What Going to Prison Taught Andy Coulson About Failure

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1:51Hi there, welcome along to another Friday episode from High Performance, where myself and Damien take a slightly different look at the world of high performance. Sometimes we reflect on some previous guests. Sometimes we sit and debate or invite an audience member to come and share their thoughts with us. But today, Damien, what we're actually going to do is put into context someone who we invited into the studio to have a conversation with us. And I don't think we've debated a guest as strongly as we debated inviting this person to come and share his views with us and his life story with us on high performance because there's no doubt about it.

2:27He did some horrendous things. He was punished for those things. But then the question we're left with is, can you do the things this person did and still be considered a high performer? Yeah, it's a really good question, Jake. And as you say, it did dominate a number of conversations that we had. But I think sometimes we have to role model what we talk to people about, lean into people. You know, everybody knows something that you don't. if you ask the right questions, you can learn something from them. And I think this was a really good example of testing what we talk about and seeing whether we're prepared to back it up.

3:03I'll tell you why it's a challenge for us because of the name of our podcast. When you have a podcast called High Performance and you put a convicted criminal on the show, people go, hold on, you've just said they're high performers. Now, I think it's important to say that what we're not doing at this point is validating their behavior, right? And saying what they did was high performance. What we are saying, though, is we can all find our own version of high performance or get closer to our own version of high performance from learning from the things that other people did. At no point are we saying that what they did is okay.

3:36Well, exactly. You know, and again, how many guests have we had that say, you know, failure has been the greatest teacher. I've learned nothing from my successes. So somebody that's open about quite a public failure that they experienced and the consequences of it and then said, but this is what I learned from it and this is what I want to pass on so people can avoid those pitfalls themselves. Surely that fits with the philosophy that we have of taking the lived experiences of people and passing them on so people can use them on their own journey to high performance. Okay, well, the guest we're talking about is Andy Coulson.

4:11He was once the face and the leader of the most powerful newspaper in the country, the news of the world. He later became the Prime Minister's right-hand man as David Cameron's Director of Communications. However, he then lost it all with the fallout of the News of the World hacking scandal. He faced three high-profile legal cases. One case was dropped and another, and he was acquitted. He spent just under five months in prison, including a two-month stint in the high-security Belmarsh Jail. Andy now runs a PR agency that specialises in crisis management and hosts the podcast Crisis? What Crisis?

4:47So when we sat down with him, Jay, you certainly didn't pull any punches in going through that list of infamy. So let's listen to how the conversation began. Tell us why a conversation with a convicted criminal, someone who... Straight in, Jake. Yeah. Someone who was convicted of things that outraged the world at the time, is the right person for a conversation about high performance. Because I believe that failure is useful, in essence. Yeah. You know, and I think, you know, for me, you know, as we sit here at the start of a conversation, it's very important, I think, for me to say that this for me isn't about, you know, looking for, you know, a round of applause.

5:26Right. I just think and feel very strongly that, you know, my story, which I'm sure we'll get into, you know, might be of use. And I'm not sure about that. How can I be sure about that? Because in the end, that's for other people to decide. but I think that failure and I've had a fair amount of it you know is fundamentally useful and as long as I suppose other people are at least inclined to agree then I'll chat about it and we would like to talk about the failure we'd like to talk about how you ended up in that moment of failure but before we do failure is useful what is the most useful thing that you would like to share with people about failure at the start of this chat you know Through failure, I have learnt the importance of control.

6:13And I think you've touched on with other guests plenty of times. This will not be new to you guys. But control is actually all about surrendering control. And I learnt to do that through my unravelling. I learnt to appreciate that sat on a plastic mattress in a police cell in Glasgow, that the only way that I was going to deal with what had become a fairly absurd life for me, a life where I'd lost complete control, is the only way I could deal with it actually was by surrendering control and then by doing that, focusing on the things that I did have control of. And that's essentially now how I live my life.

