May 7, 2025 • 35 mins
Claire Pedrick and Cath Bishop discuss Cath's journey from Olympic rowing to coaching and authoring "The Long Win." They explore the role of relationships in high performance, the need for a mindset shift in organisations, and rowing metaphors that apply to teamwork and leadership. The conversation emphasises sensing, rhythm, and unlocking potential within teams to achieve greater success.
Takeaways:
- Redefining Success: Traditional definitions of success can be limiting.
- Relationships Matter: Strong relationships are essential in sports and professional settings.
- Mindset and Behavior: These factors significantly impact performance.
- Potential in Organisations: Organisations often overlook the importance of potential.
- Coaching for Potential: Coaching should focus on unlocking potential in individuals and teams.
- Sensing and Adapting: Being attuned to the environment is crucial for teamwork.
- Quality Over Quantity: The quality of connections is more valuable than the number of connections.
- Rhythm and Teamwork: A team's rhythm can boost performance.
- Coaching Conversations: These often occur in informal settings.
- Leadership and Exploration: Effective leadership involves a commitment to exploring possibilities.
Sound Bites:
- "What do we think matters?"
- "We need to invest in relationships."
- "The team is not a task."
- "It's about unlocking potential."
- "The rhythm is key in teamwork."
- "We need to sense the environment."
More info
Cath’s Book: The Long Win
Cath’s Website: www.cathbishop.com or www.longwin.com
The Inside Out Culture Podcast
Contact Claire by emailing info@3dcoaching.com or checking out her 3D Coaching Supervision Community
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If you’d like to find out more about 3D Coaching, you can get all our new ideas and offers in our weekly email.
Coming Up:
- Inclusion and Difference in 1-1s
- Play and Plasticine in Coaching with Abbi Buszard
Keywords
coaching, leadership, teamwork, performance, relationships, success, mindset, potential, rowing, culture
We love having a variety of guests join us! Please remember that inviting someone to participate does not mean we necessarily endorse their views or opinions. We believe in open conversation and sharing different perspectives.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and today I'm in conversation with Cath Bishop, who I'vebeen told to talk to by so many guests.
Alice Sheldon, Mike Porteous, Alison Jones.
They've all said, have you spoken to Cath Bishop?
So Cath, welcome to The Coaching Inn.
(00:36):
Hi, great to be here and both boosted and nervous by everyone else saying I should behere.
Yes, adulation from all of your fandom.
Yeah, or just intrigue that I might be particularly entertaining or something.
There you are.
So you've written a book, Cath, called The Long Win.
(00:59):
And you're a coach.
And have done all sorts of other interesting things.
So tell us a bit about your journey to get you to the point of writing the book.
Hmm.
Well, the book is, I suppose, a huge reflection point on different strands of life,different intense decades, if you like, in different fields.
(01:25):
So first of all, rowing, Olympic rower, 10 years, three Olympic Games.
And in that space, learning about high performance, what it really means close up whensometimes environments call themselves a high performance environment, but they're
potentially not always doing
things that might help you.
Obviously experiencing coaching in a very intense way on a daily basis and realising thedifference it makes when coaches do things in different ways drastically different impact
(01:58):
that can have.
So, you know, that's the sort of first interaction with coaches where I'm not the coach,but I'm being coached and I'm learning to manage a coach and I need coaching.
And in a way, I'm having to coach myself a lot through that as well.
Then I went into a very different field as a diplomat.
So for 12 years worked for the Foreign Office, which was going back to areas that I'd beeninterested in through my studies of languages, international politics and a real passion
(02:27):
area.
And...
In that world, I got to experience a world that's very relationship based, that is,nothing moves unless it can move through a relationship.
That is the core business of diplomacy.
And so that really fascinated me.
And I actually realized that both those worlds, although they seem really different, wereally invest and think about relationships very deeply in teams, in sport, in the world
(02:55):
of negotiation of
diplomatic alliances, collaborations, et cetera.
And so from those two, I became very interested in the world of leadership culture, teams,what helps us under pressure, what gets in the way, how we build relationships, how we
don't.
And that has taken me into my current guise, as it were, as a coach and writing The LongWin, which is a lot of reflections that came out of those two careers and thinking, trying
(03:22):
to work with leaders and organizations to help them to think differently about
how people tick, how we build teams, what it really means to perform under pressure and tobring a very human-centered lens to that.
And so the book looks in particular through the lens of how we frame success.
So in sport, is it just about medals?
In business, is it just the quarterly results?
(03:43):
In education, is it just our grades?
And yeah, in any field really, what do we think matters?
And sometimes are we valuing
the stuff that has a kind of longer lasting success or have we kind of lost our way a bit.
So that really drove me in the book that in all these different worlds I'd been in, I hadseen definitions of success hold people back from being successful.
(04:11):
How interesting.
I love how so many people's careers are built on a little bit of iteration and promotionor development in a particular zone.
And you've come from two really different zones.
Hmm.
And I hadn't expected, I had thought right now I'm getting out of that very intense sportsworld.
(04:34):
You know, I'm going in a totally different direction.
But of course, when I'm going from one relationship centred world to another relationshipcentred world, and the thing I valued about both of those was that we did take that very
seriously.
There's no way we would neglect to build relationships, particularly by the end of thesports experience that I had where things were becoming more informed about psychology and
(04:56):
culture and environment and relationships.
There's no way you would expect to perform without that.
And similarly in the diplomatic world, that is our core business.
And so when we're discussing what we're doing this week, we're discussing whichrelationships we're building, investing in, shaping, nurturing, trying to shift.
And so I really appreciated that experience.
Now, when I go into a lot of organizations, they tell me their relationship base too, butI don't see it in that way.
(05:24):
And I know what it can look like.
And those words were by no means perfect, but there was a much more serious attention andfocus and priority given to relationships.
And I think that's what I find in my present work and whether it's team coaching orindividual coaching.
this sense of usually it's what's going on the relationship side, because that's causingthe issues or that's where the opportunity to unlock something sits.
(05:52):
so yeah, although they were very different, actually, they both gave me a huge sort ofapprenticeship and different perspectives on how you invest in, yeah, and you know, you
have that as the foundation of everything really, connections, the quality of connections,not just the quantity, the depth.
the type of those connections.
(06:15):
So interesting, isn't it?
I was talking to somebody the other day who comes from the sporting world and they weresaying, I need to train as a team coach.
And I said, I think you already did.
Hmm, yeah, yeah.
I mean, a lot of the work, for example, when we had psychologist input, I think peoplesometimes from the outside think psychologists are sort of psyching us up or something.
(06:40):
That's a very small part.
If at all any part of what they do, because really that's the easy bit.
And if you're not psyched up about Olympic finals, you know, you're in the wrong place.
What they often are doing is...
helping facilitating conversations between extremely strong minded people with a hugepassion and a very clear aim and strong opinions about how to get there.
(07:04):
They're helping those conversations.
And the most skillful coaches that I had were also able to navigate, create space, to havethe conversation about the unspoken things.
