ONE Jutta Tobias Mortlock

[00:00:00] PART ONE

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[00:00:00] Ross: Hi there and a very warm welcome to Season five episode one of People Soup. It's Ross McIntosh here Blind me P Supers season five. Thanks so much for joining me. I've got a cracking set of guests lined up for you.

[00:00:14] Jutta: So whilst many people understand mindfulness as a way of relieving stress and of feeling a little bit better, which is fab. Mindfulness can seep into entire organizations, but not just through one method, which is for individuals to sit in silent meditation, using the breath or other bodily sensations or the body scan as anchor.

[00:00:40] Jutta: But there are other ways for us to become mindful, both as individuals or you and me, we could become a mindful team and that looks and sounds, and feels different from the practices that I might do myself to become mindful.

[00:00:55] Ross: Our first guest is Dr. Uter Tobias Mor Block, a social psychologist from City University of London, who is also the co-director of the Center for Excellence in Mindfulness Research.

[00:01:07] Ross: Jutta's Research explores next generation mindfulness, which means using the science of mindfulness at a collaborative team level. I've called this episode the Mindfulness Manifesto. you'll hear a bit more about UTIs career history, the breadth of her mindfulness exploration, and the motivation for her current research.

[00:01:25] Ross: It was such a fascinating chat that I've decided to spread the joy and split the conversation over three episodes. Yes. Another first for People's Soup.

[00:01:33] Ross: Mindfulness is often misunderstood, and I felt it was important to give it a thorough airing for the pea soupers to reflect and digest.

[00:01:40] Ross: People Soup is an award-winning podcast where we share evidence-based behavioral science in a way that's practical, accessible, and fun to help you glow to [00:02:00] work a bit more often.

[00:02:01] Ross: let's just scoot over to the news desk. You might have noticed some new head shots, courtesy of my husband, my now Ortega, and a new logo on colors. I'm pretty sure there'll be some merch in the pipeline too to build upon our legendary bookmarks.

[00:02:16] Ross: I've also taken the plunge and moved to a new platform Captivate, so I'll be getting used to that and all its brilliant features over the next few weeks. But for now, get a brew on and have a listen to part one of my chat with you, Jutta

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[00:02:34] Ross: Dr. Jutta Tobias Mortlock. Welcome to people soup.

[00:02:39] Jutta: Thank you so much, Ross, such a joy and such a treat to be with you. You know, how much of a fun I, of you?

[00:02:47] Ross: oh, bless you. And right back at you, um, now UTA, you'll be familiar. I've got this research department to beaver away and look for information about my guests. So I'm gonna present to you what they found out about you. And I have to say they're not always a hundred percent accurate. So do, do kick your ears open because sometimes they get stuff wrong.

[00:03:11] Ross: A rustle of paper. So Dr. Jutta Tobias Mortlock is a social psychologist with 25 years of work experience in organizational development and capacity building in six countries on three continents. BLIMEY. Jutta's research is focused on behavior change initiatives in the workplace, geared at generating sustainable wellbeing and performance using third wave cognitive behavioral and approaches, such as P Soupers, something called ACT Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which where which we're a big fan of here and other evidence based mindfulness frameworks, , she researches and teaches workplace mindfulness and leadership in collaboration with a variety of organizations and is a popular keynote speaker on the link between [00:04:00] wellbeing and performance.

[00:04:01] Jutta: what a mouthful eh!.

[00:04:02] Ross: This is, Goodness. How do you fit all this in? In in in fact, we were having a conversation before I pressed record about how you fit all this in, but listeners blind me listen to this.

[00:04:13] Ross: So UTA, serves as an advisor to UK think tank, the mindfulness initiative and the us based mindfulness in education. Non-profit called inner Explorer. Not only that, but she's won awards too. including the 2019 city university school of arts and social science learning and teaching award and people's prize and several Cranfield uni awards two,

[00:04:40] Jutta: the teaching appraisal I'm actually quite proud of. I have to say

[00:04:43] Ross: I think that is a tough gig to get a prize from students.

