The Leadership Project Podcast
The Leadership Project with Mick Spiers is a podcast dedicated to advancing thought on inspirational leadership in the modern world. We cover key issues and controversial topics that are needed to redefine inspirational leadership.
How do young and aspiring leaders transition from individual contributors to inspirational leaders or from manager to leader to make a positive impact on the world?
How do experienced leaders adapt their leadership styles and practices in a modern and digital world?
How do address the lack of diversity in leadership in many organisations today?
Guest speakers will be invited for confronting conversations in their areas of expertise with the view to provide leaders with all of the skills and tools they need to become inspirational leaders.
The vision of The Leadership Project is to inspire all leaders to challenge the status quo. We empower modern leaders through knowledge and emotional intelligence to create meaningful impact Join us each week as we dive deep into key issues and controversial topics for inspirational leaders.
The Leadership Project Podcast
181. Performance, Potential, and Interference with Tony Latimer
💭 What happens when an IT professional transforms into a master certified coach?
Join us as we sit down with Tony Latimer, who brings over thirty years of coaching wisdom to our discussion. Tony's journey took a fascinating turn with IBM's leadership program, which surprisingly used tennis as a metaphor for coaching.
This unique experience led him to develop non-directive coaching techniques, now embodied in his latest innovation, TonyLatimerai—an AI-powered coaching tool that bridges his IT background with his coaching expertise.
Tony takes us through the vital interplay between performance and feedback in achieving leadership success. Using the analogy of a golfer overcoming mental hurdles, Tony illustrates how workplace frustrations are often rooted in similar psychological barriers. Effective communication and training are key, and understanding the 'interference' in performance is essential. Tony's insights emphasize the power of simplifying complex ideas, making them accessible for managers at all levels, drawing inspiration from Einstein’s principle of simplicity.
We also navigate the exciting yet challenging landscape of AI in coaching. Tony discusses the potential for AI to complement human coaches rather than replace them, reflecting on its future trajectory.
From basic mentoring aids to sophisticated sensory perception systems, AI's role is evolving, and Tony shares his thoughts on the economic and technical barriers to creating advanced coaching robots. Wrapping up, Tony shares his favorite books, quotes, and ways to connect, leaving us with a deep understanding of his coaching philosophy and the meaningful symbolism behind his company's logo.
🌐 Connect with Tony:
• Website: https://www.profitableleadership.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonylatimer/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonylatimermcc/
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If you would like a signed copy, please reach to sei@mickspiers.com and we can arrange it for you too.
In the famous words of Timothy Galway, performance is equal to potential minus interference. This means if we truly want to become a high performer, we have two choices. We can work on building our potential, or we can work on removing the interference and distractions that are holding us back in today's episode of The Leadership Project, we are joined by master certified coach Tony Latimer. We explore the world and benefits of non directive coaching in helping us to remove interference and elevate our performance. We also dig deeper into the role that simplicity plays in developing mastery. Stay tuned to the end as Tony and I discuss the future of AI in the world of coaching. Hey everyone, and welcome back to The Leadership Project Podcast. I'm greatly honored today to be joined by Tony Latimer. Tony has been coaching for more than 30 years, so he has a deep understanding and a deeper appreciation of the world of coaching, and he is a master certified coach. And to put that into perspective for you, of all of the coaches in the world, about 3% of coaches make it to that master certified coach, and we're going to unpack that a little bit today. The more interesting thing is that a recent development where Tony's been working on this for a while, but he's released a product called Tony latimer.ai and it is an artificial intelligence chat GPT engine that is designed to be like a coach in your pocket. But I'm going to let Tony describe it, because I'll mess it up. But it's about using generative AI and the ability to put in questions and get logical and helpful responses back from an AI coach in your pocket that can help you with your leadership. I'll leave it for that for now, because I'm sure Tony's going to tell us more about that when we get to that. But I want to go into the background first. So Tony, I really want to go back into your history a little bit, and what led you into this big wide world of coaching In the
Tony Latimer:It was 1984. So, I was, I was an IT guy. When I first place? first started working, I stumbled into the Accounts Office. Unfortunately, within six months, I discovered that wasn't for me, and we found the the the computer department. So that got me going. I went through the roles, mainframes, operations, engineering, programming, systems analysis, business analysis, and at about the time when software packages were becoming a real thing, with the the emergence of the early minicomputers, I was working for a software company who was an IBM Business Partner, and I was getting into my ready for my sort of first managing people role and messing it up. IBM were great. They used to share so I was selected and told, yep, you're going on this leadership program. And that because coaching didn't exist at that time, really, in the sense that we talk about it today. In those days, the coach was business. It was the sports person, and typically it was what I would refer to as directive coaching. So the coach was the expert who told the player what to do, what to change. But in the late 70s, Tim Galway, the tennis coach in the States, discovered non directive coaching that getting people to go and reflect on what they were doing made it easier to find the change. So as an IT guy, I go on a leadership program sponsored by IBM. We go to a country house in Surrey, and much to my surprise, we're not talking about leadership. We're actually learning how to coach people on the tennis court. I couldn't play tennis. I couldn't tell you the rules even. So I guess automatically for me, doing it the wrong way, telling people what to do was not a possibility, so all I could do is embrace the technique they were teaching us, and it worked. It was absolutely amazing. When we got to the end of the week, you do a little test where you try out with somebody, and I just post somebody in 30 minutes to the most amazing improvement on a specific part of the game. And I just, I was just blown away. I went up to the the instructors and went, guys, I get it. This is amazing. It works. Just one question, how does it help me manage people in the office? And they kind of shrugged and went. Don't know we're sports people, really. But the group that was teaching so Tim Galway was the originator the his organization in the game had just come into the UK, and there were sports people like Alan, fine tennis professional, who was teaching me. He then taught miles Downey, another tennis professional, who later went on to set up the coaching school at the industrial society. Who else, John Whitmore, racing driver, became kind of famous in the coaching world. And then Graham Alexander, who was the IBM guy, I think, who was pushing for this at the at the time, he's now got a huge executive coaching practice, so I got excited. They couldn't tell me what was happening because they were just working on it. And kind of in parallel, they all sat down and started working out what they thought coaching was for in the organization, and things like their their GROW Model and stuff like that emerged. I went back to work as the techie and just went, I'm going to figure this out. So I started working on how you could use non directive coaching in the workplace.
