Welcome to Mindset, Mood and Movement, a systemic approach to human behavior, performance, and well being. Our psychological, emotional, and physical health are all connected, and my guests and I endeavor to share knowledge, strategies, and tools for you to enrich your life and work. hello and welcome. Today I have a guest, uh, Leanne who's joining me to discuss something really important and very salient at the moment, which is why human connection in the workplace really matters. Now, Leanne is, she does a multitude of things. She's an author, a speaker, a trainer. She's worked with therapeutic work. Now she runs a company called Beam. Reset. It's a problem when you read stuff. All right. Resetting at 30 seconds. Hello and welcome. Today I am joining. It's like she just doesn't work. Okay, reset. 40 seconds. Hello and welcome. Today, we are looking at why real human connection in the workplace matters. I'm joined by my guest Leanne Weaver, and Leanne is an author, speaker, trainer, and therapeutic coach. Now, she's the MD of BEAM training and development, and they work with wellbeing, personal development, and coaching, both for people and organizations. Now, Leanne's also an author. She's done some amazing books. Radical Self Care, Interrupting Anxiety, Ten Steps to Less Anxiety and Stress at Work. So Leanne is a specialist in this field and I'm really excited to talk to Leanne to get her perspective. And to share with you why human connection in the workplace matters. This is such a salient point. Ever since the pandemic, as most of us know, we've, we've shifted, things have shifted some for the better, some for the worse, but one thing that both Leanne and myself are seeing is there's a division sometimes in the human connection side between people and there are issues that are coming up with this and we're going to cover these today. Let's welcome Leanne. to see you Leanne. Hey. Good

Sal. Thank you for having me.

Pleasure. Leanne, I would like to get some context and understand, I know your work to some degree, but for for all of us, can you take us a little bit deeper in how you're working with this space of, you know, human development, personal development, and, and take us a bit deeper into how you got here.

Okay. So, um, my journey, like many people is really varied. So certainly if I look back at kind of 18 year old me. She wouldn't have even imagined that what I'm doing now was even an option, let alone, you know, me being able to do it. So I did a degree in educational psychology, really loved understanding pedagogy and the human psyche. And at that point I thought I wanted to do play therapy. So, working with children who were struggling through the medium of play. I did a course on play therapy after I graduated, but I got a mortgage at 18. So, I mean, that's kind of giving my age away because, you know, you can't get a mortgage at 18 anymore. But it was in the glory days of houses being much more affordable, and I bought a house. And I had a mortgage to pay, so once I graduated, I also just needed to work and earn money. So I went into a finance company, and they sponsored me to do a postgrad in HRM. So, really enjoyed that, enjoyed again working with people, understanding what makes them tick. Did a lot of training as well. And I worked for an MD who I can only really describe as... It's really inappropriate. He was every kind of ist that there was. This was kind of 20 odd years ago. And he took me for lunch one day and he said, Leanne, you've got a really bright future here, just don't get pregnant. Yes.

that is, I mean, to say inappropriate doesn't even cut it, does it? Gosh.

And as irony would have it, little did I know at that exact lunch, I was pregnant. So I don't...

I'm chuckling because it is a delicious irony, isn't It Like, how did you deal with that?

kept it quiet for quite a while. Um, was really kind of... I felt like I was in a kind of no win situation. I was working sort of 14 hour days. It was all very career focused and drive. And I also had all of those maternal instincts kicking in of, I want to be a mom and I want to stay at home with my child. And, and so I decided that once I had my daughter in my naivety, cause I was quite young, I thought, well, I'll take a year out of work, and then after a year, kids are fairly self sufficient, was my naive thought. So I did that and pretty soon realized that that wasn't the case. And so I started to look at going back into HR. In those days, the idea of doing HR flexibly or from home was just, you can't do that. You have to be where the people are. It was very people centric. And so I. Thought, okay, well I need to walk away from that career and just do something to bring money in. So for a few years, while my daughter was little, I did things like telephone appointment maker and um, I held candle parties where you buy loads of candles and you try and flog them to your mates. Anything really to just bring in extra money. And then I thought again, my second bit of naivety, once she goes to school, I'll be able to get back into my career. Once she went to school, she had 13 weeks holiday, they get ill all the time when they first start school, you've only got 9 till 3 anyways, a window. So, that was the second kind of turning point for me and I decided that I needed to retrain in a career that would be much more flexible. And I did what I think most of us have done at some point in our lives, and it usually backfires, is I did the sensible thing, rather than anything my heart or my gut was telling me, and the sensible thing was I decided to study bookkeeping. because I could be a bookkeeper from home and work it around. I did that. I'm really good at learning, Sal. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm an avid learner, avid reader, and I'm good at kind of absorbing and assimilating information. However, I hated doing bookkeeping but I carried on and so I did the accounting technician exams as well and I became an accountant and I set up a bookkeeping and accountancy practice and I would have clients come into me and they would tell me about the argument they'd had with their wife or the troubles they were having with their kids or the worries they had with their money and I would sit for hours and help them. Which made me quite popular as an accountant because I was really helpful. But it actually didn't make me popular with a bank manager because that doesn't earn you money as an accountant. So I did pretty much everything I could to avoid putting numbers in boxes. And I just wanted to be around people. That then, um, made me realise that this just wasn't for me. I felt a real kind of heaviness in my body. I could feel that I wasn't doing what I meant to do. And I made a big life change in 2010. And I stacked away from pretty much everything. And decided that I was going to retrain. And the thing that had always excited me was understanding and helping people. So I retrained in, initially, holistic therapies. So I did things like my Reiki, um, I did aromatherapy, I did massage, things like that. And I set up a holistic therapy practice. And that holistic therapy practice, I quickly realised that, again, people love talking to me. And I didn't particularly like touching strangers and I much preferred talking to them. And so I started to study talking therapies. So hypnotherapy, EFT, coaching, um, meditation teacher. And I started to use that and I got asked to go into companies to speak. And I did that and the first company I spoke at, it went down really well. And then the man who'd organized it came up to me at the end and said, that was brilliant. Do you run courses? And I went,

