What's The Value You Bring?

Clark: [00:00:00] I’m interested to know. Where would you guys both say that you are on your on your journey? I don’t like that word. It’s it’s an overused word. But I had a conversation a week or so ago with somebody who is constantly asking me to look at my branding.

Clark: It’s not something that I do. And I shy away from having that conversation because it just seems a little bit too contrived to me. It’s a little bit disingenuous, I think, to try and brand yourself as something because you are what you are. However, they were saying, but unless people know what you stand for, it’s difficult for them to know whether your service is of use to them.

Clark: And I’m interested to know, I remember Rob had said that his previous iterations had been in the fitness industry and then had moved into relationships. Is that still where you are, Rob, or are you trying to move into other areas? I know, Tony, you’ve been doing this for some time, so are you are you the finished product now.

Tony: I think I’m on the fastest growth curve that I’ve ever been on personally because of the work and the research that I do to support it. [00:01:00] So there’s almost no end to that. When I’m in work, when I’m face to face with people, I’m trying to connect to a purpose level trying to find meaning in what they do.

Tony: So there’s meaning in what I do with them. So each of those experiences is unique based on the context that they’re in and the individuality that’s in the room. 

Tony: Even if the context was the same or the demands were the same or similar, the fact that each of the individuals in the room faces those challenges independently with all sorts of different drivers and needs to be met and ambition and aspiration.

Tony: I’m always in that melting pot, so trying to find a sense of purpose for all of us and also a connection with each of the individuals on that individual basis. That is what I do. I think as I’ve been on a number of those branding missions because I was obviously Tony, the football manager for a long time or the football coach.

Tony: There was a point when I made the shift. That doesn’t translate open doors. People want to talk about it. They’re interested in hearing about football because there’s loads of anecdotes [00:02:00] to share. And that’s great for talking to business people in a social setting. But it doesn’t cut the mustard when they’re expecting someone to be able to help them navigate a really complex situation.

Tony: So as I was learning all about who I was within that context and learning what the needs of these people were in these businesses, one of my advisors said, look, you need to drop the word coach. And the reason they said that was. That when you call yourself a coach in the context of business, because there’s a proliferation of coaches everywhere, you can come straight out of school, get a coaching qualification, call yourself a coach, be great at social media and build yourself a nice little business, which is fantastic.

Tony: He said, but the problem with you calling yourself a coach right now is that there’s a potential for the person that you’re speaking to see you as the lowest common denominator of what a coach means to somebody or their worst experience of coaching, or they don’t think they need a coach. So all of these immediate obstacles to buying the services that I [00:03:00] provide might present themselves.

Tony: And that’s where the term performance specialist came from. And within that, there’s a load of sort of taglines. And like you say, I’m not so comfortable with what’s contrived about it. But the language that was created by this guy, very smart guy, James Newell, his name is. His business is Clear Sales Message.

Tony: He’s the best I’ve ever seen at cutting through all of the noise to go this is what you do. This is what the meaning is behind what you do. And this is what other people will buy. They’re actually looking for X, Y and Z. So how do you differentiate yourself from all those other hundreds and thousands of coaches that are out there?

Tony: We came up with the term Performance Specialist, which sits well with sport and business. Everybody’s pursuing results. Everyone’s coming together to reach strategic objectives and all of that sort of stuff. So there’s a lot of synergy in that. And it’s comfortable with me.

Tony: My objective is to help people perform better than they perhaps believe they can perform themselves or as a collective there’s barriers that they can’t see that are holding them back from [00:04:00] optimizing their performance. 

Tony: This really resonated with me. The very first time I was doing a paid gig outside of football, I’d gone into this training room. I was suited up and I was there early and pacing around this room that’s laid out ready for these. People I’ve never met before in a business I’ve never been in before.

Tony: I had the same feelings that I had pregame in a football match. Lots of unknowns, lots of things that I knew I was going to say, how am I going to connect with these people? What do they want? So many more unknowns than you have when you’ve been with a football team for a long time.

Tony: But the feeling was the same. I was just in this room pacing around pre match this is, what’s going to happen, you don’t know what the result is going to be and you need to get these people. How long ago was that? That was Just after

Tony: 2019, so about five years now. 

Clark: This is interesting. I’ll be interested to hear Rob’s thoughts on this as well. Because the language that we use to, to describe ourselves, both to ourselves and to those that we’re talking to, makes a massive [00:05:00] difference to then how we are received and how we present ourselves.

Clark: And because you spent so long trying to refine that language so that you crystallized the message that you were trying to put across. I see that slightly different to although it’s probably the same thing as branding. The idea of branding to me is to present something, In a way that, that sends a coherent message but not necessarily what you are whilst, although I may be wrong, you may be the same thing, but you try to crystallize down what you do, what you’re able to offer and thereby get the idea, 

Tony: it’s still a work in progress.

Tony: You might not quite be able to see it, but The Leaders Advisory is the name of my business. There was a ton of work. That’s the business brand if you like So the question was at the time are you going to be Tony Wormsley dot com or a business?

Tony: So for me, it was like how do I differentiate myself and lots of people said you just need to be Tony Wormsley dot com And because people buy you that’s basically what they were saying 

Tony: I was talking to website designers and branders and saying look i’m a football manager [00:06:00] I’m, also a business consultant And i work in the field of performance and but I walk these two lines and I live in this space in between the two. One feet to the other and they really had difficulty going I can’t work with that.

Tony: You need to be one thing and I need to build this one thing. Anyway, we ended up with The Leader’s Advisory and the logo at the top, the diamond is, it’s basically captured, iconic Adidas style, retro stripes. This is how he built the storyboard around it. But it’s also TLA, it’s the three letters interlocked, but it’s also a maze.

Tony: So it’s the complexity of the maze. So there’s a lot of thought gone into it on his side. And I thought, oh wow, that’s brilliant. I love that. Let’s do that. And the colors are great, blah, blah, blah. So that’s the business’s name and the brand that I Go out with, but I don’t sell that at all. I have conversations with people and I’m not doing any selling.

Tony: All the business that I have at the moment is word of mouth and it’s people who want to work with me. So it’s a massive work in progress. My website is the leaders [00:07:00] advisory. I haven’t touched it for way too long. It needs to be worked on. I need to be putting more content up consistently to do it properly.

Tony: I just haven’t got time as a single business owner, who’s doing a lot of traveling and a lot of delivery, I haven’t got time or energy and I’m not skilled at that stuff. I’m okay. I’m good at writing. I love writing. But I don’t find enough time or the place to write what I want to write when I want to write it.

Tony: I need to get better at mapping my downtime to cater for that. It’s so it’s a mess. It’s a good mess. Like I say, I’m on the fastest growth curve that I’ve ever been on and getting results. And loving what I do 

Clark: for you. You’ve done.

Clark: I’ve seen Rob has done exactly the same. I was just about to say that when we communicate something, we need to choose the right words to make sure that what’s going on in our head conveys to the person that we’re trying to talk to. Hearing something different to what we’re saying. So the importance of branding is the idea of being able to communicate to somebody [00:08:00] that when you work with me This is what you’re going to get and we both know what to expect when we work together So clearly there’s something important in making sure that we get The message, right?

Clark: Clearly you’re in a good position because you’re too busy to refine it even further, which is great, obviously.

Clark: I just want to ask Robert, are you on the same trajectory, Robert? Is it because it seems with Tony for the last five years now, whilst you may be evolving to a certain degree, the big picture, the broad strokes are done. 

Clark: You are what you are and it will evolve as it evolves, but it’s not going to change drastically now because you your image your branding, so when the message is set. Is that the same for you, Rob? 

Rob: I feel like I’m always beginning my journey.

Rob: I get to a point where I take in so much and I change my opinion and about every six months I blow everything up and redo it. It’s a constant process of refining. 

Rob: Yet when I look back, there’s a constant through line and there’s a constant journey. 

Rob: So I left the gym.

Rob: Therapy in the search of the question of, how do we [00:09:00] basically, how do we fix human problems? 

Rob: I got fed up with therapy because I felt people were too dependent. I remember I had a conversation with someone, I can’t remember the details of it, but I was like, you look at someone makes a change how, what’s the impact going to be? 

Rob: And he said, it doesn’t matter. ‘ I’ll just come back to you and you’ll sort it’.

Rob: This isn’t what I want. I want people to take responsibility for their own journeys.

Rob: Then it was about happiness and that was the early days of coaching. I was around learning what coaching was. So it’s Thomas Leonard they call him the father of. coaching, he set up the ICF and he just left there and he was doing his new thing. And I saw what he did and he was a genius but it wasn’t me.

Rob: I can’t do that. What I can do is different. So I was, struggling with this, what am I? 

Rob: When I was writing I never give myself any kind of title. I had a lot of American people and they used to call my ministry and I was a minister and stuff.

Rob: And I was like, what’s a minister? 

Rob: Because it tended to veer into the more spiritual kind of side and philosophical kind of thing. 

