Forging Resilience
Join us as we explore experiences and stories to help gain fresh insights into the art of resilience and the true meaning of success.
Whether you're seeking to overcome personal challenges, enhance your leadership skills, or simply navigate life's twists and turns, "Forging Resilience" offers a unique and inspiring perspective for you to apply in your own life.
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Forging Resilience
43 Chris Tamdjidi: How cultivating resilience skills can drive business success.
Chris Tamdjidi, co-founder of Awaris and co-author of "The Resilience Culture," joins us to explore how mindfulness and resilience intersect in today's fast-paced business landscape. He shares his journey from his upbringing in Asia to his academic pursuits in London and the U.S., all of which fueled his deep interest in mindfulness.
Chris offers personal insights from his consulting days, drawing parallels between the core objectives of consulting—examining reality and enhancing functionality—and mindfulness practices. Listen as we redefine resilience not as mere endurance but as the skill of regulating internal states amidst external pressures.
How organizations can foster resilience by promoting healthier work habits and offering supportive environments is work that Awaris thrive at. We discuss the benefits of aligning with a higher purpose, nurturing openness and curiosity, and the positive impact of simple joys like outdoor activities.
Whether you're striving for personal growth or seeking to enhance organizational culture, this episode offers a treasure trove of insights and practical strategies.
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And welcome to Forging Resilience. Exploring for a different perspective on strength and leadership, join me as we discuss experiences and stories with guests to help gain fresh insights around challenge, success and leadership. Today, on Forging Resilience, I have the privilege of being sat with Chris Tamdigi, who's co-founder of Alweris, which is a company that helps develop human-centered mindfulness programs to help staff and businesses reach their full potential, and as well as the co-author of a credible book, the Resilience Culture, chris. Welcome to our show, mate. Really nice to see you, aaron. How are you? I'm very well, as we've just talked off camera. I'm really good. I'm feeling very blessed. As we just talked, I'm experiencing both ends of the spectrum in terms of the pendulum swinging between love and joy, frustration and fear, and I'm constantly reminded. That's exactly where I need to be. That's exactly what I need to be experiencing, so yeah, I'm really good.
Speaker 1:And how are you today, mate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I was just saying. I just arrived in Austria at my parents' house last night and it's interesting whenever you go back to your, you know the house that you lived as a child. You know, of course, many memories, but you also tend I tend to sleep really well I think maybe it's just these childhood patterns, you know and just kind of a bong song out. So I had a very good sleep. And it's very rural here. It's near southern Austria, it's very misty, there's a lake nearby, so very beautiful.
Speaker 1:Lovely, lovely, and I can completely relate to that when I go back and visit my parents, who have recently moved back to the village where I lived as a kid, even though we're not in the same house, that there's something that familiarity and also.
Speaker 1:I think even I'm a 45 year old man. That sense of security, of being close to the people that are really quite important and dear to me, is very relaxing, even as a as a man. So I, like you, sleep very well in my parents house. Is it the same house that you grew up in as well, was it, chris?
Speaker 2:yeah, not quite. No, I didn't grow up in because we grew up in asia. But uh, they bought this house 40 years ago, so you know it was a very it's been a long. You know it's for a long time it's been a reference point.
Speaker 1:Yeah chris, give us, give us an overview of what led you to write this book, the Resilience Culture, and to be co-founder of Aweris mate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, sure, so, yeah, so I think it's relevant. I grew up in Asia so of course I was exposed to many situations, cultures and so on. I think that comes with a basic adaptability and I studied in London, I studied physics and I did an MBA in the States, so I kind of went into that tangent. I worked for the Boston Consulting Group for seven years, which is a consulting company, and I think already in that time I began to, of course, get interested in things like mindfulness. So I was actually, I think I was a record holder at BCG. I still hold the, I think, unclaimed record of having the most leave of absence. You could do that, you know, because of course consulting companies were happy to have people that kind of functioned well and they gave you, you know, freedom, so I would go off, I think.
Speaker 2:So in my total seven years I had one and a half years of leave of absence, primarily going on a retreat. So I went quite deeply into mindfulness practice and then when I kind of left PCG, I actually ran a set, something I became, I guess, quite familiar with and then at some point the next phase was calling and me and Liana, my co-founder we founded Avaris aware is, I guess, bringing together the you could say, human-centric insights of how do humans function with, I guess, the challenges of the modern business world and with these you know, practices of mindfulness and so on that I've been learning. So I think that was the kind of natural, you know, maturation intention and that's kind of, you know, really been growing and I, you know, kind of. I think we have now 20 staff around and we have about 75 trainers around the world.
Speaker 2:I just came back from China last week. So I think that that's something that I feel is important in today's age, where there's so much acceleration and, I think, so much hot air around topics like, you know, mindfulness, resilience and so on, what's actually, you know the reality and you know what is really what really works. So I think that's something that you know, as a physicist and I still call myself a physicist even, you know, kind of affected my life deeply. I really try to understand, you know, causality and that led us, you know, also to this looking deeper at this topic of resilience in a slightly different way than I think is, you know, commonly done.
Speaker 1:So what led you on the path or spiked your interest in terms of mindfulness, Chris?
Speaker 2:I think, mindfulness. To be honest, it was just logic. So I finished my degree quite early. I finished my physics degree at 19. And so I took a year off, you know, kind of to just figure out what to do with time. And then during that time I went on a retreat in Thailand, a 10-day retreat, thailand retreat practice.
Speaker 2:And it was just, you know, it just made sense in terms of, oh, I've used this mind my whole life. I've never actually looked at this mind and actually I have no idea how it functions. And actually, if I sit here and I work with the breath, I'm really you know, it's not so much about the breath, I'm really looking at the mirror of my own mind. How does the mind function? And you know, it's clear, it becomes clear when you examine that you realize that all of reality, you know your perception of life, comes through. You know your mind.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know, in this situation, you know behind you, you know you have this wonderful, you know plant there, but if you aren't looking at it, you just don't perceive it. You know and I think that's something that many people completely underestimate that you know your perception, your how you direct your attention, is your gateway to reality. You know, and it just became kind of obvious. Then, hold on, you know this. If you don't know anything about this, that's not very helpful. And actually when you begin to learn about these things, you begin to you know, yeah, you begin to find that actually things like attention, things like emotional regulation, things like perception, all of these things are actually eminently trainable.
