Unbound with Chris DuBois

On this episode how sausage making banking and Formula One can make you a better leader. Are you a leader trying to get more from your business and life? Me too. So join me as I document the conversations, stories and advice to help you achieve what matters in your life. Welcome to unbound with me, Chris DuBois. Today we are joined by Paul Teasdale, who's an engineer has taken a passion to learning how things work from airplane engine parts through sausage making, Paul has also found himself consulting in food manufacturing, international shipping, dairy exports and business banking. If that range of industries doesn't intrigue you, he's also seen under the hood of McLaren. Working with the Formula One team and supercar manufacturer. These experiences have shaped his understanding of what makes high performing teams. Awesome. And he has a wealth of stories to help us connect the dots as well. Paul, welcome to unban. Oh, thanks for having me on, Chris. An absolute pleasure. Yeah, this is gonna be an exciting conversation. Because there are so many different directions that this can go off on. So yeah, let's start by just hearing your backstory. Yeah, I mean, you've mentioned a few of the experiences that I've had along the way, it's been a bit of a varied journey to where I am today. But it's, I guess, the theme that's gone through, it's all been about helping people perform in one way or another. So having done an engineering degree, but claiming myself to be the world's worst engineer. You know, I'm not a practical engineer. But I picked up early days on the manufacturing methodologies, and the improvement methodologies, Toyota production systems, all the great stuff about helping organizations to improve. And that took me on a journey through various different industries and sectors, starting off in the aerospace industry, repairing and overhauling aeroplane engine parts, although I wasn't doing that myself, was doing the improvement work behind the scenes. But then got the chance to work for a food manufacturer and was a production manager in a sausage factory for a number of years. And that's where I got a huge amount of experience with people management. So learning how to plan and produce product on a day to day basis with a team of people who were unique in their own right and very tight knit community. And I learned a lot of leadership lessons, often the hard way in that space. But work had a lot of support from some great people along the way. So learn a lot there about how to manage people and how to get the most out of people, what not to do, in a lot of cases, you certainly don't go in and one of your first days and just observe people with the clipboard, don't say anything to them. And then at the end of the day go, right. Here you go team, I've got a great way of improving your productivity, it's going to mean changing your breaks, and you're going to have different shifts systems. And that went down, as you might expect, shall we say? So yeah, I had to humble myself somewhat in those early days and just stand back and go, You know what, I don't know it all. I don't even know half of it all. So let's, let's talk and work with people to actually collaborate and go through for improvement opportunities through that space, I then took a slightly different shift and opportunity came away work for a shipping company, improving their internal systems around how they would invoice and generate revenue, and then had the opportunity to work for a food manufacturing consultant. So going back in and taking that experience, and sort of coaching and improvement mentality into businesses that weren't necessarily performing too well. And really needed, what I would call size 10 improvement support, which is going with the big size 10 boots and kick them in the places that they need to be kicked in order to get the business going, and then get it up and running and keep keep them operating. And I did that for a number of years, living on the road and living out of hotels around the UK. Before that all got a bit too much. You know, five years living on the road and consulting. I was officially living in London, but leave less than work or left home sorry for work on at 4am on a Monday and got home at sort of 8pm on a Friday and it's no way to live and decided with the the new wife at the time that we wanted to move out of London and decided to eventually head off to New Zealand, you know, had an opportunity come our way where we actually spoke to a number of organizations. My sister was living out there at the time, whilst I was over there visiting actually knocked on a few doors and said, Look, I'm thinking of coming over here. Have you got any jobs going? This is what I'm all about. And one of them with a big dairy exporter that New Zealand's biggest employer at the time. phoned me up a couple of weeks later and said yep, we we love what you do. And let's talk about making some They happen. So I've got the opportunity to sort of up routes and move from London over to New Zealand for a number of years, working in a corporate environment, where they're making multibillion dollar decisions as to what to do with their milk. Because obviously, if you start making milk powders or proteins or mozzarella, whatever cheeses that you've making, you limit yourself on what you can produce in other areas, so they would have to be thinking about price differentials and long term, short term. And yeah, it was, it was a wonderful experience. And then with the wife, six months pregnant, I got the news that I was being made redundant from that role. That was a bit out of the blue, and had to come up with a new plan as to what we're going to do, and took the opportunity with some coaching to stand back and say, you know, what, I could carry on in food manufacturing in that neck of the woods, or I could