Jamil Qureshi, Performance psychology and high performing teams

Jamil Qureshi is one of today’s foremost practitioners of performance enhancing psychology and is an expert in high performing teams. Jamil has enjoyed working with a rich diversity of the most talented business and sports people and teams in the world, helping six individuals get to World Number 1.

In 2006, he was appointed as the first-ever official psychologist to work with the European Ryder Cup team by captain Ian Woosnam. They made history in winning by a record-equalling margin.

Jamil has worked with 22 golfers inside the top 50 in the world, including Lee Westwood, Paul McGinley, Graeme McDowell, Darren Clarke, Paul Casey, Thomas Bjorn, Sergio Garcia and two world number one’s.

Ranked among the most influential figures in British sport in 2009, Jamil was voted in the top 100 most powerful men in golf 2008 by his international peers.

He has worked successfully with 3 English Premiership football clubs, one of which reaching a record position from its halfway point in the season, as well as 2 Formula 1 racing drivers, David Coulthard and Eddie Irvine and the 2009 England Ashes winning cricketers.

In business and industry, Jamil has worked from CEO and board level to middle management in a variety of sectors. He has worked with business leaders and companies in over 24 different countries, helping teams to fulfil their potential by orchestrating change and performance programmes.

He has developed and delivered management and leadership programmes at board level for Coca Cola, Hewlett Packard, Emirates Airlines, Serco, Marks and Spencer, and Royal Bank of Scotland. He has worked across Lloyds Banking Group on their ‘Journey to World Class’.

He has led teams responsible for change management in several high profile areas, such as Lloyds Banking Group’s substantial integration strategy, and with The Post Office to create The Post Office Way as they separated from Royal Mail.

Jamil is also a world recognised speaker on all aspects of the psychology of performance, psychology of leadership, leadership attitudes, improving people, cultural change techniques, and team performance.

Interestingly;

• He is one of only a few external psychologists ever to be allowed to study astronauts on the 2008 NASA Space Programme.
• Jamil has talked to an audience that included two former US presidents at the K Club in Ireland!
• Jamil’s versatility is illustrated by the fact he has talked at NASDAQ in Times Square where he shared a stage with General Peter Pace, Head of Joint Chief of Staff, the highest ranking military officer in the US armed forces, and next day did stand up in front of a celebrity audience at the Groucho Club!
• Jamil use to be a regular at London’s prestigious Comedy Store and spent two years working with TV’s award winning mind reader, Derren Brown!
• Jamil also lectures on the prestigious WorldProgram, in the US, UK and China through Ashridge and Fordham Business Schools and Qing Dao University.

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

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Transcript

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so jamil fantastic to have you on this episode of leadership rights thank you for inviting me guys pleasure to be here well this is actually my absolute pleasure because i've been quasi-stalking you from a distance on linkedin seeing the great things that you do so um from that point of view i'm probably more excited to have you on than you are to be on but it's great to have you here i'm sure that's not true it's a meeting of great minds that's what i tell everyone okay i'm buying into that so i've done a little intro just at the start of the episode just to say who you are but just for people that haven't come across you it's great i think just to hear the the who you are and what are you known for and i think it'd be great just to hear that from you uh well i'm a performance coach and psychologist i'm very lucky i get a chance to work some very good sports teams some very good business teams uh yeah when the world is normal i would travel around the world and hopefully um work with teams to change their thinking to change their doing that's what i would say i think the only way in which you change your behaviors is to change your thoughts and so i guess what i would do more than anything else is help people change their mind so get people to create a new perspective to allow them to create new possibilities and new opportunities so um as a performance consultant and performance coach it's all about um trying to find out what people do and then help them to do it better and the way we help them to do it best is to help them to think in a new or different way um to optimize their talent that's really yeah that's really where i spent spent my time and where i spend my time now i don't do it on stage and i don't do it in rooms that time this year i do it in front of a computer the new paradigm that we all we all live in i've got to admit the variety of my work guy has been substantially better i've been doing different types of work this year but the variety of my location has been the issue so it is worth noting and i think you're almost some somehow playing it down a little bit that i one of the reasons that i reached out to you is because of the prolific nature i think of your um your output in terms of just being a a speaker and it would be maybe just valuable just to hear you know pre-code just to give a sense of the line of sight you had because i think we are often the exposure that we get and you know how how much work were you doing and where were you doing it yeah so i mean i guess for the last eight years or so um and you're right actually i mean how i describe myself is probably not necessarily true and the reason why was that you know i ended up speaking about