Speaker 1:And it's very important to train them. So I'm getting the impression that you're quite open to learning or receiving the teachings, or even your own insights or revelations around mindfulness and being present from an early age, even though you've done this retreat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think it was. You know, of course I was curious. I hadn't really, as I grew up, I hadn't really interacted with it. But you know, of course, at some point when you go off and do these things and I think for me it wasn't so much per se openness, it was more, you know, based upon examination it just made sense. I don't know if I was per se. One of you know I'm a spiritual seeker per se. I don't think so. You know. It's just more like oh my goodness, yeah, when you examine it, it makes complete sense. And I continue to examine my experience, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah, again. Another observation of mine is quite I'm making assumptions here, but in terms of business consulting being very fast-paced and potentially quite aggressive and cutthroat, and then, on the other spectrum, to have this kind of presence, um awareness and ability to be, to be mindful. Did that ever clash in in your work?
Speaker 2:I wouldn't say it clashed. I mean it was certainly hard to unify, to bring it together. Do you know what I mean In the sense of you know if you're practicing, you know practicing mindfulness is like a sport, you know it's a little bit sorry, you know. Or like exercise. I mean you've worked in high performance, you know sport and general work environments. You know you have to kind of keep at it, you know, and so of course when you have a very intense and irregular lifestyle, it's difficult to stay at it.
Speaker 2:But fundamentally, you know, I mean, if you honestly look at consulting and put away all the status stuff and so on, it's really about examining reality, helping companies examine the reality of the business they're in and helping them understand better how to function. And that's no difference. You know, in some sense I often say mindfulness is not about peacefulness or so. Mindfulness is actually the accurate examination of reality, understanding how the mind works and how you process. You know experiences and, uh, you know. For that reason I felt no, I had no real at all dilemma. You know in the sense of philosophical dilemma. Do you know what I mean? Of course there's all dilemma. You know in the sense of philosophical dilemma. Do you know what I mean? Of course there's a time dilemma. You know the inability to just, you know stick to things at certain times and you know getting overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:But fundamentally, I didn't struggle with that point. And what about culturally, then? In? Terms of the culture of consulting. I mean, I think you, I think I worked at consulting.
Speaker 2:I started working in consulting almost 30 years ago and I left over 20 years ago. So I think I can only say back then, especially I think the Boston Consulting Group was not an environment of competitiveness the whole time. There was a challenging environment. You had to kind of be ready to be challenged both by the client.
Speaker 2:I remember actually a story of a friend of mine who stayed for a long time in consulting. On his very first day at work he was called up on Sunday by his project leader and said tomorrow you're not coming to the office, you're going straight to the client. And, by the way, I'm not there. And, by the way, the first thing you have to do is lead a client meeting at 8 am. You know, cheerio, see you there. Good luck, you know. And then he walks into this client which is a machine, you know manufacturer, and and the first thing the client says is when I see people like you, I want to vomit.
Speaker 2:So I mean I think you know it was. You have to be ready to be challenged in that sense, you know, but it wasn't. I didn't find it an aggressive negative, it was challenging in the sense of you know, be accurate. You know work hard and so on. So, yeah, I guess I didn't. I didn't feel overtones of you, you know, aggressive negativity or something. It might be different now, I might have been lucky, do you know what I mean? But yeah, so I didn't find a per se cultural problem.
Speaker 1:What comes to me to ask is I imagine yesterday I was doing a call and we had a power cut. It's been raining a lot here in in spain the last couple of days, much needed. But I, I asked I didn't ask this question, but I will today. And that is if we could only, if you could only talk about one thing today, or give me, if we only had two minutes left, what, what would you tell me, just in in case we got cut off? But I could still put this episode out, especially around resilience, I mean in terms of the hot air around this word.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that there's a lot of misunderstanding. So I think resilience is not about endurance. You know, we are not rocks, we are human beings. You know flesh and blood, soft tissue. I think many people forget that but it's really about learning to change and regulate your internal states in response to external stressors. So I think that that's you know.
Speaker 2:First of all, it's important to clear away that misunderstanding. It's not about endurance. It's a very kind of masculine, old fashion view of the word, but it's about an ability to shift one states, and we speak about four states growing, regenerating, letting go and being stressed. You know, and I think once you understand that, then you can also quickly understand that it's actually a series of skills which allows us to, you know, shift our state. You know, and uh, and that is, I think, very learnable, eminently learnable it's not about how you grew up, it's not about how tough you are.
Speaker 2:It's actually about noticing your state in a moment and learning to actually to shift your state, you know, and so I think that that's important and shifting your state is again, I don't want to go into the voodoo of, you know, this guy's going to talk about mindfulness. Again, it's not about that, it's really about it. Sometimes, shifting your state is just getting up and getting some nuts. You know what I mean. I'm just going to get up, change my body posture, get some nuts. Come back, sit down here. When you look at it like that, very directly, it's not very complex and it's really about how you engage in your life.
Speaker 1:And it's very trainable. What are some of the things that you teach in terms of raising our awareness of our own internal states before we get on to being able to to change those internal states?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think that this is very important and it's very single. You know our conversation, you said you know you're oscillating between states of. You know warmth and you know love and, of course, you know fear, and that's actually very fundamental to human physiology.
Speaker 2:I mean, if you think about, where does human metabolism physiology comes from? It comes from the fact that, evolutionary-wise, we were once blobs swimming in a big ocean of whatever, and so any organism has something wants to come in, wants to reject that, keep it out. And other things are attractive, keep them in. Do you know? And that's basically we have that in our physiological structure. Do you know? We have this some things are attractive, good, and some things are negative, bad, dangerous, okay, and that's what's called valence. Okay, so you have this valence of our experience, you know, and then you have not only the valence of the experience but the degree of arousal in a moment. Okay, so you know you might have a positive, you know, valence of experience. Like you know, I like to play squash. You know I look forward to playing squash, but of course I'm highly aroused when I play squash. It's very tiring, okay. So it's something like it's a positive valence but and high arousal. And then there's other things you know, like maybe making a presentation, you know, to a corporate board, you know kind of, and you know they're gonna, just, you know, shoot you down. Or to my, my friend, you know you could say, going to work on his first day at bct, you know high arousal and negative valence was the first thing he hears is, you know, people like you make me want to vomit.
