MARK Good morning. Hello everybody and welcome. Welcome to Mind Monkeys Welcome bananas, optional, regular LinkedIn live stream where we name, explain, and reframe the most common hesitations that get in the way of the success we deserve. I don't want to go on too long because I'm already sat next to onscreen my amazing guests. So enough of me just to set the scene very quickly about what we're going to do though, as we do in every episode, is essentially embark on a raw, honest, irreverent, important conversation designed to normalize the fears that we each face at work and at play, and I couldn't have picked a better guest to get into this topic. So welcome Mr. Ian Farrington. IAN Good morning MARK Let me tell the world a little bit about you, Ian. If I may, you can jump in if I get anything wrong. But for about 30 years, you've been coaching middle, senior executive level clients. Is that right? Leading, yeah. Trained development, delivering in a range of environments. You've worked in international relations for 18 years, several long-term overseas assignments. Uh, you've worked in strategic law enforcement. Uh, you've had 14 years as a management consultant specializing in strategy and transformation, and 2019 you established ProDevUK to pursue your passion for creating value through individual and organizational capability development, helping others to realize the best version of themselves, which I absolutely love. Key to your approach is adapting to the support each client needs in order to make their best move forward. Welcome, Ian. Lovely. Thank you. That's a very nice way of saying I'm old, really, isn't it? There we go. Experienced worldly wise. Yeah. Is that wisdom? Is that wisdom that we're going to tap into today? So Ian, thank you for joining me. IAN I really appreciate it. MARK I always love being in conversation with you. I, I learned so much and some of the things you come out with just spontaneously just really challenged me, make me think. So I'm hoping we can have exactly that today. The very first question I'm going to put to you. Which in fact doesn't come from me, it comes from somebody who is very keen to join us today. So Kristina, uh, Joy Fuentes, thank you so much for sending this in. And Christina's question is, Ian, what is the most common mind monkey that you've seen amongst senior executives and co that you coach? IAN I I, it's a weird question because it sounds straightforward and then you get into the reality of it. Of course. Um, I think there's several things going on. Um. One at the particular level. When you're dealing with each individual, it can be quite different. So, on the face of it that there's not a lot of commonalities quite often. Mm-hmm. Two, A lot of people when they come to coaching for the first time are understandably nervous. And so sometimes what you get is a test question. So, the test question isn't really the question they want to ask. Yep. But also, you have this idea of 'Referred Pain'. It's that idea that, you know, a toothache is often actually a sign of a heart problem. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And a hip ache is obviously a sign as, and this works with the mind as well. So quite often what you'll get as someone who comes to you with problem A because that is what is visible or comprehensible to them. Mm-hmm. But it's not the issue. And so you ha kinda have to work towards what's going on. Um, so it's, it's not entirely straightforward. Um, you made me think about this. So an extent what happens this morning is kind of mostly on you. Um, but sort of thinking it through is when you then start to abstract. Yeah. You get into an interesting place where in some ways, I'd say a lot of what's going on comes down to fear of the light or fear of the dark. And I'm happy to expand it on that scale if you like. Yes, yes. Yeah. But in the interim, before we get there, I think also I'm becoming more concerned that actually the bigger fear that people trying to work with is becoming fear of fear, and this idea that fear must be eradicated. Fear is bad, fear is terrible. Actually, most fear is well grounded. Yep. It's just not well calibrated and that's where it goes wrong. Yep. If you think, if you are scared, what if I get this meeting wrong? What if I get this investment wrong? Great. I'd be terrified if you didn't. because every sensible person should have that doubt. They should have that fear when it overwhelms you and turns into, therefore, I cannot make this decision. Therefore, I will actually work so as to make the decision believable on somebody else. But I'll still take credit afterwards if it's all right. You know, that's when things start going wrong, and that's about calibration and response. And in a sense, what we are maybe increasingly dealing with is dealing with our response to fear as a bad habit. I like that. