“Happiness is not connected to the material things, but having a clear understanding of what’s deeply important to us.”
Peter Docker was a former Royal Air Force Senior Officer, who led aviation training and taught postgraduates at the United Kingdom’s Defence College. Today, he is the author of the best-selling book “Leading from the Jumpseat: How to Create Extraordinary Opportunities by Handing Over Control.” He is also a top keynote speaker and leadership consultant, who aims to help other to be extraordinary and unleash their natural talents.
“Having a clear understanding of what’s deeply important to us and using those things to be in service of others is really fundamental. In fact, that is where I started my book—asking the question of what is deeply important to you as a human being. Once we understand what is important to us, we get access to the reservoir of energy and take things forward.”
Over the years, Peter has used his experience to teach individuals how to handle the challenges of leadership. Becoming a Jumpseat Leader requires a lot of patience and enhancing performance whatever the situation may be—during normal business, times of crisis, and life in general.
Join Peter Docker as he talks about discovering your purpose, overcoming leadership challenges and cultivating a corporate culture that is in service of others.
Website: https://www.leadingfromthejumpseat.com/
LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/peterdocker
Twitter: https://twitter.com/peterdocker
John: Thank you for listening to the Business Sphere. Don’t forget to share this episode and subscribe. Joining me today is speaker, teacher and author, Peter Docker. He’s the author of “Leading from the Jumpseat” and co-author of “Find Your Why”. Thank you for joining me today, Peter.
Peter: John, it’s an absolute delight to join you on your show. Thank you for having me.
John: I know you’re joining me all the way from the UK. I actually visited, I went to school there in University for one year. My brother lived there for over 10 years, so I was a frequent traveler to London. So I am very exposed to the culture, the social systems and some of the people there. And I have some really good solid friends still living there from University days. So I’m glad that you know, you’re from that part and I’m very curious as to how did you become who you are today. So maybe share with the listeners a little bit about your back story and how you became now an author, speaker and teacher.
Peter: Well, thank you for that John. Sounds by the way like you’re almost a local here. The time you spent in the UK, it’s great to connect on that basis too. So first of all, I’m 59 years old. So you know I’ve had in life, which I feel extraordinarily privileged to have because of the experiences that I’ve had. And really that started when I joined the Royal Air Force when I was around about 20 years old, as a pilot. I flew large aircrafts, passenger aircraft and then every fueling aircraft which dedicated giving gas away to fighter jets and my, that was a journey. You know at the age of 25, I was flying our Prime Minister. I was one of the pilots selected to do that which looking back, just kind of blows me away. I mean, how the heck I got into that place? I don’t know. But anyway, I was promoted in my 25 years of my service in the Royal Air Force, I became a senior officer. I led people during combat during the 2003 Iraq War, which was a big leadership challenge for me. I was a negotiator for the British Government as part of NATO. When the Berlin Wall came down negotiating with the Russians, which is kind of topical at the moment, I guess. Later on, in my career I taught at the UK Defence College on Leadership. So I was a teacher there, I led a $20 billion program for the Ministry of Defense, which involved negotiating with the State Department in the U.S. So many, many different things during my time in the Royal Air Force but after 25 years I thought there’s more I can do.
So I left and I joined a consultancy, nothing to do with flying and nothing to do with the military but everything to do with people and we worked in high-risk industries and oil and gas construction, mining places where typically people sadly got killed or injured in the line of work. And what we did was help create cultures and a way of leading which ensured everyone went home safe at the end of each day and that was a wonderful experience. I spent about three years, I worked in the Middle East in Kazakhstan, in Africa, so that was fascinating. But then I thought there’s more I could do and it was around about that time, the fellow’s I’m sitting became famous for his Ted Talks “Start with Why”. And I reached out to him and long story short, we connected and he invited me to help take his message around the world. So that’s what I did for about seven or eight years in the process. I, together with my colleague David made me wrote with Simon, the book “Find Your Why”. Which has done really rather well, sold about half a million copies. But after about seven or eight years, I thought there’s more I could do. So I stepped away from Simon and I wanted to bring together everything I’ve learned, you know. I’ve visited 93 countries, I’ve worked with industries and leadership team from pretty much every sector and industry you can imagine. And I wanted to bring together all of that into my new book, which is called “Leading from the Jumpseat”. How to create extraordinary opportunities by handing over control and it’s very much a how-to book, but it’s bringing together all those things that I’ve learned through my own leadership journey. But also through working with other great leaders around the world.
