Your Mind Matters With Maria Kempinska – Lesley Hetherington & John Milsom, In 2 Minds – Mentoring

We make hundreds of decisions every day. Yet in today's confusing world, making the right decision is difficult. I am Dr. Maria Kempinska and this is yous Mind Matters. All leaders have advisors. Even Alexander the Great employed Aristotle to advise him on his conquests. But which advisor is right for you? Today's topic is in two Minds, mentoring or psychotherapy. I'm delighted to be joined in this discussion by my guests, Lesley Hetherington, a business mentor, and John Milsom, a psychotherapist. They will both clarify their roles and help you decide. Welcome, Lesley. And can you begin by explaining your background and your mindset in your work? Thank you, Maria. Yes, with pleasure. So let's start with background, because in some ways that's the easiest one to speak to. And I'm going to describe my background both as formally and informally, because of course, formally we tend to look at qualifications. So from a qualification perspective, I started off life as a professional engineer, a biochemical engineer, and worked in that capacity for about eight years. I then went on and I went to business schools, I went to London Business School and I did what was then an msc, but really was an mba, and from that went into the business side of working in business as opposed to working as a specialist as an engineer, which would have been in operations. I also can add to my qualification list a postgraduate certificate in education, a diploma in Russian language, and a whole lot of certifications that come from maybe a non academically accredited institution. So that includes things like having done my NLP training right up to train the trainers, certificates and mediation, a whole bunch of things, some officially for professional use, but many of them really just for interest, but nonetheless I can claim them as formal experience or formal qualification, but in the context of mentoring, because in many ways I would say you bring your whole self to mentoring in as much as all the resources are potentially available but not always used. So your background and your informal background can be very relevant. So in that respect I'm talking to you from Scotland, which really is my home, and as much as the house I'm in at the moment is the house my parents built when they got married. So I have to call myself a Scot or I can't claim to be anywhere. But nonetheless, neither of my parents were Scottish, so I officially qualify for something that's described as being a third culture kid, that is basically somebody whose parents have different cultures or nationalities and then the child's brought up in the third one. My mum was English and pure English, but my dad was half Russian and was born and had his early years in China. In terms other things, in terms of background. Well, I'm an only child and the only one in my generation so that's obviously had an impact on who I am. It meant growing up in terms of family members. The people I talked to were from older generations and not so much my mum and dad's generation, but also my grandparents and my great aunts were an important part of my, you know, my life and my experience growing up. I often experience myself as being somebody who was on the edges of what was going on. I had a different perspective on life. And Maria, you invite. You introduced me as a business mentor and technically that's absolutely correct. And it is what I do at the Judge Business school where I mentor people on the masters in entrepreneurship who are mostly either have a business, are starting a business or a few of them are coming in thinking they want a business. But actually in reality they may decide that they don't want to be an entrepreneur. So that very much is being a business mentor. And my clients often come to talk to me about business, business issues, strategic business issues, things like designing their mission statement, getting their vision for their business and their future in alignment. But in reality, when I'm working with somebody, I almost always start with the human being. I start with who they are. I draw things like positive psychology and their key signature strengths. Maybe some of the other tests that are available through the University of Pennsylvania, like the grit surve. I will get them to talk about the things that really motivate them and maybe think about ask them the question if they had a magic wand, what is the difference they would like to make in the world? Because of course there are many businesses but I'm sure all of us have had business ideas that we would love it if somebody would create them and we'd absolutely be a customer. But there's no way we're going to give up our life energy even if we have the capacity to do it to create that particular business. I mean for me I would love it if somebody would start a fast food, vegan, gluten free food chain because it would absolutely cover not only all the things I need to do, but all the myriad of friends who occasionally I need to find food with. But I'm not going to give up my life to be the vegan gluten free McDonald's of the planet. And I think that's an important part to think about when you're thinking about business mentoring. That's brilliant. It's an interesting thing you said that's part of your life. Are you saying that not all mentors look at the personal side when they mentor in business? Well, I guess it's. We enter into this interesting issue of what makes you professional or not. And when you start off and things, I think often professionality means that