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. Um, the, it is entirely reasonable. Um, if you met a sort of bity snake, the hiss, you'd have a fear or snakes, it's maybe less reasonable to have a complete meltdown if you see a snake on tv. Most of us recognise that, so we try and get help with it. Mm-hmm. What we help with is not the snakes, it's not the reasonable thing of venomous snakes are dangerous. Beware. It's the unreasonable habit that we've developed around that fear and doubt. And often it's about how we shift that. And, you know, we talk about monkeys and we talk about chimps. You'll be familiar with the, the, the brilliant work that Steve Peters’ team have done over the years and, and the, the chimp paradox. And that basic idea that one of the problems is, is whenever we are reacting to an event, especially one that we find challenging, both the human and the chimp respond. But the chimp is twice as fast and twice as strong. Yep. So, it gets there quicker and it holds the strong ground. You know, if you remember those heady days when we were allowed to play things like King of the Castle, you know, strong Chimp on top of the castle is probably going to win the day. Yeah. Uh, and that's why. Bananas really matter because part of what we need to do is think about reshaping habits. Yeah. And the reshaping of habits comes in part from recognising when they tend to step in and take a hold, but then having the kind of the mental 'nana that goes, right, the chimp's going to come after this. I need to distract it. If you go into, so you, the, the basic techniques that you see in NLP and CBT where you look at people who are getting into bad habits and want to change 'em. Funny enough, that pattern actually feels quite familiar and quite useful in this space. Mm-hmm. because it's about Recognize. Stop. Rethink. Reset, now react. And all of that is actually just a nice simple way of, you know, getting in the chimp's way long enough to allow the human to get there and go, no, no, no, no. We're going to deal with this like a grownup. Yeah. You know, we're not going to throw a tantrum, we're not going to beat the whatsit it outta someone on a Friday night because we had an argument at the pub. We're actually going to stop and be reasonable and calibrate what the right response should be. MARK Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I. My mind is fizzing. There were so many points where I'm like, oh, tell me what about this. Yeah, tell me what about. Yeah, yeah, fine. So unpack whatever you want from that. Exactly. Exactly what I was hoping from you. So thank you so much. This. Right. Let's, let's begin with the one word that came out sort of several times within that sort of, um, explanation calibration. Yes. So, I'm going to sort of make this very sweeping, generic kind of assumption that the work you do is all about digging into that calibration. I know it's much more than that, but let's begin with how do you then, coming back to Kristina's question, when you are sat with somebody who has that referred fear, they're saying, oh, I'm feeling this. You are hearing that, and you are immediately thinking, Hmm. Actually, there's another place where we need to go with this. Where do you begin with this calibration? IAN So I think a lot of it is, it comes back to, for, for me, that coaching conversation has three core states. I'm not going tosay phases. because phases always starts to apply there's a, a guaranteed sequence. Mm-hmm. But as you know, I tend to talk about these states of expose, explore, and evolve. And a lot of the coaching conversation is a dance between exposing and exploring. Yeah. And how you do that to encourage, in particular our clients to explore and expose for themselves what's going on. So actually, the first thing, particularly in the coaching context is, is teasing out what these things mean. You know, there, there are lots of things out there that are now happily called syndromes. Well syndrome is a persistent state, persistent response. It is a bad habit in that sense. Yeah. There are lots of things that aren't bad habits. They're not persistent. They just happen now again, so let's stop calling them syndromes. Let's stop Mis-tagging. Yeah. But hidden in that is this idea that there are events that cause responses or there's the apprehension of event that causes a response and often a pre-emptive response. Yeah. So actually, let's start on picking what are the conditions? Let's explore. What does that actually look like in practice? What does that mean? When does this happen? How does this happen? Do you know that it's happening? And what you will find a lot of the time is as you start to open this up. The coachees themselves get into that sort of thread that sort of says, well, and then this happens. Well, fun enough. And that happened last week and it keeps happening. But and you know, they, they ideally as you want it to be, they discover for themselves. Actually, it's, it's not about the pain in the tooth or the pain in the arm. It's recognising there's something deeper in gut. Yeah. Now. That then becomes about listening, prompting, encouraging them