Welcome to Captain and the Clown podcast. In this episode, we're talking about coaching and mentoring and why telling doesn't teach. Enjoy.
Why did it count backwards? Hello, we're now recording.
What? Hello, Captain.
What do I...
Come fly with me. Let's fly, let's fly.
What are we going to talk about?
I don't know. So, leadership, life and everything else.
Yeah.
And we're live.
No, we're not. We're recording.
I'm going to say that every time and I would annoy you.
Ah, welcome aboard, Captain. Am I allowed to say welcome aboard?
Oh, again. And that's so corny.
You don't like that one either. But you're a captain, you've got to say it all the time.
I know.
Welcome aboard, destination, coaching and mentoring.
Alright, okay. Okay. I'll try not to be a clown all the time.
And can I just say for Julia, the reason why the clown is because Guy was a clown. This is my friend in the UK.
She said, why the clown? I know you're the captain, but why the clown? Was he from a circus? Yes.
I was in a circus. I'm a carnivore. I grew up in a circus. If you don't know that, go back and listen to our first podcast and you'll find out our histories.
So today, we're talking about coaching and mentoring.
Yeah. So Guy, I know you teach coaching and mentoring as a subject in your courses.
I have had the privilege of sitting in on a few of your courses and they're amazing.
And thank you. You're welcome. I just want to go over what is the difference between coaching and mentoring?
So I used to think that coaching was being told what to do.
So I played sport as a young man and I remember my coaches telling me what to do.
But over the years, becoming a coach and being coached in many situations and now teaching, coaching and mentoring,
I see it as a very different thing to being told what to do because I discovered throughout my career that people don't like to be told what to do.
And you might remember when we spoke about what leadership is.
Leadership is when people want to follow you. And generally, we want to choose who we follow.
We don't like being told what to do by people in authority. So that's why the majority of people would prefer to be led.
And so coaching, in my experience, if you talk about from a leadership perspective or a parenting perspective,
is asking people questions to get them to think for themselves. Yeah.
So that's my definition of coaching. And my definition of mentoring is when somebody passes on their skills, knowledge and experience.
And if you're a good mentor, you do it in a coaching fashion. So that's that's my definite definition of it now.
Well, since I attended your courses, I have changed my coaching and mentoring that I do for others as well.
So I similar. I wanted to offer them so much. And I and I was really passionate about helping these people.
And so I was probably telling them what to do too much, which, as you said, that if people are told what to do, they appreciate it at the time.
But then there's no they don't have any skin in the game. There's no investment.
Yeah. And that's what I found. A lot of a lot of leaders, they've got this passion to help people, as you do.
That's why you do what you do. And that you instantly want to tell them your knowledge.
You want to pass across your knowledge. But from age two onwards, our tiny little brains at age two don't want to be told what to do.
And so when we're telling people what to do inside their brains, subconsciously, they're saying, don't tell me what to do.
Yeah. And so we've got this resistance to being controlled or resistance to having other people have authority over us.
And so most of the leaders I teach, they always fall back into telling, as you said, you did as well, because it comes from a good part of them.
They've got this this desire to help others. They want to pass on their knowledge as quickly as they can.
And the fastest way to do that is to tell them what they know.
But what we talk about is that it's not the most effective way to pass on information.
And can I share with you the science behind it? Yeah. Yeah.
So when when somebody tells us what to do, we follow that instruction. Yes.
Yeah. It's we're becoming kind of like a robot and we forget it.
The reason why we forget it is because when we hear the instruction, that just goes to the part of our body or the part of our mind where we need to then repeat that and do it ourselves.
Let's say you're teaching somebody to do something on a computer or whatever.
You tell them what to do. They can do it because they're following that instruction.
But it's not engaging their hippocampus. The hippocampus is the librarian of the brain.
But if we ask questions and we say, OK, where do you think you would click?
What do you think you would start with here?
If you start to ask people questions, it gets them to think for themselves and engages the hippocampus.
And when we engage the hippocampus, we're forming memories.
So we're actually teaching people by asking them questions rather than telling them.
And that's I know now at the time I didn't.
But when I was first learning to fly and I unfortunately kept throwing up with the flying very early on in my flying.
But I was throwing up and my grade one instructor, Ollie, who we spoke about previously,
he got me to actually go home, study what we were going to do the next day and then come in to teach him, instruct him how to do it.
So because I was learning not to perform or wrote, but I was learning to teach to you.
You were teaching him while you were flying.
Yeah, so he was your instructor.
That's right. But he understood.
And and it was very effective because that's how I learn, especially as well,
is that when I had to understand it in order to give that knowledge to someone else or to teach someone else, it stuck.
Whereas if I just read it in a book to pass an exam or listen to him tell me, like you said, I could do it at the time.
