Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You're listening to b two B revenue acceleration, a podcast dedicated to helping software executives stay on the cutting edge of sales and marketing in their industry. Let's get into the show.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: Hi, welcome to B two B revenue acceleration. My name is Orania Motier and I'm here today with Jonathan Smith, performance psychologist and managing director at Adaptive Mind. How you doing today, Jonathan?
[00:00:22] Speaker C: Yeah, really well, thank you. And thank you very much for inviting me today. Yeah, looking forward to it.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: That's a pleasure. We're in January, so it's kind of the blues months where everybody's kind of coming back to work after Christmas. So I think speaking about psychology in sales is relatively important this month. But before we get going and speak about mental health and how can we help people psychologically for optimal sales results, would you mind introducing yourself a little bit more, Jonathan? Speak about your background but also your company, adaptive mind.
[00:00:49] Speaker C: Yeah, so my background is that I started off my career as a senior actor at a university and then about 14 years ago moved into the applied world because it enabled me to do what I really, really love, which is helping people to develop. So I've been working over the last 14 years across a mix of business, sport and also the NHS as well. My sport work is working with Olympic, Paralympic and professional sports from the England women's rugby team to the under 19 England women's football team to Formula one drivers and then working with businesses. And all of that type of work is around working with the individual, working with teams or the organization to help them to grow, to perform and support wellbeing in the environment and adaptive mind. As a company, which I set up eight years ago, now, I think it is our role is there to help people to adapt to the context that they're in so they can maximize their performance, maximize their growth or maximize their well being. And those three are really interrelated to each other when we look at it over the long term.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Okay, that makes sense. And let me start with the first question. So how can the mindset of training used for athlete can be used to boost the mental strength of a sales team? I mean, I appreciate the level of resilience in both field, but it'd be good if you speak about some of the similarities between both sports and sales.
[00:01:59] Speaker C: Yeah, I suppose the first and the most obvious one is the fact that everybody's got a mind that they've got to use as people.
When we talk about mental training, we're talking about really as a fundamental underpinning element of it is about understanding about how the mind actually works. We don't get a blueprint and we don't get almost like an instruction manual when we're born. And everybody has preconceptions about how the mind actually works, but not everybody has a real understanding as to whether it's the neuroscience element of how the mind works, but particularly around what can it do and what can't it do and how might it do these things when we look at it in relation to different types of environments? So with athletes, we're looking at how do we go about maximizing their training, building motivation or commitment, managing anxiety, or the ups and downs that happen when they perform really well or they don't perform well and how do they go about doing that? And the mind in all those parts has a really integral part to play understanding about how it might respond in those situations, but also how do we go about managing it effectively to deal with those things? And that's the same with salespeople. Now, the context might well be quite different in sales. You're performing almost every day, aren't you? It's not like in sport where they are peaking for particular competition. So british canoeing, one of the groups that I work with, is in their preparation at the moment for peaking for the Olympics and the Paralympic Games. But that's. They will peak for peak three times at most a year, and they'll race and compete for cross a year period of time, probably only around about twelve minutes, which is a tiny amount, but they spend the rest of their time training in sales. It's the other way around. So the understanding of that context helps us actually then understand about, well, what might that person face and the salesperson. They've got the internal and external pressures of hitting sales targets. They still have to deal with situations where they miss a target and dealing with that, or they go on a bad run and how do they manage that bit? But mindset training or mental training is all about how do we help somebody to develop the skills and strategies to enable them to function as effectively as possible. So if we think about it, it's really like just a different version of going to the gym, which is there for your physical conditioning. It's going to the gym, going for a run, they're all there helping your physical conditioning. Mindset training is all about how you do that for your mind, right?
[00:04:19] Speaker B: So there's a bit of a differentiation between mindset training, so you could have a very strong mindset and be extremely resilient. But if you don't have the mental well being, it would still be difficult to achieve your goal. So let's talk a little bit about mental well being and how that back to success, because you must have seen some athlete that are probably the best in their field, but are not in the right mental place. And I've seen salespeople, you must have seen salespeople as well, who are really good, but for some reason they've got a bad run and then they come back to. We see that a lot in football. In fact, you've got strikers who are just like, bam, they score goal like never, and then they stop. Five game where they score like crazy, and then they stop. So I'd like you to speak about the mental well being, the impact that is that. And also, if you've got any practical example that you've seen in sport and in business about the impact of being well mentally.
