In episode 55 of Unleash Your Impact, Unlock Others, Dave is joined by experienced Executive Coach Nick Marlow to explore how leaders can create positive leadership ripples and enhance the performance of both their own teams and the wider organisation they represent.

Drawing on his own development challengers and over 25 years of coaching leaders and senior professionals, Nick shares a compelling perspective on why real performance starts with self-awareness. Together, they unpack an evolved version of the classic performance equation first mooted by Tim Gallwey, and explore why high performance, full engagement and wellbeing must be developed together, not treated as separate agendas.

This is a thoughtful and purposefully thought-provoking conversation for leaders who want to create sustainable performance, healthier cultures and meaningful impact, by starting with themselves.

Key Talking Points:

1. Why most people operate far below their true potential
2. The role of self-awareness in unlocking purpose and performance
3. Embracing the ABC of life, Awareness + Balance + Choice
4. The dangers of promoting people away from their natural strengths
5. How leaders create positive ripples by doing their own inner work first
6. Practical reflections leaders can use to reconnect with what energises them

Welcome to Unleash youh Impact, Unlock Others, a podcast about inspiring leadership. We hope to bring you grounded wisdom, stories from real leaders and leave you feeling inspired. Let's dive in.

Welcome once more to Unleash youh Impact Unlock Others, the podcast where we explore leadership that transforms people, organizations and performance. Today, I'm joined by an experienced coach, Nick Marlow, who has a unique perspective on what drives human performance.

Now, many organizations out there would love to unlock more performance in their teams, but what if the way to do that was to unlock the performance in the senior people first? Nick's view, which I share, is that how can anybody help anybody else if they haven't done the work on themselves?

In a previous podcast, Rich and I have talked about Tim Galway's famous formula, performance equals potential minus interference. Well, Nick has evolved his thinking around this equation into something a bit more powerful.

From his perspective, that is how high performance plus full engagement plus well being equals potential minus interference.

Whilst that might sound like a mouthful at the moment, we'll unpack what that means for you, for leaders, for teams and for organizations, and specifically how coaching can help unlock potential and performance for everyone. This is designed to be an insightful conversation with some great practical takeaways for all of you.

So with no further ado, I'll welcome Nick to the podcast. Welcome, Nick.

Thanks very much for having me.

Yeah, great to see you. Before we get into your view of performance and the equation, let's just tap back into the early life of Nick.

So just tell us a little bit about where you grew up, your early life and influences.

Yeah. I've always lived in Gloucestershire and I went to boarding school and it was interesting in the sense of myself going back through my career.

If I look back, I started out in banking and that was at that point in the early 80s was a job for life.

My parents were really pleased and I went in and went through the management development program, but quite early on realized I wasn't bank manager material. It wasn't really what interests me or I. I was getting a job. Really.

Yeah.

So I can do it in the. In the sense of being able to do all the. All the. All the jobs. But it. It really wasn't where I was most comfortable.

So I stayed there for six years because when you're in banking, you're not trained to do anything else. So what happened was I went to a party one night and someone said to me, do I want to do international sales and marketing?

So I sat there and I thought, well, do I? Yeah, do I or not but to get out I thought yeah, I'll do that. So I went along and worked for Carraden Myra. It was a Myra Showers.

Yes. Yeah.

So I went into that role and I was working with the agencies in Europe and also two subsidiaries, one was in France and one was in Germany.

So what I did is I went over to build the relationship with the businesses and go out with the sales forces to implement and integrate the way that the UK was selling technical products.

Yeah.

And yeah, it worked very well for six years. I went into marketing after that doing more around the consumer and marketing materials and exhibitions, all that kind of area.

But again I can do many jobs but I wasn't, if I look back now I was contributing probably 30, 40% of myself and I was seen as not a high flyer but a very competent, always did what was needed.

Yeah.

Delivered every single time, everyone. It worked well but then actually I was made redundant from there and. But actually at that period I actually went did.

When I was 28 I went and did a HNC in business studies and finance and that was really revelatory. It was there that I met the person and that we'll probably talk about later that really changed my perspective and understanding of myself.

That really started me on the journey of growth and develop for myself.

Are you much like me then? When I was at school, my early life, before I even got to the world of work, I didn't have a clue what I was going to do.

I didn't have the level of self awareness that I needed. I certainly didn't have a sense of purpose. No. Was that the same for you growing up?

You didn't really have a clue of what your journey was like ahead of you?

Well, yeah, and having done the work that I've done recently, you know there are children now who've been. Been doing geography degrees and, and one was ppe, philosophy, politics and economics.

And the thing is if you're going to be a lawyer and you're 18, you don't actually know what lawyering includes or what do you have to do or anything. And I did talk to somebody last week and he was, he'd done, he had done geography at a, you know, one of the top.

Yeah.

Universities and he was doing what he was, he was, he's done very well. He'll get to two one or a first.

Yeah.

But then he didn't know what to do after that. So his grandmother said to him well why didn't you go and be a lawyer?

Okay.

So he looked into that and do a conversion course into law. I said to his father, who I've worked with in the past, and I said, He's doing it because he will probably.

He thinks he'll earn a lot of money and it will be whatever he thinks it is. But after two hours he said, I don't want to be a lawyer. He said, actually what I want to do is go into the Coldstream Guards.

He lives on a farm, he's got a lot of energy, he's very bright and he wants to go. He likes structure, he likes that, that kind of approach.

He likes knowing what to do, he likes to be directed and he's playing to who he is psychologically.

