Jon Rudd Edit
Wed, 3/9 2:57PM • 43:33
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, athlete, people, person, performance, sport, life, achieve, ireland, decision, perseverance, years, bit, world, helping, john, individual, swimming, deferred gratification, hours
SPEAKERS
Jon Rudd, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
John rod. Good evening and welcome to the great coaches podcast.
Jon Rudd 00:04
Thank you. It's a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
Paul Barnett 00:06
The Privilege is all mine to be talking to you after a long, dark day here in Bucharest, maybe something really simple to kick us off today. Could you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far,
Jon Rudd 00:20
I'm in a race slap bang in the middle of the Republic of Ireland in a county called Meath not far away from a town called Kells, I live in houses basically in the middle of a field. And most of my neighbors are sheep or cows. I had COVID. Recently, I got trapped in Dubai with COVID, following the Abu Dhabi World Championships, so that was an interesting experience. So I've not been back too many weeks. And now just starting to get our 2022 plans and, and revisions in place, because already COVID start to effect a few things will take place when they take place. So the nonstop roller coaster performance spot is there. It's there every day,
Paul Barnett 01:06
thank you for stepping off the roller coaster for just a little bit to talk to us about all things swimming. Because, John, when I was preparing for you, I can see that you've coached on international teams for seven different nations, Great Britain, England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Turkey, and Kenya. And you've coached these teams at World and continental championship events. And this must have given you have a great opportunity to see so many different coaches up close, maybe some good ones, and some not so good ones, but from this experience, and from this perspective, what is it you think that great coaches do differently? That sets them apart?
Jon Rudd 01:43
Yeah, I mean, that's the million dollar question. Because I've bumped into and worked with and gone head to head with so many great coaches, all of them have individually idiosyncrasies that are what make them great, but I think that there's a, there's a few things that would be sort of core standards and core values within those people, and then meticulously planned. And they're extremely passionate about what they do, potentially too passionate at times. And that puts a family life and relationships at times in jeopardy. They have excellent communication skills, certainly verbal, excellent communication skills. And if they don't have great written skills, they find someone that can do that for them. And they have a natural warmth and engagement with the human race. And so it doesn't matter whether they're working with athletes, with other coaches, speaking to officials, if it's with young athletes, engaging with parents and families or schools and universities, there just have a natural ability to draw people in and make them want to listen to them, even if the message that they're given might be fairly bland and mundane. It's the style in which the message is delivered. Look, I've worked on teams where the one of the challenges for me was I didn't speak the language that the other coaches were speaking but you can be you can still feel it. You can observe it, you can see it in body language in the way that athletes and other members of the staff respond to these coaches. I don't know if that's something that's that's learnt. I think that there's an there's an intrinsic nature to that as it almost genetic. I think it can be developed. But I don't know that it can be started from scratch, I suppose is the easiest way to put it. [PB1] But certainly in an all those years where I've walked into goodness knows how many international meats and as he said, pulled on different track suits for different nations. Suddenly, that's one of the characteristics that I would I would see in those that would consider to be world leaders in that field.
Paul Barnett 03:56
John, I've heard you talk about leadership as being intrinsic. You referenced it, then as in your answer, but it's also something that can be coached and developed. But that is your quote, great leaders also reflect back on their childhoods. So I wanted to ask you, what was it in your childhood that helped prepare you to go on this amazing journey you've had as a head coach and in leadership positions in these organizations?
Jon Rudd 04:22
Well, first of all, add examples of fantastic parenting from, from my two parents, who, on reflection, walked the line almost perfectly between giving me guidance and support and helping me make the right decisions but also at times, allowing me to trip up and make the wrong decisions, too. So there was speed bumps in the road, as well as times when they press the accelerator for me. I think you need both. And I think also, I was I was a bit of a nightmare at school. I don't know there's There's too many teachers that would that would look back fondly on their time with me in the classroom. And I don't know if if, if that was me trying to find my way, because I was always a challenger. And I wasn't a rebel for the sake of being a rebel. But I really didn't, I really didn't take well to being told to do something without it being justified. [PB2] And ever since that point in time, I've always coached we're going to do this because and I think a lot of coaches leave the because behind the thing that a didactic message of do this is enough. So really good parenting. But when I was wrong, I was wrong, I definitely didn't have parents that that would support me regardless, just just because there was the genetic chain that I really hate that in parents were, that the default is their child's right, just because they happen to be associated by blood, that doesn't work for me, I certainly don't parent that way. And my parents didn't pair in that way. But at the same time, you know, there was there was both physical and metaphorical arms around the shoulder to support me.
