Transcript BUILDING RESILIENCE Podcast Interview by Robert Holmes with John Sautelle

Male Voice:

This is the Coach Mentor Podcast proudly brought to you by Frazer Holmes and Associates making the most of your greatest asset. This podcast covers a wide range of topics related to the coaching industry. Interviews with industry leaders, coaching experts and exploring areas of expertise closely related to the coaching industry. Here's your host Robert Holmes.

RH:

Hi and welcome to the coach mentor podcast. Today's episode is titled Building Resilience in Leaders, The Journey of Self-discovery, Leadership and Capacity Building. In today's episode we'll be exploring the subject of building resilience with John Sautelle, CEO and founder of Exceptional People. John has background in Law but moved over to facilitation then action learning coaching and government leadership capacity building. John has extensive experience in the design and delivery of customized learning and development programs for a wide range of clients in the areas of leadership development, performance management, negotiation, conflict resolution and relationship management. He also designs specific programs to support the implementation of change. John holds a Bachelor of Social Science and a Bachelor of Law. His passion is helping senior executives and managers develop their leadership and people management skills. John's passion is helping leaders, individuals and organizations achieve a workplace where individuals have a strong sense of purpose and meaning. A place where they can learn and grow and make a positive contribution. He's worked with more than 50 organizations in the public and private sectors both in Australia and overseas and in fact the reason for our interview today is that he's taking off overseas tomorrow. The reason I sought John out is that resilience building is being asked for in many sectors: government, business, schools and so forth.

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So now for the interview. Hi, John. JS:

Hi, Rob.

RH:

Before we get into the interview proper, why don't we explore your journey out of the law profession and into the other things that you got into.

JS:

Yeah sure. It's been a long journey. I guess I started law more than 30 years ago and practiced in a whole range of jurisdiction. I had a medium sized legal practice on the far south coast of New South Wales and I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with it. Many things I appreciated, invaluable experience, and I found often that there was a conflict between the nature of the work and some of my deeper values, particularly when it came to anything that was sort of adversarial. As a way of staying in law I trained as a mediator back in the early 90's and that kept me in there for a while. About 12 years ago I just realized that it really wasn't what I was meant to be doing in life and I needed to make a significant change.

RH:

Now, from what I understand you were living down the coast or in a different location to where you are now. Is that right?

JS:

Yeah, I was. We were living down in the Merimbula/Bega Area. The legal practice had offices in a number towns down there. When I moved into training, learning and development and consulting I discovered that travelling around the country from Merimbula became quite problematic with the airport times and flight times so we moved to Canberra. Actually on the weekend of the bushfires in Canberra which was a very challenging time for everybody up here.

RH:

Wow. So you moved to Canberra right in the middle of the bushfire situation?

JS:

Yeah. The removals van had to be delayed for a day because the highway was closed coming up from Bega to Canberra. So it was, we'll never forget, I guess, the date of our arrival that was in 2003.

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RH:

Profound! So a bit of a values mismatch. Your passion for people and wanting to help was kind of, I guess, operating against the career that you'd chosen. So you made the jump first to facilitation and then how did you sort of come across then into coaching?

Js:

When I realized that I really had to stop being a lawyer and do something different, I tracked down a person who’s now now became a great friend colleague and mentor, guy called Allan Parker who's one of the most gifted trainers, facilitators, mediators I've ever worked with or experienced and also a wonderful human being. I'd seen him present at a conference. He was quite outstanding. There was a bit of a connection. That was some years before I got out of law. I eventually tracked him down. We had coffee and that led to having dinner that night and he really effectively, he coached me in a sense, and sat down and mapped out whole new pathway for this new career which involved doing a lot of training, train-atrainer programs. I did a lot of training with Allen and he really introduced me to my first opportunities in the facilitation space. We've become very close friends. It's amazing isn’t it when you reflect back on your life sometimes there are those key people where they come in to your life just at the time that you need them so I'm very grateful for that.

RH:

Absolutely fascinating. And so, he ran I guess a business in that field?

