You're at the Coaching Inn, 3D Coaching's virtual pub where we enjoy conversations with people who engage in the world of coaching. Welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching In. I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm in conversation with Sarah Carter and her co-guest, Martin Carter. Sarah is famous on LinkedIn. And Sarah, welcome. And then we'll talk to dad afterwards. So Sarah, how old are you? I'm 11 years old. You're 11 years old and you're famous on LinkedIn. What did you say to your dad?
So we were on the beach in the summer and I asked him what his job was because he replied he taught people how to do their job better and I said more like destroy them mentally. I can see dad looks a bit embarrassed. Yeah, there was a second half which might be coming in a moment as well, I seem to remember. Remember what the second half of that was? No, I can't. Well, I can. And the second half was, and tells him how to do a job he's never done himself. Well, there you are.
And have you changed your mind or do you think that's still what dad does? No, I've always thought that is, always will. OK, well, now dad. Welcome, Martin Carter is going to tell us all about his LinkedIn post. Please, Martin, and tell us all about you. Thanks, Claire, and thanks for inviting us both along. Yeah, so I guess one of the things that I've been working on and working with my clients on is vulnerability and honesty and openness.
And I was struck how many kind of LinkedIn profiles I was seeing where people had described themselves as kind of thought leaders or had like an amazing titles. And I was being reminded by the family of how Sarah had described me. And I thought, well, what would be the antithesis of building yourself up and what might actually be more honest and maybe a bit more humble for me how I could describe myself. So I decided I'd go for it. and thought it might have needed a bit of explanation.
So my LinkedIn profile now says, as Sarah says, mentally demolishes people and tells them how to do a job he's never done himself.
And the post was really about how do we strip back everything that we do and how do we present ourselves and how do we come across to other people and a little bit of a mischievous as I say, antithesis to maybe some of the, and I don't want to fall too much into judgment here, maybe some of the self-promotion or grandiose titles that I was starting to see in places like LinkedIn. I thought it was amazing.
And Sarah, we have to say thank you so much for having that conversation with Dad on the Beach, because that's made lots of people look at what they call themselves and go, actually, is this really what I do or is this what I hope I do? Well, you're very welcome. Thank you. And so if you had a title on LinkedIn, if you were at 11 years old, were allowed to be on LinkedIn, what would you call yourself? world's best daughter. The world's best daughter. How amazing is that?
Well, world's best daughter, thank you for being our youngest ever guest at the Coaching Inn. And we know that you now got to go and have your dinner. Yep. So enjoy and thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. It's a real pleasure. Bye bye. You've really struck something there, Martin, haven't you? It's interesting, isn't it? think, you know, I'm really struck by the wisdom of children and I'm struck by the wisdom of children's literature.
And one of the stories I often end up sharing with people I'm working with is Hans Christian Anton's Emperor's New Clothes story. and I'm sure everybody knows it but it's the one where the king having been taken in by some swindlers is parading naked through the streets thinking he's wearing an amazing suit of clothes and of course it's the child in the crowd who says but the king's naked and what's really interesting and I did go back and check my sources on this because I've been
telling people this for years that actually the apparently the manuscript was at the printers and in the original telling Hans Christian Andersen had just a townsperson saying, the king's naked. But he said it just didn't resonate with him. There was something about the story which didn't connect. And of course, everybody knows that an adult would never say that in a crowd of adults where everybody else is agreeing. It takes a child's innocence or a child's courage to say, the king's naked.
And it was a little bit Sarah's openness and honesty, shall we say, and wanting to embrace that that made me. made me go for it on LinkedIn and say, let's start a conversation. Which you did, for sure. Indeed it did. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And one of the things you said was, you know, did you give this name to yourself or did somebody else give it to you? But I think even if somebody else gave it to you, sometimes we need to push back.
Yeah. I had somebody in the room last week and she went, I can't believe I'm talking to you. And I just went... I'm just like you. Yeah. Yeah. Which I think she realized like two minutes later, she'd yeah, you are just like me. Human being. These labels we carry, isn't it? And some of them are the ones that we bestow on ourselves and others have bestowed them on us. And as I'm sure we know they can be positive and they can be, they can be negative. But the labels are really, really interesting.
you just reminded me actually of the first day of my coach training back in the day a few years ago when I was on my journey of my coach training and we were invited to go to the grounds of this lovely house that we were doing the training in and come back with something and I went out with the intention of coming back with a flower or a piece of foliage with something with some deep meaning and you were meant to describe it but as I was walking along there was a
Dorothy Perkins label that had obviously been, well I imagine it had been discarded from a dress because they use this place for weddings and it was probably causing an itch.