6:50So this is nothing new, certainly not my copyright. You know who the copyright belongs to, and that's the Stoics. So it's a couple of thousand years out of copyright. But it still works. you know it's it's for me that's that's the core of my operating system now okay so um let's talk about this this is really interesting now i don't see any value in writing people off in non-platforming them in silencing them in giving them no voice at all you can't lord people who did the things that andy coulson did you can't celebrate the things that they did but you can absolutely learn from the things that Andy did.

7:29And that's why I still believe that for us to be talking about Andy Coulson, for us to be sharing the views or the thoughts or the opinions or the experiences of Andy Coulson, will provide value for the high-performance audience. Yeah, definitely. You know, because it's a lived experience and is an intelligent man that's reflected on that and is willing to come and share really candidly. You know, he didn't shy away from some of those crimes that he was convicted for. He didn't shy away from some of the decisions that he made. He was happy to explain the context in which he made them. You know, at that time, they seemed like the right decisions.

8:05But equally, he was willing to lean into, this is what I learned from this experience. And I mean, I often see it when I work in sport. You know, like when a coach gets sacked and then nobody ever goes to pick the brains afterwards to go, what did you get wrong? What did you learn from that experience? the next manager can learn from it and it often to me seems like a waste that all that knowledge walks out of the building with them I remember reading Jack Welsh the former CEO of GE tells a story that when he was a young graduate working at the company he ended up blowing up a factory is the way that he describes it and when he walked into his boss and was anticipating it in the sack his boss said Saki I've just paid the most expensive lesson that you're going to learn that'll avoid it ever happening again.

8:49And I think, I don't mean to make light of Andy Coulson's crimes, but I do think there is value in learning about how he came to make those errant decisions. That's exactly the point, right? If we can find out how Andy Coulson, as a newspaper editor, ended up in a position where he thought the decisions that he was making were the right decisions, they clearly weren't, they were abhorrent, right? If we can understand that, then surely we can understand how we can stop someone else from being in the same position. That's how the world moves forwards. You don't move forwards by silencing the people who've got things wrong.

9:24Do you remember Brian Cox telling us, celebrate being wrong. That's the mindset of a scientist. Well, let's adopt a little bit of that ourselves by exploring a little bit of how Andy explains when he recognises now things did start to get out of control. I mean, it was pretty much instant. You know, to go from someone who was sitting in some pretty important rooms, involved in some pretty important conversations, you know, to being absolutely on the outside in every regard was pretty swift. But the process was quite slow. And that moment then of feeling you're in with the in crowd and then suddenly you're cast out.

10:05How did you process that? Badly to start with. It took me a year. and perhaps we'll talk about bitterness in this conversation because it was, for me at least, a very important lesson that I've learned is to just dodge that bitterness bullet, stay out of the bitterness pit and mix my metaphors. That is a great, great danger, I think, in crisis, in an unravelling, in a personal unravelling and I think in scandal. And the other thing that scandal does, particularly a public scandal, is that it bends everything out of shape, right? It bends all your relationships out of shape, bends all your friendships out of shape.

10:46If you're not careful, it will bend all the things that matter to you out of shape, and largely thanks to my wife, it didn't do that. But yeah, and of course for me, a lot of my friends were in the media or were in politics, and it was also that kind of, you know, who wants to be associated with someone who's in the middle of a scandal like that for their own reasons? And, you know, there were times when that made me angry, if I'm honest. But I also come to realize that that's not really my business. There's none of my business, actually. You know, what's my business is what do my family think of me?

11:17What does my wife think of me? What am I now? What do my clients think of me? What do the people I work with think of me? Other than that, none of my business. But to go from that shock and then anger to eventual acceptance, you've got to pass through several stages. and I'm interested in what did you learn about passing through those stages? Yeah, interestingly for me, I don't see it as stages actually. I think that it's, I don't know, I think about it as an operating system and that's probably a product of having used too many Apple devices, I don't know. But it's very much, that's how I visualize it.