JS:

Yeah, Allan's got a business called Peak Performance. He does very high level leadership development and facilitation. For example, he facilitates processes for the United Nations and he works internationally a lot. He's, as I said, he's just the most gifted facilitator. I was very, very lucky in a way because I got to learn a lot of the skills and the tools of the trade, if you like it, at the feet of a true master.

RH:

And then from that across to action learning coaching?

JS:

Yeah, Rob, I'm rather one of those explorers. I get bored very quickly. Very curious. I love learning new things. If I'm really sort of frank about it, this whole journey has been as much about my own growth and development as anything else. I keep searching for processes and tools that help me become a much better person to operate in the world much more as I like. I often use the metaphor of, you know in life, whether it be work or outside work, we can have our big self show up or at times we can have our little self show up. And the

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little self's that reactive, defensive, self that tends to blame and not take responsibility and judge. Yeah, I think we're all familiar with that. The times where we don't feel so good about ourselves after the event. My passion's been finding tools and processes to ensure that my big self turns up more often than not. When I find things that work for me, we then test it in our own business. We keep using them in our relationships within the business and if they're sustainable and they make a positive difference then we build them into learning and development programs and take them to our clients. So there's been that ongoing journey of action learning. Discovering action learning is part of that. RH:

And that's where, of course, we met because I attended one of your action learning coaching, training and development. Well, two weeks of training really it was. Then on from there so fascinating journey and now you've come into this area of resilience building with leaders.

JS:

Yeah, I got very interested in resilience from a personal standpoint. Initially because this is part of the challenge of when I was in the legal practice and working in a profession and having some of that internal conflict and that. I did have a bit of a history in the pattern of burning out, over committing and the stress of the work. Then I’d patched myself up and go back into it. So reflecting back, I realized that whilst I have developed quite a lot of resilience, there's that pattern that kept repeating that took a long time for me to come to terms with. That, coupled with an awareness of just the increasing rate of change, the increasing pressure and stress that particularly all senior managers and senior executives are facing, there's a real need for more and more resilience. So I started looking for tools and processes and really researching that field. Out of that again, using that process of testing things as they really worked in our practice and at the time I developed a resilience program which we're now using very successfully for our clients.

RH:

I'd love to explore the resilience program. What it's based on, the models and theories. Before we go there, can we create a simple definition of resilience? Is it a capacity to cope? Is it an ability that sort of face up or strength? What's a simple way of defining it?

JS:

Look, traditionally, resilience, I mean it's interesting because the origins of resilience came initially out of properties of materials. The resilience properties of concrete in

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structures which is the extent in which they can flex then come back to their original state without breaking. The concept then got taken into and applied into a living systems like ecosystems, and again that concept of to what extent can a system adapt and be flexible without breaking. Then that work got carried over into the sort of sphere of people and resilience. The traditional notion is that resilience is just about your ability to bounce back after a major setback. We’ve taken a much more expanded approach and much more proactive approach. So resilience is not just the ability to cope with setbacks and overcome them. There's a very strong emphasis in our work on learning from experience. Developing the capacity to cope much better in the future without the burnouts or crashes, to become much more self-aware, much more able to manage and regulate our thinking our mindsets and our emotions so that we cope and perform much more effectively when we are confronted with challenges or put under pressure. The definition we adopt is the expanded one. The ability to learn from experience, grow and develop, become more flexible, adaptable, as well as a capacity to cope with the challenges and the setbacks. RH:

I think that's incredibly helpful. The mix of those things coping with, learning from experience, capacity building, self-awareness, the ability to regulate under pressure and under stress, that's a really valuable way of looking at resilience building.

JS:

Yeah.

RH:

Also again, before we get to the tools and techniques, just for the sake of our listeners, many of whom come from a coaching background, with some HR professionals, people from the legal background oddly enough, psychologists, counselors, let's just sort of draw a distinction between say coaching and training. A lot of what you end up going and doing, I assume, when you go into an organization is running a bit of a training package or a training program. How does training relate to coaching in your practice?