Because if you don't, those are the things that trip you up on race day.
And so, yeah, absolutely.
We, you know, I think we, we've really spent time developing that and almost you arelooking out for people when you're put into your next crew, you know, you're looking for
(07:31):
which coach can help us when we've got unstuck, you know, who in the crew is the personwho's going to help us have this conversation without people flying off the handle?
How do we do that?
And often that's where the psychologist is also the facilitator of a difficultconversation.
Then, you know, there's often, though, a massive commitment to
honesty, we know we've got to sit down and discuss something and we're just not going tolet it fester because it could trip us up and no one wants after the race to wish you'd
(07:56):
had a conversation you knew you should have had.
everything you've just said transfers straight over into the workplace, doesn't it?
It's just the stakes are lower, higher, different.
I think sometimes the immediacy of whether it's going to trip you up isn't there.
So I think in the sports world, we have this sense that, you know, I want to have doneeverything.
(08:17):
I don't want to spot something I could have improved after the race day, as it were.
And even that's not necessarily waiting to the Olympics.
It's before that.
But I think that's a helpful impetus to go, do you know what?
I'd rather have the feedback because it might help me make my boat go faster than not.
And in fact, if I don't tackle this issue, if I don't listen to the feedback or seekfeedback,
(08:37):
there's a danger that I'm then not finding out all the ways in which I could be at mybest.
So I think we're better at balancing the nervousness of having the conversation withgoing, do you know what, I don't want to the risk of not having it.
And I think somehow we don't have, I think we put things off in the organisational worldbecause there isn't a sense of, you know, it could all come out on this moment of extreme
(08:58):
pressure because the pressure is kind of always there on and off.
There's not such an obvious moment when you get tested.
Or there is going to be an obvious moment, but you just don't know when that is, when thecrisis comes or when the board meeting comes or whenever it is.
And then you wish you'd had the conversation, but you didn't kind of quite know that wascoming.
so therefore you're like, well, maybe I can get by without having it.
(09:21):
There's a bit more of that procrastination, I think.
high stakes
Hmm, yeah.
Well, that's the, I guess that's the other question, isn't it?
What, what matters most?
What's the sort of commitment?
Do I believe the, can get by without having the conversation?
And I think one of the other things I noticed from a sports environment is that althoughwe are a very measurement focused environment, yeah, who comes first, you know, who jumps
(09:48):
highest, who runs fastest, et cetera, we are also very willing and, and no, we have toinvest in the things that aren't so easy to measure.
So in order to be at my best and go as fast as I possibly can at the World Championshipsor Olympics, I'm to get as fit as I can and improve my technique and lift as many weights
as I can or all these measurable things.
(10:09):
But I also know that I have to develop my mindset.
Absolutely vital.
I need relationships.
I need to have a resilience that means under pressure, I can manage and adapt to what getsthrown at me.
And those things don't happen when you walk into an Olympic village.
They happen on a cold, wet, windy day and whenever it is, December, February, March.
(10:31):
And so I know that's part of today's work.
And yeah, it's tricky to measure mindset, but can you imagine an Olympic athlete saying,well, I can't put it in spreadsheet, I'm not gonna bother about it.
Or it's a bit difficult talking about it, therefore I'm not.
But that is actually what happens in the workplace.
And I find a lot of my work is really trying to uncover, expose, just bring onto thesurface the frames of mind and
(10:56):
the patterns of thinking that are taking us in a certain direction as leaders or leadingteams.
And we've got to uncover those.
It's not just what do I do differently.
It's often, how do I have a different perspective on what it means to lead a team?
Because that in itself will then lead me to do some different things.
So I do think that kind of mindset piece, the behaviors piece, those are ones that we takevery seriously in the Olympic world because we know they affect performance.
(11:23):
So don't have to convince me I've got to...
measure it in a particular way.
Of course we will try and make sure we are showing how we're progressing and we'll look atthat qualitatively.
But somehow in the workplace we go well I can't see it in the bottom line or I can't putit in a KPI and therefore it drops off, which is madness.
So there's something about blowing potential apart in organisations really to open up allkinds of opportunity I'm hearing.
(11:52):
Yeah, I mean, is it blowing potential apart or is it just taking potential seriously?
You know, blowing potential apart sounds a bit, it sounds very explosive.
And I think it's, we're paying lip service to it.
We're quite superficial about it.
And in my mind, that also makes no sense in a world where nobody can afford any more justto hire more people to get growth.
(12:14):
And yet growth seems to often be the aim.
So surely, and we can't really work longer hours to get growth because we're alreadyworking longer hours than is sensible.
And that is likely to be therefore damaging our performance.
And so the obvious way to go is to grow people who they are, develop them, understandthem, unlock them and get that potential out.
(12:40):
And I don't think that should be seen as controversial or a luxury or an additional thing.
Mm-hmm.
And yet it is.
And so therefore, if we think of it like that, then we're not really taking it seriously,are we?
We don't see that potential or we just are ignoring it.
We're actually suppressing it, holding it back if we're just trying to get people to domore things rather than getting to do it in a different way, rather than to bring them
(13:07):
together to create something, collaborate in a way that both will grow and learn from.
And so...
don't think we even begin to take potential seriously.
Is that anyone's objective?
Unlock the potential in my team this year.
Sadly, not always, and I wish it was.
unlock the potential in my team this year as long as I don't have to change.
(13:32):
And they might be a bit resistant.
Yeah.
And I guess one of the things that, you know, to me, that's a real leadership objective,right?
There's no right and wrong.
It's not binary.
You're going to have to explore.
You're to have to use relationships because your team, they're going to need to be a hugepart of you unlocking them.
And again, when we're in this space, I think we need a different mindset than when we'reproblem solving the task and finishing the project and getting the solution to something.
(13:59):
Yeah, now with my team, I'm not fixing them, finishing them, completing them, doing them,tasking them.
Yeah, the team is not a task, is a phrase I often find myself saying, as a means of tryingto shift us into a different mindset.
Yeah, unlocking, I have no idea what that means at this point.
Well, I've probably got some ideas with my team, but that to me is opening up apossibility.
(14:22):
And that's the way we actually grow, both in who we are, but also the company gets itsgrowth.
that's its best option usually when we've exhausted working harder, which we well longpast doing.
And so I think, you know, that people are afraid of doing something, I don't know if I canmeasure if I've done it or not.
And then somehow we don't put that as our objective, but that has to be the only seriousobjective in town.
(14:48):
If we are a leader and we can't do more ourselves, so we're working through others, well,that then means we've got to explore what that means.
and what could the possibilities be?
Or we're actually shutting off possibilities.
And that doesn't make sense.
Again, in the sports world, we're willing to say, what else could I do to go faster?
(15:09):
Because it's not another round of the gym.
Yeah, at the top level, we're all training, whatever it is, for us as rowers three times aday, basically every day.
So another round of the gym, that is not the answer.
It's going to injure me.
I'm already on the edge of physically what I can do.
