when I did that thing on that course, it can be an absolute disaster.
Rob: Yeah,
Clark: you
Rob: have
Clark: to,
Rob: You have to wait.
Clark: It was, it even got to the point where, it was suggested to me that I change the name of my book and I just. I just thought, oh, [00:39:00] I’m all very well-meaning and it was great.
But it just, do you know what they say about an idea? If you have an idea, keep it to yourself and just do it. . Get it out there. And and this is why I asked you whether you were even comfortable talking.
Tony: I’ve just made, I just made a mistake for 90 minutes then, haven’t I? ?
Clark: No. That’s what I was gonna say.
The you need to change that name Tony
Mike, that’s why I asked whether you were okay talking about it, the thing is, you talking about it is one thing, us talking about it is a completely different thing because when, especially when people feel that they are able to critique certain aspects of it, it can plant little seeds of doubt and I would hate to do that because it sounds like you’re going exactly where you should be.
But yeah, so next Tuesday then.
Rob: Okay. Bye. Bye. I’ll see how this video turns out. Did you wanna use it or did you wanna just keep it, just for our discussion?
Tony: I don’t mind if there’s any sort of, without giving too much away, if there’s any extracts in there who was, that you think of value, you can use them, promote it soon.
Rob: Yeah, I, if the quality’s. Yeah, I think you just have to share ideas, I think, because [00:40:00] people aren’t interested until they have something to grab hold of. Also I don’t think I’ve said
Tony: anything that, I don’t think I’ve said anything that, that will reveal the secret sauce or anything like that. No,
Rob: I think it’s
Tony: all valuable.
Rob: I’ve done a lot of those because I had the idea of, I put it all in a document like Enneagram, Myers Briggs, Colby mechanic thing all those different stuff. And I couldn’t tell what you’re using. Also Clark you were talking about, I just edited yesterday, our last conversation, the three of us and you were talking about the people that you work for.
Are you all right with that? You’re starting to talk about that now.
Okay,
Rob: so that one will go out next week. And then I’ve got, yeah, this will be that. Two more weeks after that if it’s right.
Clark: Yeah, listen, I’m always saying things. I wonder whether I should have said them. So I’m used to it by now, but whatever you like out there.
Rob: Yeah. Yeah. I don’t really have a limit. I just, if I say it. Okay. Have a good week.
Tony: Thank you guys. Great to see you. Great to see you both. Yeah. [00:41:00] See you next week. Bye. Bye.