to map the full picture, which, you know, as you well know as a coach, is often the really frustrating bit when you've seen something before, when you've a good idea where this is heading. You can't, you must, it doesn't help. Absolutely. Must not. But you know, it's, it's, it's maybe one of the greater challenges of, of our business is, is, yeah. Holding the silence to allow the client to complete that journey for themselves because that will always be the most powerful outcome. Once they get to that point of recognizing there is a core here. Mm-hmm. And that may be consistent, what their first thought. It may be something different. It doesn't really matter, but it's getting to that sense of, yes, we understand this is the space. The next bit of challenge then is, okay, so is moving forward something that happens with someone like me? Or, and it does happen. Um, is moving forward actually going to take something a bit more fundamental and maybe something a bit more in the counselling or therapy space? Yeah. You know, I did have, uh, one client many moons ago who again presented with this idea that the problem was communicating with his team. And it didn't quite make sense from his description. We went out in, and actually it took several sessions and then when we finally broke through, what came out was essentially he didn't want to open that door because the last time we opened that door, he had a breakdown. Okay. Yeah. And then we kind of realised that's actually where we're at. But it's slightly different. And actually, I'm a coach. I've got, I've done some counselling training, but I'm not a counsellor, I'm not a therapist. Mm-hmm. We need to take this in different directions so you, you can end up at that extreme, but you know, the change of him three months later, after a bit of counselling, completely different whole bunch of things then sort themselves out. So, there is a bit about getting to the right place. More often it's in a space where people like you and I can help, where it is more about especially learned behaviours in the world of work. Mm-hmm. And where we, we all talk about culture, we all underestimate culture and we all tend not to see how culture shape us. So, surprise, surprise, we tend to miss the erosion of that boundary between corporate culture and our own culture, and in particular when those cultures are at odds. Yeah, and I've been there myself, you know, a couple of times. It took me far too long to realise the culture, and I are just never going to be happy, you know, playmates. Um, because you don't want to think that way. And, and it's just, it's not how the mindset works. Um. See, you can start to move then into position where say, okay, fine. Now that I get that, I get that. This is not a deep-rooted issue in me. I get this is not a deep-rooted problem about communicating with the team or a deep-rooted problem about X. This is actually, I'm working at odds to the kind of person I want to be, right? So now how do I want to resolve that? And then of course you can then open up into a whole bunch of other questions around, yeah, do I want to change? Do I want them to change or do I want to change my circumstances? And they're all valid responses. So, there is that bit of getting down to explore, identify what the core is. Once you've understood what the core is, it's then what's the appropriate next evolution of that. What's the best help for that evolution and then sometimes at the simplest level, it's about just having tools and techniques. Um, if I, so again, I'll come to another one who in their first management role came to me one session, an utter exasperation because nobody was listening to, you couldn't get through and they tried everything. Gosh, that must be really stressful. So, it's another 10 minutes of how stressful it was. Okay. So, what have you done? Well, I did this. Okay. And that didn't work. What response did you get? Ah, okay. And then what did you do? Sorry. Well, you know how you said you tried everything? Well, that, that, that was one thing, you know, and then what you discover is like an awful lot of us and it, it kind of wills us background, I guess to Kristina's original question. Um. Despite the fact you can do whole doctorates now in management and business administration, uh, most of us aren't really taught basic business-y things. Most of us aren't really taught basic office or work environment things at pretty much any stage of our education and development. So, it shouldn't surprise us that we come to work often without those understandings, and, and that can be a bit of adjustment. It therefore shouldn't surprise us but maybe disappoint us. That what can happen to a lot of us is we spend 5, 10, 15 years being the brilliant specialist that we are. And then one Friday afternoon, someone comes and taps on the shoulder and says, Mark, brilliant job mate. As of Monday, you are leading a team of 50. You'll be fine. You know, and then suddenly you are expected to have known and be ready