[00:05:03] Speaker C: Yeah, I suppose we best start with actually defining what do we mean by mental health and mental well being and get clear on that, because often when people talk about mental health, they're actually talking about mental ill health. And mental illness is often what they're talking about.
[00:05:18] Speaker B: Mental health is like, I have a problem, it's a mental health problem. It's not a mental health opportunity, it's a mental health problem.
[00:05:24] Speaker C: And so mental health is actually, let's talk about it in terms of it's a continuum, and that everyone's on this continuum, and it's a dynamic element of it, and it's a dynamic state of our well being in which individuals, whether that's athlete or a salesperson, can, to realize their potential purpose and meaning in their life and work through them. Experiencing trusting relationships, have the ability to cope with common life stresses or the specific stresses that they might experience in their world, sport or business, and are able to act in a way which is sort of autonomous and according to their values, that's what we're meaning by mental wellbeing. And it does fluctuate, and it's normal that it fluctuates for everybody from time to time. Sometimes we can identify really clearly what that thing is that's had an influence on our mental wellbeing, up or down. But there's also times where we're not entirely sure and it's not really clear, but we know that we've woken up one morning and we're just not in quite as good a place. And so when we have poor mental health, that's when we are likely to have situations where our behaviors, our experiences, our thoughts, our feelings are causing some level of distress. Or impairment in our daily functioning. So we might have difficulty relationship, we might have more aggressive or more agitated. We might not want to do the things that we normally enjoy doing, or we're sleeping or eating more or even less than we normally would do, being late for meetings or missing things. Communication might be a little bit different as well. We're more muddled in what we say, or we're shorter and sharper in how we talk to someone, or there might be changing routines. And we find that really that person, when they've got really challenging in terms of their mental health, they're finding it really hard to just cope with the normal things, like, things like even just like going to work. So when we're talking about the impact, I think it's quite clear that when our mental well being is struggling, it's going to have a negative impact on our work. All those factors that underpinning us be able to just be a good salesperson, but they're going to be influenced. If our communication isn't as effective as normal, that's going to influence how well we can sell in those moments. If we're late or missing things that trust that somebody else has in us and that ability to be seen as competent in our role, that starts to get missing as well. So mental wellbeing is one of those underpinning functions that enable us to then build on that, to then be able to actually do our jobs really effectively.
[00:07:43] Speaker B: Probably the $1 million question, but it's maybe a stupid one. How do you address mental well being? Do you need to go to the root cause? Do you need to forget about the root cause, but vision the future and look at opportunities? If you are a manager and you've got someone in your team that you believe is suffering from well being and needs some support because they're technically a good individual, but they may be going through a rough pass, what's the best? And it may be not a size one size fit. Also, there may be a few techniques that you want to share with us, but be good to get some practical example, because I think we've all found ourselves in that situation where we're speaking to someone who's having a bit of a rough time and you don't know if you want to speak about personal stuff, because that may not be your place, they may not want to an up, you may make them even worse. It's a very tricky situation to address. I think for someone who is not a psychologist like yourself, I don't know if you've got any tips or techniques.
[00:08:30] Speaker C: Yeah. So firstly, you're very unlikely to actually make it worse. I mean, that's as a starting point in it. If somebody is struggling, we can go us asking them a question about how are they doing, and having a conversation with them about how they're doing and listening and showing empathy to what their experiences are. That will always help an individual in those situations. Because one of the underpinning drivers that individuals have is this need to belong, need to be part of a group. We're hardwired to want that. So whenever somebody gives us attention and asks us for what we're feeling, how we are, what we're underpinning, the message is we value you and you're important to us because we've asked you about how you are. And that in itself will increase the sense of belonging. So that is a really underpinning, important quality. One of the other things that I would probably talk about in terms of just helping somebody with their overall mental well being is there's some underpinning foundations as such, that we want to just be careful of. And these are nothing dramatic at all, but just good habits of sleep, eating, rest and recovery, physical activity are all underpinning foundations to having good.
[00:09:37] Speaker B: I think so.
[00:09:39] Speaker C: We know what we're like, don't we?