This label was causing an itch and it was on the floor and I saw it and I ignored it but you know you get that little nudge in your mind and I couldn't get it out of my mind so I went back and picked it up and as all these people had these amazing items in nature I had this Dorothy Perkins label and which I've still got by the way and They said, well, why have you bought that? And I said, well, I'm not sure, but I think it's about labels.
I think it's about arriving here thinking I want to be a coach and actually what do I want to be? Why am I here? And what would it mean to completely throw off my labels in the way that that label had been thrown off a dress? yeah, I think that's lived with me since this sense of labels and the labels that we carry and the labels that we give to others. So how do you spend your time at work, Martin?
I was with a group this week actually, I think I've got the best job in the world because like I guess many of your listeners Claire, I'm a coach, but I'm also a facilitator, I do some training and I am a governor at our local secondary school, I'm the chair of governors there, so do some work in the school. But if you made me pick a label which wasn't mentally demolish people and teach them how to do a job he's never done himself. I describe myself as a performance coach.
think, I think that's really what I'm committed to doing. How do we help people perform even better? How can we be a better version of ourselves? What does that mean? And so whether it's in sort of the risk space that I still do some work in, or whether it's one-to-one coaching or team facilitation or business consultancy, it's all geared towards how can we be slightly better tomorrow compared to where we are today?
And how do we kind of hone our performance across all elements of aspects of our life. I love what you just said there, slightly better tomorrow, because that's much more realistic offer, isn't it? And it also takes the, you know, I can turn you into the world's best whatever is rather an overwhelming pressure on everybody. Yeah, obviously, listeners can't see what's on the wall behind me, but I've got a picture of Roger Bannister within the four minute mile.
And he's being, the image has got Chris Chatterway or one of his pacemakers in front of him. And he's pacemaking him. And at the end of the race, Roger Bannister gives huge credit to Chris Brasher and Chris Chatterway, his two pacemakers, and said, I couldn't have done it without them. And I think at its best, I think all elements of coaching are, it's like being a pacemaker.
You bring people along slightly faster than you'd, they'd go if they're left to their own devices, but, not so far that you're a lap ahead. Cause that's showing off and that's about you. But, but the whole purpose is to pace them to achieve their personal best. And then tomorrow they can better it. What does that look like?
And I think that's how that's kind of, think that performance coaching is just being that little bit better and being really conscious about how we can just improve by one small conscious step. Yeah. Yeah. And there's also something there about not being isolated and not feeling you're alone. Yeah. This sense of doing it with and for and alongside others, I think.
Yeah. And I think maybe the last couple of years of lockdown and all that that is and Taylor has probably left many people feeling isolated despite spending hours staring at other people on the screen all day. Yeah. Yeah. I like to define coaching as keeping someone company while they think. Yeah. Nice. And I think sometimes we think I'm not doing anything, but actually I'm keeping them company. and facilitating that to happen.
And if I wasn't here, they probably wouldn't be holding themselves to the gas, to the heat. Yeah, I like that. I think that's absolutely right. There's that sense of being held, whether you're holding the person, you're holding the space and just creating that, yeah, that thinking environment. And bringing it with, as a pacemaker does, as I guess a sports coach does, maybe... sometimes in a way that might bring a bit of discomfort. Yeah, yeah.
As you're talking about these three men, one of whom's become very famous and the other two of whom their names are known, but not at all in the same way, makes me think about leading and following. because he won the race. Yeah, the fascinating story about that. I love stories. You probably know that. You probably sus that by now, Claire. that year, and I'm my brains and I'm pretty sure it was 54. was early 50s.
The year that Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile was the first year that the BBC sports personality was awarded. And it wasn't Roger Bannister who won it. It was Chris Chatterway. who had been one of his pacemakers. just, I mean, what a great kind of, I if it was a Hollywood movie, you'd kind of go, my word. Chris Chatterway won a gold medal in a race later on in the year. It wasn't the Olympics, but it was some global event, I think.