And that, again, is a helpful impetus.
that says, I've got to do something differently.
The quality of what I do has to improve.
(15:29):
And that quickly then takes us on to mindset, behaviors, connections, interactions.
And that pushes more immediate because there's that sense of it'd be mindless.
mean, nobody pulls an all-nighter, you know, as an Olympic athlete.
So, you know, it's so clearly damaging to the quality of what we want to do.
(15:49):
But again, we don't have that emphasis on quality, I think, as much.
And so that's a different mindset, isn't it?
How do I increase the quality of what I do today rather than how do I just get through myto-do list?
And I think often in coaching, that is what we're trying to do is create a space.
Yeah, people come to us, they know, they don't want us to help them to do more.
Yeah, they've got, they've had decades of productivity tools that have failed to do that.
(16:11):
So that is clearly not the answer.
What we try and unlock, isn't it, is different thinking patterns.
What could you do differently as a leader to unlock people's potential?
What could...
what could those different conversations be?
And maybe to help them explore that.
And there probably aren't many places where they can do that outside of coachingconversation because it's probably not the norm yet to discuss that in most organizations.
(16:38):
because it's not safe enough.
Yad, it's not measurable enough, it's not clear enough.
How do I know if they're unlocking the potential better than that person and I've got tobe able to compare it.
You know, it's this, for me again, this finite versus a slightly more infinite objective.
So it's not gonna just gonna take me three months.
Well, it's your constant objective when you're leading a team or leading an organization.
(17:02):
So I think there's something there.
like, you know, we tick so many things off the way we organize our calendars and our to-dolists.
And we want to sort of, you know,
to apply that to the team and then we get in a mess.
So what were the biggest learnings as you were writing the book, Cath?
well, the book took quite a few years to write because I think I was making sense of bothof those careers that been very intense.
(17:30):
And I was trying to work through what were the most useful examples and actually what wasthe thread and, you know, just really testing how does this apply and then relating it to
the work that I was doing at the time now in the leadership and culture space.
So the actual writing, think, is such a valuable tool, as you know, for testing yourtheories and taking them to the next point.
(17:57):
So what?
So why does this matter?
So why am I writing about this?
And how do I make it even clearer?
And how would other people do it?
And what about if they try it and it doesn't work?
And you really test your thinking from lots of different angles.
So I think it deepened my understanding and learning from those processes.
and made me think about the applicability to others and just how to make that clearer, howto make my own thinking clearer, constantly testing out in the work I was doing because I
(18:32):
was working as a leadership and culture coach at that point.
So it's reinforcing thinking, it's challenging your thinking.
Again, I always think writing is just very useful at stretching you.
And, you know, what the challenges that I'm hearing or things that I'm finding difficultto do with groups, have I got something wrong there?
(18:54):
Let me go back and understand more deeply what else was going on in that environment thatI've forgotten about or haven't taken account of.
So I think when you're both writing and practicing and coaching, then you've, you know,you're constantly bringing one into the other and testing it.
And yes, so writing.
was a huge way of making sense for myself personally of those very intense experiences andthe things I needed to write about that they didn't need to go in the book, but I needed
(19:21):
to kind of make sense of them.
And I was also then thinking, which are the stories that are really helpful?
And then how can I use those?
How am I bringing them into my talks and coaching?
So yeah, it deepens, doesn't it?
It's deep thinking.
Yeah, I have a rowing question.
(19:42):
Ooh.
Yep.
Go for it.
So I was in dialogue with someone who rows and they said, sorry it's a little bit of atangent, is that okay?
But I can't, it's jumping up and down and shouting.
They said that there was a lot of learning from being in a boat as a rower that we canbring into learning about partnership in conversations to do with balance and all of those
(20:13):
things.
Yeah, so I think, yes, I absolutely think rowing is a lovely metaphor for teams in a waythat some other sports, team sports aren't as strong.
I'm obviously hugely biased in this, clearly, but I think what I've experienced both as acoach and as a rower makes me continue to feel confident in that line of thinking.
(20:41):
And there are quite a different angles almost that I'm constantly unpeeling, to be honest.
I still do work.
Sometimes I work at the Judge Business School and programs, sometimes in the classroom asit were, but sometimes we actually go into a rowing tank, which is a sort of indoor place
you learn to row where you're not out in the river being blown around, but you can put anoar in the water.
And that's quite a useful lab for thinking about rowing as a metaphor.
(21:03):
And we then sort of pull it apart.
So there are a couple of things to bring out there.
One.
One, think there are three levels.
I still row, so I also constantly thinking about this.
There are three levels required when you're rowing that I think are useful parallel,because you've got to have all working.
One is you're thinking about what you're doing, your best effort, your best technique,bringing, know, doing your job as well as you can.
(21:26):
But that is only really useful if you've got the second level of awareness, which is howit's linking with everyone else.
So one of the things about effort in a rowing boat is that it's not
if it's not put in together, you're actually working against each other.
I think that's quite an interesting metaphor to put into the working world.
It's not just how hard you're trying, it's whether actually the work you're doing, youknow, does it go against someone else or duplicate or rub up against something?
(21:54):
Is it actually helping us get towards our collective goal?
And then there's the third level of the environment you're in, the water, the weather,unpredictable.
And you need to be alert to that and adapting to that.
And when you're in a rowing boat, you're very, obviously you want to be in that flow stateof being very immersed and very present, but you need to always be mindful of those three
(22:19):
levels.
And I think that's quite useful when you're in a work environment.
and certainly you get sucked into one level as you do in the rowing boat.
And if you're really facing on an element of your technique and the coach is reallywanting you to change something, you get so immersed in that.
then you stop connecting with the timing and what others are doing and stop noticingwhat's changing in the environment.
(22:40):
Equally, if you're suddenly going, look, the wind direction changed and blah, blah, youlose sight of what you're doing.
So you're constantly, I don't know, combining, moving up and down those levels.
And I think that's a nice metaphor that you wouldn't get in an indoor sport sort of muchor a sport where perhaps weather and you're on terra firma, whereas we're on the water and
(23:01):
that.
creates an alertness, yeah, it's not predictable.
It's unstable all the time and changing all the time.
And it's a force of its own that you can't fight, you have to work with it.
I then think there are kind of aspects of what are key to rowing.
You mentioned one of those, balance is really key, rhythm is really key andinterdependence is really key.
(23:25):
Perhaps those are sort of three lovely themes to dive into that I think are really, reallyimportant.
within teams to have this sense it's never just who's technically perfect, who goesfastest.
You need this other factor that is often around rhythm and it's what enables you tosustain huge effort.
(23:46):
It's what makes it enjoyable actually feeling that rhythm which is everybody playing theirrole, sensing each other, adjusting all the time, you know really getting the
synchronicity going and you know when you're playing back
and thinking about a great race, there'll always be a really strong rhythm element.
And you often describe that.
(24:06):
There'll be things that you can pinpoint, how many strokes per minute and stroke lengthsand some timing things that we can measure.
But there'll always be this rhythm factor of how did it feel?