11:52And for me, it's about seven sort of different sets of thoughts that can creep into your head. And I know, again, you've talked about this on the pod, about the simple premise that we are not our thoughts, right? And that took me a little while to work out. So once you've worked out you're not your thoughts, then for me, you identify those thoughts into seven different sections. This is the way I operate, right? And that's anxiety, bitterness, control, gratitude, resilience, and shock, yeah? The issue, at least for me, is it's not sequential. and I still have days now and I know I will have days in the future where the anxiety will come and smack me in the face out of nowhere.

12:37How does it feel? Terrible when it happens. What is the physical? It's physical. Like anyone who... Mind sits here. Yeah, absolutely. Here and also, you know, it can manifest itself in a cold sweat or it can just take over your day, right? But what I've learned to do is to appreciate that it's just the thought, actually, that's driving it and turn the volume down on it. I really do see it as a dashboard, right? I turn the volume down on it and then I'm able to turn the volume up on a bit of gratitude or I remind myself of a bit of perspective or I am able to really appreciate, most importantly, that I've got control of all of this.

13:15It's all in my control, right? What happens, what's causing it is not, but how I feel about it, what I do about it, it's all me. No one can ever take that away from you. And once you've kind of got that clear in your head, I think you can make a lot of progress. And then, of course, once you've understood that, you can build the environment to make sure that you maximize the good stuff. But don't ever think, you know, we started this conversation by talking about the importance of failure. Don't ever think that the failure bit of that, which, of course, sits behind my bitterness, you know, and other negative thoughts, I'm never going to lose that.

13:48It's a fact of my life. You know, you just started this interview with the words, Andy Coulson, you're a convicted criminal. I hate that, right? I hate it. Why wouldn't I? But it's not inaccurate. No, I don't think I'll break the law as it happens, but by the by, in a way, right? That's not a comfortable thing to sit here and listen to. I bet. But I'm completely at peace with it because it's true, right? And it always will be, by the way. And so if I try and live a life that's in denial of that, where's that going to take me? Madness, I suspect. This is a reminder, Damien, of how quickly life can unravel and if we spend our life thinking that certain things are real that aren't, then we get ourselves into complete trouble.

14:31You know, I get the sense that all of Andy Selfworth was wrapped up in who he was. He was an editor. He was David Cameron's right-hand man. He was right at the heart of government. He knew secrets that you and I will never know. He had power. He had control. But the truth is none of that is real because the day that you're sitting on a mattress in Belmarsh, all of that has gone. so if our self-worth is tied up with our job or our achievements or the things that we do we have to accept that one day the candle is going to be extinguished and it's going to hugely damage us yeah it reminds me of the first conversation we had with dr rong and chatterjee on this where he spoke about how you know he calls them junk values where we value things like the car we drive the house we live in the status that we might have in society the contact list that we have in our phone they're all junk values that if you tie yourself up with those when they go it feels like a terminal death for you the idea of focusing on the more holistic values of the type of person you want to be whether that's being kind or respectful or treating people with dignity they're the things that really matter in life and I think unfortunately for Andy it took all those junk values being stripped from him to realize actually what really did count in life.

15:49Andy then spoke to us about something called editoritis and this is what he had to say and when you describe as well the idea of like your career path was linear in many ways that you hadn't experienced many failures i can see how seductive that environment could be now looking from the outside in a good news day for you in the media is often a bad news day for somebody else that idea of the polarized thinking and i'm interested did it affect you as a parent as a partner as well that that that worldview i don't know if the worldview did because again forgive me i'm not arguing for a second that there that there weren't moments of negativity in terms of the stories that we were running that had impacts on impact on people's lives that we thought this is something that should be in the paper, of course.