And I think it was just more in the forefront of people's minds. And when it came to the sports personality of the year, he was awarded it, not Roger Bannister, despite Roger Bannister achieving that iconic milestone. And so there's something about when you put your own goals aside to help others, it doesn't necessarily mean you're less successful. You've been successful in your own right. Yeah, that's very interesting, isn't it?
I wrote a blog post the other day about sometimes I think as coaches, we can see somebody getting to the moment of insight and we try and run over the finishing line and go, look, you're here. And then they fall over. because they've got to do that last bit themselves. It's like the marathon, isn't it? Where you've got to let somebody get them wobble their way over the line, even if it's really struggle for them. I think that's right.
I think certainly in the early part of, I may well still be guilty of this now at times, but certainly in the early part of my coaching journey, I probably wanted everything to be. boxed off in a lovely bow with a wrapper on it and beautifully packaged. of course, I think you come to realize with age and maturity and great people around you that that's maybe for you and not for the coach Ian. I think you're right.
that freedom to struggle over the line whilst being held and supported, I think is key to whatever it is that this thing that we do. this difficult to describe thing that we do. Indeed, So what's the simplest way that you describe coaching? I've robbed this from somebody and I'm not sure who I've robbed it from. But my favourite description of coaching is described as the job of a coach is not to unstick people, but to help them explore their stuckness. That's great.
So I'd love to say I created it, but I'm pretty sure I've robbed it from somewhere. I need to Google it to find out who it was from. But yeah, the job of a coach is not to unstick people, but to help them explore their stuckness. And I think that speaks to that space that you were talking about. I think what you saying, Claire, about if you weren't there, they may not make that progress.
think we ignore our stuckness or we turn away from our stuckness or we We don't want to wrestle, we find we detour around it. And I think what a good coach does is just say it's OK to be stuck. Let's just be curious about being stuck and what it means to be stuck. So interesting. So what else can we learn from Sarah and children, I wonder, in terms of coaching and leadership, indeed? I mean, I think there's great wisdom in lots of children's literature. And I think I'll end up paraphrasing this.
That's the start of the Winnie the Pooh, which I have got somewhere else on the wall in my room, is something like, bump, here's Edward Bear coming down the stairs on the back of his head. It is, as far as you know, the only way of coming down the stairs, although it can't help thinking there must be a better way. And the image is he's being dragged by his foot by Christopher Robin and his head bangs off every step. And I mean, think that's the point where good coaches step in, right?
Where clients are like, I've got this sense there's a better way. If only I could stop bumping for a minute and think about it. And I think that's the entry point for most people is when we are prepared to stop and pause and think and say, actually, what's what is there? What are the alternatives here? Why does it feel like I'm going downstairs from the back of my head?
something I often talk about with my clients, and particularly groups is, apparently, between the age of two and five, as children, we ask about 40,000 questions. Now, I guess any parent of anybody who's parented a toddler would go it seems like more than 40 days. But something like between 20 and 30 every day. But by the time we're 18, that's reduced by 80 or 90%. And after that, and and I think what children can particularly teach us is just about curiosity.
I think as we get more educated, and we enter the workplace, I think we stop asking questions or I think more important that we stop asking questions that we don't know the answer to. I think often we end up asking questions that we kind of know the answer to and we're trying to guide people to the answer we've already decided. Yeah. But I think what children do is genuinely ask questions that they don't know the answer to and they're really, really curious.
And I think the vulnerability of asking questions, and I think the reason we often don't ask questions in adulthood is throughout school, questions become code for I don't know the answer. And I think if you're in a position of responsibility and asking a question, which to you might feel like code for I don't know the answer is, my word, but I meant to know the answers because my job has got manager in it or leader in it or something in it. And so I think it's back to that vulnerability.
And if we can get back into it with that childlike innocence of asking the question that you don't know the answer to. think it unlocks teams, unlocks organisations, it unlocks communities, I think. So if there was one thing apart from brutal honesty that I think we can learn from children, it's just asking the questions that we don't know the answer to. Yeah, and then finding a better question.
Yeah. If that's all we do is to find a better question that we can sit with, that enables us to engage with something a different way. What a great thing. But there's something there isn't there, Martin, about control. Because we live in what do we call it? Volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. And yet in that, there's a fantasy that leaders and managers should know what they're doing. But they do and they don't.
