31. MIND GYM: The work-out that will enhance your brain for ultimate productivity | Octavius Black CBE

Summary

Podcast Summary: James Reed: All About Business

Episode 31: MIND GYM: The Work-Out That Will Enhance Your Brain for Ultimate Productivity | Octavius Black CBE
Release Date: June 9, 2025
Host: James Reed CBE, Chairman and CEO of Reed Group
Guest: Octavius Black CBE, Founder and CEO of Mind Gym

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Introduction to the Episode

In Episode 31 of "James Reed: All About Business," host James Reed engages in a thought-provoking conversation with Octavius Black, the innovative mind behind Mind Gym. The discussion centers around enhancing brain productivity, the psychology of high performance, effective leadership, and transforming HR practices. Octavius shares insights from his 25-year journey, highlighting how Mind Gym leverages behavioral science to empower businesses and their leaders.

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Origin and Philosophy of Mind Gym

Octavius Black delves into the inception of Mind Gym, revealing a creative brainstorming session that led to the concept's birth.

"We thought the next decade could be the decade of the mind. And so we thought, in that case, why not create a mind gym?"
[01:18] Octavius Black

Initially attempting to merge physical workouts like kickboxing with conflict resolution in traditional gyms proved unsuccessful. This setback redirected Octavius to focus on businesses, advocating for Mind Gym as a tool to boost employee engagement and performance.

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Effective Learning Approaches in Business

Mind Gym's unique 90-minute session format was a game-changer, challenging the conventional belief that effective learning requires extensive time commitment.

"The BBC was so skeptical about it, they ran a study to compare our 90-minute session with a day-long session and found that our 90-minute session actually outperformed the day on four out of five measures plus saving everyone four-fifths of their day."
[03:39] Octavius Black

This approach emphasizes interactive, bite-sized learning where participants engage in practical exercises rather than passive listening, enhancing retention and applicability.

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Precision Coaching vs. Traditional Coaching

Octavius critiques traditional coaching methods, which often prioritize likability over performance improvement.

"Most coaches want to be liked rather than to change behavior."
[08:13] Octavius Black

Introducing Precision Coaching, Mind Gym focuses on structured sessions that define clear goals and actionable steps, ensuring measurable performance enhancements. This method contrasts sharply with conventional approaches that may lead to cognitive dissonance and decreased leader effectiveness.

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Leadership Development Challenges

The conversation highlights the paradox of increased investment in leadership development coupled with declining trust in senior leaders.

"Spending on leadership development doubled over a period of 12 years and trust in senior leaders fell by a third."
[20:40] Octavius Black

Octavius attributes this decline to a lack of understanding of what it truly means to be an effective leader, emphasizing the need for training that addresses real-life business tensions and equips leaders with the skills to navigate them.

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The State of HR: Spending vs. Outcomes

Octavius presents a critical view of current HR practices, pointing out the disparity between high spending and mediocre results.

"Since 2007, spending on HR has gone up by 35%. The UK has the second highest HR spend as a percentage of payroll in the western world... but productivity has barely shifted."
[18:22] Octavius Black

He cites issues like high absenteeism and the underutilization of corporate wellbeing programs, advocating for data-driven, impactful HR initiatives that align closely with business objectives.

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The "Thrive" Model for Workplace Flourishing

Introducing the Thrive Model, Octavius outlines five key conditions essential for employee flourishing: Certainty, Competence, Autonomy, Belonging, and Purpose.

"We identified the five conditions that create your chances of flourishing at work: certainty, competence, autonomy, belonging, and purpose."
[27:02] Octavius Black

This model emphasizes creating a work environment where employees understand their roles, feel competent, have autonomy, belong to a community, and see the purpose behind their work. These elements are crucial for reducing stress and enhancing productivity.

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Psychological Safety: Proper and Misappropriated

Octavius critiques the current interpretation of psychological safety, distinguishing between its true essence and common misconceptions.

"Psychological safety is supposed to be about us having vehement arguments about the issues in order to get to a better outcome. It’s not about no one saying anything that offends or upsets you."
[31:44] Octavius Black

He emphasizes that genuine psychological safety fosters open debate and challenge of ideas without personal affront, contrasting with the misapplied notion of avoiding conflict to protect feelings.

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Implementing Effective Feedback Mechanisms

Addressing the pitfalls of ineffective feedback practices, Octavius shares strategies for constructive feedback.

"By breaking down what you notice and described how you've interpreted it, you end up having a much more constructive conversation."
[35:15] Octavius Black

He advocates for factual, behavior-based feedback rather than subjective judgments, which can lead to misunderstandings and strained relationships.

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The Role of Psychology in Business Success

Octavius underscores the paramount importance of psychology in addressing workplace challenges such as loneliness, depression, and polarization.

"Psychology can solve most of the world's problems. Loneliness, depression, bullying, polarization."
[36:21] Octavius Black

By integrating psychological insights into business practices, companies can enhance employee well-being and drive better business outcomes.

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Future Directions: AI and Talent Ecosystems

Looking ahead, Octavius discusses Mind Gym's integration of AI, particularly through their new AI coach, Leo.

"When psychology meets technology, that's when you get the real magic."
[47:57] Octavius Black

Leo offers personalized coaching by simulating real-life interactions, providing immediate feedback without human biases. This innovation represents Mind Gym's commitment to evolving with technological advancements while maintaining a focus on human-centric solutions.

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Closing Thoughts and Future Vision

In concluding the episode, Octavius shares his optimistic vision for the future of HR and talent development, advocating for integrated, outsourced solutions that leverage Mind Gym's expertise.

"The future of HR I think is going to move in this direction... the best is yet to come."
[48:31] Octavius Black

James Reed echoes the importance of psychological acumen in business leadership, underscoring the episode's core message of blending psychology with technology to drive business success.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• Octavius Black [01:18]: "We thought the next decade could be the decade of the mind. And so we thought, in that case, why not create a mind gym?"

• Octavius Black [03:39]: "Our 90-minute session actually outperformed the day on four out of five measures plus saving everyone four-fifths of their day."

• Octavius Black [08:13]: "Most coaches want to be liked rather than to change behavior."

• Octavius Black [20:40]: "Spending on leadership development doubled over a period of 12 years and trust in senior leaders fell by a third."

• Octavius Black [27:02]: "We identified the five conditions that create your chances of flourishing at work: certainty, competence, autonomy, belonging, and purpose."

• Octavius Black [31:44]: "Psychological safety is supposed to be about us having vehement arguments about the issues in order to get to a better outcome."

• Octavius Black [35:15]: "By breaking down what you notice and described how you've interpreted it, you end up having a much more constructive conversation."

• Octavius Black [36:21]: "Psychology can solve most of the world's problems. Loneliness, depression, bullying, polarization."

• Octavius Black [47:57]: "When psychology meets technology, that's when you get the real magic."

• Octavius Black [48:31]: "The future of HR I think is going to move in this direction... the best is yet to come."

