0:00:00.0 Wayne Brown: Hello. I’m your host, Wayne Brown, and welcome to the ET Project. We’re delighted to be delivering this podcast for executive talent all over the world whom we’re affectionately referring to as team ET. Today, we’re heading home. Well, close to home anyway. We’re heading to Sydney, Australia and connecting with our wellness consultant, Ms. Catherine Robertson. With a 20-year career in the pharmaceutical industry, Catherine has an acute awareness and understanding of the challenges leaders, employees, health care professionals, and patients face in the modern world. Combining her understanding and experience of organizational structure with a background in sales, positive psychology, and coaching, Catherine has a unique skill set, which has enabled her to design and deliver strategic well-being programs for major international clients and support leadership teams in a well-being advisory capacity through the COVID-19 pandemic.

0:00:57.1 WB: Catherine is a well-being and mindfulness coach, meditation facilitator, Enneagram coach, and inner child journey practitioner. She’s established her private practice in 2015, and her passion lies in coaching all levels within organizations to be their true authentic, empowered selves at work and helping to create cultures of psychological safety to maximize well-being. Catherine’s approach has been heavily influenced by her work with Dr. Rick Hanson, PhD, whom she has studied with and been mentored by for many years and is also an accredited teacher and group facilitator of his positive neuroplasticity training, which focuses on building a robust psychological toolbox and actively using neuroplastic methods to develop lasting inner strengths. In addition, she has over 5 years experience co-facilitating family constellation workshops as well as wilderness retreats through her work with Essential Wholeness Psychology and has been mentored by its founder, Eric Lyleson, in deepening her understanding of meditation practices and conflict resolution methods.

0:02:09.4 WB: Catherine is also a published writer and presented her research into the impact of gratitude practice on mental health and well-being at the 2019 Science and Nonduality Conference. Team, I hope you’re fully relaxed and comfortable as we head into this enlightening conversation with Catherine Robertson and our central topic of wellness practices and organizational strategies to foster a healthy, more balanced approach to well-being.

0:02:39.3 Speaker 2: Welcome to the ET project, a podcast for those executive talents determined to release their true potential and create an impact. Join our veteran coach and mentor, Wayne Brown, as we unpack an exciting future together.

0:02:52.5 WB: Hello. And welcome, team, to today’s episode where we explore the multifaceted concepts of well-being both in personal lives and corporate environments. And as we delve into this theme, we aim to uncover practical strategies and insights to enhance mental and emotional health across a variety of settings. We’ll discuss roles such as positive neuroplasticity. You probably won’t have heard of many of these things, but I’ll say them anyway, and then we’ll get into those during the conversation. Family constellations, individual wellness practices, and of course, organizational strategies to foster a healthier, more balanced approach to well-being. And as you will have heard me introduce, we’re fortunate today to have Ms. Catherine Robertson here to enlighten us on this journey, let’s say. Catherine, welcome to the ET project. Thank you so much for finding the time.

0:03:49.7 Catherine Robertson: Thanks, Wayne. It’s really nice to chat to you and your audience today. Thanks for reaching out.

0:03:56.5 WB: You’re sitting in Sydney, as I understand, right?

0:04:00.2 CR: I am. Yes.

0:04:02.3 WB: Yeah. You’re in my part of the world, but many years ago. Now, unlike some parts of the world, Australia recognizes mental health month in October. We’ve also had the World Mental Health Day celebrated on October 10th. So, this is a very fortuitous time to have this discussion around well-being. I’m wondering, because I know your husband is a psychologist or is in that practice, are you and he involved in any special activities during the month?

0:04:31.1 CR: I guess from my point of view with my work, I have been doing some leadership well-being offerings. So, I’ve been doing some workshops and lunchtime presentations for people just to speak to this issue that you talk about, the issue of mental health and well-being in the workplace, which is amazing now that it’s getting so much more attention and priority than it ever did before. I mean, we’ve both been around for a while, 20 years ago there was no such thing as mental health awareness month or World’s Mental Health Day. So, it’s really great to see companies getting behind their employees to support this issue and for everyone to just feel more comfortable talking about these issues.