JS:

In our practice, in the vast majority of cases, we like to develop integrated programs and coaching is the core part of that. There's no question, I think, the research and our own experience clearly demonstrates that the effectiveness of learning and development programs is significantly enhanced when it's supported by coaching. So there's a much higher likelihood that people will take these skills and the tools or the processes and

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actually apply them back in the workplace to make the behaviour changes that they want to make. Coaching is a very important enabler of that. RH:

So training first and then backing it up with coaching?

JS:

Or coaching as part of - most our integrated packages would be over a period of time where you might have a combination. It could have a 360 degree assessment and a coaching debrief and some coaching sessions. Then there could be some experiential workshops with action learning projects and action learning application between workshops supported by coaching right through the program. It's a very integrated approach.

RH:

Fantastic. It's quite unusual to sort of come across that. I know of a couple of other companies doing that integrated approach and it's very, very powerful

JS:

Yes.

RH:

Somewhere, I'll just tag the idea of talking about triple loop learning which is an idea we’ve discussed before. But can we dive into some of the tools and techniques that you use to build resilience? What's the underlying model that you've discovered?

JS:

There are a number of them. In our own program, we use a model that sort of approaches resilience from three different perspectives or angles. There's self resilience which is really about increasing self-awareness, self-regulation. Being able to surface and identify some of the deep seated mindsets and assumptions that are out of our awareness which drive often in a protective way and an unhelpful way these sorts of behaviours that we want to change and can't change. That's one whole piece if you like. Then we also look at resilient relationships. There's some core tools and processes to build much more robust resilient relationships. Obviously at work, however all of our work and all of the skills and processes tend to have application outside work as well in relationships. Then the third element is around problem solving and the process to help people get unstuck when they get really stuck in their thinking and they're going around circles which can undermine resilience. Or when they're wrestling with an important decision about their future, their career, what they want to do, that can also be very undermining of resilience if people get caught in that state and can’t find a way out of it.

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So there are those three elements: resilient self, resilient relationships and resilient problem solving. RH:

Can we dive into each of those just a little more deeply? Why don't we have a look at the underlying beliefs of the resilient self first?

JS:

One key part of that which is relatively new and fresh. It’s a process to address what we might simply describe as those New Year's Eve Resolutions that keep coming back to haunt us. Which most of us are familiar with. There's this whole phenomena that there are times when we really want to make a change. The way we're behaving or the way we’re reacting in some situations isn’t helping us? Or we want to get fit, look after our physical well-being and we just can't seem to stick with the gym program or the exercise program. In fact, it's interesting there's quite a lot of research that shows that when patients are told by their doctors that if they don't change their lifestyles and their dietary habits that they're likely to die in a very short period of time of heart disease. How many of out of seven of those patients do you reckon actually make a change even when faced with what's effectively a death sentence. What do you reckon that number would be?

RH:

Faced with the death sentence? I'd like to believe it's seven out of seven but something tells me it isn't.

JS:

It's less than one out of seven who can actually make the change. Robert Kegan and his colleague Lisa Lahey have done over 20 years research out of the Harvard Graduate School of Education into this phenomena. What is it that when people have very, very high level of commitment to make a change they really want to make and need to make, what is going on when they can't do that, when we keep acting in ways that prevent us making the change? They realized, they draw this distinction between technical change challenges and adaptive change challenges. If getting fit and staying healthy is a technical challenge, I can solve it really simply. I'll go and do an exercise program, get a personal fitness coach and I'll make the change. If the person can do that, for them it's just a technical change. For those who can't and they can't stick with that program, they can't follow it through if you like, then they're facing an adaptive change which involves a deep-seated mindset or assumption. Which is designed to protect them from fears and anxieties and at the