Rob: Then I was a happiness [00:10:00] coach. I decided to write happiness coach. And I remember it was a time when happiness started to get a boom in psychology and a lot of people will call themselves happiness coaches.

Rob: And it was I remember watching on TV, they did this TV program, and there was we’re going to make this people of this town happy. And they go, happy people who play music, musical instruments are happier and so they got them together in a choir and they go, we’re going to do this, we’re going to be happier.

Rob: And they went out to see these people on the streets of wherever it was, somewhere north. Like a gritty town and I remember them, this, I’m a happiness coach. He was talking to this woman and she’s I haven’t got enough money for this.

Rob: And my kids are sick. My parents are dying and all this kind of thing. And he’s and it was like, just join the musical instrument, go out walking. These people had just taken people who do music is because they love music and they have the passion for the music.

Rob: You can’t artificially put that on someone. And I was like, I don’t want to be associated with all these. So I stopped being a happiness coach. And I was like Happiness Engineer, all this kind of thing. I moved from happiness to relationships. [00:11:00] And I think when I was doing the book, because I wrote the book, it was the 34 Building Blocks of Happiness.

Rob: And then a few years later, someone, one of the early readers wanted to make it into a book. And she had her designers that we worked with and they went through and they read it. It was about that time last week we were talking about who do you struggle to work with and it’s like people who come read the answer for me that was about truth seeking.

Rob: And so he came up with the Truth Seeker’s Wayfinder. He’d read it and he came up with this Polynesian theme that in the. In the past, there were Polynesian wayfarers who, before Europeans could travel any great distance, these Polynesians had this way of, without any maps or without any guidance, just, they would know how to find the way.

Rob: It was an art form. So he came up with the Truth Seeker’s Wayfinder. And then I realized I’m not really a coach. 

Clark: When was this happening? 

Rob: That was, I think it was about 2013, 2014, 2012, something like that, about 10 years. I realized I didn’t want to be a leader.

Rob: And I realized [00:12:00] that the most. closest thing the best role for me was like Consigliere which is popularized in the mafia. It was the person who could advise, but they weren’t a threat because they didn’t want power, but they were able to impartially look at all the dynamics and give honest advice.

Rob: Came from like the medieval Italian states where, because they were constantly being invaded, they needed someone with local knowledge, someone who could be honest, that wasn’t a threat again. And so they would stay with successive leaders. 

Rob: Then relationships. Counselor or Coach, or whatever. Then mediation. Mediation is quite clear.

Rob: You’re a mediator. 

Rob: You look at where branding came from. It’s about cattle. It’s about branding everything the same. So I’ve always had a mixed reaction. People they’re only going to give a small amount of attention, a small amount of space and if they can label you in their head and go, Oh, it’s like that, then you can have a space in their head.

Rob: I always find about six months, I don’t know if it’s because I get bored, but I find a different [00:13:00] level. a different layer that changes how I think. So I’ve gone from coaching from mediation to workshops. So where I am now is one thing I’ve always looked for.

Rob: I had truth seeker, but that’s too general. What is the identity of the person I’ve just hit on? They’re a unifier. And so for me, it’s about finding first, mainly the market. 

Rob: I found the people who most receptive are new managers. People who’ve been there for a while, they’ve either found their way of dealing with people problems or they think they have their way.

Rob: So they’re not really open to changing, whereas a new manager is often struggling and looking to develop their own philosophy. So for me I’m focused on those people who are new to a management role. Who especially have come from the technical side and my thesis is that jump from being a doer to a leader is too great.

Rob: So you have to be a unifier first, you get the people with [00:14:00] you. And when you get the people with you, then you develop the perspective and then you can be the leader. So for me, it’s about working with unifiers and eventually I will move that back into personal relationships as in you can be a unifier of your marriage or whatever relationship.

Rob: I hate coach the word coach because I’ve seen where coaching came from. What I don’t like about coaching is The same as therapy, they give everyone the same spiel that everyone needs a coach that was around at the beginning with Thomas Leonard, which I really didn’t like because I don’t think you can have blanket rules.

Rob: Not everyone does. And I feel like there’s many ways that you can get it. You can be you can have a mentor, you can have a coach, but I think coaching has developed this ethos that they’ve successfully passed down to every coach.

Rob: They all tell you that it’s not like therapy because it’s forward focus. There’s a lot of crossover. I think coaching is a great skill set. But for me, I learn a [00:15:00] subject and then I deliver it as sometimes as a coaching format, sometimes facilitation.

Rob: You talked about Tony, where you were pacing around at the beginning, I’m not, never been comfortable speaking publicly because I’m very context driven. I don’t remember anything, like I can have a conversation and I won’t remember the conversation, but I’ll extrapolate the abstract principles from that conversation.

Rob: And it’s one of the reasons why I really like fast conversations because fast conversation, you go context, and you don’t get bogged down in the content. I like to make it a more interactive firstly, because I have a fear of public speaking of speaking about something that’s irrelevant.

 I’m better at responding. Then starting off. So I think that’s mine, 

Clark: but you’re deliberately still evolving that you’re you’re, you’ve made the conscious choice not to coalesce all of your ideas into one message or whilst they do, you will then move on to something else as your ideas evolve.

Clark: Unlike Tony who is set on something that’s working and obviously that will still evolve [00:16:00] over time organically. You deliberately dismantle your marketing, your branding, rethink everything, rejig it, put it back out there and then go through that whole process again.

Clark: You just mentioned there about coaching, the idea that people get of coaches, and Tony touched on the same subject. The thing that’s been on my mind throughout this conversation is that the words that we use whilst we may say. I’m a coach and think, for instance, I am able to do this and help you with that.

Clark: The other person is hearing timeshare salesman or secondhand car salesman or whatever. They have a fixed idea of what that means. Whilst I may shy away from the idea of being pinned down by labels and branded and so on, the conversation that I had last week was very interesting because she said the main point, Clark, is if you don’t get your message across effectively, then the people that you can help won’t hear your message. 

Clark: That sort of blew my mind. It’s so obvious, actually. But when I thought about it I’ve constantly shied away from labels and [00:17:00] branding because I think these things are too contrived. It’s a little bit disingenuous.

Clark: The answers to a particular problem depends on the person and so on. It became clear to me that it’s absolutely necessary to. To clarify the message because then it presents as clear thinking. If you can present your message clearly, it shows that you’ve thought about what you do, what you’re able to offer, and you know exactly what you’re able to offer to somebody.

Clark: If your message and branding is unclear, then it suggests that you don’t really know exactly how you can help that person. So it was a massive eye opener. For me, and unlike both of you guys, up until the end of 2022, I was working in corporate. I worked for organizations. I probably worked the last three or four years of that period.

Clark: As a contractor doing interim management and that sort of thing. But always with organizations. It was only two years ago that I decided to work for myself. And this whole idea of exactly what you’ve just said there, Tony, with your branding and what you call yourself and the logo and [00:18:00] all of that stuff.

Clark: I spoke to quite a few specialists on websites and content and logos. I spent a lot of money and was never really happy with what I ended up with. The idea was, just like you said, Tony that you’re trying to walk between two lines, and it’s not clear enough for people. I tried to clarify that for quite a long time because people said You’re a problem solver, you’re a troubleshooter you help organizations deal with chronic issues and so on.

Clark: It just didn’t sit properly with me, because whilst that was something I did in corporate and this has evolved over a period of time to obviously the 10th Man. But I’m interested to know from you guys, because The reason I ask about this is because the conversation I had with that marketing person last week echoed the conversation I’ve had with quite a few people.

Clark: And basically what they’re saying is, you’re saying to us you’re this, we’re seeing something else. 

Tony: 100 percent That’s what I was going to say Clark, whatever you land on. So the Leaders Advisory I’m happy with, that’s my business, it’s not me. Although it is, and everything that goes into that, but like I say, I’m [00:19:00] not selling it, but my contracts have that on the contract out or an invoice.

Tony: It’s all branded up with that. There was a bit of work went into that and a lot of cost, as you can imagine. But as a brand, when I’m now able to talk about what it is that I do, and I posted something yesterday about what people ask me, what does a Performance Specialist do? I’m now able to say what that is all about.

Tony: But it has to line up with what people that I’ve worked with say about me as well. So my brand is who I think I am. It’s my values. It’s my purpose. It’s my anchors. It’s those things. But it has to resonate with the people they need. They need it. It comes with artifacts.

Tony: It comes with things I leave behind. And if I say that this is what I do, and actually people that are experiencing it go, that’s not what it does, it’s not what it did for us. I’m not there yet. I’m still on that path and I feel like I’m very much delivering. I don’t do anything that’s outside of what I do.

Tony: So I’m getting more and more comfortable with the language that I use, but it’s still doesn’t fit me like when I first came into this. When I started, I was really lucky when I started my own business, I [00:20:00] was supported or I was contracted on retainer by two organizations from Australia, people that I’d worked with previously, one from football, one from change management from the transport sector. 

Tony: Where one was wanting to expand his business, which was called Structured Change at the time. He engaged me as his european partner and the other guy set up the colloquium group. Really high level coaching group PhDs, psychologists, all of those guys. Fantastic. One of them is still my coach.