And the understanding of the psyche of somebody makes all the difference because it gives that person a roadmap that they can then use with confidence and clarity and be able to explain with their story and their history where they're able to do that and why they're so good in it. So that there's a.

There's an honesty in their conversation rather than being taught us by to say what you think they should say or replying in the way that everyone else would say. Or you can actually go in and be yourself and tell the truth of where you are operating at your best.

So you got to 28, is it fair to say then, you didn't really have a strong sense of direction there, you didn't have a strong sense of self awareness. Were you aware of what your strengths and passions were or no. So all of that is yet to be developed.

Yeah.

So you met this character who you described as. This was a bit of a game changer for me. So just tell us about that person and what they offered, you know, which helped change the direction for you.

Well, I went back to college and I did this B tech and he was one of the lecturers in the second year. And I didn't know at the time, but he was about 70, he had retired and he didn't want to go and work with the very bright people.

He said he wanted to work in the further education side because he knew that there you would have a lot of energy probably and a practical perspective as opposed to an academic one. So he went back into lecturing.

Wow.

At 25, he was awarded the Military Cross for the war effort in Japan and got the troops out of the jungle.

And he said to the class, he said, if anyone wants to come and talk to me about themselves and where they're going and who they are and their career help and all that, just come and knock on my door. The next day, I went and knocked on his door. I think I was the only person that actually went along and spoke to him.

Okay.

So I spent two or three years just absorbing and understanding a philosophical way of saying, seeing the world, looking at behaviors, looking at values, looking at beliefs, looking at all the elements that create the person that they are. And he encouraged. Well, he. I didn't actually find then what I was going to do. I was. I was 35 when I found out what I really wanted to do.

But I did actually go and do Samaritan work so I could find out whether I could deal with difficult situations. I trained as a therapist, not wanting to be a therapist, but wanting to have the ethics and the morals and the understanding of the frameworks, etc.

And then I did actually, I left Myra and went and worked for Kraft Foods, part of Philip Morris.

So they were very good at the development people of people in the business, and everyone was on programs of what they'd study each year, et cetera, et cetera. And at that point I thought, well, I wouldn't mind going into people development. And I said, can I do a secondment on the training courses?

So if you've got two consultants coming in, if I take one of those, you save quite a lot of money and I will be the number two to the person that's running it. And they said, yes, because there was a saving and all these big companies want to keep savings going on.

So what attracted you to people development then? What was it that. It's almost like a little bit of a fire underneath you in terms of.

What was that thing that said people development could be the thing?

For me, I think the main thing was the understanding. I think I. I unconsciously started doing work or being able to listen and talk like Bob did.

Not in the same way academically or the brain that he had, but, But I've always. My psyche is very much, how can I help you? That is my process, My natural process is, what can I do for you?

Yeah, and that's a pleasure for me to do that because I get a lot from it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's giving, isn't it, rather than receiving.

And actually, it's much nicer actually, when you give than just receiving all the time. So that it was. It was you. You understand this. When you look back, you don't. I didn't know it that cleanly that then. No, but it was. I find it.

I find it very easy.

Yeah.

I. You know, Samaritan work is quite difficult at times, but I felt very comfortable with it. I also did survivors of child abuse counseling.

Oh, okay.

Because it was a voluntary work and it was another way of understanding and being able to hold a space and being able to be open minded, to be able to take on difficult scenarios that just. I found it fascinating, interesting.

And I learned every day from somebody else, their life, what's going on for them and what can I do to try and alleviate or take away the pain that they have inside.

You sound like you're a naturally curious person anyway.

I think the curiosity has always been there.

And you sound like you're the sort of person who'd like to push himself as well.

Doing what I want to do, I don't push myself unless it's something I really want to do, because I don't. I'm not particularly ambitious and I'm not particularly competitive. But when I've got a. With the.

For me, it's about purpose and that the base of everything has to be purpose.

Right.

And then effortless. You know, I've had. I've done this work for 25 years now, and I used to see seven people a day.

And I'm more excited at the end of the day than I am at the beginning. Just one person. That is me in my element. If you've ever read the book, the element it really is.

That is what I found through doing work that gave the foundation for it. But then what happened was I was at.

When I was at craft and I went into purchasing there and I studied this chartered institute of purchasing and Supply. So I can do these things. But again, I was probably giving 30, 40% of myself.

I wasn't going in every day thinking, I really want to be here and engaged. I can do the work and it will be done perfectly.

In your experience, then you said you've been coaching individuals for 25 years, so you've obviously coached a lot of people over that time. Thousands of people. If you were to sort of take a broad guess at it, what sort of percentage of their potential are people mostly working at?

I'm guessing it's nowhere near 100%.

It's ridiculous.

Where would you say in your experience?

Well, they're functionally good. Everyone's functionally, yeah.

Because you've learned or You've done that study or you've, you've done a workshop or you've done whatever we, you know, I can, I can do purchasing if you want me to and I do it relationally and people did very good prices for me because they trusted me. It wasn't about hitting someone around the head.

And you know, corporates really kind of, if they're very big companies, they can be really pretty bullish. You're lucky to be supplying us. Yeah, but I don't believe in that.

I think actually collaboration, my leadership style would be very much around people development. It would be, that's my natural psychology. It would be about collaboration, it would be about developing people.

It would be around getting everything organized and planned. It's. I'm very planful, I can, I run a diary that works perfectly. So you're going to get that consist it's consistency, leadership and all that.