try something a bit different, and got myself a job in banking, in business banking. So going in with zero, I used to say my only experience in banking was spending money on my credit card, you know, that was literally all I knew about it. But interestingly, they wanted to deliberately have somebody from a non banking background, who could bring that manufacturing improvement mindset into their environment. And so I would often talk about if this loan, if this sort of business loan or business credit card that you're processing was a sausage, leaning back on the sausage manufacturing days, you know, how would I measure and manage that performance. And there's no point in, in measuring myself against one set of performance criteria, when I've got a completely different set of performance criteria, we're here. So a lens on that experience and the different view of standards and standard rates and viewing different products that you're making with different lenses, and trying to get one performance metric that sat over the top of it. And that that was an interesting journey to take them on a real mindset shift from a simple metric, which was how many dollars have you lent through to something that was a bit more meaningful towards their customers, as well as their internal performance? And yeah, I did that for a couple of years. And then we decided family reasons, we're going to move back to the UK, and looking for jobs back in the UK. And as you often do, you call up your friends, you call up your network, and you say, who's got a job going? That could be of interest to me, and a good friend of mine said, Well, I'm working at McLaren. I run the simulator over there, but I'm not looking for people. But I know a guy in another part of the organization, who does performance improvement work taking the McLaren methodologies out to wider businesses. At the moment, it's just him, and he's looking to grow the team, would you be interested. And I'm not a Formula One fan, and haven't been the word for my life. But, you know, it's a well known hugely well known brand, it's a it's a fantastic, like, level of improvement and performance mindset. And yeah, I got the opportunity to go and work with them for a number of years and, and ended up working for McLaren for seven years, working with our partners, so KPMG to begin with, then Deloitte. So going out to wider industries and saying, How can we take the performance mindset, the practices, the ways of working, and some of the technologies that McLaren had built over the years, and apply them to everything from supermarket shelf stacking to oil and gas drilling, to Apple operations? You know, so all these different interesting projects, and all with a mindset of you know, if you would, managing this, like you did a Formula One car and a Formula One team, what would you do differently. And now, I have gone independent, and I do this for my clients, helping them take a Formula One mindset to accelerate their own performance and, and help them along the way with data driven decisions, with leadership with an f1, mindset, all sorts of wonderful performance opportunities that people see when they realize that high performance is accessible to them. Yeah, so I feel like this isn't just past experience. It's like it's an actual adventure, or you're going through and like there's all these actual, like, deliberate chapters of various things. Yeah. And there's so many things we touch on, like right off the bat. I guess the first thing I want to get into is just how having all these different states, right, you touched on how a banking you were comparing a lot of this stuff you're doing or using a reference of making sausage. And man, I had to avoid using the pattern of like, you got to see how sausage is made. But how, like, even now, right? You're working with so many different companies and stuff, how are you able to take all of these different experiences and leverage those to help people figure it out? Yeah, I mean, it So interested mindset, and I was talking to somebody about this the other day, it seems to be somewhat of a superpower of mine to, to see the connection between things that aren't necessarily obvious to a lot of people. And I think what you need to do is if you can stand back and say, what are the similarities? What are the things that are connecting supermarket shelf stacking with Formula One, you know, what are the things there? And once you start peeling back the layers and saying, Well, they're all about performance, and they're all about being able to look at the problem and being able to make some changes in a virtual environment and see what the impacts are likely to be before we put something into practice. Right? If that's what we want to do that similar? How do we take the best of that world and adapt it before we adopt it? I think a lot of the challenges that people face is they see a technology, they see a way of work and say I'm gonna copy that. Well, it's not about copying something, it's about making sure that it's adapted to your world, your team, your environment, such that it actually hits home and adds value and is adopted by your team. So that actually moves things forward. So there's wonderful connections between everything that you see, I love that that model fits me perfectly with my entire philosophy on leadership, which everyone listening Yeah, should know at this point. Which there's no one way of of doing things. So let's look at all the different variables here. Pull them in. And let's see how this is going to work. Okay, a lot of what you're doing comes down to systems. Right? How are you coming in? I guess, how do you identify when a system needs to be changed? Or even needs to be built? Right, from going from zero to one? Yeah. And then how do you with that? I'm just gonna keep layering on this question. How do you take into account