And we have to describe that and we'll all use slightly different language, but we'll thenshare and merge that language to create a picture that means we're more likely to be able
to recreate it.
(24:27):
And if we're in a place where we haven't got rhythm,
so we can all visualize it and work together towards it again.
You often start to create your own language of, know, the rhythm of one crew is differentfrom the rhythm of another crew.
So I think that's a lovely theme that comes out in rowing.
I actually think most sports have it, the rhythm of golf swing, you know, the rhythm of atennis stroke, et cetera.
(24:47):
But of course, this is in a team context.
It's a shared rhythm that requires everybody to be contributing to all the time.
And so then the interdependence part is really important that we can't go anywhere on ourown and we can't do more than our seats worth of effort, however good we are.
(25:11):
Again, if I'm really, really feeling lots of energy in the middle of race, it's no good mejust putting in more, yet it's got to be connected with others or I'm actually going
against someone else.
and we are not physically tied, our oars aren't tied, our seats aren't tied and yet we'vegot to move together and so you start to develop what happens between us in the boat is
(25:34):
really important what's transmitted across between the seats we're constantly checking howdoes it feel in the front of the boat, the middle of the boat, the back of the boat or it
feels different here why does it feel different what isn't getting transmitted so we'realways sort of getting that sense
And the fact is we cannot go anywhere without somebody.
(25:54):
If you're a boat of four, we need four people.
Doesn't matter if one of them isn't feeling well that day.
we need them.
And so that sense of interdependence, I think is a lovely feeling.
That means, you know, and you can't turf someone out because actually a lot of games on apitch, you might be fine with one of not being there.
I mean, often even with football, you know, when they go a man down, actually the team canpull together better.
(26:19):
But that's not like, in rowing, we can't chuck people off and people can't get out.
And so we have to get the best out of everyone.
And that means whatever they're bringing in that moment, not what you wish they couldbring, but actually what they've got in that moment.
And I think that's a really lovely thing.
And then of course, yeah, balance is actually what we're aware of most.
And when you're watching rowing, you can't always see that.
(26:44):
But balance is, I often say, it's like,
our oars are a tight rope walker's pole that are cut in half and we've got like half oneach side.
That's how together we have to be to get the balance and that's really critical because ifwe're not balanced in between the effort, like if people think it's just about the effort
but the boat goes fast for two reasons.
(27:05):
One, the effort of the oar through the water.
The other is letting the boat run in between the strokes and if you stop the boat becauseit's not balanced because you're not moving together then you're slowing yourselves down.
and a smaller crew putting less effort in may well go past you.
That's the beauty is sometimes unpredictable who's going to win because it's what you doin your ore isn't in the water that is also impacting on boat speed.
(27:30):
And I think that analogy is lovely.
It's not just how hard you're working the work you do, but when you're not doing yourthing, are you helping others or are getting in their way?
So yeah, I think there are so many, but those are some really key ones.
I think just give us a different analogy.
to then bring back into our workspace.
(27:50):
That's amazing because you're actually also describing there what happens in one-on-onecoaching, which is between what the coach, in the spaces between what the coach is saying
or doing, they can slow down the work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
you just beautifully described.
Actually, the movement happens in the in-between.
(28:12):
Yeah, yeah, in between people.
I mean, I often think that about the team construct.
Everyone would sort of spend so much time defining the, you know, each individual role,but not nearly enough time about what's happening between people.
And that's what you get for being in a team.
That's how you're going to be greater than the sum of your parts.
(28:33):
And I think we do think about that in a sports content.
We've got to optimize everything we've got.
I don't see that discussion of what are the energy levels, the quality of communication,the sort of overlap or duplication or a gap between people.
(28:54):
So you're right, I think we're in that between space where there's still so much potentialto unlock.
I heard you talking about feeling it.
Hmm
So it feels like there was something there about sensing and there was also somethingabout physically feeling it.
(29:21):
So we have to sense the boat running through the water and sense the water around us andsense each other moving.
We've got to move exactly in unison, but our seats aren't tied.
So we have to sense that.
You can only see the person in front of you.
And if you're in a boat of eight, or however many you are, often you can't, you certainlycan't see anyone behind you.
(29:44):
And you often can't see more than one person in front in terms of how they're moving.
So you've got to sense that.
But overall you're trying to sense.
boat to the water so again you can't muscle the water or you go slowly and so sensing howthe boat goes through that's one of things I love it's one of the things that means when I
am rowing I'm completely immersed in it and can't worry about other things on land becauseI'm just sensing that all the time and then adjusting to that and yeah that's a it's a
(30:15):
feeling and thinking mostly feeling and it's why you can't you can't learn rowing
through numbers, but I don't think you can learn anything through numbers, can you?
That would apply very much to something like music as well.
It's not the notes you play, it's the rhythm, it's the of the feeling that you create.
Yeah, and same at work, isn't it?
I think when you go home at night, you don't talk about what you did on your to-do list.
(30:38):
You go about, well, this meeting made me feel valued, undermined.
You know, it was exciting.
I didn't feel safe in it.
That's actually the experience we're having all the time.
But again, often it's not the thing that's really talked about in the workplace.
But it is something in the coaching sense, in the coaching place we are helping people tapinto, become more aware of, feel more confident and competent to connect with that.
(31:08):
interesting.
I could talk to you forever.
I could probably unpeel the rowing metaphor for a few more hours, but we've probably gotthe key points out.
Yeah, but that this guy said, he said, if you want, if people want to learn how to bebetter one to one coaches, learning is it pairs you call it when it's two people in the
(31:30):
boat?
Because you can tip, he said you can tip the boat over if you don't get it right.
Yeah, I mean that's what I did in two of my three Olympics was a pair.
So there's two people with one or either side.
you literally, if one of you is rowing, you're going round in circles.
You have an argument, you can't get back to the deck unless you're working together.
(31:51):
And again, you've got that tightrope walker's pole across the two of you.
So you're sensing that all the time.
And if you're not working together, you're going sideways.
So that's my favorite boat, the Cocktailers pair.
Yeah, and you get most feedback probably because there's the two of you and you're havingto communicate, create your own language.
(32:14):
yeah, be really aware.
I think that's the thing.
You have to be switched on.
You can't be on automatic pilot.
And that's what I think we're trying to bring you to the workplace.
And of course, if people are overloaded and stressed and too much going on, you sort ofswitch into this automatic pilot and then you start noticing things and sensing things and
then there's no rhythm.
And we're actually not making the boat go very far.
(32:36):
And that's true in the workplace and it's also true in coaching, isn't it?
Everything you just said about sensing and rhythm and flow and...
it's the exhausting thing about coaching, isn't it?
In a lovely way.
You can't be half there.
And you actually managing those different levels of thinking, really listening, a littlebit thinking, where do I go next?
(33:01):
But I just can't go too much there because I just need to be hearing and listening andthen...
giving time to reflect and probably actually keeping back my desire to kind of lead ussomewhere and let that person lead you.
