Episode 81 – Bek Smith | Mental Fitness Expert

In this episode I chat with Bek Smith, founder of Smith and Wellness, speaker and subject matter expert in health and wellbeing. Bek has a background in psychology, spent ten years working as a physiotherapist, is a group fitness instructor of 17 years and was sponsored by Reebok for 5 years in her role as a dance program presenter. She was also the inaugural Lead Trainer for the Wellbeing and Resilience Centre at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, and in 2019 did a TEDx talk on the importance of mental fitness.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:02

Bek, welcome to the podcast on a hot summer’s day. No, it’s still spring. Hot spring day in 2020. Summer starts in December, right?

Bek Smith  00:13

Indeed, yes

Murray Guest  00:15

It feels like summer, doesn’t it?

Bek Smith  00:16

It very much does. And I’m really appreciative on this warm day to be sharing some warmth with you. Oh, that’s

Murray Guest  00:22

the nicest thing to say to start a chat. Thank you. I’m looking forward to diving deep into mental wellbeing, mental resilience, mental fitness. How’s your week been? Because you have interesting things in Adelaide with lockdowns and non lock downs and all that

Bek Smith  00:44

Oh my gosh, I would say that my week has been positive. And it has given me cause to be optimistic. And it has also been really fluctuating. So yes, we went into lockdown for what was meant to be six days. And then we were told, after three days now it’s okay, we’re going back to easing restrictions again. And, you know, all the complications that came with that for many businesses, didn’t impact me directly. But I did notice that, interestingly, going into lockdown was not as difficult for me as coming out of it again, when they said we’re easing restrictions. I was like, I’m not ready. I was so mentally prepared to be in my house for the next three days. What do you mean, I have to go back to the world?

Murray Guest  01:29

I just bought all this pasta and toilet paper. What’s going on?

Bek Smith  01:32

What am I gonna do with everything in the fridge?

Murray Guest  01:38

Yeah. Do you analyze or assess yourself based on what you know, as that stuff happens?

Bek Smith  01:47

Very much so. And sometimes I feel like I’m over-analytical of myself, because of the nature of the work that I do. And, but I think that preceded the work that I do as well, I was always quite self reflective. And as a child, I wasn’t very social. So I spent a lot of time on my own. And I think that lends itself toward me being quite self reflective, and overly analytical. And that actually made me interested in studying psychology. So then when I go to university, you know, one of the fields and one of the parts that I took was to study psychology so I could get more of an understanding about myself. And I guess that internal reflecting hasn’t really stopped.

Murray Guest  02:31

Got you. And as you were going through that reflective process of coming out of lockdown, did you get to any breakthrough moment of what was going on as to how you’re feeling? Yeah,

Bek Smith  02:43

great question. I think it was, for me, the best insight was that I had a societally permitted few days to just stop and to stop the activity. And then when that got taken away, again, it felt like the permission to stop was removed. And so I sat with that and went ha, actually, the only permission that I need is my own permission to stop and to relax. And so the insight for me has been in, oh, maybe I do need to put the brakes on a little bit more than I have been recently and give myself that permission to take more time out without being enforced upon me.

Murray Guest  03:29

Yeah, it’s like, sometimes we need that permission to do something. But let’s give ourselves our own permission. And I know one thing we’re going to talk about is self care. And something I’ve learned over the years, I can’t remember who said it first, but self care isn’t selfish. Yeah. But like when you’ve said, okay, you need to stop, we’re going to stop for six days. This is what the government saying, Oh, okay. So I’m going to look after myself. I’m going to slow down. But how do we bring that into our day to day approach and behaviors?

Bek Smith  04:00

Yeah, absolutely. And there’s so much programming that I know that I have to stay productive and to stay busy. And that’s something that I’ve been consciously aware of for about 10 years before that the programming was there. And I was just kind of working to it without being aware of it. But the last 10 years, I’ve been making more of an effort to drop the attachment to being busy. And when I read some of Brene Brown’s work around busyness as a status symbol, and productivity as self worth, really hit me in the field, I was like, Oh my god, she can see inside my soul. Ever since reading that work, I have been more and more conscious of giving myself those permissions to slow down. However, my default is still to go back to busy and productive and I’m just continuing to work with that default pattern and trying to bring In a little bit more self compassion. And as you said, a little bit more self care over time.

Murray Guest  05:05

I was talking to my wife the other day, and I said, I’ve got a few emails to send. She goes, do you know how often you say that? Oh, okay. Let me just check in on that. Yeah, there’s this status of I’ve got a few emails to send. I thought, okay, there’s, there’s a pattern there that I’ve got myself into.

Bek Smith  05:23

And how useful is it to have other people, they’re reflecting back to you and showing that mirror too?

Murray Guest  05:29

I said, I can’t hear you. I’ve got to send these emails. No.

Bek Smith  05:35

I can’t possibly I’ve got important things to do. Because I’m important, and I need to go send important emails. Yeah,

Murray Guest  05:40

yeah. As I bash on the keyboard, yeah. I’m getting better at asking myself the question, is this the most valuable use of my time right now? Can this be sent tomorrow? And again, it’s rewiring my brain after using corporate roles. And but I’m still, as a human, I’m getting better at it. But I slip up and also back into the I need to be busy and serving and doing stuff.

Bek Smith  06:07

Yeah. It’s very interesting, though. I talk a lot about balance and trying to find the balance between different things, because it’s no use shutting off from everything. And it’s no use being completely engaged in everything all the time, you know, you need to have that right balance. So I love that question that you’ve just asked about, ‘is this the most valuable use of my time right now?’ Because sometimes, the best thing that you can do for your self care is to unplug and switch off. But sometimes the best thing you can do for your self care is to plug in and do those things, because they’re going to give you a sense of fulfillment. And so it’s just about what’s the most valuable thing right now? It’s a great reflection question.

Murray Guest  06:48

Yeah. And I had four chunks of work I need to get done this week. Each one was only about 20 minutes. And because I didn’t do them early on the week, I could feel the emotional baggage building on those because I kept on putting them off. And then when I stopped to get one done, I was like, Okay, I feel a bit better. Now I can do the next one. Yeah, that’s such a great insight that you’ve brought to the conversation around self care. Sometimes we just need to, to get it done. Other times, we need to tune out but actually being aware of where we’re investing our time.

Bek Smith  07:20

Yeah, definitely self care might be doing that piece of work for 20 minutes, not stepping out to have a massage, right?

Murray Guest  07:28

Yes, yes. Okay. So help me understand this mesh, this integration of psychology, and being a physiotherapist, how did you get to that place? And, why that?

Bek Smith  07:43

Yeah, sure. So to explain that, we’ll take a little bit of a journey back to my teenage years, and I was trying to make that decision about what to study at university. And because I had that self reflective nature, paired with some experiences of mental illness from a young person, I was really attracted to psychology because I wanted to understand more about myself. And in studying psychology, I actually decided that I was not in an emotional place to be able to help other people. So I got three years into my study pathway. And when I can’t go forward with clinical psychology, I’m just not in the most, you know, robust place for myself. So I actually diverted to a research career. And I left after three years of study after finishing my bachelor’s degree, and I went into research psychology. And that was wonderful because I got to study communication, and I got to work in a setting where I learned a lot. However, then I got really bored of sitting at a desk. And research psychology is a lot of number crunching, and a lot of report writing, and actually not a lot of interacting with people. So that year for me was really valuable in learning new things. And one of the things that I learned was that I would like to be more people oriented than that. So I decided to go back to university and study physiotherapy instead, and found out that there was a graduate entry pathway that I could take where I wouldn’t have to start the whole four year physiotherapy degree from scratch, but I could actually take some of what I’d studied in my undergraduate bachelor’s degree and apply that so I could finish the masters of physiotherapy in two years. And so then I branched off into clinical work and never intended to go into private practice. I always wanted to be in a hospital setting because I felt that that’s where I could make most difference. But I landed in this private practice job and loved it, loved it, and was there for 10 years. And funnily enough, one of the things that kept coming up in my physical therapy work treating my clients was all of their emotional baggage. It’s amazing what happens when as a therapist, you lay your hands on somebody, there is a barrier that comes down. And I don’t know how many patients of mine said to me, oh my god, I haven’t even told my psychologist this, but bla bla bla bla bla. And then I was like, I’m doing this counseling work that I never intended to. And I actually didn’t feel like I was fully qualified to do it, either. So, in 2016, I circled back to psychology again, and studied deployment of positive psychology and well being. And that lit me up like you wouldn’t believe. Because all of a sudden, I had found this field of positive psychology, which is about building on our strengths, which I know you do a lot of work in. And looking at how we can live our best lives, not just how can we recover from difficulties and trauma, but how can we actually thrive and flourish in our lives. And I feel like that was the missing piece that I had actually been looking for when I had been studying at an undergraduate level. So since then, my intention was to take that Diploma of positive psychology and wellbeing and integrate it into my physiotherapy practice. But then an opportunity came up to work as a lead trainer in a wellbeing organization. And I unexpectedly ended up taking this leap into public speaking, education and training and so long physiotherapy. So there was a little period of integration there of the psychology with the physiotherapy. But now it’s diversified into just a completely new career path for me.

Murray Guest  11:47

Yeah, and I can relate from similar journey around discovering strengths and the strengths based approach and impact that’s made on me and the people I work with, and the link between strengths and positive psychology. So I hear you, and I, high five, you.  I’m wondering though, when you reflect back on the 10 years of physiotherapy, what were some of the things that you now leverage and reflect on that’s really helped you and what you do now,

Bek Smith  12:22

I think a lot of the questioning, you know, the lines of inquiry with my patients, and the non judgmental approach that I took to my clinical practice. So whereas some physiotherapists that I worked alongside, would freak out a little bit, if there was a patient with complex conditions, you know, if they were presenting with a chronic pain presentation that was wrapped up in mental illness, or there were a lot of what we call yellow flags, where there were social behavioral issues that were compounding their pain presentation, those visitors would often hand ball the patient to me, “Bek’s really good with these kind of complex presentations” when there’s a lot of emotional baggage. And I would just always take a very open line of inquiry for those people, you know, and I would probably ask them questions that other physiotherapists weren’t brave enough to ask explicitly around, you know, their emotional state or their mental state. And I wouldn’t offer solutions, but I would just ask questions and open up conversations. And then in many instances, I was able to steer them towards seeing a counselor or a psychologist that they hadn’t been willing to before. So I think it’s that line of inquiry in the openness that I use that I still leverage from now.

Murray Guest  13:44

Yeah, gotcha. And what I’m also hearing there is knowing where your lane is, and when you refer and don’t refer?

Bek Smith  13:53

Yes, absolutely. And in some instances, people come in, and their pain presentation is compounded by loneliness. And, you know, in those instances where people have got very limited social connections, I try to steer them toward engaging in Pilates classes. And we had a thriving Pilates community in our clinic where because all these people would come together, and they’d make friends and they do their Pilates class, then go and catch up for coffee afterwards. So sometimes just staring in that direction was really useful. And more recently, I’ve come across the terminology around social prescribing, which I read about in some of Johann Hari’s work, they’re starting to do that more in Europe and in the UK, where doctors will socially prescribe community groups to people. Because the loneliness factor is so high, and such a contributor to depression for many people.

Murray Guest  14:46

And I was gonna just jump in and say and 2020 has highlighted that even more.

Bek Smith  14:53

Absolutely. And at the positive side of that is that it’s brought it more to the forefront of our attention, and I think that we now see the importance of social connection in a renewed way. So I’m hopeful that we can start to leverage from that understanding. 

Murray Guest  15:09

I’m wondering also just around when you were practicing and with what you do now, how are you aware and what tips you could possibly share around creating an environment, an environment where people open up, where you create that level of trust, and Brene Brown obviously talks about that pair of trust and vulnerability. But what do you know, really creates an environment where someone is going to open up to you when you ask those questions.

Bek Smith  15:34

I think it’s a combination of different things. One of them is body language, it will be being able to face the person but in a non confrontational way. So I found that I often used to sit facing my client, but on a slight angle, and leaning toward them, rather than sitting back and looking like I was retreating, giving them eye contact, but not staring at them, either. Allowing space in the conversation, which is so important, because I think when you’re having conversations around things that are emotionally heavy, your nervousness can sometimes make you want to fill the space. And so one of the skills that I learned was just being able to leave some silence, especially when it looks like somebody is pondering or trying to come to a conclusion or find an answer. And, again, just being non judgmental, and trying not to anticipate what you’re going to say next. But just letting things emerge, not trying to fix the problem, but allowing the problem to emerge. So that then it’s out on the table, and both people can then discuss it.

Murray Guest  16:43

Yeah, there’s something that’s sticking with me there too, about not trying to fix somebody, but partner with them to potentially solve a problem or to achieve a goal. But I’m not trying to fix you. I’m not making you wrong. So even before your work in positive psychology, I’m hearing that was just part of who you were in your approach back then as well.

Bek Smith  17:05

Yeah, it was, and it was helpful earlier on, I think it was around 2012. I did some study in coaching. So I went and did a wellness coaching certificate. And that strengthened some of that natural tendency toward inquiry for me. And it helped me to take those lines of questioning with people in a in a more skillful way.

Murray Guest  17:31

Yeah, I’m loving those tips that you just shared, because I think whilst you may not be a practitioner, or a coach, or a leader, but they’re just great tips for anyone that wants to really show up in a way that’s really present for someone else.

Bek Smith  17:48

Yeah, whether that be in a professional context, or just with your mates.

Murray Guest  17:51

Yeah. Tell me what’s the difference between mental health and mental fitness.

Bek Smith  17:59

For me, the analogy that I use is to come back to the body and to consider a healthy body and a fit body. A healthy body is something that we might do with a little bit of input and consciousness and awareness. So in order to be healthy, we might be aware of eating right, we might be aware of exercising, we might be aware of staying hydrated enough and getting enough sleep. And for some people, there can be a little bit of effort involved in staying healthy. For some people, they seem to be naturally gifted with a healthy body. And they just seem to be able to do anything, eat anything, not look after themselves, and they their blood pressure stays great, their cholesterol stays great. Those people who tend to smoke for decades and turn out to be fine. And so health I feel can be hit or miss. Yeah, you can be lucky to be in good health, you can be unlucky to be in bad health. Sometimes it takes more effort, sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of effort at all. Whereas with a fitness approach, there is always effort involved in fitness, there is always something deliberate, that you’re doing. And it’s the same with mental health, some of us are lucky enough to have a good foundation of mental health that potentially some of us might take for granted. Others are unlucky to not have great mental health. And there have been lots of contributing factors around that just like physical health, but to be mentally fit, we need to take deliberate action. And just like with our bodies, the more deliberate action we take to make ourselves fitter, the more likely we are to also be healthy along the way. And it doesn’t mean that we’re not going to occasionally get sick, right? So the fittest healthiest person will still come down with a cold or a virus sometimes. But the fitter we are, the less likely we are to be struck down by illness. So For me, that’s the difference between health and fitness. It’s just taking it to that next level of deliberate action.

Murray Guest  20:06

Yeah, I’m also thinking about the ongoing investment. So if I think about an athlete and their fitness that’s like, yeah, I’m fit for the season. I’ve done my preseason training, I’m done. No, there’s an ongoing investment throughout the season, throughout the year throughout their life. And that’s what I would add, tell me if I’m wrong, I’m thinking about, okay, how do we continue that investment, that growth mindset around my mental fitness?

Bek Smith  20:34

Absolutely. And there’s the question – do I want to maintain the fitness that I have, or do I want to grow and progress the fitness that I have, what level do I want to be at with my mental fitness. And that is also going to depend on what challenges you’re required to face, so if you decide that you want to go from one sport to another, you might need to change your fitness regime. And if you decide that you want to start to lift heavier weights, you’re going to have to start to challenge yourself a little bit more. So it very much depends on what you want out of your life. But I think that it definitely lends itself to conversations when we’re talking about mental fitness around what do you want? And definitely, what kind of investment do you need to make to get there?

Murray Guest  21:17

And back in 2019, you did a TED talk on the importance of mental fitness?

Bek Smith  21:23

I did.

Murray Guest  21:25

Before we jump into the actual content, tell me about what it was like to do a TED talk.

Bek Smith  21:34

Yeah, it was so bizarre. Because over the past three years that I’ve been doing, speaking, a lot of my speaking is a bit more free flow. And I tend to think about beforehand what I want to say. And so when I’m going into a presentation of some sort, I’ll often have dot points in my mind of these are the three or the five key points that I want to make. And the way that I express that I’m just going to get there and it’s going to flow, and it’ll come out however it comes out. But as long as I cover those key points whereas with a TEDx talk, we were required to write out our script word for word, and then practice that verbatim over and over and over again, until we had it exactly right. Then on the day, you just hope that it’s all going to come out the way you’ve practiced. And in my case, it didn’t. If you watch the TEDx talk, you might go, Oh, yeah, that all flowed fine. But behind the scenes, what was happening is I got about five minutes in and realized that I’d forgotten this huge chunk. And it had just went. And so I’m still talking and going, Oh, my God, I forgot that big chunk. Do I just chuck it in now? Will it make sense if I say it now?

Murray Guest  22:51

Your impression of a duck swimming on water was fantastic.

Bek Smith  22:53

I walked out of there, walked off the stage. And the only thing I could think about was did it even make sense. So I didn’t get to see the recording until it went live on YouTube. And so I had no idea that it would even make sense. And when I watched it back, I was like, Ah, okay, you can actually comprehend what I’m trying to say, good. It was not what I intended.

Murray Guest  23:23

And for anyone that isn’t aware, the TEDx process has the 10 commandments, don’t they? Which is like the 10 things you are not to do when you’re on stage type of thing.

Bek Smith  23:33

Yeah, pretty much and the things that they were coaching us to do, because we had a speaking coach that worked alongside us with the build up process to help us both and write our content and in practice, how to deliver it. And there was a whole bunch of stagecraft around that that I had not been privy to before. So things like instead of gesturing with, you know, hand gestures that you would normally make in conversation, you have to make them three times bigger. And if you’re going, you know, 1-2-3, you have to project and be a lot more animated than I’m used to. So it felt very unnatural. But when you do watch it back on camera, you go, Ah, that actually, I didn’t look as big as I felt. Yeah. And it’s just such such a bizarre process, but one that I learned a lot from, and I’m really grateful for.

Murray Guest  24:28

Yeah, well, I’ve heard about 20% more. But what you’re saying maybe it was 40%, right?

Bek Smith  24:37

Yeah, everything goes big.

Murray Guest  24:39

Yeah. I love what you talk about in your TEDx talk about bringing this mental fitness and physical fitness together. So this dream you have about when people go and get something looked at in their body or the physical body, that there’s those conversations that you and I have been talking about that are also happening from a practitioner or a coach, whoever it might be a trainer, around the emotional and the mental side. How do we get to that place? Do you reckon?

Bek Smith  25:11

Yeah, it’s gonna be a journey. First of all, thanks for watching the TEDx talk. I think that that perspective for me came from my work in the fitness industry as well. So I’ve been teaching group exercise for a long time, as you mentioned in the introduction, and I’ve noticed that even though I haven’t worked as a personal trainer, I have a lot of personal trainer friends. And they say similar things to me, like I was experiencing as a physiotherapist, that they get a lot of clients who will offload things emotionally onto them. And in their personal trainer role, they don’t feel like they have the capability to be able to coach their clients with what they need. And so the marriage between physical fitness and mental fitness for me was really born out of my experiences as a physio as well as listening to those experiences of personal trainers and feeling as though there is such a gap, when we’re talking about our health practitioners and our fitness providers in what we are able to provide for clients. And because I had done that coaching qualification, I started to think, my gosh, even if everybody just did a little bit of extra wellbeing coaching, and was able to then not solve problems for their clients, but lead them through that process of inquiry about, oh, what could my next step be? That would be so valuable. And then the next step after that is, well, what if we actually had some practical skills and tools that we could offer clients, which doesn’t fall into the scope of psychotherapy, however, stays within our lane, and helps us to help those clients more. And those things might simply be around, you know, some of the work that you do in asking them about their strengths, and how they can apply that to their fitness? Or to their recovery process, their rehabilitation? Asking people, instead of what’s wrong with your body at the moment, what do you want to fix? Asking them, what’s going right in your body? What do you appreciate? What are you grateful for in your body, and just getting people to think a little bit differently. And I don’t think that we need to be sitting on a psychologist couch in order to give people some of those skills and tools that they need to just think a little bit differently.

Murray Guest  27:35

And I’m thinking about how with all good intent, some people might be you know, ‘When all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail’. So people come to your your class and you go, we’re going to do this program, and we’re going to force this out, we’re going to do this program, we’re going to do that program. But actually maybe based on today’s mental health or mental fitness of somebody, we actually need to do something a bit different, maybe we need to modify that, maybe we need to work with them a little bit differently, based on where we’re at today. Because where we’re at today might be totally different from where they were last week.

Bek Smith  28:13

Yeah, absolutely. And we can carry so many assumptions that what was okay last week is still okay this week. And just because I’m able to do it somebody else will be able to do it. And from a group fitness perspective, when I’m teaching classes, which are around, most of the stuff that I teach is dance based or yoga based. And I will always offer two or three variations of moves, because I don’t want to make an assumption about the ability of my client that day, let alone in general. And my classes have always been quite full of a range of diverse people, different ages, different genders, different ability levels. And it’s because I’m quite inclusive in the way that I teach. So if you can’t do it this way, just do it this way instead. And I encourage people to be non judgmental about themselves and to be compassionate about themselves and to really listen to their body. So I’ve always blended those kind of internal reflection processes into our physical practice, because I think it’s really important to marry the two together.

Murray Guest  29:24

Yeah, I heard about some research a few years ago, and I wish I could reference it correctly. But the research was around, if you have people do exercise that they love, they’ll actually have a better improvement, they’ll achieve better results than if you get someone to do exercise that they actually don’t like doing. So I’m not a swimmer. I can swim, but if you asked me to go and do laps of the pool, I’m just not going to get the results of someone else that loves swimming. And so I’m wondering what your perspective is there around that link between our emotional or mental perspective of the exercise and the exercise that we do.

Bek Smith  30:12

The connection is just enormous. And I’ve always encouraged people to explore different forms of physical exercise to find what works for them, and not just throw the baby out with the bathwater. So if they don’t like running, don’t give up on exercise altogether. If you don’t like that exercise at the gym, don’t give up on it altogether. But just keep experimenting until you find what’s right for you. Maybe it’s roller skating, maybe it’s weightlifting, maybe it is chasing your dog around the yard, or whatever it is, find what brings you joy. I think that the more I have followed my joy in my life, the more it has taken me to places that are not only making me happy, but making me more productive and making me more useful for other people as well.

Murray Guest  30:58

I love the link here to what brings you joy and what brought you joy as a child. And how can you do a version of that now? For me, when I ride my mountain bike, I’m thinking I’ve got my flannel shirt on my tracksuit pants, and I’m with the guys in the bush and I’m 12 years old. And on school holidays. And sometimes I can smell something when I’m riding my bike. I’m like, back there. And that brings me that joy. Where swimming takes me back to swimming lessons, of being screamed at with a kickboard. I’m like, Oh, no, no thanks. So what’s that thing that brought you joy when you were young? And how can you do a version of that now?

Bek Smith  31:45

Gosh, I love that. That’s something for everybody who’s listening to this to really consider and such a great takeaway.

Murray Guest  31:51

Yeah, maybe it’s go climb a tree?

Bek Smith  31:53

Yeah, yep. Go play with some hula hoops. See where that takes you.

Murray Guest  31:59

Not very far, my hips aren’t that flexible.

Bek Smith  32:03

I took up rollerblading again. And that’s brought me so much joy. I’m so terrible at it. And I feel like a baby giraffe and so uncoordinated. But I am just having so much fun with it and meeting new people. And yeah, I’ve been exercising at the gym for you know, two decades. But just adding another little string to my exercise bow has been so much fun.

Murray Guest  32:28

And you’re using different muscles.

Bek Smith  32:30

Yeah, absolutely. And different social connections, there was a very interesting opportunity we had at the gym that I work at this year, when we were returning from the COVID lockdown in South Australia, where people had to book in for classes and book in for gym visits. With gym visits meaning going to exercise independently on the treadmill, or do weights or whatever. And the uptake of individual gym visits versus the uptake of group fitness classes was extraordinarily different. So with people coming back, we had about 24% uptake of individual gym visits, versus 86% saturation of group fitness classes.

Murray Guest  33:16

Wow.

Bek Smith  33:16

And I think that’s because of the social connection that gets created when you’re exercising with others. And that’s what people were missing and wanting to come back to. So one of my big tips around exercising mentally, or exercising physically, is to also ask yourself, How can I incorporate others into this journey with me? Because the social accountability can be really powerful but the social enjoyment can be really powerful, too.

Murray Guest  33:42

Yeah. And we’re pack animals aren’t we? 

Bek Smith  33:47

Yep, absolutely. And I’m not going to get out of bed at six in the morning on my own. But if my friend Maria is going to come and join me, yeah, well, I got to get up because I don’t want to disappoint Maria. So we often do things to you know, keep playing along with the pack.

Murray Guest  34:01

Yeah, I totally agree. Now just to help bring together some of your insights, and to help my listeners around some of those tips to really develop that mental fitness. You shared a few things already, but what would you say are some of those key things that people can do to build that mental fitness?

Bek Smith  34:22

I think one tip comes back to my point around balance that I mentioned before, you know, so many things come back to balance for me. And with mental fitness training, it’s important to have a variety of strategies. The same as though we might cross train with our body. If you are only doing heavy weight lifting for one muscle group, you will end up creating an imbalance in your body. And if you’re not stretching, and if you’re not exercising other parts of your body and in other ways, then you’re going to lead to an injury or a dysfunction. So there are approaches within psychology, like cognitive behavioral techniques, for instance, that if you only work with cognitive behavioral techniques and nothing else, you might end up becoming quite rigid in only working with those techniques. So rather than just thinking about your thinking, maybe diversify and also use other mental fitness strategies like mindfulness, or cultivating positive emotion, or practicing stillness, practicing authenticity, and have a range of different mental fitness exercises that you do so that instead of only training for mental strength, you’re also training for your mental flexibility and agility and your mental endurance as well.

Murray Guest  35:37

Oh, I like that so much. Because I’m just thinking about how that looks in my life and the people I work with. And I think quite often, we can go down the rabbit hole of our I need to go and do a whole program of ‘blah’ to invest in my mental fitness and wellbeing but let’s try a few things and keep that balance going. So something that’s worked strongly for me is active meditation.

Bek Smith  36:15

Oh, I like it. Tell me more about that?

Murray Guest  36:18

Well, I used to think I had to go and sit in the forest with my legs crossed and harm my hands in a perfect pose and recite something. And I realized that that’s not what it’s about. That, by doing different tasks, I can get into that zone. I realize I’m quite meditative. And I can feel like my breathing comes back under control, I’m more focused, and my energy levels are better, my hormones are balanced out, and I’m much more relaxed and less stressed doing different techniques. And to be honest, it might be sweeping the floor slowly, mindfully, or, you know, taking the clothes off the line – I’m not going to rush and rip them off, I’m just going to slowly take them off, and take that time out. And definitely riding my mountain bike, I can get like that if there’s a trail I know where the risks are, I can feel like I’m resetting.

Bek Smith  37:14

Absolutely. I love that you’ve mentioned that because I was speaking with somebody this week around stillness and mindfulness. And she was saying, I really struggle with it. You know, she has a complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And she said, sitting in stillness is excruciating. For me, it just brings so much up that I can’t handle and we were talking about exercise, physical exercise as a form of meditation. And because I know her through the gym, I said, What about movement? You know, are you able to get into the zone through exercise, and she was like, Oh, that’s the only way I can do it. So I will do more of that. If that’s something that you love, it’s bringing you joy, it’s helping you to clear your mind. Your body may be moving, but your mind is more still. And so you’re getting that balance, which is great.

Murray Guest  38:03

Yeah. And again, I think that leads to your strengths based approach or positive psychology approach, which actually helps tap into what works best for the individual.

Bek Smith  38:14

Yeah, because there is no recipe that’s going to suit everybody. Just like there is no recipe of food that you can make that is going to please everybody’s palate. There is no mental fitness recipe, or physical fitness recipe that’s going to suit everybody in every mind.

Murray Guest  38:31

And not everybody likes coriander. 

Bek Smith  38:33

I know.

Murray Guest  38:35

But they should. 

Bek Smith  38:36

I can’t stand coriander

Murray Guest  38:40

We have a problem now. I actually heard there’s a genetic disposition where people can taste coriander like soap. But it tastes fantastic. Honestly.

Bek Smith  38:58

I had a bad experience with a food poisoning dish with coriander, I just haven’t come back from it

Murray Guest  39:07

Yeah. Mine’s bourbon from when I was about 15. But that’s a different story.

Bek Smith  39:14

Some of these things we need to rewire and some of them can just be left well alone. 

Murray Guest  39:18

That one’s staying there. I don’t need that one at all. Bek, thank you so much for your time. It has been awesome. You are doing some amazing work. It’s been so great to connect and share your insights and your journey. And I’ve got a couple of quick questions to ask you to help us wrap up. One question is, what’s your vision for the future?

Bek Smith  39:41

My vision for the future is one where people take much more deliberate action with their mental health and one where we are embracing as a society, preventive mental health strategies, rather than waiting until we get in crisis before we do something about our psychological wellbeing.

Murray Guest  39:59

Now, this one I haven’t prepped you with. This next question, if you could hire a billboard, and on that billboard has a message and everyone in the world – all 7 billion – drive past and they see that message. You can hire that billboard for a while. What is your message on the Billboard?