If someone's, even if they're awful, as long as they're consistently awful, it's better than having you don't know what's coming in the next day, whether they're high, low in the middle. Yeah, that is really difficult. And people don't realize they're giving off the vibes. They're giving off because their self awareness is.

Well, how many people do, do a lot of work on themselves? Because it's an interesting question. And you know, people will spend more on their hairdressing, women will spend fortunes on their hairdressing.

But actually if you wanted them to look at themselves and really think of who they are and where they're going and what they want, we don't seem to do that. It's not, it's not, you know, most people. Well, I did, didn't I?

I fell into a career, I didn't have a plan and I meet most people, but I've never had a plan. Why would I have a plan? But the question is, why wouldn't you have a plan?

If you know who you are and what you're doing and where you're gifted and where you're excited and you're learning something that you're really good at, it flows into you. It's not hard work.

Yeah, but I think that's the part of the problem with performance is that not everyone does know or understand what they're passionate about or what they're good at or they haven't got the self awareness to actually, if they do know that, bring it to life and really run with it. Absolutely.

But that's really sad if you think about it, that, that it I believe that you can change that. And I've done it. I went into, what happened was at Craft, I decided I didn't, I didn't want to stay in corporate life.

Okay.

And they said, oh, consultants go in one to one working with individuals to find them when they find a job, when they've lost their been made redundant. And I sat there and I thought, well, I could do that with my eye shirt. I've done 20 years of business so I know exactly what's going on there.

I now have therapeutic qualification, I've done training within the business of craft, which is pretty good standards. And so I went to my boss and I said, can you make me redundant? And he said, well, we do want you to move to Banbury.

And I said, well I'm not going to move to Banbury, I don't want to be coming into Cheltenham, let alone Banbury.

Right.

So they were looking actually in the end for volunteers, so they did let me go. So I said, well the other thing you need to do is find me act placement consultant I can work with.

Now companies like Craft would pay that because they've got the money to do it. So I met this woman and I told her my story, Chris her name was, and I told her my story and she said, yeah, you'd be perfect at that.

That's exactly what your is your element. So she used to get her work from a guy who had his own business selling outplacement services.

So I met him for half an hour in Oxford one day just to check that because Chris introduced me to him and he said, yeah, you can come and work for me. You have to set up self employed, but I will past few clients.

Yeah, because no one wanted to employ somebody to do that service. They had to be so they didn't have the overhead.

So that, and from that day for two years I worked for that business and it worked really, really well.

And my curiosity is in the individual and what do I need to help them with to move on and sell themselves Understand what's happening in the market, looking the best ways of finding work, doing interview skills, doing self employment, if you want to go into that, looking Internet, looking into all the things that some recruitment, retirement, whatever you want. So I worked in my mind was well, how do I help this person do that?

And as time went on, after two years I decided not to be exclusive with one person. I then went to six companies and said because I had two years background, I said can I be an associate for you?

So I was working for seven associate model, seven companies and that's where all the volume came in. I was seeing seven people a day.

So you discovered this love of coaching. You've explained what drew you towards that. Why do you think coaching is so impactful for individuals and the organisations that they work for?

What is it about coaching you think makes the difference?

I would say coaching, the thing I like about coaching is it's prevention rather than cure because this understanding of the self is really important so that the ups and downs of life or the responses we give to situations or the way we feel about ourselves or we talk about ourselves in a critic or an imposter syndrome that people are talking about now and all that kind of stuff. I believe you can clear all that right through conversations and through insight of the person.

Getting to know themselves, getting to appreciate where they're naturally gifted, what they're wanting and have got the experience and knowledge to either do straight away or go and do a qualification and training and learning. We're all going to have to do that going forward because the world is changing so fast.

If you stay stuck or you don't really appreciate what you're offering and how good you are, it's going to be difficult for people because. It's so ingrained, you know, it goes in and we think everyone has a normal upbringing. Even if it's bad. This is what happens.

And of course it isn't what happens, it's just in that world you were living in at that point you, you believe is what's going on for everybody and it's not. And you have to have different perspectives, you have to have different understanding.

You have to have someone who's objective, independent, supportive, honest, open and curious for you. And then how many people really have the chance to go and sit and talk about themselves?

I remember when I did the outplacement work, people kept saying, well, this is the best work I've ever done, Thought well what that's about, what's that about? And it was because it was about them how often do you get that opportunity to think about yourself and who you are and where you're going?

And you know, within, within year, very quickly people were getting jobs within 10 weeks. Everyone always said it would take six months. It doesn't take six months.

If you ask the right question and you understand who you are and you go in there with a confidence, a real confidence, rather than faking it till you're making. Making or whatever they call it. Yeah, it's. Or you should say this or they want to hear this. That isn't a way to interview.

The way to interview the person who's the interviewee needs to be able to tell their truth. And if it doesn't work in that organization, you don't want to work there.

No. And I think this is why I think coaching inside organizations is so important as well.

Because, you know, by the same token, how many people have, you know, had performance reviews, performance discussions, when it isn't really about them. No one's really trying to get them to understand themselves, help them with their self awareness, help them understand what their full potential is.

And to pick up your point, what's getting in their way of achieving that full potential? If we had more of that inside organizations.

Absolutely.

It would be more beneficial for everybody, wouldn't it?

Much better. And you would have a much more beneficial and positive relationship if you're doing it in partnership rather than someone.

If they don't understand themselves, how can they understand anybody else would be my question. Because they'll think that they see the world exactly as they do. And of course they don't.