you're working absolutely strictly within the information and the code of the discipline you've been trained in. So, you know, as a professional engineer, in my early years as an engineer, I'd go whizzing back to the content of my degree. Yeah, yeah. I would maybe think that something I'd learned sitting with my dad growing up and my dad was an instinctive engineer. He was also a formal engineer, but he was one of these people who would say, you know, I think the answer is about three and a half foot. And then, you know, my mom, who was much more mathematical but also an engineer, I really couldn't escape a structured way of thinking, could I? But she'd go down and do the equations and the calculus and yes, absolutely, it would be three and a half foot. But dad had an instinct for it, which you could argue wasn't his professional training. My mom had the discipline and the tools to do it absolutely by the book. Yeah, but so as you grow in experience and confidence, then the question becomes is it or is it not professional to bring other things into the picture. Now there are different views on this. I would say professionality is as much about a code of conduct towards the person that you're working with and that there is scope at times to bring in material or perspectives that come from another area. So someone who's strictly a business mentor will often only talk about business and will assume that the human being that's in front of them has got it all handled. But that's really not my experience. One aspect of how I came into business mentoring was post just after I got married, my ex husband got made redundant a week before we got married, I got made redundant four weeks after our marriage and you know, income stops, two company cars, go back all those sort of life things that you don't really want. But I had a brand new shiny MBA from London Business School. I thought it had to be worth something. So I sort of set myself up as a business consultant but using the tools that I had on my mba. And very quickly my reality on the people I was working with was that often the business problem was a symptom of a personal problem. Something had happened in the marketing manager's life such that he she had rather lost sight of the work agenda because they were being distracted by something, I don't know, a sick child, an aging parent, they were having an affair. Now, I wasn't in the business of sorting out that side of their lives, but if I didn't have enough tools, insight and knowledge to get them back in the room to have the business conversation, we were never going to get a tangible result that had real value for the business as well as the person in front of me. And yes, technically I could have charged for turning up and doing what I had to do, but it wasn't a real valuable result for my client. And that's really why I got into a whole lot of more personal development type things. I never wanted to do the job that you do or John does, but I wanted enough awareness, knowledge and tools that I wasn't completely at loss with the human being in front of me. Yes, that's lovely. And it's the perfect time to introduce and ask you, John, to give us an idea of what is your background and your mindset when you or at work and when you face a client. Thank you, Maria. Amazing. Lesley, listening to you introducing yourself and realize how much your background and views actually comply with my own. Obviously I'm working in a different field, as you've said, but I think the most important element of the way that I look at my work is that I call myself a holistic psychotherapist. And of course the word holistic means embracing many, many other things. Like you, it's important for me to understand all, everything which is going on within my client's life and try and take that into account when I work. So calling myself holistic psychotherapist and working in private practice, both one to one and sometimes with children. I've been working in that field approximately 20 years, bit more, I suppose, but mainly working with adults. I have a particular interest in the origins of disease and illness, where I started off, which is working in support groups, cancer support groups, and not really having the tools that I needed in order to be able to understand my clients fully. When they spoke of trauma, deep trauma, the sort of trauma that you were mentioning that they've experienced once in their life. So having a large particular interest in the in disease and illness and all its forms, I try to get my clients to a place just where they feel comfortable in their own skin. The presenting symptoms are mostly anxiety, usually anxiety, depression, obsession, all forms of loss and obsession. So in a way, like you, I've trained in business studies, construction, subtle science, healing, analytical psychology, even. I Suppose I can put my experience of being a seaman, working with the sea, working with the elements, as being important to my work. Understanding an adversary that actually is extremely difficult to understand. Working with it, rather than working and just giving it what you've got immediately in front of you. So my likes in terms of the way that I work with clients, let's take, for instance, my experience in building, like yours in engineering. I believe it's a creative art. Engineering and building, same thing, really. It comes in many elements that I feel the soul of my work. When I'm feeling construction. It has its own life, its own entity. And when a client brings their experience in any shape or form, in any type of business or career or illness or relationship, then we have to