Of course I do.

And so he said, great. Email me details of your courses when you get back home. I thought, okay. So I very quickly sent him the brief of three courses. they were all going to be the same. He picked the middle one, obviously, and invited me in and that was a six week course on resilience and I went and I delivered that and it had amazing feedback and really positive results and that basically just grew and over the last decade or so I've I've grown that business from just a sole trader into a limited company. Last year we worked in 43 countries, delivering training in person, online and e learning. I still do one to one therapies as well, I've learnt lots of additional therapies since then, so I use things like Havening, a lot of breathwork as well, we love breathwork at Beam. And I brought my husband into the business. So, um. It got to a stage in 2019 where the business had grown quite a lot. I had some associate trainers, but I was getting through a stage where I had to make a decision of, do I carry on training myself or do I manage the business? And the training bit is the bit that lights me up. Managing the business is like... I just need to do it. Tom at the time was a project manager, his contract was coming to an end and I was thinking well this kind of might be perfect timing. So he went from project managing in construction to project managing at BEAM and then over the last four years he's re skilled as well so he's an NLP practitioner, timeline coach, breathwork, things like that as well. And so we, we run this together and our mission is. It doesn't matter if we're having, you know, a one to one therapy session, if I'm speaking to hundreds of people on stage, the mission is always that we give people tools to help them feel better at the end of it. Really practical tools, so the books I've written are very tool focused books as well. Yes.

Wow. That's a, that's a, that's a, what a journey. And thank you for sharing. It's really nice to hear because a lot of my listeners will be some of the business owners and professionals, some are kind of moving into that space. And it's so curious, isn't it? When we're younger or perhaps naive for whatever reason that we don't know options are available and. and. we do the obvious things such as go steady, be safe. And there's a place for that. Let's, let's not throw that out. But sometimes there's that rub, isn't there? When something doesn't feel right. You're a bookkeeper and you want to be working with people and, and intriguing your body spoke to you. I mean, I work with the body a lot in my practice of personal development. what our body feels and says somatically and all those sensations gives us feedback. It's so important we listen. Um, cause otherwise it can scream. So I'm delighted to

Well, I've had both.

Yeah, yeah, me too. And it's actually vital. Now, of course, that's given you a beautiful eclectic understanding of people. It sounds like you're already experienced with, um, An IST boss was, uh, quite negative, but as with a lot of negative things, we learn, right? You learn, okay, that's not how you do things, that's not how you conduct stuff. And people, uh, we vibe, literally, we have vibrations, as you're probably well aware, and how we are resonating, our mental state, emotional state, physical state, that absolutely impacts people. And if we don't take care of that... if our mind is one of fear, one of, um, uh, selfishness, whatever that might be, that's going to affect your colleagues, your, your team, your coworkers, whatever that is. And this is vital. Now, of course, you have so much experience with, with delivering all these pieces of work into, into organizations, into groups of people. When we think about human connection, which is really what we're sort of pulling in here, you. Clearly have seen human connection is vital. Um, I wonder if you can give me an example of when you've seen, uh, in more recent times following the pandemic, where a lack of human connection, what, what's that causing? What are you seeing from that side of

I think that the challenge is certainly since the pandemic. So if I just go back a little bit to the pandemic. So when the pandemic hit, we had pretty much 2020 was a full diary of training. And almost in 24 hours, that just fell apart. as it did with many people. And for two months we just put loads of free content out on our social media and newsletters just trying to support people through what we thought at that point was a temporary situation. It soon became apparent it wasn't temporary. And then we were the busiest we've ever been. We had companies from all around the world contacting us saying we need to support our employees, they're working from home, they're isolated. And so we were doing training courses on Teams and Zoom throughout the entire time. What I think I see now is now we've moved into this sort of hybrid model of working and there, as you said at the beginning, there's a lot of benefits with that. There's um, you know, I can do a call and then I finish the call and I can go and put some washing out or I can be with my dog or I can have a phone call in Sri Lanka but I'm sat at home in my slippers. You know, there's some real benefits. However, The biggest drawback that I see is our lack of social connection. So what I'm seeing at the moment is a lot of businesses are absolutely facing financial restraints. Um, that didn't seem to be as much of an issue right in the middle of the pandemic. And so training, particularly in what is still unfortunately termed soft skills, is one of the first things that kind of gets devalued. And so a lot of companies that we've worked with since the pandemic, I'm having them say to me things like, well, we're going to just have an e learning module on stress. We're going to have an e learning module on managing boundaries. And absolutely, we offer e learning and there are real benefits to that, but what it will not do is give that person who's struggling an opportunity to speak up. It will not give that person who's struggling the opportunity to see other people are struggling as well. And so that kind of learning, whilst it has its place in terms of heavier subjects like stress, anxiety, confidence, imposter syndrome, can make people feel even more isolated. And so what we see from BEAM is that there's unfortunately this movement from let's put employee well being front and center to, well, you know, this is the way we're living now. Everyone has to manage this hybrid working. And so it isn't seen as much as a priority because the pandemic is over. So. Come on, get on with it. But actually, certainly from my therapy room as well, what I'm seeing is people are feeling the impact now. The stress levels, the anxiety levels are higher now than I have ever experienced through my career of doing this. And that's across the board. I have young people all the way up to retirement. that are feeling that stress, and in my experience, one of the biggest reasons that we will feel that stress and anxiety is we've become disconnected. And the more time I have on my own, the more I spend with my head, the more of a miserable place it's gonna be.