my work more than doing it so um so literally over the last eight years or so um you know how it is you look at your diary one day and you sort of turn around and say oh i'm a guest speaker that's what i seem to be filling my time with so i was speaking um three or four days a week um anywhere in the world i was on average abroad twice a week um and i speak for i speak for anyone who'd had me so that there was a sales kick off it was a all staff conference customer day um and my natural habitat actually is is actually on stage so you know i quite like being on stage with a few hundred people in front of me um i use a flip chart i don't use um powerpoint i noticed that i tend to draw the flight flip that's how my brain works that's all and um and so i really i've spent the last eight years or so um doing my work and actually working in teams one day a week i'm going to throw it four days a week i was actually talking about my work um sharing some insights some practical takeaways at um something which um i guess sort of speeches which i call content rich i try to get across a lot really but i'm in a short amount of time to hopefully enable people to um shift their perspectives so even in half an hour or an hour of talking and i'm speaking on stage you know i'm just hoping that people move into a new space in regards to their mindset to allow them to go back into their work and back into their world and perhaps approach some of those tasks differently and how did you get when i say to be you um you know that's always the you know but we get to a point in life but there was a route to getting there and i often find that the journey to the who we are today is almost as interesting as what it is that we're talking about because it feeds the validity of well you know i can talk about that because of you know that that time i had you know in the congo with the pygmies or whatever it was you know how did how did you get to bu very good question no no that's good that's no that's a good question um it's a tricky one to answer to be honest because it's definitely a road less travel so um you know i turned around one day and realized i was here and um you know it wasn't there was no great plan i wish i could tell you about you know the superb business planning that i had and you know the route that i followed um you know and all the good fortune along the way but but it's been a series of ups and downs really i'm going to give you a potted history mate that what you know what happened was that you know my interest has always been psychology um i used to play cricket at home and enjoy playing qriket and that was taken off as a career for me but um but i was technically good as a cricketer but my my mindset was bad so um so i was particularly bad in regard to my attitude i've always had a poor attitude and then what happened was that someone said that you should see a psychologist so i saw a psychologist and took me further away from qriket um and actually into the space of psychology i became really interested in it so i then um i did a um my my my time spent studying was business and marketing um i did that came out in a variety of roles in in business development and you know commercial roles in a variety of places um and wasn't happy doing it and you know i never really fitted into that corporate world and so i gave it all up to become a magician much to my parents dismay and of course you did yeah yeah and um and and so um and so i went to the congo with a pack of cards no that's not true that'd be so great if it was though so what happened was that i decided to but the magic that i was really interested in was psychological magic you know like magic likes darren brown and heath barry so because i was interested in psychology so um you know i went to a pub in newark and did a series of your mind reading and psychology talks that you know 50 drunk people who don't want to see it um and i had really good fortune from there you know i met a few people who had some contacts in television i met a few people in term from that who have some contacts in sport and one day a golfer turned around and asked me you know whether you know i could help him and i said yes and um i went off and read another book on psychology and came back with some more techniques and um and he nearly won the open so so he did very well and um and professional sport was a really small world so because he did well right yeah i personally got press on i got mentioned in the press the national press the telegraph and mail and things because he was very generous with the credit um and so when the golfers came and joined me and within a year i was working with some of the best golfers on the planet the golfers know all the premiership footballers and international cricketers i started working with them um and then business people said to me that um look um you know you are working with you know some of the best golfers around can you come and have a chat to my sales team about what they do in regard to performance um and so i started doing some talks with corporate audiences and and you know how is with your career you know once you start doing some talks if you do them well you'll be asked to do more um and that's exactly what happened to me in terms of people took me away from sport and into that area of business again so it came full circle um because people wanted to find out you know what what do a lot elite sports people do um because i'm more comfortable talking to business audiences than i am to sports people anyway and i am i made a very natural and very easy transition to be spending 95 of my time now i'm helping business audiences you know achieve performance through talking about culture transformation uh leadership you know whatever it might be which is so relevant to the current day so i i remember getting your book the mind coach with a gorgeous