understand the importance of that soul that they feel within that business. I think that most people's illnesses contain a complex of interrelating conditions. And the toolbox that you mentioned, the broad toolbox, is really in help here, digging down to find that spanner that you need at the bottom of your box to do something which is something that you know is the right tool. You've just got to find out how to use it. And I think that things like cognitive behavioral therapy and hypnosis, I probably only use them once a year, two, three times a year. Okay. CBT might be coming up in everything to a certain extent, but hypnosis, probably less so. So most people's illnesses contain this complex of interrelating conditions. But the most important, I think, most important tool that I use, dream work. That through association of people's daily feelings, feelings from the past, traumas from the past, experiences from the past, we can talk about what the symptoms represent without actually talking about the problem directly, which is very often hidden to the client. So really, I think that sort of sums up how I initially work with a client. I have lots of views on how different clients and different situations can be solved, but that's how I use my background and my training, my qualifications, in order to get to where I need to get with a client. Can I jump to quite a large question for both of you? And it sort of moves on from what you're saying, John, to some extent, can a business be ill? And if so, how do you work with that, both in the, you know, sort of personal, as a person and as an organization? So, John, you might deal with an individual, and Lesley, you might deal with an organization. How would you deal with that? I deal with their experiences. So if they're, let's say, a company director, we deal with the relationships that are in the boardroom, what they have to deal with every day, especially if they're feeling anxiety in relation to, let's say, a particular individual, how to get through that decision making process and how to use your knowledge in order to get, get the cooperation of other people at the table. So anxiety is often often the biggest presenting symptom. And what I have noticed, and I think is common, is common knowledge really is that anxiety makes every symptom worse. It doesn't matter what your ailment is, but if you have anxiety, then the symptoms that you experience will be much, much worse. So we concentrate on what I call reducing the anxiety down to a grassroots level, like cutting the grass. Lawn always looks better when the grass is cut and we get down to that level and then we feel as though we can cope with taking on a bit more anxiety in different places, slowly increasing our involvement in other things that actually have been places which have been a no go area in the past. Does that answer your question? Yeah, it'd be lovely to hear what you think. We can then sort of join together and discuss that a bit further. It's great to hear how you would approach it, John, because you have the individual clients of all levels in business. What would you do? How do you approach something like that? Lesley? Okay, well, my first reaction when you said can a business be ill? Was absolutely, yes, without any doubt whatsoever. How I look at it sort of got three levels. It's got sort of a structural, very structural, analytical objective approach, which is things like does the business have a mission statement or not? And if so, is it functional? Because if those sources, if those are out, then everything else will also be out because there isn't the scope for alignment. And I've got quite a formal procedure for doing that. I look at it as like three levels of a business. Strategic, managerial, which is more about systems and management and then operational, and then across the functionals, hr, new sales, repeat sales, finance, operations, quality and policy. But equally the next level at which the business itself can be largely okay. I mean, it's got the right elements and people broadly understand them. But the next problem you can have that will make effectively a business ill is misplaced people. And what I mean by that is, and this is why all my business mentoring goes back to the human being, is that most of us have things that we can do if we have to, but we don't enjoy, they cost us rather than feed us. I mean, an example on that for me would be doing my company accounts. Am I capable of doing it? Yes, absolutely. But I don't enjoy doing it. It's a, it's a drain at something I put off. Ironically, I'm very good at helping other people with theirs, which links into things like positive psychology and key signature strengths. Where my signature strengths are things like forgiveness and mercy and loving and being loved and kindness and generosity, all of which play to helping somebody else with that task, but not so well for myself. Now a person who is doing a role that they hate or has responsibilities that they feel very uncomfortable with won't be functioning well. And to the extent that an organization only works as well as the sum of its point parts where you've got people in the wrong role, there's going to be elements of things that are going wrong and the business will be looking a bit sick. And then the third level, and it's, I've put it, you can have structurally, structurally fine, but culturally very, very sick indeed. And often, if you're looking at that objectively, some of it's about the human beings. But look at the systems and look at the systems, whether the systems are set up there to punish people, prevent them from