Tony: He’s one of my best friends, Murray Bingham, and he’s an unbelievable Coach. He calls himself a coach, an executive coach, or I think he calls himself an Executive Performance Coach or something like that. It took him a while to nail that down, but that’s what he does. He takes top level executives to places that, they need help getting to.

Tony: He’s a mentor of mine and I’m able to pick his brains about some amazing things. But when I started, so I had this fortune of having two businesses that I represented, but I’m [00:21:00] still trying to build a profile for myself that wasn’t football anymore, that was this new version of myself, yet I was going out publicly as sometimes structure change, sometimes the colloquium group, and I was getting I still had the same questions, who am I in all of this?

Tony: When does Tony Wormsley raise his head above the parapet and stand for something? I love those guys and love working for those organizations and they gave me instant revenue at the point where I needed it most at the beginning, when you’re starting up a new business but still took me a long time to go, masterminding and website builders, logo makers, brand designers, all of these things went through numerous iterations of it, and like you say, a lot of money to end up in exactly the same place.

Tony: Who the hell am I? How do I cut through all this noise? And 

Clark: it’s the noise, Tony, that I’m particularly interested in at the moment, because whilst you settle upon a particular avenue that you’re going to walk down, an approach that you’re going to take, a message that you’re going to give out to people, there are other people and some of [00:22:00] these other people are important because they’re clients who are saying no, that’s not how we see you.

Clark: That’s not what we think you do. And all three of us seem to have settled on the idea that the title coach Is beset with certain problems. There are certain interpretations of that phraseology that can cause us issues when we’re trying to deal with certain customers. An interesting thing that I found, and this is all, I’m clearly newer at this than both of you guys.

Clark: Before my motorbike accident, I got my coaching qualification, I think it was in 2005. Just because it was part of my job training managers and directors and so on. But way before the accident, I got approached by a customer who said, we have a particular issue with one of our senior leaders.

Clark: We know that you deal with problems in certain areas to do with business processes and so on. But we have an issue that we feel needs direct coaching. You just coach this one person around a particular issue over a period of time. And I umed and ahed about this, but the money [00:23:00] was useful at the time.

Clark: I took that role on and worked with the, with this particular person within this organization for a period of time and realized, wow, that whilst we may shy away from the title of coach, it’s a useful practice. In as much as a person may need help and clarity around a given area and you can offer that guidance as Rob said, you may in some iterations present as a mentor, a guide, but you’re basically helping somebody get from A to B. Then my accident happened and not being able to then go and stand in factories, stand up, give training with the cage and what have you.

Clark: I reverted back to the coaching and on both occasions, the success I had was more immediate and more meaningful for me. Whilst I shy away from the idea of coaching, It keeps coming back into my life and people keep saying and this is why I hadn’t meant to have this conversation with you guys, but Having started to talk about marketing and branding and speaking to this person last week She said [00:24:00] that’s how I see you.

Clark: This is what you do. You help people Specifically men and i’ll keep saying no don’t talk to me about this. I don’t want to know about that. I’m a problem solver. However, it has made me start to rethink And the problem with that is you can tend to look a little bit indecisive. You can appear as if you’re vacillated and not quite sure what you do, but when customers and the audience is telling you one thing and you’ll say no, I do this, I think it’s important to perhaps at least give it some credence and pay a little bit of attention to that because in the last few weeks, quite a few people have said, Clark.

Clark: You should be helping and hence the article of the post I wrote last week about helping men. And this is not something that I’ve deliberately unlike Rob who deliberately dismantles everything he does. I’ve tried to stay away from that and yet I’m being urged or pushed into this idea that maybe coaching is probably an important part of what you do. 

Tony: I think it’s really important, Clark, to acknowledge [00:25:00] that Let’s not diminish the importance of coaching and the relevance of it because done well, it’s an absolutely essential thing and it forms a part of just about every contract that I undertake.

Tony: So there’s always an element of coaching in there. So if I go into an organization for an extended period of time to help develop leadership. Do some cultural design stuff or whatever people want to call it. It includes facilitation of groups. 

Tony: If a company’s got an issue with silos and need to break down silos, it’s a communication challenge and all of those types of things. So there’s always a group facilitation element. At first, there’s always an assessment period. I assess the people, I’ve got these tools now, as I said, I know I need to send it to you guys.

Tony: I keep going, I’ve got to send it to these guys. I’ll do that. So we’ve got these assessment tools, whether it’s cultural or personality, values all of those things. So we bring to the surface things that otherwise don’t get talked about. We’ve got more visibility immediately of what’s actually going on in the room, rather than just what people are saying and how they’re behaving.

Tony: So there’s [00:26:00] facilitation. And then within that, there’s people who are more challenged than others. I was approached by a former boss of mine who works with a massive public listed Company managed services company. Said he had the CEO. I think he was number 2 in the organization. He had, I think, 23 senior leaders under his way too many.

Tony: He had a challenge with three of them in particular. So three senior leaders, each with their own sort of multi million dollar portfolio. He wanted to engage me as a coach for each of these three people. And he was able to articulate clearly to me the context of each of the problems that he felt that they had.

Tony: Couple of really good examples was one was a really high performer. There was nothing wrong with the business unit that they were managing in terms of success, but it was all self interest and zero connection with everybody in the team. So how do we fix that? Another one was somebody really underperforming and how do we get them up to speed?

Tony: So I’m presented sometimes with these significant coaching [00:27:00] challenges. They’ve got a very clear end game and I’m thrown into situations where I have to build rapport and then start to ask the right questions that guide people towards where this tripartite agreement has decided that we all want to go.

Tony: And that was, that was one of the major learnings for me was when I go into a business, the business engages me and I’ve suddenly got a coachee as part of the business. The process, which is a confidential conversation, because sometimes it is therapeutic and sometimes they come to you with needs that are never expressed at work with problems that might surface at work, but they’re not talked about.

Tony: Before you can start tackling performance, you’ve got to help them with stuff that’s going on outside. That’s what coaches do, right? So it’s not therapy. I’m not a therapist. There’s a line where you go, actually, I might need to refer this person on or at least start asking questions about where they are at with this stuff, because there’s some things that way outside of my remit.

Tony: But once you’re in that coaching engagement, I can only disclose to the business what the coachee allows me [00:28:00] to. My confidentiality with them is, a coach and coachee relationship. Conversation is private. But of course there’s a three way relationship here. The business want to know, is this person making the steps we want them to make?

Tony: And it became really critically important for me to ensure that at the outset, that arrangement was understood. So we agree what Remains confidential and then I’ll agree with the client. I think you need to give me the permission to take this upstairs. Is that okay?

Tony: Because then you can have conversation, start having conversation that they might not be able to have on their own. And there’s so much opportunity to fulfill latent potential when you build those relationships and reach an agreement up front as to how are these three people going to work together because you’ve got a CEO saying, I need you to come in and help me by coaching this person that’s in my team.

Tony: There’s a great display of openness to support. How are we going to do this? Because I can’t tell you everything that we’re going to be talking about. They might be talking about you. 

Clark: Tony [00:29:00] that’s always been prior to my accident. All the coaching work I’d ever done had always involved a situation where the client wasn’t the coachee.

Clark: Yes. So there is an element of prescriptiveness there. And as you say, you have to clarify the agreement because you need to be able to say, look, whilst I’m working for you, my goal is to help this other person. And for instance, very extreme the coachee may decide that actually for me, the best solution is to not work here anymore 

Tony: I’ve been through that. 

Clark: That is an extreme that can take place. But the agreement needs to be that whilst we’re helping the organization, we can only help the organization by helping the person being coached. And that’s my remit.

Clark: My loyalty, if you like, is to that person whilst you are just paying the bills. What I found after the accident, when I put myself out because I needed to earn some money, obviously, some private coaching clients, for the client and the coachee to be the same person was wonderful for me. It was not something I’d ever encountered before where a person said, I have an issue and I need to get [00:30:00] to this end point and then you have a conversation and you realize actually the issue that I think you’ve got is not the issue that’s causing you the problems.

Clark: The end point that you want to get to is not the place you really need to go. Let’s have that conversation. For me to realize that was a way of working with somebody where, similar to the conversations we have, it’s organic, it evolves as it goes along. I had this conversation with somebody recently.

Clark: It’s a Bayesian approach to work rather than a linear approach in as much as each conversation takes place, you can adjust your methodology according to where you find yourself. So you’re constantly updating, probably very like what Rob does, that he’s constantly updating how he presents himself as he evolves as a person, whatever he wants to call himself. The Bayesian idea is that you update as you evolve. And in a coaching setting, that’s the ideal, isn’t it? Because you’re going to where the person needs to get to. And you help them find the road that takes them there. But how do you present yourself?

Clark: So you call yourself a performance specialist. I think Rob was saying that at [00:31:00] the moment he’s calling himself a unifier. 

Rob: Yeah not me, but the identity of the person. 