[00:04:47] Jutta: it was actually a group of other teachers and it might even be tougher to get a teaching award from a group of other teachers that from students. In some ways, you have power over students with grades, but you have, but there's a lot of social dynamics going on between teachers

[00:05:10] Ross: Yeah. And by the way, I should have said at the beginning, me and uter both work me very much on the periphery, but uter at the core at city university of London, organizational psychology department, which is where we met and uter has been on the podcast before in name because she co-authored and supervised the research by Alexandra Lechner on creating psychological safety in virtual teams.

[00:05:39] Ross: which was one of our most popular episodes, by the

[00:05:42] Jutta: I'm so pleased to hear that. Mm.

[00:05:44] Ross: Anyway, back to my research department, the Cranfield awards, particularly recognized her innovative work on incorporating mindfulness into academic and executive education. And she's introduced thousands of senior managers and [00:06:00] executive students to mindfulness, very close to my heart.

[00:06:04] Ross: So she's been investigating and delivering innovative mindfulness interventions in the British army and the Royal Navy and currently conducts research on resilience in the Royal Marine Corps. There's more, there's more you to In partnership with another legend city, university of London, Dr.

[00:06:24] Ross: Trudy Edgington U to co-direct city university center for excellence in mindfulness research. And folks are put the link to that in the show notes for this episode, but it's at mindfulness-science.com. She's been published in many leading academic journals and also featured in the popular press, including the times, the Sunday times, the financial times Newsweek on BBC radio four and the BBC world service.

[00:06:53] Ross: And in the 2015 TV documentary, the mindful revolution me, this is amazing. And your life before academia, let's just touch upon that. See, they did their

[00:07:06] Jutta: Gosh, you've got a big team there.

[00:07:08] Ross: you worked for nearly a decade as a consultant for several it consultants who, including Arthur and. Partnering with firms such as Goldman Sachs, Nomura, and McKinsey on it.

[00:07:20] Ross: And strategy projects. I just have to put this in. We had so much stuff I had to kind of weed it out a bit. But during your doctoral studies at Washington state university, you were selected to direct a student led project, creating a sustainable community internet space in rural Rwanda. On behalf of us aid, UTIs doctoral research took her back to Rwanda where she conducted one of the first government and endorse scientific surveys of post genocide intergroup relations between Hutu and Tutsi and the effect of institutional reform to increase entrepreneurial opportunity in a desperate poverty post genocide [00:08:00] context,

[00:08:02] Ross: subsequently you to learn the art and science of lobbying in the public interest as the post-doctoral James Marshall public policy fellow for the American psychological association and the society for the study of social issues during Washington DC's glory days when president Obama introduced the healthcare reform bell,

[00:08:21] Jutta: Shout out to president Obama.

[00:08:23] Ross: Woohoo U Utah is a fellow of the RSA holds a psychotherapeutic counseling qualification from the university of Cambridge and has volunteered in us prisons for the alternatives to violence project, a volunteer run conflict transformation program. She lives in Suffolk with her family and a pushy poodle who Moonlight as a P a T, which is pets as therapy dog.

[00:08:48] Jutta: The dog is the center of attention. Whenever we go. That's for sure.

[00:08:53] Ross: Yeah, I'm a big fan virtually of, of Tilly. Now there was something else. It's, it's not something they uncovered that we were surprised by. It's an idea that we had when I was talking to my research department. Um, they were mighty impressed by your research, your energy and your influence. And we were having a chat where we started to play with a crazy idea, which I thought I'd like, just share with you to see what you think.

[00:09:21] Ross: So what we can picture, just imagine this a Netflix series it's like reality TV, where you and your trustee standard poodle Tilley visit organizations and support them in developing sustainable approaches to wellbeing and performance. And each episode would have conversations, drama, insights, and impact, and you might also solve any outstanding crimes while you're there in that

[00:09:46] Ross: environment.