0:05:16.6 WB: If I’m correct, I believe the government has even introduced some form of governance for directors of companies to make sure that it’s now mandated that directors must pay attention to this topic.

0:05:30.1 CR: Yeah. There’s some legislation that’s been brought into Australia around the issue of psychosocial risks and companies needing to ensure that they’re taking care of their employees, not just physical safety, but their psychological safety as well. So, that’s really creating a lot more attention on these issues from a compliance point of view of what corporations need to do to support their employees to keep them well.

0:05:55.5 WB: Right. Well, before we get too deep into this discussion on well-being, I’m sure our listeners, as I always do, would like to have a little bit of background on who you are and what you were doing before you moved into becoming a wellness also not wellness, but a well-being consultant as well as a coach and facilitator and many other things. Well, what was your background prior to moving in this direction?

0:06:19.7 CR: Well, it was very different Wayne. I guess most of us have a bit of a story that they end up doing this work. So, for your listeners, they may hear that I do not have an Australian accent. I was originally born in Scotland, so I grew up near Glasgow. And I studied a Bachelor of Science degree at Glasgow University, and that then led me into working in the pharmaceutical industry. And so, I was working in pharmaceuticals for about 20 years. And then towards the end of 2012, life brought some challenging circumstances, or that it does for many of us. And I reached a point towards the end of that year of probably pretty close to a burnout state. And that incident and that sort of rock bottom really put me on a path of personal development and healing. So I began working with a kinesiologist.

0:07:11.2 CR: And then for the next 8 years, basically, it was a mixture of therapy, kinesiology, studying meditation, mindfulness, studying the Enneagram, studying positive psychology in the form of positive neuroplasticity, and a few other things. And in 2020, when we all know what happened, I started to provide some mindfulness and well-being sessions for the company that I was working for at that time. And then a year later, I took the step to set up on my own as a freelancer with my own business. So, it’s been an interesting journey. And for quite a few years, I wore two hats, the corporate world and the well-being mindfulness hat. And it’s really nice now to just really step into this position as a well-being consultant.

0:08:01.0 WB: Just on a general, very broad perspective, how are you finding globally the acceptance now with this transition more towards being aware, being open, being transparent about mental health, regardless of whether it’s in corporations or in the private sector. Do you feel people more understanding now? Because it used to have a stigma around this whole concept.

0:08:29.9 CR: For sure. And I was talking about this actually just this morning with a former, a fellow leadership consultant, and we were just discussing the fact that you couldn’t even use the word well-being 10 to 15 years ago, that even that was seen as a little bit woo woo. But now companies are having breathwork sessions for their employees. They’re having mindfulness sessions. They’re having sound healings. So all of these things are starting to become more commonplace and integrated, which is wonderful, because the way I see it, and I think if most of us are really honest, we’re living in pretty challenging and difficult times right now, and it’s not easy being human. I think when you just distill it all down to that, it’s not always easy being human. And we need as much support as we can to thrive and be resilient and to be as well as we can, because we’re not taught this stuff when we’re young or at school. Well, increasingly naive, the new generation, but for those of us that are older, we’re playing catch up a little bit. So it’s wonderful to see this attention that being placed on on mental health and well-being.

0:09:45.6 WB: Yeah. I absolutely agree. And, of course, as you mentioned, you’ve done a lot of study and you you have a bachelor in science and you’ve come out of a number of areas. As you are now starting to get settled in your well-being practices. I believe you engaged with GLWS or Global Leadership Well-being Solutions, but also with positive neuroplasticity, with family constellations, Enneagrams, and the list could go on, by the way, listeners. I’m interested as we get into our conversation to understand how all these tie into the overall well-being concept. And we don’t need to dive in directly now, but that’s something I’ll be interested to understand, how it all fits together, if you like, because I think this is an important thing. I believe your husband is a psychologist. He has a business called Essential Wholeness Psychology. And I thought, well, that’s a great place to jump in because you together practice constellation workshops and you’ve recently done a wild meditation, wilderness trip. Yeah. That’s a tongue twister but it sounds very interesting. So I thought, let’s start there. So, perhaps if we could, what is family constellations and what is it you do under that topic in a workshop?