Clark: Oh, I see. Yes, you’re working with that with Unifier, right? So what would I describe you 

Tony: both?

Tony: I describe you both that if you want some brand feedback out outside of this room, I describe Rob as he works on unity. He works on bringing people together, whether it’s teams or partnerships. 

Tony: And I talk about you, Clark, as the 10th man, and I explain what the 10th man does and is. And both of those things require coaching, both of them require intervention, both of them require empathy, require asking questions, all of those skill sets that you could list that go into the work that we do.

Tony: Yeah, I think we’re all the same. We’re all obviously different, but we’re all the same in terms of we’re in the helping profession. We’re in the services sort of industry. It’s an unregulated industry that we’re in. So the brand then is the differentiator or ultimately the work that you do is the differentiator, which you’re clearly already doing it, extraordinarily high level.

Tony: It’s then about capturing the essence [00:32:00] of what the brand is. And if that’s a world class coach, so be it. Absolutely. 

Clark: I’m not telling you either of you guys, anything you don’t already know, but what you’ve just said makes me think about the fact that when you engage in problem solving, in manufacturing or in any business setting, the first thing you need to do is define the problem.

Clark: Because if you don’t define it correctly, then you’re solving the wrong problem. So many organizations and individuals end up solving the wrong problem and so continuing with the same issues that they’ve always had. I think when you say we’re all the same, that to me is the main key area that we work on.

Clark: We go into a situation where people are trying to solve something and we clarify whether they’re actually dealing with the right issue. And having then defined it we help them navigate a process to resolve it, and that can happen in lots of different ways. In your case, for most of the people you’re working with, it’s about how they perform.

Clark: With Rob, it seems to be that it’s all about how they interact. It’s about relationships. For myself it’s all about how they make decisions. Are you making the [00:33:00] right decision? Because ultimately, the decision you make today will decide where you get to. But it, in all of our cases, it’s about defining what the actual problem is.

Clark: What is it that we’re trying to do? And probably that’s the conversation we’ve been having today, because I’m sitting here talking about how we brand, how we market, how we talk to people. What I’m basically saying is, how do we define the problems that we solve? How do we define what we do? And the issue that I’ve had up until now, until recently, is being clear about that.

Clark: Because when people say, what do you do? My answer, not in so many words, but it has always been how long is a piece of string? What’s the problem? What have you got? And that’s really not the right answer. And this is where this conversation has led me this morning. Because I’ve always tried to avoid that conversation.

Clark: I think now I need to nail my flag to the mast, as we keep saying. Yeah, and 

Tony: it is, it’s easier to avoid it than come up with a garbled message because you don’t know what the message is. Yes, because it is sometimes all things to all people, which sounds crazy, but one company needs somebody to go in and do [00:34:00] some coaching with a select group of identified people that need some support is one thing where another goes, we need a whole cultural refit.

Tony: We need it top to bottom. We need to redefine our strategy and mission and values and all that sort of stuff. So there’s that side of the business as well. There’s very different things, but within all of them, you start to identify you co create what you become with each organization based on what their needs are.

Tony: And you don’t know what they need. They tell you what they maybe think they want, but you maybe help them reveal something more than that or something different than what the initial engagement was about. I’ve been in situations where I’ve been close to getting a deal over the line, thought that the deal was agreed, but then at the last minute, the CEO has gone, don’t think we need it.

Tony: Don’t think we need that. So an individual person’s gone, the whole operations team, HR, they’ve even got funding for it from the government. Like it’s all locked away. Go in and do a little bit of observation and workshopping and having just talking to people basically. And then the CEO just on the [00:35:00] whim goes, don’t think we need it.

Clark: I’ve had that. In fact, one of the situations I had was where the I’d already done a big chunk of work for an organization. And then when I sat down with the board of directors, And I was explaining the findings, the progress that we’ve made and how it’s contributing to the organization.

Clark: One of the directors said, that all sounds a little bit deep for me. It sounds a bit psychobabble. And I was describing something that’s been going on. This is what I see in the situation. And this is how we’ve been resolving it. And how I, I propose that we continue.

Clark: He said, no, I don’t like that. I don’t like the whole psychological aspect of it. I think we’re much more down to it. That conversation finished my work with that organization. That was the end of it. And there was no going back because what the rest of the director didn’t want to do was have one of their number working against the project, he decided to go down a different route, whether they did or not, I don’t 

Tony: know. I tend to think that person’s the one that probably needed it the most. It’s not for me to make judgment [00:36:00] like that, because of course I don’t know, but often the one that resists the strongest is the one that needs it the most.

Clark: This is the importance of getting your message right, because one of the things I have veered towards in recent months and this is where the 10th man thing comes in, Unlike a lot of coaches, mentors, trainers and all the other health professions, I tend to have a slightly more direct approach than most.

Clark: Whether I need to or not depends on the circumstances, but it’s just the way it’s done. I have started to say to people that, listen, Sometimes hard truths are going to come into the conversation. We can’t shy away from them, we can’t skirt around them. If there’s an elephant in the room, I’m going to walk over and bring him into the conversation.

Clark: In that particular situation that I’ve just mentioned that was, Something that everybody was avoiding, and it was clear that my thoughts on the matter were not wanted because they wanted this to stay swept under the carpet, this particular issue. That’s where I’ve had to be very clear in recent months, as I’ve refined this idea of how I [00:37:00] tell people what I do, because if you’re hiding some shit, I will find it and I will shovel it onto the table and, that worked for some people.

Clark: It doesn’t work for others. When it’s needed and hopefully when people are open to get in these skeletons out of the closet it works and it’s helpful. But if you don’t make that clear. If it’s not explicitly spoken about it can come as a shock when I say things, and I think I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been told to F off in the middle of a meeting.

Rob: Clarity partly is for the marketing, but it’s also for Avoiding problems like that. When I think about it, we all do basically the same thing, is What differentiates us is our personalities.

Rob: I remember trying to get this idea across. I looked at different football managers. Klopp was for me, unity Pep Guardiola is perfection. Jose Mourinho is dark arts. And they all have something, some way that their personality comes into it. 

Rob: I [00:38:00] never set out to be a coach. I never set out to be anything, I set out to solve problems. 

Rob: Going back just to clarify, I don’t intentionally blow up everything I do but I’m very sensitive to feedback. I don’t need much. I just need a problem to happen.

Rob: I realized that someone I’m not best working with. And so I try and clarify that. Also I hate the identity of coach, but I think coaching is brilliant. Everything I’ve learned has come through coaching. But if you can start to recognize patterns. The whole reason I got into relationships was I was all about happiness and then people kept saying, and they kept saying the same thing and to them, this is where I talk about, I don’t really know about content, but I know about context because I was taking the principles and I was seen the same principles over and over again, the situations look very different. And this is where I’m not very good at communicating is I’ll say stuff. I’ll say stuff about the industrial revolution or, medieval mindset and people are like, what’s that got to do with anything?

Rob: But to me it’s where their problems are. So the reason that [00:39:00] I change every few months is because I’m. aware of what’s going on and how it’s responding. It makes me more self aware. So I think we come in with our basic temperament and then the early environment.

Rob: So Tony was in football. So he’s been shaped into performance because of that, the demands of football and how that plays out into business and you Clark in manufacturing. And so that’s been a predominant feature of both of your makeup. So that’s where your early experiences and that’s shaping how you see yourself and me in what I’ve done.

Rob: See, I think it’s just to say that you’re a coach is lazy because you’re just taking a commodity and you haven’t added what you bring to it? I think the journey of going through that refines your ideas, but it refines your self awareness of who you are. And so it’s constantly

Clark: changing.

Clark: You do need to clarify a thing because it, as [00:40:00] I said earlier when you say coach to some people they’re just hearing secondhand car salesman. And let’s face it, we’ve all have been worked in these professions for such a long time. We’ve all been coached ourselves. And the one thing I don’t need when I’m being coached is a cheerleader.

Clark: And yet sometimes when I’ve entered into coaching relationships. And I started, I get this sinking feeling where all I’m just being motivated. I don’t want to be motivated. I want answers. I want clear direction. It stops me from giving very much into the conversation because it’s not the direction I want to go.

Clark: We probably all also had coaching relationships where It does veer into therapy. If anybody needs therapy, it’s me. And it’s the last thing I want when I’m trying to get some work done. The nature of that relationship is massively important. And you can’t know what that’s going to be until the person’s explicitly giving you a definition of how they’re going to help you.

Clark: Because, If somebody said to me, listen, I’m going to be your biggest fan. [00:41:00] Don’t bother. I don’t want it. It’s not the direction I want to go. Or I’m going to, dredge up your childhood. Let’s not do that. So you want you, Clarke, right? Do you know what? The funny thing is a as I think I’ve mentioned to both of you I’ve always used the MBTI as a quick fix template to get an idea of how I’m interacting with somebody and being an INTJ.