And I would also say, I didn't necessarily come from a town or school, where success was just natural. The one great examples, particularly my school of people that ended up being being leaders. Now, it just, it just sort of happened, which is really kind of odd. One of the guys that was in in sixth form with me, ended up being the head coach of the England rugby league team, at theirs in the same year that I was the head coach of the England team for swimming other Commonwealth Games from the same school. But I don't really recall ever really happening before. And I don't really know if it's happened afterwards. So there was very definitely a sense of it being English, Northern, traditional working class kind of area that you had to make your own chances, if you wanted to do something that was a bit different to what most of your friends would end up doing, who you went to school with. I mean, at that time, it wasn't regular, for guys 18 to go to university, whereas now it's almost written in tablets of stone that most people would go to universities, it's nothing particularly special, like it was in the late 80s. And I wasn't a natural academic, and I still aren't, so I had to work hard. I was thinking like, I was terrible at math. So to take my maths exam four times, or three times, something like that. That's how good my maths is. I can't remember how many times I took it, right. So there's an example about maths. So, you know, just to be able to get to university to become a school teacher had to have a maths qualification, I couldn't get the damn thing. I'm certainly not naturally gifted when it comes to academics. But what it did do was it just allowed good influence to influence me and learn from bad influence that if it did influence me, only influence me once. And then I recognized it was bad. And that was kept at arm's length.
Paul Barnett 08:04
Well, here's a number for you 1989. That's when you first started coaching, and you did it to earn a few extra dollars while you were studying. You described yourself as being quite brash back then, which you've talked about just just a moment ago. But how is your leadership style evolved over those years,
Jon Rudd 08:23
there's not even a resemblance to how it was in 1989. And leadership would would very much have been in inverted commas. I got the job because nobody else applied. And I didn't, I didn't really have any coach, I had a coaching qualification or teaching qualification, something really minor, but certainly no experience, a coach the way that I was coached, which again on reflection was a bit mad, because the guy that coached me was really old school. So I carried that forward probably a decade longer than really should have, should have ever existed. And I'm a dad, my father coached me as well for a period of time. And there were times I didn't really enjoy that, because I just wanted my dad to be my dad a lot of the time. And him being a coach. I also it was a conflict of interest there. And so back in 1989, I was 19 years of age and away from home for the first time in my life and just finding my feet. And this job I did. As you say I didn't want to stack supermarket shelves or pull pints to help fund my degree. And so if we fast forward the best part of 30 years, and I can now actually describe a coaching style to you that I have rather than back then it would have it would have been the things and now I don't like do this because I've ever been on the board do this because I've said that's what we're doing. I'm in charge. So let's do it this way.
Whereas now I would consider myself to have much more of an affiliative type style to the way that I do things. My leadership has coaching within it, a coach within meetings of our interactions with those with whom I work very much. Now, I'm part of a team where we make joint decisions. And it's very, very rare that I make an autonomous decision. I'll work with my senior leadership team in the in the performance on the sport, I've got a very strong and supportive CEO who, who I would meet with and use them as a sense check, I use a performance management group, which is a check and challenge group of experts from outside of my own sport, but with expertise in high performance sport, at a strategic level to put my plans to them. So I'm highly consultative, this is decision that's made. And to get a fully rounded, or as much of a fully rounded view as you can, from experts in different fields before a decision is made, I think is essential, and helps further down the line, then of not having to retract a decision and go with a different one, the only times that we really now attract decisions and change them, if things outside of our sphere of influence change. So if the national governing body or the have a view on things, or the world governing body have a view on things, or the European governing body have a view on things or net change something in their plans, will that's when we would respond and change. But it's rare that we say we're going to do this, and then we change it. Because unless something else changes outside of that, that impacts on our decision. We've done as much consultation as you possibly can to get to a definitive decision. And that's key to my leadership style,[PB3]
Paul Barnett 11:50
John, you say, coach the person and not the athlete. And it said, interesting idea. And I'm wondering if you could explain how people who are listening might be able to apply that. In their everyday life, there's many people listening who are managing leading others. And this philosophy of looking at someone and seeing them as two things. How could they apply that learning and thinking?
