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 The Coaching Inn. I'm Claire Pedrick and today I'm delighted to be in the good company of John Blakey. John has written Challenging Coaching and he's written a book called The Trusted Executive. And John, I must have recommended Challenging Coaching to 2000 people. Wow. Thank you very much, Claire. You are our biggest ambassador.
Am I your greatest super fan? I hope you're getting royalties on that from somewhere. So tell us a bit about your coaching journey. wow. wow. My coaching journey. Well, like many coaches, my coaching journey started with being coached. So back way, way. So how old was I? I'm 58 now, shock horror. And I was coached the first time when I was 33. And at the time it wasn't called coaching because we didn't really have that word. It was called Advanced Change Management, as I recall.
I went on a course in the New Forest for a week and we sat down in a room, a hotel bedroom, there were three of us and there was a lady there and we had to take a challenge from work with us. And I shared my challenge and she said, right, we're going to sit here all week and we're going to work on that challenge. And I looked at my watch and I thought, no. It's not that complicated. It'll all be sorted out by two o'clock. Trust me. And of course it wasn't.
And by Wednesday afternoon, I was in so deep, so deep and I didn't know what on earth was going on. I didn't know what she was doing. I didn't know what she was not doing. And, but it was revelation for me in truest sense of that word. And, and of course I came out of that experience thinking, I don't know what happened. But I'd love to, I'd love to be doing that for a living. I'd love to be doing that for a living.
And thankfully I have done that for a living for 20 years and very grateful for that. Yeah. Amazing. Yeah. That starts, often starts with being coached, doesn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because that's so somebody said to me this week about when you're passionate about something, when you've experienced something and you have that genuine passion, then talking to people about it and inspiring people to want to try it themselves comes very naturally.
So yeah, I think there's no substitute, particularly with something like coaching, which can be quite intangible, no substitute for being on the receiving end. And I still find it good to be on the receiving end. I have a coach at the moment, and I like to be on the receiving end because it reminds me of the experience from that side of the fence. Yeah, and there's also something about being vulnerable and learning and not knowing and all those good things, isn't there?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you got to sort of eat your own dog food, as they say. Nice. Not really sure how to follow that one. Half of the listeners are going to think that was an awful, awful American sounding phrase and the other half will love it. So A lot of our listeners will have met you through challenging coaching and know that you are, you and Ian Day are the Sir Loving Boot people. Yes. Tell us about your journey to challenging coaching and then your journey to trust.
Hmm. Yeah. So when I first started training to be a coach and there weren't many coaching courses around back then. So I trained first to be a counselor. And so I trained in counseling skills and I learned a huge amount from counseling skills, but I also learned that I didn't want to be a counselor. But I learned a lot that helped me with coaching. And then when I got into coach training, I found that I went on a lot of courses which were built from counseling best practice.
And of course for me as a corporate leader, as I had been in my career, This was Manor from Heaven. was really new, really different, and it took me out of my comfort zone. And it was really good for me to really immerse myself in that non-directive, pure coaching space. Having said that, after about sort of five or six years of practicing that style of coaching, I became aware of a gap, and my clients were making me aware of a gap around John. you know, I like it when you challenge me.
Can you challenge me more? And I thought, no, I haven't been trained on doing that. That's not what I'm here to do. You know, I know, I'm sorry, you know, and they're going, no, yeah, but that's what I want. And I'm going, no, sorry. According to the book of coaching, we don't do that. So because it wasn't in a book of coaching, then Ian and I started to think, well, is, is there a book that needs to be written about challenging coaching?
And the first book we wrote, which I've got here, was a self-published book called Where Were All The Coaches When The Banks Went Down? Yes, I remember that one. Well, there aren't many copies of that around. So that was a self-published book which Ian and I wrote really as almost like a marketing exercise for our company at the time. And John Whitmore, bless him, wrote the foreword for that book.
And then Ian said to me, challenged me and I said, John, why don't you go to John Whitmore and ask him to introduce us to his publisher, Nicholas Brearley. And I said, you're joking, aren't you? You're joking. How could I, John Blake, you go to John Whitmore, Sir John Whitmore and ask him to introduce me to his publisher? So I resisted this, but eventually I did it. And of course, John Whitmore being the kind soul that he was. introduced me and the into Nicholas Brearley.