Clark: And some people poopoo this idea, but it works for me. And it works for some other big organizations. The proof of the puttings in the eating, obviously being an INTJ I do tend to walk my own path and funnily enough, the person that I had the conversation last week who got me thinking about all of this marketing is also an INTJ. It was like talking to a female me. And she was brutal. I think I wrote in a recent post, because during that conversation she said, how’s the book going, the one where you help men with men’s issues and masculinity.

Clark: I said I haven’t done anything. I’ve been too busy. And she basically said how can you be too busy to do something that important? And it was a really interesting conversation because there were a few things [00:42:00] that I gloss over when I’m talking to people and she just went straight to them.

Clark: What about that? What about your branding? Everything I said, she just basically said that’s bullshit, and that’s what I would say, because sometimes that’s what needs to be said, and it made me have this conversation, and you can tell by the way the conversation’s gone, I’m unusually not particularly sure of myself in this situation.

Clark: It is a hard conversation to have. By the 

Tony: way, I’m an ENFP, ENFP, so a lot of 

Rob: You’re basically, apart from the N, you’re the exact opposite. The most diametrically opposed, yeah. Whereas I’m an INTP, so I’m just not as judgmental and less decisive than Clark. 

Tony: Yeah. Yeah.

Tony: You’re both in the introverted side. You’re both on the thinking side. Which is surprising for us. You’re both on the 

Rob: thinking side. From Clark, because you’re more extroverted than I am. 

Clark: Oh, I am. It’s the Machiavellian side of me. Whatever’s necessary to get the job done. I will act like an extrovert if it gets the result that I need.

Tony: I’m not wildly extroverted, by the way. I’m just to the right of centre, 

Clark: the interesting thing [00:43:00] about the ENFP thing is that I’ve found in my life over The course of certainly the last 10 years or so where I’ve been, where I’ve used that as a tool on a regular basis. Most of the people that I seem to get on really well with are either INFPs or ENFPs.

Clark: And I get 

Tony: along 

Clark: with? As you said, Rob they’re almost opposites. So they tend to complement each other. In the areas where I lack, for instance not the ability to empathize, but the ability to show empathy. I have the empathy.

Clark: I just don’t show it. But in those instances where I need somebody to, Demonstrate a little bit more compassion that type, the INFP or the E NFP is always there. And the great thing about them is that they’re not shy. They’re not wallflowers. They’re able to act decisively, but it revolves around the more feeling side of the relationship.

Clark: Where an ISTJ is much more about getting the job done. I have 

Tony: a strong feeling preference. 

Clark: Yeah, there are pros and cons. Clearly, each type has their strengths and their weaknesses. For me the, one of the great things about [00:44:00] talking with INFPs or ENFPs is that they regularly say how do you feel about that?

Clark: Or how do they feel about that? And how do you know they feel that way about that? Have you had that conversation with them? That can often bring me up short because I just haven’t given that the slightest bit of thought. 

Tony: It’s not where you went to. Yeah. 

Clark: And the the interesting thing is that from a coaching perspective, INTJ is all about results.

Clark: So if a person wants to talk about their childhood. And their relationship with their father and how that impacted the way they deal with authority and that sort of thing. Somebody like myself may say listen, this isn’t therapy. This is not what this is about. This is about getting results, et cetera, et cetera.

Clark: Whereas an INFP may say, yes, but this is where they wanted to go with this conversation. So clearly there’s some merit in having that conversation. And 

Tony: so I would say that. Until they resolve that, their performance will be suboptimal. So I would say it’s actually worth doing because when you do that work, you do your timeline, you do your future authoring.

Tony: So you do your past authoring and future authoring, [00:45:00] you basically reveal all your values and your purpose right there and then. I could do a one day workshop. I’ve done them. you spend the whole day with somebody mapping all of their memories. And you get up to today, so all the past is there, and you can draw this timeline of good events, bad events, what was happening, and quite revealing and very personal, done as groups.

Tony: It really brings people together, but perhaps you don’t get the same level of disclosure, but still a worthwhile exercise. Then you get through each of these stages. You find these stages of development that they’ve been through in life. Some of them, you could see where the hard times were.

Tony: What were the lessons that came out of that and see where the good times were, what the lessons that, you know who were the heroes at that time, who would, who were the role models? What was it about that? That was so good. So you get all of this mapping done and you get them to label these periods in their life with a set of, so I labeled mine I can’t remember what was it. When I first did it, when I was taken through the process and it was quite therapeutic.

Tony: When I was thinking what am I going to label [00:46:00] these these elements, I ended up labeling them different sports. So football, cricket, so cricket played a big part of my early life and football business. So I went through kite flying. My uncle used to build these massive kites and take me out flying kites when I was little to cricket, to football, to ended up business and consulted.

Tony: So I had all these periods of my life mapped out. And at different times, you’ve got obviously things that happened at school disasters, relationships, all of these things, brilliant exercise. But at the end of it, you’ve got absolute clarity on your purpose and you’re starting to write the next chapter.

Tony: You’re in a position at the end of it to come out of that process a different person so it’s I would advise any of you but if you ever want to do it I’ll take you both through it. We can have a session one day. It’s brilliant 

Rob: Yeah, i’ve done something like that where you map out all the times you felt fear.

Rob: I can’t remember exactly. I think it’s Carolyn Myss. Basically what happened? What did you make it mean? What did what was your reaction to that? So even [00:47:00] before 

Tony: that, if I said to you both now, what’s the earliest memory you’ve got? One thing, what would it be? The very first thing you can remember, going back as far as you can remember from primary school or even before that.

Tony: Oh, 

Clark: I know. What 

Tony: was that? 

Clark: I, something came to my mind immediately. It was when I was at, do you guys remember back in the, probably it was in the seventies anyway. When we used to do maths at school. For you, I don’t know, it must have been six, five, six, seven, I don’t know. But they used to have little blocks little coloured bricks that you stack on top of each other.

Clark: You could do it forever, but they, it was how they taught hundreds, tens and units. Because that was how they taught maths back in the day, hundreds, tens and units. And once you got through ten bricks you then Another brick that was now a 10. And then you got rid. I remember looking at the teacher and all the kids doing this, and I’m thinking, what the fuck is she talking about?

Clark: I didn’t swear, but the feeling was this, they’re speaking martian. I had no idea. And it was my earliest memory because I just thought. I don’t belong here. 

Tony: So you would write that, you would [00:48:00] you would write that down on a post-it note, stick it on your timeline somewhere.

Tony: And then, so you do this, you basically just dump every memory that you can think of as you write it down, put it in your timeline randomly, but virtually in sequence. So then you start to juggle it, right? Was it a good one or a bad one? Was it a good memory or a bad? So you’re just doing all of this. And it’s, but you end up with typically between 80 and 120 memories that they’re significant.

Tony: And once you’ve started the process, you’ll find yourself days later going, Oh God, I remember something else that I did that I should have put in, wonder why I didn’t think of that at the time. So you go and write it down. And so it’s this living and breathing map that you do. And that’s the start.

Tony: And of course some people get blocked. Some people can’t start. So you’ve got to then the skill of the facilitator comes in to try and ask questions and try and extract. And you did this, Tony you had this done to you or you. I had this done to me and then started to deliver it myself.

Tony: It’s one of the first things I started to do, when I moved into this side of the business, because of the power that it had on [00:49:00] shaping my identity, going through this next part of my life. 

Clark: But would it be similar? I remember working with somebody years ago now who did this you wrote certain things down, but you put them on the floor, and there was a literal line made with tape on the floor, and they placed it.

Clark: The interesting thing was that person, and I poo pooed a lot of what was going on at the time, but I was just, excuse me, sitting in as an observer. But they placed each memory, if you like, chronologically on this line, so that the further you walked along this line, the closer you got back to the day you were born.

Clark: And the idea behind it was that as you walked back through these memories, it started to trigger ideas or other memories. It didn’t work for me, or it didn’t have the profound effect on me that it had on others. But it seems to have quite a profound effect on people. And it’s saying it sounds like something similar.

Tony: It’s more about regardless of whether you’re, you want to talk about it, or you’re connected to what you say, there’s something in the [00:50:00] process of, having the memory and writing it down and putting where it happened, you suddenly start to see these groupings.

Tony: So in mine, I had groupings where I could clearly see where life was going really well and clearly see where I had hardship. And so out of the hardship came the growth and all of these lessons, what were the lessons in that section? There was a lot of bad stuff that went down. How did you grow into that?

Tony: When you came out the other side of that, those terrible things that happened, what. Where were you? 

Tony: That might have been 10 years ago, 20 years ago, whenever. And now, then you get to this point. So you’ve been through all of that. We are where we are. And that’s, all of that is it’s written.

Tony: It’s history. It’s done and dusted and we are where we are. So what does it all mean? What are we going to do next? All of that we know and all of that growth that we’ve experienced and those values that we’ve identified. So what are you going to do with it? What does it mean right now?

Tony: That’s going to be. What does the next chapter look like? You’re writing your own chapter and what does even beyond that look like? That’s a little bit out of not that we ever know when that might be, [00:51:00] what’s the next chapter? Because I was on this transition from one career to another, it was very helpful for me because I was at the what does the next chapter look like?

