Episode 16: John Perry
Insight and inspiration come from various places. I usually invite mostly practitioners (CFA charter holders) and candidates on my show.
But I also value different informed perspectives. Hence my guest on this episode.
John Perry is a published author, professor and a good friend who has thought deeply and written about mental toughness (the concept, not the phrase) and how you can improve your game. On this episode John and I have a wide-ranging conversation on sports and psychology, psychometric tests (the good and the bad), confidence among youngsters, employability, selecting your career, the impact of COVID etc. And of course, the invaluable 3 career tips for youngsters!
And don’t be fooled by John’s aw shucks, down to earth, calm manner. Dr Perry is a remarkably self-aware brilliant young psychologist who has already made his mark in a few fields. So do listen carefully to what he has to say.
Enjoy!
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EPISODE TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
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Binod Shankar:
This is Binod Shankar and you’re listening to the real finance mentor podcast from the realfinancementor.com. The real finance mentor is your go-to resource for insight and inspiration on careers in finance, CFA and more. Now you might think, why this podcast? Well, my goal is to deliver insight and inspiration for your financial career, by making it, one: relatable. I mean this is not theoretical stuff. We zero-in on the critical, practical issues. Number two: authentic. No bullshit, no side-stepping. The topics, guests and questions are all from that perspective. And number three: insightful. Take a Chartered accountant and a CFA charter holder, add 17-plus years as a corporate warrior, mix in 10-plus years of entrepreneurship, throw in a decade of full time CFA training. Add speaking, mentoring, cycling, mountaineering and other endurance activities, and that’s me! Welcome to The Real Finance Mentor, or as I call it: RFM.
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Binod:
Hi everyone! Good afternoon. Welcome to another episode of real finance mentor podcast. The podcast that brings you insight and inspiration for your finance careers. As you know, I’ve been looking high and wide for the right speakers on a variety of topics ranging from asset management/analysis, equity research, soft skills, coaching.
So, today’s episode I’m going to bring you bring you another special guest. The guest today is someone I’ve known for quite a long while, that I finally got him to speak and tape him on this episode. My guest is John Perry. Dr John Perry, to be specific.
Dr John Perry is the Head of Psychology at Mary Immaculate College in Ireland, having previously been Dean of Faculty of Arts, there. Prior to moving to Ireland, John worked at three UK universities. He has got 15 years of experience in lecturing in psychology. His main research areas are mental toughness, coping with stress, sportsmanship, and statistical methods.
His research has been published in numerous international journals and presented at many conferences. To date, John has published around 60 peer-reviewed research articles, which by the way is a lot! Because, I know what I go through when I write one article for a magazine.
John also published his first sole-authored book, Sport psychology: A complete introduction, four year ago (in 2016), which is one of the best-selling sport psychology books of the last decade. John is also on the editorial board of several psychology journals and works as an associate editor.
In applied work, John has worked as a sport psychologist with elite teams and athletes from a range of sports. He has utilised this ability to help people reach their potential by delivering mental toughness training to educators, health workers, bankers, and government ministries.
On his education, he comes with a significant, prestigious pedigree. John has a BSc (Hons) in Sport & Exercise Sciences with Psychology, from University of Gloucestershire. He’s got an MSc in Sport & Exercise Sciences from University of Wales, Cardiff. He has a PGCE from The University of Huddersfield, and of course, he has got a PhD in Psychology from the University of Hull.
So, he is not a finance person. He’s not an asset manager or an analyst or a CFO or a CEO. But he’s got some interesting ideas about mindsets and mental toughness, and employability and careers. Which is exactly why I invited him today.
Welcome to the show, John!
John:
Thanks, Binod! It’s a pleasure to be able to at least virtually meet and begin to talk about some of the things that we’re going to.
Binod:
I know! It’s been 7 years since I was in your ‘Mental toughness licensed user training’ class in Dubai.
John:
Yeah! I know you sent me a message of the notes. I would be terrible at filing notes. You managed to pick out some one hundred notes from a particular workshop from 2013. I guess that’s a good sign if you teach to manage accounts.
Binod:
Yeah. Well, I’m a qualified accountant John! So, what do you expect?
So, let me dive into the questions here. It seems your journey into psychology started as a sports person, from what you told me earlier. I think that’s quite appropriate because sports, and especially competitive sports, is probably where the study of high performance and mental toughness began in a scientific manner. But, John, most sports people don’t end up with a PhD in psychology. So, my questions are:
1) What sport did you start with?
But probably what’s more important is:
2) What drove your interest in psychology?
John:
Yeah, you’re quite right. It wouldn’t be a typical route to psychology. Like a lot of young boys, I was mad on football. So, I support my home-team- Grimsby Town. We’re not very good, but I sometimes think supporting teams who aren’t very good; it means the devastating lows make the highs that come along once in a blue moon all the more sweeter.