[00:09:41] Speaker B: For me, I don't think I've had probably borderline. Sometimes I think I get a little bit grumpy and I get a little bit negative. I look at situation in a negative way. I stop looking at opportunities. And it's got to be difficult because when you lead a team, you've got to be well mentally, right? If you start to go negative, then everybody becomes negative. And then it takes a long time to change things. But I've been exercising pretty much every day for a long time. And if I don't go for two or three days, I can feel something is not right. There is something about exercising in the morning, there's something about having a cold shower. I don't know what it is, but there is something about breathing, exercise, there is little thing that just makes you feel a little bit better. And another one for me that is relatively big to keep me sane is taking time for personal development. So I don't really have the brain patience to read books, but I can do podcasts, I can audiobook in the car when I'm traveling. Last thing I want to do is to open up a book in the evening. When I've been doing 250 emails and reviewing contracts and things like that during the day, I don't want to read anything. Well, I just want to close my eyes and lie down and make it easy. But really are things that are taking a little bit of time for yourself and doing something that is good for yourself, that, you know, deeply inside is good for you. That helps me to get in the right place for some reason. And eating well, I think is important. I think if you eat crappy food, it's just not going to help you. You won't feel good about yourself.
But yeah, it is interesting because when you stop doing a sort of little routine, you can feel that you may be a little bit shorter in term of mood. We have little mood swings and everything. So, yeah, it's crazy.
[00:11:20] Speaker C: Those underpinning. Underpinning. And you brought out lots of different examples of things that are likely to help somebody to actually increase their sense of well being. Fundamentally, those areas help because they're actually tapping into some of our underpinning drivers which are really important to us. And so when these underpinning drivers are fulfilled in some way or other, then we generally feel better about ourselves. And the three underpinning drivers, which there are a number of them, but the three really critical ones which I'd talk about. One is that sense of belonging that I've already mentioned. So that feeling like I'm part of something is important. So I feel like I'm supported by other people. I feel like I'm connected to other people and other people value me and respect me. That's a key one that's both internal to a workplace, but also external to a workplace.
So that's a key element of it. The other one is a sense of competence. Do we think that we're good at something? When you talked about there, I love to learn something. You were actually going, I'm looking to try and increase my competence at stuff, so by learning something, I get better at it or better at more things. So how do we go about increasing our sense of competence is a key bit. Now, the manager is a really important person who can do that, who can give feedback in terms of what we're doing well, but also can do it in terms of what we can do to get better at something. Again, my perception is that when we are giving somebody feedback to constructively help them into improve, what we're also saying to them is, I believe that you can get better. I believe you've got the potential to be even better than you are. So I value you as an individual. So that's really, really powerful for people. The third one is the sense of control. So the belief that somebody feels that they're in control of their lives in some way or other. So when we feel overwhelmed or we feel that things are. We've got uncertainty, we're not sure what's going on. That's when that feeling of control is likely to be reduced down, and that's also when our well being is likely to be reduced down. Now, all three of those are things that the individual can improve on, but all three of those are stuff that the actual manager can help and support as well. So if I was leading a team, I'm looking at, how do I increase those three elements with the person in front of me? How can I make them feel more competent? How can I help them be more competent? Their work? How do I give them a sense of purpose and control over what they're doing? How do I build that sense of belonging as part of this group?
[00:13:39] Speaker B: Yeah, I've been taking notes here, Jonathan. I don't mean to be rude, I don't do something else, but I think the way I look at it, from what you're saying in my head, I'm clicking of, this is the culture we need to push.
If we push a culture of belonging, or people feel like they are belonging to something, and it could be a group that is trying to achieve something fantastic in the world, it could just be a group of individual that are doing the same thing together, but actually have good time together.
How can we do, through training and development and talent management, develop their sense of competence and the sense of control is how do we give responsibility to people? I've got some fantastic example in my life, but I think the turn kid, my manager, your life, when people were like, you know what? I'm not going to tell you how to do it. I'm going to let you do it and try to fail, and I will be there to pick you up when you fail. And I think you won't break anything, so don't be scared, but you've got to go and figure it out yourself. Not going to tell you exactly how to do it. So you manage through giving responsibilities, right. Managing and controlling people, which I think there is something quite liberating when, you know you can do things, and even if it's not right, you're just kind of testing things. And that sort of sales lab type of environment is pretty cool and something that we're trying to push at operatics. But, yeah, I was taking some notes around that to speak to a lot of people, Sam, that, you know, because I think we should look into it when we address our managers and speak about those things that are extremely important.
