You're at The Coaching Inn, 3D coaching virtual pub where we enjoy conversations episode. I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm in conversation with Tim Bradshaw about his new book, Because I Can, The Robust Guide to Being Effective, which has got some really interesting things in it and it's all about things that you've achieved, Tim, in the face of imposter syndrome and depression. I don't know about achieve, just things I've not given up on there to be honest.
I'm not sure if that's necessarily to say, if not necessarily the same thing. mean, for goodness sake, don't really look into autobiography because you'd be more senseless frankly. I like your honesty. I just think that somebody who's willing to say that, it's an important thing, honesty, isn't it? No, no, I think 100%. And I think the world we live in at the moment, we... I've fallen out of Facebook at moment, they banned me and I'm not entirely sure why, if I'm completely honest.
But I think we live in a world at the moment where people's perception of reality and actual reality are not the same thing. And, you know, it's quite funny. Probably, I do quite love after the speaking, right? And probably the most common question I get asked is, you ever want to quit? And I tend to laugh and go, yeah, literally every day. Quit writing the book, quit on my business, quit delivering workshops, quit, you know, literally every minute of the day.
And I say to people, it's completely normal to want to quit or let's put it to context, it's completely normal to doubt yourself. Just don't, just don't quit. That's all. it's, you know, as long as no matter how small rather step forward is, it's a step forward. And I think perhaps a few more successful people need to be a bit more honest about actually they don't. back themselves every minute of the day and we all doubt ourselves and that's the reality, Indeed.
So tell us about your journey into having conversations and writing your book. I think it still sounds weird when you say that Claire, writing a book. I'm like, no, no part of me is an author. And I think I mentioned to you before, and I just said secondly, of my friends is Kath Bishop. She's actually clever and actually an author. And therefore it just feels a bit weird. But no, think life's about experiences. I still think you can't shortcut experiences, good or bad. I joined the army at 18.
My first job was leading 37 soldiers, aged 19 and a bit. Probably wasn't very good at it, to be completely honest with you, just kind of way too young. So I'm not particularly academic. I never claimed to be really. But I'm of prepared to have a go at most things. And I've just been on a journey and a path and I just, I've always had this attitude, which is the book comes from of, well, let's, let's have a go.
And, know, people quite often say, well, the army or Sandhurst in particular, you know, makes good leaders and at the risk of being controversial. I'm not sure that's true. Actually, what it does is it makes really good decision makers. You don't fail Sandhurst for making the wrong decision. You fail Sandhurst for making no decision. Or at least you did, you did in my day. And. think the other thing is there's never any kind of doubt about the outcome, if that makes sense.
So when the kernel says, this is what we're to go and do, nobody is questioning whether or not that's what we're to go and do. So the whole team is focused on achieving what it needs to achieve. Now, it can be incredibly collaborative in terms of pulling stuff in from other people and other ideas and all the rest of it. But the doubt as to what we're going to achieve is never in question.
And that's where this, I've of coined that a little bit to become this sort of because I can mindset which, you know, we've just got back from Ukraine, you know, this time 10 days ago, I was in Lviv. And we've delivered, I can't remember 13,000 boiled in a bag meals, 550 sleeping bags and several hundred first aid trauma first aid kits. But what was really interesting is we took a really disparate group of people.
And I was sitting on the sofa with my other half and said, I'm watching the news and so I can do something about that. You know, and she said, Yeah, you should. So I then sort of made a few phone calls and sent a few emails. I've got some really good people I know. And again, everybody went, okay, that's what we're do.
And when everybody has that mindset, it's really interesting, incredibly powerful as to what you can then achieve because everybody is focused on what you can do, not what you can't do. And everybody's contributing forward to what you can do. And I guess in the book, I've tried to illustrate if you, you know, I found myself in some strange circumstances, right? Whether that's in Afghanistan or... or that's on the side of a man who burst in 2015 when the earthquakes hit.
That same philosophy has stood me in good stead. It doesn't make it any easier. It doesn't make it any more pleasant necessarily, but it does take you through it. And I think, I don't know, I watched a lot of stuff at the moment. I listened to a lot of stuff, as do you, you know, and sometimes it's almost as if people are saying, don't doubt yourself, don't be afraid. Well, that's just not true, right? mean, being afraid is a biological reaction. so, and probably keeps you alive.