So, yeah.
and sensing and I'm going that your your image of the of the knot rowing bit the inbetween strokes bit is going to stay with me.
(33:29):
Thank you.
So how do people find out about your book?
Yeah, so The Long Win, it is available anywhere you normally buy books published byPractical Inspiration Publishing, but anywhere you can find it, The Long Win.
And I actually have a website with more information about the topics, about stories andthings linked to it, which is called thelongwin.com.
(33:53):
And there's more information about me as a speaker on cathbishop.com.
And I also host a...
podcast around culture in the workplace now, which has been a new venture over the lastyear or so with Colin Ellis, which is called the Inside Out Culture podcast.
There you are lovely listeners, all sorts of things to listen out for.
(34:17):
Thank you, Cath Bishop, for coming to The Coaching Inn.
It was my pleasure.
And I'm going to be thinking about tightrope walks and oars and in-betweeny things now.
So thank you very much.
Thank you everyone for listening.
Bye bye.
Hello and welcome to this week's edition of The Coaching Inn.
I'm your host, Claire Pedrick, and today I'm in conversation with Cath Bishop, who I'vebeen told to talk to by so many guests.
Alice Sheldon, Mike Porteous, Alison Jones.
They've all said, have you spoken to Cath Bishop?
So Cath, welcome to The Coaching Inn.
(00:36):
Hi, great to be here and both boosted and nervous by everyone else saying I should behere.
Yes, adulation from all of your fandom.
Yeah, or just intrigue that I might be particularly entertaining or something.
There you are.
So you've written a book, Cath, called The Long Win.
(00:59):
And you're a coach.
And have done all sorts of other interesting things.
So tell us a bit about your journey to get you to the point of writing the book.
Hmm.
Well, the book is, I suppose, a huge reflection point on different strands of life,different intense decades, if you like, in different fields.
(01:25):
So first of all, rowing, Olympic rower, 10 years, three Olympic Games.
And in that space, learning about high performance, what it really means close up whensometimes environments call themselves a high performance environment, but they're
potentially not always doing
things that might help you.
Obviously experiencing coaching in a very intense way on a daily basis and realising thedifference it makes when coaches do things in different ways drastically different impact
(01:58):
that can have.
So, you know, that's the sort of first interaction with coaches where I'm not the coach,but I'm being coached and I'm learning to manage a coach and I need coaching.
And in a way, I'm having to coach myself a lot through that as well.
Then I went into a very different field as a diplomat.
So for 12 years worked for the Foreign Office, which was going back to areas that I'd beeninterested in through my studies of languages, international politics and a real passion
(02:27):
area.
And...
In that world, I got to experience a world that's very relationship based, that is,nothing moves unless it can move through a relationship.
That is the core business of diplomacy.
And so that really fascinated me.
And I actually realized that both those worlds, although they seem really different, wereally invest and think about relationships very deeply in teams, in sport, in the world
(02:55):
of negotiation of
diplomatic alliances, collaborations, et cetera.
And so from those two, I became very interested in the world of leadership culture, teams,what helps us under pressure, what gets in the way, how we build relationships, how we
don't.
And that has taken me into my current guise, as it were, as a coach and writing The LongWin, which is a lot of reflections that came out of those two careers and thinking, trying
(03:22):
to work with leaders and organizations to help them to think differently about
how people tick, how we build teams, what it really means to perform under pressure and tobring a very human-centered lens to that.
And so the book looks in particular through the lens of how we frame success.
So in sport, is it just about medals?
In business, is it just the quarterly results?
(03:43):
In education, is it just our grades?
And yeah, in any field really, what do we think matters?
And sometimes are we valuing
the stuff that has a kind of longer lasting success or have we kind of lost our way a bit.
So that really drove me in the book that in all these different worlds I'd been in, I hadseen definitions of success hold people back from being successful.
(04:11):
How interesting.
I love how so many people's careers are built on a little bit of iteration and promotionor development in a particular zone.
And you've come from two really different zones.
Hmm.
And I hadn't expected, I had thought right now I'm getting out of that very intense sportsworld.
(04:34):
You know, I'm going in a totally different direction.
But of course, when I'm going from one relationship centred world to another relationshipcentred world, and the thing I valued about both of those was that we did take that very
seriously.
There's no way we would neglect to build relationships, particularly by the end of thesports experience that I had where things were becoming more informed about psychology and
(04:56):
culture and environment and relationships.
There's no way you would expect to perform without that.
And similarly in the diplomatic world, that is our core business.
And so when we're discussing what we're doing this week, we're discussing whichrelationships we're building, investing in, shaping, nurturing, trying to shift.
And so I really appreciated that experience.
Now, when I go into a lot of organizations, they tell me their relationship base too, butI don't see it in that way.
(05:24):
And I know what it can look like.
And those words were by no means perfect, but there was a much more serious attention andfocus and priority given to relationships.
And I think that's what I find in my present work and whether it's team coaching orindividual coaching.
this sense of usually it's what's going on the relationship side, because that's causingthe issues or that's where the opportunity to unlock something sits.
(05:52):
so yeah, although they were very different, actually, they both gave me a huge sort ofapprenticeship and different perspectives on how you invest in, yeah, and you know, you
have that as the foundation of everything really, connections, the quality of connections,not just the quantity, the depth.
the type of those connections.
(06:15):
So interesting, isn't it?
I was talking to somebody the other day who comes from the sporting world and they weresaying, I need to train as a team coach.
And I said, I think you already did.
Hmm, yeah, yeah.
I mean, a lot of the work, for example, when we had psychologist input, I think peoplesometimes from the outside think psychologists are sort of psyching us up or something.
(06:40):
That's a very small part.
If at all any part of what they do, because really that's the easy bit.
And if you're not psyched up about Olympic finals, you know, you're in the wrong place.
What they often are doing is...
helping facilitating conversations between extremely strong minded people with a hugepassion and a very clear aim and strong opinions about how to get there.
(07:04):
They're helping those conversations.
And the most skillful coaches that I had were also able to navigate, create space, to havethe conversation about the unspoken things.
Because if you don't, those are the things that trip you up on race day.
And so, yeah, absolutely.
We, you know, I think we, we've really spent time developing that and almost you arelooking out for people when you're put into your next crew, you know, you're looking for
(07:31):
which coach can help us when we've got unstuck, you know, who in the crew is the personwho's going to help us have this conversation without people flying off the handle?
How do we do that?
And often that's where the psychologist is also the facilitator of a difficultconversation.
Then, you know, there's often, though, a massive commitment to
honesty, we know we've got to sit down and discuss something and we're just not going tolet it fester because it could trip us up and no one wants after the race to wish you'd
(07:56):
had a conversation you knew you should have had.
everything you've just said transfers straight over into the workplace, doesn't it?
It's just the stakes are lower, higher, different.
I think sometimes the immediacy of whether it's going to trip you up isn't there.
So I think in the sports world, we have this sense that, you know, I want to have doneeverything.
(08:17):
I don't want to spot something I could have improved after the race day, as it were.
