Why they founded Surface Deep

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On this week’s show, Chris and Julia meet Claudia Plen McCormack and Mia Serra to discuss their newly formed leadership training company, Surface Deep, and their approach to “deep inclusive leadership.” Both late-diagnosed with ADHD, Claudia and Mia draw on their experiences of burnout and masking in corporate environments to help organizations move beyond superficial diversity initiatives and tick-box wellness programs. They introduce the distinction between “surface action”—where people mask their true selves and say the right things—and “deep action,” which embraces authenticity and vulnerability to build genuine psychological safety.

The conversation explores how their methodology combines leadership theory with neuroscience and embodied movement practices to create real-time insights. Through simple but powerful movement exercises—like following and leading activities—participants discover their behavioral patterns and tendencies without needing to intellectualise everything. Claudia and Mia challenge the prevailing corporate culture where constant productivity leaves no room for reflection, and where wellbeing initiatives often backfire by missing what employees actually need.

They argue that creating environments where people can truly be themselves doesn’t just improve wellbeing—it unlocks the productivity, creativity, and innovation that organisations desperately need, with research showing diverse teams are 60% more productive when they can work authentically. As burnout reaches crisis levels globally, they offer a different path forward: building psychological flexibility and safety into the very DNA of organisations.

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The full transcript, generated by Descript (so there are probably errors)…

Chris: Hello and welcome to WB 40 Podcast, the weekly podcast with me, Julia Bellis, Claudie Plen McCormack, and Mia Serra.

Everybody here we are again, WB40 and very good. It is to be here too. Julia, you’re gonna tell us what you’ve been up to this week, please?

Julia: I recently got back from holiday and that was a bit of a shock I have to admit because being at work is very different being on holiday, but I think I’ve got used to the discipline and rigor and routine again now, so I’m feeling a bit more at ease with it, and I always look for an excuse to talk about tooting bet Lido on this podcast.

And I did get the opportunity to go to the Lido at the weekend without instantly jumping into ice cold water. And I did a bit of a watercolor workshop, which was really fun actually. And I’m always a bit scared of painting ’cause I don’t know what I want to do. So it was quite nice to be with a group of people where it didn’t really matter and we could try out different ideas and things.

So yeah, that was lovely. How about you, Chris? What have you been up to?

Chris: Well, it’s been a, it’s been a busy week. I’ve been in London and I’ve been up and down the country. I think I went to Chester last week. That was that was a bit like a bit of a drive up to, up to the northwest, to the British Computer Society meeting up there where I was their guest, guest speaker.

I’m assuming I got let down by a number of different people and therefore why was the last resort? And I’ve got a bit of a thing I’m talking about in the moment around software. You know, how BI versus Bill just changed and all of those kind of cool, cool things. So yeah, that was good fun. So yeah, it’s been a busy weekend.

And then the weekend, it was my, my kids, they were twins. It was their, both their birthdays. ’cause that’s kind of traditionally how twins are. Unless you got right on the midnight, you know, you have one, one on each side. And also my wedding anniversary on the same day, which was you know, kind of coincidental.

So that, and so. Very rarely do we get to do anything really. It’s always been the kids have, have dominated that day, but they’re getting old in now, so I can be a little bit less.

Julia: So you have to share your wedding anniversary with your twin’s birthday? I

Chris: do. I do. It’s like all eggs in my basket. I must never forget that day.

Julia: Yeah, that is bad. Do Well, what

Chris: can I say? I, you know. The gods with me.

Julia: And what about, what about you, our guests? Claudia, what have you been up to in the last week? So I,

Claudie: I have to say that I’m just really, really aware of the encroaching darkness at the moment. So what I’m finding is that every time I see a little bit of sunlight, like there’s been a couple of days with blue skies and I go running outside just get a little bit of nature.

So walking in trees and.

Julia: You know, brilliant tactic actually, and I think we should all try to copy at the moment. Grab the sunshine when you can.

Mia: Absolutely.

Julia: And how about you Mia?

Mia: That’s true actually because I, on, on Saturday, I walk, I walk a lot with my dog. And I walked across the heath from Kenwood to Parliament Hill and they have a little farmer’s market there.

And I go and buy tomatoes, really good tomatoes from the farmer’s market, from the isle of White. Highly recommended. And it’s just a really nice walk across the heath ’cause you just get to see exactly what’s going on with the leaves and the trees and where we are in the season and, and feel, you know, what the weather’s really like.