I'm never get one of our specialist instructors telling me that, you know, healthy sense of paranoia keeps you alive, but particularly in war zones. but actually if you can come up with coping strategies, so you accept the fact I'm going to feel afraid. So when I feel afraid, what do I do and how do I deal with that? So I don't try not to be afraid. I try to think my way through it. then for me that's far more effective than trying to block out this kind of human reaction. don't know that.
And we've used those same techniques in business. We use it to teach leadership, you know, and on the side of Mount Everest in 2015 or wherever else we may find ourselves. I've got a pretty low board and threshold. It reminds me of that Susan Jeffers book that came out years and years ago. It was called Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Right, OK, I've not seen that. Brilliant. But yes, exactly. And it's a future-focused, let's do this kind of mindset, isn't it? Yeah, yeah.
I don't know I've seen that book. But yes, that's exactly what it is. So we've coined this expression a bit. Fear is false expectation appearing real. And what happens is we set up this catastrophic thinking spiral, right? If this happens and that happens, if that happens and this will happen and that will lead to that. the reality is none of those things have actually happened yet.
So we're dealing and panicking, if you like, and creating anxiety around things that actually haven't yet happened and may never happen. Whereas actually if we dial in and focus into what's happening right in front of us right now that we can manage, we free up bandwidth. And it doesn't necessarily solve the problem in front of us. straight away, but what it does is it creates a bigger capacity. And I've been having fun with people recently.
I've done a live gig the day with AHDB, the farming levy. And I said to them, it's much like lockdown, right? So you're trying to have a teams meeting in the house and your old partner is also trying to have a teams meeting in the house. Clearly yours is more important than theirs or vice versa. You've got kids trying to stream games, somebody else trying to watch Netflix. and some lunatic taught grandma how to use FaceTime.
So even though we've never spoken, normally we speak to granny every nine months, she now calls three times a week. And every time that happens, the internet is kind of like dying on its knees, right? And the way you have to get that meeting working again is shut down the bits that are least important, prioritize what you've got to deal with right now and make that go. it's not unlike that, I don't think. It's that kind of, okay, that's the biggest priority right now.
Deal with the false expectation. we have this expression which is intelligence, not information. So cut loose the information, only deal with the intelligence. And as a starting point, intelligence has to be kind of accurate, timely and relevant. And it's not all of those three things, worry about it later, if you can. It reminds me of, well, the current challenge that most people at work bring to coaching conversations is about how do I manage all these expectations all at the same time?
Yeah, no, and the answer is don't and you can't. And I, you know, I have this, I think it's quite interesting, actually, because there's almost an expectation that we can all do that, and we should all be doing that. And I think we have a tendency as well to compartmentalize things. So yeah, we often talk about work life balance is an example, right, which I think is quite dangerous, because potentially you can create anxiety lines, right.
So, so in other words, if home is oversimplified, if clear clearly, But if home's going brilliantly and work's not, then by definition, you become anxious on your way to work, whether that's virtual or real. If it's the other way around, if you and your partner are not getting on brilliantly and work's going really well, you've got the same anxiety line, you're just crossing it going back the other way.
I'll never forget, but many, many years ago, and I still have a helicopter pilot's license, and many years ago when being taught to fly helicopters by the military. One of the tests they used to do is quite interesting. They would have five or six screens, forgive me exactly, but five or six screens. But you can only ever look at any three of them at any one time, right?
And what you'd have to do is you'd have to scroll through these screens and it would be columns growing up and down or out in this. And when they got to a certain point, you had to stop them before they got to a certain point. So of course the point is in your brain, what you're trying to do is go, right, that one's all the way down here. So I'm not gonna worry about that one for a minute. This one's nearly at the top. So scroll through, save that one.
And the time you've done that, this one is coming up. But the point is you're moving between these priorities. That's the point I'm really trying to make. And I think that there's, we have these moments and I think it's all for me, I'm biased, but it's all about communication, right? So right now, if I'm getting married on the 4th of June, right? So right now that's a fairly high priority. So that requires my concentration. Work is jogging along for a week or two. That's okay. I can do that.