John: I have so many questions for you because that sounds like there’s 20 people in one lifetime in Peter Docker, that I would love to explore. But it sounds like you’re having so much fun because you’re constantly changing and figuring out what’s the next move, right? Because it seems like you hit a plateau or you kinda feel like there’s a moment, where else and what more can I do here? And then you move on to something more grand and try to make more larger impact, right?
Peter: I guess, I mean it from my end of the telescope. It doesn’t actually feel like that, you know. I’m like you John, I’m naturally curious and I love engaging with people and all those countries. For example, I visited 93, so I got a few more to go but 93 is quite a high number. I’ve met so many people from different cultures, backgrounds, religions, languages and it’s a joy to connect with them on a human level. And why I mention that is because today in the world there seems to be lots of things that divide us. But through my experience over the years of meeting so many different people, what I see is that what brings us together is so much greater than what keeps us apart. And that for me, is a great message of hope for the future and it has been still found the energy to travel and meet people in different walks of life and different perspectives on the world because that’s when we learn and that for me is a great joy.
John: Before we get into aspects of your journey, I wanted to ask you even prior to becoming an Air Force pilot, what was your upbringing like? And the question I always want to figure out is, were there people within your social group upbringing parents or relatives or family that guided you to become that pilot? Were their aspirations in early days of watching reading books or you know? Absorbing content to a point where that’s what I want to do when I grow up.
Peter: My early childhood had lots of change too, you know. I had two stepfathers, not at the same time but one after the other and they were very different. A constant force in my life was my mother, who was always focused on taking care of me and my two older brothers giving us whatever opportunities she could provide. We didn’t have much money at all and that was okay. I didn’t feel the downside of that and I guess I was quite an introverted child, I didn’t have a mass of friends, really. I had one or two close friends and in fact one of whom, Simon Marshall I’m still in daily contact with and we work together so he’s been a bit of a constant theme in my life too. But to answer your question, there are other people who really influenced me and two in particular by the name of Muriel and Frank. They were a married couple about the same age as my parents, perhaps a little bit younger. But they were both severely disabled. Muriel had been bedridden since the age of 16 when she caught polio and her husband Frank his service during the Second World War fighting in the swamps in Burma jungle, had given him really chronic arthritis and he found it very difficult to walk. But these two people were so inspiring to me. There was Muriel, for example in constant pain but to be in her presence, just lit up your day. Just who she was being as a person, she never had any complaints and she was always generous of heart and always thinking about the others in their presence. Likewise, Frank had difficulty getting around, but that in no way detracted from the difference he made at work and in other people’s lives.
And that was a way that they were both, a great influence on me. I think my mother, the way we got to know that my mother was what was called back then home help or domiciliary care and so that’s how we got to know these people and so my mother has always been in service. I joined practically every youth organization you could name, as a member of the Scouts or the scouting movement, the Sea Scouts, the air training core which has got a connection to the Royal Air Force, the Saint John Ambulance Brigade, I did piano lessons. You know, you could tell which day of the week it was by the uniform I was wearing. Because it was a different uniform every day and at weekends I was cleaning them all and pressing, I was always part of organizations that somehow served. So when I went to university to study subjects that I thought would give me the best chance of getting a great job in the end. That would allow me to look after my parents, who had both lost their jobs and worked pretty hard. So I didn’t wanna be a burden to them, I wanted to be in a position to help them. And that became one of the defining deeply important things for me, but then halfway through my university degree, something else happened. It was 1982 the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic which is a British territory, were invaded by neighboring Argentina and that really captured my attention. Not from the point of view of politics, I didn’t understand the politics there but it just so incensed me that someone was imposing their will on others and that was such a driving force for me that I actually chose to leave university with a degree and joined the Royal Air Force to become a pilot. Because I felt by joining that organization I would be part of a team who could help people who could not help themselves in future situations, that was then the start of my flight career.