[00:14:59] Speaker C: Just to add to that for a quick moment, give a little example of where that can come to life a little bit. In a workplace, you have a member of staff comes to you as their manager with a problem and a challenge. What role do you take in that situation? Do you take the role of I'm now the manager, I'm going to solve your problem for you, or are you taking the role of how can I help you to solve the problem for yourself? So if I take the role of solving the problem for you, you're not giving that person the opportunity to hit at least two of those underpinning drivers, competence or control. You're reducing both of those by saying, you can't solve this. I'll solve it for you. You can't solve this. I'm going to do it. So now you don't have any part to play in it. Instead of that, what I'd be generally encouraging people is for the manager to take on almost like a coaching role in that situation where they ask the questions, what have you tried so far?
What solutions have you come up with and what are the pros and cons of those solutions that you come up with? What help can I give you in this situation that would enable you to go away and do more? So if I ask those three questions, I'm keeping the control with that person and also trying to pull out some of the competence, the knowledge that they've.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Already got, as you know, training manager to be coach, I can speak for myself. Going through is a journey. Oh, man, I love to be a problem solver. Jonathan, tell me about your problem. I'm a fixer. I love the feeling of being a fixer. It's so bad. Even now someone come to me and I've got someone who's doing some mentoring with me and helping media. So I tell him about all my little shortcoming and he gave me some little framework to use and the framework that he gave me is grow. So start with the goal. So what are your goals, Jonathan? What are you trying to achieve? Okay, and then r, which is reality, where are you at now? How far are you from your goal? Is it a realistic goal? And then you can go to the willingness. How willing are you to get? So sorry. Your objectives and the willingness. So I use that and it's just giving me the first step of starting to ask questions, saying, you know what? Yeah, I've been there before and I know exactly what you should do. It's one of this or this or that. So try that. Okay, good. It's having the time to actually have a coaching conversation versus. Well, I think there is two sides of coaching because I've seen some people who think they go to management school, and the first thing that I was told in management school is that the people who perform, the top ceos, the top leader are the people who know how to delegate. And I think it's not to delegate it, but know how to coach the people also underneath them, because you can delegate something and say, okay, Jonathan, you know what? You've got the going help you or I'm going to ask you a couple of questions and you go and actually I don't help you and I let you fail and then I just potentially get rid of you because you failed and you can't figure it out. But I'm not coaching you and helping you to get better, then you've got the opposite, which is me the fixer or used to be me the fixer, which is basically don't even let you speak. As soon as you start, they just put up the finger on the lips and I know exactly what you're going to say next. Mind Riddler, in a way it takes me, I still have here somewhere in my paper a list of questions to ask when someone come to me. If I get on the call with an employee and I see that it's a bit of a coaching, I need to take something to remind me that I should not just go in with my ids and striking the right balance in the middle of coaching. And I think, you know, when you do the coaching, there is a coaching pregame, on the spot and then post. So, for example, you coach someone for a meeting, the preparation prior to the meeting, right. Give them responsibility in the preparation. Tell them, okay, I'm going to guide you, but I think you should try to look at the role of the person, this, that, and I would like you to put something together to tell me how do you think we should go about it. Okay, so that's kind of the preparation and what are the objectives of the meeting and stuff? During the meeting you can do some coaching and you've got instant messaging and stuff like that. You could whisper into people here if it's a call or whatever. I find that a little bit weird. But you can do a little bit of coaching through question or intervention during the meeting and then you've got the debrief after. So how do you think it went? What do you think we could have done better. What do you think? We've done very well.
You get so much from doing that, but it takes time. It takes time and it takes a lot of energy from the coach. And I think that's a problem that we.
That we need to work on, is how do we make sure that our manager are not jumping from one call to another to another to another? They think about the coaching, but they never get around doing it. Because before you know, it is 630 and you're absolutely knackered. You don't have the brain power to actually speak to your resources. And that's something that we are working on. But the little grow framework is very interesting. And then I've got another thing, which is will versus scale. So you probably also know that, okay, because I don't think you can coach absolutely everybody. I think there is some lost cause, and you can spend a lot of time training someone who is extremely skilled but doesn't have the will. And that may not be good for your culture, but you keep them because they've got the skill right. So you will see that again in football team. I don't know if it was the case, but Ronaldo coming back to Manchester United didn't really work out for them. Maybe he was too much of a voice in the dressing room, who knows? But he's definitely got the skills right. Did he have the will? Did he come back for the right reason yet? The will to follow the plan of the whole group, his own agenda? That's the thing. But then you've got people who have a lot of will, but you can develop their skill, and that's probably the people we should spend the most time with. So that's interesting to look at that from those two perspectives, because then that's, in my eyes, the way you decide where you want to put your time from a coaching perspective. But there is something great about coaching. Now that I'm better at it, I don't think I'm great, but that I'm better at it.