No, I think this is changing. But I think my experience, and I know Richard's experienced this in the past. Coaching in the past sometimes was seen as.

We use that for remedial issues. But actually what you were saying just now is. No, coaching is a performance accelerator.

If we help people understand what their full potential is, understand the performance they want to achieve and what's getting in their way. Actually, coaching is an accelerator not just for the people who are struggling.

Well, it's really interesting, isn't it? If you look at the sports model.

Yeah.

Every top sports person has a coach.

Absolutely.

Okay. They don't have that. To find out if you're a tennis player, how to hit the ball better. It's all about mindset.

Yeah.

So.

So if these people who are so brilliant at it and they get there because they understand themselves, they know what they're brilliant at, they know what their weaknesses are, but they don't play to it, they Just are aware. So they do other shots or they do something else that dissipates, that the difference is phenomenal. And why everyone could benefit from that.

Because you're going into a state where you do appreciate, you make the best of it. You've got an energy that wants to do it because you're doing what you want to do, because they've gone into whatever they've gone into.

It was interesting. There was a story about Agassiz, that it was his father that wanted him to be the tennis star.

So actually, at the end of his career, he said, I didn't enjoy it at all. And that isn't right either, because that's external validation for the father, not for the child. So this. All this stuff can really happen, which is.

It isn't the best way to.

In my book, if someone tells me who they are, what they want, where they're going, because I've done so much of the work, I can probably see very quickly in half an hour what's likely going to work for them when no one's ever told them that before or really appreciated that. Is that possible? Well, yeah, of course it is. But we don't think that.

I think when we leave school, if we've had a bad time at school, we think we are. Whatever that would be. If I'm honest, when I left school, I didn't think I was very clever because I didn't do that well in exams.

I'm not an academic person. And I'm also dyslexic.

Right. Okay.

Okay. So the dyslexia, now, it's a fact that that's it. But you can get around it.

It doesn't mean you have to do the bit that that would be difficult for you. Find something that works for you. And you have choices in life. Everyone has choices. You've got to have the awareness at the ABC of life.

Awareness, balance and choice.

But what's around all that and what brings that together is you are responsible for who you are, where you're going, what you're doing, and you can take the responsibility for it. And that's when people really engage, when they find that whatever that is.

So let's talk about your version of the performance equation. So I said, Rich and I had talked about this in a previous podcast. We talked about Tim Galway's performance equals potential minus interference.

So I won't go back over that too much. But obviously, in terms of performance, Rich and I tend to talk about not high performance, but optimal performance.

Now, everybody's version of what they can achieve optimally is different. But if all of us could achieve optimal performance, imagine how much, what better the world would be.

Now, by performance, I guess what we're talking there is a number of things. It's about having technical competence and mastery. It's about having clear goals.

It's about actually that mindset that says, I'm going to continuously improve. That's what we mean by performance, isn't it? So you've taken this performance equation, but you've added a couple of extra things into it.

So you've said, yeah, there's performance, whether you call it high performance or optimal performance, whatever you want to call it, plus full engagement plus, well, being equals potential minus interference. So let's explore those things one at a time. Why have you got the full engagement engagement bit there? What do we mean by full engagement?

Well, with the way I work with people, what I'm looking to help them to understand, make the most of deliver is with a clarity and confidence that I know there's at a very base level, there's a natural psychology we're all born with, and it's different for different people.

Right.

The thing with that, it's extremely gift, it's extremely powerful. But people have tried to get as many people to understand it and get things from it.

But when you do it in a team event, my belief is that people will answer as they want to be seen rather than who they are.

Okay.

So I think that just that can damage it because if you're answering it, this is who I want to be rather than who I am, you're not going to get the right answer.

So the full engagement is getting to the heart of who they really are.

Exactly, yeah. With a very deep. That's been used with millions and millions of people around the world over the years.

But with that, it's the environment you're in where you're doing psychological work and it's the trust that you and the rapport that someone builds with you so that you are yourself, the honesty and the truth about what's coming out and the acceptance of what that is, it's very easy because unless you're wanting to pretend to be something, which I wouldn't recommend people to do because in the short term it might work.

But in the medium and long term, you're likely to get stress, you're likely to get burnout, you're likely to be very upset or whatever because you're not playing to what your gift is, I would call it, or the element you have in your natural psychology, the, the other side of individual is not. That is the. Is the nurture side.

So everyone has a different upbringing, a different perspective, a different position in the family, a different relationship with the parent, the relationships with friends. How does that go? What's the outcome of that? What have you learned from this?

How you then go and you perhaps a brilliant sports person, and that's why you go down that route, or you're not allowed to go and play sports. So it depends what you're allowed to actually do or have the capacity to do at that point.

And this doesn't build somebody into something that grows and blossoms. It's just life is like that.

And when you can sit down with somebody and go into an honest conversation about where is it that you think you operate at your best, or what was the most exciting thing you've done, or whatever, their whole body changes and their whole perspective changes, and that's when they start thinking about, well, how could I transfer this into that or go and study that instead? Now, I went back at 28, and I think for me, going at 28 was powerful. I didn't want to do it. When I say I didn't go to university.

No.

Because I'm not academic and because I can't think why I just didn't want to go to university.

So what I think what you're talking about with this full engagement, the way that you're describing it, is we're trying to get people to emotionally commit and fully engage with, on an intrinsic level, what matters to them. Absolutely, yeah. So it's all right, knowing what performance you want to achieve.