And even that's not necessarily waiting to the Olympics.
It's before that.
But I think that's a helpful impetus to go, do you know what?
I'd rather have the feedback because it might help me make my boat go faster than not.
And in fact, if I don't tackle this issue, if I don't listen to the feedback or seekfeedback,
(08:37):
there's a danger that I'm then not finding out all the ways in which I could be at mybest.
So I think we're better at balancing the nervousness of having the conversation withgoing, do you know what, I don't want to the risk of not having it.
And I think somehow we don't have, I think we put things off in the organisational worldbecause there isn't a sense of, you know, it could all come out on this moment of extreme
(08:58):
pressure because the pressure is kind of always there on and off.
There's not such an obvious moment when you get tested.
Or there is going to be an obvious moment, but you just don't know when that is, when thecrisis comes or when the board meeting comes or whenever it is.
And then you wish you'd had the conversation, but you didn't kind of quite know that wascoming.
so therefore you're like, well, maybe I can get by without having it.
(09:21):
There's a bit more of that procrastination, I think.
high stakes
Hmm, yeah.
Well, that's the, I guess that's the other question, isn't it?
What, what matters most?
What's the sort of commitment?
Do I believe the, can get by without having the conversation?
And I think one of the other things I noticed from a sports environment is that althoughwe are a very measurement focused environment, yeah, who comes first, you know, who jumps
(09:48):
highest, who runs fastest, et cetera, we are also very willing and, and no, we have toinvest in the things that aren't so easy to measure.
So in order to be at my best and go as fast as I possibly can at the World Championshipsor Olympics, I'm to get as fit as I can and improve my technique and lift as many weights
as I can or all these measurable things.
(10:09):
But I also know that I have to develop my mindset.
Absolutely vital.
I need relationships.
I need to have a resilience that means under pressure, I can manage and adapt to what getsthrown at me.
And those things don't happen when you walk into an Olympic village.
They happen on a cold, wet, windy day and whenever it is, December, February, March.
(10:31):
And so I know that's part of today's work.
And yeah, it's tricky to measure mindset, but can you imagine an Olympic athlete saying,well, I can't put it in spreadsheet, I'm not gonna bother about it.
Or it's a bit difficult talking about it, therefore I'm not.
But that is actually what happens in the workplace.
And I find a lot of my work is really trying to uncover, expose, just bring onto thesurface the frames of mind and
(10:56):
the patterns of thinking that are taking us in a certain direction as leaders or leadingteams.
And we've got to uncover those.
It's not just what do I do differently.
It's often, how do I have a different perspective on what it means to lead a team?
Because that in itself will then lead me to do some different things.
So I do think that kind of mindset piece, the behaviors piece, those are ones that we takevery seriously in the Olympic world because we know they affect performance.
(11:23):
So don't have to convince me I've got to...
measure it in a particular way.
Of course we will try and make sure we are showing how we're progressing and we'll look atthat qualitatively.
But somehow in the workplace we go well I can't see it in the bottom line or I can't putit in a KPI and therefore it drops off, which is madness.
So there's something about blowing potential apart in organisations really to open up allkinds of opportunity I'm hearing.
(11:52):
Yeah, I mean, is it blowing potential apart or is it just taking potential seriously?
You know, blowing potential apart sounds a bit, it sounds very explosive.
And I think it's, we're paying lip service to it.
We're quite superficial about it.
And in my mind, that also makes no sense in a world where nobody can afford any more justto hire more people to get growth.
(12:14):
And yet growth seems to often be the aim.
So surely, and we can't really work longer hours to get growth because we're alreadyworking longer hours than is sensible.
And that is likely to be therefore damaging our performance.
And so the obvious way to go is to grow people who they are, develop them, understandthem, unlock them and get that potential out.
(12:40):
And I don't think that should be seen as controversial or a luxury or an additional thing.
Mm-hmm.
And yet it is.
And so therefore, if we think of it like that, then we're not really taking it seriously,are we?
We don't see that potential or we just are ignoring it.
We're actually suppressing it, holding it back if we're just trying to get people to domore things rather than getting to do it in a different way, rather than to bring them
(13:07):
together to create something, collaborate in a way that both will grow and learn from.
And so...
don't think we even begin to take potential seriously.
Is that anyone's objective?
Unlock the potential in my team this year.
Sadly, not always, and I wish it was.
unlock the potential in my team this year as long as I don't have to change.
(13:32):
And they might be a bit resistant.
Yeah.
And I guess one of the things that, you know, to me, that's a real leadership objective,right?
There's no right and wrong.
It's not binary.
You're going to have to explore.
You're to have to use relationships because your team, they're going to need to be a hugepart of you unlocking them.
And again, when we're in this space, I think we need a different mindset than when we'reproblem solving the task and finishing the project and getting the solution to something.
(13:59):
Yeah, now with my team, I'm not fixing them, finishing them, completing them, doing them,tasking them.
Yeah, the team is not a task, is a phrase I often find myself saying, as a means of tryingto shift us into a different mindset.
Yeah, unlocking, I have no idea what that means at this point.
Well, I've probably got some ideas with my team, but that to me is opening up apossibility.
(14:22):
And that's the way we actually grow, both in who we are, but also the company gets itsgrowth.
that's its best option usually when we've exhausted working harder, which we well longpast doing.
And so I think, you know, that people are afraid of doing something, I don't know if I canmeasure if I've done it or not.
And then somehow we don't put that as our objective, but that has to be the only seriousobjective in town.
(14:48):
If we are a leader and we can't do more ourselves, so we're working through others, well,that then means we've got to explore what that means.
and what could the possibilities be?
Or we're actually shutting off possibilities.
And that doesn't make sense.
Again, in the sports world, we're willing to say, what else could I do to go faster?
(15:09):
Because it's not another round of the gym.
Yeah, at the top level, we're all training, whatever it is, for us as rowers three times aday, basically every day.
So another round of the gym, that is not the answer.
It's going to injure me.
I'm already on the edge of physically what I can do.
And that, again, is a helpful impetus.
that says, I've got to do something differently.
The quality of what I do has to improve.
(15:29):
And that quickly then takes us on to mindset, behaviors, connections, interactions.
And that pushes more immediate because there's that sense of it'd be mindless.
mean, nobody pulls an all-nighter, you know, as an Olympic athlete.
So, you know, it's so clearly damaging to the quality of what we want to do.
(15:49):
But again, we don't have that emphasis on quality, I think, as much.
And so that's a different mindset, isn't it?
How do I increase the quality of what I do today rather than how do I just get through myto-do list?
And I think often in coaching, that is what we're trying to do is create a space.
Yeah, people come to us, they know, they don't want us to help them to do more.
Yeah, they've got, they've had decades of productivity tools that have failed to do that.
(16:11):
So that is clearly not the answer.
What we try and unlock, isn't it, is different thinking patterns.
What could you do differently as a leader to unlock people's potential?
What could...
what could those different conversations be?
And maybe to help them explore that.
