In one moment, everything in your life can change!

Three months ago Clark lived that moment. A careless SUV driver smashed into his motorbike. Breaking 5 ribs, his sternum, right shoulder, collarbone and two vertebrae.

An event like this changes everything.

But Clark is not your average guy. He already operated from the 10th Man. The principle that everything should be challenged.

Even so, he's had to adapt to recover.

No longer able to challenge the boards of Manufacturers he challenges individuals. If life isn't how you want it to, there's no one I could recommend more to change your circumstances. My strategy has always been to change the frame so our philosophies are aligned.

His posts are profound and deeply thought provoking.

So he was long on my radar to talk. As soon as he was well enough I pinned him down to a time to talk. Here's our conversation.

What have been your lessons that you've taken over the things

that you've really thought about?

The accident.

Yeah.

It's there probably been two sides to it.

The first one is practical.

How do you actually adjust your life to deal with quite a significant accident?

And then the other one is more personal, philosophical.

How do you view life?

Because, and they do intersect at certain points.

So for me, right at the very beginning, there was a little bit of a feeling,

an attitude from me of how dare life have the audacity to interfere with my

future, all the things I want to do.

How dare it get involved and mess things up for me.

I was so annoyed for the first few weeks.

And in fact.

Learning doesn't always happen in such a way that you know it's learning.

Sometimes learning can creep up on you.

I remember, obviously, completely out of my tree on, on morphine.

And they tried, they did all sorts at the beginning, fentanyl and some other stuff.

Which was horrendous.

It really affects the way you think.

But I remember saying to my son, look, mate, you've got to go into the office.

I gave him, a list of people, right?

These people down, I need you to contact them and tell them that I won't be able

to come back to work till next week.

And he said I don't think so.

And that was 10 weeks ago.

11, 11 weeks ago.

So the two main things that is I've learned from it are from

a practical point of view.

One needs to be adaptable whatever you do in life, obviously.

But especially when you work for yourself.

If you have all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, that can come

back and bite you in the backside.

So from a practical point of view

I've changed my the direction of my work only slightly, but quite significantly.

Whereas I was focused.

Almost totally on working with organizations that's had to

change because I can't be in factories for hour after hour.

So I've had to adjust slightly, but from a more philosophical point of view, it's

been interesting because again, only a very slight change, but quite significant.

And that was more to do with the fact that when you're working with organizations

and you're talking predominantly about performance and how you improve

processes and systems and that sort of thing, it's all about outcome.

How do we get more out of putting less in with it, with an organization?

And when I realized that I needed to start working in a way that would allow

me to be present with people, because I couldn't spend hours and hours on the

shop floor it also made me realize that actually the people part that I'm now

doing as a sort of, oh, I have to do this.

is actually the most important.

So it's not so much about outcome or output, and it's

more to do with completeness.

When I talk to people now, I've had to rethink about how I approach the people

I work with, because a lot of coaching is about how you increase outcome.

output.

What are your goals?

But it's, for me, in the last sort of five or six weeks, I've had to

realize that's not what I want from, for myself, nor do I think it's what

other people should want for themselves.

It's not about achieving a particular goal, but about

becoming a more complete person.

So those are the two main things.

They're very subtle, but for me, they're quite significant.

Even when I do coaching within an organization, it has always

been with a view to improving or increasing effectiveness.

or performance.

So there's always been that element of even when I'm coaching somebody,

there's feedback to another party usually higher up the food chain.

And it's all about, even if it's unspoken, it's the emphasis has

always been on improving output or getting better outcomes.

As I've sat and thought about that.

I've realized that, in the last few weeks, I can't work in factories.

I want to focus on people, then to me, it didn't make sense that although a

lot of coaching does focus on goals and outcomes, it didn't make sense to me.

There's a saying by Carl Jung that says the obligation of a person is not to

become perfect, but to become whole.

That's the thing that's been going around in my head for weeks and weeks.

With regard to.

Focusing on individuals.

When I realized I can't work in factories for the foreseeable future.

If I'm going to talk to individuals in a coaching relationship, it can't be for

me about goals, outcomes and outputs.

It can't be about improving efficiency or effectiveness.

Because that just makes if you're a knife, it just makes you a sharper knife.

But as a person, you need to become a much more complete and fulfilled person.

That's, it's been a very subtle change for me, but it's been quite a significant one.

Okay, so in becoming more whole, how do you interpret

that?

I was thinking this the other day, you did a a comment on a post that I did about

pain, and you were talking about problems, and I just found that so interesting,

because you and I have had some conversations in the past over material

that one or the other of us has posted.

And I just found it fascinating that you saw this situation from another side.

And that always interests me because, as a species, we tend to hold

on to our own view of things and think that everybody else is wrong.

So I try and look at the, another person's perspective,

especially somebody like yourself.

I was comparing me and you, and I may have this wrong, but I got it into my mind

that the way you deal with relationships is how individuals relate to each other.

That was the sort of the simple way I put it in my own head.

Whether that's in a marriage or in a business or a team or whatever.

So I would call that an inter relational approach.

But for me, when we talk, when I talk about fulfillment or

completeness, it's intra relational.

So if I'm talking to an organization, how do all the parts in that

entity communicate with each other to make something synergistic?

Or if I'm talking to an individual, we're made up of many parts, right?

All of us as individuals.

How do I communicate with myself?

How do the various voices in my head communicate to, to make me a whole person?

And I got the opportunity to try this out recently because my first customer

approached me about three weeks ago with a view to working with them.

And they were talking as you would typically talk in a coaching environment.

I want to do this, and this.

I want to achieve this.

And I said what why do you want to do that?

What are you comparing yourself to?

What is it that you're trying to achieve?

Are you trying to become a better you?

Or are you trying to become something else?

And as, as he said, yeah, actually I've got somebody else in mind and

I'm trying to be more like that.

I says, let's say you're maybe you're a Jaguar and you want to be a Bentley.

Why can't you just be a really good, clean, shiny jaguar?

Why can't you be the best you that you can possibly be?

And that was something that was going through my head.

And in that conversation, it really crystallized how I view completeness.

It's making sure that whatever's missing is reintegrated.

We talk about in Jungian psychology, integrating the shadow, all the parts of

you that you may be alienated from, if you can integrate them to become a whole

person and become the best you can be.

It's interesting because that where I started from was,

so I started, I had the gym.

