James Bargeron
Lance Wantenaar: [00:00:00] Good morning. Thank you for coming on and thinking like a genius podcast, James. So I’m going to start with an introduction just to get a bit of a background on yourself and a bit of your, your history and just to introduce people to use. So you are James Bargeron. Yeah. I pronounced that correctly.
[00:00:42] You are a former, executive who worked in the oil and the shipping industry. And then you’ve migrated into coaching and kind of performance mindset and also mentoring as a follow on from exiting out of, out of the corporate world. So can you provide people a bit of background on your history, how you got into shipping and also your story where you got to where you are now and what it is that you do on a day-to-day basis and what you’re
[00:01:13] James Bargemon: [00:01:13] involved in.
[00:01:14] Sure. Thanks very much, Lance. First of all, for inviting me to come along here. The story I suppose, started when I was a kid that I was always fascinated by, you know, sports in particular about how certain people and teams could be successful and others weren’t. And I suppose that was the, the, the guiding thing that drove me on that when I left school.
[00:01:42] I wasn’t an academic. I didn’t want to go into spend the whole of my life in books. I was more of an active person and dealing with people. And so I left school before going on in college and all that sort of stuff. It wasn’t for me. So I wanted to go to the big wide world and, and be successful, I suppose, is the word.
[00:02:02] And I got involved in work for a bank. First of all, which pulled the pants off makers. It was working with computers and being there at 11 o’clock at night as a teenager. And late teens with a computer talking to you in gibberish. I just asked it wasn’t for me. So I got into shipping and oil and that was, uh, to me it wasn’t, uh, it wasn’t a job.
[00:02:25] It was just so exciting because we’ve been talking with people from around the world on a daily basis, learning about these huge oil tankers. You see that transport all around the world. Dealing with oil companies dealing with people in business. And it was just, it was just mind really. Cause it was just so much fun.
[00:02:45] It was hard work. Um, at the time, you know, learning and getting into a situation, dealing with people, high finance. And negotiate learning how to negotiate these contracts. And so there, it wasn’t all fun, but that was part of it that, uh, you know, that there was the stress anxiety levels and never nine, the adrenaline that’s going to be flying through your system.
[00:03:10] And so it was, it was just a fun time going through in the eighties. And I spent 30 years in that line of work. And you know, when you, when you’re in that line, you know, you’re not going to be in it to you the time 65 years of aging get out and retire normally just purely because it was completely different, the pressures and the stress levels that people go through that you.
[00:03:38] Unless you really look after yourself, you come out with some collateral damage in one form or another. And some people had an awful lot of collateral damage. There’s certain people I know that are around these days because they didn’t really look after themselves. And I suppose it was a saving grace that when I did get out 10 years ago, that.
[00:04:01] It was quite a, an acrimonious departure, which one go into for, for legality sake. For my previous employer, the situation was difficult. And in reality, it was something I suppose, that I’ve been looking to do for a while. You know, when you’re reading something and you’re really excited. And then after a while, And I don’t mean a couple of weeks.
[00:04:28] I’m talking, you know, 30 years, it starts to wane and stuff down here, you get that feeling inside that you don’t have that same buzz getting up and going into the office every day and that sort of thing. And so the reality was when I did get out is that I got out in a different way that I first envisaged.
[00:04:49] That we have to be careful, I suppose, is the lesson I, of what we actually wish for, you know, if you’re not specific of how you want something to happen and we just gotta be, uh, open to receive things in a different way. And so I got out, let’s say about 10 years ago, and I suppose it was a saving grace, really, because as I say of the pressures that we go through, that we do things that we become.
[00:05:14] Used to have become habitual that we think we’re okay, but in reality, we’re not. And, uh, recently saw a guy who was in a similar line of work and he said something and it just made so much sense. And it just brought all these things back that I’d forgotten about, which was that you go in, you’re going into the office.
[00:05:34] And some days you forgot how you would see broken bodies, physically and mentally people. Going through dealing with stuff and you’d have the highs and lows of, you know, dealing in oil, high finance people, high pressure. And you just, after a while you took it for granted. But the reality is when you’re on that constant wheel, the whole time that how it affects you, not just physically, but mentally that if you’re not aware of that, that.
[00:06:08] The the long-term effects it can have because you’re doing other things as well. And, you know, drinking too much. Some people were into, uh, obviously harder stuff, shall we say to physically keep going and mentally keep going after, you know, working long, strenuous hours and burning the candle at both ends, as it were just to physically keep going and mentally.
[00:06:34] So that was a challenge. And I suppose in the end it was a saving grace that I actually got out and managed to keep my health and find out ways that I was actually not looking after myself. And it was able to, to change things, to be honest with you. Yeah. It seems like I was not on the, um, it was just a, a very challenging situation and I think realistic for me to get out.
[00:07:01] Although the
[00:07:02] Lance Wantenaar: [00:07:02] situation is really quite hard or sounded very, very difficult to, to manage and deal with, uh, what was the process that you used to cope with things on a, on a day to day basis, and to allow you to make decisions, which are, you could say. Quality decisions because that, that has to be quite difficult, especially if you’re in a continued stress environment.
[00:07:30] How did you, what was your coping mechanism to be able to make sure that the decisions that you were making were of, of
[00:07:38] James Bargemon: [00:07:38] good that’s a great question. Because the thing was, we didn’t often have one. Uh, we didn’t would that it’s so different these days when you see companies putting in. Situations to try and help their people, their management deal with pressures and view things back then.
[00:07:59] It was, you know, when I first started, it was in no uncertain terms that you had to perform and they didn’t care how you performed outside or whatever you did so long as you actually performed. You know, to, to the best of your ability inside to make money. And, you know, along with the entertaining and everything else, the, there was no actual strategy.
[00:08:24] That was the problem. It was, it was a lot of the time just, you know, make money. We don’t care how you do it. You know what your job is, just go and do that. And. Along the along the way you would expect to do certain things. And the idea of, you know, looking after yourself was alien. Anybody that didn’t go to the pub for lunch and didn’t go out in the evening to meet clients.
[00:08:49] And this sort of stuff was considered weird, you know, went to do anything nice to go every now and again, go swimming and stuff. Uh, it was considered wow. And I, that sort of thing. And so we didn’t have an actual mechanism where we just performed as it work. We knew what our jobs were and you worked in small teams and you just.
[00:09:14] We’re trained and taught how to be very, very good at what you did. Uh, and to be honest with you, those that weren’t very good. They didn’t stick around too long. It was as simple as that. And the coping mechanism we had was to have fun. And a lot of that included going out, entertaining people. Being around with other people and alcohol pubs and restaurants were a big part of that.
[00:09:41] And as I say, some, some people had other coping mechanisms, which were, you know, harder, harder things would keep them going. And that’s where, you know, we all, we, we all want to. Be perfect in certain situations, you know, especially at work, we’re not in my old line of what we were, we were taught that we shouldn’t make mistakes.
