My guest on the Engaging Marketeer Podcast this week is John Drysdale from No Guru and Asentiv.
John is a public speaker, trainer, coach and mentor who we worked with many years ago on what was called the Lead Program at the time – it was one of the first coaching programs that we went on with Engage Web. We thoroughly enjoyed it got a lot of benefit from it, and John is a fantastic trainer and a fantastic speaker, so I’m really excited to be talking to him.
As usual, some of the highlights are below, but listen to the podcast in full to learn what businesses can do to improve and how they can grow their business, and how they can use training, coaching and mentoring to bounce ideas around and solve problems they have within their business
John on finding his “why?”
Darren: You say in your early career, you sort of drifted from job to job not really knowing what you were doing or what your skills were. What was that like for you at the time?
John: Reflecting on that, I think we are shaped by our background, aren’t we? I grew up in a working class background, my dad was a driver for BP and Shell and worked very hard, we lived in council properties for much of my early years, and maybe that shaped my expectations. I didn’t have the opportunity to go to university, which is kind of strange now because I work in many universities, so I felt I was average at a lot of things.
I kind of fell into an average job in the oil industry, and it was one of a succession of average jobs that I had. I even went to the Middle East at one point and I was average out there as well. I was working really long hours, I worked in cargo offloading oil and loading oil, and I thought “there must be more to life than this.”
So I found a nine-to-five job that was important to me with a government agency, and it was the first time I’d seen people actually be trained to do a job. We were put in a classroom with a succession of trainers and they were all brilliant with different styles. I thought “that looks like an interesting thing to do, I wonder how you become a trainer”. I think that was a turning point for me.
But to go back to your question, it was a long meandering pathway to find something I was really good at and I really enjoyed. It was terrible experience going through what I went through, but you have to go through that, don’t you? Looking back, I just wish that someone had stepped in and intervened and maybe given me a different direction earlier.
Darren: Was there a particular low point where you thought you had to find your “why?”, for want of a better phrase?
John: Yeah, a couple. When I worked abroad and I was just married, I spent a long time away from home. I’d worked six weeks in Saudi Arabia and then moved to Dubai and Abu Dhabi. I think a lot of the time I was I was regretting being away from home and my wife. Eight weeks doesn’t sound a long time but when you’re out there, it’s quite hard to get through. There were other occasions like just standing in wet wintry conditions on the top of a tank somewhere like Aberdeen, measuring oil and being bombarded by seagulls. It’s not the best job, is it?
…on introversion and performing
Darren: You mentioned as well that being a trainer fed your desire to perform?
John: It’s interesting, I’m working on a project at the moment about introverts, and I believe that introverts can make great businesspeople and be great leaders. I strongly identify with introvert characteristics – being the eldest of three boys might have something to do with that. If you’re first in the family I do think you tend to be cautious and your parents are overly cautious of you, so perhaps you don’t take as many risks and are more reserved as you go into the world.
I was quite an introverted boy, but I loved music and when I was growing up in in Grangemouth in industrial Scotland I loved the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. As a tiny kid I used to entertain the neighbours by getting a plank of wood and pretending I was playing people songs. My mum got great feedback from the neighbours, and I suppose that’s probably the only feedback I had in my childhood that was kind of positive. I got to perform music later in life, playing in bands and a duo with my wife Fiona who’s a terrific singer – at one stage and we went and we played round pubs in Scotland as we needed the money.
So I guess the point I’m trying to get to is I think introverts are interesting. I think there are probably off-the-scale introverts who are great performers, like you with your stand-up. A switch goes on and it’s just something else happening.
…on the move to online teaching and coaching
Darren: How has it been different taking all of your stagecraft and teaching and doing it online instead?
John: To be honest with you I think it’s still something that we’re all still developing. I find I’m possibly even more animated on screen, it’s almost like you have to make yourself bigger and do more. I find myself sometimes like leaning forward you know almost like having a conversation, so it’s like having a kind of dialogue through the through the screen. You don’t have the full range of body language so I think pace is important – you need to do stuff in chunks so people can digest it. You have to involve them with things like interactive whiteboards, doing polls, getting word-clouds and making it as rich an experience as you can.
But we’re really only two years into doing this, whereas I’ve been standing on my feet doing training for the last 24 years, so it’s a very different environment. We’ve been doing long ILM (Institute of Leadership & Management) programmes online, and I don’t think there’s any real difference in the in the quality of the program. For me it still feels better being in the room with students because I observe them a bit more, but in terms of their experience, it’s been great so far.
…on embracing change
Darren: What you think makes a leader or a business owner receptive to change?
John: I think there has to be a motivation to learn. You know, we all want to do things, but there has to be a real desire to achieve your goal and achieve the outcome.
You also have to be receptive to feedback, which is quite tricky. We do evaluation sheets, and usually they’re pretty great because sometimes you just get a little comment that sort of works and you focus on that one comment, but other times I can learn from something even if I don’t agree with it. It’s incumbent on me to take that information on board and learn from it, so I think that’s a key thing – to take feedback on board as well and to be receptive to change, not stuck in your ways.
Sometimes we need a good kick up the backside – for instance, you could ask “why didn’t we do the online courses before through Zoom?” I’d used Zoom a couple of times and I hadn’t found it a comfortable experience, but then we had to use it and now we’re all using it. So I think you have to be receptive to coaching feedback and change, and recognise the benefits of that change first and foremost.
…on being coached and accepting help
Darren: It’s interesting that you say everybody should have a coach. I actually took part in an online argument with one business coach who was saying that he didn’t need a coach because he’d learned everything he needed to learn, but if people wanted to contact him for coaching these were his details. The guy was an idiot – I cannot fathom why anybody would go “I don’t need a coach because I’m brilliant” but I will happily coach you. There’s always someone who can teach you something and I don’t understand people who think they know everything.
John: Yeah, and it’s not even about teaching. I’m very flexible in terms of the coaching I do and I teach coaching skills, so we can be really directive and offer advice on one end of the spectrum, or you can be completely non-directive where you’re pretty much like a listening post for people. For me the coach is just a thinking space and there to address any challenges. You might think you know everything but then next week you might hit a challenge that knocks your confidence. The coach is there to help you work through that challenge.
My coach and I meet two times a month at least and we just continually work on the themes that I’m experiencing as a business owner at that time. Modern life is really complex and life gets in the way – I’ve been thrown some big life challenges in the last six months – and the coach is that safe place that you can go to where you can talk about it.
John is great to work with and can be contacted at john.drysdale@noguru.net, where he’ll be happy to set up an initial meeting and see how he can help you. And if you’d like to hear more interviews with marketing experts like him, be sure to subscribe to the Engaging Marketeer Podcast on your favourite listening platform.