#33 Why Telling People What to Do Doesn’t Work: Gareth Holebrook
Fri Dec 19 2025
In this episode, Grant speaks with Gareth Holebrook, President of North Harbour Tri Club, PREKURE Health Coach, and business coach, about leadership, influence, and why instruction alone rarely creates change.
Gareth’s leadership philosophy has been shaped by an unconventional career path. Thirty years ago, he served in the Royal Navy as an engineer, with ambitions to become an engineering officer. After being made redundant in 1984, he went on to work in Japan’s tech sector, where he was exposed to very different approaches to leadership, learning, and performance.
Drawing on those experiences, Gareth explains how the techniques he learned in Japan now underpin his work in business coaching and health coaching. At the core is a simple but challenging idea: if you tell people what to do, they’re unlikely to want to do it. Real leadership, and real behaviour change, comes from creating the conditions where people choose change for themselves.
A practical conversation about leadership, coaching, and how to move people forward without force.
More
In this episode, Grant speaks with Gareth Holebrook, President of North Harbour Tri Club, PREKURE Health Coach, and business coach, about leadership, influence, and why instruction alone rarely creates change. Gareth’s leadership philosophy has been shaped by an unconventional career path. Thirty years ago, he served in the Royal Navy as an engineer, with ambitions to become an engineering officer. After being made redundant in 1984, he went on to work in Japan’s tech sector, where he was exposed to very different approaches to leadership, learning, and performance. Drawing on those experiences, Gareth explains how the techniques he learned in Japan now underpin his work in business coaching and health coaching. At the core is a simple but challenging idea: if you tell people what to do, they’re unlikely to want to do it. Real leadership, and real behaviour change, comes from creating the conditions where people choose change for themselves. A practical conversation about leadership, coaching, and how to move people forward without force.