Yeah, I echo that. Uh, everything you've said there, it's, it's, it's not a surprise to me. I know we work in slightly different perspective spaces. Uh, so mine is much more with leaders and single individual coaching. Yours is much more groups, but they're human beings, right? And they're delivering something in some work context. So the similarity is still pretty close. And It seems, in my respect, to echo what you said, that it's disconnection, which is, in some ways, is obvious, like when we're, most of us are, we don't have to be a psychologist to know this, right? You don't have to, like, years and years of trying to, where we feel disconnected, things don't work. We are meant to be connected. You know, if you fall out with a partner or a family member, it doesn't feel nice. It's a simple example of that. And then if you work in an isolated space, You are bang on to something, Leon. This is something I've seen with people who spend way too much time in their head because they're highly intelligent. They have high cognitive processing and that disconnect, what I'm seeing is from the head to the body. So some or from their emotions to their beliefs and whatever those disconnects are. And it's causing a problem. I'm fascinated that you've seen something which I've seen in a slightly different space, but how the effects of the pandemic are actually sort of happening now, rather than right after, which is no surprise. You know, it's like the ripple effect that, um, or you could even call it a global trauma effect. Yeah. And to, um, be clear on what I mean by trauma, that something happened. We didn't feel control. Most of us felt helpless to some degree. And for a lot of human systems that can trigger our nervous system into a trauma free state. Like I can't do anything. So I'm stuck. Now, I've seen the cases and you might've seen it where we've seen post traumatic growth where people have really flourished from this, but there's also then the flip. A lot of people have really struggled with this. And if we are sitting. in front of a computer, zooming it up all day, or um, whatever we're doing working from a, say a remote work situation, that disconnects a big problem and Yeah, it, it's gonna cause us health problems as well. That's another thing I've seen is that if we are disconnected from other people, whether it's our colleagues or family, we then start to become unwell and it's easy to go inwards. If you're a real big thinker, you're just like, Oh, I'm not going to go out and I'm going to do this. And, and then we spiral and then we spiral. Now I'm curious. So that's. You know, alarming, worrying, but we need to name it, right? What's, what's happening where that's the other way? What, how, how you see impacts on people you're working with? It's gone the other way and said that we see this problem as well. What have you been able to do about

I think one of the things, as you were talking there and I completely agree with you and it really echoes, but one of the things that I have had conversations about with clients a lot Certainly, I would say since 2023, which is where it was like, okay, this is our new world now, we've got to kind of step into that, is I have, I have clients who are incredibly self aware, so they know that they experience anxiety because of this, they know that they're carrying trauma because of this, and, and that information is, is really kind of, um, useful. to a point. So what, what I see is two kinds of people. So I have clients who are incredibly self aware and then they're taking action to grow, to recognize, okay, this bad thing happened. Now what do I do with it? But I equally have clients who are incredibly self aware, but there's no action. So what happens then is that It almost becomes torture. It's almost better to be ignorant and not have the awareness that you have trauma or anxiety than to have the awareness and not know what to do with it. And so, working with clients, particularly when I work with them on a one to one basis, first and foremost, if someone comes for therapy, there's a level of self awareness. So, they, they kind of recognize they're struggling, so. They have that. It's them recognizing, okay, so do you have a toolkit and a desire and intent to move forward from this? Or actually, is this self awareness? Making you more miserable and driving you to almost have excuses for your lack of growth. And what this comes down to is a phrase that I use so often in therapy, is we have to recognize the difference between fault and responsibility. So all of us have had terrible things happen throughout our lives which absolutely are not our fault. And the pandemic is a great example of that. It's not our fault. We experienced that pandemic. It's not our fault that we might have had bad parents. It's not our fault that we might have been in an abusive relationship. However, if we stay in the mindset of, well, I'm like this because this happened and it wasn't my fault. We are going to stay a victim to that experience, potentially for our entire lives. If, however, we have the ability and the awareness to say, this bad thing happened, it's not my fault, but it's my responsibility to decide what I do with it now, that's when we get post traumatic growth. That's when we see amazing things happen, and people really kind of rising from the ashes and... It goes beyond resilience, it becomes this anti fragility, you know. Resilience is I can take quite a few bashings before I get broken. Anti fragility is actually the more you bash me around, the stronger I get. And so that is the, the two kinds of, um, mindsets that I definitely see on a regular basis.