doing the wrong thing, or whether the systems have been designed to support people to do the best work they can in their jobs. And if an organization grows completely organically, sort of reacting from one thing to the next, expect to find some very funny and some very sick systems because somebody somewhere in the past has done something that caused a panic. So everyone all hands to the pumps to fix it. But it's crazy because it was a one off occurrence that was going to happen once in a hundred years, but now everybody's having to, you know, walk with two walking sticks because that's what was would have been the right possible solution in that particular one off incident. So yeah, absolutely, you can have a sick business, you can have a sick business culture and you can have people who are in the wrong place and therefore everything's going sick fast. So if you assume that you can equate in systems terms, in terms of systems and structures, businesses with families, who is the most important in the, in a family dynamic or business dynamic to either mentor or do psychotherapy with within a family structure or a business structure, who's that is that to me? Yes, John, I think what we're talking about here is the relationship of the worker or is ailing in some way. And relationships, of course are everywhere. We have relationships when we go shopping, we have relationships at home, we have relationships with our children, etc. Etc. Etc. But Most of all, we have love relationships, relationship. A love relationship and a work relationship, two most important relationships. So if they are not working, then we are not working. We're not working adequately and we're feeling anxiety because we're not coping. So I think the relational work is possibly the largest part of my work. We have to look at, see how people are coping with what they do all day long. If we're going to talk about people being sick or a company being sick, then that's exactly what you were just talking about, Lesley. The company's sick. Why? Because one person within that organization, probably somebody quite close to the top of the organization, is making everybody else sick because they have a problem with some anxiety period in their lives. And yes, that's right. That's what a trauma does. It makes you react as though that's the most important thing that has developed on that particular day or that particular year and everybody else suffers as a result of that. I think there's ample evidence in terms of the political situation in the world at the moment to tell us that. But if we look at close to home, if we have a good home life, we feel content and everything's going well, then the. The we. Sorry, that threw me a little bit. If you have a good home life and you're concerned, yes, a good home life is very, very important. And to have a good home life, you have to have a good relationship, same as your work life. The amount of people that go to work just for the money instead of going to work, enjoying their work, coming home, pleased with what is taking place, and then looking forward to the next day immediately, it's a place of comfort and it's a place of enjoyment. If you had to swoop in, which most mentors or psychotherapists do not do, if you had to be proactive as opposed to reactive in an organization or in a family, who would you choose, John, to go into therapy with to make a big difference? That's a very interesting question. But if we're talking about, Say, a family, the most influential person and that can achieve the most is either a child round about the age of 11 or 12 or the mother or both the. And generally they will be causing the problem in, in the family if it isn't working. So that's the guide as to whether things are taking place or not. Now, what have we got in terms of the workplace? The workplace, I think, is that the sickness of a company is measured by somebody close to the top. It's not somebody further down. Although the Sickness is actually felt by the whole organization, without a doubt. And the more important your work is to you, then the more sickness you will feel as a result of being in the organization. And ultimately, I think that a bad boss in charge of an organization, excuse me using the word bad, it's not really what we're talking about here. But a person that isn't working in the interests of their workers within an organization ultimately will cause the organization to fail in some way or other. So it has huge financial costs. But actually, the person who's ill is actually not too worried about that. That's not what they are worried about. What they're worried about is feeling safe. And the example that Lesley was giving was a person that is desperately trying to feel safe, desperately trying to feel safe in an environment that they feel is dangerous to them. Now, that is a person that needs psychotherapy but is normally not the person that comes. That's why I was sort of saying if you had to take a bird's eye view and be proactive, which I think the world needs a bit more, if I can just jump in and ask exactly the same question to you. Lesley, this is random. I know, but I think proactivity is going to have to be the state, you know, the new way of dealing with things, because that's not what we're meant to do, because we have to ask people to join us in mentoring. But if you had to be proactive in both the family and in business, who would you choose to mentor in a family and in business? Okay, that wasn't the question I was expecting. Can I react in the first instance, the proactivity bit, and then come back to the who? Yes, because I do think this is going