But then I'm also aware that the following week we need to shift those. balance is back again. So actually to me, it becomes a communication exercise because if you explain to people involved, hey, look, I've just got to deal with this right now, then I'm to be straight onto that. And then I'm going be onto this. Actually, my experience is most people don't mind because most people are actually in exactly the same boat. And if you communicate that openly with people, they kind of get it.
They're like, yeah, okay, yeah, why wouldn't you? That makes sense. Rather than trying to do everything all at once, it's, you know, prioritize it. So what makes you human, Tim? What makes me not human, Claire, is the proper answer, really, isn't it? I I'm absolutely no different to anybody else, nor would I ever claim to be, really. I think it's just like anything else, isn't it? I think if you take up a new sport or a new hobby, whatever that is, it could be reading a book, right?
The first time you try and read a book, it's hard work, yeah? And you can't concentrate, but actually... three or four years down the line, you read books like this. The world went mad during lockdown, didn't it, from their couch to 5k. So you've never run before, unless you're Alison, obviously, from practical publishing, you've run thousands of miles a week. But you never run before. So you don't try and run 5k on day one, you build up your tolerance and your resistance.
Well, I think that's all I've done is My whole life I've been involved with leadership positions and stressful situations, mostly in my own making and choosing to be completely honest. But just like anything else, you learn mechanisms and techniques and you have good days and bad days. And I think the only difference is you, I dunno, as you get older, I've accepted the fact that, yeah, I make a mess of it sometimes and kind of that's okay. It's what you do next that matters.
So no part of me thinks I'll be not human. Unfortunately, I now need a new left knee and I'm pretty stiff when I get out of bed in the morning. So I'm getting a daily reminder that I'm more human than I would like to believe I am, to be completely honest. Yeah. So what's your hope for the book? You know, it's really funny. So any who comes and does any stuff with me will know that I'm all about outcome.
And by outcome, what I mean is not necessarily, you can't control whether you win or lose, right? I'm a hundred percent in agreement with Cath Bishop on that. You cannot control the win. But to me, when I talk about outcome, I talk about like your performance, right? That that's what. So I think for me, I love it if people read the book and when I've done something differently or that little nugget you've put in there.
or that technique that you've used there, I've just done something differently because of it, or it's helped me out. For some people, they might really go, well, I'm already doing that. That's brilliant. Great. That's a huge pattern of, you know, brilliant confirmation is excellent in my view. But also, I think if there was a group of people that started to read it and went, I've, I've done something differently. To me, that was massive. I think the biggest compliment I was terrified.
you go through the, you're an author play, you go through the process, right? You send off your book and it goes to these very clever people that kind of proofread it. And I felt literally 12 years, 12 years old again, getting my kind of red pen manuscript back, was a horrendous experience.
But then actually, but a couple of weeks later, I got an email from one of the ladies that could have sort of proofread the book and she, just want to let you know, I've rewritten my daughter's UCAS application form. using the stuff you talked about in the first and second chapters of your book. said, but I read your book and she went this whole thing about not waffling. She said like, made complete sense. And for me, that would be my aim.
If there was a group of people that were kind of ready and went, wow, I've actually just done something different. Because I think YouTube is full of change your mindset, be more positive, have a growth mindset. It's like, yeah, have a growth mindset. Perfect. How? What do I actually do? So what we've tried to do is just give some examples of, you've accepted that you're gonna try and have a because I can mindset, but here's a couple of things that you can actually do.
So when the dark clouds do roll in, when the pulse rate does pick up and the anxiety kicks in, here's something practical that might just help you. It might not, but it might just help you deal with that situation. And I think my ambition for the book is if it helped a few people.
And I think if you were somebody that's read the book and you got one single thing out of it that helped you deal with either anxiety, depression, or making big decisions at work or dealing with situations that are scary, you know, hitting the glass ceiling, whatever it might be, and share that with somebody else. Because to be honest with that's not like as we were discussing before we went live, you know, that's not a money thing.
That is a spread the word that this might just help because you know what, if it's helped you Claire, it might just help somebody else. And I think there's not enough of that personally. Yeah, I like the idea of the how to. Because that's the bit, isn't it, that turns dreams into reality. Yeah, because I think it's really easy to get what I call a shot, yeah, to get a shot in the arm, isn't it? Right.