16:42And that was part of my job was to kind of judge that. And like I say, I definitely got it wrong. But I think I also got it right on occasions. But that wasn't what the news of the world was mainly about. What the news of the world was mainly about was setting the agenda. Now, that might be on occasions through one of those negative stories that you're talking about. But we didn't, again, sit down thinking, right, That bad day for someone else is good day for us. That wasn't the mindset at all. But what we were interested in was revelation, of course, and setting the agenda. And over time, in my time as editor, trying to do things differently.

17:22And being, as it turns out, far too ambitious and driven about what we felt the news of the world was. something called editoritis, which is a little known condition. I was a sufferer and the main symptom is that the world revolves around you or around whatever it is you're doing that week. I definitely suffered from editoritis. And how does that manifest itself in behaviour? It manifests itself in being bloody arrogant, I think. Believing your own hype too much. I was winning awards. I was, you know, everybody was telling me how, you know, brilliant it was, right, how successful this thing was until it wasn't, you know.

18:08And I'm a firm believer that, you know, when you're at your most successful, when you are flying, that is when you're at your most vulnerable. The reason why I think it's important to include that clip from Andy there about editor writers is because, you know, almost everyone listening to this is not the editor of a national newspaper or the former editor of a national newspaper. but every single person can easily get editoritis in their own life as a parent as a colleague as a boss as a founder as an entrepreneur as a friend and i think it's just worth hearing what andy has to say about it purely so we can avoid it yeah definitely i think if you ever find yourself using the the line that you'll do this because and then you feel that you have to like state your status.

18:51You're falling for editoritis in your own life. But let's also talk about how this hasn't come for free for Andy, this learning. You know, he's had to work his way through a significant amount of bitterness. Let's listen to what he had to say about that. David Cameron, who was my boss and a friend of mine, you know, I think behaved pretty badly when I was on trial. His decision to have to, you know, kind of distance himself from me, I totally understood. It's politics. That's how it works. But politics does not mean that you have to interfere in someone's trial. And I felt that he interfered at the end of my trial with a public statement that was unhelpful.

19:30And as it happens, the judge didn't agree with me on much, but he agreed with me on that. Now, I can sit here and say, you know, I'm furious about that. And I'm still furious about that. I was and I'm not. And anything I've got to say about that subsequently, because it has all played out in court, so I don't feel like I'm talking out of school. It was known. you know then i'll have that conversation with david and also i i i'm really clear i'm sitting here as someone who's made so many mistakes in my life you know i don't think that defines me entirely i am more than my mistakes he's more than his mistakes right and and i'm not trying to equate the two by the way either but the reason why i think it's an interesting thing to talk about is that it would be easy for you to spend the rest of your life allowing that to eat you up right yeah that's the end if you do that that's the end if you do that so what did you do for it not to eat you up?

20:20Because there will be people listening to this who are in the position that you were in there where they're not happy. Was it a phone call? Was it leaning into that person? Was it trying to understand the decision they made? What were the things that worked from your perspective? It was deciding simply that's for them. It's none of my business. Now, that was my business. It was literally my business because it was interfering with my trial, right? And that obviously was pretty important. Yeah. So I had to deal with it and that's kind of why it became public, right? Yeah. But in terms of the others, that's just none of my business.

20:50Yeah, which is a simple thing to say, but it's such a hard place to get to. It's such a hard place to get to, yeah. So how do you even begin getting there? Because I knew, having done it a number of times, you follow the other thought, and that feeling in your stomach, in your throat, it is bile, right, will start to rise. Your throat will start to, for me, it will start to tighten up. I'll start, my temper will become shorter. I become distracted. I won't, you know, I may be standing watching the kids, one of my sons play rugby. I'm not thinking about the rugby. I'm a thousand yards there. I'm off wondering about this nonsense.

