Shape your future around your aspirations

Welcome to the final in a series of articles based on a recent OxTalks podcast in which Chris Oxley (Managing Director, Oxley & Partners) and Bradley Honnor (MatchFit Managing Director) discuss leadership and development training.

In this sixth episode, Chris and Bradley discuss the analogy of campers and climbers and the need for both in successful organisations. To conclude they discuss how to take control of your future and make your dreams become reality.

Chris: Moving onto something we’ve spoken about on this podcast before, which I thought was super unique, was your analogy about campers and climbers. Could you explain what that is?

Bradely: Of course. Campers are individuals, individuals who tend to reach a certain point of comfort or success, and they camp there. They’re not pushing for more or the next thing. Climbers are the opposite almost, in that they are looking constantly to strive for the next thing, for improvement, for personal growth, for the next challenge. They’re motivated by more, becoming more or doing better. What’s interesting is that sometimes it’s easy to assume that we might position one as more important than the other. But that’s not the case. We need campers and we need climbers. And they’re both very, very important to our business. We need people whose sense of purpose is to do a fantastic job in what they’re doing. They get take pleasure in the detail and getting it right and doing it on time and understanding it inside out. And that is their sense of purpose. But at the same time, we need people to want to grow and develop and move on to the next step. So it’s again an analogy that people can really relate to. And we can be at different stages of our lives, whether we’re camping or climbing, and we may camp outside work, but in work, we’re a climber. So it’s just an analogy. It’s not a perfect science, but it does resonate with people, and leaders really understand those within their own teams when they look for it through that lens.

Chris: Because you need both right, campus and climbers.

Bradley: Yes, and it’s really important because it’s easy to think that we need everybody to be a climber. But not everybody can be the MD. Not everybody can be on the leadership team. So we really do need people that are very content to work where they are and to perfect where they are. And you often find that a lot of campers really are motivated by mastery. So I may be in the same job for 15 years, but it doesn’t mean I don’t get better at it, and that I don’t make it easier for the people that rely on me to do my job. Camping isn’t just about sitting still. It’s just not so much about climbing. You can be very busy camping, right? You can be on pace camping. You can be doing lots of stuff that’s very fundamental and important. So it’s good to be clear about that, because in our training sessions years ago, I can remember people feeling that if they were camping they weren’t as important, or that they were doing something wrong. And that really isn’t the case. They’re both very important roles, and I would advocate having both types of people in the same team and business.

Chris: I certainly know that, in terms of the type of search I’m quite often involved with, when we have conversations or initial assessments with the client we don’t want somebody to move out of this role too quick. It’s that retention consideration – finding someone who can come in and embed into the role for quite a bit of time. So whilst it’s great that somebody’s got all that drive and they want to improve, they still need to do and have an interest in the job they’re doing today and make themselves amazing at it.

So just coming to the end of the podcast, I’d like to grab your insights around recipe for success. From your experience, what does the recipe for success look like? And are there specific elements or traits that consistently lead to success in people and organisations?

Bradley: I give that question a lot of thought. I’m fortunate to work around people where we’re discussing this a great deal. It all starts from mindset. There’s no doubt about that in my mind whatsoever. You need a positive, strong mindset, because everything stems from that. Whether it’s the direction you take or the confidence you have in yourself, or the belief you have in what you’re doing, or the actions you take. It’s very much around your mindset. If we didn’t think something was possible, we wouldn’t even begin. So that, for me, is the fundamental under pinner. What I also see in really successful people is that they have an innate capability to see the opportunity. It’s really quite interesting to be in a room with three sales people and two of them don’t see a bigger picture and wider opportunity, but one does. It’s the same conversation, but that successful salesperson is the one that is able to see that there’s a bigger picture here, and maybe the opportunity is wider than we first thought. So seeing or creating that opportunity is the second thing for me. And thirdly, people skills. And that’s a broad-brush term, but however good we are, we can’t grow a business on our own. We need people to believe in us and get on board with the plan and contribute to the plan and engage with the delivery. And people that are successful generally have a really good, strong capability of that people management piece, or at least people around them that pick that up on their behalf. So for me, they’re the fundamentals of success. If you want to recipe those three things, it’s mindset, seeing the opportunity and delivering that opportunity through people.

Chris: Finally, if there’s one key takeaway or message you’d want listeners to walk away with, what would that be?

Bradley: That’s a good question. I think it’s about not being defined. Don’t be defined by your perceived limitations. Shape your future on your aspirations. Aspirations can be a dream. Turn your dreams into goals. Turn your dreams into targets. Dream big and chase it.

We hope that you enjoyed this conversation. You can listen to the whole conversation here The Transformative Impact of Personalised Development with Bradley Honnor