SPEAKER_02 0:09

Hello and welcome back to the Slice of Pi podcast with me, Pete Jackson. The majority of my life is spent in sports marketing, and the other slice is spent training to be a sports psychologist with the British Psychological Society. Within this slice, I'm also trying to understand the Pi or the Psychologically Informment. And the mission of this podcast is to speak to various experts in different fields that can help me further understand what a psychologically informed environment is and how to strive to achieve one. In the spirit of speaking to different types of experts, I've been wanting to A speak to people in the world of consulting that help companies improve team effectiveness and develop leaders, and B to speak to people that have worked in teams in the furnace of the military environment. And I'm very lucky with today's guest, Richard Waddell, I am fortunate to get two for the price of one. After passing through officer training at Sandhurst, Richard was in the UK one moment and then 48 hours later on the ground in Basra and commanding a troop of soldiers, some of whom were far older and more experienced in the military. After navigating this and many other challenges, Richard eventually came out of the military and entered the world of consulting, working for large firms and starting his own businesses in talent identification, recruitment and leadership of development, amongst other things. As you'll find, Richard is a composed and articulate speaker. He relays his journey with great description and discusses his experiences with beautiful insight into what he has learned and how he now applies this in the corporate world. As always, we'll dive into the conversation and then pause for a full-time reflection. So let's get into that conversation with Richard Bodell. Richard, how are we?

SPEAKER_03 2:08

Yeah, very well, thank you. Yeah, how are you doing?

SPEAKER_02 2:10

Pretty good. Pretty good considering how you how are you dealing with the situation we find ourselves in at the moment.

SPEAKER_03 2:18

So it's clearly challenging, and I think it's challenging for everyone in a slightly different way, depending on your personal circumstances. But yeah, I'm getting into a routine now with work during the week and balancing that with two young kids and my wife who's doing a bit of homeschooling and looking after a four-year-old as well. So definitely a challenge. But I think as we recognize that it's going to become the normal, certainly for the short and medium term, I think it's getting slightly easier week by week.

SPEAKER_02 2:50

Yeah. So just a small matter of running a unit within a business, having two young kids and dealing with an enormous amount of change at the same time.

SPEAKER_03 3:02

Yeah, exactly that. So plenty of challenges, but I think, as I say, everyone's got their own version of that, their own mix of challenges. Um, and I live outside London in the countryside, and therefore we're lucky to have a bit of space and to be able to escape the house relatively easily. And I'm always conscious of my colleagues who live in a flat in London, for example, who don't have that luxury. So there's always someone who's got a bigger challenge. Um, so I can't really complain.

SPEAKER_02 3:32

Yeah, certainly the the time when having that space, whether it's like you said, out outside in in the countryside or whether it's just having a bit more space with which to wander within your own four walls, is suddenly become a bit of a luxury. And I I just we'll dig into your your background, your military background in a wee bit, but I just I just wondered, just I was just wondering now, actually, as we were talking about it, whether a background that I suppose almost trades in the currency of uncertain and precarious environments has maybe kind of prepared you in some way for situations like this that we find ourselves in?

SPEAKER_03 4:11

Yeah, it's a very interesting point because I do think there's a strand that runs through people that are serving or have served in the military, and that is a certain level of resilience. And I think that resilience is formed by the fact that often they've experienced very stressful, very, very testing and challenging situations, and therefore their baseline for what is stressful is perhaps higher than somebody who's never been in those types of environments. So when it comes to having to stay in your house with your family and restrict your behaviour to a certain degree, I think for those people, particularly those that have served abroad, maybe on operational tour, that baseline is a lot higher. And therefore, the current situation is testing in many ways, but it's never going to be as testing as being away from your family for six or seven months in a effectively a war zone, um, having to lead people in very, very stressful situations. So I think there's that reference point for people in the military often, um, particularly those that have served over the last 10 years with the high operational tempo that we've experienced, that means that they are reasonably well equipped. And I think the other angle to that is is the point you mentioned about adaptability. I'm reading a really good book at the moment, which is called Adapt by an author called Tim Harford, who works for The Economist. Yeah, and it's all about how different organizations and individuals successfully adapt to different environments, and it's very interesting that in that book there are numerous military examples that he draws on. And it's all about how people pivot in the moment and do what best suits them and their immediate team whilst paying respect to the environment. But the the mindset of adaptability means that they are focused on moving forward positivity and making things happen regardless of what's happening around them. So I do think there are these aspects of resilience and adaptability that help people from a military background to get through challenges in their personal and professional lives as well.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

That's interesting. So you've got this, I suppose, this imaginary baseline or threshold that you that already is in quite an extended place, having a background in a in a very challenging environment. So then when you encounter more changes like this, you've already got that that threshold, that's that threshold extended, and so it doesn't feel as potentially threatening or as difficult to deal with.

SPEAKER_03 6:56

Yes, I think that's right. And I don't know myself, but I imagine that people who've had certain life-influencing experiences, you know, whether it might be a loss or a personal accident or something significant and stressful and challenging in their lives, may find something similar in terms of how they're dealing with the current situation, in that they've always got this reference point. Nothing will ever be as challenging or as difficult or as stressful as that, and therefore it can put things in perspective and make things slightly easier in a situation like the one we're currently experiencing.

SPEAKER_02 7:35

That's interesting. The other thing you mentioned there was this idea of adaptability being a mindset, which I think is quite interesting because quite often I think about it being a skill or a competence or a characteristic, but having adaptability as a mindset is quite interesting. What do you think that means if you've got an adaptable mindset?

SPEAKER_03 7:57

So I think it's the ability to change course mentally. So I could probably come on to talk about it in more detail in a bit, but I think one of the key aspects of the military is that there is always a plan, a very well-defined and structured plan. But the key is that plan is always extremely flexible. Actually, people almost expect it to have to change almost immediately, and therefore it's a willingness to change to the environment in response to the environment, but still to remain focused on the ultimate outcome that you're trying to achieve. There's this balance between moving forward, finding a path that works for you without necessarily rigidly sticking to what was previously agreed. And I think that's there's a bit of process in there in terms of how you do that, but I think largely it's a mental state and a willingness to perhaps let some things go, embrace the new ideas or new opportunities, but to be comfortable with that.

