The Reality of Business
Welcome to The Reality of Business with Bob & Jeremy, your go-to podcast for insights, stories, and practical advice on all things business.
Since meeting at drama school in 1991, we've been lifelong friends and business partners, drawing on over two decades of experience running a successful sales and management training company together. With Reality Training at the heart of our journey, we've coached thousands, spoken at countless conferences, and travelled the world, gathering a treasure trove of stories, insights, and actionable advice along the way.
Originally launched during the lockdown of June 2021 as Bob & Jeremy’s Conflab, this podcast has evolved into The Reality of Business. Each episode offers a blend of thought-provoking discussions on the most pressing business topics, light-hearted banter, and real-world wisdom to help you think differently and make positive changes in your professional life.
Whether you’re listening as you multitask at work, relaxing at home, or on the move, we've crafted every episode to bring value, a fresh perspective, and a smile to your face. Tune in to discover what you didn't know about the world of business and beyond.
We proudly work with organisations of all sizes, from global corporations to ambitious start-ups, through our company, Reality Training – www.realitytraining.com.
The Reality of Business features original music by Charlie Morrell.
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The Reality of Business
Senior Management Development - What Are Your Options?
Senior Managers have an important question to answer – what development is going to make them better at what they do? Or do they need any at all?
Unlock the full potential of senior leadership with expert insights from Bob & Jeremy, executive coaches who bring to life the varied activities that are available. This episode promises an eye-opening journey through the world of senior management development, weighing the benefits of various growth strategies. They probe the effectiveness of conventional methods like intensive therapy and elite programmes, as well as the transformative potential of less orthodox approaches, including team-building missions across the globe. As they scrutinise these diverse options, they also ponder the controversial notion that maybe, for some executives, the best development strategy might be no structured development at all.
They also debate whether relying on the tried-and-true instincts that have guided seasoned professionals throughout their careers is more valuable than chasing the latest innovations? Bob & Jeremy lend their rich perspective of years of senior coaching to reveal how a blend of harrowing deadlines and common sense shapes different management styles and, ultimately, the fate of an organisation's success.
Finally, they illuminate the avenues for nurturing creativity and innovation in senior leadership roles, crucial elements for sidestepping the pitfalls of organisational complacency. They delve into the authenticity of senior management development experiences, highlighting the importance of continuous self-improvement in an ever-evolving marketplace. By the end of the discussion, you'll be equipped with a clearer vision for the most effective development paths for you or your organisation's senior management, ensuring that leaders are not just well-trained, but truly transformational, and motivated.
For more info, free resources, useful content, & our blog posts, please visit realitytraining.com.
Reality Training - Selling Certainty
Bob and Jeremy's Conflap the Reality Podcast. So, jeremy, you've been in business now for 25-odd years with your own business and then, prior to that, you had your own career. That's right. We think you've reached a point now where you've got a number of options and I just want to put them to you. Now. You can go and have some therapy, and I think that's not a bad idea for you. Go in and have some deep therapy. We could spend a lot of money to send you on a management development program with one of the major institutions. I think you might enjoy that. We could do some executive coaching, one-to-one with you to help you develop yourself based on your knowledge and experience. We could send you on a totally meaningless team building exercise to go and help somebody abroad. That's something that you might enjoy. Or you can just carry on as you are and have no development whatsoever. So what do you think would be the kind of option for you there?
Speaker 2:Well, it's very interesting. Yeah, Am I being given a budget for this?
Speaker 1:Well, yes, I mean, the budget is anything you want to spend because you're senior. So when it comes to development budgets, the coffers are open, whereas if it's a frontline person who's earning 20,000 a year, we hardly spend anything on them, that's true. But for you we can spend way more. So that is the theme of our podcast today. Ladies and gentlemen, senior management development options what do you?
Speaker 2:do. What do you do next? You're listening to Bob and Jeremy's Conf Lab, brought to you by Reality Training selling certainty. We're a leading training and coaching company based in the UK. For information on how we could help you improve your business, check out our website at realitytrainingcom.