Tony: So it really helped define it’s like an identity workshop really. But quite a deep one. It goes as deep as the people want to take it. You don’t take people where they don’t want to go. But I can’t think of one that I’ve done that hasn’t had people in tears, because they’re 

Clark: Oh, people love being in tears, 

Tony: don’t 

Clark: they?

Tony: Yeah, it’s a good process. Oh 

Clark: dear. So is this just a one-on-One thing, Tony I’m assuming it works in 

Tony: groups. Works in groups as well, but you’re not gonna get quite the disclosure. And rightly but it still work. It works definitely in a shared experience. You need a bit of space.

Tony: ’cause you’ve got like a big A3 or A1 piece of paper that you’re putting post-it notes on. You can do it on an Excel spreadsheet and type them in, but it’s not quite as organic. There’s something about writing it down and mapping it out and you’ve got this visual that you can roll up and I’ve got people that still got on their wall today, like years later, [00:52:00] going, I still refer back to it.

 Those values that we crystallized are still, they still guide me, like people who had no idea why they were doing what they were doing. And. And who they even were, like middle aged men in having an identity crisis, it helps them anchor themselves and appreciate all the things that they’ve forgotten about.

Tony: And that’s made them who they are and accept a lot of it as well. And it sounds like therapy, but it’s not. It might feel therapeutic for the person that’s doing it, but when I’m just facilitating a process. They’re doing all the work. I’m not helping them with anything that comes up.

Tony: I’m not providing therapy. I’m just guiding them 

Rob: through a guided process. For me, there’s when there’s where the line is you I’m not going to delve into that. For me, if you’re going to solve a problem, you need to have free reign to go wherever it is. And then it’s a willingness of, Okay, this is what it’s gonna take to solve the problem.

Rob: But if you’re not gonna go into childhood or whatever, most problems that we have [00:53:00] originate somewhere. It’s either in the past, it’s in the way that we think. And that all came from it’s gotta come from his historical, if it’s a organizational problem, it’s come from who made the decisions, who set the culture or whatever it is.

Rob: If we close off and you say we can’t look in there, it’s like you’re playing hide and seek and you’re playing with certain rooms that are closed. So for me, I think, yes, I agree. I agree. My style is mostly responding with curiosity. And then, okay, how do we deal with that? So this process 

Tony: It uncovers a tough period where, say, across about a three year band where people have thought they wouldn’t have the exact date unless somebody died. If somebody close to them died on the, they’ll know what the date is, so they put that down in bold and it’s obviously a negative experience, or a positive one, depending who it was and what their sentiment was.

Tony: But you might see a cluster of, experience that they had in a given time frame that are all pretty negative. So there’s strong weighting towards a period of their life where it was one hit after another. But this is not a [00:54:00] therapy session. So you might get them to talk about it if they want to, but you’re not there to try and solve those problems that come out of that.

Tony: It’s about identifying them. The memory itself will at times just, Bring the emotion to the surface that they haven’t thought about it for ages. But it’s suddenly a realization that there was actually for five years straight there. I was in all sorts of pain for different reasons.

Tony: People died, relationships broke down. I had an accident. Something I went to jail, all, whatever these things might be, they all happened at this point in time, what the hell was going on there? And then there’s another one, maybe 10 years later, and there’s another cluster where things looked a little bit rosier, things were going great.

Tony: So just that ability to see, actually, I’ve been here, I’ve been there and now here we are today. The end of the process is a clearly defined purpose. What the next steps are towards. Living through these values, your values are clearly articulated in very simple statements. If one of your values is honesty, for [00:55:00] example.

Tony: That comes out of all of this stuff. You’ve got to be able to articulate that in a really short tagline. So what does the value of honesty mean to you? How do you articulate that to yourself? And that’s almost like the brand you’ll know at the point, you’ll know historically when you weren’t honest and what the impact of being dishonest was.

Tony: That’s never going to happen again because you know what the consequences are. So the importance of honesty is carried through your life. This is where it really worked for me. So I know that it’s a core value of mine. I need to uphold wherever I go and I’m going to vow to do that for the rest of my life.

Tony: It anchors people on what is actually true for them. It’s like this guy was talking about, still uses this map today still refers to it often when we have a conversation. He knows when he’s walked a line that’s, transgressions that are not in line with who he said he was.

Tony: So he probably needs to revisit it and and go again. But it just gives people a real sense of anchoring where they are. And from that platform they can go let’s map the next bit. What does that look like? Why are you doing it? Who are the [00:56:00] beneficiaries of this next chapter that you’re going to be doing?

Tony: It’s a powerful stuff. 

Clark: There’s an interesting thing there that you’ve just said. And it relates to something Rob just said if there are areas that you are not allowed to go, then it doesn’t allow you to resolve the problem. I tend to look at that slightly differently because if I’m not allowed to go somewhere, I’m That’s where the solution is.

Clark: Where you want to go, 

Rob: yeah. 

Clark: And that’s the place that I tend to want to go. And I’m guessing you guys are both the same. There’s an interesting guy that I’ve been reading for quite a while, a guy called Ian McGilchrist. He’s a psychiatrist who I first heard about a couple of years ago because he wrote a book called The Master and His Emissary.

Clark: And he was talking about the an old metaphor that people used to use about this idea of the left and right brain, and that’s always fascinated me. In the book, talks about the fact that this idea of the left and right hemisphere one being creative, the other being logical, et cetera has been disproven.

Clark: And certain scientific communities have taken great delight in saying that this left and right hemisphere thing is not a thing [00:57:00] anymore. And actually McGilchrist said, hold on a minute. Whilst we may have answered the question incorrectly, it was still a good question and we need to perhaps refine the answer.

Clark: And he said, because from all the research that he’s done and the research that he’s looked into, the idea of the left and right hemisphere. is a thing, but we may have interpreted it incorrectly. In fact this idea that one side is logical and the other side is more creative is a little bit incorrect, but it’s incorrect because we’re looking at it two dimensionally.

Clark: If you stand back and look at it as a three dimensional thing, it’s more to do with how we give attention to things. So the left brain is much more focused. It wants answers, concrete answers, black and white results and so on. Whereas the right brain tends to look at things more holistically, more intuitively, and by intuitively I mean gathering data from all over and putting a picture together.

Clark: I mentioned that is because the thing that the three of us have in common, whilst from an MBTI point of view, we’re all [00:58:00] very different, that N, that intuitive aspect of our personality is a part of us. That plays a big role in what we do because the intuitive side of any situation involves taking disparate information and finding the areas where they all impact each other.

Clark: So We can look at lots of different things and start to see a pattern, as Rob just said, why can’t we go into this route? What is the issue with this? I can draw a conclusion from this, not just that I can’t go in there, but why don’t you want me to go in there? And what’s the pain point?

Clark: And so on. One of the things that you’ve just said about this whole timeline thing is that you don’t prescribe anything, you don’t suggest or tell people to do anything, because as you said, there’s a realization at some point that this means to me. And one of the great things about that is, is that as those realizations take place, the intuitive side of you will say and what does that mean?

Clark: And why does it mean that to you? And [00:59:00] what are the implications of this? Where might you want to go from there? And that really is the point of coaching. To get back to where we started the conversation, the idea behind a real coach is to say what does that mean to you? And what do you want to do about it?

Clark: How can we clarify that so you can actually get there? And it’s interesting because that whole left brain, right brain thing is really interesting because the right brain The holistic intuitive side can start to see a pattern past the job across to the left side, who says so we now need to do this, and this.

Clark: And it’s at that point, and funnily enough, one of the things he said was that society, In general, people in general, tend to be much more left brained. What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? What do I need to do now? I can’t go in that door. Okay, I’m not gonna ask why I just can’t go in that door.

Clark: Whereas, people that are much more right brained tend to say whoa, hold on a minute. Why? And they, you ask [01:00:00] why a lot more, and you ask what the meaning is behind that a lot more, and in having that conversation with somebody who’s focused on left brain things, black and white results, me, them, my role is this, it’s fixed, these are the categories that I live in, and so on, by, by asking the why and the meaning behind things, you are helping people to get access to That more intuitive right brain side of their lives and all you’re doing is just pointing at things But that really is the key behind being a good coach, right?

Tony: What it did for me entering into that coaching world was it gave me a an amazing tool to use Framework that I could follow as a novice, I’ve been a coach for 30 years, but this was different. I was now entering different new territory, gave me a platform to use that was so simple to follow had clear prompts that I could use as an intervention if, and when I needed it.

Tony: If I wasn’t using my intuition to follow it, but it’s their process. It’s not my process. [01:01:00] I’m just there to, oh, you almost see yourself in that role as a, as the literally, we started this conversation talking about listening. You’re just there to be a silent, Listen, it’s okay.