So my question to you here is what makes them different?

So... I think partly it's knowing what to do next. So I would say the bit where Beam definitely always tries to support people, whether that's in corporate, whether it's individuals, is sometimes we just don't know what tools we need once we've become self aware. So if I'm aware that I have anxiety because this bad thing happened 10 years ago, but then I have no idea what to do with that, then I'm just aware of it and I'm still carrying it every day and it's still a frequent part of my life. If, however, you can become tooled up. And learn a plethora. I mean, I, I can't even imagine over my years of studying and reading how many tools I have access to. And I have learned through my own experience that this tool that works really well today might not work so well tomorrow. So we need to be really kind of flexible and have that. That is what I see in the difference, which I could kind of sum up in, it's the resourceful people that become anti fragile.

Yeah, that's so interesting. That's really, really interesting. Now, I'm very, very self aware. I'm also an incredibly sensitive human being. I'm actually a very strong human being and because we sometimes were labeled sensitive, uh, with negative connotations. So let's use a different word. So highly responsive. I have a highly responsive nervous system to what happens within my mind and body and what happens in my environment around me, which means Uh, I have to be super mindful of what I'm doing because that makes you very good as a coach because I can really dial in with people. It makes it really difficult in certain scenarios like busy spaces, lots of, um, visual content, stuff like that absolutely overwhelms me. So we have to be mindful, don't we, about the different types of people. Self awareness is the first step. Um, understanding the distinction between fault. Blame, let's say, the victim archetype one can take, and then responsibility, understanding, and a desire to move forward, perhaps, whatever archetype we're going to call that, you know, the person who takes action, the person who, who chooses to change, what I find really interesting, and, and, and a bouncer phrase to you, um, I see psychological homeostasis. So homeostasis is our body's natural state that it rebalances and you know, the blood chemistry and all that keeps it, keeps it steady. What I've noticed is that a lot of people can get in psychological homeostasis and it becomes our identity. You know, I've got anxiety, which by the way is incorrect. There's no such thing as anxiety. It's an experience. It's a moving. Neurological, Psycho, Immuno, Psycho, Neurological, Immuno, Biological, Biological thing. It's all this stuff going on, but actually if we start labeling like I'm an anxious person or um, you know, uh, I'm a stressed worker, we start to become an identity connection or have an identity connection to it. And I do wonder if this is some of the, some of the stickiness of these problems that I see with when, when helping people with change and maybe you'll see them. So if we've got someone who's. Who, who's not the resourceful one who's coming to you or your organization or coming to me and say, Hey, look, I need to work on this. What about the person or leader who's, who knows there's anxiety, knows there's stress, knows there are problems, but isn't shifting? How would you address that?

So, I think, first of all, your point about sort of personifying a condition, it's something that I tell people so often, we're so quick to sort of talk about my anxiety, my stress, and as soon as you take ownership of it, Now I have to care for it, now I have to have it, I have to feed it, I have to look after it. And so, I completely agree with that and, you know, I'll often explain to clients, you know, our emotions are electrochemical reactions and our brain can get addicted to the same thing. So if every morning I wake up and I get a hit of anxiety, well, all my brain cares about is that I'm alive at the end of the day. So if I've survived yesterday... Then it makes sense for my brain to give me a hit of anxiety today, so I can survive today. It doesn't care if that makes me miserable, or unhappy, or stressed, or uncomfortable. It cares that I'm alive at the end of the day. So, um, kind of recognizing that cycle and that addictive pattern of, of those emotions is really important. So I just wanted to pick up on that. In terms of, um, sorry, go back to your question, Sal.

Yeah. So when we, when we sort of call that out, that can be happening for many of us. So we don't want to start saying this is right or wrong. This simply is, if this is what's going on for you and you're like, Oh, that sounds familiar. You know, I'm having anxiety. I am stressed. Uh, I've got issues at work and within my business, but I'm not doing anything. And I think there's the rub is it's the, but I'm not doing anything to change this. So. When we think about human connection, so understanding how we function, of course, absolutely vital, but human connection, how does that play in? So some of the work you've, you've been doing with your training and bringing people together and the things you've been doing, how does the human connection side then address this, perhaps this sticky point that we may need to