And the dog just runs and runs and runs and runs. So it’s just really nice check in with nature and the weather and the same as Claud said, get a little bit of sun. So that’s really been lovely.

Julia: The way to do that right now I think is early in the morning, isn’t it? There’s no light slot after work.

Claudie: Definitely. Yeah. True. You can get yourself out there. That’s first thing. That’s the way to do it.

Mia: Yeah. This’s. Quite late. Sunset. Actually, I have to wait for the sun to rise to walk the dog. So

Julia: the image, the

Mia: image

Julia: popped into my head when you were talking about walking across Hamster Heath was the latest Bridget Janes movie.

And she lives on the edge of hamster teeth, doesn’t she? And it features quite a lot.

Mia: Yeah. Well, I didn’t see any park rangers, any Hanson Park rangers. None to be had on my way to Parliament Hill. What, next time? What a

Chris: Well, Barry Norman, well done for bringing the film element into this. So thank you Julia.

Let’s track on and we’ll talk about surface deep.

Julia: Claudia m are here today. To talk about their recently formed leadership training company, I believe. Can you tell us a bit about what this company is and why you’ve decided to form it?

Mia: Well, that’s a very good question. I think it’s, it’s something that came together very organically. We were brought together by a friend of mine who said, both of you’re talking very much about the same thing you should really meet. And, and we’ve found out that we’d had very similar experiences in the corporate world.

And we’d got to a very similar point in sort of realizing that we were not working at our best in a, in a sort of average corporate environment with the kind of management and the kind of culture and the the the way things work. But we. We know and we were aware that a lot of people, for example, who are neurodiverse or are slightly different in other ways or would also be struggling or have been struggling with sort of your typical environment corporate environment. And so I think it was, that was sort of one of the starting points of understanding how we’d both experience burnout. We both experienced less than optimal environments where, and we have a lot to give.

And it was, it was. This idea that we really want to help people to be able to work and sustainably and to be you know, instead of feeling like they’re burning out or they’re constantly exhausted or they’re masking their behaviors to try and fit in. You know, what about, you know, if you could actually truly be yourself, if you could actually be a, you know, all your talents could be expressed and everything that you, you, you can do.

Could contribute to that company and that team and, and that has an effect on the bottom line as well. We know that diverse teams, teams that have many different types of people, and that can be neurodiverse as well, are 60% more productive than teams that are not diverse. And that’s an, that’s an HBR stat.

So we know that there is a benefit to having. Many different types of people and styles in an organization and inside teams. The question is how to do it.

Julia: What types of behavior had you observed as contributing to what did you call it, the sort of average corporate culture and what led you to want to change those?

Claudie: You know, one of the things that brought Mia and I together actually there were so many things, but we both come from kind of quite big corporate environments. You know, Mia started in finance. I have moved through kinda big tech management consultancy.

You know, we both worked in startups also, that kind of environment. And what we’d experienced was an environment where being different was not welcome. Where even though there was a lot of talk, maybe as we we say, you know, on the surface about we need to grow, we need to innovate, we need to have new thinking, all of that kind of thing.

Actually, if you’re coming into that environment as someone who genuinely is almost like an outlier. Yeah. With your perspective, with your way of thinking. As you know, Mia’s mentioned both of us are late diagnosed, A DHD, you know, which also brings a different way of thinking all sorts of benefits, but sometimes you don’t fit.

And you feel like you’re on the edge. And I think on top of that, what we’d noticed was that, you know, we’d experienced a series of life shocks, as everyone does. You know, you go through periods when you experience bereavement, when you’re experiencing, you know, some people might go through a divorce, they might be going through caring responsibilities.

Yeah. When we were doing that, the support didn’t exist. What we have found both through those personal experiences, but also being really aware of, there’s some shocking statistics out there. Some of the research that we’ve been looking at recently that, you know, 48% of what workers globally are going through burnout or experiencing some form of burnout because we’re expected to do more with less.

. We’re all going through, you know, stress mental health difficulties. Neurodiversity is only one form of kind of intersectional challenge. It might be gender based, it might be, you know, different cultures. And so bringing all of that kind of knowledge and experience together, what we became aware of was you know, some really big threats facing organizations today.

One of them being the world’s going a little bit crazy.

Everyone’s trying to innovate, everyone’s trying to grow, and people are falling off the radar and they’re struggling.

Julia: So when you say the world’s going a little bit crazy, I mean there’s loads of things that that could be a reference to actually at the moment.

