Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Hello and welcome back to the Slice of Pie podcast, where the Pie is the psychologically informed environment, and the mission is to explore it, excavating both the common and unique themes that emerge from conversations with different experts working in different environments in sport, business, or in any domain where performance and well-being are hot topics. This episode is part two of my conversation with Robbie Anderson. The first one was a belter, and this one is just as good. In fact, if you like digging into the performance world of Formula One as well as casual mentions of the importance of Portuguese restaurant chain Nando's, then you're in for a real treat. If you're interested, check out the first part of the conversation with Robbie. The link to that episode is in the show notes. But even if you're jumping straight in at this point, there's more than enough to take from this part without necessarily needing to listen to part one first. So without further ado, let's get into part two of that conversation with Robbie Anderson.

Interview

SPEAKER_00 1:30

And I've worked with clients before on like big interviews, interviewing with big jobs. And I think interviews are a really interesting example of that where you you can kind of replicate an interview scenario. We can do mock interviews, you can do that with your wife, you can do that with trusted others. But you know, most of the time in life, your main practice for performing an interview is doing an interview. And sometimes you need to do a few interviews and fail them before you nail the one that you do get. But I noted that down as just an interesting quirk sometimes of performance, and you know, across different domains, there are examples where yeah, the only time you get to practice is actually doing it.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Yeah, but then there's there's some nice, maybe more scenario-based avenues and and opportunities. So, for example, um in the Olympic kind of cycles, that was part of one of the things we would always do is have you know at least one, ideally two, if not three or four mini Olympic days. Now, yeah, if you can it and again, you have to be fair to do this, because what you're trying to do, you're trying to, well, let me make the point. If you can have some kind of performance outcome to that, for example, um, there's already a pre-existing structure whereby there's national races X amount of times a year, um, and you know, naturally whoever wins those championships gets the points and gets the Olympics actually. If there's pre-existing structure, then almost those scenarios are kind of pre-made, aren't they? You know, you you have to deliver well on those Olympic qualification days in order to go to the Olympics. So that's like scenario-based, but they're they're you know, they're tying in to prepare you for the final event. Now, in other, in other domains, um, let's take finance, for example, you you're very busy, you're um obviously live, trading very often, the markets are live. One thing that can be helpful if there's time for it is to do some scenario-based training where you know you you would create scenarios that are foreseeable but perhaps unusual. Yeah. So what I'm saying is no point in doing the everyday, yeah. That you do something which could happen and you you help people prepare. Because of course, if there's a massive tank in a market and suddenly everyone's positions are at jeopardy, we know the brain is is primed to go to red, and we know that's not always the best system to respond in. So from one very detailed idea of visualization and and and um stimulation in Formula One, you can go to a more broad idea of, you know, I'm not gonna use the word role-playing. It just seems to undermine it, but scenario-based learning, ideally with some kind of outcome, again, is just so good for the brain to to practice and and to build its reference points.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

Yeah, I I liked you said the words, was it foreseeable but unusual?

SPEAKER_02 4:17

Um, I'd say kind of like realistic, but but um I don't know how to say it really. But for me, it's it's preparing for the unexpected. Okay. You know, yeah, the brain needs to be ready for the unexpected. Now, you have to be reasonable. You could be there forever preparing for every single situation, and that's just obviously not helpful. All right. So obviously, what we're saying is, hey, let's, I mean, there's a good story, isn't it? Chris Oyan preparing his visualization of his lap at the Olympics and knowing exactly his process. And as he's doing it, every single person in front of him, I think two or three riders, are breaking the world record. So what he'd visualize was no longer even relevant.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:57

So I'm sure Chris would have prepared something like, okay, how will I respond if the unexpected happens? So that's a it's like a global internal mechanism. So, okay, we've planned for the probable things in Formula One, a safety car, um, change in strategy, um, maybe having to, you know, protect tires earlier than we thought. These are all predictable, and you can do that on a simulator. But let's also think forget the scenario, think about the emotions. Something unexpected happens. What's the best way for you to respond? That's a global autopilot, all of a sudden.