John: I mean it sounds so extraordinary that there were people that we’re just so grounded, right? And when you look back, it’s more like those people didn’t complain they lived, they survived and you have this ability to just be grounded, be fully present and acknowledge that there’s people worse off than you there’s people that are suffering and these are some of these traits that I’ve been trying to harvest to my child right now. Just letting him know how fortunate, lucky and grateful he should be because there’s people around the world where because we’re fortunate to be in the Western world and culture where we have water, food, needs, necessities choice, and an abundance of resources, and accesses.
They are just surviving with bare minimums and you know, this is a small percentage of the world population that we’re living in, maybe less than 5%, maybe 2%. Where 90% plus of the world don’t have clean water or sanitary needs and shelter. So all these things at a young age, you were able to see it and then being that service. Focus on trying to figure out how you can serve others, which is more the impact part where you know I feel learning this in your 20s, I didn’t start learning this until it was mid-30s. But trying to figure that out and that’s why I feel like the people close to your early days made such an impact on how you became who you are today.
Peter: Absolutely, though I wasn’t fully aware of it at the time and it’s important to make that point I think because I wouldn’t want to occur as someone who got this all sewn up right from an early age. Because I haven’t, like everybody else I’m just trying to figure it out. It’s just that I chose to spend a little bit more time reflecting and thinking about these things and putting my thoughts and feelings into words so you can act on them and that is the important thing. And I just pick up on your point about, yes we are very fortunate where we each live, of course, we are. Something I’ve learned as well is that our happiness is not connected to material things or money, not at all.
It’s a choice we make and it is a choice that is directly connected to a clear understanding of what’s deeply important to us as individual human beings. One of those non-negotiables in our life, having a clear understanding of that and also using those things to be in service of others, and that is really fundamentally. In fact, that’s where I started my book, asking a question what is deeply important to you, as a human being? I’m not talking about the latest iPhone or paycheck. What is deeply important to you? And I take people through that inquiry because when we can understand what is deeply important to us, it acts as a reservoir for energy to take us forward when we’re facing uncertainty or the unknown, it helps us to take that step forward.
John: Well, there are a lot of things I want to ask you regarding those 25 years in the Air Force. So let’s now talk about that because you were able to travel, be a part of certain conflicts and serve so many great nations and I’m sure and people. Throughout those years, you were able to see a lot of human suffering and people that were in need, or people that were living better lives than you were at that time because you were exposed to Prime Ministers and some Royalties. Obviously, there are so many people that you were exposed to, but were there specific people that really triggered you to want to continue moving forward? Were there times of reflection where you’re like, why am I doing this? Is this right for me? Were there people that push you to continue to pursue your bigger goal, whatever that was at that time?
Peter: So there are quite a few points you raise there, John. So I’ll try and touch on all of them. There are always been people in my life who have been the cheerleaders and encouraged me you know, whether it’s my mother, whether it’s my wife now 34 years Claire, or my friends that are closest to me. And I think we all need the cheerleader, the person who is the one who makes us feel they’ve got our back, and that’s incidentally a key aspect of leadership as well with the leading team. We have the opportunity to have people feel that we have their backs and when people feel that we’ve got their back, then they’re likely step beyond where they might otherwise stand to take those risks, to step into the unknown, so that is really important. In terms of people that I’ve met over the years in my military service, what immediately comes to mind is a story which I write about in the book. And this goes back some years now, I was flying a supply mission flight, I flew big aircraft, large unarmed undefended aircraft. I flying down to Freetown, Sierra Leone on the West Coast of Africa. It was a time when the Civil War that had been raging over such a brutal civil war. A fragile peace had been established, and the British forces have gone into established that peace. What I was doing was taking in the next batch of British military people who would help to train the Nationals on the ground to help maintain that stability. I remember as I flew down to the airfield, it was the first of our aircraft to fly in as I circle over here I can see all the mortar crates on the ground, around the wrong way. We touched down and we texted in, there was rubbish everywhere, the craters everywhere. I shut down the aircraft, the troops got off and whilst airplanes were being refuelled. I thought, well, I’m going to go up to the air traffic control tower ’cause I’d like to talk to the controllers I was speaking on the radio as I flew in. So I walked up to the control tower and it was the building itself puckered with bullet holes.