0:11:14.3 CR: Well, family constellations, it’s a little bit of a tricky process to describe. It’s one of those experiences that you have to see to be believed because you describe it to people and it just sounds so wacky and it’s hard to imagine, but I’ll do my best. So, in a family constellation, we sit in a circle for the day. Someone comes to the session with perhaps a difficulty or a block that they’re experiencing. It could be an issue within a relationship that they’re having with someone else. It could be maybe a sense of stuckness in their career. It could be an illness even, a physical symptom. And so the client comes with a specific issue, they choose representatives in the circle to represent them, themselves, and their immediate family, and they position them in the middle of the circle.

0:12:03.6 CR: So like chess pieces, or it’s a little bit like a, maybe, a Ouija board. And the client then sits down, and what then happens is the part that’s kind of hard to believe because the people who are standing in those positions then start to become like channels for the people they’re representing. So they may start to have sensations or feelings or emotions that are not necessarily theirs but actually belong to the people that they’re representing. So the process of a family constellation is whatever has not been spoken within a system, and that can be within a family system, a health system, a work system, gets given a voice. Because what we see, and this comes from the work of Bert Hellinger, who’s the founder of family constellations, that he established it, is when the truth is spoken, love can flow more freely. So we tend to see that things, that maybe the difficulties that people are having, is not actually related to them. It can be something they’ve inherited from an ancestor, and it’s carried down their line when they’re simply acting out.

0:13:12.2 CR: So once… It’s almost like this process of question and answer to the representatives about how they’re feeling. And whatever needs to be revealed can be revealed. Whatever words of apology need to be said can be said. And on an energetic level, it changes things in the world. So, it’s miraculous to see the changes in people from the beginning of the day, when they’re often feeling very burdened or troubled or anxious, and almost then this lightness at the end where their pain has been lifted in some way. And nobody needs to know what they’ve done. Their family doesn’t need to be there. Their family doesn’t need to attend. But things then seem to shift in the physical world. So it can be an incredibly powerful tool. I guess it’s a little bit like group therapy and it almost fast tracks to get to the root cause of some issues and blocks in people’s lives. As you rightly said, my husband is a facilitator for that. We hold it at our home. So it’s a day workshop where we support and look after people. But it’s not the core aspect of my work.

0:14:16.8 WB: Now the second thing is the wild meditation wilderness trips. So you’ve really piqued my interest with these. Could you give me a little bit of background about what it is, goes on, and why you call it a wild meditation?

0:14:33.0 CR: Basically, it’s taking people into nature for a day immersion. Mostly a day immersion. Sometimes we’ve done overnights as well. And it’s taken people to places maybe that they wouldn’t normally access themselves. It takes them away from the distractions of everyday life, from technology. Gives some guidance and orientation to meditation and mindfulness practices. So, the day is like a height in nature interspersed with maybe time alone with some guidance, time as a group, meditation, and just to give people a chance to really drop in and connect to themselves and to connect to nature because we know how powerful it can be for regulating your nervous system, for deepening connection to yourself, to other people, to the natural environment, is so important. And most people don’t do enough of that really. We do. We’re junkies for nature and hiking and exploring. And I guess, it’s titled Wild Meditations because it’s not just taking people to a guided signpost walk where there’s lots of other people. It’ll maybe be stretching them a little bit. There’ll maybe be a little bit of rock climbing or scrambling or squeezing into a cave or something like that as well. So it’s kind of stretching people a little bit out of their comfort zone, which afterwards people go, “Oh my God. I really needed to tap into that sense of adventure and wildness.” So, yeah. That’s a beautiful thing to do with people.

0:16:04.8 WB: Yeah. I have a claustrophobia fear. So squeezing in the caves is not something I enjoy, but the rock climbing, the mountain climbing, the hiking very much. Yeah. So, both of those, for individuals, for families, or for groups, do you also engage in those practices with corporations?