I remember I was in a game. I was in my late teens, 1998 it would have been, and we were nil bottom of the league. We were playing against West Bromwich Albion, who were a team at the top of the league. We had five or six players that used to play for the other team, in our team. We were not expected to do anything. We were expected to lose comfortably. By the time half-time came around, my team Grimsby were winning 4-0 against this team that were at the top of the league. I remember, what was interesting was that they just went and blew the other team away. They found an extra gear. These were committed players. These were players who every week, you would not fault their commitment, their effort. You can tell when a player is trying their very best. I’d stand there watching them week after week. They’d normally lose, but there’s no doubt they were trying their absolute best. And then on this occasion where there was a real point to prove, there was an added incentive there. They had been sold by a team, you know, kind of discarded. Like they weren’t good enough. They had a point to prove and they found that extra gear.
And that’s what sort of first got me really interested because I thought we often think about the way that you can try your best, as if it’s thinking you have control over the amount of effort you put in. But here I’m watching people who no doubt, try their best every weak. But really, I wonder what they are doing is- they are trying to try their best. And on this occasion, where there was a novel motive there, that wasn’t normally there, they got a whole new level. And that’s sort of what first gripped me.
So, when inevitably I was told that I was never going to be good enough to make a living playing football, I went off to university and I wanted to learn Sports Science. But I was so interested in the psychology from seeing those kinds of things, that I studied it as a joint honors. I went on, and I carried on doing both subjects. I worked in Sports Science for a little bit.
But alternatively, I’ve realized that for all of the effort spent watching videos and analyzing them and drawing skeletons on the screens- which we do a lot of in Sports Science, I thought I can talk to these people and I can make a bigger difference. I can tell somebody that they’re good. Give them a hug and tell them they’re important, and make a bigger difference than what I can through hours and hours of video analysis. So, from that point on I kind of became much more committed to the psychology part, and I really enjoyed the fact that so much of it is difficult to explain and is intangible. But you know that it’s real, because we’ve all felt times where we can do everything and we’ve felt times when we feel useless. And that’s the thing that’s always really wrapped me.
Binod:
Interesting, since you mentioned how they really raised their game at that point, and it just clicked in that match, didn’t it? But it must have been immensely stressful! Generally speaking, John, competitive sports is quite stressful. I mean, I recall reading the Chimp Paradox, and I think Kevin Pietersen’s autobiography, and the hell that a professional batsman has to go through in cricket.
It never struck me that the fact of rock-hard pitches and hostile bowlers, constant sledging, massive angry crowds, unsupportive teammates, you have a critical media, I mean all adds a huge amount of pressure! Lot of people break, some people survive.
So, my question is: How is the study of sports useful to first understand how people deal with pressure? And now, I’m talking about pressure at the workplace, or pressure in writing exams, or in academics. How did the big boys handle pressure? Because you’ve seen teams and you have coached individual players as well over the last many years. So, what’s your take on this?
John:
It’s a great question. I think the real value in studying sport isn’t actually just to help sports people do better at their sport. There’s not much value in trying to help a multi-millionaire golfer earn an extra couple of million. But the real value in it, comes from the lessons we could learn and apply to all the parts of our lives as your question suggests. Sports is interesting, because as a researcher it contrives these stressful situations. We don’t get these naturally occurring in our everyday lives. But sport is like a laboratory that sets the perfect conditions to stress people out.
So, if we take the cricketing example, if you’re batting in cricket, you’ve got some simple aims. Firstly, to not lose your wicket and secondly to score some runs. But if sport left it as too simple, it would be very entertaining to watch. So, we put rules in place to make it harder. Like, if you go out of your crease you can be stumped, or you can be caught and so on. So, we have rules in place. We then have opponents and we match those opponents to a level that is set to be challenging. You know, we have different leagues and different structures. So really, sport contrives this setting. The whole point of it is to induce stress. Because inducing stress means inducing uncertainty, and that’s what’s entertaining in sport.
We don’t want to watch a sport where we know who’s going to win, we know the outcome of it. What’s most entertaining is, when there’s significant uncertainty. And what’s interesting there is, uncertainty is the most common source of stress- not knowing what’s going to happen is stressful. So that’s what I mean by this kind of a lab scenario, where sports, sets the perfect time to stress people out, to put them under pressure. And then it tells us where and when we can find them. So, it’s perfect for that.
On the second part of the question about how the big boys handle the pressure, the first thing I would say is not all of them do. And sometimes you can get very successful athletes, but that doesn’t mean psychologically they’re particularly skillful. Some people have a tremendous technique, and even if physically they aren’t the best, or psychologically they aren’t the best they can carry them(selves) through. Equally, you’ll see some players who don’t quite have the technique, (so to carry on with the cricket example) there’s been many players over the years who have very successful careers with just a handful of shots. Because technically they’re not gifted as others, but mentally they’re incredibly strong and they put a value on the wicket and make it really hard to get out.
I’m aware a lot of the listeners or viewers here are from India, so you guys had Rahul Dravid (-The Wall). You know who’s one of the most mentally tough performers you can imagine. But for every kind of Rahul Dravid there is, I think of all the ones like Shivnarine Chanderpaul in the West Indies. There are other players who don’t actually cope with it well. I don’t think the top sports people necessarily handle pressure any better than most people do. That would be anecdotal experience in being around them. The difference is- we notice that the ones that are successful, and we discard the ones who are less successful.