And then the next day, kind of it was foggy.
You know, I knew I had to be doing something, but wasn't quite sure because it hadn't really got in there.
OK, so telling doesn't teach coaching and mentoring is about engaging with people.
So have you ever had any great mentors as a pilot?
No doubt you would have had a lot of other pilots and captains teaching you over the years.
Have you had any great mentors?
And have you had any that maybe weren't so great mentors?
Yeah, yeah, I have.
And actually to that, I was very fortunate that most of the people I flew with were naturally great at
sharing information and experiences and doing it in a way, you know, in we're sitting in a flight deck.
It's a small office for many hours at a time.
You get to know intimate details about each other.
And then but but just through this, you would glean information in different ways of doing things.
And there were two that stood out, actually, and both female, Carol and Louise.
But both of them were natural leaders.
So how did that how did they do it?
Well, how they did it is I remember Carol especially would and she was respected by by male females, everyone.
She she kind of come up through the ranks.
She'd been flying since she was young and she could she could not only talk the talk, but she could walk the walk.
So she would suggest possibly, you know, she'd give you an example of when she did something or she flew or she came across a
situation that might have been a bit challenging and what she did not saying telling you you should do this.
But it made you think and you could picture what she was talking about.
And then she'd say to you, why don't you give this a go?
Or what would you do here?
So she'd give you an opportunity to put your own spin on things with that knowledge or with that experience
that she's already told you, which you've then in your mind put yourself in.
And it and it was a great learning experience.
And so and because she was naturally good at it, people would go to her and ask her advice, ask for her experience.
And again, she wouldn't just tell them she would spin it in a way that where she had a time,
gave an example of where something similar happened to her and what she did.
And she left it at that.
She didn't say, so you should try this.
So you should do that.
Have you been micromanaged then?
Oh, absolutely.
There are a couple that come to mind there, too.
And unfortunately, and it gets around again, the pilot group, you know.
So there were some people that whenever you don't have to mention names,
but whenever you flew with them, it was it was hard work because you were micromanaged.
You weren't even though they were standard operating procedures and everybody knew them.
And in order to to fly up the front, you had to demonstrate.
So you've been checked and ticked off.
So you know what you're doing. Yeah, you know what you're doing.
And every every person has their own role.
They were telling you just seconds prior to you doing it, which, like you said,
about you don't want to be told what to do.
You almost you wanted to, which was very childish, but you wanted to kind of dig your heels in and go, no, stuff you.
But obviously you wouldn't do that. No, because that was the reaction.
That's right. That's the reaction you're having.
It came a real emotional sort of, you know, resistance to this like, don't tell me what to do.
Not that you'd actually say that.
Yeah, yeah. So I like hearing that story that even though you're at the front,
you all know what you're doing.
The fact that they're telling you what to do when you're about to do it,
your brain goes, don't tell me what to do, that there's this emotional reaction to it.
And I see that in a lot of the coaching workshops I do where somebody slips back into telling
and you instantly see their body language changing, that they become resistant.
But when you see people asking questions and engaging and, you know, giving people autonomy, people open up.
It's almost like the door opens up in their mind.
So when you say to somebody, hey, can I make a suggestion?
You can you can see the door opening up in their mind.
But when you hear somebody being told what to do, you almost see that door closing.
Don't tell me what to do. You know, I'm an adult. I know what I'm doing.
When I became a captain, I spoke to another one of one of the guys who who was always accused of micromanaging
and he had a nickname, which I'm not going to say, but he and people would actively call sick.
So whenever crewing rang and didn't want to fly with him, they didn't want to fly with him.
When crewing would ring and say, you know, we've got a call out if you want to.
And they called it a draft if if you want to earn some extra money and fly on your day off.
And the number one thing people would ask is who who is it flying with?
And as soon as they said this person's name, probably 80 percent of people would be like, no,
oh, wow, can't pay me enough to describe how they behave compared to it was Carol.
Yeah. Yeah. So as a first officer, you didn't you know,
you could contribute, but it it was really the captain's role to to do fuel planning, flight planning, et cetera.
But most captains would give you the opportunity to do your own figures and then you come together,
compare, give any, you know, explain why if there's a huge difference, what you're thinking,
because they would say and encourage, you know, we don't always think of everything.
Maybe you've seen something I haven't, et cetera.
So it was very open communication and you felt safe to give your opinion or your view.
And this particular pilot, no, it was very closed.
And even so much that when you're coming into land, the first officer, so from two and a half thousand feet,
it was a requirement. You guarded the controls, which is you have your feet on the rudder pedals
and you have your hand on the control column and the thrust levers.
You would do that. And then what he did is he put his hand on top of yours on the thrust levers,
which was weird because no other. Well, not really hanging over the top.