And it was basically why don't I train in nutrition?

And I was giving people these diet plans, exercise plans.

No one's sticking to it.

And I was like, I qualified in nutrition and I barely used

it because what's the point?

No one's gonna, I still would struggle to be enthusiastic about nutrition

because no one's gonna stick to the plan.

So I, I went on a deep search on why and it started and

then eventually led me to uni.

I did psychology and a bit of sociology and then I was talking about happiness.

So back then, which is when I wrote my book and that was, cause that was first

The 34 Building Blocks of Happiness.

So people used to talk about in spirituality terms and that and it

was all about that wholeness and things like that and where I came to

relationships was because that was what everyone wants to talk about.

So I think there's a strong interaction between how other people treat us and

how we perceive other people is a direct reflection of what's going on inside.

So for me it's first been whole.

In the sense of the way I envisage in it is you stand on strong foundations.

If you're not on strong foundations in yourself, which I guess is where you're

coming from, is that your relationships flounder because you're not whole.

So yeah, it's becoming whole in yourself.

And then it's a large part of what I've seen of people's problems are identity.

And I think, I was talking to someone today and for me, I

never got into relationships for the sake of relationships.

For me, it's about being freedom.

What I do if there's a purpose to what I do, it's about helping people be free.

And until you can have good relationships and you know the

dynamics and how to change them and how to choose good relationships.

You're not free and I see so many people trapped in relationships, trapped in

anxiety and insecurity about themselves because of their relationships.

So I, my, like my goal is to help people be free of that.

Not for the sake of the relationship, but for the sake of them.

So yeah, I can see, I can I think there's a strong similarity.

I think your idea of the 10th man is what I've done and I've had

different terminologies for it.

But I think we are, we have a similar approach, although we've

come from a different direction.

Yeah, every time you've ever commented on any of my posts, you

always come at it from a slightly different angle, but you clearly

get exactly what's being said.

And very often, a lot of the comments, some of my posts get, I can spend

a half a day answering comments.

But they're all pitched from the perspective of the person that's

commenting, obviously, and I understand that but very few really

get the point that's being made.

I had a conversation with somebody this morning, we were talking about

potentially working together and one of the things I said was, because they were

talking about my post, and I said, the thing is, everything that you've seen in

there, There's a reason that it's there.

You may not notice it.

You may not, it may not be significant for you, but some of my posts seem to

be a little bit antithetical towards coaching and that sort of thing.

And I do have a little bit of a an axe to grind with the whole

coaching profession anyway.

Because the guy that I'm going to be working with in a few weeks, who's abroad

at the moment, said that in the 20 or so minutes that we were talking, he got

more out of that conversation than in something like two years of therapy.

And I just thought that was so sad.

And clearly the therapist wants to help.

But I think the therapist, in this particular instance, Is more interested

in the relationship, the therapeutic relationship than in the person.

You mentioned the 10th man there for me.

I introduced the 10th man a while back because it allowed me to say,

look, this is the benchmark that you should be looking at for yourself.

So according to the principles and standards that you've set, this is the

benchmark that you can refer to without ever having to speak to me again.

If we can put this person in place and then you can always ask

yourself how do I deal with this?

By referring to the 10th man, basically the 10th man is a concept

that just personifies, if you like, absolute rational objectivity.

What's the most logical, rational, and reasonable way to deal with this thing?

And I put that concept there so that people could have that as a benchmark.

In doing so, I'm making myself redundant, of course.

At some point, they don't need a guide, if you like, anymore, or a coach.

But that's got to be the point of what we do.

of making these people, as you say, free and able to stand on their own

two feet.

I think it is I, it's interesting you say, and I think we probably have a

similar opinion about coaching and therapy because immediately where I went

before uni was going in, into therapy.

I had a gym.

And rather than sell gym memberships

I did therapy because I wanted to understand what was at the

cause and I was more passionate about that than about the gym.

Like I did the gym as a business.

And.

I know people love fitness and that it was their dream job, but for

me it was, okay, we'll do this.

And I knew I wasn't doing the right thing because like in getting

someone's induction, I was pleased when I got it down to 10, 15 minutes.

But then when I started to go, okay what is it?

And I learned therapy.

And once they'd open up, it would be about, they thought their

partner was cheating on them.

They thought that they were going to leave their relationship or they

just left their relationship and they were worried about dating again.

So they wanted to get in shape.

But.

In three months time, they'd have met someone, they wouldn't

be worried about that anymore.

They'd have found out the relationship would have patched itself up.

They no longer wanted to go to the gym.

And so that was at the core of it.

I used to be there and I'd get to the root of the problem

and I got quite good that.

within, the time of a sales call, I would get to the root of the

problem and go, yeah, I need to go and enroll in that college course.

And they would just go off.

So I reached the point where I'm either going to do the gym and sell it.

Were you offering counseling?

Basically like when you're selling a gym membership, you're like, okay,

what's brought you here and what's the problem and that kind of thing.

And I would just get to that and I would just have a conversation

with them and figure out

As part of your consultative sales pitch, you were getting

enough information to help you, help them solve their problems,

right?

Yeah, but instead of selling the gym membership and then going yeah, they

would go, yeah, I need to go and do this.

And they would just walk out and they'd go, yeah thank you.

So I was like, I either, got to treat this as a business and do it that

way, but for me, that would kill me.

And so I got manager and I got people running and I left it for a few years.

And then I went off doing this.

So I ended up doing therapy and that kind of thing.

And then it was stress.

I think one of the things that put me where I am now, I'm

just thinking about your situation.

They're coming from that therapeutic background.

I grew up, my mom was a psychoanalyst and we had conversations.

All the time I was growing up about a certain therapeutic approach, isn't it?

I have my own issues with psychoanalysis.

There are aspects of it that I love and they've made enormous advances in

the field of mental health, obviously.

There are other parts of it that I'm not such a fan of.

But strangely I've come full circle because having worked for the last

20 years in manufacturing and looking at organizations as if they were a

living, breathing organism, as if they were an entity in themselves rather

than a collection of individuals.

When a boss or a group of bosses, a board of directors, for instance,

would say Clark we need you to look at this particular issue because we've

got a problem with X whatever it might be, employee engagement or something.

And very often, I've seen other people come in to deal with similar issues.