SPEAKER_02 8:59

Yeah, the the key thing in there for me, you just mentioned, was that expectation. So that expectation almost that it is going to change, and therefore we are going to have to deal with that, and we have the tools and resources in place to do so. It strikes me as particularly in the context of the time we're living through, it's always going to be a seismic shock to most people because we deal so often in the currency of trying to control and predict our futures, whether it's thinking about the mortgage rate we want to pay or the next job that we want. Quite often people talk about this kind of life plan, you know, that I'm going to do this and then this and then this. So when a seismic change happens, it is really impactful because you don't expect that to happen. And so I suppose what you've you've outlined there is the expectation that things are going to change means that when it happens, it it just is less less shocking. You're almost expecting that to happen and you're ready for it.

SPEAKER_03 9:58

Yeah, exactly that. And I think the your point about control is key because it feels very much at the moment like the government and policymakers are having a significant control over our lives in terms of restrictions they've applied for good reason. And I think that is also very comparable to, for example, being deployed on an operational tour in the military where you're really waiting for orders to be told where you're going, what you're doing, and how long you're going to be doing it for. And that lack of control can be quite disconcerting. And you can only control what's immediately around you. And we talk a lot in the military and a lot in leadership consulting about spheres of influence and focusing on what you can control. You can't change the government's policy, you can control what you do on a day-to-day basis and your mental state. So it's probably a better use of effort to focus on that. And I've often compared current situation with friends and family to the mental state of being deployed on an operational tour for perhaps six or seven months. And we used to say that the days were very long, but the weeks were short, and I think that's what people are finding at the moment, and that's because we don't fully have control over how we spend our time, but we we find that when we look back over the last one or two or six weeks, it seems to have gone very quickly. That's exactly the mental challenge and the experience I found being away overseas with the military. Because you're in this bubble of time, you don't know exactly when it's going to end. Other people are controlling your movement and your activities to a degree, and it is a strikingly similar parallel between those two experiences. But again, I think that's why people with that military experience are particularly well suited to the current environment because they they have this reference point, this benchmark to go to. Oh, I remember when it was like that in my experience. I think that makes it easier than having never experienced anything like this before.

SPEAKER_02 12:07

I think that is incredibly eloquent, and I actually don't think I've I've heard any sound bites or quotes as perfectly on a personal level summarise the last couple of months as well as this idea that of the days are long and the weeks are short. I think that is that is almost poetically but razor razor-sharply descriptive of what I think maybe a lot of people have it experienced. Now, speaking of change and flexibility, we've we've almost gone miles off on the discussion guide that we put together beforehand. And do you know what? I almost predicted that this was going to happen because there are so many elements to your background, Richard, that I think are so interesting. We can go off on lovely tangents, which I encourage us to do so. But if we could just replay back for a bit, because I think it'd be really interesting for people who are listening to the podcast to know a little bit more about your background, particularly in the in the military, and then how you then transitioned into consulting and what you do now.

SPEAKER_03 13:10

Yeah, certainly. So, in relation to my background, my interest in the military actually started at school, despite having no family connections. I found out about a scheme the military were offering at the time, and I think they still do, called the Gap Year Commission, where they select people, send them away for a year between school and university, and give them the time of their lives. So they send them around the world, experiencing the military with the hope that they will either join or they'll become ambassadors for the military when they become professionals in the business world. And so I went off and did the selection process for that. I didn't get a high enough pass to do the GAPPEA commission, but I did get a standard pass, if you like. So I then went off to university. I joined the officer training corps, which is a great organization set up at many universities where you effectively train on a weekday evening and about one weekend a month, you get paid for your time, and you're taught many of the basic military skills that you'd expect a soldier and an officer to have. So that again strengthened my interest in the military whilst I was at university, and I had this pass from my original interest at school in my back pocket. And so when it came to graduating, I thought I can either go and get a job with the rest of my peers, or all I have to do is write a letter to Sandhurst saying, I want to come and join a commissioning course and train to be an officer, and I can go and do that. And that temptation was just too strong. So I decided to do it. And the January after leaving university, I turned up at Sandhurst on day one with my ironing board under my arm, seen in the in the photographs in the paper. Um and yeah, embarks on this great adventure of 12 months training at the Royal Military Academy in Sandhurst and really learning firsthand about what leadership is, and from there carried on to serve for six and a half years as a regular army officer, uh, and subsequently transferred to the reserves when I left the regular army and served for another eight years as a reservist based in London.

SPEAKER_02 15:25

So you've had this interest from a young age. It started in school, didn't have any family connections, but there's an interest anyway. You've applied for this Gap Year Commission, but been given this standard pass. And I like how you've referred to this as a kind of a bit like the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory golden ticket kind of sitting in your back pocket that you can use anytime you want. And then you're at this then crossroads after university about whether to join your peers to go and get a job after university. And I'm assuming, like many British universities, there's probably a lot of your peers going to London and thinking about working in business and finance and et cetera, et cetera. And then you've got this other door number two, which is Sandhurst and using the golden ticket. Was that a do you consider that a bit of a sliding doors moment for you? Were you ever umming and awing about that decision, or was it only ever going to be one route?