Mick Spiers:Oh, that's brilliant, Tony. Now, there's so many things I'm hearing there, but the three key things I'm hearing is that you started in it and to come to our full circle moment later when we get into.ai it's not surprising to hear that at all. Then this, this journey that you're going on, where you're at the start of it all, the start of transformative coaching and the concept of a heightening mindset instead of a bridging mindset, so you didn't know how to play tennis yourself, and yet you were able to use a heightening mindset to unlock some kind of blocking factor or technique issue with someone that was trying to play tennis. And then there's the power of reflection, that it's through reflection that we truly unlock, learn and elevate. How does that kind of sit with you? Tell us more about your view of this heightening mindset and what happens when in transformative coaching, when that is unlocked?
Tony Latimer:I like to keep things simple. One of the issues I saw over the years was that most of my clients, so I continued working in it, but I was playing with these ideas in the background. And then about 23, 24 years ago, got to that point where I need to be doing my own thing, and by that time, I'd got a body of IP developed around leadership and using coaching skills and so on. So one of the things i i noticed was that soft skills, and I don't even like that term, I don't think there are any soft skills. There's they're all hard skills, right? Everybody in the sort of HR people development space would tend to use very fluid, flowery, dare I say, tree hugging, kind of language about stuff. And I noticed that in the IT world, you know, we're technical, we don't sit comfortably with that sort of thing. You talk soft skills and the technical guys just kind of run a mile. The thing that's really worked for me was was tapping onto my abilities that maybe want to work in it, which is like a very high capability for logical analysis. And one of the other things I've learned over the years is, and I thought it was just me, but I heard an old recording recently that Douglas Adams had the same thing, which is, it's difficult to learn unless you totally understand and how that shows up for me is you can tell me, anybody can tell me something, and it doesn't matter who you are. I my brain cannot accept that what you're telling me is true. I have to unpack it, understand it, and either prove it to myself it's right, in which case you've now got a dedicated follower, or I'll change it and improve it. So this whole soft skills thing made me just want to instinctively rebel I was, and the bit that got me excited. So if you go back to the foundations of Galway stuff, his formula for performance was performance equals potential minus interference. And the way that played out was, if you if you take a tennis player and say, Are you any good, they'll go, yeah, modestly, not too bad. But if you ask a different. Question and say, Have you ever hit that one perfect shot? You know, the one that golfers talk about in the bar for years afterwards, right? And most people will go there, yeah, but just once. So, okay, so then the real question is not questioning your ability or your potential if you've hit that shot once your system knows how to do it. So we can't question your potential. We have to go and find the interference that's getting in the way. And that formula stuck with me. So the foundation of what I did was about, okay, let's get scientific about this. Let's stick to the maths. Because the nice thing about a formula like that is, if you can remove or change the interference the variable in the equation, you guarantee that the result will change. So suddenly when it comes to the stressful part for managers about, how do we how do we get people to improve? How do we change their performance they're now getting, you know, it's pretty cool. It's interesting. Change the formula. Yeah. So, so where it goes wrong is people look at somebody's performance, and they start to question the potential. Are they the right person for the job? So we're having these repeated conversations about, please change your performance. Please change your performance, and then we question the potential. So if you pin the equation to a specific job, or part of a job, it becomes purely mathematical. Result, constant, variable.
Mick Spiers:Yeah, I love it.
Tony Latimer:So, an easy right? And when you, when you talk to sort of technical, whether they're designers, bankers, it people doesn't matter. They're all technical in their roles. They all worry about this soft skill stuff. But when you just give them a formula like that and go, let me explain. Yeah, stop doing this. Go over. There they go, like, Oh, wow. Okay, I could do that. Yes, I hear what you're saying about transformative I would probably call it just really big changes. I really love, I like the animal farm of language. Four syllables, bad, two syllables good, everything. And when we communicate in organizations around the world. Typically, you're doing it in English, which is nobody's first language, and if you go past people's vocabulary, that's when you trip up. If you can keep everything short and simple, then everybody goes, yeah. So in fact, an example you I've been in workshops where I've talked about this with leaders. And when you say vocabulary in in Japan, everybody gets the electronic dictionary out and tries to translate that. Okay, so don't say vocabulary. Just say words that you know. And everywhere around the world will go, oh go, I know what you're talking about.