Speaker 2:So I think that you know we have, once you understand that as basic, you know, part of our physiology. We have, you know, these four, two dimensions. You know, kind of the degree of arousal of a situation, the degree of valence of a situation. And you know you talked about and this is very nice you talked about actually, hey, I'm oscillating a lot between these two states, you know, and that's actually a positive sign. You see, that's actually a sign of that you're varying your state okay, because you know essentially this modern kind of, you know, mechanistic view of life is, you know there's stress and I have to endure in stress. I have to endure in this kind of high, negative, high arousal, negative valence state, but actually we say no, it's unhealthy to try to endure there. Actually it's pretty unhealthy. A lot of chronic, you know stress and illness and burnout and so on happens there. It's actually key things to be able to move your state around these four.
Speaker 2:So you're talking about this movement, you know back and forth between you know kind of valence, left and right, positive and negative, and then there's the you know this movement which is, you know, between high and low stress. And once you begin to understand that, then look at your life and go okay, when in my, in states of positive, what are the things that inspire me? Make sure I do that, and I think that that's what happens to people is that they don't pay attention to their state. They think that I'm home, I'm just going to take out my phone and relax, but actually phone is stimulation, so basically they're keeping themselves, let's say they're stressed, in a negative, failing state.
Speaker 2:They come home and they do pick up their phone and they watch a couple of funny YouTube videos. Okay, that's moving to the positive, it's kind of entertaining for a while, but it's still high arousal actually. And then after a while, you know, the videos get darker and it's, you know, doom scrolling. So they kind of move into a lower arousal, negative state again. You see. So, rather than having really relaxed, read a book or done something nice with you know, going out into nature, you see, they end up just in a very small motion, which is quite close to you know, and that's, you know, not healthy, quite close to you know, and that's, you know, not healthy.
Speaker 1:And I think that for people to learn to both notice their internal state and to learn to regulate, it's really not that hard, but it, you know, it requires attention yeah, and if I were to reflect I understand completely what you're saying and if I was to reflect on my own experiences in in of work that the need to look after ourselves then and have that time and space to down-regulate or create more calm environments to move ourselves between those states, firstly, it might have been talked about but in my experience never really taught. And secondly, to that and I guess I'm going to be really careful with my words here but in today's culture it's not even really widely, it's not accepted, promoted, it's more. Yeah, that's my own perception and I know that's a generalization, but I'm not quite sure where I was going with that. Yeah, but I guess there's two things there then. So it's not really taught, and there you go, and it's not really encouraged until it's too late and maybe even it's not really believed.
Speaker 2:You know, that's the starting point and I think that's what I mean about reality. You know, I think that actually a lot of what goes on in business life is complete. It's kind of completely unrealistic, you know. I mean, you do that too. I meet a lot of people. I'm we're a high performance company, you know high performance leadership team. I say super, what are your relaxation routines? And they look at me like what do you mean? No, no, no, we go, go, go, go, go, go. Yeah, I say it's completely unrealistic. You know, no high-performance sports person ever maintains high performance without conscious recovery, relaxation, because they know how the body and mind function, you know. And so, therefore, when I meet, you know these leaders who say, yeah, we're a high-performance leadership team, I say bollocks.
Speaker 1:What a brilliant word. You can tell you've been in the UK, exactly bollocks. If you can tell me what a brilliant words.
Speaker 2:You can tell you've been in the uk. If you haven't done, you haven't got clarity about your recovery and relaxation routines, then you are not a high performance team at all. There's no question, no discussion about that. You know there's interesting. You know I work a lot with a formula one team for many years. You know they have a real focus on psychological safety and recovery, you see, because they understand that you cannot maintain high performance if you do not have that kind of focus. So I think that you know.
Speaker 2:So, going back to your example, I think that you know historically, let's say 15 years ago, you know there were natural rhythms that people had in life. You know they went to lunch in the cafeteria and they had social connection plus they had food. You know nourishment, okay, and they had social connection, plus they had food nourishment. Then at five o'clock they went home and they did not spend the next three hours on their email or on their smartphone. So I think that we had this natural variation Much more naturally you could say whatever 10, 15, 20 years ago.
Speaker 2:And now, with our digital work and this kind of belief in performance and always being on and so on, we have to become conscious of it and create these situations ourselves, and so I think it's really. Situations have changed and with that there is a belief in how humans can function. That's completely unrealistic, it's rubbish and it has to be said very clearly, it has to be named very clearly, and then you have to help people go okay. Yeah, you're right, my reality is constant digital simulation. Even you and I are now currently in a digital environment and actually, if you look at how digital simulation works, it works very directly on the nervous system. So one of the ways you can test that is many people do that is they wake up in the morning and they're lying in the bed groggy, and the first thing they do is they grab their phone and then they pick their phone up because they instinctively know that the light of their phone will actually stimulate them and wake them up.
Speaker 2:They can't name that, but actually that's what's happening. You see, they can't name that, but actually that's what's happening, you see, and so you know I think people need to understand that that we are just subject to a lot more stimulation and a lot more negativity. So systematically, we're being pushed into this, you know, field of high stimulation, high negativity, and we have to learn to move ourselves because it's not going to happen. It's like you know, in modern age we're confronted with high calories and you could say high sugar content of our calories. You could make a correlation and say calories is like stimulation and the sugar content is like negativity and therefore you have to learn to move yourself out of the space of just eating high calorie, high sugar food. And many of us have learned that it's natural for us and I think in the same way I really encourage that that regulating stress is not so difficult once you understand it. It's just natural, but you have to do it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think. What comes to me, though, is the courage to be able to create that both for ourselves and probably yeah, first, before we do that as a culture, be that as a family, as a business or bigger being a father to two young kids, the amount of constant challenge in terms of wanting screens, be that just have a look at my phone or for the PlayStation that they were desperate to get for Christmas, or to the snacks. We're bombarded by these things, and it's so easy to understand why parents and even normal people most people, average, in fact, everybody falls into that trap sometimes.