SPEAKER_03 16:21

I think if I'm honest with myself, there was only going to be one route, and I think it had been a very gradual journey to get to that decision point. So it wasn't a black and white choice of do I go left or right. But I think a lot of that was down to the army's proactivity actually and their effective recruiting process. So throughout, well, ever since I went through the process at school, I'd stayed in very close contact with one or two of the regiments that I'd shown an interest in. And whilst I've been at university with the officer training corps, I had the opportunity to go to Sandhurst to do the reserve officers commissioning course, which is a three-week summer course, which qualifies you to be an officer in the reserves or the OGC, and that really gave me a very good taster of leadership training Sandhurst way and very practical leadership. So I'd already sort of wetted my appetite by experiencing that, and then just to cap it off, as I finished university, the Royal Artillery, who was sponsoring me as my regiment of choice, said to me, Look, would you like to go out to Canada to see what this is all about firsthand? So they sent me out to Canada for three weeks. I spent all of that time on the prairies on exercise with a number of different units. All right. Just shadowing, meeting soldiers and officers, you know, understanding how they actually do the job for real. Absolutely fantastic experience. And then at the end of that, they said to me very cleverly that you've got a choice now. You can either get the next flight back home to England, or you can get the last flight, which is in about three weeks' time. What would you like to do? So I chose the last flight, as you might expect, and then I went off travelling around the Rockies and Vancouver and exploring the amazing sites and adventures that Canada has to offer. Yeah, brilliant. So very clever of them to facilitate that. But I think by that point I was thinking this is a pretty good lifestyle, you know, lots of opportunity. I'm going to see and do things that I just won't experience if I go and get a job in London. So that helped me to make my mind up. I wrote the letter and as I say, turned up on January the 6th, ready to go.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Yeah, very cunning. Yeah, they've they've sent you off on a global globetrotting experience to see how things are done in a different country. And not only that, they've they've picked certifiably and globally renowned the nicest country in the world in Canada, and one of the most natural, naturally beautiful as well. And then and then giving you that that choice. Now, for apologies for my ignorance, this will be a classic, is it civy? I'm a civvy, I'm sorry, civilian, classic civvy, um, ignorance about the different units, corps, divisions, brigades, regiments, etc. It's all kind of alien language to uh to some of us. Are you able to explain how the the royal artillery kind of fit into the the overall machine of of the British Army?

SPEAKER_03 19:30

Yeah, absolutely. So it is, as you say, very complex. The Royal Regiment of Artillery is one of the big building blocks of the army in terms of capability. So if you think about, for example, the infantry who specialise in fighting on foot or with vehicles, the engineers who specialise in building or sometimes demolishing things, the Royal Artillery are there to support with direct and indirect fire. So that could be anything from air defence and keeping the skies safe through to actual artillery pieces on the ground via in support of the infantry or other troops, and it also encompasses very heavily now as well an aspect of intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance to finding and understanding what the enemy or another group or um body of people are doing. So within the Royal Regiment of Artillery, there are numerous different separate regiments which have different roles and are located in different places.

SPEAKER_02 20:39

And and your journey with the Royal Artillery, did that take you out to any of the kind of the hotspots that we'll be familiar with as kind of regular members of the park public? Did it that take you out to Iraq or Afghanistan or any of these areas?

SPEAKER_03 20:56

Yeah, so I was I was fortunate in one regarding that in my six and a half years as a regular officer, I've packed in a lot.

SPEAKER_02 21:12

And what what were your defining defining experiences then, defining moments or stories, if you know within the bounds of what you're comfortable to to talk about from those tours abroad?

SPEAKER_03 21:24

Yes, I think the key one about Iraq was that it was my first operational tour. And when I joined my regiment, which was based in Tidworth in Wiltshire, but was currently deployed in Iraq, I went out to join them straight from training. So they'd already been there for a couple of months, and I was flown out along with another young officer who I completed training with, and we were to join them already on the job. So that was going to be a challenge in itself. We didn't have the time and the process of preparing with them. And we knew that when we arrived, as is the case with every young officer. When they finished training, we would be given a troop of soldiers to command and to lead. This is normally somewhere between 25 and 35 soldiers. So we had that expectation on top of the experience of going to a foreign country and a place where there was a lot of uncertainty and hostility. And one of the defining moments was flying from Verizon Autumn to Basra Airport and being told to go to the back of an armoured Land Rover and driven out to the base where we were going to be living for the next few months. And halfway there, we got stuck in traffic in a road in the middle of Basra, and the back doors of the Land Rover were flung open, and I was told to get out and to provide security for the vehicles as we walked through this crowd in this market. And so I'd gone from a UK airport to an Iraqi airport to a street in the middle of a Basra market in a very short space of time, and it was a complete culture shock. I'd never been to the Middle East, I'd never been to Iraq, certainly. And I was just stood in the middle of the street with locals around me shouting, looking threatening in many regards, and it was a baptism of fire in every respect. And from that point, I then got to meet the soldiers I would be commanding, and that in itself is a huge leadership challenge. The environment's completely alien. The idea of commanding real soldiers is alien at that point as well. And one of the great challenges of military leadership at an early stage, at the stage I was at, is that almost everyone you're commanding is more experienced than you, and in some cases older than you as well. So quite a an uncommon model in that regard, one that you may not find in business very often. But there's this great challenge of leadership, but also a very supportive environment. So people want you to succeed. And you have a colour sergeant or a platoon sergeant who is really your number two, who will have considerably more experience, will know the soldiers in your troop inside out, and is the person you need to rely on, certainly for the first few months, to really help you navigate through what you're doing and help you to be successful.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Yep. I think that point about the the leadership challenge at an early stage in your career and having others more experienced and old, I think that is something that is going to resonate with a lot of people across different industries. I know, particularly in teaching, the the average age of head teachers is becoming quite young now. And there are more head teachers that are being put in that position where they have a base of teachers that they have to manage, many of them have been in teaching for a lot lot longer than them. I think that is is cropping up in business a wee bit more as well. So it'd be really interesting to dig into that a wee bit later when we I think we're going to talk about leadership in a wee bit more detail. But at this juncture, I'd love to understand a bit more about your transition out of the army than into, I think it was you you went into consulting, didn't you, when you you came out?