Controversially, I’m not convinced that sports actually develop characters as well as we think it does. I think it actually selects characters. So, if you’re good at it, you tend to carry on; and if you’re not good at it, you tend to fall away. In terms of how the big boys in sport handle the pressure, I say- generally no better than the average person and no different than the average person really.
Binod:
It is interesting that you mention about sports, and the role it plays in developing character. Because, there’s always been this saying that the British Empire was built on the cricket fields of Eton, meaning that a few people were picked up- selected (quite rightly), and groomed to demonstrate certain skills and they had certain traits and that was just made better through team work. This was demonstrated on the cricket field or somewhere else, so interesting analogy. But I want to move on to education. Because, you’re a college lecturer, I was a financial trainer. So, let’s talk about education. I was reading a recent book called Messengers by Joseph Marks and Martin Stephen. Now, I will quote this particular section from that book and I’m sure it will connect with you:
“A better understanding of how our minds work may lead us to becoming more aware of the pitfalls that await us. Consequently, it might be useful for people to learn earlier, rather than later in life, how their brains operate. At the age of 16, students in most countries take exams in subjects such as maths, English and the sciences. Psychology rarely features. Indeed, while just over 40% of students in countries including the US and UK study geography for at least 2 years by the age of 16, only 2% study psychology. It is a fact that most people, leave school without an education in basic psychology”
Why is this? More importantly, is it changing and how?
Because, we don’t use much math or geography or biology or social sciences when you work in your adult life. But psychology is something you, the way your brain works is something that you must be intimately familiar with, or at least be a bit familiar with the basics. So, what is your view as a qualified, trained psychologist, psychometrician and a lecturer?
John:
This is something that I feel very strongly about. Actually, we have such antiquated education system globally! You mentioned some of the sort of mathematical elements and things like that. I remember spending a significant portion of time in school learning about Pythagoras! As an adult, I’ve never once found myself standing in a position where there appears to be some sort of triangle and I know the length of two sides and I need to calculate the length of the other side. And I do wonder if there are more useful things that I could be learning. Apologies to any real, passionate Pythagoras enthusiasts out there.
So, the system that we have was largely something that came about during the industrial revolution. It was what we needed at the time. So, these kinds of subjects were set in place and there was some science and technology and engineering, and math and arts’ subjects. And that was seen as giving this well-rounded education. But that was a long time ago. At the time, we didn’t really talk about the self, and we certainly didn’t talk about psychology. We didn’t talk about health; we didn’t talk about relationships.
Now, I think if I was to go into a nursing home and ask people there, “What’s important”? I think they’re going to say family and health. We don’t learn about these things in school. How is health and relationships and yourself not the three main topics that you do in school? And the fact that we don’t do any psychology, I think those young people are done great injustice in terms of the transferrable thinking skills that it develops. And I’m not talking about psychology in a way of memorizing those certain experiments done by certain people on certain dates. I am talking about being aware of ourselves. Knowing who we are; knowing that, “when I respond in a certain way, why do I respond in that way”? I want to make meaning of that. Maybe I responded that way because I have a particular insecurity based on some previous memories and things like that. But while I can’t go back in time and change those memories, at least when I respond, I know that’s why I feel this way. I know that’s why I’m acting that way. I also think that means when other people respond to a certain situation; rather than me dismissing the way that they’ve responded, because I would do that, I understand whether they’re conscious of it or not.
There’s meaning, there’s reason why people behave the way they behave. And the more I can understand how I do that; I’d also recognize that there’s reasons why other people behave the way they behave. We’re around the understanding or not, I don’t know. But I know that it exists. Then, that makes me such a more grounded person. I think about how I’m going to deal with stresses and strains in life or how am I going to manage my interpersonal interactions with other people; or how am I going to work in a team. Based on just having this awareness of myself- what my own responses are, where they come from, I recognize that other people have their own responses too and having that compassion in that kind of sense. So, I’d be very scathing I suppose of our current educational structures. They are the way they are, because that’s how they’ve always been it seems. If we reinvented school now, it would be very, very different.
Binod:
Yeah, very Interesting. Going back to what you sad earlier John, in terms of the three things that you need to know, you never get to know in school- your health, your relationships with other people and about yourself. Now, talk about yourself. You made another interesting comment about why do you act the way you act or why do you think the way you think. Knowing that is extremely important. And of course, over the last couple of decades you’ve had lots of tools that allows you to do just that, right? I mean, one of your specialties is as a Psychometrician. Now there are lots of psychometric tests and tools out there like the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (quite the controversial MBTI), DISC, there is Hogan, there is an OCEAN test that looks at the Big 5 personality traits. And of course, there’s the Mental Toughness trait test, that are just some of the many out there. Now, my question is for someone starting on the journey of self-awareness, you know? As in trying to find out why he’s acting or thinking the way he is. This can seem quite confusing and paralyzing too. Where should he/she start and why?
John:
That is a great question and it’s not an easy one to answer. In the sense, because there are a tremendous amount of psychometric tests out there; but there also exists a really large gap between research and practice. And with that, there comes a gap between essentially evidence and practice. So, you could almost think of this as being in a quadrant where there are some things for which there is very little evidence and there’s very little practice. Something like phrenology for example, you know where people fill the bumps on someone’s head. There’s no real evidence for it and no one does it anymore. There are also things where there’s lots of evidence, but we don’t really see it much in practice.