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Conclusion

This episode of "James Reed: All About Business" offers deep insights into the intersection of psychology and business leadership. Octavius Black's expertise sheds light on effective employee engagement, transformative coaching practices, and innovative HR solutions. Listeners gain valuable strategies to enhance productivity, foster a thriving workplace, and navigate the complexities of modern business environments.

For more information about James Reed, Octavius Black, or Mind Gym, refer to the show notes accompanying the episode.

Transcript

[James Reid]

Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reid, the podcast that covers everything about business management and leadership. 70% of workers say that performance management processes simply don't work. And with 1/3 of workers leaving their jobs every year, how can leaders and managers get the most from their teams while keeping them engaged? Joining me today on All About Business is Octavius Black, the founder and CEO of Mind Gym. He merges behavioral science with leadership development. In today's episode, we discuss the psychology behind high performance, why leadership programs are a waste of time, and the six step process for transforming your teams. What a wonderful name for a business. I'm going to ask my first question to you, Octavius is why mine?

[Octavius Black]

Jim?

[James Reid]

But just to give a little explanation, it's very much focused on learning and development in business. And you founded the company, as I understand, in 2001 and floated it on the AIM public market in 2018. So you've had 25 years now in in business. Quite a journey. But let's begin. Why mindjip? Why did you call it that? What does it do?

[Octavius Black]

Well, it started off, dare I say, in a slightly drunken dinner. We were looking at each decade and what it had peaked at. So we thought the 80s with Jane Fonda and jogging and exercising other than for sport was kind of the decade of the body. Then we looked at the 90s. It had yoga and feng shui and alternative medicine became massive. But maybe that's the decade of the soul or the spirit. And then we thought, what would be next? Well, mind, body, soul is an obvious trinity. So we thought next decade could be the decade of the mind. And so we thought, in that case, why not create a mind gym?

[James Reid]

That's really interesting. So that's pretty big picture stuff.

[Octavius Black]

And we came up with this thought and then went out to physical gyms. And the idea was in order to get people's attention, in a gym you couldn't last for anything longer than 90 minutes. Everyone thought of those days that to learn anything useful, you need to spend a day doing it, which is clearly absurd now and was ridiculous then. But we came up with the idea of doing a 90 minute workout because.

[James Reid]

In a physical gym, in a physical gym, that's the maximum kickboxing.

[Octavius Black]

And then you might do conflict handling.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

So we take.

[James Reid]

Oh, so you did both in the gym.

[Octavius Black]

That was the idea.

[James Reid]

Oh, I see.

[Octavius Black]

So we went out to all these gyms to push this idea and it was a complete disaster. They could not have been less interested. The only way the modeling worked out was if you had zero marketing costs, zero winning business costs. You filled every session, then you broke even. So this was clearly not a business model.

[James Reid]

So you began by thinking that people who like kickboxing would also like conflict resolution.

[Octavius Black]

They could do the mind and the body in the same place, preferred the fighting.

[James Reid]

I don't know.

[Octavius Black]

My background had been as a management consultant and I've seen lots of recommendations not succeed because businesses didn't think of the human dimension. So you'd have this fantastically clever strategy, brilliant analysis, but then it would flop because people weren't on board, they weren't engaged. You weren't using the psychology of behavior in order to get people to sign up and commit to things. So I thought, why don't we spin this and turn it on business and go to businesses and say, why don't we run a mind gym for you so your people are more engaged, more committed and faster at change and perform better.

[James Reid]

And did you still stay with the 90 minute format?

[Octavius Black]

We did indeed. Very importantly, the BBC was so skeptical about it, they ran a study to compare our 90 minute session with a day long session and found that our 90 minute session actually outperformed the day on 4 out of 5 measures plus saving everyone 4/5 of their day. So the case for it became pretty compelling after that.

[James Reid]

That's very satisf. So why was it that the 90 minute approach outperformed?

[Octavius Black]

We rethought what learning is about. So traditionally, people thought you had to have a set of learning objectives, you had to move at the pace of the slowest learner, you had to make sure everyone covered everything. We were like, no, this is not how people learn. And what you want to do is to stretch people. You had to think a little higher, go a little beyond. And therefore you packed the session with a day's worth of content and people would pick the two or three things they found most useful. And then we never have anyone sitting and listening for more than six minutes at a time. So you're constantly doing things like, it's a gym after all. So you're doing exercise. I'll give you an example. We have a very popular session called Influence and Persuade. Sitting in horseshoe chairs and on alternate seats is a pen. And you come and you sit down. And before even the introduction, you said, those of you either got a pen or you're sitting next to someone without a pen. I'd like you to pair up and the one without the pen has to persuade the person with the pen to give them the pen.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

And after Two or three minutes. Some of them have and some of them haven't, you know, why did you persuade? What worked, what didn't? The way to persuade people is to appeal to their interests, not your own. For example, right? So you're moving.

[James Reid]

So what's the best example of that you came across?

[Octavius Black]

Have you got one years ago, pitching to a bank called ubs, and they were pitching to the HR people and the directors of this and that now. And suddenly the big cheese comes in and he's like the absolute authority. Everyone goes silent, quietly turns up and says, okay, tell me what you've got. So I started telling him about influence and persuade, and in kind of status move, he stands up, turns his back on me and starts pouring coffee. So, like, in that moment, I could have just carried on talking, but if I did, I've kind of lost him. So I go silent. He said, no, no, carry on. I said, no, don't worry, we'll wait until you've done the coffee. So finally he turns the other people in the room. He hasn't spoken.

[James Reid]

You say, mine's a cappuccino.

[Octavius Black]

At this point, all comes in a moment.

[James Reid]

So then what happened? Yeah.

[Octavius Black]

So then he says, do you want a coffee? So I say, yeah. They say, no. I say yes. And he gives me the coffee. Obviously, I don't drink it because that's all part of the status, all right?

[James Reid]

You know this stuff. Yeah, you don't drink.

[Octavius Black]

He's done the effort he's had to serve me, but then I haven't seen it worth my while to consume it. Then he looks at me and says, what have you got that's so good? I said, we have this great session on influence and persuade. He has this fantastic question he asked me, he says, are you using it on me now? Which is really clever, because if I say yes, he can go, it's not working. And if I go no, he says, well, if it's so good, why aren't you using it? So what I said is, the answer is yes, and we'll find out if it works at the end of this meeting. And he kind of smiled. Okay, we're on the same level here. And sure enough, they ended up becoming a client and we went from there.

[James Reid]

I like that you've got to think on your feet, though.

[Octavius Black]

But that's what mind gym's all about. You're talking in pairs, you're doing an exercise, you're asking, answering a quiz. You're. There's something going on the whole time. So you're not sitting with a boring lecture or boring video of someone. You're actually taking part in exercises and trying things out. See how would I apply this? Or what is the blocker that's stopping me from doing something?

[James Reid]

And how many people would be in a typical group?

[Octavius Black]

Typical group, about 20 people if it's in person and about 16 people if it's virtual.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

We also run large sessions like TED talks on speed and they can have fill the whole stadiums. And we also do one to one coaching. Coaching is really interesting because coaching can transform or it can make you worse and you don't know which until it's too late.