And immediately go to work on those particular issues instead of saying

how do we know that's a problem and why do you think is a problem?

And does everybody else in the organization think is a problem?

And why is it a problem?

And how is that problem manifesting itself?

And what have you tried to do about it?

And all of those questions have brought me all the way back.

I think I got my coaching papers, I don't know, 12, 15 years

ago, just as part of my job.

But as I've asked those questions more and more, it has become

a lot clearer over the years.

That whenever there's an issue, it's usually not the

issue that they think it is.

And like people, organizations have blind spots.

You were just saying about, with the diet and fitness and nutrition.

You would often recommend something and they'd say no, that's not the problem.

Because they don't see that aspect of themselves that is causing this problem.

And so it's strange that this accident that happened to me,

which I wouldn't wish on anybody.

It's been an absolute nightmare.

But being forced to sit still for 10 weeks and just stew, has caused

me to get a better understanding of how I do what I do and why I do it.

And then having come to that the obvious conclusion that it's about

helping people, then the question I have to ask myself is why don't you

go and help some people instead of helping businesses make more stuff?

And was that just a question of time that you hadn't asked that

question or was there anything else?

It's, we, talking about people's blind spots I have blind

spots of my own, I tend, I enjoyed working on in factories and on shop

floors and within organization.

Because I enjoy the people side of it.

I enjoy the helping people deal with, you can talk to a boss who says, we've

got really good employee engagement here.

And then you can walk onto the shop floor and realize that the picture

is something completely different to what's being seen in the boardroom.

Having said that, virtually every boss, manager, director I've ever worked with

has wanted the best for their people, so it's not as if that happens deliberately.

But when you start to get a bigger picture, I did some training

a couple of months before.

The accent on systems thinking so clearly I was heading in this direction anyway

because he was trying to help managing and Board members zoom out a little bit

on their problems and Try and apply a little bit of critical thinking to some

of the issues that took place within the business and it involves asking

yourself whilst I might think this or that Does everybody think this and when

I tell somebody to go and do whatever?

It might pay me to ask them.

What do you think?

What are your thoughts on this?

And to try and get a little bit more of a holistic systems

thinking approach to the problem.

So I was heading that way anyway, I think.

But it's only now that I'm forced to think much smaller.

Because even driving for me I have to be driven everywhere at the moment.

At the end of this month, I'm going to be doing a whole load of physio.

So I'm hoping that I'll be able to drive.

But very often I'll get somewhere and I'll need to sit down for an

hour before I can even do anything.

So working in a manufacturing organization is not possible at the moment.

So having had to focus.

On individuals, it's made me get a little bit more real about the problems

that I'm talking to people about, because all of those people on the

shop floor, all the bosses, they're all dealing with their own issues.

And when I look at them at an organizational level, it's very easy

for me to just brush over the individual problems that people have now.

I need to focus on.

the actual things that are causing people to, like you've just said,

why would a person want nutritional advice and then ignore it?

Or why would a person say, for instance I really, I know I should stop smoking.

I just can't, these things at a micro level are bizarre that we

say these things to ourselves.

I know I should, but I just can't.

Okay.

What's that all about?

So that's why it's got very micro for me.

I've been working in the macro environment for 20 years.

I've got very granular now, talking to individuals about their own specific

problems that they're dealing with.

And actually.

Somebody said to me recently, Rob something about changing the world one

person at a time and I just thought, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

You're only going to do it one person at a time.

So it's I can't see me going back to the big stuff after this.

I just enjoy the conversation I have with that, with the client I'm going

to be working with in a few weeks.

Was as revelatory for me as it was for them.

I think when you when you talk about how you looked at things, I

never knew is what I did, but reading about Elon Musk and his ideas.

I realized that I've always worked from first principles and I think that's

what you do is that we've always broken everything down into the mechanics of how

it works and then looked at each element and I think when you look from that

perspective, I think that's I think what we saw in each other in our post that we

knew that we'd worked it out step by step.

For me I always looked at what influences things, there's economics

that influence things, but it influences things on the individual.

And it's the individual that is the basic building block

of society, of a relationship.

And it's when you can change that.

So I've gone in the other direction and I started working with individuals

and then what I realized was a great team, a great relationship was a team.

Yes.

A great team is built of great relationships.

So if we can understand what works on one person, if we can understand what

drives and motivate someone, we can like the next, for me, it's a series

of concentric circles is that you have yourself, you have your like primary

relationship, you have your family, you have your work, you have your tribe.

But at the core of that is the individual.

I'm just thinking about this idea of the individual that I personally came

across a little bit of a problem with that and you're dead right, you're absolutely

right, but like most things in life we can make certain assumptions about people

and they can hold true up to a point.

And this is why I do go back to first principles quite regularly.

Because I need to make sure that my thinking is not going off on a tangent

based on the preceding thought and the preceding one and the preceding one.

And the problem with the way that I've found with individuals is that I can

talk to you and you're a reasonable, rational person and we can agree that

there are certain ways to behave in society and that's a great thing and

I can walk away happy that you're not going to go and murder anybody.

And, the world is safe with you around and I can do the same with lots of other

people, but then I can get 10 people together and all of a sudden, and this

is why my organizational background has helped me a little bit here.

You get 10 people.

If one of those people says something convincingly or persuasively enough.

The other nine people don't bother themselves going back to first

principles and really thinking critically about the situation.

And groupthink starts to take over.

And there's a thing, there's a bit of a trend at the moment in the media

talking about mass formation psychosis.

Which is basically groupthink.

When a group of people can be persuaded that a certain course

of action is the right one.

And sometimes it isn't.

They call it psychosis, I'm guessing, because it can tend

towards pathological at times, in as much as you see everybody refers

always back to the Nazis, of course.

It's the most obvious one.

But there are lots of different iterations of people.

Getting together and all of them agreeing on a really bad idea and for

me, that's always been fascinating because I did a little bit.

And this is the reason for the whole 10th man thing.

When I started working with organizations, I needed to help the businesses that

I worked with put something in place.

that was some sort of an antidote to potential group thinking.

As you quite rightly say, when groups of people work together as

a team, it can do amazing things.

They tend to work synergistically and accomplish much more

than they could on their own.

Sometimes assumptions are made, for instance you hear a lot of talk

about immigration, for instance.

