Hello and welcome to the Growth Workshop Podcast. We're thrilled to have George Anderson here today. Welcome George. Thank you for coming along.
Great to be here.
Thank you and George. You're a performance coach, and you help individuals and organizations as they think about their own performance and the energy and focus and mindset and all of those things that will help them be essentially better and more successful, and we're going to unpick that in the discussion today. So very much looking forward to that, as is customary on the Growth Workshop Podcast, we like to ask our guests a sort of interesting question, I guess, to kick us
off. And today, what we'd like to understand from you, George is, if you could choose two people to be on your personal board of advisors, so those who would advise you in your personal life, who would those people be, and why? And they can be anyone from celebrities, well known people, individuals that only you know. Who would those two people be?
I love this question because it it's something that I know I'm going to take away from and reflect even more deeply on after the podcast today, when you ask me, but I think I have got a couple but one person who actually is on my virtual board of advisors already. And one person who is somebody who I would, I would love to have access to his brain. The person who already know is a guy called Jerry Duffy
who has been, I've worked with him many years. He's a speaker, and he's, he used to be very, very successful endurance athlete as well, and he didn't do so much of that now, but he was the first person I ever came across who had done a ridiculous ultra endurance challenge. Did 10 Iron Mans in 10 days, which
is just like the mind boggling. So I got in touch with him, and I interviewed him, I got to know him, and we became close friends, and he actually inspired me to then go and do my first big Ultra challenge, which is sounds nothing in comparison, but I did 10 marathons in 10 days a couple of years later, and Jerry was very much instrumental in coaching and inspiring me and mentoring me through that process. And he has been very helpful to me over the years as I've been building my
business as well. So it's the very kind of sage advice I get from Jerry.
And what about the second person?
Well, the second person is a bit of a I am a bit of a fan boy of and it's another podcast host Andrew Huberman from the Huberman lab, and I've been listening to his podcast for the last few years, and just absolutely love his approach. Is the way he's so methodical about obviously, very, very clued up. If anybody is a fan of the human lab,
they'll know he's very, very detailed. I love the questions that he asks, and I can just imagine him being an advisor and just calling me out on anything that didn't quite make make sense and and just ask me those important questions that I'd have to really stop and think and give you a proper consideration to. So yeah, Andrew human, he'd be my second board of advisors.
That's brilliant, it sounds like a great balance, and it's almost, I guess, linked back to what it is that you do and how you help people in those two sides of things. I know when we first met, you were sharing with us the connection between physical well being and mental well being and and how important that is. So maybe you could just describe for the audience, George, a little bit about what you do and how you help people.
And then I know we've got a kind of fun, fun exercise, as it were, that we're going to go into around Jonny and my own...
Slightly nervous, may I say...
I came into doing what I'm doing now, which is, as you said, helping individuals, teams, organizations, with performance. And there are many different facets of performance. It could be around resilience, could be around motivation or mindset or even one of the big things that I spend a lot of time working with people now on, which is energy. How do you create that? That energy, physical, mental, emotional energy that gives you this foundation so that you can
access those tools of resilience and mindset and motivation. And I came into this through the route of personal training, which I started off doing 20 plus years ago, worked with lots and lots of clients, and I really found that the people who were best able to stick with the changes that they were making were the ones who weren't just connecting what they were doing to their goals in the future, but rather to the impact it was Having on them right now, like when they were exercising a bit
more, eating a little bit better, sleeping a little bit more as well. They were just feeling better, and they were in a better mood. They had a better outlook. They were more optimistic. They had better relationships. They were telling me these things, and 20 years ago, I didn't really fully appreciate or acknowledge the significance of it, but I just noticed that they were the ones who are the most motivated, and
found it easiest to stick to those, those habits. So that's what I try and bring now to the audiences and teams that I work with.
Wow. Brilliant. Love to as we dive into the conversation, I'd be curious to think about how long it takes some individuals to get there, and I know for my own, my own journey as well. I think, I imagine, lots of our listeners are probably in the same boat where actually it's quite hard to connect what you're doing right now to how you how it's really making a change and a difference in your in your life, and it's maybe easier to look back over time and reflect on
how that feels. So it's I'm curious to explore that a little bit further, but I think we'll do that after after first. First of all, we look at the results of mine and Jonny's own performance mindset survey. So on George's website, there is a link to the performance mindset score. And Jonny and I, just before we started recording this podcast, undertook the survey, and we have our performance mindset scores.