Mick Spiers:I like the simplicity of that coming.
Tony Latimer:I'm not sure if, I'm not sure if I answered the
Mick Spiers:You did it. And I'm gonna replay back to you some of question. the things that I took away from that. And we're gonna start with the last bit, which is, we're gonna come to this later, the simplicity. I love the simplicity of what you're doing there with with language, so that the things I'm taking away their Tony. I'm thinking about this performance equals potential minus interference. That's really resonating with me from a coaching point of view. And I'm going to keep the tennis analogy going for a moment, and controversially, because a lot of people don't like the guy, I'm going to say that Nick Kyrios is probably the tennis player in history that had the most potential, the most natural ability, and yet his life was is full, I was going to say was full. Is full of interference, of distractions, of limiting beliefs, of all kinds of things. Novak Djokovic at the other end, I'm going to say, had all of that potential, probably close to Kyrios, but was able to remove all of that interference. And the difference between a champion and someone that's, let's say, a top 10, top 20 player, is the big moments where they're able to remove that interference, that limiting belief, and win that point, win that point. How does that sit with you?
Tony Latimer:Completely agree with that. It's some, it's the difference. I mean, I'm not not big on tennis at all, even to this day for me, it's formula one. And again, we see the same things. We see a handful of awesome drivers, but there's the awesome driver who keeps making mistakes, and then there's the awesome driver who consistently does not make mistakes. He doesn't let things face him. We're seeing it in the current period. We saw it a few years ago with the with Hamilton, they just don't make mistakes. They're very few and far between, and that's about not getting the distraction. So I had a little I'll give you an example. Can't do tennis go golf. Early days of starting my coaching practice, you're sort of running around doing whatever goes somebody I knew came to me and asked me if I could coach a golfer. And it was somebody who was on, he come out of Japan. He got a sponsor. They sent him to Singapore. He's on the tour, and he was a natural. I mean, this guy was just a beautiful natural. Came to Singapore, and after six months on the on the tour here, he couldn't go. He couldn't make the cuts anywhere. And I literally went, Okay, I'll, I'll take away. He was having anger issues and all sorts of stuff. So I went with him. We actually, we actually went up from Singapore. We went up north in Malaysia, to EPO, to a tournament. Okay, I'll be with the with you for three days there, and before the tournament started, right, okay, first thing I want you to do is just go out and walk the course and then come back, and then we'll talk about it. And he came back, and he just said, I don't like the ninth hole. Interesting. That's it's just a hole. But as we unpacked it a little bit, he now can, he now knew where his game was going to go wrong, and he went out for his practice rounds. And that was exactly where it went wrong, on the ninth hole, because the interference was, you know, golfers are supposed to be able to sort of play down either side of the fairway, right to head towards the great and this particular one, I think there was a water hazard on the right, but then there were some trees on the left. And although they can play both sides, they tend to have a preference. And because of the layout of the obstacles, he felt that hole was forcing him to play to his weak side. I don't think the hole was forcing him to do anything right, but this was how his brain translated it, and this was the kind of the interference that was kicking in. It's absolutely fascinating.
Mick Spiers:It really plays to this thought about the power of the story that we tell ourselves in the head, tell ourselves about ourselves, tell ourselves about others. It's really powerful. I'm going to try and take this Tony into leadership parlance for a moment, and think about how the audience, if you're listening to this and you're hearing us talk about tennis, Formula One, golf, the concept translating it to coaching in the workplace and leadership in the workplace, the one I'm thinking about, and this is very personal, me openly sharing where I know my biggest limiting belief in my leadership journey has been the ability to give feedback. I always had a limiting belief, a more than a limiting belief, a fear of giving feedback, of not wanting to hurt the person, not all kinds of reasons, and until I addressed that limitation, I was never going to be able to give feedback. So this, this whole thing, of the performance equals potential minus interference. For me, the interference was the the mental block before I even opened my mouth to give the feedback. It wasn't the I've I can speak English, I can give feedback. I had the potential to give feedback.
Tony Latimer:Yes.
Mick Spiers:The interference was the mental block before I'd give the feedback.