And there probably aren't many places where they can do that outside of coachingconversation because it's probably not the norm yet to discuss that in most organizations.
(16:38):
because it's not safe enough.
Yad, it's not measurable enough, it's not clear enough.
How do I know if they're unlocking the potential better than that person and I've got tobe able to compare it.
You know, it's this, for me again, this finite versus a slightly more infinite objective.
So it's not gonna just gonna take me three months.
Well, it's your constant objective when you're leading a team or leading an organization.
(17:02):
So I think there's something there.
like, you know, we tick so many things off the way we organize our calendars and our to-dolists.
And we want to sort of, you know,
to apply that to the team and then we get in a mess.
So what were the biggest learnings as you were writing the book, Cath?
well, the book took quite a few years to write because I think I was making sense of bothof those careers that been very intense.
(17:30):
And I was trying to work through what were the most useful examples and actually what wasthe thread and, you know, just really testing how does this apply and then relating it to
the work that I was doing at the time now in the leadership and culture space.
So the actual writing, think, is such a valuable tool, as you know, for testing yourtheories and taking them to the next point.
(17:57):
So what?
So why does this matter?
So why am I writing about this?
And how do I make it even clearer?
And how would other people do it?
And what about if they try it and it doesn't work?
And you really test your thinking from lots of different angles.
So I think it deepened my understanding and learning from those processes.
and made me think about the applicability to others and just how to make that clearer, howto make my own thinking clearer, constantly testing out in the work I was doing because I
(18:32):
was working as a leadership and culture coach at that point.
So it's reinforcing thinking, it's challenging your thinking.
Again, I always think writing is just very useful at stretching you.
And, you know, what the challenges that I'm hearing or things that I'm finding difficultto do with groups, have I got something wrong there?
(18:54):
Let me go back and understand more deeply what else was going on in that environment thatI've forgotten about or haven't taken account of.
So I think when you're both writing and practicing and coaching, then you've, you know,you're constantly bringing one into the other and testing it.
And yes, so writing.
was a huge way of making sense for myself personally of those very intense experiences andthe things I needed to write about that they didn't need to go in the book, but I needed
(19:21):
to kind of make sense of them.
And I was also then thinking, which are the stories that are really helpful?
And then how can I use those?
How am I bringing them into my talks and coaching?
So yeah, it deepens, doesn't it?
It's deep thinking.
Yeah, I have a rowing question.
(19:42):
Ooh.
Yep.
Go for it.
So I was in dialogue with someone who rows and they said, sorry it's a little bit of atangent, is that okay?
But I can't, it's jumping up and down and shouting.
They said that there was a lot of learning from being in a boat as a rower that we canbring into learning about partnership in conversations to do with balance and all of those
(20:13):
things.
Yeah, so I think, yes, I absolutely think rowing is a lovely metaphor for teams in a waythat some other sports, team sports aren't as strong.
I'm obviously hugely biased in this, clearly, but I think what I've experienced both as acoach and as a rower makes me continue to feel confident in that line of thinking.
(20:41):
And there are quite a different angles almost that I'm constantly unpeeling, to be honest.
I still do work.
Sometimes I work at the Judge Business School and programs, sometimes in the classroom asit were, but sometimes we actually go into a rowing tank, which is a sort of indoor place
you learn to row where you're not out in the river being blown around, but you can put anoar in the water.
And that's quite a useful lab for thinking about rowing as a metaphor.
(21:03):
And we then sort of pull it apart.
So there are a couple of things to bring out there.
One.
One, think there are three levels.
I still row, so I also constantly thinking about this.
There are three levels required when you're rowing that I think are useful parallel,because you've got to have all working.
One is you're thinking about what you're doing, your best effort, your best technique,bringing, know, doing your job as well as you can.
(21:26):
But that is only really useful if you've got the second level of awareness, which is howit's linking with everyone else.
So one of the things about effort in a rowing boat is that it's not
if it's not put in together, you're actually working against each other.
I think that's quite an interesting metaphor to put into the working world.
It's not just how hard you're trying, it's whether actually the work you're doing, youknow, does it go against someone else or duplicate or rub up against something?
(21:54):
Is it actually helping us get towards our collective goal?
And then there's the third level of the environment you're in, the water, the weather,unpredictable.
And you need to be alert to that and adapting to that.
And when you're in a rowing boat, you're very, obviously you want to be in that flow stateof being very immersed and very present, but you need to always be mindful of those three
(22:19):
levels.
And I think that's quite useful when you're in a work environment.
and certainly you get sucked into one level as you do in the rowing boat.
And if you're really facing on an element of your technique and the coach is reallywanting you to change something, you get so immersed in that.
then you stop connecting with the timing and what others are doing and stop noticingwhat's changing in the environment.
(22:40):
Equally, if you're suddenly going, look, the wind direction changed and blah, blah, youlose sight of what you're doing.
So you're constantly, I don't know, combining, moving up and down those levels.
And I think that's a nice metaphor that you wouldn't get in an indoor sport sort of muchor a sport where perhaps weather and you're on terra firma, whereas we're on the water and
(23:01):
that.
creates an alertness, yeah, it's not predictable.
It's unstable all the time and changing all the time.
And it's a force of its own that you can't fight, you have to work with it.
I then think there are kind of aspects of what are key to rowing.
You mentioned one of those, balance is really key, rhythm is really key andinterdependence is really key.
(23:25):
Perhaps those are sort of three lovely themes to dive into that I think are really, reallyimportant.
within teams to have this sense it's never just who's technically perfect, who goesfastest.
You need this other factor that is often around rhythm and it's what enables you tosustain huge effort.
(23:46):
It's what makes it enjoyable actually feeling that rhythm which is everybody playing theirrole, sensing each other, adjusting all the time, you know really getting the
synchronicity going and you know when you're playing back
and thinking about a great race, there'll always be a really strong rhythm element.
And you often describe that.
(24:06):
There'll be things that you can pinpoint, how many strokes per minute and stroke lengthsand some timing things that we can measure.
But there'll always be this rhythm factor of how did it feel?
And we have to describe that and we'll all use slightly different language, but we'll thenshare and merge that language to create a picture that means we're more likely to be able
to recreate it.
(24:27):
And if we're in a place where we haven't got rhythm,
so we can all visualize it and work together towards it again.
You often start to create your own language of, know, the rhythm of one crew is differentfrom the rhythm of another crew.
So I think that's a lovely theme that comes out in rowing.
I actually think most sports have it, the rhythm of golf swing, you know, the rhythm of atennis stroke, et cetera.
(24:47):
But of course, this is in a team context.
It's a shared rhythm that requires everybody to be contributing to all the time.
And so then the interdependence part is really important that we can't go anywhere on ourown and we can't do more than our seats worth of effort, however good we are.