Speaker 2:You know, and a good way of, I think, working with that is. It's interesting, I had that with my daughters too, and you know, it wasn't that we tried to forbid it, but we just tried to, again and again, make them feel how it made them feel.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:And that's, I think, the key thing. And this is the same thing about, you know, I think, diet, so I'm not so good. I mean, I'm not bad at my diet, but I'm not so good at my diet. But you know my co-director. She feels what something does to her and therefore it's not about judging herself I shouldn't eat this, I should eat this but she just feels it. This is not good for me. Therefore, I won't eat it. Do you see what I mean?
Speaker 2:And I think this is working with digital stimulation and in general, therefore, the connection to resilience. I think it's important. It's not about forbidding it for people or children, but it's about encouraging them to notice and feel what that does to them and therefore for them naturally to realize when they've had their fill. My daughters really have that occasion that they really say my older daughter especially. She'll say I just had enough. I'll turn on my phone for three days, do you know what I mean? My older daughter especially, she'll say I just had enough. I'll turn on my phone for three days, do you know what I mean? And she'll self-regulate that way because she's learned to pay attention to what she feels and not.
Speaker 2:We're a mindfulness family, yeah, yeah, and I think that that's what I think is so important is you know how do you help companies? How do you help individuals? You know, learn you help, uh, companies. How do you help individuals? You know, learn this regulation and resilience. Of course, at some level, you have to show them data, do you know? I mean, it's very important because data is important for people to cognitively understand some, but, above all, you have to teach them to feel you see, to notice their states and actually to notice what being in a regenerative state feels like, or being in a growth state feels like, and therefore they get themselves attracted to that that's I think quite doable you know?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah, that's. That's really interesting. You said that I think it's two weeks ago. I was sat on the sofa with with my kids watching a film on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Yeah, and I had the observation which I think I communicated them the lethargic state we were all in after an hour and a half film and the temptation to keep going with something else.
Speaker 1:The next day, on the Sunday, we went out for a walk and, whilst there's quite a riot to get out of the front door, some of the comments, the interactions that we had, the three of us, whilst my wife she's working night shifts as a nurse, while she's either working or sleeping, it was a really interesting observation for me. What we want in terms of yeah, in this case screens and suites, we want it immediately, but it makes us feel bad or or a certain different state, always, not always positive afterwards. Yet sometimes going out in nature, going for a walk, or is there a lot of resistance at the beginning?
Speaker 2:but look how we felt during and after that experience so I remember my daughter as well, when things were really yucky, you know, I guess one of the things I I maintain is a sense of humor. And then I said, okay, let's go out and do a puddle jumping competition, you know. So we put on boots, you know galoshes, and we would see who could. And the puddle jumping idea was to actually see who could make the biggest splash jumping into a puddle. You know, and I think that's the thing you know you have to acknowledge that children have a natural need for input, for, you know, humor, for warmth, for experience. You know, and if you're not helping them get real life experience, they're going to substitute that by virtual experience. But real-life experience is sensory, so much richer. I mean, that's one of the things.
Speaker 2:This is a very important point to understand that a lot of people who are very wealthy suffer from a complete feeling of poverty Because they are not open to their sensory experience. And the feeling of richness comes from sensory experience. You see, and I think that that's one of the things that happens in today's world people working virtually, they have a both. They don't have a feeling of richness in their day of interaction, nor they have a feeling of efficacy. Okay, I think something works, because it's never really clear what works. So it's interesting. I work a lot with people in production environments, in automotive production. You know, on the one hand you could say it's a very stressful environment, but they have a feeling of efficacy, they walk through, they see people, they see that this is fixed. And I think that, you know, one of the reasons why people struggle in virtual work is they have neither a feeling of sensory richness nor do they have a feeling of efficacy, and then they substitute that with other forms of stimulation, which kind of spirals them off into again worse states of being.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's some of the things, the key points, that you look for with their staff and each person will get a completely anonymous individual report showing what resilience skills they have. This is one of the key things is we kind of show people what skills they have, because that's again very important to strengthen people, for them to understand what they can already rely upon. But then, of course, from that analysis at the individual level, we see at the group level, we really see the data about what the different stressors are people are struggling with, which skills people have and which skills are overall lacking, which are lacking in the population and which skills are lacking fundamentally in the kind of actually cultural fabric of the business.
Speaker 2:Okay, and I like you know it's often, you know it's interesting and I hope not to offend anybody, but I like working with the people in terms of well-being who are connected to the safety. So the health and safety people are because essentially they've learned that safety is an issue of process, okay, and and rituals, okay, you don't change. You can't kind of do like a one-hour workshop in a plant and say you have a safety issue and everybody, oh yeah, we have a safety issue, that was a nice workshop you know what I mean it's like anybody involved in safety goes like how completely ludicrous, you know.
Speaker 2:Like come on, wake up, you know. But that's how well-being is dealt with. We have a one-hour workshop oh great, you know. And it's like, come on, let's get realistic, it's not going to going to change anything. So the next thing is to really kind of work with them to understand.
Speaker 2:Okay, for example, you have an issue with people doing emails out of hours. Point one here's the data which shows how much stress that contributes, because there's a lot of evidence that basically, the expectation of being reachable after hours contributes a lot to people's feeling of poor work-life balance, even if they are working too much. But this feeling that okay. So then what we'll do is we'll actually get the companies to analyze two months of emails, okay, after eight o'clock, and say please analyze them, please find us actual situations which had to be dealt with out of hours. And usually they come back. Actually, we found no situation which couldn't be dealt with within two to four hours of the next working day. Super, okay. Then make agreements about that that people should not be checking emails. And of course, there are people who have kids and they want to go home early and then check the emails, and fine, let them look at their emails, but it's clear that there's no expectation of checking emails and then to actually measure that, because you see, you can't just say, oh yeah, you're right. You know, checking emails outside of hours is not good. Everyone does it. Because, I don't know, people just expect it. No one ever discussed it, you know. I mean, it's kind of a very unclear situation, you see. So, like in the health situation you might have in the, the causes of those risks, you need to kind of begin to identify the you know the factors that will eliminate those risks and actually measure that. And so you know if you do that. So if you find in the stressor analysis that the company has an issue with this perception of work-life balance that tends to be one of the biggest, you know sources of stress, and then you kind of say, okay, look, what are the reasons? Is it? You know working hours, and if it's not working hours but it's actually just reachability, and then you kind of analyze reachability Actually, we didn't find any emails and then you can say, okay, look, let's now try to reduce the email checking out of hours by 60% in the next three months. You can track that. It's very easy to track that on servers. And let's look at the causes.