It's 48 questions, and the website is bygeorgeanderson.com.
That's subliminal, By George. By George...
48 questions, takes about five to seven minutes to complete, and then what comes back is a score. We're about to tell you the score, what we've got back, and you're gonna, we're all gonna watch George's reaction when we give our score.
I'm intrigued this because I was watching you do it and seeing the changes of expression on your faces as well, and even like you were even complaining about how you said it would take five minutes...
So we're about to read out our scores, and then George, you're gonna give us a little bit of coaching on these scores as we go through over the next few minutes. Who's gonna go first?
You are, Jonny.
Ah, right? George, the response here, so my overall score out of 100 is 67.
Well, it's okay, right? It's not a disaster. But we go into the four different mindsets as well. So what tell us what the mindset score results were for the individuals as well.
So I'll start with the lowest stress advantage mindset, which when doing the questionnaire was was one of the things that I thought about the most. 58% adaptive resilience mindset. 63% growth mindset, should be better. 71% and then self leadership mindset, which I you know, when answering the questions felt right, was 76%.
I think, probably worthwhile briefly explaining what each of those four mindsets are slightly from the bottom, that stress advantage mindset really is this a set of kind of thought processes around how you perceive pressure and stress, and it doesn't mean you have to Enjoy the feeling of stress, but those with a higher stress advantage mindset tend to to thrive and to form better under pressure, because it's almost the signals are that him, I'm
rising to the occasion here and and the way you frame stress can really make a significant difference to how you then perform when you are under the pressure of deadlines or You've just had some kind of rejection or setback, and you really need to get that deal through. That can really make a difference.
Unpacking a little bit. But just for the listeners, stress concerns me. Stress actually builds anxiety in me. So when I read the question, because of the history of anxiety and depression in my family, I looked at the questions going, I don't want to be anywhere near that word stress, so I wonder if it has any of that impact.
Interesting, because it does actually make a difference the way you frame the word stress, and even thinking about the word pressure might be more aspirational to you. It's motivational. So this is pressure, and I perform under pressure. There's the wonderful Billie Jean King quote that pressure is a privilege, and seeing that, okay, I'm in this, but I've got an opportunity here to there's a reason why I'm in this situation with this pressure, because I can do this.
So that's the first one. What was next? Some stress advance....
Adaptive resilience design set 63%.
Yeah, this is really your ability to manage and navigate and adapt to change. So when things don't go the way you wanted them to, or things happen around you, and it could feel like it's happening to you without your consultation or consent, there's that kind of change. And when you have a strong adaptive resilience mindset, then you'll probably find that you get to a place of acceptance. And all right, I still have to like it, but this is the this is the situation.
What do we do with this? You'll get to that point faster when you have this stronger, adaptive resilience mindset.
That's really interesting. I call it the quadruple. In the last recent years, I got engaged, got married, had a kid and got a dog. Oh, I moved house, so I did the five, yeah, not particularly great at change, and how I've survived that. But that's a really interesting point. That's something I do want to work on, is that change piece so we're really keen to dig into that later on. The next one growth mindset, 71%.
Yeah. And one of the things that often surprises people about growth mindset is it shows up in a lot of different aspects. It's not just the belief that you can do something if you were to put the effort in. Now, that's our usual understanding of it. But often when you think about how it applies to say, receiving feedback, maybe critical
feedback. If you have more of a fixed mindset, then you're probably more likely then to take that personally, to maybe discount what the person is saying if that you don't particularly like them, or you don't have that respect for them, whereas if you have a growth mindset, you still might initially have that response, but you're more likely then to go away and think about it and take the kind of the nuggets of
gold from it, if indeed there are any. So it's really about looking at where growth mindset shows up in a lot of different aspects of life, but 71% so that's a pretty decent, decent score for that one.