[James Reid]

Tell me about that. So why is that? How does that work?

[Octavius Black]

Well, you confuse likability with performance improvement. So a very interesting study in the States, the largest study of upward feedback is students rating their faculty. And you can also measure students performance on their exams at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year. So the question is what is the relationship between how students rate their faculty and how they do in their exams? The answer is after a point they are inversely correlated. So the more you like your professor, the less well you do or improving your exams because the professor is very likable. James, fantastic essay. A few facts aren't quite what I thought and I never heard that view before, but I love your originality. Well James, you can't get your facts right. You come up with a hypothesis that no one's coming 100 years, get back to work. And the first one you really like the advice, that's really helpful. The second one you think actually I don't like this person at all. But you work doubly hard. So what we've found with coaching is often the coach wants to be very likable because that's how they get more business. Right? James, you're doing a fantastic job. Does your boss really know how good you are?

[James Reid]

I never get feedback like this. I've got shareholders. My professor was pretty blunt as well.

[Octavius Black]

That's why you've done so well.

[James Reid]

I think I do respond more to sort of getting a bit of a shove than being told I'm marvelous. I think because that makes me think I've got to show you will do that.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, but most coaches want to be liked rather like the professors rather than to change behavior. And so we developed a new methodology called precision coaching which is all about driving performance and it's shown time and again to get better performance buttons.

[James Reid]

Does a precision coach push Octavius?

[Octavius Black]

First of all, they imagine what you get. You imagine what good enough would look like in cognitive behavioral therapy or in actually normal psychotherapy. One of the most successful versions of it is success based therapy. So you imagine what good enough would look like and we start with that and then we work out what are the things that are getting in the way and therefore what are the first steps you can take. And we do a 4 by 45 minute journey. So you start off defining the problem, what good enough looks like. You work out what's getting in the way, you have a go at trying to fix that, you work out the next thing that's getting away, you have a go at fixing that, and then you finally finish off. And then you work out you've got good enough at something before you move on to the next thing and repeat the cycle. So the worst thing you can do in the coaching session is say what's on your mind today or where should we start? What you need to do is to have a structure which says, this is the goal we're going after, this is what good enough looks like. Now let's work out the steps that get you there.

[James Reid]

So coaching in that sense sounds quite distinct from therapy, say, or analysis or it's performance coaching. Is that similar to sports or is it different in business?

[Octavius Black]

There are similarities and there are big differences. I mean, often people talk about sporting analogies.

[James Reid]

Well, I know, and I've always been a bit sort of unsure about that.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, you're right to be unsure.

[James Reid]

Oh, good. I wasn't very good at sports, but I want to be good at what I'm doing now. Well, I mean, so why am I right to be unsure?

[Octavius Black]

Because sport mainly takes place in a very defined period of time, between 10 seconds and 90 minutes. You practice a lot beforehand, you then get on the pitch or the field and you do whatever it is that's required. And you're doing the same thing, broadly this every time, or very similar with a very defined group of people.

[James Reid]

I mean, the world's not like that.

[Octavius Black]

Business is constant. Yeah, you don't turn off, you don't practice. You might rehearse a pitch or something like that, but in the main you're on the whole time. If you've got a large business, you don't even meet most of the people. Your individual contribution, obviously you're in a slightly different situation. But for most people, most businesses, the individual contribution isn't moving the dial in a massive way, but the combined effort is what's moving it. So you have to think of it almost like an Infinite game. And when it never stops, you never get to that. Wonderful. Sonny Uptons, the CEO, does this big speech saying, you've done a brilliant job. It's very tough. We're going to do these changes. Then it will all be wonderful. But then it will be wonderful as a complete myth. It's not how business works. You're constantly tomorrow, yeah, the sport does have an end. You get a gold medal, you get the Championship League cup or whatever it happens to be.

[James Reid]

We're delighted that you're listening to this episode. Hit the follow button so that we can continue to bring you the best business insight to help your business and or career. That's quite insightful, I think, because the sort of always on aspect of work and life is very apparent to me. And yet we have this sort of, this conversation. I mean, it's been brilliantly portrayed in the TV series Severance about sort of somehow compartmentalizing work from things. What do you think about?

[Octavius Black]

I think severance is brilliant. It's an absolute genius program. And I think actually we blurred the lines between homework too much and as a result, we're making too many demands on each other. Whether you're an employer or employee.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

The employee says, for example, I'm not feeling very well, I'm feeling exhausted. It's work's fault. And work is saying, in order to be part of this, you have to work. Bring the whole self to work, and every part of your life is part of your working.

[James Reid]

Be totally authentic and present and all of that.

[Octavius Black]

All incredibly unhelpful.

[James Reid]

Is it? So why is all that incredibly unhelpful?

[Octavius Black]

Because you're a different person at home from your work. There are different skills and attributes you bring and you want to keep those things, two things separate. So we talk a bit about depoliticizing the workplace and diversity and inclusion has become a hot topic at the moment, partly because of Trump's executive orders, partly because of the Supreme Court ruling. And actually what you want to do is you want to depoliticize work. You and I might be getting on tremendously well creating new products and then we discover we have different view on trade or immigration or Israel, Palestine. And the debate of the working relationship between us gets massively destroyed by that effect because we feel very strongly about these issues and that's really unhelpful for the business, business and it's really unhelpful for our work. So what we're very much encouraging companies to do is to remove the politics, not need to take a strong stance on Issues that don't relate to the company itself and create an environment where people from all sorts of backgrounds, all different beliefs, all different pathologies can work in harmony for the benefit of the company.

[James Reid]

I think that's something sort of very important there about having a common purpose, a shared objective. And I also think that, I mean, in our business, I've always talked about inclusion and belonging. I want everyone to feel that they are welcome in the business, that they can give their best in the business, that they belong here and whatever background you're from. So I think it's so important to bring people together behind a common objective or common purpose. But are we getting better or worse at that as a business community?

[Octavius Black]

It ranges. So some pioneering companies are getting brilliant at this because they recognize that the things that polarize people are best not included. And therefore they avoid some of the diversity and equity and inclusion language and stances and some of the focus on different kinds of representation targets. And they are focusing much more on what we can do to create your word belonging. So how can we say, whoever you are, if you're talented and you're committed and you want to achieve what we're trying to do as a business, you are welcome here. So working with one company that's short on engineers, and engineers tend to overrepresent in neurodiversity. So they're like, well, we've got to go, these engineers. And actually we're not a great environment for neurodiverse people to work. So we need to change that so we can harm all these great engineers. Makes perfect sense. Other companies are still caught up in. The one company we've got has got 180 different employee resource groups who represent different criteria, whether it's vegans or menopause or.180. 180. And they don't think this is the limit to much of their chagrin. So what we're doing is we're helping them focus and coordinate those in order to get the benefit of a few that really bring people together and that help to address business problems. So, for example, working with a pharmaceutical company that has a low level of Asian women taking part in clinical trials, now that's a big issue because then they're creating drugs that don't necessarily work for Asian women. So they're going to the employee resource group and saying, can you help us solve this business problem? What can we do about it? Another who's failed to get in market penetration in certain markets, whereas they just had no one from those markets on the project. Team. So where you use diversity and inclusion to further a business objective, representing who comes to clinical trials or understand your audience, it's a really important thing to do. And there are lots of ways you can build belonging partly by helping people value variety in its infinite sense. We've, for example, got companies to talk less about projected characteristics and more about headwinds and tailwinds. So headwinds are the things you're born with that made life pretty tough until the ones you're born with that made life a lot easier. We tend to overestimate our own headwinds. I had it really tough. And underestimate everybody else's. James, you had it really easy. A lovely family, very upbringing.