It's really easy to go, yeah, we've all watched our favourite film or, I don't know, listen to it, listen, listen to our favourite kind of YouTube sort of whatever podcast. we go. You know, but actually it's the how to. that creates that initial momentum. And I often like it, it's like, we've all tried to push start a car at some point or another, you know, that was yours or your parents or whatever.
And getting those first couple of feet done, getting the thing to move is really difficult, right? Once it's up and moving, you start to get positivity, you gain momentum, it starts to move and it gets easier. So if a couple of those how-to things give you that first step, create that initial momentum, then to me, that's kind of, that's job done really. And it's interesting, isn't it? Cause actually it's the first tiny millimeter that unsticks the car that's broken down.
Yeah. Cause once it starts moving, it will continue to move. I, I, I'm walking 600 kilometers in the summer, across Spain for charity to try and raise a lot of money for, the motor neurone disease association. People keep saying to me, why are you walking all that distance across Spain and why are you walking 50 miles a week and why are you upping your 50 miles a week to 100 miles a week? And it's because I can. Exactly, there you go, you see, because you can.
And you know, like yesterday, I was thinking, I don't want to. Which is very normal Claire, it's complete. Normal to think that, just to be, because why? Because it's a ridiculous thing to do. know, there's a chapter in the book, you'll read it at some point about counting lampposts, right? And you will definitely be counting lampposts or trees or something at some point, I promise you. We call it micro goal setting, right?
So every time you feel yourself slow down, you just pull it in a bit closer and move on. I can remember when I walked, when I was 40 and I walked across the Sinai Desert, it was 40 degrees. And on the last day, It really was 40 degrees. It was absolutely horrendous. And you just had to put one step in front of the other and go, this is another mountain that I'm walking past or alongside. It was really hard. then... I'm not surprised. But then you've done it, haven't you? Tick the box, move on.
It's good. Yeah. And I think you can't beat... It's interesting, right? I know... quite like you. listen to Simon Sinek, right? And I quite like Simon Sinek talking about dopamine hits and stuff. I find that all... quite interesting. And on the one hand, we crave the instant achievement, right, of course we do, because it's great, it's cheap, it's easy, but go and buy the whatever it is and put it on the drive or do whatever you need to do, kind of whatever that thing is, right.
But there's still nothing better, we just call it shared experiences than that, taking on a challenge, having the kind of buzz of agreeing to go and do it, then inevitably go into the kind of dark moments of working hard, training hard, doubting yourself moving on.
But then that feeling at the end of it, And this is where I think it differs sometimes from the sort of quick dopamine hit of materialism, that's even a word, is that actually, is that shared experience you've done that that can never be taken off you. You trained hard, you overcame it, you achieved it. And 10 or 20 years later, whatever it might be, you've still achieved it. And people will still go, wow, Claire, you walked across the Sinaloa desert. That's amazing.
And I think that's quite special. We've just started doing a lot of stuff with business people about, we call it like a walk on a talk. So we do coaching, but what I do is I take people out for a walk. So we were discussing, you know, I live in Scotland. So I've got a couple of guys at the moment and it's a conventional coaching stuff. It's based around leadership and whatnot, but we go for a walk. We go walk up a hill and we walk side by side.
And there's something really kind of, I don't know without sounding too wafty about it, but there's something quite cool about the heart rate coming up, a bit of fresh air. you're side by side, so you're together in nature, it's kind of not competing with each other, we're not sat across a desk and also there's nowhere else to go. So for three or four hours, kind of have to have that conversation because you kind of can't get out of it.
So and most of the places in the highlands, you struggle for phone signal. So actually, so it becomes quite cathartic in itself, let alone any value you might get out from the kind of coaching process that goes with it. Yeah, no, I totally agree with you. It's interesting because I was talking to somebody else last week who I'm hoping will come on the podcast at some point who's also been in the army. And we were talking about the value of learning to coach whilst walking.
OK. And he was also describing high octane mountainous stuff. But there's something I think about traveling alongside with somebody, which not only means that they encourage us to do it. and we keep each other moving forwards, but also you get this beautiful pace between you because when they want you to speak, they'll look at you, won't they? And if they don't speak, they won't. Yeah, yeah, no, no, absolutely. And in fact, it's interesting, you can draw all sorts of parallels.