I mean, in the most simplistic form, when we are connected to other humans, we're not focused on ourselves as much So, you know, when during, um, the pandemic Tom and I created, um, a movement called the Social Medicine, which was specifically designed to help people who were experiencing loneliness, and we ran free events and things like that for it. When I talk to people about loneliness and I did speeches on it and things like that, essentially I can sum it up in one thing. The antidote to loneliness is help someone else. That, that's it. That's what it needs. If I say the antidote to being hungry is eating a bit of food, the antidote to loneliness is helping someone else. So the second we are not so insular and isolated, and we have to consider the needs of the tribe, if you like, the community. Then I'm not sat thinking about what's wrong with me, what's going on in my head. Oh no, I've had more negative thoughts. What about that problem? Could it get worse? I'm now considering the whole. So simply, you know, from, if we look at, say, a workshop, absolutely, we, we'd still do the majority of our training online. Because that's the world that we're in. But the difference in when we get the people in the room, And they look at each other and they're more open to asking questions and more open to saying, Yeah, I know what that's like. When we're running workshops with people and they're physically in the room. Something so much more amazing happens because people are looking at each other's faces so even looking across to your colleague and seeing them nod at a point is reassurance that I'm not alone, someone else feels like that. People are far more likely to interact and ask questions in the room rather than online. So you hear another colleague say, oh I've been struggling with stress and... This is what helps me. We get the opportunity to share best practice. I'm there as the facilitator and the trainer, but there is a wealth of experience in every training room I'm in, and getting people to share that, getting people to understand behaviors. If we take stress, for example, whenever I train on stress, I talk about our five key stress responses, which are faint, freeze, fight, flight, and fawn. And then I transfer those into how that looks in the office. So, okay, we don't tend to faint that much, but freeze looks a lot like procrastination. Fight looks a lot like that difficult person that just won't help you. Fawn looks a lot like people pleasing, and flight looks a lot like avoidance, the person who phones in sick or has all of a sudden got an emergency. And when you start to... Have these conversations in a room full of people, you can all of a sudden recognise that that colleague that has perhaps been driving you crazy because they're always procrastinating, needs a bit of help and support. They're actually stressed. That colleague that drives you crazy because you feel like they're a creep and they're always people pleasing. is actually stressed. And those sorts of conversations are a lot harder to have when we're having them online. It's a lot harder for us to, to be that open.

Yeah, that's, that's lovely, really lovely, lovely articulation of both those neural states that we go through and perhaps those what, what that actually looks like. And, you know, for me, some of this feels like it's pulling the veil down, doesn't it? Rather than the label. And you've already named this earlier about, you know, labelling. Labelling can either box you in or set you free. And, and there are various reasons why that happens, but I can't do this because of X. It means you've labelled and boxed in. I have this condition, or I feel stressed when, but I need Why? That sets you free because you understand it. But what you've described there was really, uh, I think really poignant because if you're trying to understand it in the context of, well, what's it like in my workspace? What's it like with my team? Then it becomes not a label. But a processor. Oh, so that person keeps saying yes to everything, but they're not delivering. Maybe they're fawning a bit. Maybe we should have a chat to them and say, Are you all right? You know, you're under it at the moment. And of course, there's that distinction about opening up the connection, isn't there? That allows connection. For me, it feels like it creates permission because it creates the conduit to happen. We are, um, I mean, I love remote communications because it allows us to do so many things, but we have to see the short side of this stuff. When we're in a room with someone, of course, we have more peripheral vision. You see out the corners of your eyes. We see body language, you know, whether it's a tapping foot or someone breathing. And even if we don't know, on some level our brain registers micro expressions and all this kind of stuff. So, if we run a low resolution screen with a bit of a head, a floating head, then it's quite hard to do that. And I think this is one of the things where we need to be very careful, whether we are a trainer, Uh, whether we are a company or a leader, getting people in the space of growth and understand why we have problems such as the classics, stress, pressure, burnout, overwork, all the things that people are having to deal with, which are negative. Then realizing that as simple as it sounds, isn't it a simple, but we need to get together. We need to have a conversation and be in a room. Maybe you feel someone's skin by shaking a hand. Um, literally hear the reverberance of voice around the room, this sort of stuff. And it's easy to forget, and I think it's easy to forget, and I really want to get your view on this. I've got, uh, I'll alias this person, Joe. Joe runs a media company, uh, super successful. They have a whole lot going on, and she has a bunch of fellow directors as well. They have so many pressures, and in my coaching space, it's like unloading that stuff, working it through. One of the biggest things is there's no time to think. There's no space and of course in a coaching capacity or a training capacity, hopefully that that person has space and and it. And I hold up the mirror. I'm just like, look, you're running a hundred miles an hour. And that's great. You know, if you want to build this business, you're going to have to go at it hard. But if there is no space to literally breathe, to think, to process, and you're the leadership, you run this ship. How do you think your team of how, how do you think that's all going? And of course they have remote people and all over the place and they have problems. They have disconnect in their, in organization. And this particular person is doing very, very well. bringing connection back because they're bringing social events back. They're bringing connection. So getting people back into the office for even a day a week. Um, so that's something I've seen for one of the leaders I coach around how they're making changes with connection. Now we've spoken a little bit around the context and stuff. If I let's get a viewpoint from a leader's perspective and perhaps, uh, uh, an employee or team perspective, because I think wherever we sit in that space, it's good to see the other. If you're. If a leader comes to you and says look we've got a whole bunch of challenges with my team, my business and stresses, the things you've already spoken of, how or rather what to start making the changes, you know, whether it's the type of training, the type of conversation, what's the first step you would, you would encourage them to do and to

So the very first step I'd get them to do is similar to what you just said with your example in that a phrase again that I use quite often is demonstrate, don't broadcast. So it's all very well if the leader is saying, right, we need to connect, we need to do this, you need to like take some well being time off or whatever. But if we're not demonstrating that as a leader. Then, we're human beings, we mimic behavior, we do what people do, not what people say. So, Demonstrate Don't Broadcast is something I learned years and years ago, it's something I try and live by. When you, um, are going through any sort of change or personal development or growth, our tendency is to try and drag the people we love along with us. And say, I found this amazing thing, you need to do it too. And one thing most of us hate is someone telling us that we need to change.

