Kevin Green, Performance Leadership 2.0

Kevin Green has  a new book called Performance Leadershp 2.0. Kevin is an integral part of the Living Brave delivery team and soneone I have had the pleasure of knowing for some 20 + years.

In Performance Leadership 2.0, Kevin Green presents ideas and practical solutions for achieving exactly that. 

The ideas and approaches in this book have been assembled from over 15,000 interactions and conversations with the people that Kevin has engaged with during a lengthy career as a performance consultant. 

The methods offered are presented in an easy to understand structure and then brought to life using many stories of practical application from time served in many operational environments. 

This book is split into two key parts. 

Firstly, it examines the need to be a worthy role model so that others will want to belong to your team and feel invested in something, and somebody worth following. 

The second part switches the lens and focuses on what the Manager can do to boost performance from the team. 

Even if you are a seasoned Manager of teams, you are bound to find something new in this fresh, and very practical, approach to improving performance at work.

To find out more about Guy Bloom and his award winning work in Team Coaching, Leadership Development and Executive Coaching click below.

The link to everything CLICK HERE
UK: 07827 953814
Email: guybloom@livingbrave.com
Web: www.livingbrave.com

Transcript

0:05

see my game face came on then yeah exactly so get in the zone get in the zone it's like that um it's like pulp fiction isn't it you know we've been messing around for the last 20 minutes and then it's like into character when they're outside the student room door in the block of flats and they're just about to bust in and they start just having a chat yeah we've been talking about burgers for the last 20 minutes but never going to do a podcast so into character that's exactly what they call a big mac in france a royale with cheese catching me out on basics like that so listen uh the great and powerful kevin green it's good to have you on leadership bites on a episode that is dedicated to you about that boom drumroll you already started me crying i've got to work my eyes are tears now because i'm already laughing so much oh god that's why nobody listens to the podcast just it's just it's just me me talking and laughing to myself but uh we are here we are here okay this doesn't work so it looks a little bit like that i see you spot you've shown it before i've done my reveal so for those of you that aren't listening uh listening on the podcast and actually looking at the zoom recording the the book uh that is kevin's book is now appealing appearing at the bottom of the screen so uh kevin has written a book called performance leadership 2.0 and it says uncommon sense to achieve uncommon performance at work so we're going to just have a little chat about the book and um now this is the bit where i embarrass you kevin but uh there are very few people who i pay attention to as you well know um as i have the attention span of a goldfish literally so there are certain key people that if they do something or say something i'll listen to it and i'll pay attention to it and and you're one of them captured that on video now guy thank you because i've probably said as much on a comment on whatsapp from time to time i am of the view that opinions are not created equal men and women might be but i do not believe that all opinions are created equal so when you're willing to states say stuff like that about me coming from you that gets me in the heart thank you boom okay well listen awesome let's let's talk about the book let's also introduce you now people will have come up if they know me they'll know that i know you we've known each other for whoa ever such a long time now um uh over 20 plus years 20 plus years i was going to say it must be at least 10.[Laughter] it's like the uh it's like the married couple that go um we've been married for what 10 years 20 you know something along those lines so we've worked together we've um had breaks apart from working together we've then come back and worked together um and now we work on projects from time to time as they come up in fact we're about to if all things go well we're about to embark on a 12-month project uh together um which i'm really looking forward to so i know you i dare say the word intimately um probably never use that word again but there is a thing called professional intimacy in there easy for you to say yes there is and that intimacy definitely exists as a between the two of us so listen uh kevin green i know who you are but who is kevin green just a little introduction from you that says what if people kind of want to have a sense of who and what i am and what i'm about this is this is who i am just before we get into the book who is kevin green is a very very big question this is my best stab in terms of my work some people have have a job and that's good because it provides shelter some people are lucky enough to have a career i consider what i do to be a calling i have been so fortunate and so grateful and so blessed that i'm in a role which enables me to spring out of my bed every single morning i can't remember ever having to scrape myself off a mattress just to go to work at least for the last 14 15 years so i'm in love with my work i'm in love with the difference that i can potentially make for others if we end up talking about any element of book which talks about what motivates people to do what they do my driving human need my biggest motivator around kevin green is contribution are you making a difference and when i talk about being grateful for the role and the work that i do i'm in a position where i have a chance i have a stab at taking people maybe one percent closer to their potential after and during the work that i do with them that sets me alight i'm really flipping enthusiastic and passionate about that stuff my other roles in this world are i am a father i have a 25 year old son called adam who got a first degree in business and economics and i'm so proud of him he worked so hard during his university career and he is making his mark in the world now as a pay-per-click account manager doing very well as well already received two promotions and