In same way that in coaching, we do know what we're doing, but we don't know what we're doing. We never know what we're doing. We know a process, but we might not know the answer. We might not know where it's leading us. For sure.
favourite cartoon which I used with a group earlier, earlier last week is and I'll try to describe it as best I can but it's a row of people walking up to a hut that says answers and there's an arrow pointing to the right that says simple but wrong and you see lots and lots of people walking down this path and falling off the edge of a cliff and then an arrow pointed to the left that says complex but right and it's this tortuous winding path up this hill.
that's just got one or two people walking up it. And maybe I'm getting old and therefore cynical and bitter. Or maybe there's something in it, but I think we're more and more prone towards simple answers. know, this is black and white and simple answers. And I think we're maybe losing the patience or the art or the willingness or the vulnerability of just wrestling with complex answers.
And being satisfied with answers that, as you say, might not actually draw us to a conclusion, but just lead us to an even better question. just sitting with that, I think is something which probably is not an auto response thing. I don't think it's prevalent. think we're 100 mile an hour looking for simple answers most of the time. And that goes back, doesn't it, to how you described your stuff at the beginning about moving people forward a bit.
Yeah. Because if you could move a question forward a bit, that's progress, right? Yeah, absolutely. And I think part of this, think, is back to childhood. You know, from within 20 minutes of being born, assuming you're healthy, then you get whisked away from your parents and the midwife weighs you and measures you. And here in the UK, they flip to the back of the red medical book and they plot you on a graph.
know, within 20 minutes of being born, you're plotted on a graph and told how you compare to everybody else. And then it doesn't really stop from there. think we're, you know, we're constantly fed a comparison alongside everybody else. And our self-worth is often measured externally in terms of how am I doing in relation to everybody else. as push the real journey is how am I doing compared to myself? How am I how am I doing compared to that best version of myself that I aspire towards?
And that's that's I think the key metric and without jumping on a digging out social media bandwagon, which of course is popular, but I'm about to I don't necessarily think the the kind of social media maelstrom that we can live in that we often live in is helpful in that regard because we are constantly compared. invited to compare ourselves to others.
And again, I think that's where coaching can really help people liberate themselves in terms of breaking that external verification and thinking, actually, what is the best version of me? What does that look like? And what can I consciously do towards to move towards a little bit more towards it? Yes, so much to learn, isn't there, from children? It's really interesting, isn't it, when you tune into them. I'm sorry, I'm just reminded of another story.
This happened about a couple of years ago, pre-COVID, and I was working at a place not too far from where I live, over on the other side of the Midlands here. And it was one of these working farms. And was during term time, and the classroom was upstairs. overlooking the courtyard of this working farm.
And when we're on a break and when people were having conversations, I was looking out the window and I was struck by the fact that there seemed to be too lots of carers with the young children because they were all under four or five, it was term time. They either seemed to be grandparents or parents and their grandparents were just really engaged with the children. The children were really excited, come and have a look at this, come and look at that, look at this.
And the grandparents were there with them, bending down, engaging with them, answering all of their questions, leading more questions. And the parents were really distracted, maybe worn down by the 37 voices that they'd already heard, or they were on their phones, or they were, but they were somewhere else. And they were disengaged. And what I noticed was that the children their enthusiasm waned because if enthusiasm isn't reciprocated, you see the enthusiasm waning.
And it really struck me about, you know, is there something that by the time you become grandparents, you've kind of reconnected with this wonder and this joy and this being present that sometimes we may lose in those middle years of working and paying the mortgage and keeping the kids safe and all those other responsibilities that we...
that we carry and again, what would it mean to, without kind of, well, without failing to recognise that they are real challenges for any parent, just hold on to some of that curiosity and that joy and that sense of being in the moment. Reminds me of that phrase about raising people up and bringing them down, about how you can... you know, what you've described as the grandparents is raising up, isn't it? And the parents is kind of bringing down the mood.
And I wonder what the equivalent of that is at work. And who are the grandparents at work? And who are the parents at work? It's about preoccupation, it? mean, where's your focus? Where's your attention? Can you interrupt yourself from the pressing concerns and all of the things that are squeezing in on us? And just be, just be present and know that being present is probably the greatest gift you can bring to your colleagues. You it's not necessarily...
It's not necessarily your wisdom, it's not necessarily a 10, 20, 30 years experience, but just being alongside people first and then allowing all of that stuff to flow from there. Being present and being human. Which I think brings us back to vulnerability and courage, Yeah. Can you take your mask off and be prepared to be a little bit vulnerable, a little bit courageous? permissions those around you.