Speaker 2:You see, and this is what is so important, how I find this important to work with people is you have to be, on the one hand, analytical, but you have to make agreements which are actually anchored into the fabric of the organization. You can't expect Aaron to show up at a nice one-hour workshop and walk away going yeah, I'm stressed, because I'm checking my emails too much and then for five days Aaron doesn't check his emails but then on day seven, so-and-so, says why didn't you answer this email in the evening, you know? And Aaron can say actually, look, we discussed it, we all know it's pointless Because the others haven't reflected. They think it's meaningful and it isn't, you know, so anyway. So I think this is the key thing is really this understanding of we need to be analytical about these things, we need to kind of have real data, and then we need to agree upon organizational-wide practices that we're going to stick to and measure, because it's not going to change otherwise. So this is, you know, I mean, I think you know we started off talking a lot about, you know, kind of the human dimension, but I'm a little bit. You know, hard and also, I guess, quite tough on this whole process dimension. I think I've been a physicist and a consultant for too long. It's not going to change if you're not going to actually measure things.
Speaker 2:So one company, global company, said yeah, we understand this. Focus times are important, meeting free times are important. We're going to announce now, 60,000 person company. We're going to announce now Monday morning should be meeting free. And you're going to announce now 60 000 person company. We're going to announce now monday morning should be meeting free. And you're gonna go oh, come on, I mean how stupid. Do you know what I mean? Nobody, nobody is good at making monday mornings meeting free. Do you know what I mean? And then, who's going to measure this? How are you going to control this? You see, I mean. So these are just things where you think, come on, like, wake up, you guys are so smart about measuring certain, you know brand identity and you kind of globally, can analyze this, and then you say something like this from the CEO, which just has no intelligence whatsoever I think that leads me on to my next question or point that I'm guessing.
Speaker 1:Then that needs to be a certain level of buy-in from the leadership, firstly to bring you in and then to listen to the insights that come. Just a quick tick box exercise and there's a deeper level there to maybe the example leadership set for everybody else. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:I mean, as you say, there's no a depth of you know in the sense of, okay, let's be accountable for this. Do you see what I mean? If you can announce money, money, money, free time, what are you accountable for, you know? Are you accountable for 60% or 30% or 10% of people actually doing that? And so I think that this is the thing, is there's no in that sense accountability, and in some sense it's understandable.
Speaker 2:Well-being, workplace well-being workplace resilience is very complex because you're dealing with issues that are A, human, b, partly outside of your workforce control. You know it happens in somebody's private life. Actually, what kind of stresses them? In part C, it's interacting also with complex organizational systems. So it is very complex and, I think, more complex than most issues companies are used to analytically dealing with. But it doesn't mean that you shouldn't try and begin to learn any kind of complexity. You have to approach with a conscious mind to begin to understand the causality in that complexity and the interconnections. Okay, and once you do that, then you know you can find, and so, for example, you know there's a lot of evidence that friday afternoons is very beneficial for people. It both has a very strong productivity impact on people. Meeting free Friday afternoons has a strong productivity impact and it has a strong well-being impact because people leave the office and they got their stuff done. You know they didn't have additional stuff piling onto them on Friday, so you know you can do that and then say let's measure it. Let's say the target now should be for year one that we have 40% of people worldwide have Friday afternoons free for getting stuff done, but it's not free for not doing anything. So of course you have to track. Are they just going to take time off too? I mean, it's complex things.
Speaker 2:Recently I had a discussion with somebody who said yeah, they've tried one day meeting free. They're coding. It's a software company and they found that the actual amount of code written on that meeting free day was a lot less and therefore they felt it wasn't working because basically they felt people were just goofing off. But I said, honestly, it's not clear to me. Did you analyze what their reported work hours were on that day? They might indeed have gone to the dentist that day because it's convenient and therefore work two hours less, and so of course, if they're only working six hours, they'll be coding a little bit. So I was just kind of struck by this very. It's a global software company, very analytical, and they came to such a conclusion with so little data, so, anyway.
Speaker 2:So I think that you have to have some kind of buy-in in the sense of okay, we're going to figure out how to make this work, in the sense of looking at the problems that come up too and seeing okay, what are the obstacles, why isn't this working? But, like anything, I always use the example If you have a manufacturing leader and he has a quality problem, and he has a quality problem, let's say the kind of whatever the failure parts rate is going up from should be at 0.03, and it's gone up to 1.1. And you say fix it. And three weeks later you see him and how's it going. Oh, yeah, we had a workshop on it for an hour. We don't know it could get better. Do you know what I mean? It's like what. But then you do the same thing on the well-being. You say, yeah, yeah, we had a workshop on it for an hour. So will it get better? No idea.
Speaker 2:So this is really, you know, I think. That's why I think you have to be very realistic about understanding how humans function and go okay, this isn't going well for people. So let's begin to analyze what we can do. You know, and how can we help individuals. And this is again we see this in our data. We see that there's a certain stressor load. So you can measure stressors. You know. You know my there's a high workload and you know I have to work after hours and you know, maybe my daughter is sick and you know I don't know what I have financial uncertainty. You know there's a whole scale you can use to measure people's stressors and we see that basically, when people are facing over usually more than four stressors at a serious level, then actually their ability to be resilient massively drops off. So essentially, statistically, you see that up to three or four stressors we call that the Goldilocks zone. We call that the Goldilocks zone.
Speaker 2:It's much better to help Aaron develop his own resilience skills working on his sleep, working on his emotional regulation, working perhaps on his connection to people. Do you see what I mean? Compassion you said earlier, and that will help him more. So we see that in a low stressor level, individual resilience interventions are more impactful. But once you get Aaron into a situation where he's basically facing, look, he's got a bad boss, he's got poor work-life balance. He's got a heavy workload plus he has worries about his financial issues. Do you see, then?