i'm in love with my wife jill who i've been extremely happily married to for the last 20 years and that probably links us to the first part of the book where everybody does their acknowledgements right my first acknowledgement was to my wife she's a nurse the book provided me with space in my calendar to write the book and uh i'd run out of excuses to not write it you nagged me and bullied me into doing it my diary emptied because of covid and the first thing i wanted to do was say well done jill my wife because when we go out of our doors thursday and at eight o'clock when we used to to clap for carers i knew that i was clapping for my wife and then on on a thursday in april i think it was the third week in april she was interviewed on on bbc national news and so millions of people around the country ended up meeting my wife and so i'm talking about my role as husband the reason why i'm in love with jill so much is because if you could come out with me and jill you should see the number of occasions where small normally skittish animals just become comfortable in her presence she just seems to give off an energy of it's okay to be near her and small children stop crying when they see her and catch her gaze uh and they start smiling her it's a wonderful experience just to be with her and around her i don't know if that's just answered the question though who's kevin green wouldn't it that was the question i don't want to talk about the book anymore i want to talk about you and jill so so i'm hoping that gives you a kind of a flavour as to the type of man that i am um and and the difference that my work makes to me in this world the biggest thing that i want to underline is i feel so grateful every single day that i never have to hit snooze on an alarm just to get out of bed i love getting out of bed to get into the kind of stuff that we do when we share okay that's it that's the end of the episode i think we should end there perfect so listen thanks for that kevin um that's awesome the the book um you know i do we do laugh about the fact that you know my whatsapp's going where's your book where's your book where's your book um but you know that's why i use the word bully bullied me into it but listen it's all huge and positive so listen you've got this book and i know that you did it i know you didn't get a ghostwriter i know you didn't get um somebody else to do it for you you um you know you did the book cover design you you've done everything so it really is your you know your your uh the essence of what you're about and stuff like that so um we've touched on it slightly but if i say what triggered it because you know somebody bullying you doesn't trigger you to do it but what was the reason for you maybe it's the purpose maybe not what triggered it maybe what's the purpose of the book for you i'd like to talk about only briefly two things that were not the purpose because that leads me nicely into what did drive me opportunity was a big thing i knew sorry i didn't know i felt that i had a book in me and then when my my diary which is normally chocker suddenly empties because of kovid whilst i wish the circumstances that provided that space and time to write it wasn't caused by people suffering that gave me the space i didn't write it because i wanted to make a bunch of money though if the money came along i'm not gonna pass it off and i didn't write it to become a bestseller but equally if that became a consequence that's absolutely fine with me the reason why i did write it was because i want to use it as a potential way of reaching with my work and if one of the ways i can gain credibility in a potential customers or clients eyes is to say well actually one of the ways i can check him out is to see what he's got to say in his own book then that's hitting the nail on the head for me so it was written with a motivation to achieve professional credibility but if you don't mind guy if we go back to the earliest motivations around why would you mind telling your story around why you ended up writing your book and and your the story that was triggered by you having a conversation with mark janssen yeah so mark janssen who we both know and i reported into as a boss mentor um for many years who i've got you know i think he is probably one of the most capable leader managers i've ever come across in terms of his intellect and his empathy and his drive and his motivation you know uh he's an incredible human being so uh and he was incredibly tolerant of me um you know as we all know which requires a lot of tolerance and you know he which is effective leadership by the way yeah exactly gave me a lot of space adapting to the nature yeah probably more than i deserved many times but the the point of that was is you know the the having a book in you i'd been messing about with a book for a long time and i couldn't get it out of myself so to speak and we went to a conference and there was a speaker he was all right and he had a book and he gave the book out which was fine and i thought i'll read a bit of this because you know i'm trying to write a book and it was gibberish basically and that's why i'm not saying if it was or when it was and it was it was literally it was literally unreadable well it wasn't unreadable it was just it was like it was written for like children and and i came downstairs the next day sat down and said to mark you know that book and mark i went it's absolute generation i mean it's written for children and i just went on and on and on and mark being mark just let me witter on and then after probably at the point where he had something actually that he needed to do stopped me and went guy can i stop you for a second i go yeah he goes you know his rubbish book he went oh wait yeah he was it's better than your no book though isn't it it's brilliant in it brilliant and i will never get tired of listening to that story and it made me just go oh god because he absolutely nailed it it was you can't really have an opinion on a thing that you haven't generated i mean you can but it's rather childish to say that's rubbish but i haven't done one you know and you have a very keen and accurate critical eye guy but in the end i think what mark hanson achieved there is self-awareness accountability and and the fact that we realized that nobody ever built statues for critics