to be a bigger one, but yes. All right. Because in terms of the proactivity, you are absolutely right that in many ways the mental respond is asked to mentor. But I think there is an element of proactivity, because when I look at what I do in mentoring, there is almost always an education element. That's one of the reasons, I think, as a mentor, it's very important that you are a lifetime learner. And even if what you are studying isn't directly relevant to your client or your client's situation, it will nonetheless have value. And you can be proactive about education. Being proactive about digging into somebody else's problems is a whole different thing. But you can. And often education, understanding how something can work, should work whatever is of itself somewhat therapeutic. It sets people down the path of thinking and reflecting. So that was what was coming to my mind when you were talking about proactivity. But the who, The. The. In an ideal world, I mean, often when you go into a business, business and you look at it at the small, a small business unit. So even if you're working in a large corporation, looking at the business unit level. Yeah. The people who work, you can identify which is the union unit that isn't performing well. Now quite often then if you were to listen to what people are saying in their conversation, anecdotally, you can spot who the. The particular department or the particular person that seems to come up a lot. And in an ideal world, you'd be able to go in and help that person. Yeah, actually you mostly can't. So you can help the person who's feeling impacted by what's going on. And in terms of the ideal person, if I'm looking at it from a business health perspective, you'd find somebody that everybody else sees is competent and doing okay, doing well, so they have the respect of their colleagues and you would work with them to make things even better. And if you can, that's ideal because you're floating free of the problem rather than having to actively deal with the problem. And I've got an idea, I've got an example of that that came to mind. And it was one of the many universities that I've worked at. There was somebody in our department who now I know a lot more about things like trauma. I would say without doubt needed to be directed to John for some significant help with a very early stage trauma. But he managed to influence an entire department and then indirectly most of a faculty adversely just through his attitude, his inappropriate humor, his blocking everybody. Yeah, but he was the last person who would have gone for help. He was actually eventually the reason that I walked away from that particular institution and job. I mean, I loved my job, I believed in what I was doing. I had fabulous colleagues. But unfortunately, before things went really sour, the world saw me as the person who could get on with him. So I was ending up with anyone who needed to deal with him. They were coming to me and asking me if there was any way I could help. And I just went, I'm not here to do this. I'm not paid to do this. So that made me actually walk away from a job and a career and something that otherwise was absolutely perfect for me. Yeah, but in that context, if we could have helped our head of department, then perhaps the whole thing would have turned around. So if I can just add my experience as well. What I've noticed, particularly in the small to medium businesses, which slightly changes when you go into corporate world, because I've been in both, is that very often the boss is emulated by their staff, whether it's in the attitude or voice tone or in practically actually every single way, the way they dress, the way they respond to people. So if you have a bully of a boss, the rest of the staff will all become bullies. And it's an unconscious mechanism that goes on before. I really want to talk to you, John, about the mother child point you've made here, but before we do that, should then businesses, and especially large corporate businesses, where they are not personally involved, unless you're a fund and you might have be part of the funding of the business. But should every board have a psychotherapist on the board? Is that. That's a question? Yeah. Should they have a psychotherapist on the board? And if so, can they be. Can the psychotherapist be impartial? To whom do they. Whom do they refer to? Because a lot of stuff, especially on American tv, you have a lot of psychotherapists on American tv. Psychotherapists, stroke mentors, they become almost the same person and they are there 24, 7 and they respond and are reflective to their staff consistently. Do you think that should be part of the culture generally in business and actually in life, it wouldn't hurt a family to have somebody? Yes, I suppose the answer to that, the short answer is yes. And certainly in family. I have rather interesting views on how perhaps parenting should be influenced at a very early point, perhaps right at the beginning of a relationship. If we're going to look at the future of how families and also perhaps businesses look at their staff and look at the world and look at their future so that we actually start turning what looks to be a difficult situation developing within the world in terms of a culture of divisiveness rather than cooperation. If we're going to turn that round, I think we need to start working somewhere nearer the birth element rather than when it's all gone wrong, which is currently what we're doing now. So in terms of. I don't want to miss your question because I have a habit sometimes of answering the wrong question. I was just