Jon Rudd 12:15
Well, the The primary difference between a high performance athlete and a high performance Formula One vehicle is the one has emotion and the other one doesn't. And this collection of bones and tissue and blood vessels that we call a human being is absolutely that it's a highly cognitive and emotive being that is more than a performance machine attempting to win a medal in a world championships on Olympic Games, and more furlers. If we forget that there carry the same feelings, and the same emotion, and the devil on one shoulder and the angel on the other, all of those things that we experience, if we forget that the athlete is the same, then we not only miss them a huge trip, but we're not working in the right in the correct realms of ethics and morals either. And so we might be able to tighten a bolt or change a wheel on a Formula One racing car to get a better performance. But that's because to all intents and purposes until a person steps inside, it's an inanimate object, what we're dealing with in terms of high performance is this living, breathing, human being and not a human doing. And so if we don't work in that way, there's a point in time where the relationship between the person who is trying to achieve the performance, and the person who is trying to help deliver the performance on their behalf, that becomes frayed, and ultimately will break. So for me, it's super important in the whole realm of, of ethical practice, that we remember that we're working with, with human beings in all regards, because they're only a performance athlete for what is a relatively short period of their life. And before that, and after that, they revert to just in most incidents, being a regular regular human being isn't in that performance environment. We've got to remember that context at all times, that if we develop the person, then we're more likely to develop the athlete as a byproduct of that, rather than focusing on just the them as an athletic specimen. If you like,[PB4]
Paul Barnett 14:43
John, was there a person or a moment or an event that was the genesis of this this thinking or this thought or approach that you have?
Jon Rudd 14:53
I don't think so. Have I always felt that way? I would say yes. Have I always acted upon it? As well as I could have done or should have done? Probably not. But with edge and experience, I've got better at it every year of practice. So I'm probably best better than I've ever been at thinking that way and acting that way now. But I expect in a year's time that I'll be better. Again, it's an ever evolving skill set in, in remembering that and trying to engage with a person or team of people in that way. Because I do believe that you're going to get more out of a person, as an athlete, if you're treating them holistically well, and respectfully, and with consideration of all of the other aspects of their life, that are, in my case, away from the swimming pool. Because if we have an athlete in the water two hours in the morning, and two hours in the afternoon, and then an hour in the gym, that's five hours, but there's another 19 hours of their day, that unless we're working with them about how they work in and control and self regulate those 19 hours, then we're missing a huge trick. And now this doesn't mean that we start to encroach on their personal lives and start to become something that they don't want us to be. But we have to, we have to take into account that for most performance athletes, they've got family, they've got maybe got a partner, and they have maybe in a life in education, they have sponsors, and maybe they have an agent, there's so many factors to the the jigsaw that makes up that person, that if we don't try and help them assemble all of the pieces into position, then we're less likely to get the outcome that we're looking for as the coach[PB5] . John, the
Paul Barnett 16:47
Tokyo Olympics was Ireland's most successful in the last 25 years. What were some of the first things you did when you got there in 2017, that helped drive that result,
Jon Rudd 16:58
assemble great people around it is no doubt that that's the number one factor was, you know, the performance director can't be all things to all men and women in that regard. So it was it was crucial. And the very best people that I could attract into roles, either from within Ireland or from from outside, were brought in in those in those specialist areas that were going to help the program grow into something that was more organically robust for the athletes that were looking to us to do the best for them and by them. So that was number one, and is my heaviest investment from the performance budget is in is in people.[PB6]
And the second thing was to create fit for purpose daily environments for athletes on shore, we had a number of athletes were leaving Ireland for their university years and beyond. And although I wanted to maintain their right to make that choice, I didn't want them making that choice because we weren't offering them something that was of equal status and ability and, and class as that that they could receive outside of Ireland. So we we set about making the National Center in Dublin and the National Center in Limerick as a robustness, bulletproof and high performance as we possibly could with great people and great results. And then most recently, we've done exactly the same again in Northern Ireland with a third center in Bangor. So great people, great environments in which in which to work and strong support services and working with key partners. So working with the sport Allen Institute, and the sport Northern Ireland sport Institute, to provide services to athletes that were outside of those which my employed team could provide. So it was it was key partnerships in those areas. And then it was making a stronger connection between what was happening in all four provinces. Because all probably all four provinces were doing good things, but they weren't necessarily doing them all at the same time for the same reason. And even using the same language in what they called them. And I wanted I wanted it so that we had alignment across Ireland so that if you were born in Galway, and you're a swimmer but your father got work and moved you to Belfast Swimming was still something that you understood immediately as you walk through the door and you don't you didn't have to relearn terminology or the weather the domestic competition calendar worked, and that the comp the domestic competition calendar was very much about it was a means to an end in its own right but it was a means to an end to get to national level. And that was a means to an end to get to international level for those athletes that competed a particular levels but couldn't couldn't for whatever reason compete at the level above. It was important to them but for those that that would could compete at a high level. It was also a stepping stone through to those level as well. And that was something that took a little bit of time to get right. And we're still polishing it and nudging it. But it's certainly in a satisfactory position. Now,
Paul Barnett 20:08
you often liken coaching to a jigsaw, where the pieces are present, but they're not in the right order. I was wondering if you could tell us about a time where you have put those pieces in the right order. And what happened to performance as a result?