Tony Latimer:That's fascinating. Do you want to just dig deep on that one for a minute? because that's a really cool one. The piece of work, and it took several years to do for me was saying, take that performance equation and then how do we use it in the workplace context? And the key was saying, what exactly does potential mean? So I don't use potential in the sense of, could you rise higher? We say what is required for this role. So the potential is, what's the attitude, attitude and values that's needed for the role? So then we can see, has the person got it. We can match them up if it's not working, or if this change required different result, you must go to the interference. So. And after a lot of years of figuring it out, I realized that interference comes from three areas. There's skill, which is basically inside you, there's environment which is anything outside you, and there's aspiration. Now you don't ever when you're trying to change performance. You don't ever touch aspirations, because you'll always get a false positive. What you do is just simply open the door to say, look what's what's going on. Is there a difficulty in skill or in environment? And skill is made up of two things. So when I use the word skill, I'm saying that you actually do something. You can do it and it works. But skill is a combination of knowledge and confidence to apply the knowledge, and the one you just mentioned is very, very common people know they need to give somebody feedback if they're not delivering right but they don't, and the reason they don't is because they lack confidence, exactly the way you expressed it. We're basically afraid of the emotional response we might get. Now the fun bit is that overcoming confidence usually comes from giving them deeper knowledge. So as the manager think back over the last month, what are the things that your your people, your team, have really ticked you off on when they haven't done something, and you're going in your head, you're going, Oh, come on, it's obvious. And they go, oh yeah, I've got a few of those, right? So you need to unpack those and document them, because when you ask yourself the question, when you were 12, was it obvious? Well, no, of course not. Okay, so all that means is it's something that you've learned since you were 12. So instead of getting frustrated in thinking your people are stupid and useless because it's not they're not seeing the obvious, you have to realize that all this means is they have not yet learned it, and because to you, it's obvious, it's knowledge that you've just absorbed into your system and your way of being so naturally, they would never occur to you that you need To teach it to anybody. Because it's obvious, isn't it? So when you unpack the it's obvious, you've then got deeper nuggets of learning that you can then teach people. And so go back to that example. You've got the manager who's afraid to give feedback because they're afraid of the emotional reaction they might get, which could be a whole bunch of things. It could be they get angry, they jump over the desk and hit me. It could be they quit. It could be they cry. It could be they don't quit, they stay and then they stab me in the back when the 360 or the employee engagement survey comes from all sorts of stuff with that fear. What if I could teach you a way to give feedback that will guarantee you will not get that emotional reaction, would you maybe feel a little bit more confident to try
Mick Spiers:Yeah, yeah. I think the most, most people would, if that? that was the thing that was holding them back, they'd go, tell me. Tell me more.
Tony Latimer:And in fact, I just, I literally just came out of a talent development workshop yesterday with one of my clients, and we just done that piece, we had that conversation about, let's go through the steps of how you give somebody feedback, and so don't just let's play that conversation. How does that feel? Does that feel like I'm actually giving you negative feedback? And we went, No, not at all. That just felt helpful. Okay, so that's now. Now their exercise this week is having analyzed their teams. They've for next Tuesday. For me, they've got to prepare the script of the conversation of, how am I going to say that to my people that way? And there wasn't one of them in the room who's got any hesitation about the fact that they're going to have to go and do that, because we've got rid of the interference by giving them deeper knowledge, which fixes the confidence problem. But now they can, they're happy to go do it, and it'll become a skill.
Mick Spiers:I like it a lot. And. And once you've got that skill, you will walk in with confidence. And then once you do it a few times, you'll also then build competence, and you'll get in that competence confidence cycle, and it just gets better and better. It's really good.
Tony Latimer:I'll go, I'll go further than that. I'll say it's a one, it's a one time shift.
Mick Spiers:Yeah, right yeah.
Tony Latimer:So this, this particular organization I'm working with, I developed their new talent development program last year, and we're doing it again this year. Five people out of the nine who were on the program last year had varying degrees of performance issues with some of their team members, and every one of them had, like one person where they're going, like, you know, this, this, this is world war three. This has got to end. And we took them through the here's how you could deliver the feedback. Here's how you have this conversation. They went and did it. And then when we did our next group coaching session, every one of them came in and sort of went, it just worked. So it wasn't a practice this, practice this. When it's that bad, you've only got to, you've only got to do this one time and watching work, and you just go, OMG, yeah, yeah. So it really is a massive, massive, oh, can I use your word transformative shift from people.
Mick Spiers:So, let me share with you now this is really interesting, hearing how you're doing it with others. I'll share with you how I managed to make the breakthrough. And the first one was very similar, was I learned the skill, and the skill was SBI. So I I switched to SBI. I've used a few other frameworks as well, but SBI so situation behavior impact, and I add a action. So situation behavior impact, action, it helps me feel like I've got a framework that I can rely on, that it delivers the feedback effectively. I know it works. I have the confidence that it works. And then the second part it was, for me, was empathy, and I put myself in the shoes of the person receiving the feedback, and convinced myself that if I was the one receiving, I'd be mortified if I was doing something wrong and someone didn't tell me and give me the chance to fix it. So I reframed it from Oh no, I've got to give feedback, to giving feedback as a gift, and SBI is my framework in which I'm going to deliver that gift.
Tony Latimer:Absolutely, absolutely. I think you and I probably are doing it in a very, very similar way, the way I express what you've expressed is getting people to realize that for anybody on your team, if they've got the job, you cannot question their potential. You have to convey to people. So the belief This is based on, is barring physical limitations, anybody can do anything they want to. You've just got to learn some stuff and put it into practice. And the difference between saying to something, somebody I believe in you, as opposed to saying, I know you can do this, there's just a little difference in the the energy and the intention that comes through that one. So I get them to get in that place right up front when you sit down with your people, because if you honestly did not believe, and do not believe that the person in front of you is capable of learning how to do that job then, so I'm sorry, don't waste your time having this conversation. They shouldn't be there. Because if you actually, genuinely believe that, then even though you're wrong, probably you can't actually do anything to help them to change because you're sitting there going like, no, no, this is the belief I hold about you. And our behaviors drive our beliefs, right? So you could just get them to completely shift that mindset go, no, no, you're gonna when you walk in. And just kind of people, I know you can do this a little something shifts in people's heads.
Mick Spiers:I love it, Tony, so what I want to transition now to and I think we've built on this as we've gone along, the simplicity of mastery. And for those that are watching the video, it's written right behind Tony's head. Unpack that for us, because you it seems like two incongruent words, but I don't believe they are so.