Most of the windows have been taken out and I pushed through the doors which were barely hanging onto their hinges and walked up the staircase up to the top to the control tab. As I walked in, there were two guys probably in their 30s who took off their headsets, there were no other aircraft around so they took off their radio headsets to turn to me and greet me. But then in the corner of my eye, I noticed this elderly woman, she was sitting in the corner doing her knitting, she’s probably the mother of one of the controllers. When I walked in, she jumped up and she ran over to me and she just hugged me and she said thank you, thank you, thank you. At that time, I mean I was pretty taken aback I didn’t immediately realize what this was about. But of course, she wasn’t thanking me as an individual, it was the uniform I was wearing and it was the peace that we’ve been able to help bring to her country. Although she was old and pretty frail, what struck me at the time is the hope that she represented. She’d seen atrocities over the years of the war where whole families were killed. But she maintains that hope and hope are so much more powerful than optimism. Because optimism says, it’ll be over by the new year, whatever it is or it all changed by the spring and those times come and go and often with disappointment but hope is an unshakable belief that there will be an after. I’ve always remembered that because I think it links directly to leadership. Particularly in times of uncertainty and change, the world has changed considerably over the last couple of years and continues to do so. When we’re leaning from others, we need to be that guardian of hope. Because when we maintain that hope, it creates a crucible and possibility where others can help. Use that hope to figure out what we need to do.
John: What a great story! I mean I look at what brands represent, what countries represent, what service people represent. You being, a part of servicing that great nation that you represented. When people are at the last straw, I mean you got turmoil, civil wars or what’s going on in the world today, unrest. That’s all they have, hope! They’re looking for ways to get all the main situations to have a better life for not just themselves but the next generation. Just to give you a perspective, my parents left the Vietnam War to come to Canada. So I completely understand their sacrifice. I understand what had to go through and I was able to go back to Vietnam a couple of years ago with my mom to see how it was because we went to some of these more museums and she didn’t even want to go to them.
Well, I wanted to. For her, I get it because she probably lost a lot of friends and people during that time. So for me, war is the worst thing anyone can go through and now I can really sit back and you saw it first hand, right? Because you were actually flying and seeing real people and you see the forces on the ground. I can only imagine just from the visuals going on right now through media. But that exposure really impacts the way you live, and how you look at life differently. I was exposed to it in a different way through my parents and family. It hits people in different ways but that turmoil, and pain that everyone goes through, I would never want anyone to go through it because it’s probably the most painful thing that will probably haunt you for the rest of your life. It will never go away.
Peter: Just a couple of things what your comments prompted my mind, John. First of all, all my former military colleagues, none of us ever wanted to go into war or combat. Because when you end up doing that, then in some ways it failed. Where military combats the last option really but secondly, everything we talk about here applies to business too and I think that’s an important point to make. In my book, I talk about well storage dramatic things such as when I was facing a crash landing airplane with 140 people on board or leading people in combat. I tell these stories not just for the drama but because it shows how the principles I talk about in terms of leading apply even in extreme circumstances where people’s lives are on the line.
But they equally apply in a business where the stakes are still high but generally, it’s not about people’s lives on the line. I talk a lot about the role of the leaders that nurtures a sense of belonging in your team, and you do that by caring. Now, some people might say well this is a little bit fluffy, isn’t it? I talk about fear and love in my book and again people can recoil, particularly the word “love” when attached to business. So the reason I use these stories from my military experience and flying aircraft, I’ve emergencies is to demonstrate that these aren’t fluffy concepts at all, they really are not. It’s the key to what’s unlocked human performance and has us do certain things when everything is on the line. And it applies just as much as in, should we say everyday life as it does in those situations.