And I think it's a scenario that I often find myself exploring with clients is if I can be vulnerable, if I can be more courageous, what does that permission around me? Whereas if I appear invulnerable, if I appear like I ride every storm and every day is perfect and no issues and nothing ever faces me and nothing ever concerns me, then you create that expectation around you and then you end up with an army of people in suits of armours underneath which they are maybe struggling.
Yeah I said that in the book actually that one of the things I think that's a real risk is that coaches start to look like people who are sorted who work with people who aren't sorted. Yeah. And you know as much as we're not going to disclose all our personal wounds in the space where we're facilitating someone else's processing, equally, we can't look like some robotic successful. thing because that's just not human. No, no. And I think it's not human. And it just doesn't create empathy.
I think people want to be alongside people who feel that they get them, they understand them, they've maybe walked some of the similar paths that they're walking. Or could at least empathise in terms of what it might feel like to do so. Yeah. There's a hospice doctor in the States called Rachel Remen. And she said you cannot, she said fixing and helping create a distance. Right. You cannot serve at a distance. You can only serve that to which you are profoundly connected. Isn't that beautiful?
Foundly connected. That's really powerful. Yeah. Yeah. I think, know, as coaches, we live in the same world as everybody else, despite what some people might think. We have many of the same challenges, many of the same kind of difficulties. And I think it's about bringing all of that, isn't it? And not holding ourselves up as some, as you say, some kind of guru or thought leader or somebody who can in any way fix. anybody.
Now, of course, that might make it hard to sell your services if people feel they want fixing, but I think we have to be careful of that. yeah, profound connection seems like a good place to start.
Yeah, and we've got some more podcasts coming up in the next few weeks about that thing about promising outcomes and also being human and that space between that tension between those two because actually we can't promise outcomes but if you don't say people tell people what the outcome might be then they don't know what you're going to do you know you don't they don't know what you're doing so it's it's a real challenge isn't it yeah yeah Steve
Ratcliffe has this bit and is in leadership plan simple future engaged deliver book where he talks about, you know, it being about helping you be at your best more of the time. that's more or less where I start with any kind of client is well, we create a space to help you stop and think about how you can be at your best even more of the time. You're already functioning. You're brilliant. Some of the time you might be brilliant. Most of the time.
How can we help you be brilliant even more of the time? What's that going to look like? That is such a beautiful way of describing performance coaching, isn't it? Because I think that often when it's commissioned, they can feel like a very close line between performance coaching and performance management. Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think when I think about leadership and management, I'm back to my childhood again. And we used to play a in the playground called Follow My Leader.
And of course, if nobody's following you, you are just walking around the playground. And as a leader or a manager in an organization, if people are only following you because the org chart says they have to, and that's a bit like, you you're playing at leadership, okay? You're getting a sense of compliance while the org chart says I have to follow you. And I think you can manage like that, but leadership liberates something else in people. think leadership is where people follow you.
for a reason other than the organization chart says they have to. And I think the best leaders end up bringing many of the skills that the best coaches bring. How do you create a space that people around you can thrive within? Ultimately, what I think we're trying to do as coaches who coach leaders is help them create a space that people can thrive within because you can't make somebody come to work and do a great job.
you can only create the space that enables them and equips them and then encourage them to do so. exactly. Well, what an amazing conversation, Martin. That's blown by, hasn't it? Yeah, thank you so much for coming and also thank you to Sarah. And if people want to continue a conversation with you, how do they get in touch with you? Well, they can find me on LinkedIn, of course, as we know. It's Martin P Carter, which is the height of arrogance to use your middle initial.
There's a subtle reason why that's there. So you can find me on there. You can also get me via my website at Martin Carter Associates dot com. Brilliant. So either of those places and just would love to continue this conversation with anybody who's keen to explore what this means to be more childlike in our leadership and our behaviour. yeah, just drop me a line and would love to connect with anybody. Thank you so much. So I'm Claire Padraic and I've been in conversation with Martin Carter.
Bye bye. Thanks Claire. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today, we'd love you to share the podcast with a friend or leave a comment on social media. And if you'd like to become a regular at The Coaching In, you can subscribe on Podbean and all major podcast channels. We look forward to welcoming you next time. You've been listening to The Coaching In, 3D Coaching's virtual pub. For more information, check out 3dcoaching.com.