And I shall always remember being sat there in Nicholas Brearley's dusty publishing house in, in Farringdon. Having read a copy of where all the coaches went, when the banks went down, Ian and I went to meet him, fully expecting that he'd say, run along now little boys and stick to the day job. And he didn't, he went, I think there could be something in this. And I sort of went, what? He said, I think there could be something in this. And it's like the walls of the room.
It felt like the walls of the room were billowing in and out at that point. Because I couldn't really understand what was going on. And I walked out of that meeting and Ian said to me, are you okay? Because really I was in shock. Yeah. That Nicholas Brearley, whose books I had loved and I had, you know, the learning organization by Peter Senge, Coaching for Performance, know, Nicholas Brearley published some of the greatest books, you know, and I thought, what?
Anyway, yeah, he, sponsored us to write challenging coaching. That came out, caused a bit of a stir. Some people accused us of being heretics, some people still do accuse us of being heretics. But nevertheless, it was a book. So it couldn't be pushed away that easily anymore, because Nicholas had said, it's a book. So it was in the book of coaching there. We'd written it. And that's challenging coaching.
So maybe I'll pause there because, you know, then there was the journey to trusted executive, but I probably need to take a breath and and just pause. Sing a story. Yeah, yeah, well, John, I want to I want to I want to give John some glory. John Whitmore some glory, because John, such an inspiration to me and many coaches and He was such a generous man. gave me so much time when I was learning to be a coach and yeah, I miss him. I miss him a lot.
I just want to mention him because wonderful, wonderful man. It sounds like a man with humility and humanity. absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. One of the most inspiring people I've had the fortune to build a relationship with and Yeah. Yeah. And do remember with affection, the last time I saw John was in his home in Seven Oaks and he'd got dementia by then and he didn't recognise me. And he was searching all over his flat to try and find something that he thought he'd lost.
And it was very, very sad to see him, know, the great John Whitmore. And he was in a, he was not in good way at that point. But I was glad to still be with him and around him throughout that. So all sorts of insights there, aren't there, about honouring and respecting those who've gone before us? Absolutely, absolutely. You know, there are some people who come along and they act as catalysts for your journey, helpers, as the hero's journey would refer to them as helpers.
And these people are really precious. So, yeah, it's important to give them the glory. Yeah. Yeah. And it took you to be, to learn from him so that you could then embrace the challenge space.
Yeah. And he wrote the forward for challenging coaching, which is, you know, a real sort of privilege and it's such a great legacy, you know, that he has in all respects, but, know, I love that there's a little bit of him in challenging coaching and, He and when I last met the reason I visited him that last time was to give him a copy of the trusted executive. wow. Because he knew about that and I talked about it with him.
I felt like he'd given it his blessing, but he I doubt if he ever got to read it. Yeah. but you carried something into it that you had embodied from being with him. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow. Wow. I want to stay with challenging coaching and also want to move on to the thing.
Yeah. Because I honestly think that that book was a real moment in the coaching world and gave a way of looking at enough challenge, too much challenge, not enough challenge in a way that people could get it really easily and therefore go, yeah, I completely understand that.
So when I, in the days when I did onsite, we'd always draw your two by two on a flip chart and ask people what their preference was when they received a conversation, was it high challenge, low challenge, high support, low support? And they'd all say, that when they received a conversation, they preferred it in your loving boot space, your high challenge, high support.
And then when you asked them what their preference of delivery was, they would almost always go low challenge, low support or high challenge of high support, low challenge. And, you know, over many, many years of delivering that little session with that flip chart in many courses, it's always the same. So there's such a need for people to be able to look at it and make their own meaning and go, my goodness, what I like to receive and what I like to deliver are completely different.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So there's a few aha moments in, in that, know, and, one of the great things in the early days of challenging coaching was we would do, and I would do workshops and at the break someone would always come up to us and sort of quietly whisper, thank you for writing your book. And what they meant was you've legitimized something, you've given me permission to explore a space that I didn't know whether I was able to explore or it was okay for me to explore.
And if I did nothing else alongside other people at that time who were writing other books that we also were inspired by, it was to expand the space in which that conversation can happen, not to declare rights and wrongs. but to expand the space. Yeah. And give people a wider repertoire in dialogue. Yeah. Wow. And then, so what was the journey from challenge to trust? Yeah. Well, I'm a big fan, of course, in the book, A Challenging Coach, in the facts model, The C-Stuns for Courageous Goals.