[00:09:47] Ross: Yeah, I think he's sort of a superhero with a trustee sidekick dog. And what do you think,

[00:09:54] Jutta: Yes, make it about til and make me the support and check where, where Timmy [00:10:00] has fallen into the well

[00:10:05] Ross: I'm kind of reluctant to suggest anything on to add to your to-do list, but maybe we can work on just stripping that back. So you can also look after yourself

[00:10:16] Jutta: yes I do. I do though. And I think having a dog in your life is a incredibly wonderful thing to pull you back into the present and into what really matters This is how Tilly adds value to my life. The dog that forces me to be outside at least twice a.

[00:10:34] Ross: it's a serious, it's a serious point actually, but we're talking about how busy you are and how there are so many requests and pulls on your time. How do you look after yourself? I can see that Tilly plays an integral part in that.

[00:10:46] Jutta: Hmm. I think the, the, you and I have, again, before the, before we press record, talked about values and about what's important to us. And I'm fortunate in that I'm old and gray enough to know what happens when I don't look after myself. And I've had so many war wounds of overloading, my diary to show for that.

[00:11:12] Jutta: I think I've built up a little bit of a thicker skin to actually say, I will do this, But only after I've, you know, I, and again, I'm a learning machine. Aren't I constantly learning constantly room to improve. But the thing is, this is such exciting work, the work that you and I are doing, helping people in workplaces be and do well. it's satisfying work. And so the work is the fun. And if the work is fun, then that feeds me to, to have the energy to keep going. I think it would be different if I had a different job.

[00:11:49] Ross: Mm. And there was a lovely phrase that you talked about that I don't think translates to English, but it was, I think it was from your mom. What, what was that phrase?

[00:11:59] Jutta: [00:12:00] Yeah. And so, so when we talk about values, it's sometimes it happens that we. We talk about values that are goody two shoes values, like, you know, be kind, um, maybe, have discipline, but these values are not necessarily helping us ourselves. And , there's this saying in, in German that literally translates as asking yourself who's the one that needs this most.

[00:12:29] Jutta: And the saying goes, I am also somebody, not just everybody else. So I am also somebody who has needs. I'm also somebody who has the right to make space for myself, as well as making space for everybody else. So perhaps that's something for people to take away. Right? You are also somebody, you know,

[00:12:52] Ross: I love that I can, I can see that on t-shirts yet. Or maybe, maybe just written above your own laptop to remind yourself because sometimes it's easier for us to convey these messages to others, but do we apply them to ourselves? so I gave a, a whistle stop tour of your, your CV there.

[00:13:10] Ross: Very condensed. But I wonder if you just talk a bit more about how you arrived at where you are today and maybe some, pivotal moments in your, career.

[00:13:20] Early career

[00:13:20] Jutta: I really didn't know, what I wanted to do apart from, I wanted to travel. I wanted to, be with people. I wanted to see the world. And so I moved away from Germany as soon as I had the chance. and I studied a bit of everything, business management, law languages, and got into it. Consulting

[00:13:40] Stuff that was causing the most amount of harm and suffering

[00:13:40] Jutta: loved it and realized over the first 5, 6, 7 years of my it consultancy career, that the stuff that was most juicy and the stuff that was causing the most amount of harm and suffering in organizations, and these were high power, highly resourced organizations that I work with, but the problems were [00:14:00] not to do with money, finance or technology, even though we were always talking about technology, business processes and so on.

[00:14:07] Jutta: And these things, the problems were always people and especially interpersonal relationships and people worried and lost sleep, not over the work, but over the people dynamics at work. so I, I was intrigued and I didn't really get it. So I went back to school. Got a PhD in social psychology, which is the social psychology is the, the bit that in organizations, when you're interested in science, you dip into social psychology because that's the, almost the core of how we relate to each other.

