Part 2

[00:00:00] Hi there, and a very warm welcome to Season six, episode 44 of People Soup. It's Ross Macintosh here,

Yass: And there doesn't really seem to be anywhere for people to, to put it and have an easier submissions process than a traditional academic journal. And then the second point to that is that. I love organizational psychology and applied psychology in general. I feel like we have so many great insights, and I dunno if you found this Ross, but anytime you mention it to someone who doesn't know anything about org psych, maybe you talk a bit about your work.

Everyone's so interested because they can see the impact for their own lives 'cause in the, in their own company or where they work or their team, or even in their family, it might not always be in the workplace, but they can see it in their own applied context.

P Soupers. This episode is the second part of my conversation with Yaz. Red Yaz is the founder of We were unpublished, a part-time consultant at Affinity Health at work, And a PhD student researching perfectionism in the workplace and [00:01:00] ACT interventions for wellbeing. At City St. George's University of London, we discuss ya's systematic review of workplace acceptance and commitment therapy and how interventions change psychological flexibility. Subprocesses Ya also introduces her great new platform. We were unpublished. A website for practitioners and students to share unpublished applied psychology research via short accessible submissions. and there will also be a supportive community. Thanks for tuning in folks. People Soup is a podcast that mixes stories, science, and a sprinkle of daftness to explore what helps people thrive at work and beyond.

Our mission is to give you the ingredients for a better work life through insights and stories grounded in behavioral [00:02:00] science, especially acceptance and commitment therapy, and other evidence-based approaches.

before we go on, let's take a quick scoot over to the news desk. Reviews are in for our last episode, which was part one of my chat with Yas called Balancing Art and Science, the Jewel Passions of Yas Rad. Over on LinkedIn. Amanda super said this is a great episode of the Brilliant People Soup Podcast, highly recommended.

Thank you, Ross and Yaz for accompanying me on my dog walk through the woods this afternoon. I really enjoyed listening to you both. Well, thank you, Amanda, for sharing your reflections, and I really do love to get your reviews, so please do post them on the socials or contact me directly so it's time to get a brew on and have a listen to part two of my chat with Yaz Riot.

Ross: So Yass, in this part I really want to focus in on the first paper from your [00:03:00] PhD, which is the effects of workplace acceptance and commitment therapy programs on psychological flexibility, sub-processes, a systematic review. And I also want to talk about your new emerging project. We were unpublished because I'm a big fan of both. Spoiler alert.

Yass: Oh my gosh.

Ross: Let's talk about the paper first and maybe just, I'll start off by just talking about the title. So the bit I wanted to highlight on the title is Psychological Flexibility Subprocesses. So for those of you who are more familiar with act, act is made up of six subprocesses and Paul and Yaz are getting really curious about which of these subprocesses have the most impact for, for people in the workplace. So I wonder if I could start just by telling us a bit about this systematic review.

Yaz.

Yass: no, definitely. And this was and is my first PhD study. So for me, what [00:04:00] I really wanted to understand is almost get a lay of the land of, of psychological flexibility in the workplace. And so. This study kind of came out because, I think it's pretty well documented in the literature now that act is super beneficial for various outcomes such as burnout and, other sort of mental health outcomes that have been measured in the work context and beyond.

So that's kind of more well known. but I typically in general always have an interest in sort of looking under the lid of, especially big processes like psychological flexibility or let's say mindfulness or whatever it may be, even perfectionism. There're any multidimensional. Area that has loads of different sub areas, would that make it up like psychological flexibility? I'm always wanting to know about each one. I don't want, I don't, for me it's not enough to look at it overall. and so, doing some, some digging, I saw that a lot of the, [00:05:00] and and, and through sort of conversations with some of my amazing sort of co-authors, obviously my supervisor Paul, but you know Ariana Prezi as well.

There's so many different co-authors that we had loads of conversations and realized that there was some sort of, the reviews that had been done would often, and for good reason, look at psychological flexibility overall and how act training through psychological flexibility would lead to the benefit on these outcomes that they're interested in.

So with that, what we couldn't see was how and what parts of psych flex were being changed through these interventions. And what was more discouraging and slightly alarming was that sometimes these studies couldn't see that act was changing, psychological flexibility. So sometimes they would see that and sometimes they would see the change on the outcomes, but not through psych flex.