Bek Smith  40:23

I think my message would have to be a question. And it would just be something to stimulate people to think a little bit more deeply around looking after themselves and others. So it might be something around, Who are you looking after today? Because I think we need to consider what we’re giving, as well as what we’re taking in this world. And we also need to think, you know, am I looking after myself? Do I need to look after somebody else today to really get over this epidemic of loneliness and disconnection that we have? Yes, that’s the first thing that comes to mind. Tomorrow, it could be different. 

Murray Guest  41:03

We can update the billboard every week. That’s okay.

Bek Smith  41:06

Oh, that’s exciting, I think come up with a whole list.

Murray Guest  41:12

Thank you so much. And for people to find more about you, I’ll make sure in the show notes is a link to your LinkedIn profile. I know you share some amazing stuff on LinkedIn. And also check out Smith and Wellness, your website, which has got lots of cool stuff. And to finish this up, tell me what is your definition of inspired energy today?

Bek Smith  41:35

A definition of inspired energy is around looking at, if you break down the word spire, a spire is a pinnacle, and inspire means to breathe in or take in. And people have often spoken about in ye olde days around inspire being taking in spirit or taking in higher knowledge. So my definition around inspired energy is around cultivating the energy or cultivating the momentum that nourishes our highest being. And that could be our highest knowledge, our highest physical presence, our highest spiritual presence. But it’s about that taking in to keep generating that energy and keep generating that momentum to help us be our best selves. 

Murray Guest  42:21

Oh, I love that. I love that so much. And I love your link to ye oldie times whenever it was as well.

Bek Smith  42:30

Whenever that was…

Murray Guest  42:33

Thank you so much for all your wisdom and knowledge and energy today. It is been such a privilege to spend some time with you. Thank you so much.

Bek Smith  42:42

Thank you, Murray. I really appreciate your generosity of time and your generosity of knowledge sharing as well and giving myself and all the other speakers that you’ve had on your show this platform to share a little bit of insight.

Murray Guest  42:53

I really appreciate the chance I get to meet lots of awesome people like you, wishing you all the best for the rest of 2020 and an amazing and fulfilling 2021.

Bek Smith  43:04

Thank you and to you and to everybody listening and thanks. You take care of yourselves and each other. Bye bye.

Episode 78 – Alessandra Edwards | Performance & Wellbeing expert for CEOs

In this episode, I chat with Alessandra Edwards. Alessandra is a high performance and wellbeing expert, coach and trainer. Alessandra is passionate about helping leaders understand their own genetic limits so they can achieve their maximum potential and reach exceptional levels of physical and mental performance.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Alessandra, thank you for your time today. And welcome to the podcast. So looking forward to talking to you about the unique perspective that you bring to high performance. How’s your week been?

Alessandra Edwards  00:17

This week has actually been fantastic. As you know, I live in Melbourne. And about a week ago, we had this fantastic announcement that we got the out of jail free card. And so it’s been a busy week. But just having this renewed freedom has really brought about incredible sense of energy, momentum, and appetite for really going out and experiencing life again.

Murray Guest  00:46

Yeah, I’ve seen some footage on the news. And I’ve heard about on the radio about some of the, I guess, embracing back some of that freedom, which people have been needing. What’s it been like, living in Melbourne these last three months?

Alessandra Edwards  01:04

Yeah, it’s really interesting question. And I wish I could summarize it for all the other Melbournians, so I will just stick to what the experience has been for me and my family and some of my clients. To begin with, it was a little bit of a rollercoaster, the initial phases were really intense, and obviously, very much driven by a lot of fear of the unknown, what’s going to happen, personal safety. I have very close friends of mine who actually lost relatives. So there was this very much unknown quantity. And it really felt like, Okay, this is the right thing, let’s all go in, and let’s all rally, as we then re-experienced a little bit of freedom, and then went straight back into a much harsher lockdown. The experience that I had with my family was that the fear was no longer there. And so we’d already had the experience of being in lockdown with our kids, learning new routines, my husband runs his business as well. So negotiating who gets the office for the day, who’s on call for the children, donning the teacher’s hat, no longer having access to what we take for granted, or just being able to go out. So just the mental restriction of just having one hour, or one hour a day, even though some days, we wouldn’t leave the house, you know, back to back meetings and calls. But just having that potential for freedom, mentally, was quite a challenge initially. And then, you know, as the days went by, and we were in lockdown for basically four months, what I found, which really surprised me was that, especially towards the end of the last month, certain revelations came through. For me and my husband, they actually made us realize, you know, once we finally came out that there was a lot of good stuff that came out. And I think it’s really relevant for the conversations I have with my clients around really managing time in terms of aligning that to our purpose, and what’s important in life. And I wish I could say I’m perfect at that, I’m sort of the queen of high performance, and my life is perfect. And I always manage time with family and friends. But the reality is that that’s not true. And suddenly, I have more tools and awareness, perhaps that me and my clients have. But if you get sucked into that vortex, and if someone had actually said, you know, no stop, you’ll actually have to stop and take stock of what’s important. And it really struck me at some point that I literally looked around, and there was a sense of Yeah but I can’t see my friends, and I can’t do this. And then just realize, yeah, but everyone, and anything that’s actually really important to me, in my life, are within these four walls right now. And that they’re here, they’re safe. I’ve had an incredible evolution of relationship with my teenage daughter, that I couldn’t put a price on that. And obviously, as I mentioned to you earlier, I feel incredibly privileged that I don’t work in an industry that was really destroyed. So it’s easier to look at the higher self evolution. The survival aspect, in terms of Maslow’s hierarchy, right? We’ve got the food, money in the bank, and we’ve got safety, health safety. So, I can’t say it’s been the same for everyone, but that that was an incredible realization, and I am so grateful to have been able to have this be part of this huge psychological human experience.

Murray Guest  04:54

Yeah. Can I say I echo a lot of what you’re saying around that renewed perspective. My children and I felt like we got deeper connections through COVID. We went into lockdown, nowhere near the length of time in Melbourne. But we had that early on. And just doing things that we would not normally have done, some of those connections. I also remember watching my children work out in the backyard together, they normally go to the gym, but just working out and encouraging each other. And that wouldn’t have happened. My wife taught me to play backgammon, and we played every afternoon for like, two months. I’m still not as good as her. But it was just, you know, those things I think about and what you’re saying, I think we’re aligned here, is that renewed perspective around what’s important. And where do we invest our time to actually focus on those things that are most important.

Alessandra Edwards  05:46

And I think as well as the perspective, in terms of having a different way of looking at things, but also an increased level of awareness are really, truly and honestly taking a hard look at ourselves and go actually, you know, what, I was really trapped in a little bit of a hamster wheel. And I’m not sure that all of the choices that I made or the behaviors that I did, or the engagements I chose to say yes to, really served me at a very deep or high purpose level. Which is really the tenant of the philosophy that underpins the work that I do with my clients.

Murray Guest  06:28

Yeah. So just before we talk about that amazing work that you do, I’m going to just check in – what is one thing out of this process of the last four months that you are committing to doing in the future and keep doing?

Alessandra Edwards  06:44

At a very quick level, I would say, learning to have more space between committing myself, committing my time. Yeah, my mental IP and my service, and having more time, creating more space, in that moment of decision. So that’s a takeaway, practical tip. What sits behind this is actually a bigger commitment to aligning my why, with my what.

Murray Guest  07:21

Yeah, I love both of those. And I think as you’re talking through those, I’m thinking about what that means for me and how I’m doing that, I’m thinking about the power of the pause in some of those commitments and decisions. But, again, knowing our why and really linking the what we do back to that as an ongoing commitment. Yeah, I’d high five you if we could touch you know, like I agree totally. Now about this great work you do. And I know it’s about how science and nutrition affects our DNA and our optimal wellbeing and you help with high performance. But help me explain what you do even better than that to people that are listening.

Alessandra Edwards  08:05

I think that’s a that’s a great summary to get started. Perhaps I will just rewind a little bit to give a little bit of the premise of what genetics are in the context of high performance. I think that we tend to think of genetics still today as ‘what’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with my heritage?’ Yeah, there is there is something inside that might mean that at some point, I may develop some some kind of really bad disease.

Murray Guest  08:38

Yeah, yeah. Gotcha.

Alessandra Edwards  08:40

And there have been celebrities which have famously brought to the surface in the media on specific genetic mutations that have that brought on different kinds of cancers. So I think we tend to think of genetics as the scary aspect that lies beneath. And whilst we are incredibly curious, because as a species, we are very curious about introspection and the journey within and learning more and more about who we really are. So I really get that. The dark side of it, I think, is for most people is the fact that they want to see it, but they don’t really want to know. So I don’t do that. I look at what’s called genomic wellness. So if you think that we have about 25,000 genes, I mean, that’s a lot. That is really, truly a lot. And some of these genes interact with each other. And this is really still an emerging science. So within the next five years, there will be an explosion of research that will look at the full 25,000 genes. Not only that, but also how several hundreds of thousands of them interact with each other. Now, we’re still at a stage where we’re looking at you know, maybe 30 to 40 genes that are really relevant in terms of personal performance and wellbeing. And we look at interaction of a maximum of three. So that’s to give you the scope of where this is really an emerging science. So I look at these genes and in consultation with my clients, or leadership teams, we first of all work out, what is it that you’re trying to access? What is it? What is that special thing, that you feel that perhaps you have, or you’re good at right now. But you want to be really better at, you want to really increase this level of self mastery over. With the genetics, then we can actually look at what these character traits are. Okay, so just to give you an example, someone says, I know you’re all about energy, okay. And it’s different guises. So someone is interested in having more energy. Okay, so tell me, what kind of energy would you like to have? Is it more physical energy, more stamina? Or is it more mental staying power, or the sense of increasing your ability to learn so really ramping up to cognitive ability is energy in the sense of being mentally strong. So we can look at all these different facets. And then what’s really interesting is that the genes that give us this blueprint, that becomes us, I’m kind of static in the sense that, you know, at birth you’re given a toolkit, okay? So you get what you get, and you don’t get upset. And that’s your toolkit. But then, within that, obviously, how we look after the toolkit is going to have an impact on how we use the toolkit, is the toolkit all greased up and left outside to rust? Is it kind of constantly breaking down hard rocks, all of those kinds of things.

Murray Guest  11:58

Well, yeah, and I think back to the genes, you mentioned about that we understand now, and we are seeing the future about, we’ve got a toolkit that’s quite big, but we’re only playing with a couple of the tools at the top.

Alessandra Edwards  12:09

Absolutely, then we can actually intervene. So that’s what basically the genomic wellness does, it tells you this is your toolkit. And also in some of the bigger conversations, especially with more experienced senior executives are, Okay, I understand that you really coming to me about energy, and you want to have more energy, and maybe you’re not sleeping well. So this is impacting your energy, or maybe you have the kind of brain that just doesn’t stop thinking, impacting your ability to create that pause, okay, which then allows you to access a more grounded state so that you make the right decisions in the moment rather than a brain fog of you know, overwhelm.

Murray Guest  12:54

Can I ask just on that? Do you think people generally know where they want to improve? Or is there even a conversation about helping them understand that in the first place?

Alessandra Edwards  13:05

Absolutely. So that’s what sits behind. And it’s very individualized, some people have already developed a great level of depth in terms of their awareness. And so they’re very much aware of the why that sits behind what is the purpose. And so they’re very clear and concise in terms of saying, the reason I want more energy is because I actually want to create this amazing thing. Okay. So it’s not the energy per se, but some people are very much like, I’m exhausted. And I know that in my teams, there’s heaps of energy gaps. We’ve come out of COVID over the last five months, and I need people to be like, let’s go, let’s go people. Revenue has been impacted, I need people to have their energy needle move from 10% to 80%. They’re very different conversations. But ultimately, the genetic interpretation is the same. There are a number of foundational pillars that are going to be affecting how well polished and how sharp you tools are.

Murray Guest  14:20

Can I just say, as you’re talking through that I’m thinking about the clients I work with and different leaders, and how they try to get the most out of their teams. And again, and tell me if this is where you’re at, it’s like the whole understanding of the DNA of people at an individual level is adding to the conversation about building on to other leadership approaches and investing in people’s development to help them get there at a real individual level.

Alessandra Edwards  14:51

Absolutely, yes, spot on. You’ve described it really, really well. And that’s the work I do and often I work it as part of a of a team with other leadership coaches, that then we do genetic testing for the team. And we work out where the energy gaps are, where the mental stamina gaps are. And also we look at character traits, I know you do a lot of work around strengths, so if you like, it would be the genetic aspect that underlies the different strengths. And so just this week I’ve been working with a leadership team in Sydney. And what we found out by doing the genetic testing is that some people, genetically-wise, have all the markers for perfectionism. And what’s happening is that they’re exhausted right now, their business has pivoted a zillion times over the last six months, to really try and fit into new niches, right, they’re really moving the needle to really fill the gap, and get back on top. And so what we’re finding is that a couple of people in the interviews with these high perfectionist traits are also very tired. And they’re having to change how they do work on a regular basis, but the high level of perfectionism on a genetic level is really holding them back.

Murray Guest  16:15

Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, that makes sense. And I can see 2020 with COVID is probably highlighting this even more, as you’re saying that perfectionism, or that need to change rapidly, and how we are pivoting so much.

Alessandra Edwards  16:33

Yeah, absolutely. So it’s actually really, I’d say, for your listeners, even without doing genetic testing, this is something that you can observe for yourself. Because high pressure, high stress environments, always amplify the gaps, always. So you will have experienced over the last six months, an increase of the gap. And so if you were not aware of it prior to COVID, now you have a very clear indication of where the polishing, the patching up, the rebuilding needs to come in. And it’s really important to start on that work. Because once those gaps get amplified, and really, let’s face it, we’re kind of in and out of COVID. I mean, really, there’s no vaccine, there’s no end date in sight at the moment, we’re getting better at managing it. But we don’t know for sure. So I think that a realistic expectation and a positive expectation is to think okay, we’ve entered this marathon under new conditions, it’s a new landscape, I’ve got no idea how to tackle it. So we need to, as we go now, start patching up these gaps, because we might still be here in six months or 12 months. And so if you leave these gaps within, what will end up happening is that you’re just going to have these leaks. Right? So energy leaks, resilience, leaks, motivational leaks, and then what are you left with?

Murray Guest  18:05

Yeah, and I think, to be honest, if I think about all what’s going on in the world, right now, if we think about inequalities that have been getting raised, and we talk about climate change, we talk about politics, we talk COVID there’s just a lot, you know, I’m hearing the heaviness that people feel right now. And I think about their compassion that people are feeling and adding that to burnout. And I love that the way you’re describing this gets me thinking about how do I actually know myself more deeply at the individual level, so I can invest in me, because as you said, I mean to strengths, we’re all unique, we bring that uniqueness. So I’m just also mindful of a question that maybe some listeners are wondering, I know of 23andme, which talks about our DNA heritage – this is not what we’re talking about, is it?

Alessandra Edwards  18:59

No, this is not ancestry DNA. And so currently, and also in Australia, if you’re doing genetic testing by 23andme, the TGA (Therapeutic Goods association of Australia) had declared a few years ago that you would not allow for the full medical interpretation, which partly is also highly controversial, even in the US. So with 23andme or ancestry DNA, what you get is a report based on where’s your heritage. So, this is different, this is wellness testing that will look at a number of things and look at neurotransmitter production and break down, it will look at whether you are a fat burning machine or actually if you would benefit on an energy level and also in terms of waistline level, from adopting a more leaner, more plant based kind of diet. It looks at how our cells produce energy. So it’s very comprehensive, but it doesn’t look at your ancestry at all. So that’s a good thing to bring back.

Murray Guest  20:09

Yeah, just to help people understand that difference. And you mentioned leaders. So what are the type of people you work with to help them understand this.

Alessandra Edwards  20:19

So I work mostly with CEOs, and particularly male CEOs. And that’s not because it’s a personal choice, I think, unfortunately, it reflects still the gender disparity. So I probably work with 70% male CEOs versus 30%. female. And also I work with leadership teams, and management teams, and also work with a number of business owners. So generally, people who are really passionate about their work and work is an important part of their life and their life’s purpose. And they are prepared to make an investment, they understand that the body (and mind) is their ally to achieve their goals. And you know, the goals can be for like a smaller level, which are related to increasing revenue, increasing productivity, those kinds of things, right up to bigger goals, like what does my life mean? What is my purpose here? I want to be a CEO. And at the same time, I want to impact my community, I want to impact my country, I want to impact the bigger conversation at global level. And I know that I need a decade still, of me, my body working optimally, in order to continue doing this great work.

Murray Guest  21:49

Can I ask why this for you? Like, why do you do this work? Because I have talked about your degrees early in introduction, but tell me how did you get to where you are now and doing this amazing work?

Alessandra Edwards  22:05

I think, and tell me if I’m wrong here, but my experience of having lots of really great friends and colleagues in the coaching space is that we tend to be attracted to the level of knowledge or IP that actually is going to serve us. Have you found that?

Murray Guest  22:29

Yeah, I have, I think there’s a bit of our own journey we’re on when we’re doing the type of work that we do. So yeah, I hear you on that. And I think there’s something maybe it’s also DNA related as well, which connects with us at a cellular level that we really love to do. And we’re here to do.

Alessandra Edwards  22:46

Yeah. And so, for me, the journey started quite early on. Probably surprisingly, I was brought up in a household in Italy, my mum was French, that was so anti wellbeing like, it was chain smoking, chain drinking, workaholics, don’t even mention yoga – because it’s for people who are actually mentally deranged. So my mum had an encyclopedic knowledge about pharmaceuticals – medication – we had an incredible cabinet. And she used to actually remember having arguments with our GP in terms of how much he should prescribe. So what happened is that unfortunately, my father passed away when I was 12. So he was diagnosed with a very quick advancing brain tumor. And what happened is that it came out of nowhere so seemingly, he seemed very strong and then he was literally felled like a big old tree within the space of 10-12 months. And then a year later, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. And then eventually she died of lung cancer. So I became really interested in this when I moved to England to go to university and I started to be exposed, as you do when you go to uni, to lots of different ideas of people that at the time with my mindset, I thought were complete flakes and hippies. So literally, a friend dragged me kicking and screaming to yoga because I had some back pain and I just remember coming out of that class going, actually, I don’t think that this is all rubbish. I feel a lot better and so I feel like this initial curiosity came about and then I started to understand a little bit more about some of the behaviors that I witnessed in my house growing up and incredible levels of anxiety that my mother used to experience and the self medicating and starting to put dots together. After uni, I worked in a corporate setting, and I was very much through the highly driven Type A executive. So first one to get to the office, last one to leave. I still have memories of a couple of nights sleeping in the office. Can I say way before Elon Musk did.

Murray Guest  25:23

And before, we didn’t have a sleep pod. You know, you were on the floor… So when you talk to these CEOs, it’s like, I’ve been there. I know what it’s like.

Alessandra Edwards  25:35

Yeah, I’ve been there. And I had, you know, the classic story, massive burnout, the doctors could see it coming, but I just kept going, it even back then – I’m 47 so this is quite a while ago – but even back then, I told myself the same stories that I hear CEOs today in Australia say to me, such as we just have to get through this merger or I just have to get the team over this hump, or, you know, I just had to get to December or I just have to get past COVID.

Murray Guest  26:12

And there’s always a ‘just get to’, isn’t it? Like, it just continues and continues?

Alessandra Edwards  26:16

Yeah, it continues. And we feel justified, utilizing those excuses, because they give us permission to not go and look in the dirty cupboard, the hidden cupboard of all the stuff that needs to be dealt with. So that was the end basically, with the burnout, I went to seek specialists, online practitioners, blah, blah, blah. And I just did not get the results that I wanted. And so that’s where the interest in genetics fits. I retrained in health science, I specialize in Clinical Nutrition. And then that’s when the genetics then came in. And that’s what really helped me understand why specifically I had burnt out. Sure, it was a matter of not sleeping enough and play hard work hard kind of scenario, but why specifically, did burnout manifest in that way for me? What was it?

Murray Guest  27:20

Do you remember the moment? Did you have like a light bulb moment where you’re like, Oh, my God, I now get this.

Alessandra Edwards  27:29

It wasn’t like that. It was gradual, because genetics are complex, and you have to have a really good understanding of also the biochemistry behind it, because genes do give these instructions, which then are decoded, and then are encoded into biochemical pathways. And so it wasn’t, it was more of a gradual effect. But what I do remember was really increased awareness of this sense of efficacy, and self agency. And for me, this is really important part of the piece, when we’re talking about wellbeing for personal performance. This is not about just give me a list of supplements, or give me the latest diet, or let’s look at the latest blog by Tim Ferriss about the 10 habits, or the 10 most successful, productive leaders, this is not it. It’s really about understanding self very, very well from that genetic and then emotional perspective and biochemical perspective. And then understanding that you can be the leader of you.

Murray Guest  28:37

Yeah. And correct me if I’m wrong, but combining that with some intrinsic motivation, some deep motivation, through the data and understanding to then have that motivation around investing in self.

Alessandra Edwards  28:51

Okay, I love love love this question. The reason I love it, is that yes, and that’s our usual understanding of we need motivation for action and implementing behaviors. What happens then, though, when at a genetic level, one has very, very low levels of motivation producing neurotransmitters, what do we do then? Does it mean that only the ones that have you know, high dopamine for motivation can then progress on to accessing personal power? So this is when then this understanding of, if you like, how do I hack the system? What do I need to do to then crank up my motivation? And then how do I then maintain that level of consistency, because we know that even people who are highly driven, you know, the motivation, just like incentives, only works for a certain period of time. So my interest then is around the psychology of behavior. So one of my mentors is Professor BJ Fogg, who’s created the behavior lab at Stanford. So I have been training with him and continue to train with him to really understand then, okay so we do the genetics, and we increase a person’s motivation. How do we then design the best personalized strategy to implement these behaviors over time so that they become automatic?

Murray Guest  30:24

Yeah, okay. I can understand what you’re saying. So I’m thinking out loud here, Alexandra, about the the deeper cellular motivation as opposed to some surface level motivation. Yeah. I can feel that one. That’s cool.

Alessandra Edwards  30:43

Exactly. And if I may go one step further, in terms of, if you like, from my perspective on the whole journey is, so I mean, that sounds good enough. And that’s good enough for me to sell my programs – that’s like, yep, give me that. I want to learn how I increase my motivation and how I make my behavior stick. Even when I’m traveling and working 80 hours a week, how do I stick to those while being happy. So that’s good. And then when we get to that, it’s like, Yay, but then the next level is about becoming truly and utterly comfortable with the idea that you’re actually truly only doing these behaviors because they are perfectly aligned to your why. So you no longer going to the gym, just because you want to lose the inches on your waist. You’re not just going to bed because you need energy for the meeting in the morning. You are truly doing those behaviors and living in a certain way because at a deeper level, your why is about complete self love, complete self acceptance, and living in a state where you have the highest possible imagined type of energy, because you are in this constant self serving self pleasuring mode, which is very controversial in this day and age, I understand. But that is where people really move on to you moving on to a completely different level of mastery. And that is where you really access sort of the highest level of personal power. When you’re in that stage stuff really starts to happen, you become completely magnetic.

Murray Guest  32:27

Yeah, and I loved on your website, I’ve been looking and having an understanding of some of the programs that you provide, and this level beyond energized, of being unstoppable. Tell me what unstoppable looks like. What does it feel like?

Alessandra Edwards  32:45

Unstoppable is about getting to this level that I’ve just described. So it I think that many people think in terms of Oh, that’s fantastic, so unstoppable is if I want to feel as if I’d have 15 coffees and I’ve got that kind of energy. No, it is more about how you get to really high energy and unstoppable is when you’re able to really take that pause with a gazillion things coming at you. And it’s a feeling of time stretching, you become the master of time. So because you have achieved such high level of mental and physical mastery that you can actually self regulate your biochemistry. So you can, and we do testing on this. So we’ve seen it with people’s heart rate variability, which is a marker of how the two aspects of the nervous system work, really expanding, doing specific techniques. So I like to think of it as like the Samurai state, I’ve never been to Japan but I have a real fascination with Japanese culture. So for me, unstoppable is feeling completely in your power, standing in your power for the right reasons, with your whole body and mind being right behind you like the highest performing team. And you being able to, you know, dodge bullets like in the matrix. That is unstoppable, obviously, without bullets, but being able to just reset. And as you turn around and deal with the next challenge or obstacle or difficult team member, that you turn around and your whole body turns, your body, your mind, your values come with you. So the decision that you’re making, the communication that you’re giving is coming from this place. And when you get there it’s a little bit like being in flow, the energy is self renewing, so you’re not coming home exhausted at the end of the day.

Murray Guest  34:45

And I’m thinking about alignment with self, alignment with your values. I’m thinking about resilience, to be able to handle and rise above the ups and downs, those types of things that people would be feeling through this unstoppable state.

Alessandra Edwards  35:01

Exactly. Yes, absolutely. And as you’re in that state, as you said, what happens is that you almost have double vision. So you start seeing things for the way they really are rather than the way they appear. So for example, I know many of my clients have become completely addicted to the news. And they may be aware, but perhaps not truly, truly aware of how that cycle of catastrophizing, negative news is actually affecting how they then affect the business.

Murray Guest  35:34

Yeah, gotcha.

Alessandra Edwards  35:35

Yeah. When you’re in that unstoppable mode, and you’re aligned, as you said, with all your strengths, your values, and then you’ve got the body and the mind, then what happens is that you can actually watch the news, but you can also see, okay, I see this is actually another cycle of really traumatic news and images. And this is actually going to speak to my brain, and then my brain, because genetically, I have high levels of rumination because my prefrontal cortex is super active, because I’ve got my dopamine receptors, genetically, are off the charts. I produce heaps of dopamine, and I don’t break it down, then I can see how that is going to start coloring my thoughts. Hmm. Isn’t that interesting? Okay, so you’re able to then distance yourself, have this pause, which is not just in time, but also from a space perspective. And can you imagine if you’re living like that the whole time? Incredible power.

Murray Guest  36:33

Yeah, I can I just say, just hearing you describe it, I’m feeling more energized. So to actually have that awareness. I can imagine then, that self awareness, that self understanding and that ability to have that greater awareness, and a choice then to shift.

Alessandra Edwards  37:01

Nailed it. Yeah. It’s about choice. Because we think we have a choice right now. But we don’t, we really don’t have a choice. And regardless of what job title you have, we think we do but we don’t. Whilst you’re still within this, the system, your body is at the mercy like a puppet of environmental challenges and stressors. And while you’re still stuck in your script, that you don’t have time, because you’re too busy, and that you will have time once you have got to whatever imaginary situation is coming – I call it the oasis in the desert because it always shifts – then it’s not freedom of choice. You’re plugged into the matrix. But the moment you step outside, you can see yourself and go, oh, there we go. Here goes Will, he’s doing his routine. He’s up at 5am. And he’s already on the emails at 5:30. I can see. So then you can make deliberate choice. And then you can say, Well, actually, I choose to answer those emails, for whatever reason, because it’s aligned with what I believe to be true and helpful.

Murray Guest  38:19

Yeah wow. Again, thinking about some of those other ways I was describing before, I want to add empowering, empowering about the the way I’m living my life to help me achieve that high performance. So I’m wondering if we’ve got listeners right now listening and they’re intrigued to tap into your knowledge and experience without getting the genetic testing, of course, which they can do through you, by going through one of your programs. But what sort of tips do you like to give to people to help them be at their best to actually invest in their wellbeing?

Alessandra Edwards  38:57

Yes. First, it all starts with an inventory. So you need to do an inventory as if like, you were commenting before about the books and doing this kind of thing. And I love Marie Kondo and the whole idea of clearing and tidying and all of that. So when you watch Marie Kondo… for those listeners who don’t, perhaps especially if you have mostly male listeners, Marie Kondo is a Japanese thought leader of tidiness. 

Murray Guest  39:28

Does it bring you joy? If it brings you joy keep it, if it doesn’t bring you joy anymore let it go.

Alessandra Edwards  39:34

Yeah, absolutely. So I always love starting with this idea of an inventory. So literally as if you were opening a closet and you look at it, it’s like there’s all this stuff you don’t know where to start. Just start writing down everything that comes into your head or surfaces at that emotional level that when you ask yourself the question, where am I right now? Who am I and what am I feeling? Just write it all down. Don’t question it, write it down. And then once you have this list, and for some people, this can go on like five, six pages, then take a pen or a highlighter and just just go through it, look at it and work out exactly what you said, Does this bring me joy or not? Okay. So say for example, I have a teenage daughter. And she is, much as I like my books ordered like this, she has a floor-drobe right. Yeah, you know, you’ve got kids similar age. I don’t know if yours is the same, but mine is. It’s like the Hansel and Gretel story, you can tell what she’s been because instead of breadcrumbs, there’s items of clothing.

Murray Guest  40:44

You know, it’s really hard to hang up towels in the bathroom as well.