And there are assumptions that immigration is bad, which is ridiculous, considering

the country you and I live in is built on immigration, from all the way back from

the Romans through the Saxons and the Vikings, everybody here at some point can

trace their lineage back to immigrants.

So once these ideas start to take hold and people make assumptions

based on those ideas, You can end up in some very dark places.

And so from an organizational point of view, working with businesses, it was

always important to me when sitting in meetings where policies are made

to be able to put something in place that stopped that from happening.

About a year or so ago, for instance, I was in a meeting with a group

of people senior leaders within an organization and they said the answer

to our employee engagement morale problem is that we need to empower the

people and they were, oh, that's great.

Yes.

And I said hold on a minute.

What does that mean?

What are you actually going to do to the people that empowers them?

Are you giving them what, they get a ticket?

Is it a certificate?

What is it, they get a key to something?

I need to understand what this means.

And of course, it's pretty meaningless.

The idea of empowering anybody is to say that I have the power, I'm

going to give some of it to you.

And what they meant was, and we, we talked about it, and they wanted

to create an environment that made the people that worked in that

area, feel like they had some say.

And that made a lot of sense, but it was important to question that idea

because if we hadn't have done that, then it would have just disappeared into

nothing and nothing would have happened.

So this idea of introducing the 10th man to combat groupthink was important to me.

And I think it's something that you've seen yourself, I push a lot.

Strangely enough though Rob, there was some research done a few years

ago that, that mentioned the fact that groupthink is not something

that just occurs in groups of people.

It can occur in one person.

We can have lots of voices in our head with all our cultural

religious beliefs and all the other inputs that come into our mind.

And we can sometimes think, yeah, I've got to do this.

And actually, when you think about it, if you stop and say hold on a minute.

Because, you don't see your own blind spots, you don't see your own prejudices

and cognitive biases and so on.

If you just stop and say, oh, hold on a minute.

So I still use the 10th man in my own one on one coaching as

something you can invoke and say to yourself hold on a minute.

What's the worst that could happen in this situation?

Could I be going down the wrong road?

And if I am, where would I potentially end up?

Whilst you're absolutely 100 percent right that groups of people can together do

amazing things as a race, as a species.

We are extraordinarily good at shooting ourselves in the foot, even

when we're doing something good.

So I just, it's just that sort of trying to figure out a way of avoiding that.

There is are you familiar with Ash's research where they went around the group?

And it's which line is strong, is longer?

And it's it was in the 60s.

It was to try and understand, there was a lot of research to try and

understand why the Nazis, why Germans had gone along with the Nazis.

Is that the one where, that where, even though the answer was obvious

all these people dissenting caused the one person that was the actual person

being looked at to say, Oh, okay.

Maybe I'm wrong.

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you can say, yeah.

And also Zimbardo's work of like blue eyes, brown eyes where they

did it with school children.

They did it in students,

experiments and all that stuff.

Yeah.

We have such a need to belong.

That we will put aside what we actually believe often.

So yeah, so we do have those blind spots.

And I think what's really important is when you were talking about your

conversation earlier today, I think it was someone had asked you something and

What people will typically do is they'll answer the question in front of them.

And what you did was challenge the context for the question.

And that's so important.

That's what we need.

The 10th man principle for is you have to challenge the assumptions.

In my work, what I found is that if you look at conflict, most of the

conflict isn't really between the people, it's between their assumptions,

it's something that they've learned or misinterpreted or were taught wrong and

particularly when people are given dogma.

When you look at religious wars are fought because people have grown up

with a different story of who God is.

And they're both fighting for the same figure.

Of course, everybody

can prove that their religion's dead right, of course.

We all know that it, whatever belief you have, it's absolutely

100 percent provable, right?

Same as Freud with his when you're talking about and

when you talk about therapies.

I think you're talking the same thing that I've often said is Every therapist

will interpret the person who's in front of them based on the school

that they were, they're so ingrained, so like therapists and in much the

same happens to coaches is that they become taught someone else's view.

And you could take someone to 10 different therapists and they'll have

10 different complete professional opinions of why they act as they do.

And it's because the therapy, the school, the coaching, whatever gives the context.

And that context is inherently flawed.

And when you don't challenge.

I feel with coaching so I was around in the early days of coaching and

I learned from Thomas Leonard they call him the father of coaching.

And it was when he'd left ICF which he founded and I watched him

and it was like, you're a genius.

But you're not my genius.

I couldn't do that as but what I see is so many people, they learn from the

school of coaching and they think coaching is their thing, but coaching is a tool.

And what they do is they diminish their self and they start promoting coaching.

And the whole methodology of coaching of what they've been told.

But really there's something in the person.

And the coaching is tool or a technique should be aligned with

what makes you individual and what gives you that particular slant.

And I think that's where a lot of where the whole framework of coaching limits

people where it could free them more.

Yeah

I agree.

I was just thinking that actually, that I consider myself

a little bit of an anomaly.

I did some research a couple of years ago the idea behind the tenth man for

me, the reason I adopted that as part of my sort of ethos, if you like, my creed

and so you'll see the logo of the tenth man on a lot of the stuff that I use,

is that it's not just that person should be a devil's advocate, Or a contrarian.

When I did my teaching qualification years ago, good grief, 25 years

ago I became a a teacher of adults and the work that I did my work in

my exam was all around teaching.

There was a theory back in the nineties about left and right brain.

I know it's been a little bit debunked recently, but there was this

idea of the left and right brain.

So I did a lot of my thesis on this idea of left and right brain thinking.

And one of the interesting things I came up with was that being left handed myself,

roughly one in ten people are left handed.

That's across all periods of history.

It always appears to be the case that one in ten people have been left handed.

And that's across all cultures, whether you're an Inuit, Or

an Aboriginal in Australia.

One in ten people are left handed.

And some of the study that's been done on that is, is about the idea that the

world is predominantly right handed.

And so whenever you make a a decision to do anything, to open a

door, for instance, you go through a, let's say, a two step process.

See door, grab handle, open.

But I see the door, go to open it, realize that it, that I'm standing

on the wrong side, and I have to make another cognitive step.

And because of that, it tends to make left handers think a little

bit differently to right handers.

And as a consequence, a lot of the people that challenge the norms

of society are often left handed.

Not that they all are, and it is also true that there's a a great predominance

of psychopaths also amongst the left handers as the right handers.

So there are issues with being left handed as well as some of

the advantages that they offer.