Jon Rudd 20:24
I know, which really led me down here, or I suspect I do, I think there's, there's a few times where pieces have been put in place in the right order at the right time in the right way. One instance, that resulted in an Olympic gold medal from 15 year old girl, which was we talked about roller coasters, there was a roller coaster for a few years. And what's interesting about that analogy, is the athlete has to choose to allow all pieces of the jigsaw to be put on the table before you can actually start helping and put them together in the right order. And the vast majority of athletes leave one or two pieces missing. So you can never put the full picture together because there are parts of their life, that they're not willing to change or maneuver to be the full pack. The 24/7 365 Day performance athlete with a performance lifestyle and mindset that that is 100%. And so quite often, quite often, you don't find until you're a long way into putting those jigsaw pieces together, that there's one or two bits that haven't been lost, but you've just not been afforded to click into position and then you know that you're only going to find 97% or 94%, or whatever it is that athlete's true capabilities and potential, but that's their choice. That's their choice. Because the the biggest challenge for for performance athletes is that holistic buy in is that 100% energy and commitment to what's necessary because the sacrifice there that's necessary, there's difficult decisions to be made. And you have to be a really, really special individual to be able to do all of that. [PB7]
So in the case of roots familia, Tita that the Lithuanian Olympic gold champion in in 2012, she was absolutely the very first person I believe I met that was willing to give all pieces of that jigsaw onto the table, and then would work in harmony to put them together, which is incredible for a 15 year old, you know, there was extreme maturity. And there's, there's, we could digress all day as to why she was that way. She was a special person, but part of her upbringing and part of where she'd come from and what she saw with the benefits of not not just to her but to our family in doing this in a particular way we're beyond the years are very similar character that I coached before I moved to Ireland in Ben proud was the same, in that he was just so focused and so committed, but he was a little bit older. And he also because he was a bit older, he also had an inter dependence with me as his coach, whereas router, I think, at the beginning had more of a dependence. And that was because of her age. Now, interdependence spoken about this quite a lot is where you actually want to get to with an athlete, where you're a team with consultation and liaison and discussion. And you honestly give the athlete the table at times to give opinion and allow them to provide you with information that can help them, they've kind of got to earn that through experience and years, and trust and money integrity. And so I would say they absolutely are two examples of where that all those pieces clicks with router image or Olympic champion with Ben, he was fourth at the Olympic Games and just missed a medal by and that's Wesco. When it comes to time, I honestly believe that there are athletes I coached in that 30 year period that were either as talented as those two, or arguably more talented, but because they held some pieces of the jigsaw back, we didn't see how truly great they were on I asked you about your apprenticeship, but
Paul Barnett 24:12
I'd like to follow up a little bit because swimming swimmers starts so young, and the time involvement you just talked about five hours earlier, but they start early in the morning and they do extra in the afternoon. It's such a huge time sacrifice. How do you help them find joy in this grind and balance so that they have the energy to continue? That's
Jon Rudd 24:34
a really interesting question. And I've always worked on the basis that the journey is more honorable than the outcome of the journey, the journey itself of commitment, seeing or attempting to see what is the best version of yourself in something that you have a scalar and is the most honorable thing that an individual can do. And therefore, by implication, the coach helping that person to kick open the doors and push up on the windows and let the light in and see who they are. And what they can achieve is one of the most honorable vocations that you can have, you know, what's more honorable than helping somebody trying to be the best version of themselves? [PB8]