But one of the other hot topics on this podcast is AI and I guess that has all kinds of reverberations through the workforce, doesn’t it?

Claudie: Absolutely. One of the things I’m really conscious of is we are posting so much change and it’s constant and what we talk about is kind of storms approaching.

. And one of them is ai. And actually one of the things that we were looking at today is not just. How do you engage with that kind of change?

Julia: So is this a goal of your training?

To be able to take a reasoned look at what might be ahead and plan for it, rather than being taken by surprise and reacting more reactively. Or is it different flavor?

Claudie: I think it’s, yes. I think that is definitely, you know, potentially one goal of the clients that we work with. But actually, I suppose Mia and I have talked more about how we want to build psychological safety, psychological flexibility into the DNA of organizations into their strategic thinking in terms of giving leaders the skills to deal with whatever turns up.

And do it sensitively and authentically.

Mia: There’s also an element of, of, of reflection. I think that’s one of the things that we were talking about is that, you know, every, if everyone’s moving so fast and being constantly productive, there isn’t a point where people say, okay, what worked, what didn’t work?

You know, what is working? What could we do better? There’s a sort of, you know, some, often there’s a nod to that or say, we should do that because somebody told us that we should. And, but a very authentic, you know. Reflection on and, and a listening process of understanding what is going on for everybody and what is working for them.

And I think there’s, that’s, that’s the idea as well in, in, in the process that we, that we’ve developed is that people will get a chance to self-reflect on how they might. React in certain situations and what their patterns are as leaders and where they could look to including different kinds of tools and different kinds of kinds of techniques.

And also how they can build in reflection. You know, whether that’s with the team or self-reflection.

Claudie: Yeah, absolutely. I think the there’s a combination of different factors here. So me and I have developed an approach that we call deep inclusive leadership. So that’s really exactly answering this question of how do we not only just do what’s needed on the surface.. You know, being polite, saying the right things you know, which can lead to a lot of stress, but actually create kind of a deep sense of belonging, safety.

And as Mia says part of the model and I can tell you a little bit about the model we developed that goes with that. Part of that is combining leadership theory. . Which is really old fashioned in a lot of organizations. People are still using the same models that someone was talking about the nineties or the forties or the 1860s.

You know, they’re not diverse voices or thinking. Taking into account neuroscience, they’re not taking into account, you know, what happens to system as me just said. So we’re combining the theory and team development theory and communication theory with. Movement with everything you need to calm your nervous system down.

Julia: So can I just dig into a bit of that? Actually these, this idea of, you know, how things operated in the 1860s and I don’t know much about the history of leadership, but if I am imagining it and filling in the gaps, I can see leadership being a sort of a top down military style operation. You do, as I say.

Then maybe information feeds back up to the top where the decision making happens. And can you describe a little bit how you are trying to change that? Okay.

Mia: Well that kind of links in with this idea that we include in, in, in our thinking, which is about force versus flow.

And I think that the military style leadership format, which is. S really the benchmark for a lot of things. You know, whether it’s time management or whatever else, it’s always, you know, very sort of military and specific. And if you’ve got to make your bed and you’ve gotta get up exactly at six o’clock and all these things, and that might work for certain people, but that doesn’t really include a sense of, maybe that doesn’t work for, for others.

And this idea of forcing we’ve had for many decades or many centuries that we can force people into. Being a certain way and being productive, or if we just tell them what to do, you know, in a scary way they’ll do better. You know? But actually, you know, we, there is a lot of research that shows that empathetic leaders get a lot better results than leaders that are forceful and also.

This idea from a, when we’ve, there’s been quite a lot of re research recently on the flow state, and if you can create an environment where your team is in a flow state and where they are safe to make mistakes and say, you know, random things and bring up new ideas, they can. Be in a state where they’re being naturally innovative in a peak state, and that can be on an individual level, but also in a team level.

And they can be going in directions that, you know, that weren’t, maybe not even thought of at the beginning in a very structured sort of, you know, military format. Not to say that there isn’t a place for structure, but I think it’s become the be all and end all of everything. And, and yet now we know and that that is not.

Necessarily the best thing for everybody. And also that isn’t the state, the flow state isn’t a state of force. So it’s a question of when do you have structure and when do you allow, and, and I think there’s a certain vulnerability in allowing flow, in allowing a team to flow in the direction they’re going or to flow with, with a project that’s going in a certain way.