[00:14:37] Jutta: That's where also all the stuff happens when it hits the fan. And I wanted to go back into consultancy, but realized I really like science. I really like when stuff is valid and reliable, and that means it doesn't just work for blonde women. And it doesn't just work on a Tuesday. So I, I got a little bit hooked on science and I came back to the UK and started working for Cranfield university and in their business school, teaching leadership management, performance management to senior executives.

[00:15:08] Jutta: And around that time, The mindfulness movement had started. And I got into researching and teaching mindfulness, not because I had a history of personal healing or, or personal suffering that I brought to my life or to the life that I, that I was sharing with people that I was teaching, but I came to mindfulness for as a decision making scholar.

[00:15:33] Jutta: And so, uh, and I still to this day, think mindfulness has a lot to say in helping people judge and make better choices that I could for them in the long run. For example, reminding myself that I am also, somebody helps me be a little bit more mindful in making decisions. And that's one of the practices that I'm kind of exploring and investigating.

[00:15:57] Jutta: How do we help people make choices? [00:16:00] that are good for them in the long run that don't just feel right in the short term, immediate and many of us of course, want to help others or want to please others. So in the short run, maybe saying yes to something that in the long run is not good for us is actually a mindless choice is a choice that we make absent mindedly.

[00:16:17] Ross: perhaps doing it for the short term relief of not having that decision on your mind or, short term, get this off my desk.

[00:16:25] Jutta: On impacts on urge. an instinctive urge that might dominate and bias, right. And, skew our perspective of what's. Right. And what's good for us in the long

[00:16:39] Jutta: run.

[00:16:40] Ross: so you discovered mindfulness and you started to think how this might be useful for these executives and these academics and organizations. So how did you begin to work out how to make it accessible to them?

[00:16:53] Jutta: Well, I think the thing that makes me a bit different from mainstream and from, the largest group of mindfulness researchers and practitioners is that I read as much as I could on different schools of mindfulness. And then in fact, I'm writing up a paper right now on giving almost an historic perspective of how the mindfulness movement that steps beyond the popular and incredibly successful science based around Jon Kabat-Zinn's mindfulness as meditation, and almost the equation of meditation with mindfulness.

[00:17:30] understanding mindfulness

[00:17:30] Jutta: so the, the way I approached understanding mindfulness was read about different literatures, read about different incarnations of mindfulness, both for individuals, but lo and behold, there's a whole mindfulness literature that's highly scientific and highly, uh, valuable and reliable for organizations.

[00:17:52] Jutta: So whilst many people understand mindfulness as a way of relieving stress and of feeling a little bit [00:18:00] better, which is fab. Mindfulness can seep into entire organizations, but not just through one method, which is for individuals to sit in silent meditation, using the breath or other bodily sensations or the body scan as anchor.

[00:18:18] Jutta: But there are other ways for us to become mindful, both as individuals or you and me, we could become a mindful team and that looks and sounds, and feels different from the practices that I might do myself to become mindful.

[00:18:34] Jutta: And the big AHA moment 7, 8, 9 years ago for me was that mindfulness is not the same as sitting in silent meditation, sitting in silent meditation is one of many ways to become mindful. And that's actually what Jon Kabat-Zinn, who I'm of course a big fan of, and perhaps your readers might know about him, but Jon Kabat-Zinn is the founder of mindfulness based stress reduction, which is pretty much, the basis and the foundation for virtually all mindfulness training programs that have now gone into all sorts of context.

[00:19:08] Jutta: Even though Jon Kabat-Zinn designed MBSR 40 years ago, based on his understanding of, Buddhist contemplative practices, combining them with clinical science for hospital patients. So, and, but Cranfield, and where I was teaching mindfulness, 10 years ago was a very different context from a clinical or medical hospital where people had tried out lots of other things to relieve themselves from the stress associated with chronic pain or with complex medical, mental health conditions. And so I was questioning to what extent this one size fits all approach to becoming mindful which is based on using the breatho as an anchor, almost tapping into the monastic traditions of people, sitting in a cave for hours on end learning insights through silent contemplative [00:20:00] practice.