Yeah, I would say that that's, that's the key to enjoyment. You know, there's, there's, there's times when it's tough, there's nothing particularly glamorous about baring first and chlorinated water for 20 hours a week, that notion of deferred gratification, what you give up now in other aspects of your life, not give up, but change or make small sacrifices, so that the next the life experience that you can have, because of what it is that you're doing is so more rounded, or special than that which a regular person might achieve, who doesn't commit to something in this particular way. That for me is the drive and the intrinsic motivation for them to do what it is that they do. And ultimately, what they're seeking, is the knowledge of how good they are. So that when it's the day to hang up their swimsuit and said, That's it, I'm done. They can honestly look in the mirror and say, I know how good I was, and not have any element of frustration, of not knowing, because there's no time machine to go back and put it right.[PB9]
Paul Barnett 26:45
You talk about this theme of deferred gratification, it comes through, it comes through a lot in the articles I've read about you. In fact, it sort of is about his long term thinking this decision making with the future in mind, I've got a quote, I think which summarizes your belief in this area a little bit and you say, the coach with integrity knows that they have a duty to protect and honor an athlete's future in the sport. This is not necessarily normal, common. The performance today tomorrow, the next event tends to be the main focus. How did you come to shape this belief around the future being a incentive or a motivating factor for an athlete,
Jon Rudd 27:31
because we're a sport that requires early specialization, whether we like it or not, it does, it requires a high level of commitment quite early in a person's life, it does require them to commit a large part of their childhood and their adolescent to see how good they can be. But it's not in those years that they're going to get to see what the end game is, for a 15 year old girl to win Olympic gold medal is unusual, it's happened before it will happen again, but it's unusual, is even more unusual, if not unheard of in males. So we have to work on the basis that the vast majority of people who are potentially going to achieve their greatest achievement in the sport, whatever that might be, it's going to happen just before or close to a point of retirement, that they're in the if they're not in the 11th hour of their career, when they do it, they're in the ninth or 10th hour, it's not in the first five minutes of starting. So and I think this is this is the case with the vast majority of sports is that it's time sensitive, the window of opportunity is relatively small, doing the right things at the right time, allow that full fruition at a point of seniority to come at a time when the athlete is most likely to be able to say that is potentially my greatest achievement. And I don't know if I'll ever beat that. [PB10] That's a real shame if that happens at 12 or 13 years of age, because what's happened is what will some something is right, the athletes decided that this isn't something they want to do anymore. All you have an unscrupulous coach that does too much too early in the wrong way with a young person to get results that don't really mean anything in the grand scheme of things. But there might seem to mean something at that moment in time. And so the plates, you got to keep spinning not just with the athlete, but with parents because we know that parents can be extremely hungry for success. You know, there's nothing better than Mr. Mr. or Mrs. Jones, like than sitting down with a neighbor's and saying how great a little Susan or little Jimmy is at 13 years of age because they get bragging rights and whatever else. But you have to keep this plate spinning, which is for now to keep them interested and engaged and wanting to come back tomorrow. But at the same time you've got this plate spinning over here, which is tomorrow and next year, and the next five or six years where what you're doing here is keeping them engaged but it's not hurting this side of things, either. So it's enough first success to be felt, and for motivation to maintain, to come back the next season and come back the season after. But there's, there's nothing that is done. That potentially hurts. Where there can be when it's 11th hour, when it's right, this is the year of these other months in which I have to get this right. Because there's a point in time in any athlete's career, where the line of progress just starts to tip the wrong way, having flattened out a little bit before it, it's inevitable, because the vast majority of sports have an age determining factor to them, certainly physical sports, the coach is ethically sound and morally sound with the right scruples will do all that they can to allow the athlete to achieve success in the moment. And everything that they can to ensure that whatever it is that they're prescribing or delivering content wise, in terms of the coaching program is not going to be a hazard or an impediment to allow them to see how good they can be in their senior years.