And, and, and, and, and. Maybe not stopping or interfering if that’s actually going to be beneficial to the business. And, and that’s, some of that actually applies to the, to AI as well in terms of we are gonna, instead of saying we are bringing in ai, you know, and you are gonna have to deal with it. You know, it could be a much more flowing thing of like, listen, we want you guys to be able to have free your minds up so you can innovate more and be more in a state of creativity or innovation.

And this is gonna take. The admin off your shoulders and all these basic tasks that you don’t really want to be doing anyway, and that’s gonna really help you to do these other things, you know, and, and, and you can, you can be more in flow. So there’s, there’s many different applications to that, and I think that.

That was, that’s a really good point you made about this sort of military basis to things that still, I still get emails about time management, about, you know, making your bed and shining your shoes and that being the ideal scenario of the most in control person,

Chris: So, I’m thinking when, when you’re talking about that leadership style from the 1860s Julia, that. Such a lot of the economy was then based on, on kind of manual labor or, or production of, of things where your process is more synchronous, it’s more reliant on the, on the person before you’re doing something at the right time.

People have to have to work in context. It’s more repeatable. Yeah, and and we are working now far more in a knowledge based company. Where with far more people who aren’t necessarily working synchronously at all, they’re working asynchronously, they’re handing off work. You know, that doesn’t necessarily have to be done this moment or whatever.

And that, that’s a challenge if you’ve grown up in a world where, I mean, I was just mentioning the other day to somebody I was at, I was at an event and I was wearing a suit for the first time in Lord knows how long. I dunno why I decided to wear a suit, but I. I thought to myself, you know, I hadn’t worn a suit for a long time and I wear a suit today.

And then thinking back to a time when divas do just a fairly simple job, you know, crawling from the desk and plugging cables in, I, I would be wearing a shirt and tie and it would’ve been, oh, if I hadn’t you know? Mm-hmm. So some of the things that change in terms of why we manage people, the way we manage them and what we expect the outcomes to be.

I think they’re probably down to, you know, sometimes the, the, that they, they change quickly and sometimes they take change slowly. And if you think about that kind of manual production line type of, you know, work where, or even sort of physical work with people doing calculations in a, in a, in an accounts department or in a typing pool or whatever it might be.

When somebody is not performing at their best, it’s often because they’ve. You can see why, right? There’s a, there’s a physical manifestation of why they’re not working at their best. Whereas in knowledge work, it’s much harder to see the injuries or the reasons why people aren’t working out at their best.

And, you know, I think we desperately need a different way of looking at things. It’s a, it’s a different world we live in and it’s different type of work we do. So I think it would be odd if we decided that we, we all had to, you know, work like you know people working in an enormous factory churning at machine parts.

Claudie: . It’s really interesting what you’ve just said because this is really guiding all of the work that we’re doing, this idea that you cannot take at face value what you see on the surface. There’s so many different reasons. So just as a few examples. You know, post COVID, so many people are working remotely.

They’re working in, you know, in hybrid teams you don’t see each other all the time. And so it becomes very easy to mask exactly as you said, what’s going on underneath the stresses you’re experiencing, what might be happening at home what might be getting in the way of your performance, your ability to deliver.

And, you know, bringing in this idea of neurodiversity, bringing in the idea of, you know, caring responsibilities, all the stuff that. Sometimes we don’t. People talk about bringing your whole self to work, but it’s not welcomed..

Julia: Mia mentioned that word vulnerability which fits in with what you were saying, Claudia, about all of these life events that really do take up somebody’s mental energy but are not visible.

Especially in this. A hybrid work environment that we all find ourselves in now. And then I was thinking about leaders being vulnerable, mm-hmm. Do you have anything to say about that and the impact that, that can have on a team?

Claudie: this is, this is really interesting for us. So, you know, we, we kind of referenced this model that we’ve created that goes with a deep inclusive approach.

And we’re calling it the tree model. For sustainable. Yes, sustainable leadership. And as you imagine, you know, the central image is a tree because what we were thinking about is actually being able to grow healthily. Yeah. The trees grow with an ecosystem, so you’re constantly connected. Your team members, your might be stakeholders, your family, the external environment.

And you know, one of the things that we’re finding is. That vulnerability actually sits as part of that model. So where it starts, if you imagine kind of the roots being really strongly you know, the foundations of everything for a leader that they need to be stable. They need to be feeding themselves.

They need to be, you know, there’s so much having that flow coming from the base, but also building trust. Yeah. Testing themselves, all of that kinda stuff. That’s the foundation of everything. And if your roots aren’t kind of. Strongly anchored into the ground, the tree can fall.