I'm gonna unveil the next one, and then Matt would be great to hear about your score, and maybe George, you could, you could take us through, maybe. Some ideas around how to develop. You know, the fourth and final aspect was self leadership mindset, which I thought was a really interesting bucket to unpack. 76%.
Yeah, I find this shows up quite heavily in the sales community. That has been quite strong because effective, high performing sales leaders and professionals, they tend to have to be self sufficient and and resourceful as well. And these are all some of the characteristics and traits of someone with a high self leadership or strong self leadership mindset. I think entrepreneurs tend to have quite a lot of this as well. Don't wait to be told what to do,
hanging around and hoping that somebody else will do it. So when you're ready to just this is the way we need to move. And I'm just going to take action on it. That's usually an indication that you're going to have a fairly strong self leadership mindset.
similar to Jonny I looked at when I see the word stress, I don't take it as and I love your reframing of it to pressure, because I think I see stress as the the negative stresses, the stuff that's outside of your control, the stuff that or that feels outside of control, not always outside of your control.
Yeah, the original research into this came out probably started around five or six years ago, with a lot of research into the the mindset of the Navy SEALs. And as you can imagine, they probably had very strong stress is enhancing, or stress advantage mindset, versus the stress threat mindset, which is where you see all stress as being bad. Got to avoid it, got to mitigate it, try and try and stay away from stress, because
it's bad for us. And there's been a lot of research into the impact that seeing stress as a potential positive, something that's going to elevate our performance to deal with whatever it is that's in front of us, how that has an impact on our health metrics, but, but this is the first time believe that it's been studies how it impacts your your performance from a mental perspective. So actually, it can open you up to making better quality decisions, to seeing things more clearly.
And in the Navy SEALs study from a few years ago, it was shown that actually they were perceived to be better recruits, potential recruits into the SEAL teams by their colleagues and also by the commanding officers as well. And they perform better on a lot of other benchmark tests as well, like obstacle courses and problem solving tasks also, and the only differentiator was this, stress is enhancing, or stress advantage mindset. But the word stress absolutely just like you
were saying a moment ago. There, Jonny, that it's it can feel, not triggering. But actually, we all have that experience. It's a natural phenomenon we need to have that it's our brains and bodies getting ready for action. But what do you do with that? How do you pass it? How do you understand it? And then do something with that? Just the way you think about stress can have a really significant impacts on what that performance and what those decisions and behaviors then turn into being.
I think I can see, I see a lot of that in myself just completing this, and I think it can definitely relate to that. I think that that sort of mindset, the the next for me was 79 on growth mindset. So I think that had me coming out as medium.
Did you, when you were working through the questions, really think about how, where, how they were a part of the growth mindset? Because sometimes, as I said, growth mindset can show up in all sorts of different ways in our lives. But the way the questions are designed is to sort of maybe just get you thinking about, I never really thought about how I approach these different situations. Did you notice any of that as you were going through?
Definitely a couple of questions that I had to kind of reread and really think about that. Yeah, absolutely.
Because I think even just with the app, with the score app, there the questionnaire, it can be useful because it brings awareness, and that really is the purpose of doing this. And when we talk about mindset, it's all very well and good having the tools and the frameworks and so on, but you need to create the awareness of it in the moment as well. So if you're thinking to yourself, oh, well, every time I encounter some kind of a change, somebody shifts the goal posts
or is the target, and now we've got a bigger target. I know that I normally start thinking this, or I start thinking, oh my goodness, why they're doing this again? Or that's not fair, if you know that, that's how you normally think, even if you get on board in the end, then the next time you go into those situations, having that awareness, you can be more intentional about it. Think, Okay, well, that still doesn't
feel awesome to have that happen to me. But how can I better process that and think differently in that moment, so that I can actually then perform better externally, but also think and feel better inside my own head as well?
It's interesting. You mentioned that there, George, one of the things that, you know, I was always searching for the, you know, what does EQ mean? What does IQ mean? You know, emotional intelligence. I always was searching just for a simple, simple approach. And I like, I like this approach where I've heard it before is, you know, self regulation, self awareness, or self awareness and self regulation. And you sort of describe that a little bit by going through the questionnaire.