0:16:25.4 CR: Not yet, actually. But it’s definitely something that’s been bubbling away, especially in terms of offerings for companies for the likes of team building days. It could certainly be a great thing to be able to take a team for a day immersion in nature and let them really drop in and connect with people. So, that’s definitely maybe something on the radar for next year, perhaps.

0:16:53.0 WB: Yeah. Well, let’s shift a little bit now and bring in the corporate perspective into the topic of well-being. We started talking about it at the beginning, but companies should be looking to address well-being. In Australia, there’s some government policies around it. In other countries, I believe, there’s similar happening. But in general, companies seem to be shifting that way. If you were talking to a company who is just on the beginning of that journey, what sort of advice would you offer them? How would they prioritize bringing in employee well-being into their operation?

0:17:39.6 CR: It’s a great question. And it’s incredibly specific to whatever the organization, whoever the organization are because, as you know, with the work you do as well each organization has its own culture, that has its own issues. There’s different challenges. And it also depends what they’ve done in the past as well. So, a really great place to start is to just to do a little bit of an inquiry and benchmarking as to what have they done already. Have they done any sort of pulse survey with their employees to find out what their staff are struggling with? Maybe what are some of the issues that are apparent. And then looking at designing a strategy which works within their budget to maybe tackle that. So that could be very broad. That could be bringing in physical therapists to do physical checks. It could be often an opportunity to have coaching for employees to really do a little bit of an audit to see where are they currently at within different domains of well-being, and what do they need to do? It could be providing access to meditation, mindfulness, well-being lectures, all of those things as well.

0:18:57.4 CR: So, it’s definitely multifaceted. It’s not necessarily easy. But what I would say when it comes to implementing some sort of well-being strategy for a company is the importance of it really coming from the leadership team themselves. And for it to be embodied within the culture of the company. Very often, well-being offerings are sort of brought in and it’s like a signed offering. Maybe there is a meditation class, maybe there are yoga classes, maybe there are different seminars and workshops that happen. But if the leaders of the company are not being seen to prioritize their time to attend those it’s sending a little bit of a message to their employees.

0:19:40.4 CR: If a company is saying, we have no meeting Fridays because that allows people to do some deep work, but then people are seen to be scheduling meetings, then again, that’s gonna cannibalize any effort that’s being put into the well-being space and in terms of making a safe environment for companies as well. So, I really stress the role modeling aspect of any sort of well-being offerings for a leadership team and for them to really be clear on exactly what it is that they’re hoping to achieve and to validate that with their employees so that it’s not just a set of offerings, which is not really wanted or needed by the organization itself.

0:20:24.2 WB: Let’s dive into that a little bit. And it’s a great segue to bring in GLWS. I wonder if you’d mind introducing who and what this is and what they do, please.

0:20:36.2 CR: Sure. So Global Leadership Well-being Solutions is an Australian company. It was established by two organizational psychologists. And as a way to target the well-being challenges that leaders predominantly face, they’ve created a diagnostic, it’s almost like an audit, and a framework to be able to benchmark exactly where an individual and a team lie on the well-being spectrum. So, if you think of well-being as almost like a seesaw, like a balancing act. We describe well-being as a delicate balancing act between the internal and external resources and strengths and issues. Everything that’s internal is a resource that someone has to rely on for their well-being with the external and internal challenges and demands and detractors that are happening with well-being. So, if there’s too many challenges and distractors, well-being dips. If someone doesn’t have enough internal or external resources, there will be well-being dips.

0:21:46.5 CR: So we’re looking at this sweet spot of a balancing act. And so what the GLWS report, which is about 120 questions which an individual will answer, it then splits their well-being into six different domains. So rather than just being well-being being this huge big topic, it breaks it down into authentic relationships, balance and boundaries, resilience and equanimity, vitality and energy. And then also splits it into how does that show up in their work life and how does that show up in their home and their social life. So an individual gets very clear signals, where are they performing strongly? Where is their well-being high? And where are the areas of concern? And then we can use that as a really clear, direct tool for coaching an individual to help them tease out exactly where are the weak spots with their well-being and what needs some attention. So it really helps everyone grow and maximize their well-being overall.