picture of you on the front looking incredibly wise and um so that was the be the person you really want to be yeah it's not a great book i wish you didn't plug that it's not a good book at all let's let's delete that uh from from our consciousness yeah in 2008 it's amazing actually because one of the things which um you know i genuinely believe is that um you know doing psychology or performance coaching is it's a bit like um learning to swim by reading a book um you know it just doesn't happen so 2008 i don't think i was particularly advanced in regards to psychology you know here we are a number of years later and i think the more you do of it the better you get yeah i think it's the same with anything i think that's speaking on stage you know just you know working with individuals i uh i had dave ulrich um who's the uh well-known hr guru on the podcast and he said you know um you know people talk to me about the ulric model he said but you know that was one of the first things i do i did i've moved on yeah you know i don't want to be known for the first thing that i ever said yeah that's how i feel about the mind coach but you know because what i said and it wasn't very good but um but do you know what business is a game of continual adjustment isn't it you know we need to learn to dance on a shifting carpet not see the rug being but you know what actually having something out that you've moved out on and you've moved up on is a way of actually role modeling what development is you know um yeah it was fine at the time but i've moved on as a culture should and so it's it's indicative of your craft probably well yeah i always say that you can't trust the future to anyone who champions the path that you know the future demands us to be different doesn't it you know part of that difference being a leadership team or be a company or be an individual yes to reimagine repurpose reinvent um to be future relevant and future literary and you look at the time that we are in now i can guarantee all the companies i'm working with at the moment the ones who aren't struggling the most you know the ones who are trying to get back to normal um the ones who are flourishing are the ones who are moving forwards into this space of reimagining and repurposing and starting to see the beauty and the chaos um because once we start to realize that you know there is always opportunity it's the perspective that we have which allows us to you know gain sight of that um then i think that we can become more agile and open-minded in the way in which we construct our organizations and construct our thinking to then allow us to deploy resource to opportunity in the most relevant way yeah the new normal isn't the past in some ways no i mean you know and i think that you know there's no i mean like it's funny if you say something new normal there's nothing normal about it you know it's totally abnormal and um you know i think it's the new now yes and this time next year there'll be another new now which will be different to this you know i'm convinced of it i saw a one of my favorite memes that went around was you know that job that they told you for 20 years that you couldn't do from home you know it turns out you can yeah it's that kind of um what what kept us in the office or what kept us in that well because you know we had a we had a tunnel on what right looked like yes that's right and i think the assumptions that our businesses have been built upon you know have been roundly challenged you know so now i always say it's better to be disrupted from the inside than it is to be disrupted from the outside and so you know this is these are the thoughts that we should have been having the challenges that we should have been the conflict that we should have been having within our businesses anyway i don't say we're ready for change and i'm so you know i agree with you i think that um it is possible to do many things in a different way now the only thing i'll say though um guy is that um what's really interesting is that you i think that people are a little bit bored of these virtual platforms i'm seeing it all the time team zoom webex when these first thing when these things first came out and people said it's the end of conferences no one's gonna fly anywhere no one's going to do anything when these things first arrived and but that wasn't the case you know we still continued to meet even though we had zoom and team webex um and so i do think that um you know we'll as a social species we will want that contact again you know we will want um serendipity you know we'll want the chance encounters and i don't know what the lost opportunity cost is for organizations at the moment but um but it's certainly um a two-dimensional way of working and i think that we need a three-dimensional interaction to allow us to be successful yeah it's it's you know like just the digital books will kill the paperback or something you know whatever that is and and i think there is the chance conversation the um we're talking about nothing but actually we just generate an idea in conversation on the way to the conference you know all these little things or i just feel a little bit more comfortable with you and i'm just more likely to want to do something with you you know all these little things don't necessarily come out of it's not that this can't enable but it is a different thing definitely yeah no absolutely that's absolutely right i always say that you know it's great being a guest speaker at a conference and i hope that it's useful to people um but that time spent over the coffee machine complaining about the volabons you know or you know that time waiting in the foyer at times you're going to get your breakfast you know it's invaluable and so many teams come together for a day or two days in barcelona or madrid or dubai wherever in the world um and everyone