Alessandra Edwards  40:50

Hey, in COVID, we’ve all lost muscle mass, so let’s not go there. So that is the thing that for example, I would write down like it absolutely drives me nuts. And I write it down. And then what I would do is I would look at it and say, okay, when I pick up the towels, or I have the argument with her, does that bring me joy? No, it doesn’t bring me joy. So does it bring me pain? Yes, it brings me pain. Okay, well, does seeing the towels on the floor bring me pain? Well, yes, it does, which is the greatest pain? Battle and have an argument with her, and then doing all of that? Or is it like, having a beanbag and just shoving things in or just pushing things aside? Which is the easiest. So you might want to ask yourself those questions. And then pick the ones that you feel gives you a little bit of a sense of yuckiness inside. Yeah, you read it and your heart sinks, so that you don’t want to go there. So that’s where you want to start. And you might want to ask the question, in terms of where am I, in terms of you write down, do the inventory of all the things that give you energy and deplete your energy. And then start looking at is there a pattern here, and what’s sitting behind it? So in terms of the epigenetics of the things that you can do that then influence your genes, you could go through each one of those and say, Well, I can see a little bit of a pattern here that I’m tired. You know, every Monday morning, I’m tired. But every Sunday night I’m having a whole bottle of wine. Okay, so start looking at what came before and see the pattern. Is it that the pattern is related to you going to bed very late? Yeah, is the pattern that you really struggle to fall asleep? So try and find these patterns and then work with your current knowledge or wellbeing practices. I mean, we’ve got so much information in terms of what’s a good sleep routine, right? Not eating sugar, etc. Just go start with the basics, because you’ll be amazed how quickly those basics work if you do them consistently without even worrying about the genetics.

Murray Guest  43:03

What I love through this process that I’m thinking about that’s really helpful is it’s not just blindly going to do some latest fad or routine or idea that you might have read about or seen online. It’s getting back to what’s triggering the need for those things to shift and and as you said, What are the patterns? What are the themes that are leading up to that? Bring that to your awareness then going now what can I do about those things?

Alessandra Edwards  43:24

Absolutely. And is it that the trigger, as you just mentioned, could it be that the trigger for you, maybe you don’t sleep well at night, because like many of my clients, you come home and after dinner, you just start picking at food, you can’t stop? You know, there’s a heap of genetics related to that, but you don’t need to know that. You will know deep down that actually that behavior doesn’t serve you because you always go to bed with the full stomach, and wake up at 3am feeling a bit nauseous. And then in the morning, I wake up as if like someone had died in my mouth. So then what you can do is start working out okay, well, okay, that’s interesting. So when you go and you know, pick your bag of chips, or whatever it is that you snack on at night, just pause for a moment, just pause and just see how you feel. What’s the emotion that’s behind it? Does it feel like your cup run is empty there emotionally? Maybe. Many of my male clients work all day. And they’re in a leadership position all day, they come home, they’ve been married for a gazillion years. And the wife is no longer waiting at home with an apron and go oh, my God, darling, I have missed you, you know, big kisses and make him feel like a man again, right? So for many men, the snacking comes from ‘I actually I don’t feel loved’. And it might take us five or six coaching sessions to get to that. So we don’t do things just because we do them. I mean, yeah, obviously, things taste nice and we eat them, but those repetitive behaviors that go against our highest self knowledge. They come as a way of bandaiding and pushing down very uncomfortable feelings and thoughts.

Murray Guest  45:07

Yeah, I invite listeners to go down that path and start to explore where those motivations or the awareness or the triggers that are driving some of those behaviors. And I reckon once you start to do that, you might need to reach out to Alexandra and have a chat to her and have a look at her programs to help you then start to shift that because as you’re talking through that, I’m thinking about my own behaviors and the little bit of chocolate I like to have after dinner, and then maybe it’s a little bit more, and then I think maybe I didn’t need all that chocolate, I feel a bit sick. But where’s that coming from? Why am I doing that? Yeah… But thank you, that’s been enlightening to just think about that process. Obviously, the genetic testing gives us a real depth of knowledge when we do that. And as you said, the coaching that goes alongside that, because this is not a ticking the boxes, that this is a journey you take people on.

Alessandra Edwards  45:59

This is a journey, and it’s not for everyone. And I think with any kind of choice that we make for ourselves, again, reclaim that sense of empowerment and self agency for yourself. I can confidently say here with a scientific background, there is absolutely no one diet fits all, there is absolutely no exercise, there is no program for everyone, that everyone should be doing mindfulness, absolutely not. So you pick things that you come across, and maybe sort of spark your interest and your curiosity, and really start opening this conversation, this dialogue with yourself. You don’t need to pay any money to do it. All you need to do is have a willingness to explore some of the difficult feelings that we experience. And then you’re off. And then when you get to a point where you go, right, I’m ready for the next level, I really want to go in depth, then this is what these programs are for. I don’t want everyone to contact me for this specific reason. So there is so much that we can do well before getting to the genetic testing.

Murray Guest  47:05

Yeah, of course. Gotcha. And going back to one of your first comments, 2020 is the best year for reset, isn’t it?

Alessandra Edwards  47:11

Yeah, yeah. Well, I tend not to work in years. Just because I always think is like, well, is it really this day?

Murray Guest  47:24

It’s like, why do we have to have a new year’s resolution, I could have a resolution any day of the year.

Alessandra Edwards  47:31

Any research is good. Anytime that you feel like there is, it’s almost like sort of a voice, or a little spark of something, of intuition, that comes into your ear that goes, now is the time, now is the time. And so that that’s a good time to do a reset, or just start opening this more kind of investigative approach. 

Murray Guest  47:58

I love it. Thank you so much for talking us through the amazing work you do, some of the background and the science behind it, and the impact that makes in people’s lives, and the leaders you work with, and then that self evaluation that we can start to go down the path of ourselves. So it’s been such a great conversation, I’ve got two more questions need to ask, before we finish up. Where is the best place online for people to reach out and find out more about this great work that you do?

Alessandra Edwards  48:29

Obviously, there’s always the website. I have to say that for all my organization, the website needs to be updated, it doesn’t reflect all the programs that I do. But you can certainly have a look on the website. There are some really good articles there. But generally, I’m quite active on LinkedIn. So if you’re interested in picking up tidbits and furthering the conversation, just connect with me on LinkedIn. And through the website you can download 30 tips for increasing energy and then I send out twice a month, a short note related to genetics and performance, which has a section called Smart Hacks. So they’re two minute smart hacks and we look at things like how to deal with anger, anxiety, sleeplessness, those kinds of things. And we’re related back to genetics. That’s a great place to start.

Murray Guest  49:18

Fantastic. And I’ll make sure there’s links to both LinkedIn and your website in the show notes. That’s awesome. So thank you for that. Now, just to wrap us up. This is the Inspired Energy podcast. What is your definition of inspired energy?

Alessandra Edwards  49:35

You put it at the end. This is a big question.

Murray Guest  49:40

I think you’ve already answered it in this conversation.

Alessandra Edwards  49:44

I think I have. So for me inspired energy is when our being, or our why, our purpose, then aligns with our DNA. Which is our ‘who’, who we are, which then aligns with our actions, which is the ‘what’. So it’s the being aligned with the DNA aligned then with behaviors and actions that reflect the other two. That for me is inspired energy. 

Murray Guest  50:18

I love that. And it links beautifully as a great summary to everything we’ve talked about today. Such a great conversation. Alessandra, thank you so much for your time. I am really inspired by the work you do and the people you help. It was such an insightful conversation honestly, thank you so much.

Alessandra Edwards  50:35

Yeah, the same I really really enjoyed it. I just loved it, actually I could happily carry on talking, I can see that there’s so many synergies and things that we could learn from each other. So I hope that we get to connect again.

Murray Guest  50:48

Well I’m sure I’ll have you on the podcast again in the future. All the best for the rest of 2020.

Alessandra Edwards  50:54

Fantastic, same to you. Bye.

Episode 70 – Kirsty McCulloch | Sleep, Fatigue & Human Factors

In this episode I chat with Kirsty McCulloch all about sleep, fatigue and human factors. She literally wakes companies up, and helps employees get enough sleep and arrive at work full of energy to start the day.

Listen in your favourite app

Transcript

Murray Guest  00:02

Hey, Kirsty, welcome to the podcast. I’m so looking forward to catching up with you. How have you been? 

Kirsty McCulloch  00:07

Yeah, great. Thanks, Murray. How are you? 

Murray Guest  00:10

I’m doing really well. I’m actually in a place of gratitude and renewed perspective after these past few months, certainly, it’s been a challenge for lots of people. And you and I were quickly talking before we started our chat about, you know, what’s been going on in the world. But I feel like I’ve got a renewed perspective on some of those little things in life. And I’m really loving the clients I’m working with at the moment, what have you been up to?

Kirsty McCulloch  00:37

So the whole COVID situation has been different for me. So I’ve got two very young children. So originally, up front, of course, I had a lot more contact with them than I’m used to, which put a whole lot of different perspective on what’s important, where I’m spending my time. And it also may be quieter with work as well. So changed my perspectives on that. So that’s been quite liberating to be able to explore that and what that means for me. And coming out the other side of it, what does that look like now to that getting busier again, which is great.

Murray Guest  01:08

Yeah, it is a funny time right now, where there’s, you know, different countries in lockdown, different requirements for things we can and can’t do. I also think the appetite for learning has been changed quite a bit around online learning, and what that looks like going forward. And in your space, around risk management and human factors. Oh, wow. There’s just so much we could talk about to do with that right now.

Kirsty McCulloch  01:34

Yeah, it’s huge. And companies perspectives on it is changing weekly. Which is great, with increased focus on individuals especially.

Murray Guest  01:42

So we’re going to get into this conversation about fatigue risk management and human factors and those things that I know you for, that you’re so passionate about. But what I’d love to know is how did you get to be in this field in the first place?

Kirsty McCulloch  01:57

It was something that I fell into. So I studied psychology at university, I finished high school and saw Silence of the Lambs and thought, gee, that’s a cool movie. And I’d love to be like Jodie Foster and, you know, talk to some criminals and understand what how they became criminals and get into all that stuff. This is way before CSI became really hot or anything like that.

Murray Guest  02:19

Can I just say there’s only two movies that have given me nightmares and one of them is Silence of the Lambs. 

Kirsty McCulloch  02:23

So what was the other one? 

Murray Guest  02:25

It was Cape Fear with Robert De Niro. And it was a remake. And he was stalking this family. It was just yeah, put me on edge.

Kirsty McCulloch  02:33

Yeah, Silence of the Lambs and Misery for me. Anyway, so wanted to be a forensic psychologist. And then as I finished my degree, two things happened, one is that I realized we didn’t have that many serial killers in Australia to make a huge career out of. And two, I was a bit of a speedster in my youth. So I had too many speeding finds to get into the police force, which was the only really way to kickstart a career in forensics. So I thought, well, I need to find something else. Luckily, I had really good grades. So I got offered a scholarship to study sleep. And I thought, well, what else am I going to do, I don’t want to be a clinical psychologist, that much was clear. And so I went and studied sleep in a sleep laboratory, literally wiring people up and watching them sleep and what happens when they do sleep, and what happens when they don’t sleep. Did some alcohol comparison studies, which were quite interesting seeing what happens when people get drunk compared to tired and that was fun. But it wasn’t where my passion was. So I said to my professor at the time, you know, I really, really love doing this, but I don’t want to make a career out of it. So see you later. And I’m going to explore other options. And he said, Well, how about we get you out to industry. And so he got me into aviation, and looking at pilots and what happens to them in the real world setting when they get tired, what sort of mistakes they make. So I got to go up in, you know, big airliners, looking at actual mistakes that people were making that were quite frightening. Got to go up on hot air balloons, who you know, get up at the crack of dawn to get these balloons ready for pre dawn flights. And what sort of mistakes do they actually make and, you know, fueling errors and stuff that’s happening. And that’s, that’s life or death situation. So that was exciting to be out in. And something I could see I could make a real difference in. So that’s how I got passionate about fatigue and launched my career into what sort of mistakes that people make when they’re tired. And then Human Factors more generally, what sort of mistakes that people make in the workforce and how can we stop them?

Murray Guest  04:32

Can I ask when you got into that work, did it change your perspective around risk and what you would do and not do in life?

Kirsty McCulloch  04:40

It certainly made me commit to getting a good night’s sleep. I am an early to bed and early to rise kind of girl where I prioritize sleep over everything else probably.

Murray Guest  04:49

Yeah, I admit I’m older than you, I know that, and I’m also later to learning about the benefits of sleep and I totally, totally, you can see the difference it’s made in my life. And it’s interesting. I remember still being at the gym a couple years ago, and there’s a guy that had this body that I was like, Hey, I wanna look like you mate. And I said, so what do I need to do, what tips would you give me? And one of the key things he said to me is make sure you get your sleep. It was sleep, stretch, and eat appropriately. There was no exercise. It was all about sleep.

Kirsty McCulloch  05:23

Yeah, right. Yeah, we’re just not taught about sleep when we grow up. We were told all about what to eat. We know about the food pyramid. We’re taught about exercise, of course, because we were forced to do that, I hated exercise at school. I love it now but hated at school. So forced to do all this stuff. And we know all about that. But we don’t get taught about sleep at school. 

Murray Guest  05:42

Mmm true. No, no, you’re right. And also, I would have never had a conversation with my parents, I don’t think most people do, about sleep. It’s like go to bed. And that’s it type of thing. And, and even not, how do you get to sleep when you go to bed, either. You did mention over the years, you’ve seen some interesting, I guess, errors people have made. Early on, when you saw those, what type of errors did you see that you’re okay to share, that you went, oh wow, this is just something that needs looking at.

Kirsty McCulloch  06:14

So simple things like putting in the wrong altitude, missing a decimal place off of an altitude on an aircraft, and so they’re flying, you know, magnitudes lower or higher than what they’re expecting. And I saw practices in truck drivers where truck drivers would literally put Velcro on the back of their hats, and align it with a piece of velcro on the back of their seat so that their heads would stay upright when they fall asleep when they’re driving. So I’ve seen some pretty, pretty interesting solutions to to get around the sleep issue too.

Murray Guest  06:52

And over the years, you’ve worked in a range of different areas. And in different industries. What’s been the impact when people start to have a greater awareness around sleep? What like, you and I can talk from a personal level, but what does it really mean when there’s this focus on sleep?

Kirsty McCulloch  07:13

Yeah, it’s interesting. One of my first experiences, I was working with a company that had a whole lot of typically ego driven professions involved, so talking doctors, we’re talking pilots, and nurses as well. And there are a lot of egos. There’s a lot of clashes within this culture. And all of a sudden, we implemented a fatigue procedure, which made them look at, start to look out for each other. This was way before Are you okay, and stuff was in place. But it made them start to look at each other, and if they were tired, which they always were, because let’s face it, doctors and pilots and nurses work around the clock and they live to serve their profession, they started asking each other, Are you too tired to do this? Or, you look tired, how are you feeling? Can I help in any way? What sort of controls should we put in place? We started to implement that Are You OK culture and started to actually open them up a lot more. And that was one of my first real wins. And in this job, in this profession, to say, we can really change cultures by getting people to look out for each other more and actually looking out for the core values of you know, are you getting enough sleep? And why not? And what impact is it having not only on your health, but on the health of everyone that you’re serving as well?

Murray Guest  08:30

Yeah, and I think about when someone’s asking that question of a peer or a team member, or someone that they they are leading, it’s creating trust, it’s creating vulnerability, it’s creating connection. It’s creating all these elements of an engaged culture. When you see that sort of start to happen, and you’re starting to see that sort of play out, how do you think it, you know, stays in place? Because obviously, in our world, consultants, we have our part to play and quite often we’re not there to see it to fruition. How does it continue do you reckon?

Kirsty McCulloch  09:09

So I’ve seen a lot of companies that I’ve worked with, and everyone’s gotten very excited after the training that you rollout, everyone’s like, yeah, I’m gonna make these changes. And I’m going to roll it out to my kids and my husband, and we’re going to sleep really, really well. And they write these awesome policies and procedures, and some of them way too long, some of them some are not long at all. And they sit on shelves and they collect dust just like many other safety systems. So you’re right, a lot of a lot of companies do this stuff, get a lot of energy around it, and then they just don’t sustain it. And it’s only the companies that I’ve seen that have established well being programs where they, where they actually have this programmed in on an annual basis to talk about. Doesn’t have to be with a consultant, but they just have an awareness period every month where they’re talking about fatigue and other wellness issues. Just to maintain a sense of focus, so they revisit it and they might send out new resources. Like there’s some, there’s some really good web based talks and some really good free resources that they can share around. So just having that systemized scheduled process to maintain that works really well.

Murray Guest  10:19

Yeah. And I know that you’ve worked not just in heavy industry, and not just, you know, aviation or construction, when we talk about sleep, who does it not apply to?!

Kirsty McCulloch  10:33

Absolutely everyone. And increasingly, so actually, all of my jobs at the moment are white collar workers. And more and more so for their families as well, because companies are realizing that if families are not working harmoniously behind the background, it’s impacting on their workers.

Murray Guest  10:52

I still remember I was working with a site a few years back, and there was a number of guys that had young children or babies basically, and they were having trouble sleeping, and they were turning up each day overtired. And then with that over-tiredness, this also became grumpiness with fellow teammates, and we did a toolbox talk on how to get your children to sleep. Here’s some ways to help with that. And I still remember the impact that made because I think you’re so spot on, it’s not just about that individual. And, to be honest, even COVID-19, these past few months, has shown or highlighted that people have lives that are much more complex than just you know, home and work. There’s all these other elements.

Kirsty McCulloch  11:36

Even things as simple as teaching people how to sleep. So many people say they can’t sleep, or they don’t know how to sleep, or they just for whatever reason won’t sleep. And teaching people the importance of it and telling them how to and helping them to get around the obstacles that might be blocking them has a huge impact on company revenue and safety and on overall health as well.

Murray Guest  11:59

And that presenteeism so showing up for work, and that you doesn’t matter what your job is, I can imagine that you are there physically, mentally, emotionally to do the work ahead of you.

Kirsty McCulloch  12:11

Yeah, we’ve all experienced that, haven’t we, staring at the computer screen and nothing comes out. And you think, oh god what did I do today. And that’s growing increasingly in awareness in companies too.

Murray Guest  12:20

So if there was your top sleep tips, so if I can imagine if you’re at a barbecue, and someone says, what do you do? And you said, sleep. And they’re like, so tell me what are the best tips? What do you tell people?

Kirsty McCulloch  12:31

So dark, quiet room, make sure your room is as dark and as quiet as possible. And turn off your phone within half an hour of going to bed and don’t fall asleep in front of the TV. So remove all technology within half an hour of going to bed. Because that completely changes your sleep structure. Avoid caffeine within four hours of bed. Even if you can fall asleep with caffeine in your system, that shot of coffee before you go to bed. It still has a huge impact on your sleep. And so does alcohol and even sleeping tablets, they have a huge impact on sleep quality too, so avoid them as much as possible. They’d be the top four.

Murray Guest  13:05

Can I add one that worked well for me?

Kirsty McCulloch  13:07

Go for it. Are you going to say sex? 

Murray Guest  13:12

Well, yes, I think sex is good for lots of reasons. Of course. 

Kirsty McCulloch  13:18

It does help you fall asleep. 

Murray Guest  13:19

It does help you fall asleep. It’s good for immunity, for connection. You know, a whole range of things. It’s actually music. I’m a big advocate for using, Insight Timer is the app that I use, and it plays, I use different sleep music. So not guided visualizations, but just some music. And I reckon I’ve even trained my brain when I hear certain music, I’ll just switch off and get into some really good deep sleep.

Kirsty McCulloch  13:47

Yeah, that works tremendously well. Especially for using sleep based music and not the nightclub style music. We know with kids as well, you can train kids to fall asleep to a certain song. So your brain reacts to all these triggers. If you use it routinely, you can train your brain to hear something and hear a tune a song or a type of tune or song. And your brain automatically knows right it’s sleep time. So of course, that’s what it’s gonna do.

Murray Guest  14:13

It’s interesting, because when I had my accident, so about 18 months ago, and I was in hospital in the neck brace and I would listen to some tracks to help me really sort of tune out and deal with, you know, all the bits that were going on then. I accidentally put one of those ones on a couple of months ago. And I felt this recoil in my body of like, No, not that song, not that song! Yeah, that’s not the one I needed. Because I’d still, you know, train my brain back to those moments. My youngest, who’s 11 he does listen to rain sounds every night before he goes to sleep, and that helps him fall asleep. And I think if you’re a parent and having trouble with children, I think that’s a real you know, there’s ambient music and different music out there that’s all free that can really help to get them to relax and just train their brain. 

Kirsty McCulloch  15:00

Yeah, yeah, all those sleep associations are great. 

Murray Guest  15:04

You mentioned sleep and alcohol and that sort of connection, just then, but at the start of our conversation you mentioned, or you alluded to the correlation, or I guess, some of that similarity between blood alcohol content and you know, when we are tired. What do you know about that? What can you share about that?

Kirsty McCulloch  15:25

So this has been, this research has been really important for political lobbying, to say, you know, we’ve all well accepted for a long time now that it’s not okay to drink and drive, and pull up your mates if they try and drink and drive, take away their car keys. But from a political lobbying perspective, we started to do experiments comparing how people react when they’re tired versus how they react when they’re drunk. So we could actually say, look, this is as important as driving drunk. So when I very first started out in this industry, we were doing experiments comparing that and these studies have been done hundreds of times around the world now too so we know without a doubt that when you’ve been awake for about 18 hours, your performance is comparable to having a BAC of .05, which is a legal driving limit. So 18 hours awake, it’s not very long, it’s kind of getting up at 6am. And then getting home after a nice dinner at midnight, that’s 18 hours a week, point 05, then add a few drinks onto that, then your performance is going to be even worse. If you’ve been awake for 24 hours, which lots of shift workers do, they’ll get up to do school drop off, be awake during the day, go their first night shift and then drive home, 24 hours awake is not unreasonable for shift workers. And performance is worse than having a BAC of point one.

Murray Guest  16:37

Wow, wow, yeah. And I unfortunately, and I’m sure you have over the years heard about people coming home from night work, and you know, getting very close to home and having those accidents, having micro sleeps. And so I know that what you’re sort of starting to think of, that you do sorry, is in working with organizations, also, how are our shift patterns structured? How are we getting people to and from work? How does that look so that it’s actually supporting their overall wellbeing?

Kirsty McCulloch  17:09

Yeah, that’s right. And so driving is probably the biggest risk that any shift worker faces, from a life and death perspective anyway, and they’re likely to make a whole lot of mistakes during this shift as well. But you’re right, how we set these shifts up? How we support our workers to say, actually, I’m too tired to drive. Do we give them cab vouchers home if they’ve worked overtime, for example. There’s a whole lot of consideration that can go into that.

Murray Guest  17:34

Yeah, and I think, and then you sort of mentioned this before, too, it’s not just the employee and the company that they work for. But also, I can imagine family members, and let’s say if someone is working in an environment like that, and they’re working long hours, how well their partner knows the importance of sleep, and they’re supporting each other to get that sleep as well when they get home.

Kirsty McCulloch  17:55

Yeah, that’s right. A lot of shift workers get home after a night, and then they get their list of things to do during the day. And yeah, they don’t really prioritize sleep at all.

Murray Guest  18:06

So something we also spoke about earlier was about human factors. What’s your overall short description of when we say human factors? What do we really mean?

Kirsty McCulloch  18:17

Human Factors has really piqued my curiosity because everyone wants to blame something when things go wrong. So we’re trained and programmed to do this from such an early age. And I do it myself, when something goes wrong here, something gets dropped, something gets smashed, especially if it’s something of mine. First thing I want to know is who did it? And what are they going to do about it, and kind of want to tell them off. That’s my automatic reaction, even though I’m the Human Factors person. So human factors is understanding that we all make mistakes. And we’re all programmed to be lazy. So we’re all programmed to conserve energy and do things in the easiest way possible. And we’re creative individuals, or if we’re gonna find a way to do that we’ll do it. So knowing that is our nature that we will make mistakes, and we’re all programmed to do things in the easiest way possible, and it’s totally acceptable for people to break rules and to expect that to happen. So as companies, we need to try and preempt that and work out how can we make this doable in the safest way possible. And not judging or blaming people unnecessarily. There’s certainly times where you do. But trying to understand why was that done, and how was that done. Rather than jump to blame to start off with, so that we can prevent things more systemically.

Murray Guest  19:32

Yeah, and I think you raised the point that there is a difference around the conscious choice and the subconscious actions. Yeah. I can give you a major list of the times I’ve made mistakes. But we don’t have time for that right now. But I know rushing is that human factor that’s tripped me up quite a lot.

Kirsty McCulloch  19:54

Yeah, rushing, being slightly foggy, having multiple things on your brain. So you know, you’re trying to keep things like 10 things present in your mind so that you can jump straight into the next thing as soon as you’re finished. It’s another big one as well.

Murray Guest  20:08

So if someone’s a leader of a team or a business, and how do they actually start to even implement something like human factors? How do they even start to consider it’s okay for people to make mistakes and errors?

Kirsty McCulloch  20:23

It’s really, really tough, especially when you start to talk about, you know, potentially life threatening incidents or incidents that have cost a lot of money from an infrastructure perspective. So people have, you know, cost, you know, sunk a multimillion dollar plane or something. It’s really, really tough. But when you start to analyze incidents on the whole, and mostly companies will come to me and say, Look, we’ve had a lot of, I’ve just had one today, we’ve had a lot of crush injuries where body parts have been crushed in plant as a whole lot of different types of plant. But we’re having a lot of these injuries. So then when we look back, and we look at why they’re happening, the rules are being broken. Well, why are the rules being broken? Well, they were written 20 years ago, they haven’t been addressed. Staff aren’t trained in them. There’s a whole lot of reasons why people are breaking those rules. Not to mention, it’s so hard to follow them and be compliant, takes half the time. So of course, of course, there’s going to be workarounds. So the next step then is to say, Okay, well, rather than getting them to keep on breaking the rules, let’s come up with better rules, that’s actually going to be safe for them to do it. Let’s involve them in doing it. And of course, the only way that companies get engagement in that is if the employees are involved. And if they’re blaming them and firing them for making, you know, for not doing the right thing, then they’re not going to get that level of engagement. So it takes a little bit of time, but normally, there’s some good traction behind them and some good evidence that they need to do something before they engage.

Murray Guest  21:54

Yeah. And I think about the experiences that people have had over the years where they’ve started to create that sort of emotional frame around how they they feel about the work they do, and how important helping them reframe what’s going on in their, in their working life, so that they are going to embrace it and feel like they’re not going to be blamed.

Kirsty McCulloch  22:16

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And that, it’s all baby steps, you know, somebody gives a little bit of trust, it’s about this vulnerability word, again, that you use before Murray, somebody gives a little bit of trust. And then if that’s not broken, they’ll give a little bit more than next time. And if that’s not broken, they’ll give a little bit more. So it just builds and builds and builds as a culture develops.

Murray Guest  22:34

So when did human factors as a concept start? I wish I knew off the top of my head. I just can’t think right now.

Kirsty McCulloch  22:41

It’s in the 1980s. A guy called Trevor Kletz. Geico Trebek clips. And James Reason in the 90s. Really, really founded on human error, understanding why people make mistakes. And also understanding how to fix that. So people are actually unintentionally doing the wrong thing, making mistakes. retraining them’s not going to fix it, because they’re not consciously doing it. So telling them to do the right thing, or be more careful, actually doesn’t work if they’re unintentionally doing it. So, so these practitioners that talk around, Well, how can we better treat that with memory triggers? Or, you know, engineering solution so that people physically can’t get it wrong?

Murray Guest  23:22

Yeah, and I think you raised a really good point before too, about how do we create a system or a process that makes it easy to succeed? Like, where it’s not easy to not fight because it’s so bloody, you know, complex? What’s, what’s the, if we look the future way, what do you think the future holds for human factors and this sort of understanding of we actually do need people, we actually do have people doing the work.

Kirsty McCulloch  23:51

Yeah, I think it will be. We’ve seen that start to emerge in a lot of industries like space, aviation, and medicine, where systems are much, much better designed, and relying less on human intuition and more on systems to actually managing so it’s easy to interact and intuitive to interact. Even the way that we use phones now is intuitive. My one year old, when she was only one, started to pick up my iPhone and use it because it’s just so intuitive and easy to operate. Now, with minimal scope for error, there’s not much you can do to stuff up a phone these days. And when they were first introduced, you could easily delete things and wipe things. And it was hard to use anything. So the better we get with systems and engineering, I think the less scope for human error there’ll be. But also relying on individuals to be part of those solutions, rather than coming up with you know, engineers that have never touched an airplane to design an airplane, for example. And you know, that will become less and less of an occurrence.

Murray Guest  24:51

Yeah. Okay, gotcha. Again, I hope and I get the feeling that through this pandemic for last three months, it has again highlighted the importance of empowering people, trusting people, consulting them. We’ve had the biggest, you know, working from home experiment ever. And I guess lots of people have been delivering, if not the same amount of work, but more in lots of cases as well.

Kirsty McCulloch  25:19

Yeah, people are saying they’re way more efficient in their meetings, they jump to the point a lot quicker. And they’re using the technology that’s been at their fingertips for years now. But they’ve been forced to use it. And now they’ve embraced it. It’s this whole resistance to change thing that none of us want to do it if it’s new, but as soon as we have to we can learn to love it.

Murray Guest  25:39

Yeah, totally agree. Now, you’ve recently had another baby. Can we talk about your baby? 

Kirsty McCulloch  25:46

Oh she’s two years old now. She’s turning 2 next week, so she’s not that recent. 

Murray Guest  25:49

I’m talking about the recent one…

Kirsty McCulloch  25:51

Oh the even more recent one. Yes, yes. So that would be a fatigue app that takes fatigue management off the shelves and puts it into a real living breathing beast.

Murray Guest  26:04

Yes. And I say that because I know launching an app or releasing a book. It’s that birthing process.