Speaker 1:If you're a senior manager, your time is valuable and therefore anything that you do which is there to develop you values that time to the fullest extent. So if you have to go somewhere, then it's all paid for Absolutely. If you have to have coaching or therapy, you have it in your working hours, which, on your high salary, is definitely a few hundred pounds an hour plus the fee. If you're going to go and do meaningless team building in affording invisible streams, I was thinking about the team building, and if we look at our episode on team building, we go into some detail on some of the slightly more pointless things that one can do from team building. Senior team building can be meaningless, but it can also be. Let's go and spend some time in a third world country building something.
Speaker 1:Now, I have no problem with that objective. I do have a problem with the development things that come from it. I really think that that is questionable Because of course you can go over and have an amazing experience and bond with some people and give something back, and I think all of that is admirable. I really do. I don't like the idea that it comes under the heading of a development program. I think that's a hook to hang the title on, but I actually think it doesn't mean much. I think it's the kind of thing that one should do anyway.
Speaker 2:You know.
Speaker 1:If you're a large corporation worth hundreds of millions of pounds, you should be going abroad and helping other people. Of course you should. It should be a natural thing you should do. You shouldn't do it as a kind of a smoke screen to develop your executives because, a what they're going to get from it is questionable and, b that's not everyone's cup of tea.
Speaker 2:So in your opening you talk about various options or do nothing. The question before that is why are we talking about this? Why do senior executives need?
Speaker 1:developing. It's a good question and that's why I've put nothing in, because I think for some people nothing is actually a pretty good option. But I think, if you think about most of the work that we do, it's frontline people, it's team leaders, it's sales managers, it's sales directors, it's operational people in the main. And then occasionally we do executive coaching with very senior people and that's one-to to one and quite intensive. Part of the issue with those very senior people is what. What can they do? Yeah, you know, let's imagine you've got 40, 45 plus, you're in a director position, you're earning good money, and the subject matter for lots of those coaching sessions are things like work-life balance, personal impact, personal growth, presentation skills leadership, Developing the next wave all that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so those are the kind of themes that we're dealing with, but that's just one thing. Executive coaching is, by its very nature nature, a one-to-one personal intervention. But then you look at what else there is I think, why this topic interests me.
Speaker 2:You know what do you do with senior people who kind of don't want or need training? The very fact is, all the senior people hold the budget responsibility yeah so the largest investment I was looking up interesting writer vict Victor Lipman.
Speaker 2:He's written a couple of books and he writes about this topic. This is his thing. Where's the training pie? And is all the budgetary responsibility and where the money can be spent is held by those people. So they spend as you said at the beginning. They spend less on the people at the front line. His assertion, and many others, is that all the investment should go at first level managers.
Speaker 2:So that they start their career with the best possible training. What they learn then they can use for years, and so on, and so on, and so on. However, a lot of the money is spent at the more senior level, which is 15 grand courses at management colleges, schools, retreats, that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, we have an example of this. So we worked with a very large organization and we did a lot of frontline sales training and to get that work was quite a few hoops that we had to jump through to get that work, but the actual cost per head for that rollout was quite low. Okay, In the same year that same organization sent a cohort of senior managers out to somewhere like Sierra Leone to do a major project out there. Okay, that would have cost 100 grand plus easily with all the expenses, accommodation and the different people. And if you remember, I think it was a 12 to 18 month program and I think half of the senior managers had left before it finished. So if you think about that as an investment, what are people doing by thinking that's a great idea? If they think that's a retention strategy for keeping somebody, they totally failed in that instance.
Speaker 2:Well, that's immediately interesting. Yes, senior people are valuable and some of them are amazing and do great stuff. But if I'm coming to the last 10 years of my work and you're spending 100K on me, 50k, 15, 20, whatever, whatever it is are you not better off trying to work at the other end to really invest in people so that they think, gosh, I've, this is my third job I'm doing so well? This company really want me to grow.