[James Reid]

Thank you.

[Octavius Black]

And actually, if we.

[James Reid]

Well, you don't know, I mean, anything about someone who's just sitting opposite you.

[Octavius Black]

And I mean, they might have had.

[James Reid]

All sorts of things going on in their life even 100 day before.

[Octavius Black]

So the headwinds and tailwinds becomes really important.

[James Reid]

So you, when you, when you, when you sort of conceptualize that, are you trying to get people to think about that more in other people?

[Octavius Black]

Yes.

[James Reid]

So you're trying to make people aware.

[Octavius Black]

Of headwinds and concept empathy. Yeah, and empathy about the individual rather than about the category. So rather than women or black people or whatever category it is, is actually thinking about the individual and saying, how can I understand them better? Or. And what can I do to help them be belonging included, part of them.

[James Reid]

Which is all you can do in the end because you're going to be sitting opposite Octavius or Frankie or Will, and they're the people in your world. So, best place to start.

[Octavius Black]

We work with a very interesting psychologist called Lassana Harris out of ucl, and he ran an experiment in a school in Chicago where the kids, the black kids, were getting more detentions than the white kids. So the traditional thing to do is to show the data to the teachers and say, stop being racist. He's like, I'm not sure that's going to work because there are a lot of psychological effects like backfire and backlash and stuff. Basically means that's very unlikely to succeed, even though that's how most DNI programs tend to work. And instead he got them to say, well, why did you become a teacher? And they all basically say the same thing. I wanted to help kids grow. The best chance tonight. What would make you, James, the best teacher you could be? Well, again, they all say pretty much the same thing. I teach each child individually, get to know them where they are, and that was pretty much all he did. Racial discrimination for detentions dropped by 45% within six weeks and continued low for the next rest of that school year and the next school year. So you've sidelined the effect of bias, even if you haven't necessarily changed how your teachers think. That's where psychology becomes really clever.

[James Reid]

So what you're saying is what the teacher took more time to know each individual as a person rather than. Yes, just categorize.

[Octavius Black]

In effect, they reinforced their identity. Why did I become a teacher? And professional excellence. And then they got to empathize each individual. So recognizing in the, in the empathy, what was it like that kid doing homework? Well, do there's a quiet place or do they have to compete with noise? Was like getting up in the morning to someone out their clothes and giving breakfast. Or they have to get themselves up and then suddenly little Tommy turning up five minutes late instead of saying how dare you be five minutes late? It's like you made it in only five minutes late.

[James Reid]

Yeah, exactly, yeah.

[Octavius Black]

And you had more empathy.

[James Reid]

So excellence in what you're doing and empathy, yes, bedfellows in a sense.

[Octavius Black]

Exactly.

[James Reid]

So I mean HR is the world I operate in in many ways as a recruiter and obviously many of our clients and customers work in hr and I'm a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personal Development. So I'm very interested in the future of hr. But you've got some sort of interesting insight that I think you should share with our.

[Octavius Black]

I'm very happy to do so. Far away, far away that I think there's lots of excellence in pockets in hr. So there's some really great HR professionals who are very driven by numbers, data and evidence and outcomes and that's exceptional. But overall, en masse, the report card is not that impressive. So since 2007, spending on HR has gone up by 35%. UK has the second highest HR spend as a percentage of payroll in the western world, second to the Netherlands and probably in the whole world. The data doesn't show rest of the world outside the west. And then on top of that we're seeing productivity has barely shifted in the uk it's a few percentage points higher than it was in 2007. We're seeing absenteeism at an all time high, sickness at an all time high. We're increasingly seeing people doing two or three jobs simultaneously, full time jobs, and no one even noticing. So I think there's all sorts of. It's not good, is it?

[James Reid]

No, no, that's a bad, bad call.

[Octavius Black]

Sheet, the outcomes are not great. So I think the intent is really good. But quite a lot of tendency to follow fads rather than facts. And therefore we find that 40% of initiatives that started never actually see the light of day. There's $200 million on digital licenses for learning libraries that aren't used. So you have an enormous amount of waste because it seems like an interesting or fun thing to do or because everyone else is doing it, or because it's the fad of the moment.

[James Reid]

So the $200 million, what people have been given this to spend and they're not using it.

[Octavius Black]

They've signed up for digital libraries, bought lots of licenses that aren' Right.

[James Reid]

And that's hr. Who would be signing this on behalf of their employees?

[Octavius Black]

It's the loved Eddie. So I'll get this digital library and we've ticked the learning box and everyone's got access to it and they can learn reading body language or how to handle your boss or jam making or whatever, but actually usage is really low and linked to business outcomes is very low.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

Leadership development spend on leadership development doubled over a period of 12 years and trust in senior leaders fell by a third. At the same time you have to look at that and ask yourself questions, what went, what happened and what could we do differently?

[James Reid]

So what happened and what can we do differently? I mean genuinely, what did happen? That sounds terrible. Well, so you invest. So we as businesses investing in leadership development, the leaders are getting worse.

[Octavius Black]

Yes.

[James Reid]

So what happens?

[Octavius Black]

So what we're not really understanding is what is it that it's like to be a leader and therefore what can we make learnable about how to be more effective at it. I'll you give explain that in a bit more detail. So the first thing in life is full of tensions. There are things that are impossible to do, both of them at the same time. You would probably want absolute mercy, but you want absolute justice for everybody else and we all feel the same. But you can't have absolute mercy for every individual and absolute justice for everybody because they're logically inconsistent. So life in business is full of the same kinds of tensions. So you say to your team, I want immediate results, want this quarter to really deliver on the goals. But I also want you to think long term and plan for the future and invest in new ideas. I want you to coach people to make them great. But I want you use your judgment to get on and get the results that you need now.

[James Reid]

And there are all these, you know quite well.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, I've been speaking to some of your people. No other leader does this in the world.

[James Reid]

You're the only one, is that right? Yeah. So you want everything, then what happens?

[Octavius Black]

So what happens is you then get what's called cognitive dissonance. So you're trying to hold two conflicting thoughts at the same time and this basically hurts. It hurts your head and you can't do it. So then you have something called displacement. You find reasons to explain it away. The well being bit doesn't really matter now. I leave it for later. It's the bosses that are impossible. I would try and delegate more but my boss won't let me. And you find endless excuses and reasons to justify why you can't resolve this impossible tension which then increases your sense of autonomy or agency. And the last thing you want is your leaders to feel less in control. So then that repeats the cycle and it goes on downwards.