Kirsty McCulloch  26:12

Yeah, Indeed, indeed, I’ve been working on for several years now getting all the algorithms right and testing it. So in conjunction with a company called Oz Health, is a really big fitness for duty company that do a lot of drug and alcohol testing and general employee wellness. So in conjunction with them, I’ve developed this app called Awaken. So that’s a fatigue app. And it gets, it gets individuals to measure how much they’ve worked, and how much they’ve slept, just using a Fitbit, so it pairs with a Fitbit. And it will be paired with other devices going forward. Basically, to tell you just how tired you are, or how likely you are to make fatigue related mistakes. So for shift workers or people that are on call, I do a lot of work in the water industry where people are called out left, right and center. So you can imagine if something goes wrong with a water main, you want water at your house when you wake up in the morning, so you can have a nice warm shower. So that has to be fixed immediately. These workers run in very lean teams. So they’re called out at all hours of the day to fix water leaks, and respond to things and the power industry is exactly the same. But any workers that do this ad hoc call outs, we want to make sure that they’re fit and safe to do the work, especially if they’re working with high risk, high pressure or high power tools, and infrastructure. So this app can track how they’re going, let their supervisors know how they’re going as well. And just make sure that everyone’s actually tracking on a day to day basis. So you said before, how do companies keep this alive? And I said, Well, they can refresh it every year just through awareness. But this is another way to keep it alive. By actively monitoring on an individual’s and also a supervisor basis, how people are tracking with fatigue on a daily basis.

Murray Guest  27:51

Yeah, well, congratulations on getting the app out, as you said, it’s been years in the making, and there’s all that work in the background, the algorithms to make it work. So tell me if I’m part of a team, I’m getting the mains on in the middle of the night, and do I get an alert? Or does it tell me some way to be mindful to watch out to, to get some sleep? What does it do?

Kirsty McCulloch  28:15

Yeah, so as soon as you tick over and into a moderate or a high risk zone, you’ll just get a push notification to your phone so it won’t have huge alarm bells that startle you out of the concentration of what you’re doing. But it will just give you a notification on your phone to say, Look, you’re in a moderate zone, you probably need to think about your risk, or you’re in a high risk Red Zone, and you probably think about stopping work very soon. Similarly, if you’re in a high risk zone, it can alert your supervisor to say, look, Murray’s really tired, he’s worked 24 hours straight. And he’s probably only had two hours sleep. So you should probably check in on him. And just make sure that he’s thinking about going home soon, or there’s other controls in place.

Murray Guest  28:54

And I can imagine that powerful tool to support leaders where they don’t have that direct line of sight with their leadership with their team.

Kirsty McCulloch  29:01

Yeah, well, very few companies track actual work hours. Very, very few, which is surprising, given the legal liabilities around actually managing it. So very, very few companies even know when or where their employees are working. So this is a really good way to track that as well. Every company that I’ve ever worked with where we’ve done reviews on rosters and working hours takes so much effort to gather examples of actual work hours because companies just don’t keep it or track it. And they rely on individuals to say how much they’ve done in a month for overtime purposes only.

Murray Guest  29:36

Yep, yep. Yeah. Well, fantastic. And again, back to some of your earlier points around sleep and fatigue. This app I assume is not suitable for just heavy industry, it could be suitable for any industry.

Kirsty McCulloch  29:52

Yeah, we’ve got a council, just a local city council using it at the moment to track their worker’s sleep and fatigue. And so yeah, and anyone can use it for individual purposes or for company purposes alone, some companies are just using it to raise awareness. So they’ll only use it for a month out of every year during their awareness month. And some researchers are using it to compare different rosters. So to say, you know, this Team A’s using a roster, Team B’s using a different roster, what do they look like? How does overtime rate on one versus the other? How do people sleep on one versus the other? If we swapped them around, how do the teams interact? So you can use it quite scientifically as well to get some data driven decisions made within your company.

Murray Guest  30:36

Yeah, fantastic. And I’ll make sure that there’s links to the app in the show notes, so people can check it out and and see how it can support them in their team in you know, managing their fatigue. 

Kirsty McCulloch  30:47

Yeah, it’s exciting to get it out there. 

Murray Guest  30:49

I bet. I bet it has been. So well done. Awesome work. Thank you. It’s been so good chatting with you and connecting and talking about the work that you do. I know that there’s a real impact on what you do through the companies that you partner with around the health, the wellbeing, and of course, the safety and productivity. So thank you for the chance to talk through all this with you. 

Kirsty McCulloch  31:12

Thanks, Murray. I appreciate you inviting me. 

Murray Guest  31:14

That’s okay. Now, I wouldn’t let you get away without you sharing your definition of inspired energy, which is something that everyone shares on the podcast. So what is your definition of inspired energy?

Kirsty McCulloch  31:26

I think this changes every time you ask me. But my definition is, is finding something you’re passionate about. And creatively pursuing excellence non stop so that you can deliver those learnings to everyone you touch.

Murray Guest  31:44

You know what? I think I might take that definition and put that on the website. That was beautiful. I like that one. Yeah, that was a good one. That was very good. Thank you. Again, thank you so much. It’s been great chatting, connecting. Where’s the best place for people to find you online? 

Kirsty McCulloch  32:03

On my LinkedIn page. It is that easy for people to find? 

Murray Guest  32:09

I’ll make sure it’s a link to your LinkedIn page in our show notes as well. 

Kirsty McCulloch  32:14

That would be great, I’m not tech savvy. 

Murray Guest  32:17

That’s fine. We’ll make sure that’s there. Great chatting to you today again, and if anyone got something out of today’s session, please share it on social media and or let me know and also check out the Awaken fatigue app as well. Thanks again Kirsty so much. 

Kirsty McCulloch  32:35

Fabulous. Thanks, Murray.

Episode 69 – Lockdown Leadership | Self-Care

Across this 5-part podcast series, I chat with Becky Hammond from Isogo Strong and unpack some common leadership themes that we have seen stand out during this crisis. As we’ve coached and worked with leaders over the past several months, themes have emerged where the best leaders are thriving and implementing changes to successfully take their team and organisation forward. These themes include Grace & Kindness, Communication, Individualization, Clarity, and Self-care.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:00

Welcome everybody to conversation five in what the best leaders are doing during lockdown. Here I am, again with Becky Hammond. And we are talking about taking care of self and self care. Such an important thing right now, and has been obviously through COVID-19. And right now in this period of transition, and it’s honestly something which I think, unfortunately we do sometimes as people and as leaders we can let slip. But right off the bat, I’m going to say self care isn’t selfish, looking after yourself is so important. And as we’re going to explore in this conversation, how the best leaders are making sure they’re investing in themselves, so they can show up for themselves the best, for the people they lead, and for everyone else around them. Becky, how are you? And what do you think about this whole topic of self care?

Becky Hammond  00:54

Hmm, you know, this is one that I’m particularly excited about, I think, you know, one of the leaders that I spoke with, have you had the chance to listen to the strength in crisis series that we did on the podcast anyway, one of the healthcare leaders said, I have never worked so hard to achieve so little. Now there is a lot like some people, you know, went home and felt like they had a lot of time, and some industries, and some organizations and some leaders felt like, oh, my goodness, I didn’t think that life could get any busier or any more stressful. And so, you know, it has been hard for leaders in especially in those industries to say, Yeah, I should prioritize myself, right? Because just like you said, you know, you’re a little catchy catchphrase, like, taking care of yourself isn’t selfish. And it’s not. And not only is it not selfish, but it is the best thing that you can do for your leadership and for your team members as well. I had a, there was a leader who that I was talking to who blocked out time when she hit a wall. She like woke up one morning, she had hit a wall. And she just said, What am I going to do about this, and when she reflected on her life, she’s like I have been working for 24 days straight. And there’s no way that I’m, that this is good for me or for my team. And so she looked at her calendar and just said the next time I could do this, is like a Tuesday or something, next time I could do that is Friday morning, blocked out for a couple hours. She exercised that morning, she went on a walk with her kids. And she just, she took care of her body and her mind. And she was able to show up that day. And the following week, even with just such a different energy to her work, even though the stress stayed the same. The busyness maintained the same but because she has chosen to pause and take care of herself, her entire perspective and outlook changed.

Murray Guest  03:00

You remind me of helmet time.

Becky Hammond  03:03

What? Oh, helmet time, like how much time like riding a bike? The goal?

Murray Guest  03:08

Yeah, yes, yes, a bicycle. Okay. So a leader I was talking to about a week ago, in a session he was talking about his feeling of stress of anxiousness of overwhelm, very aligned with unfortunately, your leader of working so hard, but feeling like not getting stuff done right now, not achieving. And we’re doing a call on zoom. And in the background is his bike, his bicycle. And I said to him, when was the last time you rode your bike? He goes, I used to ride twice a week, but I hadn’t written now for a month. And he said, I love riding my bike, but I just don’t have time right now. And I said, I said, What is it like when you ride your bike? And he said, I feel free. I feel like I’m a child again. And I totally align. You know, I love my riding my bike. And, and I said, so what’s happened? He said, I just haven’t been making time for it. But you know what he said, I miss my helmet time. And it’s that that getting out and doing that thing, that exercise, his self care. Yes, it’s physical, but also the emotional connection and the mental benefits of riding the bike. And so he calls it his helmet time. And I love that. And I’ve heard from him since that he’s been back out for some helmet time a couple of times a week and feeling so much better. Yeah, so much. Just short, short bicycle rides. But again, it’s the neural connection of when he’s on the bike, he’s taken to a different place and feels better.

Becky Hammond  04:50

So yeah, and it’s not always about necessarily the physicality of it, though that is a part of it, taking care of your body, your physical body, it’s also creating a mental space. And so on a bicycle, you could probably do both, right, you’re creating this, there’s a physicality to it. But there’s also this mental space of like, no one’s calling me, you know, no-one’s talking to me, I’m able to either check out if that’s what you need to do or use that time to process through things without interruptions, without judgment from yourself or others of what you’re doing as you’re just sitting there and thinking. It also looks like maybe scheduling a vacation or a staycation or making sure that you’re blocking time off where you are unplugged for a while. There was a leader that I was working with who said, you know, she was too busy to take a vacation, but she was going to do it anyway. Because she realized that not only was it good for her, but she wanted her team to feel through the freedom to say it is okay to unplug. And that, you know, she just came back and she like, I feel so much better. Like I feel like, Yes, she’s like, yes, I do want to stay on vacation, I wanted to just stay here. But now that I am back, I feel refreshed. I feel a new sense of energy to be able to put into this role. And so not only was it for herself, but then also for her team to say like, Look, if somebody at this level can take a vacation without checking their email, and without getting on calls, then, you know, I can, I can do that too. And you will find as a leader that your team comes back, refreshed, and maybe they even come back with new ideas. Because time away helps you to have perspective.

Murray Guest  06:47

Yeah, and I think what you’re exploring there, Becky, something that’s so important, and that’s those leadership symbols and walking the talk, which demonstrate the the importance of something, not just by saying it, of course, by doing it. When we talk about self care, like, you know, taking a break, what else do you think leaders could be doing to demonstrate that to their team?

Becky Hammond  07:12

You know, I think part of it has to do with, okay, so we talked about physicality, we talked about taking a break. So there’s like a physical aspect and mental aspect. There’s also kind of a self reflection aspect of, if you’re really taking care of yourself, you are leaving time in your day, or your thought processes, to come to a deep awareness of how you show up, how that matters, what your strengths are, what energy you have when you walk into a room, you know, we talked about our leaders who give a damn program like, what if you could just pause for a second before you bust into a room? I mean, maybe not a bust, no, maybe not a bust-in kind of type, but before you walk into a room like what energy are you bringing in there? Are you bringing a nervous energy? Are you bringing your stress energy? Or are you bringing something that when people walk in, they’re like, oh, leaders here, that’s awesome. Right? Like, oh, there’s a peace that you bring just by being here, like, Oh, my gosh, I’m so glad to see you. Because, you know, as we talked about in our last episode, like you bring a sense of clarity, I can ask you these questions, I know we have trust together. So just understanding like, it’s all part of self care, I think this idea of self awareness, being a part of our self care, and that it benefits, you know, not only you and your psyche, but your team, as you really are aware of how you’re showing up and what that impact is that you’re having on them.

Murray Guest  08:36

Yeah, and all those little symbols, again, create a culture, they encourage the team behavior, they also help you demonstrate how they can be at their best. I can share unfortunately, an example that’s not as good. And a leader I was talking to in the last month, and he was talking about his business. And I said, how’s the team going? He said, Oh I make sure the team have lunch every day. I encourage them to have lunch every day. And they have lunch in an area not far from my office. I’ve got a double door into my office and I can see them. And I said so what do you do when they come in to have lunch? And he said, I don’t have time for lunch. I just quickly eat my food in front of the computer. And I said, So how do you think that looks? I’ve got some inauthenticity, some misalignment there. And he goes, Oh I never thought about that. I said, So the team connects over lunch, you know, you bond as people over food. And even if you take out 15 minutes, if you do have some busyness, you’re gonna send a different message. He goes, Oh I have never thought about that.

Becky Hammond  09:49

Yeah. Oh, man. That’s such a good example, and how easy it is for you know, us as leaders to be like, well, I’m busy, but they should do this but I’m not, you know, that creates an environment that you probably aren’t contending as leader. Talk a little bit about, you talk a little bit about seeing articles on LinkedIn and things like that about the third space. What does that mean? What is it? You’re talking about investing in the third space? What does that mean? And what does it have to do with our self care and our well being?

Murray Guest  10:19

I have loved this conversation about the third space, I’ve been sharing with a range of people in my workshops, and yeah, as you said, on LinkedIn, I put a post on there, which has had a lot of traction, which is fantastic. It’s something which I find is a real simple way for us to think about where we’re investing our time and you know, that self care to be at our best. So, you know, if you think about home is your first space. And then work is your second space. And generally, for people, let’s just say, pre COVID-19, they were very separate. I’m at home, I go to work. And they’re separate. And in between those is a commute in some description, maybe drive, public transport, walk, ride a bike. And then our third space is this thing that we do in our life that is separate from home and work, which helps us be at our best, something we love doing, invest in your self care, we’re passionate about. And it could be riding a bike, it might be going to the gym, it could be doing yoga, and maybe reading a book, could be catching up with friends and shopping, might be going to the cinema, to the movies. You know, I could go on and on and on. Yeah, all the possibilities. What has happened, unfortunately, in the past few months is space one and space two come together as one thing. Working at home, and my space one, space two is together, I’m at home. And I’ve also not able to invest in my third space, because things aren’t happening, things are closed down, or I’ve got restrictions. That has led to, unfortunately, stress and impacts on well being, mental health. So we need to pause and reinvest in that third space, create that third space. And honestly, I think it’s something so again, simple but can have a real reset and how we’re looking after ourselves. So for example, my wife, Tammy, she’s been doing yoga at home. The local yoga studio has been doing classes online. And that’s been really good for her. People I know that have got a stationary bike at home, and they might ride the bike at lunchtime at home. People that had been catching up with friends, and then they couldn’t, have started to catch up with friends whilst maintaining social distancing. But they’re going for a walk together separately, but starting to connect, because that third space is so important because we know our world is just work and home all blended together. We haven’t got that distinction to help us be at our best.

Becky Hammond  13:13

Yeah, it seems like no matter what, it’s the first thing to go right. Like when life gets stressful, let alone the fact that your worlds have collided, that it’s the first thing to go. I remember, I’ve actually just recently got back to it. But I’ve been doing ceramics. So I like to throw things, make things out of clay. And I had done this for 13 years. And then I started working a job in San Diego where it was many, many hours. And I got achiever, like overdrive. And I didn’t do that anymore, you know, and so this is like way before the world that we’re living in right now. And yet, it’s like it’s that, that I would always when I was doing it regularly, I would every Wednesday I would say, Oh I don’t want to go. And then David would say, Yeah, but you always feel better when you do. And then I would say, Fine, I’ll go. And then when I came back, it was like, Oh my gosh, it was amazing. It’s awesome. And I was like a different person. I was like a better person to be around. And that’s, you know, that’s what you offer your team when you set aside time for the third space even when you don’t want to, and it doesn’t have to be physical. It can be like you said reading a book, or you know, as it was for me like putting my hands in mutton you know, it’s just a, there’s a different psyche that’s created when you decide to invest in a difference space outside your family.

Murray Guest  14:35

In the Leaders Who Give a Damn program, in the module of well being, I remember us talking about joy. And one of the things that bring you joy and making the time to reflect what are those things that bring you joy and revisiting those and bring those back into your life. And, ceramics, for you, I’m just hearing that right now. It lights you up, gives you joy. And you’re a better person to be around.

Becky Hammond  15:02

Yep, that is true, you can ask my husband.

Murray Guest  15:06

So similar, similar to another leader that I’ve been working with, he is a surfer, he loves to surf and he’s one of those water people, he loves being in the water. And if he doesn’t get that surf, he can start to feel a bit grumpy and is a bit tough to be around. And he knows that about what he does. And what he has been doing is making sure he gets that surf in. And he’s even been, I would say, quite clear, again, linking back to our conversation on clarity, clear on his boundaries, he’ll look at when the surf is up, as they say, and he’ll make sure that he’s able to go for that surf, but then he’ll work longer hours when he needs to. And he’s actually, he’s had a meeting come through from a peer that said, Can we meet at this time? And he said, Oh no I’m unavailable at that time. I’m going for a surf. And they said, what!? And he said, No, we can chat at six o’clock tonight if it’s that important, otherwise, tomorrow, but I need to get my surf in today. Again, setting some boundaries and making sure he’s looking after himself. And I know that might be hard for some people to do in the type of work that they do. So more think about, well, what is your third space? And what does your self care look like? And make sure you’re creating those boundaries. And you’re doing that for yourself as well.

Becky Hammond  16:24

Yeah. Yeah. And so then what’s the impact? You know, you and I’ve kind of just both been dancing around it. But what are we like, what’s the impact on your team if you decide to take care of yourself? Why do we say that self care isn’t selfish?

Murray Guest  16:42

Well, do you either make time for your health now or make time to be sick later on? And that’s not from me, that’s from Dr. Mark Hyman, he says that, and I totally agree with that. And it’s about taking that time out for you now. Because down the track, there’ll be things which will, will show up, unfortunately, in your own health and well being. And I also think that you are lucky, you said and articulated so well, you’re a better person to be around when you have invested in that self care. You’re a better communicator, you’re leading better, you’re showing up. Excuse me, I’m going to cough. Better connection with your team for sure.

Becky Hammond  17:28

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, no one wants the burnt out version of you. I think in the end, that’s what it comes down to, you’re gonna show up better for your team and for your family, both, both of those first two worlds, if you invest in your third. You know, the burnt out version, I’ve seen leaders who are the burnt out version, and they are not kind people to be around. Nor do they seem to treat their family well, either. You know, there was a guy that was the leader of one of the managers that I was managing. And there was a story that he was kind of proud of that on the day that his daughter was born, within 30 minutes of her birth, he was taking a call that he just had to take. And that just, I mean, that just ruffled the feathers of relator guy, like you? And that wasn’t being an inspiring leadership example that his team was after at all, and know that burnt out version creates somebody who’s quicker to get angry, they’re more impatient. And that impatience comes at home, it comes with your team. And that ends up being the result when you don’t take care of yourself, you don’t invest in that, in that third space.

Murray Guest  18:49

100%. Yeah, and there’s an ad for paracetamol that we have in Australia, and I can’t remember which company it is. It doesn’t matter, I think in this point, but their slogan is soldier on. Make sure you can soldier on. And it’s all about, you know, pressing on. And yes, there’s some things that we need to get done each day. And yes, we need to make sure we were there for our family, and yet work hard and for our teams that we lead. But in essence, we’re also going to look after ourselves along the way. We’re going to pause. We’ve got to make sure we’re filling that cup and investing in our third space. So Becky, I would ask if the leaders listening to our conversation today, are thinking, Okay, I’m hearing all this and I’m starting to think about what I can do to invest in my self care. What’s the action, do you think, that would help them move this forward?

Becky Hammond  19:47

Yeah, there’s two things that really come to my mind. One is very tangible, which is a scheduled time. So you create calendar events all day. Right, you create calendar events with your, your team members, maybe you are starting to create clarity in your team and you have a morning huddle, you create time in your calendar, that’s one of the things we talk about in tackling busyness in Leaders Who Give a Damn is, it feels like you don’t have control of your calendar. And there are some things that are just outside your control. But there are little things that you can do to make a difference. And this one will make a huge difference, scheduling time in your calendar for self health, for the opportunity to invest in that third space. And just start with you know, if I was going to be very, very practical as I just start with one time per week, and maybe that’s 10 minutes before you usually wake up in the morning. Or maybe it’s you know, as the leader that you worked with said like scheduling, blocking out the time when the surf is high. Maybe it’s scheduling a lunch break in, because you’ve been working from home, and you realize, well, I could go out and hang out with my kids for 15 minutes, whatever feels life giving, but don’t make it – I caution again, especially if you’re a leader that’s listening to this and you’re like interested in self growth, you’re probably like, okay, yeah, I could do this, right – like, if there’s an inclination to say, I’m going to do it all or I’m going to do not at all. And just start small and said, You don’t have to do it all, just start small. That just one small change in your calendar scheduling time would be the first thing that I would recommend. And the second part has a little bit more to do with mindset, giving yourself a mental break. Letting yourself know like this self care to teach yourself and to talk to yourself to say, you can only control what you can control. And everything else you have to let go. And trust that it will happen that you’ve been doing all these other things like giving grace and kindness, you’ve been talking to your team, have been providing clarity, you’ve been flexible and individualizing, you are doing everything, you are building yourself up as the great manager. Those are the things you can control. If you can’t control it, you have to let go. And you will give yourself a mental break, you will invest in your well being by just saying you know what, I can’t control that. And so I’m going to, you know, not worry about it. Easier said than done. But it gives yourself a mental break when when you enable yourself to do that.

Murray Guest  22:29

I totally agree. And I think that’s a beautiful link back to our last conversation on clarity. Bring that clarity in about, you know, what can I focus on? What can I not? And taking the time to journal that, write that down, working through and process that. I would love to just add a third little suggestion for the leaders. Yes, this is about self care, but also the care for your team and asking your team, how are they investing their own self care?

Becky Hammond  22:54

Yeah, I love that.

Murray Guest  22:57

We talked in the last conversation about, obviously, clarity and how you bring that to the table with your team. But also, my suggestion is how can you bring this conversation to the table as well? And just asking them, how are you investing in yourself this weekend or in this week, so that they are also making sure that they’re being at their best, and explore the concept of their third space, and what that looks like for them. Again, knowing your people is very important as leaders, and this is a way to show that you really give a damn about them, and you’re making sure they’re looking after themselves.

Becky Hammond  23:29

Yeah, and what better way, no better way really, than to be doing it yourself. Because that gives you a lot of credibility as you go into that conversation with them.

Murray Guest  23:38

100% Becky, this has been, again, a great chat and a great series as we’ve talked about these leaders in lockdown, and the leaders in lockdown that are making the best out of this difficult and challenging time, and how they have been demonstrating some of these themes that you and I have talked about over these five conversations. We’ve talked about obviously going all the way back to grace and kindness and how important that is and leading with grace and kindness, we talk about communication, individualization, which obviously is so important in knowing the individual needs and requirements of your team members. Last week, we talked about clarity. And here we’ve just wrapped up talking about self care and how important it is to look after yourself. So many great stories of what leaders are doing so well right now. And a couple of examples of the not so good ones. But also, you know, I’m learning from you all the time, these conversations Becky about your experiences as well. So thank you for all that you bring to these conversations.

Becky Hammond  24:52

Thank you. I feel like that the thanks goes to the leaders because leaders are the ones, you guys are the ones that are doing the hard work. You know, if it ever comes off that Murray and I are saying that this is an easy thing, you just put these five themes into place, and you should be, you know, hunky dory. Easy, breezy. That’s not what we’re talking about, you know, you guys know, as leaders that you’re, you’re doing the hard work, and by investing in growth of yourself and of your team, and learning from other leaders that are doing it well, that are saying, you know what this situation sucks. But we will, as leaders, have an opportunity and a privilege and honor to be able to impact how people feel about this season. And, and can provide real stability, trust, hope, compassion, the things that your followers need, and that your team members need. You are the ones that have that potential.

Murray Guest  25:52

And I just like to also say, Becky, after a conversation I had this week, and one of my sessions with some leaders, I finished it saying, I don’t want you to finish this session thinking this means a lot more work. And I certainly don’t want any leader thinking, out of these conversations thinking Becky and Murray are saying, oh, wow, I’ve got all these extra things to do, right now. I know, that’s not our intent. Our intent is actually, honestly, for a lot of us is doing less. And also changing a little bit, the way you do some things. So that actually gives you more value, and really helps demonstrate how much you care about your people through your words and actions. And it might feel like extra time right now for some of these conversations. But you’ll see those benefits we’ve been exploring in these conversations.

Becky Hammond  26:43

Yep, you can really be a leader who gives a damn.

Murray Guest  26:45

So as Becky just said, Leaders Who Give a Damn is a fantastic, and I say that because I think it was so great, all the conversations we had in Leaders Who Give a Damn, we explored seven key elements of what that looks like in that program, we talked about self awareness, wellbeing, know your people, managing perceptions, prioritizing conversations, and valuing relationships and tackling busyness. And obviously, in today’s conversation of self care, and links well to wellbeing and to self awareness. And as I remember I was talking about in that program, you can’t be the leader you want to be if you don’t look after yourself. You need to make sure you put the fuel in your tank. And certainly there’s lots of links in today’s conversation in those modules. If you want to know more, check out Leaders Who Give a Damn. Obviously, there’s the conversations I just mentioned and each one of those modules of those conversations, we support you with resources and worksheets to help you apply the key things we talk about. So check out the show notes to have a look at Leaders Who Give a Damn.

Becky Hammond  27:59

Sounds awesome. We’d love to have you a part of our community. And it’s been really fun to have these conversations and hopefully provide some insights that our leaders, that we have the honor to work with, have been showing us.

Murray Guest  28:12

100%. So wishing everyone health, happiness, safety and self care beyond this conversation and look forward to talking to you again soon, Becky, Thanks again so much.

Becky Hammond  28:24

All right. It’s been a pleasure. Bye now. Bye.

Episode 68 – Lockdown Leadership | Clarity

Across this 5-part podcast series, I chat with Becky Hammond from Isogo Strong and unpack some common leadership themes that we have seen stand out during this crisis. As we’ve coached and worked with leaders over the past several months, themes have emerged where the best leaders are thriving and implementing changes to successfully take their team and organisation forward. These themes include Grace & Kindness, Communication, Individualization, Clarity, and Selfcare.

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Transcript

Becky Hammond  00:01

Well, good morning, Murray Guest. I was gonna say just your first name, but I decided to say both. So good morning. I’m so excited that we’re having this conversation today.

Murray Guest  00:11

Well, good afternoon to you. And you know, we are talking about clarity in this conversation and you’re bringing some clarity right into it from the start around, you know, names and time of the day. How have you been?

Becky Hammond  00:30

Doing good, you know, I mean, it is, it’s a crazy time still, like, I didn’t think that if we were in July, we would still be saying that. And, and we are, we’re saying that there is still a lot of uncertainty. And I know even in my personal life, we’ve had just kind of some close calls and just some things where we felt like, wow, one moment could change a lot of things. And I think that kind of all speaks into what we’re talking about today. And why this topic, this theme of clarity has come up, as one of the key elements of leaders who are doing it well, are really doing well, in this season of lockdown, of uncertainty. You know, I mean, a lot of organizations are not in their same, you know, we’re all staying at home, and we’re all working from home. But there’s been a lot of changes. And it continues to be uncertain in this time. And so this, this theme of clarity has been one that the leaders who are doing it well are just, they are starting to have a clear voice and a clear perspective. And they are communicating that to their team. So, Murray, this is a topic that is near and dear to your heart, and that you have seen leaders all around you do well, you’ve also been able to encourage others that aren’t seeing the importance of it to say, okay, well what happens if you practice clarity, practice, practice communicating more clearly, and painting pictures of expectations. So let’s dive into this topic a little bit more. Why don’t you, first if you would, just define clarity for us? What do you mean when you say that the best leaders are those who can create clarity for their team?

Murray Guest  02:19

So I totally agree with everything you just said then, Becky, around this time right now in July 2020. And what it’s like and, you know, things changing so rapidly. And who would have thought that after what we’ve been through the last few months, we’d be still in this situation right now. Before I share my perspectives, I just hope everyone that’s listening to us is happy, healthy and well, because it is something on the minds of every conversation I’m having with people and of leaders. And I think links back to some of our early conversations about our care for our team as well. I think about, you know when you see on Instagram those beautiful pictures of nature, of this still water and you see the pebbles underneath the water, or you might see the reflection or you see these beautiful shots where it shows underneath the water and then above the water. And it’s just, you look at that and you feel calm, you feel peace. And you think wow, I just would love to be there. I’d love to swim in there, I’d love to just, you know, experience that. It’s not the photos on Instagram of a murky dam, where you go, Hey, I can’t wait to put my foot in that one. And I follow nature, which is just a very simple, simple account on Instagram but shares those type of photos all the time. And honestly, I look at those and I think that’s just beautiful. And it brings this calmness to my sense of being when I look at those and I love it. The murkiness, the lack of clarity, imagine going for a walk if we were walking in the in the forest, and it’s a hot day, we’re with our children. And there’s a lake and we say, let’s go for a swim and we walk up to the lake and it’s crystal clear. We go Okay, we can see the hazards. We can see maybe there’s a log that’s washed down. We can see how deep it is, if there’s any weeds or anything like that. And we say yeah, let’s go for a swim. If it’s all murky, kids, let’s just back up and you know, play on the sand and let’s lie on the pebbles. We won’t go in the water. So clarity in nature gives us this calm. The beauty. We understand what’s in front of us.

Becky Hammond  04:39

Security in some ways, right?