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same time has them sort of with a hidden commitment to act in ways that stop the change. So if I give you just one quick example in a leadership context. Working with a senior executive who was at a level in the organization where the ability to delegate is essential and they couldn't let go. This person, I mean she was working 80, 90-hours a week and burning out because she was still trying to micro-manage, check everything. Coaching her using the very powerful process that Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey have developed. They call it “overcoming immunity to change”. What the process does is that you identify the goal then you step through what the person is doing or not doing instead of achieving the goal. This is really interesting and counter-intuitive, you now ask them to imagine doing the opposite their doing or not doing instead of the goal and identify what the greatest fear or concern is. Then what’s the commitment to try and prevent that ever being realized, what's the big assumption that drives that commitment that's out of awareness. To cut the long story short, what surfaced at the end of that was an assumption she wasn't aware of. That if I trust other people to do things for me, they’ll make mistakes, let me down and I'll be punished for something that's not my fault. That was the belief or assumption or mindset that's driving this sort of immunity to change to try and protect her. The challenges of the assumption was over generalized. The assumption was that that would always be the case every single time I trust someone this will happen. It’s those globalized or generalized assumptions that are setup often in early life to protect us from consequences which then limit us. It's a bit like let's be safe rather than sorry so the unconscious belief is that I should never trust anybody. You can imagine that when people are dealing with an adaptive change like that around things that undermine their resilience, unless you have a process to surface and work on the mindset, then you can't make the behaviour change which explains the New Year's Eve Resolution phenomena. RH:

This model sounds like it has quite a lot in common with cognitive behavioural therapy – looking at the underlying assumptions, looking at the over generalizations being made and then thinking more critically about those. I like the idea of going against or thinking the opposite. What would happen if the worst thing happened?

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JS:

Well, it's actually, it's counter intuitive and, yes, there's some parallels with cognitive behavioural therapy. The process itself tends to surface some of these assumptions in a way that other processes don't get to so easily or readily. I'll give you one other quick example because the assumptions are sometimes quite surprising. They aren’t necessarily all setup early in life. It could be later. There's a lovely video of Robert Kegan which people could find by googling Robert Kegan. The YouTube clip where he is describing working with a 58-year-old client whose goal is to take his blood pressure medication every day. What he is doing instead of that was not taking it, hanging up on the automated messages that came from the pharmacy, starting and stopping, and so on. Kegan asked him, "What's your greatest fear, imagine if you were taking the drug every day? What's your greatest fear or concern?" His initial response was, "Well, if I don't take the drug every day I could have a stroke and I'll die." Kegan said, "Yes, look I understand that's your concern if you don't take it but I'm asking you a completely different question. What's your concern if you do take it? Imagine taking it every single day and..." Before he could finish that question this client said, "If I had to take that damn drug every single day, it will mean I'm an old, old, man. That I'm over the hill. That I’ve got one foot in the grave. Like I'm a father in his nursing home." The assumption that was out of his awareness that came out as a complete shock to him was he assumed that taking the medication everyday equated to him his life being effectively over. So to protect against that quite irrational if you like, underlying fear, he was committed to, at an unconscious level, to not taking the medication. It's sort of a fascinating process. As he said to Keagan, “So you’re telling me that in order to make sure that I keep well and healthy, I’m doing things, I'm not doing things so that instead I'm likely to die?”

RH:

Absolutely!

JS:

What was interesting is until that assumption or that belief had been surfaced and could then be challenged, he was powerless to do anything about it. That's the process really in a nutshell.

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RH:

That's incredibly powerful. That's powerful. Alright, that's the first part, the underlying beliefs, the resilient self. Part number two I think you mentioned was resilient relationships?

JS:

Yeah. Another key area of work that relates to both of those that we draw on is some very groundbreaking work done by Jaak Panksepp who's the author of The Archeology of Mind. Panksepp's work which is now being recognized by mainstream science and mainstream neuro-scientists relates to what he describes as some primary emotional processing circuits in the very oldest part of our brains. They’re survival circuits and there's sort of seven separate sets of them that drive our responses to perceived threats and to which we either move against or move away from and rewards things we move towards to sustain lives. Panksepp's work is in the process of revolutionizing a whole range about other fields including therapeutic psychology. An understanding for ourselves of those systems and how they get activated and what some of our learnt behaviours are, when they do get activated, and understanding what's going on for others gives us a much greater capacity to avoid those escalation cycles when our threat systems get engaged to stop triggering each other. There's some really core new knowledge and practical application to help us manage conflicts within relationships more effectively. To recognize when disconnection is starting to occur very early on so that we can reconnect rather than drive more and more disconnection.