Speaker 1:This is where I'm gonna camp out but also you could also argue that for all of those people, rather than book this massive intervention, they could have said we'll give you all an extra 20 grand each to stay, and they would have gone fine. And actually by doing nothing, by just throwing money at them, they might have achieved more than what they actually did, which was then have a disjointed program where people left and went and some people rejoined or didn't turn up or there was less people involved. And you then wonder where is the value here for the organization?
Speaker 2:hardly any at all, I would say and I also think that the old adage of old dogs, new tricks, the reason why training isn't really offered they call it other things, don't they? Leadership development, executive program, retreat isn't really offered, is people don't really believe they're in the zone of needing training at a senior level. So companies are sitting around and perhaps not getting traction. Perhaps there's a lack of motivation, lack of leadership. They go. What do we do to get this group better? Some of them are even involved in that decision on their own about what do I do about me? You know what do I do about me and my six on the board, and so maybe it's quite attractive that. Ok, I never really did it before, but I'm going to lock into some senior leadership program. It's got a university angle. There's going to be some doctors lecturing. I'm going to learn something that I just didn't know doctors lecturing.
Speaker 1:I'm going to learn something that I just didn't know, something that you love always and I've always loved, is the facade of academia, the facade of academia.
Speaker 2:So I can go to a city yeah, that has a famous university and be on a program with a loose connection you don't even need to do that.
Speaker 1:There are lots of management programs which take place in buildings that look like they are universities. They have that kind of slightly faded grandeur, yeah, of a large mansion, and you turn up and you've got lovely accommodation and you are called alumni and you're in a faculty of learning and so that whole facade is there, even though you do not come out with a piece of paper most of the time sometimes you do, but not always that says you are officially qualified to do anything. You know you just turn up and do this program of different discussions and exercises and looking interested, and I'm sure some of these courses are fantastic. I have no doubt about that. But I do wonder sometimes, if you're a senior manager looking at different options of how you're going to develop, how you're going to grow in the last, let's say, 20 years of your career, then where is that value? You know you could go and do that course for six months. Then what then? What? Do you do it again next year and the year?
Speaker 2:after, or are you meant to be skilled enough to apply your learning?
Speaker 1:yeah, and then what do you do? Do you get to a point where you know you're so senior is that going to take you to the very, very pinnacle of your career. But then what do you do? So do you then have executive coaching, or do you have therapy because your mind's blown by the status and power that you currently have?
Speaker 2:Well, I think the therapy one. The reason why we put that in is actually, I think people get to a certain stage in their life and actually, if your company can invest in therapy, that might actually be what you need.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more and I think that one of the massive missings at the moment is an understanding that mental health issues, not just in this country, across the world are at a peak and any assistance that anybody can give is going to help people. And I think when you do get to that stage in your career, then those therapeutic discussions about you, what you want, where you're going, where your head's at People- talk a lot about mindset.
Speaker 1:You don't know what your mindset is until you discussed it and delved into it a bit and poked around and found out exactly what it is you're thinking. So you do need some time to do that well, I?
Speaker 2:I think that's probably the hidden benefit of working at building the school, the orphanage, the project, the water aid. Whatever it is you're doing is you're in a reflective mood with other people at a certain position and you start to have your other conversations about here I am at life, my kids have fled the nest, whatever it is, and what am I going to do next. So that's probably the main benefit of some of these quite expensive retreats. At the other end of that, you've got our children's age, who are 18, who are going off and doing the similar thing post-university or post-school. They're working in Vietnam, nepal. You pay for these experiences. But you could argue at those two points of life pre-career and as career is nearing an end you could gain an extra bit of charge from people who've who are reflecting, they go back into the workplace and then maybe they're helping their left tenants to. You know be better before they. You know, you know, what do you, what do you call it? Succession stuff, isn't it?