Murray Guest  04:41

Yeah. A sense of knowing, you know, what’s ahead. Yeah. And as leaders, we need to provide that clarity. We need to lead clarity and those clearing conversations. And this time, right now, as we’re talking about lessons in leadership in lockdown. Unfortunately, we’ve just got all these bits that are adding to the murkiness that we need to bring to the surface and bring that clarity.

Becky Hammond  05:11

Kind of filter out, filter out the things that are creating the murkiness, that are creating the lack of clarity.

Murray Guest  05:17

Yeah, 100%. And we were talking before this conversation about assumptions and about just going through in our leadership roles or in our life about, we’re just assuming this or just assuming that or maybe people understand that, or, you know, I’ve told them once, they get it. But having those conversations, when we bring clarity to the conversation, just think for a moment about how that feels. And not just the calmness, but it reduces the anxiety, reduces the stress, it gives us clear direction moving forward, aligns with my what’s my purpose, what are my  priorities? And also, where can I provide value right now? And people need that. Because right now we’ve got all these other bits around us that we don’t know what’s happening. There’s change from, you know, organizations, from policies, from communities, to governments, and all that’s happening. So I need clarity, I need clarity right now. So I can feel at my best, and I can, I can deliver on what I need to do.

Becky Hammond  06:24

Yeah, what a powerful position if, as a leader, you could actually impact your team’s psyche, in a really uncertain time, by just creating clarity even in just in one space, right? Like, we’re still gonna have lack of clarity or those murky waters in some of our other areas. But what if in one space, as a leader, you can create a sense of ahh for them in one very important part of their life where they actually spend, you know, most of their time, if you’re working full time.

Murray Guest  06:56

Yeah. And I, I think about some of the work I’ve done over the years in partnering with organizations that work in high risk areas. So for example, power generation, where, you know, I want to talk about power, talk about electricity. And what I’ve heard and what I’ve found out and talking to the leaders in those emergency situations where we’ve got to be really switched on. What happens is people talk more, they communicate more frequently, they reduce the assumptions, the murkiness more, they’re communicating frequently. And clearly. And what happens is productivity, safety, performance improves in those situations, when things are at their most dangerous, their normal day to day work. Because they’re bringing that clarity in day to day, and this has been repeated many, many times. The challenge for them is how do we take that mindset and that driving and leading of clarity, into our normal business as usual.

Becky Hammond  08:01

Right, when there’s not a sense of urgency or emergency at which maybe even happened at the beginning of kind of lockdown time, right? Like, people were like having more regular conversations and things like that, because it felt like there was a lot of adrenaline up. But then what happens once the adrenaline wears off, and now you are kind of still in an uncertain environment. But you’re back to your day to day. And as leader, you know, where can we find that oomph and that drive to create clarity? So what have you seen, what what stories can you tell us about, you know, the leaders that you’ve seen that really have done this well, or, you know, the impact that it has had, either way, when they’ve done it well, or when they haven’t done it well?

Murray Guest  08:46

So over the past few months, I’ve been talking to lots of leaders. And thankfully, there’s some really good examples where the leaders have done this really well. And I think it’s not just about the team that you lead. But it could be those people you work with side by side, your peers, but also leading clarity upwards sometimes as well. Quick example around a leader that I know, he needed to really get clear with his team about what are the priorities right now? And you might think, is that such a big thing? Well, what was happening with this team, and with a lot of teams right now, is people are working from home, some are working back in the office. There’s a transition going on right now, like some in different areas right now. And the workload isn’t just the same in some areas, it’s increasing because they’ve got projects and they’ve got business as usual type tasks to do as well. And people are starting to feel overwhelmed, they’re starting to feel like, Well, how do I deliver this? How do I still actually maybe do a bit of home schooling, pick my kids up, in the office some days and for the most I’m at home, and it was the team going to that leader and saying, hang on, I actually don’t know what’s the biggest priority right now. And then the conversation generated and evolved into, you know what, that chunk of work, that project, let’s leave that for a few months. And they are like, Really? I didn’t even know we could do that. That was that, let’s leave that but this right here, this other project we need to deliver on, that needs to be done right now, you know, and the tasks for that need to be done right now. But leave this other bit and leave this other bit. And I think what the best leaders are doing is actually just bringing the unknown to the surface, they’re actually making it very overt. They’re having that conversation more frequently to make sure, Hey, I’m not telling you how to do your job. But what I’m going to do is make sure you’re clear on what our priorities are.

Becky Hammond  10:55

Don’t you think that sometimes leaders think that this is kind of like a boring conversation to have? Like, they might say, well, I mean, like, you talked about assumptions, but even more than assumptions, just like well, I mean, it’s just not that interesting, right? Like, I was talking to a leader today who said that she had a meeting with her team. They’ve been hit very hard by the impact of COVID-19. And they had to do layoffs, and they’ve had to restructure. And she decided to have a meeting with everybody on her team. There’s like 40 people there. And there’s, I think, four or five different departments, and everybody was on a zoom, live. And she went through four or five different org charts. And she explained who was in what role and what they were going to be doing. And as she got off, she was just like, oh, my goodness, poke my eyes out. I’m sure everyone was so bored. You know, like, this is not a riveting conversation. But what she found was that people were text messaging or Facebook messaging or emailing her saying, that was the best meeting that we could have ever had in this moment. Thank you so much for going through that. And what they were saying was, thank you for providing clarity when we were feeling stressed. You know, I mean, when people are getting laid off, of course, you’re stressed, it’s unclear, then not only is it, man, am I keeping my job, but what are other people doing? And who do I go to now for, you know, to work on this project? Or who am I supposed to collaborate with on this? And what she did by having a boring – what she thought was a boring – meeting, she made a peace in her team that she probably couldn’t have achieved in any other way, except for going through a boring org chart.

Murray Guest  12:55

Yeah, and I think that’s a great example, where, through that process, I can imagine the flow of the conversation of, Hey, I just want to confirm this bit of information. And I just want to check on what’s that person’s role now, and now I understand it. So it’s again, you know, getting everyone on the same page, removing the assumptions. This is the org chart going forward right now. And this is how we are going to work together. I mean, that is showing, I think, the vehicle that the discussion, the org chart, helps create greater clarity, not just on the org chart, but I’m sure other things will have fallen out from that as well.

Becky Hammond  13:32

Yeah, yeah, definitely following up with a Q&A and people feel because the leader is being forthright, they feel more secure, that they can ask questions, because they have a construct for asking them now, it’s not just kind of out of left field, and you know that the leader has given the impression that she is open for their questions and for their concerns and cares about their everyday job.

Murray Guest  14:00

This leads me to a point, Becky, I think is really important for us to consider that sometimes we need to provide clarity about where we can’t provide clarity. And in that conversation this may have come up. I’m, of course, not too sure. But what this looks like sometimes is people thinking, Oh, we won’t talk about that because we don’t know. What happens is everyone else is creating their own story, their own meaning of what they think is going on right now. And as a leader, you might need to say, actually what I would encourage people to say is, right now, all we know is this, and that’s all we do know. And this other part, you know, about an org chart or a change or what’s happening from projects in the future, whatever it might be, we don’t know what’s happening there. And so therefore can’t provide ant more clarity but I can provide you clarity on this. Again, reduces that stress and the assumptions and the stories and potentially gossip as well.

Becky Hammond  15:00

Yeah, when you and I talked back a while ago, for my strengths in crisis, it feels like years ago, it might have only been a few months ago. You mentioned a leader who you had worked with who said that it was communicated this idea of creating clarity, even when it wasn’t going to be popular, even when the decisions that were being made, like weren’t going to be giving the fuzzy feeling. Can you share that story again, about what she said?

Murray Guest  15:38

Yeah, I’ve got a few stories. I think it was this one.

Becky Hammond  15:43

I’ll let you know if it sounds familiar.

Murray Guest  15:46

Well, one that this does remind me of many, many years ago, when I was working for an organization and redundancies were happening. And I remember talking to the CEO, and we were walking to one of those town hall meetings where all the staff were going to be there. And I remember I just happened to be walking next to the CEO. And I said – and I was quite, quite young and junior in that day – and I said something like, Oh, are you going to talk about redundancies? You know, people are really worried and maybe you are going to talk about something like that? And she paused, walking, again, great leadership, didn’t just keep walking, paused, looked at me and she said, Murray, of course I am. People want to know what’s going on. I’m going to talk about it and answer the questions as best I can right now.

Becky Hammond  16:34

Yeah, and that’s a scary thing to do sometimes.

Murray Guest  16:38

Yeah, yeah. And I’ve seen the opposite to that happen. You know, redundancies, obviously, are an emotional process for a lot of people, for lots of reasons. But when you can provide that clarity, again, it makes it easier, you know, it links back to us talking about leading with grace and kindness, and how important that is. The other story that I want to share also is about leading clarity upwards as well. And a leader I was talking to earlier this week, she shared some frustrations about, how I am being communicated from my leader one on one, I feel like I’m not getting the full picture. Whereas my peer, who is having one on ones and another peer having one on ones. We all feel a bit misaligned in our approach and how we’re leading our teams. And they said, Look, what do we what do we do about this? And so they actually went to their manager collectively and said, hang on, we don’t think this process is working. We feel like we’re missing some gaps. And that there’s a lack of alignment and clarity. Can we change this process and meet collectively, more often, to reduce that? And they were actually a little bit concerned because they didn’t know how this manager would respond. And he was very much like, Yeah, sure. Okay, let’s do this. How does it work? I’m glad you came to me. Again, some assumptions there, but so powerful, because I’ve spoken to them again since and they’ve said, it’s been so good. It’s just helped us get clear for not just us, but for when we are leading our teams as well.

Becky Hammond  18:17

Wow. I love that. I love that as a leader, you can seek the clarity. Like so when you start to see things are murky, you don’t just have to sit there and trudge through the murky water, you can also start to pursue ways of cleaning that up. And I mean, it could feel a little risky, like you said, like they said, I don’t know how he’s gonna take this. But in the end, you know, hopefully you’re approaching a leader who says, Well, if we can create more clarity, then in the end, it’s going to be better for all of us. 

Murray Guest  18:53

I was just going to say sometimes when we do jump in that clear water, we can stir it up a little bit. And it can get a little murky. And sometimes to create clarity, it’s going to get a little bit, I don’t know I’m going back to the metaphor here, a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit murky.

Becky Hammond  19:13

Your shoes are gonna get wet.

Murray Guest  19:14

Yeah, maybe maybe a little cold, you know, a little bit, a little bit uncomfortable. That’s what it’s about. But through that, you’re going to get the the clarity that you need for you, your team. And it’s just so needed right now, Becky.

Becky Hammond  19:29

Yeah. So what does it look like? So you’re talking about some really great stories, what are some of like the actions and behaviors? So as a leader, I’m listening right now, I’m like, okay, those are some good stories, but like, how do I actually go about doing that? Like, what are some actual behaviors that you are observing that are repeatable by other people who might be listening today?

Murray Guest  19:55

So I think about from this conversation with clarity, there’s a couple of angles that a leader can go down. One is their own self clarity, where they need that. And to take the time out to reflect and think what is causing me stress right now? Where am I lacking clarity? And write it down, write down the list and actually do the work, and say, Okay, now who do I need to talk to to increase that clarity for each one of these things, and then plan and actually have that conversation and explain your intent. I need to know clarity on this project, I need to know clarity around what’s happening. But actually, then make sure you have the conversations. So that reduces your own sense of stress and worry, it helps you get focused. And then the second thing is to actually have that conversation with your team. I invite all leaders to be thinking about, sorry, not even thinking, let’s take that back. At their next meeting, at their next meeting, to actually say to the team, where do you need more clarity right now? What do you need clarity on?

Becky Hammond  21:13

So inviting them to help you point out the murky parts?

Murray Guest  21:20

Yeah, point out the murky parts. And then make sure you listen, and then create space to have that conversation. And you may not have all the answers, and that’s okay, that’s 100% okay. But create the space to have the conversation and then generate some actions where you need to follow up and get the answers or give them the understanding that you don’t have the answer right now, to reduce that. For some teams, you might need to give them some time to reflect on that and then come back to that. And, and others that actually might generate, which I think happens quite a lot, is the clarity that team members are going to provide to each other. So it’s not all about you as the leader saying, hey, I need to tell you this, this and this, but it’s actually going to increase the understanding between team members as well. The third one, I think that is really important is actually talk to your team about how often you are talking in your meetings. Is the cycle of your meetings matching the rhythm of your work? 

Becky Hammond  22:29

What does that mean? 

Murray Guest  22:30

So we think about how our work flows in our teams, sometimes we are getting through work at a pace where we need to talk more frequently to match the information flow that’s coming in and the decisions we need to make. So for example, a team might be meeting once a month or something like that, yet they need to have updates more frequently and get that alignment throughout the month. So another great example of this in the recent months, a leader I know was meeting with his team once a week. And it was a pretty good meeting. But with working from home and all of the changes to the arrangements, they now have that that huddle meeting every morning on zoom, where they check in on what are our priorities, how are we going, what’s working, and the team are definitely saying we want this to continue when we go back into the office, because that’s happening every day and how valuable it is in bringing that clarity. I think we talked about this one in communication when we spoke about that, because it is such an important thing right now in having those conversations more frequently to match the needs and the rhythm of the work, of the team.

Becky Hammond  23:50

What if a leader is feeling like man, I just don’t have time. I don’t have time for like more meetings. So what have the best been doing that have helped them with that? Because it’s not that the best leaders aren’t busy, they are. Everyone’s busy, right?

Murray Guest  24:06

Well, I’d ask the question of leaders that say that what’s the most valuable thing that you should be doing with your time? And what’s the time cost to have the conversation now? And what’s that impact if you don’t have it now, and how you’re actually repeating a conversation model times down the track? A leader I was talking to yesterday, she said to me, she said, Murray, I actually went back to my team after our last session where we talked about clarity. So it’s awesome when leaders do the work. And she said, I was thinking about this conversation, and she said, I realized when I was delegating I would normally just tell them, Hey, can you do this bit of work? And leave it. And she said, I paused and I actually said I need it by this date. I need it to look like this and this is the priority. And she said she was really clear, she said it only took me an extra couple of minutes. And she said, I even felt a bit uncomfortable. But the person was like, thank you so much. And she said, previously, there would have been five or six, you know, backwards and forwards, trying to sort the work out. So to answer your question, Becky, I think, yeah, it’s the role of the leader to actually bring that clarity and have those conversations sooner. Because when you let that go, you know, when you let it fester, when you let the water go murky, you’ll pay the price.

Becky Hammond  25:33

Yeah, yeah. So it’s like incremental meetings are going to, in the end, be more efficient than one grand meeting or going down the wrong path, because it was fogged over right, to mix our metaphors a little bit. But so that nothing’s a surprise, right, especially in performance, in evaluation, right? Like, I mean, this is some of the basics of managing of like, well, if you don’t tell them what you’re expecting, then it’s not fair to hold them accountable to something that they didn’t know was the bar. And so in some ways you can’t afford not to, even though it feels like maybe it’s because you’re busy. I mean, it feels so stressful.

Murray Guest  26:21

I think it’s a great link to It’s The Manager, which is the Gallup book that Jim Harter and Jim Clifton released last year. But we talk about past work and future work. And past work was an annual review and future work is an ongoing conversation. That’s what we’re talking about here. It’s not, hey, how you going, once a year. It’s an ongoing conversation about what’s working and what’s not, and how can you acknowledge the good and improve in some areas. And again, that’s that mindset of the ongoing conversation as a leader to provide that clarity in other areas as well.

Becky Hammond  27:11

Yeah. So what’s the impact? And we’ve been talking about it kind of incrementally as we’ve gone along here. What have you found, the leaders who are creating the most clarity in their teams, what is happening to their team? Why should leaders be like, Oh, yeah, I want to create clarity.

Murray Guest  27:31

Honestly, they are happier. They are thriving, they are more productive. They feel less stress. And they, I think there’s less resentment. Because I think sometimes we can get some of those negative emotions of, I’m not hearing and I’m creating a story why I don’t know and why it’s murky. I wish my leader would tell me, but I’m too busy… and all that stuff. So all that’s going. So we’ve got more happiness, more engagement, more productivity, and less stress.

Becky Hammond  28:13

Right. As an institution, my experience says that we do not take into account the emotional stress and the impact that that has as much as we could or should. That it’s like, as if you’re carrying an extra weight on your back, you know, you’re like a, you’re a marathoner, and every day, you’re starting at zero, and you’re trying to get to the end. And that emotional stress of not having clarity is like carrying an extra weight. So that as you go, you’re not going to be as productive, you’re not going to be as happy doing it. Because you have an extra weight on your back, you’re going to be thinking about things that, you know, maybe you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t spend your time spinning your wheels about. And, but when you can, as a leader, release that from them, it’s like you’re taking the burden off their back, and they can feel lighter. And more, you know, like you said, happier and less distracted by the emotional weight of a stress of the lack of clarity.

Murray Guest  29:22

Yeah, I think to add to that, there’s less conscious attention. There’s less thinking. There’s less worry about, Oh I’m thinking about all these elements right now, I can actually focus on what I need to do right now. And I’m thinking about other analogies right now that are just so relevant to this conversation. You think about when you go on a holiday and you plan it. Where are we going? What does it look like? Where are we staying? And some people might prefer to just go, I’m heading out and that’s fine. Generally, though, I would say everyone’s got some level of plan as big or small as it is. And when we have that structure, and that clarity that’s going to help us get there. I think even with the people that like the smallest amount of planning, that enables them to know where I’ve got some clarity, and when I can, you know, go with the flow. It’s when we just don’t know at all, again, anxious, what am I doing? What does it look like? I have no idea. I was in America years ago, and you and I talking about driving in America, it’s hard enough driving on the other side of the car, let me tell you that.

Becky Hammond  30:38

I have had that experience. Yes.

Murray Guest  30:41

But then too, so there’s one bit of clarity, how do I drive from the other side of the car? And then to actually, you know, drive across is it the i45? Whatever it is.. 

Becky Hammond  30:52

You’ve been to Omaha too many times.

Murray Guest  30:57

I’m trying to think which it was, you know, so many big roads. But then to actually say, I drove from Los Angeles out to Las Vegas, and to get out of LA, and where am I going? I needed to know, where am I going? Which corner do I take? Which street sign? How do I do that? Because I remember that knot in my stomach with a, a car full of family and luggage and trying to get across five lanes of traffic. Right? Where am I going? How am I going to get there? So I can make the best, safest decisions to reduce that stress. It’s exactly what we’re talking about right now, as leaders we need to provide that.

Becky Hammond  31:43

Yeah, I love that. That’s a that’s a really tangible metaphor that we can kind of think about where are we going and how are we going to get there. And so we don’t have to be stressed when driving, we can just chat with our family instead of feeling stressed and overwhelmed. So what, if there are leaders listening right now that are like, okay, I’ll try it. Or, oh, I see how I could add a little bit more clarity, or let’s just see what the impact would be. What do you think that, what do you suggest that leaders would do right now that they can say, Okay, this is a tangible thing that I’m going to do next week, or this week with my team?

Murray Guest  32:23

Yeah, so I think the first thing would be to have that conversation with the team. To actually say, right, we’ve got our standard team meeting, but let’s bring to the topic at the start of the meeting this concept of clarity. And you can even use the traffic light analogy. So right now, where have we got green lights, so we can just go straight ahead. Where do you feel like you’ve got some amber lights where you don’t quite understand, you know, I need a bit of information. And, and then we have our red lights, where have I got red lights right now where I actually don’t understand, I need clarity. Really simple. And then just go through that with the team. Again, bringing out the clarity, bring it out. And some of that you’ll find will be, as I said earlier from the leader within the team, or maybe from customers, internal customers, internal suppliers, where then it’s going to drive some real tangible steps to say, Okay, I’m going to go find that out, I’m going to find out what we need to know.

Becky Hammond  33:36

And not be afraid to say I don’t know, let’s let’s think about that.

Murray Guest  33:40

Yeah, let’s loop back on that. Let’s come back in our next meeting. You don’t need to solve everything in that first discussion. Yeah, let’s go and find out and we’ll come back. That’s what I say people should do first. And I think, of course, team meetings are a great places that but again, like we said earlier, think about what it means for you one on one for your own, you know, manager that you report to or leader you report to and how you can get more clarity for yourself as well. The other thing I would say Becky is try it out at home.

Becky Hammond  34:17

Hmm that seems like a whole other ballgame.

Murray Guest  34:25

It’s something which I put my hand up as a husband and father where I’ve missed the clarity bus. Let’s just say. And haven’t provided that. And the stressful conversations I’ve had. So what I’d say is yeah, have the conversation at home if you have a partner and about where are we missing that right now? And, and how can we improve that clarity and, and just see how that can reduce maybe some stress and improve that well being.

Becky Hammond  35:00

Yeah, and kind of circling all back around the uncertainty. If we can create certainty in some of the most important areas of our lives, then even though we still live in the midst of uncertainty, we’re going to have less stress and experience more well being in some of those key areas in our lives. So cool. Love that. Love that last little tip. I think I’m, I think you were trying to coach me on that one. So I will take that one. I’ll take that one home. Conversations like we’ve been having today are ones that we also have in our Leaders Who Give a Damn program. And, you know, what’s the connection? What do you think the connection to the Leaders Who Give a Damn program and clarity really is?

Murray Guest  35:44

Ah, so definitely I would say knowing your people is one of our modules, we talk about leaders who give a damn around knowing their needs and knowing them. Definitely also prioritizing conversations. That’s a key part that we talk about in the Leaders Who Give a Damn program. And as you said earlier, Becky, not just waiting to have the conversation. But yeah, let’s talk about that reduction of, of anxiousness or murkiness and bring the clarity there. And even the last one, tackling busyness. You mentioned leaders are busy, have always got a lot on their plate. But I would say this is a key part in our leadership roles, and making this a priority. And it will then give you that reduction in your busyness because I think, I’d like to say a lot of leaders will find it will prevent some of that re-communication and re-work and going over things that’s happening right now.

Becky Hammond  36:49

Yeah, yes, I love it. That is totally true. And we, in the program, in addition to tips and stories, provide some clear action that leaders can take. The idea is that we want this to be useful to you, very consumable. And so if leadership is something that you care about, if you care about caring for your people, then definitely check out Leaders Who Give a Damn. We have one more podcast in this series about lockdown leadership. So next week, we are going to be talking about self care, well being and just understanding the importance of taking care of yourself and the impact that is having on some of the best leaders that we have the pleasure and honor to work with during this time. So thank you, Murray for sharing your insight on clarity and your stories. And it’s just been a pleasure to chat as always.

Murray Guest  37:46

Right back at you Becky, always a pleasure chatting with you. And thank you for sharing your insights and stories from across the pond.

Becky Hammond  37:55

Murky or clear?

Murray Guest  37:57

Clear. A clear pond. Yes. See you next week.

Becky Hammond  38:00

All right. See you now. Bye

Episode 67 – Lockdown Leadership | Individualization

Across this 5-part podcast series, I chat with Becky Hammond from Isogo Strong and unpack some common leadership themes that we have seen stand out during this crisis. As we’ve coached and worked with leaders over the past several months, themes have emerged where the best leaders are thriving and implementing changes to successfully take their team and organisation forward. These themes include Grace & Kindness, Communication, Individualization, Clarity, and Selfcare.

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Transcript

Becky Hammond  00:00

Well, hello there Murray Guest, I’m so glad that we get to have another conversation today about what leaders are doing in lockdown and have done in lockdown, and the themes that seem to be shining out of the best leaders, the most resilient leaders that we know. So, welcome, as we talk about this.

Murray Guest  00:21

Thank you, Becky. And I know you and I’ve been talking quite a bit in between having these conversations about these themes. And whether people are based in my part of the world or your part of the world or anywhere, there’s some common themes that are certainly arising from our conversations, and also some of the articles that we’ve been reading and things we’ve been seeing as well. So it’s great to connect and talk about these themes. And I think this one is a really important one. I’m hearing this a lot as leaders are in lockdown, and even right now, as there’s so many different versions of transitioning back into the workplace, back into organizations. And this theme of individualization in leadership, so so important.

Becky Hammond  01:05

Yeah, you know, Gallup has said for a long time, that the best managers, the ones that kind of rise to the top are those who individualize. And I think for some leaders, this is a super frustrating statistic, because, you know, it does require, it requires energy. It requires thoughtfulness, it requires work. But what we’re seeing is that it is true, the best leaders out of this crisis are individualizing, they are asking the tough questions of themselves to say, what could I do to add to making this experience to be one that is smoother, to be one that is more flexible, that doesn’t jump to conclusions, or base their theories of what’s happening on assumptions, and they are truly, truly individualizing? I know that we have some stories from some of the best leaders that we are working with right now. I’m curious to know, kind of what’s one of those stories that rises to the top for you, as we talk about individualization and flexibility?

Murray Guest  02:09

Yeah, I certainly want to share a few of those stories, because I’ve been inspired by how leaders really bring that individualization to their daily leadership and the way they’re approaching it. And I think even just to pause for a moment and reflect on this idea of managing people to a job description, and treating them like parts of a factory process, you know, like the old style management. That has been highlighted through this experience that we’ve all been in, in the past, you know, three or four months, how that just does not work, that doesn’t engage people, they don’t feel connected. And honestly, we don’t treat them as humans and as whole people, if we manage people like that. Yeah, and as you’ve just highlighted, Gallup, has highlighted and identified the research that that individualization is so important. And one of the stories I want to share, Becky, is a leader that I’ve been working with, and they manage an operations area, and they needed to, you know, start to have people work from home. While some people still need to be coming to, basically a depot as you would call in America, or down here we call it a depo. That’s the same place.

Becky Hammond  03:32

Oh what a cultural adjustment. Thank you for being so sensitive to my language. I definitely would not have known what you meant if you said depo. So thank you.

Murray Guest  03:45

So I have been corrected by some of my American friends in the past on that one. So it’s one of those ones. But let’s talk about the depot. And how through this process, they needed some people to be based there and some working from home and how they make that work. And I think, to be honest, an ineffective leader and a leader that may be taking the easy route, would have just said, okay, you’re at home, you’re at work based on your job or your role. And just, you know, cut it down the middle. And to be honest, that is easier, and that is faster. But you know what, it doesn’t engage people. It doesn’t treat them like humans, it doesn’t consider what’s going on in their world and their life. And what this leader needed to do was actually, you know, pause and actually say, Who needs to be at home? Not ‘who do we need at work’, but who needs to be at home right now with what’s going on in the world? Yeah, so a totally different approach, which I know took time, took focus, took energy, and even felt difficult because it’s like hang on, we are putting people first. Hang on, but that is is important. And so what they did was they went through that process and didn’t take a long time, but also took some really valuable time and they identified that one of the leaders has a daughter who’s immune compromised. And through that process said, right, so it’s best for you to work at home for this next period of time. So that you’re okay, your family is okay. And she’s okay. And in having that come to surface as in, right, so how do we actually start to even use this as an opportunity for some improved succession planning and people stepping up. Which then there was a flow on effect, where we then had a leader that was working from home and someone else could step up into his role. And then someone else that normally works, let’s say, on the floor, stepping up again. So opportunity out of crisis. So everyone was looked after, everyone could do their role slightly differently. But then we had this great opportunity for development. And that, I think, is a really good example of that individualization and flexibility we want to talk about today.

Becky Hammond  06:11

Yeah, totally reminds me, or occurs to me in this moment that it takes a good deal of creativity. It’s not just the time but like thinking outside of the proverbial box, like, it says, Okay, this is the role that this person has always played. And this is what we need them to do, or what we need our organization to do. So how can we still get the same things done, and how people maybe take different rules or different priorities? Your story reminds me of the healthcare leader that I was working with, who had very similar outcomes of, okay, usually every person is in the office, there are zero remote workers when you are working in a healthcare setting, you know, pre March 2020. And but they said we want to we are committed to keeping these people employed. And so what can they do, they looked at, there was two particular people who had family members who were just higher risk. And they said, it’s not worth it for you to come into the office, we’re exposed to the general population every day. And so they were creative. They had to, you know, reorganize some things, readjust some things, people had to take on different responsibilities and roles, but I think the leader, the leader’s example of showing like, it’s okay, we can do this, you know, kind of gets back to the grace that we talked about in the first episode of this series, which is, you know what let’s all breathe a little bit, like breathe in and breathe out some grace and say, we can we can be flexible, we can individualize to the, to the people that have real human needs. You know, HBR, Harvard Business Review, wrote an article, I think, was back in 2011 2012, that just said, People aren’t assets. You know, we talked about like people saying, you know, people are assets. Well, people aren’t assets. They’re humans that need to be to be cared about and to be looked after as unique individuals, and not as every one of them being exactly the same as being a cog in the system.

Murray Guest  08:18

Yeah, and I think, additionally, Becky, I’m thinking about a conversation I had recently with a leader. And actually, I should say, it was a group of leaders where we were talking about our assumptions. And I know that as humans, we make assumptions all the time. As people we make assumptions, we make assumptions when we drive down the road that the car coming towards us is going to be on the other side of the road. And our brains need to make these, yeah, I was careful how I frame that one. And those assumptions we make in all areas of our lives, and we need to from a brain perspective, otherwise, we’d be focusing on absolutely everything. And we’d have that sense of overwhelm. And I think this is just raising to the awareness and in this conversation, of this group of leaders, about we can’t just assume what people are doing or can’t just assume that they can deliver exactly on their role if they’re working from home, or that they can work from home, or they can or they can do their job elsewhere. It’s about being present, having that grace and kindness that I loved our conversation on, and knowing our people to a depth that shows we care, but also, and this is where the difficulty is, I’m gonna call it, we want to know people but also have some boundaries there as well. So it does take some time and energy and focus, but it’s about this is true leadership.