Julia: In this analogy, is the tree a team or is it a leader?

It can be both.

Claudie: Of course it can. Yeah. That metaphor can run around. So a tree, we can, we talk to leaders about being the tree. Yeah. So really kind of, anchoring themselves into the ground building trust from the ground up. You know, when we get into the trunk, that’s when we start to promote resilience.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Claudie: Which actually leads into this concept of psychological safety, psychological flexibility. But when these storms come, how do you bend and flow in the wind?

Julia: Ah, that, that’s such a beautiful image. I was just coming up with trees flowing in the breeze. Not falling over and Oh, I’m sure there’s metaphors plenty about that.

Claudie: Exactly. So this idea that resilience is partly that psychological flexibility.

Julia: Yeah.

Claudie: The psychological safety that comes from the trust in the roots. But also if you imagine that, you know, a tree has rings and every year as the tree grows, those rings almost represent wisdom that you are kind of learning from everything that’s happened.

As, as Mia said earlier, you’ve taken the time to reflect. You’re looking at what worked, what didn’t work. Yeah. And then you build from that place and then, you know, in the kind of the tree canopy where the branches are kind of reaching up into the sky and the leaves are growing. We have empathy and equity, not because they are kind of fluffy concepts.

You know, we all want everyone to be nice to each other, or we all want everyone to have an equal voice, even though, you know, a big part of psychological safety is having a voice. Yeah. And being heard. Listened to, but actually, because when you look at what drives innovation and business growth, those things are really central.

Julia: I think it’s really hard in our hybrid working environment to create. An atmosphere where people who are more introvert and more reflective naturally and less kind of outward facing, it’s more of a challenge to create an environment where those people can speak up.

Would you agree? And would you have any, well, can you help me actually? What are your tips, is what I’m asking.

Mia: I tend to be quite introverted in my, in my working style. I think it’s, it goes back to that. Idea of understanding that everybody’s different and that you, you don’t have to do a training course on introverts to under, you know, you can just ask someone.

You can say, listen, I, you know, I, I haven’t heard that much from you. And, and, and I’d like to make it easier for you to make a contribution. What would be the best way, what would feel easiest for you to contribute? You know, is it writing? You know, should we have a one-to-one rather than a group? Meeting, would you like to write your thoughts?

You know, I’d like you to, to contribute more. And I think it’s having enough interest and, and again, empathy comes in here as well because you have to care enough to ask that person. Because I think what we’ve done a little bit with neurodiversity and what’s happened in society generally is that people have said, oh, neurodiverse people, they need headphones in a quiet area and they need.

You know, dim lighting or something and, and it’s just like, what? I mean, you know, it’s okay. I mean, maybe sometimes, but that’s not gonna help if I’m, if I’ve got, you know, rejection sensitivity or I’ve, I’ve take, been offended by something and then. I don’t feel I can talk anymore because I feel like everyone hates me.

You know? And the only way you’ll find that out is by saying, listen, you’ve been a bit quiet and I’d really like to hear from you. And actually taking the time to notice and ask. I think Claudia does this really well as well in the beginning of workshops, as well as just saying, what do you need in order to learn best?

And you know, and asking people, ’cause we can’t assume to know. Each person says, you know what I’ll need, I need this, or I need that. And that really helps us to create an environment for, for, for the, the people who are present. They can say, you know, and we can, we can, we can try and guess ’cause we know a little bit about neurodiversity, but we, we can’t possibly read people’s minds.

And that’s where communication and empathy really comes in, into its own.

Chris: Does this, does this have an effect?

Think about the neurodiversity kind of angle, the A DHD angle, you know, as we get older, if we’ve been masking for a long time, that’s kind of, that’s kind of how we are, right? That’s, that’s kind of how our, part of our working model. So is it, is, does it come a point where you, where you have to kind of accept that that’s, that’s how it is and actually you’re better off working with the mask?

Or, or is it always good to get onto the mask? What, what do you think?

Claudie: That’s a really good question. I think that in reality there are times when we all mask and we all maybe kind of flex and change a little bit to fit into our environments to fit in with the people that we want to connect with. Yeah. And there’s, you know, sometimes there’s nothing wrong with that.

I think that the danger is when this becomes, first of all, going back to Julia’s question. You know, Mia was talking a lot about this, you know, this week about the way that some kind of founders or CEOs hiring their own image. Yeah. So if they’re an extrovert, they will either just hire people that echo that, or they’ll hire people who can pretend Gosh.