However, the point that this research was making that from an evolutionary

point of view, It seems necessary to have a small group of people within

society that challenge the norms.

Otherwise, we can tend to go off on this.

Broad and narrow path into, the future following, let's say steam locomotion,

we could have had an entire world built up of just pure steam industry.

But because there are the Elon Musk's of the world, the strange

thinkers, the people that come at things from different angles.

we tend to branch off in different directions.

And hence, we moved out of steam into the combustion engine, into

electricity, into the internet and so on.

So it's, and it doesn't mean that the left handers or these unusual

thinkers make this all happen.

They just spark the changes that make the rest of society

go off in different directions.

And so when you talk about coaching, I think coaching is very important.

I think we all need to be guided in the direction that works best

for us and to be shown the best way to take our own journey.

Nine out of 10 coaches follow a fairly standard approach.

And I think that's what works best, but occasionally it does help if some

lunatic comes along and says hold on a minute, let's flip the whole thing

upside down and try it a different way.

It doesn't always work, but for somebody like me that sort of tries to

work a little bit against the norms.

And so hold on why we're doing it this way, so when I talk about coaching

and the vast majority of coaches are working towards an outcome, I'm working

towards something completely different.

And it works for the people that I work with but for the vast majority of

people, the coaching that most coaches do is the best type of coaching.

So I would never say that my approaches is the best way.

I think it's just it's.

It's just an alternative way of dealing with some of the issues that we face

as people that help us perhaps to start thinking, hold on a minute,

is this as right as we think it is?

Are all of our assumptions absolutely correct?

And for the people that I work with, especially leaders working within

organizations where the leaders are making decisions that affect everybody, it's

important for me to help these people start asking themselves hold on a minute.

How do I know this story I'm telling myself is right?

And just because everybody's nodding, is it because they all

agree or because they're terrified?

And those occasional people that come along to challenge the status quo are

not necessarily the best way of doing it for everybody, but it does sometimes just

change the way we think about things.

And you're right I think in a lot of cases, coaching is just

a job, just like being a plumber is just a job for some people.

But there are a lot of really great people, there's a

lot of coaches on LinkedIn.

The ones I talk to are amazing people and they've helped me.

Although the two or three have actually approached me and I've had coaches

myself in the past, but I'm very careful about being coached myself

because I actually said to somebody recently, I'm scared of you coaching me.

Because I don't want to become too mainstream.

I don't want to become too normal.

I'm a bit weird.

I'm happy with my weird.

And for me, it works with the people that I work with.

By and large, I wouldn't suggest that's the best way for people to

go.

That's the thing.

And it comes back to what you opened up with about being whole.

I think what we have is we have traditionally we've had religion,

we've had school and then you have the schools of therapy and schools of

coaching who are trying to commoditize.

And I think what you've done is you've taken what coaching has to offer and all

the other things, and I think that's what we need to do is we need to take all of

these different schools and take what we want, what works from them, what we

have in the end, we have to be whole and we can't be whole by just fitting into.

And so I think what you've done is you've challenged the

assumptions and the context.

And so you've taken what works and what doesn't, and it's become your methodology,

it's become something for you.

And that's what I feel.

All of us, we have quirks and we have individual viewpoints

that are made up because of our uniqueness, our unique experience,

our unique genetics, all of that mix.

And I think that what we, that's what we need to embrace is identify what it is.

About us and then fit those systems in so that they all work

as a kind of a congruent whole.

That's dead right.

I, you just reminded me of something.

I wrote about it a little while back because it was probably for me,

it was a changing point, a turning point for me in my whole working

life about I don't know, 10, 12 years ago, a boss that I was working with.

Again, working in manufacturing, predominantly working around problem

solving, because in manufacturing problem solving is a discipline on its own.

All products from a quality point of view can have faults that occasionally

crop up and if they're not spotted can just stay within that product

and cause all sorts of problems.

So you need to be very quick with dealing with problems in manufacturing and it was

my job to work across three factories, one in the UK, one in France, one in Germany

to identify issues that took place out with the customers, bring those problems

back to the factory and resolve them.

And one day I was talking to the boss of the organization.

I just reported direct to this guy who was my mentor.

And he said I want you to go fix this problem.

And we were just talking about the logistics and so on.

He said, listen, I want you to just go and see what's going on and then fix it.

And that phrase burned itself into my brain.

I had to go to France to sort a few issues out.

As I was looking around the factories and talking to the various

dealers and so on, I was asking myself, What's actually going on?

Not what do they think is going on?

What are they telling each other that's going on?

What are they trying to persuade me that's going on?

What's actually going on?

And this was about 10 years ago, and it's stuck with me ever since.

In every circumstance that I've worked in, always in a sort of

problem solving environment trying to fix issues with either the business

or with relationships or whatever.

Or in this case now, from a coaching context I always

ask myself, what's going on?

What's actually going on?

Not what are they trying to persuade me that's going on?

Or what do they think is going on?

Or what are they projecting onto other people that they say is going on?

What's actually going on?

And it's a very interesting question to, to ask yourself.

We see the world at the moment is dealing with all sorts of weird problems and

polarization and, arguments and so on.

And I find it fascinating to sit there and ask myself what's really going on.

Not what do they think is going on, but what's actually going on?

And when, from a coaching point of view very often I consider when somebody goes

into a you're talking about mainstream coaching being a little bit disrupted from

time to time by taking certain things out.

What tends to happen in all situations is somebody will come up with something new.

It works.

Everybody likes it.

They all adopt it.

And then it becomes dogma.

And the trouble with that then is it becomes rigid.

And so any anomalies or outliers or anybody that's trying to live their own

personal experience, if they don't fit into that dogma, then they are either

forced to fit in or they're outcasts.

And so the idea behind this approach, what's actually going

on here, is why are we doing this?

Why we're coaching people, not whether it fits a certain formula or a certain theory

or a certain approach or a set of beliefs.

What's going on?

What are we trying to accomplish?

What's going on with this person?

How can we best help?

Sometimes the answer is we can't, at least we know that instead of

trying to voice this idea that we have in our mind on them.

You'll notice from my posts, I hate dogma.

I'm constantly when people say stuff.

And they just assume that we all agree, I'm just like, Oh,

hold on a minute, hold on.

That's not always necessary and by and large, most people's

intentions are very good.

Most people are doing really good things to help each other.