SPEAKER_00 5:34

That reminds me of speaking to people in military environments where that's kind of drilled very, very, very early and often around kind of responding to change. And they were almost, I'm thinking about I did an episode of this podcast with a guy called Richard Waddell, who'd come through on a military training and was in the military for a long time. And he then went into private enterprise. And when things then inevitably went sideways in some of those environments, he found that he was kind of one of the only individuals that was excited by that because he got to implement his posture, his mindset, his his tools that he'd he'd learnt from those days in the military to uh an emergency situation or a situation that needed dealing with. It's interesting that some of that reaction to these things can benefit from from training. It's not just a mindset thing, it's actually well, have we worked through this scenario previously?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:31

Another thing that we talked about in the lead up to the interview, something I noted from your your very good article in the the New York Times.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

Which was, I think it was in the last year or so, was it?

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Yeah, I mean, first and foremost, as always, massive, massive, massive respect. Um, I think to you know, to the writer, because I think as always they interview you and they're just so fantastic in communicating it. So I do want to share a little bit of that. Um, but yeah, it wasn't it was in the last year.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

They didn't remix your words and re- uh misrepresent.

SPEAKER_02 7:01

They were very, they were very honest, they didn't misrepresent. That was great, but I also think they did a great job in pulling together probably two or three experts. Um, so I was basking in reflected glory, I think, in that regard.

SPEAKER_00 7:13

One of the things I noted in that article was the self-defeating nature of negative instruction. So you're you're whether you're using simulator or you're working with your driving coach or you're speaking to someone like yourself, you have a plan for the for the race, you know where the breaking points are, you know the the hot spots on the track which might be open for overtaking, etc. But then what you say to yourself in those those moments can be can be important in and the way that you you frame that that self-talk or what you're focusing on in those moments. Um, you know, the the example the example I think from the article was don't overrun the corner, and how you know actually that you know, whilst is exactly what you want to do at that point, may not be the most kind of functional way of looking at it and how that can be an area of exploration and and training from a psychological perspective.

SPEAKER_02 8:06

Yeah, I mean it's funny, yeah. My my undergraduate, which feels like an age ago, and I feel really old for saying that, but it really does feel quite a while ago now. My undergraduate, you know, you have to do your research piece. And I just kind of stumbled, I think, a little bit on the work of Wegner. And Wegner was just ironic effects, yeah. Ironic effects, and very much exactly what we're talking about. So if we use a classic example of golf, you know, this idea of rolling the ball up to your putt would would not be a huge issue because you're on a slight hill going upwards, it's not a huge issue, but overhitting it, you go off the other side and it's off into a bunker. So, of course, there'd be a massive um bias for a lot of our brains to be saying, don't overhit the putt, don't overhit the putt, don't overhit the putt. Now, interestingly, does it mean you're going to overhit the putt? Or into another irony, does it mean you really underhit the putt? You know, you just don't even get it up the hill. So for me, it's just all around what do we want the brain to do? So, again, classic example of this. Don't think of a pink elephant. Oh, no. Where it is. Okay, so the brain doesn't process a negative. Yeah? It doesn't process a negative. Don't do this. Well, of course it's going to do it because you just you put it into its thinking. So we take that same principle into driving a car, and you know, don't put it into the wall. It's just so unhelpful for a you know driver's frame of reference. Now, it might be that we can get better cues, it might be we need slightly better regulation, and like you said, that could be through self-talk, it could be through practice and repetition. There's like loads of tools we can do. Yeah, but that's the principle I was looking at in the New York Times article there. And I think that's important because that fits to everybody. You know, that's like an everyday occurrence for all of us, isn't it?

SPEAKER_01 9:54

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_02 9:55

You know, if we swake up in the morning and we've got a good idea of how we want to be that day, this is how I want to be, you know, maybe just wash your brushing your teeth. This is how I'd like to be today. Maybe these are one or two things I'd like to get done. And and you're priming the brain on the right path. And if you don't do that and you just go and you let life you know kind of come and take you, then we know there'll be interaction between red and blue thinking. We know there'll be, oh, I shouldn't have done this or should do that, or a bit more impulsive. So often it's just about telling the brain what you'd like it to do, and that includes the known scenarios and some unknown scenarios we spoke about a minute ago.