Speaker 2:Actually, it's very hard for the individual to do something about it. It's too much, and you need to have help from outside. And I think it's very helpful again for companies to understand that, to understand that you, you know what's the right trade-off. When is it important to help individuals with individual skill building? When do we need to do something from the company kind of side? And I think that you know that's all of this clarity is missing for many, many companies and leadership teams. They just they haven't really paid attention to it. It's just like a yucky difficult topic they don't really know how to deal with and it's just yeah, okay, whatever, yeah yeah, yeah, so what?
Speaker 1:what's some of the, the key skills that you teach when, when, when you go into to a company in terms of improving resilience?
Speaker 2:yeah. So I think you know, again, we did a lot of analysis and also looked at the literature. We found that there are 12 skills, and and 12 skills I mean that things humans can do that actually move them around their internal landscape. So as an example, let's say I'm here kind of up in the high stress, high negative zone and then I leave the office and I do some sports. My stress will actually increase. Sport is stress. It'll even go there. But then afterwards I come down into a calm, regenerate zone. Do you see what I mean? So that's what I've done, is I move myself around. Or let's say it's Sunday morning and I'm kind of like a bit negative and low arousal, even if I do sports. I do sports again, it raises my stress level first, but then it kind of puts me here in this positive regeneration zone. So sports is an example.
Speaker 2:Exercise and movement is an example of how we move around. Another one is like let's say I have a good meal, okay. So again, I'm at my desk, it's, you know, it's Tuesday at two. I just had a difficult meeting and I go to the cafeteria and I sit together with Aaron and we have a nice conversation and we have a nice meal, you know. Then I end up here and I come back and I'm much more regenerated. But let's say and this is very typical in the UK let's say I just sit in front of my laptop, you know, eating my sandwich while doing my work. I don't move anywhere. You see what I mean.
Speaker 2:Another example is you know emotional regulation. So many people are quite good at emotional regulation or attention regulation. So you can really see that actually this is very interesting about this. You know, you can really see and we can measure that. We do measurements with people of heart rate variability. We've done, I think, upwards of you know, a few thousand measurements with people all day, three, five, four to five days, and you can kind of really see where they are and how, what moves them around this landscape.
Speaker 2:Okay, so essentially there's these 12 skills. Another one, for example, by the way, is compassion. When people express compassion to others, that changes their own internal state. Another one is connection to purpose. You really see, when people are connected to purpose, they might be kind of low and gloomy, they become inspired, they move up to this kind of corner. So you really see that there are 12 things that individuals can do and you can kind of assess whether individuals are doing that, whether they're actually engaging in a conscious.
Speaker 2:That's what we do. We measure engagement in these skills and then you can do the same thing at the organizational level. You can do the same thing at the organizational level, especially around things like attention regulation, purpose, social connection, all of these kind of human-to-human skills. So that's what we measure. We don't measure traits so much or so on, but we measure directly observable skills. And actually we've done this with 120 teams too, and it's very interesting we see exactly which skills lead to what outcomes in terms of innovation or psychological safety or performance. So it's very interesting to see that, for example, teams that have good attention regulation yeah, so teams that have cameras on when they have meetings that don't interrupt each other, that have focus times in their calendar which are shared and which have, you could say, a good multitasking agreements Okay, that they typically are high performing teams. 94% of those teams are high performing teams, whereas teams that do not have attentional agreements actually only 50% of them are high-performing teams. So we kind of have seen now with these kind of core humans.
Speaker 2:So we start off with this kind of core human level, identifying these 12 skills. And then we kind of said, look, these 12 skills are actually. They manifest at the team level too. How do teams connect? So what's the social connection? Do teams take time for social connection?
Speaker 2:So we ask again, for each of the skills, we ask teams four questions, four habits, whether they're visible, and we can then predict, when teams do have them or not, actually what the outcome is on their performance. And that's a very crucial piece because, you know, companies are all about performance. In the end, that's what it's about. You know that's their raison d'etre about. You know that's their raison d'etre. And so you know you have to make this connection to how these engagement in these things actually pays into both well-being outcomes and performance outcomes. And that's, I think, what we can do very nicely, you know, both with the team data that we have as well as with the organizational data that we have, and say, hey guys, you know it's very interesting, so you know we might do so.
Speaker 2:I'm just actually, today I'm meeting, I've it's an automotive supplier and we did an assessment for 100 people of their resilience skills and, interestingly enough it's interesting the biggest stressor that came out was lack of growth opportunities. It surprised me it wasn't what people were expecting and, interestingly enough as well, when you look at the people who are resilient in that population, the ones that have the highest resilience are the ones that have a good connection to purpose and that have good emotional regulation. Interesting, so it's interesting In different populations you see different stuff coming out. So if you have a kind of a population of carers, people in, let's say, healthcare, you often see that emotional regulation and compassion are some of the biggest predictors of their resilience skills. When you have leaders, often their attention regulation and things like exercise are their biggest predictors of resilience. Okay, so people typically you see people with a high workload that has those people have very high workloads. Attention regulation becomes one of the biggest predictors of resilience and well-being outcomes. Okay, so you know.
Speaker 2:So this is the thing that you, that we, kind of do with them, is. We just begin to kind of get this data and show them. Hey, you in particular for the situation you're facing. So automotive industry, as an example, at currently low growth prospects, a lot of uncertainty, okay, interesting enough, this growth, lack of growth prospect is actually worrying people the most and therefore this connection to purpose why are you here is kind of very important and we see this also. We work a lot in political environments, work as well in the uk with the uk parliament and there you see as well, in political environments as well, connection to environments as well, connection to purpose, is very crucial for people's resilience. So it really kind of comes out differently for each company is what skills they need to work on and how to work on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess what leaps out at me the last couple of days that I've been reflecting on my own things. Is this purpose? Again, to get really clear on my own things is this purpose?
Speaker 1:again to get really clear on my own purpose, and so I can understand why. If, if you, if we're, if we're in a company working and in this case there's no possibility for growth, how can I develop? How can I grow what? I guess it's a. We're asking ourselves the questions what's the point is? It's pointless, and and things start to dive from there is that exactly so?
