Mind over matter

"O the mind, mind has mountains," wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, It is line that Bart McEnroe fully appreciates as the Oldcastle man has built a business out of helping people attune their minds to achieve what they want in life. These days, he calls himself a 'business resultant'. It's a term he conjured up himself to distinguish himself from a business consultant, a job he had for years before he left, a little disillusioned and a lot wiser, to strike out on his own. The son of the late and well-known Oldcastle cattle dealer Bartle McEnroe and brother of former Meath footballer John McEnroe, he has been busy helping people meet the many challenges they come across each and every day. What McEnroe seeks to do is to talk to people, on an individual or group basis, and help them maximise their talents; he believes that when people are in the proper frame of mind and motivated in the right way, they can achieve more of what they want. His beliefs are based around the so-called 'Human Givens' approach developed by psychologists Joe Griffin and Ivan Tyrrell. The basic assumption in the approach is that humans have "evolved innate emotional needs that they seek to match to their environment, and that mental distress results when these needs are not met in a balanced way". McEnroe stresses that, when applied to everyday life, the approach can help people achieve their maximum potential. It can be applied in business, sport or any other walk of life. His work has brought him in contact with a wide variety of people from various professions and pursuits, including successful Tyrone team manager Mickey Harte who has described the Oldcastle man as his "mentor". McEnroe's involvement with Tyrone and the role he played in helping them to All-Ireland success was, he points out, exclusively involved him working with Harte rather than the players. "The main impact I had with Tyrone was the conversations I had with Mickey Harte. An awful lot of football managers make a big, big mistake," he says. "The big mistake they make is that the manager assumes the players can do what's in the manager's head; that's a major mistake because a human being is a self-contained organism. A player, or an employee, can and will only do what's in their own heads. "In the context of preparing the players from a mental prospective, their job is to work with what is in players' heads, not what's in the manager's head." McEnroe's advice is that a manager or boss should consult the players or employees; encourage them to talk about how they feel progress can be made. Invariably, he says, they come up with the "management picture". Often, they will come up with a better strategy than the management themselves. It's the kind of outlook that will not find agreement with army sergeant-majors seeking to impose unquestioning discipline among the ranks. But McEnroe insists it's a kind of strategy that works in the office, factory floor, building site - or playing pitch. The Oldcastle man's career as a 'business resultant' and his daily role of helping people fulfil their destiny is long way from the 1980s when he left UCD armed with a degree in agricultural science. Ireland was in the midst of a full-blown recession and McEnroe joined many others in going to England in search of employment. He worked on building sites yet also looked to further his education. He studied for a masters' degree and became a business consultant. He worked in that role in England and the US, but the job didn't quite turn out as he had expected. "In consultancy, I had my ideas and my idea was to impose my ideas on other people. Consultants may say they are the experts, they have the answers and they give all the answers to other people. What I found was that you go into a situation, work for six months or so and, when you left, people who were in there continue what they are doing anyway." New approach One day, while listening to the radio, he heard about the Human Givens approach put forward by Griffin. McEnroe purchased the book, digested the ideas and felt he could relate to what the message was. "It all made an awful lot of sense to me because Joe Griffin was first guy who explained to me what motivation was and where it came from and how we can actually understand how the human being works at an emotional, thinking level." On the morning last week the Meath Chronicle spoke to McEnroe, he was about talk to a group of salespeople in Co Wicklow. His aim was to focus minds so that objectives could be achieved. This, he pointed out, involved getting the sales people to development their sales approach with the customer, finding out information or the needs of a customer and meeting those needs. "It's a process we call RIGAAR," he explained. "It's building a rapport, gathering information, agreeing the customer goal, accessing resources, agreeing a strategy and rehearsal. I'm not setting goals. I'm asking the questions to get people to set goals for themselves. You don't set goals for other people." McEnroe works with people from all parts of the spectrum, from those who are finding life difficult in the midst of the current recession to high achievers who are looking to add further to their success. Remain focused For those who lose their jobs or are on the verge of relinquishing their business, the main lesson is to remain "calm as possible and focused" in the midst of the storm, something McEnroe admits is extremely difficult if not impossible for some. "The main thing we have to aim to teach people to do, either high performers or not, wherever they are on the spectrum, is how to be able to relax themselves down so that they are at the appropriate, emotional arousal level to be able to think clearly in the context of which they are working in," he says. He believes it is important that people don't allow themselves to become "emotionally hijacked", restricting their ability to think clearly and use their innate resources clearly and effectively in times of stress. The sudden arrival of the recession, McEnroe says, undermined some people's perceptions of themselves as confident, successful members of society. As part of the response, McEnroe believes these people may need to readjust to their economic environment; they may need to "calibrate their brains" in such a way that they can adapt to the new situation. He adds that people can feel their lives are in a downward spiral for a number of reasons, such as unemployment or the trauma that's involved in losing their jobs. But Bart McEnroe is one voice out there seeking to help people improve their lot with the power of the mind - something Hopkins also knew a thing or two about.