RH:

Those underlying biological responses can affect both our own behaviour and our relationship with others?

JS:

Yeah, absolutely. Panksepp's identified seven systems and distinguishing between what we would describe as the emotional state, we talk about anger, happiness, sadness, the seven systems and he uses capital letters to signify that they're the underlying set of neurocircuits that drive those emotional states we become consciously aware of. SEEKING which is a primary motivational system because we seek resources, we seek things to thrive and survive in the world. CARE, PLAY and LUST which are all the four primary reward systems. Then you have three threat systems which are RAGE, FEAR and PANIC which is a separation system.

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When any of those, particularly the threat systems, engage for somebody. So if I’m experiencing disconnection from you for some reason. Or if you're experiencing disconnection from me and I'm totally unaware of it, if your panic system engages, because this is sort of survival responses, then it will activate the same system or one of the threat systems in me without even realizing what's going on. Particularly with that system, separation distress system is another way it’s described, we have learned ways of responding to that that are unhelpful.

It’s a bit of a paradox when our panic system engages, the thing we primarily need is reconnection and the learned responses which come out of some of that attachment can be serious if we can get frustrated and angry or we can tend to put up a wall. Which of course may have worked for a very, very young child or a baby to get reconnection and attention and which doesn't serve us very well as adults because it just drives more disconnection. So getting a handle on that is very confusing. That's why relationships are such a challenge. Having some awareness and understanding though of what's actually going on for self and maybe going on for others gives us a place to go then there's much more likelihood of choice and reconnection rather than just escalation of the threat systems. RH:

So I'm imagining that when you go into an organization you begin to work on resilient relationships this is going to have an immediate effect on some of their other primary relationships isn't it?

JS:

Yeah, in fact, it's as much about taking at home as it is at work. I guess I have a view around, I think that language we use often doesn't serve as well on the work-life balance. This description is problematic because it sets up a dichotomy between work and life, it’s as though work is something separate to your real life. I think when you think about balance and we stop thinking about some sort of arbitrary distinction between work and life then all of these tools and processes are wonderful for life balance across the whole spectrum.

RH:

Have you got any examples of executives that you worked with that have taken this home and as a result it's come back and affected their working environment?

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JS:

Yes, I can think of one where a senior executive got really interested in the emotional systems in particularly our learned responses to disconnection, when our panic system engages. She realized that her response is that when there was disconnection with her partner, her need was to have it resolved as soon as possible. She got quite anxious, frustrated if it wasn't. There's that highly emotive sort of response. His response and his coping mechanism on the other hand was when there was disconnection he would tend to put up a wall so he needed time and space. Of course, as he put up a wall then her need to break down the wall became greater and so she got more and more emotive. The more emotive she got, the more she was trying to knock this wall down. The bigger and wider he would build the wall. This is what she realized, she kept pursuing him until he's virtually backed up against the wall, nowhere to go. Then he'd start to get very reactive as well. When she went back and they explored and talked through that pattern that kept playing out and gained an understanding that they have different needs when there was disconnection or any sort of conflict, then they had a way of dealing with it much more effectively. The language was that she would say, “Look I'm feeling disconnected. I need to address whatever is going on sooner rather than later and I also know that you might want a little bit of time and space. When can we talk about it?” So by recognizing the different needs that came out of those patterns just gave them a much more constructive place to go rather than just increasing disconnection. Then she brought that experience and the learning from that back into the work place and became much aware of the different response patterns the members of her team had so that she could be much more effective at, firstly, managing her own state. When there was disconnection or tensions or she needed to have difficult conversations. Secondly, an understanding of what was going on for others. Much more ability and capacity to manage the conversations and the relationship in a way that maintained connection or at least enabled very quick reconnection when there was disconnection.