and it really put put you it was a challenge it was also a challenge you know it was um you know it was him really saying to me put up or shut up you know it was he'd heard me talk about a book over the over time and you know yeah so that that that's the and actually if we think about what performance management performance leadership is you know it's not all in a room at three o'clock having your performance review is it it's actually a passing reflection insight challenge call to arms counsel mentorship all in one statement sometimes and and i think so quite interesting i think it's a wonderful story and answers the question around you you passed that story on to me you gave me the right mindset and assistance every now and again to to point me in the right direction of of how i could get it done how i could organize and arrange my thinking but it also provides an example of the book's title what mark did for you not to you what mark did for you in that conversation is achieve performance leadership i think performance management might have been covering your next one to one guy i finally be critical of your peers um you had nine thing nine bad things to say about that author and you couldn't even find one good thing that might have been the performance management conversation could you bring to work a more cheerful outlook in future police guy might be the typical performance management conversations but when mark does it so artfully and with skill and incision and says you know his rubbish book guy better than your notebook it just took one sentence and it's hit the mark it's hit the bullseye and i think that's performance leadership well i noticed that on the inside of the jacket it says performance management uh and i'm holding it up for those of us that are watching the video and performance management management's crossed out and then it says leadership uh underneath and 2.0 so um hopefully it would be great to pick up on that a little bit and and follow on from that thinking that for you there is a difference between performance management and performance leadership yeah i wanted to visually make that point because performance management i i think is a term talked about mostly it is a term that causes most people to become fearful in their workplace bob's being performance managed mary's on a performance management plan or a performance improvement plan uh if you are responsible for the line management of others you are a performance manager you will always have access to a set of metrics a dashboard a range of kpis to which you can hold your team members accountable when you engage in those conversations around you see that number there you need to make that better that's performance management and i think that occupies the bulk of performance conversations and if we're having performance management conversations can i speak to you in the office for 10 minutes that's normally bad news normally comes with an award of a position you are responsible for the line management of others performance leadership is behavioral it's how you show up into a conversation that achieves breakthrough realization ownership and accountability i'm responsible for my motivation you are responsible for yours what can i do in the name of supporting you and providing you with an environment that can cause your performance breakthrough the example that we've already used is this rubbish book is better than your notebook that's performance leadership and it takes more thinking it takes care it takes consideration and it's not all of the time dependent on a set of metrics 2.0 i wanted to try and make a suggestion immediately to the potential reader that we're not starting at square one so how can i capture that and represent that visually so what's beyond basic i hear the term 2.0 and just to make sure that i wasn't going to embarrass myself i researched the term 2.0 and it says what i hoped it would be saying i.e it's a it's a reinvigoration it's the next level it's a second step and maybe beyond so whilst i believe if you are of reasonable intelligence you will pick up the contents of my book and get it i think the 2.0 stuff is bringing the craft and bringing the art of your performance sorry performance conversations which ends up being leadership of performance through your behavior not performance management by metrics and data so there's something here about it's nothing instead of am i right it's an and it's still the competence of knowing how to run a formal management performance process because there has to be maybe an underlying competence of craft but then there's it's the it's the and that says maybe you know and maybe at one end of a conversation no this is a very clear performance management in the context of that vernacular that we use that we wish people don't use but all but also it can there's a you pick up the stick you get both ends i guess which is there's another end to this which isn't just stat stat stats it's also about what i might do through my exp the experience of me that would engender performance is that right yeah yeah engender performance is a nice way of putting it and it's an end is also a nice way of putting it not instead of not a replacement of um yeah i'd go along with that it's not it's not performance management because in the book i haven't told people how to have an effective performance conversation i haven't given you a structure if you're the reader as to what elements or what touch points should be involved in a performance conversation performance management there's a thousand thousands of books that already do that yeah yeah but what i have covered in the book is to how to show up into those conversations when things are are not going as well as they could be but rightly yeah i've acknowledged in the book that most people don't come to work just to mess it up nobody's coming with a motivation for sabotage nobody's coming with the deliberate unconsciously intent to mess things up for the boss so i i spend a bit of time on calling out the things that people are doing doing right i watched a wonderful video on youtube it's uh it's a coca-cola advert and it the way it landed it's key messages for me was there's loads of cctv cameras in the world the main aim of cctv cameras is to prevent and to solve crime but the cctv cameras of the world