[James Reid]

So it's a sort of downward spiral of loss of control.

[Octavius Black]

Yes, because you've got too much is being given on.

[James Reid]

You're saying he's demanded of people at.

[Octavius Black]

The same time and they're dinged for not doing one thing or the other.

[James Reid]

So. So the leaders above them need to get better at saying this is your priority or this is our priority. Is that what you're saying?

[Octavius Black]

No, it's not. What I'm actually saying is the key, the meta skill is this ability to handle tensions.

[James Reid]

Oh, so you've got to train someone to be able to deal with all that at once. Because it's not going to go away.

[Octavius Black]

It can't. It's logically impossible for it to go away.

[James Reid]

So it's not as if, why can't it go away?

[Octavius Black]

Because you are going to think you need short term and long term and you are going to need to look after people and make decisions half and quickly. This is the nature of running a business or running a division or running a team.

[James Reid]

Yeah, I accept that this is the essence, of course. So it can't go away. So you've got to get better at dealing with it.

[Octavius Black]

And what the research has, really compelling is the meta skill for successful managers and leaders is this ability to navigate tensions. So seeing tensions as a source of strength. So a bicycle without tension is a lump of metal on the ground. It's useless. But tensions is what drives things forward. So actually, how do you mobilize and use these tensions? And what we've done is we've created our team of psychologists, we've reinvigorated an old term, psychological term called attunement. And we've made it learnable. So we've developed it into four practices. So the first is noticing. Don't just do something, stand there. People are forever rushing to take action or rushing to reach conclusions, but actually gathering information. What are people saying? What is not being said? What are the patterns that I'm starting to see going on and then move to sense making. What does that tell me? What does. How do I understand how the system is working and then make a choice about what to do. So for example, one of the skills that's really important for leaders is managing intensity. So you have too much intensity, people burn out. But too little, nothing much happens. And the natural force is to reduce intensity. Oh, you've got so much to do here, boss. You understand how difficult it is on short resources.

[James Reid]

No, no, no, you don't want to do that.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah. And then the final one is acting on it. And then it's like an infinity cycle. Then you go back to noticing and sense making and greatly does this sense.

[James Reid]

Just noticing, sense making, sense making, choosing, choosing and acting and acting and choosings around the intensity.

[Octavius Black]

Yes. Or for example, there'll be other choices.

[James Reid]

You make one of what other things?

[Octavius Black]

You might decide whether to address the issue or not. Whether to call it out, how to call it out. You know, do you report to say, I noticed that you've been late for the last three meetings or do you say, I think you're lazy? You know, at every moment there are choices that you can say or do or do nothing, or bring people together or.

[James Reid]

And all of that together is called a tuning.

[Octavius Black]

The achievement of the full cycle.

[James Reid]

You're a tune.

[Octavius Black]

And you're constantly dancing around that cycle and greatly. Just do it instinctively. I'm sure you do, but I don't know.

[James Reid]

I'm gonna try. Sounds good. That sounds good.

[Octavius Black]

What's never happened before is to make it learnable.

[James Reid]

So this is a new innovation, if.

[Octavius Black]

You will last two or three years.

[James Reid]

Yes.

[Octavius Black]

We just had a really interesting study with a company called Galderma, which is a skincare company, comes out of Nestle and, and they were preparing for IPOs. They're really driven on business results. And we said, look, if you want business results, you should run a leadership program based on this concept. And they found that the general managers who took part saw growth in top line revenue and growth in ebitda. And the ones below also took part and saw growth in the both and then ended up running case studies that increased market share and sales by over 100% in certain product Categories. So they got this fantastic financial result off the back of attunement. And one other concept that we taught.

[James Reid]

Well, that, that, that's a very good case study for you. But I now want to know what the other concept you taught was. I certainly will, because I want to know more about how to get these wonderful results, obviously. Well, as a business owner, this is.

[Octavius Black]

About how do you get people who feel unlocked?

[James Reid]

How do you get the best from people?

[Octavius Black]

Exactly, exactly. It's totally how do you get the best from people? And there's a interesting study come out today that recruiters are finding it really tough at the market at the moment. The reason is because more companies are saying, my solution isn't to hire lots of people from outside, but it's actually to grow people from within. Now, the truth is both of them, you need to balance those two together. And you guys do a fantastic job on that.

[James Reid]

I agree. It's both of them.

[Octavius Black]

But what we've got is companies also thinking about how do you make the most of the people you've got? And people feel overwhelmed, they feel exhausted. There's a big issue with absenteeism going on in the markets at the moment. More people are off sick. This is a disaster for business, it's a disaster for the economy, and it's totally avoidable. And so the other concept we focused on was what are the conditions you need at work in order to thrive? So companies spend $50 billion a year on corporate wellbeing programs. And I'm not even going to ask you to guess how much impact they have, because you probably know.

[James Reid]

50 billion globally. Wow.

[Octavius Black]

No impact at all. Four different longitudinal studies all show no impact.

[James Reid]

Zero impact.

[Octavius Black]

Zero impact. One that has 80 measures. Two measures moved. One was intent to change weight, but body mass index hadn't moved at all.

[James Reid]

That's my problem.

[Octavius Black]

You've already been on these corporate wellbeing programs. And so we've built a diagnostic that shows people how what's happening at work that reduces your chance of flourishing and what can you do to fix it? It also has a report for the manager and the leader as well. But the key is to take responsibility for this.

[James Reid]

You say the key is to take responsibility.

[Octavius Black]

Yes.

[James Reid]

For who?

[Octavius Black]

To take responsibility for the individual, often in conjunction with the manager. But for the individual to say, work's a nightmare if you make stress.

[James Reid]

Okay, so they say that. So what happens?

[Octavius Black]

So the first thing is recognizing that stress is a good thing, not a bad thing.

[James Reid]

Right?

[Octavius Black]

Or can be. And simply seeing stress as life enhancing reduces absenteeism by 15 in a study.

[James Reid]

By Stress is life. Is there any medical evidence of that or.

[Octavius Black]

There's lots of medical evidence, because the opposite of stress is total relaxation. Yes. Basically you get bored, you've got nothing to do. Yes, it's like that other type of one that you want that. No, you can't have enough time and enough imagination. It's not possible. If you've got enough time, you haven't thought of fun things to do. If you've got enough imagination, you haven't got time to do it all. So what, you want people to recognize a certain level of stress. It's called eustress. Euphoric stress actually makes you perform better, more resilient, enjoy life more happy and all sorts of things. So the first thing is to reframe stress as a good thing up to a point, and secondly to reframe work as a source of that good stress up to quite a significant point, sure. So you meet more people, have more interesting times, more challenged, more challenging, all of that. And therefore the first bit is framing the stress. And then we've identified the five conditions that create your chances of flourishing at work, which are certainty, competence, autonomy, belonging and purpose. And then what we help people understand is which of those are high and low and which are the ones you can do something about.