It makes you fulfill, like, one of the things that we didn't discuss in term of the factor of influencing well being. But maybe it's coming from the competence or an element of control or an element of belonging, but doing something for someone that makes you feel good, when you see someone progressing, they eventually get a promotion two years later. That's where you get the dopamine shots.
The dopamine is the one that takes longer to come, the deoxytocin. And that's quite special.
[00:20:56] Speaker C: And there's some good research out there around the idea of actually doing things for other people will reduce down well, will improve our well being because it takes us out of our own heads, it takes us out of our own problems. And we then are showing a willingness and doing something for somebody else, then just we get something back. If you ever want to influence somebody and actually create a good relationship with somebody, actually asking them for a favor is a great way of doing it. It really helps actually create that sense of bond again, because by asking somebody for help for them doing, you're saying to them directly, you've got competence that I need. That would be useful for me. So you're showing value to that value to that person by asking that question. Because we don't ask people who we don't value to help us. We don't do that. That doesn't make sense that we would do that. So if we ask somebody to help, the underpinning assumption of that is that you're valuable in some way or other. You've got competence in some way or another. And I recognize that it keeps coming back to those underpinning drivers that we're trying to develop and build with people. And there are so many different ways that we can go about doing that. And they have impact psychologically, even if they're not necessarily a psychological intervention, that's slightly different thing. So you don't need to be a psychologist to help build these things. You just have to have an understanding of psychology and then applying it in a variety of way that's appropriate for the context that you're in.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a choice of words. If you go to someone and say, look, I think you're subject matter experts about this and I've seen you the other day doing that. So I've got something to ask you about this. Just see it on their face or going to a shop and very polite with people or cracking a joke or just giving a smile, being kind and making people feel good is just so easy. Cost you nothing and make you feel better, make you sleep better. Right. So it's definitely something that. But I guess you need to be in the right mental space to be able to do that. You've got to be joyful yourself to be able to. You're an amplification of your own feeling.
[00:22:52] Speaker C: Right? Yeah. Which is those underpinning habits that we talked about a little bit earlier. If we do those, that gives us the better chance of it. And with one of those being that sleep rest recovery, making sure that we don't just continue to plow on. We spend time on a day to day basis, whether it's real short ones, when we're in work, a little bit longer, when we're out of work, and a little bit longer, sort of at certain periods of time to rest, relax and recharge. Because that's key for us. We are energy creatures, and if our energy reduces down too much, that's going to have a negative impact on us, but also on what we can help and support others to do. So we need to spend time to recharge that energy on a regular basis.
And when I talk about energy, part of that is the physical energy, 100%, but it's also the spiritual. I don't mean that in terms of from a religious point of view. I mean in terms of actually from more of a purpose point of view. Why am I doing what I'm doing, and what's the importance of it? Can I see the importance of it? I'm talking about it from a cognitive point of view, in terms of actually when we're thinking. If you remember going back when we were doing exams at sort of a levels or gcses, we came out of those exams absolutely tired as anything when we've just been sat down doing nothing physically. But our brain takes up a huge amount of effort and energy when we actually are thinking. So we've got to recharge that energy again, and we can recharge it by doing things that build us energy. Some people that will be about being around friends and family, et cetera. For other people, it'd be about going for a walk by themselves. Any of that stuff just helps us to recharge our energy so we can then give it back out again, either directly into our jobs, the sales type role, but also into other people as well. So it's that balance that we've got to do about doing hard work and then rest, recover. Hard work, and then rest, recover. Not just hard work consistently, because everybody at some point in time will burn out. Some will take longer than others. But we need to have real clarity as to where and when do we need to actually recharge our batteries to then be able to go again so we can optimally perform?
[00:24:56] Speaker B: You may have answered my question in a way, but one of the things that I was keen to ask you, Jonathan, is how do you strike the balance between maintaining a competitive edge and at the same time, as you say, don't get to the burnout stage, preserving your mental well being, particularly when you are in an eye pressure environment so again, I look at it as sales at the end of the quarter in a public company, and you need to do your target. You may lose your job or an athlete. You're just about to perform in the Olympics and you've been training for years for that.