Tony: Wherever you’ve been is okay. This is a really safe environment that we’re in. You write things down. You may want to talk to me about them. You might not. If you do, I’m here to listen. No judgment. Go for it. If we go where you want to take it. So it’s all on the table. And if they don’t know you, You’ve not built rapport with them, this is a full day’s process, it can be a full day’s process, and even then you might not get through the end of it. It’s draining people, you tell them, you’re not going back to work after this, you’re going to go home and rest, because they’re going to be exhausted, because they’ve relived a whole lot of stuff, and then thought about what they’re going to do with it.

Tony: So does that 

Clark: impact you? Do you find that when you see other people getting emotional and bringing things up out into the open that impacts them emotionally. Does that affect you?

Tony: No, in, in a situation like that, it just informs me that there’s something important. It’s like tread carefully. [01:02:00] This is important to them. But does it drain you? Talking to, are they talking to you about it? No, that doesn’t drain me. Doesn’t drain me. I was 

Clark: just thinking, Rob that. As as an F, one might assume that, that might be quite tiring or draining or emotionally burdensome.

Clark: But actually I think the opposite is the case, because he’s an F. This is all Yeah. 

Tony: Yeah. 

Clark: Meat and gravy for me. Exactly. When people get emotional. I find it enormously hard work. I 

Tony: when 

Clark: they’re finished, I need to go and light that because the outpouring of emotion weighs heavier probably.

Clark: This is 

Tony: interesting Clark, right? Because your chosen path right now as you are finding your way through, through this sort of maze is. You seem to have landed on coaching men who are going to be going through all sorts, as they go through this. Up will come all of this stuff that you will find challenging, confronting and tiresome, like draining, because it’s oh, this is not where I normally go and here we are.

Tony: It’s fascinating that you’re in that space. And sometimes 

Clark: [01:03:00] it I used an analogy when I had the accident and I was still in my brace feeling the need to control situations because obviously when you’re strapped to a trawl on board in a hospital and they’re injecting you with stuff and sticks and tubes in various orifices of your body, you have very little control.

Clark: And so what I tried to do for a long time when I first went into the hospital was engage the nurses and doctors to try and influence them. To give me all the information that would help me try and control the situation, which of course doesn’t work, and I soon realized very quickly that you have to just surrender yourself to this situation.

Clark: I used an analogy in one of my posts that said, it’s a little bit like jumping in a river. Sometimes you jump in a river. You know what to expect. Sometimes you’re pushed, and the cold can make you panic, you start flapping around, and you exhaust yourself, and sometimes you’ve just got to go with the flow, and what I’ve realized, and this is probably what prompted me to have this conversation right from the beginning, because I’m having some interactions with people who are saying exactly what you’ve just said, I tend to, as the tenth [01:04:00] man, who is basically the person that asks the questions that gets us to where we need to go, And to help us make the right decisions.

Clark: It has happened organically that I tend to have people gravitate towards me. All men, in fact. I haven’t had a female customer in well over a year. And that’s telling me something is it’s given me a certain amount of information. And what was most eyeopening for me was when I still in my cage, actually, I was introduced to somebody, my first coaching client.

Clark: And it was just purely a speculative conversation just to see whether they wanted to work with me and in that conversation, that person started crying and literally I was just talking to them. Ended up talking about some things that were quite emotional for them. And that person said, yes, I want to work with you.

Clark: We worked together for 12 weeks and we’re in the process of arrange to do some more. But afterwards I felt something interesting inside me because I don’t. Enjoy emotions. Funnily enough, there was something because this was not a coaching situation.

Clark: This was just a conversation to see whether we wanted to work together. [01:05:00] Somebody else was there who was an F who was a colleague of this person. And I didn’t enjoy it. This other person loved it. You could tell that this whole emotional outpouring was really riveted for this person. And we had the conversation and that person said, look, I guess I want to work with you.

Clark: But afterwards, I felt something really interesting because whilst it was hard, To engage with that. I thought I can help this person. I knew I could help this person and having moved away from, this wasn’t a corporate situation. As I said to you earlier, it wasn’t where I was. Having to get results on behalf of an organization.

Clark: This was helping that person deal with a particular issue. And over the course of the time that we worked together, whilst it did get emotional at times, and whilst I found it hard, it was enormously fulfilling. And, you have to sometimes be guided by the situation itself, right? 

Clark: The conversations around me and the people that are talking about these sort of things have all helped me to start realizing that my ideal customer is not an [01:06:00] organization, it’s a person, it’s one person.

Clark: Because I did have to ask myself how does a tenth man help one person? But of course, group thinking is not something that just happens within an organization. It happens within all of us. We are all part of a group, being driven daily by the opinions of the tribe that we’re a part of.

Clark: And sometimes that tribe can get us doing things that we wouldn’t ordinarily do. This is why that person was so emotional, because they’d spent their life trying to please the tribe. Fascinating stuff for me, but enormously interesting. And not something I ever would have thought was something I’d get into.

Clark: But the emotional side of it was just part of the job. 

Rob: I find that quite interesting, your different responses. The first thing I noticed with coaching was and even therapy is that never tires me. That gives me more energy. I have more mental energy than physical energy.

 I never felt I’d never liked the idea of an hour or that I was just like, let’s just solve the problem. And I would try to solve all their life problems in one sit. And they’d be, I’ve got to go, I’m exhausted.

Rob: I’m like, why are you tired? We’re only [01:07:00] talking. Emotions never affect me because I think I have that clear distinction between thinking and emotions. I love to see emotions because it tells me when I’m on the right track or it gives a great clue of what’s powering that.

Rob: Like in HTML, the emotions are the webpage and the thinking is the source code. I could keep doing that for ages.

 I don’t feel what someone feels. I understand why they feel it. And I’m very, I don’t know if empathetic is the right word, but I’m very sensitive. Like I come in, all I do is listen. If there’s coaching, all I do is listen and just someone just talking and I know what what the issue is and how to fix it. 

Rob: Very good at understanding how they think and why they feel as they feel, and I know how they feel, but their emotions don’t affect me because all I’m thinking is, okay, what’s the source code? Let’s change the source code. We can change their emotion. And the problem or the barrier is their willingness to [01:08:00] feel the emotions and their willingness to go to the source code of what’s going to fix it.

Clark: That doesn’t make you sound like a psychopath at all.

Tony: It’s so interesting. I think it’s easy to categorize emotions in this context as when people cry. And it’s also, if I think about what I measure with the score model, you’ve got positive emotion on one track. You’d think negative emotion would be the opposite. So Myers Briggs is a, dichotomies, they’re polarities, whereas the positive emotion lives on the extroversion track.

Tony: So it’s goal orientation. So it’s Dopamine induced feeling good when I’m in pursuit of something that I want. Now that becomes problematic if what you want is an unhealthy pursuit. Addiction lives in there. Negative emotion lives on a separate track, which is about proneness to anxiety and depression.

Tony: And it’s again it’s measurable. So when we talk about emotion, and people may appear to be uplifted or excited about something that they’re doing. There’s a lot of learnings out of that. But also if you’re so if you’re [01:09:00] driving a car, you’re heading down. You’re going out for a meal, something to look forward to, you know exactly where you’re going, you know it’s going to be great when you get there, and you know how to get there because the road’s there, and suddenly the road’s blocked, and you’re going to miss your appointment, traffic jam, and your level of anxiety might go through the roof.

Tony: Or you might snap or, who knows what, what happens when what you want to achieve, somebody puts a barrier in front of it. And the world is no longer the way I thought it was going to play out. And I’m not happy about it. I’m angry. I’m upset. I’m anxious, whatever it might be. Once we start to unpick that and the five whys process from manufacturing, all of those problem solving type thing.

Tony: Why? You can use that with an individual, especially around negative emotion, because reacting to the stimulus or the situation that is, I wanted to go there and now I’m no longer able to, so I don’t get what I want. Now I’m anxious. What does that mean? And you can keep asking why and take it anywhere you want.

Tony: Because it’s not just [01:10:00] the fact that you can no longer go where you want in that moment, that negative emotion state that you’re in is built up of All the different reasons why they’re interconnected from as far back as you can remember to the relationship that’s going wrong to any number of things.

Tony: By asking why, you start to go at okay, now so now we know why you’re feeling anxious more than you want to more often. Because all of this stuff that we’ve just revealed by asking why, it’s quite a fascinating process. 

Rob: It’s also about future focus and present.

Rob: I’m very future orientated. So I’m always looking at the future. The reason that I’m not bothered about emotions now is because it’s about where we’re heading. I always believe the future is better and I believe that how we feel in the moment is due to the barriers that we already have.

Rob: So the reason I’m happy with, I’m fine with someone being In a uncomfortable state now is because of where we’re going [01:11:00] to head. It’s like anxiety. People are very anxious. The analogy I’ve always used is there’s a fire and we go close to it and we feel heat. And because of that heat, we we back away.

Rob: And people who are anxious are avoiding that heat and because they’re avoiding that heat they shrink and their level of comfort becomes smaller and smaller until they’re not willing to do almost anything. But the people who go past the anxiety are going to go straight through the fire and realize that the fire was a mirage and then they’re out of the anxiety.