Paul Barnett 31:19
John, can you tell me about your snowflake theory,
Jon Rudd 31:22
I'll probably need to change its name now. Because the connotation of snowflake has taken a second a whole new meaning in recent years. So when people now say snowflake theory, we're not talking about Generation Z here, that
my snowflake theory that goes back a good 20 years before anything of that nature was considered. And it effectively says that every single person that walks through your door, whether you're a coach, whether you're a school teacher, whatever it is, you may do in terms of working with young people, they're a unique specimen that you've never seen before. And that's even the case with identical twins, they might look the same. And they might be the same height and the same weight and whatever else. But they're, they're not the same people. And so every person that you work with, is a coaching experience and a learning experience for the coach to prepare for the next person that they get to work with, who they've never worked with before, and will never get to work with again, because they're unique. And my snowflake theory was was very much around, there was a trend in the 80s, late 80s, and the 90s, for writing development plans for the masses, which put hundreds, if not 1000s of kids into pigeon holes of what they were, and what they and what they needed. And again, this was something that I I didn't like and I rebelled against, which was that's not coaching the individual, that or learning who the individual is, and again, what they're individually idiosyncrasies that make them that unique person. That's just coaching robots, that's just gray mulch in the middle. And that we've we've got to find a way of, of reaching individuals within groups of athletes that we coach, because there'll be something physical or psychological, or emotional. That is, that is then we won't have seen before, and we won't see again. And every time we coach that person, it's a preparation for coaching the next person who will not be the same as them. So where we're always evolving as coaches or teachers working with young people in that sense, because there isn't a point where you where you can say, I now get to I now know how to coach anybody and everybody that walks through the door, because they'll always be the person that breaks that rule. And so that's where my snowflake theory came from, was it because every snowflake is unique, when you put them under the microscope and no two are ever the same. That's exactly the same with human beings in both physical, mental and emotional characteristics.[PB11]
Paul Barnett 34:11
You're not that old, John, you fed a long apprenticeship as a coach, a long path from that boy in 1989, all the way through to coaching on the world stage today. What does this taught you about patience and perseverance?
Jon Rudd 34:29
Well, I feel pretty old. Even Thank you for saying that I'm not.
Patience is absolutely everything. There's a term that I sometimes use, which is a dichotomy, which is patient urgency. So the way I think of that is you have to be able to wait for the time to be right to add or to cajole or to nurture to push, but at the same time, we know that with every day that passes, it's a day that we don't get back to So you're, again, you're, you're in this situation where you know that it's maybe next week or next month or next year that you'll really start to see some outcomes. But you also know that if it isn't that those days are gone, or those hours are gone. So that patience is is absolutely key. But at the same time, you leave no stone unturned within your patience. So whilst you're being patient, you kicking open doors and pulling books off shelves and scouring the net and calling people and whatever it is that you need to do to try and find an answer that you may be looking for. That enables you to make the progress that you would like to make within that particular period of time. And so Rome wasn't built in a day. And now there is a great athlete now some a built much more quickly. And that might come down to their natural abilities and a genetic predisposition to something that you're trying to achieve them with a with a particular stroke in the pool or with a particular event. And then there are others, where what experience has told me is, he maybe even if you don't, openly thing that they're, they're not going to achieve the greatest things. And you might subliminally kind of go, Well, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna do the best I can by this guy, because I don't necessarily see them swimming at a particular level, like, they're the ones that come and get you. They're the ones that can bite you on the ass and prove me wrong later. And I've been caught I've been quite a few times like that before. So I've learned never really to write anybody off. And to think they're not the real deal. Because there are those that come to the table real late with their abilities and and kind of prove you're wrong. And then there are others where you see them early, and you think, wow, we've got a, we're now sort of well beater here, and then they just don't have some of the minerals, it's necessary for them to necessarily bring that to fruition. So human beings are the most incredible species, the most surprising of species in what they're capable of doing when you don't think they can do it, or incapable of doing when you believe that they can. So patience is a massive element of that. And I suppose the perseverance and patience go hand in glove. And perseverance to me sometimes I'm a little bit concerned with as a term because it suggests carrying on doing the same thing, but hoping for a different outcome. Whereas perseverance for me is persevering with the individual, but looking for different means and methods that allows the individual to make sufficient progress. Because we all know if we just carry on doing the same thing, we just get the same. So there's there's perseverance to person, maybe not perseverance to the task, if you're locked into perseverance to the task, then maybe you're limiting the individual from not being expansive and open enough to try something new that allows them to, to reach that full potential limit.[PB12]
Paul Barnett 37:56
With these learnings of perseverance, and impatience, and being nudged, you talked in there about Rome not being built in a day, you talked about no stone being Unturned, you've got four children of your own, and I believe three of them have followed you into swimming. So you've clearly not scared them off. But if I could ask you to go back, if we had a time machine, and I know he died, but if I could take it back and introduce you to that 19 year old, that was the head coach at Plymouth all the way back then, knowing what you know now, and the experiences you've had. What would you say to that person?