talks about the value of the connectivity just as much as they do the agenda um and i do think i don't know about you mate but you know the more that we've been asked to stay apart the more i realize how much we need to be together um and i think that you know no one knows no one knows the answers so therefore what we need to do is to be more connected we need to play into people more so more inclusive collaborative and connected the more knowledge sharing that goes on the more successful we can be because we make more sense of the world um so paradoxically you know there's a greater call i believe and certainly in the teams that i'm working with for greater connectivity can you connect more than we ever have done because safety in numbers you know let's make sure that we're sharing knowledge and understanding the world by hearing the diverse opinions and experiences of other people yeah i've got a little phrase there which you know that the tribe needs the campfire and you know i firmly believe in that which is that that capacity to come together and share and to just be in each other's presence at a human level there's just that sense of i am not alone which when you're we're talking about resilience and well-being i think is is is that just that sense of not being alone let alone sharing information and all the value that comes out of it i think there's a base need for um contact totally agree i thought you're getting into another congo story then at your campfire well i i i've got to buy it but you know we're determined to get us to africa in this podcast aren't you determined we'll get them but you know um but yeah i know i agree and i think it's a really good point but you know i think from a performance perspective you know let's let's drive change and transformation by being connected um but a more you know a more um you know more human level at home that you're absolutely right that you know resilience comes from being part of something um bravery and confidence comes from is easier as part of a team um you know all of these things that uh you know are are made possible by the idea of collaboration connectivity and cooperation it's what we how we've built humankind you know society and civilization today so you're absolutely right the the the benefits of connectivity are substantial have you noticed a um has there been a shift you know i mean when kovitz started i was almost all you know let's not make it about covid because that'll get old pretty quick but you know it's been going on long enough has the have people wanted to hear different things from you in this space or is it no it's the same essence but it's now just aimed into a different context it's a very good question isn't it um yeah do you know i think that i think i'll answer that in two ways that i'm still doing the same thing with a different slant so i'm talking about productivity i'll talk about motivation morale uh connectivity team dynamic um so leadership in a new context people strategies in a new context so you know all of those things are things which i've talked about previously you know anything to do with getting the most out of ourselves by using our mind that's what i cover um i've just been doing it with a different perspective and because the world's changed but the only thing that um that i've been talking about which is different to what i usually talk about is some of the macro environmental changes so people are asking me about um well you work with a lot of companies in a variety of sectors so how do you see this playing out talking about more about the economy about governance and about the future of work so they're conversations that i didn't really have before people are more interested in in their team and themselves um but i get more and more questions based upon um you know the experience that i'm having with the variety of companies that i'm working with and how they see things playing out sort of economically or in regards to the future of business so i imagine that contextually for a business things have changed but when it comes to the people that are in those businesses do you think that's still in essence the same message well do you know i mean i i think what's really interesting is that um we've all had sort of eight or nine months to sit at home alone with our soul thinking about why we go to work um where we work who we work with what we do what do we do and who do we do it for and then once we've done that we've seen that the world changed dramatically so the assumptions that our world has been built upon have been roundly challenged what we thought was valuable is no longer valuable you know what we didn't value we're finding out is incredibly valuable so i think perspectives are shifting all the time so um if you look at the way in which we sort of built our economies you know we've got a marshall plan after the war at times you know based upon competition economies of scale um and you know you can see how we've almost ended up here and the problem that we've got is that you know we had a rusty red it's a rickety old house which burned down um you know why should we go back and build a rickety old house you know it's a time to construct something which is more sustainable which is more sustainably successful so i think that many of us them are thinking about you know how do we want to express our talent in a world which has now changed so i was actually with a bank the other day and you know the bank was talking about i'm having conversations with bankers i've never heard before so you know i had some of someone say to me um a question like you know about getting the economy moving and someone else interjected and say well look we need to almost decide what the economy is for um it's a really good question and because you know these are these are questions that we don't necessarily hear because we're