SPEAKER_03 25:21

Yes, I left the army in 2009, which wasn't an ideal time to leave the military given what had happened with the financial crash and so on. So finding a job in London was never going to be very easy. But I was very, I was set on it, it was my focus, and I was intrigued by the world of business. And I thought if I'm going to leave the military at some point and not stay serving for my entire career, then it's probably better to do it earlier rather than later. So I've still got many years to build a second career. So I ended up doing a lot of networking as people do when they leave, and I met somebody who was previously ex-military a long time ago who ran a change management consultancy and did some independent work for that organization, and that was actually a really good arrangement because it got me involved in lots of different clients, a mixture of public and private sector, and exposed me to lots of different individuals and environments that I hadn't experienced before. And actually, what I spent quite a lot of my time doing in the first year or so was working with an organization called the National Skills Academy for Social Care, which was a brand new organization at the time, and it understandably focused on social care and people that used social care services. And that for me was the opposite end of the spectrum from the military environment that I was used to. So again, that was a real test of my adaptability and my ability to get on with people from very different backgrounds and to almost overcome that stereotype when I'd say to them, I've just left the military.

SPEAKER_02 27:02

In just anecdotal accounts that I've either experienced or read, people coming out of the military and then going into quote unquote normal life has been reported as a challenge in itself, going from that environment to another. Do you think the fact that you went into this very dynamic environment of change management, working with lots of different clients, being put into uncomfortable situations where you had to adapt? Do you think that helped your transition? Do you think that that kind of minimized the potential of you coming out of the army and then just working a kind of a very, I don't know, run-in-the-mill and quiet job? Do you see what I'm trying to get at here?

SPEAKER_03 27:41

Yeah, I think it did help because you touched on a good point because I'd always said to myself, I want a clean break. So a very common group for people leaving the army in particular is to end up working in security consultancy or in defense or close protection, yeah, or a similar area where they're directly using the skills and contacts they make in the military in a more civilian context. And I chosen not to do that. I explored a couple of roles in that sort of area and thought actually, what if I go down that rope, it's going to be very harder, it's going to be very hard to make a break later on. So I do think that extreme contrast helped, but I also didn't experience some of the challenges I know other people have experienced. And I think that's partly because I hadn't served for as long. So I think if you're leaving after 15 or 20 years, it's a lot harder than if you're if you're leaving after six or seven. And I think as well, I'd never doubted my decision to leave. I've been very deliberate and it was a thought-through decision, but I was very focused on leaving for personal and professional reasons, and then establishing myself in a new career. So I think that very firm view of this is going to happen, I'm going to make it successful. I don't know what the future looks like at all, but I'm comfortable with that. Almost goes back to our initial discussion about agility and adaptability. I was comfortable with that uncertainty and I had faith that it would work out, perhaps blind faith at times, but it did work out in the end. But I think that helps me to get through that period of not really understanding what I wanted to do or what I wanted to be doing, and find more of a long-term path.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

So as you were trying to work out long-term what this path was going to look like, did working in that initial change management world help in the way that you were exposed to lots of different sides of business, leadership, consulting, change management. Through that process, did it become clear that there was a specific area that you were interested in in order to take your career forward?

SPEAKER_03 29:56

It became clearer, but I wouldn't say it became crystal clear. So I knew that I enjoyed variety, and I've known that from the military as well. And I knew that I wanted to gain as much experience as I could in a short space of time because really I was trying to catch up with people who had worked in a similar area since they graduated. So that's what led me more towards consultancy. And I was also very interested in the human aspect of people and psychological aspect of consultancy. So that led me to a conversation with a friend of a friend who worked for a consultancy called Hay Group, and he said to me, Look, I think you'd quite enjoy what we're doing here. We are going to be taking people on in a few months' time, so why don't you apply? Of course, I was hoping you'd say, Why don't you have a job and uh start next week? But he said, You're welcome to apply as uh as someone to go through the process. So I did that and I managed to secure a job at Hay Group. And that really was my first introduction to a large non-military organization, about two and a half thousand people worldwide, many different offices, and it was it was great for me because it gave me a proper focus and some proper structure around my learning and my professional experience. So rather than working on different projects just as they came up, contributing here and there, I was now part of a bigger machine, and I was still able to carve my own path in terms of what I focused on and who I worked with, but it struck this nice balance between having that structure and the infrastructure in place, but also the freedom to be able to focus on the things that interested me. Yeah, and that's that's where I started to really specialise more in leadership and psychology and things like team dynamics. So I hadn't set out to focus on that and to join a business that did that, and I think, like many people will experience, I didn't so much fall into it, but an opportunity presented itself and I took it and I found I really enjoyed it. That's what's become my focus since that point. And it's also nice that it does enable me to use my leadership and team experience for the military in a business context.

SPEAKER_02 32:10

So you've you've transitioned now into the Hague group, two and a half thousand people worldwide. You're now in a team environment again, but it's a non-military organization. You will go on to upskill and develop yourself a lot more in leadership in psychology and team like team dynamics in a more formal way. But before that happens, when you've just started at the Hay group without any, let's say, formal knowledge of all of these things, did you notice immediately the stark differences and similarities in the way that that team at Hay, or your immediate team or the wider team operated versus in the military? And were you ever kind of slightly critical? Did you see stuff that was happening in the commercial world that you thought, God, we would never do that in the military?

SPEAKER_03 33:02

So I think there were certainly similarities in terms of great work ethic and wanting to do things that were genuinely right for clients. So there was there were values around doing things in the right way, and many people lived and breathed those values to a degree. I think there were also definitely some differences, well, not so much differences, but I think some of the experiences I'd had mapped well on to working in a consulting environment. So, just as an example, I remember quite early on after joining, we were working on a proposal for a major client, and it it meant we had to work pretty late into the night in the office. There was a small group of three or four of us doing it. And for me, that was that was quite normal. Okay, we needed to do this this thing, we needed to hit the deadline, so we just work hard until we do it, we work in a very collaborative way, and we remain positive and with a can-do attitude. And that's very much what I was used to. And I think the way I approached that surprised the more senior people I was working with, and they almost couldn't believe that I just got on with it and did it without making a fuss. And that surprised me because I thought, well, isn't that normal? Would people wouldn't wouldn't everyone behave in that way? So there were small things where I think that again the attitude of we just need to make it happen, just get on with it, we'll find a way through it, it will all be fine, wasn't necessarily the way that many other people see the world or see their professional environment. So I think there is this aspect that ex-military people bring to the workplace of positivity and just wanting to get on and do it. Sometimes that can come with naivety, and I did have some of that as well. So you don't necessarily have the political awareness that you need in a big organization, because in the military, I think the the level of politics political undertones are not as strong as in a civilian business organization.