So, you know, there's loads of reasons for why that might have been. But through conversations we thought, you know, no one has kind of looked at the [00:06:00] next level down, which is those sub-processes of psychological flexibility and how they change before and after an act intervention. Because if I get nitty gritty, when you pull loads of, measures into one overall measure, such as in processes like meta-analysis, commonly they, they are looking at psychological flexibility.

And so they bring in the measures and measure as a whole rather than each set subsection. 'cause that's the data. That they can get and to get enough power to make that makes sense. That's what they do. so through that process, you lose all the granular detail. So you can't see if, for example, an act intervention means that people experience higher levels of acceptance afterwards, but not high levels of present moment awareness.

And that detail you can't see, but you can see that psych flex may or may not have changed, you know? But if one thing goes up and one thing goes down, it might not, nothing's changed, but actually one thing's gone up and one thing's gone down.

Ross: This is a [00:07:00] natural home for your curiosity.

Yass: Oh, yeah. these are the bits that I really love about research. So, psych flex being multidimensional and perfectionism being multidimensional constructs means that I have all endless fun trying to turn to dig underneath all these, uh, bigger concepts.

Ross: So tell us what a systematic review is. Just in brief, give us the headlines.

Yass: So a systematic review. It can also end up in a meta-analysis, which would do some of the more data crunching, such as pooling some things and finding bigger effects, which are really helpful for some areas of research. But a systematic review essentially will look at all the studies that are relevant to the research question you have, and do a search for those studies and pull together all the different findings to sort of get a overarching conclusion almost about what's, what's been said and done.

So I actually really love systematic reviews for that reason. They really [00:08:00] help you get a clearer understanding. And if anyone's done any research or has done a master's or anything, you'll know that when you find a systematic review on the topic you're interested in, it feels like you found the golden ticket to understanding it standing because they've done all the work for you, and have crunched all these papers and all these findings and given you the headlines.

So has, has that been a good explanation of a systematic review?

Ross: I love it. And you're right, it is like the, the golden ticket

and you are the author.

Yass: Oh, yeah, yeah. Now I get to be, be one of the, the, the people that helps create one.

Hmm. Great fun. I.

Ross: Now I wonder, if you could just give us the, maybe two or three headlines of, of what you've found from the systematic review.

Yass: So with this systematic review and all systematic review reviews will find a different number of papers, obviously, that are relevant to the question because we were looking at subprocesses of psychological flexibility and studies that have measured them individually [00:09:00] rather than using whole measures, which there's a lot of research doing whole measures.

Obviously

we found 30 studies and we chose to include not just randomized and controlled trials, we also included the non-randomized non-control trials because I think it's really important, especially in the work setting, to not just focus on sort of what people consider a gold standard of research. I think any even sort of.

Smaller samples or, or even sort of just pre-post without a control group. Sometimes that's more realistic to operate in, in the work setting and in applied settings in general. So, so yeah, we, we found 30 studies and after doing all the crunching of, of what they found, I guess one finding we saw was that there was a sort of difference in consistency of findings for each of the subprocesses, which in a way, unlike some of the reviews before, that kind of [00:10:00] sometimes showed act impacting or, or, or sort of creating change in cycl flex, yes or no, depending on, on the study in the context with this.

It's a, you know, when you look at the subprocess level, it's a, it's a bit more of a positive picture, which is that, especially for certain subprocesses, so diffusion and contact with the present moment, there's a much more consistent. Finding an evidence base to say that act interventions do create change in those processes and therefore outcomes as well.

So I'd say that was the sort of core finding is that it's slightly more, consistent when you look under the lid.

Ross: Yeah. Lovely. And that's such an interesting finding that things that had changed over the course of the training in these papers. With a cognitive diffusion. Now that's about changing your relationship with thoughts, emotions, memories, sensations, urges, and contact with the present moment is exactly what it says on the tin. Now, for [00:11:00] those of you who may be listening who are more on the practitioner side, we're gonna continue this conversation over on my fledgling new private podcast called People Suit Practitioners. For those of you who want to just continue listening to Ya's Wisdom, we're gonna move on to talk about your project.

We were unpublished.

Yass: Lovely.

Insert audio here about new private pod

Yass: Go for it.

Just before we move on, that fledgling private podcast I mentioned is called People Soup Practitioners, and there'll be more news on this very soon, Back to the chat.

Ross: So yes, I'd like to explore your other project or one of your other projects. We were unpublished.

Yass: please.