21:32Disappearing down all sorts of rabbit holes that are increasingly more difficult to get out of. That is what bitterness is. You know, it's a well-known quote. I suspect I'm not the first person on this podcast to say it, But bitterness is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die. It is an absolute truth. And I had to swallow a bit of poison before I realized that. And it's the single most important thing for me. And I still get bitter days. I've not worked it all out completely. There'll still be something will happen. But what I've got is that ability, as we discussed earlier, just to kind of turn down the bitterness volume.

22:09I let it in a bit. It's good to let it in a bit. Why is it good to let it in a bit? Because then you can process it. Because then you can remind yourself. And what I do is, okay, well, I've got this bitterness here that sort of weighs, got this sort of weight. How much gratitude have I got? God, my gratitude is so headless. It doesn't even compare. It doesn't even compare. And then I can spend a good 10, 15 minutes thinking about what I'm grateful for. I mean, that is a very interesting part of the story when it comes to him carrying this bitterness. And, you know, we know the cost of carrying that kind of stuff weighs heavily on people.

22:44but again we want to share this message because there's a lot to learn and i'd like to play a couple of clips the first one here is andy's advice for other people undergoing a calamity or a failure because he now runs a business which is because he now runs a business which is helping other people through times of crisis but he also speaks about resilience and what that's given him two really important points i think we should hear andy discuss So without any of our listeners having to experience a calamity or a failure, what advice would you give them about being able to identify what's most important?

23:22I think it's not waiting for crisis, right? Don't wait for the drama to appreciate what your life is. That's what happened with me. The drama is what brought the realization. But it doesn't have to be that way. If you can imagine what your life would be without something or someone, then spend a bit of time imagining that. Really think that through. I did. I had to, right? And it was not what I wanted at all. And so, you know, don't wait for the drama, I suppose, would be my advice. But if you do find yourself in those difficulties, you know, that's the gift that crisis can give you, is that it is absolutely an opportunity to reassess who you are, much more importantly, who you want to be.

24:11Because also the other thing that I came to realize is that, you know, having had to spend years thinking about it, is I didn't want to just go back to where I was. I really didn't want to go back to where I was. I wanted something better. And that is the other road that you can take when your life unravels, is that you can decide actually through my behaviors and actions and you know work I am going to take myself and for me very importantly I started with this productivity and the sort of sense of providing that I want to be able to take everyone that matters to me with me to somewhere better and uh and that is yeah I mean that's that's that's why I'm as happy as I am can we talk about resilience please because I think from when we first started this podcast I remember thinking to myself I can't wait to meet all these talented people and then I start to realize after having many conversations with them that resilient people are outperforming talented people by an incredible rate and I think resilience is one of your superpowers what have you learned about resilience and for those that find it a struggle what advice would you give them for building it?

25:27For me, resilience is fundamentally linked to control, right? And you won't be resilient unless you surrender control. You've got to work out what's important and what's not. Explain surrender control to people. Fundamental of stoicism. Well, you know, a lot of people mischaracterise stoicism. They think that it's about being emotionless. It's not about being emotionless at all. In fact, it's the exact opposite. It's about being less emotional about the things that you don't have control of. Excuse me. And by doing that, being more emotional about the things that you do have control of. I'm very emotional about the things that I have control of.

26:01And that for me is the absolute key because if you've got that sort of grip in your life, there's not a lot that can touch you. Actually, there's not a lot that can touch you. I mentioned William Hager. He came on the pod and he characterizes it as you know everything is doable other than death row right and i think actually i love it it's a great phrase but i think serious illness aside actually everything is doable if you can see life through that prism if you can just see it through the prism of of control and and of or also the the acceptance and the realization that life is is problem solving right so again Again, terrible cliche, guys, for which I apologize.