You can have very clear goals, you can understand what your technical competence or your strengths is. You can even understand what you're passionate about. But actually, it's more than that. What you're saying is there's got to be this.

This energy and focus towards it.

Yeah. But you asked most people what they want to do, they don't really understand what that means.

Like the example of the person and then said he wanted to potentially go to law and things like that, because it's a lot of money. Well, money is great, but it's not actually what's going to make you very happy. Probably.

No. So.

It'S a much, you know, anyone can send, you know, can do a goal, but actually, is it the right goal? Would be the question.

So the only way you're going to, I would say that you can get that is through understanding your psychology, understanding what's gone into you, nurturing and Then you also have to think about the environment you're in, because some people can cope very well in corporate life. I couldn't cope in corporate life because I didn't trust people, because people were playing the game. They were very egotistical.

They were particularly driven and ambitious. They're not bad things, but they are if they're not used in a positive or an honest way. So you're going to get mismatches.

And.

We'Re not taught at school to work as a team. All we're taught is to get our own exams. And so there's no real development in that.

So when we go into work, we haven't got that underneath our belt or thinking about other people. We're all thinking about what grades we.

Got all the time.

Well, it's really important you do well, but it's not the most important. You'll find something. I didn't get very good grades. I got an E in History of Art as an A level. Didn't stop me doing eventually what I wanted to do.

And it's not always going to happen straight away. It's a journey of life, isn't it?

So the people that you help, as you said, you've studied psychology and you've studied some therapeutic. Now, most of the leaders that will be listening to this who are leading inside an organisation won't have done that amount of work.

So how can they translate what you're talking about into some practical strategies that they can do with their teams to go deeper? Let's try and get some emotional commitment and help people tap into purpose and intrinsic motivation.

How can they do that without doing all the study that you've done that.

What I've done is to create a career through it. You don't have to do that depth or no. Or volume, but it's just prevention is better than cure and the prevention will be understanding yourself.

That is what frees everything up and making the most of who you are and what you want and it builds a confidence that that can change and something else could come up or you. They. Some people can do many, many things. Some people like doing narrow things, some people like creative things, some people like practical things.

But. And then neither of that. None of this is good or bad, it's just. It's.

It's finding your space that will allow you to deliver well, perform, engage and have well being. The well being is an outcome of doing the other two.

Yeah, I was going to move on.

So just to wrap up the engagement bit, I think your advice there to Answer my question was just help people inside your organization become more self aware, spend some time helping them find out who they really are and how can they can maximize who they really are.

Well, if you think. Yeah, exactly.

If you think about your staff, they're the biggest asset you have and if you don't do it, you are, to be honest, not making the best of the investment you're putting in there.

Yeah.

So if I could.

I was talking to somebody on the, on my journey here today who's a top HR lady and she's earning very, very good money, works in a global place and she's 60 now and she's doing well, she's got another job and all this kind of stuff. But what she's really, really good at is sales and relational stuff.

Absolutely exceptional and people really trust her, she knows her business perfectly. So she's gone into another corporate job.

And what she said to me on the phone here, she said I'm really worried about all the technical stuff because that's not where I do my best.

So I said well why don't you say along, go and talk to them in a month's time and say look, I could spend double the time selling without doing half of it as selling and half of it getting the other bits sorted, the detail and the information and the analytical stuff. And she said well, and she's an HR lady. And I said well. She said do you think they would.

And I said well actually if they want to make the most money that they're going to get, I would get you to be doing that all the time and get somebody else who can do it as an admin role, that the money would be very, very different. So it's this mindset that people have to start looking and starting to understand. I met somebody 12 years ago and he was a brilliant salesman.

Systems for hp, IBM, other companies. And for six, half every year he said there's a pattern. And I said well tell me the pattern. He said well the first six months I'm setting it all up.

I'm doing all the relational stuff, I'm coming up with the proposal, I'm coming up with the, the offering, I'm coming up with the team I'm going to get used who are going to be in the team. I'm doing all that and I'm really excited. I go off every day and I'm really happy. I said well, so what happens after that?

He said well, I have six months where I feel really guilty because I don't want to do the detail and I have to do this and I have to do that. And he says I'm like a bear with a sore head.

So I said, well, why don't you say every time I've delivered detail that and it's at the stage where it can be taken over by somebody else. Give me another project that I can go and do what I really love doing and where I'm very gifted and excited and engaged and very perform.

Performing brilliantly.

Yeah.

He said, well, I've never done that. He was, when I said it, I was probably 58. And I said, well that's fine, you can change it now.

Yeah.

And look what would happen and what is what happened. He went off and his energy and his, his work ethic and all that just went out of the roof and they earned much more money from him.

But people don't know if we don't know it ourselves. How can anyone else know that? Unless you're sat with somebody who can be objective, independent, honest, explain what's going on in a very clean way.

And then he went into his boss and I say it worked really well. But these are very successful people. But they could be even more successful and engaged and performing, doing the bit that they really thrive in.

People always said to me, why don't you do group work? Well, if I had to do group work, I'd have to go away for two years, three years because I need to know my subject.

I don't talk unless it's genuine and honest and I'm not going to do that. I love the one to one relationship. Now some people would say, well, it's silly, but. Why is it silly? It's what I want to do. No, no, no.

Yeah. I mean if all do the thing that we're really good at and want to do and excel in that.

Yeah.

So you talked about this performance equation. So high performance plus full engagement plus well being equals potential minus interference. Let's talk about the well being.