[James Reid]

So your first model was called attunement. Do you have a name for this one?

[Octavius Black]

Thrive.

[James Reid]

Thrive. But the first, the first tenet of thrive is to accept that stress is a good thing or be sort of persuaded that stress is a good thing.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, up to a point. It's definitely a good thing. I remember years ago doing a session with a guy at bt, an engineer, and he said, I never get stressed at all. He said, so the only thing that ever stresses me is my colleagues getting promoted ahead of me. I'm like, well, I think we know why that is, mate, don't we? They're awake, they're stressed because they're busy performing, why they get it promoted.

[James Reid]

So did you share that with him.

[Octavius Black]

Or did you in a more polite way? Yes, I did.

[James Reid]

So they, yeah, he needed to switch on his stress.

[Octavius Black]

Well, there was a trade off. He could feel totally relaxed and calm and Zen the whole time, but he wouldn't get promoted.

[James Reid]

He wasn't throwing himself in enough.

[Octavius Black]

If you wanted to get promoted, he had to experience a bit more stress.

[James Reid]

So you mentioned six things there. There's quite a lot, you know, purpose, competence. I mean, where do you begin with those?

[Octavius Black]

So what we usually measure, so one size Fits no one is one of our beliefs. So what you have to do is sheep goods are for sheep. You know, let's focus on what this matters to you. I actually launched this research Oxford a longevity forum. One of the people in the audience has started a biotech and she said I now realize where I went wrong because all these people were exhausted and I kept reminding them why our work matters so much, why we're changing the world and how we were all in it together. So I was dialing up purpose and belonging to but actually what they were quite high on purpose and belonging what they were low on was certainty and competence. So what I should have been doing is more to show them what was happening the way power rather than the willpower and more about how they had the skills to be able to get through this and we could all do this together but based on I mean.

[James Reid]

Because it doesn't seem to me that much is certain. So what is certainty in this?

[Octavius Black]

In this model certainly well there's several things as to certainty. So at a meta level you're obviously right. The world is uncertain, life is uncertain, who knows what's going on. But there are lots of things you can increase the level of certainty on and really it's the small things that happen every day. We're working with one company where they were closing down a whole lot of sites and they were keeping some other sites open and they couldn't put legal reasons to disclose which ones they were closing, which ones they were opening so people would come to us and go really uncertain. Is my site being closed down because well, have you noticed in some sites they're putting new fiber optic cables in? Yeah, yeah, I've seen that. Do you think they're putting them in and the sites are going to close down? Oh no, maybe not. So actually you can just pick up information this increases your certainty.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

And there's a great psychological term called confident uncertainty which I don't know exactly what's going to happen but I know I can cope with it whatever it is and therefore we help people establish confident uncertainty.

[James Reid]

So this model, I mean this, the how long have you been doing this.

[Octavius Black]

The thrive piece Thrive again a couple of years Now a great professor called Amy Edmondson who bought Psychological safety Safety to the kind of four as a.

[James Reid]

Concept is she the Harvard Business School.

[Octavius Black]

And she'd written the forward for it and has been very much positive in.

[James Reid]

Endorsing so she's about psychological safety.

[Octavius Black]

She's about psychological safety. Interesting enough I said to her when I helped her Launch a book. And when she's over in the uk, I said, amy, how much do you think psychological safety has been misappropriated to do the opposite of what was intended? SHE OCTAVES on a scale of 1 to 10, I'll give it a 9.

[James Reid]

So what do you mean by that? Where are you seeing that? What are you seeing?

[Octavius Black]

Yes. Psychological safety is supposed to be about us having vehement arguments about the issues in order to get to a better outcome. So the pursuit of the business, we can happily disagree. So Pixar, for example, they rip each other's scripts apart. That character doesn't work and the plot line is boring and the subplot is irrelevant and yet they still go out and perfectly friendly afterwards. But it's all done in the spirit of making things better, making a really good film. Now, it's been misappropriate to say, I don't feel safe speaking out about here because someone might disagree me or tell me I'm wrong. The whole point is to tell people that you have a different view and why you have a different view and debate those things through. So the idea of being psychologically safe is not about. No one's going to say anything that offends me or upsets me. It's the opposite. People are going to challenge me, but not as me, as the ideas or the concept or the product or the marketing strategy or the digital route or whatever else.

[James Reid]

Sure. It's not the person you're challenging, it's the idea or the direction of travel or whatever, isn't it? I mean, I suppose they might be giving voice to it.

[Octavius Black]

The risk, using a sporting analogy, if someone's running up the pitch, they're chasing the ball, not you. But you can think it's you that they're chasing.

[James Reid]

Yeah. So is that a problem? Do you see it a lot in business that people are too sort of tentative around people's feelings and ideas when they should be more.

[Octavius Black]

Absolutely. I think this is a robust be taking care and come overdone strength. And actually caring is being frank and being candid and saying things as you see them and reporting very interesting work on feedback, for example. So everyone says, we want to have more feedback. We're on a feedback culture. I remember going to see Sears, big retailer in the States.

[James Reid]

I remember. Yeah.

[Octavius Black]

And they just won a award for the most feedback ever given and received in a company. I'm like, are you sure that's a good thing? They're like, we won the award, didn't we? And we know what happened to Sears? Didn't determine.

[James Reid]

I said, I remember.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, exactly.

[James Reid]

So Sears, for our younger listeners, what happened to Sears?

[Octavius Black]

Well, they went into administration. So feedback itself can be really helpful, but it can do an immense damage. And so what we've done is break it down into what's the bits of feedback that work. So describing things, really helpful. So I noticed that you put sources on all your charts. I noticed that when the CEO asks you a question, you asked a question back. And then you can say, this is what it tells me. You can then own the interpretation. It tells me you're very rigorous. It tells me you're thorough researcher. Or it tells me you're willing to absorb, to ask questions to power or whatever it might be. Now you then on the receiving end can go, either I disagree with the facts, half the charts didn't have sources, or someone else put them there, or you can agree with the facts, but actually there's a different reason for it, but because by breaking down what you notice and described how you've interpreted it, you end up having a much more constructive conversation.

[James Reid]

Yeah, feedback people find difficult to digest, don't they? Someone said on our podcast that someone said to him, you know, feedback is like getting a. A jumper from an aunt. You can always put in a drawer and forget about it. Which I thought was quite good. But, you know, that's the other side of it. You don't have to take it on. I mean, it's just. It's just information in a way, isn't it?

[Octavius Black]

It's useful information if it's what someone's noticed.

[James Reid]

Yeah.

[Octavius Black]

So the more factual you can make it, the better off.

[James Reid]

Okay, more factual. So it's based on what you've actually noticed?

[Octavius Black]

Yes.

[James Reid]

There's indisputable, you know, if someone had a video and recorded it, or if.

[Octavius Black]

You dispute it, you can at least have a discussion about what happened.

[James Reid]

Yeah.