those, like, second and third order effects? Right, like when you're talking about the dairy industry of, yeah, we might start doing mozzarella, but that means we don't have enough milk to go to these other places. So we're gonna lose revenue. Yeah. You know, I just load you up. It's all good. And I think what that question itself points out something that's, that's very interesting. Performance is always multifaceted. It's never just the one thing, even when you get to a really simple example, like f1, where you say, you know, drive car fast. car comes first, when all good, well, actually, it's not just that, it's, it's a lot about, you know, you can drive a car really fast for one lap, and be in the front for one lap. But that doesn't really make a lot of difference. Because you've, you might have worn out your tires, you might have pushed the engine too much, and you haven't won the race. So firstly, you need to win the race. So if that's the timeframe, you thinking of, actually I need to win this race. But actually, I can win a race by burning out the engine in that race. And but not leaving myself behind the rest of the team for the remainder of the year. So I don't get the championship points. So actually, I am I am about the championship points when it comes to there. So maybe you need to take a slightly longer term view. And then you can start layering on all sorts of things like what are your strategic objectives? What are your priorities? How do you want to be seen to perform. And at McLaren, there's a lot of things around sustainability. And fan engagement, were two things that sit outside of that standard performance, and just like, well, those actually direct how you're going to get your performance. Because as an organization, if that's the strategy that you're taking, then there's no point in saying, right, I'm going to get the championship points, but I'm going to ignore the fans. You can't do that, you've got to do that, and bring the fans on board. And you've got to do that and in a sustainable way. So the first port of call for any conversation that I have with People is about understanding the results. What are the results you're trying to drive and it's not result, it's results because there's lots of them, both in terms of what you want to do and how you want to do it and how you want to be seen as an organization or as a team or as even as an individual. And I use a lot of the lessons one of the probably the most counterintuitive lesson, I guess, from the world of f1, that I learned was to put data last. In a data driven world data comes last. And the thinking behind this. And the example from the f1 world is that you can put more and more sensors on a car, there's loads of sensors on the car, already, there's huge amounts of data coming through. But every one of those sensors has a weight. And that weight drags your car down, and therefore has a detrimental impact on your performance that you're trying to drive. So what you've got to do is you've got to have the data and the sensors that really have an impact on the performance that you're trying to drive. So and what you really want is the smallest amount of data and the smallest amount of sensors for the critical data that helps with performance. And so that's where the model that I follow is what called Rapid performance where you've got you've got understood results first, then what are the actions? What are the things that you can do that impact those results? Followed by who are the people making the decisions and enacting those actions? Then you've got the AI, which is insights, which are what insights do your people need in order to make the best decisions? And if you understand the insights that they need, then you say, right, what's the smallest possible data set that helps me generate those insights? And that is where you can really help people to understand actually, where do I invest money? Where do I find one client at the McLaren days, for instance, who were thinking of spending 10s of millions of euros on new equipment for their production facilities? And just through that, having that conversation of let's put data last, they like, well, we don't need to spend 10s of millions, maybe we could do, you know, get 80% of the performance that we're looking at with the first one or 2 million? And then we can build on that if needs be. But let's let's do that first, instead of spending all this money upfront? Yeah, I have seen some dashboards that would give people there's just so much data coming at you. So you don't even know what to do with it. Yeah, that's the like that concept, it's the biggest challenge as an individual and an organization level that I see most people dealing with these days is the political purpose if I get this right, proliferation of data, just the sheer amount and the volume that's out there and coming towards them. And organizations tend to think that, oh, as a manager, if I give you more reports and more data, you can make better decisions, and you'll you'll get better performance. Well, actually, there's cognitive load associated with that. There's headspace, and you just go, I'm drowning in this stuff. Yeah, give me insights, give me things that help me make better decisions. And then I can perform better for you. And that's the, that's where taking this rapid approach can really help people to shift their mindset from data first data last. Well, so let's let's, let's get into just that level of decision fatigue. Right, you can have all the data in the world, but it doesn't make it actually easier to make a decision. What are some of the things you're doing with teams to to help them actually make good this? Yeah. I mean, firstly, it's about understanding what are those decisions? You know, what are the critical things that you can change in your organization? And the things that you have to