And I've lived my life very much on that premise of courageous goals, know, what is the next mountain to climb? And after challenging coaching, you know, because the courageous goal before challenging coaching was to write a book. And then you do it and you think, okay. So I've sort of normalized that experience. And you have to think, well, what now from here is the courageous goal? And The thing with Challenging Coaching, was co-authored with Ian.
So one of the questions in my head was, can I write a book with my own voice, with purely my own voice? That was something that I thought, hmm, yeah, that would require more courage. And the other part, the trust bet, or the other element of Challenging Coaching was when we launched Challenging Coaching, on the first day we launched it at the CIPD exhibition in Ells Court.
And we had lots of many, positive experiences that day, but there was one conversation I had with a lady who came up to our sort of booth where I explained challenging coaching and talked about it. And she went, so it's an airport book then, is it? And bear in mind, this was the day on which we launched it and we were all very proud of what we'd done. And funny enough, in my life, those sorts of conversations have often triggered a response.
And I thought, okay, I want to write a book that's got an academic grounded. So the challenge with Trusted Executive was A, to write on my own, but B, was to put myself in the classroom again in 2012 to start a doctorate, a DBA at Aston Business School and to write a book that was based on the research. And that's where the Trusted... executive model than I have is a trust came from that research.
So when the trusted executive was published as a book, I personally knew that I'd have I'd gone to a different place. You know, it was it was a different book to challenging coaching. Obviously, I love challenging coaching. It was great to write it with Ian. But for me on my journey, the next step was, can can you do something that's your own voice alone? And can you base it on academic research? And that was the Trusted Executive. Wow. So quite a big shift.
Quite a big shift and a real lot of work. mean, a real lot of work. And of course, the interesting thing is that even though, as you might expect, Trusted Executive was not an airport, but that meant it also didn't sell and it never sold as many copies as Challenging Coaching. It's had I've sold more corporate copies of that book, but in terms of individual purchases, it's interesting, isn't it? That's why airport books are called airport books, because they sell a lot.
They're a different type of book. So I've had an experience now of a self-published book, Nicholas Brearley published in Challenging Coaching. And of course, I went to a new publisher, Kogan Page, for Trust Executive and that was a big decision really because of the loyalty to Nicholas but there was reasons for wanting to do it with Colby and Paige and so there was a lot different about Trust Executive. And then there's a fourth book that you haven't mentioned.
You and I had a conversation, I can remember it, I was in a coffee shop, we were on the phone in 2013. Wow. And you told me about your poetry book. Yeah, that's the secret book. That's the book that was written, wasn't written, you know, again, it's different again, obviously completely different again, it's poetry. And it was self-published. It was a cathartic act for me to write that again, required a lot of courage. And hardly anybody has read that.
you, Claire, you know, one of the, one of the souls that, that has, that doesn't know about that and, and, did connect with it. But yeah, you know, that's certainly not an airport. So does that mean it's out of print now? Pretty much, pretty much.
I've, I've got like a little private stock and occasionally I'll be working with someone as a coachee, a client who I think, you know, it could have some meaning for them and some relevance and I might give them a copy or I might share certain poems with certain people at a more personal level. I've been in coaching sessions where I've suddenly remembered a poem and I've shared it with the person that I've been working with.
Interestingly, poems came first for me and I wrote poems for many, years just as a private, as I say cathartic sort of practice. Since I've been writing books, challenging coaching and just because I haven't found that I've been able to write poetry at the same time as I write books. I don't know whether I'll get back to that. I'm actually thinking at the moment and talking to my publisher about a new book.
And the new book probably is a hybrid between it's a spiritual, it's going to need to be a spiritual book. I just don't know how it's going to be pitched, it's going to be in the poetry is spiritual, is spiritual and challenging coach and just exactly, you know, there's academic in there, there's practical practitioner stuff in there. But this new book, I think is, is, is going to be a spiritual book. Wow. Yeah. Wow. God willing.
I might come back to you and ask you if I can use one of your poems in our new book. wow. Because I think it might fit really beautifully. Right. Yeah. Well, that would would be lovely. So you're well trusted now in the world of trust. So what qualities do you bring intentionally to trust people or to have people trust you? Well, the model of trustworthiness, the nine habits of trustworthiness, I was sharing that today with a group of leaders from the NHS.