Rob: So being overly emotional is a barrier. So I think there is three barriers that we have. And the barriers dogma is what we’ve been told that isn’t true. Being overly swayed by emotion and ignorance. So if we are able to and willing to embrace and go past any emotion, then we never become trapped by it.

Rob: basically emotions, information and emotions are the [01:12:00] GPS. If you take the information that the emotions give you, they’ll guide you to the ultimate, which for me is happiness. So they’re all helping you on the journey. But if we don’t listen, if we don’t take them as information and we give too much weight to how we feel in the moment, then we become trapped and we can’t go beyond that.

Clark: I think Tony just said something. When he was speaking, Tony just talked about what something means. And I think when you talk about emotions there, Rob, the interesting thing for me has always been that when I see a person’s emotions, it’s an indication to me of what the situation that we’re talking about means to them.

Clark: And I had a conversation recently with somebody who When I asked them what does that mean to you? And they said does it need to mean anything? I said it doesn’t have to mean something, but it does mean something because every single thing that you do is done out of a feeling that this thing, whatever it might be, means this.

Clark: So for instance, a wife might see [01:13:00] a husband not speaking to her and assume that it means he’s angry or it means that he’s not interested in her. Anymore or whatever. Maybe the next time we talk, this is probably an interesting area to discuss because that What a thing means to a person is probably the most interesting is the thing that drives all of our behavior.

Clark: And when we talk about the 10th man, for instance, certainly in the work that I do, the thing that I’m looking for above and beyond everything else is what does this thing, what does this problem, what does this issue mean to that person and how do they know what? In fact, what, when I do my coaching, It may not happen right at the beginning, but one of the first things I try to find out I ask two questions.

Clark: What’s true or what’s real to you? And how do you know? So I’m trying to find out what the person believes what is their framework of belief. Because based around that framework of belief is where they derive all of the meaning to all of the things that happen to them. And when somebody, for instance, like that person I just said [01:14:00] who said does it need to mean anything?

Clark: No, it doesn’t. But it absolutely does mean something, and the fact that you’re asking me why it needs to mean anything tells me that you don’t want to tell me what it means. Why would that be? And the whole idea of what a thing means, you could you could win something. You could win a competition, you could succeed at something, but what’s important about that particular accomplishment is what it means to you and to those around you.

Clark: That, for me, is probably the thing that I’m trying constantly to understand. Somebody said to me recently that seems to be a little bit one sided and, straight away. I said maybe it is. It depends what I’m doing means to you and you need to clarify that because we’re not communicating the same thing clearly because, we are both attaching different meaning to that particular situation.

Clark: So I think that’s it’s a real key. And I would love to be able to talk to you in the next session, we’ll learn more about this because everything that we do has to revolve around the framework the framing that the [01:15:00] person or the organization that we’re talking to has around this particular situation.

Clark: When somebody comes to me and says, I have a problem and the problem is this, the very first thing I always ask is why is there a problem? Is it a problem for everybody? Are some people happy that this is happening, because if they are, maybe they’ve got a vested interest in that thing being a problem.

Clark: Maybe they’re deriving something from this. So it’s all about, to me, it’s all about what meaning is attached to the situation. 

Rob: And often those meanings are conflicted. I didn’t really link up the point, but what, the point I was trying to make is, where there’s Towards and away from as one dimension, what comes to mind to me is there’s also future orientated and past or present orientated.

Rob: So for me, it’s like a quadrant that whether someone’s moving towards or moving away and then it’s wherever they want to be whether they’re focused on the future or in the past. 

Tony: Yeah, I have an interesting distinction there, Rob? Around that, which is [01:16:00] certainty lives in the past, right?

Tony: Is written. We talked about that mapping exercise that’s written that happened. That is certainty. So if you predisposed to anxiety to start with, number is one aspect. Second is if your history is one that is repeatedly full of negative experiences. then it’s really hard not to look at the future in, through, through those eyes.

Tony: But if you’re predispositioned to, so you’re future focused, I’m future focused too, I’m future focused, delusionally optimistic about what’s possible. I live in the world of possibility. So I’m very intuitive. So when I piece together these things, it’s not trying to make sense of it or logic out of it.

Tony: It’s what’s possible. What could we do with it? Imagine all these new things, drive some people absolutely nuts. Anyway, that’s what I love being that way. It’s why I’m where I am, doing what I’m doing. But when all the potential lives in the present and Clark, you touched on this.

Tony: Need to be in control. Okay. So in the present where we can have some control over the actions We take the things we [01:17:00] say and what from what we do is where it’s important I think what becomes problematic is when people are too wedded to need to control what the future looks like Because the future is uncertain, but it’s full of possibility But it’s also uncertainty people can live in the present looking forward going shit Who knows what’s going to happen and that scares the bejesus out of them.

Tony: Whereas for me, it’s wow, what could happen here for others? It’s this could go pear shaped. If you’re prone to anxiety, it’s a problem. The future is a problem that we as coaches need to help and deal with because we want, because within you, if you work in one to one, Obviously it’s with the individual, but if you’re in a group, you’re dealing with multiple states of different levels of looking back, looking forward, not feeling in control in the moment.

Tony: It’s really complex. Often when I’m doing leadership work, I help people recognize for themselves that it’s actually an impossible job that they’ve got. That it takes courage to lead with all of that complexity that’s in front of them, but [01:18:00] bringing to the surface things that you can’t see at the moment is going to help you crystallize an approach.

Tony: You’re going to be better for having insight than without it. Otherwise, it could be like the blind leading the blind. If I want of a more appropriate term, 

Rob: Also people try to control the past and often their emotions and they’re stuck in a way of perceiving the past, and we need to let go of that to have the freedom.

Rob: But for me, all of these bits are all like tiny Lego bricks. When you talk about being delusionally optimistic I am because I believe that where there’s negative emotion is because we’re breaking down. If you’re knocking down a house, there’s loss and there’s people are going to be upset about that.

Rob: But what you then get is a whole load of Lego bricks that you can build the best future you could have had. But it’s your willingness to be able to, like Joseph Campbell said, we’ve got to let go of the life that we have in order to have the one that we want to have. And it’s, so for me it’s about breaking [01:19:00] everything down into pieces and then how do we rebuild it in the best way?

Clark: I’ve touched on this a minute ago. That’s really the essence of what Bayesian thinking is all about. I don’t know how much you guys know about Bayesian statistics or Thomas Bayes was a guy, I think he lived in the 1800s kind of, but he was a statistician, but he basically said if I want to go from A to Z, you can’t just map that route out as an A, B, C, D, E, all the way to Z, because as you get to each point, and this is what I mentioned earlier, You’re constantly having to update the information that you have.

Clark: And very often, most people tend to work on the assumption that the information they had when they started continues to stay constant throughout the journey. That’s not the case. Every new thing that you do, every brick that you add onto that model changes the entire context of the situation so that you need to update constantly.

Clark: One of the reasons I talk about Bayesian thinking a lot in the work that I do is that what held true When you’re a child or 10 years ago or three months [01:20:00] ago, doesn’t necessarily hold true now. When Tony was talking about, and clearly all three of us are all future orientated, I don’t know about you, but my brain is constantly living in the future. Constantly looking at all of the possible ramifications of everything that happens, but the thing that I try to make sure that I do, Is that I’m making my assumptions about the future based upon the updated information that I have now.

Clark: Because every single thing that happens adds to the equation. And Thomas Bayes said it’s a lot easier to come to conclusions if you are constantly referring to the information that’s taking place around you now. He did an analogy where he said, He threw a ball over his head onto a table without looking.

Clark: Somebody else was looking. He was able, based upon his second throw, when the person said, it landed in relation to the first throw here. So without actually seeing anything, the more information he was given, he was able to [01:21:00] accurately predict where the first ball landed. Now, he never saw where the ball landed, but based upon the constantly updating information that was fed to him, He was able to accurately predict where the first ball had landed.

Clark: And what he showed was The more information you have as time goes on, the more accurately you can predict what the outcome of a given set of actions is going to be. The point of that is that you can’t just throw a ball behind you and say, I think it landed here. That’s a guess.

Clark: Most people’s beliefs about the world are a guess. We believe that God’s going to do this for us, or that the, the great hula hoop in the sky is going to do this for us, or that if I buy my wife a bunch of flowers she’s going to feel this. This is all based upon guesswork. And as long as we’re constantly updating the information, so I give my wife a bunch of flowers, I look at her expression, I have new information.

Clark: And Bayesian analysis of any situation says, look at what’s happening now. Look at all the information that you have available to you. So while we’re future orientated, and while [01:22:00] we’re constantly trying to control what’s going on around us. We have to be open to all the information that’s coming into us.

Clark: One of the things I think that we all do, certainly what I do in my work, is when new information comes in, I’m constantly looking at that person to see what that means to them. How has this new information affected you? If it hasn’t affected them, then clearly they have a very linear view. Of how the world works and, that may work for them sometimes, but it will often bite them in the

Rob: arse. That sounds interesting. I think that’s where, when I say I blow up every six months, that’s why, because there’s a update. 

Clark: Yes, that’s clear.