And Yeah.

Julia: You, you have you just imagine this room full of extroverts. Yeah. You know? Yeah.

Claudie: And so, and so the, you know, there’s a question for us about what’s the cumulative stress. And equally, what’s the brain drain that occurs if you lose people to stress, if you lose people to not being able to hold that mask permanently or every day?

And what’s the, the kind of, I suppose yeah, the, the impact on the culture, innovation, engagement, all the things that we’re looking for if people are constantly hiding really wonderful things about themselves.

Mia: I think it’s also to just interject there a bit as well, is it takes energy to mask. So we, we had this idea for Carousel, for LinkedIn is to have this, you know, pitch at sort of line drawing of somebody who’s working but actually spending 50% of their energy pretending to be fine.

You know, or you know, actually Yeah. You know, pretending that you know that, that the environment they’re in is not disturbing them and you know. The, actually we have, you know, we have a certain amount of energy that we can expend and if we are using that for, you know, so, you know, to, to answer your question, Chris, yes, you could keep, you know, somebody could continue to mask and they’re in the habit of that, whatever, whatever else.

But if they are, feel, if they get. To, to feel so comfortable that they feel like they don’t need to do that all the time. Then you are unlocking productivity and, and, and creativity and innovation and possibilities, which is beneficial for that person and for the business. So it’s, it’s, it’s a load. It’s, you know, and, and, and Chloe talked a bit about this as well, of this labor of, of you know, using your energy for the, for the kind of purposes of masking rather than for the purposes of productivity.

Claudie: I think, yeah, just to, to drop that in there. There’s some literally brand new research out at the moment, which I’m finding fascinating. About the emotional labor that is the consequence of what they’re calling surface action over deep action. Yes. All. Tell me more

Julia: about that.

Claudie: So this is, this is really interesting.

We were like, oh, coincidentally, it’s same as our company name. Brilliant. But really what they’re, what they’re finding is surface action is when you are masking, when you are saying the right thing. Yeah. When you are, you know, you’re not really entering into a difficult conversation or taking the risk of being vulnerable, of being yourself, all of that stuff.

Whereas deep acting is that kind of authenticity. Which can be vulnerable, but is also enormously powerful. Builds trust, builds connection, builds psychological safety. And so there, there’s, there are real consequences for that

Julia: masking. So this is really interesting. I think your. Now you are asking people or nudging people or creating an environment which encourages people to take that risk of creating those real connections, which I think is something that to lots of people, feels really scary.

And you just alluded to the payoff, claudie, and the payoff is, are these real relationships? Can you talk a bit about what those relationships might lead to, or, you know, what, what transformation you could be able to kick off if this works?

Claudie: I, you know what? I think it’s really interesting because people think about that relationship stuff.

Yeah. Connection has been really fluffy, but actually if we go back to that image of the tree and we think about the connection between the roots and that innovation growth piece.

Julia: Yeah,

Claudie: they’re ultimately connected. You know, there’s a lot of evidence, again, a lot of research that looks at the difference between the performance of acquaintance groups versus friendship groups.

Turns out if you have more trust, if you feel more connected, not that you’re best buddies and you spend every night together, it actually contributes to team performance. And so this, yeah, so this idea, again, going back to your question of, you know, is the tree the leader or the team both. Yeah, about that whole growth and connection.

Julia: And I can imagine that being in a team that has somehow nailed this is very satisfying experience if you can achieve more than you otherwise could without those sorts of connections.

Speaker 2: Yeah,

Claudie: exactly. And I think, you know, we also talk a lot about, you know, everyone’s talking about burnout at the moment.

But on an individual level. But what we are more interested in is you know, what does that look like at a team level? What does that look like at the strategic senior leadership organizational level when it’s literally, you know, we talked about it being built into the DNA of the organization. In terms of behaviors.

In terms of culture. Like what can you achieve then, and this, you know, the risk of burnout at that kind of macro level. You know, it’s almost like we’re all driving along a motorway and you can see a pile up in the distance, you know, with flames and smoke and Exactly. Disaster occurring. Yeah. You’re not quite sure if you’re in that lane.

Julia: Yeah.

Claudie: Until you’re right. Kind of right up there.

Julia: You can kind of hope that you’re gonna take a turn off before you get there. You

Claudie: know. Exactly. But emphasis when we’re talking to leaders and, and organizations at the moment, this is what they’re frightened of. You know, we know this is coming. We don’t have the skills.