And I shared with them, when I talk about the model, I always share the two habits that I'm working on and I've been working on for some time. Because some of those habits come naturally to people. Of the nine, they're going to be some habits that will come natural to anybody. And there are other habits that people are going to need to work at. creating the habit, making it habitual, being conscious, being explicit about that.
And there are two habits for me that I've needed to work on and I'm still working on. One is being open and the other is being kind. So being open, it's interesting talking about books. Books require you to be open. Writing a book about spiritual poetry requires an incredible amount of vulnerability, or at least it felt like that at the time. So I'm clearly more open than I was, but I still feel there's stuff in me that I, and this is the next book, there's stuff in me that I haven't shared.
it frightens me, the idea of sharing it, but equally it also excites me. And then the other habit that I'm focused on is being kind. I wasn't brought up to be kind, I haven't been. particularly role modeled into particularly in terms of leadership, I wasn't it wasn't role model to me about kindness and leadership. So that's very countercultural for me. And I've, again, had to be very explicit, intentional around practicing kindness. But you know, I feel I'm getting getting there with that.
But I still have to work at it. But I'm amazed at the power of kindness. So, you know, for me it's something I discovered quite late in life, you know, that I wish I'd earlier, but it just wasn't on the radar. I love your honesty. Because it's easy, isn't it, to make assumptions that we are all brought up like X, Y, Z. Actually, that's not true. No, and of course there's a cultural conditioning around lot of these things. There's a gender conditioning around these things.
You know, I was brought up to be an alpha male and, you know, to be one of the, that species. And, you know, kindness is not part of the sort of role description necessarily of that. So yeah, that's what I'm intentionally working on. As we talk about it, being open, realize I can do that, but what the challenge is to do even more of it at a completely new level.
And then the kindness one is, Yeah, it's just I'm a novice, you know, and I'm way behind the curve a bit on that one, but I am working on it. A novice or on a journey? Well, yeah, don't have a judgment around the word novice, know, wear the white belt as they say, and I wear the white belt on that one. I hope that comes over as humble and, you know, that's another of the habits that does come more naturally to me. So, so yeah, I'm a novice, but I don't I don't judge that negatively.
That's interesting. You said humility comes more naturally and kindness doesn't because often they would be linked, wouldn't they? But you're saying that actually for you in the work that you've done and the deep work you've done on yourself, they're not the same. No, no, I'm a natural at that. say natural.
It's a bit ironic to say that you're natural at being humble, but But it definitely, yeah, it's home ground for me that doesn't mean I'm perfect with it, but it's home ground, whereas, kindness is alien territory. Can we talk about where this all comes from? Yeah, sure. So where does this all come from? Well, I'm a Christian and I give all the glory to God. And so that's where it comes from. John Whitmore once said to me, John, how do you feel when you're writing? And I said, John, I feel loved.
I feel loved when I'm writing because that's when I'm closest to God. and I hear him. The strange thing is that I'm deaf in one ear and I've always thought that that was the ear that was reserved for him. And when I write, I listen with that ear and it comes through me and that's a beautiful experience to have. And I'm yearning for that experience again at the moment. So part of writing and I was having this conversation today with someone about.
You know, there's so many books out there on so many things and who wants another coaching book, who wants another leadership book? If you start to try and think about writing books for worldly goals, then I think it can be quite an overwhelming experience. But if you think about writing a book as part of your personal journey, part of your healing, part of your spiritual dialogue, then... for me, that's a great reason to write.
And then if somebody else, it's like my poetry book, if somebody else happens one day to connect with something that you've written, great. know, obviously love that. But actually a lot of it's been about, I write because I need to write. And I need to write because my faith calls me to be in that space. Hmm. So there's something about connection to God outside of yourself that is fundamental to who you are as a person.
Yeah. Well, that first coaching experience that I referred to as a revelation, Claire, that's where I found my faith. wow. I didn't have my faith when I went on that course, but when I came away from it, it was there. And, you know, that was what was when I went deep. That was what was revealed to me. And I didn't even have the language to talk about it. In fact, I didn't talk about it to anyone, including my wife, Jane, for three years. I didn't talk to anybody about what had happened.
