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Simon Jones Edit
Fri, 8/13 6:55AM • 23:40
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
people, coach, coaching, role, feedback, athletes, listened, behaviors, conversations, environment, bit, plan, support, learn, performance, team, guess, complex, set, improve
SPEAKERS
Simon Jones, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
Simon Jones. Good afternoon, and welcome to the great coaches podcast.
Simon Jones 00:05
Thank you for having me.
Paul Barnett 00:06
So I mean, where are you today? And what's the weather like?
Simon Jones 00:09
It's actually sunny. I'm in Perth in Australia, main quarantine. So 14 days soft quarantine because I've just recently been in Adelaide working in my office, which is a bit on the chilly side. But all good.
Paul Barnett 00:20
Thankful for your giving us a little bit of your time today to talk about your coaching experience because you've had a wonderful journey. And I'd like to start off actually by asking you about two great coaches that you worked alongside Peter Kane and Sir David Brailsford. And these are just a few of the great coaches that you've had access to over the years. But what is it you think the great coaches do differently?
Simon Jones 00:41
I think they don't give up and they live in the future. I think that's a great challenge and support. I think that the three main things, you know, create the future that challenge the status quo, and then support people. And that can be come in a combination of supports not always necessarily positive. And it could be a probe and a prod, and some honest conversations. But I think that's what they do they create a future state that people want to go to.[PB1]
Paul Barnett 01:05
In preparing for this interview today. I was reading a lot of articles, and I keep hearing people talk about your man tripping. It's not the plan. It's the planning. So I'm wondering if you could talk about how you've used this particular mantra to help improve your athletes?
Simon Jones 01:18
Yeah, I don't know. He was funny when he mentioned that. Yeah, I do mention it yesterday, again, because I think you've got a great vision for the future. But we don't know what's gonna happen. We live in this complex world, but without a destination to aim for. So just use it for like getting the car going leaves off maps got GPS now and the GPS can guide us there. And you've got to change direction, maybe based off as the traffic conditions or in a while stop along the way. And in a simple analogy, that's what coaching does. It's about understanding the destination. It's about kind of working out the route and the journey, the resources required, but we got to stop and take a picnic on a journey, you basically got to work out what you need to do to get your destination. So I'm a big one for planning. But it's not about the plan. Because I think people like to stick to the plan, then don't absorb new information, and then iterate the plan. And because we live in this complex world, and it's ever changing, so those people that stick to the plan, or they get in a comfort zone, and I think oh yeah, I've got a plan and we're on track and they're not able to be because they'll absorb new information. So I think I think you're constantly learning. So planning is you never stop planning. People think they write a plan. And that's it. Now your plan is always a live document that you just adjust with data information, athlete insights, competitor information, and it's a living, it's a living document[PB2] . So that's really the background to that statement.
Paul Barnett 02:34
Actually, I'd like to talk about the comfort zone because I I've heard you talk about it actually, on other interviews, when you've said, you know, humans are designed to be in their comfort zone, they don't like change. But to remain at the top, you always have to be evolving in cycling, what is the role of the coach in bringing the athlete out of their comfort zone?
Simon Jones 02:51
Well, first thing, I think everybody needs a coach, not just athletes, but coaches need coaches as well. So I think there's a coachings about a culture and a way of a way of doing things. And I think central to that is about getting feedback. Because we do miss things, don't we we know we have our perspectives. I think coaching simplistically is about a partnership. And it's about co creating plans together and offering perspectives. It can be many things, I mean, coaches come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. So my, what I've learned over the time is that you've got to I believe athletes have got so many the answers, even young like young athletes, because they experience in what they're doing, you've got to learn to tap into that. So I think the role of the coach is to really, really understand and get feedback from training sessions at one level. The other one is that you got to dangle the carrot in the future. And you've got to get people to kind of do things which they probably might not really believe they can do. And I think by doing things that you're not done before, it's uncomfortable for really a mental thing. Yes, the trainings hard. That's always a given. But I think quite often people struggle to try things because they're scared of failure. And they don't want it because it's uncomfortable, isn't it to fail, but that's really when we learn as human beings, we don't really learn when we do things. Well, we don't say that. But when we don't do things well, and we get some feedback or poor performance, I think that's when people really sit and think about what they need to do differently. And so is that the role the code, I think that's the the coaching environment is to create this, I guess this environment, they try to improve, you're trying to get to the next level, what we talked about, you never really get there, it's not assembler you actually achieve it's a constant. Once you accept as a constant moving target, and you don't try and get there you accept the fact that it's you're uncomfortable. vironment comes more comfortable because you accepted the fact that you don't really ever get to where you can go and you're constantly improving and adjust motivation, which is a limiting factor primarily around that. So coaching, it comes in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and the role of the coach can be different at different times. [PB3] Going back to planning, there's many different types of planning coach needs to have from long term short term, medium term plans, in other session plans, the big picture plans or strategy, and I think, you know, the role of the coach is a very complex and challenging role and more challenging, I think, in modern times, because I think they're dynamic, I think The way that younger people now don't really want to be told what to do. And that's good. And there's a lot more information available. So I think there's got on the days of coaches or telling people do this and get on with it, sometimes that happens. But I think there's much more of a conversation as much more complex now, because I think there's more information. But that makes again, that makes the role of coach even more important, because you've got to filter through the noise. And you've got to focus in on the key components.