Speaker 1:but then then we're talking about motivation. Yeah, so that's a hell of a thing to engage in just to motivate somebody, yeah, and actually you might be just as motivated by, you know, a uk-based team building exercise going to henry the eighth's banquet. You just don't know what's going to motivate people. And to some people, going to a third world country would be an absolute nightmare, and I think it doesn't suit all to to put yourself outside your comfort zone. Everyone says these days to to put yourself outside your comfort zone. Everyone says these days, you must put yourself outside your comfort zone. Well, if you're not comfortable with that, then it could be an absolute nightmare for it could ruin your life, it could ruin your career.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's the basic shortcut of therapy is the thing that you fear most. Unless you embrace it, you'll continue to fear it. But that's the most common treatment of anxiety. We could say but you're right, you're very senior, you don't want to do these things, so you're not going to do them.
Speaker 1:But then I think that comes back to our point what if you do nothing? So let's say you get to.
Speaker 2:I know plenty of those, I know people who are still working 70, 80, 65 who are kind of in control of the destiny of their organizations. They're not in the market for development. So really a lot of these organizations don't have development because the culture is often set by that, that type.
Speaker 1:I know plenty of people like that so if you don't do anything, does that necessarily mean that you're going to be less successful than people at the same position who are developing themselves in some way?
Speaker 2:it depends what you're measuring. If you're measuring success, that's one measure. If you're measuring great collaborative workforce, all happiness is is teeming through your organization kindness giving. It depends what you're measuring If it's just the success. I bumped into a friend outside a supermarket who works for a house builder and he said they've brought in a brand new operations manager who's known as the most scary person in the house building industry. He jumps from company to company. He gets all the projects done industry. He jumps from company to company. He gets all the projects done, but everybody hates him and he's signed to do a year to make sure all these new projects are built on time. Success for him is getting them built, but there's no development, there's no culture. That's just the buildings will be up. So that's hitting a deadline. I think there's always going to be senior people who can come in and promise that, and we see so many of them. They only stay at a place for two, three years.
Speaker 1:They're not necessarily even in the market for what we're talking about, so maybe it's more like the board below the board, chap who had been on the board of a company that doesn't exist anymore, that was very big in its day, ici, who you will remember very well, and he had worked his way up from the post room to the boardroom over 40 odd years and he said to me that he'd been to a management development residential thing, having had no previous development at all.
Speaker 1:He just risen up through the ranks with no training, and he said, as they went through each subject, each exercise, as they would pose the different issues that they were supposed to deal with, he would just say well, okay, the common sense answer to that is to do this. And he was right every single time. And so when I heard that, I thought does that mean that as you get older, you lose your concept of what's common sense and what isn't? Is that what it is to remind you that these are the kind of straightforward functions that one should do? In which case, why do we need to have development in that regard? Why don't we just say to people we need to start using some common sense here, or is common sense dull and uninnovative and not very?
Speaker 1:exciting, exactly, I think it's that and not actually not growth-based Yep, but these are people who've reached a senior position. They wouldn't have reached those points without growth and development and success anyway. So you've reached a certain point and your common sense and your you know, your knowledge of opportunities and looking at various things and balancing up your decisions has come from all that years of experience. You're then challenged to be innovative and exciting. Is that exactly what you should be doing, or should you just use the common sense, because that's what's worked?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's very intriguing. Or maybe your job is to allow new ideas in because you're blocking creativity, because you've become more risk averse. You don't have a mortgage. You're financially secure, is it? That classic thing is that if this company doesn't do something new, it will become extinct, and therefore you're in the position of decision-making. We need to do something with you. We don't. We realize you don't want training, but I think you need to be open, and so we're going to develop you in this other way. You're going to be appointed to have an executive coach. You'll have a chemistry session. If you don't like that coach, we've got two others, others. But we want you to be challenged, to innovate in some way should we do?
Speaker 1:three is the magic number yeah, hit it. This has been my easiest, my easiest questions I've had so far so my question to you what's the best senior management development that you have?
Speaker 2:had. If I'm even senior, I suppose I am potentially and it's the training that we've given ourselves in that case.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So probably my coaching with Simon Crowe.