also pick up on people stealing kisses from each other they also pick up on the hero pickpockets where they notice that somebody has been pickpocketed confront the pickpocket retrieve the bag the personal wallet and return it to its owner we see people celebrating the fact that there are homeless people outside the kebab shop and they're sharing their chips with them cctv catches people doing it right as well as wrong as a boss in the workplace as a leader of the workplace responsible for elevating levels of performance we can use our eyes to be the cctv that catches people doing it right as well and i cover in the book how that sets off a really nice chain reaction of chemicals that go into the bloodstream um so that's a flavor of the tone of voice that the book covers i like that i think the work that we do and we work together we we always say the tool isn't complex the model itself is relatively easy it's your mindset it's your motivation it's your will it's the whether or not you're actually going to apply your character your personality your brand that narrative that you want for yourself the the duty of care that you have that might go beyond the process that's all that stuff that sits around a technique which you can google you know how to give feedback boom there you go job done take you about five minutes easy so this is a book that says look there's probably 50 to 100 ways of doing a performance conversation and there's not that many ways of doing it technically wrong but actually if you want to make it of high value if you actually want it to have an impact but then it's the experience of you and what you're doing in that context and that's what this book is about right nice and you use some nice language there guy along the lines of it's about bringing your character and your personality and i talk about the need and importance of bringing your own weather to work with you for example if if you are a line manager of others you're not entitled to bringing cloudy weather with you that was inspired by an event that happened to me every now and again i get a great opportunity to speak to three four hundred people at a conference environment i still get that despite the number of times i've done it now i still get nervous and that's okay i'm i'm at peace with the nerves one of the best ways i've found of massaging or easing or calming my nerves is to meet and greet as many people in the entrance or the foyer or the reception area of the conference event and just say hello to as many people as i can and i approached one delegate on one conference and said hi my name's kevin i'm going to be looking after the event for you today how are you doing and this person said to me well you know it's that time of year isn't it i said what do you mean it's all you get up in the dark you go to work in the dark you come home in the dark i said thanks very much i hope you had a good day and i turned on my heels and i left that engagement the reason was i brought because it was my duty to a sunny outlook a cheerful sunny outlook day because i was responsible for bringing cheerful weather with me to work and that man as a delegate had brought cloudy weather with him to work at that day and i didn't want his weather infecting mine and so in the book i talk about the need to bring your own to choose and to bring your own weather to work with you i like that and um yeah i'm just looking something up here which is the um and i can never say his name right which is why i was looking it up i know how to spell it but when you say i was looking something up you needed jamie don't you yeah so if if any of you know the joe rogan reference yeah joe rogan the ultimate podcaster uh has a jamie and that's the jamie who basically as joe rogan speaks jamie is almost in real time pulling stuff up for joe rogan to look at and uh he's a wizard um on the internet in that and i think it's got a which is g-o-e-t-h-e i'm almost certainly saying that wrong but i he in one of his quotes is i have come to the frightening conclusion that i am the decisive element it is my personal approach that creates the climate it is my daily mood that makes the weather to your reference in all situations it is my response that decides whether a crisis is to be escalated or de-escalated and a person is to be humanized or dehumanized superb and that fits doesn't it that way you're absolutely really where you're coming from on that and i that really really resonates with me absolutely and another thing you mentioned about bringing your character and your personality to work i i try to reinvigorate performance conversations in the book along the lines of well okay things aren't going too well for you at the moment bob so how much do you think of yourself are you applying at work today and sometimes people will turn around and say i don't know probably 80 it's a bit rubbish around here lately in it probably 85 maybe tops well don't worry because i'm not going to go to hr and ask for a 20 deduction of your salary this month but i do want to remind you that when we entered into our bargain with each other you signed up for 100 of you regardless of whether or not you think it's fantastic or rubbish here now i'm not saying that that has to be a literal conversation but i think the reinvigoration of the thinking around performance conversations can be like that and i think what i've always loved about the you know there's uh the exposure to other people helps me be better at things right and one of the things i've always admired about the way that you deliver that thinking which i know is present in the book is a expectation of fulfilling an agreement that sits between two people you know i'll um i'm your manager you're my line report that's not that's not about hierarchy i mean there is one but we we need to have a contract between the two of us you know you want to be dealt with in this way and i need this from you and you know we promise to do this with each other and etc etc and so i i always see that you know way of your verbalizing am i writing saying and have we understood each other and would it be fair to say because you're you're you're you're going down that road of you know there might be a process here but this is really about what you and i are agreeing this is really about the honesty between the two of us and how