Tell us what to do, absolutely. Dude, don't tell me what to do.

So, but if you just show people. So, something that I talk about a lot is recovery breaks. So, for example, with that, um, Joe that you talked about. So, there was research conducted by someone called Sean Acor in the States, and they found that, almost without exception, people that reached clinical burnout didn't take recovery breaks. However, when people take recovery breaks, they can produce and persist so much longer. than someone who doesn't. And it's defined in two ways. So a recovery break is internal recovery and external recovery. So internal recovery is working with our ultradium rhythms, which is the kind of energy and pattern of our brainwaves. And our brains can only perform at a maximum level for about 90 minutes. And after 90 minutes we become sluggish, forgetful, it's just harder. They found that if we take even something as short as a 3 5 minute break every 90 minutes, where we use our brain in a different way, so we perhaps step away from the computer and we do some breathing exercises, or we play with the dog, or we even play in a game on your phone, you know, something totally that is using your brain in a different way. When we come back, we're refreshed and we're able to produce more and produce better quality. And then there's um, external recovery. And external recovery is taking a 60 to 90 minute break at the end of a mentally taxing period. And so if, for example, you've had a really challenging day at work, It's having 60 to 90 minutes to decompress, so essentially it's anything that gets us in this wonderful flow state, so exercise, music, creativity, cooking, gardening, anything that gets us into that flow state where we're using our brain in a different way, gives us the opportunity to recover. And to recharge. And I think one of the things that I see in all people, not just leaders, but certainly those leaders that feel the demands and pressure is they think that rest is recovery. And rest is not recovery. So they've had a challenging week and so they decide to just lay on the sofa watching Netflix all weekend, you know, and it comes up with that message checking you're still alive and you're just like, yep, another box set, another box set. The problem with that is that's physical, because I can be laying on the sofa watching box set after box set, but that doesn't mean my brain is resting. I'm physically resting. Recovery is about mentally resting. So it's about using our brain in a different way that gives it the opportunity to just, it's kind of like doing exercise. If you go to the gym and all you do is squats, you're going to do more harm than good. It's using different parts of the brain. So I would say demonstrate, don't broadcast. And the first thing you demonstrate is taking recovery breaks and encouraging your team to do that.

What absolute gold. I mean, it's absolute gold. Uh, I too have studied the, um, ultradium, circadian, all the rhythms of the body. And I, I basically do a coaching process with, uh, time and how to be most effective with some of my people I coach, because we have these rhythms. But to echo what you said, It was Dr. Ernest Rossi. I studied under someone who studied under him and he did a lot of work in this in the therapeutic context and noticed that most people benefit from a 90 minute session, not an hour in coaching or therapy. He was particularly around therapy and our brain actually goes into the waves. So if you're interested in brain waves, they actually change into a almost trance y state. So this is an absolute must. And I'm just going to push this forward because if we're doing a back to back meetings, back to back sessions, and we haven't had a recovery break, the system doesn't work that way. And you can't beat the system because it will break, and the system is your brain and your body. Don't try and beat it, work with it. That's again, I would echo that. That's starting to reconnect as well. That, and the theme of reconnection, that's finding reconnection. And, well, my go to is movement. Yeah, okay, I move all the time, I push this, I'm like, look, everyone's gotta move because of all these different things. Um, but if we are in our head a lot, if you are very... analytic, cognitive person. If you have a knowledge worker, if you're a knowledge worker of sorts, and a lot of people I've worked with are, and you know, we're doing knowledge work now into some degree, shift your awareness and your experience and your energy into a different work. So nothing beats, and I love doing heavyweights and something like that, nothing beats going into the body and working there or connecting there. And you're right, you know, disconnecting with whether it's alcohol, whether it's TV, you're still being stimulated mentally. Yeah, so basically it's, it's like trying to put the fire out with petrol. Bad idea. Yeah, don't do it. So they're really good thing. And so interesting that statement about demonstrate don't What was it? Please remind me of your phrase? Demonstrate, Demonstrate, don't broadcast. Beautiful. So, so important. Because for me, that's about self leadership and self connection. If you are a leader and you are not modeling or demonstrating, as you said, what to do and how to do it, how can you expect your colleagues and your team to do it? You know, this is responsibility, which you said a little while ago. This is responsibility number one. Love that. Perhaps we could turn our lens of attention on to if you're an employee or team member of some kind and Perhaps you're not at C suite or leadership level. What's the experience like for that that person or these people and How can we build connection that human connection in that space?