[Octavius Black]

You know, I noticed that you didn't speak for the first half hour of the meeting. Oh, actually I did. I said at the beginning X, Y and Z, and you can agree or disagree on the facts. Usually there's fairly firm agreement on it. But that then gives you a base from which to say, well, because you didn't speak for that long, I think. So the clients were worried that you weren't part of the team or you didn't bring enormous value or didn't give as much respect when you did speak about X, Y or Z at a later stage. Now, the other person can then change their view on the interpretation. But at least you separated the event from the interpretation of it.

[James Reid]

So just listening to you, Octavius, you're doing a lot of analysis of when I was thinking about how you handled the bank, who turned his back on you to go to the coffee. You're doing a lot of analysis in the room of people's behavior and what's going on from their body language and who says what in what order. And is this something we. I mean, I think you're going to answer this question that we should all be much more conscious and aware of.

[Octavius Black]

Well, the basic principle of what mind you exists to do is psychology can solve most of the world's problems.

[James Reid]

Say that again.

[Octavius Black]

Psychology, understanding human behavior can solve most of the world's problems. Loneliness, depression, bullying, polarization. They're all psychological issues.

[James Reid]

Conflict, Conflict, absolutely.

[Octavius Black]

And they can also solve most of the issues at work. So if you could equip people with practical, useful psychology, their lives would be a whole lot better and their working lives would be a whole lot better and their businesses would be a lot more successful. So what we do is equip people with that psychology so they can do it themselves.

[James Reid]

A lot of young people are studying psychology now. Does that give you hope that the next generation of managers and leaders will be better or are they reading the wrong stuff?

[Octavius Black]

It gives me great hope, yeah. Psychology has now become a really mainstream. When we started kind of, I remember saying to a client once, I said, he said, what do you do? I said, we bring psychology to help you grow your business. He said, you know my view of psychologists? I said, no. He said, he said, I think they're like B days in bathrooms. They add a touch of class, but no one knows what to do with them. So that was put down on psychology. I think that's changed a lot.

[James Reid]

But do you recruit psychologists?

[Octavius Black]

You recruit lots of psychologists.

[James Reid]

That's your thing.

[Octavius Black]

Yes. And then we're. And we're very data driven. So you recruit also psychometricians. So we're very excited. We've got the world's leading IP on predictive assessments. So you want to predict whether someone will be a good leader or a manager or what they'll be capable of. We have got the most reliable diagnostic in the world for doing that.

[James Reid]

And what's that involved? So if I want to do this diagnostic, a bit late for me, but how would I go?

[Octavius Black]

Some of the people you're busy finding for your clients.

[James Reid]

Yeah, yeah, it might be. Or wanting to promote or.

[Octavius Black]

Exactly that.

[James Reid]

So if someone in this thing wants to do that how do they go about it on your website?

[Octavius Black]

So if you're a company and you wanted to find out who's most likely to become an effective leader or who's most likely to do some particular skill, be more agile in their working or better at accountability or more likely to collaborate, we've got the data that shows what are the skills and what are the personality traits that will most likely lead to that outcome.

[James Reid]

Okay, give us some clues. So what's the data throwing up?

[Octavius Black]

If you want people who are accountable, you want people who are ambitious, for example. So ambition is really strongly related to why is that what the data says? I'm not sure I can give you the answer to that.

[James Reid]

An ambitious person is more likely to be accountable to.

[Octavius Black]

My hypothesis as to why that matters is because they want to succeed and therefore they want to be seen to succeed and therefore they take ownership for things that they're asked to do. I can't prove that, but that's my hypothesis.

[James Reid]

It's very interesting. We had a guest recently who didn't do very well at school, but he said I've always loved responsibility. And he. And he's been incredibly successful and runs afraid. Yeah. So he must have sort of linked to that. I remember that was a striking remark. So that's one. Is there any other things that. Was it the psychometrician?

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, psychometric is someone who does the, the data for diagnostics.

[James Reid]

Yeah, so. So the psychometrics. What else. This is interesting. What else are they telling us? So that's one example. Any other? The, the, you know, if in terms of leaders.

[Octavius Black]

In terms of leaders, what you. One of the things that's really strong for leadership is emotional self regulation. So they did, we did an interesting study. It's also one of this diagnostic. Interesting study for partners of professional services firms. And what was the characteristic that most distinguished those who are more successful, build the most hours, sold the most business than the rest. It wasn't cognitive ability, how smart they were, it wasn't how great communicator they were or how collaborative they were. It was their emotional self regulation. It's their ability to come into the meeting with you not carrying in the mood from the meeting they just had before. And this comes back to you, you asked about certainty at work. The big part of certainty is how your boss treats you. So if your boss turns up in a mood, does that affect what's going to happen? Or is your boss always quite calm and ready and listens to you and present, in which case you're pretty certain you know what's going to happen as a result. So the boss's ability to self regulate greatly increases certainty which then increases well being and the chances that people will thrive and so on and so forth.

[James Reid]

So emotional self regulation. So they're not wondering what sort of boss is going to turn up today, but consistent like McDonald's? Well.

[Octavius Black]

Yes.

[James Reid]

How do you achieve emotional self regulation? Is that just sort of something some people don't have or something you can learn? How do you learn it?

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, you learn it by thinking about what is your triggers and alarm calls. So when are you likely to get into an emotional state? Your emotional state is roused and you're seeing red mists or you're angry or talking too fast or you're whatever it is that you normally do do in those moments. Therefore you can then say, well at this moment I'm not self regulated so I need to go for a walk or delay this meeting or not make this decision now. And therefore you start to notice the triggers and then you start to choose to behave differently, usually by deferring or delaying.

[James Reid]

Another guest was talking about information diet. The importance having an information diet because of all the toxicity that's being sort of directed at us on social media and you know, click, click on this or you're getting served sort of not the nicest of things. And how do we, how do we get away from that in this world? Have you got any thoughts?

[Octavius Black]

It's great research on happiness.

[James Reid]

Yeah.

[Octavius Black]

And there's a Lar Crumb is a student of another brilliant psychologist who talks about intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and how we draw our strength. The more we draw from intrinsic motivations, the pleasure of the breeze on our face or the joy of good company or whatever it is that we are actually enjoying in the moment or a range of. We call that intrinsic intrinsic as opposed to external validation. So compare and despair might be your motto. So the more you go on social media and discover that someone's looking more glamorous or more beautiful or going to more parties or something you wish you weren't, the more you're going to be in a funk.

[James Reid]

Right.

[Octavius Black]

So same comes with the news cycle. So if you, you tend to be happier if you're reading books, particularly novels, than if you are following daily news clicks and clickbait.

[James Reid]

So reading novels is a good thing.

[Octavius Black]

Reading novels promotes empathy. So you're more likely to be empathetic.

[James Reid]

And understand other people rather than business books?

[Octavius Black]

I'm afraid so. Business books are helpful for another reason.

[James Reid]

Since Written a business book. I should have written.

[Octavius Black]

I read four books for Holiday just now. Only one was a novel, so. Exactly.

[James Reid]

Okay, well, I gotta write a novel next. That's good. So you're obviously you're helping with well being and with performance and with leadership. What next for Mind Gym? How do you see your company evolving from here?