Ross: I just ask, start by, tell me about the rationale and motivation for creating it.

Yass: So it came, a co a couple years ago now actually, when I had been doing my PhD for a couple years and through that [00:12:00] experience, I'd, I was, you know, supporting on a couple different seminars and bits and bobs at, at Citi and, and trying my hand at a few different things. And I've also now been working in organizational psychology since the masters, which I finished in 2020 something.

2120 or either in COVID, I forget those years. They've all blended into one. So during COVID I finished my masters and since then I've been lucky enough to work in the field with various. Not only consultants, but practitioners, you know, talking to people like you, Ross and, and the team at Citi. And been exposed to a great, great network in, in the, in the field.

And I guess seeing a lot of great work be done and, heard about the issues and the concerns and the difficulties with publishing research specifically for consultants and practitioners who aren't, academics at a university or, or professors. And it just frustrated me and, uh, I just felt like there were so many great people doing great things and I just, I wanted to, why was I only hearing about it [00:13:00] once a year at a conference and had no idea that had happened?

And also at a conference, it's so hard to go to all the talks 'cause there's four, like, you know, often multiple at a time. And I, you know, you, you miss, you miss out on the, on

the different knowledge. Anyway. So I think it stemmed from, from just knowing there's more to learn that than just what I read. Also I've, you know, I've done that systematic review.

I've done a few reviews through work, you know, through my work as well. So reviewing is quite a, a frequent task of mine that I, I enjoy. and knowing that I'm not reviewing everything because I can't, I don't see everything, 'cause some stuff isn't in the areas I'm reviewing. So it stemmed from that knowing that there's stuff I can't access and would love to learn.

And there doesn't really seem to be anywhere for people to, to put it and have an easier submissions process than a traditional academic journal. And then the second point to that is that. I love organizational psychology and applied psychology in general. I feel like we have so many great insights, and I dunno if you found this Ross, but anytime you mention it to someone [00:14:00] who doesn't know anything about org psych, maybe you talk a bit about your work.

Everyone's so interested because they can see the impact for their own lives 'cause in the, in their own company or where they work or their team, or even in their family, it might not always be in the workplace, but they can see it in their own applied context. So knowing that people are so interested in what we do yet, we don't always get our words out there to the, to the non, the non-community, let's say the, the, the general public.

If I can create a platform which enables work to be seen outside our field too, 'cause it's accessible to read and and engaging, then I, I would like to bring our work outwards more.

Ross: And it speaks to you that you notice this problem, you are frustrated by it and you've done something about it.

Yass: Let's say it leaked out of the box that I tried to put in.

Ross: Yes. I love this. I love this theme of leaking. Yeah.

Yass: I dunno if that's the nice image, but

Ross: so it's, it's, if I got this right, it's not you criticizing the world of academic publishing. [00:15:00] It's you saying there's lots of research happening maybe from master students, maybe from lots of PhD

Yass: yeah. Lots, lots of PhD students.

Ross: and it's high quality, rigorous research can gather dust on a shelf.

Yass: Mm-hmm.

Ross: Rather than being scrutinized and appreciated by people who might not be able to find it.

Yass: Yes. And, and I think that, you know, I also am a big, maybe this is from the sort of more creative side of me, but even if you read something you don't agree with, or let's say you don't think it's been done right for whatever reason, 'cause you can have that with academic research published in journals, you can read it and think, that wasn't done how I would've done it, or, you know, I think that is also a super helpful feeling to have because it then you think, how would I do it?

And then you can do it how you, you know, you might, that's how you evolve and learn more is by if something you know, frustrates you or you don't agree with it, you have then got some ammunition to do the next [00:16:00] thing in a way. And, and so yeah, I don't, it doesn't feel like, um, you know, journals and academic publications have a great, they serve a great purpose, you know, they are there for a reason and, and they always will be.

And you know, I'm sure they are evolving as well over time, but it kind of feels like. Yes. And how about the rest of it? the rest of the work that would never really enter that because it's not that type of work or people don't have the time to dedicate to publication processes?

Ross: That time point or people are bamboozled by the, the process or

Yass: Yeah,

Ross: fearful of it.

Yass: well, you know, it's almost a full-time job, especially if you are, if you're doing multiple, if you're trying to, let's say you have multiple pieces of research trying to get published, it could take a lot of time. And also time elapsed between when you start the process to when it actually sees or hits the page, let's say.