I think one of the biggest things that I would come to there is embracing self reliance. I think a lot of us have given our power away. whether that's with our physical health or our mental health, in expecting, well, if it breaks, I can take a tablet to fix it. Or if there's a problem at work, I can go to HR to fix it. And of course we have those systems in place when we really need them. But a lot of the time, we have the solutions within us. So instead of waiting for permission to take a break, Set those boundaries in place that this is what I do. I, I do not have my lunch at my desk. I, I always finish by XPM. And setting those, we, we run a course on, um, home and work boundaries. And we talk about how, um, I don't know if you've read Cal Newport's Deep Work. It's a brilliant book. Really, really good book. And he talks about setting firm boundaries. And when he finishes the day... He literally has a shutdown process, which is, he writes, um, a to do list ready for the next day so everything's out of his brain. He writes that to do list, and then the very last thing he does is he shuts down his computer and out loud he says, Shut down complete. So there's this constant trigger that that's it. I'm not stepping away from my computer and then picking up my phone to check my emails in an hour's time. I'm not stepping away from my computer and eating a meal with my kids and thinking about the project I've got to do tomorrow. It's having that all on, all off mentality. And one of the biggest... impacts of stress in the workplace is this kind of attention residue that we're never all on or all off. And working from home particularly, whilst I see loads of benefits, it has that negative of if I'm sat here and I'm working, But then I'm thinking, well the sky's cleared up, I could put some washing out. As simple as that little thought is, it's not causing me stress, it's taking my attention away. So now I have a bit of attention on my washing. So I'm not fully on with my work. And so again, going back to these 90 minute cycles, what's useful is to say, right, for 90 minutes, my phone is out of the way, I'm focusing on this, and then I'm going to give myself a break. And you will get so much more done. in a much healthier way than if you're zipping in and out. Equally, how many of us will have finished work and we're with our family, we're doing something enjoyable, but we're thinking about what we've got to do the next day with work. So we haven't got full attention on our downtime as well as our work time.

Wow, yeah and Attention. I'm thinking about human connection. I think about, you know, the kind of strategies and practicals, but what you've just said has given me a shiver because if we don't have our attention with our colleague, our coworker, um, or at home with our partner or friends, whoever that be, then we don't have connection. It's, it's like the basic, uh, constituent part. So we could be in a room together. Uh, and sadly in today's world, a lot of people in a room together staring at a phone. You know, so they've sold their time and attention to a tech company, which is essentially what we've done, you know, we've handed it away for free, which is curious. Unfortunately, it's addictive, it's cultural, and that's a whole other podcast, but if we don't have our attention clean and clear, and you've got that attention residue, as you say, then we are already compromising human connection because of that. And, and I think it's really nice, isn't it, to see those processes and what those things do and how the impact of, oh, I'll just quickly check email. No, be with your colleague, go have some lunch, have a cup of coffee or talk about a project. Don't talk about project and email. It's really curious how we need attention first and foremost to then make the glue between people come together. So that's, that's a really, uh, I think such a vital point. Easy to forget

And we're all guilty of it. You know, there was one study and it suggested that even just looking at your phone, so it beeps and you just look at the screen, you haven't touched it, you haven't picked it up, it takes 24 minutes to get back into that flow that you were

I've seen the study. Yeah, it's crazy, isn't it? Uh, I know if, if you, if anyone is who's just like, what? So, uh, I'm just trying to remember which university it is. Um, it could be Berkeley. Anyway, we'll, we'll find it and we'll put it in the show notes, but it's, it was 23 minutes and something seconds. So let's round up 24 minutes. 24 minutes. I don't have 24 minutes to give away to something unhelpful. Like, I don't know, let's say an Instagram alert or whatever it is unhelpful or someone is coming in because you haven't got boundaries, then that starts to put a wedge, doesn't it? A divide between our attention and then between our human connection. So human connection needs, for me, it needs attention. It needs focus. You need to be present with another person or all your people, whether you're you know, leader or team, it doesn't matter. You need to be present first and foremost to be fully in the room on that level. Now, I'd love to get your, your thoughts, because there's a lot we've covered here. There's a lot of some strategies, some, some key salient points that are go tos that we need to have in place. Once those are in place, what, Let's say the most practical steps. What can someone go away and do and if you're thinking if you're whether you're leader or team, right? We know human connection works. We know we feel better and we know the opposite. What would you suggest there? What's the some of the steps that the people can start thinking? Yep, if I make sure this goes in my diary and I do it this will bring human connection and a better working environment

definitely making sure you have some human contact, real contact, even if that's going to your local shop, you know, some real human contact every day. So it's not just this digital contact, that you can look someone in the eye, you can, you know, if it's a friend or something, you can give them a hug or shake their hand and, and have that. I think also going back to that attention and presence. Giving people the gift of being fully present. Now, of course, if it, that is something that we need to bring into work, but actually it's something we need to bring into home. How many of us are with our spouse or our kids and we're looking at our phone or our head is just somewhere else? And we can create boundaries and rules with the phone and kind of have it. Certain times where it is not in our vicinity and not where we would be tempted to glance at it, you know, having it, again, there's another study where even just having it face down on the table doesn't go off, nothing happens. You don't concentrate as much on your conversation as if it was out of sight. Um, and then thinking about, well, what kind of person am I to be connected? What kind of communicator am I? Most of us are really terrible listeners, and I'll frequently tell people hearing isn't listening, so most of us unfortunately listen with the intent of replying, so I managed to get human connection, and I bump into you Sal, and I say, how was your weekend? You say, I went for a lovely meal. And before I've even heard what you say after that, I think, Ooh, I went for a meal. I'm going to tell him about that. And so I'm instantly having a conversation with myself instead of you. Um, when I, there's a course I do on communication and one of the final exercises we do in there is that. a person has to say a sentence and the next person has to use their last word as their first word so they fully listen. So you're not constructing your reply because you have no idea where it's going to go. And just challenging yourself. Now a way that I often teach that is using a therapeutic term and the therapeutic term is that you practice the pause. So, as a therapist, usually someone will come into my therapy room and I'll say, So, how are you doing? And they give me the stock reply that they've given everyone else. Which is, Yeah, not bad. Or, Fine, thanks. Yeah, it's pretty good. That's the stock reply. Now, if they really were pretty good, then the chances are they're not coming for therapy. If I was terrible at my job, I could then go, Oh, great. You're good. Okay. Well, get in touch. I'll see you. Goodbye. Obviously, that's not the case. So, what I've learned is to practice the pause, which is to not leave a really uncomfortable silence, but to also not jump in. And one of the things I've learned is that it's the second thing people say that is most important. So they will say, yeah, not bad, thanks. And I will nod or I'll give little kind of words of encouragement, but I am not going to fill it in because you're in therapy and it's not about me. I'm not going to talk about my week. And then they go. Ah, well actually I've been really upset this week. Actually this really tricky thing is going on and I don't know how to deal with it. That's when you get real connection. And if we think about it, most of the time, when I told you my journey, the builder that was coming in to tell me about his marriage problems when I was an accountant, the person who'd booked in for an aromatherapy massage that was telling me about challenges they had with their children, they weren't really... come in for their accountancy or for their massage, they were coming to have human connection, to be listened to. And I really think it is one of the biggest gifts we can give anyone is to hold that space and allow them to be truly listened to. Not just hearing you, I'm listening to you and this is about you, not me. And I think if we did that in all of our relationships, we would see our relationships really grow and blossom. We would be better parents, better partners, better friends. Better leaders, better managers, better employees.