Speaker 2:it's very interesting. Connection to purpose is typically so. We work a lot for the european union and so we do a lot of assessments in that environment, and we see that in political, in governmental environments, connection to purpose is one of the most important predictors of resilience, and so that's something you have to really nourish and nourishing. It is not just you know, here's a new opportunity for you. Nourishing is actually let's remember why we're all here, why do we care? So I'm a, you know, often when I work I work with quite some senior people at the commission Often I'll start by saying oh by, oh, by the way, you know, we'll have a training session and I'll open the training session. I say, oh, by the way, you know, I'm a european citizen, and I start by I'd like to start by thanking you, and they all look at me like this guy's a little weird.
Speaker 1:You know where did he come from. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean I say, no, I'm sorry, I know, I know this is like you don't like to hear this or maybe even embarrassing for you, but but I really want to take this moment and say, hey, these are the things that you've done and I want to thank you very much for that. I think it's very important, these things and I do the same thing working in political environments in the UK to say actually look, pay attention to this, this is really important. These are the things you've done and this is very important about connection to purposes People have to also connect to actually all the the things that they're working on, which are going well, which are safe society, which you know what I mean, and so you know I think it's very important to when people struggle with, as you say, growth opportunities or this, you know, challenge of finding their purpose, it's also important to connect them to actually why did you choose to be here and what is it? And is it actually not that some of this is still actually very rewarding if you think about it, and I think that that's, you know, very helpful to help people. And, as you say, it's interesting.
Speaker 2:Again, in the data, you see that the more uncertain things get, the more connection to purpose becomes important. So, because connection to purpose is, you know, not navigating by the currents but navigating by the stars, you see, and that's the thing when you're out in, you know open water and you don't know where you're going, you need to have a kind of orientation. So I think that you know these are things that are very interesting to see coming out of the data and for different situations, what are the skills people need to navigate? And that they're different. And I think that that, again, is there's no understanding of that in the well-being space. You know that again is there's no understanding of that in the wellbeing space. Do you know that there's different things needed for different types of stress, or it's different type of stress situation? And again, I think that gets a lot of buy-in. You see, because when companies hear that, they go yeah, you're right, that's actually what we're struggling with. Oh, we never thought about it this way. Oh, okay, it this way. Oh, okay, you're right. We need to have conversations about purpose. It's a difficult time now. We need to reconnect to our purpose, okay?
Speaker 2:So I think that you know this is, um, it all comes from a basic understanding of physiology. Interestingly enough. You know, if you look at connection to purpose, it's actually interesting that connection to purpose, from the evolutionary point of view, is very important for survival, because if you and I have a story to tell each other about our shared purpose, we're much more likely to work together. Therefore, when people connect to a higher purpose, you see a lot of changes in their physiology. You see, there's actually a release of dopamine and there's a kind of a sense of relaxation of current worries, and this is what I mean.
Speaker 2:So we looked at the physiology of this. We saw ah, interesting, there's a lot of research showing that connection to purpose does lead to downregulation of stress and increase in resilience. Ah, so it's one of the 12 skills. Ah, look, organizations need it too. And actually when organizations are going through very stressful times with a lot of uncertainty, connection to purpose is a very important thing to help them with systematically.
Speaker 2:And I think that this overall architecture of our approach really helps people, kind of ah, the whole thing makes sense and how it pays attention and pays into performance. And therefore, please, please, please, take well-being and resilience seriously. You see, don't just say, okay, we'll do a one-hour workshop on it, but actually you need to invest in purpose, and purpose doesn't have to be that you as a company have to kind of come up with a new purpose. It could also be that you give teams time to talk about their purpose and to reflect upon it, and to each person to remember why did I show up here? Oh, yeah, you're right, and we did this and we did this and that really, actually, that really worked well and I was really happy. And, yeah, you're right, we never talk about these things. Because people never talk about these things, they go. The next problem I need this urgent issue to solve, you know, and that you know it's continually draining people, rather than saying the things have gone well yeah, yeah, so much, so much to say that I could.
Speaker 1:I could keep going all day, but we'll go for longer. But, um, yeah, in going back to why you start by thanking people, I might have missed that, but what was your, your, your motive behind that, chris?
Speaker 2:why do you sit down and thank people for, in terms of the politicians or the because yeah I think, first of all, I do remain, I think again, there's, first of all, there's a bias in today's world because news is free, okay, so therefore negative news gets more clicks than positive news. You know, one plane crashed, not 23 000 planes landed safely. Do you know what I mean? And therefore, actually the there's a lot of analysis about that that the news and informational landscape is becoming much more negative. Okay, and this is especially in companies that you know. If you have 150 emails per day, you don't open all the emails, you only open the ones that are serious and negative, and there's always something to talk about. It's very simple If you're driving 200 kilometers per hour on the highway, which you can do in Germany, then you have to be highly alert. So companies that are driving at full speed basically have to be highly alert for the negative. So there's good reasons why our informational landscape has become much more negative, but that means that we don't actually know this fundamentally all the things that are going well, you know, all the beauty, all the warmth, all the safety, and so this is particularly important in political environments. Political environments have become far more negative Because, also, people don't take time to appreciate all the things that are actually going well in our societies. Okay, so you know, if you look at the website Factfulness, you'll see the data gathered on all the things that are going well. You see, in life, literacy is increasing and child deaths are declining, do you know what I mean? And 1 billion people have been lifted out of poverty in the last 10 years, 15 years. I mean it's just phenomenal actually, the positive developments in the world.
Speaker 2:Same thing, for I was just in China last week. Okay, and China is an overwhelming to the census, but actually China has said we want to plant the equivalent area of Belgium each year with new trees. Belgium, I mean, it's like what? And you see this? You look out the window on the train. I was in the train from shanghai to beijing. It was four hours, 1100 kilometers and everywhere tree planting. Do you see?
Speaker 2:I mean, so the news landscape about china is generally very negative, but actually when you see what's going on, there's a lot of positive too. It's not to say that the negative doesn't exist. Yeah, the negative still exists. I'm not trying to deny the negative, but so, informationally, there is a strong negative bias in our perception nowadays and it's very important to shift one's perception to actually pay attention to the positive, which is reality. You see, it's not that the positive is in a rose-colored glass. So therefore, in the political environment, I pay particular attention to that because, actually, people who are politicians often are public servants.