John: And I like you correlating with not just business but even relationships, let it be being a parent, friendships, community leaders, I mean whatever it may be. Because all these fundamentals it seems like you’ve learned and extracted over so many years of experience. It’s all about the fundamentals people take for granted. If you really care, you actually present, you listen and you wanna help others that’s what it’s all about. When you’re a parent, you’ll do anything and sacrifice. You’re gonna take the bullet, you’re gonna do whatever it is for your child, right? You’re gonna not even eat and drink or whatever it is because your child needs it, right? Like, whatever it is. So in the business world, that’s what has to happen as well, most people don’t come from a lot of money to be running a business. You probably have to sacrifice something to get there and in that sense, you probably have to sacrifice time or pay or whatever it may be, away from your loved ones for a short term, hopefully. So all these things make sense, the way you’re explaining it.
Peter: Well just building on that, John. Everything we do in life Is driven by one or two things. Everything that’s important to us is driven by one or two things. It’s either driven by fear or driven by love. Now I’ll come back to love thing ’cause in business, people do get a bit twitchy when I mention that word but let’s deal with fear first. Fear raises its head when we sense that our life is on the line. Well that’s good because it has a step back from the oncoming car that we didn’t see until the last moment, you know it saves our life. But fear well, it raises its head in other circumstances too. Fear is triggered when we sense that our livelihood, our status or our reputation is on the line. And when those three things are triggered, fear is much less helpful to us. Because in those circumstances, when our livelihood, status or reputations on the line, fear can show up as well. First of all, we close down, we don’t see, we’re not thinking about other people. We’re thinking about ourselves, we see the world not as a place of opportunity and possibility but is a place of scarcity. We might show up angry or the other extreme timid. None of these things are helpful to us in those moments and worst of all, our ego can come to the fore, and that’s where it all becomes about me ,ego is Greek for “i”. But here’s the thing, we always have a choice and that choice is instead to sort ourselves from love and the way we do that is by seeing fear as a warning flag. To prompt us to make that choice, love in a business context looks like well a focus on others, in our team and the people that we serve for our business rather than on ourselves. It’s about seeing the world’s a place of opportunity and possibility and importantly, instead of leading with ego, we lead with what I call “humble confidence”.
First of all, confidence is all about recognizing our strengths and being absolutely resolute on where we’re heading. I’m ready to make the decisions when they need to be made. But then the humble piece comes in. And humble confidence means that we have the humility to take a step back and listen to others and to source the collective genius of our team to figure out the solutions, to the challenges that we’re facing. But we can only have humble confidence if we sort ourselves from our place of love rather than a place of fear. So very briefly, we mentioned parenting and parenting I think is one of the greatest leadership challenges that the vast majority of us face and there are lots in the books “about my parenting journey” too. But sadly as we speak, we know that thousands of our predominantly mothers fleeing conflicts in their country. Here is an example of fear and love, fear has been the trigger they’re afraid for their life, their livelihood, and their reputation. But they’ve used that fear to source courage and that courage has had them act from a place of love. And what that looks like is to gather whatever they can and move to a country where they feel safe. They don’t know what they’re stepping into, there’s so much uncertainty that it’s difficult to begin to imagine. But they do it from a place of love, just as your mother did all those years ago. And here’s the thing with fear and love, courage can only be triggered by fear but courage can only be sustained over the long term through love and so it is with business as well. If we choose to act during times and certainty when we sense that our livelihood, our status or reputation is on the line, we choose to act from fear and be driven by ego. It isn’t going to turn out well. But if we make that choice to be driven instead by love, to be that guardian of hope, to lead with humble confidence. Then we will find the solutions to the challenges that we’re facing.
John: It’s great words of wisdom, Peter. I mean, I love how you’re giving analogies and it’s how life is, right? Give people real stories, give people real examples and life is more simple that way. By knowing real situations because people can understand what people are going through at that given time and moment. Like just going through my parent’s Vietnam War, leaving the country, sacrificing everything, liquidating all their assets, not knowing a language, coming to a new country, and not knowing how to navigate anything in survival mode. Like everything is going on and until you’re actually living that you do not understand what those people are going through, you can only imagine. But I can tell you it was challenging, it was different but I don’t take it for granted. I respect and really look at my mom as the biggest hero in my life and my parents really sacrifice everything they had, to do what was best for not them but for the next generation.