to blow a whole range of leadership and management skills, tools and techniques. Lord knows how, but you know, there it is. Um, so no wonder you might find yourself by Tuesday thinking, gosh, this feels quite difficult. Am I an imposter? Gosh, this is quite scary. Um, yeah. And you know that whole thing about fear of light is that fear of being seen, which is particularly ironic because it's one of our most prime urges is to be seen. Hmm. But we also know that comes at risks. Indeed. Indeed, yes. You managed, you know, I mean, I've have, we talked about the painted zebra. We had that conversation. Let's have it now. Let's, let's do it again. Let's try now. So yeah, let's share it. Um, a couple of times I have been told that this is true, but have never seen a proper attribution, so I'm going to stay with the view it's probably apocryphal. Okay. Um, the idea is that you have a, a wildlife crew following a dazzle zebra across, you know, the grasslands. And, you know, surprise, surprise, when you stick a camera on a dazzle zebra, basically it looks like a blurry barcode. So, you can't really make sense of it. So, what they did this for several days, getting there were all very difficult. What are we going to do? And someone has a brilliant idea. What we will do is in the middle of the night while they're all asleep, we'll creep up to one of them and we'll put a circle on its backside because then that will stand out on the camera and we'll be able to track it and then we'll be able to explain the story much more effectively. Okay, so they do this and then the following day, uh, they come back, they catch up with the dazzle and they're tracking, but they can't find the zebra. And I think, well, it was a blasted big red spot. How can we not see it? Well, never mind. We'll see how tomorrow goes. So, the next day goes, and the following, still can't find this ever day three. It's kind of, no, something is wrong here. So, what are we going to do? Well, we'll re track our steps. So, they drive the track back. To where the, the dazzle come from and eventually under a shady spot. Um, they find the half-eaten carcass of a zebra with a big sign over it saying eight outta 10 big cats preferred it because paint on the backside of the zebra made it trackable by the pride of lions. Yeah. And whenever we step into leadership, we kind of become a painted zebra. And we all know that at some level. So back to, we shouldn't be afraid of fear. We're kind of right to have a bit of doubt of fear if we step into leadership and management because we are exposed. MARK So with that, but I mean, let's calibrate it. Yeah, I was going to say, so with, with that very much in mind, so again, there is that, as you say, that misplaced assumption, fear equals bad, you know, we should be afraid. But as you rightly say, and I always talk about embracing fear, you know, it's, it's, it's an energy that can be a force for good. Uh, within those conversations then, as you are sort of working through the calibration, how do you encourage people to step into the light. IAN Uh, so actually I don't necessarily encourage them to. Fair enough. Yeah. First thing is to find out what they really want. Nice. Because actually not, not everybody really wants to step into the light. Yeah. And, and that's an okay choice. So long as it is a conscious reason, choice. If you're not stepping to light because you've let fear become uncontrolled, that's not a good outcome. No. If you're not stepping into light, because actually I don't enjoy it. It's not me. My space is working within the dazzle rather than standing up from it. That's, that's an entirely fair position. And you can own that, but don't not do something because fear has become overwhelming. So, part of the conversation is then how we go around that space of what, what are the drivers for that choice? MARK So, does this then bring you back, uh, within that conversation? Yeah. You mentioned this a little bit earlier around, you know, the, the, the, what is it you really want? So, you know, the values, the purpose, the sort of the individual direction, the schema, the sort of culture they're brought up with that, again, could be playing at odds with the nature of the business and the company or, you know, in its very simplest terms, the job they've been asked to do. You're, you're sort of stepping back into, their story, their journey. Um, and just touching again, something on something you were saying, as you say, not getting into the counselling or sort of the sort of dealing perhaps sort of bigger T traumas, but there will be elements of somebody's story, somebody's past, things that happened that they've attached decisions, meanings to they've carried forward, um, that could surface and could, you know, pro prove or provide that very strong, clear, absolutely acceptable reason why this, this fear, this feeling, this syndrome is, is not acceptable to them. How you, how do you help them unpick that? Again, without going into the Yeah. The deeper