Paul Barnett 05:22
You talked a minute ago about even coaches needing coaches, could you talk a little bit about how you use coaches and the type of things you talk to them about?
Simon Jones 05:30
I think what everyone needs a coach, not just a coaching environment, which is one where you work collaboratively you seek feedback, if you've got a coach, I think you're more open to improvement. If you go ask for how was that meeting today? I ran a meeting and How was my agenda and had I chair the meeting and getting feedback. So if you're the one asking for feedback, it's either much more open to maybe going okay, that's interesting. Whereas you turn that around, and if a coach isn't the one saying, oh, by the way, I need to work with you. There's a few things that got to say to you, that's like a complex situation. So I think everyone needs a coach, I think that like a coaching culture is one where the person trying to improve or doing whatever they're doing is, is the one driving the development. And then you're looking for people around you to get feedback in perspective. I think that applies, I guess, any environment that you're in? And do we do that perfectly? No. But it's something which we tried to do. And I think it's actually this is a good conversation, because I think we started this off it South Australia, you know, a few years ago about a coaching environment. And I think, and I need to lead it. So if I start asking for feedback as the boss, and give people opportunity to comment, and critique and support, it's always nice to get a bit of positive feedback. But you know, everyone likes to give, I think it sets the tone and sets the culture. So I think coaching has got come from the top, I think leaders need to be open and willing to take on feedback from I guess the most of the people that are on the ground floor, or in the trenches, I suppose in terms of being humble enough to take that feedback on. So I think I need to keep doing that be open to it.[PB4]
Paul Barnett 06:54
I'd like to go back if we could to your time with Team Sky. I mean, you were working with to David Bradford when he pioneered this philosophy of marginal gains. And it was a philosophy teams guy used to win the Tour de France seven times. Could you explain a little bit of this philosophy to us? Well,
Simon Jones 07:10
it's back in British cycling days, to be honest, I'll donate teams guy for a few years as a break cycling for 12. So I think Dave's see things and he's very good at taking what's fairly simple and communicating it well. And I think what he observed, and he taught that Peter keen, that's where I got a lot of my pizza was a mentor. And not I took a lot of my early coaching information from him is really again, it I think Dave just noticed the attention to detail. And he could see the interaction of multiple people, multiple strategies, and he could see how they compounded together to get a bigger gain. And I think at the heart of marginal gain, it's about it was the accumulation of these tiny gains. We were measuring things like the aerodynamics and the physical, the psychological, there was a lot of different components. And if you improve those things, a number of things around an athlete around that performance, then it's not such a big ask, whereas a lot of people try and go from step one step 10. And the goals to bake. So by setting yourself smaller, more achievable goals, and just chipping away, it's much more doable. So the marginal gains was about it's more of a psychological kind of summary of what we're doing about trying to improve about see holistically around the performance and on a proven a number of areas, which becomes more manageable than saying I actually got climb this mountain and keep looking at the top and people think they can't get there. So it's about setting new horizons, [PB5] I think an improvement level, whereas improvements quite boring. But marginal gain sounds quite sexy. And I think that's why Dave is improvement. And people in business go we've been doing this for years. It's not new. So the language I think, the messaging around that really caught people's attention. And it's pretty clever.
Paul Barnett 08:40
Talking about psychological improvement, you have a big focus on this, especially in your new role that you've brought into the Australian cycling organization, you brought in Ruth Addison from British cycling, to ensure the mental performance was optimized. Can you explain her role and the difference that you hope she makes within the team?