decide on? And there are levels to do that decision as well, you know, do you want to automate the decision? You're just take it completely out of people's hands and just say, right, it's simply based on rules. If This Then That. And actually, in the world of f1, one or two of the teams tried to do this with their decisions around when to pit and, you know, they said, right, the model says, pit on lap 15. So I'm gonna pit on map 15. Well, that's all well and good in theory, but the reality actually hits and something changes. So you still are better off having a what we call a human in the loop, who looks at the those insights and says, right, instead of asking the human, what's the decision I should be making right? Now, you can actually present them with insights and present them with data that says, if you do this, this is likely to happen, or, you know, based on this data is the best decision. Why shouldn't I be making that decision? Or what insight? Or what views do you have that would impact the decision to pick now or not? Or to invest now or not? Or to produce one product now versus another? And by changing that question, from what do what should I do, which has so many different options to it? To? Here are the options I think you should do? Tell me which one you think is the best? Or tell me why I shouldn't choose a over b, because the data says A, the human then is allowed to wrap their intelligence wrap their experience over that and say, Actually, I know it says this, but I know that our data is a bit dodgy in that area, and probably doesn't reflect the fact that we've got, you know, Dave on the line, who's less experienced than Steve, and when Steve runs it, it can do you know, the realities of your operation. But what you're doing is you're taking that cognitive load off them, instead of saying, start with zero and go to decision, you can present them with insights that say, the decision should be this according to the data. What's the human intelligence that you can wrap around that? And I mean, I'll give you a real life example as to something that can make a huge difference. And I really encourage leaders, if you're listening to this about are your people being presented with data or data and information or are they being presented with insights and the sample I always tell is, I did some work at a hospital, where they're looking at promising prostate cancer pathways. So when a patient goes in, you can make all sorts of different decisions as to what treatment you're going to give them at whatever stage. And that's based on all sorts of levels of information, their blood works, their age, their, their general health, have they got any other diseases going on, or all this sort of thing that happening. And we sat in on this board to this multidisciplinary board of experts with phlebotomist and oncologists and all sorts of lists in their specialists in their field. And they all sat around and had the same report in front of them. And it was one page per patient. And this is great, right? First Page. Patient A, this gentleman was born in September 1977. And he's done. And after, as soon as they said board in September 1977, you could see everyone in the room, calculating in their heads, well, that was 44 to 223. Now, it must be 4546 45. Maybe, by which time half a conversation has gone on, they've missed that because they're not there. And it's cognitive load over 20 people, we could have just said in the information in front of them 46 year old male, because actually the the real information or the information that influences the decision is what age bracket is that person in combined with their blood works and their bits, other their BMI and all sorts of other information. So present, instead of just presenting the data, the raw facts and figures, and presenting it in a way that means people have to think about what that means to them. Can you present individuals with insights that say, here we go, we've got a male who's in the 45 to 50 bracket, which puts this risk level higher than if he was older or younger. And therefore, let's look at his bloods in that area and look at his BMI. And therefore bringing all this together, the data would suggest that this is the best way forward, discuss why that's not the case. And it was simple as moving from change the data from date of birth to age. And that had a profound effect on the efficiency and the effectiveness of that particular meeting. And the decisions that went around it. Yeah. And as soon as if your next time you're in a meeting, or next time you see a report, look at it and say, am I having to translate any of this on my people, when I give them an information here? Am I working with a different organization at the moment, and I see, I see the logistics people talking about a certain container that this goes in. And then the production people are worried about what size of bottle it is. And the people who put the liquids into the bottle are worried about what type of blend of product is going into the bottle. But if I'm in logistics, I've just I just talked about container X container, why? Instead of saying right, container x, which by the way, production is a one liter bottle, and by the way, fluids people this is this particular fluid, or presenting that visually in a way that everybody understands. So that everybody has a slightly different language that they're thinking maybe it's finance, maybe it's marketing, whatever it is, just think about how people are translating what you give them. And that can have a dramatic difference on your efficiency and effectiveness. Right. So I have a lot of background in marketing. And one of the big things we do in marketing is provide insights, right? I can I probably have the same information that every other company has to give to you. But I'm going to serve it up in a way that you feel like he just