Peter: Absolutely, and that comes from a place of love, not fear. I think to your point as well, stories are great and that’s why my book is full of stories because it’s how we’ve shared knowledge over centuries. But each story, I’ve extracted the lessons from it, the things that we can act on in life and in business and that’s important I think. Stories are great, but it’s really important to distill them into actionable principles and concepts that you can put into action and practice, and that’s what “Leading from the Jumpseat” is now.
John: If you don’t mind sharing with the listeners a little bit more about “Leading from the Jumpseat”, about what’s going on in your kind of next pivot in your journey in life right now? And how it’s going for you?
Peter: Well, let’s just dive into that jump seat thing, because many people might not know what a jump seat is. So this is an aircraft to fly, for example, it dates back to when I was a senior officer in the Airforce and pilot. I was certified doing the last checks on this young captain called Callum. He’d been a first officer and co-pilot for many years and he just made the transition to become a captain, which involved about six months of training. Letting so much more detail about the aircraft and operations, and they may have known previously and the last part of the transition was for him to fly from London over to Washington Dallas and now on to San Francisco with the experienced guy such as myself acting as his copilot to give him that final check. And so it was with Callum, I was watching him as we flew into San Francisco which is a very busy airport and he did a great job. We landed taxed it in, the 140 passengers got off and it was with huge pride. I was able to turn to him and say , Callum, great job! You’re fully certified now as a captain. We’re stopping here tonight, in the morning we’ve got another full load of passengers back to Washington Dallas, you’ll have a regular copilot, a first officer with you and I’ll be down the back with the other passengers, well done”. It was a great feeling ’cause you’ve worked hard for this. Anyway, in the morning he thanked me and said then, I’ll just mind my own business because he’s doing his planning before taking off and he said “Excuse me sir” and the Sir is important here not for my ego, but the fact that I was very senior to him. He said It’s very busy here out of San Francisco in the morning rush hour, he said we don’t come here often, so can you come sit on the jump seat to act as an extra pair of eyes to make sure we tax the right way and we stay clear of other aircraft. I said Yes, captain, I’ll be delighted to. It struck me how courageous that was because he wanted me to sit on the jump seat, which is a seat, a third seat on the air, on the flight deck of the aircraft, usually empty but if you’re a crew member you can sit there and it’s immediately behind the two pilots. You can touch their shoulders when you sat there and that’s where you wanted to sit because you have a great view out the front. I thought it was very courageous because you just got me off his back, he’d been checked and assessed for months but here he was connected to a higher purpose, which was the safety of the airplane.
And they have the humble confidence to come to me and say, can you sit in the jump seat? So that’s where I sat, I strapped in. We got clearance to tax in, we made our way to the runway and finally, it was our turn to get airborne. We thundered down that runway and it was all going well. So we got up to about 3 or 400 feet off the ground just after takeoff, when we have an emergency and Callum was wrestling with the control. And I knew that in well say the next two seconds, what I chose to do would fundamentally affect the outcome of the situation and whether we would all survive or not. And here’s the thing, I did absolutely nothing. I sat there with my hands in my lap, perfectly relaxed, I just certified Callum to be able to handle anything on that aircraft if I didn’t think he could handle this situation we’re facing now, I would have had no business signing him up the day before. What I needed to do at that moment was not to lead, I needed to become a great follower. Callum need to feel that I had his back and this is what gave me the notion of leading from the Jumpseat. Because you know what we all hand over control in life if we’re the CEO of a company, we will retire, if we’re a team leader, will probably move on to another team, and yes, even as a parent, our kids eventually grow up, leave home and start to lead their own lives. So how many overcontrol is inevitable? Leading from the Jumpseat is all about how can we lean into that intentionally? How can we prepare our people? Lift them up, so that when the time is right they can take the lead. Jumpseat Leadership is not about retaining or growing our own power, it’s about empowering others. So that was the story that prompted the title of the book. Clearly, I’m talking to you now, so it will work out ok, John. But you can read the detail of it in the first few chapters of the book. So that’s been my focus and continues to be my focus now, the book came out in October of last year. So I’m delivering keynotes on it around the world virtually and in person, thankfully these days too. Also running workshops and at the moment I’m developing a course that other facilitators will be able to deliver, to be able to scale this way of leading across big companies to where they’re just as a time for me to be able to do. Workshops for everyone, so that’s the focus right now.