So, for example, I, without being an expert on; climate science, climate change and environmental science- there’s tremendous amount of evidence. But does our behavior really match that evidence? Probably not. There’s a lot of psychometric tools that exist in research, so there’s a lot of evidence. But they’re never really commodified. They’re never packaged and used as products, so they don’t make it in the wider system. So, I think that there’s one area there where people can look at- are there other avenues that haven’t been made into products and used?
Carrying on in this quadrant of course, there are things where there’s lot of practice and there’s very little evidence for it. You mention the MBTI for example, (I don’t know, that is kind of controversial). I’m aware that some people may have spent significant amount of money in training themselves to do it. It’s not to say that the whole thing is a waste of time, but no research is around there using the MBTI. As a researcher, I never see it. Only when I step into the applied world, do I ever cross it. In a simple sense, it would be, I guess my parallel there would be homeopathy. There’s no real evidence that dissolving a drop of onion juice into water dilutes it a thousand times, will make any difference. But people do it.
And then in the top of that quadrant you’ve got things for which there are a lot of evidence, and it is used widely in practice. And these would be some of the better psychometrics out there. I suppose a number of my analogy towards that would be the way that people say smoking cessation, for example. Loads of people used to smoke. Loads of evidence to say, actually smoking is very bad for your health. Now, far, far few people smoke than they used to. That’s where we’ve got lots of evidence and it’s affecting practice. And that’s kind of the sweet spot, that’s where we really want to be. But we’re often not there, we’re actually either in the ‘there’s lots of evidence but because it’s never turned into a product, it only exists in research’, and only researchers know about it. Or there’s things that nobody researches about it, but they’ve been turned into very marketable products with glossy brochures and they’re used frequently.
Now in terms of where you start and why, I recommend that people search databases, so things like Google Scholar for example, you can select things- whether you want things to be peer reviewed. If you search Google Scholar and there’s very few articles in the last five years or ten years that use a particular psychometric scale, that would be a red flag. Because, if researchers aren’t using it, why aren’t they using it? And often it’s because they’ve got some concerns about it. There are also other red flags as well. I guess my phrase I would go to, would be that “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
I often see particular psychological models or psychometric tools that make huge claims, and really people don’t develop quickly. You don’t change a person by talking to them for an hour. It takes time. Also, a lot of these models, they make something sound simple. I’ve never met a person in my life that I think, “God! That’s a really simple person”. People are incredibly complicated. Why we are the way we are? Why we think the way we do? Feel, the way we do? Act, the way we do? And then, all that changes when you put us into a different situation. We’re so complicated! So, any psychological model that is going to make some sort of claim, about being able to explain these ridiculously complicated beings, has to be quite complicated. So, I guess to summarize my advice, it would be: If you come across a particular psychometric, search for it! Look it. Can you find evidence that’s used in peer reviewed articles. And secondly, do the claims sound realistic? If they’re claiming to change someone’s life around in a matter of days or weeks, then I’ll become very skeptical very quickly! And thirdly, does the complexity of them really represent what I know to be the complexity of a human?
Binod:
Interesting, John, that you mention conscientiousness. Professor Jordan Peterson also mentions this as one of the two factors, especially industriousness. Because, conscientiousness has two bits, right? Orderliness and industriousness. And it says, industriousness is one of the two factors essential for success, the other being IQ. Now, how does one develop this crucial trait of conscientiousness, which I have actually even seen in the mental toughness literature. I’ve read about meditation. I’ve read about mindfulness, helping you to concentrate and control impulsiveness. Any other tips that you can give for people to develop their conscientiousness?
John:
I’ll try. But, in all honesty, I don’t think there’s much you can really do to develop these kinds of traits. This why I often raise a few eyebrows if I talk positive psychology (in a) conference, which I don’t quite regularly. Because sometimes I feel like I’m dealing in negative psychology so I can’t talk that. But as much as I like positive psychology, and I like the notion of focusing on maximizing our potential, rather than the traditional, self-clinical models of fixing problems; I do think we sometimes fall into this trap of ‘As long as you try’, ‘If you can dream it and believe it, that you can achieve it’. It makes a nice meme on Instagram, with a person running on a beach at sunset in the background or something.
But I think that’s a bit of fallacy because a lot of what we’re able to be (industrious, organized), is tied to kind of predisposition really. And we sometimes think that it’s a matter of free will because we like to think that to put effort and to work hard is a choice. But really, that’s quite contradictory to our understanding of a lot of the traits that you need to have to be able to work hard. So, we know that things like conscientiousness, it’s quite a stable trait. It does develop, but it develops slowly over years. And we know things like attentional control for example, and on the mental toughness scale- things like commitment being tied to certain parts of the brain. Whether if there’s more grey matter in the precuneus which is in the parietal lobe, we are more likely to stay on tasks for longer and things. So, knowing that so much of the things we require to be able to be industrious are genetically involved. I think, actually, that is what it’s more helpful is to see it as, rather than something we have complete control over and we can choose to put more work in, or concentrate for longer. Because, then that makes us feel like we’re lazy when we don’t. And that’s actually quite debilitating. When you don’t have the energy; whether that’s emotional energy, physical energy, mental energy to put work into something, you’re being a normal human being. Because, if you want to work hard to achieve (I don’t know) better exam results (for example), that’s not a life or death situation. And the brain knows that’s not a life or death situation, so why would it expend all of its energy on it? So, the most human thing is to relax a bit and to work less hard.