Simon Jones 08:56
What does that background room she's clinically trained, she worked in Australian system, she was the head of AI s psychology. And then there's worked in other sports as well, and then worked for about four years in the British system. So she's Australian, I think, just through my experiences of get back at British cycling. And and as a coach, I think just I think a lot of the conversations you have as a coach around people's thoughts and feelings and behaviors, which then drive their actions. And then I think as a coach, quite often, you can have a very poor amateur psychologist. So I think the role of the psychology within a team like ours is twofold. It's to support the athletes directly, but also support the coaches and upskill educate the coaches, because they're the ones that are having the majority of the conversations with the athletes. And the third thing is we've had a process for a few years now by what's our performance behaviors and trying to understand what are the those observable actions that we can take which are aligned to our objectives of winning?[PB6] So that's really what rousse role is as athletes, coaches and abroad behaviors. You just
Paul Barnett 09:55
talked about those behaviors. So are you able to share some of those
Simon Jones 09:58
Look, they're quite basic, and it's a bit of I think that this type of work is not something that you really sort of start and stops, we started with, like the athletes trying to have these conversations. And it could be quite simple things which are observable with it within the training environment, and ones that you know, like ones like giving 100%, about making sure you finish, if you've got a session to do that you gave 100%. And you can, you can actually observed that, whereas you're quite often organizations about values, values are good, they've got a role, but you can't necessarily see them the things that you values, we rather sort of turn them into more behavioral. So we've got another session coming up a month or so to to go back to us. But it's about supporting each other, it's about challenge is about accepting, there's a challenging environment, I think so which just reminds people that if you've not been challenged, or you've not challenged, like someone for a while, you can observe that behavior. Some are team based, some are individual based, I'm sure the list will grow. But it's more about having conversations about what are the standards, and what are the expected behaviors. And I think often people in high performance environments, it's not a happy family environment. It's not a family environment, it's really, really supported. But they often have high levels of challenge as well. So it's getting the balance between a supportive environment, but also one, which has got a lot of checking challenge as well.[PB7]
Paul Barnett 11:07
So if a character is trying to improve the culture, which is a very broad word to encompass values and behaviors, and expectations, what advice would you give them? What would you tell them that the first things they should do?
Simon Jones 11:19
I think you've got to start very simply, and you've got to prioritize, and you've got to do the ones which are manageable. And I think you have to build it over time. And I think it's a once you've set what those standards are, could be we start training on time, you might you know, for example, you know, we always do a debrief, for example, it could be things like that, I think what you can't do with these things is you set a culture, and then you don't do it, and that that undermines trust. So I think you got to start small set things which are realistic, and then build on them, as opposed to sort of starting with like said, like the, you know, the gold standard, and then having a really, really big mountain to climb.[PB8]
Paul Barnett 11:55
He talked a minute ago about different personalities within the team and needing to be aware of those personalities. I'm interested to know how you've managed to influence negative behaviors within the context of a team.
Simon Jones 12:06
Yeah, it's challenging, because everybody's got a different perspective. And I think you've got given the chance to be heard. And if anything, I think with the autism, we're working with all these has been, I've really, really loved it, I've actually tried to encourage people to be not negative, but be that be more challenging. I think there's, I've comment quite often that they're really nice people, and really respect their mates and their teammates, which is really, really important. So if anything, I've tried to ask them to turn the dial up on the on the other side. And I can't really think in terms of like negative behaviors, I think if there are negative behaviors, which come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, you know, could be on the other side of aggressive could be passive aggressive, for example, but you just got to call it out, you've got to have honest conversations with people, I don't think he can walk past like low standards, because if you do walk past low standards, then he basically accepted them. So you've got to have conversations with people about their behavior and their attitude on a regular basis. So I never been a big fan for the annual appraisal seems very corporate kind of, you know, the annual 360. And you've got lots of short conversation that they'd like an annual appraisal about what setting goals and setting objectives. But if you're not speak to people on a regular basis, don't leave it to an annual appraisal. Everything should be covered on a more of a micro level.
Paul Barnett 13:15
I've also heard you talk about doubt, and a sense of doubt being essential for any athlete, but doubt can also hold you back from Elite performance. So I want interested to know if there's any particular tips you have on dealing with self doubt, or at least harnessing it for a better performance and better energy.