John: That sounds like so much fun. I mean, I look at how you put that into a story and make it realistic because as a business owner, I’ll give you my example. The first couple of years, do everything yourself, you hire a management team, you try to get them to delegate, you try to teach them to grow, let them make mistakes and then eventually you wanna have a business that runs on its own. So that you can focus on doing what you love and have some freedom because you put so much time and effort into growing this business, right? So in order to scale, you need to not be hands-on, you need others, just like you’re talking about to amplify, scale, reach other people and do the majority of the work because one person can only do so much. But if you have a fleet of hundreds of people doing it on a larger scale, hitting as many businesses or consultants or organizations, you’re at a much better part of growing your business really.
Peter: Of course, and you know to take the flying metaphor forward, you’re not gonna be able to go very far or go to many places if you’ve only got one pilot, you’ve gotta have lots of pilots who can deliver in the way that you want them to deliver and to carry forwards what’s deeply important to you. So everything in the book it’s a how-to guide, I describe through the stories and then give people the tools and techniques to be able to create an environment where people step up, take responsibility, where they begin to lead and we can take more and more of a setback. When we do that, it’s not just about handing over when we take a step back. It turns out that when you put into practice everything that I’ve written about you create extraordinary team and performance right here and right now. It helps us to lead when we don’t know the answer and for us to see that not as a weakness as a leader but as a strength. Because leading when we don’t know the answer does not come naturally to people.
The reason that we’ve been promoted or started our own businesses is that we do know the answer to the problem that we’re trying to solve, the big problem, the big thing that we’re trying to bring to the world. It’s actually quite hard to let go but I can tell you that when you do let go and you can put your hand up to your people and say look I really don’t know the answer to the situation we’re facing, but let me tell you a reason why it’s so important we’ve got to figure it out. And then you’re in service, you’re people creating an environment where they can learn their way through to the solution. And you are no longer the constriction in the pipe because if progress depends on you knowing the answer as a senior person, you are the limiting factor. So in the book, there are lots of examples of a real-time exam, I talk about the space program about NASA and Apollo 13. I give lots of business examples so you can see how this plays out in the real world and then how to do it yourself. I’m proud of the book because I know that it’s helping people right now to be better leaders than I ever was.
John: Amazing, Peter. It sounds like you’re having so much fun with this new journey of yours, your new business, yourself, right? ‘Cause this is a business of your own that now you’re starting and amplifying, and speaking and creating a kind of workshop and that’s a journey on its own as well.
Peter: It is! I established my business back in 2007, but I’ve always had businesses. In fact, I’ve started a new business to publish this book, I’ve started a publishing company and that was a deliberate choice. I could have gone down the traditional publishing route but I had so many people around me who I thought, you know what by starting my own publishing company I can draw them in, I can lift them up. In terms of giving them the opportunity to do what they love but take that step further to help them grow and so the writing of the book has been an example of everything that I’ve written in the book. It’s the whole journey of getting this book onto the shelves around the world has been an exercise in jump seat leadership and continues to be so. I’m desperately trying to practice everything that I’m preaching and I’ve written about.
John: Amazing, so where do you see yourself in the next 5-10 years?
Peter: In the next 5-10 years I hope that the people that I work with you know and I call it the people I work with they each have their own businesses. And I’m absolutely dedicated to helping them grow their business, it just so happens what they do in that business really helps me too. So I’m in service of them to grow their business and their livelihoods and that kind of works out pretty well because they seem to be in service of me too. So in five to ten years what I envisage, my vision is that all these people and perhaps one or two more all have their own thriving businesses, we’re all working with one another when it makes sense to work with one another and we’re all helping to lift each other up. And the work that I’ve put down in this, specifically from the jump seat and the course that’s coming out. The companion guide will be out there in the world and many others will be using it to deliver these ideas of “Leading from the Jumpseat” to their companies and spreading the word. That’s what I look forward to in the next 5-10 years.
John: Amazing, is there a type of company or an individual that you kind of see working with? That would help them more like an avatar type of persona that is an ideal type of client of yours to distinguish it so that at least the listeners would know if this would be a good fit to reach out to you, Peter.