And so he he basically shouting at you that I don't trust you.
Yeah, that's what it was. And I spoke to I had the opportunity to speak to him.
And I said, why, you know, you used to do this.
And I then didn't fly with him for quite some time, sometimes through avoidance.
But and he said, I never trust first officers. I never trust them.
And I'm thinking, wow, is this it's just because in order to be up the front, they've passed all the checks.
They've done everything they need to do. They're safe pilots.
That's right. And yet he didn't trust them, which I realized he didn't trust himself.
Yeah, that's that's that's what micro managing is.
But somebody is micro managing. They're doing it out of fear.
They need you to be perfect because they fear that it's going to reflect on their performance.
And so basically what he's showing you that he doesn't trust himself.
So he's trying to control you. Yeah, that's that's fascinating.
And I can imagine that that would put you into a almost a different sort of emotional state.
Well, you were thinking, is there something wrong?
Is he saying something that I'm not? Is is there an emergency about to happen or is, you know,
and and you really were starting to second guess yourself.
So you're feeling fear. You were. Yeah.
And also then your performance can't be the best it can be because you're not looking at what you should be looking at and focusing on it because you're worrying.
You're protecting yourself from. Yeah.
And that's something we're going to talk about in another podcast.
I've got a large list of things I want to talk to you about, Michelle.
It's a thing called psychological safety, and it's a very, very important aspect of leadership.
And so he wasn't creating what's called a psychologically safe environment.
No. And what that was doing is putting you into a heightened and not a heightened, but a kind of a fight or flight response,
which means that you lost part of your cognitive abilities when you feel fear.
You don't think as clearly.
And so in other words, when you fear making mistakes, you make more mistakes.
And so he was putting you putting you into quite a dangerous situation there by micromanaging.
Absolutely. So we train, you know, in the simulator for engine fires, engine failures, the whole thing.
But not for flying with him.
So Carol was a great example of what a leader does.
They ask questions, they engage, they make you feel safe.
Whereas a micromanager. Old mate.
He wasn't. That's the opposite of coaching and mentoring.
Yeah. Yeah. So now, Guy, you, I imagine because you're an Olympian that you have been coached by the greatest,
the best out there and a lot.
Yeah. So I threw out my whole career coached by many, many people because I played in many teams and obviously the Olympic team.
And what I noticed is that coaching at the elite level is very much telling people what to do,
because by that stage, you kind of knows what to do.
The coach is really giving you tactical instructions and those sort of things.
And I had the experience of the last three years of seeing a different style of coaching.
It's actually my son's baseball team.
Now, my I know nothing about about baseball and the my son's been playing for three years and the coach asked me if I could help out coaching.
So I've been assistant coaching without knowing anything about the sport for three years with with his baseball coach called Tony.
Now, Tony is an amazing coach.
And I'll tell you why. So when we started, we had we had kids who had never played baseball at all.
And they needed to learn the rules. They needed to learn how to play.
And I've just been observing Tony, we call him coach, obviously, coach Tony.
And he doesn't tell the kids what to do. It's all questions.
So if we're at first base, which foot do you put forward to catch the ball?
Do you glove hand or your other hand? Everything's questions. How many outs? Where's the outs?
It's nonstop questioning. And I've watched these kids over the last three years go from not being able to play the game
and some of the kids early on even had learning difficulties, but they by the end of the season were really engaged,
really learning this game and being very, very motivated.
And so I've been thinking, is that something that possibly we could be doing it more at the elite levels as well?
I'm still not quite sure with that. But he asked he just asks questions all the time.
And watching him do this, the kids are engaged. They're learning.
They don't feel as if they're being dictated to or told what to do.
And it's a fantastic style of helping people learn.
Whereas I've watched some of the other coaches, some of the other coaches from some of the other teams, they're abusing their players.
These kids are nine years of age sitting on the bench being abused. Why did you do that?
You've got to do this and then telling them what they're doing wrong.
Whereas Tony won't tell people what they've done wrong. He'll just ask some questions. What will you do there?
And it's a fantastic. It's been a fantastic experience to watch somebody coaching children's baseball, who's really at the top of their game.
And it makes me think that maybe at the elite level, there is a space for engaging with the players where you ask them questions.
OK, so what would you do here? Not because they wouldn't know what to do,
but just to create more of that psychologically safe environment, because not every athlete is the sort of person where you tell them what to do
and they run off and yeah, no worries, I'll do it. Some athletes might need more a different sort of coaching techniques.
And maybe there's an opportunity for both styles.
And I know I was rambling a bit there, but I'm really fascinated with the different styles of coaching in sport.
But coaching in leadership, in an organization or in a cockpit is just like you discussed.