Simon Jones 13:30
I think getting yourself into the optimal mental state. There's the skills to develop, I think the cornerstone to that is around yourself awareness and really understanding yourself. So I think that's where you start. And then you start to learn about, I guess the What about progression, I guess, the mechanics and the processes of why we think the way we think and how we can guess what's optimum thinking. And again, those types of conversations are best for somebody else. And then coming up with a plan, I think will be the three sort of components to that. I think the doubt is always it. Whereas when people say I believe a lot of what we do, it's that we're trying to predict the future. And no one knows what the future is. So it's our best guess a plan is really your best educated guess. And then as you go along, you need to get some data and information that you're tracking in the right direction. So it does worry me people think I really believe what we're doing. It really scares me because I think we're not going to think hard enough about what actually are we on track. And I think that's the balance. So it's just a balance between in like a phased way of getting on with the plan, then stop taking a breather, assessing, reevaluating, scrubbing down, and then go in again. So I don't think you should read daily data yourself. But frequently, you got to stop and reevaluate. I think again, all these things it's you can doubt too much. Of course, you can believe too much and you've got to try to find the sweet spot and that I think the fun thing that work in I guess in any organization that gets in any team it's we all see the world in quite a different way and and again, the complexity of our perspectives and perception. of our environment is, is quite different in the that's why winning in life in sport isn't an easy thing to do, because that's the the goalposts are constantly shifting. So that's what I think is key. I think that's that, you know, self awareness of really understanding yourself and understanding how you think is a real Cornerstone, and you need people expertise to help you learn about yourself.[PB9]
Paul Barnett 15:19
In preparing for today. I loved reading about your coaching journey and the people you've interacted along the way but also listening to you, you seem to be very self aware, like always looking to get feedback, it comes across, even in the interviews where you ask the people interviewing you questions, but I'm interested, what advice do you wish you'd had, when you were starting out on your journey that you now know,
Simon Jones 15:38
I think it's easy to recommend to do better on the feedback. To be honest, I think that's one thing. It's very easy to get into a groove. So I think it's, it's easy to say it'd be harder to do, what would I do differently going back, I think, I guess the thing would be probably to have a bit more patience, and you can achieve everything. Maybe as quickly as you would like to do. I think there's a lot of coaching, which I could probably do a lot better than I did. As a coach, when I started coaching, really without much of a mentorship but we didn't have any coach education or development or training like most other professions have now thrown in the deep end, you learn on the job. I think, in an ideal world, it would be nice to really learn about coaching, learn more generally around what the demands of a coach and role highpoints coach is, which is really, really complex, I think being really prepared for that would have been really helpful. But I wouldn't have changed necessarily the experiences, even though it was pretty tough to get thrown in the deep end. It was a great experience and a great opportunity at the time.
Paul Barnett 16:35
You've had some great mentors, but I'm interested to know Are there any other books or resources that you found particularly useful as a coach,
Simon Jones 16:41
I listen to a lot of podcast now. And I think that's the great thing with mobile phones. I guess one of the good things with mobile phones that you know, a lot of not a massive reader that that can sit still laptop enough for that length of time, I really got to work hard reading books, but I don't quite like Mark crochets finding mastery really listened to a lot of that I tend to listen to a lot of Harvard Business reviews or to the HBr podcasts around sort of business and entrepreneurial efforts, a lot of synergy between, I guess the entrepreneur and their problem solving sort of calculated risk taking requires, you know, what's required in an entrepreneur as a result of coaching as well. So I listened to coffee and sort of business orientated. Now people have failed a lot in their lives, and they're willing to share the things that they've learned and ability to pick themselves up again, and sort of try again. So I really enjoy things outside of sport, to be honest, more so than read an otter. You know, Alex Ferguson's autobiography, for example, I probably that's probably not the bit of that I would be drawn towards.
Paul Barnett 17:35
Is there any particular story or anecdote that you've found interesting? Just recently?
Simon Jones 17:41
Well, I take note of in less than 213 minutes from the moment I've actually gone through it twice. Because I think what was I think, if you were to break all that down, and that's on the BBC, at the moment, I think the vision of being the first nation to get a man on the moon in a not because it was easy, because it was hard to do. I'm really connect with that. And that's kind of all sports about it. We don't try and win gold medals, because they're easy. We try and mix the bloody our to do and why would you try and set yourself easy things to do. So I've listened to that. I think that's a really good podcast. And even like the live commentary from the 13 minutes from when they started to send to the moon, there's a section on there, which is just the live feed and the communication. And then the role clarity, the way the chain of command, the way that the sense checks with everybody to there's like he's getting feedback from all the different systems. And he's making decisions on the fly in summit, which no one's ever done before. So that's like 50 years ago, I was taught the amazing the moon landings, that kind of stuff, I think is really inspirational and always pick out, like sort of listen for learnings. And I think they did that so long ago, it's almost like we're a bit scared now to try to do things like that. That's pretty inspiring. And that's well recommended. If you're not listened to that.