But from time to time, it does need somebody to say no, I

don't think so, I'm one of them.

I used to have a a concept called the think free rebellion.

I think the problems that people have is because they don't think free.

And yeah, freely think I think people our problems come from three main sources,

which are dogma to drama, which is their emotional biases and then dated maps.

So ignorance of the things that they don't know.

I went to school and.

I just spent all the whole of my school life rebelling because you put me here.

You decided what I say I could do this quicker.

Why do I have to sit here for years?

It's stupid, so I'm not going to do it.

And yeah, so I've always disliked any kind of, any form of dogma.

And I think what you're getting that in.

is what you've always done is in, in trying to understand how things

work is you'll get into truth.

So I've always called it truth seeking.

So I think on my book, it was the Truth Seekers Wayfinder, that was back then

I realized that the people I worked best with were people who were looking

for truth, because some people were looking for power, some people were

looking for peace but it's about truth.

One of my foundational principles is build on truth and truth is different

from honesty because people can be being honest but it doesn't mean

that they're Actually speaking the truth and I was mistaken, right?

Yeah.

And so the truth is you have to dig for and you never know what the truth is.

So I've always operated on like my personality type.

If you look on the Enneagram, my fear is not knowing, my

fear is not being competent.

And so I've always sought knowledge.

And I've always been aware most of what I think is wrong.

And so that's where I've always challenged every context.

Most of what I think is wrong, and it's the things that I'm wrong about that are

the things that are going to hurt me.

So I've spent my life in trying to anticipate.

problems and solve problems.

And one of my main drives in seeking out problems to solve was so that

I never had to live through them.

I realized that you could outgrow problems, or it was an idea

that you could outgrow problems.

So you've constantly been seeking to prepare yourself for the unexpected.

Yeah I think as a teenager I read a lot of books and so I was reading Peter

Drucker in my teenage years and I just thought, hang on, every time I learn

something, it's here's what you know.

The problems are outside of that.

The more that you know, the less problems.

And it was a childish attempt to avoid any problems.

And all the world, all that.

Yeah.

All that.

Yeah.

And all that happens is you just get different problems

that you do still didn't see.

But I think that's probably what motivated me to, to look at the things as

I do.

If ever proof of that idea was necessary this accident, for me, was

that that you literally cannot control.

Everything, even if you control everything, something is

going to bite you in the arse.

And with that knowledge and understanding that precept, I think

it's important that whilst I spend a lot of time talking to organizations

and individuals about being the best.

They can be as a, as an entity, whether they be an organization or a person,

it doesn't matter how good you get at being you need other people, you

need other organizations, you need partnerships, you need to collaborate.

And that really there's a line beyond which.

Whilst I don't go beyond that in my work, it's absolutely important it's

fundamental for people to understand that as good as you personally make

yourself, that has to involve being able to connect and collaborate with

other people, because you could be the most amazing version of yourself.

stuff will happen.

And so by trying to be insular and isolated from the rest of the world,

you are by definition, not your ideal self, because you're not connected,

connecting to the outside world.

So that's where sort of your world and my world just touch on each other.

Because I will very often I in my work, categorize The different approaches

that certain people might take and there are segments of society that

try to insulate themselves from too much interaction with other people

because of the hurt that they might incur by interacting with other people.

You have to overcome that because, all the best things are very risky,

love and relationships and so on.

So you have to take that risk.

You have to move beyond.

the safety of your own boundaries.

And that's where, what you do is so important.

I would say to somebody, get, become amazing, then go and

see Rob and he can help you.

So there is a line at which all the self improvement and personal development

has to move beyond the boundaries of ourself into other people's lives.

And we need to, that interrelationship.

side of our life is super.

Although I don't go there, it's a super important part of our own development.

Yeah, I recognize that where I started from was in trying to outrun

problems was really motivated by, yeah, self protection and It was really

an aim to not engage with the world because then it makes it safe and,

you can stay in your little bubble.

But yeah life will always give you whatever you, whatever plans you

have, and we all have our blind spots and mine were those but you

have to learn to relate but it.

It's like in, in relationships, people are always I'm going to work, like

someone's had a bad relationship.

I'm going to work on myself and I won't have relationships until I'm better.

You can't fix the problem of the relationship.

out of the relationship.

You do need to look and address, what was in you.

A lot of that has to happen in the relationship.

Much as I like to put equations I like to, see, I like maths and English equally.

And I just think maths is has less of the frills.

So if you can get something into an equation, it's.

There's something that's completely true.

It's not true for it.

It's true, like you can boil down to everyone.

It's not as descriptive or prescriptive.

The problem with that though, Rob, it's funny you say that about this boiling

everything, things down to an equation.

I like that way of thinking, actually, and I did I wrote a little, I'm

always writing these things from my little talks and courses I do, little

pamphlets, and there was one that I did that talks about exactly that.

That most people to navigate life we need to understand how

we come to certain decisions.

So most people's thinking tends to be, if A, then B, because C.

So if I do this, then they will do that, because they like, whatever.

And the problem with that is, whilst that holds true again, nine times out

of ten, it will be perfectly correct.

But there are situations where A doesn't equal B, so you can't do C.

And just on those occasions is where we trip ourselves up.

We stop at a red traffic light, because it's, we know that red means stop.

And then it goes to green on the assumption that all the

other traffic is stopped.

And we assume that's correct, and 99 times out of 100 it is correct.

But sometimes, for whatever reason, that's not the case,

and that's where we fall over.

And as a race, as a species, humans can operate on that, if A, then B, because C.

And we progress phenomenally well.

But occasionally, we need something to say, what if it doesn't?

What if it doesn't do that, because maybe this isn't that?

And when we ask those questions, so for instance, in your case,

and what I do in my coaching is, I would make an assumption.

I'm not saying this about you, but I would make an assumption about

somebody and I would ask them.

So you're trying to prepare yourself for all of these unexpected things.

Because, you don't want bad stuff to happen to you.

Why?

What's wrong with bad stuff?

Why don't you want any bad stuff at all?

And what do you think is going to happen to you if the bad stuff does happen?

Because I need to know what that one time out of a hundred, if that does

happen, like this accident to me, I was zooming through life and thinking

everything's great, and a big flash moment of bang, and everything stops.

And I didn't have a plan for that, and as a species, we often don't have a plan for

that tiny thing that might just happen.