Tony Latimer:No, I don't think so either. So I've always liked some of the stuff that Einstein said, and when I was younger, I didn't really understand it all, but I got fascinated by it, so I sort of dug in. And I may get the exact quote wrong, but I. He said something to the effect of everything should be simplified as much as possible, and no more. And what I found over the years, when I was developing some of my theories, was that, as he said, If you simplify something to it. If you take something down to its simplest components, you get a universal truth, something that will work almost anywhere. So what I've found, and when I look at the frameworks that all my leadership stuff and coaching stuff is based on, every concept has three there's always three elements. It just seems like if you analyze it correctly, you'll get three which is useful because three things is even the male brain is capable of holding three things in its conscious awareness at one time. So people, and you can represent it graphically, people can remember them. They can recall it very easily. So that's that's the core beliefs about simplicity, a mega breakthrough for me that was all in the leadership stuff. Back in 2007 I'd got a lot of coaching hours logged. I'd done my pcc credentials, and I had the hours. So the immediate they gave me the certificate. I went, great. I'm going to apply for my answer. Apply for my MCC. I hadn't done as early as Matt, because I was just busy trying to build a business. In those days, there was no training for that level. When I got my MCC, I was number 103 globally. Now there's a few thousand, but three or four thousand but then I was, I was 103. So who are you going to learn from? And you literally had to, either physically or over the phone, travel the world and sit at the feet of the Masters, watching them pour tea into overflowing cups, and go, like, what does that mean? And this is when we came back to this complexity of language. I'd hear these master coaches going, Ah, yes, you must listen to what is not being said. I go like, okay, which year would that come in? Then I don't get it. And I could see why trying to teach any of these skills to sort of technical, engineering minded leaders in business, was like, it's not going to work. I got it, and I was very lucky, because in those days, the pass rate for the exam was about 6% for first time pass. It's a bit better now, but not much. I got through and I got it. But the biggest realization was, hang on a minute. I passed. That means I can do this. That sounds a little absurd, but it was mind opening for me. I can do it. And if you can do something, and you have the ability to logically analyze what you do correctly, you can codify it. And if you can codify it, you can teach it. So I then set about saying, Okay, let's just simplify and break down. What exactly did I do? How do I coach? So when you've broken that down, suddenly you can teach it. And literally, share another perspective. I was asked to join an ICF global task force a few years ago that was looking at coach training and education, and we revised everything. A number of things we came up with the latest level 1, 2, 3 stuff that we have in coach training, even though there was no level three stuff available. And as I looked at that, I went, you know what? There's a there's a gap. And that was the point a couple of years ago when I first, for the first time ever, decided to start sharing what I what I do as a coach with professional coaches. So for 23 years, I just taught corporate people, internal coaches, HR, to use coaching skills. The interesting bit was what I realized that what I'm teaching that is MCC Level Mastery is exactly the same stuff that I've been teaching these corporate managers who were beginners, and that's why, at the end of a three or four day program, they were perfectly capable of sitting down and doing your first application of coaching as A manager is stop being the expert problem solver and get people to think things through and and that was, that was what we worked on, and they were all capable of doing that by the end of the week. The level of coaching that we're talking about needs 1000s of hours of practice and so on. So you can teach. You can teach mastery to beginners if you've simplified it. And that was where the phrase came from. It's just like, This is what this is about. We are we are teaching. And I suddenly realized it applied to the coaching skills. It applies to the leadership skills. If you've analyzed it, you've broken it down. You've got it in its simple components. You can teach it, people absorb it, they use it, It works.
Mick Spiers:Love it, yeah. Thanks Tony. Thank you for sharing that I want to now segue to tonylatimer.ai, so I think we need to challenge a little bit first, or explore a little bit first is a better word the world of AI. A lot of people can see it coming. They can see it changing at a ever increasing pace. And there are some people that are thinking that it might replace them, like there's a lot of fear out there, as well as a lot of excitement. It's kind of either end of the spectrum, and then a bunch in the middle. Where do you think the world of AI is going?