SPEAKER_02 35:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

So it can be easy to assume that decisions are being made for one reason when in fact they may be being made for another, and not to see that, not to see the subtleties. So there are downsides to almost being naive about saying, well, that needs to happen, so just get on and do it. When in fact, I think a business environment can be even more complex, and therefore it's not that simple.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Yeah, it's interesting that you've transitioned from one environment to another, and having those or having transferable skills that are seen as a positive can give you a bit of bit of confidence in in transferring those those skills. And as you said, but almost naturally there's going to be a naivety in terms of the blind spots, and I suppose that's going to happen. But with a bit more experience now and having built your own business and moved into your role with with Hanover, looking back, are you in a more clearer position now to look at the really good bits to take from the military to apply to business and the bits that maybe don't apply so well because the context is just so different?

SPEAKER_03 36:17

Yeah, absolutely. I'm much more aware of that. And when I talk to people about the effectiveness of military leaders and teams, one of the first challenges that often comes up is yes, but the context is completely different. And I take that to a point, but I think there are lots of similarities as well. As you suggest, there are lots of positive aspects of how military leaders and teams operate that can be applied in the workplace. I have one friend, for example, who left the army at a similar time to me, and he joined one of the really big pharmaceutical companies, and they were struggling to create clarity around certain processes. He developed a planning tool which was very, very closely related to the planning process the military used, and he rolled this out across the project team, and they just thought it was fantastic. They said this is so simple, it gives us so much clarity, and it was basically the process we use in the military for planning across whatever we were doing. So there are things like that which map very well to a business context, and it's true of leadership behaviors and team dynamics as well, but understandably, it can be quite hard to replicate some of the high levels of trust and understanding and clarity because, for example, you just can't spend the same amount of time together, you're not living together for six months, you're not going through life-threatening situations with your colleagues, and it's very hard to replicate those sort of experiences in the workplace.

SPEAKER_02 37:50

Yeah, we we hear that a lot actually in sport psychology. So kind of pivoting on to leadership, do you think leadership is one of those elements which is a real strength of the military which can be used or be studied or learnt by those within business?

SPEAKER_03 38:12

I think it is, and I think there are a number of elements that make up military leadership and help to make it effective. I think to start with, it's very stark that the military invests in its officers by allowing them to train at Sandhurst for a year. Where else in in life, or in certainly in a business context, are you able to train full-time for a year in leadership? It's a pretty rare opportunity. So I think the time spent and the money spent on training officers in particular in leadership, but also soldiers as well, because they go through a lot of intense leadership training throughout their career, is second to none. And there's a recognition of the value that comes from that, the return and investment from spending time and money on training and facilitating leadership development. And I think there's also this, and I mentioned it earlier, but this there's this balance between leadership around a very structured process with clear steps to follow, and on the flip side, using your initiative and your instincts and your natural strengths to your advantage. There's a constant balance between the two, and you're strongly encouraged to use your initiative, and there's this concept in the military called mission command, which is absolutely key to how leadership and teams work in the military. So mission command is about telling your subordinates or your team what you want them to achieve, but you never tell them how to achieve it.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 39:54

So even if I'm if I'm a very, very experienced officer with 30 years experience, I may say still to a private soldier who's been in the army for one year, what do you think? How do you think we should do it? Genuinely listen to your input, collect input from a whole range of people, and then I, as the superior, sorry, as the senior officer, will make and own the final decision. But I've genuinely consulted other people. And if I've given somebody an objective to go off and achieve, I let them go and do it in the way that they want to do it based on their initiative and expertise. I don't micromanage them and get involved. There's a high level of trust there. I think that mission command is what separates the British military from many other military organizations, but also from many teams and leaders in a business context.

SPEAKER_02 40:48

Yeah, it's interesting. Even in that one anecdote there about mission commands, there's a lot of in this the sport performance psychology world, there's a lot of ingredients there that one might recognize, whether it's the social identity theory of bringing people within a team into feeling like they have partial ownership and impact on that decision. The fact that there's not a micromanagement particularly over process or how to achieve something, there's there's definitely an ingredient there about giving people autonomy, which is a key ingredient in a lot of the motivation theories of teamwork, like self-determination theory. So even within that one anecdote, there's a lot of ingredients there that are a recipe for good motivation, good feeling of coherence and being part of a team, and I'm sure a few other things that uh I haven't even spotted.

SPEAKER_03 41:44

There's a big misconception with military leadership. And I've experienced this when I entered the business world, and people would say to me, surely, in terms of leadership styles, it's very directive. You're told what to do, you issued instructions or very clear direction. And actually, that's true some of the time, as you'd expect, with a directive leadership spot style, it's used in high-pressure situations where immediate compliance is required. But actually, there's a much broader range of leadership styles used in the military, and collaborative is certainly one of them, and that's what speaks to that mission command approach of what do you all think? Right, this is what we're going to do. But it's genuinely listening to others and valuing their input so that everyone, as you say, feels part of the solution, and therefore there's a high level of buy-in, but also a high level of clarity and understanding as well. The other interesting point just from my time at Sandhurst is that I mentioned I'd previously trained at Sandhurst for three weeks when I was at university, and I'd also spent four years with the officer training corps. So I had a certain level of basic ability in terms of how to use equipment and how to use processes. So I was fairly comfortable in the early days at Sandhurst that I knew what I was doing, and there were people there who had turned up from university or from a job in London and had zero military experience, so I had a big advantage compared to them. So I was quite comfortable, but I'll never forget about six weeks into my first term, I was pulled aside on exercise by the colour sergeant who was in charge of us, and they were just giving us very brief feedback on our progress. And he said to me, Mr. Waddell, you're in the middle third of the platoon, and you're doing okay, but stop being such an epic and boring bastard, technically. And that was a real shock for me. He basically was implying that whilst I was technically fine, I wasn't showing any character. Character and injecting some kind of personality into how you lead other people, and there's no right or wrong way to do that, it's very personal and it varies a lot. But I noticed after that that the people that were doing really well were the ones that were technically okay, but they had a lot of character, and they'd be the ones that were a little bit cheeky or would occasionally get into trouble for doing things that were a bit close to the mark. But it was about developing this character, and therefore that became a real focus of me for me, which was as I say, not just doing well at the technical aspects of the job and of leading, but actually the personal aspects as well, my impact on other people. And I think that's a challenge I see very often, particularly in the financial services and professional services worlds, where there's a lot of emphasis placed on technical ability. People are promoted into technical, sorry, people are promoted into leadership roles based largely on their technical ability and experience, but then they sometimes struggle to lead and make an impact on people. And it's because all of the emphasis is on technical, not necessarily behavioural.