going to say, do you think then a therapist should go into the family setting? I do quite a lot of family work, but usually when I'm working with a family, I will work with them together and sometimes individually, or I'll get a colleague in to talk to Somebody else in the family, if I think that that's appropriate. And sometimes it is because it's usually quite divisive stuff when you're talking to a couple who are really, really at wars with each other and they tend to take that war directly into the therapy room. So sometimes to take it out of that and refer to a colleague who you think would be appropriate, I think is a very good thing. And certainly with the younger ones, I have several people quite local to me that I entrust that sort of job to and know the result. And then you get the family working together more. And once you get that understanding and knowledge, you get a better result. But. And there's a big but very often when it's a couple and they are punishing each other, it doesn't usually end well. If anything, it probably hastens the demise of the relationship, which is usually a good thing in terms of what the children are expecting, experiencing. So I've got particular views as well on sort of crime and punishment and things like that that sort of fit into that, that we are, we. We are actually putting people into prison so they can re offend rather than taking the opportunity of their incarceration to, to treat them with respect and find out what their problem is in turn their system around. It's exactly the same if you look at the business in terms of somebody within the organization causing problems in an influential position. And as you've said, the way that's copied through the organization, the bully system, you could apply that directly in a family and you could apply that directly in the prisons as well. Now that is big because it's the microcosm into the microcosm, isn't it? It's how you respond, how you are internally, how that affects your family, society, work, everything but just that. Quick question to you, Lesley. Should there be a therapist on the board? These corporations are massive. We're going global at the moment where, you know, sort of people at the top are linking all over the world in different continents. They all have very often different feelings and different attitudes towards the business, which we hope. Every business that sets up hopes that the culture will be the cohesion, be the glue between it. But do you think there should be a therapist that people have on their board? Right. Well, the first level of answer would be not on the board of the company, but on the advisory board, without doubt. The difference being that an advisory board can obviously comprise of as many different profiles of people as you think are going to be valued to, to the company. But I also kind of read another question into what you were saying, Maria, which was, should you have access to a psychotherapist? So for senior people in the company and across the company, should this be something that's embraced and seen as being positive, responsible, respectable? Absolutely, without doubt. Earlier, one of the things you said was you differentiated between SMEs and corporates. And I think that's a massively important area where the distinction isn't usually clear enough. Because the process of going from SME to corporate is to a large extent about the depersonalization of everything that's going on in the company so that it's alienated from any particular personal culture or profile so that it can grow and it can grow rapidly and independently of any one individual continuing to be with the organization. Now, by definition, that means systems more impersonal, putting people into boxes. And you talked about how if you've got a head of a company of an SME whose behavior is off and they've got problems and whatever impacts everybody and absolutely it does, but you can sort of still track it to the person at that level. The trouble when you put everything, go to the corporate side and everything's become much more systemized and regulated and the, you know you're meant to behave a certain way inside your box. If you're not careful, you're making everybody sick. John said earlier about how anxiety is at the root of pretty much everything he deals with his clients. And I would absolutely echo that. I think anxiety is key and it's one of the things that's making it so difficult for people at the moment. People get stop performing well and stop engaging when they feel helpless. Yeah, absolutely. And so many corporates, in an effort to streamline effectively make people feel helpless. It depends on how you see a box. Do you see a box as a container for yourself or do you see it as a climbing frame? Some people will be sufficiently ambitious, you could argue, ruthless, not caring about other people that they'll see, see boxes as climbing frames and they'll look for ways where they can change the rules, break the rules, get to the top without before anyone spots what they've done. But the vast majority of people and they, if they say, suppose they're going to work to do their job, not just for the money, even though that might be the major reason why they feel they can't walk away, they want to go to work to do a good job and they want to get along with their colleagues and their peers. And you start putting impossible regulations and systems in, you cut across so much of that and then you get sick people. Yeah. And if you've got to try and come full circle to your question, Maria, in terms of psychotherapy and it being available to board members, recognized