0:22:50.5 WB: And if we’re an organization, if I’m running an organization, can I also leverage this assessment as a tool for my organization or does it need to be individual?

0:23:02.9 CR: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, some organizations will buy GLWS reports in bulk, for all of their, either a whole department or their whole leadership team, their whole staff. An ideal way to utilise it is to do a report, then have some coaching, and maybe at a 6-month mark, redo the report so that they can see exactly where the growth has been. And then that can also be done as a team as well. So we can do team profiles. So, from embedding this language of well-being into the organizational culture, that’s a really great way to do it because you get the individual report, then you get the team report, and everyone starts to talk about it. And then maybe what we see is some signals which are indicating some changes that need to be made within the culture of the company or the operating procedures or the systems that they have in place, which is not supporting the overall level of well-being.

0:24:01.2 WB: So this would be like the starting point for an organization if they’re just launching into looking at how they introduce employee well-being, this would be a great starting point. Do the assessment first, understand what that’s telling us, and from there, we can build the strategies and grow from there, I guess. So that’s what I hear.

0:24:25.1 CR: Yeah. Absolutely. Because it is complex. If you look at all those different domains and then for each individual, well-being is very complex and what I’ve found from working with people is people often just feel overwhelmed about, “Where do I begin? Am I supposed to be doing breath work? Am I supposed to be doing ice baths? Should I be meditating? I can’t meditate.” There’s a whole different array of angles which impact an individual’s well-being. So this really just gives clarity, and we can start to really drill down about what is gonna be the best approach for that individual to really make a difference.

0:25:07.2 WB: Now, you’re also involved in another very interesting field that I hadn’t heard of before I spoke with you. It’s called positive neuroplasticity. Now, I know neuroplasticity. I know positive psychology. But bringing the two together. It sounds fascinating. Again, would you mind just introducing a little bit about what is positive neuroplasticity?

0:25:32.5 CR: So, positive neuroplasticity is, I’m slightly more angled to go with… What what do I bring in first here? It’s coined by an American psychologist, Dr. Rick Hanson. He’s one of my mentors and Rick Hanson has really pioneered a lot of this work into positive neuroplasticity. So what it is is the Science of training the brain to have more positive and beneficial experiences and then embedding those experiences into the nervous system to improve well-being. So, if…

0:26:04.6 WB: So, positive experiences, which then lead to our behavior or how does it impact us?

0:26:16.0 CR: It’s helpful to take a step back and look at the human brain itself and how we’re wired. So there’s such a, I’m not sure if you’ve heard of the negativity bias?

0:26:26.1 WB: Yes.

0:26:27.4 CR: All humans are born with a negativity bias. It’s back from cavemen primal days. It’s a mechanism in the oldest part of the brain to keep us safe. So we’re hardwired to look for what’s wrong, what’s missing, what’s dangerous in the environment. Where’s the tiger that’s chasing us? So we hyperfocus on negative experiences. That’s just the way our brains work. If you think of the term, misery loves company, it’s so easy to get into a conversation with someone where you’re both complaining and you’re feeding off each other. So, our brain is orientated in that direction naturally. So, Rick likes to talk about the fact that our brain really is like Teflon for positive experiences and Velcro for negative ones. So when you think about that, the positive things, the good things that happen to us, they tend to just slide off of us, and don’t really make too much of an impact.

0:27:25.5 CR: Whereas those negative ones, the criticism we receive, or the really bad thing that happened at work two years ago when someone shouted at you in a meeting, you remember those, they have a lasting impact. So positive neuroplasticity is a practice of using tools so that we start to be able to maximize those positive experiences when they happen so that they’re not quite so transient. They’re not just a temporary experience that we can actually transform them so that they become a lasting trait in our brain. And what we do over time by practicing that is we start to create new neural pathways in our brain, which starts to then rebalance that negativity bias.