Peter: So most of the companies that I work with tend to be larger companies because I’m focused on trying to do this and deliver this message at scale. But sometimes I speak or deliver work at conferences where there are lots of different smaller businesses. Some years ago, I delivered a four and a half-hour session for just under 3,000 people over in Australia, it’s just me on the stage. They were from many many different businesses some very small businesses but they’re all helping one another during that four and a half-hour session to help put the ideas I shared into practice. So in the right circumstances getting smaller businesses together, I think that’s a great way of delivering this at scale through lots of small businesses. At the moment my focus is on the larger organizations and I’m starting work very shortly with a large grocery store chain in North America, which is going to be exciting working at every level of that organization, so I’m looking forward to that very much.
John: That’s amazing and I know you’re going to bring so much value because you’ve seen it in the government. And the government has so many layers, so many people, so much structure, and processes systems that don’t even talk to each other, right? So there are a lot of challenges when it’s a large organization, the whole point is how do you streamline to be efficient and productive. How do you get it to a point where everyone along the way understands because communication gets distorted the further away you are from the main source. But as a smaller business, everyone is in a line but as you get larger it’s very hard to have culturally the same values or alignment throughout every single individual.
Peter: Absolutely, although it is possible. So one company I’ve written extensively about in the book is ASOS, the online fashion retailer and they’ve got something like 450,000 product lines they add 5,000 products a week to their website, and those products are available in over 200 territories and countries. So, absolutely huge scale, and it’s been run for the past few years by the CEO Nick Beighton, who is a Jump Seat leader. Going around their head office in London It’s phenomenal, the average age of their 4,500 employees is just 27 years old and when a new product is photographed in their studios in the morning it is available on their website that afternoon in 200 territories in every size. Now that takes what some might see as military precision but actually, when you go around their headquarters there are groups of people sitting on the floor having sort of creative conversations but it works, the reason it works is because everything we’ve been talking about has been applied at scale in ASOS and people are empowered, people are invited to bring their special genius whatever that happens to be to the party in service of the people who they serve.
And they’re all focused on ensuring that everyone in the world has got the opportunity to be who they want to be. They happen to just do that through the medium of fashion but that’s what they believe and everybody who works there believes that too. I think that’s vitally important as companies grow from being a small startup to becoming much larger, you’ve got to focus on what I refer to as the picture on the box. It’s like the jigsaw puzzle, there are all the puzzle pieces on the table that’s the content, the stuff that you do, the things that you talk about but the content has got no meaning whatsoever without context. Context is like the picture on the puzzle box and as senior leaders, founders, and entrepreneurs we need to make that picture as vivid as possible particularly as we start to grow. Because when that picture is very clear very vivid everyone else in your organization can figure out how to bring those puzzle pieces together. But if that picture on the box is not clear then things start to go wayward, and it starts to break down. So that’s the key the larger we get the more senior we are the more we need to focus on context, on that picture, on the box.
John: It’s all about branding and what does that represent, I love that. Well, thanks a lot Peter, I really loved our conversation. What’s the best way the listeners can reach out to you, check your information. This is your chance to shine on a plug.
Peter: Well you can find me in the usual places on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram, @peterdocker. My website is a growing place for resources that’s leadingfromthejumpseat.com, and there are videos and other resources on there but then, of course, the book “Leading from the Jumpseat” is available pretty much everywhere in the world, in paperback, hardcover, eBook and audiobook. So that’s the best way I guess, grab a copy it might even be in your library so borrow a copy and hopefully, you can start to learn and put into practice all of the ideas that I’ve shared and more.
John: Amazing, well I really want to thank you. I’m ultra grateful to have you and honored because you shared so many great stories and you made me smile throughout this entire hour because I had a lot of fun, and that’s what it’s all about, right? Having moments like this where you will cherish and remember. So I want to thank you for this great opportunity to have you on the show and hopefully, a lot of the listeners who had value check his site out, buy his book, watch his videos and reach out to him if you have any questions. Thanks a lot, Peter!
Peter: Thanks, John! It’s been an absolute pleasure talking with you today, bye for now.