Now you did ask for tips. I think, rather than trying to change these highly stable traits the best thing to do is to understand that it’s ok to not be good at something. If you understand it, you find a work-around for it. You find a behavioral strategy that kind of by-passes the requirement for this. So, to give you a personal example, I’m awful at concentrating on things. I can write an 80,000-word book or a PhD thesis or whatever, but I’m actually terrible at concentrating. So, I’m not naturally good at controlling impulses, I’m very hedonistic. I like things right now. I don’t like the idea of sitting down and approaching really long tasks because I’ll get bored and I’ll lose focus. And that’s not ideal for a lot of my work that I do. But the strength is not about changing that, it’s not about changing my concentration capacity. But it’s about recognizing that- that’s an area I’m not great at. And because I know that, I’m able to come up with behavioral work-arounds.
So, what I do is, I am very good at managing stress. So, I multitask. I take on lots of different projects and I do them all at once. So, when I do get bored of one thing, I put it down and I pick something else up. So, I’m still being productive. So, even though I don’t have great concentration skills, I still manage to be as productive by just finding that work-around. I think that people are better at finding the kind of occupation, the things you’ll do, that you’re better at, that reward you. And they’re going to suit you (the) best, rather than trying to necessarily change that element of who you are.
Binod:
It is funny you say that John, because when you said you’re terrible at concentrating on something for long. That you’re a hedonist. “I like things right now”. That’s not the picture I’ve got over the last seven years! I mean, in my mind you are this fanatically-focused, super intense person with infinite patience and concentration skills, as a researcher.
John:
That’s all smoke and mirrors in an auditorium of mirage. But that’s because I’ll have 10 different projects on the go at once. So, by the time all ten come out, they’ll be the same standard as if I worked really diligently on one, and then finished it and then moved on to the next. So, I get there in the very end. So yeah, I’m not what you might have pictured of me in that respect.
Binod:
Let’s talk about employability John, which is one of my focus areas and an issue for job seekers even well before this Covid pandemic broke out. And I was very interested I think, towards the end of the book ‘Developing Mental Toughness’ which talks about a 2010 survey that linked mental toughness with employability. As enhancing the capacity of the people to get the jobs that they want.
Now, again I’m going to ask the same familiar question which I asked before. And hope to hear a different answer from you, which probably I won’t get. But I’m going to try anyway. Which is- which of the four pillars of mental toughness do you think, are the most important when it comes to getting a job (i.e. employability) and why?
John:
I feel like a politician avoiding questions, on these kinds of things. So, I’m not going to pick one. I’m going to say it’s the interactions between those pillars that matter. So, for example, if you were really high on challenge but are low on emotional control, you would probably take on loads of tasks. You’ll say, “Yes! I’ll do this. I’ll do that. Yes, I’ll take this on”. But then you wouldn’t be able to manage the stress that comes with it because the emotional aspect of that, you don’t have control over. So, you end up sometimes taking on more than you can actually handle in that respect. So, I don’t think it’s about being particularly strong in an area, but it’s about having that balance there. So that’s just one example.
So, just interestingly, on the study that you talked about there we’re in the process of doing some really longitudinal research because that study was cross sectional. It shows the connection between employability and how well people are in their careers if they’re Senior managers, Middle managers, Lower management, administrative or clerical. But what I’ve always thought is- is that a bi-directional relationship or is one more of a predictor than the other? For example, the Senior managers were more mentally tough than the Middle managers, who were more mentally tough than the Junior managers. Now, what I would really like to know is:
Were they always that way?
Were they always mentally tough?
And that’s why they became Senior manager?
Or did their experiences in junior management moved them up a little bit on mental toughness. And then their experiences during middle management moved them up a little bit more.
And I suspect it’s probably a little bit of both.
Binod:
And here I was, hoping for a simple direct answer from you! Which is of course, naïve to expect that, in psychology as we talked about it earlier.
Now, of course, I want to talk about a key topic that I keep seeing at work and in class among my mentees as well. And that topic, or that pillar of mental toughness is confidence. Because most of the youngsters that I meet in class or via LinkedIn or even otherwise are from Indian Subcontinent. A lot of them are “quiet” and “nerdy” (for lack of a better word). And I get that because I was like that myself once. I changed when I was 19. That’s probably a different discussion that we can have.
I suspect that this lack of confidence stems from thoughts that they will not sound good, especially in English (which is not their native tongue). And lot of them didn’t go toa school or college in “English medium”, as we call it in the subcontinent. Or this lack of confidence may stem from the thought that they will look like an idiot in front of everyone. This issue can persist well past this young adult/teenage or young professional stage. And I’ve seen that persist all the way to their thirties and their forties and probably even beyond! So how can people build up the confidence to at least speak up? And I know public speaking has always been mentioned as the top or one of the top three fears of the average human being. But how can they build up their confidence? Because, you find John that whether its career or relationships or in academics, if you don’t speak up- you don’t get what you want, what you deserve.