learned something from me fast. I don't know that I've ever thought about it. Yes. Like naturally, right. It might might have happened every now and then. But that was the inside of it. So you've worked with a lot of high performing teams, you've worked with a lot of non high performing teams in order to help get them there. What a what, from your opinion, makes a team high performing. And I think the first and foremost, and this is where the leadership of a high performing team is critical. Is is clarity. If the in order to have a high performing team, those individuals in the team all need to be crystal clear as to what they're aiming for. And it may seem obvious, and it may seem obvious to you. But believe me, everybody has their own interpretation of it. And so a great leader first one of the first things they do is they are clear as to what high performance is what the performance thereafter and how that translates down to the individual And they Keep on drumming, that messaging as well. Not every opportunity, can we talk about the maybe it's the efficiency of your plant is the app is the key thing that everybody's driving towards. So keep asking those questions about that, or asking people what the performance is currently, what are the thing is gonna be tomorrow, or maybe it's the financials, maybe, whatever it is, keep on talking about that, and be clear as to what it what it means to you, and also why it's important. So once you've got a team focused on one thing, that's half the battle, you know, you've you've got individuals who are coming together to work to a common goal, that sort of classic definition of a team. And the high performance is one of the crystal, sort of the critical things in my mind is that high performing team trusts each other. Trust is a huge thing in high performance. And it's not just about, you know, I trust you to if it's an extreme situation, such as in the armed forces, and I literally trust you with my life, because I, you're watching my back, when I'm looking forward, and I've got the edge of my back, I know that somebody's watching that for me. But in a normal operation, shall we say, you've got that trust, that people will be doing what they say they're gonna do. And they've also got the trust that if they're not going to deliver, they'll let you know. And there'll be clear about our, I'm not gonna be able to do that for you by this week. But I will be able to get it by that point, unless I can have some support. Or, you know, I'm really struggling in this area, to people down, I've got somebody off sick, and I'm not being able to produce that. But I could, if you could support me in this area, and maybe next time, I can support you somewhere else. And because they're focused on the clear goal, they're focused on what's going to impact not achieving that clear goal, not just their own personal pieces, and therefore they work together, they trust each other and support each other in that sense. Awesome. And now, I think it's probably pretty well known f1 teams have to be well synced up. Right? You have such a limited amount of time when that vehicle hits the pit. And even the drivers gotta be communicating, hey, I'm hitting it right now like this lap, and everybody's got their job, and they're running through with it. There has to be, I mean, like, everyone knows their role, right? Like, and you have to be so focused on what that is. How I would just love to go deeper on how the importance of like, knowing your role, but also, like, you kind of have to know everyone else's role so that you know where you're exactly. Right. How do you work with? Yeah, I mean, it is again, it's, it's a flaw that you've picked up on really well there is that often, you can get too focused on just your thing, which can be useful to hone in particular skill. And it can be useful if everything goes to plan. But as soon as things go slightly awry, then no, knowing what other people are doing, knowing how you can support and knowing what your role is in that situation or not, can be really important. So if you take that pitstop example, for instance, everybody knows exactly what their role is. But they've also practiced those things that they know could go wrong. So be it instead of just a four wheel change, you might need a front nose cone, you need nose cone replacement because of an accident or something, or maybe there's some problems with some aerodynamics that you need to fix. Like, who's going to do that in that moment? Well, if you've got a high performing team, you've thought about these things you've done the often called pre mortems, or in the world of the military, it might be action on is like action on an ambush from the left at this time, it's like, this is the action we're gonna take if this happens. And so you talk these things through, you have a game plan, you have a playbook. And people practice those things. And creating those opportunities to practice can be relatively easy in a world such as f1, because you've got a specific time that is the race, it can be less easy in a day to day operation. But it's no less important. So as a leader, you creating that space for people to say, you know, let's practice, let's think about what could go wrong. We've got a really important meeting coming up. You know, I'm going to be leading the meeting. And you know, Chris, you're supporting, by the way you're going to do this bit in this slide that slide. But if things go wrong, if we start getting questions, that I'm not the right person to feel, then I'm going to stick my hand up to the left and you're going to, that's your signal for you to go in. You know, that's a very simple example of things where you can just get yourself ready for those bits of action and say right as it Team, what are we going to do if these things go wrong? Who's going to who's going to stand up and put