Why Lifelong Learning is Key in Treasury with Doug Williamson

During that period, fairly early on, I realized you can't teach people everything. You have to in some way get them in a place where they can teach themselves. So that stimulated an interest in coaching. My first wife had retrained as a life coach. I had some life coaching and the very first thing I read about life coaching from the coach said, the client, Doug, remains entirely responsible for all of his actions, omissions and their consequences. I liked that idea in terms of empowering the client. I also liked it from the perspective of the coach saying, I don't need to worry whether he or she does what he or she said she would. And I guess that that was quite parallel with students because some, most students will engage, a minority are incredibly hard to engage and they're going to fail their exams. And as a tutor you just have to relax about that and say, okay, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make it drink. So that made me appreciate there's a significant coaching motivation element to all teaching at its best, I feel, and I've been learning more about coaching since and currently continuing my learning and education about coaching and continually trying to integrate it with the finance. I like to believe everybody has the other motivation within them and you can evoke it. However, I guess it's a matter of if you've got an assessment until people are reassured they'll pass the assessment and until you can show them that's just a starting point. It's a bit like passing your basic driving test. So much more to learn. And I guess that's the best thing one can do to stimulate that is get a recent ex student and say, here's how I got through my assessments, my exams. However, here are all the things I've learned. Since this is just one step on a very long journey, or to put it in a more negative way, you're at the bottom of another extremely long and greasy pole because all of that knowledge is just assumed. You were mentioning before we started, that's a minimum. What's different about you? There's these differentiating things and I guess to me that's the application part or the development part as in learning and development. It's not just knowing stuff and demonstrating them and know it, it's I can apply it, tailor it and ideally, thinking of the treasury context in particular, see the perspective of the one who's on the other side of the negotiating table. Pick up as many qualifications as you can, speak to as many people as you can, write as much as you can. I think that the value of there's been no greater opportunity to write, social media, et cetera. And if people are in the habit of writing, you actually improve your thinking as you write and people will engage with you. I guess it's appropriate engagement and responses. And it's always have a plan, any plan. In other words, if I'm motivated, if I'm switched on, if I've got a sense of movement and direction, then I'm going to move purposefully. It might mean I then say, whoops, that didn't quite work out. Let's backpedal or let's take it, take a different tack. But to be moving with a sense of purpose and long and short term goals and let yourself change your mind appropriately as well. So I mean, this is the real tricky bit, is don't do things for too long, but don't do, don't ship out too quickly either.