Speaker 1:Really you put that above learning to become a coach in the first place at AOEC.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I suppose I first of all learned about coaching through Simon he introduced the whole concept to me. So I think I've been coached by him twice and I still have things used from that. So yeah, I would say that's my best. That's not my most fun question to you, I'll save that one. But same question to you is what have you had and I'd forgotten about the other external things that we do but what's yours?
Speaker 1:It's really hard for me because I can think of some ones that I'll come onto that were an absolute nightmare. But I think the best thing that I've done is any one-to-one coaching I've had. I had some a couple of years ago with a lady who we met on our coaching course and she was so good at understanding me and I think if we then strip back what we're talking about here, we want to be understood. Leadership is lonely and I think sometimes you need understanding to help you feel good about what it is you're doing. So my next question to you is what is the worst senior management development you've either seen or experienced?
Speaker 2:well, you could call it. We paid you and I to go on this thing together, run by a national, we'll say organisation, where we had an evening with by somebody who claimed to be a presentation expert. Have you forgotten this?
Speaker 1:I've completely forgotten it. You're going to have to bring this to life for me Well it was a national newspaper running the session.
Speaker 2:Does that help a bit more? Oh, it was online Online.
Speaker 2:Oh yes, that was terrible, They'd managed to sell 70 or 80 of us into this person's thing. Oh, that was awful. And they were filling it with images and what you could say, what you couldn't say. He was jumping around and yet his clients that he had his client list of is why. Why we'd signed up is that he'd helped these major organizations all over the world improve the way they present themselves. That was awful. It was worse. It couldn't be in the room. It was so uninspiring, so fast, just awful. And the person wasn't a trainer, of course that was terrible.
Speaker 1:That was terrible, okay, okay. Well, I mean, that's thankfully it wasn't, you weren't kept there, you weren't locked into a building that you couldn't leave while you were doing that. You could just leave it yeah okay, which we did.
Speaker 1:My worst one was a manager's residential. I did at a very well-known manager's residential college I use the word college with apostrophes and we all turned up on the first day and we did a version of not Myers-Briggs but something else one of those kind of personality assessments. And I was with a gentleman in that session who was a horrendous boss, really quite a difficult person to work for, and as we started answering the questions to work out your personality type, and as we started answering the questions to work out your personality type, it became clear that he wanted to have a team full of people who were a certain strong, not very pleasant personality type. And you felt, if I don't edge into that area, I'm going to be ridiculed here by this individual. And you then started changing the answers you would normally have given because of that.
Speaker 1:Okay, now that, I think, is classic stuff, where you go for manager development, you turn up somewhere and then you realize you can't be yourself because you're in a hierarchical thing and there's a kind of pressure being put on you. I mean that's appalling, isn't it? I never forgot that. I just thought that is such a waste of everyone being put on you. I mean, that's appalling, isn't it? I never forgot that. I just thought that is such a waste of everyone's time and what it must have cost. We had days in this place well fortune.
Speaker 2:It's a bit like when people say you know, we really want to see your leadership, your leadership and then you say what you mean we want you to get people to do what we're telling you to tell them to do, isn't it? You know, we need to see more leadership from you. What are you saying? Well, we want this stuff to happen. Go and make it happen. Okay, is that leadership? Thanks?
Speaker 1:okay. Well, my last question to you is what do you do now to develop yourself?
Speaker 2:well, funny. I bought a little thing this morning which really piqued my interest, a very specialist business to business concept bit of training about value and misinformation, which I think is interesting because that's flying around as a topic at the moment, that you know what should we believe, who's being presented the information, who's asking it. And this is about how, as a business, you can position yourself to help customers understand what they don't know and through doing that better, they begin to want to have your offering. But that, that sort of lower down the agenda which I found as an interesting concept. So someone's put together, of course. So I occasionally get inspired by a little course. I buy the odd book and get inspired by books. I'll probably return to having some coaching at some point. It's a bit of a mix, I suppose. So my question to you is the five things you gave us at the beginning, what do you want next?
Speaker 1:Oh, that's really good. I would say, I would like some executive coaching.