Is there any tactics or techniques to strike the right balance to make sure that you don't? Is it as simple as walking out, resting or some other things?
[00:25:35] Speaker C: Yeah.
So firstly, I think this is that bit between short term and long term that we need to think about in relation to this area. So I don't see that competitive edge and mental health being on sort of two ends of a different spectrum. I see it far more about if we can keep somebody's mental health at a reasonably high level, recognizing that it's going to fluctuate at different points of time and it's going to be less or more of a priority at different points of time, we're more likely to get long term competitive edge or long term high performance. If we don't do that, then we won't get that high performance from people. That's the first bit of it. I think the second bit of it is to recognize that pressure or stress isn't a negative thing. And I think sometimes people talk about it. Just the idea of stress, that somebody is feeling some level of stress being a negative thing, don't believe that's the case. And the research supports that's not the case as well. It's about how much and how long are we in that place for. That's the key bit in terms of our performance. So if we have no pressure whatsoever, then that leads to negative performance and low levels of performance, because people are bored, they lack a purpose, they lack challenge in that situation. And often it leads to this level of can lead to depression. Because actually, what's the point of my life? What's the point of what I do here? Which is why you sometimes have situations where you have billionaire kids have everything that they want in terms of, from a physical point of view, but because sometimes they lack a purpose, they actually suffer from depression. So that's because they've got this potentially this complete lack of stress. On the other hand of that, if we have too much where we are constantly on the go, never stop, pressure is high and it stays high consistently, then that leads to burnout and therefore lower levels of performance that way, because we then actually burn out, stop work and likely lead to ill health as well. So what we want to do is find that ideal zone where we are stretching that people feel stretched and it's going to, over time, move up and down on a continuum as you move through things. So as you're going moving towards the end of a quarter, for example, and you're looking to hit your target at that point, that might mean that actually that pressure is rising up. But as long as some point after that point or some point before that point, we have been able to recharge our batteries, then that's all fine. That's not an impact, that's not an issue. Our well being might well reduce down for that short period of time, but as long as we've got that plan in place to then build it back up again afterwards, or we got that time in place to build it back up, that's all good. The issue is where somebody then burns out and then goes 100% again straight away burns out 100% and then they become a yoyo. That's when we get unhealthy behaviors and unhealthiness. And eventually what that generally leads to is somebody actually leaves the job. And from a business point of view, somebody leaving a job and new person coming in costs far more money than it would do if that person was looked after and supported during that period of time.
[00:28:37] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. And how can leaders promote an environment where people feel comfortable to speak about their mental health and having conversation and encourage people? Almost like that safety group. I remember Simon Sinek speaking about the safety groups and making sure that everybody inside the group feels safe. But how do you promote it as a leader in sport and in is.
[00:28:59] Speaker C: About the manager can do a couple of things, I think in this one. One is that role modeling. So this is about role modeling, about how you are feeling at different points and at times, and you've got to balance this for the person. But at times actually just talking about how you are feeling to make it actually okay to talk about. Actually today I am bushwhacked, I'm tired, I'm struggling today. And then next day you're coming back in and you're good. So that's an element of it also. Then the other part of that is about actually incorporating that psychological safety, mental health into what we do on a day to day basis. So it's not a separate actually, this session is about mental health, or we're going to do a workshop on mental health this week and then we don't talk about it again for the next six months until it comes back to renewal time for us to talk about mental health again. For me, it needs to be incorporated into it one of the things which we do in a couple of the sports that I work with, particularly when we are moving towards times where the stress level is likely to come up, we'll start to actually incorporate it into our general meetings. How is everybody today? Where are we at? What's our energy levels? On a scale of one to ten, where are we at on that? And just to get everybody actually just talking and feeling open to it. So that's a really key bit of it. The second part of that is that, again, I apologize that we keep going back to this, but that sense of belonging, when people feel generally like that, they feel trusted, they can be their authentic self, their real self. They don't have to hide away from who they actually are. They are more likely to share in those situations where people don't feel like they're going to be judged and there's going to be a negative impact. If they say something, we won't share when we think there's going to be a negative impact. So making it shown or proven that actually there isn't any negative impact, only a positive impact can be really helpful. So cooperating into team meetings, team check ins and how we're doing, creating buddy systems so that people have someone who they know have got their back, supporting people to create care plans. All the athletes that we work with have care plans as to this is what I look like on a good day. This is what I look like on a bad day. This is what's helpful for me, for me to do, but also for you to help me with. All our coaches and support staff have their own care plans for that.