trying to satisfy shareholder value i think there's a new level of bravery in the way in which people might organize their careers and home life there's a new level of bravery in which people might want to construct new teams and new businesses which play into sectors in a different way to construct a world which is different to the one that we lived in before so i think this is where it gets into you know what i call sort of big pans territory which is that uh yeah it's like when i see people sort of talk about they run courses on leadership with love i'm like yeah i get yeah uh at a kind of you know at a level of wouldn't it be good if we could all share you know i i'm kind of with that so that that referencing that redefining of the world and why would we rebuild what we just what we just had that didn't work but then we've also got players in the global market who are playing a different game yes and that's exactly the problem yeah absolutely right see one percent of the world's um well and one percent of the world's population uh own fifty percent of the wealth so the status quo is but we've also got countries you know you know like a china for example that are you know the politically based they're they front as a commercial entity but they have an agenda that i would say probably is they are generational in their strategy and we're cyclical in in ours you know and it's a very it's almost like we're playing giraffes and they're playing chess yeah and i think but but you know i mean you know i'd like to think that we're going to sort of think a bit more systemically but um you know and globally come together more you know what we've seen um you know we are getting too political on on the podcast that you know what we've seen we've seen we've seen authoritarism not not authoritarianism not play out very well you see what's happening in places like you know hungary america you know and even in this country populism doesn't deal with this particularly well and um yeah so um so we need a more collaborative approach to solving the world's problems and i think that you know for us to see things as them and us i don't know china will do well after this in terms of america you know is failing um it's a global problem needing a global solution you know such as you know along the likes of climate change you know which will be a greater problem than covet 19 i don't know for humanity so you know i would like to think uh you know if you ask me optimistically i'd like to think that there's going to be some better realization that we went through a um a intellectual crisis in 2008 and this is an existential crisis this is different and so maybe people's hearts and minds may allow us to play into each other and become more connected you know in a way which is different to what we did before so you're asking optimistically you know i'd like to think that let's not look at different geographies or countries doing badly or well out of this how do we as a species and then come together to solve some of the world's biggest problems which affects us all if you ask me on a pessimistic day and um you know i would probably say that um you know the problem that we've got is that exactly as you've described it you know that people um are involved in themselves in nationalism and so you know therefore believing that the way forward is to look after our own but you know i don't see that as a way that we can play out of this from an economic perspective or even from a healthcare and public policy perspective and i think that's where i find it very interesting with dealing and working with senior teams on on a personal level which is that um angst between what they believe to be right as a human being and what they feel themselves being pushed to do in the context of either their job security or an earn out or whatever it may be and it's it's very interesting just to see good people very often i won't go so far as to say doing bad things but there's a very fine line between being motivated bullish and a bully yeah and sometimes you know high motivation is in that kind of depending on who's experiencing it is that kind of bullish area of you know let's go go go but go go go on a continual basis with no time for self becomes a kind of a bullying environment even though i'm not being technically punched in the face yeah and and i and i think i i wonder where your message uh or maybe that this is because i don't understand it well enough but when we talk and i talk to people about personal resilience and personal mindsets it's that yes guy but have you met my boss or yes guy but that's fine but you understand what's happening within this company or and and so i think often there's a a desire for the by the human to want to do things but the collective cultural push doesn't necessarily marry up to what's being asked which i don't think makes people even more anxious because they see the the um the hypocrisy yes you're absolutely right and and you've hit it on the head that the 85 percent of people who have a job don't like it because the statistic that plays out time and time again you have a look um 85 people have a job yeah aren't satisfied with it and i honestly believe the reason why they're not satisfied with it um it's because it probably compromises their thinking so there is contradictory you know we get involved in organizations and get involved in teams that don't necessarily um with who we are so yeah i always said being a good leader being a good colleague is seeking not seeking to impress but seeking to express you know to be ourselves in the context of the workplace um and you know i think very few places are like that you know this is the problem so many companies have i don't know um mission statements but very few are on a mission you know they don't galvanize but um you know a common purpose amongst them people who are