genuine that can be and i think i find that i mean that's a truth for the context of having high quality conversations but i really see that presence and i and i feel that in the book as well thank you for that guy because i'm really big on two things num number one is permission ie i won't just comply with your view i'm here for the learning as well so if i'm not on board with your view of the world because none of us view the world as it is we only view the world as we are and we're running all of this stuff through our own filters before it comes out of our mouth and out and off our lips so if i don't agree with you i'm seeking to understand you first before i judge you or for my heart and far just opinion about your view so i'm big on permission saying actually guy i'm not on board with the way you've just described that can we dig a little bit deeper because i'm curious i want to make sure i understand you before i challenge you but i'll seek your permission to do that and that normally makes you feel safe under the weight of a challenge so i'm big on permission and i'm also big on summarizing because i don't want to have a 30-minute performance conversation with somebody with me exiting exiting with one view of what we've just agreed and you exiting with a completely different version so for every chunk of conversation i don't care if that chunk is 2 minutes or 20 i'm going to press pull so guy it so far i think we're signing up to or guy am i right insane which was the language you used so those are those are two things i'm big on permission permission to challenge normally so that i can understand you and summarizing to make sure that i'm on the on the right page with you i think uh summarizing is it's a it's a it's a constant summarizing with the intent that the other person is listening to the summary to calibrate what i've just said and that's something that i really know that you i we focus on which is that it's yeah i'm showing you that i've listened but i need you to listen to my summary of having listened with the intent that you give it a thumbs up a ah not quite that's not quite what i heard or that's not quite what i meant or a challenge to my understanding so this constant theme of be it a conversation be it a performance leadership conversation as i will now call it and never refer to it as a performance management conversation again that's my taking that on board thank you what a difference we're making already to the world mate between the two of us and um but what i what i recognize is it's it can't be passive it can't be a passive interaction it's not you turning up and i am doing it to you we are going into a interaction and there's going to be a partnership here yes i have the probably the positional power you know if it's hierarchical but the reality is if that has to be utilized then something's gone wrong and i have to come to the realization and acceptance that if i only ever will hierarchy positional power with you to influence you i'm never going to get the best performance from you yeah there's always going to be something subconsciously held back because i'm being done too by the hierarchy of my line manager the position of power of my line manager the other thing that i think we achieve when we when we take time to summarize well accurately and skillfully is a probably not the best choice of words but i end up scoring quite a lot of points with you because you now know that i've shown up into this conversation to understand you not to respond to you not to press on with my agenda for you so the better i am at summarizing your your view of this situation you know that i'm that i'm invested you know that i care you know that i've paid attention and your voice is therefore heard and valued yeah that's that's achieved by summaries as well what's the reaction to the book been so far kevin it's early days uh like i said i'm not i never i've never wrote it with the motivation to to to sell thousands um but with relief all of the reviews so far have have been five star on amazon um the biggest risk that i took was asking my brother-in-law is an entrepreneur uh he owns property in the northeast of england uh he as his home he bought an old hotel just converted it to his house the only reason you do say no he trades money uh he trades not stocks and shares he trades futures uh for an exchange it's a different world to to me maybe you as well but he's he's clearly a very switched on an intelligent man and he's made his money a couple of times over um so as an entrepreneur i knew out of maybe just family loyalty he was always going to buy his brother-in-law's book but because he is so flipping comfortable in his own skin my biggest fear was he would write a review and if he if he thought he was garbage he's earned his right to call it garbage and he would have even though i'm family he would have entered one star and say what a waste of time that was but his review on amazon talks about him being unable to put it down having delivered so many performance management interventions for the time when he was a consultant pwc uh talks about never engaged with performance management or leadership content like this in the past breath of fresh air i can't remember the last time i was able to read a book in in one sitting because i wanted to um and five stars so when his review landed massive sigh of relief and a highly credible reaction positive reaction to the book and and others have followed suit i've i've been really really pleased with the reaction to it i think what comes across is the way that i've constructed it i divided it in two things but one is about you're the problem actually it's not them it's not the team members that you should be getting more out of it's you what kind of a role model are you so book one or part one of the book is devoted to you as as boss and then book two is it's not you it is them and these are the performance leadership conversations that can be reinvigorated the other thing that i try to achieve with balance is it's either founded on existing research existing frameworks that are just good in their own accord and stand up to scrutiny things that i've applied with my own success in the past and i still and i tell stories of successful application of everything so it's very practical in the in the not only the watts but