0:28:12.1 WB: Now, you mentioned that there’s tools that you have that can support people in making this transition. And I guess you introduced those as part of your practice. Is there any simple tool you could talk to at the moment? Yeah. Just to give people an idea of what could they do to make this transition start today.

0:28:33.8 CR: Yeah. For sure. Well, I really… Rick is a great fan of acronyms. So, many of the things in his teaching have acronyms. The one I’ll share with you today is HEAL, H-E-A-L, which is really easy to remember. So when it comes to these practices, the H stands for, Have a positive experience. So that can either be one that’s happening right now, so I’m having a beautiful conversation with you or you can recall something good that’s happened in the recent past. You bring that positive experience to mind. Then the E stands for, Enrich that experience. Just make it bigger. Put some color to it, put some sensation to it, exaggerate it a little bit, like, “Oh my God! This is the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had.” Like, “Oh, it’s just the temperature is right. It smells so beautiful. Oh, it’s just the right bitterness. It’s just exactly how I like it. This is amazing.” So that’s the idea. Then the A stands for, now Absorb that enriched experience, marinate in the good feeling. And I love marinade because it’s such a juicy kind of word that you can just settle into.

0:29:56.9 CR: So you absorb that good experience, almost like water just sinks into a sponge. So we absorb it. And because the science, the neuroscience has shown, if we stay for an experience for like 8 to 10 seconds, that’s when it has the biggest impact on the neurons in the brain. They start to connect and talk to each other a little bit more. And over time, that’s what creates the neuro pathway. So we’ve had a positive experience, we’ve enriched it, and then we’ve absorbed it into our being. And that’s the HEAL process. And the L for HEAL is a bit of an advanced step, which I don’t really wanna go into because it starts to get a little bit complex. And it’s not necessarily essential in the teaching course, when we take people through the full 18-hour course, it’s not actually essential. Those first three steps, Have a positive experience, Enrich it, and then Absorb it into your being.

0:30:51.6 WB: Does it work as well if you go out and you trigger the positive experience? So can you go out and look for an action that’s going to trigger a positive experience for somebody else?

0:31:07.6 CR: Absolutely. You can have a positive experience. You can create a positive experience. Say for example, you’re having a bit of a funky day. You can stay in that funk and feel sitting in front of your computer and just feel a little bit crappy. Or you can know, do you know, I’m gonna go for a walk and I know if I go for a walk, it’s gonna benefit me on multiple different levels to move my body. But actually when I go for a walk, I’m gonna pay attention to the world around me and see if there’s anything that captures my eye, which I can utilize as a positive experience. One phrase I like to share with people is thinking of yourself as a hunter of beauty.

0:31:50.1 WB: Does the GLWS assessment incorporate any form of positive neuroplasticity or is that somehow separate?

0:32:02.6 CR: No. Not so much. No. Not so much, that would be separate. So, in terms of the one-on-one work that I do or workshops that I design for companies, then it all gets kind of woven together into a lot of what I teach people as well.

0:32:20.0 WB: So, if we stick with the companies, again, for a little bit. Whether it’s the assessment or whether you start to work with individuals or the companies, I guess, the aim at the beginning is to try and establish a baseline. Like, where are you today? If there’s problems, what are those root causes to the problems before you can move forward? Is that what you’re looking for?

0:32:47.1 CR: Definitely. I really think it’s got to be very specific to each individual. And so I think the first step for anyone, whether it’s an individual or a corporate that wants to improve well-being, is to, first of all, just do some deeper self awareness work. Like, understand what are some of the triggers that are happening, what are some of the blocks, doing some reflection so that you get a better understanding of maybe what’s a barrier to well-being and what’s getting in the way because only then can you really start to look at interventions. So that would be, first of all, to understand and to to do some some reflection.