Paul Barnett 18:50
I think there's a general feeling that a lot of coaches aren't as innovative as they were previously. And what do you think stops more coaches from being innovative?
Simon Jones 18:59
Science in a word, I think when go back 30 years coaching was information was less freely available, we went to books and maybe dug around and or 30 years ago was there was still called information. Of course, I'm not talking about the Dark Ages here. But I don't think information was quite as freely available. So I say hunches, and you have to kind of learn probably in a quite a small environment. And now as far as got more sophisticated, the teams are bigger that there's more data. And I think it's got really complicated in what's a really complex world. And I think what you can't do in complexity is you can't solve it by equation. complexity is one way he literally after sense, measure, assess rate is a constant plan, do review because we work with people and I think we're trying to apply an overly scientific, complicated, solvable problem in a complex environment. He can't do that. And I think that's what coaches are good at when that we don't have all the answers and someone's got to make a decision and I think we're now in the People can't make decisions unless they've got all the answers. And we don't have all the answers. So if you want to rely on evidence all the time, what good luck because we're already going over here without the evidence, because we've got to take our best guess because we live in, in this complex world. So working in complexity, that's where the that's one of the best coaches do. They synthesize information, they summarize, they get trends and directions and then discover and they evaluate, and they go again, and then they don't be ahead of people, because they're good at pattern recognition and pulling information together like that[PB10] . And I think sciences, I think slow that up, because you want to measure everything and get an answer before we move to the next level. And I don't think that's not really the best way to do it in like an art context, if you're making a machine that is the right way to do it. And the machines are complicated, not complex, and therefore you can systemize the process and they'll give other all evidence base and the other benchmarks and but you can't do that with people.
Paul Barnett 20:50
So I'm and I've seen some footage of you, with the team on race day, and you're reasonably calm. And I'm wondering if there are any routines and I said you work on your patients, but you do go, the footage at least shows you looking calm, and wondering if there's any,
Simon Jones 21:04
I tend to stay out of the way when it comes to we don't race that much as well. So
Paul Barnett 21:08
yeah, there wasn't a lot of footage. But there was I'm interested to know if there are any routines or systems that you use to sort of keep calm before during
Simon Jones 21:18
the game. When I used to coach as a long time ago. Now, I think I just get really, really stressed and I think tired. I two people. One would be Chris Boardman, who was a real mentor when I was coaching in the national team. And Dave, I suppose. And also I've just mentioned, you know, Steve Peter, this another psychiatrist, who was the team psychiatrist, and I think all you can do on race day is the negative impact as a coach like your job's done. You know, team talks are overrated, no one really listens to you. If you've got to do a big team talk, or go through your race strategy, you haven't done your prep, right? So I've learned that the best thing you can do is smile and be calm, because then you're a bit more relaxed. When things do happen, leftfield things you probably got a bit more competent space to make the right decision. So I think I've only learned through making mistakes in terms of being super anxious and worrying[PB11] . And basically, and people give me feedback and say, like Jonesy looked like someone's gonna die. 15 minutes for final of a team pursuit or something. So it's only through the feedback and people have in your best interest at heart. And I think I've got one of those faces that look a bit grumpy as well. So I have to actually work at smiling just the way I was born. So I can't really blame my parents for that one. But yeah, so I think I have to think about it. But ultimately racing on race day gray, that's the day you get to test yourself. Yeah, the best influence you can have on people around you as being calm and smiling. I don't think I do it all the time. But I certainly do try to do it. So on that odd occasion, you caught me I was obviously doing a reasonable job.
Paul Barnett 22:39
This one last question if we can Simon and it's about legacy. And I'd like to know what's the legacy you wanted to leave as a coach and in particular, in your present role as head of cycling Australia?
Simon Jones 22:50
I've heard this quite a bit. I think I think legacies for ego. I'm just doing my job having these highfalutin I'm not saving lives. I'm not president or politician or with my probably not my favorite people, not someone who's leading the nation. I'm not a teacher in a school or not a nurse in a hospital. We're just working in sport, super privileged to be working in sports that we love, having a great time and hopefully treating people with a lot of respect, challenging support having some fun along the way. I'm not too sure legacy is that my street. To be honest. I think it's very ego orientated and what I've left behind, it doesn't really sit well with me to be really honest. I'm just doing my job and trying to enjoy the I guess most of the time.
Paul Barnett 23:32
Simon Jones, thank you very much for your time today. It's been a wonderful conversation. We appreciate it. Have a good day, guys.