John:
Yeah. I often think wouldn’t it be a tremendous superpower if you were able to travel back in time and put your present mindset into the mind of your younger self. Because when you’re 12, the things you worry about when you’re 16, you think they’re silly. And if you could implant that, you wouldn’t worry. And then when you’re 21, you go back and you can implant that mindset in the 16-year-old and say, “Why would I worry about these kinds of things”? And when you’re 35, you would go to your 21-year-old self and say, “What are you worrying about”? I kind of feel that problem goes on forever. There are so many antecedents, so many causes towards where we get confidence on.
So, firstly, it’s important to always to remember that we live inside our own heads. We don’t experience what all the people are experiencing, and often therefore it can feel like what we’re experiencing is as if everybody’s seeing it and as if it’s important to them as well. If you’re giving a talk at a conference or somewhere publicly, the extent to which you’ll concentrate on how you’ll come across is severely diluted for the audience. The audience aren’t evaluating you, nearly as much as you’ll be evaluating yourself. So, when we feel inadequate at something, we tend to make this assumption that everyone else is fine. Everyone else has got everything together and they’re doing well, whereas they don’t. Everybody else is also got things that they feel inadequate about, that they’re not sure around. And experience teaches us that we’re all winging it, one way or the other. We’re all making it up as we go along.
For example, I’m a new parent, I have a 1-year-old. When I was a child, I thought that parents knew everything about being parents. And then you become a parent, and I don’t know anything about being a parent! My parents were probably the same, they probably didn’t know either. So, we learn to understand that this level of feeling uncomfortable or inadequate at something is normal actually. I’m not strange for feeling that way. Everybody feels that way about something. So, as a simple thought, I often think that when you’re 10 or 20 years younger, you probably thought you’d be grown up. You’d have all your stuff together. You’d be really sensible by a certain age. And then you get to that age and you think, “No, I still feel young”. And then you get to the next age, and mentally at least, any way that needs to start to go. But mentally you think, “Yeah I still feel young”.
Then the second thing that I would pick up when it comes to confidence is that we live in a really highly future-oriented world! And some of us are naturally more comfortable with the future. I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m a hedonist. I’m very much the here and now. So, at the moment with the pandemic on lots of people don’t really know what the next semester’s going to be like. And the future oriented people would be nervous, anxious about that. I’m okay because I take it as a point of ‘we’ll figure it out as we get along’. So, when people are future oriented, you’re constantly making predictions about the future. And that’s the real norm of what confidence is. We look to the past; we find pieces of information and we use that to predict the future. If we’re optimistic, we think that the future’s going to work out well and therefore we become confident. And if we’re pessimistic, we feel the future’s probably not going to work out well, so our future prediction is negative. Therefore, we become less confident.
And that all depends on the kind of confidence and how we go about things. Whether we approach tasks or whether we avoid them. And we don’t have to think like that. We can remove these obsessions with the future and remove these obsessions with dwelling on the past. I think this is why mindfulness is such a popular tool to use, because it brings people into the present. Which means, if you’re present oriented, you’re not making predictions about the future. And if we don’t make predictions about the future, well confidence doesn’t really matter. Because confidence is making future predictions. So, it’s not all about trying to force yourself to become confident. Because, when I’m confident I’ll be able to achieve ‘X’. Maybe, actually we just do stuff we enjoy doing and we’re good at doing it, and then we achieve. And then we’ve got a success story. Which means, in the future, when we look back to the past we look back at the success, and then we’ve got somewhere. And I talk about that all the time with people in sport because sometimes I’ll be working with performers where they might be taking on someone who is objectively better than them. You know, if my team that I mentioned at the start of this episode were playing against Liverpool or Manchester City, then they can’t be confident. Because, well they’re not as good. So, they probably will lose.
So, how do I overcome that? I can’t. I can’t convince them that they should be confident because that would seem ridiculous. So, really what I do is I just focus on the moment and the feeling, and think about how does it feel to be do things that you are good at. You get some kind of internal feedback and internal reward for doing that. And then, you just let the confidence come naturally when good things happen.
Binod:
Yeah absolutely! Because the popular “meme” or the popular urban legend is that you have to be confident first to be competent at something and then to be successful. But I suppose in reality, life works other way round, doesn’t it? You get good at something and then you develop confidence and then you go get better from there.
John:
Yeah! How could you be confident of something you’ve never done before unless you are deluded. If you’re a beginner at any skill, you can’t be confident at that skill. You might be confident in your ability to learn new skills, to develop new skills. But you’re not confident at your proficiency at that skill. So, you just have to do it, and enjoy it and learn from it. And then you’ll find out if you have an aptitude for it. And then confidence will stem from that. Sometimes we do get it the other way round. We feel like this comes over time in where people feel the psychological trait comes first, and then that causes…
Sometimes you’ve just got to do stuff, and then the experience will shape the psychological trait.