Speaker 2:Right fine.
Speaker 1:I've got a series of goals that I'm working towards at the moment and I do have coaching assistants through a course that I'm doing that helps me do that, but I think I need more of it. I think I need a bit more directive coaching, because sometimes coaching is a little bit kind of what do you think you could do then? And actually I would quite like people that I know and trust to say a little bit kind of what do you think you could do then? And actually I would quite like people that I know and trust to say we'll do this and do that and be a bit more direct. Is that not more mentoring? No, because I I think mentoring there's a certain kind of this person's already achieved all this and there's this kind of doyen of, of superbeness. That's not the case. It's about that connection with someone that you trust and you value their advice and you value their opinion. I think that's that's something that I would definitely like you love the word doyen.
Speaker 2:That's fun. I haven't heard that for a while. The other word you love is grandee grandee you love.
Speaker 1:I used, I used grandeur earlier. No, no, but when you talk, about a grandee of the industry.
Speaker 2:Who's? Put on a chair to talk.
Speaker 1:Well, I do wonder how many grandees of industries have ever had any development. Well, that's the point. They sit there and they I mean.
Speaker 2:You and I sat there at one conference where two grandees agreed with each other. It was the least inspiring conversation we've ever witnessed.
Speaker 1:I couldn't agree more. I also think that these days, there is is massive opportunity for self development online, so there are loads of courses that you can do. I did one the other day and I learned a lot, and I think we have to perhaps change our mindsets now where we think well, I've reached a certain point now I don't need to learn anything new.
Speaker 2:Actually, if it interests me, yeah, if it interests me, then I can go off and and yeah, but that's one of your things.
Speaker 1:That's one of the things that you say a lot. You say if it interests me. I remember years ago you were moaning about the fact you could never find your way anywhere, and I'd say why don't you look at the map and work out where it is you're going? And you said it doesn't interest me. And I thought, well, okay, so if it doesn't interest you, then you have absolutely no reason to look at it. Okay, but I look, be like reading instructions to build something. You know you wouldn't do that either because it doesn't interest you, even though it would actually make your life easier. And so I think that's the thing. I did one recently. I did an email marketing course which I have no interest in at all, but I actually learned five or six really good bits of information from that. That was worthwhile. So maybe the challenge to you Do things you're not interested in. Yeah, look at something you're not interested in and see whether you do develop an interest in it. You can't tell me you were always interested in marketing years ago.
Speaker 2:Surely not.
Speaker 1:Something must have happened for you to go. Oh, I quite like marketing. I don't know what it was, but there must have been something.
Speaker 2:It was Rosie Phipps who was one of my customers at Yellow Pages. She ran a college in Oxford and I was renewing her Yellow Pages advert and she just said you sound like you'd love marketing. You're asking me questions that normal salespeople wouldn't ask. And I said really. She said hold it there. And she went off and came back with a sheet of archetypes and she handed me the sheet and I just went oh, this is good. And yeah, I was out of there within the year.
Speaker 1:Well, there we are.
Speaker 2:Rosie Phipps.
Speaker 1:She was called Okay, well, so listeners, thank you for listening to Bob and Jeremy's Conf Lab. If you are a senior manager, we'd love you to think about this question what are your development options? Are you going to have some therapy? Are you going to have coaching therapy Are you going to have coaching and it's important to make the distinction between those two things Are you going to pay to go and live somewhere for a few weeks and immerse yourself in some current management thinking?
Speaker 1:Are you going to swan off to a country and build a school, somewhere very worthwhile, and live your life slightly differently? Or are you going to do nothing? Are you going to simply do your job and live on your wits and see how successful you can be? You know, and now there are other options, of course. Of course there are other options and you know part of that might be to look at your organization as a whole and say, right, what are the development needs of everybody? And I, as a senior person, should become involved in all of them so that I'm actually helping those things to embed and land and I will grow as a result, and that's another another thing that you can do. But please give that some thought and we'd love to hear your views on what are the best senior management development options. Thanks for listening. Thank you.