the house and where i wasn't completely satisfied with the original creator's own work i've moved it on i hope a nudge or two or a notch or two and it's also been based in field application as well so there's lots of first-hand experience not just from me but from others the last chapter of the book is tips from the field where i've gone out to a maybe i think from memory 20 of my contacts in my network and said if you have only one answer to the question what's the best most effective performance leadership technique you could implement what would it be after all of your years of experience and it was another great relief that everybody that came back and contributed to the book seemed to tie in nicely with my own thinking and my own frameworks that i've included i know you've got a vast i mean you've got decades of experience when it comes to coaching developing working with teams that report into you going into organizations and working with teams and team leaders and department managers and senior team members when it comes to listen the techniques the technique but the reality is that's the easy bit the hard work so to speak is in the reality of all the stuff that we've just been talking about so i know that you come to the table as a consultant layered up on top of actually having been live in the field so you've walked the walk you've then been able to have the level of experience that only a consultant can get because if you'd have been in as many establishment well as many organizations as i know you and i have been in but you've been in in particular you'd be fundamentally unemployable if that was your actual cv you know in terms of where you'd be able to get access i never wanted to think of it like that before thanks same here right you know how many people how many people have you worked for this year you know that would that wouldn't work wouldn't it but so you come laden with i've done it i've trained it i've been into multiple organizations hundreds of well it's thousands of people now which is and i i don't think this works i i absolutely have all the evidence that is that i'm privy to to say that if you do one plus one then you will get two and and i think that comes across really clearly and and i know that for a fact and so yeah because the science and the framework and the model it won't do the work for you you can only lean on the framework as a handrail to some as a crutch to lean on but it will never do the work for you so it's about with what craft and what are what elegance what skill will you show up with in the name of performance leadership and i think that's something that we both talk about that but i have a real passion about which is this word craft and it's that sense of the it doesn't matter what team i walk into senior teams in particular where my energy and focus goes to everybody understands what feedback is everybody does it and they're all they're all relatively appalling at it and they can be quite good at it down the line you know as a direct report of mine and the answer to that usually is well that's because they've got to listen to you because you've got the positional power but i'm particularly interested in performance leadership as we now call it when it comes to peers and it comes to stakeholders and it comes to people up the line where they don't have to listen to you from a position of subservience but actually bringing that application to that and maybe that's uh you know that's another factor in another conversation so listen i'm i'm alert to time and um you know in terms of you know you and i we can disappear down a thousand rabbit holes right easily i'm particularly interested into what's happened to the door behind you was there supposed to be a door in that door oh well there was yeah we we bought this house about a year ago and it and there's a cupboard in there which you can clearly see um but i just thought it looked nicer and of course it's one of those jobs that i want to get around to filling in where the door hinges you used to be in painting but i haven't yet um i haven't done that i haven't done the decoration around that uh so yeah that's where i store all my office supplies there we go randomness at its best so listen as always kevin absolute uh joy to talk to you um as we do most days but anyway uh good to capture one on video i'm gonna press the end button uh your book performance leadership 2.0 obviously on amazon i'll put a link to it in the description on the podcast episode as well so people can just link to it directly and um i'll also put a link to you for linkedin so again people connect and say hi if they if they want to on that note um i'll the press to stop button will stay on just for a few minutes and have a chat and uh thank you for coming on leadership bytes kevin well god just before you do press stop on the record button i just want to say two thank yous thank you for having me on and being willing to uh dedicate one of your podcasts to me and my book that's very very generous of you i really appreciate it and the other thing is to thank you for the overwhelming difference and impact of a positive nature that you've had on my career i know that you've said that we've been working together for you your mind was saying 10 years we've been we've having a work relationship probably 20 but i don't know if you remember this but after i asked for voluntary redundancy from royal bank of scotland insurance i felt like i learned enough about myself to to go self-employed and start up on my own and that's what i've been doing since but one of the occasions you got in touch was to say you you might be right for us can you can you come along and have a chat and the original chat just wasn't right for me in terms of the timing um and then you got in touch about six months maybe even 12 months after that and we got together again and this time it was right in terms of look feel what the relationship could be and i've never looked back and i know i got to thank you for sponsoring on my first being my sponsor to get me on my first lead major leadership development program so it just feels that this is another platform i have to express my gratitude to you thank you that's very much appreciated thank you very much on that note thank you sir and stay on the line caller take care kevin thank you guys bye-bye