‘I see confidence as something that’s rooted in how we feel before any words, something which touches on sensations.’
What do you think of when you think of sports coaching? Elite lean performance machines preparing to break records?
Mike Porteous has competed and coached at elite level as a triathlete, but he believes that coaxing new swimmers from the shallow end is just as important an act of coaching as taking an elite to a new world Ironman time.
To allow people to go beyond what they believed themselves capable of – in sport and in life – the coach needs to build confidence in three directions: the athlete’s confidence in their own ability, the athlete’s confidence in the coach, and, crucially, the coach’s confidence in themselves.
There’s an obvious parallel to the book-writing process, and the slow-burn confidence demanded of authors to grapple the uncertainty and believe that their message is worthwhile. If you’re involved in coaching, in whatever capacity, and particularly if you’re writing about it, this is for you.
Mike’s site: https://www.zigzagconfidence.com/
Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-porteous-11754235/
Alison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/the-alison-jones/
The 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge: www.proposalchallenge.com
The Extraordinary Business Book Club on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/1447064765612358/
Practical Inspiration Publishing YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@piptalking
Alison Jones: I’m here today with Mike Porteous, who is the founder and director of Sports Coaching business ZigZag Alive and founder of Confidence Centered Coaching, a resource for coaches across all sports with an interest in confidence and self-belief. He’s represented his country and is now a coach mentor for British Triathlon, and he coaches people across a wide range of abilities and ambitions from first time swimmers and triathletes to people undertaking long distance challenges like Ironman triathlons.
And he’s the author of Beyond Belief: The art of confidence-centred coaching.
So first of all, welcome to the show, Mike. It’s great to have you here.
Mike Porteous: Thank you so much, yes. I regularly tune into these podcasts so it feels something special to be here.
Alison Jones: Oh, that’s nice. It’s always nice… and you’ve got a sort of sense of what I’m going to ask you, which is always a bit of an advantage, isn’t it?
Well, I’m going to start with the really obvious one, which is, well, when you say confidence-centred coaching, what do you mean by that?
Mike Porteous: Okay. What I don’t mean, maybe I should start with that, is thinking of sort of clever tricks and tips that if only people said these things to themselves, or coaches told the people that they’re coaching these things, then they would have this magical thing called confidence.
That’s not what I’m about. That’s not what the book is about, and it’s not my understanding of confidence. I see confidence as something that’s rooted in how we feel before any words, something which sort of touches on sensations. And confidence-centred coaching aims to get to those places with people, but not just for the people that we are coaching.
It’s about how I feel as a coach, how I can, or how I try to create a space, I call it an assured space somewhere where I just feel like the coaching will just flow. It’ll happen naturally. I’ll bring the best of myself and there’ll be an easiness in the coaching. It’s also about the relationships of trust that we develop, again that kind of easiness between two people or a coach and a collection of people, as well as how can I help prepare people for these big, hairy, scary challenges that they come to me for help with.
Alison Jones: I have to..
Mike Porteous: All that means. Oh, sorry. Yes.
Alison Jones: Well, no, you finish that off and then I’ll kind of go back to you about that multifaceted dimension because that’s what’s really interesting to me. But just, yes, finish off because when you say, ‘and what that means is…’, I want to hear the rest of that sentence.
Mike Porteous: What that means is that, perhaps rather ironically for someone who’s written a book about the art of confidence in coaching, is I don’t believe there is such a thing as confidence. If you think of it as a thing that some people have and some don’t, or something that you build up in people.
Often people say that in quite a judgmental sort of way. You know, you really should be more confident, you know, let’s fix you, let’s get you on the right path.
Whereas if it’s about a deeper set of emotions, wow, that opens up quite a different way of coaching, of me being a coach and the relationships that I want to develop, as well as how I’m hoping that people will feel as they go into their particular challenges.
Alison Jones: And I love that identification of it as an emotion, an emotional state. And it also is something that you, that you construct, that you kind of co-create with people and it’s relational. And what really struck me about your book from the get go was that sort of multifaceted aspect of it, that it’s about confidence in yourself, but it’s also about confidence in your coach, and it’s about the coach’s confidence in their own ability, and this sort of virtuous kind of web of sort of confidence-enhancing things.
You obviously are from the world of sport, particularly triathlon, particularly, and swimming, but you and I know, and we’ve talked about the fact, that this is not just for people who fancy doing an IronMan tomorrow, is it? This is a much broader approach to confidence.