So we've only talked for me, which is funny because people with my background, you know, and I like to point out to people I spent more time in Afghanistan than we have in lockdown. So just give you sort of a frame of reference. But actually there's this sort of perception, which I think comes from the TV as much as anything else, but about this kind of Spartan leadership, you know, this kind of, ooh rah, the leader must be stronger, infallible, you know.
Whereas in actual fact, if that's the case, all you do is make the gap bigger between the leader and the lead. So you actually make the situation worse. Whereas in my view, what you need to is you need to provide reassurance and direction. So actually, rather than... you know, ooh, this is awesome, keep cracking, don't you know, it's okay.
In a corporate environment, don't you wrong in a special operations community, it's slightly different, but in a corporate environment, or even a domestic environment, you've got to tell people it's going to be okay, you don't have to hand them the answer, because we don't know what the answer is. But you've got to tell them we're in this together, we're going to work together. But then actually, provide a direction, say, look, this is what we're going to do, we're going to move this way.
then actually people are then becoming part of their own solution. I think that's super powerful. And as you say, going for a walk sometimes and it doesn't have to be up a mountain, just being outside. Actually is that same thing. It's like, Hey, we'll get through this together. Here's the direction we're going to go in. We're going to keep moving towards that goal. We might have to take a different path. We might have to slow down for a minute. We might speed up for a minute.
You know, we might put a jacket on who cares. But actually that's not stopping us getting towards our end goal. So that's good. Yeah, and it's interesting because there are so many different kinds of leadership and that is a kind of tell and co-create version of leadership. And I know lots of our listeners are going to be in the collaborative coaching leadership, but actually sometimes we've just got to go there.
Yeah, and you know, I'm a huge, so my job at the end of the day was to run and recruit foreign agents, right? So as I say to everybody, try, imagine trying to lead somebody, not only do they not work for you, they actually work for your very successful biggest competitor and you're trying to lead them. And that's kind of the only analogy I can think of as to kind of what we used to get up to. So it's got to be about influence and it's got to be about creating a pull, not a push.
But I think that where that goes wrong sometimes is that can still be quite hard edged. And occasionally it does need to be. And to go back to our car analogy earlier, know, unfortunately to get the thing moving, you got to whack it. You know, and there does come a minute that to get the car moving initially, you've got to put a bit of sweat into the job.
And there's still there will always be that moment, there will always be that moment where you've just got to be I like, I'm not into manning up, I'm into being courageous, right? And, and there comes a moment where you have to be courageous. And, and that's the bit where you can give people all the right tools, you can dispel all of the kind of like I said, false expectations. You can make sure that people are focused on the right outcomes and get all of that right.
But it comes a moment when you've just got to tell them, OK, now you've got to step up. Now you've got to push on a little bit and be courageous for a moment. And I think we've the world has become a little bit afraid of saying that, think, in my view. And actually, sometimes people don't mind hearing that because, you know, people are nervous if if if you're about to go and do something brand new for the first time ever, of course, you're a bit nervous.
And sometimes you need a bit of a gentle push. don't need shoving out the door, but you just need someone to say, right, OK, on you go. Take that first step. Ask the girl to dance at the school disco. Whatever it might be. It's funny, because as you're talking, I'm remembering my, I think it's because I said something about it to you, that walk across the Sinai Desert. And we were halfway across from Mount Sinai to the Israeli border.
And it was just us and some Bedouins and one Land Rover and some camels and 12 walkers and four crew or six crew. There were a lot of crew compared to walkers and one of the girls collapsed and they had to get her to the next camel so that she could be taken off. And the rest of us had to wait while this happened in the little shade we were able to get. And one of the other walkers, trekkers, said, don't worry, because they'll use a satellite phone and somebody will come and get us.
And the guide went, there is no satellite phone. There is no plan B. You've got to walk out of here. We're just going to wait until it's a bit cooler, like 35 degrees. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then we'll crack on. But I think we get in this fantasy world, don't we, where there is always a plan B. And actually, well, I think the world has become very, sanitized. I think we need to be careful.