SPEAKER_02 45:13

Yeah, I suppose it it goes back to a an observation, particularly not just within business, but famously within in sport, being a world-class athlete, while sometimes can lead you to being a very successful coach. And there's many examples of that, whether it's Guadiola or Deschump or Beckenbauer. Certainly doesn't apply universally, though. Doesn't predict if you're world-class at the technical thing that you do for a job that you're then going to be able to coach and develop and lead others.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

Yeah, absolutely. The two complementary but potentially quite different skill sets.

SPEAKER_02 45:54

And you were talking about in high pressure situations where clear direction is needed, that's maybe where us as the general population or or civvies might have the stereotype of a military commander barking out the very direct orders. But you've you've also said there's a slight misconception there because in in other areas of that leadership journey, when there isn't the need for that high-pressure situation direction, that actually there's a lot of listening and a lot of collaborating. And it made me reflect upon, and I know this is this is something that you do quite a lot in your role within uh leadership development, is how psychometric profiling tools, when used badly, can give people a sense of, well, I'm the black hat, so I have to act in that way, regardless of the context or the situation. And I think what you were painting out there is actually, you know, you could have a personality preference or a character preference to act in a certain style, but it can be very, very flexible and adaptable across different contexts. You can be quite facilitative and collaborative in one instance, but in another instance where a decision needs to be made, you can be very directive.

SPEAKER_03 47:13

Absolutely, and that flexibility and adaptability is key. Um, and just to highlight that, I think one of the unusual or less, I suppose one of the aspects of military leadership compared to business leadership, which again may be common with the sporting world, is that with your soldiers you're leading them professionally, but you also have a strong role to play from a personal perspective as well. And that's because they're often spending a great deal of time with you, particularly if you're deployed overseas, and therefore you're supporting them from a welfare angle. So this can often lead into almost becoming a cancer in some regards in relation to their finances or their marriage or their family life, and that requires a great deal of adaptability in how you communicate and interact with them. So you're going from shouting an order at them on a patrol one minute to sitting down with them one-to-one in a quiet corner and asking them how they're getting on with clearing their debts. And I think it's that adaptability, which is often underestimated. And I'd be interested in your thoughts, but again, from a professional sporting angle, I imagine a coach and the person they're coaching may have a similar close relationship.

SPEAKER_02 48:31

Yeah, I mean, there's there's certainly a lot of literature around the social identity theory of teams and and groups, and I think that can be used to explain beneficial outcomes between uh coaches, athletes, and teams, um, and the relationship can be at the heart of that. But I suppose the funny thing with elite sport is there's always stories that can kind of run counter to that. So there's some very famous examples of international cricket teams down the years where the the players and the coaches didn't really like each other. I think there are France, the the rugby team managed to get through all the way to the World Cup semi-final final, seem to remember having basically kind of sacked their coach mid-tournament and just taken control themselves. Um but on on the whole, there's there's a lot of evidence to show that strong relationships between all hierarchies and particularly the coach and athlete and and other support staff certainly is beneficial. Um, I just wanted to, just because this is something that is used from time to time, but also I wouldn't use the word controversial, but something that's certainly discussed in detail within the sport performance psychology world, is the usefulness of psychometric profiling tools. Is there, do you have any strong beliefs around how they're used? Is there one that you use that is a kind of a favorite of yours? How how is that kind of usually deployed in in the kind of business and consulting world and and uh the the world of recruitment?

SPEAKER_03 50:14

So in a leadership and team consulting context at Hanover, we use psychometrics extensively. So we use a different range depending on the the application, but my preferred tool and um company of choice is is called Lumina L-U-M-I-N-A, and their tool is called Lumina Spark. And there are some very clear reasons why I like using that tool versus many of the other tools on the market, and one of them it's the point you mentioned earlier about typing people. So some tools will put you into a box and say, This is your personality, these are your colours, or these are your letters. And I get quite frustrated when I see leaders walking around the office saying, I'm a red, you're a blue, so I need to talk to you like this. Because I think that oversimplifies the complexity of personality and of people. So Lumina uses 144 questions to measure traits, to measure patterns of behaviours, rather than typing people, and rather than putting you into a box, it recognizes that you can behave different and sometimes you can behave in contradictory ways, depending on the situation. So, in one situation, you may be very structured and process-driven, but in another you may be quite conceptual and imaginative, and it recognizes and allows for that. So it helps you to understand your range of behaviour, and then we can have a really good conversation through feedback about what might trigger those different traits, when they might be helpful and when they actually might be damaging or negative. So, what happens when you overdo them, for example? So Linna also looks at your underlying personality, which is how you may be naturally, perhaps at home, your everyday personality, which is what you bring to work based on what you know is important about the environment, the culture, your role, and your overextended personality, which is how you're likely to behave under pressure or when stressed. And we're finding at the moment, particularly, we're having some very insightful conversations with leaders about their overextended personality and how they're responding to the current situation with COVID-19. It helps to bring to life some of those personality traits, and we can then help to make people more self-aware, help them to build their self-awareness, and therefore actively recognize when some of these helpful and unhelpful behaviors are in play and therefore manage them to a greater degree. And the ultimate goal is to help them to be more effective leaders, be more impactful, more effective, to get more out of their teams. It's a great starting point for that journey of becoming a more impactful leader to better understand your own behaviors and what drives them at a slightly deeper level.