as being a part of something respectable that the company consults. Absolutely. Because it start, it's a real big flag that says it's okay to look at people's mental health and well being as something that's part of their professional capacity and not a weakness, not a stigma. And I think it's the stigma thing that's massive here and anything we can do to turn that around is only for the good of everyone. Yeah. So I think that in my opinion they should have psychotherapists, stroke mentors who are both business aware and personally, you know, in the psychodynamic field to be full time in a business. But also they would need somebody to fall back on. And as John says, whether it's with the family or whether it's in an organization, they can also bring people in or send somebody who needs extra help to different types of therapists. Can I just follow up? We've only got a short period of time, sadly to talk about everything that's being brought up and it's so fascinating. But John, can I just bring up the point of mother child relationship in the family? Family, you said they were the most important. Yes, please do. What, what would you like me to talk about? Why did you specifically think it was the mother child as opposed to the father child? Well, I suppose we have to go back to how we view the meaning of life. Big, big question. But if, if we, if we looked at why we go to work each day, been talking about business a lot, it is to bring back the bacon as such, to feed the family. But there is something else as well. I mean, talking about people's success and their feelings of contentment and creativity. And I think that if we've got to exercise those needs within every individual in the family, we have the nurturing role which is taken by the mother. I know that we talk about different nurturing roles, but if we take the traditional feelings of this, which is like a nature type nurturing role that, I mean, it can be performed by any sex. But it is a question of encouraging the next generation, directly or not directly, to be able to feel that they are healthy, have security, have wisdom, love, creativity, these sort of life skills that are necessary to fit themselves into society. It's the ultimate feeling that has to be given is that feeling of, to use a word, loved. If we feel Loved. We feel we have competence in our abilities and who we are. The converse of that, as Leslie was describing just now, the chastised person in the business, their confidence goes. They feel anxiety when they're in apartment. They go home feeling exactly the same and taking that with them. It's an endemic process which actually destroys the confidence within the. Within, not just the business, but also within the family itself. So it's really important, I think, the role, the parental role, if you take it back to the mother and child and the family relationship and then extend that into the workplace and into prisons, if you like, into the politics, into the world as a whole, and look at the role as a nurturing role, rather than looking at one of divisive politics and, let's say, the pursuit of simply monetary gain. This is not what it's about. But as Leslie made a very good differential there is that the corporations that are growing bigger and bigger and bigger, cutting out the importance of why these smaller companies were actually produced in the first place. My word for that is they lose their soul. And if the employees have also lost their soul, there's a huge hole here developing. When the nation loses its soul and you can see it and feel it coming and just bit by bit, unless we change things around, that is what's going to take place. And you see it in countries which have a sort of government, whereas everybody just gives up because the system is so powerful and so strong that they have no power within it. Now, that will happen in a business, it'll happen in a family in the same way. So do you think then coming back to the psychotherapeutic and supportive need of a woman at home, or a mother at home or the primary carer at home, impact on society? I do think a lot of mothers do need support, mothers, fathers, whoever is the primary carer, and consequently it impacts on society as a whole. And coming back to crime and punishment, it then can affect the crime rates. And I know if you just take that further, I know of a woman many years ago now who was very caring about her son, you know, financially. She had to raise her son and he became a criminal, basically. And when she turned for help, there was nobody to turn to. Do you think that, Lesley, that that system can be changed as well? Bottom line, any system can be changed, but it's not necessarily easy to do. And it's got one way of looking at this. Is something. Is it possible that something's done? Are people willing to do it? Somebody has to be willing to change the system. But probably what you've got, which is the biggest block, will there will be people who know how to operate the current one or benefit from it, and they are likely to act as blocks, be that overtly or covertly. So your systems can be changed. And the other thing is, if you're changing a system, it's the point at which also you let go, you've got the new one in place and you actually actively let go of get rid of the old one. So you haven't still got the old legacy sort of hanging around. But yes, systems can be changed. The starting point is usually to think about what would you do systematically that would be supportive of people performing at their best, but at their best where they are taking responsibility for what they're doing. So the system is there