[00:31:18] Speaker B: Is it like a document where you put what makes you feel good, what makes you feel bad, what are your bad habits? Your good habits?
[00:31:26] Speaker C: Yeah, it's exactly that. It's a single page document that describes these things that have been talked through on an individual basis and then likely shared with their buddy, for example, with their line manager, and then somebody else who they think would be important for them to share with and having conversations about that. So that then we create then a sense that people can help us and can input into us because we know that on a bad day, what I want to do on a bad day and I'm feeling rubbish might be really different to what you want to do and what's helpful for you. So if I don't know what's right for you, I'm likely to go back to what I think is right for me, and that might not be the most appropriate thing for you. So for me, it might be about getting away and going into the countryside or just going out for a walk. For you, it might be going for a run. If we start to do what's wrong for the other person, then that's probably not going to be helpful. So if we've got better awareness about what you need, I'm also going to be more confident about coming up to you and helping in those moments.
[00:32:25] Speaker B: Makes sense.
[00:32:25] Speaker C: Makes sense.
[00:32:26] Speaker B: And then how do you see the signs? I know we touched a little bit on it earlier on, but last thing that I want to discuss, which is if you are a newish manager, what are the signs that make you aware that someone may be requiring some support from a mental health perspective or someone who's getting changes in the workspace, how would you see it?
[00:32:45] Speaker C: Yeah.
So firstly, as a manager, you want to have a good understanding about what that person's just normal behavior is like. So what are they like when they're normally in a good place and then what you're generally looking at is a change in behavior. So it's not necessarily a specific behavior, but it's actually a change in the behavior. So someone who might normally be very quiet on a day to day basis, if they get really noisy, that could be an indication of them having some mental health challenges at that point. But in a similar way, somebody who's really noisy, very gregarious, very chatty, who they then go very quiet, that might be an example of them actually being having some mental health. If I'm generally assessing somebody and look at it, the areas that I will probably generally look at, and this is about things that are likely to have big impact on their daily lives. I'm looking at things like changes in sleep, changes in eating, relationships, are they able to do their day to day and how they find it more and are they finding it more difficult? They're the areas, but when those things are happening, they're not necessarily seen as easily in the environment, they're more underpinning and we're getting into a little bit more in terms of starting to look at it, more of a clinical area for it. And then after that, if you do notice, the key bit is actually then having the courage just to have a conversation in an appropriate place and to ask them about how they're doing and then recognising that they may. And this is a real habit in the UK. Yes, I'm okay. As a first answer and a real quick answer, it's worth just checking on. Are you sure you're okay? And on that second one, then you've given them the opportunity to really open up a little bit.
[00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it was really good. Thank you so much, Jonathan. I mean, getting to the idea, but it was very useful. I really enjoyed the chat. If anyone wants to pick up the conversation with you or see how adaptive mind could support their business or their team or themselves as an athlete, I don't know if we've got a lot of athletes listening to us, but what's the best way to get hold of you, Jonathan?
[00:34:41] Speaker C: Probably the two ways you can get hold of me by email. Jonathan at adaptivemind co. UK as one way of getting hold of me. I do have an Instagram page as well, or the company does. Anyway, if I'm perfectly honest, I'm absolutely rubbish with Instagram, but you can get hold of me from that, which is adaptive mind academy. So reach out if it'll be useful for people.
[00:35:01] Speaker B: Yes. I forgot to ask you the question. Do you think social media has got a correlation with mental well being?
[00:35:06] Speaker C: It definitely has been shown to have an impact, yeah.
[00:35:13] Speaker B: You just see all the things you don't have.
It makes you want, you don't have, it makes you feel bad.
[00:35:18] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. And it's not what in the past we had where we had comparing to our local street in the past, 20 years ago, and that's all we saw. Now we're comparing to the rest of the world.
[00:35:29] Speaker B: Thank you so much. Anthony, was a great pleasure to have you on the show.
[00:35:32] Speaker C: Absolute pleasure. Really nice. Thanks. Ray.
[00:35:35] Speaker A: You've been listening to b two b revenue acceleration. To ensure that you never miss an episode, subscribe to the show in your favorite podcast player. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time.