SPEAKER_02 53:07

Super interesting that what I heard there is sometimes psychometric tools can be seen as so you get the letters, or you get the colour, you get the output, and that is seen as the output. That's the end of the process. But what you're saying here is actually, no, that's just the start of the process, that's the catalyst for us to have a conversation around parts of your personality you think are helpful or unhelpful in different contexts. So instead of being the end, the output, it's actually the start of building self-awareness.

SPEAKER_03 53:40

Yes, absolutely that. And it comes back to a key military phrase that we used repeatedly in many, many different situations, which is so what?

SPEAKER_02 53:50

So what?

SPEAKER_03 53:52

Yeah, whatever happened in the military planning process, we would ask ourselves, so what? What does this mean? What's the implication of this? And we would keep asking that question until we got a satisfactory answer, we had a clear plan. And it's no different when you're dealing with something like psychometrics, where, as you suggest, it gives us a picture of how somebody is likely to behave. So what? What does that mean for their current role, for their career aspirations, the current team environment? This is where context is so important. You've got to overlay the current context, both them individually, and the broader context around their role in organization to really understand what it means. And this is where I can sometimes become quite cautious of overusing psychometrics, and I encourage clients not to rely too heavily on them. Because if, for example, you're looking at psychometric reports and saying this person would be no good for our organization and never actually met them or spoken to them, then that's a big call to make because you're looking at somebody's view of themselves, right? Because they've completed the questionnaire, and you're looking at how they're likely to behave based on that psychometric. And whilst the psychometrics we use are very rigorously tested for reliability and consistency, it's still a big call to make to say, for example, I don't think this person is going to be good for this job, or this person isn't a good leader based purely on a psychometric. So it's a very valuable tool, but it's as you say, a starting point to a conversation, further insights, and it shouldn't be relied on in isolation. That would be my summary.

SPEAKER_02 55:32

Yeah, I think that's very fair. It's a lot of the time with any model or tool, because there's there's no perfect application of them, it's the the skill in which you apply them and also the sensitivity with which you apply them as well, which you've outlined. Interestingly, as well, you also mentioned this so what being a key term within the military, because certainly within some of the theoretical models of psychology, whether it's the damward arrow in CBT or inference chaining in ROBT, this idea of using so what or what does that mean repeatedly allows us to get closer and closer to kind of pure meaning or sort or the meaning behind something. So I think there's some really interesting patterns and crossovers there. But before we we kind of get into the last stretch, I just really wanted to briefly talk about a kind of, I don't know whether you described this as a side project or a side hustle or just something that you do in your spare time, or it's or as part of your your day-to-day week. But I was really interested to to note the Operation Encounter project that you do, taking young people and schools, organizations, and teams through a don't know how to describe it, I suppose an outdoor adventurous military experience.

SPEAKER_03 56:53

Yeah, so this is this is very interesting, and it's a great passion of mine, although I'm not involved on a day-to-day basis due to other work pressures. But this was a seed of an idea I had when I left the military full-time, and it coincided with an increase in spotlight on the military and an understanding of what the military do, which was accelerated by people like Ross Kev going out to Afghanistan and embedding themselves with units and reporting back in a very candid way, and then a number of series of programs and things on TV which all had a military flavour to them. I was thinking to myself, is there a way of giving non-military people access to some of this experience and to some of this expertise around leadership and teamwork? And I then through my wife met somebody who's now my friend, Matthew Cooling, who is an ex-Role Navy officer, ex-pilot, and have been working in the outdoor education space for about 10 years, doing things like running Duke of Edinburgh expeditions for schools. And we were discussing this idea, and we said, actually, there's there's probably something here we can do. And to cut a long story short, we we built this business called Operation Encounter based in Marlowe, just west of London, and we now run outdoor adventurous activities and military experiences for schools, sports teams, and corporate groups. This is a fantastic organization that runs a program every summer for young people who are leaving school, and the idea is to broaden their horizons, connect them socially, and provide them with life experiences to help prepare them for the world of work. So it's a four-week program. We are a partner for them for week one, and therefore we run a week of adventurous outdoor activities for these young people, normally 17-18 years old. And for many of them, they've never been outside the place where they live, whether it's London or further afield, and they've never experienced being in an outdoor environment, living in a tent, going over an obstacle course, or creating a raft. And it's uh it genuinely is a life-changing experience for them, and they make friends, they try new things, they scare themselves, and it's become a hugely rewarding experience to be part of. Last year we had about two and a half thousand young people come to us for an experience, and that included the NCS Trust, but also a number of schools, a number of sports teams like Reading Football Club and their youth team. And we found this great interest in doing outdoor adventurous activities, which has always been there in the market, but doing it with ex-military and experienced adventurous training instructors who live and breathe the military values. So there's this great blend of the traditional activities that they may have undertaken for many years as an organization, but they're doing it in a slightly different way with a slightly different emphasis, which is seen in a very positive light. And we're getting great feedback from that. This year is clearly going to be challenging, so there's no um there's no program running this summer, which has produced some tests for us, but we're already looking at next summer and agreeing a contract with the trust and with a number of schools for summer 2021. So we're looking ahead, staying positive, we're adapting our business as best we can, and hopefully it will be expanding and growing as the NCS Trust expands. And that is very much their intention that they'll give access to this experience over the summer to more and more young people to help them prepare for the world of work.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:55

Great. Well, as you mentioned, I'm I'm sure very challenging, very challenging for any business based around outdoor events and and that type of thing at the moment. But sounds like an incredibly valuable and positive thing for young people to go through, and very interesting as well that sports clubs like Reading Football are investing in it as well. And you know, I I note that that the the project aims to build you know leadership and communication skills and confidence and resilience, all of those things that you mentioned before. Um, just to finish, this is the the question that I tend to finish with on all of the podcasts and be really interesting to get your angle and opinion on it. Obviously, there's no right answer, but the I suppose the bias or the angle that people bring to it is always the interesting bit. But what does a psychologically informed environment mean to you?