Becky Hammond  09:47

Yeah, yeah. Reminds me of that concept of emotional templates that we talked about in Leaders Who Give a Damn program, of what you’re reminding me that like some of those things are things that we need, where we need to cut like, especially if they’re positive emotional templates that we can create those things, these assumptions, these filters of the situation that we’re about to go into. But when we find that we’re creating a negative emotional template or a negative assumption, that’s where we kind of as leaders, the best leaders, they check themselves. I was talking to a leader today who, man she’s so good at individualizing. She’s saying, you know, okay, I talked to this, I said, I said something to the effect of how is your team doing? And she’s like, Well, yesterday, I would have said great. And today, I’m not so sure. And so she had a conversation with one of her employees that she usually has great rapport, great trust with. And today, something happened, by the end of the call, it was clear that there was, there was something going on that there was either a lack of trust, or that there was just, maybe toes being stepped on, or I know, as a coach, I was helping her think through that, and what that might be. And I think one of her greatest strengths as a leader is that even in this sense of crisis, where you know, one of the true answers as to why things might be going wrong, is because people are tired, right? They are exhausted, they have been working more hours than they ever have. And she was doing a great job of just saying, Well, what is it for this person? You know, she and I, I coach from a Strengths Finder perspective. So we’re talking about the strength of that particular person, and what might be causing the riff or it might have caused this like, difference in interaction. And in the end, yeah, maybe there were some strengths related things about relator and significance and some different approaches that this leader could take. And so that’s individualizing. Right there. And then also just realizing, fatigue is setting in. And so what can we do to assume positive intent, go back to people with, go back to your your team with, like, hey, that didn’t go so well? What can we do to make that go better? Or, what do I not know that I should know, that will help me to tailor our conversations a little bit better.

Murray Guest  12:06

And I think that’s just another great example, Becky, of a leader that’s really being present, and, and really present to the needs of their team, and how they’re feeling. And I think the important part here for people to just reflect on also is, this doesn’t mean that’s taking away from your job, this is your job as a leader, this is a core element of being a leader. And I’ll even build on that and say, while it might feel like it’s taking away some of the conversation from where you’re up to with your projects, where you’re up to on some of your work, or where you’re up to and delivering on X, Y and Z. By having these conversations, it puts people in a space so they can deliver on their work and actually feel more engaged in their jobs. So I think we’ve got to just, and this has just highlighted so importantly, through this, this process, through this pandemic, how important we are connecting with our people on their individual needs. And a leader I was working with a couple of weeks ago, she told me she had to change the way she conducted her one on one conversations with her team. And it was a great awareness where she realized that it was all project based. It was all, where you’re at with your work. How are you delivering on the timelines? Have you been speaking to stakeholders. And the awareness she got was, Hang on, I’ve missed that leadership component. I’ve missed that conversation. I’ve missed the check in, where are you at? Like you’re leader, a great example. So she brought that in, and the shift on the productivity, the shift on how people were connected, and even communicating with each other shifted significantly, by her showing that care at the start of every one on one. Again, good practice and a simple change but made a big difference.

Becky Hammond  14:07

I love that it’s just the power of showing up first with, this is a human I’m talking to, kind of like, you’re not an asset, you’re not a to do list to me. It was challenging for people like me who are to do list kind of people, like okay, well we have these things that we need to take care of. Right. But it’s like you said, it’s not adding to your job, it IS your job to get to know them so that then you know if you’re going to be able to get through all that checklist of things. And the leader that I was working with who said, you know what, they started to do one word check ins at the beginning of every meeting. So you sometimes you feel like I don’t have time to like get everybody’s like how they’re feeling today and like you know, download everything about how their weekend was and all that. But if you’re having a team meeting, you know, it’s pretty powerful for people to go around the room. And say one word. You know what you don’t have to explain it, you don’t have to, it doesn’t have to be happy. It doesn’t have to be good, or it could be. But what happens if you go around the room and everyone says their one word like, this is how I’m coming to this meeting today, then you as a leader can individualize to the team or to that meeting, or like, if everyone in the room says, overwhelmed, exhausted, burnt out, then you know that you have a different situation than if most people are saying, you know, what, pretty good, or, you know, I’m feeling content today, or I’m relaxed. Those are very different experiences that you as a leader can then kind of tailor your to do list to after that.

Murray Guest  15:39

Such a simple process. But I can imagine the openness, the vulnerability, that creating the space for people to start to share how they’re feeling. And you know what I think a good leader in that situation might say, we need to pause the conversation about this project. And we need to maybe talk about what’s just come out of that review of how we’re all feeling to make sure we reconnect and how we are looking after ourselves and looking after each other in that moment. I do that often in my workshops, and around with teams and those themes of I’m feeling busy, I’m feeling overwhelmed and feeling tired. Because people, I feel, like are juggling, and we talked about this in one of our I think it was in the training we did a few weeks back. People feel like they’re juggling a lot more balls at the moment. So yeah, I think that check in from a leader is again, a simple step, but really impactful, shows you care as a leader. The bit I want to add, Becky, that’s so important is if you’re going to ask that question, be prepared for the answer, be prepared. Be prepared for what people say, because if they’re going to say, Hey, I’m feeling tired, or I’m feeling a bit lost, or I’m feeling overwhelmed or stressed, you know, we’ve given them the space to share that. Now let’s do something with that. Because if someone raises that, and we go, Okay, now, let’s move on to the projects.

Becky Hammond  17:07

Okay, that being said, check, check, check, right, like, yeah, what do you think? What What have you seen some of the best leaders do? Or what are what are some of your experiences of, you know, not derailing your entire project? You might not be able to, but really still addressing some of those, you know, what does it look like to be ready for the responses that people give you?

Murray Guest  17:32

Yeah, so I think that’s a really good point. And I think it’s that preparation. So being aware that if I’m going to ask that question that I’m already thinking about, okay, how do we support? How do we share so I know leaders that are thinking, Right, in my agenda that is a part of the process. And then what I’m going to make sure I can do is, I’ve got some suggestions that I might bring to the table, after more of a coaching approach. So for example, if people saying I’m a bit stressed, I’m a bit overwhelmed, or I’m feeling too busy right now. Okay, so the coaching approach would be so what are you going to do about that? Or what support do you need? Or what additional resources? Who could we delegate some work to? So ask some coaching questions, but as a leader, also having ready to bring to the table some ideas in case the team, you know, don’t quite get there. So but you know, in the start with that coaching approach, so I’d say that’s the first thing. The second thing is, you know, being very mindful on and listening with intent for anyone that needs follow up after that meeting. So one of those tailored one on one check ins. Yeah. So you might need to check in with someone and and catch up with them and say, Look, hey Becky, I noticed that right now, you’ve said you’ve got so much on your plate, you’re not too sure where to start. Let’s catch up after the meeting and talk through that so I can help you with some of the priorities on that work right now.

Becky Hammond  19:05

Yeah, it reminds me of a leader, one of the best leaders that I have worked with in the recent years who says that he, during this time of crisis, maybe it was probably about, I don’t know, six or seven weeks in where people are starting to feel that burnout. He said that he had just a conversation with one of his team members who came to him and just said, You know what, this is a lot. I don’t know, if I can manage this. I’m feeling completely overwhelmed. And as he just kind of stood, stood in that place, and had a listening ear, stood, I don’t know, he might have been sitting because he was probably on a zoom call at that point, but had a listening ear for her situation. You know, by the end, they were laughing together. And he was just kind of letting her know like, You’re not the only one that’s feeling like this and here’s some strategies that maybe we can try and, you know, he’s good at cracking jokes and such. And so they were laughing together, you know, high positivity, strength type leader. And, you know, at the end of the conversation, she just said, you know what I came in just feeling so down and I appreciate that I’m able to have a conversation with you that you’re willing to stop and talk to me. And you can always make me laugh, even if I feel like, you know, everything’s about to crash, crash and burn. So you know, that I feel like that’s an example of, of tailoring that one on one of, of knowing that it was not time to be like, I mean, it probably wasn’t even time to be like, Okay, well, let’s list out everything that you have going and see what we can eliminate it, you know, that might have been a helpful fix. But really, all she needed was that emotional connection, and that sense of being understood and being heard, and adding a little bit of levity back into her life at that time. So that leader just did a really good job of individualizing that experience so that he was helping her get what she needed in that moment.

Murray Guest  21:03

Yeah, I love that. And I love the practical examples with these great leaders that you work with Becky, because I think it helps us understand how this can look, in a day to day approach. I just want also flag I think what’s a really important distinction here. Leaders caring about their people is obviously important, something that we are so passionate about. But leaders also aren’t counselors. So it’s also striking that balance of showing you care, building that trust, but also being aware of when you may need to refer or suggest other support mechanisms your organization has to support that person as well. And just so I think that’s an important element that leaders need to be mindful of, and not stepping over and getting and also not being too emotionally invested. And show you care. Yeah. But at the same time, making sure that you keep some boundaries there as well. Yeah, I think the bit that I just add to that, explaining your intent is really important. If you are asking someone how they’re doing or you’re asking how things are, some people may be thinking, Oh, this is a bit personal, you’re diving in too quick. So it needs trust. But explaining your intent that the reason I’m doing that is because I do care about you, I want to make sure you’re okay. Some simple words to explain your intent go a long way.

Becky Hammond  22:28

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, we’ve talked a little bit, kind of all weaving throughout these stories are some of the behaviors that we’ve seen of good leaders that individualize and are providing flexibility in this kind of lockdown time and after, we’ve talked a little bit about impact. What more would you say about the type of impact that being an individualizing leader, a flexible leader, really has on your team and your team culture and your end products?

Murray Guest  23:01

Well, I think the word we’ve said a few times is trust and 100% I think it builds trust, builds that greater connection between team members and the leader, also reduces stress, anxiety, and worry. I think it also builds employee engagement, it builds that connection to the team and that connection to the organization and the purpose. And you and I’ve talked about this in the Leaders Who Give a Damn program around, you know, the, I think it’s 70% of an employee’s engagement relates to their relationship with their manager. So if my manager shows, my leader shows, they care about me, then I’m engaged, and I’m going to show up. So there’s the impact there, isn’t just from human to human, but also from a business sense. So I think the other thing that also does is that creates a new way of working and a new team culture, that transition to this time right now where some businesses are working back in the office or back in their workplace. And then beyond that. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been running workshops with a range of clients. And I’ve been asking the question, Who wants things to go back to the way they were before this all started? I think you know the answer. Drumroll for the surprise. Yes. It’s been, I think around 200 people, and honestly, I’d be like, two people have said we want it to get back the way it was. Everyone has enjoyed or been inspired or appreciated or changed the way of working, been exposed to a different way and wants something out of that to continue, whether it’s the flexibility, whether it’s the start time, whether it’s working from home, whether it’s the type of work they do, it’s just so strong, so strong right now. And unfortunately, though, I was talking to a team recently, and they said that the message they got from a leader was when you go back into the work, it’s back to five days a week, exact same hours back to what we’re doing. And they’re all like, hang on, hang on, hang on. That’s not what we want. And there’s this conversation happening right now about how do we individualize? How do we take what’s worked for me and what’s going to work for the team going forward? Because otherwise, Becky, if we don’t do that, as leaders, there’s going to be massive, honestly, massive emotional mental impact and massive disengagement.

Becky Hammond  25:55

Yeah, yeah, that is a really striking, a striking story about, you know, an organization saying, you know, we’re just gonna go back to doing what we were doing. It’s not like, we’re asking you to do anything more than what you did before. Yet, people are starting to say, but look, I’m doing a great job. And look at all the less miles that are on my car, the less pollution that we’re putting in the air, the less number of hours I spent on the train, and you know, all the different elements, whatever kind of they’re pulling out as man, this was a real benefit to me, and I’m still doing a good job for you, aren’t I? You know, and yeah, it’s really fascinating.

Murray Guest  26:33

And I’m getting the chance to invest in my health and well being, whilst I’m not commuting into the workplace. Now, I’m not saying, and I don’t want to put my assumption out there for people to think that I’m saying everyone should work from home going forward. I’m not saying that. I know that’s not what you’re saying, either. I think what we’re very clear on is it’s the individual needs of the person and the team and the business and how they can all come together. Because there’s lots that has worked over these past few months. And I think from a habit point of view, if it takes 21 days to form a new habit, people have been forming new habits for over 90 days. And if we consider that, we consider that we’ve got people that have formed some new habits and new ways of working, and they’re getting locked in pretty solid. And, like you said, it’s working in the sense that they’re delivering on what the team needs as well.

Becky Hammond  27:31

Right, right. Since as you’re saying these things that I’m gonna take your Venn diagram approach, I feel like there’s a middle, right, there’s the me, there’s my team, there’s an organization, and where does that overlap? And, you know, as an individual team member as well, you know, you don’t just get to do whatever you want, right? There has to be some from the team and from the leader and from the organization. And I think for the first time we’re seeing that. That it can work when there can be a really great place of overlap of all those things, and still be focusing on the human and the individual and, and what people need. Yeah, really good.

Murray Guest  28:15

Yeah. I totally agree, Becky. And I think that’s a good way to, I think, wrap up this conversation and for leaders to actually take that pause, and maybe even get the piece of paper out or get out their device and think about those diagrams, those circles and how they do intersect. What do my individuals need, what do my team members need? What does our team need? What do I need? What does the organization need? And how do we map that going forward? Talk to your team. And really listen, and be prepared then to invest the time and shaping this amazing opportunity going forward. Because right now, there are so many different versions of work that is being developed and being implemented. And it’s about finding the one that works for you and for your team and for those individuals in your team.

Becky Hammond  29:11

Yeah. Now, I love that practical application of just kind of being able to see like, where do these things overlap? We’re not saying that, I think what I’m careful of is we’re not saying that every individual’s needs have to trump everything. I mean, that won’t work, right? It won’t work. Not everyone can get every thing that they feel like they need. Maybe they can, but most likely they can’t. And so where are those biggest sections of overlap? And how can we come to a solution that looks at the individual for their situation, the individual for their strengths. I think about individual ways to encourage and recognize each employee. I mean, this has been something that’s been a thing, you know, since the beginning of management, and it feels even more important in this time where people are feeling just more uncertain. And so as a manager, you know, one practical takeaway is just okay, think about who each of my team members are as an individual, and what can I do to encourage and recognize them for the work that they are doing during this time, and the value that they provide based on their individual needs and their individual strengths.

Murray Guest  30:24

And, of course, Becky, there’s a really great link here to Module Three in the Leaders Who Give a Damn program, which is knowing your people. And I know as you go through that module, there’s some resources there to help you invest in deepening that knowledge of your people, to connect with them on an individual level. So if you haven’t checked out that program, I would love you to check that out. Because I know that module links so strongly to what we’re talking about today.

Becky Hammond  30:51

Yep. And it leaves you with some real good, solid action planning guides and some practical next steps that you can take to individualize as a leader and even more when it comes to knowing who your people are, and being a leader that inspires them to follow. So yeah, definitely check that out if you haven’t, and we will be excited to continue this series about leadership in lockdown. Next week, whenever the next episode is in our fourth episode of this series, we will be talking about clarity. And clarity is something that Murray, you especially have been thinking about and are passionate about in this time, that you’ve been seeing the best leaders are those that create a sense of clarity, and there’s some interesting ways that they’re doing it and that you’re seeing that happen. So I’ll be excited to dive into that in the next episode.

Murray Guest  31:42

So Becky, if you expect to get a word in next time, you’re going to be severely disappointed. I am so passionate about clarity, and I am looking forward to talking about that with you. So thanks again so much. I love I love love our conversations and thanks everyone for listening.

Becky Hammond  32:01

Yep, and thanks to the inspiring leaders that are teaching us what it looks like to lead well in lockdown. Bye now

Episode 66 – Lockdown Leadership | Communication

Across this 5-part podcast series, I chat with Becky Hammond from Isogo Strong and unpack some common leadership themes that we have seen stand out during this crisis. As we’ve coached and worked with leaders over the past several months, themes have emerged where the best leaders are thriving and implementing changes to successfully take their team and organisation forward. These themes include Grace & Kindness, Communication, Individualization, Clarity, and Selfcare.

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Transcript

Becky Hammond  00:01

Hello, good morning. good afternoon, Murray. How are you today?

Murray Guest  00:06

I’m really good, Becky, thank you. It’s fresh morning here, winter, of course in the southern hemisphere, but I’m really appreciating the the coolness and I’m appreciating… Honestly, I’m really appreciating the sunrises each, each morning at the moment. And I’m loving starting my day chatting to you about leadership, something that we’re so passionate about. And so, tell me what are we getting into today?

Becky Hammond  00:29

It kind of sounds like a little bit like a game show. Right? Like, so what’s up next, right. Now, you know what this series we just, we one, you heard before, you might have caught that before it was about grace and kindness. And really what we’re talking about is about what are good leaders doing right now? And what has come out of this time of crisis? You know, we started asking ourselves, What are they doing? What did they do so well? And what did they learn maybe even the hard way during this crazy world crisis that that we see them carrying forward into what might end up being a new normal, or maybe uncertainty is the new normal. And so what works as a leader as we move into a time that that maybe feels just as uncertain, if not more practiced, at least at this point. And so the themes that we are talking about over these five podcasts are grace and kindness, which you can check in the last episode, communication, we’re talking about that today, individualization and flexibility, clarity, and taking care of self. So today, we are going to dive into this concept about communication. And communication is something that I think is, it’s an overused word, so maybe I would choose a different one. Or maybe we can define it in a way that really separates it from just like, okay, yeah, good communication is a good idea. What do we mean by communication, Murray?

Murray Guest  02:04

I think that’s a really good point can I just say, Becky, on communication. Over the years when I’ve been running workshops, and I have asked teams, what can we do better? And people say communication, and I go, Ugh. Because it’s like, it’s such a broad word. And it means I could ask 20 people to write down on a piece of paper in a room, what’s communication? I get 20 different answers. So you’re right, it means so much. It means so much. So I think that’s an important point that let’s be clear, when we say communication, what are we talking about, and also for people to think about what it means for them. The second thing, though, before we get into it, I just want to mention something. I’ve been running a leadership program with a team or a group of people at an organization this past couple of weeks. And the question I’ve been asking in every session is who wants things to go back to the exact same way they were? Before this all happened, before we were working from home, working in isolation? And I’ll say my quantitative analysis of these, you know, worked with 60 leaders in this group in the last two weeks, it’s been honestly like one or two people. It’s everyone wants it to, to change in some way, for it to stay changed with these new ways of working, there’s new flexibilities, there’s new communication processes happening. People don’t want it to go back to the way they were, they can see the value and the benefit. So I think that’s where these conversations are really important to actually take the time out and say, What is working? And how do we leverage that and keep that going?

Becky Hammond  03:46

Right, and not just fall back into the way we used to do things because we used to do them and when they were comfortable, and we knew how to do it that way, but rather really pushing yourself as a leader and as a team to say, you know, what might work better? And especially what might work better, because some things just won’t ever be the same?

Murray Guest  04:06

Hmm. I totally agree. And communication. Great question about when we say that, what do we mean, what are we talking about? So yes, there’s the word we use. There’s things that we say. But there’s also the the amount of listening we’re doing. So how much are we listening to each other, listening to our teams? And then is that the whole other part of our communication, which is the energy we bring, there’s the body language, there’s our hand gestures. There’s all those little messages that we provide people. I’ve got, quote, again, from someone that I love working with is, I can’t hear what you’re saying, because what you’re doing is so loud. So as much as we may be communicating by speaking something, it’s being lost through our behaviors as well. So the way we communicate is so much and of course with all the changes in our ways of working, a lot of the behavioral communication has been lost in zoom, and online meetings and things like that. So I think that’s something that we need to be mindful of then and to be honest, even tap into that even more to really watch and to really be focused in those in those meetings and conversations. So yeah. So communication, something which I know for the people I’ve been working with has been focused on, to see how that could be improved. And how that can be something which they take forward in the way they’re working back to whatever the new normal is. Yeah. So Becky, what’s been happening with some of the clients you’ve been working with? What have you been hearing about this?

Becky Hammond  05:45

It’s kind of interesting, because as you talk about, like, all the different aspects of communication, I also think about how it’s kind of important at every level, and in every space you occupy. And I think now more than ever, you know, we might have always said communication was important in our families and our work. But now we’re saying our families and our work might be together forever, or at least in new ways. And certainly they have been over the last several months. And so a couple different stories, conversations come to my mind about leaders who’ve been really effective. And communicating well, and having, sometimes that means having tough conversations, sometimes that means having the hard conversation, I think of a leader who they were running this really big event. And it didn’t go off. Well, from a technological standpoint, the end goal actually was better than they expected. So that was the silver lining. But when she was going back to talk to her team about what went wrong, on the tech side, there was there was some pretty big defensiveness, and she’s just kind of wondering like, Okay, how do I, how do I get the whole story. And as we were talking, I realized, if they don’t have this conversation, then trust is breaking down. And so she in the end, just said, in the end, she just asked for the straight story and said, I can back you up better to these other departments if I know exactly what happened, even if you are the one that was at fault, or you had some fault in this, you know, like, in general, most problems we have, every party has some fault. And what that did was it led to more trust, not less. So even though her leader that was working for her did have some like, ooh, I don’t know, that wasn’t really the best, you know, that wasn’t the best thing to do. So maybe it was a mistake, instead, build more trust, because they were able to have a conversation and really able to communicate about that particular thing. And so that’s one of the stories that stands out to me about the power of communication. And just the challenge of it. It’s not an easy thing to do as a leader.

Murray Guest  07:59

Yeah, I totally agree. And there’s lots of programs and literature out there about having courageous conversations. And I think if anyone wants to invest in having those conversations, you can check out some of that. And of course, we do talk about in the Leaders Who Give a Damn program, because having those conversations are what shapes the culture. And I think in the program, I might say something like every conversation is an opportunity to influence the culture. I think I say a number of times, I’m a big believer in it. And I think that’s something which we can’t lose sight of as leaders for every time we have those conversations, it’s going to influence the culture in some way. And that culture of trust that you just referenced, that that leaders generating and creating, through having those conversations and owning her part, I heard that as well. Owning her part of whatever happened is so important. There’s a quote, I want to share as well that I looked up in preparation for this one, this chat about communication, and it’s from Leonard Saffir, who’s a public relations executive. And what he says is, in crisis management, be quick with the facts and slow with the blame.

Becky Hammond  09:21

Plays so well back to our conversation about grace as well. Like there’s a pause there. There’s that breath if you’re practicing, taking that breath now to inhale grace and exhale grace to other people. You just pausing to take the facts and don’t just jump to conclusions.

Murray Guest  09:43

Yeah, and it’s something which you know, in the times of crisis that we start to realize how important communication is. And what I do hope is anyone that’s listening to this they actually take that timeout, take the pause to say okay, how has my communication adjusted through this process of working from home in different arrangements, and how’s it helping me be a better leader? And how can I keep that going forward? A simple process one of the teams that I’ve been working with was doing, they had a weekly meeting, which to be honest, wasn’t that effective. They felt like it could have been clear in the purpose, clear in the process that they were having are getting together. What was happening was, they would meet for, I think, was about an hour and a half, sometimes for a week. But they wouldn’t chat that often throughout the week, throughout the week, you know, every day, there might have some project meetings, but not that good effective alignment as a team. And since working from home, they’ve implemented a daily huddle, where every morning, every morning without fail, they’re on zoom. And they are connecting as a team, and not just about what the priorities are today, what do we need to deliver on, where we’re up to with some of our challenges and goals, and some of their internal customers which was a big focus for this team. But, how are we? And they actually have a measure through to five, of where’s our health level at? And actually share that, and they check in on that. And they talk about that. And they support each other. So I actually, luckily, at the moment, I’m working with that team, and they were talking about this. And I said, Okay, so who wants this to continue when you go back in the office? And everyone’s like, Yes, me, me, me, we have to keep doing this. The value of the alignment, the engagement, they’re feeling more connected. And they are talking the other day about the speed of agility. So with this communication increase, and here’s a thought, Becky, I’d love your perspective on this, I think every team needs to talk more frequently, more regularly. Because I think too often we’ve got these old processes where, Oh we’ll just talk about this in the meeting, you know, each week or each month, or whatever it is. But when we talk more frequently for a shorter period of time in effective meeting, it builds that alignment, builds the understanding and builds that speed of decision making.

Becky Hammond  12:24

Yeah, yeah, well, the phrase that comes to mind, and I don’t know if I just made this up, or if I heard this somewhere, so let’s just be honest about that. To me, in my mind, it says less more frequently, right? So like this team that was having hour and a half meetings, they’re not meeting any more, right, they’re meeting the exact same amount of time, if they’re meeting every day of the week for 15 minutes, yet, they feel more connected, they feel less bored, they feel more engaged with each other, they understand their team better. They, what I’m just hearing you say right now, are working together better as a team, which I assume also means like getting to their goals in a more effective manner as well. And so, yeah, I love that I, I think to be efficient, and be connecting with people and working towards goals. I mean, to me, that’s a dream as a leader.

Murray Guest  13:20

Yeah, yeah, high Achiever for Becky, they’re getting…

Becky Hammond  13:26

Hey, I put that connection in there for you and your relator. So.

Murray Guest  13:31

So something I think that you started to mention before, and I might have cut you off. So I do apologize. But that was my communication coming out. But what I think is something that has been highlighted here in the past couple of months is also the importance of communication at home. And what I’ve been sharing with some teams I’ve been working with is team meetings at home. And so we have team meetings at work, you know, what’s on our plate and what projects, but we need to have those at home as well. And Tammy and I have been having team meetings for some time. And we explore a whole range of things of you know, what’s in the calendar for the children, what’s on our calendar, who’s coming, who’s going, you know, who needs the bandwidth the most on the Wi Fi, whatever, who needs the quiet time in the house. So stop talking, you know, so we can do all that. But I think I’d like to know what you’re hearing as well about this need for the increase of communication and clarity at home as well.

Becky Hammond  14:37

Yeah, yeah, there’s one leader that brings to mind who actually has always worked from home so she runs her own business from home. But now all of a sudden she doesn’t have a nanny. She doesn’t have her kids in school. Her husband is a teacher, is now at home working as well. And one of the things I was just most impressed with by her is how they brought communication as their main tool for thriving during this time, they just said, Okay, we’re gonna, I mean, communicate about the same things that you’re talking about, like, Okay, I have this important call at this time, you know, as a video recorded call, we need, I need all the bandwidth, or I need the kids out of the house for these two hours or we’re going to have constant, you know, bickering in the background of all my, you know, all my recordings or of my coaching calls. And so I was just very impressed how she brought that to the forefront. You know, this is a person who had been married for a long time, they’ve been working together for a long time in terms of running their family. But it was the first time that they really had to, like you say, have a team meeting about what, what is it gonna be like to run and operate here. And, you know, I have to always bring it back to this big overarching theme of grace. Because as you communicate, you’re offering grace to each other, you’re giving each other opportunities to compromise and to give and to take a little bit and to know that it’s not going to be, it’s not easy for either one of you in this particular situation, yet, it’s, it’s a worthy thing to fight for that. That solid communication, everyone feels like they’re operating on the same page.

Murray Guest  16:14

You know, what the other thing that I’m picking up with this theme of grace is also this theme of removing the assumptions or validating our assumptions. So we’re running off them as part of life and the way we live, but with this, this need to actually bring to the fore and talk through it. So we’re not just making an assumption of a, you know, that I’m going to need this time. Because I need the quiet time. All right, you know, no, actually, let’s talk about it. Let’s make it clear. Let’s make it over and work through that. And I’m hearing how people are getting that the importance and the impact that’s having. So it’s removing those assumptions, removing the stress. So yeah, definitely.

Becky Hammond  16:58

Yeah. So what would you say kind of are the common behaviors or actions that leaders I mean, like, so we’re talking about communications, there’s some some really good stories that we’ve heard some of it’s about, you know, about building trust. What, what are some of the practices that you feel like these are the key parts of what good communication looks like, coming out of crisis and kind of into even an uncertain time.

Murray Guest  17:28

Yeah, so I think what pops into my head first on this, Becky is having that conversation sooner. So I think about the difference between great managers and good managers, and great managers act sooner. And I think that’s one of the key things is communicating sooner, not waiting, whether that’s one on one or with the team, but having those conversations sooner. So that’s one thing. Second thing is being aware that it may be difficult. And even making that clear with the person talking about it, might be a tough conversation, but saying, hey, look, I know this might feel a bit icky. This might be a bit clunky, but I know it’s something we need to talk about. So you actually put that out there. Because that will then ease the tension. I think the other thing is, don’t rush it. Don’t be like, hey, it’s before we’re about to start our meeting. And I’ve got two minutes to tell you this is really important thing, which we have never talked about and blah. So you allow yourself again, the grace and the kindness for you and the person you’re talking to or the people through the time to have that conversation. And to do that effectively, you might need to do a bit of preparation. So a leader I was talking to this week, he needs to provide some feedback as a colleague, not someone he leads, but a peer. And he’s not happy with the way they’ve been interacting on a project. And we had a really valuable conversation about how he’s going to prepare for that conversation, not just go in and blurt it out. So again, that preparation is really important. And again, how you can show up with some empathy and kindness for that person. I think the other part is being open to owning your stuff as well. So with communication, it’s about how can we be future focused, solution focus, moving forward. And what’s your contribution? And when you own your stuff, when you show that vulnerability that opens up the space for someone else to own theirs as well. And that takes courage and courage creates a space for other people to own theirs as well.