[00:10:03] Certainly the offices that I first started in mistakes were not just frowned upon. They were unacceptable. Failure was unacceptable. And that was the, the mindset. That was the mentality that we were. Living within the culture that was developed. And it was really simple is that, um, if you didn’t like that, there’s the door.
[00:10:28] It’s very simple. You either were part of it or you weren’t, and it was just you, you built almost a sixth sense, sixth sense. I should say. That, when you dealing with situations, you would preempt what was going on. Uh, those people that were at the top level, you would know, and preempt what the client was going to do in order to do something.
[00:10:55] And you would print the ideas and thoughts and everything you would sow seeds, you would help them, uh, with different suggestions and everything else to preempt the situation so that you would make their lives easier. Because there’s more, you made their lives easier. The more business you would get, it’s quite sensitive.
[00:11:10] And so you have to respond, but often we reacted according to the situations and often we didn’t react terribly well, you know, when things didn’t go right. Which is why we spent quite a lot of time in the pub and bars and everything else. So how has that
[00:11:30] Lance Wantenaar: [00:11:30] actually allowed
[00:11:31] James Bargemon: [00:11:31] you
[00:11:31] Lance Wantenaar: [00:11:31] to use that experience? To impart lessons in coaching and in your current line of work, because obviously you’ve moved into, into coaching and mentorship.
[00:11:43] So how has that experience allowed you to develop your skills and your mental capability in your. You could say that experience, how has it been crystallized into ways that can actually benefit people?
[00:11:57] James Bargemon: [00:11:57] It certainly has helped me an awful lot, as I say, uh, because, um, unknowingly I’d been coaching and mentoring and training people for, you know, 25 years.
[00:12:08] Once a week. Well, even, probably longer than that, because when I started within a couple of years, I was, we started taking on other people and I started helping them and think differently. And that was the thing. So I’ve worked for 25 years. Really. I’ve been unknowingly coaching people let’s put as trained.
[00:12:25] You train people how to do certain jobs when they came in. But the coaching side of it is more the case of actually asking questions so that people can think for themselves rather than just telling them what to do. And. It was only when I got out that I discovered the power of, you know, intentionally coaching people, training and mentoring people.
[00:12:48] And I had some pretty bad mentors along the way. And that’s the problem is that when you, when you are in a situation where you’ve got people that you’ve got bosses instead of leaders, and you’ve got people that just like to tell you what to do and shout and scream and train people by fear, then. What happens is all you’re doing is.
[00:13:09] Replicating the same thing over and over again, which is why, you know, you get somebody in an organization and, Oh, well he’s a good salesman. He, Oh yeah. He made more money. Anybody last year we need to, we’ll make him a manager and that’s the wrong thing you do, because what you’re doing is you’re taking a guy who’s really good at, you know, produced it for the company is happy.
[00:13:28] He’s got no formal training of working with people of how to work with individuals and collectively as a team that’s by skillset. So you then. Put him in that position and make it worse for the company. And then they wonder why that they actually start making less money because the whole situation. And that was a realization when I, when I got out is that I could use the skills I’ve learned for, for many years of which was negotiations, dealing with people, reading people, reading their reactions, the psychology of how they would respond.
[00:14:05] In person, as well as on the telephone, it was interesting. Cause when you’re talking to somebody on the phone, you could ask a question and I could tell by their response, their delays and the sound of the tone of their voice, how they were thinking and whether they were in denial, whether they were telling lies and this sort of stuff, just by different sounds and different things they would do.
[00:14:27] So that was a great help. And when I got out and started going into coaching and had a coach myself, and then realized I’ve been through the training, is that all those years, that actually set me up for something to do something professionally, like now with all those years experience, rather than coming out and going, what can I do?
[00:14:45] Who wants, who wants somebody who is involved in shipping? So it’s helped me an awful lot. So. Train people, but also coach those that want to be coached and improve. And as I said, there’s the difference between the two and it’s, it’s made a world of difference, really, to understand people that are at a better level, let’s explore that
[00:15:06] Lance Wantenaar: [00:15:06] part of the.
[00:15:07] Psychology and, and the listening, because that’s something that I’m really interested in. Part of my work is obviously I work in cyber security and I deal with social engineering as well. So the, the whole relationship building process, when you’re actually dealing with somebody is also making sure that you actually listening to people and actually listen to their intent.
[00:15:28] And you’re also paying attention to inflection their tone of their voice, whether they stressed or whether they relaxed. And that’s, those are very subtle things you need to pick up when you’re actually paying attention to people and actually listening to them. So how did you actually start noticing that you could pick up all of these differences, which allowed you to.
[00:15:51] Manage the conversation to
[00:15:52] James Bargemon: [00:15:52] actually get the result that you wanted? Well, it just, it comes with experience. Lance it’s like anything is that if you, if you want to improve upon something, you want to do it intentionally because if you’ve done and it’s just haphazard. And so being around people who are really good.
[00:16:13] Uh, what they were doing would then help you to become really good, because obviously if you copy what somebody else is doing, then you’re gonna find out through your own experiences, whether it works or not. And that’s the whole point is that. Best of people you are around the better you’re going to learn.
[00:16:32] The more you’re going to learn. And it’s, it’s, it’s no different than anything. If I use sports, I look for a lot of analogies is that if you’re surrounded by 11 or 10 people on a football team that are really, really good, you’re going to. Step up a certain number. You make good as them, but if you’re surrounded by people who are poor, they’re normally going to drag you down.
[00:16:52] And so that, that was a great thing, is that learning from those people that were really, really good. And I was fortunate. I had some clients who were some of the top people on the planet, in their, in their line of work. And they just saw at a completely different level and learning from them, how they did things.
[00:17:15] Was a game changer on the basis is that it was like playing poker, to be honest with you, because you would see their responses, you would see the way that they reacted or sorry. They responded rather than reacted. And that was a huge thing. And so you’d notice somebody with the, as we said, with their tonality, their excitement levels, and there were certain people that were just flat-lined.
[00:17:41] Yeah, more time. And they were normally the guys that were very, very sick accessible, because they weren’t affected, um, and were very stoic. They weren’t effected by what you’d said or they didn’t let you know. That they were affected by what you’d said negatively or positively. And that was a great thing.
[00:18:01] Is that when you came across people who would get excited, get angry, starts stamping their feet and shout and scream. And down the phone, you realize they were the people that were under pressure that wanted something more than you or the other party did. And it was a sign of weakness, but the guardians who were there and.
[00:18:24] Didn’t go into great details on certain situation and then would a B minus elaborate, you know? Yes, no fine call you back. You couldn’t read too much into the situation because they wouldn’t allow you. And they would, they were the, normally the guys that were really good, but the guys didn’t say you would start with one great one was to go.