[Octavius Black]

We're very excited indeed because what we're seeing is all the pieces come together. So we've developed all these great units from the bite sized workout and the precision coaching and the diagnostics and we're now piecing them together into one talent ecosystem, for want of a better word. And therefore we think there's enormous opportunity for companies who want to make their talent development, learning and development culture, whatever they choose to call it, more cost effective by focusing on the few things that will deliver the greatest impact and making sure they all fit together. So the diagnostic feeds into the coaching, which feeds into the workshops, which feeds into digital learning and can be hyper personalized so you can give people what they need at the moment they need in order to drive the business outcomes.

[James Reid]

How do you do that? I like the word hyper personalized. If it's one word, it's probably two. But how do you do that? Is it digital or is it through other methods?

[Octavius Black]

It's a combination. So you might take our diagnostic, the world's most validated one, and it tells you that the things you need to get better at are decision making. And there might be some self directed E learning on decision making which we've designed. And again, all our learning has been tested with 5 million people. So it's got to quite a high proof point.

[James Reid]

So the diagnostic covers those six areas, is it?

[Octavius Black]

It covers a whole range of areas. More than that. Okay, to be fair, there are two diagnostics. One covers specifically the six areas and one covers a broader range which is more about leadership. And what we've got is the way you might then you take complete the diagnostic, it gives you your profile, it gives you some, maybe some digital learning that you can go to immediately. It's specifically targeted for you. It can also direct you to certain bite sized workshops, our 90 minute workshops and say actually the one on courageous conversations will really help you. We've also got a coach for tough conversations called Leo who's trained in Mind gym, who will help you practice and his audio visuals.

[James Reid]

So is Leo a real person or Leo's a bot. All right, so you can talk, talk.

[Octavius Black]

To Leo and you describe the. It's great because you describe the person they're very argumentative or they're very passive or they oh, the person you want.

[James Reid]

To get better at dealing with.

[Octavius Black]

Yes. And you describe a situation, they're underperforming or they're over performing or they're slacked off or whatever.

[James Reid]

All right.

[Octavius Black]

And then you practice it live.

[James Reid]

Leo adopts the role of that person.

[Octavius Black]

Exactly. And then Leo responds as that person would. And at the end Leo gives you feedback and says, this is the things you said that were really good and these are the things you could have done differently that would have got you to.

[James Reid]

Should we care about Leo's feedback because Leo isn't a person?

[Octavius Black]

Well, I think we should care about much more because they're not pushing their own biases or assumptions about what's right.

[James Reid]

Yeah. They don't have an agenda and they're.

[Octavius Black]

Listening to you 100% of the time. So then Leah will also create more data that will then tell you in light of this, what you really need to get good at is goal setting or feedback or whatever else it happens to be. And then you can point to other or get your coaching and your coach gets this feedback about you so knows where to start the conversation rather than dancing around.

[James Reid]

How did Leo learn his or their trade?

[Octavius Black]

We all mind gym content. We've got 25 years of IP, as I said, tested with 5 million people and we taught Leo all the content we've got.

[James Reid]

Is Leo going to put you out of a job?

[Octavius Black]

Octavius AI is going to transform the world of work. It's going to make things we're going to need probably fewer people with higher skills that are more critical to the business. And a lot of jobs are going to disappear and change or form into new kinds of jobs. And so we're certainly seeing that AI can change the nature of business. Probably not as quickly as people had anticipated, but it's coming for sure. And it's changing our business because we're getting able to provide the same content through different routes. So this is you. We do it self directed, we do it large scale events, small scale events, one to one coaching and now through AI and different people in different situations will require a mix of these if you want to change behavior. But it's still the case that 75% of people's P L is people.

[James Reid]

Sure.

[Octavius Black]

And if you don't realize the costs, well, it may cut cost, but you still need to get the most from that 75%.

[James Reid]

Exactly. It's really important. So how long has Leo been sort of at work?

[Octavius Black]

Leo's just Arrived.

[James Reid]

Leo's new.

[Octavius Black]

Leo's new.

[James Reid]

And what's the response been from the first sort of guinea pigs?

[Octavius Black]

Well, the people who've used it love it. What's interesting is how many companies are nervous and anxious their legal departments. So the HR departments, the leaders really wanted, but they, the legal departments are getting in the way.

[James Reid]

So what are the legal departments?

[Octavius Black]

One legal department didn't like it because they were worried that the AI coach might say something that contravene company policy. Lots of safeguards.

[James Reid]

Coach what? Leo might.

[Octavius Black]

Leo might. There are lots of ways. There are trigger words that Leo says, I'm afraid that's not acceptable and you can't use that. And there are ways that Leo will actually walk out the room if you.

[James Reid]

Well, so the legal department is worried that Leo might say something that would then result in them being sued.

[Octavius Black]

Yeah, I suppose that's exactly. But we've actually got all the precautions, behaves quite well. Leo is impeccable.

[James Reid]

You could just much better than anyone, you might get a suit.

[Octavius Black]

We have.

[James Reid]

Much easier to do that with a bot than a person.

[Octavius Black]

I remember years ago, legal departments, not only people have email because they might use it for personal reasons. I mean. Yes, legal departments aren't always the first to embrace new technology.

[James Reid]

No, that's probably an understatement. Yes. Okay, so you see AI obviously changing a lot, but you see a constant in psychology being important.

[Octavius Black]

I'm hearing it's when psychology meets technology, that's when you get the real magic. And so what you want to do is help people become more effective at dealing with other people and using technology to make that happen.

[James Reid]

So when technology meets psychology, you get the real magic. I think that's a very good point. To finish our conversation, thank you very much, Octavius. I'm going to ask you two questions that I ask everybody. And the first is what gets you up on a Monday morning?

[Octavius Black]

I love what I do. I've loved it since I started doing it. I love it now. So Monday is like every other day for me. It's just exciting to get out there and try and change the way the world thinks.

[James Reid]

That's very good because we love Mondays. So the last question I'm going to ask you is a question that's in my interview book, why you? Which is where do you see yourself in 5 years time?

[Octavius Black]

Where I see the future of this market is a very different kind of model where you've got integrated solution that companies, if you like, outsource to. In the way that lots of marketing departments have an expert outsource partner who's in source partner who provides the specialist knowledge, who provides the data and is integrated with the company. The future of HR I think is going to move in this direction. Now some of the more operational bits of HR like payroll and pensions management has already been outsourced. But the next stage is the talent part and that's where I think we can bring incredible expertise and I'm phenomenally excited. I think the best is yet to come.

[James Reid]

Well, I wish you continued success and I'll have to get you back in five years time to see how that's evolved. Thanks very much for coming to talk to me.

[Octavius Black]

Thanks very much.

[James Reid]

Enjoy the conversation. Thank you Octavius for joining me on All About Business. I'm your host James Reid, chairman and CEO of Reed, a family run recruitment and philanthropy company. If you'd like to find out more about Reid, Octavius or Mind Gym, all links are in the show notes. See you next time.