Amazing I'm really struck by that It's, it's, it's stuff I know, it's stuff I work with, with my own, uh, sort of coaching and performance around people that actually we need to be steady, we need to be able to be calmer within, it's connected within and we need to really connect with another and that doesn't happen if the mind is busy, we're rushing around like whatever, we are looking to jump straight in and what you've just said there just, just It just, just felt so natural. Yeah, of course. Isn't that lovely? That's what I want. And most of the time I do that. I don't do it all the time because I'm human. I get it wrong. Like most people would do. We sometimes are busy, but salient, vital. And in perhaps many ways, points that we all know, and what I love about them at your experience, Liam, but my experience of doing a lot of clever psychology and deep practice around that, often the most powerful stuff is the stuff we implicitly know as a human being, when we are quiet and steadier and calmer, and we are in a good place, we, we know that we want to hear someone and be heard. And that creates connection and creation, connection really helps whether it's family, whether it's your business. So, You're welcome. Thank you. It kind of goes like, let's start at the beginning, right? Start at number one. How are you doing? What are those processes? And then connecting to number two, the other, through a clear open space. And then of course, that's a ripple effect. If we're able to model that, certainly as a leader in any context, that's modeling that wonderful ripple effect of what can create good human connection. Wow, such good, strong, massive points here. I have one last question. What is your, what's your go to for you personally, that's your way of remembering to do what you've covered so eloquently today, but what's your go to to remember that this stuff matters and this helps you connect? What do you do?

So two things came up when you said that. So one is what I've already touched upon, which is not just to have awareness, I need action. So being aware of my stress or my, um, challenging relationship or some anxiety, whatever it is. And then what? And I will very frequently say to myself and to clients, and then what? Really important, right? So that's definitely one, but then in the most simplistic of terms, my go to to remind me to slow down, to connect, to be present, is the breath. Because I've always got it with me and it's our breath that is one of the first indicators that will tell your brain whether your environment is safe or threatening. It's the thing that changes in a split millisecond if I'm feeling anxious, if I'm feeling relaxed. And the great thing is I can control my breath. So if I am having a conversation with someone and I recognize that my head has started to race somewhere else, Then I come back and I just slow my breathing down and make myself fully present and I will literally, I'll do it in my therapy chair, I will Just take some deep breaths and I'll press my feet into the ground and here I am back in the room fully present But I'll do that with my husband. I'll do that with my mother. I'll do that with anyone And so those two were the first things that I turned to Before I then go into the toolkit and get anything and everything else out. It's the breath And, and then what?

Beautiful. We need the right key to open the door,

absolutely. And it doesn't always work the same time.

No, and I think this is the important thing, but it's like, if it works most of the time and it's a really simple strategy, it's remember the breath. Oh yeah. Remember, like, and what action? What, what have I got to do? Beautiful. Really well articulated. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and summary experience around work. connection, the workplace, and of course you've gone deeper into human connections, so I'm deeply grateful for all that you've shared. Of course we shall put Leanne's details in the show notes if you want to get in touch with Leanne or myself, they'll be all in show notes. And until the next time, dear listener, I hope you can remember to breathe, remember to ask what's next, and perhaps to go back through the podcast and extract some of the key points. In many ways, Leanne's just taken us through a training process. I'm deeply grateful for that. It was wonderful. So Thank you Leanne. Dear listener. See you on the next one.

Thank you. so much.

Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe and if a friend would benefit from hearing this, do send it on to them as well. If you would like to get in touch yourself, then you can go to my website, which is sal jeffries.com, spelled S A L J E F E R I E s sal jeffries.com. Hit the get in touch link and there you can send me a direct message. If you'd like to go one step further and learn whether coaching could help you overcome a challenge or a block in your life, then do reach out and I offer a call where we can discuss how this may be able to help you. Until the next time, take care.