0:33:23.9 WB: So once we’ve mastered that first step or that starting point or that baseline, I guess then what we’re looking to do is the prevention strategies or maybe even before the prevention strategies, the actual intervention where we start to then turn the ship around and head in the direction we want to, whether it’s through positive neuroplasticity or whatever interventions you’re using. I often chat with colleagues about self awareness for me is almost step one in the process, followed then by the need to understand how to self regulate. In my own case, I know the self regulation, that self awareness, I’m extremely self aware, but to always be able to catch myself in the moment to self regulate is my biggest challenge. I can imagine it will be the same or similar for many people. Do you find that?

0:34:26.5 CR: Yeah. Absolutely. And for myself as well, I have 12 years of doing this work, and there’s still, what I like to think of as little pockets of quicksand, where I kind of fall in and sometimes go, oh, it’s only afterwards catching it. So definitely. And I think that’s where it’s really important to have a team that you work with. Back to what I said earlier, it’s not easy being human. We all need help. I have a team of people that I work with that help support me and more on well-being as well. So I think the first step is to reach out to a coach, a therapist, a mentor, a well-being guide, someone that can help support you in that process of getting curious and to see where those aspects of your life are maybe negatively impacting your well-being. And then what we can do after that is start to create better habits and routines.

0:35:25.4 WB: And for me, creating those habits is where it becomes really useful when you have other people around you that can gently remind you or to hold you accountable to what you’ve committed to, or just to highlight, “Hey, Wayne, I just noticed you did this again. I thought we had spoken about trying to make a shift in something going on.” Just having people that you trust, you feel comfortable with, who can help you through some of those moments, for me is what I find very powerful.

0:35:57.0 CR: It’s so important. I think it’s so important, because we’re human. We get busy. We get overwhelmed. I know for sure when I go on holiday, that’s when my meditation practice tends to drop off. And after a couple of weeks, I can feel a little bit like getting more reactive. So, it really helps sometimes to have accountability and to build communities which, back to the corporate part, having this language being more common in the workplace, having communities set up where people are supporting each other is incredibly powerful, for people to be able to put their hands up and say, “You know, I’m struggling.” So, it’s one of the second aspects of focus for people is to just improve interpersonal relationships for us to get better at being authentic and vulnerable in our communications with each other so that we’re not just pretending everything’s okay when it’s not. And we’re actually able to support each other and to… Yeah. Just really be in community and connection with each other because if we’re not real, like, we gotta get real. I think that’s one of the things I’m really passionate about, being real with yourself and then being real with other people.

0:37:18.9 WB: One of the things that comes to mind is, if I’m in an organization or if I’m leading an organization, we have the corporate responsibility, which is very important to care for our people, to ensure that we’re doing what we need to. But from a business perspective, there needs to be also an upside in pursuing this, because it could all be great for the employee. But I think there’s enough evidence today to suggest that by focusing in this way, there’s also that upside for the organization, for the business. How would you address that question if I was the organization talking to you and say, “Yeah. Catherine, that’s all really nice and I love my people.” But at the end of the day, I still have to answer to my shareholders. And if we’re spending a day, a week, holding hands and feeling good, then how’s that gonna drive my business forward?

0:38:25.5 CR: I think we can look at what some of the research is documenting currently about how people are doing. So, what we know is that from the Deloitte research that one in three executives and employees are struggling with fatigue and poor mental health. We know that 75% of the C-suite are considering leaving their job for one that better supports their well-being. So, we know that these are the challenges that are accumulating from the world that we’re living in right now. The stress is increasing. Companies are expecting more of their employees than ever before. They need to do more with less. They need to create that bigger return on their investments. They need to place their shareholders, they need to integrate hybrid working, they need to deal with the advent of AI, all of these things. And what the research is pointing to is that leaders aren’t needing to do more than they’ve ever done before. We’re expecting more of our leaders, and they’re not coping. That’s what the research is pointing to.

0:39:32.3 CR: So, unless this is targeted, then leaders cannot be vital and energized in their work. They can’t prioritize, they can’t bring in their best self to the workplace if they’re kind of struggling. And we know that GLWS do a lot of research in Australia as well and what their research shows is that in the three years since the start of 2020, the proportion of leaders that classify themselves as thriving has dropped from 15% to 10%. So, leaders aren’t doing well, and if we come back to the GLWS framework, it’s not just all about how people are doing at home, it’s how they’re doing at work.