emotional... IAN Well, well, sometimes you have to and, and again, it, it's what, what's there and why. One of the things in all this is, um, cute little monkeys that we are, we delude ourselves that so many of our decisions have been made consciously, and they're not. 95% or more of our decisions are made in subconscious and are invisible to us, such that once we've taken a decision, we assume that the rationale behind it was sound because our subconscious told us it was. Um, so actually the first stage is unpicking the reasoning behind and the driving experience. So, when you say you can't do that, what, what do you mean you can't do that? What specifically is stopping you? So, you have to go in, and you are, you're literally unpicking threads with needles at certain point to get in at that. Where specifically has this idea come from? And you know, sometimes it's come from as simple as, I tried this in my last job, and it was a complete disaster. Well, why was it a complete disaster? And then either you go and you go and you go, and again, you will come to that point beyond the layers of So what, where you start to see either there's an issue that has coloured the memory, coloured the perception of what we're doing, or there's some solid evidence that says, actually without some significant change, I really shouldn't be managing people. Because you know, there are characters like that and that's fine too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and then it's a choice of do you want to, do you want to learn some techniques that I could do with that? Or actually would you much rather be sat on a mountain with your laptop? You know? Um, and none of this is about presuming that people should stay in their comfort zone. Because we don't know, we don't grow without pushing beyond that. But it's understanding opportunities to stretch versus boundaries to what's actually going to work for us. And, and none of that is written in stone. Um, it's not the same for everyone, and it won't be the same for each of us over time. Because of course, this is the other thing and it's the old issue. Well, we tried that before. Yeah. If you tried it before and it didn't work, you know that's tending to stack the weight of the dice. But let's understand why it didn't work before. We just assume that it was the solution that was the problem, you know? And if it is, it is. But actually, that's not wasted time either because. If you are going back and understanding that if we started from this, this point of concern of I'm not really sure that I'm doing the right thing in this organization. Well, why? Well, because I don't want to do this. Well, why? Because last time it didn't work. Why didn't it work? Because the market won't sustain A, B, and C. Have you explained that to your colleagues? Ah. So, these scenes can be simple, short stories, and they can simply just understanding how the facts come together. Sometimes. Yeah, they're more about emotions. Sometimes they're more about, back to our theme for the day. They're more back to, um, the bad habit. I've attached to a fear. MARK And once you've, once you've helped somebody, as you say, sort of get into that realization of, okay, yes, I haven't done everything, there was this other thing I'm aware of that you've set that, that kind of baseline for the calibration you mentioned. Yeah. And then, then we're getting into, okay, let's work on establishing better habits, and by better, I mean habits that serve you in a way that move you to where you want to be. Tell me a little bit more about that journey, like those kinds of conversations. IAN Uh, so at their most basic, um, it comes back into, uh, those versions of the NLP, CBT, ABC, uh, notions. Uh, and, and I use STOP as a variant of that. I use choice as a variant of that. So, it's, it's about finding that snappy idea that works for you. So that you can own it, and that has to do a number of things. One, it has to get into the habit of predicting the rain. So, what, what, what do the clouds look like before it rains? Yeah. So, when you're at work, what does it look like before there's an argument, what does it look like before there's a challenge about A, B, and C. If you have a problem with that relationship, what does it look like in the lead up to that happening? So that you start to be able to anticipate? Mm-hmm. Because that gives the human a chance to get in ahead of the chimp and therefore that lousy human start say, okay, right. I'm going to get my mental banana ready because at some point I'm going to need to call Stop. And then you can either say that I've heard or two people literally do stop physically and call stop out loud. because that's what they needed to, to invoke that mind snap. Yeah. For other people. Yeah. The ABC approach works from, from CBT what whatever model you can adapt easily to go, this is approaching, I need to put the human in charge. And then you need to think about, so what are the tools that are then going to help a human? So these