Tony Latimer:If we look in the the sort of coaching space, the the AI kind of burst into the public awareness with the launch of chatgpt, everybody gets excited about what it can do in all sorts of areas. We all know that aI had been in use prior to that, but the degenerative chat based one was the one that just woke everybody up. I think one of the mistakes that's been made is people in lots of fields, coaching, particularly, are jumping on chat.GPT style interactions, and saying this is going to become coaching. And there are people out there who've got really more Grunty little coaching bots, which are getting better, then they're never going to really crack it, because there's a fundamental problem that the design of the AI tool called a GPT is that it has a knowledge base from which it can answer questions, and that's mentoring, not coaching, right? So it needs, I think, I think they need to create a GPT that is the opposite way around. That's because the problem everybody is trying to design coaching bots is having is that getting it to stick to coaching, as opposed to giving advice and so on, is a real challenge, and that's one of his limitations. I believe if you could create a GPT that went the other way around so that it can ask questions, rather than be geared to answer it. Because whilst, whilst we know it's it's occasionally permissible for a coach to sort of share insights or something, as long as you then keep triggering the thinking. You really need to start with the fundamentals of it's about getting the other person thinking. So it's got to be, it can't be about answering questions. Interestingly enough, over a few weeks ago, I was discussing this with a guy who's very big in this area, in the UK jazz resort. The point I made when he was saying, like, do we think any of these coaching bots will replace humans. It's a question of scale. It's a question of gradient. Because one of the ways, a second way, that you could make the AI more useful is give it the census. Because, you know, in the history of coaching, who coaches over text, right? That just doesn't help. How can you have a pause when you're applying to text, basic level coaching? If you connected the AI to the sensors, then we're starting to get somewhere. And then, lo and behold, what was it? Less than a week ago, we've got those demonstration videos out now where they've actually put chat GPT connected into a human form robot that can do it. Have you seen that one? It's absolutely similar, right? So it's now gathering the information, so you've given it the census. If you have one of those we're in, I think even just using the answer based chat GPT, I think we're in a slightly different place as far as coaching goes, because they can receive the signals, the facial expressions, the eye movements with that and. Have the possibility of teaching it how to know that you've made somebody think, because at the basic level of coaching, we look for change. Is there a pause? Is there a muscle structure change? Is there a different skin coloration? Is there an eye movement for some of the people, is there a cessation of eye movements, which means they're thinking the focal distance change. So I think we've got definite potential, but the AI into the sensor box that it could start to be taught how to do that. So that may be a different way of overcoming the problems of the GPT being very geared towards answering the questions rather than asking. Because then, if it can, if it can sense thinking or no thinking, from some of these physical signals, it can be told, okay, if you don't see these signals, you need to ask better questions. If you do see the signals, shut up and let them carry on thinking. So that's another possibility that could help. I think where it gets really interesting is people are asking the question of, potentially, could these coaching box replace human coaches? The answer is yes at a level. So if you look at what they've done down at what Nikki's done down at Stellenbosch University, they've got their tool coach Vici, they've narrowed it down to a very specific use case, an engaged user who agrees to stick with that can usefully get coached on achieving a couple of specific goals, workplace goals, if you accept some of the stuff that Rebecca's doing out of Germany, where they coded one that works very strictly to a solution focused model. So if you're happy to be coached in that model, and you don't want to think outside it, then that could work opening it up to make it work more widely and more generally. I think needs the sensor box. And I think that could work, and it does. It could work quite nicely. The really interesting bit, though, is like, what kind of coach cannot be replaced? That is when you move to the energetic level. So the way I describe it, think of coaching as operating at two levels, Newtonian physics or quantum physics. Typical ACC, PCC, coach training, you learn a coaching model. You use a coaching model. You can get through the credentials at that level. In order to get to MCC, you've got to let go of that you won't pass if you're detected as using pre prepared questions, structures and models. So you've got to coach without models. So the way I teach people to do that at the basic level is to get over the bar of mastery. However, that's like martial arts. That's like getting your black belt. I had daughters, so at a ridiculously old age, in my mid 40s, with the young girls, it seemed like a really good idea to get them to do karate, and the only way they would was if I did it as well. So as the creaky old guy in the room might have to try and learn this. And in fairness, I got to, I got to the brown, black, the one step before Black Belt during the grading bust my shoulder, and that was it. You never going to make black belt, my tough luck, but, but it was a lot of fun. And the interesting thing was, when you're just about to do your black belts, they suddenly turn around and say, you now qualify to come to the black belt class. And you go, like, what's that? Didn't know it existed. They say, yeah, colored belts. That's just about learning the basics. Getting a black belt does not mean you are a master. That's the first step on the road to mastery, and then you've got your eight downs of how far you go. And coaching is like that. Once you learn to let go of it all and coach without models, you can get over the bar at mastery, but you're still using the five senses. You're still doing Newtonian physics. It's what I see, it's what I hear, it's what I say. The degree to which you have mastery depends on your ability to use energy, and by that, I'm talking about the again, back to Einstein, everything in the universe. US is matter. All matter is made up of energy. Cannot be created or destroyed. I'm energy. Your energy in a different form. The Space Between Us is just energy in another form. It's physical. Your thoughts are physical. They are electrochemical signals on neural pathways in your brain. So by definition, if we could vibrate those it's going to help them change and move. It's like oiling the cobs. People have physical manifestations of the emotional content of the neural pathways they're accessing. I think of something embarrassing. My skin coloration changes. I blush. I Think of something sad. I cry. As a coach, you have to learn that they're not upset. They're just having a physical manifestation of the emotional content of a neural pathway, and if you can help them shift to another neural pathway that will stop. But the interesting thing is, people also have physical manifestation at an energetic level when they access a neural pathway. So, there is an additional level of signals being sent out at the energetic level that if you can learn to pick up on them, you get a much better read on like what's going on. So mastery, beyond the black belt, is about learning to three levels. I find it works at first, learning to read the energy, to pick up the signals. Second, learning to connect with the energy. And then the third is moving the energy. Because when people get really stuck, their energy stops. It's bought. This is really no different to what a TCM practitioner is doing physical ailments in the body, the energy flow is there with that's what we move once you realize that your thoughts are physical. And then coaching is about the process of making people think, well, we can play with that as well. So learning to actually flow the energy. And one of the thing where we teaching at the advanced level is how to learn to connect with people, but then flow the energy through them, because when their energy starts flowing again, all the physical things get a little better. So the mental connections, you know, the the thought processes happen.