It's it's having feeling autonomy. It's being asked questions, being asked your opinion, not not told what to do.
You have mentioned before, I saw it in your course, about the asking questions until they run out of answers.
Yeah, yeah. So one of the things we talk about in the coaching course is that somebody sets a goal or you give them a goal
and then you ask them, how would they go about it? What would you do? What else could you do? What else? What else?
And you keep asking that question until you find the edge of their knowledge.
And their edge of their knowledge is where they just can't think of anything else.
You go, what else could you do? And they go, I just don't know.
And that's the magical moment in coaching. Yes. Because what it does is it gives you an opportunity to become a mentor.
So if you've got skills, knowledge or experience that you can pass on to that person, that is the magical line.
That's where you say to them, hey, can I make a suggestion?
And they go, yeah, because they're desperate for something else because they can't find the way there.
And like you said, the brain opens. Yeah, the door opens.
Sometimes it's a rusty door and they go, yeah, you can ask me.
Like you can offer a suggestion, but you say, can I make a suggestion?
And they go, yeah. So they're now open to that suggestion.
You say, hey, would it be worth considering? Have you tried this? Have you thought about this?
And now because you're asking it as a question, you're passing on your knowledge, your skills, your experience,
and you're asking it as a question, you're giving them autonomy. And if they choose it, they own it.
Yes. But if in that moment you go, you know what you should do?
Their subconscious brain goes, don't tell me what to do.
They stopped at age two and it's not going to be as effective.
And that's actually like yourself. When I first started coaching many, many years ago, I was telling people what to do because I want to help people.
I've got all of these books that I've read, all of this wisdom I've collected from all of these fantastic people that I've met.
And I wanted to pass that on. So I was telling people what to do.
And it comes from a good part of you, but it's not the best way to teach. Telling doesn't teach.
Yeah. Now you're a parent. Yes.
OK. I'm going to ask you, have you applied any of these sort of tactics with your parenting?
I have, again, after sitting in on one of your courses. So you gave me...
But surely before the course you were also...
Well, I don't know. Sometimes I get quite frustrated, but...
As we all do.
Yeah. Yeah. And I am very guilty of falling into the trap of telling and sometimes and just telling the same thing louder and louder, frustratingly for everybody.
It's like playing fictionary. Just keep drawing it darker until they guess what it is.
I'll just keep going over it until you guess what I'm drawing.
But you gave an example of when your son was young and how when you planned ahead and you thought, OK,
I'll get up a little 15 minutes earlier and then offer the play and I'll let you tell that story.
But I have been doing that also. And now I get up quite early.
However, what I realised I needed to do was to set aside, almost like in the, you know, marking it in your calendar, set aside half an hour to get my kids up.
And my kids aren't young. Oh, they're youngish, but they're in school, high school.
And it's that whole if it's a pleasant thing for them.
And again, it's it's not telling them you have to get up.
There's only 20 minutes left until school, which I have done before.
Yeah, that's right. It's it's, you know, good morning and and come down and oh, what have you got on today?
And anything exciting and I can just going upstairs and having coffee.
Do you want to come up and have brekkie with me?
And question. Yeah, that's right.
And making it attractive to to get up. Yeah.
And I have noticed such a change that it's a really pleasant experience.
Mornings were I dreaded them. Honestly, I did.
And I thought, I've just got to get through this. Yeah.
And then the day will be good. And yeah, I love mornings.
I used to apply that same principle getting them to bed.
So when they don't want to go to bed, I used to say things like, hey, would you like to go to bed at seven thirty and read two books or seven forty and read one book?
And they go two books. OK, so seven thirty and two books.
They go, yeah. So they're still going to bed.
Yeah. The choice was how many books that I got.
So giving kids a choice is a great way of making them feel empowered.
Yeah. Yeah. OK. So to summarize coaching and mentoring, coaching and mentoring is asking questions, giving people autonomy.
Coaching is is asking them how they would get their mentoring is passing on your skills, knowledge and experience,
but doing it in a way where that you again, you're giving autonomy because.
So it's almost like coaching until that line that you mentioned and then mentoring.
Yeah. Until you've found the edge of their knowledge and then you can pass on your own in a in a coaching way.
So and then the whole message we're trying to get across here is telling doesn't teach.
Correct. How do we finish this podcast?
The world needs more dogs. That's it.
And if Bollinger want to sponsor us. Yeah, they still haven't reached out.
No, they haven't reached out. So Bollinger, we're ready to receive the cases and we will happily talk about your fine bubbles as we do this podcast.
Absolutely. Have a great week, Michelle. You too.
Well, that was fun. That was fun.
You're such a clown. Lady captain.
And who's going to listen to this? Maybe I'm not. Thanks, mom.