to make them response able. Yeah. Yes. And that's what so many systems are not designed to do, largely because they're probably designed out of fear. And I mean, anxiety seems to have been a theme in this conversation, but I would suggest that none of us perform our best when we're afraid. You know, you probably perform our absolute best where we're being both objective and compassionate. Oh, I don't know. I think fear can be a driver. Oh, I didn't say it could be a driver, Maria. And it can have some of the best results because from fear you can create something under duress and stress, as we know geographically, you know, sort of geologically, that you get the diamonds and you get all the wonderful gems. But I do believe in that. I totally agree. What I'm trying to get at is here as well, is organizations. For example, in school, I was just thinking about schools and families, that the psychotherapist or the mentor doesn't go deals with the individual but not the organization. So what we've got, even with the NHS over here, and we're very fortunate to have such a wonderful offering in this country of help both through, you know, physical illness and a certain amount of mental illness. But the individual comes and it doesn't impact on the system that is implementing the, you know, the help. So the government perhaps should have psychotherapists attached and mentors that are both psychotherapy psychotherapeutically aware and in terms of organizational structure, I think there's a problem. Oh, sorry. To have somebody who can advise on the soul and mental health and well being of the organisation and the impact that it equally has on the individual. What do you think, John? Well, I think there's a problem in the situation you described in terms of governments and perhaps large organisations as well. There's enough problem in terms of families, but at the end of the day, a large corporation is usually into power and money because that's all they've got. They've long lost the importance of building a particular pump in a certain way a long way down the line from that. It's about growth and the bottom line on their balance sheet and how many millions they've made. Especially when a company becomes quite diverse in, let's say, its manufacturing process, not one of them is important enough. They're only thinking about, well, if this one's down, that one could be up and we can still make money and that's okay. I think we're losing sight of what's important in the world and the board will not want too much intervention. And I think when Leslie said the advisory board, yes, but my own view of this is that no matter what you advise, if that's not what the chairman wants, it doesn't really catch on. But I do. I have a situation quite recently, had a client that worked for me for a while and she was on her way up in the organization and when she became in the organization nearer the top, she started referring people for therapy and that was a really smart move and it did really change the balance of power within the organization. So I think that could work. But it's not something you can say to an existing chairman. What you need is to have a psychotherapist on the board and they'll solve a few problems for you and it'll all be okay. Will it make me money? The short answer is yes, but actually he's still not going to take it or she is not going to take that view. Culture, actually as Leslie we were talking about what is the culture of a company and unless the culture of the company includes the well being of society and I think more and more young people are becoming aware of that. We're talking about climate change, we're talking about who matters in this world. And I think if we change and we can be influential in the culture change, then perhaps chairman will say actually we've got enough money here, we don't have to make more profits year upon year, 10% and push everybody towards the financial, you know, sort of results, but also socially responsible results. So a part of the result is inclusive. So with mentoring, success and finance, but also self expression and healing and benefiting the world that we live in, which is now global, is now having a great. We are all having an impact, one upon each other and I do think that's the way to do it. And perhaps mentors and psychotherapists need to be a little bit proactive. And I do come back to this term in speaking out and telling people what they need as opposed to waiting for them to ask for what they need. Lesley, do you want something to quickly tie up? We've got very two things. I would. I would agree that I think if you're a professional in any field and you understand how your field works, there is a sort of duty of care to speak up a bit more so that your understanding gets spread more widely and people can be come up with new creative solutions that embrace that understanding. In terms of this conversation, the place I would suggest that corporates would be very well advised to engage with a psychotherapist early on is in system design. And that probably isn't at the board level. That decision's made. It's more at the senior management. But the board would have to endorse and authorise that. Working with a psychotherapist was a good idea. I think that's something we could bang drums on and make much more of a noise about. Lesley Hetherington and John Nelson. A wonderful conversation. We could go on for a long time. Thank you for joining me today. In youn Mind Matters. This can be heard on women's radio station and men's radio station. And please remember, the most powerful personal decisions are often small and hidden.