Speaker 2:They came to serve the public. If they don't feel that they're doing good serving the public, they lose their inspiration, they become very cynical. That's what happens in political environments, is people become quite cynical, more so than in, you know, in a bank, you know? Or in an automotive company. Do you know what I mean? And so, reconnecting to that and also pointing out people that their perception is biased towards negative is, you know, very important, and that's why I do it, even if it's embarrassing at first yeah, and I guess what I'm understanding is you're recognizing or giving them that opportunity to reconnect to, to why they're there doing their thing.
Speaker 1:and from what I'm hearing as well is again, where do we put our focus, be it all right on the negative or all left on the positive, or acknowledging both, because both are there, it is.
Speaker 2:And actually I mean, you know, if you say to your average engineer, you should pay attention to the positive, what do you mean? There's this risk and there's this risk and there's this risk. Yeah, there are these risks, but actually you've solved 600 other risks already. Do you know what I mean? And so, yeah, you have three problems and pay attention to them, but don't forget, you know I sit in cars nowadays. I mean, isn't it amazing how good cars are? You know, it's like 6,000 pieces brought together to function as a smooth whole For 15 years. These things work. Do you know what I mean? Keep you safe, warm. So you know I just this big danger. I I think, if we don't appreciate all the things that are going well, and that's a fundamental skill, you know, it's not about putting on rose-colored glasses, but it's actually about seeing the reality of how amazing cars are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the whole amazing trains are the whole picture how amazing our food supply is. Do you know what I mean? I mean so, yeah, that's I kind of find so important and that's one of the skills that people have. You know, people who are resilient have the skill of actually perceiving the positive. Yeah, fascinating.
Speaker 1:What do you think might be one of the most overlooked skills in the 12 skills that you teach, or easily forgotten about or dismissed?
Speaker 2:yeah, I think the two that are come up the strongest are interoception we cite that or self-awareness, but we use the word interoception for that because it's really the skill of noticing your physiological state. So it's not just your mental self-awareness but actually your physiological self-awareness. And I think that's a personal story for me. I studied physics. I did not know, I had a body. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:I was like a head on a stick.
Speaker 2:You know, I was kind of in there in quantum mechanics and so on. And my co-director, liane she is Mrs Embodied, Okay, so she had anorexia when she was young and she talks about that openly whether she was going to live or not. But in some sense that taught her fundamentally to have extremely high resolution awareness of her body and so this ability to notice and, for example, liana, she can feel each organ in her body, she can notice the temperature shifts in different parts of her body, she can notice exactly what food is doing to different parts of her body and she can walk into a room where six people are who are not talking and she can say exactly what happened in the room before, Because she feels what people's status do see. So that's a skill. It's called interoceptive awareness. That's just one that a lot of people are like huh, what is that? They don't even know that, but it can be cultivated. It's just like learning Chinese. At first you don't hear the syllables, you have to train your ears, but once you train your ears you begin to hear Chinese, and that's the same thing. You have to learn to train your bodily awareness.
Speaker 2:So that's one, and then the other one which is interesting, which is conscious breathing. So you can regulate a lot by breath. You can down regulate your nervous system very quickly through breathing and you can actually up regulate yourself too. You can actually raise, you know, and then you know, I don't know, you know, the extremes are these people who sit in Tibet in the snow, in the frozen snow, and they have to, kind of they get put frozen blankets put on their shoulders and they have to dry the blanket in the winter snow because of their ability to raise your body temperature through breathing, you know, put on their shoulders and they have to dry the blanket in the winter snow because of their ability to raise your body temperature through breathing, you know. So I mean, these are extremes of what people can do, and so this is, I think, the two that come out in our data as being the ones that people kind of I didn't know that yeah, even if you don't have to defrost a blanket in this.
Speaker 2:You don't have to try a blanket. We don't.
Speaker 1:We only do that to some of our participants chris, I'm gonna I'm gonna start to wrap it up soon, but I was just wondering if there's anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to mention or or leave as a as a parting discussion point um, I think that you know, shifting away from a kind of a fixed view of resilience is very important.
Speaker 2:And then realizing, once you begin to see it as a dynamic view and this ability to shift states, a lot opens up. And I think when you do that and think about this way, actually that begins to free the mind of a you know kind of a very sometimes stuck view of this topic. And I think then, you know, beginning to then operationalize that with skills is really crucial to think that actually, yeah, we all have a skill profile, we all have certain skills and if actually we can strengthen those, so I think that this journey of you know kind of, I guess, freeing our mental view of resilience and then taking a skill-based view and then building our skills is, I think, the essence of what I find is important for people and I think that it is a lifelong journey.
Speaker 2:You know, if I look at myself, you know, was I resilient, you know, at 20? You know, I had a natural, you know, young resilience, which means I can, you know, stay up all night, go to sleep and get up and I'm well again, because my body resilience was still at a highly functioning state. But I think that if I look at what I've learned in my life I've probably learned about, of the 12 resilience skills we talked about, I'm probably pretty good at nine of them Do you know what I mean? Which means I can handle most things. So I think that and I had a burnout once, I had a burnout about 15 years ago, so I kind of was, and a burnout is a form of depression.
Speaker 2:So I was in a, you could say in a low resilient state. So I think that if I look at my life once you take this view of variability and you take the skill building view, then actually it becomes a lifelong journey and it's a very rewarding journey. One. It becomes a lifelong journey, you know, and it's a very rewarding journey. You know one's ability to yeah, I guess regulate your internal states and begin to see things differently. So I think that's maybe the point that I haven't spoken so much about this, this lifelong journey, quality of it love it, chris, listen.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for for spending time talking to me today. I've thoroughly enjoyed that conversation. There's a lot that I've learned there, but where can people find you if they're interested in reaching out to you, mate?
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I think you know the book is one way, of course, read the book the Resilient Culture. It's available on Amazon and you know Waterstones and so on. And then the other way is just reach out to us, you know, over the website wwwawarenesscom, and you know easy to find us and happy to speak to anybody. I really, and really also also to you. I very much appreciated the kind of openness and curiosity and softness in the conversations, you know. So I really all in our pre-conversations. I really appreciate that and I think that that's necessary. I think a lot of people are struggling with these topics and I think it's just really good to just be open and soft and, you know, kind of be curious. I think that when you kind of go back to that you find new things. So thanks for creating that.
Speaker 1:My pleasure Likewise. Chris, thank you very much for your time and I look forward to speaking to you again soon. Take care.