Mick Spiers:Really interesting turning so I'm taking away four things here, four layers I'm going to call it. So bear with me as I try to summarize this. The first layer is where we are today, that generative AI is getting better, better at giving answers, giving better answers. In fact, the fact that a job exists called a prompt engineer, whose very job is to make a generative AI give better answers. That's where we're at, which is, as you mentioned, it's more mentoring, it's more the bridging mindset, teaching you something that you might not know, having that resource at your fingertips so that you can look something up. But it's not coaching, and it's not a heightening mindset at this point, but it could be an augmentation to coaching. So if you are having coaching sessions, and then your coach can't be next to you, 24/7, and you're in the workplace and you're stuck, it could be a tool that helps you become unstuck at least momentarily.
Tony Latimer:Yes, because sometimes you need ideas, that's right, and, and this is where the mentoring approach to it comes from. You can't coach somebody through a knowledge.
Mick Spiers:Exactly, right. So, so this is our level one, the level two that I like, where you're going with this. And I think this is possible. I agree with you that if we flip the script, script from answer intelligence to question intelligence, and all of a sudden the AI coach is asking better questions, not giving better answers, but asking better questions. All of a sudden we're back to that reflective state that you and I discussed all the way back at the start of this interview, where, when you get someone into that reflective state, this is where some true heightening mindset and growth can occur. So That's level two, layer three, or level three that I'm hearing from you is then the multi sensory and you used an interesting quote before you were talking about when you first went into coaching and people started saying to you, you got to listen to what's not said, not not what is said. This is where the multi sensory coming comes in, the ability to notice a shift in someone to go, oh, like they might be talking about something from their past, and a huge smile comes to their face. Or that ability to see the whole. Of the person in a multi century experience would be level three and the level four. And I am not a master coach. You you are. So I, I was with you, and I understood everything you were saying. I've not experienced what you're talking about when you talk about the energy level, so then picking up the shifts in energy that happened during the coaching conversation. So then now to come back to my original question of the where is AI going, I'm feeling like it's a it's a continuum of augmentation, a continuum of augmentation. So at the moment, it's nothing more than, let's say a mentoring augmentation to a coaching experience. As it goes further, it might get more advanced with the with things like flipping the script from answer to question, then it might get to Century perception, then it might get to energy perception. But I still feel like a human, a human master coach like a Tony Latimer, is going to be there for the whole journey. How does that sit with you?
Tony Latimer:With what we're seeing flip to level two and then level three is going to be technically possible in focusing? Yeah, a guy standing there saying, explain to me what you did whilst you clear up the rubbish I've just tipped on the table. That's, that's it. That's, that's the level three. Now, I saw a smile, therefore I'm going to ask what happened, because I know that a smile means you've accessed a neural pathway, etc. So that's level three. And if you look at those robots. If somebody chooses to put the money into designing a robot to coach, then we're not far away from that at all. I think we're about to have a huge breakthrough. Does that wipe out coaches? No, because that's going to be a pretty expensive robot, right? I mean, if you're trying to do a GPT tool just through chat, yeah, that's cheap. Anybody can deploy one of those. So you then got an economic barrier to the deployment of that kind of full century robot that can really coach properly at that level. I don't think we don't have the sensors in hardware available to detect the energetic.
Mick Spiers:No, I would say that's correct. So, so I'm going to say, yep, I fully agree. So we're probably already at level one. Level two is a matter of programming and and smart prompt engineers with the right ability level three, computer vision is going to go some way. That's not cheap, as you said, so computer vision will pick up some of that, and machine learning would it would improve the computer vision over time, but the energy, no, I don't see it yet, but yeah, the world changes quickly, right?
Tony Latimer:Well, first of all, energy detection that level one of the three I talked about would require a type of sensor we probably don't have yet. So somebody's got to invent some hardware that could do that. Level two, level three, of using the energy we're in the realms of science fiction a few millennia from now, before that could be happening, because when we're teaching people to do the energy work, they sort of it's hard to grasp, and then they go like, how do I do, and what I've discovered is that intention is the control panel for your energy. So in you ask somebody to reach out and connect with a person energetically, they go like, how do I do that? What? What? Physically, I'm not using my muscles or anything. So it's an intention. If you have the intention to move that energy, it starts to happen. So your your chances of building the hardware that could have the intention to do that, aren't we kind of talking a real human at that point, I think for the foreseeable future, as long as coaches can learn to drop the level one, level two. So really, what we actually need is people to learn that level three, that coaching without models, get to that and you're okay. You're doing what the machines can't. Or next year, a machine will be able to do it. But guess what's going to cost 50 million bucks just for one machine? So, yeah, not going to happen.
Mick Spiers:Yeah.
Tony Latimer:But what I think missing is, is this additional deployment of what AI can actually do at the moment, the the learning tool. If people you know the answers they need in the moment right now, you. So we can revolutionize how people learn by putting an AI on the front of a private database of guaranteed correct knowledge.
Mick Spiers:I still think that that is the better question anyway. Tony, and bear with me for a second. We started off with a question somewhere along the way where we said, will AI replace coaching? And I prefer to ask the question, how should AI augment coaching? Should be complimentary, and we shouldn't be thinking, Oh, how do we replace coaches? It should be how can we give people tools that would take coaching to the next level.