Jon Rudd 38:34
I'll tell you what, that 19 year old guy wouldn't have listened to me because he was too I headed, he would have just believed he was doing it the right way. And would have would probably have nodded and said, yeah, thanks very much. And then who's that old guy that's trying to tell me how to do things. So that would be my worry about going back in time and trying to advise myself is without actually listening, it'll be a little bit of time to recognize that there were some people that I needed to listen to. There isn't an awful lot, I will change. You know, some, there's some really weird stuff that happened to me that at the time was was was pretty horrible. But if it hadn't happened, then I wouldn't be in the position I'm in now. So I get an example. We were taught the wrong syllabus for air level English. And so when we sat in the exams, we were all there was a lot of books that we were asked questions on that we hadn't read, if we'd have had the syllabus taught to us correctly, my level English would have been a better result. And I would have gone to a different university and I wouldn't have ended up coaching. Because I had a different route in my life. I ended up at the university that was bottom of the list, because I ended up with a level resorts where that's the only place I could go. So I ended up in Plymouth, which was not my first intent. And then I ended up coaching which wasn't an intent. And then I ended up coaching and school teaching, which again really wasn't an intent and then I came out school teaching to become a coach. And so, so when I look back, it was pretty painful when I got that level result, it was pretty painful when I sat in the exam trying to answer questions on books that I hadn't read for two years. But if that hadn't happened, then I wouldn't be where I am. Now I'd have a completely different, completely different journey in life. And it might have been a journey and something that I couldn't or didn't Excel it because it probably wouldn't have been so in coaching. So there isn't an awful lot that I'd go, I'd go back and change. Because the mistakes you make unless a cataclysmic bonds, the mistakes you make formula who you are much more than the successes do, I think you're you become a stronger, more resilient person without the ability to display, hardiness, and empathy. Those things are all developed through making mistakes, rather than just being good at stuff all the time. And so if you were to go back in time, your default would be to try and tell yourself where not to make those mistakes, but then you wouldn't be the person who you are 30 years later. So there's not an awful lot change. I'm very, very satisfied with my life path.
Paul Barnett 41:13
John, you've been very generous with your time today. And I know it's, it's getting towards evening, and you've probably been up since like 3am teaching swimmers. So maybe just one. One last question if I could, and I'd like to ask you, in the distant future, when you do hang up the whistle. When you stop coaching, what's the legacy, you hope you've left behind
Jon Rudd 41:34
and moved to Ireland to try and help people experience what it is that I'd experienced. There's a next sectional glow and warmth to helping a young person achieved the pinnacle of the sport. And it was evident that in order to be able to do that, it has to be it has to be systematically strong within the nation or the region or the area in which you work for that to become more likely, because no matter what you do, unless you have a really huge population of athletes come through the door, it remains unlikely. So your job is to erode away the unlikeliness and creep it towards more likely, most most coaches in the world 99.9% of coaches in the world will encourage an Olympian ever man coach and Olympic medalist. So the more I can do, wherever it is I'm working, the more I can do to help and enable others to feel that tremendous sense of of satisfaction. And I can only describe it as a as a as a warm glow that you get when you help someone to achieve their ultimate ambitions. If I if I can find ways of knocking over pediments and removing barriers to allow people to achieve something that's even close to that. If not that, then that's the kind of legacy I want to leave behind. Wherever I work, we go back to the honor of the journey. And that, for me is an honorable journey and one that I'll continue to work on.[PB13]
Paul Barnett 43:14
I think the honor of the journey is a great place for us to leave it. John, thank you so much for your time this evening. Great chatting with you so many golden nuggets and insights in there and I wish you all the best for the road towards Paris.
Jon Rudd 43:27
Thank you. It's been it's been a great hour. I've really enjoyed that. Thank you Paul.