[00:18:52] But whenever you would ask a question, if you ask the right question, which was really in depth and he struggled, he would always delay and then cough. And the thing was, he didn’t realize he was doing it. But that was basically the response to save it. I’m just thinking of something, a story I can tell you that really isn’t true.
[00:19:16] And we’ve got to realize that is that each time he coughed, is that okay? We know that he’s not, he’s being economical with the truth. So it was, uh, it was very helpful, uh, in that respect. And so dealing with people now, when you talk to people, um, People that want to improve. They don’t lie. It’s just more effective that they’re unaware of certain situations.
[00:19:44] And it’s only from when you start dealing and peeling away, certain layers that you find out where the problems really are and the challenges are that they, they’re not always aware of how they think, how they’re thinking of their self-talk about the way that they speak. And it’s. At times denial because obviously they don’t want to face certain situations.
[00:20:09] And it’s, it’s a good way of spotting those things. And when you’re talking to somebody, which is why I always prefer to use zoom or something like this to work with somebody, because then when you’re talking with somebody, they want the improvement, then there’s no point hiding behind a telephone. Yeah, the idea is if you want to get improvement, well, we gotta, you know, find out what’s what’s the obstacle first.
[00:20:32] And when you find out what the obstacle is, then you can actually do look about how to get over it, get through it. And sometimes you’ll get, yeah, people’s facial expressions. Their eyes will move when you ask them a question and this sort of stuff, it’s just all part of that psychological thing is you’ll see their reactions, which will determine.
[00:20:49] Uh, how you then lead into the next stage, the next phase, whether you’ve touched a nerve or something like that, that may have caused them to think about something that may have stopped them from actually, you know, improving the chances of successful becoming successful, going through those processes that you actually get that.
[00:21:12] Lance Wantenaar: [00:21:12] You get it, you get to the underlying reasons and the, the underlying, you could say drivers, uh, which allows you to explore
[00:21:19] James Bargemon: [00:21:19] it even more. Yeah. And the thing is that Cole Huma said, you know, uh, until you make the unconscious conscious, it’s going to direct your life and you’ll call it fate. And the thing here, it happens with so many people is that they’re not aware of certain situations.
[00:21:34] And that’s when you go through and you ask certain questions and you then start, as we say, peel away and start digging away at certain situations and they start be white for the lights to come on with somebody going. And that’s what you’re really looking for. And so that’s where the, the, uh, my experience previous city has helped is that, you know, reading people and when they’re facing a challenge, it will come out, you know, saying in their voice or something.
[00:22:01] So that’s something you pick up rather than. You’re asking a question for the sake of it. The idea is that with the challenges people are facing these days, and the more pressure that’s put on them, they’re running their own business or they’re an executive or CEO, whatever it may be. It’s not just those pressures at work they’re having to deal with.
[00:22:23] You know, as we’ve just seen what’s happened in the last few months, the fan is their responsibilities, the time and all these other pressures that they’re dealing with. And it manifests in different ways. And people aren’t always aware, as I said, I wasn’t aware of how things were affecting me and. When you work with somebody and you can actually swap those things, you get them to become aware of it.
[00:22:49] And that’s the real critical key is for them to become aware of those things. Cause then they have a choice and we’re using all these tools that we have, you know, to see somebody, how they’re reacting their responses and everything. It just gives you a better, a better way of detecting things to help them.
[00:23:08] Obviously
[00:23:09] Lance Wantenaar: [00:23:09] questioning is a key part of actually allowing a person to identify some of the areas that you think are going to uncover some of that you could say unconscious processes. Yeah. So how would you approach the questioning for them too? Allow them to become a lot more aware of it because questioning is a skill in itself.
[00:23:34] Because if you ask a really close question, then it’s going to be a yes, no response, but if you need to structure the way to get more of the person to open up and allow them to explore the idea, to actually get the realization that they have. To uncover that information is a bit of a skill. So how
[00:23:55] James Bargemon: [00:23:55] would you approach that?
[00:23:56] Well, you’re gonna say right. And I don’t mean to be funny. It’s not a bit of a skill. It is a skill, it’s a huge part of, you know, getting people to, to move forward. And the initial part comes in to like anything it’s getting people to trust you. And that’s where again, where my background has really helped me is that.
[00:24:20] You know, from a young age, being in, involved in that line of work is that you got customers to trust you before they would actually start doing business with you. And once they started trusting you, then you build up a relationship. You build up some sort of a bond. And that’s where in the end I had clients that would give me business and not necessarily have to keep calling him back every time they would give me a variety to go and, you know, get them a result and then contact them because they trusted me.
[00:24:53] And that’s the big thing. And it’s the same when you work with somebody when you’re dealing with somebody. And as I say, whether it’s their business, personal life that interacts with the business too, you know, they, they are intermingled. Yeah, they’re all coming or you can’t be a CEO or run your own business and think, Oh, you’re going home and that’s closed now.
[00:25:12] It doesn’t work like that. And so the idea is that when you get somebody to trust you, that’s where you learn to ask the right questions that are going to open up and give you more of those, uh, responses that you can detect as a, as I mentioned. Yeah. And that’s the way that you get somebody that’s gonna give you the answers for them.
[00:25:36] To then realize what they’ve just said then when they realize that they can think, wow, hang on a second. Where did that come from? And that’s the, that’s the huge difference though, as I alluded to previously is that coaching is about helping people understand what the obstacles and things are about themselves so that they can make the choices to move forward.
[00:25:58] Rather than, you know, teaching and training, which I do as well. That’s completely different. And when you sit and talk with somebody, you ask the question, you ask the question and you get them to actually talk about a situation because it’s very cathartic for people to actually go through a process.
[00:26:20] It’s not therapy, I’m not a therapist. Um, it’s more a case of you have a relationship. That people want to improve, but they’re not always sure how and yeah. When you feel that they can trust somebody to talk about a situation that is separate from their work environment. And they’re happy to then go through and talk about the fault processes.
[00:26:48] Cause that’s the big one is how you ask questions to get them to talk through their thought processes and the basis behind that. Will then open up even more of a window for you to ask deeper questions for them to actually then explain what the driver for those things are. And there will always be a driver.
[00:27:09] It will usually be fair, um, which is a huge driver of why people do certain things or desire. And. You have to find out where along the line that that person is being driven by fear usually, or if it’s a desire that’s been driven or other things along the way. And when they start becoming more aware of those things, that’s when that’s when the magic happens, because then they’ll decide, hang on a second.
[00:27:38] Now I know what it is. I have the choice. I can do something about it or I can stay stuck and nobody wants to do that. Yeah, you’ve
[00:27:47] Lance Wantenaar: [00:27:47] highlighted quite a lot of really interesting aspects because the, the drivers are really quite important to actually get somebody to start the initial process, because it deals with your intrinsic and extrinsic motivation.