0:40:14.5 CR: So we can clearly see through debriefing on that report that maybe the leader or manager is going from meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting every day. They’re not taking a lunch break, they’re not having any breathing time, and then they’re burning out their work. They’re coming home and then working until 9:00, 10:00 PM at night as well, which is not actually serving the business either. So, we can target that aspect of it, we can address some of the practices throughout the day, which then is going to boost well-being overall. So it’s not just all about what happens outside the workplace, it’s really looking at how people are able to function in their roles as well.

0:40:56.4 WB: In actual fact, what we’re saying is paying more attention to well-being and mental health is actually part of the solution to helping the business perform better because the people within the business will be able to perform better. At the moment, they’re operating under duress almost in these circumstances, which is inhibiting their performance. And by shifting our focus, we actually open the Pandora’s box to who knows what achievements. I think that’s a great response. I’m conscious of the time and a couple of questions before we wrap up. If we look ahead to, let’s say, a few years into the future, is there anything you’re seeing with the trend we’re on at the moment with more and more awareness? Is there anything positive coming out of the future with well-being and mental health?

0:42:02.3 CR: Definitely. I think the fact that more companies are willing to engage with people like us that do this work, to bring in, to provide support, to provide resources, to provide education to employees, to begin these conversations, is a really positive step. I definitely know of companies who are involved in workplace well-being who are actually coming in at the recruitment stage with companies so that when a new employee begins, they’re not just getting the phone number of an employee assistance program, they’re actually being educated on the well-being focus within the company with the services that are available so the employee is right from the get-go. So, when you start to see things like that appear on the horizon, that’s incredibly encouraging.

0:42:48.1 WB: Yeah.

0:42:48.6 CR: The challenge is in this current economic environment where the cost of living is increasing and we see some budgets decreasing around what’s seen as discretionally well-being. That’s a little bit of a concern because, back to the research, if the leaders aren’t gonna be doing well, the company is not gonna do well either. It’s kind of looking at how to grow that aspect of it so that it seems a priority for all companies, but it’s definitely growing.

0:43:18.8 WB: Is there one key message that you would hope our listeners can take away from our conversation today?

0:43:24.4 CR: One key message. Oh my goodness. That’s a challenge.

0:43:31.7 WB: Sorry to put you out of pressure there.

0:43:40.8 CR: I would say reach out. Reach out. If you have a sense for your organization that your staff are struggling, which you could pretty much guarantee from most companies, people are struggling right now. That’s what the research is saying. Or if you’re an individual that’s listening and feeling like, yeah, I’m not thriving, I’m struggling or languishing, reach out, find that coach, that mentor, that therapist, that guide that you’re gonna be able to engage with to get the support that you need to start to unravel and unpack whatever those blocks are that are affecting your well-being. Because the way I look at it, we’ve only got one life, let’s make it as wonderful and as exciting and as fulfilling as it can possibly be. And if something is getting in the way of that, you deserve to live a really great life.

0:44:28.9 WB: Where can listeners go, Catherine, to connect with you, to learn more about what you’re doing?

0:44:41.0 CR: Yeah. LinkedIn is in a great place. That’s how we connected and do have a lot of the details of what I do and how I can support individuals or companies on that page. My website is a little bit of a work in progress. As I said, it’s only been three years that I’ve been doing this work. And yeah, that’s still to be developed, but please go to my LinkedIn. Yeah. You can reach out to me there.

0:45:03.3 WB: We’ll make sure we put the link in the show notes. It’s been an absolute delight to connect with you and have this conversation. Thank you for being a guest on the ET Project.

0:45:13.9 CR: Thanks, Wayne. It’s been lovely to explore this with you. Thanks for having me.

0:45:18.7 Speaker 2: Thank you for joining us on the ET Project, a show for executive talent development. Until next time, check out our site for free videos, eBooks, webinars, and blogs at coaching4companies.com.