Becky Hammond  19:41

That’s true. Yeah. And you’re talking about being a good manager versus a great manager. Another thing that great managers do in this concept of communication is they individualize their communication. The best leaders that I’ve ever met, really understand their team. I mean, kind of this goes back to knowing your people from Leaders Who Give a Damn program, that when you really know them, you can individualize your communication. And then their communication becomes much more effective. If you know that someone loves recognition and praise, then you can start every conversation with a genuine specific recognition and praise, right? Or if you know that you need time to think about things, you can give them a little, you know, heads up. But first, before you have a homerun conversation, saying, Hey, you know, I want to talk about this XYZ. And so I wanted to give you a little bit of time to think about it. I mean, those two examples, like there’s, you know, hundreds of different examples of ways that can utilise communication.

Murray Guest  20:49

Well, the bit that I think, and you and I are very passionate about strengths, and I think about knowing the strengths and preferences of people and how they like to be communicated with not to, with, and the one that I see comes up quite a bit is that context. And knowing when you’re communicating with someone how important context is to them, some people it’s not so important that might not be that, that big for them to know the detail, know the why, know the past and others, it is so important, and knowing that changes how that conversation’s going to go. Because I’ve seen it when that context has been left out. And it’s important to someone and they still just don’t get the why or the how and and they’re not engaged to it. And it honestly just doesn’t land. Whereas if someone has that importance to them, and you know that and, as you said, individualize the communication and embrace that, they’re going to really listen, and you’re going to have a much better conversation.

Becky Hammond  21:48

Yeah, and you’re going to be less frustrated as a leader too, right? Because more of your things are going to land, more of the things you want to communicate are going to compute, that you’re going to have a more rich dialogue back and forth, instead of just like, here I’m communicating to you. And yet, you don’t, you don’t know if it lands, you don’t know if it really sticks, if it’s really accepted and understood. And so you’ll be less frustrated, if you realize like, Oh, this person needs lots of context, don’t be, you know, I don’t need to be frustrated by that, I just need to provide that. And now, they’re going to be on board with the, you know, the next steps or at least more readily on board with the next steps.

Murray Guest  22:26

And as we talk about in Leaders Who Give a Damn program, we talk about self awareness. And there’s the self awareness about our own blind spots and our own communication preferences. And being aware of that, how they might show up. So yes, we want to tailor our communication for those people we’re talking with, but also how we might have our own blind spots, which are going to maybe not match this and just being aware of that, and, and being a bit flexible about that. So we can be effective in that communication. Something we talk about in one of our future conversations Becky, just want to plant the seed here, it’s really important, is the importance of clarity. And it’s such a theme that I know you and I are going to talk about with some passion. And we’ve seen this. And of course communication and these more frequent, regular, short conversations, bring that clarity. And with clarity, we reduce stress, we reduce anxiousness, we increase engagement, we actually improve the alignment and productivity. So communication and clarity go beautifully together.

Becky Hammond  23:32

Yeah, and have such an amazing impact not just on your team, but on yourself as a leader as well, just like, I can breathe easier. I mean, I know for a fact that that leader who didn’t really want to dig into the details of all the things that went wrong on that tech issue. When she did, she breathed easier, because now she can trust this person going forward as well. So it wasn’t just about resolving the past, but trusting going forward. And in that communication piece was a huge part of her feeling a new level of trust with that, that person.

Murray Guest  24:10

So a couple of suggestions here I want to put out Becky, it sort of builds beautifully on your individualization of communication that you mentioned. So one of them is, and this was a quote from a manager recently I was talking to, he said, Everything doesn’t need to be a zoom meeting.

Becky Hammond  24:28

Wait, what? It doesn’t?! 

Murray Guest  24:31

No, no. And his perspective that he’s been feeling is, Okay, we’re all working from home, hey, everyone, let’s embrace zoom, and just zoom, zoom, zoom zoom all the time. And he’s like, I’m so over it. He said, can’t we just have a quick phone call sometimes. And I think that the evolution was everything was being emailed. And then now we sort of moved into these online meetings. So I think take the pause in your communication and what’s the best platform for this conversation? Is it zoom? That could be, but it also might be an email, or it might be a quick phone call, might even be a text message. But knowing what’s going to be best. Another one I want to quickly share. And that is don’t schedule your meetings for 60 minutes or 30 minutes.

Becky Hammond  25:21

What what, like 54 minutes or something?

Murray Guest  25:25

Hey I like 54 minutes. Imagine being invited to a meeting for 54 minutes, people are going to say, What? Why is it 54? What I do with the other six minutes, what happens? You know what, with that six minutes take a breath. We do talk about this in Leaders Who Give a Damn. And it’s just a little tweak. It’s a little twist. So many teams and leaders have back to back meetings. If we give ourselves some grace, give ourselves some time. You know what, I’ll put my hand up here and say, I reckon that what you want to cover in 60 minutes is going to get covered in 50 minutes or 54 minutes, as you said. Or not 30 minutes, but 25. And what they will give you is some time, give you some time and some grace to go to the bathroom, to get a drink, to get to eat. If you’ve got back to back meetings. I challenge people. Stretch. Let’s get out of our seats. I challenge people to try this and see the impact. And actually let us know and share it online. I’d love to know. Yep, tag Becky and I. And what’s the impact when you’ve started setting meetings for 54 minutes or 23 minutes? And it’s going to change people’s mindset and start to rewire their brain. Again, something different is happening. And let’s just give it a shot and see what difference it makes.

Becky Hammond  26:53

Yeah. And just one little additional challenge to that. Try not to fill those extra six minutes with checking your email real fast between meetings, right? I mean, sometimes you got to do that. Or maybe you’re checking it in your meeting. But the the point of that is to create space, and to create a mental space for the next meeting, maybe so that you’re communicating well in the next meeting, and not just kind of blowing off steam from the last meeting. And so as you do that, you’re kind of being intentional about what do I use those six minutes for, those five minutes for, that are in between meetings as well.

Murray Guest  27:27

100% totally agree. And I think that’s a great build on the shortened meetings that and to what we’re talking about here in leadership about investing in yourself, giving yourself that time and your team. Because when you do that there’s a ripple effect as well. So Becky, to wrap us up, I’d love you to share what some of the links here that you see with our Leaders Who Give a Damn program as well.

Becky Hammond  27:56

Yeah, yeah, you know, over seven modules, Murray and I have seven conversations. And in those seven conversations, we talk about self awareness, well being, knowing your people, managing perceptions, prioritizing conversations, valuing relationships at every level, and tackling busyness. And I would say that communication is a common thread that is kind of weaved throughout every single one of those modules. And, and kind of like today where we try to leave you with a couple of like, well, what can I do with this? That’s that’s what we do in the Leaders Who Give a Damn program as well. That’s even more robust with worksheets and action items and just kind of an action plan for how can I really put these things into place so that my leadership does make an impact so that I am a leader that other people just are hankering to follow, are inspired to follow. And so if you’re enjoying conversations like this podcast, I think you’ll really, really enjoy the Leaders Who Give a Damn program.

Murray Guest  28:57

I totally agree. And I’ve loved our conversations on that program just as much as this one today. And just getting to share the great things that leaders are doing that are working and what we know have worked over the years as leaders ourselves. So again, Becky, this has been awesome chatting about the importance of communication and I look forward to some of those tags as people try some of these little tips we’re talking about. So thank you again, so much.

Becky Hammond  29:25

Yeah, this has been wonderful. And our podcast number three in this series, we’ll be talking about individualization and flexibility. So stay tuned for that one, we’ll love to have a conversation about what that means as a leader and what it can mean into this kind of new period coming out of crisis. So we’ll chat later, Murray.

Murray Guest  29:45

Yep. See you on individualization. Thanks, Becky. 

Becky Hammond  29:48

All right. Bye.

Episode 65 – Lockdown Leadership | Grace & Kindness

Across this 5-part podcast series, I chat with Becky Hammond from Isogo Strong and unpack some common leadership themes that we have seen stand out during this crisis. As we’ve coached and worked with leaders over the past several months, themes have emerged that are making the best thrive, and even make changes that they are keeping into the future. These themes include Grace & Kindness, Communication, Individualisation & Flexibility, Clarity, and Taking Care of Self.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:00

So it’s June 2020. And it has been an unprecedented 2020 for so many reasons. In Australia, we’ve had bushfires, there’s been crisis around the world. And of course, we’ve had COVID-19. So many people working from home, their lives and livelihoods impacted. I am so fortunate and appreciative of my health at the moment, and I know a lot of the leaders I’ve been talking to have that renewed perspective. The other thing is, in catching up with my great friend and colleague, Becky Hammond, we’ve been talking about some of those leadership themes that have been shining through right now. And how they’ve been so important in leading teams and leading ourselves to be honest, through these challenging times. And we’re going to explore those key themes in a series of conversations, which I’m so excited to do, because I absolutely love catching up with Becky, and I love the knowledge and insights she brings. So Becky, looking forward to talking with you today. 

Becky Hammond  00:59

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it as well. It seems like this has just been something that kind of naturally, organically came out of conversations that we’ve been having not only together about, you know, our work together with leaders who give a damn, but also with the conversations with leaders that we’ve been having, you know, I mean, I would say since what, early to mid March, and that who have been dealing with world crisis and what that has meant for their individual lives, personally in their families, and then also in their role as leaders and with their teams. So there’s just there been some themes that have stuck out and there’s, I don’t know, what did we decide? There’s five or so themes that we’re going to just kind of have some conversations around and really try to provide some actionable next steps like, Okay, this is what some of the best leaders are doing. And so how can I put a couple of these little behaviors into my own leadership to make a difference now, even as we’re kind of coming out of crisis, those themes are grace and kindness – we did a whole free training on that which man, this is this one’s packed. There’s communication, individualization and flexibility, clarity, and then taking care of self. So over the next five podcasts, we’ll be diving into each of those in more depth. And today, we’re talking about grace and kindness.

Murray Guest  02:30

Yeah, you’re exactly right. I remember a few weeks back, man, I’m losing track of time and weeks at the moment. But yeah, we talked about the importance of grace in our leadership and how important that theme is. And you’re right, Becky, there’s these leaders that I’ve been connecting with over these past eight weeks. And they’ve been sharing with me what’s working and what’s not. And there’s been some real key themes coming out of that. And this idea about leading with more grace, leading with more kindness with their people. People’s situations have been turned, really upside down in so many ways. Companies having to find ways and systems and processes and cultures, to be honest, to have people work from home, and have people feel empowered, trusted and supported to do their work at home in very different unique situations, while at the same time worrying about their lives, their health of themselves, their family, and the people they love. So leading with grace and kindness is just so important. Because you know what, we are talking about people, we are talking about humans. And I want to go back to my first little point that has been so important is this new perspective and gratitude that we have for those people, and for our own lives and those people that we have in our lives. So Becky, I just want to, before we jump into this, when you think about grace, when you think about what that looks like, what do you think when we say leading with grace looks like? What’s your sort of definition there?

Becky Hammond  04:07

Yeah, you know, I think a lot about this concept myself and I, there’s a definition that I have loved and I teach my kids which is unmerited favor. So it’s giving favor where you don’t deserve it. And I think that looks like giving yourself and others a break. And, and expecting the best or thinking the best. Assuming the best I guess is the word I’m looking for, assuming the best in the situation, and giving a break when the best isn’t actually happening.

Murray Guest  04:44

And I think I just also agree totally on that idea of assumptions. And as humans we’re making assumptions all the time. As leaders, we’re making assumptions about people. We make assumptions of our partners and our children and and I think it’s about, maybe honestly, in this time resetting those assumptions and thinking, Okay, what assumptions am I making and are those assumptions filled with grace? Are they filled with kindness? And there was a group I was working with recently, a group of leaders. And I actually, I said something which had a bit of a discussion happened around, it was a bit maybe a bit controversial at the moment. But I said, No leader should be assuming that their team members can deliver on the exact same work they were doing before they started working from home, we just can’t make those assumptions. And later on, of course, we’re going to talk about individualization and now leadership and how important that is. But you’ve had some leaders you’ve been working with who have been doing this really well. And you’ve got a couple of stories that I think would be great to hear about that help you understand what, you know, what this grace looks like in reality.

Becky Hammond  05:54

Yeah, in action. Yeah. Cuz I think it’s easier to say than do and I think that’s the thing that’s been interesting is like, the leaders that I’ve been talking to you say, Yeah, I just, I think my strategy needs to give myself more grace, or I need to give my team more grace. Well, what does that really look like in action? One leader that I was talking to you said, you’re not going to get it right. And just kind of like, it’s been her mantra. And I think that, to me, feels like grace in action, to give yourself a break. I mean, it’s good, that idea of giving yourself a break to know in advance that you’re going to make mistakes, especially in a situation and unprecedented situations that you’ve never been in before, and no one has ever been in before. She said that she was sitting, and that there was a younger colleague who was sitting in a board meeting and said something to the effect of, you know, well, this is my first pandemic, so I don’t really know what I’m gonna do. And she’s like, yeah, it’s everyone’s first pandemic, right? We don’t know, we don’t, we’re not, we’re not going to get it right every time. So I feel like that’s grace in action. And that same leader was, I feel like she was giving her, she had some really tangible stories in her own life of how she was able to live that out. One of those had to do with a project timeline. She’s somebody who is high in the Clifton strengths responsibility theme. And so for her, like, meeting a deadline was really, really important. And one night she had these budgets due and she realized that she could stay up until two in the morning and get them done. And technically get them in on time, because it was in before the next day, responsibility, you share that strength too.

Murray Guest  07:41

So I totally connect with this story.

Becky Hammond  07:46

But she was exhausted. And what she, as she stepped back and kind of looked at her situation, she said, You know what, I’m not going to be giving my best work, there could be errors in this, I could just miss something, I could miss something big. And so instead, she wrote a little note to her colleagues and said, I need to submit this tomorrow. And I will do it with fresh eyes. And it will get in. And so at three o’clock the next day, she submitted something that she was proud of, and that she knew wasn’t gonna have errors in it. But that type of, that type of grace to herself was not something that she was accessing very often, prior to this crisis situation. Because maybe, because she didn’t have to as much, things just weren’t as stressful and weren’t, they didn’t have as much pressure. But also because her life wasn’t as complicated as it is, as it is now working from home with kids and husband at home. And you know, all the different variables that, you know, that we need to give our ourselves grace for.

Murray Guest  08:48

Yeah, and I think, I love that we, you know, talk about our role as leaders and the people that we lead, but there’s also leading self. And here, I’m hearing so strongly that importance of how can I be kind to myself, how can I show myself some of that grace as well, because we need to look after ourselves as much as we do the people we lead. And I actually, the bit that’s popped into my head, Becky, as we were exploring this great example is, there’s possibly I think some things that were happening before, I’d say COVID-19 hit. And as a leader, that’s just highlighted the importance of those things. And what I mean by that is, yes, I had grace in my leadership, yes I was kind, but now I need to do it even more. So now I need to actually think even more consciously about where I’m investing my time. And the messages I’m sending, and the way I’m doing that. So that changing language, as you said, we’re not going to get it right. While that’s so small, in a few words, but so powerful. And, and, and then to extend that to, you know, I’m actually going to have a bit of courage and call a colleague and say look, I just can’t get it done. I’m gonna get to it tomorrow.

Becky Hammond  10:03

Yeah, that does take courage.

Murray Guest  10:05

I was gonna say, similar, a leader I was talking to they were talking about changing their language as well from the expectations on their team from not asking for something by close of business, to start of the next day. 

Becky Hammond  10:23

And how did that make a difference? 

Murray Guest  10:25

Yeah. So, again, I think it builds beautifully off your example of changing the culture and changing it to be okay to work in with some grace of the challenges that everyone’s got in their life, with children or home situation, whatever that may be, to say, Yes, I need this back, I need a report or some data or some information. But I can wait till the start of tomorrow. So what that might mean for this person is I’ve got some things I need to do this afternoon. I can actually get into that a bit later on. Yeah, maybe after dinner, which is something we probably wouldn’t normally do and encourage because we want to, but that’s just become so blurred. But what it created was grace, and also created flexibility. And the team said, Hey, we really appreciate knowing that.

Becky Hammond  11:15

That’s really cool. One of the things that comes to my mind when I think about grace and kindness, too, is not, it’s not the big things. It’s not as much the big things that we’ve seen the leaders do, but also kind of some of the little things, little ways that, you know, maybe don’t have anything to do with the actual business product that you’re producing, but that they are doing to create a sense of grace and kindness to crew to be a leader leader who exudes that I know, you have a couple examples of that as well.

Murray Guest  11:46

Yeah, and another one, which we hadn’t talked about before that I was only exploring this week with a leader. And she was talking about how powerful it is to actually observe the behavior. And she, she just had that reminder around, people will say something like, yeah I’m not going to work all through the night. And yeah, yeah, I’m having lunch. And you know, but what she said, for her kindness in her leadership, she was really mindful of, actually, they’re saying that, but their behavior is showing, and actually, really constructively challenging them on their behavior and showing that kindness and resetting those expectations. So I thought that was really good from her doing that. And of course, the big one, which I talked about in my podcast earlier this year, was a local manufacturer near where I live, who, to be honest, they make big dishwashing machines for restaurants and cafes, and all that. And diners, as you would call them, Becky.

Becky Hammond  12:48

I don’t know if I’ve ever used that word.

Murray Guest  12:54

Their world, their business took a you know, a big hit, a big stop, because all of that just finished. And all those businesses were closed down. And the leader of that business and I had a really good chat. And he said what he was aware of is people in that business had recently bought houses. These were employees that had new mortgages, new families, and they were going to have their livelihoods impacted if they didn’t have a job, if they weren’t able to pay their mortgage, and like very serious situations. And so they pivoted very quickly, and I think it was like 10 days, very, very quickly, and started manufacturing hand sanitizer in bulk and providing that and selling that. The fantastic thing is they’ve been very, very busy. They are now moving back into their normal manufacturing as well because you know, lockdown laws are changing. But what I’m really glad to say is also the leader was really aware of the of the importance of the culture, the communication, and keeping everyone engaged throughout that process. And then another great thing is they’ve been recognized locally, in the media, in newspapers and on the TV just for doing that. So yeah, just a really great story about Yes, it’s a pivot and yes it’s innovation, but there’s a real kindness and grace in that as well.

Becky Hammond  12:59

Right? Because it sounds like it was motivated by trying to keep people employed. Not necessarily even, I mean part of it is the result, right, but not necessarily even motivated by trying to keep their business afloat, which of course, was an equal concern, right. But what can we do to help keep these people employed? And what can we do to help meet a need that the world has right now? I mean, talk about extending grace, for yourself to the people that work for you to the entire world. That’s pretty amazing example.

Murray Guest  14:51

Yeah. And, you know, some people might be listening to them thinking, I can’t do that in my business. I can’t make that that big change. I can’t have that innovation. So I think what it’s also about is thinking about the small little things like some of those examples of the language and the also the very small messages you can send your team. So one I’d love to share is, I know about a couple of leaders who I’ve been talking to recently who have really started to focus in on where’s the team at? Where’s the energy of the team? How are they feeling at the start of their meeting? Because as someone saying to me recently, it was a bit novel, hey, we get to work from home isn’t this great? This is new. I get to work from home. And yet, there’s energy there. And I’m working from home. And next to me is my child who’s drawing and this is fun. And then after a few weeks, it was like, Oh, this is hard work. 

Becky Hammond  15:51

And he doesn’t want to draw anymore. Yeah, you know, they’re like, throwing the crayons and eating them. And yeah.

Murray Guest  15:59

And, and another lady this week was talking about how she often is working, and next thing the cat is on the keyboard. So there’s that our human children, and also the the pet children as well as challenges. Yes. So after the novelty has worn off, and we’ve sort of in the hamster wheel, the importance of leaders of leading with grace and kindness to actually not just push through in an agenda, not just push through this as our standard meeting approach, but actually doing that pause and saying, how are we? How are we feeling? And do we actually need to talk more about that right now than what we thought we’re going to talk about, which is an update on some projects or some tasks, because what’s more important is you and your well being not that project, because you know what, that could slide a little bit because I care about you. And if you think just bring that into your language, and your approach can just have such a big ripple effect, to not just how someone feels, but then their engagement, and you’ll get the productivity as well.

Becky Hammond  17:09

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think it’s sometimes hard to make that connection, right. Like, it’s hard to make that like, you know, what, part of me bristles a little bit when you say, well, we don’t have to, you know, we have to concentrate on that initiative, even though that’s due tomorrow, right? Rather, we should be focusing on the energy of our team and how people are really doing. But just like you said, there’s like that there’s a ripple effect. That, that in the end, you will get that thing done for tomorrow, and you will get it done happy, right? People will enjoy getting those things done, and potentially even show up even more engaged and ready for the next project.

Murray Guest  17:49

Yeah, well, I think the bit there, and I think you’re right, we still have things that need to get done. We still have tasks, projects, goals that need to be delivered on right. And it’s about considering how we are feeling, considering where we’re at, considering how individuals are at, how do we bring that to the table in a constructive, supportive way to then deliver on what we need to deliver on? So do we need to provide more support? Do we need to move resources? Do we need to start to share the workload? How are we exploring it, discussing that instead of just again, making some assumptions? Right? Now I want to know about flowers, and a leader you’re working with who did something which I thought was very, very beautiful, just such a powerful thing to do.

Becky Hammond  18:38

Yeah, and it really is powerful. And so, so simple, so, so easy. Right during towards the beginning of the stay at home orders in the town where this person works, she decided to go to a flower shop. So you know, when that was still open, and supported the local flower shop and bought some flowers, and went and delivered them to each person’s house on her leadership team with a handwritten note, and flowers, and she didn’t even ring the doorbell, she just left them at the door and then sent a text message that said, Hey, something’s at your door. So it was completely you know, at the time, especially because people were, you know, we’re very nervous about being anywhere near each other. They, she just, you know, was respectful of what was going on. But then also recognizing you’ve been putting in a lot of work, you’ve been putting in a lot of hours. In this particular industry was one that didn’t come to a standstill. In fact, they were having to figure out more and more things that they that they’ve never had to figure out before and refunding a lot of money to people who had already paid. And so they were feeling extremely stressed and working days and days and days in a row by that point, and this little gesture this little act of kindness. Just it, it put breath into the lives of the leaders that were working so tirelessly for her and forth for the organization.

Murray Guest  20:14

I love that. And it’s such a great example of grace in action. Because as you said at the start, it’s, it’s without expectation of it coming back to you. It’s without, to be honest, it’s with surprise. So it’s not like she knocked on the door and said, Hey, here’s your flowers, I want you to see that I’m delivering them. It was very much, I’m just doing this as a gift of appreciation, and to brighten your day. And she didn’t need to be there for that. So and you’re right, yes, there would have been some costs there. But it wouldn’t have been, you know, astronomical. But the value I’m sure people felt when they saw that would have been, you know, much more than the cost of it itself. And very similar, but a bit different. A leader I know, they, in their organization, again, very similar, busy, even busier. But they needed to run these Lunch and Learn sessions, which a lot of companies do, where they might provide lunch, or you bring your own lunch. So they’ll running those over zoom, and what this leader did, so everyone’s working from home at lunch and learn. So prior to the lunch and learn, sent everyone a voucher for Uber Eats. So the encouragement was, you know, contact someone in your local area. And luckily, everyone could, and organize something that you want to eat. That’s your thing. So it might have been Mexican or Italian or a bit of pizza, what it was doesn’t matter. But that was your thing, and have that delivered. So everyone’s opening up their Uber Eats bag for the lunch and learn together. So a bit of cost there. But again, it was, Hey, I’m being kind in my leadership. I’m being appreciative in his again, surprise to the team. 

Becky Hammond  22:09

Yeah, no, I love that. I love that. It’s just a special way to be creative. I mean, they, they probably were providing lunches during lunch and learn pre March, right? And now they’re just doing it in a different way, in a way that would be surprising and delighting. And, you know, I mean, that’s the thing with grace, you say it’s like, it’s unmerited. It’s not like, it’s not like the person is expecting accolades, right, but also the person who receives it. They’re just doing their job, right. I mean, at this point, they’re just doing their job. It’s not like they’re, they deserve to have Uber Eats show up, or they deserve to have flowers and a note and a handwritten note, yet the leader is offering grace by giving that to them when it goes beyond it goes above and beyond just recognizing that it has nothing to do with their performance, but everything to do with that desire to kind of operate from grace and kindness.

Murray Guest  23:08

Yeah, and I think there’s a renewed perspective, there’s a renewed gratitude. There’s a renewed engagement, and even connection, if you think of those those flowers, or, yeah just the flowers, everyone in that team thinking, hey, we’ve all got flowers today. Yes, we are working from home, we are miles apart. But you know what, we’re all connected still, we’re all so connected. And same with the Uber Eats as well. And I know that that gratitude has been renewed in a lot of leaders I’ve been talking to and how they are refreshing that in their perspective to help them and help their team. And I know for me, it’s something which I’ve really drawn on in these past eight weeks, around my family, and around the chance to see my children exercising together, the chance to be more creative. Interestingly, Becky, I don’t I think we’ve talked about this, but my wife and I, Tammy and I’ve played backgammon every afternoon for the past eight months, not eight months, weeks, it’s felt like eight months, eight weeks, eight weeks, I think we’ve missed two days. And it’s only just for 15 minutes, you know, and she’s been teaching me and she’s much better than me, let’s be honest. But it’s the simple smallest thing, which, you know, there’s there’s some great benefit for strategic thinking coming out of it. But it’s more of a connection. And that would not have happened out of this process out of you know, what’s happened to us. So I think there’s something about taking the time to pause and we talk about the power of the pause quite a bit to have that gratitude of what we’ve got and how that helps us because that links I think beautifully to that kindness as well. 

Becky Hammond  24:57

Yeah totally. And when you think about the impact That you are having as a leader when you’re operating from grace, this is not something that’s easy to choose. It’s not something that’s really easy to do. Because you might not feel like I mean, even simple things like not feeling like going to the store and getting flowers or writing a note, you’re busy too. You’re just as busy. You are maybe busier than your team of leaders that you’re leading. Yet, yet, there’s an impact that goes that, just goes miles and miles or kilometers and kilometers, excuse me. You know, and when I think about the impact, I’m thinking like, well, what’s the alternative? Do we want, you know, if what we’re trying to build is compassion and trust and hope through offering grace, like the alternative is like begrudging, shame based perfectionistic leadership that’s rigid and presumptive and, you know, like that, when I put those two things side by side, even though grace is harder, the results that you get from grace and kindness are so much more significant and so much more human. That you say, okay, maybe it’s worth the extra effort.

Murray Guest  26:17

Yeah, and I think the slowing down, to be honest, the slowing down, that does come with being a bit more graceful being a bit more kind, and leadership might feel like it’s taking more time, it’s slowing us from what we’re doing right now. But then that, as we said earlier, there’s a flow on effect, a ripple effect from that, and it builds. There’s a leadership quote, that I learned, oh, gee, must have been 10-12 years ago, and I still come back to it quite a bit. And it’s a very simple phrase, how we get there matters. And we are getting somewhere. But how we get there really matters, the way we work, the way we interact, the way we come together as people as humans. And we show that care and kindness for each other is so important. I mean, at the end of the day, what sort of leader do you want to be remembered for? What’s your legacy? And I think, yes, this has been difficult. I don’t want to gloss over that. Yes, it’s been hard, people’s lives and livelihoods have been impacted. But at the same time, it gives us an opportunity for us to look in the mirror and say, Okay, how can I be a more graceful and kind leader? And be a leader others want to follow?

Becky Hammond  27:37

Yeah definitely.

Murray Guest  27:41

Yeah. So just to wrap this up this great conversation, oh, I get so energized talking to you about this stuff. So thank you. What do you think are some simple things? What do you think are some simple things people could do that could help them to really tap into this grace and kindness?

Becky Hammond  27:59

Yeah, I think we’ve shared some really good examples of things that you could do, simple things you could do to add, modify to what fits your team. Another one that I’ve loved that a healthcare leader recently expressed to me and suggested was breathe. Now, that sounds like what does this have to do with grace. But as I thought about it, she was talking about the pause that we were talking about, you know, in order to breathe well, you have to pause, you have to stop. You can’t I mean, you don’t breathe your best. Unless you’re, you know, an elite Olympic athlete, you’re not breathing your best when you’re running a million miles an hour, right? You’re breathing your best when you’ve stopped, you paused, you slowed. And I, I just I had this visualization about the breath that she was talking about. It’s like, the simple act of like taking a breath in like, *gasps* and then letting it out. Slowly, exhaling. The inhale is like the act of receiving grace to yourself. So bringing that into yourself, filling yourself with like, it’s okay, I’m not going to get it right. And then exhale, is letting that grace out to others. I just love what that physicality does. And also the word picture does of like I’m breathing grace in and, and letting it out to others.

Murray Guest  29:24

I love that so much. And I think, you know, there’s so much power in tapping into our breath and mindfulness and meditation, but just that simple connection with grace and doing that, at the start of every meeting at the start of conversations at the start of your day, and you can bring that anytime into your life. But I honestly love that connection with grace as well that bring it in and lending it out to everyone around you in your circle as well. So, yeah, simple, but effective. And as you said, there’s some things we’ve covered, build on that as well around some of those simple messages and tokens and language you’re using with your teams and with those people that you work with, and being more mindful of that and think about, okay, how can I say this with grace? How can I communicate with grace? How can I show that and tapping into that? And I know that as we continue this podcast conversation, we will, in the future conversations, tap back into this and link into this with some of the future topics we’re going to talk about. The other thing, Becky, I think we’ve had some great links to the Leaders Who Give a Damn program. I mean, in there we talk about self awareness, we talk about your well being. But of course, we talk about knowing your people. And we’ve got a great module about how important is knowing your people. And so I know in that program, we we explore these concepts, and they link beautifully to grace and kindness as well.