SPEAKER_01 10:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I think this links quite nicely into the other part of the article that I noted down, which was the role of recharging. And I think you you might have even articulated it as an overlooked aspect of performance and recharging, because I see that as a as a direct interaction with some of those pieces that you just talked about, because you can work on these things, but ultimately you're you know you're trying to train or nudge your brain in a direction of of being helpful to you in certain moments, and it won't be helpful to you if you're strung out or you're too tired, or it that's when the floodgates tend to open, I find with athletes that I've worked with is all the good stuff that we might work on can be easily undone by just actually the kind of you know, the basics we talked about at the start, yeah, in terms of how you're looking after yourself, etc. So but I wonder whether that is something that is particular, I mean it's prevalent obviously in all sports, but whether it's particularly prevalent in in Formula One. Um and I'm thinking about my sports marketing side of my world where I know exactly how much time all of these drivers are having to dedicate to brand deals and different partnerships and media interviews, and then they're on the road as well, and they've got a performance person, and you know, that's that's a lot of things to handle for one person.

SPEAKER_02 11:53

I will try in 30 seconds to not bore the audience, but you know, I I will fail, I will fail grossly in trying to explain the demands that are on a Formula One driver. And again, I I'm not here to like, you know, one upsmanship or anything else. I'm just here to like communicate the question, which is about energy demands and how important it is. So, you know, they race, they race 24 races a season, a typical season. It is multiple continents, and typically on a triple header, the races might be in different continents. So, you know, you're like time shifting over a three-week period. You are press day on a Thursday, so constant multi-press, internal press, external press. Sometimes those questions are quite pointy. You're managing your emotions and your responses, you then have engineering, you have free practices, two of those on a Friday. Engineering, you have qualification Saturday, maybe it's a sprint race, lots more media. You know, you have to obviously prime and recover the body, as in like most sports, like football, you've got a warm-up, a warm down, yeah, cooling processes. That's all in there. You know, you're a human, you've got people that you want to talk to, see friends, family, performance team. And that's one race weekend.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

I just said. Oh, I forgot I'm a human as well. Actually, maybe I should give my mum a ring.

SPEAKER_02 13:11

Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm not a robot, I'm not a robot. That's one race weekend. There's three of them back to back, and you travel in cross time zones. And in between it, as you just pointed out, multiple partnerships. You have to be most of their contracts state, they have to be in these places, and as I'm sure you can imagine, they're not always in the place that you're going. You know, it might be that you need it in Europe, so you fly back to Europe to go back to America. Now, look, I'm not here to kind of promote like sympathy for them. It's a great job they've got. They all say it's a privilege and they wouldn't swap it for anyone in the world. But what we are saying here is, how can you do all of that? I mean, me and you fly today to New York and we get off the flight, yeah, and then we go straight into a meeting. Probably be reasonable to say we're a bit we're a bit jaded, you know. Can we can we just can we just have a walk first in Central Park? Right. They don't get that. They they they are repeatedly draining out of the battery. So the idea of recharge is about giving people um skills to actually unpack and learn and process race weekends. Because at the end of the day, if you carry that, you know, if you have a disappointing Sunday and then you've got lots of media and stuff that night, you fly late, you're flying overnight, you land this Monday morning, you are, I guarantee you, physically exhausted from the adrenaline that the body needs to race for two hours at the speed that it races at. So we call it, I call it Blue Monday. The body is uh you know flat. So then not much thinking done on that day. And then Tuesday is your one day really to recharge, debrief, unpack, take learnings, prepare for the next race, because by the way, you're flying tomorrow and it's another continent. So what I think when we talk about energy management, uh it is a religious, I mean, I'm talking just like absolutely 100% um religion of sleep. They just protect their sleep at all costs. It is an absolute dedication to performance nutrition, fueling at the right times, fueling in the right way, uh, optimizing, you know, giving the body the right energy. It is a big dedication. I I think that the top guys, the top racers, top athletes, it is a big dedication to your psychology, you know, getting your mindset right, learning quickly. Um, again, that that you know, we know the brain uses such a significant amount of our energy. And if we're stressed, we know we're burning more energy. So deal with your stresses, you know, deal with your stresses, obviously. And you know, and that's just that's just a small look there at some of the steps they're taking to manage energy, to make sure that they have the physical and cognitive resources when Sunday comes to drive two hours at 180 mile an hour average whilst not stopping. You know, just for all of us, by the way, that's uh UK-based people, that is Stockport to London without stopping, hitting 220 mile an hour peaks, and you know, and you can't you can't get anything wrong.