26:45But the other thing that I do on a regular basis is I catch myself saying, oh, I've got to do that. I've got to do that. I spent most of my early career just having a great time. But I would also say an awful lot, I've got to do this. Whenever I say that, either out loud, and if I'm at Eloise's company, she'll pull me up on it, and I'll pull her up on it. You don't got to. You get to. and when you've had all that removed from you when you've had the ability to be a problem solver removed as I did then that becomes very, very valuable device I mean that's a brilliant clip from Andy there making that distinction between I get to do it or I've got to do it changes our view on how we approach a task and gives us plenty of resilience and energy to attack things to our full capacity I think also one thing that we should finish with is that Andy's helped us to reframe some of our thinking around people who are in prison.

27:42He spoke to us about the fact that prisoners are high performers and actually James Timpson, who owns the Timpson's shoe repair places, he's come on and told us how he employs people from prison because they have real value to give. John McAvoy was a former criminal turned elite athlete. He came on the podcast and spoke about his journey. Both of them understand that you can be in prison and be a high performer. And actually, Andy spoke to us about this really nicely. There's some bleak facts about how many re-offenders get almost trapped in the system. And you're somebody that has obviously learned to change direction in your life.

28:18You've taken the lessons. I'm interested in what have you learned that other people can do about actually changing your ways for the better when you face this? Stoicism sounds like one. Stoicism is one. And just look for bits of gold, right? And I'm quite good at, and I'm a journalist by trade, so I'm quite good at talking to people. I'm not afraid of talking to people in prison. I talk to everybody. I was pretty bored, but I was also fascinated at times. I had some amazing conversations. You know, when I'm in Belmarsh, I'm at the start of a five-month, 18-month sentence, but I knew I'd be in prison for about five months.

28:55That's how the system works. And I was talking to lads who'd just been convicted or sentenced, and they're facing 20 years, right? for a joint enterprise or for something worse. And those conversations are fascinating. You know, your podcast is called High Performance. I can tell you, prison's full of high performance. It's full of high performance. You know, entrepreneurial, numerate, whip-smart, energetic, focused. The problem is it's all focused in the wrong direction. It's focused towards criminality. And I had some really interesting conversations with young lads who explained to me why they were why they were or where they were and the businesses that they were running at the beginning of their sentence.

29:39And then I went through Belmarsh into an open prison, Hoseley Bay, which is a resettlement prison. And there I was much more productive, actually productive for the first time in years because they put me in the education unit and I was a sort of education assistant. And I was helping lads put their CVs together, get ready for release, doing sort of drag and den presentations. and there I was dealing with lads who were at the end of a 20-year sentence and they were fascinating conversations, obviously, for a whole bunch of different reasons. And not all of them, but there's still a bit of a sense of entitlement with some, you know, what does the world owe me?

30:13But the vast majority were, right, I want to work, what can I do? And these Dragon Den presentations were, you know, I want to set up a gym or I want to start a small business of a different kind and you'd sit and chat with them and they're fired up, right? The system had worked in that sense for them. And then there were more fascinating but emotional conversations because prison's full of high performers. It's also full of emotion. I mean, they're deeply depressing places, but they're also full of emotion. So one of the first conversations I had when I was in Hoseley Bay was with a guy who was coming to the end of, I think, 20-plus years.

30:50I'm pretty sure it was a murder conviction. I don't know the story, and I didn't ask him. and he'd not seen his kids at all in the time that he'd been in prison right so they were kids when he went in they're now grown-ups and I naively said to him are you looking forward to seeing them presumably when he come out he said I'll never see them again he said and I took that decision not long after I came into prison and I made the decision that their lives are better without me he said and that's the kind of the best thing I can do as a father and he said I don't want them shackled to me and everything that I've done.

31:25They want them shackled to me and all that I've done, which is for someone sitting in a prison and who'd been in prison for decades, that's quite a moment. I found that very moving, actually. Yeah. You know, whatever your scenario, sorry, very long-winded answer to your question, but whatever your scenario, there's something to learn, right? There's something to find everywhere. So what Andy describes there is the difference between how we view people. There's two conditions. The Pygmalion effect says that if you believe somebody has got a high potential and you treat them as that, they'll act up to that standard.