It's actually raises your self awareness. And then when it comes to a scenario where you have to be a bit more. Adaptive or things change actually. How do you self regulate your mind set to actually adapt to that scenario? But if you're not self aware in the first instance, how are you going to then regulate?
Exactly and it works the other way as well, not just looking at the times where you might find yourself disintegrating towards a lower performance mindset, but but actually looking for those moments where you you actually do really embody and embrace that growth mindset, or that stress advantage mindset, those times where you have felt that
pressure and felt good like you were performing. Because when you can go back in your mind to those moments and those responses, you can really savor those experiences and think through them very deeply, and then they become almost this, this cape of like superpowers that you can put on and say, Well, I'm that's the kind of person that I am, rather than defaulting to, well, I'm always like this, because actually, no
one is 60, 50% for the stress advantage mindset. And so there's still going to be a lot of occasions where you, you, you do default towards feeling really good in that stress and pressure environment, so focusing on those and then creating this sense of identity and capacity potential to be like that and to respond like that again in the future.
Yeah, and I know we'll come on to talking about mindset in general in a moment, and those tools that we can put in place to sort of help with this the other the next one for me is 85% self leadership.
Are you feeling that that sounds about right for for you, and the work that you do, the kind of way you approach things?
A lot of compliments are given to Matt to your face. But also a good sign of a great leader is someone that doesn't always get the compliments to their face. So your peers regularly mentioned to me how you're really well. You've got a great process, you've got a great discipline in what you do, but you're across everything, and you've really got that self starter approach. One of the things when we first started working together was, wow, where's this man come from?
You know, you've got high aspiration, high motivation. So, yeah, I mean, that's that feels right, right?
Because how often do we like systemize getting that kind of feedback and that reflection, and certainly when the things that are related to our strengths, our character strengths, when somebody can reflect that back to us and it's like, okay, no, I sort of intuitively, no, I'm pretty good at this. But when you know that other people are seeing it and experiencing as well, that's really powerful, not just for you and for you, but for other people around you
as well. Because you're probably going to, you know, make sure, make sure you you do more of the thing that comes quite naturally to you, and recognize that as being one of your superpowers.
Yeah. And I think it's always nice to, sort of to hear that stuff as well. And I think it just reinforces the the way you see that, and the way, you know, especially when you catch yourself, and you mentioned in those, in those sort of slightly sort of somewhat sort of destructive or negative moments, and actually being able to turn that around in something that's that's a little bit more productive. And then finally, the adaptive resilience mindset at 90 now, my
wife will attest the fact that I love change. Okay, I'm like, a change fan, so I guess I'm probably least surprised by that one despite the fact that it's very high and very you know, someone changes plans last minute. No stress. We crack on roll with it. Yeah, yeah. I encourage it, much to my wife's annoyance.
What about bringing change into your life voluntarily, like changing your habits or or things? So that's a feature as well is it?
That's a feature as well all the time. And that can make me sort of somewhat impulsive sometimes as well. And I think there's a sort of linkage there. I'll tell you a semi boring story. I don't like to wake my wife up in the morning if I've got to get up early to go to London for a meeting or to go somewhere for a meeting, or something like that. So I use one of those, like wearable alarm clock things. And I've tried, probably, I don't know, five or six different
options in the last month. And, you know, some might say that's kind of impulsive, but part of that's me inviting more change to find the perfect solution. And I think it's just I'm always willing to kind of try stuff and like and I always see myself at the sort of front of the bell curve that really makes it I'm definitely an early adopter, so I was the first person to get one of those flippy Google phones, which was just absolutely rubbish. But it didn't matter. I just want to
try that. That looks cool. I'm going to try it. And I think that's just my, yeah.
It's interesting with change, because some people will do really well with bringing change into their lives, and some people still find that hard, like they want to change. Want to change habits, or they want to change processes, or even like service providers. And some people can find that really hard to do that, because I'm just so used to it, even if they're deciding to do it. Changing career is
another great example. I want to do this and then really struggling with a change, and then you've got the kind of change that really the adaptive resilience mindset is more about which is this, when change is happening around you, or it's happening and it's not ideal for you, then that's different again. But I think most people are either good at one or the other, rather than being necessarily good and leaning
into both of them. So the fact that you've got that and. Um, or maybe the fact that you are so ready to bring change into your life, it's almost inoculated you against it, so you're so used to it now. So when then change happens and it isn't in alignment with the plans you've got these mental processes and and structures to to deal with that and get on board really quickly.