[00:28:01] The biggest challenges extrinsic motivations will normally fail because they are. You get to, you’re trying to press something or put pressure from externally to, to actually get a, get, get a reaction to going to a specific direction. And invariably it means that you don’t have a participant that’s willing participant.
[00:28:21] Yeah. And the motivation is not from a personal motivation and it’s not a personal choice because it doesn’t, it doesn’t match your belief systems and your, the way that you make your decisions. It doesn’t tie in to your personal drivers that doesn’t tie into your. Own framework of references and decisions, and potentially even your personality and your long-term goals, it might be something that’s a short-term goal, but it’s not going to be a long-term benefit for, for, for
[00:28:50] James Bargemon: [00:28:50] anyone.
[00:28:51] But totally. And that’s why I don’t like motivation. And somebody said to me, Oh, I was doing a talk last year. And somebody said, Oh, are you a motivational speaker? And I said far from it. I should know, what are you then? I said, well, I, I like to speak on topics about helping people, you know, tap into their potential and what’s stopping them from reaching that.
[00:29:16] And the word I prefer to use is inspiration because as you’ve just alluded to there that having someone motivate you, I don’t want someone to motivate me to get my, my ass out of bed in the morning. I want to have a reason to get out of bed and that’s going to come from that, as you just said, that’s got to come from here, what’s in here.
[00:29:37] What, what is your desire go after something, what you want rather than somebody else wants you to, you know, be motivated, you know, and what fun is that? And you wonder why there’s so much apathy around that because people are trained by fear in organizations. I see it all the time. And you know, you just look on LinkedIn about the language that people use and this sort of stuff, just look with inside companies and organizations from the leadership down it’s that they’re doing things.
[00:30:10] To motivate people rather than inspire people. And the people that inspire people with insight, it doesn’t matter how small and a team network organization is. If people feel inspired, you’re going to get better results. And it’s as simple as that. And if people are inspired, why spend your life in a, in a place that you don’t feel that values you you’re exchanging your life for what time and some money, it doesn’t make any sense.
[00:30:36] And so find out what is the real driver inside you? Why you go to work, if it’s, if you’re going to work to make money, to pay for your, you know, you’re a single parent and you want to make money to supply for your kid. Yeah. By all means, but find out what really is inside there. That’s going to make a difference in, you know, not just your life, other people’s lives.
[00:30:58] And that, that makes it a whole different ball game completely rather than just being driven to do what somebody else wants you to do, which is why. Sorry, Lance. I spoke with somebody recently by this he’s a, a guy he’s a sales trainer and we were having a conversation and I said, targets, you know, it’s crazy with inside a company.
[00:31:21] If you’ve got a sales team that sequel 10 people, whatever, it doesn’t matter what organization they’re in or business they’re in. Having somebody set targets for you is the worst thing possible. Because you’re coming in thinking, Oh, am I going to hit my, you know, 20,000 this month target or my million dollars this month and all the rest of it, you’ve got that pressure.
[00:31:42] That’s been set on you by somebody else because the company thinks that you should make that amount of money rather than having people sit down and say, do you know, what, what do we want to do? What’s going to inspire us to actually achieve those and what are we going to get out of it? And at times you have to think about it.
[00:32:00] Yeah. What’s in it for me. And that’s where you get so many people that you’ve got. These people let’s have pep talks and sales talks to motivate them. That lasts about five minutes. Yeah. People aren’t interested in that. They w w what they, what they really want is to be, have some sort of inspiration as to why they want to make that money and let them set the targets and everything else.
[00:32:23] And the thing is that if they’re setting targets, they know they can hit well. They’re obviously not pushing themselves or feeling inspired enough to go after something, if that makes sense. And that again, that’s a, that’s a game changer when you change that rep.
[00:32:39] Lance Wantenaar: [00:32:39] The other thing that you’ve highlighted over there, which I think makes a huge difference is that when it’s something that people personally choose, it gives them a certain amount of responsibility and autonomy when it comes to that choice.
[00:32:53] And now means that they’ve got a personal responsibility to achieve the result, but they’ve also made it their own responsibility to do it. And they, because they’ve got a choice and they feel they’ve got a. Certain amount of control in it. It ties into motivation that ties into long-term goals and it means that it’s going to be way beyond and they’re there.
[00:33:18] Their approach is completely different. It’s not because they have
[00:33:20] James Bargemon: [00:33:20] to. Yeah. Yeah. They feel valued. Is that you’re talking about the hamburger or the sausage factory. You know, okay, this comes along. That goes, this happens in that and everything else. You don’t need any brains or anything to do that, which is why they’ve built systems.
[00:33:37] If you look back at how McDonald’s was so successful, I have a system cook the head, do the buns, catch up onions. Must’ve man. It’s whatever. It just goes along a processing line. If you get that with people, guess what they can’t think at the end, if they’re not thinking they’ve got no imagination, which means they’ve got no imagination, they’re not going to feel inspired.
[00:33:56] Which means you’re not going to get anything like the results that you would is if you get people that want to do something, that if you get people that, and you value the people, it’s amazing what you get at somebody. If they’re supposed to finish at five o’clock and you dumped some stuff on their desk at ten two, and say, look, I really need this shit done for tomorrow.
[00:34:15] They’re going to stay and get it done. If they fit, if they feel valued. And if they feel that they have a say inside what’s happening inside the organization, Rather than okay. Five o’clock. Oh, you should just be lucky. You’ve got a job. I mean, yeah. Great. Thanks. Sort of motivational talk. You really need from somebody.
[00:34:35] Getting people to feel valued inside an organization. And the people are the most important thing inside the organization. And once they start feeling that their mindset changes, their mindset changes and you get completely different results.
[00:34:49] Lance Wantenaar: [00:34:49] Have you found that being able to tap into that mindset change has a long-term benefit and change in how people approach things.
[00:35:00] And there, you would say apart from their drivers, but also there. Personal awareness and stress management and coping
[00:35:08] James Bargemon: [00:35:08] mechanisms. Yeah. You, but you have to develop that as a culture. You can’t just say, okay. Yeah. It’s like buying a packet of Chris. Okay. I bought a packet of crisps one day. Um, but hang on a second.
[00:35:19] What about tomorrow? What about the next day? What about when you’re not there? Does everybody know what the culture is of that organization or that team? What are you actually building so that people actually know what that is? Hmm. And do other people know what that culture is because they just have to look at an organization and see in operation.
[00:35:41] And that will tell you, all you need to know about the culture is if it’s actually being developed and you have to do that intentionally again, it doesn’t happen by itself. Because if you don’t set out with what you want and have the imagination, the vision as people call it these days of what you want to achieve, then that’s where, you know, you can just let things happen as they go along.