SPEAKER_00 16:13

That's good knowledge. I see you've you've you've rolled out that statistic before. That's not that's not off the top of the dome.

SPEAKER_02 16:20

It's not well, I looked at it because honestly, Pete, you you can't almost like put it into human terms unless you start to think to yourself, if I'm in the car for two hours, I'm I'm you know, I'm I'm maybe doing a few tasks um all within legal amounts, but it's you know, I I get there and I'm a bit jaded. You just put it into perspective of the demands. So anyway, I don't know if that's helpful, but it's just to say the low-hanging fruit are still the most important, psychology, definitely important. Um, debriefing, learning, processing, um, goal setting, moving forward, all that stuff is very, very relevant. And then the other big thing I'll say is the personal life. So I mean that in a you know, just a broad term. They are humans, they are you know, um big businesses, they're leading teams, they're making decisions, they're they're you know, they've got personal relationships. Managing those aspects is also a key part of the work. You know, we know that's important. If one of those aspects gets derailed, that's a huge um, you know, that's a huge demand on energy. So, of course, that also features it's not all just racing lines and breaking points. That that's that's that's you know, that's just the sport bit.

SPEAKER_00 17:25

Energy management, yeah. Really, really helpful and yeah, useful on unpacking of what that looks like in Formula One there. So thank you for that. And in the spirit of energy management, I'm gonna attempt to do some podcast management because I know we've we're starting to run low a bit on time, but in the last little period of conversation, there we're starting to touch on elements of the environment around drivers within Formula One. So I think that's a nice, nice little slingshot and segue into the final part of the conversation, which is broadening the the perspective uh widely to the psychological informed environment, the the topic of of the podcast, um, and whether you you want to talk about it within Formula One or Motorsport or just how you're piecing everything together as an applied practitioner, having been in so many different domains and sports and parts of business, it'd be very, very helpful and interesting to know what a psychologically informed environment looks like for you. What are the elements, what are the ingredients, what were you coming to think that that that looks like, you know, over the over the course of your career?

SPEAKER_02 18:34

I said it at the start, and I can almost prove now that I was genuine. When I've listened to the podcast, and I always listen to people's answers for this, every single answer you listen to, you think, yeah, that's fair. But yeah, I think every single answer has been different. Yeah. You know, there was the the golf one uh most recently, and and you know, speaking about, well, when you're not embedded, it's a completely different psychological environment compared to when you, you know, yeah, four years with one Olympic team. So the first thing I'd say is, you know, to me, um, there's not one model of like a high performance um not even a psychologically informed environment, it's not one. Um, I think when I've seen maybe is the more textbook, or what you could definitely easily write a book about, it is those embedded opportunities you get. Everyone's on board, you know, performance director or director of sport, whatever, and you've got a captive audience, and you do what you know traditionally is like a what's the vision, what's the mission, what are our objectives, and what's going to help us do that. The flip charts are out. Yep. Oh, yeah. And hey, honestly, done well and done with the right group of people who are really receptive and ready to do that, who are on the buzz. Yep. That stuff is powerful. Honestly, I mean, I think Team Sky were one of the best ever at doing it. You know, they codified winning behaviors, they called them winning behaviors, and they all bought into them. And they, you know, they basically back in the day when we weren't using AI, they they had um they had a buddy system to make sure that they were doing the winning behaviors during the Tour de France. They checked in on each other, they self-reviewed the winning behaviors, giving themselves a little rating score. And of course, that keeps like literally the day-to-day behaviors of the culture alive. And of course, that was a dynasty of success in many ways culturally. So that's you know, not here to get into debates and saying that one way of doing it. Now, what I see as a challenge is when you're maybe in a mid-level team uh organization, and I'm thinking more about size. So they might not have a psychologist, you know, the the luxury of a way days and a psychologist outpull this all together. Um, and and consequently, you know, if I was looking at some absolute low-hanging fruit of a psychologically informed environment, it's do we think they've got clarity? You know, has that team got clarity? What are we here for? Has everyone had uh at least heard that or had a chance, ideally, to put some input into that, you know? What's my role in that? You know, how am I gonna contribute to that? How am I gonna be assessed and am I gonna be supported and all the rest of it? There has to be a balance of support and challenge. Just you know, like um really, really clear what what I'm doing now, really clear on my role, feel like the people around me want me to succeed, and and equally they're they'll push me a day. Hey, come on, Robbie, we could do a bit more with this. Let's do you think you could look at this a different way. Hey, hey, I saw this today. What do you think of it? And me in the right headspace, I'm really receiving that, and I'm thinking this is great, we're building something together, and that is trust. That's trust, you know, so clarity, role clarity, uh support and challenge, trust. Now I pause because I just think you also have to really think about culture. And what I mean by that is sometimes the kind of VMOS style that we spoke a minute ago is very Western without being too like, you know, kind of kind of create a A um a dichotomy, it's very Western, you know, we'll plan it, we'll we'll codify it, we'll be it, and we'll be great. Okay. But I tell you what, I've seen some great teams who don't want to do that. They don't want to do all that. They just wanna they just want a great identity, they want a great community. Maybe faith, maybe faith plays a big role in in how that team binds and and and its higher purpose.