[00:20:00] What's the question we can ask?

[00:20:00] Jutta: And I then started to experiment with different ways that help people make space between what's in front of them and how they decide. And that's how I, for example, got into different schools of mindfulness that are saying what, what's the question that we can ask to help us pause and perhaps see something that we don't see.

[00:20:19] Jutta: And that's actually in line with contemplative traditions. It's just not as popular or popularized as the mindfulness as stress relief movement. That feels good in the moment, but that, over the last five years or so scientists have found, is increasingly trying to stretch itself and not really work in different contexts, especially for example, in workplaces, relaxing is not necessarily appropriate.

[00:20:48] Jutta: For example, in high stress, high pressure, uh, environments, using mindfulness to calm myself down and slow down might not be the best way for me to make a good decision in the moment. And so mindfulness as relaxation, might actually make me less motivated to do the difficult work that I have to do.

[00:21:08] Jutta: And that ultimately helps me as well as the organizations. And so we're finding that, the one size fits all model of mindfulness that equates mindfulness to, silent, contemplative practice may not be the full, story. And that's one of the reasons why Trudi and I have created the Centre for Excellence in Mindfulness Research at City University to push the debate around mindfulness into the next generation.

[00:21:31] Jutta: And that's what my latest publication is based on the next generation of mindfulness

[00:21:35] Jutta: trainings. Right?

[00:21:36] Ross: but that's so important and so exciting cos you and me have spoken before about ways that organizations introduce mindfulness to, to their people. And I always say when I'm training mindfulness in organizations, I think it's become damaged by its own

[00:21:51] Jutta: Mm-hmm, this, this version of mindfulness has become yeah. And it's, It is now when people use the word mindfulness, [00:22:00] they think relaxing the body and actually stopping themselves from thinking about their options and almost shutting out thought, you know, being nonjudgmental, but non being non-judgmental in a work context, especially is not necessarily helpful.

[00:22:17] Jutta: Even though, of course, we don't want people to judge badly or to prejudge or to be prejudiced. Of course we don't want that, but we want people to apply their experience or check whether the data that they have is actually the right data, rather than just being kind all the time, being nice all the time, being relaxed all the time. 'Cos mindfulness might look like I am angry, 'cos it's appropriate to be angry. I have a difficult conversation because it's right to have a difficult conversation. There's injustice in organizations and it needs to be addressed. And this is why I'm coming to social aspects, community collective aspects of mindfulness being so much more important than our current mindfulness training protocols . Our current mindfulness training programs assume that people are like monks sitting

[00:23:14] Jutta: by themselves.

[00:23:15] Jutta: And that in itself translates into their behavior in the, their context. But we know as social scientists that it's the social soup, and this is why I like your people soup podcast. It's the social soup that determines our choices much more than our individual motivation. Our individual choice.

[00:23:34] Jutta: And it's the norms of our group that make us do things or that prevent us from doing things that aren't good for us. And so my, incarnations and the last five years of my research have been focusing on what flavors of mindfulness practice that we can do together? What conversations help us be mindful of each other? What exercises get us to see things that we don't see [00:24:00] together? So that we can collectively manage stress, not just so that you, by yourself learn a bit of stress management skills.

[00:24:08] Jutta: And then you hope for the best that when you need those stress management skills in a hectic work environment, you can actually apply them. We've moved to a model where. Groups organizations became organizations that approach stress collectively when nobody's alone in managing stress by themselves, where nobody has to shoulder stress management as an additional to do list.

[00:24:32] Jutta: But where I get sensitized trained, rewarded for looking out for you and you get trained sensitized rewarded for looking out for me and, and ironically, this is something that, highly value driven organizations, such as the armed forces have traditionally been very good at managing stress collectively. And perhaps that's why the armed forces in the UK are, have been very welcoming of helping me try out these ideas in their different contexts.