(25:11):
Again, if I'm really, really feeling lots of energy in the middle of race, it's no good mejust putting in more, yet it's got to be connected with others or I'm actually going
against someone else.
and we are not physically tied, our oars aren't tied, our seats aren't tied and yet we'vegot to move together and so you start to develop what happens between us in the boat is
(25:34):
really important what's transmitted across between the seats we're constantly checking howdoes it feel in the front of the boat, the middle of the boat, the back of the boat or it
feels different here why does it feel different what isn't getting transmitted so we'realways sort of getting that sense
And the fact is we cannot go anywhere without somebody.
(25:54):
If you're a boat of four, we need four people.
Doesn't matter if one of them isn't feeling well that day.
we need them.
And so that sense of interdependence, I think is a lovely feeling.
That means, you know, and you can't turf someone out because actually a lot of games on apitch, you might be fine with one of not being there.
I mean, often even with football, you know, when they go a man down, actually the team canpull together better.
(26:19):
But that's not like, in rowing, we can't chuck people off and people can't get out.
And so we have to get the best out of everyone.
And that means whatever they're bringing in that moment, not what you wish they couldbring, but actually what they've got in that moment.
And I think that's a really lovely thing.
And then of course, yeah, balance is actually what we're aware of most.
And when you're watching rowing, you can't always see that.
(26:44):
But balance is, I often say, it's like,
our oars are a tight rope walker's pole that are cut in half and we've got like half oneach side.
That's how together we have to be to get the balance and that's really critical because ifwe're not balanced in between the effort, like if people think it's just about the effort
but the boat goes fast for two reasons.
(27:05):
One, the effort of the oar through the water.
The other is letting the boat run in between the strokes and if you stop the boat becauseit's not balanced because you're not moving together then you're slowing yourselves down.
and a smaller crew putting less effort in may well go past you.
That's the beauty is sometimes unpredictable who's going to win because it's what you doin your ore isn't in the water that is also impacting on boat speed.
(27:30):
And I think that analogy is lovely.
It's not just how hard you're working the work you do, but when you're not doing yourthing, are you helping others or are getting in their way?
So yeah, I think there are so many, but those are some really key ones.
I think just give us a different analogy.
to then bring back into our workspace.
(27:50):
That's amazing because you're actually also describing there what happens in one-on-onecoaching, which is between what the coach, in the spaces between what the coach is saying
or doing, they can slow down the work.
Yeah.
Yeah.
you just beautifully described.
Actually, the movement happens in the in-between.
(28:12):
Yeah, yeah, in between people.
I mean, I often think that about the team construct.
Everyone would sort of spend so much time defining the, you know, each individual role,but not nearly enough time about what's happening between people.
And that's what you get for being in a team.
That's how you're going to be greater than the sum of your parts.
(28:33):
And I think we do think about that in a sports content.
We've got to optimize everything we've got.
I don't see that discussion of what are the energy levels, the quality of communication,the sort of overlap or duplication or a gap between people.
(28:54):
So you're right, I think we're in that between space where there's still so much potentialto unlock.
I heard you talking about feeling it.
Hmm
So it feels like there was something there about sensing and there was also somethingabout physically feeling it.
(29:21):
So we have to sense the boat running through the water and sense the water around us andsense each other moving.
We've got to move exactly in unison, but our seats aren't tied.
So we have to sense that.
You can only see the person in front of you.
And if you're in a boat of eight, or however many you are, often you can't, you certainlycan't see anyone behind you.
(29:44):
And you often can't see more than one person in front in terms of how they're moving.
So you've got to sense that.
But overall you're trying to sense.
boat to the water so again you can't muscle the water or you go slowly and so sensing howthe boat goes through that's one of things I love it's one of the things that means when I
am rowing I'm completely immersed in it and can't worry about other things on land becauseI'm just sensing that all the time and then adjusting to that and yeah that's a it's a
(30:15):
feeling and thinking mostly feeling and it's why you can't you can't learn rowing
through numbers, but I don't think you can learn anything through numbers, can you?
That would apply very much to something like music as well.
It's not the notes you play, it's the rhythm, it's the of the feeling that you create.
Yeah, and same at work, isn't it?
I think when you go home at night, you don't talk about what you did on your to-do list.
(30:38):
You go about, well, this meeting made me feel valued, undermined.
You know, it was exciting.
I didn't feel safe in it.
That's actually the experience we're having all the time.
But again, often it's not the thing that's really talked about in the workplace.
But it is something in the coaching sense, in the coaching place we are helping people tapinto, become more aware of, feel more confident and competent to connect with that.
(31:08):
interesting.
I could talk to you forever.
I could probably unpeel the rowing metaphor for a few more hours, but we've probably gotthe key points out.
Yeah, but that this guy said, he said, if you want, if people want to learn how to bebetter one to one coaches, learning is it pairs you call it when it's two people in the
(31:30):
boat?
Because you can tip, he said you can tip the boat over if you don't get it right.
Yeah, I mean that's what I did in two of my three Olympics was a pair.
So there's two people with one or either side.
you literally, if one of you is rowing, you're going round in circles.
You have an argument, you can't get back to the deck unless you're working together.
(31:51):
And again, you've got that tightrope walker's pole across the two of you.
So you're sensing that all the time.
And if you're not working together, you're going sideways.
So that's my favorite boat, the Cocktailers pair.
Yeah, and you get most feedback probably because there's the two of you and you're havingto communicate, create your own language.
(32:14):
yeah, be really aware.
I think that's the thing.
You have to be switched on.
You can't be on automatic pilot.
And that's what I think we're trying to bring you to the workplace.
And of course, if people are overloaded and stressed and too much going on, you sort ofswitch into this automatic pilot and then you start noticing things and sensing things and
then there's no rhythm.
And we're actually not making the boat go very far.
(32:36):
And that's true in the workplace and it's also true in coaching, isn't it?
Everything you just said about sensing and rhythm and flow and...
it's the exhausting thing about coaching, isn't it?
In a lovely way.
You can't be half there.
And you actually managing those different levels of thinking, really listening, a littlebit thinking, where do I go next?
(33:01):
But I just can't go too much there because I just need to be hearing and listening andthen...
giving time to reflect and probably actually keeping back my desire to kind of lead ussomewhere and let that person lead you.
So, yeah.
and sensing and I'm going that your your image of the of the knot rowing bit the inbetween strokes bit is going to stay with me.
(33:29):
Thank you.
So how do people find out about your book?
Yeah, so The Long Win, it is available anywhere you normally buy books published byPractical Inspiration Publishing, but anywhere you can find it, The Long Win.
And I actually have a website with more information about the topics, about stories andthings linked to it, which is called thelongwin.com.
(33:53):
And there's more information about me as a speaker on cathbishop.com.
And I also host a...
podcast around culture in the workplace now, which has been a new venture over the lastyear or so with Colin Ellis, which is called the Inside Out Culture podcast.
There you are lovely listeners, all sorts of things to listen out for.
(34:17):
Thank you, Cath Bishop, for coming to The Coaching Inn.
It was my pleasure.
And I'm going to be thinking about tightrope walks and oars and in-betweeny things now.
So thank you very much.
Thank you everyone for listening.
Bye bye.
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