Why do you think it’s important even if you aren’t about to undertake an ultra marathon?
Mike Porteous: Well, I should say, I’ve been on a bit of a journey with it, but I didn’t set off on the journey thinking, oh, I’ll write a book that will apply to everyone, to leaders, to teachers, to parents, I set off very deliberately to try and have an impact in the world of sports coaching.
And then, as it happens, as I started showing people some of the drafts and talked about it with people outside of sport, more and more people are saying, well, this is so relatable to my area, to my area as a teacher or as a therapist.
And when I did the 10-day challenge with you, strongly to be recommended to all, I remember I kind of had to work myself around the loop of thinking, have I written this, have I got the audience right here? Surely there’d be a, you know, a bigger market if it was addressed to this wider population. But in the end I came back to say, no, in a sense, I was going to say I know my audience, but actually I, you know that I know my experience…
Alison Jones: yes.
Mike Porteous: …and when I’ve talked about it with other coaches and then I feel sure that there’s something there, no matter what sport, no matter what age group people are coaching, no matter what abilities…
Alison Jones: There is a very well trodden path, isn’t there, from, I was going to say from elite performance. I mean, you are not, you take in elite performance, but you are very clear that that’s actually not who you are and what you do necessarily.
Do you know, actually, let’s just touch on that. Why is it so important?
Because a lot of people draw a lot of their self-worth, their reputational kind of capital from the fact that they train national level athletes, and you are actually just as proud of the fact that you train kids to swim. Tell me a little bit about that.
Mike Porteous: Yes. Yes. I suppose it goes back to this thing of, the whole mission in a way, of confidence-centred coaching is to try and reimagine coaching. Where instead of performance being the kind of the heart of what we’re there for, and I as a coach have this expert knowledge, which will help you to perform to someone’s standard; what would happen if we reimagine coaching as fundamentally being about how people feel in the moment? Or again, how I feel as a coach?
If you step into that kind of arena, then the pinnacle of coaching, coaching at your best, isn’t going to be defined by whether you are with elite athletes, whether they’re, you know, at the very top of their sporting trees. Whether you are regarded as a, you know, top elite coach, it’s actually going to be in things which are far more basic, far more down to earth. How can I engage with a young person who really doesn’t want to be there, who’s come with a, you know, a whole burden of angst? How can I work with them in such a way where they feel that actually they belong in this place and they can really enjoy discovering how good it can feel? Or,
Alison Jones: The opposite of the toxic culture that we’ve seen so often in elite sport, isn’t it, that sense of…
Mike Porteous: yes.
Alison Jones: …sacrificing the athlete for the results, almost.
Mike Porteous: Yes. I’ve had over the years quite a number of women who, in their early sixties, come and say, you know, all my life I’ve wanted to swim, but at the same time, I’ve had myself telling me or other people telling me, you’re not really a proper swimmer, they come with a kind of a burning desire to find out what it’s like to swim, particularly in the open water, and for many of them to actually do quite a big challenge. You know, a five mile, yes, a five mile swim. Wow, I mean, that has to be like a pinnacle of coaching, being able to treat their ambitions with utmost respect, just as much as anyone would the Olympic athlete, to really honour what they’re bringing and to see it as, you know, I think of it as you are being handed a gift, the most privileged gift a coach could ever have.
It’s the person’s raw ambition, full of doubts, and all sorts of luggage from the past. Wow, that has to be up there as the best of coaching.
Alison Jones: And in that context you can see that if you can give back to them confidence, that’s the most amazing gift too. As you, I want to bring it just to the book for a minute, because you’ve been doing this work quite a long time, but as you started to shape it into a book, give it a title and put together a table of contents and so on.
What did you find most challenging about that and what did find most rewarding about it?
Mike Porteous: Right. probably the most challenging thing is partly the isolation because I didn’t do what I know you always encourage people to do, start with a publisher and then start writing. I did it sort of back to front, so I was pretty much on my own writing and kind of wrestling with these ideas.
Fortunately, I had someone who was ready to read each chapter as I wrote it, which we’ll maybe come on to, but that was quite challenging. And I’ve, on a very personal level, I get so absorbed in that kind of wrestling with an idea, that too easily I kind of, so I can get a bit lost in it.
Probably not the best partner to have around.