their hand up and, and get involved? And as much about who's not going to get involved, you can't have everybody jumping in and trying to answer a question. You know, you've got to have some level of control around these things as well, in order for it to be effective. Yeah, I mean, that was something we definitely practice in the military was, like, man up drills, where I'm the leader, I go down, who's stepping up to take my role now who's stepping up to take theirs? Or even, you know, laterally? Who's moving into just grabbing that machine gun? Yeah, yeah, it requires. I'm a big rugby fan. And watching rugby teams performing and watching them practice. One of the things I loved a documentary about the All Blacks, and suddenly, they say, right, you, you're off, you just been sent off. Okay, I'm not gonna. And that's all the information you get. And the team then has to reorganize themselves. And you might have had a critical position or you know, somebody who has a particular skill set, it's like, well, who's going to step up and do the kicking now, or who's going to be the, you know, the scrum half and going in and picking up the ball and passing you know, who's who's taken on those roles. And if, if you haven't practiced, those scenarios that they're not used to, then people will panic in those situations, and they'll start to wonder about what they should do. But if you set those opportunities up in a some sort of practice environments, then you can help people to go right, Oren, I've come across this before, we know what's happening here, guys, this is how we move forward. And it might be slightly different, but the principles will be there and the muscle memory will be there in some ways around those decisions. Yeah. Right. So let's focus in on the leader per second right leader has a lot of responsibilities within the company, very frequently, or at least with people that I'm coaching. They started the company, they're the ones who had the idea. And so they're the ones who have been doing a lot of the work. And now there as a company grows, they have to start stepping into more of a leadership role where they're not necessarily working in the business, but they're working on the business. What there has to be tons of lessons read that you have seen on just why that is so critically important, as a couple of great stories around that actually. Historically, if you look back to even sort of 80s 90s the approach to Formula One leadership was essentially, you're the best mechanic, you're the person with the most experience leading the team. So if things go wrong, you're almost there with the spanners and, and fixing the car yourself might not fit be physically there. But you know, you're seen as well, I'm going to ask that person who, what to do in that situation, I'm going to look for guidance from my leader. And over the years, there's been much more of a shift to a deliberate approach to what we call decisions at the point of most knowledge. So taking a leadership decision that when decisions need to happen in those moments, I don't want to be the one making the decision, I need to make sure you're equipped to do that. And having phrases even such as leadership decisions at the point that most knowledge, lets people know that that's what you really mean in those situations. And the really mean the fact that you know, if I've got somebody who is there's a great story about things. Fernando Alonso's car had about two minutes to go before it needed to be out on track in order to start the race. And you don't have to be that much of an f1 fan to realize if you don't start the race, you can't finish the race. And if you can't finish the race, or go and win the race, so it's a good starting point to get your car on the starting grid. And the car isn't starting two minutes ago. And you've got a mechanic and a team mechanics under the car, you know, you've got some guy early 20s with his spanners and wrenches, trying to get this thing fixed under the car with oil dripping and all sorts of things happening. And the leader, or one of the operational leaders at McLaren, at that time, was standing in the pit area with a client from a partner. And because often the senior partners would get the opportunity to be there in person and experience and thing. The partner turned to the leader at McLaren and said, Why are you so calm? If this situation was me in my organization, I'd be screaming and shouting, what's this person who's getting them? You know, all the stuff they need? What do you help? What do you need? What help do you need? Can I help you know what my what this is what you should be doing? This is what I think you should be doing? That sort of micromanagement approach. And the guy at McLaren was like, that's not my job. My job in this moment, is to make sure that decisions are being made at the point of most knowledge. So the things that I've put into practice Is that all these tools and techniques and things that I've given to people are actually happening? So I'm looking to see if what we planned for is actually happening in those moments? And what can we learn so that this doesn't happen again in future. But then he said that another thing, which is I'm looking for the eyes, in those moments of high pressure and high intensity, look for the eyes, because your team will naturally look to the leaders in that team. And it doesn't matter how old they are, how experienced they are, you know, what position they are in the organization, if the team are physically looking to them, in those areas of what do we do now? Or how do we move forward? That's a leader in your organization. And you should be embracing that and supporting that all the way through. So I just love that term of look for the eyes. So as a leader, your role is to look for the eyes in those times of high stress and high importance. Yeah, love