31:55The Golem effect says that if you see people as evil, they'll live down to that standard. And I think it's incumbent on all of us to see people through the lens of Pygmalion and create the environment for them to go on and do great things. I think it's really interesting, Damien. And we're almost at the end of our reflections of having Andy Coulson on the show. And I just want to play people his final answer when I asked him very openly after the life he's lived and the issues he's had and the crimes he's committed why should we have andy coulson on high performance and this was his answer so i know that when this episode comes out some people will send us messages going why why would you have andy coulson on a podcast called high performance right for a start they're assuming high performance means a certain thing um but my answer to them would be we need to change the way that we see the world.

32:46One of my reasons for falling out of love with being a football presenter was exactly what you've discussed. It was heaven or hell. It was black or white. It was good or bad. And I was kind of having an internal battle wanting to say, well, there is a bit in the middle here, which is the bit that we are failing to realise, which is the empathy and the understanding of that human being. And you've brilliantly articulated that even now, when we look at your news of the world career, we're guilty of the black or white, good or bad mentality. And it's a great lesson for us as well. So how have we ended up in this place where we see the world so polarized and what do you think from your experiences we can do to change the way we talk interact communicate uh uh it's a strange thing for a former editor of the news of the world to say we just need more reasonableness you know as i've got older i just find myself drawn towards the reasonable right i think we need it in politics i think we need it in the media i think we just need it in our lives and unfortunately these computers that we carry around in our pockets, which I know you guys have spent a lot of time discussing very constructively, are not reasonable machines, that is for sure.

33:55They drive us into the extremes. And also the political climate now, if you look at inequality, immigration, the incumbencies it was with the Tory government, the longest day in power that as popular you become, all of these things drive the conversation to the edge. And then once you've driven people to the edge, then the only politicians who are going to thrive are the ones that operate on the edge, who like operating on the edge. And that's kind of where we are. You know, maybe this new government will be different. We'll see. They're not a tricky start. But, you know, we'll see. Maybe they can start occupying a place of reasonableness because I think that's the answer.

34:28Do we have the power to change it? Possibly. But, you know, again, schools, this is where it starts. So it is about, you know, what is it to be reasonable to have that kind of conversation in our schools in a meaningful way? What is it to be resilient? And again, I know you guys are involved in that kind of work. Very important, in my view. But also, you know, if we talk about it from a media perspective, how do we start injecting this idea of, you know, independent thought or independent thinking? Because we talk a lot about critical thinking, which is valuable and important. But I'm not sure that really gets to independent thinking.

35:10I think of my grandfather when I think of this, right? Bill Seabrook. He was a shop steward, labor through and through. And he used to, on a Sunday, he used to buy every newspaper and he'd read every leader column. These are the world, Sunday mirror, everything across the whole spectrum. And I asked him once, why do you spend so much time reading all these? He said, well, I want to read what everyone else thinks. and then I'll make up my own mind. And that's pretty old school from my grandfather many, many years ago. But that is what we've got to do because the incoming now is unavoidable. Unavoidable.

35:51And so you've got to teach, I think. I try and do this in my own little way with my kids. Just realise that these aren't fixed. And what a way to end this episode. and I think really that's the strong message, right? You can ignore someone like Andy Coulson. You can not have them on a show like High Performance. You can discount with that all of the learnings, all of the lessons and the biggest one for the end there that we need more reasonableness and I think he's right when he says that but I think when we reflect on someone like Andy and the life he's lived, we should do it with maybe more reasonableness.

36:28Yeah, and do it to people in our own lives, you know. how quick we are to judge how quick we are to demonize people or just you know how readily we've got an opinion i think if we all just take a moment to pause to reflect and just ask ourselves am i being reasonable am i seeing things from a different perspective am i demonstrating understanding and empathy rather than opinion we'll all benefit from it great damien thank you ever so much thanks jake and we'll see you again soon for another episode of high performance

37:12so

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