[00:36:07] And guess what bad habits get bad habits, which gets more bad habits. And that becomes the culture rather than a culture of high performance and high performance to many people. And they hear about me talk about high performance. They think it’s, Oh God. Yeah, you’ve got to be under more stress and more pressure because you’ve got to do 10 times as much as anybody else, none far from it.
[00:36:30] When you actually run a team of people that are high-performing people, they look after themselves. They look after the people inside the team, they look after themselves, mentally and physically, which means they’re more productive. And they develop that as a culture so that they look after the, themselves the wellbeing and do the things that are, I remember when I, in my old line of work that people thought was, you know, we, we went out with the fairies, you know, like eating healthy, taking time to get your mind in a position where it’s not on the, you know, the hamster wheel, 24 hours a day, take time out, go and do stuff.
[00:37:11] And. It doesn’t really matter if, say for example, you used to make 20,000 or a million or whatever, whatever the figure is. If you do that, you’re supposed to do that in a month. If you do that in the first afternoon, we had two schools of thought. We had one guy who would say, well, if she can do it today, you can do it every day.
[00:37:31] Well, he was an idiot. And then you had one and then you had the other guy turned around and said, you know what? Great you do it the first afternoon. You can go and play golf all week long. I don’t care who was, who was going to be more inspired to actually achieve things. Yeah. And this is where people just don’t think.
[00:37:49] And in the book by Carol Dweck mindset,
[00:37:54] Lance Wantenaar: [00:37:54] I love
[00:37:55] James Bargemon: [00:37:55] that book was fantastic. She talks about a company in there and I used to deal with this particular company Enron. And Enron was the huge oil giant in the us. And in it, she talks about the mindset, the culture that they developed, which was about only picking the very, very top people, the most talented people and get what happened to Enron.
[00:38:26] It didn’t work because of that’s the culture and the mindset that they were developing. It was along the similar lines to guide, just alluded to, is there, if you could make, you know, you hit your targets in the first afternoon, you can do that every afternoon. And that doesn’t, that doesn’t happen. And that was the, the, the, the mindset and the culture that they developed.
[00:38:46] And they imploded because they just had people that they were employing. To be, you know, the best on paper. They weren’t the best as a group of diverse group of people that could form as a team. And ultimately that’s what happened.
[00:39:03] Lance Wantenaar: [00:39:03] You’ve actually unpicked a really interesting topic over here that I’m going to explore a bit more there’s I need to find out the, the, the name I’ve got it in a book blog, but one of the guys that actually worked for Enron.
[00:39:17] I worked in the, I think the energy trading sector, I’m trying to think he is, he’s now billionaires. They started up his own trading company, which he sold for profit or what have you. But, he was actually able to trade on, on two sides because of saw the inputs and he could then trade on the output.
[00:39:34] Yeah. And he made a lot of money for Enron during that time, even when all of the other companies or other parts of the business was failing, he was able to make significant amount of profits because he saw both ends of the market. He saw the input and the output, and you could trade on the differences, which had allowed them to be very successful and he’s, he was mathematically approach.
[00:39:54] But one of the things that he, he mentioned is the fact that they, they would poach people internally. So if they had somebody successful in another part of the department, they would poach that person, regardless of whether the other person and the other department had a day to fight, to keep them. And they would post people internally, which meant that they were basically cannibalizing their own system to, to, to get for search for self.
[00:40:20] James Bargemon: [00:40:20] That’s exactly it, Lance, is that what the culture is that they wanted the best of the best and they didn’t care how they got it. And they’re not the only ones I dealt with an awful lot of the oil companies around the world. And there were one’s in London doing the same thing that these guys would come through guys and girls would come through and when they would shine, The people inside their own departments with other departments, as you just said, would write, we want him, we want her.
[00:40:54] And there’s no. Questions are asked. It was because you’ve got this hierarchy going in and you’ve got these different departments, which were considered to be better than others because we make more money than you. So we get a bigger shout and say, what goes on? I understand business kind of works, but it was just a case of what we’re going to take.
[00:41:15] That one that now we want him, we want her theirs. And it was a fait accompli. So there was no real discussions. This discussion was we’re doing it. We want them and we’ve, already agreed it. And as you say, cannibalism, but yeah, that’s just business, the culture they set, as opposed to, trying to do it another way.
[00:41:34]Lance Wantenaar: [00:41:34] That also something else that, which I’ve been, as you’ve been talking about, you know, watching people and actually relationships with, your clients that you are dealing with and understanding them and preempting them. It’s alluded to something else which I was going to discuss with you is basically systems thinking because the, you were inadvertently paying attention to the systems and the processes and.
[00:42:00] Not just the one single aspect of actually dealing with a client to actually allow trust, to develop and knowing actually what it is that they want. We actually understood their systems and their processes and some of the intangibles there that were affecting them. And that would make things work for them because you knew how they.
[00:42:20] Systems processes, relationships internally will work in which gave you a level of understanding, which allowed you to have a certain amount of, you could say leverage to do things on their behalf. And systems thinking is something which is really key to actually make things work. Because again, the alluding to the Enron example where you cannibalizing.
[00:42:42] Yes, you might be taking out the best person in that system, but what’s happening is actually impacting that system as a whole, because now what you’ve done is you’ve changed the homeostasis. You’ve changed the balance within that section of the organization. You might’ve taken out the best person in our group, but there’s no guarantee that he’s going to be the best person in the group.
[00:43:02] That’s going to be working in the team that you’ve got. So now what you’ve done is that you’ve enforced them another aspect or another factor within your own team, but now you’ve got a whole new dynamic, which means your whole system changes. The, the, all of the interrelationship changes, all of them.
[00:43:18] There’s not going to affect because now it either has to find a state spaces to, to actually work and become part of the system. Well, it’s going to get to a point where it’s like, you’re not part of the system, which means that person will get rejected.
[00:43:33] James Bargemon: [00:43:33] Yeah. And now that it has, uh, earlier is this guy, you know, so often you see salespeople just take the guy out and say, Oh, he’s done really well this year.
[00:43:42] He’s the top sales and we’ll make him the manager. It’s exactly the same thing. You’ve just described there rather than having somebody that is trained in that position. Why not keep the guy here to inspire the guys on the desk, to, you know, and what, by what he’s doing and how he can help them employ somebody who is capable, who is a leader, a manager of people, not a manager of systems.
[00:44:09] And you’re not going to affect it in the same way. And, and that, and that’s the thing is that people haven’t really always looked at situations where they say, okay, what is the effect going to be of us doing this? What’s the effect of us keeping him there? What’s the effect of us employing him in that position?
[00:44:26] They did that in a, in one of the organizations I worked at towards the end of my career, uh, a guy and they, they promoted this guy. And because it just still aren’t right. That’s the thing to do, but they didn’t sit down and talk with people to find out what the repercussions would be. If it’s a positive and negative, the pros, the cons, and all these other things in order to make that decision, they just made a decision based on one element and proved to be very costly.