that. All right, we we talked Yeah, in pre interview, about a story that I loved about pit crew, taking a different approach, to be unable to work well together that I think would be useful, and for my audience to be able to just get some other ideas for what they could do anything. Yeah. Yeah, this is a interesting story about bringing in the ballerinas. So when you have a pit crew, and it's a team of people, this is a classic high performing team, with a high stress, high intensity role to play. As a leader, you can look at that, and you say, how do I get the best out of these individuals? How do I get this team working and humming and doing everything right? And sometimes you need to look for external influence and look for high performance in other places and see what you can learn from it. And it was a conversation, I believe, where someone said, oh, you know, this, this pitstop, it's a bit like a dance, you know, your whole team are moving together. And that inspired some thinking to go well, yeah, this is about movement. It's about efficiency of movement. It's almost about being graceful as a team, because if you can be graceful with your movements, you can actually move quicker, particularly as an organization and a group of people. So who does this stuff really well? And by asking that question and saying, Well, yeah, ballet dancers are really good at this, the Royal Ballet is just down the road here, we could give them a call and see if they can come and talk to us about what they do and how they do it, and how they train their teams and how they move, what they do, maybe their diet, the rest, approach, whatever it might be. And so you bring in a different perspective, deliberately, to challenge what you're doing so that you can learn from them. And again, as I said, before it's adopt adapt before you adopt. So you can say, right, some of the stuff that they're doing rare is great. And I love how they approach this, if we adapted that to our certain team and our approach and our culture, then we could take the lessons from that and make it real for us, and make it value adding. And that had a real profound effect on the performance of that team and how well they're doing and continue to do. Yeah, that's a great lesson. Okay, thank you. So I take notes during this, which I know I'm working on it up, listen to the episode later anyway. So I can, I can get the notes of that. But there are so many just like one liners that make for great, like, just remember to do this, right? Like the adult before you adapt, look for your eyes, or look for the eyes, rather, but like things like that little like sayings that can keep you on track this this episode is packed with tons of awesome information. And I am very glad that uh, I was able to have this conversation with you. I'm gonna go through a couple more questions, though. Please do. But the first man, what book would you recommend everyone read? Well, a good friend of mine has just released his first book. And I've been supporting in whatever ways they can throughout the process, and giving them feedback. And it is truly been a great book to be involved with. It's about. It's called Beat burnout. It's by a guy called Jimmy burrows. And he's just released that book now. And it's all about how do you recognize and combat burnout in order to build high performing teams, both in from an individual perspective, but from a team and an organization side as well. Highly recommended, even if it's just to notice the symptoms and the approaches of burnout for yourself, or notice them in your team. And it really gives him real practical tips as to how to stop those things from really getting in there and you can so that you can stop the rot and you can make sure you can actually accelerate that performance itself. So big shout out to Jimmy and And the team there for bringing that book out and grab a copy of that one. What's, what's next professionally for you? And well, I'm doing a lot of work on my own offering at the moment, you know, I'm considering the book, approach myself as well, you know, a lot of my lessons and stories come under various different guises. But I think what I like to do is take those offerings to people. So I'm building a lot of different stories and packages, to sell to offer to organizations and to teams to bring some of those stories and some of those opportunities to people so that they can adapt them to their organization and adopt themselves. So you know, the books on the horizon, it might be a little while before that comes to fruition. But it's really about getting those packages, right for people so that I can work with them share my stories, and and help them to, most importantly, put them into practice for themselves. And that's, that's a lot of the work. I do. Yeah. All right. And where can everyone find you? So the easiest place to find me is my website, which is Paul teasdale.co.uk. Or you can contact me, please connect with me on LinkedIn, always keen for more connections. But what do you find if you go to the website, the first thing I offer a free 30 minute consultation or conversation, just to have a chat. I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm just trying to see what your issues are. If I can support if it's a case of maybe it's not me who's best to support but somebody in my network that I'm always happy to pass those on to other people as well. But yeah, contact me through the website. That's the best place. Awesome, Paul, great conversation. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for having me, Chris. An absolute pleasure. This has been a lot of fun. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love a rating and review on your favorite podcast player. And for more information on how to build effective and efficient teams through your leadership, visit leading four.com And as always deserve it