SPEAKER_01 22:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

So you have to understand what drives that environment, and the people within it who are aware of it are in a psychologically environed, yeah, psychologically informed environment.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

I I love that last point around culture um and an identity, community, and faith. Have you read Sevens Heaven by Ben Ryan? No, I haven't.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

No.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

Yeah, so the um the England Sevens coach who went over to Fiji and then won the Olympics. What Olympic, first ever Olympic gold for Fiji as a country. And yeah, great, great book. And it was very, very emblematic of what you were just saying because everything that they'd been doing up until that point was kind of almost antithetical to like a Western, you know, kind of sports performance, highly organized and operationalized, you know, kind of environment. It's freewheeling, it's off the cuff, it's just unadulterated enjoyment of the game of sevens rugby, it's creativity, it's spontaneity. And that had led to massive successes for them, but inconsistent successes. And there were also gaps within their certainly their kind of their talent model, which was probably run a little bit too much on nepotism up until that point. And there were some other gaps that that Ben kind of surfaced when he went in there. Some were, you know, as simple as dentistry. You know, how can you perform when you know your teeth are falling off? Um, and you know, there was some nutritional aspects, there was some training aspects. And the book is so fascinating because he brings just enough of that kind of that that Western organization and you know, control the controllables, all of that, but just enough without dampening what was the kind of the magic of the Fijian, you know, sevens system, you know, which was built around God, it was based around love of the game, um, you know, and and being proud to represent your country. Um, and it kind of culminates in that, unfortunately, for Great Britain, it culminates in us getting absolutely terminated in the uh the final of a sevens game, where you know that that's why the the book was called Sevens Heaven, because it you know whether a team ever reaches that that zenith of performance again on a Sevens rugby pitch is is to be seen because it was that that perfect whirlwind whirlwind of everything that they had in their their culture with that, just enough of of kind of Ben Ryan's value adding from his experiences. But yeah, just kind of um really really came together for me because I think a lot of these conversations I have about the psychologically informed environment, which I think you've identified here, maybe do come from a certain starting point in terms of you know the types of teams that we work with and the culture that we we come from, but there are other cultures and though there are there are other kinds of centers of gravity and strengths from those cultures that can be equally effective if if kind of tailored in the right way.

SPEAKER_02 25:26

But then isn't isn't a psychologically informed environment the environment that is considering those factors, you know, not dictating or you know, worst case, just you know, um absolutely kind of imposing. Um and again, look, I'm I'm not here to say it's right or wrong, actually. That's not for me. For example, there are um different Olympic systems around the world, and we know that some will be you know far more ownership based and you know, very transparent, and others will be a bit more autocratic. Fair enough. Hey, that they're all they're all capable of winning a medal at a given time. Okay, so what I think is interesting is a psychologically informed environment um is where there's at least leaders at different levels, but leaders thinking about how to get the best out of themselves and other people, and that that encompasses so many factors. That that to me is a psychologically informed environment. They're thinking about that, they're looking at the levers and which ones to pull, which ones to leave, and they are you know they're cultivating an environment that is conducive to people being in a good place and performing well, you know. I know that sounds so cliche, Pete, but honestly, that that's probably like a high level of it, as I can describe really.