We don’t have, how, how do we actually prepare our leaders and our teams to circumnavigate that to, you know?

Mia: There’s also been a lot of talk about wellbeing and wellness and, a lot of. Fun activities and trying to, you know, sort of make people feel better on a sort of macro level.

And that can really backfire. And I think, and also there’s some research that shows that eight, I think it was 8% of people would consider leaving their job if there were. Presented with benefits that they didn’t, that did not help them. And I think there’s that, there’s this kind of idea of that you’re give you, you are giving people something so you think that they, you know, they should be grateful and happy, but actually if it completely misses the mark and they’re dealing with, you know, some kind of issue and you give them something else and say, well just, you know, be happy with this.

Then it really sort of shows them that the company’s not listening and it just magnifies that feeling. So I think we have to be a bit careful with, well, the general term of wellbeing and wellness and this sort of macro term of, of, of, you know, finding this way to make everybody feel better and, and go back to sort.

Basics, which is again, going back to that sense of, of of people being feeling safe to express what they want and need in, you know, in a work environment. And leaders being, you know, able to actually listen and, and. Accommodate for different types of people. And I think that’s, again, like there’s a lot of money spent on wellbeing and wellness and, and there’s a lot of investment in that because that’s a real big buzzword at the moment, especially with a lot of people.

I think it’s now 9.5 days of, of sickness. Days taken on average per year for employees, and that’s the highest it’s ever been. So, you know, there, there’s a big push to sort of get people back into the office and not off on sick leave. But again, it’s which direction do you go in? And this is, we are just presenting something different that we know from our own experience and from the experience of others and also looking at the research.

This is effective and this is not just a sort of. We’ll just sort of put that on top of everything and make everybody feel better in a kind of wellbeing, wellness way. We’re tick boxing. We’ve, we’ve ticked that wellbeing box

Chris: and that’s the, that’s the trick, isn’t it? Right. We sometimes, we all, as a business, we’ll say, okay, well let’s, let’s get someone to talk about well wellness.

And that’s like a day or half a day or a couple of days, whatever it is, and it’s like, that’s done. Then we’ve done the wellness thing. Whereas really take your, you have to, you have to. Really commit to this and, and it has to be an ongoing, it’s a learning experience, right? It’s a, it’s a, it’s a way of thinking, a way of behaving that that, that you need to essentially commit to building into your, your business.

Is that how you see your model working in terms of helping people to get through those times when actually they think it might be a bit. Actually we need to put all this well, on sort of one side, it’s just a, it is a bit expensive at the minute ’cause we’re, we’ve got a, we’ve got a serious problem.

And how do you, how do you make sure you maintain it and live those values?

Claudie: Well, I think that’s, yeah, I mean, you’ve really described it there because it can’t just be about, you know, as Mia said, you know, we’ve worked with clients who say. You know, we know there’s a problem with, you know, people struggling. Can you come in and run a workshop on, you know, work life balance for half a day?

And the reaction you get is, can be actually quite angry, you know, because it’s so tone deaf. And actually one, this isn’t enough. If it’s not strategic imperative that prioritize within the business, you’re not gonna fix this problem. You know? And you will lose people. You know. You know, we talk about the fact that we need to stop breaking people.

Julia: So, have you been asked that? Have you been asked to come in and run a half day wellness workshop and said no? Yes.

Claudie: Well, I, no. I’ll be completely transparent. I have done it and I have experienced it. So I, yeah, I’ve had that experience and it was a learning experience for me because what I realized, I took it face value.

I thought, you know, that’ll be useful. They know their people. And actually it was a really interesting response internally. You know how that felt, how it landed.

Julia: Mia mentioned Claudia’s question at the beginning of a workshop, which I think is really powerful actually.

What do you need? In order to learn best. Was that the question? To learn at your best? Yeah. And there’s an element of knowing yourself in order to answer that question. Do you prioritize a knowing yourself as a.

Mia: I think actually that’s part of the movement element and you know, and that’s, that’s why it’s not just we’re discussing a concept, you know, in our minds, and it all sounds very clever, but actually there’s a lot of discovery that happens in the, in the movement exercises that we do. People start to understand.

What their tendencies are. And I think, you know, one of the interesting things that we did in the movement exercise in the workshop last week was we, you know, I did a sort of following leading exercise and so, so people would choose to be, to follow someone else and just follow the way they were walking.