And it comes out. We were quite lucky with our systematic review. It I think it took maybe six months, or, or something like that from the [00:17:00] time we submitted it,

which is actually quite rapid, but that's still six months. We had done the research, it was done. and I like the idea of.

Creating a, a sort of quicker access point where, you know, you could submit it and have it on the website in a month, and then you can share it with a client in a month and you know, or whatever it is. I like that.

Ross: I love what you say about, when you talk about your work, people are curious, which is, it's kind of understandable and it's also a bit frustrating that the profile of organizational, occupational, or business psychologists isn't higher. I think it's getting better. I used to say when I started doing a a few guest lectures, like to the students, the master students, I just say, get out there and make some noise because I'm frustrated when an organization collapses or there's a crisis of leadership. There was never anyone on the news going, let's look at this from an organizational psychology perspective, but now I [00:18:00] think there is a bit more.

Yass: Yeah. And I hope, I hope, that increases and continues. And I guess in a way, this feels like my contribution to create, helping create some of that noise, because I do think, I think we've got got some great things to shout about that could help ultimately help lots of people

Ross: Yeah, and

from a practitioner perspective, it could help us find out what people used with different populations,

give insights into the context of a population. Like I'd love to look at studies around that were unpublished around. So for instance, some of the populations I work with are ballet dancers, engineers in high performance environments, people in banking.

What's that context like for them? What did you do

and What were the impact? I think that's invaluable for practitioners. Yeah. What worked.

Yass: Yeah, and I do think that that's sometimes, you know, even reviewing the literature for various things, often something we can't see is that sector specificity and seeing what changes [00:19:00] from sector or context or team size or just hearing different people's approaches and experiences of trying things, I think is super useful.

Ross: And listeners, just to let you know that I was fortunate enough to be on a panel which Yaz was hosting at the British Psychological Society Conference for the Division of Occupational Psychology. See, even that's all a mouthful,

Yass: Yeah, it's a long.

Ross: And

I was fortunate enough to be on a panel which you were hosting with some of your colleagues from Affinity Health at work. And that was, uh, Claire and Louis and also Jerry Ann talking more from a, psychometrician view of, of, of publishing. And we had a good old chat, and I think the concept of we were unpublished really resonated with people. I've since done a lecture to the master students at Burke Beck, university of London. Told them about it and they were [00:20:00] like, oh yeah, This is brilliant. We love it. How can we get involved? So I think once it's presented to people. Thanks to your tenacity and creativity, I think it's really resonating.

Yes.

Yass: That's very exciting to hear because that's really the hope. I was always, you know, if no one finds it helpful, I won't carry on. I don't need to. It's only for helping people really.

Ross: So, so tell me more. So if I'm a practitioner in time, will I be able to come and search on, uh, what will it be? Like a database or so.

Yass: Yeah. It's essentially a website. and we've got a submission about to come out, you know, 'cause I've been, I've been Guinea pig in the process. It's still really early days. So if you're a practitioner, firstly, please submit any work and findings that you have so we can share them with others.

Or if you've got an old master's or PhD. Um, study that you haven't ever shown, please share it with me so we can share it with others. But the hope is that once we've built up more of those people's submissions and, and articles, I guess on the website, then [00:21:00] yeah, you can come and take a look and see what people have done in different contexts.

You could share it. 'cause you know, one thing that's as one of my personal values being beauty. It's important to me for things to look and feel engaging and especially for an external, non-academic audience. Hopefully the links to the site, to certain studies that you found interesting or inspiring or angering even will be something that you can share with a client and, share with a colleague or a friend and they could also read it and, and digest it in their way.

And it feels like something that you can share and, and help each other learn more

Ross: Mm.

Yass: things.

Ross: And say, I've got, my master's dissertation is like, it's over 10 years old now.

But it was looking at the experience of,

Yass: Get it out, that dust it off that shelf.

Ross: the experience of organizational politics through the lens of act.

Yass: Mm. Oh, I wanna read that. I.

Ross: So if I wanted to share that, would I just submit it as it is? [00:22:00] Or do you want me to tailor it and summarize it for your audience? What would be best?

Yass: So on the website now, we've got a submissions link. So you can go on it and it will show you almost like chunks of where to put it. So it would typically be you summarizing it. sometimes, I know some master's courses or courses in general will make you also write like a narrative summary, like a blog post version of your dissertation or, or your study.