And you often meet people that are preparing for life by trying

to answer all the what ifs.

You can guarantee there's one what if that they haven't thought of, and

that's the point of the 10th man, because everybody you'll get groups

of people in a meeting, and they're all saying, if A plus B then C, right?

And they go, yeah, but that's not always the case.

And so whilst it works a lot of the time.

I just try to I'm always, I find myself mentally saying to people

all the time, Oh, hold on a minute.

We're all rushing headlong over this cliff, and you look at the

warring in Ukraine the situation with Hamas, all of these terrible

things that are taking place.

And we're making assumptions about why it's happening and

what needs to be done about it.

And if we could just do this, then we, then that would happen.

And you're just like, hold on a minute.

Every single thing that you do has a ripple effect on some, something else.

And you don't know what all the ramifications are.

And even just a person thinking if I can just control the whole world and not have

any relationships, that has an effect.

It has an effect on all the people around them, so you have to be open to risks and

all the other stuff that comes with it.

But at the same time, you need to be as complete as you can possibly

be, so you can get some bloody enjoyment out of life, right?

The human condition is hilarious.

People have a control drama.

The Enneagram talks about the core fears that drive people.

It's like we try and get a flowing river and we try and put it in a cup.

But the water just becomes stagnant, so it's not, we have to engage with life,

which means that we have to face fear.

I

know nothing about the Enneagram and probably this is a

conversation for another time, but I would be interested, in fact I

will almost certainly Google it now.

I've seen it, I've seen it, one through nine, isn't it?

Yeah, that's it.

So I've seen it, but I don't know enough about it to have any

appreciation of what you're saying.

So for example, it speaks to me in.

What it has is the nine different groups and the nine different

groups are based around their fear.

So for mine's five, the investigator and the fear is incompetence or ignorance.

And so the way, so when I look at my orientation it was to

amass as much knowledge as I could as a protective mechanism.

And when we talked about not really wanting to engage, it's because of

a fear that if I was in a situation, I might not know what to do and

I might not be competent in it.

And so it's trying to constantly weigh the world so that you can always win.

Protect yourself.

To protect yourself.

Yeah, basically of not failing.

And then other people have so for one is like a fear of not being a moral person.

And so there'll be the people that will look for moral and ethical things and

they'll be very moral and ethical because deep down they fear that they're not.

Number two is the helper, who will be they will constantly help, they're

selflessly, they'll be the martyrs that will always put others first, because

they don't what is it, they don't feel good enough, they don't feel whatever,

but yeah, there's nine different fears, so it's an interesting model to look at.

Every stance that we adopt, there's always a payoff what's the payoff

for a particular approach that we take.

Even the person that gives everything of themselves all day, every day and

it's super, there's a payoff there that they're getting from that.

Whilst I don't know the Enneagram, I find that quite interesting.

I've always been fascinated, and it's become quite trendy recently

to talk about the hero's journey.

And, Jungian archetypes and that sort of thing.

So I've always tended to see the way we approach the world

in a sort of archetypal way.

So when you talk about this desire to protect yourself, or the martyr, or

somebody that takes a very high moral stance I find that quite interesting.

They all fit certain archetypes, and I'm guessing.

I don't know whether you use that in your work, but I'm guessing that when

you see clues towards a certain type of approach to life, not a certain type of

person necessarily, but when a person is adopting a particular stance from an

archetypal point of view for me, when I see that you can draw certain inferences

from that, if somebody is trying to protect themselves, the obvious answer

is from what and why, what happened, and, how does this translate into the

way you interact with the rest of the world, all of those archetypes can

point you in a different direction.

A direction, right?

I've had conversations with people who I don't know whether they

ridiculed it, but so I have used the MBTI for years just because

it's a tool that I know really well.

It works up to a point.

It's not like the horoscope or anything like that, it's just something that

once I see certain things, I know that certain preferences with the

way we interact with the world would indicate other similar preferences.

And so it helps me to just move in very quickly and focus in on certain behaviors.

But all of those things are those archetypes and the, the way we type people

as long as they don't become dogmatic.

And, you're this, so you must do things this way, as long as you can use them as

a tool to guide you in the direction of being able to help the person according

to what they want, not what you think they want then they're very useful.

And I will often say when I'm talking to people about things like the MBTI.

It's something that highlights a collection of activities or behaviors that

we all have but they tend to congregate around certain beliefs in the world.

And it just helps me to hone in on those beliefs when I'm talking to somebody.

But they're not the, they're not the answer to, I can't tell

you who's going to win the Grand National or anything like that.

And I'm guessing that the Enneagram is something similar and it just helps

you to understand a certain group of beliefs and belief structures around a

person's way of dealing with work, right?

Yeah.

I love archetypes.

I love rules of thumb because they just give you clues.

So yeah, I'm a big fan of Myers Briggs as well.

The problem can be that someone's yeah, Myers Briggs, that's

it, or a Enneagram, that's it.

And they then have something to sell, it's if that's all you do,

you, then you sell him that thing.

But what it, I think all of them when, if you look at them,

what's true, what's not true.

So for me, I saw the Enneagram as it did speak truly to me and it spoke truly to

other people I saw of their fears and it obviously it doesn't work for all of them,

but the same way Myers Briggs gives you indicators of someone's personality and

then there's, there's lots of other tools like Kolbe Fascinator Wealth Dynamics?

Have you come across them?

Yeah, I

was just thinking as well, when you said that, of how people,

DISC and things like that, that they in themselves can the practitioners

of certain types of heuristic or rules of thumb can become dogmatic.

And When people say, oh, yes, I do the Enneagram, I think the

MBTI is rubbish, or I think this is rubbish they're all rubbish.

If you look at it from that point of view, they're literally just a

heuristic that you can make certain inferences from, and nine times out

of ten your inference will be correct.

Not always, and that's where a successful practitioner of anything like that is

aware that there will be times when you're wrong, and for me if, for instance,

let's say a certain MBTI type who finds themselves who considers themselves a

very data oriented person, will make me think, oh, on that basis then, probably

not always their ability to deal with the emotional side of certain behaviors

is not as developed as their data, the data driven side of their personality.

It's an inference that you can draw.

And based on that, you could say to somebody.

When you're in an argument or, when you face with conflict,

how do you deal with that?