passionate about where that organization is heading because it fits with their values there are a few companies who are doing it and doing it well but a majority don't and i think that um the reason why people are unhappy in their role is because it's contradictory to their values what happens then if they become stressed and anxious makes them more susceptible to the virus so therefore you know there needs to be a reset with this world and we need to reset the way in which we look at health and well-being and we look at public policies to do with creating healthier environments for all the societies and communities to allow us to um productive be more productive and successful in a more well-rounded manner boom i do like that phrase which i may stick on a t-shirt which is you know you may have a a mission statement but you are you on a mission you know i mean that's it when i was when i was being provocative when i used to stand on stage i take in the good old days and i have a few hundred people in front of me depending on what i was talking about i was talking about culture or something i'd subtract you'd like this one you'll sense the humor i tell them i would um i would i would say to um the audience um um do you have your values on the wall but you have values on the wall so it's like 4 500 people from a particular company whoever it might be and um and there's obviously 400 people put their hands up that's how i say okay well let's just ask you a quick question um how many of you driving to work every morning thinking i cannot wait to express my company values today and they all look down including the board in the front right all look down like this little snickering i said well i've been i've been a bit mischievous because you probably don't do that however okay you probably don't do that because you're driving into work thinking i cannot wait to increase shareholder value today and they all look even more embarrassed then including the board and then i think yeah we don't go to work to increase shareholder value but um we don't feel excited and engaged when we write out our to-do list and you know we don't go to work to you know express the values which you know someone has pinned up in our you know in our office um yeah we go to work to create meaning and i think that organizations and um organizations and leaders you know go wrong when they focus upon what they can have rather than what they can be and i think that you know let's start to you know construct um economies and businesses and teams and roles with some real meaning and purpose let's realize our contribution let's understand what we enable to take place in the world as a result of you know expressing ourselves and i think that if we can um get into a idea or notion that um culture at um is our true differentiator and our only sustainable competitive advantage is to learn faster and better than our competitors and the way we should construct that culture um i think that companies could do very well in the chaos which you know we're in at the moment people often talk about executive education but i've got this kind of thing which it's more like executive growth which is from your point of view you know right the numbers the financials whatever you know you're either at a level of competence to understand it or you're not we've we've then got that um something about space how people find the space for themselves how they find the space for others and and and maybe how they find maybe the that bravery and it probably is at a senior level to say not so much when is enough enough but how how hard do we need to push because you know that that gantt chart with we're chasing all of these rabbits at the same time um do we does that have to be done um and and i think that's that's the work i'm very interested in at that most senior level because actually you know you're setting the tone right yeah particularly at the moment so um i always say that the issues that a company will face are pretty unimportant um the ability to form a team that can deal with those issues is essential so you know we can't predict the future i don't know the only thing that we can predict is that there'll be a level of uncertainty complexity and and unpredictability so you know let's have a look at our thinking and strategies and plans now which allow us to um to embrace the idea that first things first second things never let's focus upon what's really important where we have impact where we create value now what's meaningful and let's start to direct our energy in that particular direction the reason why um um football teams and terms doesn't work in premiership football teams and the reason why they can play brilliantly together for 90 minutes these teams do you think about it you got to 11 people they don't speak the same language so some people in the premiership 14 won't even speak english and so you don't speak the same language they don't have the same background they don't have the same religion and they play in different positions and different experiences and different times in their career and they play brilliantly together for 90 minutes so why do they do that and how do you do that one of the reasons why is the simplicity of winning everyone understands what winning looks like there's a real clarity the simplicity this is what we we all know how to win a game of football and we all know how to commit to a particular way of being and doing which enables us to win in business it's so much more complicated i bet you see it all the time that you know there's metrics which suggests we're winning in this area and someone will say well i know but we're losing in that one tell me i know but that's because of this have a look at here and it almost seems that we're dotting around not really in that plate spinning but i'm trying to make sure that this is successful and that's