SPEAKER_00 26:36

No, that's that's good. And and to be honest, having having done 35, 36 of these now, sometimes I've I've I sometimes when I'm I'm writing about this stuff, because sometimes I write articles, you know, pulling together the themes from from what everyone has said, I do feel like I'm building, you know, a kind of a giant cliche. And that that's you know, when I'm late at night, you know, kind of my threat-seeking brain thinking, it's it's is is this is this good? Um but I I you know with a more optimistic uh hat on, I think that you know cliches, you know, quite often are cliche for a reason because there are elements of of truth in them. Um and and that's what I find interesting about having this conversation is is once you start hearing things over and over again, that's worth kind of paying attention to. And everyone I think who's come on the podcast has always caveated it with you know, it depends. It depends on the the cohort you're you know you're working with. Uh as you identified Will McConn, Palfryman, who's who's worked in golf, you know, they don't have a physical environment for that that team, and it's a set of individuals kind of playing together, so that's a completely different set of circumstances. There's the culture, and then also just like how you're applying it as well. You know, there's a huge amount of art and science and how you're applying this stuff. So, yeah, there probably isn't a you know one size fits all model, but I've as I'm having these conversations, there are definitely ingredients that keep popping up over and over again, which I think are helpful to collect and to pay attention to. That's my soapbox moment, anyway.

SPEAKER_02 28:09

It was a lovely um I like an iron fair play, and and you're right, maybe there's some kind of uh again, um common sense uh universality that comes in. But but I also do still like to keep it practical because otherwise we get to like a dictionary definition, which is so stripped of any context that it probably isn't helpful to any like practitioners. From a practice level, um a profound moment that I just always remember and I almost use it as like an anecdote to remind myself or to talk to you know here it here it comes. I remember when we were at a rugby club at Worcester Warriors and we had multiple cultural groups. So we had, for example, a South African contingent of rugby players, we had a Pacific Island um contingent, we had some, you know, British and Scottish and Irish, etc. And it was a I would like to think it was certainly aspiring to be a psychologically informed environment. Um, you know, we we definitely had done a lot of the the VMoth type stuff, we'd done values, we were, you know, we were engaging a leadership group, all kind of stuff that I think you know would maybe be described as as bread and butter. But one of the things I really did enjoy as well um was to engage those groups and to really understand what uh what a what a good culture meant and would look like for them. And I never forget we had a um uh Dan Leo, his name was again. If this might be helpful to people to go and look at Dan and get him in, I don't take any thoughts off Dan, but I just remember him being good. He came in and he did a session for the coaches and the management about some differences between Pacific Island individuals and what we might typically have as like European-based rugby players. And yeah, it was just fascinating. You know, he spoke about eye contact, so um look looking down at the ground um would be classed as a sign of respect, a big sign of respect in their culture. And you can imagine everyone in the huddle, eyes in, eyes in. Are you are you paying attention? You know, you can just see the conflict because we don't understand that person is is listening and they're paying. But another big one was when we asked the guys, what would really, what would you know, what would make you give that you know, discretionary effort, that bit more blood for this team. But it was it was heavily about community, it was heavily about eating together. It came down to like eating together, you know. Do we have like a few barbecues, get family in, you know, make this all part of this club? So community, food, faith were massive agendas, which would be so easily put aside if you did a what it takes to win analysis of Premiship Rugby, you know. So again, I just use that because it was it was eye-opening to me, and I think that clearly would be the same for the South African group, and there'll be variances within that, but yeah, really worth engaging people and asking them and wherever you can bring those um, bring that colour to the picture so that it it gives you a much better culture.

SPEAKER_00 30:54

I love that, and we did say beforehand we were going to try and surface some of your anecdotes. So big tick box there, love that anecdote. Going to pick your brain for one last thing before we say goodbye. I'm collecting now like a magpie, psychologically informed environment magpie, books, podcasts, movies, TV shows that have impacted our guests. So and anyone that comes to mind.