Alison Jones: But in a sense that’s, it’s a dance between that, isn’t it? Because if it’s too glib, if it’s too, this is what I already know and I’m just going to put it down and move on, that hasn’t really taken us anywhere particularly interesting. You know, I want our authors to almost be surprised themselves, to be discovering and unearthing new stuff. And there’s some uncertainty in that and you don’t quite know where it’s going to end.
At some point it has to end and at some point you have to have that kind of, it’s quite an agile loop, isn’t it? You’ve got a hypothesis and then you explore it and sometimes you change your hypothesis or it takes you in a slightly different direction, or you discover actually those parts are in a different order than I thought, but it’s quite hard to hold that intention and keep things moving.
Mike Porteous: Yes. Yes. Funny enough, it reminds me of, there’s a, like an art open house thing in the area at the moment, and at the weekend my partner and I visited one of the artists, a woman who does ceramics and painting, and she was telling us about her process and she said that what she does is, in a sense, it kind of, she lays down like a base material. And then she spends a lot of time, kind of in some cases, literally kind of scraping away some of the detail that’s there in order to get to what she called the essence of what it was that she wanted to capture. The emotion or the imagery. I think there’s something, I’m not as exalted as her, but there’s something in the writing I found like that, you know, of kind of grappling with this kind of fuzzy, unclear ideas, trying to put them down somewhere and then just going back and doing a lot of, kind of taking out. When I was writing it some days, I used to say to my partner, I’ve deleted more than I’ve actually written today. But it’s that process, you know, what is it I’m trying to get to here? What do I really feel? What does a person I’m describing, have I really got to what was going on for them or what’s going to help the reader? So that kind of stripping back to, I want to get hold of these big ideas.
Alison Jones: And the problem, of course, or the beauty, or both, is that you can’t go straight to the essence. You have to write around it. It’s quite iterative. And then you have to, as you say, strip back. I am firmly, and I’ve said it before on this podcast, I’m sure I’ll say it again, no writing is ever wasted because that’s what gets you to the point where you’re able to say in fewer words, more clearly, with the right imagery or you know, whatever it is, but it can feel heartbreaking when you sit down and you’ve written minus 4,000 words.
What did you enjoy most about the process?
Mike Porteous: Hmm. I’m not sure ‘enjoy’ is…
Alison Jones: …it was a leading question, wasn’t it?
Mike Porteous: I’ve been really quite taken aback by some of the feedback, I’ve had quite..
Alison Jones: Sorry I’m laughing because it’s that great thing. I don’t enjoy writing, but I enjoy having written, I can’t remember who said it, but it’s very true, isn’t it? Dorothy Parker I think.
Mike Porteous: And I don’t know if other people do this, but sometimes I find myself picking up the book and flicking through it. Oh this isn’t bad.
Alison Jones: That’s hilarious. Yes. And it is a beautiful book as well, actually. And if you’ve got a copy to hand, just hold it up so people on the video can see it. Yes. It is gorgeous, isn’t it?
Just, there’s something very, you know how you want to embody the emotion of the book, the sort of the feeling that it gives you on the cover, and I really feel it does that. It’s just, it’s very calm, but very energized and yes, I really like it.
I always ask my guests, Mike, for their best tip, for somebody just setting out on this journey. I am always worried when I say to people, what do you wish you’d known? That they say: If I’d known, I would never have started.
What do you wish you’d known before you set out on the journey? What would you like other people to know?
Mike Porteous: Well, I suppose that takes us back to the why did I write a manuscript before coming to publishers? I think I probably would’ve done it differently, for book number two, I think I’m going to adopt that approach. But it’s difficult because again, part of the process is, you know, you have this sort of fuzzy idea, how on earth are you ever going to persuade anyone to go with it until it’s in a form like, you know, the thoroughly worked manuscript where you’ve done all that scraping to get to the truth that you really want to share. Yes.
But certainly what helped me, thinking of, you know, kind of tips, was having that person, Professor Stephen Rollnick very generously said he read each chapter as I wrote.
And that helped kind of give, it gave me a spur, you know, when I found myself getting lost in other things, I thought, you know, I’d be thinking, oh, I really must send Stephen another chapter, I need to keep up the momentum. Yes, that really, really helped.
Alison Jones: Yes, got some accountability there.
Mike Porteous: Yes.