[00:44:59] Why? Because when they did that, the other people around the desk didn’t respect him. He didn’t have their trust. And so if you haven’t got trust, nothing’s going to work. Yeah. As soon as you get a challenge from that, that door is open. They all RAs are gonna asleep and that’s exactly what happened. And yeah, nine guys ended up walking out, leaving, leaving.
[00:45:24] Okay. Yeah, the management and this one guy, they promoted. How good does that look? How much money is he going to make on his own? So naive at the end of the day. So it just happens more often than people actually think. Yeah.
[00:45:38] Lance Wantenaar: [00:45:38] And it’s, it’s really quite an interesting dynamic when you start considering that, because now you have to use second level, third level of thinking, because you’re not just thinking about the immediate impact.
[00:45:50] You’re now looking at everything almost as though. Process and also as an organism, because your, your consideration about the impact on multiple levels. And now they’d get that gives you the, the, the ability to reassess things and use some of the other, you know, advanced thinking processes of using scenarios or.
[00:46:11] Visualization or two to break it out into potentials because now you’ve got probabilities that you can play with, which allows a certain
[00:46:20] James Bargemon: [00:46:20] amount of that. Somebody that only works. If you’ve got an end result in mind division of what you want it to look like true. And so many organizations don’t ask them what they want now, what we want to make money, or we want to make 4 million this year.
[00:46:39] They haven’t broken down, always the reason why they want to make four or 10 or 50 or a hundred million in relation to the long-term thing. Are they thinking three, five or 10 years down the line? Do they want to have, um, a hub. On every continent. Do they want to have 10 satellite offices? Do they want to have just one office, the employees 300 people.
[00:46:59] Sometimes you don’t get that and quite more, in fact, quite often you don’t get it. And so going back to what you were saying there with my previous organization, they didn’t have it. You, you, you had, Oh, well let’s just employ it. Sorry. Let’s just promote him. They didn’t think about right. What are we doing?
[00:47:16] Do we need. 15 people on a desk. Do we need 20 people here? What are we actually looking to achieve? In three to five years, they just played it as they went along. And guess what they got found out because they didn’t have this vision. And when you get the vision, you can reverse engineer. Everything is okay.
[00:47:33] That’s what we’re looking to, to achieve. How do we get there in five years, time or three years, whatever it is, what do you need to do in two years time? What do we need to put in place in a year’s time? So what do we need to start doing in six months? And now. Okay. And then when you get to three years down the line, are we going to hit that five years?
[00:47:51] Great. Once we’ve done that, we’ve got to start putting plans in place. What are we doing for five years, hence from now, so that it’s not, when we get to that five years, we go, right. Well, what do we do? You’re always looking at how you can do something, how you’re going to grow. cause I don’t believe you don’t, it doesn’t have to be by growing and having another office somewhere else.
[00:48:11] It could be changing. It could become more diverse. It could be, you know, when you’re looking at, in my own line of work that, we were on fossil fuel based oil is, well, hang on a second, 25 years ago, 30 years ago, there wasn’t that many people talking about LNG. And, you know, there was very little about the guest side.
[00:48:30] But it’s like, people think, well, hang on a second. Why don’t we build a gas department for down the road and then, Oh, well, how many people are we going to have in the gas department? It’s that sort of a situation rather than be proactive rather than reactive.
[00:48:43] Lance Wantenaar: [00:48:43] Yeah, you’ve highlighted a lot of really interesting aspects, which I’ve, I’ve looked at over the years.
[00:48:49] And, the example of actually planning backwards to the point where you want to be, and then stepping it back to where you are, allows you to build a certain amount of clarity. It doesn’t have to be a really detailed plan because sometimes if you go to and detailed, you can actually lock yourself into a path or a pattern, which is going to be completely untenable.
[00:49:10] So you’re right. Yeah. And, you need to allow yourself a certain amount of flexibility to change as things develop and as things. Alter because nobody would have predicted that six months ago, we’re going to be in a global lockdown and everybody’s going to be forced to either work from home or be required to do some kind of other creative way of actually dealing with it.
[00:49:32] Yeah, I
[00:49:33] James Bargemon: [00:49:33] think you’re right. Lance and I, I wrote a blog or an article a few months ago along the similar lines. What you’re saying is that. The idea is that you have a vision. But don’t, unless, unless you’re a huge conglomerate that can afford to pay, you know, accountants and lawyers and all these people to sit down and spend lots of money on necessarily about how this is going to work.
[00:50:04] The analogy I used is that a football stadium, you know, a modern football stadium, one was just built in North London and finished a year or so ago that. That took planning a huge amount of planning, cost money to get the architects, the lawyers involved the surveyors and everybody to get and look at this thing.
[00:50:28] It’s unbelievable. The engineering that’s gone into that, that would be pretty stupid to actually attempt to build something like that without having that in-depth level. You know, planning and research and skilled people. But when you’re talking about something else that we don’t have to have that level have the vision of what you want it to look like, but how you actually get there can be a completely different kettle of fish, as you just said, because there’s going to be situations so long as you are adaptable and more important thing is the who rather than how along the way, the, who is far more important, because if you have the who.
[00:51:07] They will provide the how, because you will find the right. If you find the right people, then they will. Why? Because they’ll be able to use their minds and they’ll be able to use their critical thinking to a much higher level than those people that are just told what to do. So it’s far more important to have who inside an organization and, you know, the team that will joke because they’ll find the way.
[00:51:30] And as you say, you’re moving forward, you’re going to be doing a lot of this as a, as a company or an organization, or even a sport, small firm. It doesn’t make any difference. That is, that is the key, the who not the how.
[00:51:43] Lance Wantenaar: [00:51:43] So if it’s a principle that you can apply to your own thinking or for somebody to use in their own approach to day-to-day life, how would you boil those down into a concept?
[00:51:57] That’s going to say to them. Okay. This is a general process that you can follow. That’s going to give you the adaptability, but also the capability.
[00:52:09] James Bargemon: [00:52:09] Well, first of all, you’ve got to decide what do you want? Most people do not know what they want. Most people talk about what they don’t want or what they’re trying to avoid in situations, whether that’s in their personal life or running a business.
[00:52:23] When you hear about, uh, uh, we’re not gonna take on three people because the, the tax will have to pay. Hang on a second. Who mentioned anything about that? Yeah, but think about if you employ those people and you can afford to pay the tax more than one, not look at what you want to achieve. So it’s so much easier when you actually look at what you want to achieve.
[00:52:47] And then as we said, you can actually look back away to do it. Forget the how, because you may not have, you know, as you said, if you have to cast in stone, a plan it’s only old fashioned bank managers that used to tell myself, can we see your business plan? Well, how am I going to give you a business plan that I know I’m going to make $3 million in three years time, that’s only what I’m wishing at the time.