Becky Hammond  30:58

Yep, in each of those conversations, kind of like today, but even more so, we leave every leader with some real true action, some action planning guides, and some worksheets and things that, you know, you can listen to a conversation and say, okay, maybe I can take one nugget out. But the program itself is designed to be able to help say, okay, yes, you need to take a nugget out. And what’s that going to be for you? And how are you going to put it into play? And let us be the ones that can help you do that. So yeah, so if you’re liking these types of conversations, you will love Leaders Who Give a Damn.

Murray Guest  31:36

So thank you so much for talking about grace and kindness and leadership. And in our next conversation, we’re going to talk about how important communication has been in these past couple of months and some of the insights and stories that we’ve got to share with people from the leaders we’ve been talking to him working with. So I look forward to doing that with you, Becky. Thanks again so much.

Becky Hammond  31:57

Yes, thank you, Murray. Always a pleasure. And I look forward to the next very important conversation about communication.

Episode 63 – Sharon Hespe | The Good Gut Girl

In this episode I chat with Sharon Hespe, a naturopath who is also known as The Good Gut Girl and who wholeheartedly believes that it is possible to change your life through good gut health.

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Transcript

Murray Guest  00:01

Welcome, Sharon to the podcast. Great to see you. Great to catch up with you, how you been? 

Sharon Hespe  00:08

Fantastic Mary, how are you?

Murray Guest  00:10

I’m good. I’m feeling good today, I am feeling a bit heavy hearted about all that’s going on in the world, that’s for sure, particularly in America, and it is spreading obviously, the protests and the awareness around just what’s going on, and the changes that need to be made. And whilst you and I both understand strengths, and I do joke around and say my empathy is low, and yours is high, I’m definitely feeling it at the moment that heaviness as well.

Sharon Hespe  00:36

Yeah, that’s understandable. There are major changes going on now all at the moment. And, and sometimes it’s a little bit hard to cope with everything, because there is just so much going on.

Murray Guest  00:48

Yeah, and I know that certainly you help with your clients that you see around how to handle that and do that. And similar to myself, I guess, the client I see quite often is coming back to what’s in your control, what can you do about it? And, having the conversation I think is really important as well.

Sharon Hespe  01:05

That is very true. And often I will say to my patients, there is nothing that I can do to control what’s going on around you. But there are lots of herbal medicines and supplements I can give you that will help you to relax into what’s going on and not be so stressed about what’s happening. So it gets you the herbs and supplements will help you to adapt to situations rather than reacting.

Murray Guest  01:31

And that building of resilience within the body with the work that you do so that we can handle what’s going on in our world. I’m sure that’s that’s what I’m hearing there. Now you are known as the good gut girl. Which I love. I love it such a great saying and a great perspective that you bring that people I know need to learn about on ask, Why? Why this focus on the gut? How did that come about for you in your area of naturopathy?

Sharon Hespe  02:05

Gosh, I remember many years ago, or around 12 years ago, when I was studying in a clinic, we had a supervisor and she was really big on food intolerances. And it was such a complex world. And I remember thinking, I’m not sure that I’m really gonna get into food intolerances when I get out and become a naturopath because it’s so complex, it’s so hard. Sure, there must be an easier way to make money. So I remember when I first became a naturopath and my very first patient had a food intolerance was like, Okay, I really know what to do here, because I’m really experienced because of my clinic supervisor, and then the next person and then the next person. So I did probably half my work in the beginning around food intolerances. And then a letter landed in my letterbox from the council, and they were saying that they wanted to help health professionals to build their business within the St. George, the St. George community. So I thought, Okay, that sounds great. So they, they created and ran a business course for us. And it was absolutely brilliant. And in one of those lessons, I can remember one of the facilitators saying, you really need to pick something that is that is happening now that there is a future to and you really need to nation, it was like, Huh, okay, I think I know what I need to do. So I said, Look, I really think I need to focus on food intolerances because I have a lot of experience in it. And more and more people are coming down with gut problems. So I did and that’s what I really focused on. And since then, that’s almost, in fact, that is the only patients I do see I’ve got problems. If I have someone with fertility or song with cancer or someone with some other problem, I will refer them on automatically because in my mind, I’ve got problems day in, day out. So when I sit and listen to somebody, immediately it comes straight to mind. I never have to go to a textbook, I never have to go and look something up because it’s just what I do day in day out.

Murray Guest  04:18

And your your depth of knowledge from seeing all those people and understanding their needs is this I can imagine this library that you have just ready access to in your head and from all those experiences.

Sharon Hespe  04:30

That’s correct. And there’s a lot of anecdotal symptoms with gut problems, lots of anecdotal symptoms that you see. So if, for instance, if somebody would would present with a fructose malabsorption problem, they would have pain high up in the gut, that pain at times will be really severe. There will be worse after garlic and onions there will be worse after fruit on an empty stomach. There could be anxiety there will be liver function problems just straight away before I even test, I will think, okay, it’s likely that there’s an intestinal absorption problem here, because those symptoms are very, very common in that gut problem.

Murray Guest  05:13

So for those people listening that may not have an understanding of the difference between a food allergy and a food intolerance. Okay, can you help us understand those differences?

Sharon Hespe  05:24

Yes, yes, they’re both mediated by the immune system. But an allergy is an IGE mediated problem. And an intolerance or sensitivity is mediated by the IDG part of your immune system. So with the IGE part, it’s like we almost saw that has a peanut allergy or a seafood allergy. So the reactions that you get will happen between around sometimes 30 seconds, up to five to 10 minutes, after you ingest that food, we’re any tolerance will happen, you will get a symptom between possibly half an hour and up to five days later. So it makes it quite difficult to, to work out what’s going on. So I do test a lot for intolerances, because it’s just the easiest way to do it. But yeah, there’s a big difference between an allergy and intolerance. And obviously, allergies are life threatening emergencies. And you, you will always have an epi pen, and there’s a huge difference. And once you either have an allergy or you have an intolerance, then you understand what’s going on.

Murray Guest  06:26

Yeah, I think that’s a distinction that I was aware of that an allergy is life threatening, whereas an intolerance is and tell me if this is incorrect it in causes health, I guess, concerns and problems and discomfort, but doesn’t have that same consequences that are that when you have the allergy it has?

Sharon Hespe  06:49

That’s correct. That is right. But it does create some really uncomfortable and really awful symptoms to people that they have to live with day in, day out. And sometimes people just tend to get used to it and their illness becomes the new, normal way of feeling that this is how these sounds always been sad people feel. Whereas an allergy it’s a totally different thing.

Murray Guest  07:13

I’ve heard some things in the media. Over the years of that there’s more people having food intolerances than the past. And they’re on the increase on wondering Is that what’s happening? Or are we just getting better at identifying them? Or is it a bit of both?

Sharon Hespe  07:30

Look, I do think it’s a bit of both. But there are a few things that really will contribute to a food intolerance or a gut problem, and that is stress. And you look at the world, especially since January this year, and look at the stress people have been on it. It’s been huge. But as well as stress, it’s poor dietary choices. So too much weat, too much dairy, too many processed foods. So people say oh, in my day, you know, my grandparents didn’t have that. They had a very different life than we have now. They had a community to help them they had family to help them. And they had food from the gardens, you know, or they had they had a lot of fresh food, they didn’t have nearly as much processed food as we have, or nearly as much stress. So both of those things are huge contributors to food intolerances.

Murray Guest  08:17

So if I’m walking around, and I think I’ve got a food intolerance, what should I do?

Sharon Hespe  08:25

Okay, first thing is you need to find a naturopath that is great with gut health, because they will be able to help you. I say to people, 

Murray Guest  08:35

Can I just go back a second? How would I even know if I’ve got a problem?

Sharon Hespe  08:38

Interesting. That’s true. That’s true. So you would have symptoms and all go really probably from the head down. You may be getting headaches, you may feel a bit foggy, you may have a terrible memory, you may be getting mouth ulcers, you may be getting indigestion or reflux, you may be getting gut pain, that gut pain may be high up on your ribs or it might be lower down. You may be getting bloating, you may be tired a lot. Your muscles may ache you may have. Your poo might smell all of those sort of things are symptoms that you may or may not have.

Murray Guest  09:20

I think that’s a quite a big list and actually I think brings attention that when we are out of alignment those problems you know got a can impact so many parts of our body can’t it. 

Sharon Hespe  09:32

Off course it does. Yes. 

Murray Guest  09:35

Okay, so then as you’re saying if we’ve got some of those complaints, or we’ve got some of those health concerns, and my normal is like that and I’m don’t want that normal anymore. You started to say then see a naturopath that has a knowledge and skill around gut health.

Sharon Hespe  09:53

Yeah, that is so true. And the key that our that the way that I like to operate. I’ve the way I do things is you need to find the cause of what’s going on. So and we’ve we’ve got problems, it can be really things, it can be a food intolerance, it can be SIBO, which is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, it might be a fruit, just malabsorption problem, or it could be just too much bad bacteria in that gut. And you know, we all see that television ads where you’ve got the good bacteria dancing, and the bad bacteria dancing, and the bad bacteria tend to take over. And that just means there’s too much bad bacteria in your gut, it can be a Candida overgrowth, it might be a parasite, it could be a salicylate problem, it could be a histamine problem. So there are quite a few things that can be. But the key is, as with all health conditions, you need to find the cause, before you can treat it properly, there is only so much that you can do symptomatically

Murray Guest  10:49

it really is about finding the cause. And something you’re saying before about the timeframe that the symptoms can show up, Is there like a load that you can slowly build up over a period of time with those food intolerances or those problems, it’s not like a switch, and it just happened. So it could be a number of things going on to get to a point where you’ve got the pains and the aches and the symptoms. Yeah, that is very true, it’s a little bit similar to the perfect storm. And often what you’ll see when people have a food intolerance, they’ll have a stressful event. So then I’ll get married, then we’ll get divorce, that they bought a house or had a child or someone’s died. So they’ll have this really stressful event that happens to them. And they gut lining becomes in really bad shape. And if the food proteins are not being broken down or digested properly, those food proteins drop into that leaky gut through that leaky gut into the bloodstream. And you’ll have a reaction. So I’ll use myself as an example as to how this happened. And about nearly 10 years ago, now, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And she had passed away within the week. And she was already she was 63 years old. So that’s a relatively young age. And then all of a sudden, she was alive, relatively healthy. And within a week she passed away. So it was a really stressful time for me. And I can still remember the stress of that time and about. So I went back to work and do the whole funeral all of the things that you’re supposed to do when somebody dies. And then about three months later was like, why am I so tired, I was so tired, I would set my phone alarm for 20 minutes and sleep on the couch between patients, because I was so exhausted. And it took me quite a while to work out what it was and then hang on a minute. Maybe I’ve got a food intolerance. But I’d never had any other symptoms, no bloating, no pain, no constipation, none of the other symptoms that are talked about at all. And I thought well just test yourself and see. So I did I did the finger prick blood testing clinic process at all, and was like, Oh my god, I there was about five or six foods that showed strong intolerance as well. Okay, I still wasn’t convinced. I thought okay, well just remove the foods and see how you feel. I felt terrible for the first four or five days as I removed those foods from my diet. But But that day forward, I six was like, I could run to the top of Mount Everest, I felt so good. And that’s when I knew Okay, it was a 50 chance but but those are sort of things you see with a food intolerance, you see a stressful event, and you will always I always had a little bit of hay fever. That’s it. That’s the only sign off into my head. And obviously, I had gotten to like other people. This is my new normal. This is how I’m supposed to feelwhen it wasn’t. So it’s quite interesting.  There are things that I’m thinking about too is when we’re under stress quite often we go to drinking and eating things which aren’t the best for us. 

Sharon Hespe  13:49

Always. 

Murray Guest  13:50

Which then compound the problem, I guess.

Sharon Hespe  13:52

Yeah, that’s true. And too What happens is people think, well, I feeling really bad anyway. So why would I do what I want to wait? Because how much worse can I really feel?

Murray Guest  14:03

I’m feeling crap. So you know what, I’m just going to drink some more so I can not feel it. And then I might eat a whole bunch of, I don’t know junk food or comfort food? Because that’s what I’m feeling like, and then that’s not helping as well.

Sharon Hespe  14:15

That’s correct. That’s exactly what happens. Yeah, it’s a huge, vicious cycle that sometimes you need someone just to step in and intervene and say, let’s look at things in a different way.

Murray Guest  14:27

So you mentioned good and bad bacteria. What are some things which help us build that good bacteria in our gut?

Sharon Hespe  14:36

Okay, with the good bacteria you need to, for really good gut health you need around 40 different plant foods per week, which is a lot of plant foods per week. Ideally, if your gut is in great shape, you will cope with those sorts of plant foods. And that will keep your gut in fantastic shape. So it’s about variety. It’s about brightly colored foods and things such as that

Murray Guest  15:00

Okay, and I’ve heard that drinking doesn’t help those good bacteria. When I say drinking I mean drinking alcohol.

Sharon Hespe  15:09

Yeah, alcohol, alcohol and caffeine can be really detrimental to the gut lining, it’s really quite inflammatory and you’ve got it that lining you can imagine, it’s like having. If you can imagine your fingers, your hand and you open up your hand, and you can spread your fingers out beautifully. And that hand works really, really well. So then imagine, if three of those fingers were stuck together and only one was open, your hand won’t function very well, like that. You’ve got the same if it’s not in great shape, it can’t function well. And, and then you’re in flaming that one little part that is still open, then it just compounds and becomes worse and worse and worse.

Murray Guest  15:51

Yeah. Okay. So this is a bit of a reset for me. Thanks, Sharon. I mean, I’m now drinking less drinking less coffee. You’re just ticking off these things, maybe what else am I gonna cut out next your going to tell me, no chocolate!

Sharon Hespe  16:07

Ah, I see. The problem with chocolate is the dairy. So I think he is people always forget that chocolate has dairy, but it’s dairy milk chocolate. So look, dairy. A1 dairy in particular is the probably the food that is most problematic for most people. But you can have dark chocolate, because that doesn’t have any dairy milk in it. You just need to be careful when you read the label that doesn’t say it contains milk solids.

Murray Guest  16:38

So I do have I do like my dark chocolate. And I am mindful also of enjoy life in moderation. So having those small bits of dark chocolate. But I you know, I think we all slip up and that’s something maybe which I wonder about too, and about being kind to ourselves when we do slip up a little bit because we got to be kind to ourselves, maybe to get back moving forward again, don’t we? 

Sharon Hespe  17:02

Yeah, of course. And I often say to people, you know, when they come in for their second or their third appointment, They say, look, I need to be honest. I haven’t, you know, haven’t done what you’ve asked me and I feel terrible. And I say, Look, you’re human, it’s okay. You know, just get back on the horse. And let’s start again, it doesn’t mean that you’ve ruined all the work that we’ve done. It just means that you’re humans. And and, you know, just don’t be so hard on yourself. Let’s give you find ways to help you to do it better. 

Murray Guest  17:34

Yeah, great, great. I need to ask about the emergence, if that’s the right word about kombucha in the last must be last couple of years, I guess. And I admit, I don’t mind, if I’m at the shops or if I’m getting some petrol from the service station, I might grab a bottle of kombucha. And I’m, I’m telling myself, that’s a better alternative, and I haven’t drank coke and things like that for years, that I’m telling myself that’s a better alternative and it’s doing me some good. How much good is it doing me? Really,

Sharon Hespe  18:09

Kombucha is a little bit like sauerkraut and it’s a little bit like all of the so called functional foods. Now that probably 60 is probably a good word for them. Now, with your gut health, they say that things like kombucha and sauerkraut, give your gut good bacteria. In fact, they don’t give your gut good bacteria. They are like all other foods and they are transient. But one good thing about them is that another food so that’s another source of variety for your gut, which is also good. So I said, Look, you know, maybe one kombucha week is fine, but a kombucha everyday is too much. And often I will see patients that say okay, I’ve been on this huge health kick. I’m having kombucha I’m having sauerkraut I’m juicing everyday. And they’re just getting worse. And I’m thinking yeah, no, you’re just getting worse. So it doesn’t mean that those things in large quantities are better for you have those sort of things in small quantities. And I always think that water is probably the best thing. Just get a sparkling mineral water one time. Get a kombucha the next we want to have a treat. A kombucha is fine, but treat it as a treat food. Not a normal food.

Murray Guest  19:19

Yeah, not an everyday food. Yeah, I think that’s a really good point. I’m also thinking about what I’ve learned over the years about listening to my body, and how powerful that’s been around my decision making or what it’s telling me or if I need to slow down. I’d love to know your perspective around how much we do and how much you see the power and listening to our body.

Sharon Hespe  19:44

Listening to your body tells you a lot. And I find when a patient first comes in and I ask them a series of questions. They have no idea what is going on in their body. But once we remove problematic foods, whether they be intolerances or SIBO foods or fructose foods or foods that are bad for the bacteria in your gut, people then start to listen to their body. And then they’ll have a food that they’re not supposed to have. And they can feel exactly what’s going on. So sometimes it needs for somebody to say to you, let’s look at things in a different way before they actually do stop and listen. And once they do, stop and listen, they go, Ah, now I can hear. Yeah, it’s like that whole, you can’t see the forest for the trees until someone points out that particular tree and what that will do for you, and then you Okay, now I can see.

Murray Guest  20:34

Yeah, that awareness now and then taking more notice of it as you consume different foods and what the reaction is that your body might be had this yeah, gotcha. Okay. Shaz I’d love to know, I mean, you’ve shared a couple of stories about yourself. But is there a story or some insights around someone you’ve helped, of course, mindful of, we don’t want to know their personal details. But I’d love to know the impact that you’ve had in some of the people you’ve worked with.

Sharon Hespe  21:00

Yeah, I think the biggest the biggest stories that I do see, come from young children, and from people that have terrible diarrhea. And often I have people that come to see me, and honestly, it’s sometimes it’s heartbreaking, and I almost feel myself in tears. Because for these people to get to work, they need to take medication, such as gastro stop, because if they don’t, they actually won’t make it to work to get to the toilet in time. So as often, it’s as simple as it might be an egg intolerance. It might be a fructose malabsorption, it just might be too much bad bacteria. And just a small change in diet makes a huge difference. You know, so with adults, I see that a lot. And I love that. But it’s with children. It’s so you will see a small child that will come to see with one of their parents, or their carers, and they tell me pain is terrible. You know, and actually, there is one great, great story that I will tell you about a child that once came to see me, there was a lady, she came to see me she had four children, and her youngest boy, was the one that was unwell. And I don’t like to test children. I like to if I do need to send the probiotics I will, I do prefer to set up let’s remove a couple of foods first. So we removed these two foods from this child’s diet. And the mother came back in I think was probably a month later. And she said Sharon, she said, Thank you so much. She said, I thought I just had a quiet child. She said the three of my boys were like, bouncing off the walls and the chairs and the counters like energetic children. And she said, My fourth child, she said, I just thought he was quite he used to like lay on the couch. He says sit around, he never had any energy. He didn’t used to do much. And she said now I realized he was just unwell. And because he was only two, he couldn’t tell his mother he was unwell. And as soon as you remove the food, she said, he just became what the other three children and he was. So things like that make such a huge change in people’s lives and and then his poor mother felt so guilty. She said, Oh my god, I thought I had this quiet child, but she said he’s been on welfare the whole two years of his life. So so that was that was a nice heartwarming story,

Murray Guest  23:20

That is beautiful. And your many, examples of the child but also the adults where you’re changing and working with them to change the quality of their life. So that they can live a better quality of life and a better day to day life. And as you said not have to fear going to work or wondering where the next toilet is, or worrying about even that I can imagine some people in that situation to have like a day to day management of what are they going to do and organizing their life around that.

Sharon Hespe  23:52

Yeah, often people’s day to day management is okay, I’m going from here to and I live in hurstville Grove in just south and city. So a person Saturday management, if they will go into North Sydney, they would know where every public toilet was on the way. That’s their way of managing it. Which I can understand if that’s the way that that’s the only way they can do it. But that is how people do manage their lives when they have something that’s happening like that, which it’s sad because it’s just not necessary.

Murray Guest  24:23

Yeah. And I can imagine then, if we’re taking that out of the day to day management, that then opens up attention in the consciousness to focus on other things and enjoy life much much better. Yeah, of course.

Sharon Hespe  24:36

Yeah, that’s right. It’s life changing. Yeah, getting your guts in great shape. is life changing for many people? Hmm.

Murray Guest  24:44

Is there a saying a question just popped into my head and that is, is there different needs? Like, generally that guts need through different life stages. So as we get older, do we need to think about things differently for our gut, or is it more on an individual level,

Sharon Hespe  25:01

It’s more of an individual level. But as we get older, we get we have less stomach acid in our gut. That is probably one of the things that happens when we get older. And often you see in elderly people, they just, they’ve been cooking for 70 years, and they just don’t want to cook anymore couldn’t be bothered. So they will tend to have tea and toast and things like that, which are not great for anybody. But it is more of an individual thing, rather than what you see for the over the lifespan.

Murray Guest  25:35

And there trends within families, you know, is that genetically, that that sort of influences some of those intolerances as well.

Sharon Hespe  25:45

Often, often you will see a parent and a child have the same, exactly the same intolerances. And often people will ring me and say, Look, I want to bring myself and my children and I say, pick the person that is the most unwell in your family. Let’s get them right. First, let’s remove the foods that showed to be a problem for that person. And keep everything else the same in the family. And you will find that that comes that that they will all come together as well. So yeah, it’s often something you see that does run in families. And often if a pregnant mother has poor gut health, that child will as well have poor gut health. Not always, but it’s a common common thing.

Murray Guest  26:25

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. Okay. Yeah. This has been fantastic Shaz, I love your passion for what you have for the work that you do and the people you are seeing. How’s it been? I just want to ask for the past couple of months with COVID. And a change of working. How’s that been working out for you as well?

Sharon Hespe  26:47

Look, it’s it’s been I’ve had to pivot and move online, like many people did any fact as naturopaths, we were told our association said, Look, you actually don’t have to go online, you can still see people if you want to. But my thoughts were and especially in the beginning, it was such a panic with that with the COVID. My thoughts were, I didn’t want to catch the Coronavirus and give it to a patient then to give it to their patient to to give it to the whole family, if that makes sense. So I said okay, I’ll just move online, like everybody else did. And it was great. But my biggest skill is empathy. So it’s quite difficult to speak to somebody on a screen and look at a camera and, and get a great understanding of what’s going on in their life. So it can be done, but it’s not as ideal as it is in person. But I do notice what I have started to see now is people that now have to go back to work. And they say, Oh, no, I have to get back on that train. Now. I better fix my gal has seen a host of people in this last couple of weeks, realizing that they actually do need to go back to an office environment. And the I’d better get my updates before I go back. So they don’t have to get off at work right. Get off at all these stations on the way to find the nearest toilet.

Murray Guest  28:05

Yeah, gotcha. You just reminded me of something I did want to talk about. And that is with their own immunity and gut health. What’s the relationship there?

Sharon Hespe  28:14

Look, with immunity and and gut health. It’s, there’s this huge, huge relationship because about 70% of your immunity is within your gut. So if you don’t get your gut in great shape, then it makes sense that your immune system also will not be in fantastic shape. So and like I discussed before, the gut barrier is suppose contains a whole bucketload of immune complexes and it’s a really complex situation. So I suppose the basics are if you want your immune system to stay in great shape, you need to keep your gut lining in great shape. It’s as simple as that.

Murray Guest  28:53

So whilst we thinking about in coming into winter in the southern hemisphere and the flu and obviously COVID-19 looking after our guard to increase our immunity is really important.

Sharon Hespe  29:07

It’s it’s super important and not only will it help your immune system, but you will feel fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. Yeah. And there are a few things like I said to people, like you know, try and limit your wheat and dairy intake to once a week. Try limit your alcohol content to two servings a week. Make sure you really really increase those immune system features such as zinc, so your seafood, your red meat, your nuts and seeds, your vitamin D foods like fatty fish and eggs. Your vitamin C foods, capsicum, strawberries, citrus are fantastic. So your vitamin C, vitamin D, vitamin A food so all yellow, orange fruits and vegetables that pumpkin, carrot, oranges all have great amounts of vitamin A in there. You can get this great variety in your diet. It will really really help to keep your gut healthy.

Murray Guest  29:58

I think that’s such a beautiful list of the rainbow of colors that you mentioned earlier. And that variety. And if you’re seeing that, that rainbow, you’re seeing that variation on your plate. Not the beiges, you know, the browns, the whites. That’s going to obviously make a difference. Yeah. Yes, it does. That I think that’s such a great list of foods you just talk through, for people to think about and think about their color. But if someone’s listening, before we wrap up, shares, I want to know if there’s a little strategy that you know, would help everybody what would that be?

Sharon Hespe  30:45

Find out what’s going on your gut? Get tested, find out you need to Yeah, yeah. And you can guess. And you can put in this way you could put in that food and you can try this, you can try that. But don’t guess get a test?

Murray Guest  31:00

Oh, I like that. Okay, now, I want to ask you, you mentioned empathy a couple of times empathy, number one, in your top five strengths. And in the past, through a program, you found out your top five strengths. And with Tammy and I are working on that. I just want to check in because I love the impact strengths is made in people’s lives. What was the impact for you knowing those strengths for you.

Sharon Hespe  31:35

It makes you understand how you think about things and how you view the world. And and I know sometimes when you can over dial your strengths, that’s also not great, either, it’s important to understand, okay, this is what my strength is, this is what I’m good at. But also to remember that there are other people that have other strengths, and you need to work together. And it’s important to understand where your strengths lie. So you can use them responsibly and ethically. And understand what your weaknesses are. So you can work on improving those.

Murray Guest  32:13

Fantastic, I love how you’ve referenced your empathy a couple of times, and I can imagine that something you need to need to be conscious of in the way that you are empathetic, but also not getting fully involved in the emotions of your patients as well.

Sharon Hespe  32:29

 I must admit I’m quite good at that and what I say to patients, and this is one reason why I don’t do fertility work. And this might sound a bit strange, like, if I was to do fertility work, I would feel that it’s more responsibility to give you a baby, we’ve got work, it’s more responsibility to find out what’s going on to say to you, I need to do this, this and this and this. But when you decide to go home, and you decide that you’re not going to do that, that’s not my problem. I’ve given you all of the information. I’ve given you everything I can can. But you need to now take responsibility. And I will cut myself off there and say this is now your responsibility. I’m here to support you. But I need you to do something. I can’t do everything.

Murray Guest  33:12

Yeah, people need to do the work themselves, don’t they? 

Sharon Hespe  33:15

That’s correct yes. And that’s what I said, when I do that work. They feel fantastic. You know, people say to me, oh, thank you so much. Thank you. Let’s look, I’m just doing my job. You’ve done the work. And this is why you feel so good.

Murray Guest  33:29

I cut out dairy. And that was a challenge for me, particularly cheese. I love my cheese that I’d shifted my type of milk in my coffee some time ago. And also I cut out meat for some time, but I am eating some more meat there was what he was eating salmon and some other fishes might through that. But the way I felt was a lightness, I felt lighter. And my being. And I think there’s that, that heaviness with some foods and it doesn’t, it’s not just the heaviness in the gut. There was a heaviness over all my energy. So that lightness was something which I found, to be honest, the lightness I found addictive. I wanted to have more of that and feel like that and not feel the heaviness. 

Sharon Hespe  34:17

Yeah, that often that happens. Yes, yeah. 

Murray Guest  34:19

Yeah. Now, Sharon, Tell me please, what’s your definition of inspired energy?

Sharon Hespe  34:28

I think it’s inspiration to do things that are going to give you energy. 

Murray Guest  34:36

Love it. That’s such a beautiful, I think summary of what is all about for these conversations. And I think that anyone listening to this great chat with you, the good gut girl is going to get some inspiration to find out more about their gut and to feel that lightness and their energy and I love how you I talked about a new norm, not the norm that we have now that we get used to have that heaviness and changing that.

Sharon Hespe  35:06

That is so true, you know that the way that people can feel and do feel once they discover what’s going on, they got and they make those changes. And sometimes it’s as small as removing one or two foods and doing things like eating three meals a day stop snacking, just sometimes it just takes a small shift in things that no set of people there. So all that people sometimes do, I feel so silly should not know that. I say no, you know, you know what you know best. I know what I know best. And it’s up to me to share with you my knowledge so that you can learn how to get better yourself.

Murray Guest  35:43

Fantastic. Now, I love that nice a great way for us to wrap up. If someone wants to find out more about you and the work that you do and how you work with your patients where’s the best place to find you online. The best place is my website which is www dot the good girl.com.au I have quite a large Facebook group as well a quite a large following. And I post daily on Facebook and I’m in the middle at the moment of 50 tips in 50 days so I’ll be popping a gut tip a day up on Facebook so people can have a look on Instagram the good girl the underscore good underscore, underscore girl and just by email naturopathic Sharon his.com delay you so they some great links and make sure all those are in the show notes. And particularly I think that Facebook one where you’re sharing at the moment those 50 tips in 50 days for a good guy i think that’s that’s fantastic. So lots of information there for people. Make sure all those links are in the show notes and thank you again for your time and your knowledge. shares. This has been awesome. So thank you. I also want to encourage anyone that’s listening to this conversation with Sharon if you got something out of it and you want to share it online, I’d love you to do that. Please tag the good get go. And myself Murray Guest hashtag inspired energy because every time you share that everyone else gets to get your insight as well. So we we share the knowledge and inspiration. So shares Thanks again so much for your time and energy all the best for the rest of 2020 and for your health and keeping warm because it’s getting cold down here. But again, awesome chatting with you. 

Sharon Hespe  37:27

Thank you Murray was great to chat with you again too.