RH:

Profound. So building executive teams, helping people deal with the understanding that they're having threat response when perhaps that doesn't need to be triggered. I'm guessing that they're now becoming a lot more self aware. They're able to slow things down a bit, start thinking more carefully. I think the third element that you then talked about was problem-solving tools? I can already feel how integrated this model is. It's

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hard to treat each bit separately. So you moved in to problem-solving skills at some point? JS:

Yeah. A process which has number of elements. It really at its core is a model that allows people to get lots of different perspectives on the issues or the problem, to be able to change their thinking, to explore from different timeframes, to consider different options in relation to their values, to consider the impact on their own well-being, explore it from the perspectives of key relationships that might be involved. We actually do this often physically where there are a number of different places of people can move to through the process. The other choice the coachee will have is to be able to do it content-free so that you can use the process using just questioning and process skills without knowing what the person is working on which is pretty interesting as well.

RH:

In a previous interview, we chatted to Chris Collingwood about recoding or the new code NLP and that was one of the techniques that we discussed was content-free coaching. It sounds like an excellent tool for coaches to adopt.

JS:

Yeah. The process model I've developed draws part of the underlying knowledgebase from NLP. Chris is a wonderful facilitator-trainer. I did my NLP training with Chris and Jules, or a good part of my NLP training. It draws on a number of other areas of expertise as well.

RH:

Traditionally, people in business would be treated to problem-solving skills ah-la Harvard Business School or perhaps Macquarie Graduate School of Business. You’ve obviously got your own tools and techniques. Where did you gather those? Are we going back to the law days and negotiation-facilitation type stuff?

JS:

Every time I find a tool or process, every time I have found one over the last, or ever since I’ve started my mediation training. If it’s practical and it works and I'll start using it. I'm also one of those curious people who likes to try it in different contexts or try variations, to experiment, see what can be improved or not. So that’s a combination of drawing a whole range of those things over the years. Then testing practically and seeing what works, what's most effective, adapting and changing as need be.

RH:

So if one of the listeners was sitting there thinking, “Hey, I'd love to get John and the team in,” what sort of engagement are we talking about here? Two or three people coming? What length of time to build resilience?

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JS:

It depends very much on the need, the context and also the extent on which the organization is committed is to and can resource it. Ideally it would involve that sort of integrated approach that I've described which there could be over a twelve month period with a combination of workshops, action learning, practical application and supported by ongoing coaching.

RH:

Do you end up embedding anyone n the organization who can continue to build the resilience or the hope is that they’ll pick up the tools and just use them naturally?

JS:

With resilience? The resilience program is relatively new. It's only been really the last 18 months we've had that running. With other programs, if you take the action learning for example. We ran a major leadership program to one of the largest Commonwealth departments which had that whole integrated approach. Part of that was training up and skilling executive level staff as action learning coaches so they could be an internal resource to be able to continue coaching. So philosophically, yes one of our beliefs is we serve clients best when we help them develop the capability and capacity to continue the work and expand the work. I think we’ve been privileged in a way to have the opportunity to have access to some very powerful processes and tools. Our commitment really is wanting to spread the benefit of those as far and as wide as we can. An essential part of that is building internal capability and capacity.

RH:

Powerful. So just stepping back again before we talk about other speakers that you might be bringing in to Australia or getting into the triple loop learning, is there anything else just stepping back from the whole sort of resilience building process that you wanted to mention or share?

JS:

I think one of the key things with resilience is it is an ongoing journey and so equipping people with tools and processes and then supporting them in their journey is the key.

RH:

So that they have things to take away and continue to coach themselves?

JS:

Yeah.

RH:

So, in a couple of days time or tomorrow you're heading out of the country. Where are you going?