successful so we can say that we're winning in that moment one of the things i talk about is unified purpose and you know if we say that kicking the ball into the back of the net is in essence a unified purpose maybe but there's what i actually find is at senior teams is that in startups it can be a lot easier but as the organization gets bigger yeah people and this is an an interesting statement for me but people almost don't mind too much if the company doesn't do that well as long as they do yeah so if i do well and the company does well enough to keep going i will be kept on because i did quite well and it's a it's a no that's that's a i don't mean that of everybody but i see a lot of that where they do know what the the end game is of sorts they they understand what it is but actually there's a human need for self-protection that actually gets in the way of the the ideal yeah so that that's and that's very true and um and again you're absolutely right that the reason for it is protectionism so maintaining a position committing to neutrality if i do my bit i'm all right so um give you an example of it you know where i see it um uh here's an example for you if knowledge is valuable in an organization and i was part of that organization why would i share my knowledge with other people you know if i share my knowledge with you and you know it too all i've done is devalue me i'll keep it to myself and um so we get these fiefdoms of knowledge and you know we get these people who drive their own areas drive their own geography drive their own clients drive their own accounts um because one that's how they're measured and i'm performing well look at my kpis but i'm doing all right and so we need more unifying purpose and unifying metrics and then so um so i'm doing well um and whilst i'm doing well i can wipe my brow and maybe if i've got some time playing to the other guys to see if we can do it together and you're absolutely right that it's this protectionism looking after me making sure i'm safe and you'll probably see it even more now than than any other time you know this year i don't lose this account don't lose his client dawn is my job don't lose the team don't lose my status reputation and so in a way there must be so many new ideas this year which are at the mercy of what people don't want to lose so something motivated by what we're seeking to achieve and create so many people are motivated by what they're seeking to avoid they don't necessarily look up to see the opportunity so you know i think that i totally understand the consideration of having to hunker down let's batten down the hatches let's look after stuff i get that um but i just wonder whether if it's too much of a consideration it becomes a motivation and so therefore we miss out on the new perspectives which would create these new possibilities new ideas are so fragile someone suggests a new idea someone um and someone raises an eyebrow yeah about the idea is dead yeah someone that's a new idea someone smirks the idea is dead let alone until when that and then the new idea is a victim of a discussion based upon how much is it going to cost us if it doesn't work i think the fragility of a new idea is a very good metaphor or very good you know it is delicate yeah i think that's that's that's very true and then it gets suggested into an environment where people say yeah it's a nice idea but if it doesn't work how much is this going to cost margin market share revenue income what are we going to lose with this one and i like it but what are we going to lose let's consider this wisely the new idea is dead because people are starting to talk about it in a negative way and explore all the reasons why it won't work and you'll always find reasons why things don't work so in the limited time that i have with you because you know with a beverage and a chinese takeaway i could i could keep on like this into the to the wee hours and maybe some west african cuisine[Laughter] you're not going to let it go away so there is that so for me what is i've got two kind of things i want to ask you what one isn't the time we've got which is was there a moment in your life where you had a book a conversation with somebody and an observation where you really thought that was one of the the real shifts not in me wanting to do that career but in my learning in my understanding of my topic um i think yeah do you know what i've had a few and um i think because because i'm always after an epiphany i'm always trying to find one i need a paradigm shift by a wednesday or i'm not a happy man exactly right exactly right so um so yeah so yeah probably a few um really i think it's funny because someone once said to me that pride can be a very expensive thing um it's one of the best pieces of advices i've ever had um i see it in business all the time you know where people's ego i don't drive them to champion something which is failing and they're going to have good luck and they confuse it for genius but um you know and um you know so many times that you know we we you know we drive an agenda you know because you know we'll lose face not to we want to have our say and i've probably told that as a teenager pride can be a very expensive thing um i think it's very true now the other piece of advice that you know i had is that someone once said to me that life is about timing and when you're young i don't think you realize that you know you get um so um no men of a certain age like us that um that will um i look good for 74. so we'll start to realize that it is about timing but i mean i genuinely believe it and i think that you know look at the time that we're in now i mean i think we'll look back in five years or ten years time and it'll be some super successful companies in the next five years or ten years i bet you they were born out of this i bet you yeah so it almost proves