Um, so it'd be more aligned to that type of work. And you'll see in the form, uh, the ideal is that in total it won't be more than two pages. Uh, so the word counts for each chunk is quite small. So yeah, you could maybe have your study up that you did and then have the form up and kind of summarize and, and also you have creative freedom to make the wording more engaging.

If you want to talk about it in bullet points or talk about it in more conversational tone, that's very. appreciated because that makes it more accessible to a non-scientific community. So [00:23:00] any casual summarizing and tone or voice changes that you want to make, you're very welcome to. And yeah, you just follow through the form, but I'm also very aware that this is such a new concept that, you know, the form again, might not feel suitable for everyone.

And so, in which case, you're very welcome to email me and we can, if you, if your, if your piece of work doesn't fit into that con sort of constraints which we have to have had, then I'm would happily sort of have a more one-to-one discussion to figure out how we can make it work. 'cause um, ultimately there is that freedom and, and that's important to me to have.

So yeah, the website's got that submission form, it's got some sort of criteria and guidance is the kind of thing that we're looking for. And, um, yeah, there's also some reader ethos if you're reading how, how to view things. 'cause there is a, Review process, but it's a friendly one, so not a rigorous scientific review.

So readers also need to exercise their autonomy and, and, and, and caution when reading as you should with everything you read these days.

Ross: Lovely, that's really [00:24:00] clear. So I'm pretty sure I wrote an executive summary so I

could doss that

off and, and, and work out how to share that. So watch this

Space

yas. I will, go to we were unpublished.com

and

Yass: become published because we were, we were as past, you're all published if you come to me.

Ross: Yes

now. Yes, there's a community aspect to this too. Tell us about that.

Yass: So this is what I'm. Also really passionate about as a sort of second point, but it's, it's a space. And another thing I observed was that a lot of us doing this work or practitioners, we often, you know, maybe work more flexibly or, or are doing this work and writing this stuff up in our spare time or in sort of non-standard working hours.

Let's say you are, you know, like me, you're doing, you are, you know, a consultant, but you're also doing some study and PhD work and that sort of thing. so not only for this community, but also to bring external people who are also working on interesting things into the community. I wanted to [00:25:00] have a space where we could all kind of almost help each other out and get inspired.

Kind of like a book club, but not a book club. 'cause it's not about books. Maybe you meet up and you work together virtually just to have someone to work with on a Saturday morning or, or early morning or evening. And you can all kind of, I guess share knowledge, share thoughts, share ideas, get inspired, and, um.

Come together really, and hopefully as part of that I'll have things like events, but it's just to watch the space that you can register your interest on the website and as soon as I release or open up the membership to that, that will come out. Because where the research aspect and the submissions and the publishing of those is always free of charge this community be like a sort of small membership community and um, in a way will help sort of fund the, the, the platform, but also create value in a different way.

Ross: Lovely. Thank you. Yeah. So folks, if you're interested, you'll find the link in the show notes, or you can go right now to we were unpublished.com. So [00:26:00] yes, I've really loved this conversation. I wonder if you have an insight or a reflection that you'd invite the listener to sit with.

Yass: I would sit with the thing I I've been telling myself, which is being comfortable being your sort of holistic, authentic self and working in that way and unapologetic about doing so in your work.

Ross: Beautiful. Thank you. Thank you ya. And thank you so much for joining me. I feel like we've covered so much. Really grateful for your work out there in the world and for being your own authentic, beautiful, weird, funny disco dancing self.

Yass: Well, thank you Ross. Thank you for having me and thank you for facilitating this conversation and doing so, so amazingly. You are a star.

Ross: Oh, bless you. Right back at you.

That's it. Peace Supers the [00:27:00] second part of my chat with Yaz in the bag.

You'll find the show notes for this episode at People Soup Captivate fm or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Thanks to Andy Glen for his spoon magic and Alex Engelberg for his vocals. But most of all, dear listener, thanks to you, Look after yourselves. Peace Soopers and buy for now.

Ross: you'd used it so I, I felt comfortable using it, but I think it's a lovely word.

Yass: I love that word personally. Is it offensive that

I

use that word?

Ross: no, no. I, I think if I call someone weird, it's a term of endearment to be honest.

Yass: Yeah. I also refer to myself as weird a lot, and my mom's always like, why would you say that? I'm like, well, I don't think it's a bad thing, so I'm okay with that. I love [00:28:00] that word.