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JS:

I'm going to Vancouver. Then from Vancouver to Vernon which is about an hour’s drive away to co-facilitate a clear-leadership program with Gervase Bushe. We draw on Gervase’s work quite extensively in terms of tools and processes. One of the most powerful tools we have which we use in most of our programs is a model of experience that he's developed called the Experience Cube. A very, very practical application to self-awareness, self-regulation and managing communication in relationships. Gervase has an international client and part of their operation is in Australia and the leadership team are doing a four-day integrated clear-leadership program with Gervase. So I'm going to join three other clear-leadership trainers and Gervase for a week in Vernon to co-facilitate and act as a coach in support of the participants of that program.

RH:

Fantastic. You're quite well-known for bringing people like Gervase to Australia and other experts in to speak. Do you have anyone coming over next?

JS:

There's no one just at the moment although we're very keen to see if we can arrange to have Robert Kegan visit Australia to spread the value of his immunity to change work. I went over to do a facilitator training with Robert and Lisa last year in Boston at Harvard and he’s the most wonderful facilitator, trainer, as is Lisa. It was just an amazing three days with some very, very talented and interesting trainers and consultants of HR people from around the world. I'd be very keen if we could to be part of bringing Robert over to Australia.

RH:

Fantastic. Well I'll make sure that I'll stay in touch with you about if he is coming over and what the dates are. I'll be sure and include those in the show notes if he comes. It will stay there and be continually available to people as we go on. Probably one last thing I just wanted to dip into was the triple loop or quadruple loop learning model that I learned from you. Are you able to give us a sketch of how people learn and learn and learn again?

JS:

There are different definitions of double and triple loop learning. I'll just give you the one that we’ve been using which I think is the one we shared with you when we’re doing the action learning coach training. We can be aware and learn about something that's happening indirectly so if we're operating in a team, working on a project, we can be aware of the cause and effect and what's happening within the team and with that project and with the way we're

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delivering it. We can have a single loop learning which is an awareness of what's happening. If we can step back from that and if as a team we’re committed to reflective learning and continuous improvement then we might sit back and start asking some questions along the line. Why are we operating the way we are? What was happening in that project that resulted in the successes we can identify? What was happening that resulted in the failures or the areas that didn’t work? So stepping back and trying to identify what’s happening systematically. If the first loop is we're aware of what's happening and the second loop would be we're starting to gain awareness of why it's happening in the way it is. The third loop is to then step back again and ask a question. How can we take our learning about what’s happening in this system, for example, doing this part of the project in a way that we’ve approached and done it, how can we take the learnings from that about what worked and what didn’t? How can we transfer those into other contexts into a broader system? It's a bit like the first loop is aware of what’s happening. The second loop is aware of why what's happening is happening. The third loop is we can then take the systemic view of learning of that and look at applying it in completely different and other contexts to bring about improvement. Does that make sense? RH:

As an analogy or as a parable to another area. The fellow who founded Toys R Us looked at the supermarket systems and why they did what they did and applied the learning from supermarkets to the toy sales process and designed and developed Toys R Us. Applying the learning into another environment altogether.

JS:

Yeah. There could be a completely different application or different environment. But it’s taking the systemic learning and applying it.

RH:

Fantastic. Well, if people want to get in contact with you, I'll put the direct contact to Exceptional People at the end in the show notes. You can go to the podcast program page and get all the references to Exceptional People, peak performance, action learning coaching, Robert Kegan, all the different people that we’ve mentioned in today's show. Is there anything else that you wanted to say, John, before we sign off?

JS:

I think that's about it, Rob.

RH:

Thanks so much for your time. It's been really valuable.

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JS:

I've enjoyed it. Thank you for the opportunity.

RH:

Great! Well, I'm looking forward to you joining us next time. In our next interview we'll talk to Grant Soosalu and Marvin Oka about Multiple Brains and Intuitive Coaching. Go to the podcast page for the show notes from today and the links to the organizations and businesses mentioned in this interview. Thanks so much and we'll see you next time.

Male Voice:

You’ve been listening to the coach mentor podcast. Find us on the website at www.frazerholmes.com/podcast. Join us next time for another exciting installment of the coach mentor podcast.

END

Coach Mentor Podcast Transcript – Episode 7: John Sautelle – Building Resilience

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