SPEAKER_02 31:19

Okay, I again I've obviously listened and I have thought about this a little bit. I don't want to be too structured, but I just I just I do want to just almost give a quick kind of call to three levels. Okay. I I honestly to this day remember and and just reference Anderson's paper. Um, I used to work with Beckham. I think it was like 2005. Yeah, I've got to be able to do that. I just remember I've done my under yeah, yeah, you've read it. I just remember because what what it reminded me was you do your like basic training and you get some skills and off we go and we're gonna start working with athletes. And then this paper was just like a sledgehammer of bigger questions, you know, like you know, um, yeah, like ethical and and who's the client? Is it is it the F1 driver who is paying you um to the company directly? Yes, that's the client. Okay, or is it the race team who is actually now sponsoring you to work with the driver? Okay, well, that's interesting, or is it the race team who's asked you to come and be the psychologist in-house and you're working? So these questions hit me in the face in 2005. And you know, to this day, when I now kind of lead the group and we look at our contracting and we look at how we communicate with teams, to this day they're relevant. So that was powerful, and I think still still good. Fantastic. I think the chimp paradox, it would be mental of me not to say how powerful it was. It just gave me an insight to neuroscience, which in 2008, when I'm 2008, when I met Steve, um, didn't exist. And he was writing it on the board, he was literally drawing these ideas on a whiteboard because his book didn't exist. Four years later they published it, and I always say, if you haven't read it, it's a good holiday read. So Tim Paradox. But the final thing I'll say, and I can say this so earnestly, for me, it's not a book, it's not a film, but the biggest influence on my work is uh conversations with people. Brilliant. It is people, honestly, Pete. It is peer groups, supervision groups, it's going for a Nando's with a colleague and saying, Hey, can I run this past year? It's me and you talking today. That for me is just the biggest inspiration and and learning window for me to this day.

SPEAKER_00 33:24

Brilliant. I love it. Final question What's your spice level at Nando's?

SPEAKER_02 33:29

I'm right up there, which is silly because I get so hot sometimes, I don't think I can enjoy the food. Yeah, I've I've really I would start at a hot and I'd probably be having the pot of extra hot on the side. Um, and a good friend of mine who should get on this one day, Rich Rich Hanson. He's um, you know, we've trained together, but he's he's doing the FA job now. Rich is the exact opposite, he's scared of the lemon flavor, so we always make sure when the flags come out, I try and swap them before he eats his. But um, yeah, I'm right up there and he's right down. So I'll have to invite him out soon.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

I've I've never had a finish to the podcast referencing a uh a popular British uh restaurant chain before, but I'm all for it. And I'll I'll probably probably see if I can work this one in uh a little bit more often in the future, see if we can get wagger mamas or five guys in towards the I was gonna say other other brands are available.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

Other brands are available. Maybe it's when you hit the nirvana of the kind of sweet spot of asking the the pie question, um which I think still got legs, by the way. Don't cut it. But when you when you maybe hit critical mass, then you can swap to the Nambo's question.

SPEAKER_00 34:33

There you go. Future-proofed, future-proofed. Well, look, thank you so much, Robbie. Uh, we've had a good chat there. I think we'll probably end up splitting these into two episodes. And I I know for a fact um the the listenership of this podcast will get so much from your experiences and your insights, um, and your your humility as well. So thank you again so much for your time. And yeah, all the best for the rest of the Formula One season, what you're doing um with hints uh what you're doing uh personally uh as well with uh with Performing Minds. Uh and uh yeah, thanks again.

SPEAKER_02 35:07

Yeah, thanks, Pete. I mean, genuinely thanks for the opportunity, but also thanks for what you're doing for the network. I think it's great. I think it just gets people thinking and talking and sharing. So yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 35:18

Good man. Take care. Cheers.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_00 35:20