One of the guys I work with, a guy called Joe Phillips, a very senior business guy, and we run this program. So the book, we've turned it into a schools initiative. And we've spoken to nearly 8,000 school kids now in 18 months, completely free of charge. We go into schools and we talk about resilience and being courageous and stepping on. And we also try and relate STEM subjects actually to kind of adventuring and all this kind of stuff to drive it forwards.
And there is a problem in it is we kind of a little bit, little bit too cotton wool sort of wrapped up self diagnosis. And, and actually there's nothing wrong with identifying a risk, mitigating that risk. So whether that's collaborating with the right people, giving yourself the right training, preparing yourself as much as possible, all of those good things, and then taking that risk head on, that's okay.
And actually, if we're going to solve climate change, if we're actually going to create equality and diversity, then people have to be brave or people have to be courageous. Give them the right kit and do that. But again, exactly, exactly. There is no plan B. We've got to step on and we've got to make those decisions. And to me, that's lots of school. You know, it's that I'll never forget. It's really, really funny.
did a talk, a great bunch of people, I did a talk the other week at the Gateshead School Sports Partnership. And they've had a pretty tough years. Imagine trying to teach remotely or with a two meter gap. know, you can do it. It's like that. How does that work? It sounds like you do rugby team, frankly. But anyway, I said to them, they were little bit kind of knocked down, but they were like, what are we doing?
And I said, they are the unsung heroes of the world because to me, they are the ones that teach us to be brave from a really young age. I'll never forget. I I've always played rugby, my dad played rugby. And I'll never ever forget the first time I had to make a tackle. I'll forget age 12, wherever I was watching the big kid run straight at me, thinking, wow, what am going to do? And there are those tiny little lessons. Of course it was fine, right?
Or the school cross country meeting, when I'm thinking, am I going to get beat? I'm not tiny, et cetera. And I think that all of those kind of brave, courageous moments teach those habits of, okay, let's not be foolish. Let's not take daft risks, but... actually let's overcome the barrier that's in front of us. And I think it's quite important to actually think it's pretty important to do that.
And I think if we sanitize it out too much, like you say, it's fine, the helicopter will be here in a minute. I don't know, then we have a problem when it's not. Well, there is no helicopter. Well, so if people want to buy the book to read it, or if they want to give it to their kids, or their aspiring UCAS applicant if they're in the UK and wanting to go to university. How do they find your book?
It's easy to find on Amazon actually, if you just stick in either my name, say Tim Bradshaw, or hashtag because I can into Amazon or Waterstones actually, you'll find it and it'll ping up and it's available. I don't know we've done Audible yet but we've definitely done Kindle and or paperback. What I would recommend is It's really cool to be on Kindle. I'm a massive, I know where mine is, it's here somewhere. I'm a massive Kindle fan, which I travel quite a lot.
But one of the we wanted to do with the book is it makes complete sense to read it front to back. But the idea was that somebody keeps a sort of copy on the desk. And if you're about to go and do something or about to write something, you can kind of flick into it and go, I've to do this, this and this. So we've sort of bullet points and bits and pieces at the back of every chapter, Claire, do you know what mean?
So you can actually flip back to it and go, right, yeah, I've got to do that, that and that. there's an advantage to having it that you can kind of scribble notes on and flip backwards and forwards and I'd be pretty flattered if I thought it was on somebody's desk sort of well and truly thumbed where there was scribbles and notes and stuff on it. So it's a dipper and read listeners you can write in it there you are there's permission for you.
That's for another subject isn't it can you write in books or can you not write in books? Big issue. Thank you so much Tim for joining us today at The Coaching In so because I can The Robust Guide to Being Effective by Tim Bradshaw. And I'll pop a link if you want to talk more to Tim, I'll pop a link in the show notes. thanks, Claire. I'm super, I say to everybody, if we've a few sparks, I'm always available on LinkedIn.
I spend way too long sitting in airport lounges waiting for trains and stuff. So I'm Timothy, think, actually, on LinkedIn. if we've sparked, yeah, litany sparks, please share your thoughts, get in touch always. Thank you. So I'm Claire Pedrick and I've been speaking to Timothy Bradshaw. Bye bye. Thanks, Claire.