[00:24:58] Ross: Wow, my mind's going off like, uh, a pinball machine. It's so exciting to hear you talk because I'm work working with organizations at the moment. and I'm trying to position this skill of noticing We can do this through mindfulness and we can do it through other ways, but I haven't had the opportunity to take it to the sort of, how can we direct this to each other as well and create those conditions for collaboration and cooperation, that we can all experience this.

[00:25:25] Ross: And I fit, I think it fits in very well with psychological safety.

[00:25:29] Jutta: Yeah. And I'm just, let me just pick you up on the language that you use Ross, because we know that language shapes our reality. And so you

[00:25:37] Jutta: say, we can do this, We can create awareness. We can create motivation. For people to do good things that are good for themselves, as well as for the collective through mindfulness and through other things.

[00:25:48] Jutta: But what do you mean by mindfulness? when, what we typically talk about when we, when we mean mindfulness is sitting in silence using the breath as anchor to start changing the way we [00:26:00] process information from intellectual cognitive to perception based, you know, through our five senses, what can I perceive?

[00:26:08] Jutta: What can I feel? What can I hear? What can I see? How can I sense what's going on? but this is a dichotomy. That's actually a false dichotomy from how we live our lives. We cannot just switch tracks and become mindful. That means we shut out thought. It doesn't really happen. It's, it's actually, it's a simplification and it's also not very helpful to step out of reality and to use mindfulness as a way to, escape.

[00:26:37] Jutta: What is real, what we need to do is monitor and that you've said the word notice what is going on. So we need to use mindfulness to notice and to put like a break or pause into, hold on, am I on the right track? Or am I on the wrong track? And meditation is actually not just sitting in silence and feeling the sensations in my body.

[00:27:00] Jutta: Meditation comes from the Latin word Meditatio. Meditatio means reflecting. It means, an act of checking what one is doing. And so, mindfulness is a reflection. It, it is supposed to be an, an act of noticing and then perhaps making a choice that you might not have seen, if you, if you hadn't noticed, if you've gone fast and unconsciously like sailed through all this, internal processes, but you can induce a state of mindfulness, which is effectively a state of being aware of what is going on and of what your choices, by asking a question adding in front of what is going on the saying, "I notice that", or, "I am aware that I'm noticing that".

[00:27:48] Jutta: So through language we can change our state of mindfulness. We do not have to see mindfulness as "HOLD ON!". Let's take a moment of mindfulness [00:28:00] now, . Because then, we're effectively separating mindfulness from what we're doing every day. And I'm absolutely certain that if we continue to see mindfulness as a formal activity, that we need to spend formal time to train, to learn, to process information through our five sensors and through, by perceiving reality, rather than by checking what we perceive against what we know intellectually, it will not become embedded as much money as we throw.

[00:28:30] Jutta: And as many mindfulness trainers that we train up it, needs to be become organic. And in organizations where we are effortfully talking to each other by paying attention to how we are speaking to each other. Those are the organizations. That not only function mindfulness, but they actually function more reliably in the face of stress. that's it, folks. Part one in the bag. I'm pressing pores for a bit of metaio so we can all reflect. June next time for the second part of my chat with Uter, where we delve into her research into collective mindfulness.

[00:29:11] Ross: If you like this episode or the podcast, please could you do three things? Number one, share it with one other person. Number two, Subscribe and give us a five star review with some wonderful words, whatever platform you're on. And number three, share the heck out of it on social media. This will help us reach more people with stuff that could be very useful for them. I love to hear from you, and you can get in touch at People's Soup top pod gmail.com.

[00:29:37] Ross: On Twitter, we are at People Soup Pod on Instagram at People dot Soup, and on Facebook at People Soup Pod. Thanks to Andy Glan for his Spoon Magic and Alex Engelberg for his vocals, most of all. Dear listener, thanks to you for listening.

[00:29:53] Ross: Look after yourselves pea supers and buy for. sort of a superhero with a [00:30:00] trustee sidekick dog. And what do you think,

[00:30:04] Jutta: Yes, make it about til and make me the support and check where, where Timmy has fallen into the well