But I knew that I'd come away with a faith and I didn't understand it. And I never wanted it. I hadn't asked for it. It was against everything I believed before that point. So it's taken me a long, long time to be open. about my faith. mean, not talking about something for three years, that was that. And it's partly that I feared judgment and ridicule.
It was partly because every time I tried to get the words out, there would be so much emotion coming with the words that I couldn't actually get them out. Whereas now I can talk about it with you. I can be quite calm about it. I've normalized it. But at the time it was really sort of quite... scary stuff for me to be in that space. Some insight. I can get why you called it a revelation.
Yeah, as I say, I sometimes describe going on that course and being close at time as like living in a house for all your life and having lost something and then gone on the process of trying to find it. searching for it and turning the whole house upside down, literally upside down, know, pulling everything apart, pulling the sofa apart, you know, taking the plasterboard off the walls to try and find this thing.
And then getting to a point actually on that course, getting to a point where I actually gave up and surrendered. And in the moment I surrendered in this house, like a door opened that I never knew existed. And it just opened in front of me. And I'm thinking, I was looking everywhere and you know, and then this happens, this door opens and the thing that I'd lost, I found again. And how do you talk about that?
I can only talk about it metaphorically, like I just have done, you know, how do you put that into words? That's why writing and speaking is important to me because I'm trying to put into words something that I will never be able to put into words. And the coach that was working with you in that hotel in the New Forest did not do that. No, but she witnessed it. What a great definition. She bore witness. She bore witness to me. She stood with me at the moment that it all fell apart.
She witnessed that and she held it. And in the midst of that brokenness appeared something. That's courage from both of you. Wow. Yeah. Yep. That's faith. That's a leap of faith.
And if anybody's listening and if this is speaking to anybody who's listening, it's like, if you ever get that moment where you think you might be able to take this leap, but you don't know what's on the other side, it's like, well, my testimony is, that when you leap, will always be, the ground will appear, you will always be caught, but you have to leap. have to have the courage to jump. And you get this, don't you Claire? I mean, you get this.
That's why, you know, I can talk to you about it because you get it. I don't know what your own journey is, but I know that, you know, you have that. Yeah, I do get it. You have that capacity to have this conversation. And I think what's interesting is we've got some people coming up on a podcast in a few weeks time who also want to talk, not in this space, but in a similar space.
And I think there's something that I often say in coaching that, that great coaching comes from what we see, hear and sense. But for people who have an engagement with the divine and I think, you know, you and I have an agreement there about what we perceive that is, but for people who have an engagement with the divine, I think there's also something about what we discern. So there's something about what we see, what we hear. what we sense and actually what we discern.
there's a book by, I nearly said Matt Damon, but he's an actor, isn't he? There's a book by William Damon called The Path to Purpose. And in that book, he's the professor of, or he was a professor of human development at Stanford or some university of the state. And his research into human purpose, said that people find purpose when they're connected to something outside of themselves.
And in that moment in your looking, you connected to the God outside of yourself and the God outside of yourself connected to you. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. And I have moments in coaching. I also, I feel very close to that presence in my coaching. There are times when I feel it. very, very present. And there are sometimes when, when clients are letting me in, are really letting me in, that I always hear this phrase about the scripture about, take off your shoes, you're stood on holy ground.
Because I know I'm in a sacred place when they, when they let me in there. And sometimes they've let me in somewhere that they've never let anybody into ever. And and I just go really, really still and really quiet. I just, it's such a sort of sacred place that for me, that's the only thing you do at that moment is you just go as still as you possibly can and as quiet as you possibly can. And you let that profoundness just be experienced before disturbing anything further. That's the last line.
of my last book. What is the last line? Take off your shoes. The place you are standing is holy ground. wow. you're giving me shivers now. You're giving me shivers. Well, there you go. When two or more are gathered together in his name, there too will I be in the midst of them. Wow. What an amazing conversation. Yeah, yes, good. So I'll put in the show notes, your books, Challenging Coaching and The Trusted Executive. Are you happy to connect with people on LinkedIn if they want to talk to you?
Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, very active on LinkedIn. So yeah, more than happy to connect. I want to say a massive thank you for coming to the coaching in today. And you've given us loads to think about and I want to have a conversation offline with you about your next book. Okay, thank you very much. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you for coming. Bye bye. Bye bye everyone. I'm Claire Pedrick and you've been listening to me in conversation with John Blakey.
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