There we have it. Part two with Robbie Anderson in the books. From energy conservation to VR, from scenario-based training to ironic effects, and from pies to nando's. Maybe not a combination one would stomach in culinary form, but very enjoyable in the context of Robbie's fantastic insights and experience. It was a conversation that freewheeled and dropped into some hugely interesting areas and talking points, of which I'd like to highlight a few in this post-interview reflection. Now, firstly, performance contexts that are hard to replicate. Really interesting that national teams, club teams, governing bodies all put a huge amount of energy and effort into designing conditions that mimic or at least get closer to mimicking competition settings. So athletes can start to physically and mentally dress rehearse for what lies in store. There's a few examples that came to mind as we were discussing this, one being the England football team training and heat chambers ahead of this summer's World Cup, like the one at Leeds Beckett University, to help acclimatise. Perhaps that came in handy during the epic last 16 game at the Azteca in Mexico City. Or it might be Maury McAlroy's well-publicised day trips to Augusta to practice the famous course before winning back-to-back tournaments this year. But Formula One is really an interesting case where drivers can't just simply jump in their cars and take them for a spin around Silverstone. Yes, there are the practice sessions typically on the Friday before the race, but these are very tight windows of time compared to other sports, where at least being able to kick the same size ball on the same size pitch in the same size pitch surface is broadly less restrictive. And that has paved the way for the importance of technology such as VR. And even in the NFL, it is fascinating the use of VR for quarterbacks to get extra mental reps to learn the playbook or pattern recognition for opposing defensive schemes and coverages. Robbie also notes the use of mini Olympic days in Olympic sports to try and mimic certain conditions like pressure ahead of time. I've just come back from an excellent performance psychology conference at Staffordshire University where gold medallist Helen Richardson Walsh records during her keynote speech where regular sessions were scheduled in, where the coaches would just make training as hard and demanding and frustrating as possible in order to gain that valuable reps in dealing with hardship or even unfairness. She had a great anecdote where, in some of these situations, coaches convincingly role-played a hugely difficult or unfair umpire giving terrible decisions to see what the reaction might be. And then the second theme was scenario-based training. So hard to pin a catch all definition for this concept, but I did like Robbie's initial turn of phrase here, foreseeable but unusual. And we retreated some great anecdotes, such as Robbie's anecdote from his experience in finance and the use of roleplays to mimic different scenarios and to reflect on and condition what ideal responses would be if it happened in the real world. And despite Robbie's rightful apprehension using the words roleplay to sum up this approach, because these two words can certainly extort a groan from many knowledge workers, it does partly explain the rampant use of roleplay activities in many corporate and professional services training, whether that's managing client disputes, negotiating training, public speaking, among many other valuable skill sets. Because rarely do we actually get the chance to practice these things formally, but ultimately without the real-world stakes on the line. And in my experience, when it's done well, you can really strike that great balance between creating a safe environment with which to practice, but enough conditions crafted to mimic conditions where there's enough perceived pressure or intensity that these role plays really make it feel challenging and worthwhile. And a convincing method actor instructor can really go a long way, as does being appraised in a room of your peers who are also taking it in turns to be in the spotlight. And this is what I was getting to in the discussion with Robbie around role-playing interviews as well. Interviews are really hard to practice for. Maybe in an ideal world, we don't really do them that often as we're busy being happily employed and getting on with building our careers. But they are also an important part of career building, both moving from organisations to others, but also navigating promotions within organisations. So practising and role-playing and mimicking real-world conditions as much as possible is really important in that particular area. And because yes, we can and will learn from our mistakes in real-world interviews, I know I have, but if we have the opportunity to iron out as many kinks as possible beforehand, hopefully it feels like we have a well-rehearsed performance versus an anxiety-inducing scrabble to find the right words while our palms are sweaty and the strip lighting is bright. And as Robbie is describing here, scenario-based planning can be really, really helpful. He also mentioned having to be reasonable with your planning as well. You could be there forever planning for every different kind of scenario, but you can't, so you have to be choiceful as well. And this is where the specific versus global response planning framework that Robbie mentioned can help. So an F1, Robbie mentions commonplace in-race changes like safety cars, changing strategy, protecting tires earlier than maybe you thought, but also sometimes forgetting the specificness for a second and just thinking about right, something has happened, we don't know what it is yet, what's the best way to respond? So there we have a jam-packed conversation, deserved a jam packed reflection. So hopefully you stuck with me for that and I salute you, tip my cat to you if you have. All of that reflecting has taken it out of me, and I'm off to Nando's to top up my energy levels. So if you have been, thanks for listening.