[00:53:11] According to writing down a plan, the idea is that if you want to do something, get crystal clear and then find the who. Who is going to be around you, who do you need? That’s going to help you get there. And it is so important to have a team of people. You don’t have to employ a team of people, but do you have somebody that’s going to help you?
[00:53:32] Whether you might need a videographer, if you want to become a professional speaker, doing it on your own with a crappy little, phones might get you a couple of Instagram followers. But if you want to have companies that are going to pay you money, then you need to have. A really good quality video. So you need somebody that’s going to help you do that.
[00:53:54] And all this talk about being a self-made man is not true. Nobody’s self-made they always need that people around. So get good, good team of people in whatever shape or form you are going to be involved in, in whatever line is, get the best you can. And don’t be scared to invest in those people, as well as investing in yourself.
[00:54:21] It will cause it will reap literally great rewards for you. Yeah.
[00:54:27] And
[00:54:27] Lance Wantenaar: [00:54:27] it ties back to some of the other topics that you were talking about is, is Carol Dweck’s book about mindset because her, her research that she, that she did on mindset, it was actually fascinating to actually read because the focus was on the people who were more successful over a period of time.
[00:54:45] When necessarily people who were, you could say talented, there were, they were very willing to be focused on one learning and to the fact that they’re going to, they might fail, but the end result is going to be, they kind of develop a skill and they’re going to be willing to work at it at a day-to-day basis and to be consistently willing to learn, because they’re not, they don’t have the emotional.
[00:55:10] Baggage or failure, they realize that learning is failure as
[00:55:14] James Bargemon: [00:55:14] part of learning. That’s how you learn. Absolutely. Right. A hundred percent agree with that. Uh, and she, she pinpointed it is that, they view things in a different basis. Those people that want the, you know, going to be successful is that they view things as a challenge, faintly, it’s a challenge to be gotten through and question that the situation is, well, what did I learn?
[00:55:38] Rather than failure being a situation that defines them. Oh, I’m a failure. That’s that’s a fixed mindset rather than hang on a second. What did I learn out of this? All right. Cost me some money. Fine. I know not to use that guy again. And there are so many factors that comes into that, you know, it builds resilience is that we become resilient.
[00:56:02] Uh, you know, that we’re not wrapped in cotton wall and we then can think a different level, you know, asking these open-ended questions of ourselves, who do I need to become in order to achieve this? Who do I need to get around? Who do I need to find that can teach me? Who do I need to learn from to do these skills that I don’t have.
[00:56:25] Where am I lacking? What do I need to know? When do I need to know it by all those sorts of questions, we’ll get, you know, this level of thinking up, you know, another notch and the more you do that, you’re going to keep getting yourself up and changing your mindset, changing the way you actually view thing, view things in your perception.
[00:56:44] When you start doing that, it just, it makes you do things in a completely different way. And it
[00:56:50] Lance Wantenaar: [00:56:50] also allows you the ability to grow at a completely different pace. And it allows you to feel inspired because now what you’ve got is you’ve got a personal direction. And I think that’s probably what a lot of people feel that they lack is they don’t have their personal direction, which means that they’ve, they feel frustrated.
[00:57:08] They feel undervalued. They don’t feel like they providing anything that makes them feel like they doing something that’s worth their while. Which is invariably what means what causes people to either move or to change quite dramatically is because they don’t feel like it’s something that resonates with them because they end of the day, that’s what, that’s what people want to do.
[00:57:30] They want to do something that resonates with them that makes them happy, feel valued and feel that they’ve, they’ve got a direction in life. Yeah, because we don’t get a direction. You, you stagnate.
[00:57:40] James Bargemon: [00:57:40] Exactly. And it goes back to what you were saying the other day. And before we got on here, maybe it goes back to, you know, human needs.
[00:57:49] Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Yeah. It is that people want to feel valued. People want to feel that they’re actually adding something. They want to feel that. What they’re doing is worthwhile that they’ve got some sort of a purpose and their self-esteem. And when you add up all these things that that’s, when you get people to elevate their thinking, their behavior, their performance, their results, and you just then the better it gets, the better it gets.
[00:58:22] And you get that spiral going up rather than spiral coming down. And that’s why it’s so important for people to be aware of. The, where they’re thinking where they’re not valuing themselves. And when other people aren’t valuing them, that really, where can you make a choice to change things? And that’s the real deal too, is that when you can actually change things and the, and the big problem as we talked about way back in the beginning is this situation is our drivers is fair.
[00:58:57] Your driver. Or is fear a challenge because if a fear is a driver, that’s actually keeping you back, or is it a driver to challenge the fear that you can actually get through, then you can actually do something about it. But too often, people aren’t actually aware about how much fear controls their life.
[00:59:21] That they scan this they’re scared of failure. Oh, what are people going to decide? What am I going to look for? And there, there are so many different parts of this jigsaw puzzle, which goes back to what I was saying earlier is that when you start working with somebody, whether it’s individuals or teams, you will start finding out those things only by asking the questions.
[00:59:40] And their reactions and this sort of stuff, and finding out where the obstacles the challenges are. And most of the time the challenges and obstacles are all in here. They’re all made up all their, somebody somebody’s somebody else’s crap that we’ve taken on. Yeah.
[00:59:55] Lance Wantenaar: [00:59:55] And you highlighted something else, which I think is quite crucial in that majority of time, when people have got a fear of wanting to take an action.
[01:00:06] Yes. Fear is an inhibiting factor because when you actually look at it, it actually triggers the amygdala and it ties into fight or flight. And there’s various processes. If you look at Stephen Porges work on polyvagal theory, he starts talking about the rest, the phrase of, of, of the brain. You’ve got the fight or flight, and then you’ve got the freeze aspect.
[01:00:29] So
[01:00:30] James Bargemon: [01:00:30] if you’re in a really.
[01:00:32] Lance Wantenaar: [01:00:32] Dangerous or a position where you feel like you got to protect your site and the South yard they’re going to fight or flight, or you go to the lowest level, which is basically freezing. And that’s a good example as that was where people, especially in first world war, when the guys were in the trenches, they would have, some of the guys were completely disabled with fear it’s because they had that below level of, of.
[01:00:56] Of self-preservation at the brain things, either position where I’ve no idea how to cope. And the only thing that I’m going to do is to preserve the host or the preserve me is I’m not going to do anything. And it’s not that somebody is, a coward or anything of that is just the physiology is that it’s so much information that the brain needs to process.
[01:01:18] That is just saying, okay, I’m going to preserve you, which means I’m going to disable you. And it just disables any kind of thing. Reaction or action that you can type because it, the coping mechanism is there’s just too much for, for, for, for the body to cope with or the brain to cope. But so it goes into a self preservation mode and that’s part of the reason why fear is so powerful.