Binod:
Well, continuing with employability, we also know that a person’s personality is linked to success or failure in a specific career. I mean you see that all the time. For example, if you score low in extraversion and conscientiousness, and high in neuroticism, and also low on their mental toughness score; you might get into investment banking but you might find it very difficult to stay there. Because, that’s a very unpredictable, competitive, 80 hours a week, high stress, client-facing career. But what I find, John, very fascinating (and we’ve talked about that before) is that there is no easily accessible study or tool or test, that links what a specific career demands (and there are lots of very popular careers so we’re not talking about niche careers) with a person’s personality.
Now, why is that the case? Is it the complexity, or are there tools out there? Either way, more importantly, what I was thinking is what can youngsters do at the start of their careers to ensure a better fit? Because, I see a lot the misery and career issues that people have is intimately linked to the lack of fit between their personality which is difficult to change and what that particular job or career demands.
John:
Yeah. There have been many attempts to kind of match personality traits. For example, a strong interest in Holland Codes was one example of a psychometric tool that tried to offer this career guidance. But they typically don’t work. The reason they don’t work is because it seems the relationship between one’s personality and their career success, is this sort of fairly simple transactional relationship. And there are so many uncontrollable factors that change the experiences that people have. Particularly those early experiences (which I spoke earlier about how we build a narrative from the experience). So, if you have a negative early experience of something, you might build a narrative around it. “Why was that? Maybe it was because I’m not very good at something”. Which means, there’s a good chance you’ll probably never really back yourself to go further down that route.
What was interesting about your question there, you phrased it, to say ‘career demands’. There are different ways of interpreting that. If the career demand is about specific skills, so being able to concentrate and things like that; I don’t think that’s as useful. But if the career demands are more focused on situational variables, like the culture that you might have (like you mentioned long working hours). If you work in a kitchen, kitchens tend to be very high pressure with very little tolerance for mistakes. So, you have to be able to take criticism and things like that.
I once spoke to some people working in performing arts like music and stage, and I thought people in sport could be harsh but performing arts- brutal! So, I think it’s more of a fit into the culture that you have, that’s important. So, if you’re quite a sensitive person, then working somewhere where praise is not particularly forthcoming and criticism is frequent, then you’re going to find that very difficult. Now, people will know their industries better than I do. But I think it’s more important that it’s the culture of the organization that you’re in, that you need to fit with personality wise than the nature of the organization. You know what are the goals of the organization. You might work for one investment banking firm where the culture is entirely different to the other. So even though the aims of the company are identical, your fit for the personality would be very different.
Binod:
Interesting! Now you talked about mindfulness and focusing on the present. So, I want to talk about what we’re going through right now. We are now in this weird pandemic era. In June 2020, John, you teamed up with Dr Michael McKay, postdoctoral researcher at the RCSI to conduct a survey that aims to assess the effects of lockdown on hope, optimism and psychopathological symptoms, such as anxiety. Quite interesting! You said (when I checked on the website. See! I do my research), “While there is no doubting that COVID-19 has been devastating for many people throughout Ireland, for those who have not been closely affected by the pandemic, the pause has provided somewhat of an opportunity for reflection and perspective taking. I think for many, this can be positive”. Can you expand on that? How can it be positive?
John:
Yeah. It not necessarily what I expected to find, to be honest. I have a couple of studies now. One sport based and one is general population based. What we’re finding is, of course, people who have been dramatically affected by the pandemic- there’s nothing positive. But for many, we might not have been ill ourselves or had anybody ill around us. So, the effect really has been slowing down of life. Because it might be working from home, or perhaps not working for a period of time and receiving welfare payments in place. And also, there’s been less to do. So, people haven’t been able to go out and do the things they would normally do. Which means, there’s lot more time for personal reflection. So, the common theme that has come up in the two studies that we’ve done is that:
those people who are in that situation of not being affected from a health point of view or the people around them, they may have had this kind of momentary pause in not only their career but also a lot of their social life. Inevitably, whenever we have a pause, we begin to reflect. We evaluate. So, what we’re saying is that, that break from the normal routine means that people have started to slow down, think a bit slower and re-evaluate.
So, sometimes what happens is; we live in this very fast paced world, as I said, ‘the future oriented world’. People are setting goals all the time. I’m going to achieve this, I’m going to achieve that, I’m going to achieve something else! And the pause gives people the opportunity to think, “Is that still my aim? I set that goal three years ago”. Just like that, life has changed in those three years. “Do I still want to do that”? Maybe I want to do something else, maybe I’d look at the time or the effort or the money that I’m investing in something and change the direction.
So, I think incidentally that’s true of a lot of goal setting. I’m not a big proponent of goal setting. I know there’s a million-a-month articles and books saying “isn’t goal setting wonderful”? I think it depends on the individual and the context. I think sometimes goal setting can be seen as this detrimental model. It is, “I want to be at a certain place, therefore how bad am I”? You know, you’re looking at what you’re not rather than reflecting it back and looking at the way you’ve been. And I think when people set goals, the most important thing is regular readjustment of those goals. Think when you set a goal. If that goal becomes unattainable or loses relevance over time it becomes a sort of stress, or a strain or a chore. And I think that’s that what’s happened during the pandemic, during the lockdown. It’s allowed people to readjust what is it that they want to achieve; and then find something that’s a bit more central, a bit more meaningful to themselves.