Alison Jones: I’m laughing as well, when you say about, well come book two, I’m going to do differently. because I don’t know if this is a common thing, but when I finished my first marathon, I remember very clearly as I crossed the line thinking, well I’m never going to do that again. Nothing to prove now, done my marathon. And by the time I sort of picked up my goodie bag, I was thinking, sure, I think I could probably do a bit better with that. Next time, what I’m going to do…, isn’t it funny how your memory hides the the horror?
Mike Porteous: Yes.
Alison Jones: You just think, oh, it’s terribly rewarding experience. I think I’ll do that again.
Mike Porteous: And actually now you say it, I do think some of the best moments were when I interviewed people for the book. And people are so generous and so open. And I’d come away just quite awestruck almost by saying, wow, wasn’t that amazing? How lucky am I to, you know, kind of witnessed or been a part of that conversation.
Alison Jones: It’s a great reason to write a book, isn’t it? It gives you, I was going to say a pretext, I don’t quite mean that because it’s real, but you wouldn’t have had those conversations if you weren’t writing a book. So that in itself is really important, isn’t it?
Mike Porteous: And that’s why I’d like to do a book number two.
Alison Jones: Not for the book. Just for the conversations.
Mike Porteous: The conversations, yes.
How amazing that would be.
Alison Jones: Yes. Oh, well I’m here for it. Brilliant.
And also, I always ask my guests for a recommendation, as you know, because you’re a listener. What book will you recommend us, Mike?
Mike Porteous: Alright, I’m going to go for something a bit unusual, if I may, so it’s not a business book. And it also has a slightly alarming title, Art Against Despair by the School of Life.
Alison Jones: Oh, brilliant. Love School of Life.
Mike Porteous: Yes. And you can tell, I’m a big, big fan.
Alison Jones: Yes. So go on. Why are you recommending it?
Mike Porteous: Well, the way it’s set out is, I was going to say, each day, you could read it that way, you know, one page a day, but each page has representation of a work of art and then some text alongside it. And then, I think there are two things that really impact on me. The first is sometimes you’ll look at a picture and you think, well, that doesn’t do anything for me. Why did they put that in? But the text, it kind of invites you to look that more deeply. To kind of look and say, well, what’s actually going on here? And particularly around the emotions. What was this person trying to convey or what kind of world did they live in when they created this piece of work?
And I think, especially for sports coaches, but I know for for other areas, that’s such an important skill. To be able to not go with your first reaction, but to have that kind of pause where you want to look a little bit deeply and say, what’s going on here? And most important, how does it connect to me? What does this leave me feeling?
Wow. I think that’s a key skill and in my book, not wish to plug my book in this…
Alison Jones: …oh, do…
Mike Porteous: …but I talk about that, you know, the difference between closed reactions and open responses. The skill for art of creating open responses. Yes, so that’s one thing.
And the other is just the compassion that each one of these text is written in it. And it kind of, it again, it tries to invite the reader to think about themselves. You know, I’ve felt this way and this is what has helped. Or yes, I can see that in myself.
Alison Jones: I love that, so often…
Mike Porteous: …that’s such an important skill, instead of thinking, as people tend to do, you know, kind of mental health issues over there somewhere with that bunch of people. And let’s be sensitive to them. Art Against Despair, oh, well, all the stuff by School of Life, it kind of invites you in to connecting to your own feelings, to your own fragility or uncertainty or, through that, I think if I can be compassionate to myself, it just happens naturally that I’m going to be compassionate and kind and generous to people in front of me.
So that’s what I’m, that’s what I want to be. That’s how I want to be. Yes.
Alison Jones: It’s a lovely antidote or counterpoint to what is so often the sort of dominant mode of the business book world, isn’t it? Which is informational, I’m telling you, and it’s authority based and that idea about really actively co-creating the experience and inviting you into the emotion.
That’s lovely. Thank you. Great recommendation. And Mike, if people want to find out more about you, more about Zigzag and more about the work that you do, where should they go?
Mike Porteous: There’s a website which is www.zigzagconfidence.com, and that has lots of blog posts and information on the philosophy and the actual practice of confidence centered coaching. And, y es, that’s probably the best, best place to start. I have a LinkedIn page, but I’m not very good at using it.
Alison Jones: Brilliant. I’ll put those links up on the show notes at extraordinarybusinessbooks.com and thank you so much for your time today. It’s mostly brilliant talking to you, Mike. Thank you.
Mike Porteous: Alright. Yes. Thank you for having me.