that circumstance and situation are not important um what's most important is what we choose to do with it and i think that you know i i realized too late the power of choice and i think that you know we can make great choices rather than um look at the circumstance and situation that we're in obviously blame looks backwards responsibility looks forwards um as soon as you start to take responsibility and allow that to meet great timing you know i think that we can really um do some amazing stuff so before i kind of get into my closing funnel um which is now getting relatively well practiced this is a question that might test you a little bit but what's the best maybe not the best what's the bit of advice that you're almost most proud of giving somebody um honestly specifically for an individual what do you mean the advice i give out often i think yeah when you maybe i think for an individual where you actually thought you know what i actually think that's going to help here's the thing for you and i need to be careful how i worked this one but um it's amazing because i i'm really really lucky i'm very lucky you know i've traveled the world working with some amazing people incredibly successful business people and sports people um and the best psychology i've ever done um hasn't come from a psychology book um when you're sat in front of a 16 17 year old golfer you know who earns you know a few million quid a year lives at home with his mum and dad in a two-bedroom house and um you know and um he's had a bad day and he wants to kill himself and kill you and you know you just say to him you know look stop being an ass go and practice tomorrow and um it's quite possibly the best advice i've ever had handed out yeah is the advice which is you know more fatherly and not sort of you know or as a best mate it's the sort of thing you say to your best mate which is you know look you've been you've been attacked tomorrow yeah there's something genuinely human yeah yeah and i swear to god it's the best that there was i'm not gonna name the golfer but as a golfer who was you know languishing at whatever 70th in the world young kid yeah and yeah he won his first tournament in a number of years and um and i promise you the advice i gave him was just stop moaning and go out and win there's no technical advice there's no great psychology behind it needed to kick up the ass and she just you're going to kick up your arm he needed a clip around the ear and so the best advice i've ever given is there's literally been that moment of truth um and you'll be amazed actually how you know sometimes you know with very senior people or you know very wealthy people whatever it might be but um you know sometimes you know the ability to look them in the eye and um you know and risk everything is worth it and you know you just have to answer that fully yeah honest conversation you know not from a psychologist to a client not from you know a consultant to a ceo but from one human being to another attorney that says look mate it's more like this than that i buy into that and when i try and find people to bring onto my team my issue isn't their academic intelligence or their what the books they've read because generally they're smarter than i am and they've read a lot more and they're better qualified my biggest issue is their ability to stand in front of somebody senior or sit and whatever and just occasionally go you know that's bollocks right yeah absolutely and for it to be acceptable because it's coming from the heart from somebody that he's genuinely sharing and not judging that's right and i think you know you do have to build a relationship to have that level of honesty yeah so um but you know that in itself um you know it enables you to have greater optionality so when you build a relationship up high then it gives you the license you know to have a new level of honesty and i think that um there's no substitute for it i mean you can't read that in books at home you know you learn it by doing it i think actually in terms of the greatest skills i think when i'm looking at leaders is that ability to build the trust to have the honest conversation which leads to the moments of humanity where then we're trusted so i'll definitely buy into that yeah we need to become increasingly human-led and technology-enabled you know i need to increasingly think about you know the way in which we can humanize language you know to humanize what people do um i think that it's an interesting skill for leaders moving forwards so listen jim i i want to stay here for the next four or five hours but i'm relatively sure that you have to go and actually do something um you'll be roasting in that body walmart you sat there for the next four or five hours listen thank you for bringing that up but i realized that this thing like this top i add on was reacting to the lens and it was sending a bit squishy so i had to quickly put that on thanks for i've been feeling sick by watching end of the hour actually so i'm glad you've got the yeah no exactly i thought it was a bit it's a bit so i've shoved it up so if people want to i'm going to put your contact details in the description but if people want to reach out and engage with you is it via linkedin your website what what's the best way to yeah i've got my details on a toilet wall in my opinion but you're doing so well up until the last minute weren't you and then you blew it all through linkedin you know it's fine by me at um you know and obviously my website is jamilcracie.com it's always a pleasure to hear from people okay fantastic listen on that note i'm gonna press the stop button i'm just going to ask you to not go away for a moment just in case um there's a crisis but just for me personally just thank you so much for coming on on this episode thank you for inviting me it's been a real pleasure thank you very much you