are the questions about, okay, what am I seeing? Why does it matter? What do I fear? What's the evidence for what's going on? What tools do I already have or through working on my own or with my coach am I developing that I can now bring to bear to recalibrate my response to something that's more appropriate? And again, that's, I'm, I'm doing that in that generalised form. because that's a scalable response. Of course. Yeah. For some things that's a five minute conversation. They've got it and they're off for other things. You may be having this conversation over 3, 4, 5 months. Indeed, indeed. And that, and the harder something is buried and established, the, the more you're going to have to kind of dig into the roots to dig it out. But it's that same process and trusting the process. MARK And I think that that kind of leads me to. Sort looking at time, what may be sort of my last question, but it's, it's quite a big one. This idea of sort of the, the, the stickiness, um, of these new habits. As you say that the deeper you need to dig the, the, yeah. The harder or the, the longer the journey will be in order for these new sort of beliefs to establish. So, there's something I've, we've been playing with this week around the idea that well practice doesn't make a permanent practice, makes proficient. But it's still the mindset that makes permanent. And I wondered how would, how would you take, what, what were your thoughts on that? IAN I, it's an interesting one because it comes up as well when you are looking at, um, profiling and job hunting and CVs and it's this whole question about experience. Mm-hmm. And the, the line between experience and competence. And it's, it's not a bold straight line No. And. Repetition on its own kind of takes you nowhere. And of course, as you know, while the working definitions of madness is repeating the same action and the expectation of a different result. Yeah. So, practice alone is not enough. It's about intentional practice. Yeah. And that's in the space of recognising. So typically, um, what you would expect is changing any habits. Going to take around three months to embed. And you are kind of resetting your initial response. You are resetting your secondary response. And then the intentional bit is being alert to responding in the new way, then reviewing the difference between the old way and the new way. And even if that difference is, yes, I still got mad, but actually it took longer and I got rid of it faster because I realised what I was doing. That's a win. Yeah, be upset, lose control. But you know, you, yeah, you start to mark those changes and if you need to, you can start using scales of one to 10 to calibrate. Can those, and that's fine. You can work on, again, you tailor it to what's going to help you see that the, the ground is shifting. The practice is shifting and the response is shifting. I think one of the, the fun bits in this space that's probably worth being in mind here as well is, um, and I, I talk about this a fair bit. I used to be one of those filthy smokers and eventually where I, we got 30 years ago gave up, um. And gave up in such a way that for the first two years I didn't say I'd stopped smoking because I didn't quite believe it myself. Yeah. And when you give up smoking, you have two to four weeks of absolute hell, which is all about the nicotine withdrawal. You then have the next few months, which are all about act, changing the habits you have associated with smoking. Mm-hmm. Which is, you know, you go into a shop, you buy paper, you buy some cigarettes. I'm still buying a paper in the hand. You know, one hand is automatically wanting to reach a cigarette, so you, you're kind of changing those patterns. The one that surprised me slightly. Uh, and then over time you realise how important it was, is it's back to this fact that no man is an island. So, when I change my habits, even at that small level, those changes change my relationships with other people. Yes. Yes. because they changed my relationships with the people I used to smoke with. They changed my relationships with the people who were used to my smoking and used to make time and space for that. Um, and then sort of other certain people around me and actually we all find change difficult. Mm-hmm. Because fundamentally the, you know, the brain is looking for an easy ride because it's under constant 24-7 pressure. Change is hard work for the brain. So, if it can stay in its right, it will tend to try and stay in its right. When I chose to give up smoking, that was my choice and my ownership. The people around me didn't make that choice for me, so my choice became an imposition on them. Even if indirectly and even if it was actually good for all of us. So actually, all the things that took more time is getting people around me outta the habit of, oh, so you coming for a smoke? And then of course, oh God, I'm waiting for a smoke. You know? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so that there is that thing of recognising that when you make changes, you create ripples in the pond, and you are going to have to manage those ripples too. So, if you change the way you interact with your team. Be ready. The fact that your team may change how it interacts with you, and sometimes that will be straightforward. Sometimes that will be outta sheer confusion sometimes because they're in the rut. Oh, whenever I do this, Mark always gets angry, so I'm going to drop it into five to five on a Friday and then run. And actually, because you've changed, you now realize that you need to give them half an hour to talk it through. So, you both end up being really confused at five to five on a Friday because you are ready for a conversation and they're throwing it through the door to run off. because they don't want to be shouted at. So actually, you need to engage them to explain that things are changing. You want to do things differently. MARK Which, which, when you think about it, it suddenly magnifies, isn't it? This sort of the implication. In some ways the sort, the, the pressure on ourselves. So I don't want to sort of talk ourselves back from the amazing work that we do, but when, when you introduce somebody to this, this sort of the possibility of what they can become, how they can become aligned, how they can unpick, you know, these historic sort of, um, beliefs and, and dangers and sort of trip wires and things, and they start, get, get excited about that, but then become aware that, as you say, there are ripples, our implications, this will affect other people. This is much bigger than just the decision they're making to better themselves in a way that's right for them. Uh, which yeah, it's scary. It makes it even scarier. Even scarier than facing your own. Yeah. Monkeys, uh, you're now having to take on some other, other people's monkeys as well, which coming back to the, you know, the senior sort of leadership levels that, that you work in, obviously there is responsibility there, but, but again, for that individual sat with you in that moment, who has braved, like you said, at the very start, that initial brave, vulnerable conversation of, I think I need help. And now we're saying to them, you do. But this is going to have this, you know, this outward effect on those around you. And there may then become conversations around how they need help. And yes, you have responsibility, but equally, and we both know this and what we do, the responsibility sits within ourselves at all times. Those, those team members who are thinking of throwing the hand grenade in at five to five and then run. There's something going on there with them. Um, so it, it, yes, it's, it's enormous. It's enormous thing, you know, IAN Come back to the monkeys. Um, yeah. You, we, we, we now use the term nitpicking to mean something bad. Um, actually in a monkey colony, it, it's a really important social bonding activity. Yeah. Um, so there, there is this strange thing around, yes, it does mean you're going to have to talk to your team in a different way. But remember you came here because one of the issues you had was actually the team isn't working. Yeah. In the way that works for the team. Yeah. Maybe we're now finding out how to open up that conversation so you, part of the framing is, yes, it's going to be work, but you are doing this for a reward. And it's not just work and reward for you. It's work and reward for those around you, when you frame it and when you embrace it in the right way. MARK Exactly that. Exactly that. Which is why someone like yourself does this so very, very well. Ian. Thank you. So I, we could, well, we could talk for hours. I'm going to have to get you back as well, because I, I just love, I love the way you think. I love the way you explain things, right? It's just, it's, it's a joy to hear you in action and on a roll. So we will do this again. Ian. People can find you on LinkedIn. Yep. People can look up ProDevUk. Where is the best and how is the best way to get in touch with your people who would like to know more about your work? Yeah, so because I'm in a GDPR row with certain people on my website, come to LinkedIn, uh, got my contact details there. IAN Um, easiest thing there is just it. Send me an email, uh, say ianfarrington@prodevukltd.com. Um, and let's have a chat. MARK Amazing, amazing. And anyone who takes you up on the offer will have just the most delightful chat, as I always do with you. Thank you. My pleasure. Sincerely, it's been an absolute pleasure. I wish I knew it would be. Um, that's it for this month's episode of Mind Monkeys. We are back in May. Um, my next guest, um, I will introduce some tease on LinkedIn. I'm going to let this one just per permeate and percolate now because it's been such a great, great half hour. Thank you, Ian. Thank you everybody for tuning in. This will be available to watch back on LinkedIn as always, and it'll be up on YouTube shortly as well with all those previous episodes. So, take care, enjoy your Friday. Thank you all.