Binod:
Yeah. It goes back to what you said earlier, John, about having acceptance mindset and being mindful. We had a long discussion a few weeks ago as well on this. As in, you know, accepting that this is the way life is going to be. And also having a gratitude mindset- count your blessings instead of counting the gaps or the deficits!
John:
Yeah! It’s absolutely such a difficult thing to be able to do. You know, to be able to take that perspective; it’s almost that sort of death-bed scenario where you were able to zoom out on life. I often talk about- Imagine if life is this time scale that you can see in front of you from birth to death, which is hopefully a very long time. Often what we are is, we’re so zoomed in that even the next week or the last week feels like a long time ago. So, that ability to be able to sort of pause, zoom out and see actually how small and insignificant most of the things we’re worried about, actually are! And I think that’s such an important step then being able to develop that gratitude for what you have. Because, when you perform that sort of zoom out exercise, things that seem important at the time, become less important. But equally, some things that you’re not necessarily cognizant of regulate other things that are really important. Nobody lies on their death-bed and says, “Oh! I remember 30 years ago I was writing that report, I wish I got it in the day before”! They might wish to spend time with their family.
Binod:
Absolutely! Absolutely! I have got to let you go. I know this has been going on for some time. This will probably be my longest ever podcast interview. I have loved every minute of it! But before I let you go, John, you’ve been a sports person, writer, platform speaker, researcher, lecturer, psychometrician. Did I miss anything out?
John:
A bad karaoke singer!
Binod:
I didn’t know that! Now, this is a question I always ask my guests because it’s so, so important! Especially, from someone who is so experienced! If you were approached by a youngster, a graduate in his/her early 20s asking for career specific advice, knowing what you know now, what would be your top three tips to that person?
John:
Okay. So, that’s some question! I’m sure you must be getting some fantastic answers. You know how I like to start many answers with a caveat!
So, this one is that I’m always aware of the survivor bias with these kinds of things! Just because some things work for me, doesn’t mean it is the best piece of advice and everybody should do it. I often think that, when you see the kind of TED talks where somebody will be saying that they did something they thought were brilliant and that everyone should do it!
Like there’s a meme somewhere I saw that there’s a guy with loads of money. It’s about the survivor bias. He’s showing how “I spent every penny that I had on lottery tickets. People told me I was silly, but I carried on, and look where I am now! Eventually I won”! You know, because that one did, but there’s a lot that didn’t reach TED talk stage. You asked me a very simple question so let’s do 1, 2,3.
Don’t set rigid goals. I mentioned about goal adjustment. I think sometimes when you’re young, it is easy to set out what you want to achieve. You’ve got this timeline and you’ve got this focus. And there’s awful lot to be said for that. But focus on that means you might miss other opportunities as well. I think there’s a real travesty sometimes when people do that.
Do stuff that you’re good at. Because, it’s really rewarding to feel that you’re doing something well. So, if you can find something that you’re good at, know that you’re good at it and keep doing that. It will get its reward one way or the other.
Finally, I would disassociate career, with life satisfaction. It’s one factor; there are many factors to life satisfaction. You don’t work forever. You’ll spend a period of your time where you’ll retire and enjoy life in retirement. To go back to my death-bed scenario, nobody lies in their death-bed. Wishing that they had spent all their time in work! Know that there are friends and families and hobbies, and ambitions that are not career related. All of these things, the things that bring about life satisfaction. So, never place your happiness as contingent upon one thing.
Binod:
Right! So that’s it, folks! These are the top three tips from a very eminent and well qualified person! Don’t set rigid goals, do stuff you’re good at and ensure that life satisfaction comes from many roots and not just work! And we could go on for a couple of hours more, John. I know you have work and family to get back to. But this has been fascinating! I think we’ve covered almost everything in life and career. I think we talked about careers, employability, sports psychology, confidence, mental toughness, introversion, extraversion, culture. Quite a few tips, I think which a lot of youngsters might benefit once they listen to and absorb all this. Personally, it’s been as you know, continuing from the discussion we had a few weeks ago, been quite enlightening for me as well. I always walk away enlightened whenever I speak to you, and an inspiration as well; apart from of course being intellectually entertaining. You talk about lot of the deep issues that society rarely talks about but probably they should focus on more! Whether it is psychology training, or relationships, or how to view life in general.
So, thank you so much Dr John Perry for being on this show. I hope I don’t have to wait another seven years before reconnecting. But it’s been wonderful talking to you. And hopefully, I know you’re in Ireland and I’m here in UAE, but hopefully one day once this whole pandemic scare has died down, you can fly over here or fly through Dubai since it’s a very famous hub and we can catch up for a cup of coffee!
John:
That would be fantastic Binod! And thanks for having me, pleasure was all mine.
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Binod:
This podcast is brought to you by the real finance mentor. Thank you so much for listening and I really hope you found it insightful and inspirational. If you did enjoy this episode, please drop us a review and spread the word. You should check out more exclusive content on therealfinancementor.com and my LinkedIn profile which is: Binod Shankar, FCA, CFA. Let’s keep in touch! Just add your name to the mailing list on therealfinancementor.com, and we’ll tell you about new episodes plus book reviews, upcoming events and blogs. Till the next time, onwards and upwards.
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