Tony Latimer:So, one of the interesting things on that so for instance with with our tool, the coaches who I work with, they go like, yeah, this always happens. People come up and ask questions and they need to learn something, but I'm not the subject matter expert. You can now give them this tool, and they can go and get the answers, and you can they get ideas. You focus on coaching them on how to put the ideas into better that's a great one. The other area I'm just experimenting with, it's like in in mental coaching, where we're helping coaches develop. So you take a recording of some coaching they've done. Now I can see that we can start to use the GPT tools to say, Okay, here's a very detailed description of every bit of evidence, everything we're looking for when we assess somebody against core competencies. So here's a recording of a piece of work they've done. Just zip through that for me. And that would work. The GPT tool will give me an analysis of that coaching against the competencies in seconds. Whereas a coach is going to sit down and spend a couple of hours doing it.
Mick Spiers:I'm going to say yes and on that one so yeah. So it's going to speed it up. What it will do is it'll be able to do the parsing. It'll be able to look at the language. Potentially, you could train it to look for pauses and things like this, but it won't pick it still won't pick up the shifts. So if the coach followed the handle questions and the core competencies, like a robot, sorry, poor pun, right? Like, like, if it was a robotic, uh, coaching session, like you were saying, like an ACC might do, for example, it'll, it'll be able to parse that, and it'll pass that in, in the speed that it can process it, right? It'll be done, but it wouldn't pick up. Hey, Coach, did you not notice the the person really shifted, you know, their their energy or their their attention or their they even slumped in their chair when you got to that, the AI won't pick that up yet.
Tony Latimer:So, so it makes the the mentor coach or the the one who's teaching more effective. So, it can do the grunt work
Mick Spiers:For focus on the mastery.
Tony Latimer:And you focus on the other stuff.
Mick Spiers:Love it, all right. Tony, this has been really interesting. What a great journey we've been on. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today, and also your the way that you think, the way that your process, which makes a lot of sense to me as an engineer too, by the way, it's been really great discussion and great pleasure having you on the show. I'd like to go now to our four questions that we ask all of I guess so we call this our Rapid Round. What's the one thing you know now, Tony Latimer, that you wish you knew when you were 20?
Tony Latimer:I think it is this whole thing around the existence of energy and it being real, as I've sort of worked over the years to sort of try and grow my business and this as my corporate career went on, I find myself looking back now and thinking, If only I'd had somebody like me to talk to in my 20s if I'd understood, because this, this energy thing, is not something new. I actually think it's an inherent human ability that we have lost a majority of people have lost, because everybody can rediscover it and it shifts how you see the world, and even just in simple interactions, when you walk into a room, when you go into a meeting, just understanding the impact that that your energy and how your being can have on everybody that would have, that would have, yeah, would have been nice to have known about that.
Mick Spiers:Yeah. I love it, Tony. What's your favorite book?
Tony Latimer:Books, sets of books that I tend to go back to on a regular basis. Over the years, I've discovered, if you're looking for an idea or a quote or a concept, um. Anything by Oscar Wilde, Alice in Wonderland, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Mick Spiers:Back to Douglas Adams.
Tony Latimer:Those are the three things that I just keep coming back to.
Mick Spiers:All right. Well done. So what?
Tony Latimer:Couldn't read anything else? Give me, give me those three sets of what happening.
Mick Spiers:All right, what's your favorite quote?
Tony Latimer:Everything should be simplified as much as possible, and no more.
Mick Spiers:That's really great. Einstein's got some wonderful ones like this. So really good. All right. Finally, Tony, how do people find you? There's going to be a lot of people listening to this, and they some of them, their mind has definitely been expanded, for sure, and they'll want to know more. Tell me more about this. Tell me more about coaching. Tell me more about the simplicity of mastery. Tell me more about Tony Latimer AI, How do they find you if they'd like
Tony Latimer:A central place to go. First look for Tony Latimer to know more? on LinkedIn. I google fairly well, as they say, reach out to me on LinkedIn if you want to go look at what kinds of work I'm doing. The company brand is Profitable Leadership. So profitableleadership.com as you asked before, about the figure behind me. Some years ago, I met an amazing designer, and I was able to talk, and she's able to turn it into things. So the whole the symbol is based around the P and the L of Profitable Leadership, but with the intention of it just shows the coaching connection.
Mick Spiers:Alright, brilliant. We'll put the links into the show notes as well, Tony, it helps people to find it. Thank you so much for sharing your time with us today and your wisdom and insights. It's really been heightening for me. I'll use that term heightening mindset. You've heightened my awareness. You've heightened my thinking. You got me to stop reflect and think about different concepts in the coaching world. Really appreciate your time today. You've been listening to The Leadership Project. In the next episode, we'll be joined by Sarah Olivieri, the brilliant mind behind pivot ground. She will share her extensive expertise in non profit management. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you video podcasts and short curated videos all about leadership each and every week. Thank you for listening to The Leadership Project mickspiers.com a huge call out to farisadek for his video editing of all of our video content and to all of the team at TLP. Joan Gozon, Gerald Calibo And my amazing wife Sei Spiers, I could not do this show without you. Don't forget to subscribe to The Leadership Project YouTube channel where we bring you interesting videos each and every week, and you can follow us on social, particularly on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram. Now in the meantime, please do take care, look out for each other and join us on this journey as we learn together and lead together.