Yeah, I'd say that's probably reflective again, just change organizations, organizational things. I spent a lot of my career in startups as well, where change is very fast.
The point around change is really interesting. We run a large number of projects, and these projects can be number of years. And the type of work that we do is sales and marketing transformation work, where, fundamentally we put processes, we put systems in place. Yeah, okay, but let's talk about people, and this is what we're talking about. Is performance, the way that projects live and die, is by change, and whether change goes well. We just talked about Matt
there having that score. What are some of the things that you can do as an individual to develop your resilience to change, or if we unlock that bucket a bit more? Because I reckon our listeners, just in general, our clients, could really value some of your ideas around how we can help people change or be more adaptive to it.
Yeah, that's a great question. There's a couple of parts to that as well, actually, because I think, as a leader, if you have a very high adaptive resilience mindset, then it can almost be frustrating when the rest of your team don't come with you quick enough. So I think as sales leaders, it's important to recognize that just because you're really good at something doesn't necessarily mean that the rest of the team aren't you need to maybe coach them or
support them as they get up to speed. Being involved in the change process as well seems to have a really, really positive
impact on someone's willingness to adapt and acclimate to it. So if you feel like you've contributed, you've been listened to, and your worries about the change understood, then again, even if it's still going to happen and it's nothing has changed about the change, you're more likely to feel like, All right, okay, people understand me and what the challenges are now, rather than things are just happening to me
without my consent and consultation. But also, I think there's something about just finding ways to get used to change even small things. Sometimes, when I'm teaching, I use the fun example. They get up in the morning and you go to the fridge and there's no milk, so you can't have your Weetabix, which is a usual Breakfast has, oh my goodness, I can't believe I can't have my breakfast. Someone's used up all the milk again, right? And some people will genuinely be like
completely derailed by having something small like that. So if that's the sort of thing that would normally take you out, but, but what is it? Where are those small opportunities for for recognizing that there's a little bit of change here that's okay, I've got this not, not going straight into the big stuff, big seismic systemic changes in the corporate or the business units that you're operating in, but the little changes, and then just being with it and thinking, okay, how
can I move through this? How can I get to that place of acceptance faster? And actually it's okay and things aren't as they were. I can't have my Weetabix. I'll have to have my peanut butter on toast this morning instead. But that's okay. Change is good for me, and you start building up this belief that actually I can do it, and then the mindset is then transferable to these other domains, these other areas, these other bigger challenges and changes that do then happen.
So what I'm hearing from there is that it's about that the small things lead to the big things. And maybe businesses are able to help others and individuals understand that in their day to day life, that actually could become more resilient to that adaptation. Is that what I'm hearing?
Yeah, it comes back to that word cultivation. So, you know, we don't just become resilient or become better at change or get a better mindset. It doesn't just happen like that. It happens over time, and it takes effort, but we can do it. So if you're not very good at change at the moment, and you you go on and say, well, in the next six months, I'm
going to really try and work on this. And I know people who have done this, and they've just got significantly better at working through change and adapting much faster, but giving yourself that permission just to take a little bit of time and and to get better and generally cultivate that that resilience, to cultivate that mindset around change. And I think that links into something else which is really key as well, which is about being intentional about it in the first place. So we
gathered awareness that what his mindset is. Well, how can I each day show up as somebody who's just a bit better at managing change and looking out for those incidences through the day and recognizing how does that make me feel? How am I responding and how could I respond differently in the future? The small things lead to the big things.
Appreciate you sharing that what you're sharing is going to help not only people listening to this, but actually just that ability. You're referencing things that you can control effectively, which is your mindset. You go to the fridge, right? What's the alternative? Rather than throwing hissy fit and say, Oh, where is the milk? Sounds a bit like me at home, actually. But you know that that aspect. Is really interesting.
That is a fantastic place for us to end today's conversation. So thanks so much for joining us, and we hope that you join us again for part two of this conversation.