If they say something in line with that, with the inference that you've

drawn, it pushes you more in the direction of thinking, Oh, yeah,

they really are an ISTP or whatever.

And you can then help them come to some other conclusion.

But you would have got there anyway, if you'd have used any other, any number

of ways of getting to that information.

But they can sometimes get you there quicker, right?

Yes.

You're not tied to it.

It's just clues.

On that note I'm interested.

What is your Myers Briggs?

INTJ.

Ah, very similar.

I'm INTP.

So that's why I just mentioned ISTP actually, 'cause I

are you, I or IN

I'm INTJ.

But I mentioned ISTP there because I worked in manufacturing I tend to

work with a lot of INTP's and ISTP's.

They're very similar where although the INT can be a little bit more conceptual in

their approach to dealing with engineering type problems, but they're the number

crunches and the geeks and the nerds and the IT people of most organizations or ips

and ISPs, obviously we're all different.

But I, in talking to you, I recognize that

yeah.

Because I've read one of the things is you shouldn't be involved

with people . There's an INTP

yeah, there's something like that.

It was like.

Like not best, it should be something like engineering or IT or something like that.

And I can understand that because.

My orientation to relationships came because that was the problem that

people had and I looked at solving that, but I've done it in a very

different way than most people.

Most people who talk about relationships will be very warm and empathetic,

and they'll be very much on the emotion, whereas I'm look at it and

I look at, okay, here's the dynamics and I look more at The dynamics

of what works and what doesn't.

Because I think a lot of the problems in relationships are because people

don't separate logic and emotion.

So could I ask

you then just as an INTP, the I find it interesting talking to you because

my wife for a long time thought she was an INTP and we talked about this a lot, and.

Depending on the mood, the time of day, what's going on in your life, people

can type differently and this is why for me, the whole 10th man premise is

don't trust everything all the time.

Don't believe everything all the time.

For a long time, she thought she was an INTP and we kept saying I

think you might be an ISTP because she's much more action orientated.

And so on, but both INTP and ISTPs you're what I consider to be obsessive collectors

of information, constantly more, you can never have too much information.

Whereas somebody like myself, an intuitive type there's a saying, isn't

there in, in manufacturing, certainly that two events don't make a pattern.

Unless you're an INTJ like me, and two's more than enough.

And I'll be forecasting, the next three weeks of work based on two

little things that have happened.

We don't need a lot of information to jump to conclusions.

But you've never got enough information, have you?

Yeah.

So my girlfriend would say to me I'll write the same thing again and again.

And I'll have forgotten.

As soon as I've written something, I've forgotten what I've written.

I'll rewrite it because to me, I've updated my whole model

and everything's changed.

I'm constantly aware that the assumptions I operate on are flawed.

And I'm constantly refining and developing and evolving a model.

And it's essentially the same.

Even back when I wrote that, it's 2004 so 20 years, it's still, that's when I

talked about the operating system and it's still, the human operating system

is still what I think we all function from but yeah, I'm constantly gathering

does this fit, doesn't this fit.

So when I look at something, I look at who agrees, who disagrees, and I try

and weigh up to get, because I think they both have part of the truth.

And it's really why I love conversations like this, because you're where

we find a point of difference.

Like most people hate, and I don't particularly like being in conflict,

but I actually love conflict because when you have conflict, you have strong

emotions and you get to the truth.

And then you're able to work stuff out.

But it's not knowing the truth most like you can't operate

if you don't know the truth.

And so you have to constantly test your assumptions and know that you're operating

on truth and not some flawed idea.

It is fascinating that this because I think I seem to remember

writing a post about this recently about everybody's truth being the correct one.

It's become fashionable these days to say this is my truth.

And, okay, whilst that may be true in some ways, we can't all have our own

truth, because, the sky is blue, and if I walk off a cliff, I will smash myself

to pieces at the bottom of the cliff.

There are certain rules and laws that we need to follow,

and that's an absolute truth.

But when talking to people of your MBTI and similar.

So anybody IP it is all about what is the truth.

Getting closer and closer and closer.

For me, there is no truth.

Everything could be, who knows?

Who knows?

It might be relative truth tomorrow.

But even relativity is relative for, we're literally contrarian with ourselves.

We, we question the questions that we question ourselves with.

It's just we love to play with Enigmas and word games and all this

the way we categorize our world.

But the ips I had I had to do some group coaching just before the accident.

I was given very little information except what the MBTI types of each person was.

And I needed to figure out very quickly what the group dynamic was.

I got an idea based upon the information that I had already

on the personality types.

And I thought, if I'm guessing correctly, this one person is going to be the cause

of most of the problems, because they were so different to everybody else.

Their type was so different.

So I thought, I can either ask, and we can go around the table and

talk about it, or you could just throw a bomb in, say something

inflammatory and see what happens.

So I went for that one.

It was the quickest way to get to the answer that I needed.

Fair enough.

I threw it in and boom, the whole thing went up and somebody said,

I don't have to put up with this.

I'm going on.

I'm not staying.

And they stayed and it worked out fine.

But it was afterwards the boss said.

Wow, that was risky.

And I said, yeah, we got to where we wanted to get to really quickly.

And we were then able to use the rest of the time available to us

because we only had an afternoon productively dealing with all of the

issues that came up as a consequence.

I, INTJ is my type.

We love just seeing what happens.

Let's just light the blue touch paper and see what the hell happens.

Because IPs like yourself.

Even if you don't consider yourself people, maybe, I know a lot of IPs

that say people are not my thing.

I don't like to socialize.

But most of your problems, or most of the issues that you encounter,

or most of the things that you deal with, revolve around people.

Relationships and all the stuff that you work in.

Whereas for other types like the IJs.

People issues are not a problem for us.

We're more interested in abstract concepts.

So knowing these things, as we do, and as we've just been talking about,

it allows you to throw those bombs in sometimes and see what happens.

It is interesting because I should be.

Like from that type, I should be an engineer or something like that, but

I've got no interest in buildings.

I've got no interest in cars.

My interest is people.

I like the engineering of people.

It is like I'm talking to people and when I listen, I'm literally the

very words they use now drawing me a map and I can see how they think.

And so I know, so all I need to do is listen to someone talk about

relationships and I know the problems they're going to have in the next

five years in their relationships because it's already set in there.

Operating system in their assumptions and their beliefs.

But yes I have that approach, but to people.