We were doing, just walking around the room and just to experience what it feels like to follow someone and to copy what they’re doing. And then we would switch roles. The other person would lead. And just to again, notice if anything changed. So, you know, you know, are you now trying to impress that person or do something interesting rather than just walk?

You know, and I, I would just give some suggestions of, has anything changed? And also what, what would you need? To come back to feeling authentically you and also leading. And, and we’ve had, we had some really interesting responses that people were saying, oh, actually I was really comfortable when I was leading, but following, you know, was really not very fun or boring or one, one lady saying, I didn’t do either of those because I always, you know, just.

Do everything myself and I, you know, I found myself walking around the room on my own and, and thinking, oh wow, everyone else is leading and following, and I’m, I’m just walking on my own. And that’s what I do. So people have these very deep realizations from quite, actually quite simple, seemingly simple movement activities.

And, and, and that’s just a very, very small element of, of, of what we do. So it’s actually that, it’s not like go away and self-reflect. But within the workshop. You’re starting to understand and a little bit more about what your preferences are and how you behave in a group or in a leadership role. And also as we do these movement exercises, we’re also working with the concepts of the tree.

So we’re rooting and grounding into the floor. We are feeling our feet on the floor, and we are using our whole body. So again, we are not just thinking with our brain and trying to think our way out of a problem. But we, what happens when we start to use the whole body is we get insights or we get, you know, get a bit more creative in the same way as if you go for a walk or if you start to, you get more insights and you sort of get less rigid in your, in your thinking.

So this is something that people were saying, they have never seen this. Done in leadership workshops and it’s fascinating and new and different and it really brings the work. You know, it makes it much more it happens much more in the moment that you’re not like then going away and reading your notes, but you’re actually having real insights in, in real time.

Chris: Loads

Julia: of food for thought there. Thank you, Mia and Claud. I’m really interested in how such a simple exercise can have such lasting deep effects and impacts. And I’m gonna be thinking about that question. About how can I feel authentically myself and lead. I think that, that there’s a lot to think about in that.

But now I want to talk about what our plans are for the next week. Mia have you got anything coming up in the next week that you wanna share with the listeners of WB 40?

Mia: Well, I do some interesting. Movement things. So I, I tend to do improvisational movement sessions and I get a lot out of that.

I think one of the things I always say is, you know, I dunno how I am until I’m, I’m moving. And so yeah, I’ve got a couple of improvisational movement sessions in the diary and I’m really looking forward to those.

Julia: Wow, that sounds amazing. I have recently after. About three or four even decades absent return to doing ballet lessons.

Oh. And I’m really enjoying that kind of movement actually. And it’s a massive challenge for the brain. So I dunno how I am until I’m moving is a really interesting point. How about you Claudie? What have you got coming up?

Claudie: So, you know, just to fit into, to, you know, what everyone else is saying. I am actually going dancing next weekend as well, but my major goal for the week is actually to go and watch the second part of Wicked in the Cinema.

So that’s awesome. Awesome goal. I’m, I’m over excited. The, the triumph of good over evil, you know, green people magic.

Julia: I hope, I hope you achieve it actually, and, you know, get satisfaction and joy from it. And how about you, Chris? Are you going dancing in the next week?

Chris: Well, I dunno about dancing. I, I, I can’t see that in my immediate future, but you never know, you know, hope springs a eternal I.

It’s, it is gonna be a bit another busy week. I’m been in London actually on Thursday, so I take making the trip down to the capital and I’m doing a, I’m going to, it’s like a security technology, security conference, which, which is always interesting. And I’ll, you know, and then meeting up with some people for lunch, so that’ll be nice to do that on, on Thursday.

And otherwise it’ll be a, a frantic week, no doubt of other things. How about you, Julia?

Julia: Oh, well, yes, I am working with people face to face on Wednesday all day, so I’m quite looking forward to that. Like to fit in with what we’ve been talking about today. It’s always nice to get that human physical interaction, isn’t it?

And then at the weekend, I am not dancing, but I am taking my family to see ballet shoes at the National Theater, which I loved that book. As a kid, I probably read it about seven times before I was 11, so I’m interested to see what they have done with it.

Chris: Very good. Well, thank you everybody. Thank you Claudia and Mia.

It’s been fantastic and we’ll see everybody again in the next episode. WB 40, whenever that is. I have no idea. So, but you know, good stuff. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Chris: Thank you.

Claudie: Okay. Thank you for listening to WB 40. You can find us on the internet@wbfortypodcast.com, and on all good podcasting platform.