[01:01:38] It’s not the fact that people are cowards. It’s the fact is that people don’t know how to cope with what they need to do. So. They, they go to the default of not making a choice because it’s the safest thing for them to process at the stage. Now, the good thing is that you can actually change it by developing your, your structure of how you actually make a decision or how you going to go about a direction, which is the example that you gave about working backwards with a company plan.
[01:02:08] Yeah. If you’ve got a company plan that can work back to where you are, What you’ve done is you’ve created a structure. It’s not a detailed structure, but it’s a framework that you can use to base your decision and your actions on it’s. The same thing was with when it comes to personal direction, you’ve got a framework of decision.
[01:02:26] Yes. If you’ve got fear, it just means that you don’t know, you don’t have the direction or the decision or the pointed your reference that you can use to actually base your decision on for the next step. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to take the next step.
[01:02:42] James Bargemon: [01:02:42] Well, when I use the analogy of inside of business, I was using that on the basis that it is transferable, as you’ve just said to individuals, is that when we have this fear, uh, and, and the big thing is.
[01:02:55] Is to realize it’s the fear of what is the actual fear of, and that’s part of the process when you go through, when I’m talking with people and everything else, as I said is to see how they react. And when they say certain situations, it could be about a boss at work. It could be about taking on three new people or a new office that they want to, and you’ll see their reactions and that sort of stuff.
[01:03:16] And it’s Oh, okay. There’s the key indicator. So what’s, what’s the problem with taking on that new office? Well, and you. They’ll do that sort of thing, which will just really reaffirm what I was thinking about when they start looking down and they start doing this stuff when they’re talking about, you know, taking on three offices and then their voice goes and say, okay, so that’s just reaffirmed to me that there is something around that area.
[01:03:41] So then you can just say, well, okay. It’s w what’s the problem with taking on three, three, and then they’ll open up about it. So, and usually that will be fear-based then that’s the key. Is that okay? So what is the fear. And then they’ll start letting you know a little bit more about the situation, but until they actually say that and then talk about it, you can only surmise the situation, but it becomes easier for them once they actually can say it, what the problem is.
[01:04:08] And then they get clarity on that. So that’s the fear. What is it really a fear? Is it all just made up? So that’s just an example, but it’s just probably that person. And then to actually work through the fear, because so, so often people have fear as an obstacle, but they’re not actually sure what the fear is.
[01:04:29] It goes back to what we were saying about, you know, Carl you’ll until you make it conscious that it’s going to be in your mind, but you’re not aware of it. And it’s directing your life. Oh, no, they’re not going over that way. We’re not going there. Well, why. Until they actually face up to what actually is stopping them from going that way.
[01:04:48] You know, an allergy, you might drive 30 miles around to get to this one particular point, costs you a fortune in petrol every time when really you could actually just pop across that bridge, but you don’t want to go across that bridge because, well, you got attack when you were 18 years of age by a couple of folks.
[01:05:04] But, yeah, it’s just until you actually bring that to the forefront, you’re not going to be able to do anything about it and challenge it. I’m sure there are, there are good reasons for having fears in there. There are other reasons which aren’t just really reasons. They’re just things that scare us, but we need to get through.
[01:05:23] Yeah, that’s very
[01:05:24] Lance Wantenaar: [01:05:24] true, James. I had a fantastic interview. It’s it’s been fascinating discussing we’ve we’ve we’ve dived into a couple of areas, which I didn’t think would, uh, would come up, especially with some of the top of the topics about the Enron. There’s I’m trying to think of one of the books I’ve got, uh, behaves that he was an executive had shell.
[01:05:46] I think it’s a Dutch shell. Um, I’ll send you through the details of it. It was written many, many years ago. And one of his jobs that he had to do was working in TA department to actually create scenarios. And one of these, uh, Things that they did is actually coming up with multiple scenarios and situations to how they would cope with various situations.
[01:06:09] Another one of the things that they sought about is to use the forcing function, to say, okay, what would happen if the oil price would drop down to 20 barrels? Because at that stage, I think it was early eighties. Oil price was quite high. You know, nobody foresaw any kind of impact with that. And they, they didn’t predict that there was going to be any come long-term issue with that.
[01:06:31] So they, they use that scenario method to actually come up with potential ideas of how they would cope if the oil price would drop down and they’d play through this whole scenario, worked at our, just as a hypothetical. And then lo and behold, six months, 12 months later, they, the, the, the whole oil price crashed down.
[01:06:52] And they were sitting there, like, what are we doing now? So hang on, we, we did a scenario and they actually dug out that scenario and said, okay, this is, this is what we thought we could do to actually cope with that situation. And that allow them to adapt and to change to then use that. Framework of those ideas that they had to actually allow the company to actually cope with it, with, uh, with the situation at
[01:07:16] James Bargemon: [01:07:16] the time.
[01:07:16] Exactly. And that’s the thing is that again, that comes down to a mindset, is that how you perceive something when it happens? And that makes the difference between those people that can get through a situation. And as I’ve always said, is it doesn’t matter about the size of the challenge. It’s how you get through it.
[01:07:36] That makes the difference. And it’s what’s between here. That makes all the difference.
[01:07:41] Lance Wantenaar: [01:07:41] Yeah, definitely. James, thank you for a fantastic interview. I’ll thoroughly enjoyed it and I appreciate your time. No, I
[01:07:47] James Bargemon: [01:07:47] appreciate you asking me a Lance and hopefully, you know, your listeners and viewers will get something that they can actually take out.
[01:07:54] But that’s what this is a about is that at least somebody can, if there can be a little light bulb that goes off in somebody’s head, then the job done. So thank you very much. It’s a
[01:08:03] Lance Wantenaar: [01:08:03] pleasure. How can people get
[01:08:04] James Bargemon: [01:08:04] in contact with you? Well, my name James Barger on, if it’s shown up on the screen, they can either find me on LinkedIn, which is where I’m usually found.
[01:08:16] I’m not a fan of certain other social medias. To be honest with you. I, I do use, uh, an Instagram one, but not very often. And also, uh, on my website, which is my name, James Bolger on.com. They can go and they can get, uh, uh, an an e-book, which we’ll talk about mindset. And some it’s it’s based on coaching questions, which will get people to think rather than just read another load of blurb.
[01:08:41] It will actually get them to look through and ask some questions for them to answer. So hopefully it will be, uh, it’s designed that way. And, you know, I’ve had some very good responses on it that it’s getting people to really think. About how they can move forward with things rather than just reading another piece of paper and do nothing about it.
[01:08:58] So,
[01:08:59] Lance Wantenaar: [01:08:59] excellent. I’ll share the details of your links and all of your connections on, the show notes. And obviously that’ll, that’ll get pushed out, but, thanks a lot for, your time and I thoroughly appreciate your insights and, have a fantastic
[01:09:13] James Bargemon: [01:09:13] day. Thanks again.