Why is the well being element so important?

Well, because you're healthy, because you go into work, you don't knock off sick, you're wanting to get out of bed and go to work every day. That's what I've had for 25 years. Every day I'm more excited meeting my clients, I'm sure, than they are seeing me. But I see it.

It's the curiosity, it's the understanding. It's what I love. I did as a child actually, which is a really big.

If you ever ask anybody, what did you do as a Child that you really enjoyed doing and where you were in your element. Time would just go, yeah, yeah. Well, that often gives a very good insight into where and how and what they did. I used to play a game of.

I was, I don't know how old. I remember my mother had a business and it was all about people and it was all about. All about developing people because it was, it was.

I can't think what the word is now. It was Tupperware, actually. I can't remember that's called now, I believe, but. And it was so energizing.

It was developing people, it was high energy, it was a very good product and I suppose I got a lot from being involved in that environment, if I think about it quickly. And it made a big difference to me. And I suppose that energy stuff really was relevant to me.

And yeah, I think well being is, as I say, is an outcome from finding yourself and deciding I'd like to go down that avenue, go and get more training or go and get experience or go and do voluntary work or whatever you can. And it's about taking responsibility for your career, knowing why, how, what, all that.

So that when you talk to somebody, it's very infectious when someone knows and can talk in a really clean and open and honest way about themselves. Of this is why I like that. That's, that I've done this, that's worked for me. I knew that wasn't right. Sadly, it's not a normal way of operating.

Okay.

Yeah, yeah.

Because obviously resilience and recovery is a big part of well being, isn't it?

Absolutely. All those elements. And the emotional resilience.

Yeah, the personal power, the goal directedness, the flexibility, the connecting with others, the authenticity, all those emotional intelligence elements are what is building your personal power. But underneath that you've got self awareness and underneath that you've got self esteem or self esteem is doing everything.

And if your self esteem has never been really looked at, understood, if you don't know or you don't have a good relationship with yourself or whatever, it has a profound effect on people.

Right, yeah.

So that's when the well being comes up because you do have self esteem, because you're doing something you're self aware of and then you can do the personal management stuff that really makes you do very well.

Yeah, I think you're right. I think well being is integral to performance and I think it does often get overlooked. I think. I think you're right.

So let's talk about the interference element here. So, you know, even if I have got a really strong idea of what my performance levels, I want them to be or need them to be.

I am fully engaged in it and I'm emotionally committed. I, I kind of understand my sense of purpose. I have got some energy and some focus. I am looking after my well being. But stuff get in the way it can.

But you'll have done quite a lot of work to have got to that stage.

You don't get there without looking at the interference or really appreciating what has happened to us in our lives or how we've responded to different things, or what behavior and modeling we've done in the family or with friends or at school or all that stuff is profound and unconscious.

And so are we saying that if we do all that work naturally, the interference will, will not be there then?

Yes, because you're getting rid of it before it really going into a point where you're having a breakdown or you're off work with stress, or you're off work with anxiety. All that has happened. Something has happened to you to have those things. You're not born with anxiety. No, no, no, no. So something's happened.

So you have to work out and get the person to think, what was it that started this? When did the anxiety start? What was the situation? Oh, okay, so let's. I'm not going to go through the whole, there's so many things it could be.

But when you go into that and you start thinking about, well, what's that? What did that effect have on you? What did you take from it? If you think about it, what was it that manifested that?

Or whatever, it starts to break it down into something you can then allow to let go of.

Rather than keep holding that in your psyche, which is damaging you and not allowing you to be free or letting things go or realizing that actually you can reframe it and see it and understand it in a different way or know that actually that was when you were 12 and you're still doing that when you're 30 or you're 40. Because how do you take that out unless you're conscious that it's what started the whole thing off in the first place.

Yeah, yeah. So, okay, so let's talk about coaching as a catalyst for organizations to do better.

I know you coach individuals, but those individuals work inside organizations. Yeah. So coaching, I don't think it's a luxury. No, it's a necessity. It's a necessity. The increase.

You can see someone's body change. You can see it in their eyes. You can see it in their whole demeanor. And they go in with a very different energy.

And it's energy that we all have to have and we want high energy.

It doesn't mean you've got to run around and do a dance, but it does mean you're going in with the mindset and the intent of doing something you're really interested in, something you're curious about, something you want to learn more of, something you want to try other things or whatever. It's the whole mindset of the individual that is critical for them, their team and the organization.

And when I work with a team of 12 partners, I've worked with nine of them already, the whole conversation and the whole way they run the business is now much more democratic, much more saying, well, actually that isn't where I'm going to add the best value. What I need to do is X. And now I want to do the strategy stuff or I want to do the delivery of it all or whatever.

And then you can have really clean, open conversations about the person, really engaging and wanting to perform at their best because they're doing something that they find effortless. For me, my work is effortless. I enjoy absolutely every minute of it.

I guess you're an experienced coach. I guess where I'm coming from is, you know, I agree with you. Coaching isn't a luxury.

It's a strategic lever that we can use inside the business to get performance, engagement, better well being, all of those things. It also creates psychological safety and trust. It encourages people to own things and to be accountable.

It builds resilience and adaptability inside teams, which is also important. So all of these benefits are there.

If I'm a leader inside a business listening to this conversation, thinking, okay, what are the big takeaways from me? Is it that as a leader I need to go and learn how to coach my team, help them be better versions of themselves, which is important?

Or is there something that's more important than that?