SPEAKER_03 1:01:49

So to be a psychological psychologically informed environment is almost like speaking another language, and by that I mean at an individual level, I think it's observing others and being alert and tuning into their behavior as well as your own behavior. So, really, it's about emotional intelligence, and therefore it's about what's not being said as well as what's being said, and almost what's driving people's behaviour behind their eyes. So it's understanding those deeper meanings or the things that aren't said, and I think in a team context, it's about using that insight to influence and shape team dynamics and therefore team performance. So it's this I think it's a bit like, as I said, reading and speaking another language that sits below the surface, it's less obvious and it passes many people by, but tuning into that and recognising how you can understand it and use it to your advantage and help other people to understand it, I think that's that's very powerful. And if you're working in an environment where a lot of people are able to do that to tune into and understand that language, I think that's where you can really benefit from the insights that come from it.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

I've just written down observation, intuition, and empathy. It sounds like your view of a psychologically informed environment is very much a it's almost a process. It's a process of tuning into others, being emotionally intelligent, and then using that rich information to then decide how best this team needs to be put together in order for it to perform well and and to work well with each other.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:36

Yeah, absolutely. And I think just to illustrate that point, it's a bit like working with a leadership team with which we do a lot and looking at the processes the team use and how they communicate and how often they communicate, and the sort of harder aspects of that team. But actually, it's it's really about sitting in, for example, a team meeting and observing the individuals in that meeting and how they contribute, who speaks first, who doesn't speak at all, and it's tuning into that less obvious environment or the aspects of the environment that are less obvious. So it is the subtlety, as I say, the things that aren't being said to help you to understand what's actually happening in that environment.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:20

Sounds like you spend a lot of your life in a kind of rich and Richard Attenborough-esque state, observing how people act and talk.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:28

Yeah, absolutely. And I'm fascinated by I've already scratched the tip of the iceberg, but I found it fascinating around what you can tell from body language, and if you start to overlay team dynamics with individual personality profiles, with body language and life experiences and all sorts of other factors, I just find it fascinating how uh rich and complex people's behaviour is.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:55

Great. Well, I'm sure that's well very useful thing to be enthusiastic enthusiastic enthusiastic, enthusiastic about what you're in. Well, look, Richard, thanks so much for for joining the the podcast. There was an enormous amount there to take away and to reflect upon. Where do people need to go if they want to find out more about what you're doing? Where can they where can they get in contact with you?

SPEAKER_03 1:05:24

So I'm very active on LinkedIn. So my profile has the key components that you mentioned in terms of the different organizations. Um, from a leadership consulting perspective, the best website is hanoversearch.com. And on there, there is a leadership solutions page which relates specifically to our work around leadership development and teams. And then in relation to Operation Encounter, the website is operationencounter.com. And again, that's got some more information and insights into the work that we do with young. People with sports teams and the corporate groups as well.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:04

Great. Well, as always, I'll leave all of those links in the description of the podcast so it's easy for people to find. Thank you so much, Richard. That was a really, really interesting, fascinating conversation, particularly the the delving into the world of the military, which is one, as I've mentioned, so alien to myself and lots of others. So really fascinating to hear more about that and how that some of those elements apply to different environments. So thanks again for uh for coming on and uh the best of luck with uh navigating the the rest of this uncertain time.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:40

Thank you very much, Pete, and thank you very much for the invitation to be part of this conversation as well. I've really enjoyed it.

Full time reflection

SPEAKER_02 1:06:48

Hi again. If you're still there, thanks for listening to another episode of Slice a Pie with me. This was a real bumper episode. I normally cut these down to around 45 to 50 minutes of interview, but with this one I just couldn't bring myself to chop anything out. If you're a regular civilian like me, you might have been equally fascinated with Richard's insights about the military and how it produces leaders and well-oiled teams. So, where do you start reflecting on that conversation? We talked about leadership styles and different contexts, military insights applied to sport and business, psychometric profiling tools. Richard also offered up my favourite encapsulation of Covid so far with his one-liner from Military Tours: The Days Are Long and the Weeks Are Short. I think one of my biggest takeaways was reappraising a pre-existing misconception I had about leadership and teams in the military. And in fact, Richard mentioned that this is one of the biggest misconceptions that he experiences from others. And that is the misconception that leadership in the military is only directive, or in inverted commas telling people what to do. He mentioned that this is generally the case in high-pressure situations when immediate compliance is required. But collaborative leadership is actually a huge part of the day-to-day process. Everyone is polled on how to solve the problem, and therefore everyone feels invested in the solution that the leader decides. When we go on to talk about how these different sides of our personality can manifest in leadership, it reminded me of a workshop I did with Mindflick at Staffordshire University's Performance Psychology Conference a few years ago. The Mindflick trainer Tim Pitt took us through their psychometric tool Spotlight, and I learned how personality preferences can change depending on the context. I, for example, am generally very creative and open, but have the capacity to be quite curt and businesslike when deadlines approach. For example, a pitch that needs to go out the door within the hour. As Richard mentions, where psychometrics often go wrong is when they are used to categorize people into neat boxes. But when they are used as the starting point for a conversation, then we can use this self-awareness about our preferences in order to improve our performance in certain contexts. For me, knowing that the pressure of a deadline brings out my curt, business-like side, I can recognise these natural urges in the moment and modify them in order to get the work completed, but not at the expense of a relationship with a colleague. I also loved Richard's soundbite, leadership isn't just about technical ability, it's about character and injecting some kind of personality in how you lead other people. And there's no right or wrong way to do that. This is a great reminder that reading books about leadership or listening to podcasts like this is all well and good, but after knowledge is gained, craft skills are developed, the final piece of the jigsaw is us. Being our authentic selves and how we use all of this information to lead and work with others. So on that existential note, I'll leave it there for this episode. Lots more great conversations to come in series 2, so look out for the next episode when it's out. That's it for me. Thanks again for listening, and until next time, have a good one.