The biggest element that we've really got to sort is the individual themselves. So as a leader, definitely the way what you've got to do is I would say you've got to understand yourself.

You've got to fully understand your gift, your background, your qualifications, your experience, your, your drives and all that. Find that and then you, that person will be in a much better state. They'll be doing work that absolutely suits them.

You know, most people who get become managers are technical people. They're very good technical people. But technical people don't always have much interest in Other people. No, they don't.

So we have to have two streams, a technical promotion and a management ladder that you can go up and down and not everyone can do the other or the one. It doesn't, you know, it's. We're just so different. But we, we. People don't.

If you, if you're, if you're very technical and you love the detail and you love delivering things that you've done, etc. Running a team is not your gift.

Yeah.

So why don't we, why don't we promote or allow people to go up a ladder that they're gifted in rather than doing something that probably doesn't work with the other people? And then you're going to lose.

You're going to have people leaving, you're going to people that don't respect or no one talks or there's bad ways of being with people or putting people down and all that. That's likely to happen, if you think about it. And management is quite a difficult thing. Everyone thinks. Everyone can manager. I can promise you.

They go in there and they're not interested.

I think what Ray Rich and I often explain this is that if you're a leader inside a bit, whether you're senior, somewhere in the middle, or even team leader. Exactly. Your job is to create positive ripples within that organization.

I think what you're saying is for those positive ripples to happen, those leaders need to, as a starting point, understand themselves fully, do some work on themselves. Exactly.

But they don't because they think they know it or they don't worry or. And they always think the other person needs to change rather than the individual themselves. And it doesn't make sense.

No, no, it really.

How, how can anyone. Yeah. So most people. I know, most people don't want to do what I do and that's fine. And that doesn't.

I don't want to be a lepor or I don't want to be an architect, or I don't. And I want them to be brilliant at what they do. But if you're an architect, you'll be. There'll be someone who can see the whole picture.

There'll be someone that can do the detail, there'll be someone who wants to deliver it, or there'll be someone that's brilliant at that. There are many elements to every different job we can all do. We could all do probably very many, many, many jobs. But it's.

Which bit of it, where is it?

What is it that really excites you and interests you and you're curious about and where is your gift that allows that to manifest and do the best you can be.

It's interesting. One of the questions I was going to ask you in this interview was what's the biggest barrier to creating a coaching culture?

And I think you've just answered it.

One of the biggest barriers is the leaders in the business have got to want to develop themselves first of all, before they start developing other people. I think that's where you're coming from.

Absolutely. You've just caught it in one nugget. But it's really interesting.

Everyone else, most people think they want the other person to change and it's actually you have to start on yourself.

Start on yourself.

Yeah.

So I think using your equation, if I'm looking at.

Okay, I get the message that I'm hearing here from Nick is that if I really want to be the best version of myself, which means I can then help other people and create these podcasts positive ripples using your equation. So what does high performance mean for me or what does optimal performance mean for me?

I need to understand where I have technical competence and mastery or people skills.

Or people skills, anything, creativity or whatever.

I need to create some clear goals and have some feedback loops against those aligned to that. Aligned to that.

Not just do you think you should or would make you more money or get to a better position money wise. If it's not the gift, it's not going to work in the long term.

And all that will happen is the person will become stressed or they will be doing the wrong things in the business because it's not aligned to who they are.

And you also said I also need to have a continuous improvement mindset as well. The full engagement piece was I need to emotionally commit to that development. I need to tap into what intrinsically matters to me.

I need to try and discover what matters to me in terms of meaning and purpose and then use my energy and my focus and to really chase that.

Not everyone has a purpose.

No, they don't.

Okay. So we can't just say these one things. You've got to work out what each person is, what it is.

Some people are very competitive and if they want to do that, let's do it in the cleanest way we can.

That doesn't start affecting other people and you're allowed to go and be brilliant, but it's not having a detrimental effect on any other part of the business.

Yeah. The other bit is the well being aspect of this. So your physical and mental well being Are performance enablers?

Are you looking after your physical and mental well being?

Well, your serotonin and your dopamine and all the endorphins will be working naturally in your body. If you're doing something that you're aligned to and it's your element, you don't have stress.

Yeah, it might be hard or it might be complex, but people like that because you're doing the right area of where your expertise is or knowledge is or qualifications are and they're right for you. You don't get stress and you don't. You're not ill because your body is a great healing element.

I've had a very bad accident and my body is healing, which is really remarkable, to be honest, that I was told dreadful things. But with the mindset, it's changed and it's working and it's all going to come back to normal.

So that has happened through a mindset and, and I didn't really put an outcome. I just believed I would be fine and then it works.

Okay, so in terms of top tips to people listening to this.

So the message is, if you're going to be a great leader who's going to put really positive ripples into your business and the wider communities, start with yourself, do the work on yourself. What would be the starting point? What do you think actually would be the, the first thing you'd go and do? Listen to this podcast today?

Well, I would follow the model that I use with every single person, which is getting the nature and nurture understood. Psychology, Psychology.

Why would I look at where I'm, you know, why would I spend my time looking at what I'm weak at?

Why would try and get somebody who doesn't like or isn't interested in or doesn't have any knowledge of or why would you spend your time looking at your weaknesses? To me, that makes complete nonsense to the whole developmental process.

Right, okay.

And if you do look at things in a more positive light and you start thinking, well, when I met the guy that helped me when I was at college, he said to me during one of the conversations, he said, you don't know what you're doing, Nick, do you? I said, no, what am I doing? And he said, within minutes, you really like to get to know somebody.

You're very open, you build rapport very, very quickly, it's very effortless, etc. And I said to him, doesn't everyone speak to people like I do?

And he said, nick, I've never seen it how you do it, because it's so natural that it's effortless, isn't it? And I said, well, I haven't taught myself to do it, it's just the way I am. And of course, being is where everything works rather than doing.

If you can be yourself and you can find that gift, and if I. When I tell somebody that gift or what I've noticed in them, their whole psyche changes because no one's ever told them that before.

And if you have a natural ability, you think, well, it's not very clever, really, is it? We're all taught on academia, actually, with the natural G. Gift is the most powerful thing you could give to anybody.

Because then they start appreciating why they're so good at art, or why they're such a good hairdresser, or why they're such a good nuclear scientist, or why they can speak 10 languages. Because if you can speak 10 languages, you probably don't think it's that clever because you do it, do it naturally anyway. Yeah.

So all this bit really needs to come out into the light so that people can then start thinking, oh, I never knew that.

Yeah.

And that was revelatory to me. And I remember Bob said, what started that conversation, he said to me, God, brilliant, aren't you, Nick? And I almost fell off the chair.

What do you mean, I'm brilliant? And that's when he said, you don't know what you're doing. So it.

No, I can resonate with that.

Do you?

Yeah, I think understanding what you're good at and why is really important. And a lot of people don't. Because you know what happens if you ask somebody about their performance?

They'll naturally go to the negative side of it, what they're not doing. But actually, as you said, that's not necessarily the place to start, is it? No.

So maybe one of the answers to the question I asked is, well, where can leaders who are listening to this start actually go and tap into and understand what is you're really good at, what is it you're passionate about, and use that as a starting point for being a better leader.

Look back at your career and think, which was the element or the area or what projects or what management I had to do, or what. What program I had to deliver or what house did I build or whatever it is. Which bit of that is the bit that really got you going?

Yeah, yeah. And start with that. We also need, I think, to create space to reflect as well, don't we? That's important.

Definitely. Reflective learning is where it all changes and where you are, you have got the time to think back or appreciate or understand.

It's about understanding, really. It's understanding of self.

Yeah.

And that is once you. And the other thing, once you've seen it and where it's worked, if it's.

If that is unconscious, unconscious at the beginning and then you find that, then you can then grow from that and put the other threads or other ideas in place and it starts to have an energy of its own.

And what happens is, I believe, is that when that happens, the next week or whatever, you read an article or someone said something and it's all aligned to it and it just seems just to have a life of its own. I don't know you've ever had that with clients. It's almost like the universe comes to you and you can.

It really gives that energy, the confidence, the clarity, the confirmation, all those things that really make it become a reality start to manifest.

Yeah, no, I think, I think you're right. I mean, if I reflect back onto, you know, parts of my life where you've had these light bulb moments. Yeah. Some of that.

Some of that light bulb moment has been not about getting better at things I'm not very good at. It's been actually understanding where I add value and what my gifts are, my strengths are and how other people appreciate them. So that might be.

You need to go and ask other people how they see you and how they see you add value. Because you may not understand that yourself, but a good coach can help you.

Of course, understand that, understand that, can't they?

Yeah. Okay, Nick. So, Nick, if people were to find out more about you and the work that you do, where's the starting point to find out more about you?

Well, things are changing, which is good. So we talked a few weeks ago and I'm going to become an associate figure of business. You are really exciting. On LinkedIn would work.

Yeah.

The name of my business itself is NPM Associates. So you've got that and all the information would be on those.

So look for Nick on Nick Marlow on LinkedIn. NPM Associates is also on LinkedIn and.

Through your website and look at the.

Zentenna website where Nick's associate profile on Biog will be Absolutely. So, Nick, I just want to say thank you for coming in today and sharing such a powerful perspective on coaching and performance and human development.

I think you're right. I think it's really important to have curiosity.

I think it's really important to work on yourself as a leader and just try and find out how can you be that best version of you?

Yeah, it's great as well, when you think about it. If you're doing that, your children will see it as well because.

And you're encouraging them to think about where are they best, what is good for them.

It does naturally.

It's like a ripple. It's a ripple effect.

You're dead right there. Because I've got some listeners will know if they listen to this regularly.

I've got two young girls, 13 and 11, and I think I do talk to them all the time about being curious and working on yourself and understanding where your strengths are. And I do think that does gradually seep into their psychology as well.

So if you take that into the workplace, if we are a leader that says, look, it's really important I work on myself and I develop my self awareness, on my emotional intelligence. And that will seep into the other people around you.

Absolutely. I'd call all this work is about the ripple effect, but the ripple is yourself.

And that's really powerful because you're building this confidence, this clarity, this honesty, this openness, this wanting to contribute, et cetera, et cetera, in the best way you can. If that. Everyone into business like that, or into an organization or into a sport or into a hobby, the whole thing changes because we're in our.

It's the famous book. I can't remember who wrote it, the Element, but that. Oh, Ken Robinson.

Ken Robinson, yeah. Paul McCartney's school friend.

Yeah.

Oh, is it? Yes, he was. Yeah. And it's a really good book. It's a really good book. Yeah.

All that work is being in the flow. Positive psychology does all that element and it's the same thing, really.

So, yeah, go out and create positive ripples.

Definitely.

And on that note, Nick, thank you for coming in.

Well, thanks very much.